Reason as controlling force of the universe

[ughaibu]

1) reason, is the controlling force of the universe

2) the way to know God, the reason for all things, is to study nature

3) I don't think there would be a science forum, nor any sciences, if there were no laws of nature

There's an argument that goes something like this:

1) laws of nature are real (by 3 above, I assume you accept this)

2) scientists study nature in an attempt to isolate and mathematically express those laws (by 2 and 3 above, I assume you accept this)

3) scientists study strings of symbols that correspond to facts observed in nature

4) scientists produce algorithms (that more or less approximate the laws of nature, 3 above) which generate the strings corresponding to the facts and generate new strings that correspond to testable predictions

5) the best theories generate the longest strings of facts/predictions, from the shortest algorithms (principle of parsimony)

6) any string of symbols can be expressed as a string of binary digits

7) a string of binary digits is random if it is incompressible, that is to say, if it can not be generated by any string shorter than itself

8) it follows that all facts are either random (those that form incompressible strings) or they are generated by laws that are random (those generated by parsimoniously incompressible strings)

9) given 8, your 1 above is false, there is no reason in nature

 

I find this argument a bit odd, but it's interesting, and I think, if nothing else, it establishes that realism about laws of nature commits the realist to rejecting both god and a reasonable universe.

[nutronjon]

Again for the people who get here from a google search- what Cicero had to say of God and modern science is totally awesome.

 

Cicero: Philosophy, Metaphysics of Cicero's 'Nature of the Gods'. Quotes Pictures Biography Cicero

 

The fact is that everything which grows and flourishes contains in itself a natural heat without which it could not grow or flourish. Everything which has within it heat and fire is stirred and enlivened by their motion. And while anything grows and flourishes, this motion is steady and regular. And so long as it remains so with us, our life and consciousness continue. But when this vital warmth grows cold and finally extinct, we ourselves decline and die.

..the veins and arteries throb constantly with a fiery pulse. It has often been observed that if the heart is torn out of any animal, it continues to beat violently like a flickering fire. Therefore everything which lives, whether it is animal or vegetable, lives only by reason of the heat enclosed within it. From which it can be seen that this heat has by nature a vital force within itself which permeates the whole world. (Cicero)

 

From which it follows that as all the elements of the universe are sustained by heat, so the whole universe is itself preserved through all the ages by a similar power: the more so, because it must be understood that this hot and fiery principle is so infused throughout the whole of nature that it provides the life-force and is the source of all that comes to be, and from it is born and nourished every living creature and every plant whose roots are in the earth.

That which we call Nature is therefore the power which permeates and preserves the whole universe, and this power is not devoid of sense and reason. Every being which is not homogeneous and simple but complex and composite must have in it some organising principle. In man this organising principle is reason and in animals it is a power akin to reason, and from this arises all purpose and desire. (Cicero

[REASON]

nutronjon,

 

I've thought a lot about your argument for "reason as the controlling force of the universe." I believe I've read just about every post you've generated on the subject.

 

I've noted that you continually get frustrated by the members here that just don't seem to get what you're saying, and I've come to the conclusion that this has to do with communication, not necessarily your ideas.

 

Since these fora are all about writing (and smilies), the words one chooses is paramount to effective communication, and choosing a different word can change the entire meaning of a statement or idea.

 

I think it is clear that the use of the term "force" in your statement is very problematic and is generating a lot of resistance. "Force" conveys something tangible that one can experience, like the force of gravity, or the force of the wind. It can be measured. Reason cannot be measured, so it cannot be synonymous with force.

 

In an earlier post, you presented a definition for logos which included:

 

1. [sometimes l-] in Greek philosophy, reason, thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifest in speech.

 

Now in this definition the term "principle" is used instead of "force." The term "Principle" changes my reaction to the statement, because reason can be or have a principle.

 

The statement: Reason as the guiding principle of the universe (I chose to substitute guiding for controlling) has a different flavor to it and seems to make better sense, particularly when considering it in the context of the ancients who were faced with mysticism and superstition as explanations for occurences in nature. Keep in mind though, that their knowledge of the universe was very limited compared to ours today, yet we are still faced with the same types of mysticism and superstition.

 

In the face of mysticism and superstition, reason as the guiding principle of the universe is what I have come to believe you have been trying to convey. In this context, this is something I can agree with. In fact, I would like to see reason as the guiding priciple of democracy as well. :cup:

 

But we still cannot scientifically infer anything about God. That task is for you personally.

 

Does this make sense to you?

[InfiniteNow]

Again for the people who get here from a google search- what Cicero had to say of God and modern science is totally awesome.

 

You really need to address directly the questions and posts directed at you, nutronjon.

 

You either completely ignore the points people make or you pivot with an appeal to authority.

 

This is why I find the image below so descriptive:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"... if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." ~Carl Sagan

 

"Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that 'God is the ultimate' or 'God is our better nature' or 'God is the universe.' Of course, like any other word, the word 'God' can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal." ~ Steven Weinberg

[CraigD]

I’m concerned by what appear to me to be several inaccurate claims made in this thread.

Democracy as religion begins in Athens. It begins with a belief in many Gods and evolves away from believing in supernatural beings, to believing, reason, is the controlling force of the universe.

This description classical Athens (about 510 to 338 BC) appears to me to be very inaccurate.

 

Classical Athens had democracy, and also religion. However, I’ve seen no evidence that the people of that period considered democracy a religion, nor any that democracy or rational philosophies replaced, or reduced in popularity, traditional religion. To the contrary, evidence of superstition, in such forms as religious sculptures, religiously allegorical plays, and civil support or religious institutions, such as the Oracle of Delphi, increased in number, and apparent sophistication and popularity at the same time that Athen’s democratic institutions, such as the Assembly.

 

It’s also noteworthy that classical Athenian democracy was not what most would consider, by 21st century standards, democracy. It was limited to adult male citizens who completed military training, a population never exceeding about 10% of the population of the city state. After 450 BC, citizenship was restricted to the descendents of a mother and a father who were both citizens, and to people explicitly granted citizenship by the Assembly. Although by 450 BC Athens was the controlling state of a de-facto empire of about 150 city states, the Delian League, none of the citizens of these states were able to participate in Athenian or other democratic bodies.

… what Cicero had to say of God and modern science is totally awesome.

Cicero was clearly an excellent orator and writer, and his many English language translators very good. I personally consider him a very important contributor to the rise of non-religious, rational thought. However, Cicero was not in a modern sense scientific, selecting ideas on the basis of their logical and rhetorical appeal, not by a processes of objective experimental testing.

 

Thus, claim of his such as these

The fact is that everything which grows and flourishes contains in itself a natural heat without which it could not grow or flourish. Everything which has within it heat and fire is stirred and enlivened by their motion. And while anything grows and flourishes, this motion is steady and regular. And so long as it remains so with us, our life and consciousness continue. But when this vital warmth grows cold and finally extinct, we ourselves decline and die.

 

… the veins and arteries throb constantly with a fiery pulse. It has often been observed that if the heart is torn out of any animal, it continues to beat violently like a flickering fire. Therefore everything which lives, whether it is animal or vegetable, lives only by reason of the heat enclosed within it. From which it can be seen that this heat has by nature a vital force within itself which permeates the whole world.

are not only unscientific, but scientifically wrong. Living organisms are not animated by a fiery “vital force”, but by energy-producing chemical reactions, of which heat is not a cause, but an effect.

 

Although Cicero, his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors show sound guessing skills in reaching such conclusions based on the very limited information available to them, they guessed wrong. Ideas such as vitalism, therefore, are now almost entirely discredited, with only a handful of present-day scientific supporter, such as Rupert Sheldrake and David Bohm. It should be noted that Sheldrake’s central vitalistic idea, morphic resonance, is widely considered pseudoscientific, and, IMHO, shares little in common with the very rational arrived at, though ultimately wrong, ideas of ancient, classical, and early scientific thinkers such as Cicero.

[nutronjon]

We seem to forget Europe was Christian and it was not Christianity that gave us democracy. Democracy comes from Greek and Roman classics, and few Christians were literate. However, those who were literate, were literate in the classics, so an understanding of democracy did come through Christians who were so education. Without this literacracy, no one saw democracy in the bible. Replacing liberal education which used the classics to transmit a culture essential to the meaning of our democracy, liberty and freedom, with education for technology and leaving moral training to the church, as Germany did, has almost completely destroyed our democracy.

 

"Moral" comes from a Greek concept meaning to know good manners and The Law. When we add an "e" to moral, we get "morale", that high spirited feeling coming out of believing we are doing the right thing. We should have never dropped our education for good moral judgement and left moral training to the church, because doing so devastated our understanding of morality and God. And to know The Law, well this is science and the search for truth, and coming to know universal laws. These concepts have been Christianized and the memory of them as coming from Athens, has been lost to us, and now the US is in big, big trouble.

[REASON]

O GOING O

[Boerseun]

Nutronjon, I applaud your tenacity.

 

It doesn't mean you're right, however.

 

"Democracy", as we know it today, is very, very far removed from what the old Greeks had in mind.

 

"Democracy", in today's terms, is not anything mystical or magical or overly philosophical or even moral.

 

"Democracy", in the classical Greek sense, comes from "Demos" and "Cratos", or, in plain English, "Governance/Rule by the People". And the Greeks kinda sucked at keeping to that philosophy. Only a very, very small percentage of Greeks qualified as eligible for having a say.

 

"Democracy" in today's terms, means "consensus". Nothing more, and nothing less. Everyone's got a say. And we take the statistical mean of what was said, and go with it.

 

I think you're blowing "Democracy" a little out of proportion.

[nutronjon]

The point is not to argue about God. We can not directly experience God, so we can not know God. How silly is it to argue about something of which we can not know? However, we can study nature and we can reason, and participating in a democracy means constantly increasing our knowledge and constantly reasoning things through, at a level of mental activity much higher than self interest, because law making involves everyone, not just self interest, and our bad decisions will come back on us in unpleasant ways, while our good decisions will make things good. Our children and grandchildren inherit want we leave to them, and the older we get, the more we care about their future. It is projecting our thinking into a God, when we ask, what are the best decisions we can make, and the answer will be what is best for everyone, not just what is best for you today.

[Boerseun]

Why, then, assume the existence of something you cannot experience?

 

Is there an echo in here?

[ughaibu]

It is projecting our thinking into a God, when we ask, what are the best decisions we can make, and the answer will be what is best for everyone, not just what is best for you today.

At Tanabata I'll be celebrating two birthdays with some friends. Naturally, before then, we will "ask, what are the best decisions we can make?" and "the answer will be what is best for everyone, not just what is best for you today". Tell me, where does god come into this?

[Southtown]

At Tanabata I'll be celebrating two birthdays with some friends. Naturally, before then, we will "ask, what are the best decisions we can make?" and "the answer will be what is best for everyone, not just what is best for you today". Tell me, where does god come into this?

Tell me, how did you arrive at this thinking? Natural selection?

[ughaibu]

Tell me, how did you arrive at this thinking? Natural selection?

I dont understand your questions. Do you mean 'how can you think?'? are you suggesting the answer would be that I'm a thinking organism as a consequence of Darwinian evolution?

[InfiniteNow]

There is an importance difference between policing someone's thinking and policing someone's behavior. Posting an insulting picture, is not picking up an argument made and responding with a logical argument, so that the discussion can progress and advance reasoning. Burning the flag is not freedom of speech, but a behavior. Speech, means words, and the words need to serve reasoning. Not just, "you are wrong"- but "you are wrong because--------------". If that countering argument isn't there, it is an insult not a reasonable argument.

 

Our freedom of speech is not the freedom to say whatever we want, whenever we want, because this could be immoral. That means the words cause harm. This is a matter of cause and effect. If people say things that harm the forums, the forums must be protected, by preventing the harm.

 

However, making a reasonable argument, is not immoral, and does not cause harm. How we determine the difference is, with knowledge of argumentation, not our feelings. Either a person is making a reasonable argument or not. This doesn't mean we agree with what the person says! It means the form of the thought expressed in words, can be identified as an attempt to make reasoned argument, no matter how much we disagree with what was said. It can be faulty logic, it can be reason based on error, or misunderstanding, but if there is an attempt to make a reasonable argument, that is what it is, and it is not bad behavior, such as deliberate attempts to insult someone- are bad behavior.

 

I don't think it should be so hard to judge between the difference between possible bad reasoning and bad behavior. Is the person speaking to a point made in the argument, or is the person attacking the person who posted?

 

Since you're so often fond of quoting Cicero and Jefferson, I thought I'd offer to the thread a quote from the latter. Although I already responded to your comments above previously here in the thread, the below is another response those comments, and more broadly, to the sentiment which underlies them.

 

I found it...hmm... In this context, I found it rather funny, really.

 

 

 

 

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unitelligible propositions."

 

~Thomas Jefferson

 

 

:cup:

[freeztar]

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unitelligible propositions."

 

~Thomas Jefferson

 

 

:cup:

 

"When the superior scholar hears of Tao, he diligently practises it. When the average scholar hears of Tao, he sometimes retains it, sometimes loses it. When the inferior scholar hears of Tao, he loudly laughs at it. Were it not thus ridiculed, it would not be worthy of the name of Tao." - Lao-Tzu

[Boerseun]

Before we go too far off topic, just a simple question:

 

In order to get to the statement that makes the heading for this thread, you have to explain how you came to the conclusion that "reason" is a force in the first place.

 

How is "reason" a force?

 

"Reason", to the best of my knowledge, is using your brains in order to connect A to B.

 

Say a midget lifted a ten ton truck above his head. How did he manage that? We inspect the scene and see pulleys and ropes and levers lying around. "Reason" is the process whereby we deduct the possibility that the midget constructed a crane using the pulleys, ropes and levers that we see lying around to lift the truck.

 

Nowhere in the above did "Reason" do anyting else than connect A (the fact that the midget did, indeed, lift the truck) to B (how he did it, using pulleys, ropes and levers).

 

"Reason" is not a force, has never been a force, and will never be a force.

 

Please explain how you see "Reason" as a force, before you assign anything like "controlling the universe" to it.

 

And there's a big difference between "force" in the philosophical sense, and "force" in a scientific sense. But in saying it "controls the universe", you've crossed the boundary between philosophy and science. So either you're using the term as a metaphor, or you don't quite understand the difference between the two.

 

So which is it?

[modest]

I think a great disservice has been done to ancient Greek philosophy in this thread.

 

Before classic Greek philosophy and science there was no organized method for understanding the universe. Rather than finding logical explanations for events, supernatural and hidden forces were considered the cause.

 

The Greeks did so much to change this that most of our modern attitude toward the physical and human sciences is traced right back to them. They literally started the foundation of science. This is no metaphor. Hippocrates is the father of modern medicine. Pythagoras is the father of numbers. There is a crystal clear and unmistakable reason this happened which is precisely aligned to the title of this thread.

 

By the fifth century BC Greek philosophers started giving up the mystical accounts of things in favor of physical understanding. They developed the idea of ontology where they apply reason and logic in asking what is real. They weren't perfect at applying that logic, but they at least were trying. Before that paradigm shift it was typical to think that saying an incantation or drawing a picture would summon spirits or animals or cause death or life. Until Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy I don't think anyone questioned that kind of thing. Egyptians for example just assumed that was the way things worked. The Greeks said: why? how? What is the reason?

 

So, the title of this thread is not far off. The ancient Greeks would say logos is ontological. Or, only things that make sense or are logical can be real. That was a big step forward in rationally understanding the universe. It was a rejection of mysticism.

 

Nutronjon, by arguing for mysticism and belief in a God without evidence you have turned this around completely backwards. I realize this thread is an offshoot of "Nature as God", but you can't just use Aristotle to argue anything. The Greek's use of logic and logos is not immediately transferable to your ideas of God and democracy.

 

I'm afraid in making your argument, you've given people the wrong impression regarding the foundation the Greeks made for western civilization and modern science. Hopefully the usefulness of using reason rather than superstition in understand the universe is evident and hopefully it's evident that's what the Greeks were doing.

 

-modest