Hi. I'd sent this response earlier, but not to the list. It starts where the ------------ is.

ml

Joey wrote:
> So, when the inevitable question first popped in the
> mind of Early man "why are we here?" Is
> it really suprising that man's answer involved a
> story, rather than a desire to catalogue and
> analyze the physical world?

I agree with all of what Joey wrote and I think it addresses Todd's questions quite nicely:

----------------------- Yes. Unfortunately, something about being alive and conscious precludes us from direct contact with The Rules. Although things that aren't alive and conscious don't have any more "contact" with them than we. In fact, if any matter were expected to experience itself, it would be the reflective life forms. And yet, as Todd points out, we are shut out, despite the fact that we are the only things made of atoms that realize it.

Maybe being made of isn't enough. Atoms are made of atoms. They don't know anything, as far as we can tell. Rabbits are also made of atoms and their realization is questionable. So, why should we be so special? Maybe life least of all should have a direct link to the rules. That isn't its work. By definition, the reason we call it life, is because it is matter that has evolved the tendency to propagate, in like form, in a singularly efficient manner. Not depending purely on chance, like crystal or coal, does.

So evolution hasn't favored plugged-in varieties of life. Maybe they get distracted thinking and aren't too good at replicating. At any rate, I think if we were meant to have all the answers, this would have become obvious by now. And I'm suggesting that something inherent in the definition of "life form" precludes it from also being "universe understander." And maybe the Eastern religions are right and only the whole universe together knows everything that it is doing and is. Maybe sections can't develop that eye. Because, as we've seen, when they develop an eye, it is in order to optimize survival, and who said survival has anything to do with knowledge?

M Lessov

--------------------------- Todd wrote:
> Something else to ponder is *why* our mental processes and the
> way nature works are such that the scientific method is such
> a struggle for us. I mean, since we are made of stuff that is
> operating according to principles we discover through science,
> why aren't we just directly tuned into those principles? Why
> do most of our ideas turn out to be wrong, so that we need
> the scientific method to zero in on the principles that work
> in describing what happens in nature?

If you are happy with the theory of evolution, then our
brains evolved to solve certain problems of getting through
life, exactly what Joey described. In fact our brains are
well-suited to handle pre-civilization life, we probably
haven't done much evolving in the time civilization has been
around (although certainly it's had a large effect on how our
brains are taught as we grow up). In any event our brains
are not optimized to understand the principles of science,
or to handle the scientific method easily, because neither of
these would serve any evolutionary purpose.

The moral of this:
Let's face it, science is not a career you enter to attract
lots of members of the opposite sex and pass on your genes! :-)

--Eric