The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out

I've been reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a collection of short works and transcribed lectures of Physiscist Richard P. Feynman (edited by Jeffrey Robins, who left in enough errors to make me think that he really didn't like Feynman;1999, Helix Books from Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA). It can be difficult to read at times, because these are mostly transcribed lectures, and the transcription didn't change the speech to text. I have no doubt that Feynman was a fascinating speaker; probably very animated and exciting. But when transcribed almost word-for-word is ungrammatical and even disconnected. (I do get the irony here.) Anyway, I just read the The Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society*, and I had to comment on it. Feynman's thesis, summed up, is that Science should investigate religion. I think he really wanted to say that science should debunk religion, but he didn't want to go that far. For example, he compared the miracles at Lourdes to astrology, even suggesting we should make measurements at Lourdes ("If the healing process is working at Lourdes, the question is how far from the site of the miracle can the person, who is ill, stand?"), so as to better control the situation. I think the implication is that there are no miracle at Lourdes, or anywhere else for that matter. Well, let's give Feynman (who I really do like, I think) the benefit of the doubt. He lived in heady times, and clearly struggled with the idea of a higher power. *A lecture given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy, 1964.

Victims of rape and incest

I heard Cain waffled on abortion in the case of rape our incest.  This is an emotionally  charged question, which deserves an emotionally charged answer.  I think a good response is "Do you mean: should we punish the victim?"

Einstein, Heisenberg, and Tipler

Einstein, Heisenberg, and Tipler

This was a cute, if a little irreverent, article. The concept that creation was via information, not matter, is an interesting idea. Of course, the idea of a bug in creation is a little heretical.

It's also interesting how I came upon the article. I had read about the Planck Power in the latest Proceeding of the IEEE, and as I hadn't heard of it before looked it up. That landed me on the Plank Energy Wikipedia entry, which referenced the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays article, which led to John Walker's lively analysis of the 1991 event. This had links to several other of John Walker's pages.

...As It Is In Heaven

Reading Mark Musa's translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, in which Dante uses imagery of the perfection of the planetary motions as images of Heaven, it occurred to me that heavenly perfection was what Jesus meant when teaching his disciples to pray. This is what the understanding would have been, and indeed th.e heavens were considered perfect until fairly recently. So the prayer is that "May Your will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven", really means "May we be perfect, as the heavens are perfect".

We may now, in our hubris, rejoice in the now known imperfections of space, what with meteors, gamma ray bursts, rogue comets, the chaos of the Sun's surface, etc., and think that we don't need to be so damn perfect. A closer examination, though, will short circuit that thought. The ancients observed perfect gravitational reactions -- they didn't know gravity was what it was, but that's what they observed. All the other stuff that we now know is in outer space is still perfect though, just more complex than the ancients thought. Each particle of dust reacts to gravity perfectly.

Of course, one can say that quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle may give us the randomness that will excuse our imperfections. But even quantum reactions are perfect. Of course, scientists depend on that perfection, and new theories hang on minute deviations from the expected reactions.

So no more excuses: pray to be perfect.

Scientist as a particular type of Athiest?

I heard this the other day, probably on a Christian radio station (WAVA 105.1 in Washington DC area). The term scientist is really that you believe in science. Of course, that's a bit of a logical puzzle, as science is about obtaining evidence with know error margins. Belief shouldn't enter in to it, but I think the science community does, at least in public, believe very strongly in science.

As a Christian, I've always maintained that my faith started with facts (see McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict) and wasn't so much a matter of belief, and science is by definition fact based. So I think the two mix very well. The faith comes in after digesting the facts, because the facts point one to faith in things to come. And this is OK for Christianity, but not so much for science. The statement that everything must have a scientific explanation is a statement of faith, because it can never be subject to experimentation.

Sacred Science: Using Faith to Explain Anomalies in Physics: Scientific American

Sacred Science: Using Faith to Explain Anomalies in Physics: Scientific American

Like most such articles, the author takes a most unscientific view of God -- that is, he assumes God does not exist, and explains everything in these terms. Now, explaining anything using the existence of God from the outset is foolishness. Even the Catholic Church, whose very trade is in miracles, takes a very sober view of them - saints aren't declared haphazardly. But either God exists or He doesn't, and a scientific attitude would leave the question open.

Rather, science can examine miracles. We would have to record enough preconditions to the miraculous event to declare that the event could not have happened without a miracle. And then the result would not be repeatable. Not repeatable? Of course - that's why it's a miracle.

I don't expect to see such evidence presented anytime soon though. It would take a truly remarkable scientist and man of faith to record the details of miracle with such evidence that skeptics would be moved. The religious scientist would likely be too moved himself (herself) to be objective. And a non-believer (or should I say, a believer in no God) would most likely bury the evidence.

American Scientist Online - Tip-of-the-Tongue States Yield Language Insights

American Scientist Online - Tip-of-the-Tongue States Yield Language Insights

This article creates a strong case for language as fundamental to thought processes. This may explain why people who know more than one language (a club I am not a member of) often seem smarter. It may also explain why culture seems so strongly tied to language.