I'm not sure if you are disagreeing in a way which is relevant to the
particular discussion I have been having with Ian."
and that's ok. what i hear u saying is u are seeing what i would call a linear
opposition --><-- and i am seeing a set of points all distinct, but sharing in
common their equidistance from a focus.
imho many, many of discussions like this thus have a go nowherre quality of
equal and oppising forces.
i tend to look for a y axis, and thus all kindsa curves, and thus curve balls.
:"Newton believed that in the absence of any forces, a body in motion
would continue to stay in motion at a constant velocity. Aristotle
taught that in the absence of any forces, a body in motion would tend
to slow down and stop."
cool..thank you.
that may in itself be relevant.
if i might, for our purposes here, reframe this statement:
newton propagated the statement that in a platonically ideal environment where
"no interference" could be given, motion stays motion.
aristotle propagated the idea that it is inherent that >>some dang thing<<
about which we may know nothing, will interfere.
my above paraphrase makes truly sucky physics, but workable theology,
psychology, and matches most people's personal perception of the motion of
their own lives.
it allow me to give a name to "some dang thing" "entropy" .
and now newton and aristotle are both only talking about what they see, not
what is.
and what they see, being a construct, >>necessarily<< (to paraphrase centruy of
lioght) will be deconstructed or propagate its observational bias.
:"When I am talking
about certainty I mean absolute certainty."
and when i mean absolute certainty i mean only Logos--everything else being
not Logos and therefore not certain.
:"by convention a
circle is *defined* to have 360 degrees."
yes. thank you. ya!!
by reality, there is a ratio between internal triangle and circle. for all i
know it';s true even when euclid;'s 5th isn;t...but i dunno.
for reasons that have to do with deeply held perceputal bias that makes no
real difference, 99.999% of the time, that deep bias is about the relationship
of man/Divine, earth/sun, etc, and the units of describing the arc are related
to a perceived calander. and an underlying assumoption (God hates fractions)
that makes a base 60, and a 360 day year, etcetcetc).
thus >>>we call<<< the arc 360, and having agreed, call the internal angles
180.
i (ok, not i, but somebody) could develop a language such that hmmm, let's say
there are 5 x 19 "degrees" in a circle, and suddenly say that a pontacle was
an inherent and self-evident "truth" of circles. at which ponit a triangle's
interals would equal 47.5 degrees.
in math, there is a long standing agreement, as i see it, to pretend that the
infinite number of lines that can be drawn from focus to point have "utility"
when we say that 360 of them "count".
this kind of thinking becomes a signer of something or other useful when we
look at the relationship between the history of the metric system and the
history of chemistry.
:"can be settled just by clearing
up our definitions."
yes. totay. so, is it a "necessity" that we deconstruct the sustem of
assumptions until we return to a point of shared common ground?
yes, imho.
can we take that process too far?
the image in my head is that we have a beach. we can sort the grains into
lkarge/small, light/dark, endlessly, until each grain is in a unique
classification--at which point we have a beach...and have done nothing. if we
acknowledge that "the sands move" we cannot even map the beach we have created
through our perception.
we thus have derrida saying before/after coffee sip are 2 distinct meaninggs,
one of which is now incomprehnsible, and he is right.
is the process of being human, "discovering the underlying erealities"
saccomplished by placing more debris on top of them--or by deconstructing the
edifice of observational debris left by others?
:" only for those who agree that the thing on a dollar bill is a
pyramid, not a triangle.
>From my perspective that's a very tiny if. "
i would offer that that measure is a conscious decision to forget the time
when pyramid/triangle was not a clear distinction in your mind.
:''m not sure how what you are saying affects the basic point that the
notions of what is "obviously true" has changed throughout history."
ok..i ihad this same discussion last night with a firend of mine in for
t-giving break...it started with definitions of "creationism" and "inerrancy"
and i related the sotry in such wise that "God invented eyeballs before She
invented newton" being true doesn;t mean "u can mess with the pope."
>>>that<<< is an example of apples and oranges.
you are involved with people engaged in fundamental definitional issues: "who
am i, why shoulde i care, and why should anyone else."
those 3 points likweise define a plane, albeit non-euclidean.
the thread h
