How much do we know?

[TagliatelliMonster]

So you are talking about the unknown and how it can't be known and all that is known, is known by science. That is testable.
You: If it's a question about reality and the answer is known, it's known by science.
Me: No!
That is not known by science, yet you know, that I wrote "no", so you know something not known by science.

False analogy.

 

[Thief]

Get off what fence, and why? It is no part of science to offer instant solutions to every problem.

If we don't yet know, we don't yet know. Anyone who demands a choice be made, before there is enough data for it, reveals himself to be an idiot.

I leave it to you to decide how you want to appear to others.

the documentary I saw about dark energy and dark matter...…

displayed scientists were convinced...….
the bulk of the universe is not known

they seemed VERY SURE of it

 

[Thief]

Try a dose of intellectual honesty.

physician heal thyself?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

False analogy.

As it stands it is at best an unsupported claim. You need to give reasoning and what not.

 

[exchemist]

the documentary I saw about dark energy and dark matter...…

displayed scientists convinced...….
the bulk of the universe is not known

they seemed VERY SURE of it

Well why not try reading a bit, instead of relying on your impressions from one documentary?

I've given you a nice link about dark energy. I recommend reading that at least. If you, as I did, try searching under "dark energy placeholder", you should find at least 2 more articles in which dark energy is described in this way, making it very clear that there is very little so far behind this hypothesis.

Dark matter, on the other hand, is a lot better established. There are at least two independent types of evidence for gravitational effects in galaxies that are larger than can be accounted for by our estimates of the conventional matter they contain. But the evidence so far is solely gravitational, and we have no model for what form this matter, if it is indeed matter, takes. If particle physics can give us that model, it will become a much stronger hypothesis.

This by the way is quite typical of science. It is almost never a question of certainty, merely degrees of confidence in a model or a hypothesis.

 

[exchemist]

Yes, there are still big questions out there. Tyson has mentioned some of the known unknowns here, but I'm willing to bet there are unknown unknowns still waiting for us to find too.

But look on the bright side ─ if it's a question about reality and the answer is known, it's known by science; and if it isn't known by science it isn't known at all.

A bit of a diversion, but this reminds me of an Oxford rhyme about a well known Master of Balliol College (and Regius Professor of Greek) in the c.19th, called Jowett:

Here am I, my name is Jowett.
There is no knowledge but I know it.
I am the Master of this college,
And what I know not isn't knowledge!

 

[Thief]

Well why not try reading a bit, instead of relying on your impressions from one documentary?

I've given you a nice link about dark energy. I recommend reading that at least. If you, as I did, try searching under "dark energy placeholder", you should find at least 2 more articles in which dark energy is described in this way, making it very clear that there is very little so far behind this hypothesis.

Dark matter, on the other hand, is a lot better established. There are at least two independent types of evidence for gravitational effects in galaxies that are larger than can be accounted for by our estimates of the conventional matter they contain. But the evidence so far is solely gravitational, and we have no model for what form this matter, if it is indeed matter, takes. If particle physics can give us that model, it will become a much stronger hypothesis.

This by the way is quite typical of science. It is almost never a question of certainty, merely degrees of confidence in a model or a hypothesis.

I then choose to be confident
the known universe is small
compared to the universe we cannot affirm

 

[exchemist]

I then choose to be confident
the known universe is small
compared to the universe we cannot affirm

Cannot affirm what?

 

[David T]

Why are you pretending that a theistic "god" and "nature" are the same thing?

" the mentally ill person asks why i dont see all the little green men around me"

Only a half wit would understand nature and god as split apart. My daughter cant do that, therefore she isnt so hung up on herself narrcisist.
Jesus said "you are too full of yourself and thus stupid be as davids daughter" as he pointed 2,000 years into the future. Its not that hard really!!! You do love your own image though, regardless and you are singular.

 

[blü 2]

A bit of a diversion, but this reminds me of an Oxford rhyme about a well known Master of Balliol College (and Regius Professor of Greek) in the c.19th, called Jowett:

Here am I, my name is Jowett.
There is no knowledge but I know it.
I am the Master of this college,
And what I know not isn't knowledge!

Wonderful!

I came across Prof Benjamin Jowett when I used his famous translation of Plato from Gutenberg for some Plato work. (And shortly I downloaded it wholesale so I could do a block replace of thou / thee / thy / doth / didst &c, which I found deeply irritating ─ but once I'd made those repairs I thought it deserved its reputation. Then I came on him again when I was digging up Alf Tennyson ─ in the weird way that Tennyson had friends, he was a friend of Jowett from his Cambridge days, and at Jowett's request he wrote one of his worst pieces, called 'The Human Cry', for Baliol College, which Jowett headed. Tennyson also wrote another well-forgotten poem called 'The Ancient Sage' because Jowett suggested a poem about Lao Tze would be nice; and there were others. Your poem beats that stuff hollow, and I'm delighted to make its acquaintance.

 

[Valjean]

If Atheists are to be held as a standard, then not a whole lot in that cranium.

Standard? What sort of standard?
You imply atheists are mentally challenged. How did you come to that conclusion?

As a matter of fact, you're correct in that there is a correlation between intelligence and atheism, but it's opposite your implication. Atheism is most prevalent among intellectuals and academics, particularly those in mathematics and the sciences, where logic and reasoning are most prominent.
...And as long as we're on the topic, surveys have found that atheists are also more knowledgeable about religion in general than are the religious -- As numerous RF posts over the years have pointed out.

 

[Valjean]

Errrrr..... yes. Hadn't you noticed?

More knowledgeable, perhaps, in toto; but wiser? I think not.
Your average Joe is not privy to the accumulated knowledge of the experts and academics. He's as blinkered as a Neanderthal. Psychologically, we're still the same bunch of naked apes we were 10,000 years ago

Yep.

Even the genius Isaac Newton engaged in the fallacy.
Not once in his entire physics work did he invoke god. Until he hit a wall. Then, suddenly he saw "the hand of god".

Some century later, another physicist then solved that problem. Without having to invoke any gods.

Hear hear!
God has always dwelt at the margins of human understanding.... and lately He's been moving house rather frequently, it seems to me.

" the mentally ill person asks why i dont see all the little green men around me"

Only a half wit would understand nature and god as split apart. My daughter cant do that, therefore she isnt so hung up on herself narrcisist.
Jesus said "you are too full of yourself and thus stupid be as davids daughter" as he pointed 2,000 years into the future. Its not that hard really!!! You do love your own image though, regardless and you are singular. View attachment 30391

I look at "God" as Nature personified, just as, in my tradition, Agni is fire personified or Yama, death -- convenient folk tales, but not to be taken as ontologic truth.

 

[David T]

More knowledgeable, perhaps, in toto; but wiser? I think not.
Your average Joe is not privy to the accumulated knowledge of the experts and academics. He's as blinkered as a Neanderthal. Psychologically, we're still the same bunch of naked apes we were 10,000 years ago
Hear hear!
God has always dwelt at the margins of human understanding.... and lately He's been moving house rather frequently, it seems to me.
I look at "God" as Nature personified, just as, in my tradition, Agni is fire personified or Yama, death -- convenient folk tales, but not to be taken as ontologic truth.

Oh a sane religious person!!!! We could have great talks in walks in the forests here on the oregon coast. John Muir was spot on!!!

 

[Valjean]

All hail St Muir! (full disclosure -- long time Sierra Club member)
I'd be blissfully happy wandering the Oregon forests. Have you ever experienced the high deserts and forests of my home in New Mexico?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If that is so, is your stance on the Bible the same--"Dan knows a lot, but not everything, and so might inquire further?" If so, we could talk about the Bible, yes?

My stance on the Bible remains the only valid stance that a person can have based on the evidence. Any other stance is belief, unsupported by any evidence and in some cases refuted by the evidence.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

From a lecture series by Neil DeGrasse-Tyson. It is a 6-part 6-hour series called "The Inexplicable Universe" (I think, it was a while ago, on Netflix), the main point of which was to illuminate how much we do not yet know about the universe. And he didn't just make the figure up, it was an estimate arrived at by he and many of his colleagues in the sciences. I recalled him saying the percentage was something like 84% unknown, but someone else on this thread pointed out that it was more like 93% unknown. Either way, the percentage estimates are so great that it pretty much renders the idea that we understand the universe, absurd. We understand only the very small part of the universe, if even that.

Sure. Knowing a lot does not mean knowing everything. I imagine even 1% would be a lot of information.

 

[PureX]

Sure. Knowing a lot does not mean knowing everything. I imagine even 1% would be a lot of information.

Depends on one's chosen perspective. Viewed relative to what we don't know, what we do know becomes miniscule. Viewed relative to knowing nothing, it might seem a vast amount.

Interestingly, it's beginning to appear as if complexity might be infinite. Meaning that there is no limit to what could be known. That 'omniscience' is an eternal impossibility.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Depends on one's chosen perspective. Viewed relative to what we don't know, what we do know becomes miniscule. Viewed relative to knowing nothing, it might seem a vast amount.

Interestingly, it's beginning to appear as if complexity might be infinite. Meaning that there is no limit to what could be known. That 'omniscience' is an eternal impossibility.

Or that we hit brute facts.

Here is the most brute fact of all: How come there is something and not nothing? Because there is.
The idea that we can know everything, defeats itself because of the foundational problem of justification of knowledge. Read up on Agrippa's trilemma if you don't know. The problem of knowledge is that it is in practice a set of beliefs that apparently work.

 

[PureX]

Or that we hit brute facts.

Here is the most brute fact of all: How come there is something and not nothing? Because there is.
The idea that we can know everything, defeats itself because of the foundational problem of justification of knowledge. Read up on Agrippa's trilemma if you don't know. The problem of knowledge is that it is in practice a set of beliefs that apparently work.

I agree that what we call "knowledge" is really just relative functionality. We assume that if the idea functions relative to our experience of existence, it's "true". But our experience, and our capacity for understanding it, are limited. So we can't really know that anything is true beyond relative functionality.

But relative functionality matters. Recognizing and using that recognition to our own advantage is how we humans thrive and survive. It defines and enables us. So there is no reason not to proceed with it. Especially given that we have no real alternative. On the other hand, we delude ourselves when we think our truth is the truth (which we do all the time). The human condition is a precarious state.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

More knowledgeable, perhaps, in toto; but wiser? I think not.
Your average Joe is not privy to the accumulated knowledge of the experts and academics. He's as blinkered as a Neanderthal. Psychologically, we're still the same bunch of naked apes we were 10,000 years ago

While I acknowledge the distinction you make between knowledge and wisdom, sounds like just an opinion though.
I have a different opinion.