Epistemology, Science and Technology.

[cladking]

I found this thread on a search. I hope people don't mind bringing back old threads here (I'm still really a newbie).

 

I think I've stumbled on the answer. It's the metaphysics of modern science that has caused the fragmentation. I don't mean the fragmentation of knowledge as that is natural due to the remarkable quantity of knowledge and the "necessity" for specialization. It's the fragmentation of the knowledge itself which is rarely understood by anyone because people mistake technology for science and for knowledge. Technology is merely the ability to remove something from the lab and does not connote any knowledge.

 

All human knowledge is therefore either incorrect as being overgeneral or is true in light of the metaphysics. Nothing we learn can legitimately be extrapolated, except through technology, to the real world or a real world way to understand existence. We are victims of our great success as surely as the ancient metaphysics failed.

 

Ancient science was real world science. While the technology was usually simple the metaphysics are extraordinarily complex. Rather than a mere process based on observation like modern science there was extraordinary logic to know how to apply observation to knowledge. This metaphysics appears to have been language itself and when human knowledge exploded with the advent of writing the language became too complex. The metaphysics was lost and it is remembered as the story of the tower of babel. The great world religions are mostly an attempt to preserve the old metaphysics. Confusion still reigns.

Edited January 7, 2013 by cladking

[PeterJ]

Interesting thoughts. Don't entirely go along with it, but I'd agree with the idea that a fragmentation of knowledge occurs when we do not have a metaphysical foundation with which to bind it together, and that this is a major problem in the sciences and in some religious belief systems.

[cladking]

Perhaps an expansion on the points would be beneficial.

 

Modern science has an exceedingly simple metaphysic. Observation> hypothesis> experiment> conclusion. This is, of course all tied together with the logic and definitions that underlie it and its math. Most of the metaphysics can be stated in a few simple paragraphs. But people lose sight of this and the history of science which is essentially the history of the experiments so they don't understand the true nature of either science or the results. Most people mistake the technology generated by experimentation with science. People believe that it's knowledge that underlies science when the only reality is the metaphysics and the accumulated results of experiments.

 

However, I have learned that this is not the only kind of science. I suppose everyone who's educated has a sort of sense that we've lost something or that something important came before us and this may it. We suspect there's a missing puzzle piece because of evisdence such as artefacts and the great pyramids which we hardly comprehend. We know on a visceral level that something must be missing.

 

The ancient science was far more complex than ours. Where ours is observation and experiment based the ancient science was observation and logically based. This means they had to develop a massive metaphysics to understand nature. This all occured rather naturally in all probability because language was natural and incorporated science. It was composed of sounds from nature and the logic required to make communication possible and to rhyme with nature. Few words were necessary because meaning didn't come directly from the words but from their order like computer code. Word meanings, unlike in modern languages where words take their meaning from context, was very static but could be modified by phrases and sentences. As new learning occured the new concept became not a word per se but a "natural phenomenon" which was given human characteristics and incorporated into the language. This is invisible to us because we speak an entirely different language which can be deconstructed and interpreted. Ancient language loses its meaning when taken apart. We mistranslate "natural phenomena" as "gods".

 

It appears that the ancient science was extremely advanced. Of course by our standards a lot of the cutting edge material was speculative but the same thing is occuring in science now with thought experiments and mathmatical justification for new cosmological concepts. I don't believe the old science was superior except where there is no modern lab equipment and tomes of previous experimentation. Where the modern "bible" is the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" which contains tables and formulae theiur "bible" was the book of thot which contained the metaphysics of their science.

 

 

Interesting thoughts. Don't entirely go along with it, but I'd agree with the idea that a fragmentation of knowledge occurs when we do not have a metaphysical foundation with which to bind it together, and that this is a major problem in the sciences and in some religious belief systems.

 

 

 

I think this fragmentation is natural and caused by the simplicity of our science. It might not have to be such if people were trained in the metaphysics and experimental results but very few are. So we get a hodge podge of information as well as the inability to distinguish bad science from good science. Facts and data don't fit into an overall picture because of both extensive specialization and the comingling of reality with the flavor of the day. People are divorced from nature because they don't understand the science that discloses it and our machines work to remove nature from our lives. If it's cold we turn on the heater in the car. If there's no road to where we want to be then one is built.

 

I don't believe any sort of religion existed before 2000 BC. Religion arose with the advent of modern language and was largely an attempt to preserve the ancient metaphysics. Today religion can give many people comfort but it does a less good job of uncovering nature or the nature of being human. Of course there are vast differences between the intent of religion and the modern day version. Modern religion is a sort of fixed point that is continually evolving.

 

I believe we can't understand the true nature of humanity until we understand the nature of the ancients. I doubt we can invent artificial intelligence until we invent machine intelligence. Machine intelligence will not use modern language or any language where the meaning can be deconstructed. In order to pass Turing's test we'll simply need a translator for a thinking machine.

 

The implications of all this are far ranging. I might not have even scratched the surface since nothing remains unchanged and even the concept of educated cavemen becomes a reality. We have an improper perspective of human history and science. It has made us blind to countless realities (or at least possibilities).

Edited January 8, 2013 by cladking

[imatfaal]

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Moderator Note

 

Cladking

 

Section on cavemen and novel interpretation of texts from the pyramids has been split off and placed in speculations.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/72157-how-much-did-ancient-humans-know-and-understand/

 

[imatfaal]

!

Moderator Note

Oy! Pyramid Texts stay in the speculations thread please!

[imatfaal]

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Moderator Note

 

cladking


Do not post speculative theories regarding ancient pyramid texts in the philosophy section. they have been moved to speculations.