AVDI VIDE TACE translated means “HEAR, SEE, BE SILENT”

The Royal Society, the premier and oldest learned society for the study of science, was founded in 1660 with the motto “Nullius in Verba” or “On the words of no one.” This date probably was the start of that remarkable period in the intellectual history of Europe that we call today “The Age of Enlightenment.”

But the story of the beginning of that age went back many years.

European universities and intellectual climate at the time were still dominated by Aristotle and Scholastic system of thinking, that of the “Disputatio.”

The way to arrive at truth was the method of “Deduction” axiomatic deductions from authorities. Who constituted the “Authorities" anyway? The sacred books, writings by ancient authorities and so on. Scant attention was paid to empirical evidence.

An example being based on the authorities of St. Thomas, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Kings 1, (the last three are books of the Bible) and St. Augustine, one must logically deduce that witches exist, and therefore it was heresy to say otherwise. (Hence the Witch Trials that lasted for 100's of years)

The Catholic Church’s pressure on Galileo to recant his heliocentric world view was base on a similar line of reasoning. The authority of the Bible and of Ptolemy clearly stated that the earth was immovable and was the center of the universe. (Many intellectual men of this time lost their lives or came very close at the hands of the Church)

Even Martin Luther, the man who started the "Reformation" was steeped in the Aristotelian world view and was a follower of the method of scholasticism of his Age. He had this to say regarding the heliocentric world view: “This FOOL Copernicus wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.” (Again the teachings had to be that the Earth was the center of the universe because the Bible said so)

Even today you will see people holding up a Bible or Koran as proof of anything they disagree with. Evolution, Gay Marriages, Women's Rights, etc.

That was the method of scholasticism that one drew upon the rigid axiomatic deductions by logic from premises, the veracity of which were based on "AUTHORITIES."

To sum this up, “TRUTH” is to be derived by induction from the particular to the general, by induction based on empirically collected data.

When I read or hear a person quoting sources of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Rielly, Donald Trump, or any other Mass Marketed Ultra-Conservative Personality as proof of their argument; my only thought is, “Hey Mindless, Non-Critical Thinking Lemming!!! At Least Try And Join The 17th Century Line Of Thinking!!”

“NULLIUS IN VERBA”

A Pivotal Moment In Human History

We are today now living in a pivotal moment in human history. New technologies and theories are allowing us to see our world and universe like no one before could have ever imagined. Over recent years we have viewed and realized for ourselves a sense of the world and universe that is much richer than any one could have conceived in the past.

Those who have not kept up educating themselves with science facts are still living in an imagined universe where space is simply emptiness, stars are scattered randomly, and God views us all from this vantage point. Even the most liberal of this group can just picture the universe as shooting stars, spiral galaxies, maybe an ember red moon rising over an unknown planet. This of course does not represent the universe as a whole any better than a single atom would represent your own face. Yet every pre-scientific culture had their own idea of the world and cosmos in which they had a central and significant place.

Pre-scientific people had developed what they thought were believable answers to big questions but have become impossible to support with answers once someone started to demand scientific accuracy.

Many people today in this country hardly even ask such fundamental questions anymore or appreciate how the answers affect not only how we live but what we believe is possible. Ours is probably the first major culture in human history with no shared picture of reality. Many of humanity’s most dangerous problems arise from our fifteenth century way of looking at our world and the universe, which is at odds with the principles of science that we use in countless technologies today. The main threat to sane thinking is a result from the almost total disjunction between the power of our technologies and the wisdom required to use them over the long period and to what effect it has on us all during a lifetime.

The last time Western culture shared a coherent understanding of the universe as a comforting cosmic dwelling place was in the Middle Ages. For a thousand years, Christians, Jews and Muslims believed that the earth was the flat, immovable center of the universe, and all the planets and stars revolved on crystal spheres around it. The idea that God had chosen a place for every person, animal, plant and thing in the Great “Master Plan” Chain of Being made sense of the rigid medieval social hierarchy of the time. The Church, Kings, Lords, Peasants, Slaves, etc. But then came early scientists like Copernicus and Galileo who discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe after all and the cosmic hierarchy lost its credibility as the organizing principle of the universe.

Then came Newton who developed the picture on physics that explained accurately the motions of a single star’s planetary entourage. Newton became a targeted threat from the Church because he had developed mathematical formulas explaining gravity’s effect on an object.

Pre-scientific people always saw themselves at the center of the world and universe no matter what their world was at the time. The human instinct is to experience themselves as the central object being reflections based on their own independent viewpoints relative to everything else around them. Yes man is naturally a very narcissistic animal as a whole.

The true difficult task for many religious people is to free themselves from the limits of man’s own five senses, which evolved to work in our earthly environment. An example being of the concept of Dark Matter where one cannot see it from their back yard but it makes up the largest part of our universe. This is a threatening and insecuring thought for many of these type of people. I personally have known deeply religious people who are even afraid that this Dark Matter, when spoken about, is the Devil's influence within our world.

Just as Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”

Intelligent life is neither incidental nor insignificant but has a place in our world and universe so special it could not have even been imagined before the invention of modern science, their discoveries therein, and cosmological concepts throughout. By understanding the world and universe in which we live, we begin to understand ourselves.

Engineer of Knowledge Quote:
“The Liberal thinking mind is the evolution of man’s breaking the restrictions of the Conservative status quo viewpoint mindset.”

The View from the Center of the Universe

Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos

I have just been made aware of the book called, “The View from the Center of the Universe,” and I think that it will be on my short list for reading very soon.

In The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, Joel Primack, a leading cosmologist and professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his wife Nancy Ellen Abrams, a lawyer, writer, and musician, tell us that this cosmic alienation has its roots in the Copernican and Newtonian revolutions and a Faustian deal brokered by René Descartes and Francis Bacon.

This very important and fascinating book powerfully describes the scope and depth of human connections to our universe. Primack and Abrams make clear the revolutionary concepts and implications of the modern understanding of time, space, dark matter, dark energy, eternal inflation, and the stardust filling our bodies, and how that knowledge can affect our feelings about ourselves and our future. Drawing lessons from the history of creation myths in many cultures, and from the changing perspectives of science over the centuries, they use many complementary approaches, including images and symbols, to paint a comprehensive picture of the value of our place in the universe as we now know it, and our opportunities for action in this critical century. Their well-supported admonition to "think cosmically, act globally" can be a vital guide to build a "sustainable prosperity." This topic demands the attention of nearly every thoughtful adult at a time when our impact on our home planet is rising dramatically, as are conflicts between science and religions. So far, scientists have not succeeded in helping most people sense meaning or purpose when considering the vastness of space that astronomy has revealed over the past few hundred years.

We humans occupy an insignificant place in the grand scheme of things, and there is no evidence that the universe has taken or should take note of us. I suspect many other scientists, as well as nonscientists, have had a similar experience. Carl Sagan summed it up well: "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that orbits a humdrum star in the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy"—and he said it before dark matter and dark energy were discovered and were found to account for 96% of the stuff in the universe.

In the wake of Galileo's bad experience with the Catholic Church, scientists adopted a policy of noninterference with religion, dividing the world into the material (realm of science) and the spiritual (realm of religion). This division allowed science to flourish unfettered. And flourish it did with profound advances in our understanding of nature, from quarks to the cosmos, and dramatic advances in our quality of life, from electricity and medicine to science-based agriculture and today's quantum-based information economy.

Yet Primack and Abrams argue that the bargain had a significant downside: the severing of humankind's connection with the universe. They also contend that the present revolutionary period of cosmic discovery is the right time to re-establish a widely shared cosmological myth that connects us to the universe. Reconciliation 400 years after a messy divorce is not easy; but with their complementary backgrounds and a decade of jointly teaching a course on cosmology and culture at Santa Cruz, this husband-and-wife team is well qualified to start the conversation.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is a review of the cosmological myths that preceded the divorce of science and religion, from the cosmology of ancient Egypt to the heavenly spheres that survived from Ptolemy to the Middle Ages. The second part is an exposition of our present understanding of the universe; it focuses on recent breakthroughs such as inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. The third part is an exploration of how we might take advantage of this quantum leap in our knowledge to reconnect with the universe, and even learn lessons from the universe. In the authors' words, "think cosmically, act globally."

The discussion of contemporary cosmology is built around five simple and engaging questions: What is the universe made of? What is the "center of the universe"? What size is the universe? Where do we come from? Are we alone?

The Holy Oak Tree's Old Time Religion Hymn

As sung by Joseph Campbell

Chorus:
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
Give me that old time religion
And that's good enough for me

We will pray to Aphrodite
Even tho' she's rather flighty
And they say she wears no nightie
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with those Egyptians
Build pyramids to put our crypts in
Cover subways with inscriptions
And that's good enough for me

O-old Odin we will follow
And in fighting we will wallow
Til we wind up in Valhalla
And that's good enough for me

Let me follow dear old Buddha
For there is nobody cuter
He comes in plaster, wood or pewter
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with Zarathustra
Pray just like we useta
I'm a Zarathustra booster
And that's good enough for me

We will pray with those old Druids
They drink fermented fluids
Waltzing naked thru the woo-ids
And that's good enough for me

Hare Krishna gets a laugh on
When he sees me dressed in saffron
With my hair that's only half on
And that's good enough for me

I'll arise at early morning
When the sun gives me the warning
That the solar age is dawning
And that's good enough for me

Religious Myths Conflicting With Science Facts

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his book, "The American Scholar," predicted the day would come when America would end, and I quote, "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands."

His prediction came true in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in no area of learning more so than in science. This surely would have pleased Emerson. When he listed his heroes he would generally include Copernicus and Galileo and Newton along with Socrates and Swedenborg.

Although I think that Emerson would have mixed feelings today about one consequence of the advance of science that has led to a widespread weakening of religious belief.

Since the Renaissance, the tension between science and religion has primarily been the result of contradictions between scientific discoveries and specific religious doctrines. Galileo remarked in his famous letter to Grand Duchess Christina that "the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes," and this was not just his opinion of the time. Many such as Leonardo Da Vinci and even Cardinal Baronius, the Vatican librarian, were discovering through science that religious teachings of the time were inaccurate.

Contradictions between scripture and scientific knowledge have occurred again and again, and have generally been accommodated by the more enlightened among the religious. For instance, there are verses in both the Old and New Testament that seem to show that the earth is flat, and as noted by Copernicus (quoted by Galileo in the same letter to Christina) these verses led some early Church fathers like Lactantius to reject the Greek understanding that the earth is a sphere, but educated Christians long before the voyages of Columbus and Magellan had come to accept the spherical shape of the earth. Dante found the interior of the spherical earth a convenient place to store sinners.

The direct conflict between scientific knowledge and specific religious beliefs has not been so important in itself, it is the tension between science and religion that has become important.

The primary source of tension arises from the fact that religion originally gained much of its strength from the observation of mysterious phenomena such as, thunder, earthquakes, disease, that seemed to require the intervention of some divine being. There was a nymph in every brook, and a dryad in every tree. But as time passed more and more of these mysteries have been explained in purely natural ways. People believe in God because no other explanation seems possible for a whole host of mysteries, and then over the years these mysteries were one by one resolved naturalistically. The “Cause & Effect” outcome is a certain weakening of religious belief is to be expected. It is no accident that the advent of widespread atheism and agnosticism among the educated in the eighteenth century followed hard upon the birth of modern science in the previous century.

From the beginning, the explanatory power of science worried those who valued religion. Plato was so horrified at the attempt of Democritus and Leucippus to explain nature in terms of atoms without reference to the gods that in “Book Ten of The Laws,” he urged five years of solitary confinement for those who deny that the gods exist or that they care about humans, with death to follow if the prisoner is not reformed.

Isaac Newton, offended by the naturalism of Descartes, also rejected the idea that the world could be explained without God. He argued for instance in a letter to Richard Bentley that no explanation but God could be given for the distinction we observe between bright matter, the sun and stars, and dark matter, like the earth. This is ironic, because of course it was Newton and not Descartes who was right about the laws of motion. No one did more than Newton to make it possible to work out thoroughly nontheistic explanations of what we see in the sky, but Newton himself was not in this sense a Newtonian.

Of course, not everything has been explained, nor will it ever be. The important thing is that we have not observed anything that seems to require supernatural intervention for its explanation. There are some today who cling to the remaining gaps in our understanding, such as our ignorance about the origin of life, as evidence for God. But as time passes and more and more of these gaps are filled in, their position gives an impression of people desperately holding on to outmoded opinions.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

THE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION
By Richard Dawkins


Being a man of science myself, this week as we celebrate and recognize Charles Darwin’s published science facts, I decided to complement this evolutionary science with a posting of Richard Dawkins.

The bible thumping, delusional, science fact deigning, folks whom funded and visit the Creation Museums popping across the country, are accomplishing nothing but dragging their children into a pit of regressive education.

Since its conception, one of the strengths of this country’s economical edge was our science lead within the world. Putting this country’s science edge into the hands of the Fanatical Religious Right, as stated in the video clip, has just placed our standing well below the competitiveness of other countries we have to economically compete with.

One of the most important issues in this country today is not Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, it is the oppressive agenda from within of those whom would insist that science facts be ignored and be replaced with their religious fundamental viewpoints.