[-empyre-] metaphor

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

It's interesting to think of the role of 'superstition' in science over the
years and how that has continually been regarded with a dubious eye. Some
would think it is no longer present in scientific discourse, but talk about
such relatively mysterious realms as quantum mechanics is, at least in the
popular literature, full of references to shamanism and consciousness as a
'force' that acts upon things. The more scientific training it takes to
actually understand the science, the more open it becomes to popular
misconception. Literary science? Science fiction or science email? Also,
fallacious 'proofs' (Penrose) that humans can do things like solve the
halting problem are published and become best sellers. We live in a magical
time, do we not? Giordano Bruno's time has nothing over on ours, in this
regard.

The alchemy of poetry and art is, at least in part, in the way that it
operates metaphorically in such a way as to make it profoundly resonant with
the inner world. Its truth is of a different kind than the truth sought by
science. Are the propositions of science, couched within mathematical
abstractions, essentially metaphorical in that they are directly about the
abstract models and only indirectly about 'a way the world is', or are the
mathematical models in some fundamental correspondence with 'the way things
are'? We can amass experimental evidence to the point that, for instance,
the existence of the atom, as described in the mathematical models, can
hardly be contested, yet our conceptions about it are necessarily models,
metaphors. So perhaps our understanding is necessarily metaphorical in its
operations and there will always be this diffusion of superstition through
science, which nonetheless seeks some objectivity from the vaguely personal.
To imbue stones with consciousness, to postulate an animistic universe, is
quite resonant with the inner world, isn't it. Whether it is a hypothesis
that is of any use in science is another matter.

It is probably like the question of how many angels can dance on the head of
a pin. That is my feeling, also, about the question of free will vs
determinism. The question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
involves assumptions that are not required in science (angels) and the
'answer' is inconsequential to science. The question of free will versus
determinism, in popular thinking, often involves the assumption that an
algorithmic model of how thought operates limits thought in ways that cannot
be demonstrated.

ja
http://vispo.com/animisms (kinetic poetry with soul)