Previous
in thread
Hi, Todd. I understood
why you chose the quote. I think the way to make people comfortable
with disturbing concepts is to related them directly to their experience,
which does reflect these concepts whether they know it or not. I
think all people experience the changing flow of time in relation
to change, for instance whether or not they board a light-speed-traveling
spaceship. Relativity is demonstrated on earth in the speed process
of our thoughts. If you think many thoughts and "go" many
places in fime minutes, just as the clock has, you have lived more
closely five minutes than if you've thought "I have to get
to work. I have to get to work." for five minutes. That is
why days filled with a couple of events repeaded over and over in
one's head go by more quickly than days filled, like a child's,
with many different thoughts a minute. When it feels as if you've
lived less, that's because you have. You've experienced less change,
traveled through less space, because your spaceship, your mind,
is moving more slowly.
I understand that relativity
says this time-slowing dynamic is really reversable and it doesn't
matter, or is impossible to tell which object is moving more quickly
than the other; each measures time as having slowed on the opposite
craft. But, still, without including this detail, the above description
is one way in which I relate my experience to concepts in science
and a way in which others could, if such examples were presented
them.
maya
On Tue, 2 May 2000, Todd
Duncan wrote:
> All right, so I'm guilty of choosing the quote in question.
It's from a
> book by Prigogine and Stengers, called "Order Out of Chaos"
(p. 96 in case
> anyone wants to look at the context). I found it somewhat puzzling,
too, so
> I thought it might stir up some interesting discussion (which
it certainly
> did!:-).
>
> My interest in the passage arose from discussions with people
who perceive
> science as alienating. As a result, they may reject science
in favor of
> ways of thinking within which they feel more comfortable or
at home. The
> statement that the direction of time is somehow an "illusion"
is one such
> comment from science that is sometimes pointed out as alienating.
>
> I saw the quote as a recognition that if we force people to
choose between
> scientific ideas that they see as alienating, and nonscientific
ideas that
> are comfortable, most people will understandably choose comfort.
This
> raises an obvious question: Is it necessary for these folks
to see
> scientific ideas as alienating? Is there a missing interpretation
step that
> could allow them to see the scientific ideas in a way they'd
feel more at
> home in?
>
> Todd
> --
> *********************************
> * Todd Duncan *
> * Science Integration Institute *
> * duncan@scienceintegration.org *
> * (503) 848-0280 *
> * www.scienceintegration.org *
> * 1971 SE 73rd Ave. *
> * Hillsboro, OR 97123 *
> *********************************
> >> "To deny time - that is, to reduce it to a mere
deployment of a reversible
> >> law - is to abandon the possibility of defining a
conception of nature
> >> coherent with the hypothesis that nature produced
living beings,
> >> particularly man. It dooms us to choosing between
an antiscientific
> >> philosophy and an alienating science."
> >>
> >> - Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers