Friday, January 02, 2009

Another bust ...

... Edge answers and materialism's credit crunch.

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that once you have equated matter with energy, so that the "material" world is just an energy pattern perceived by us in a particular way, then "materialism" becomes a very odd attempt at reducing reality to one particular phenomenal configuration.

Here is Rupert Sheldrake:
Materialism's credit crunch changes everything. As science is liberated from this nineteenth-century ideology, new perspectives and possibilities will open up, not just for science, but for other areas of our culture that are dominated by materialism. And by giving up the pretence that the ultimate answers are already known, the sciences will be freer—and more fun.

Yes, it is a 19th-century ideology, isn't it? Quite Victorian.

3 comments:

  1. Of course, you could also look at it as energy just being the "material" world perceived by us in a particular way.

    E may be mc^2, but m is E/c^2.

    :)

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  2. Which reminds me of the 18th-century riposte addressing the dispute over whether matter was a projection of mind (Berkeley) or mind a product of matter (Hume): "No matter, never mind."

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  3. Which reminds me of Dr Johnson and Boswell:

    "Discussing Bishop Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter, Boswell remarked that though he considered it untrue, he wasn't able to refute it. Kicking a large stone, Johnson said, 'I refute it thus.'"

    Ouch.

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