They say no news is good news

[communistworkethic]

save your cash and a tree - it's free online

[Prufrock]

So there we have it, The Wanderer's conclusion on the origin of the aussie word 'Pom' :-

most likely originating from pommegranite, however plausibly disputed, and far from FACT.

I like FaninOz also believe that fairies live in the bottom of my garden, just not literally.

you don't literally believe? Or they only metaphorically live there?

We are too obsessed with FACTS and the scientific/literalistic/rational world view. Fairies can be just as 'real' as a law of science. They inhabit the world of imagination and metaphor which is the same place that super string theory and wormholes reside..

The emboldened bit is in my view not only wrong, but dangerous, if we assume we are talking regarding a way of viewing the world and informing what we do and beleive. The reason i beleive scientific research is so important is because it listens to nothing but facts, and, crucially, is willing to admit when it is completely wrong, not just change its story to fit. I recently read an interview with Richard Dawkins who talked of a science professor (i think his own) who spent years of his life working on a theory only for it to be disproved by a visiting expert. Instead of despair, the teacher was pleased. It is the pursuit of knowledge that drives civilisation on, and that is what distinguishes us from animals. Science, art and philosophy, man's crowning acheivments, all of which should be encouraged and praised, not underappreciated and devalued.

[freeindeed]

Well, Dawkins (& Derren Brown) leads us to believe that any non-rational perspective is dangerous. Fanatacism and fundamentalism indeed are dangerous but are born of the literalisation of religion rather than the world of creative imagination and myth that i am alluding to. There is no danger in a myth, we simply suspend our disbelief, and in doing so whole magical realms can open up and teach us about other aspects of being human.

Dawkins story has an agenda. In his role as high priest, he's trying to convey the scientific ideal as being ever present and bathing all those who live by it in fair minded equanimity. The truth is that scientists are human and competitive. They start with a hypotheses and then try to prove it - in spite of the observed data. Often holding onto completely false notions for a lifetime. It's the sheer mass of collected data, that slowly refines models over time. Ultimately leading to their being outmoded and discarded. What was once the 'truth' becomes a superceded model of thought. It was imaginary.

I'm not anti-science, I read New Scientist. I just think it's ego needs checking. There is a place and a time, i'm not autistic so rather than objectively observing data 24/7 i like to read a story sometime. Allow my mind to remain open to other possible ways of engaging with reality.

Does a child want us to relay objective observations and dry 'facts' or create a rich, multi-layered world of mystery, myth and imagination. Perhaps a little of both eh?

Dawkins in particular is condescending and dogmatic. More so than many that he rails against. A life of defending his ideas against religious wackos has polarised his thinking, and eroded any flexibility.


The imagination, metaphor and myth are an important part of being human & they will always find a way of creeping in at the edges of a world of stark realism - in the form of fairies, shape-shifters, u.f.o's, and a universe full of dark matter that even though we can't detect it in any way, really is there honest! Trust me, i'm a scientist.

[communistworkethic]

yep, shit loads of drugs!

[Puskas]

Well, Dawkins (& Derren Brown) leads us to believe that any non-rational perspective is dangerous. Fanatacism and fundamentalism indeed are dangerous but are born of the literalisation of religion rather than the world of creative imagination and myth that i am alluding to. There is no danger in a myth, we simply suspend our disbelief, and in doing so whole magical realms can open up and teach us about other aspects of being human.

Dawkins story has an agenda. In his role as high priest, he's trying to convey the scientific ideal as being ever present and bathing all those who live by it in fair minded equanimity. The truth is that scientists are human and competitive. They start with a hypotheses and then try to prove it - in spite of the observed data. Often holding onto completely false notions for a lifetime. It's the sheer mass of collected data, that slowly refines models over time. Ultimately leading to their being outmoded and discarded. What was once the 'truth' becomes a superceded model of thought. It was imaginary.

I'm not anti-science, I read New Scientist. I just think it's ego needs checking. There is a place and a time, i'm not autistic so rather than objectively observing data 24/7 i like to read a story sometime. Allow my mind to remain open to other possible ways of engaging with reality.

Does a child want us to relay objective observations and dry 'facts' or create a rich, multi-layered world of mystery, myth and imagination. Perhaps a little of both eh?

Dawkins in particular is condescending and dogmatic. More so than many that he rails against. A life of defending his ideas against religious wackos has polarised his thinking, and eroded any flexibility.


The imagination, metaphor and myth are an important part of being human & they will always find a way of creeping in at the edges of a world of stark realism - in the form of fairies, shape-shifters, u.f.o's, and a universe full of dark matter that even though we can't detect it in any way, really is there honest! Trust me, i'm a scientist.

You don't seem to grasp the scientific method properly. In both this post and a previous one, you refer to scientists as "priests" - it is difficult to think of something further from the truth. Priesthoods traditionally require secret initiations and ancient texts which are revealed only partially to the public. Science, by its very nature, is open. Everything is published. It is this that gives it its strength. You can pop down to the library and read the journals. Rather than "Trust me, I'm a scientist", one should be saying, "I'm a scientist - but don't trust me, check the data for yourself".
Indeed, you seem to acknowledge this later, without fully appreciating it, when you talk about fallibility amongst individual scientists. Quite so - individually they may hold wrong-headed ideas, not believe the data and so on. They may be corrupt or incompetenet. Or they may be brilliant and honest. They may even bum dogs. It's irrelevant - what matters is the replicable data.
You also once again are confused as to the status of certain propositions. In a previous post you equated fairy stories with:
1) Strings - hypothetical entities with a growing body of evidence to support them, that explain various otherwise mysterious phenomens within comprehensible mathematical boundaries. Not universally accepted as existing, by any means, but certainly a reasonable assumption; and
2) wormholes - theoretical possible entites that have (so far as I know) no evidence supporting them.
These are not even epistemically equivalent to each other, let alone to fairy tales.
This time, you throw in dark matter (which you erroneously claim is undetectable - it is detectable by its effect on observable matter. If it were undetectable, it would not be a part of science). Again, one may dispute its existence, but it has a very different epistemic status to that of fairy tales.
This is not to say that fairy tales, or indeed, any other form of fiction, have no value. They do - as entertainment, moral fables, psychological insight into the writer, metaphor for the human condition and a whole host more that you can probably add. But it's important not to confuse them with scientific propositions, simply because a scientific proposition makes a direct claim about the world that can be either verified or falsified according to evidence. Stories are metaphors, and to understand metaphor, one needs to understand that it is not talking directly about the world. For example, I could say, "Cliver Lloyd was a panther prowling through the covers". If you were to object that Clive Lloyd was a human being and not a panther, you would be correct, but misunderstanding the metaphor. To fail to appreciate this difference, as you do with your lumping together of vastly different statements, leads you to not merely fail to grasp science, but to miss the point of art, as well.

[CrazyHorse]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

[Puskas]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

Facetiousness, Mr Hoss, will get you nowhere...
In fact the "world is flat" hypothesis is the obvious one to someone with limited experience of the world and no other data. The earliest recorded scientists (people who measured the world and made deductions from that) brought you "the world is round" hypothesis as far back as ancient Greece - Pythagoras was probably the first person to suggest it was (albeit probably for aesthetic reasons connected to his weird religious beliefs than for any genuine evidence). Anaxagoras discovered that the light from the moon is reflected, and gave a theory of eclipses - but still held that the earth was flat. This was, however, then easily shown false by the shape of the earth's shadow in lunar eclipses.
The fact that this information seemed to have been (at least partially) lost during the dark ages shows what happens when science is in decline.
I would get on with some work, but, unfortunately, seem to have very little to do at the moment...

[thebish]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

Facetiousness, Mr Hoss, will get you nowhere...

but science-gone-wrong brings zombies (see "what are you watching" thread)

[Puskas]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

Facetiousness, Mr Hoss, will get you nowhere...

but science-gone-wrong brings zombies (see "what are you watching" thread)

You make a good point. However, there are also instances in the literature (well, films, but anyway...) of zombies coming about through voodoo, or even just Meddling With Dark Forces We Don't Understand.
So, with or without science, we're doomed to be zombie food one day. They'll eat our brains, and that'll be it.
As a wise man (*) once remarked, "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth."
Doomed, I tell you.
I think I need to lie down.

(*) I have no idea who the wise man was, but he wrote the tag-line for the classic "Dawn Of The Dead". And I can think of no higher authority to appeal to.

[thebish]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

Facetiousness, Mr Hoss, will get you nowhere...

but science-gone-wrong brings zombies (see "what are you watching" thread)

You make a good point. However, there are also instances in the literature (well, films, but anyway...) of zombies coming about through voodoo, or even just Meddling With Dark Forces We Don't Understand.
So, with or without science, we're doomed to be zombie food one day. They'll eat our brains, and that'll be it.
As a wise man (*) once remarked, "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth."
Doomed, I tell you.
I think I need to lie down.

(*) I have no idea who the wise man was, but he wrote the tag-line for the classic "Dawn Of The Dead". And I can think of no higher authority to appeal to.

which "dark forces" would those be?? dark forces we don't understand?? Dawkins would have you strung up young man... superstitious nonsense!

(and you're right - we are dooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed )

[FaninOz]

I can't believe that my boredom thread has started such a philosophical dicussion. From Aliens to fairies, big bang theory and Newtonian physics. WOW, its like being back at university, but them a lot of your currently are I guess.

[Lord Kangana]

I'd p*ss mesen if a giant alien craft landed, and Zod got out explaining that it was actually the mice who ruled the planet, which was actually on the back of a tortoise stood on elephants, and that we were being eradicated to make way for an interstellar highway.

Then of course I would panic and drink lots of beer, hoping that some bloke named Ford Prefect was kicking about.

Anybody got a probability equation for this happening? It might be worth a few quid...

[Puskas]

I can't believe that my boredom thread has started such a philosophical dicussion. From Aliens to fairies, big bang theory and Newtonian physics. WOW, its like being back at university, but them a lot of your currently are I guess.

And zombies. Don't forget the zombies. They're important.
It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

[Lord Kangana]

I can't believe that my boredom thread has started such a philosophical dicussion. From Aliens to fairies, big bang theory and Newtonian physics. WOW, its like being back at university, but them a lot of your currently are I guess.

And zombies. Don't forget the zombies. They're important.
It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

So just the desert to go then and the prophecy is complete?

[Zulus Thousand of em]

It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

Sounds like Breightmet.

[TANGODANCER]

It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

Sounds like Breightmet.

I was thinking Johnson Fold or New Bury.

[Zulus Thousand of em]

It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

Sounds like Breightmet.

I was thinking Johnson Fold or New Bury.

See! The buggers are everywhere!

[freeindeed]

I understand the scientific method. I'm not saying that the methods used by scientists and priests to reach their conclusions are related. Rather that the way scientists claim the moral highground and an infallability (of method & perspective) is much the same as the way that priests traditionally have. Science does have limitations in scope, there are certain areas of enquiry that more naturally lend themselves to the process of observation and data collection. However science claims and speaks with authority on subjects where their own method is difficult to implement. Hence highly theoretical models, contenscious within their own specialisations, that are frequently discarded and forgotten. Simply ideas dressed in technical jargon, authorititively projected as the truth. When in fact there is no more 'objective' truth contained than in many of the more colourful and archetypal perspective's on reality offered by non-literal thinkers.

In splitting hairs about epistomolgical consistency, the underlying point has been ignored. Which is that for all sciences wishes for us to accept them as the sole interpreters of reality, due to their pristine, objective method. There is in fact plenty within science that is mythological, and plenty within the imagination that is truthful. As far as i am concerned, strings, wormholes and dark matter will in time prove to be scientific fairies. Time will tell.

Fairy tales can of course just be used as an entertainment, and temporary rest from a self imposed regime of literalistic outlook(!), but it can be more than that. If we don't immediately close ourselves off to ideas and experiences because they are not 'literally' true. We can live an enchanted existence of unlimited possibility, embracing the child inside that is our true nature. All you have to do is allow the little folk to live. In your imagination.

[enfieldwhite]

I can't believe that my boredom thread has started such a philosophical dicussion. From Aliens to fairies, big bang theory and Newtonian physics. WOW, its like being back at university, but them a lot of your currently are I guess.

And zombies. Don't forget the zombies. They're important.
It's only a matter of time before we're living in the desert, hiding from marauding hoards of the buggers trying to eat our brains, and fending them off with our last remaining rounds of ammo, whilst making desperate and increasingly dangerous sorties further and further afield to get more fuel.
It won't be pretty.

Save the last bullet for yourself. ITK. FACT

[communistworkethic]

Scientists. The people who brought you the world is flat theory.

no they didn't. there's no actual record of that theory being purported other than in film.