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Michael Friebel wrote: snip Pleaase don't confuse science and technology. Your computer is not science. It is technology just as every peice of glassware and every analytical tool in the science lab is technology. It is not science. Science dwells in the realm of the mind. I think all of Einstein's work in relativity was the result of 'thought experiments'. It is the domain of science to ask questions and to hypothesize answers for those questions and then to go and test the hypothesies. More often than not, the results of these tests and the answers that they bring result in new technologies. Technology acts as a static latch for the process of scientific inquiry. Even language and books are a technology for recording ideas. Without this technology knowledge can be lost. New technologies often result in the ability to test new hypothesies and so science and technology interact in a cycle where one provides the impetus and the other provides the leg to stand on just like climbing a ladder. (Taoists nod knowingly) The human mind is an integral part of this process and always has been and always will be as illustrated by the story of Schrodinger's cat.Are you then saying that your computer is a theory? At which point do you claim science to fail? It may be extremely relevant to us. The fact that we have not discovered something does not mean that it does not exist. The fact that we do not understand how genes are expressed does not mean that we will not, like a small child playing with fire, get our fingers burned in the process of discovery.If a thing (whatever it may be) is testable, then it will, in time, be discovered & acknowledged in our process of science. If a phenomenon is not testable, then of what relevancy can it be to us? snip All that matters is that it is testable. By whatever way we may perceive something, if it is testable, then it is relevant & comprehensible. If we have a yet-to-be-discovered 6th sense, wouldn't it be of the mind by definition? This is a good question. The first part is very solid except to say that if it is not testable, this doesn't imply that it is irelevant though it may be incomprehensible. It was incomprehensible to people at one time that the earth was not flat. The question brings us around to a comment Bob Allen made early in this thread which was to the effect that what other means do we have asside from science to continue the process of discovery? Is there another means for gaining knowledge other that what our senses tell us through experience? As Bob pointed out we have only mysticism as an alternate route for knowing. I do not discount it as a possible source of knowledge but I would still say that any knowledge gained through that route should be servicable and should be testable in order to assign that knowledge to the domain of what we call 'truth'. Otherwise it is just some divinely inspired theory. Certainly science does not have all the answers at the present time. Perhaps one day we will have a theory which supports mystical insight and maybe even a technology which can make it evident or at least seem less magical. Maybe I read to much science fiction when I was a boy. LOL. If I take apart a broken machine that I don't understand and it works when I put it back together even though I don't know why, that is not to say I fixed it. ( I hate when that happens) Though police may use psychics to help solve crimes, the fact that it sometimes works doesn't make it scientific. Even if a whole bunch of people say a thing, it is always possible that they just suffer from the same delusion. The mind may be much more sensitive than our current scientific understanding gives it credit for, but at the end of the day it is as you said. All that matters is that it is testable. Joe |
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