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Another Terence McKenna quote I'm reminded of! "The British enzymologist, J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s, in an essay, said, "The universe may not only be stran
by cyberpip 8y ago
Another Terence McKenna quote I'm reminded of!
"The British enzymologist, J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s, in an essay, said, "The universe may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger than we can suppose," and I suggest to you that as we look back over human history, every pinnacle of civilizationf whether it be Mayan or Greco-Roman or Song dynasty, has believed that it was in possession of an accurate description of the cosmos and of man's relationship to it. This seems to go- this seems to go along with the full flowering of a civilization. But, from the point of view of our present civilization, we regard all those conceptions as, at worst quaint, at best half right, and congratulate ourselves that our civilization, at last, has its finger on the real description of what is going on. " from https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Psychedelic+Society?query=stranger%20than%20we%20can%20suppose https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Psychedelic+Society?query=stran...
- maxerickson 8y agoNone of the earlier ones had lasers though.
- yosito 8y agoEh, I'm not saying we have a full picture of what's going on, but the scientific method is much more effective at helping us arrive at a real description of what is going on than any arbitrary religion of the past.
- perfmode 8y agoSo we believe, for now.
- GuiA 8y agoThe scientific method is the most important tool that humanity has ever developed, without question. That being said, the belief that the scientific method can build up arbitrarily accurate models of any observable phenomena is without foundation, yet some behave as if it is obviously true. Until we have something like a unified model of physics, there is no reason to believe that statement to be true. (and in fact, the scientific method has led to results like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which makes it perhaps more likely for it to be false)
- mythrwy 8y agoI question that the scientific method is the most important tool humanity has ever developed. Maybe numbers and language (especially written) are more important. Oh ya, and fire. But the scientific method is way up there in important, no argument there.
- dalbasal 8y agoMmm. I don't disagree, but I do think it's possible to overstate these things too. The scientific method is extremely effective at getting scientific answers to scientific questions. Often though, we try to (or pretend we are applying this method to achieve unscientific questions (a la Karl Popper's criticisms of Scientism) or try to add up scientific answers in an unscientific way. When we do that, we are using the (well earned and underappreciated) cultural authority of science in ways that do not promote truth seeking.
- adrianN 8y agoAsimov wrote an essay to counter that point: https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.ht...