DAPHNA, on Jan 1998 you wrote in your e-mail message to me:
... there is an attitude that comes through your writing...
Also through my other activities. Problem is, I got used to having only the few friends who do not react the way you do.
... as if you are trying to intimidate or embarrass your prey. .
It is not my intention, but I'm aware of that, and got used.
Attitude does come through writing; if it did not, the written word could never be used to write the poem or novel. So, no, I will not delete those lines.
OK
... philosophy is the grandfather of all the branches of science. When Thales first stated that all was water, we have not been able to look back.
Thales was wrong: all is not water! He also predicted a solar eclipse: he was correct! He was also a mathematician. What he really did was to call the attention to Nature as following physical laws, not god's whims. This opened the way to real knowledge, not theological dictates. He therefore founded the love for knowledge, 'philosophia.' Of course this was the first step for things to come, science being one of them. Aristotle did it when he started classifying the extant knowledge. But real science started with the establishment of strict experimentation, whereby the replicability of the experiment led to fundamentals.
Daphna, it is nice to know about the pre-Socratic, the Socratic and the post-Socratic searchers of truth. In our time there are those who look for man's existential questions and responsibilities, and those who say that only realities that can be sensed should be the subject for the search of the true way of thinking, believing and behaving on the crust of our planet. It is my belief that the advances of the recent decades call for a New Philosophy, based on science. I am intent in taking the first step by means of the Serendip forums.
The last discipline to officially break away was psychology, the next hopefully will be logic.
Breaking away? Science is possible only when measurements can be made. Mathematics, which is not a Natural Science, is the underpinnings of science. Whatever can not be quantified remains within the aegis of 'philosophy' in its loose sense. Psychology became a discipline as it established principles of its own; as it employs more technological advances, measuring changes in bodily manifestations, especially in the brain, the more it tends toward science.
After having taken a logic course, I would not mind it going its own way. Perhaps philosophy still has a place in contributing to future knowledge, frankly I am not too sure of that either, but the education you can get from studying philosophy is immense. All branches of knowledge are touched upon, or should be, at the undergraduate level. It is a wonderful way to ascertain your interest for higher education or your interests in the work world. But many philosophers and theologians were not writing to be understood by even an intelligent reader, so I must question their reason for writing in the first place and question whether they are worth the time and effort needed to decipher their writings.
As for Logic, why do you say 'hopefully'? Logic has been a separate discipline for quite a while, yet its principles are overarching for every human endeavor. Logic is the sine-qua-non medium that philosophy and science utilize to act, as water is for biochemical reactions.
Daphna, once you grasp the essence of theology, philosophy and science, realizing that philosophy's turf is the immeasurable yet clearly comprehensible, such as language, syntax, rhyme, communicating unambiguously, law, liberty...; that theology is the domain for concepts like God, Creator, soul, hell, heaven..., while science deals with the measurable and capable of being studied experimentally, you will understand that indeed the time has arrived for not wasting too much time reading things passe.
Science does not answer the 'why?' that I am asking,; it answers the mechanics of the universe, but even after you answer all those whys, you are still left with my why. Unless science can, as Hawking says, "Know the mind of God", (unraveling god's mystery), we will have to depend on philosophy and possibly theology. Theologians may find philosophy to be an unwelcome visitor but if some of the research is correct on the beginnings of religion, than the first questions asked were philosophical, not religious. I must also question how far science has traveled, from the first "metaphysical musing" of all is "water", we have progressed to the latest "physical science musings" of all is "quarks"(or whatever is the smallest particle or wave of the moment is). We have in physics a lot of theories as yet unproven, not much different to the philosopher who states a theory and then sees if it holds up to the onslaught of criticism from other philsosophers and scientists. ( By the way I much prefer Tillich's "ground of being" to any religious god that has been defined to death.)
There is now a wonderful opportunity to open new horizons, by integrating philosophy with science and by clarifying theological concepts. In fact, a question on a forum about the soul I commented by stating with 'absolute' confidence that memory is the soul. I could add here a new idea: a newborn's soul is limited to his inchoate Collective Unconscious. An anencephalic embryo has no soul.
Daphna, try to edit the above paragraph, making it completely unambiguous.
The moment you stop saying (feeling), 'I much prefer (so and so),' you will have matured. In the meantime you are looking for a guru capable of answering your immature WHYs.
Remember: 1.- YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT BEING THAT HAS BEEN OR WILL EVER BE CREATED.
Yes, there is no evidence for God, but neither is there evidence for no God... To be at the pinnacle, to be able to affect the world the way we do, requires a seriousness and a responsibility that we don't exhibit on any regular basis. And yes I must include you in on my generalization, because if you demand that a fresh deck of cards be available for contract bridge, or if you eat steak, or if you buy from businesses that are only concerned with their profit margin and have no concern for the environment or their employees, then you are asking that we continue to rape the earth for your benefit. No, I am not a rabid environmentalist, but I fully believe that we can maintain a high standard of living without the destruction, even creating a higher standards of living. For that, science is needed. I am a rabid science fiction fan and I am constantly amazed at what yesterday was fantasy is today reality.
2.- AND YOUR VALUE IS NIL.
3.- ENDEAVOR TO ADD SOME VALUE TO IT.
You are an armchair idealist. That's why you ramble. There are ORGANIZATIONS which are in charge of seeing to it that things be done to improve what can be improved.
Thank you for all the feedback, I have enjoyed it tremendously, and my comment on your "superior expostulations" simply has to do with that attitude that comes through on your writing... We have probably entertained everyone enough for now.
Daphna, I see in you a person interested in learning and advancing. In the measure that you have the stuff to do so, I'll be interested in dialoguing and learning with and from you. Why, you might aspire to become a second Hypathia (disregarding the last paragraph of her biography).
Yes, of course there is 'fun' in this; otherwise I wouldn't be into it. My attitude is in part dictated by the confidence I have in my output, a fruit of painstaking reading, experimenting, analyzing, erring, learning from my errors. I can devote 10 hours a day to learn bridge and to add something of my own to it. I can devote 4 hours to the analysis of a single hand, until I UNDERSTAND it.
P.S. I had to take a Chemistry course this last semester, The professor said that ..my words here... all of the element were noble gas wanna bees. Is there any other purpose in the world for helium except to blow up balloons and be an inspiration for other elements? I also used the terms actual and potential, noble gases being actual, the rest potential, the professor preferred the term stable for noble gases.
Yes, the elements are cyclic. There are also what are called 'magic' numbers, which pertain to electron shells. Element 114 is expected to be a very special one because it will enjoy several magic numbers. There are no 'purposes' in Nature: Teleology is out of bonds in science, didn't you know? Full-shell elements are stable, they hardly intermingle; that's why theywere facetiously mocked of as 'noble.' It is not a question of name preferences. By the way, you might as well read my poem on the elements, 'Of Quantum and Love'...
I hope you'll reply in due time after digesting this (or spitting it out).