Brain Fertilizer

While everyone else is posting about Ronald Reagan, I thought I'd share some more from Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat?

A few things I didn't make clear before. New Science and New Thinking don't replace or invalidate Science! or the mechanistic/deterministic paradigms, they merely place them into a larger context. Another aspect of New Science is that unlike Newtonian physics, the observer is not detached and objective, but does play a role in the outcome merely by observing (that's the basic idea of Schrodinger's Cat, by the way).

One way observers affect the outcome is merely by imposing a classification system. Mechanistic thinkers like Darwin adherents insist the order is there, but they merely describe it. Quantum thinkers recognize the fallacy of that view.

Here's an example: Scientists and philosophers in historical China started noticing that everything seemed to come in "fives". There are five distinct colors (blue, green, red, yellow, and black). There are five directions (North, South, East, West, and Center/motionless). There are five visible planets. There are five elements: Air, Water, Fire, Wood, and Metal. They based their music on a five-note scale. Was that a natural system, or order imposed by the observer? The Chinese didn't really know what to do with mercury. Or the color "white". But the framework of "fives" lasted beyond the recognition of aspects that didn't fit neatly...

None of these things have been "disproved", per se, they have just been placed in a larger context in which they make more sense. Blues still uses a pentatonic scale because there is no "wrong" note, which can happen in a major scale (minor scale tone played against a major scale sounds "wrong"). There are more than five directions, but those five are definitely the most definitive. The elements are rather comprehensive, too, representing liquid, gas, energy/plasma, and two kinds of solids: living and non-living. The color concept is the most intriguing to me, because "brown" and "orange" still aren't distinct colors for the Chinese (the term for them is usually in relation to the other colors...brown is considered a subset of "yellow", incidentally), and their perception of color certainly impacts their sense of fashion from a western viewpoint....

And that applies to modern biology, too, doesn't it? The classes and families and phylums and everything are nice and consistent...but what about the platypus? It breaks several rules by itself. And what about some uni-celled creatures that have aspects of both plant and animal...? But the framework of genus classification still lives on despite clear examples that don't fit the classification scheme. Why? Because the classification isn't wrong, per se, and is still very useful in understanding how living things relate to each other. But it makes more sense to admit that it is more of a useful shorthand system representing human viewpoint and sense of order, rather than actual reality.

So if you don't like some of the things I discuss in the context of New Science vs. Science!, understand that I am not denying the accepted principles of Science!, I'm merely attempting to explain the broader context in which Science! makes more sense. To do that, however, at times I will have to point out the flaws inherent to Newtonian/mechanistic/deterministic thought. Okay?