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Voodoodali: Just the other day I made joke in another thread about believing the earth was flat since I haven't seen it with my own eyes. I assume you are joking too?
Originally posted by Mr Sleep:
<STRONG>I actually agree to a degree with the notion that because i haven't seen it, i do not know it to be true. I have been shown pictures that the world is spherical, but i have not seen it with my own eyes. So i can not say for certain that it is so.
This of course can come down to common sense
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The idea that something has to be percepted first hand through your own senses in order for it to be a fact, is a problematic view with the technology man has today for observing the world. Very often you can not observe things directly, merely indirectly, either through other people (often scientists) or via their
effects.
We can't observe the building blocks of matter directly - have you ever seen at atom? A quark? But do you question the existence of atoms?
(As for me, I have actually seen particles collide in the CERN particle accelerator
But not everyone has. )
Have you ever seen your own genome? The double helix in your cells? Do you believe the DNA is there?
Alpha Centauri is the star system closest to earth. How do we know it's not made of cheese? Nobody has been there - nobody has seen it reality except for as a small dot on our night sky.
(Sleep, I'm not making fun of your reasoning here, I'm merely posing a few question to illustrate what I think is an important issue)
In the art-porn thread we are discussing some of the core problems in modern art. I think what we are discussing here, believing in what you see, is a core problem of modern science. Not only has science become very esotheric and technical, which makes it more and more difficult for non specialists to understand, it's also getting very abstract in the sense that it goes far beyond the directly perceivable.
There is no short way to describe the current standings in genetics, neuroscience, molecular biology, particle physics or organ chemistry, just to mention a few large, very important areas. Findings that have a large impact on
all of us are often very difficult to really understand, unless you are prepared to devout hours and hours of reading.
How many people understand the limits and the possibilites of current stem cell research? How many understand the impact of prolonging the the life of the nematode C Elegans 5 times? How many of us understand how evolutionary studies of yeast have given us the most promising cure for cancer to date? How many even cares?
Another problem is that scientific thinking and they way modern science works, is many times contraintiuitive. It has become very unlike "common sense" or "normal thinking" of the kind we all do in our everyday life. Media and popular science is mostly
not making it easier. Misapplication in the form of generalization and unfounded speculaltion are the most common form of desinformation from media. But if you're not a molecular geneticist yourself, how do you know what's wrong when media are presenting ideas of cloning headless humans to store organs for transplantation in?
For these reasons, I think many people get alienated from science, which is bad because it affects us all so immensly. Also, science can not provide the same type of answers of explanations as religion can - the aim of science is not to provide us with meaning and cause for our lives. No wonder mysticism, fundamentalism and new-age have increased in the secularised western world