Re: Very interesting, but not funny.....

In article <48627dce$0$6048$88260bb3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jon <jonmein@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Campbell is about story telling. The ones that inform and
direct our cultures and the ones we tell ourselves. The ones
told about belief and history and the ones we write by living.
Yeah yeah, the mythos thing.

And some things about human nature. Perspective.

Well some argue our nature is locked and cyclic.

I think that you have to first separate "inform" vs. "direct."
We direct certainly by our ideals (e.g., "We hold these truths..." for
better or worse).

I think the science and math which follow behind might be more important.

In some ways, by some measures. Are math and science about
essential truths? Are they about improving our model of
the universe? What do we do with them? What we could do...
What we should do...

When you see something that is technically sweet, you
go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do
about it only after you have had your technical success.
That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
--
Oppenheimer

Headed to his brother Frank's place in a couple of hours.

You have limits with math purely by itself. You can do a lot of work
but it can all too easily be brought down. So to me it depends what you
mean by "essential." I'm just not clear.

As for model improvements: Kepler had a hard enough time before Galileo
to reconcil motion. As Pat pointed out, you could put Earth at the
center of the universe. That only takes you so far. I think that Doug
Adams would look a little cross eyed at what Campbell was doing (not
knowing either well enough) just as Dawkins looks at some Americans on
the evolution question.

Math is mostly just a language tool to describe a lot of this.

"Do", "could," "should."
Well life's work is to figure out the "should."
I think discussing this (thinking about action) is an action itself.
You just don't want to get wrapped up in it while the world burns around you.

Sure, I can toss 100 lbs. on my back, but I'd want to know answers to
basic questions: why, how far, is the load decomposible? etc.

I hope math and science can give us and our children a "last
chance to see" the natural world, the non-artifical, in more
places and for a longer time. More places to "get lost" in
appreciation of physics, chemistry, biology, etc... manifest
in wildness.

Well why should it be last? Last, might or might not be good.
Pat's a Abbey fan. I am to a limited degree, too. In contrast, Bryson
has a limited following and I've not had to time to read him, and others
seemed to like and dislike him (Cyli had this pluses and minuses thing
about him). Where Pat (and my old profs like Nash) like Abbey, I've
much longer preferred Carson. Sagan and Cousteau came by JPL and work
on occasion.

The mythos doesn't affect science and math directly (except when long
cherished myths, like an earth centered universe, are shattered by
science), but mythos does affect culture.

It's a frame of reference, common sense/nonsense, a comfort
you can use "context," too.
zone of belief,-- always flawed, or limited, at least, -- an implicit
constraint on science of the day, any day, until the constraint is
broken. We're not completely out of the dark ages.

Yeah, we are still in the Dark Ages.

I've got to show Murray that Earth-to the Moon episode.

--
.

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