specialists, cosmologists, bla blaBLAH BLAH

[Daniel Stein]

Quoth Paul Mackin:

"Now for the hard part. Or maybe the sad part.

"The books _do_ dangle the idea that scientific theorems and other bodies of
learned discourse _can_ be extended to the human and even the divine.
Reluctantly, I've interpreted this to be a portrayal of madness--the
creation of connections where none exist--for the purpose of humor and
gentle mockery. In other words, to create and impart wisdom.

The problem for me is--it would be a heck of a lot more fun if such
jumps were _really_ possible. Otherwise science seems so dead.

Book publishers (including Pynchon's) know what they are about.

Someone want to straighten me out?"

***************************************************

Sure, Paul, I'll bite.

As all this WvB stuff has surely pointed out, scientific concepts can be
converted to poetic images (good, bad, depends on the poet's skill).

If human beings are capable of distinguishing the animate from the
inanimate, it is an
integrally (but perhaps not exclusively) human trait, and to some extent,
the Edge between
the animate and inanimate is culturally drawn - in the form of poetic and
religious sentiment.

If science isn't 'of' the human, I don't know what it is 'of'.
Doing science is a human activity, done by humans, but it's just not
always ABOUT humans. Surely we can stand not being the center of
attention once in awhile. The same rocket that falls as GR closes
is really the same one that lets us vicariously sniff the air on Venus,
Mars, and now Jupiter.Sniffing the air is both a scientific and a poetic
image. Who has not sniffed? and not merely with disdain?!)

Nevertheless, when one "does" science, one does it better and better the more
care one takes in marking the Edge. Jumps and tenuous connections are not
unknown, but we leap, we always rest on a consideration of the path trodden
so far,
and really do have some notion of how wide and deep is the chasm that must
be leapt.
Then the path continues onward.

Week after week, I've puzzled over many postings to this group in terms of
expressed
attitudes toward and understandings of the "scientific". I'm not at all
sure what you
mean when you state that "science seems so dead." This view is characteristic
of the failure to remember that scientific knowledge is, above ALL else,
tentative
(provisional) - living, evolving, always testing the depth, like the
bather, even when
toes do not  touch bottom. I could (and do) make the facile remark the once
you have a
Universal Truth on your hands, you indeed have something inanimate (or
dead? not at
all the same.) But likewise the path continues on from, or perhaps athwart,
that UT.

***************************************************
And thus Chris Stolz:

"I don't see what the problem with the Von Braun quote is.

"My experience with talking with a lot of scientists has been that
rigorous analytical scientific investigations (philosophical ones
also) do what Wittgenstein found:  they show you what you *can*
and do know, but, much more importantly, they show you what you
*cannot* know.  Understanding particle physics, or molecular
biology, or chemistry, or whatever, will show you the limits of
scientific reasoning.  There 's that fascinating quote in the
_Slow Learner_ intro where Pynchon talks about how important it
is for somebody to understand his/her ignorance, and that
ignorance may have its own laws and ways of being.

"I think this is Pynchon's interest in WvB:  immersion in calculus
and physics makes it very, very clear that basic metaphysical
questions are not only unanswerable in scientific vocabulary but
also that these questions are as important as scientific thinking
itself."

*************************

I'm not quite sure what all this "getting in touch with the limits of
knowledge" is about.
But I guess that sets only some very indefinite limits on what I don't know
about not knowing.

Science is, up front, about choosing answerable questions over unanswerable
ones, even
if the answers really turn out to be just more questions. That scope may
appear inordinately
restrictive to the Absolutely-inclined, since not all questions may be
entertained meaningfully.
And the tentative nature of scientific knowledge may fail to satisfy one's
craving for Truth. But come to think of it, art doesn't always satisfy that
hunger either.

Indeed, GR's rocket (merely a vehicle designed to deliver the metaphysical
question/answer)
never quite arrives in the end - held suspended just above us - as we sit
there in that "theater of
the mind". We are thereby informed that the metaphysical questions are
unanswerable,
not just scientifically, but even in terms of their own metaphysical
vocabulary. The
moment of Enlightenment never really arrives. That does not discourage me
from reading and
rereading, and GR is not any the less funny, scary, and beautiful in the
extreme.

When it comes to the insubstantial, I note that we all begin (and end) on
an equal footing.
And we know our ignorance of it (or should!)

Not that it isn't a rich entertainment to have one's own try at it.
Metaphysical questions are
important to anyone who thinks they're important. How we luxuriate in this
electronic
pasture, biting off big hunks of epistemology and metaphysics, chewing awhile,
ruminating and regurgitating until at last some idea becomes digestible.
And periodically
leaving behind little piles of residue known as 'books' to fertilize the
ground for next year's
silage. Ah! if only one could simply ruminate, wondering whether the only
reality is
the one going on inside that theater up there...Then, the ratio of  philosophers
to stockbrokers and marketing wizards would be different, a good thing IMO.

With hope that this does not ignite the Two Cultures debate again,

Flamelessly, i.e. Brenschlussingly (?)

Dan