Category: Science as a Religion

Old philosophers, science and the poison of knowledge…

A friend recently asked: how can we seriously read philosophers from before the 18th century, now that we know of their lack of knowledge regarding the cosmos and the universe? How can we read them and draw any serious conclusions now that we know that they knew almost nothing that we currently do, based on our supreme technology and modern science?

And my answer was: Actually it is only those philosophers whom we need to read! Because their thought was pure and not yet poisoned by the knowledge we think we have.

My friend was stunned. But what about all this knowledge we have amassed?! All the things stubbiness know for the universe? All the things physics knows about the workings of the cosmos? My friend was not the exception. It is really unfortunate that so many people believe that science today has proved things regarding the truth of our cosmos instead of what it is really doing: formulating theories to model the cosmos based on specific unproven assumptions.

But what do I mean by that?

Let’s take for example the field of astronomy and the infamous cosmological principle. This is a principle which governs astronomy today and which in two words holds the belief that the universe is homogenous and isotropic. This principle is based on observations and on this principle many theories are built by modern astronomers.

So far so good, one might say. Except the fact that nothing of the above is true.

What is true is that there are indeed observations which support the cosmological principle, but there are also observations which refute it. (See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle or https://philpapers.org/rec/KAKFGT)

So why do we hold that principle? one might ask. The answer to that would be more shocking to someone not acquainted with epistemology: Science continuously used unproven theses as a starting point of theories! This is not bad nor good. It is just the way science works. What is wrong is to take these starting point as “true” even though they never meant to have any relation to what philosophy calls “truth” or “reality”.

Scientific models are just… scientific models!

Nothing more.

Think of a glass dropping to the floor for example. This is something we all observe. Let’s now try to formulate a theory to explain this observation. The modern atheist will hold the belief that the explanation of why the glass is dropping to the floor is something “objective” and based on “facts” and data. But he would be wrong. For the observational data is just… observational data. The theory to interpret that data is something else. And for the glass dropping to the floor we have many!

Ancient Greeks thought perhaps that Zeus made the glass drop. Then came Newtown. And we explained the observation with the help of an invisible all existing field called gravitational field. And then Einstein changed everything and now we have not a field but curved spacetime!

See?

Same observation, three different theories!

But are those theories equally valid? And do they all adhere to the data equally successfully?

The answer is yes, if we wish so! Even the theory which wants Zeus to bring the glass down to earth can be formulated in such a way that there is full compliance with the observational data in hand. (E.g. by starting that Zeus makes the glass fall with an acceleration equal to g) In the same way the theory of Newton can be also as accurate as the latest theory of Einstein if we make it so. The problem is that scientists rarely tend to update the details of old theories, so people tend to believe that these theories were abandoned because they were less accurate. A grave misunderstanding which is based on the arrogant ideas that we know more than the people before us. And yet the ancient Greeks could easily predict celestial phenomena centuries in the future even while believing that the gods were moving the planets in the celestial sphere…

To the modern atheist all this is crazy of course.

People who believe in scientism today can hear nothing which could refute their perfect idea of science as a method to reach the “truth”. Not even Godel could change their mind.
Going back to the cosmological principle, today’s believers (in science and scientism) truly believe that this is a fact we hold true on the basis of observations. My friend and his friends could not even consider an alternative. So here we are. Men who do not know if Mars had water, but who do know with certainty that the whole universe is isotropic and homogenous! It would be comical if not so terribly arrogant…

At the end it is not a matter of data or knowledge. It is a matter of the ability to think freely without just following what others say.

Today’s atheists and proponents of scientism would be the greatest followers of the institutional church during the middle ages. Because what makes them blind today is not a lack of knowledge for something specific, but the arrogance of a man who does not want to admit that others might be able to see things clearer than him. These people would follow the Pope in whatever he said, in the same way they now follow the opinion of the majority regarding the truth of science.

The same people would swear that you can only draw one parallel from a straight line.

They would argue fiercely in favor of the fifth axiom of Euclid and would mock anyone trying to attempt to utter a different opinion.

At the end, we will discover if Mars has water…
At the end, we will “know” that no parallel lines can be drawn…
At the end we will draw multiple parallel lines…

Do you see?
There is nothing there.
Except for the things you see…

Against stupidity: A lost cause [On the irrationality of terror for a ‘nuclear’ war]

Harmonia Philosophica has for a long time fought against stupidity at all levels. The recent cries of terror from scientists regarding the gruesome effects of a nuclear war are yet another example of sheer stupidity which once more needs to be dealt with if we want to keep our sanity within this insane world.

Due to recent tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers, the Internet was swarmed with grave warnings of how the planet would be destroyed and the climate would be affected to such an extent that the planet would essentially be inhabitable in a matter of years.

Reading from a ScienceAlert article: “For that reason, climate scientists have modelled how an exchange of nuclear weapons between the two countries – what is technically called a limited regional nuclear war – might affect the world. Though the explosions would be local, the ramifications would be global, that research concluded. The ozone layer could be crippled and Earth’s climate may cool for years, triggering crop and fishery losses that would result in what the researchers called a “global nuclear famine” (source)

Now let’s get real and start to dismantle everything this statement of terror tries to tell us: According to the article, a war between two countries possessing about 140-150 nuclear weapons (both) would result in the destruction of the ozone layer and would create global famine. Really?

Or better: REALLY?!?

Harmonia Philosophica has reminded people over and over again of a “small” little fact that the “global thermonuclear war” we are all so anxious of happening has ALREADY happened. Check out the article “Global Thermonuclear War: It has ALREADY happened! (tip: it was called “testing”)”.

In summary: During the Cold War all the superpowers (and the lesser powers) detonated about 2,400 (that is TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED) nuclear weapons on the surface of the Earth, in the sea, below the surface of the Earth or (that’s even better) on the upper levels of the atmosphere. (so as to make sure that the ozone layer is destroyed).

The result?

NOTHING.

Or so we are told… According to the most widespread ‘theory’ the ozone layer which was destroyed about the time those nuclear tests ended was not because of these nuclear tests but because of you (yes, YOU!) who owned a refrigerator with chemicals which were ‘bad for the ozone’. Yes, your refrigerator is more powerful than 2,400 nuclear bombs detonated on the planet… And now we believe that theory because… why would the government lie to us? Right?

I am not a conspiracy lover, but this goes well beyond being a conspiracy. It is more at the borders of ridiculousness.

But even after 2,400 nuclear bombs there was no global famine. No global disaster. (or it there? could the widespread increase of cancer be attributed to this or did the ancient people also died like flies because of that disease? Let’s see what the official medicine has to say about that; yet, that medicine which until recently claimed that smoking is not bad for your health and which now swears that cell phones are OK and affect not your brain)
Science has reached to a point of being a global religion. And religion, in its bad version, always needs terror to impose itself on people. This terror is what we see everyday in the news when ‘scientists’ (as if this attribute alone means anything) warn us about how we are all going to die if we don’t stop using straws while at the same time they accept grants from companies potentially making those straws. And this terror has the same foundations as all other types of terror used in the past to control people: Stupidity.
One must be really stupid to claim that world disaster will strike Earth is India and Pakistan will go to war.

Because as I said above: The nuclear bombs matter not.
It is your refrigerator you must be concerned about…

Implanting information directly in the brain… So?

Two neuroscientists at the University of Rochester say they have managed to introduce information directly into the premotor cortex of monkeys. The researchers published the results of the experiment in the journal Neuron. Although the research is preliminary, carried out in just two monkeys, the researchers speculated that further research might lead to brain implants for people with strokes.

“You could potentially bypass the damaged areas and deliver stimulation to the premotor cortex”, said Kevin A. Mazurek, a co-author of the study. “That could be a way to bridge parts of the brain that can no longer communicate”.

Dr. Mazurek and his co-author, Dr. Marc H. Schieber, trained two rhesus monkeys to play a game. The monkeys sat in front of a panel equipped with a button, a sphere-shaped knob, a cylindrical knob, and a T-shaped handle. Each object was ringed by LED lights. If the lights around an object switched on, the monkeys had to reach out their hand to it to get a reward. (a refreshing squirt of water)

Each object required a particular action. If the button glowed, the monkeys had to push it. If the sphere glowed, they had to turn it. If the T-shaped handle or cylinder lit up, they had to pull it.

After the monkeys learned how to play the game, Dr. Mazurek and Dr. Schieber had them play a wired version. The scientists placed 16 electrodes in each monkey’s brain, in the premotor cortex. Each time a ring of lights switched on, the electrodes transmitted a short, faint burst of electricity. The patterns varied according to which object the researchers wanted the monkeys to manipulate. As the monkeys played more rounds of the game, the rings of light dimmed. At first, the dimming caused the monkeys to make mistakes. But then their performance improved.

Eventually the lights went out completely, yet the monkeys were able to use only the signals from the electrodes in their brains to pick the right object and manipulate it for the reward. And they did just as well as with the lights.

This hints that the sensory regions of the brain, which process information from the environment, can be bypassed altogether. The brain can devise a response by receiving information directly, via electrodes. (1)

Another example which shows the main problem with all brain-related research: All experimental results will always be dependent of specific out-of-the-brain circumstances which will dictate how we interpret what happens inside the brain. Our analysis or our ways of affecting the brain will always be related to things the subjects do. We will never examine of affect the brain per se, independently of the environment or outside of the context of a “story” in which the subjects think of something and then do something.

The scientists did not inject any information directly into the brains of the monkeys. They created an experiment with the monkeys, they trained the monkeys, they gradually changed the experiment parameters and they at some point made the experiment work without the initial parameters present.

Sometimes you have to say things as they are. With no simplifications.

The devil lies hidden in the shadows of the details.

And science does an excellent work in playing in the dark…

While not believing in the devil, but in an imaginary enlightened man…

Yes, everything can be done. Everything can be affected.

But in the context of a cosmos in sync.

In the context of a universe in harmony.

You are not God.

Accept that.

And you will become one…

Few bodies problem…

In physics, the conundrum known as the “few-body problem,” how three or more interacting particles behave, has bedeviled scientists for centuries. Equations that describe the physics of few-body systems are usually unsolvable and the methods used to find solutions are unstable. There aren’t many equations that can probe the wide spectrum of possible few-particle dynamics. A new family of mathematical models for mixtures of quantum particles could help light the way.

“These mathematical models of interacting quantum particles are like lanterns, or islands of simplicity in a sea of complexity and possible dynamics”, said Nathan Harshman, American University associate professor of physics and an expert in symmetry and quantum mechanics, who along with his peers created the new models. “They give us something to grip onto to explore the surrounding chaos”. The work was published in Physical Letters X.

The researchers’ key insight is using a simple case and start working in abstract, higher dimensions. For example, the equation describing four quantum particles in one dimension is mathematically equivalent to the equation describing one particle in four dimensions. Each position of this fictional single particle corresponds to a specific arrangement of the four real particles. The breakthrough is to use these mathematical results about symmetry to find new, solvable few-body systems, Harshman explained. By moving particles to a higher dimensional space and choosing the right coordinates, some symmetries become more obvious and more useful.

Coxeter models, as Harshman calls these symmetric, few-body systems, named for the mathematician H.S.M. Coxeter, can be defined for any number of particles. So far, only rarely do solvable few-body systems have experimental applications. What comes next is to implement the Coxeter models in a lab to help unravel some of the most complex concepts in physics, like quantum entanglement. (1)

We cannot solve even simple equations.

And yet we believe we can describe how the planets move.

We cannot understand how four particles behave.

And yet we believe we can know how the cosmos was created.

For a short period of time it seems that we can.

And yet, one minor detail…

One minor change…

And everything goes into chaos.

No, you cannot understand anything.

Unless you give up trying to understand and be part of everything.

Only when you stop trying to be the mirror, do you realize you are the reflection…

Why religion is important!

Do you believe religion is outdated?

Think again!

Harmonia Philosophica analyzes in a few pages not only why religion is important today, but why it is of the uttermost importance ESPECIALLY today!

In the era of scientism, in the cold universe of materialism, the warmth of religion focused on man is what we need…

Find the file here: Harmonia Philosophica – Why Religion is important (PDF format)

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