2. A View About the World (cont.)
Points from the Video about a Scientific View
- Scientific behavior at its best can be characterized by never resting content with what's known, but always seeking to test, confirm, and validate with new data.
- Even respected scientists, like James Clerk Maxwell, can make incorrect inferences and false predictions.
- A scientific attitude recognizes that our knowledge is never complete, always tentative, and subject to change and revision.
- A scienfitic attitude was described by Richard Feynman as "imagination in a tight straightjacket" with respect to considering what is possible based on what is known.
- The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge serves as a caution that there may be forces or variables of which we are unaware. An arrogant "know-it-all" attitude or an ignorance resting on "common sense" may lead to disaster if not tempered by skepticism, curiosity, and open-minded observations.
more About the World
Consider:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all
the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put
to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it,
and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it
by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.—Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.—Albert Einstein
Dream as we may, reality knocks relentlessly at the door. Even if perceived reality is largely a construct of our brains, it has to chime with the real world or eventually we grow dissatisfied with it.—Francis Crick
More Quotes to Consider
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Fundamental Aspects
By, About Steve Stockdale
