the ongoing disaster at Fukushima shows avoiding mankind how it is incapable to make such serious decisions and developments as affect centuries if not millennia.
Showing posts with label agnothi seauton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agnothi seauton. Show all posts
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Job of a lesson not to be drawn from history
clever, but the below is not the lesson to be drawn from history...
that man exaggerates his knowledge and ability is closer to the facts.
Job 38:4-7, 31-33.
"It almost feels like we're taking our first baby steps as a species, as a civilization, towards actually having a model of the universe that will hold up over the next 500,000 years," proclaimed Perlmutter shortly after discovering the acceleration. He may be right -- the present model certainly paints a coherent picture of the universe we see around us -- but if there is one lesson to be drawn from history, it is that time is a harsh judge. Many theories have had their day in the limelight, only to disappear into the wings when another one appeared. Over the centuries each new generation felt it had found, or was close to finding, the right answer, and it is worth remembering that Ussher was not alone in drawing the wrong conclusion about the age of the universe. Many of the greatest minds in science were equally blinkered, trapped by their own beliefs, or the prevailing assumptions of their day. Newton was every bit as religiously dogmatic as Ussher and fought to reconcile his science with the Bible; Darwin exaggerated the Earth's age to allow enough time for species to evolve; while Einstein was forced to concede that the universe was not static, but expanding -- his "greatest blunder." Given this track record, it seems all too likely that our present picture of the universe is flawed in some way."
that man exaggerates his knowledge and ability is closer to the facts.
Job 38:4-7, 31-33.
"It almost feels like we're taking our first baby steps as a species, as a civilization, towards actually having a model of the universe that will hold up over the next 500,000 years," proclaimed Perlmutter shortly after discovering the acceleration. He may be right -- the present model certainly paints a coherent picture of the universe we see around us -- but if there is one lesson to be drawn from history, it is that time is a harsh judge. Many theories have had their day in the limelight, only to disappear into the wings when another one appeared. Over the centuries each new generation felt it had found, or was close to finding, the right answer, and it is worth remembering that Ussher was not alone in drawing the wrong conclusion about the age of the universe. Many of the greatest minds in science were equally blinkered, trapped by their own beliefs, or the prevailing assumptions of their day. Newton was every bit as religiously dogmatic as Ussher and fought to reconcile his science with the Bible; Darwin exaggerated the Earth's age to allow enough time for species to evolve; while Einstein was forced to concede that the universe was not static, but expanding -- his "greatest blunder." Given this track record, it seems all too likely that our present picture of the universe is flawed in some way."
-- Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001, p. 291.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
gnothi seauton!?
man imagines it knows himself (or could if it made the effort)
(worth knowing that while "know thyself" in one form or language or other is spread from (disputably) Thales of Miletus via Plato, Linnaeus, et al, even onto The Matrix, that there appears to be no full scholarly study of the history of it as an idea: gnothi seauton, nosce te ipsum, know yourself.)
(worth knowing that while "know thyself" in one form or language or other is spread from (disputably) Thales of Miletus via Plato, Linnaeus, et al, even onto The Matrix, that there appears to be no full scholarly study of the history of it as an idea: gnothi seauton, nosce te ipsum, know yourself.)
Thursday, December 13, 2012
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