From: markk@sagredo.West.Sun.COM (Mark Kampe)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Long excercise in theory (cosmology)
Date: 1 Sep 1992 15:21:47 GMT
Organization: SunSoft South
NNTP-Posting-Host: sagredo.west.sun.com

ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe) writes:

> Uhm, what definitions of "true" and "false" are you using?  I may be more
> comfortable with the former worldview than the latter, but I don't think it is
> possible to judge any worldview to be either true or false.

	The point of my example was not epistemological, and so I'd like to
	stay away from "definitions of truth" (in this thread).  I think that
	most commentators would agree that the works of Newton were "more in
	tune with the workings of the cosmos" than were the works of Pope
	Innocent VII.  This notion of relatively more/less truthful is all
	that is needed for the purposes of this discussion.

	My point in this paragraph is not that some people have truth and 
	some people don't.  My point is that the effectiveness of a mind-set 
	in altering the world is not particularly related to how well that 
	mind-set is "in tune" with objective reality.

> Well, I haven't seen anyone fly in a way that was not in complete accord with
> the law of gravity--have you?
> ...
> It certainly does.  I don't think you understand the law of entropy.  We do 
> not in any way violate the law of entropy.

	I understand the laws of Newtonian gravitation and the first three 
	laws of thermodynamics.  Flight does not violate the law of 
	gravitation and evolution does not violate the law of entropy.  That 
	is my whole point.  Laws that would seem to impose great limits on 
	what is possible, in fact do not.

	In a universe where gravity were the only force, flight would be
	utterly impossible (as would space and time ... but that is another
	topic).  Thus, a person who looked at gravitation in isolation would
	conclude that flight was impossible.  Gravity is not the only force,
	and it is really very simple to get over forces to overcome the force
	of gravity ... and so flight is trivial.  The falacy is the belief
	that the law of gravity has anything to do with flight.

	In a universe where entropy was the dominant tendency on all scales,
	any sort of order would be impossible.  It turns out, however, that
	entropy is only a gross thermodynamic property of closed systems, 
	and does not apply to abstracted micro-systems.  Once again, the falacy
	is the belief that this "law" is relevent to what we are doing.

	A naive observer who "harkened to the law" might conclude that many
	things were impossible.  One who better understands the mechanisms
	of the universe will realize that reality is quite complex and that
	all of our "laws" are only "descriptions of isolated aspects of 
	factors that contribute to reality". 

	The original poster was talking about the need to "get around laws".
	My point is that the universe has very few laws, and they generally
	do not put up significant obstacles to the things that most of us
	need to do every day.

> The laws of physics are not "the real world"--they are merely a model of how
> the "real world" works.  Just because a model is a model does not mean that 
> what it attempts to model is also a model.  (Sorry about that sentence, but 
> it is the most logically precise way I can say it.)  I think you are 
> confusing the map  with the territory.

I think I understand this point well ... in fact, I thought it was so important
that I made it the opening subject of posting.  Please reread my first few
sentences:

) The universe is.  Its existance is (to the greater extent) indifferent 
) to us, our minds and our rules.  The universe does not have rules.  Rules
) are things that minds fabricate to try to bring order to what they have
) observed.

I then tried to go on from that point to make two additional ones:

	Just because someone tells you there is a rule doesn't mean that
	the universe (or you) have to be limited to what that rule says.
	Our rules are not particularly binding on the universe.  The
	"real rules" of the universe (not our approximations of them) are
	binding on us ... but in most cases it will turn out that the
	limitations they impose are irrelevent to what we want to do.

	The rules in our minds, however, can affect us greatly and have
	caused virtually all of the significant events in human history.
	Saying that an effect is "purely in the mind" is not saying that
	the effect is small or inconsequential.

If I were asked to choose between

	(a) having power over the laws of space and time

	(b) having power over my own ego, world view and mental processes.

The decision would be a no-brainer for (b).
Newsgroups: alt.magick