Small Brains Considered - 7

Fig. 1 The Priest & Albert

I. Background

In the previous post of this series a couple of well-known physicists (Penrose, Hameroff) indicated that they hypothesize:

"... a theory of consciousness ... consistent with Eastern spiritual traditions ... Eastern philosophy and other spiritual traditions ... afterlife, reincarnation ... out-of-body experiences ... The quantum soul." 

(Small Brains Considered - 6, emphasis added). This is completely in accord with some of the criticisms and observations made for years here on Dredd Blog.

One of those physicists along with other physicists once had a different view concerning the fundamental underpinnings of a cosmology and physics that courted mysticism:

"...we have a kind of metaphysical belief that there are laws of nature that are outside time and those laws of nature are causing the outcome of the experiment to be what it is. And laws of nature don't change in time. They're outside of time. They act on the system now, they acted on the system in the same way in the past, they will act the same way in a year or a million or a billion years, and so they'll give the same outcome. So nature will repeat itself and experiments will be repeatable because there are timeless laws of nature.

But that's a really weird idea [for scientists] if you think about it because it involves the kind of mystical and metaphysical notion of something that is not physical, something that is not part of the state of the world, something that is not changeable, acting from outside the system to cause things to happen. And, when I think about it, that is kind of a remnant of religion. It is a remnant of the idea that God is outside the system acting on it."

(If Cosmology Is "Off," How Can Biology Be "On?", 2013, quoting of Dr. Lee Smolin at The Perimeter Institute). But, as we will see further along in this post, this cognitive incursion into modern physics even changed the shape of Einstein's cognition.

II. Exceptional Priests

That may seem like a radical departure, but it isn't.

The whole world of cosmology comes from mystics, beginning with the priest who originated the Big Bang mystical hypothesis all the way to those who name microbes:

In a cultural 'priestdom' the high priests can be priests of science, or priests of religion, because the Greek word 'presbyteros' ('priest') simply means 'elder' or 'senior'.

The priest who hypothesized The Big Bang was literally a priest, but in addition to that, was a 'presbyteros' of science (Georges Lemaître).

A "priest", "elder", or "senior" can easily be applied to technocracy:

"Technocracy itself is an immortality ideology that, although it is coupled with materialism, has as part of its makeup an element of the magical and a belief that new tools and innovations provide solutions to both the small day-to-day problems of life and the larger problems of human happiness and mortality. Technology is entrancing, and, functionally, technologists become creators of magic and the wizards of today, claiming the same authority over technology that doctors claim over human health or shamans over the cursed. This has always been so, going back to ancestral peoples who learned to use fire, tools, wind, and wheels. Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996)."
...
[I repeat]"Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996)."

(The Machine Religion). The nomenclature of the culture of the priest who hypothesized the big bang is of the same "language family" and nomenclature of the culture of the current commercialized scientific community.

...

The big bang 'presbyteros' (Lemaître), spoke and wrote in a 'presbyteros language' which the laity did not understand (Use of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church, Ecclesiastical Latin, The Day the Mass Changed, How it Happened and Why).

That form of 'communication' spilled over into the 'presbyteros language' realm of the science of the day too.

...

Eventually the communication became intense, like the time when scientific teaching was severely imposed upon  by ecclesiastical teaching (Galileo vs. the Pope).

That tension waxed and waned from time to time, but the language of the scientific realm still remains mysterious to the scientific laity.

Upon occasion the scientific laity persuaded some of those of the scientific 'presbyteros' that there were various anomalies of doctrine, so efforts toward better ways of communication emerged from time to time:

"Since at least the 17th century (and mostly because of Newton), natural scientists have stopped using formal or final causes to explain natural phenomena ... except in biology. This was first pointed out by Colin Pittendrigh (Pittendrigh, C. S. Behavior and Evolution) (ed. by A. Rose and G. G. Simpson), Yale University Press, 1958), who coined the term "teleonomy" to refer to the kind of teleological phenomena observed in biological processes."

(On The Origin of Genieology - 2). The language of the scientific 'presbyteros' is still with us (It's All Greek To Me), but to a lesser degree:

"Scientific names are used to describe various species of organisms in a way that is universal so that scientists around the globe can readily identify the same animal. This is called binomial nomenclature, and many of the scientific names are derived from the Latin name of the organism. The scientific name is broken down into the genus name, which comes first, followed by the specific species name.

...

Modern binomial nomenclature was adopted by Swedish physician and botanist Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century. The reason for the proposition of the two-part name was to create a code that more readily identified specific species without the use of long descriptors that could be prone to subjectivity."

(The Importance of Scientific Names for Organisms). The power to name things is not all it is cracked up to be (Why do scientists use Latin when they name organisms?, "Scientists started using Latin back in the Middle Ages"). 

The reason 'Middle Ages' scientific 'presbyteros speak' is the same today as it was then is because the scientific 'presbyteros' can (if they couldn't they wouldn't).

(The Doll As Metaphor - 6). The Big Bang "takes the cake" for imaginative cognition.

III. 'Mystical' In Large Part Means 'We Don't Know'

"We don't know" is an honest statement, it is not an admission of ignorance. 

Why then, would scientists want to convert the unknown into some type of mystical ignorance? 

Not knowing is fine so long as it is a true condition, and it is better than made-up mystical ignorance or 'un-truths'. 

And not knowing at a given time hands the matter over to scientific research. 

That is the proper way to process the unknown, to be patient and careful in research mode so as to increase knowledge rather than increase ignorance.

IV. Mysticism Overthrew Einstein Too

For example, when the priest scientist Lemaître made up the big bang hypothesis which challenged scientific papers in scientific journals of that time, Einstein said of the priest's hypothesis:

"Lemaître described his theory as 'the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation'; it became better known as the 'Big Bang theory', a phrase originally used sarcastically ... This challenged the established finite-size static universe model proposed by Einstein. Einstein refuted Lemaître’s theory, saying 'your math is correct, but your physics is abominable' ... [BUT Einstein later said it was] 'the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.'”

(see link at Fig. 1). We don't hear much about that do we now?

V. The Dolls

In a fairly recent snarky post I poked fun at an article on the Space blog (The history of the universe: Big Bang to now in 10 easy steps), to wit:

"The Big Bang was not an explosion in space, as the theory's name might suggest. Instead, it was [natural doll and selection doll quivering, causing] the appearance of space [space doll] everywhere in the universe [universe doll], researchers have said. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born [dolls R born] as a very hot, very dense, single point in space [space doll and universe doll are hot, dense, and single].

Cosmologists are unsure what happened before this moment"

(Quantum Biology - 9, data in brackets '[]' emphasized). Notice the reality that cosmologists (mystics) "are unsure what happened before this moment" when "the Cosmic Egg [exploded] at the moment of the creation" ... in other words they don't know but exploded into doll play any way:

"When the universe [doll] was very young — something like a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (whew!) [the time doll was not conjured until shortly after that] — it underwent an incredible growth spurt. During this burst of expansion, which is known as inflation [inflation doll], the universe [doll] grew exponentially and doubled in size at least 90 times [what about space doll and environment doll?]."

First Doll Uterus

"The universe [doll] was expanding, and as it expanded, it got cooler and less dense [enlightenment]," David Spergel, a theoretical [doll] astrophysicist at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., told SPACE.com. After inflation, the universe [doll] continued to grow, but at a slower rate [diet doll]."

"As space [doll] expanded, the universe [doll] cooled and matter formed [matter doll]."

"Light chemical elements were created [light chemical dolls] within the first three minutes of the universe [doll's] formation. As the universe [doll] expanded, temperatures cooled and protons and neutrons collided [proton and neutron dolls] to make deuterium [deuterium doll], which is an isotope of hydrogen [of course dummy]. Much of this deuterium [deuterum doll] combined to make helium [helium and shelium dolls]."

"For the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang [bang doll], however, the intense heat [heat doll] from the universe's creation [heat doll was hot] made it essentially too hot for light to shine [it's dark inside hot dolls]. Atoms [atom dolls] crashed together with enough force [force doll] to break up into a dense, opaque plasma of protons, neutrons and electrons that scattered light like fog [fog doll]."

(ibid, Quantum Biology - 9, data in brackets '[]' emphasized). Yes, I was snarky ([read between the lines square brackets]) about the progression from "we don't know" into "the appearance of space" all of a sudden. 

VI. Closing Comments

Hey You Mystics! Repeat after me: "We don't know!" 

And watch the second video below about the most-honest we can be with our words:

Dr. Paul Falkowski (orig video damaged)

"Andy. Thank you very much, Andy, and thanks for inviting me here. It's a pleasure. So I just want to begin this by thinking about a bridge. In this particular case, it's an obvious bridge. And if you think about evolution, you know where we've come to, but you don't know where we began. So origins of life is one of the most challenging problems facing science. Actually, as my friend and colleague Nick Lane says, it's the black hole of science. It's an embarrassment. And it's a very complicated problem."

(From first video transcript, emphasis added; the original video).

I like Dylan's take on Einstein in this context:

"Einstein
Disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend
A jealous monk
He looked
So immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off
Sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you
Would not think
To look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing
The electric violin
On Desolation Row"

(second video below)

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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