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| Benjamin Libet |
BTW, even Benjamin Libet did not discount free will. he beleived there was a brief moment in time between a thought and an action where free will existed.
One of the big problems with all this science...is that our cognitive science is still primitive...models of the nature of consciousness, and the nature of space, time and cosmos are still infantile...the earth about 4 billion years and the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. That puts it in a bit of perspective.
Once recent paper...in biology reviewed the most cited literature...couple of decades ago - over a ten year period or so. About 40% of the findings...subsequently...highly flawed or dead wrong. I wonder how flawed will these neuro-imaging papers be in a couple of decades...not dismissing scientific knowledge....the posssibility that...modern science remains highly limited in its current expression, particularly in the understanding of mind and intelligence. (see entire comment to earlier blog)
G. There is no question that what science has proven and is investigating in any field, including cognitive neuroscience, constantly changes. That is how empirical investigation works, in science and also in our spiritual practices. Consistency is only possible if one operates totally on belief and functions like the old adage, "Often wrong, but never in doubt."
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| Galileo |
As an example of the changing nature of scientific experimentation, let's take telescopes and viewing remote celestial bodies/astronomy as an example; this is often regarded as the beginning of modern science. The practical telescope was invented in 1608 by Hans Lippershey in the Netherlands, who called it a "looker". Galileo, who is known as the "Father of Modern Science", heard about this and built his own "looker".
Prior to this, descriptions of what we saw in the heavens were based only on what everyone could see with their own eyes. Everyone believed that was the true picture, so much so that it was the basis for religious dogma.
Galileo soon found the four moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and sunspots. He also found that the earth was not the center of our universe, that, in fact, the sun was and the earth and the other planets rotated around it. As this directly contradicted an fundamental belief of the church, Galileo's work was investigated by the Inquisition in 1615, which graciously ruled that this was only a possibility, not a fact. This generosity, uncharacteristic of the Inquisition, occurred as Galileo was a good friend of the pope, Urban VIII, and the Jesuits.
Galileo then wrote what was arguably the first real scientific paper, documenting his discoveries. The Inquisition became crabby now and retried Galileo and his work and found it "vehemently suspect of heresy", forced him to recant under threat of torture (which the Inquisition had perfected) and death, and put him under house arrest for the rest of his life.
Since 1608, there has been a plethora of new telescopes, "looking" in new ways @ many "new" astronomical phenomena. There were more powerful versions of Lippershey's design as well as telescopes to detect x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, far-infrared radiations, etc., from land and in space. Many different types of stars and nebulae growing and dying, black holes, anti-matter, countless galaxies and universes, etc. were found as were new understandings of how this all operates. Astronomy has been constantly changing for 400 years and is arguably changing faster now than every before, and will continue to change. To your way of thinking, science has been wrong, continuously for 400 years.
What didn't change, for a long time, was belief - the church continued to refuse to accept Galileo's discoveries. Not until 1822 did the church lift the ban on Galileo's work, but they would not pardon him. Finally, in 1992, three years after the "Galileo" spacecraft probe and orbiter had been launched to Jupiter, the Vatican cleared Galileo of wrongdoing, expressed regret for how the affair was handled, and officially conceded that "the earth was not stationary".
That is the difference between science and belief.
As a personal anecdote, i was going down the Grand Canyon on a raft trip a few years ago, as shown at the right. (i'm in the orange hat so they could find my battered, mangled body). There was a wonderful family on the trip, with two pre-teen kids, from MI; the father was an engineer with Ford. They were fundamentalists.
At one point, we passed rock that was 1.4 billion years old, by scientific measurement. (you cited the earth as 4 billion years old, so you do believe in this science.) The Christian Bible does not state how old the earth is, but believers added "begats" to get an age of around 6000 years. Other spiritual texts believe that beings came from the sky about 25,000 years ago to create earth.
i asked my fundamentalist friends how they reconciled the 1.4 billion year old rock with their belief that the earth is 6000 years old. They replied simply "we just don't talk about it". That is what belief is.
re your statement that Benjamin Libet "...did not discount free will. he beleived there was a brief moment in time between a thought and an action where free will existed.". Libet's discovery in 1982, (covered in "my" youTube videos on Free Will and You Are Not In Control) on what initiates action, the brain or the "I" (the brain), was not less mind-blowing, IMHO, than realizing that the "earth moves around the sun", or that the earth was flat (BTW, there is still a Flat Earth Society; beliefs die hard).
Libet's work met a fate similar to Galileo's in many respects.
There was tremendous rejection from the popular media, folk on the street and the already entrenched scientists, to Libet's work, with much pressure to recant, and many counter-discussions and papers. Libet did later "believe" that there was a possibility for intervention (implicit coercion?); he never experimentally demonstrated it.
On the contrary, as with telescope development, the huge increase in neuroscientific efforts, technologies and devices has consistently demonstrated that Libet's original finding that the "I" does not initiate actions, the brain does, was correct. A fascinating BBC/German Institute video, the featured video of a recent Science and NonDuality conference, is an example.
Since 1608, there has been a plethora of new telescopes, "looking" in new ways @ many "new" astronomical phenomena. There were more powerful versions of Lippershey's design as well as telescopes to detect x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, far-infrared radiations, etc., from land and in space. Many different types of stars and nebulae growing and dying, black holes, anti-matter, countless galaxies and universes, etc. were found as were new understandings of how this all operates. Astronomy has been constantly changing for 400 years and is arguably changing faster now than every before, and will continue to change. To your way of thinking, science has been wrong, continuously for 400 years.
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| Galileo Spacecraft |
What didn't change, for a long time, was belief - the church continued to refuse to accept Galileo's discoveries. Not until 1822 did the church lift the ban on Galileo's work, but they would not pardon him. Finally, in 1992, three years after the "Galileo" spacecraft probe and orbiter had been launched to Jupiter, the Vatican cleared Galileo of wrongdoing, expressed regret for how the affair was handled, and officially conceded that "the earth was not stationary".
That is the difference between science and belief.
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| Grand Canyon Rafting |
At one point, we passed rock that was 1.4 billion years old, by scientific measurement. (you cited the earth as 4 billion years old, so you do believe in this science.) The Christian Bible does not state how old the earth is, but believers added "begats" to get an age of around 6000 years. Other spiritual texts believe that beings came from the sky about 25,000 years ago to create earth.
i asked my fundamentalist friends how they reconciled the 1.4 billion year old rock with their belief that the earth is 6000 years old. They replied simply "we just don't talk about it". That is what belief is.
re your statement that Benjamin Libet "...did not discount free will. he beleived there was a brief moment in time between a thought and an action where free will existed.". Libet's discovery in 1982, (covered in "my" youTube videos on Free Will and You Are Not In Control) on what initiates action, the brain or the "I" (the brain), was not less mind-blowing, IMHO, than realizing that the "earth moves around the sun", or that the earth was flat (BTW, there is still a Flat Earth Society; beliefs die hard).
Libet's work met a fate similar to Galileo's in many respects.
There was tremendous rejection from the popular media, folk on the street and the already entrenched scientists, to Libet's work, with much pressure to recant, and many counter-discussions and papers. Libet did later "believe" that there was a possibility for intervention (implicit coercion?); he never experimentally demonstrated it.
On the contrary, as with telescope development, the huge increase in neuroscientific efforts, technologies and devices has consistently demonstrated that Libet's original finding that the "I" does not initiate actions, the brain does, was correct. A fascinating BBC/German Institute video, the featured video of a recent Science and NonDuality conference, is an example.
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