if any of you have read ‘the tao of physics’, then you will be well prepared for this debate.
after reading "the tao of physics’ (coupled with my own knowledge/intuition) i came to the conclusion that empiricism/intuition come to the same point. however, it seems that (after having read the book) empiricism is behind.
note: if you haven’t read the book, then you might not be able to see what i am talking about. i suppose this debate is for those that have either read the book, or those that are aware of the similarities between the truth that “eastern” intuition and “western” science, and the fact that “eastern” mystics have been saying the same things that “western” scientists have been saying long before the “western” scientists “discovered” the “truth”.
in other words, we are living in an age where we have a group of people that seem to think that logic should take the place of all intuition when “eastern” mystics have been saying the same thing for thousands of years and sub atomic physics is starting to explain things in a very similar way. does anybody else see it? and if not, why is it so hard to accept intuition as a valid source?
I’m sorry, I haven’t read the book. You’ll have to enlighten me, but I’ll try not to be too hard on you.
What truths are you speaking of? Can you name one or two?
How have eastern mystics been saying the same or similar thing(s)?
I’m not sure I understand your premise. Who are the group of people? Replace all intuition? Maybe we’re operating under a different definition of the word but that seems a rather impossible task. Scientists use intuition all the time – sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t, it’s simply a tool that comes with our brains. Of course, there’s a small difference between using it in our daily lives as a hit or miss means and using it to construct a model of reality.
Also, assuming the so called mystics have been saying “the same thing” I somehow doubt they got much traction out of it, technologically speaking. Then again, eastern thought is a bit of a weak spot in my education, beyond the basics.
I’m just looking for clarification.
Because sometimes it tells us it’s turtles all the way down.
comrade33, I read The Tao of Physics, but it has been several years.
I am a firm believer in adherence to the scientific method in teaching and research. I support open-minded skepticism.
In my personal beliefs, I think that eventually there will be a scientific understanding of many aspects of what is now considered to be (for lack of a better word) the mystical. I think that all of it is perfectly natural.
I once experienced what I guess Maslow would have described as a “peak experience.” Actually, it is indescrible. Although I am a Christian, I feel as comfortable linking that experience to the little that I know and understand of quantum physics and perhaps TOE as of do my religious beliefs. Through that experience I was able to imagine what I could not imagine before.
I explore my intuition and dreams, but I believe that that may have some basis in the way that time functions. Or perhaps it is a sense that is not well developed. I just don’t know, but there is something to it.
I am not “clairvoyant,” but I did dream about and write about what I think was the capsizing of the Swedish ferry a few years ago. Some might not see it as such. (By coincidence, about twenty-five years before the dream, I had made several trips on one of the three ferries that was identical to the one that capsized – only this one was in Denmark.) I live in America and have not been to Scandanavia for many years.)
But everything else has been much smaller and less significant. Just little things that I have told my husband about or written about before hand. It is common in the women in my mother’s side of the family. There are five of us, but just in small ways.
It is just a natural thing. Some people can play the piano by ear and some can recreate the curve of the human body in stone. This ability is not as refined or trained as that. But maybe it’s from the same source. I don’t know.
This board tends to be very physicalist / materialist / empiricist.
One theme that does reappear periodically (not just here but in nearly every venue where logic, reason, and hard empirical data are valued so highly) is the notion that perhaps feelings, intuitions, and emotions just get in the way of clear thinking and that maybe we should get rid of them.
I’ve often tended to post within such threads, arguing the contrary. While there’s an amazing compendium of common-nonsense bullshit floating around, ranging from homeopathic remedies to blind-faith religious belief systems, that richly deserves a good puncturing from the skeptics, it still remains true that we don’t really know or learn the things we know through deductive logical reasoning. The vast majority of the coolest and most clear-headed level logical scientific thinking continues to require artistic inspiration, intuitive leaps, and the pursuit of something that the researcher has “a feeling about”.
First I do not think empiricism and intuition are in any way in conflict. They are both tools that are necessary, that’s like asking whether or not the drill or the table holding the board are more important to the drill press. You need both to make a functioning drill press.
I think that the belief that these two aspects are in conflict is one of the greatest sources of ignorance in the western world.
Idries Shah, a Sufic scholar compared Western Technical skill to Eastern Spiritualism. I thought it was a very apt description as I have used computer metaphors quite often to understand eastern concepts.
A lot of Westerners who are infatuated with the advances of modern science do not realize that many of the concepts are actually ancient, but were not developed into a practical usage in the way they have been developed by western science. Most of us westerners that delve into eastern thought have a hard time explaining to the person raised by western pedagogy the lineage of thought that has led to the wonderful advances that they give credit to science.
The thing is that eastern systems are esoteric (inward looking) and western systems are exoteric (outward looking)
They are both approaching a lot of the same questions, but neither one is ahead, and neither one is behind. They are working in tandem. Something I’ve been exploring recently is the idea that America IS NOT a Western nation. The East/West paradigm is based upon an “Earth is Flat” model, where Japan and England are the extreme ends. It almost entirely ignores Africa, Oceania and the Americas. In America, Japan is far west, and England is far East. The way that culture moves across the globe has changed due to the world being round, rather than flat. It doesn’t simply move from east to west and back again across Eurasia.
I haven’t read the Tao of Physics though. Sounds like an interesting book.