Scorn directed at people who regard science or nature as wonderful

Khwarizmi

Between this and all the people who dismiss various religions as being irrational or silly, what exactly can you believe in without somebody treating it like something shameful?

TheyCallMeTomu

Nothing, not even nothingness.

/solipsist

Tnophelia

I think it's the problem with most science. They tend to inject the vanilla boredom of life into the things they describe, and some of the people who use the scientific process on every aspect of mysteriousness.

Wonder if there are Krakens? "Vanilla injection! Unless there was proof that squids can get as huge as boats, they do not exist, and you are stupid for believing in that."

But that is s

Myrmidon

"Damn straight. Look, you have two choices if
you're a materialist. You can believe that there are lots of substrate things.
Like Democritus. Atoms, whatever. Little balls. Or you can believe that there's
one thing. Like Heraclitus or Anaximander, or Spinoza. Goo. Lava. "

"Now for some reason little balls are uncool.
Something to do with relativity or quantum theory but you're probably a bit
fuzzy on that. You just know that lava is cooler than balls. And you'd be right"

TheyCallMeTomu

FUCKIN' LAVA

Khwarizmi

But which side is the person you quoted arguing from, Myrm?  The atoms or the goo?  I'm not sure I follow.

Myrmidon

"Quantum theory puts paid forever to the idea that there are little balls or
whatever underlying everything. Why? Ever read John Bell's little 1964 paper on
local realism? That gets rid of an awful
lot of scientism right there—the Dawkinsesque mechanism stuff. To have a machine
you have to have parts. To have parts they have to be separate from one another.
Entanglement happens, easily and frequently in the lab nowadays. Do the
math…"

“"What about the lava?
That's cool.” "

"Show me the lava.
Sure it's cool but that's just an aesthetic judgment. Where is it? What is it?
When you look for it you find electrons, gluons, alpha particles, quarks, and on
and on. Out of what goo is this stuff made? Since we only find distinct, unique
objects, wouldn't it be reasonable to conclude that there is no goo? " 

Gelzo

These posts are weird, so I choose to respond to the OP.

 So, are you saying these people are the same group? I'd be surprised to hear that. For that matter, I don't know for certain of anyone who would mock someone for having an appreciation for science and nature, unless maybe if they started gushing over it to where it got annoying.

And I don't really think there's an opinion you can express or action you can perform that wouldn't be met with scorn from some person in the world.

And @ Tno:

There's really a lot that science hasn't been able to explain. Read up on cosmology, or dark matter/energy and tell me that shit isn't amazing and mysterious.

TheyCallMeTomu

Quarks are made of goo. Or rather, Quarks are made of subquarks which are made of goo. Or maybe subquarks are made of subsubquarks which are made of goo. Or maybe-

Khwarizmi

@Myrmidon & @TheyCallMeTomu: And «goo» in this sense means?

I'm sorry, I guess I'm kind of dense. ^_^;  I have spent the last 35 minutes sat here trying to understand Myrm's last post, and I still don't understand.  Is this to do with philosophical realism or something?  I mean, I understand the words, but not what's actually being said, nor what spirit to take it in.

(I don't suppose there's a Simple English Wikipedia article on this?  Or a specific philosopher I need to read to understand this?)

@Gelzo: No, I'm not saying they're the same group, although I guess there could be overlap.  But I see a lot of scorn directed at people like Dawkins for expressing wonderment at nature and so on, and I can't fathom why.

Myrmidon

http://www.homestarrunner.com/crystal.html

Go ahead and believe it. But don't act as if I'm objectively wrong for not believing in your anthropocentric secular ontotheological Leibnizian spin on things.

Gelzo

I think he's just being silly.

Khwarizmi

If I ever had the ability to distinguish between actual philosophical writing, the ramblings of insane bloggers and postmodernism generator style copypasta, I've long since lost it.

Myrmidon

Okay, back to words people can understand.

Basically people get whiplash from sudden transitions between hard-headed scientific reductionism and neo-hippy almost mystical pantheism.

Khwarizmi

I guess I can understand that line of thinking.  I don't see why «nature» or «science» must be taken as pantheist concepts, as opposed to simply «stuff that's interesting» in order to be admired, though.

Myrmidon

It's silly to demand that people make the a prior judgement that nature(lol vague concept) is aesthetically appealing when tooth decay, maggots, and diarrhea are all considered completely natural things. 

TheyCallMeTomu

Well, there's the theory that it's "Turtles all the way down" when it comes to the existence of "stuff." That "matter" is a substance, and everything exists merely in many forms of it. As opposed to balls, wherein there's multiple types of things everything is made out of.

Khwarizmi

@Myrmidon: Oh, agreed.  But one can still take an interest in the complexities of the life cycles of bacteria, flies and rhotaviruses, and how they are adapted to live in a particular way, even if the results of their interaction with human beings are less than charming.

@TheyCallMeTomu: I see.  I suppose those theories both make sense, although I don't really see how it need make much difference to how one views the world.

Particularly since matter need not be a substance to be existent; matter and antimatter can become photons, yet they remain physically there.

Myrmidon

I'm just saying that there's no necessity to see science or nature as aesthetically pleasing and it's stupid to suggest that anyone who doesn't is just being ignorant/stupid.

TheyCallMeTomu

But ultimately, Ockham's Razor really is just an application of aesthetics.

Khwarizmi

Oh, I agree with that, Myrm.

Tomu, is that necessarily the case?  Ockham's Razor prizes simplicity, but doesn't aesthetics encompass a broader range of, sometimes more complex, largely (if not wholly) subjective qualities?

TheyCallMeTomu

Well, I guess not really Ockham's Razor persay. Come to think of it, I was more thinking of Aristotle and his weird stupid idea of Crystal Spheres or whatever it is. Get off my case, you expect me to be learned and knowledgeable about stuff I myself bring up?! Pfft.

Myrmidon

The guy I was quoting earlier was arguing from an Aristotelean perspective!

TheyCallMeTomu

Oh, well, there ya go. Aristotle sucked monkey balls.

Super Lazuli

Question!

How the hell do you spell [that monk guy]'s Razor?

I've seen Occam Ockham Ockam Ocham and Occem.

Khwarizmi

Doesn't matter, nobody back then knew how to spell anyway.

Occam or Ockham is most common.

Myrmidon

Technically his name was William and he was from a town called Occam/Ockham/Ockam/Ocham/Occem.

[Deleted User]

"Between this and all the people who dismiss various religions as being
irrational or silly, what exactly can you believe in without somebody
treating it like something shameful?"

Human kindness and love, works of art and passion, competition and sport, etc... there are plenty of qualities you can admire even if you dislike both religion and science (I note that the band Bad Religion has songs which attack both, like "The Answer" and "I Want to Conquer the World").

"But ultimately, Ockham's Razor really is just an application of aesthetics."

Nope. It's an application of probability theory.

Khwarizmi

But all of those are trivial in comparison to God, and are only one aspect of nature.  Human qualities may be impressive, but we are, after all, only one species in all of the universe.  By restricting your admiration to humanity alone, you miss out on some of the other awesome landscapes and processes and creatures and other amazing things that exist.

Super Lazuli

"Human kindness and love,"

Will get you called saccharine, or if you live in a less sensitive area, gay.

"works of art and passion,"

See the latter of the above.

"competition and sport"

Will get you thought of as a Jerk Jock pretty quickly.

As far as I can see, there is really nothing you can believe in or appreciate without having SOMEONE riding your case, the only thing you have to decide is if they have a point or not (ProTip: They usually don't.)

arks

You know what gets me? The idea that analysis and understanding destroys any enjoyment, wonder, or mystery that the subject might have. I'm a music composition major. I enjoy breaking things down into their constituent parts. Every time I've done this, it has increased my enjoyment of the piece I studied, not decreased it. When you find what makes something work, you realize what has to happen for it to work, and often that shows you what an amazing fluke it is that it even exists in the first place.

But anyways, to find something that people won't hate on you for, you'd have to find something that everyone enjoys. There are people out there who will hate on you just for liking something they don't. Problem is, there isn't a single thing everyone enjoys.