>> There is a real need for for inspired and precise language
>> with which to describe intuitive events within natural
>> systems. As I've stated before, the dichotomy doesn't
>> really exist..
I (Matt Champagne) responded:
>> but science as historical force does have real
>> connections to and roots in positivism...
To which discussion Dale Wilson adds:
>If by positivism you mean the movement that gave itself that name,
>August Comte, the Vienna Circle, and Ernst Mach, etc. Then you are
>certainly wrong. Positivism is barely a blip on the historical scale
>compared to the institutions of science...
(elipsis)
>I suspect many organic gardeners abhor reductionism (ontological sense)
>because they are rooted in mind-matter dualism. They really want to
>believe that that compost has a spiritual (mind)essence that cannot be
described.
Actually, no. I appreciate your calling me on my flippant use of words
such as positivism and reductionism; please be patient. But what I was
referring to was precisely the "mind-matter dualism" which you referred
to; which seems to have fairly well dominated science/philosophy from
Aristotle through and beyond Descartes and which I can't imagine you can
deny is more than a 'blip'.
>Quantifiable aspects of reality are "privileged" simply because they
>are more important in practical terms (like "how much compost should >I
put on my corn?")
But that depends on what you are doing, doesn't it? What your practice
is? Perhaps my 'practice' has very little to do with information that
is 'quantifiable', that is, subject to a specific form of record-keeping
(how much) -- numerical notation, i.e. **discrete units**. Such
phenomena (love, poetry) may be no less real and no less 'practical' for
living than anything else, but that they bend more readily to ephemeral
notation (e.g., speech) and less to atemporal, discrete notation (early
mathematics) means that they take second place in a system that
privileges quantifiable phenomena.
But this does not go to say that quantifying phenomena is not a useful
practice; it has taken the 'western' world nearly 2000 years of science
to explore deeply the method, and to begin to feel how it touches the
"other side" (which is the collapse of the Cartesian dualism).
>Ah, yes! here it is! the relativistic kernel. In other words: "X is
>true for me but not for you", where X is some practical matter such as:
>"spraying vitamin C on my Okra will protect it from nematodes." (I'm
>sorry I'm not trying to ridicule you, just groping for an example)
Actually, again, no. I was referring more to the uncertainty principle
and, more abstractly, to the fallacy of the discrete unit, unessentially
related to anything else but itself
>I believe that both science and the exploitation of nature are both
>natural and deeply rooted in human nature, the one does not necessarily
cause the other.
Yes, but I think that 'science's' history of exploitation (man's use of
science, which is all science is), shows a real lack in understanding,
that we are only now beginning to fill out...where particle gives way to
wave.
n.b.: please don't anyone get defensive. I think there is a science to
love and a love to science; as well as a poetry to all three; and that's
one lovely thing about the modern world, nothing need be privileged.
Also, this is all (more or less) extempore, and I can't say I speak with
the most authority in these areas (I'm not a particle physicist)
so...please forgive the holes.
Matt Champagne
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