Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 58: Line 21 (1002)

 And anything that happened at the speed of light would have too many unknowables attached to begin with—closer to religion than science.

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"closer to religion than science"
This sounds like some of that "common sense" pablum. You know, when some dolt says, "He may be smart but he doesn't have any common sense," to make them feel superior to the smart person. But common sense is stupid. It's observation without scientific backing! It's making assumptions about the world based on basic perceptions! Common sense says that the sun revolves around the Earth. Because you can see the sun moving across the sky. That's common sense. Science is all, "Yes, that is what it looks like! Good perception! But I'm about to blow your mind, baby!" "Common sense" is closer to religion than science ever could be!
    People also love to point out that people who believe in science have faith just like a religious person. They have faith in their theories and whatnot. But obviously that's about as insipid an opinion as somebody could vocalize! Scientific theorems are based on evidence while the main attribute of faith is that it cannot have any evidence to support it. If there's evidence to support a conclusion, there is no room for faith. So shut up with your faith-based arguments against science, stupid people!

Although, really, I get what Merle is getting at. Science always seems to have an event horizon which we can't imagine ever truly being able to understand. In the 1880s, the speed of light must have been bewildering! But they had already developed experiments to begin working with light and methods with which to measure it and observe how it might change based on other variables (the whole point of the Michelson-Morley experiment). I think about this limit in terms of The Big Bang. I can't imagine how it could ever be knowable what was happening on the other side. I don't see theorizing about it as being close to religion though. But then I've been areligious my entire life and so I'm not too fazed by unknowables. Let them be unknowable! I've got turnips to buy!

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