What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

To be honest, MindWalk, looking at it again, it seems like one of those books that gives the impression that it might be very deep, but which could really be just a big vague and not that meaningful. Bohm wrote it when he was in his 60s and it appears more philosophical than scientific.

   Why do I always feel that you require me to answer the same question several times? Now remember, Mr. Walden Pond, I had earlier said "dead" and you twisted that into "worthless".

   That aside, what part of dead don't you understand? There was a time when the human race did not have the knowledge or tools that we have today so there were "armchair scientists"...known as "philosophers".

   Mind you, I have studied philosophy. And, I am glad that I did. And, I have studied religions (both western and eastern). And, I am glad that I did.

   But that's because I have an inquisitive mind. That and I had to wade through tons of miasma to sort things out. Now, if I was living a couple of hundred years ago, I would be talking about shadows in a cave and monads and that I am because I think and blah...blah...blah...

   What part of "dead" don't you understand?! You want a nice liberal arts education, then you study this sh*t and Renaissance art and how to make doilies and you wear a powdered wig.

   You want to do something productive with your life and have a better chance at making a living, you spend most of your time learning engineering, medicine, chemistry, science...something which you can use to make a significant contribution to humanity rather than being a well educated, liberal arts gadfly.

   Bah!

   Speaking of gadflies...

"During his defense when on trial for his life, Socrates, according to Plato's writings, pointed out that dissent, like the gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of silencing individuals who were irritating could be very high. "If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me," because his role was that of a gadfly, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." This may have been one of the earliest descriptions ofgadfly ethics."

re: http://www.ask.com/wiki/Social_gadfly?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com

In Canada if you wear a powdered wig, that means you are a Barrister and doing quite OK in the making a living department.   10/90 you are contributing to humanity.  About the same as any other profession.

(#3495) Bohm wrote it when he was in his 60s and it appears more philosophical than scientific.

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....and probably kinda normal for ppl beginning to face their own mortality, wouldn't you feel ?

....and thank you Rocky for the suggestion to look n2 this book. I read a little 2day. And BTW, you could always read that book from back to front- but do start w/ the Introduction. The last paragraph closes the book beautifully....and the warm colors of the wing on the cover is perfect.

(#3486) THERE IS A GOD AND THE WORLD WE LIVE ON IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD AND GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS IMAGE!!! HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE LAST AND GREATEST CREATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY!!!

So true........

MindWalk wrote:

einstein99 wrote:

MindWalk wrote:

einstein99, I am not sure why you say what you say, in the face of the evidence painstakingly gathered over many years by many scientists. Do you deny that they have gathered evidence? Do you interpret that evidence differently than they do?

__________________________

It's hard to proove anything past DNA testing abilities Mind Walk.

I can't help noticing how some people--not just einstein99--seem incapable of answering questions, instead making replies that don't answer the questions. Why is that?

___________________

Lots of evidence for something MW. 😕

You seem to think you're being enlightening. But no. I still don't know what you mean by "dead."

And I still *strongly suspect*, based on what you *have* said, that you are referring to a very restricted part of philosophy: speculative metaphysics, or perhaps even more restrictedly, speculative metaphysics uninformed by scientific understanding.

But I'm still guessing, because *you still aren't explaining what your metaphorical use of the word "dead" means*.

Lola: "(#3486) THERE IS A GOD AND THE WORLD WE LIVE ON IS BILLIONS OF YEARS OLD AND GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS IMAGE!!! HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE LAST AND GREATEST CREATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY!!!

So true........"

   Yeah but he hasn't read the Bible. For one, it shows the Earth to be only about 6,000 years old. btw...what is God's image? He has arms, legs and...and...you know?

   We have the vestige of a tail... He has that too? And if he is a He, and there is a Son, where is the She God?

   Never mind. I am getting a headache.

p.s.: Why is that strange man always screaming?

MW: "You seem to think you're being enlightening. But no. I still don't know what you mean by "dead."

   You still don't understand because, although I like you a lot, you are denser than Cn on the periodic table.  

   Dead means archaic, obsolete, oudated, antiquated, dowdy, fusty, nfg for any useful purpose...

   We are just going to have to disagree.That or you are going to turn me into a madman at which point I am going to come through your modem and give you a personal demonstration, old boy. 

Bizarre claim about philosophy being "obsolete". Moral and ethical philosophy is quite alive and kicking. Identity philosophy, linguistic philosophy, philosophy of history, sociology, law, culture, etc., is always being specified and revitalized. Philosophy can certainly be dead in the mind of an individual. Ignorance or just personal choice can account for that. But Philosophy will out-live those individuals:) 

Ironic since it seems you are arguing against philosophy from a purely philosophical perspective.

_Number_6: "Ironic since it seems you are arguing against philosophy from a purely philosophical perspective."

   Eh, you may have a point there...but only ostensibly. I am a freethinker with an analytical mind, a decent education and a great many decades of experience. What? You think I'm a pimple-faced noob?

   Trysts, you make some valid claims (well, I am mostly just being polite ). But let me first emphasize that what I have said is not so much in regard to the ethics side of philosophy but the metaphysics, cosmology, ontology, teleology and epistemology. Shoot, I think I just eviscerated the bulk of the subject. Science has rendered these matters of armchair omphaloskepsis as impotent, pointless, stupid, worthless...did I mention dead?

   If you can't or won't agree with me on this...fine. I don't care. Tough patooties.

   Now when we get to ethics in philosophy, we have...well, here for example:

"Philosophers have three main approaches to the field of ethics: deontology, teleology (more commonly referred to as consequentialism) and virtue ethics. These three approaches differ in terms of the object of study.

Deontologists focus on actions themselves and try to determine if they are inherently right or wrong. For example a deontologist might say that the act of lying is always wrong, regardless of the reason.

Consequentialists look to the final consequence of the action, not the action itself. The measure of the consequence is taken by the increase in pleasure and decrease in pain caused by the action for those involved. With the consequentialist approach, lying to damage someone would be wrong but lying to protect someone would be right.

Finally, virtue ethicists look at the individual actor when determining the moral standing of an action. According to virtue ethics, an action is correct if it nourishes virtue within the individual. Common virtues include honesty, which is contrary to lying."

re: http://www.ehow.com/info_8272871_ethics-philosophy.html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask

   So, what do I think about this part of philosophy (not that anyone who disagrees with me really gives a...gives a, well how about "hoot"?

   What is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil, how should a society conduct itself, is nose picking moral and blah...blah...blah...

   We still have religion (like it or not) which is a prime influence...the Ten Commandments or Sharia Law, for example. Political parties...lefties, righties, liberal, conservative, moderate, Nazis, communists and so on and so forth. On top of that, there is the "law of the land". 

   You can sit around all day on a barstool sipping Singapore Slings (or guzzling them) and proffering profound philosphical ethical and moral viewpoints and biased, subjective opinions, all the while wearing a powdered wig and crooking your teensy-weensy pinky finger at just the exactly correct (and most popular) angle...but you go out on the street and break a law or, in many countries, break a religious fiat and, well, try it. You'll see firsthand what I mean.

   Only fools such as hapless (who has fled the scene in defeat and despair) are so naiive as to think ethical philosophy is worth a farthing.

   Grow up, people.

   Bah!

I suspect that the error came in observation.  The theory of free fall and the acceleration of gravity is universal in a vacuum. Aristotle pre-dated partial vacuum experimentation by approximately 2100 years.  

Galileo was clever in designing his experiments to predict how objects would react and from that was able to accurately isolate the variables.  Even he lacked precision timing devises but his solution was ingenious. 

It seems to me that in order to accurately predict acceleration from scratch you would need an accurate way to measure, or at least have a very good understanding of the relationship of gravity, time, distance, mass, drag, density of the material being passed through, and the projected area of the object.

Aristotle being wrong may have driven scientific research for over 1800 years as scientists tried to work out exactly where he went wrong.

Which puzzle were you trying to solve philosophically? 

http://www.jfinternational.com/ph/free-fall.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics#Natural_motion
http://www.vias.org/physics/bk1_05_01.html

A pimple-faced noob? Hardly. I think anyone who uses the phrase "a well rounded gentleman" is experienced enough to know what a Churchill is and was alive when its namesake was.

I'm listening to what everyone is trying to say here and I realize how much time we spend thinking about our past, & then our future, & then our past....interesting. It's like almost all of our thoughts ! Why ?....that doesn't really feel very right....and you know what I mean....stuff like what we just might discover or what part of past philosophy that we've moved beyond, & on & on.

Well, how about now ?....I mean right now ?....this second ?

I know one thing....they haven't thrown dirt on my body yet - and that's good. YKW ?....I say one moment at a time. Forget about yesterday. Forget about 2morrow. I'm not saying always always....but howbout more often than not ?....I think this is good - good for the brain, for the body, for the spirit........

Aristotle's error can not be forgiven easily. All he had to to was drop some rocks of very different weights. He was far too keen to jump to conclusions without thoroughly testing them. This was not the only major error that resulted.

My question to me is: Where am I right now ? (besides stuck on a rock....and surrounded by saltwater  )

Am I:

Living for the moment ?....nah, too irresponsible.

Living off the moment ?....nah, that's 'glory days'. 

Living out the moment ?....no, too fleeting.

Living by the moment ?....not quite there.

Living to the moment ?....no, too much planning. Too much future need.

Living over the moment ?....that's too pompous & phony.

Living under the moment ?....nah, not expressive enuf.

Living around the moment ?....no. Too aloof.

Living in the moment ?....not bad, but there's better.

Living with the moment ?....Ahh, there we go. That one feels just right.

This is a fluid-cool place where I can be mostly free and not too determined. Kinda like old skool recess where my senses are alive and well and free. But, not like 'head down on your desk' where my senses are suppressed.

So, today ?....I'll spend alotta my time fighting the enemy of my freewill....determinism. That's the bad part. The good part is that my freewill is holding it's ground........