Newton & the absolute, true, mathematical quantities themselves (materialism)

[Joseph Tracy]

> Pruwett's intellectual dishonesty is revealed in the end quote - taken from Prigogine's 1982 Tanner Lecture "Only an Illusion "
> http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/Prigogine84.pdf
> 
> the full quote being
> 
> "Do we have really to make a tragic choice between a timeless reality which leads to human alienation or an affirmation of time which seems to brade with scientific rationality?" 
> 
> Prigogene' concern here is to question Einstein's assertion that the arrow of time is an illusion, and has nothing to do with Pruwett's attempt to assert 'mind' as a universal fundamental. 


First off, thanks for the link to Prigogine’s Lecture. I ploughed through the whole thing( plus the addendum of correspondece between Eistein and Tagore) as best I could with limited understanding of many parts. I can’t agree at all that Pruett is being untrue to the gist of the lecture which is an attempt both to describe the post materialist, post-quantum conundrums of science as regards time, the second law of thermodynamics, and irreversibility and to point to his  physics based agreement with Tagore that there is no position by which to study nature outside of nature, or outside of mind. He is very clear that he agrees with Tagore in the  view  that mind is best understood as an iteration of nature as a whole and not a random divergence. Prigogine appears to me to be saying in the most general sense that there is abundant scientific reason to suppose that neither time nor mind are an illusion or a merely subjective experience.

What Pruett seems to me to be doing is taking part of the quote to focus on the deeper query of the lecture , which I think he would be quite happy for the reader of his article to take a deeper look at. The question of time seems to me a subset of Prigogine’s deeper question.  One has to look at Pruett’s motive for including this lecture quote rather than the fact that he lifts the quote out of its exact context. Anyway, that is the way I see it.

> On Feb 13, 2016, at 2:38 PM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> From another Pruwett piece:
> 
> Toward a Post-Materialistic Science
> "The newest frontier of science is the study of consciousness, for which a materialistic bias is particularly prejudicial. That is, investigations of consciousness reveal phenomena that appear to violate the existing materialistic paradigm. Materialistically oriented scientists typically reject these so-called "paranormal" phenomena out-of-hand because they fly in the face of cherished preconceptions. The refusal to accept the "damned facts" at face value and confront them head-on is, according to the authors, "antithetical to the true spirit of scientific inquiry."
> 
> The authors then propose a radical, post-materialistic paradigm: "Mind represents an aspect of reality as primordial as the physical world. Mind is fundamental in the universe; i.e., it cannot be derived from matter and reduced to anything more basic."
> 
> In the final essay (April 4, 2013) of a nine-part Huffington Post series on "Science's Sacred Cows," I arrived at essentially the same conclusion: "Consciousness is not the magical by-product of a mechanical cosmos. It is an inherent attribute of the stuff of the universe."
> 
> The idea is neither original nor new. One can find intimations of this point of view in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel, and articulation of it in the writings of paleontologist-priest Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and "geologian" Thomas Berry (1914-2009). What's new, however, is the naming of the science of the future as "post-materialistic" and that the idea is gaining traction.
> 
> The proposed post-materialistic paradigm heals the Cartesian partition separating mind and matter, reunites philosophy and natural philosophy, and begins to resolve the age-old clash between science and religion. Much of the tragedy of the human condition lies in the competition for human allegiance of two rigid metaphysics: transcendental monism (spirit/psyche first) and materialistic monism (matter first), the former the metaphysic of religion and the latter that of science. "Do we really need to make this tragic choice?" pleads Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry.
> 
> Pruwett's intellectual dishonesty is revealed in the end quote - taken from Prigogine's 1982 Tanner Lecture "Only an Illusion "
> http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/Prigogine84.pdf
> 
> the full quote being
> 
> "Do we have really to make a tragic choice between a timeless reality which leads to human alienation or an affirmation of time which seems to brade with scientific rationality?" 
> 
> Prigogene' concern here is to question Einstein's assertion that the arrow of time is an illusion, and has nothing to do with Pruwett's attempt to assert 'mind' as a universal fundamental. 
> 
> 
> 
> On 13/02/2016 11:38, ish mailian wrote:
>> Science's Sacred Cows (Part 2): Absolute Space and Time
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

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