Why the small details may mean nothing!!

Nature of systems:

In science it is assumed that the nature of all things can be discovered on the microscopic level. For example, a botanist would presume to know the workings of a tree because he/she is able to know the parts of the cell wall, the way electrical signals work, photosynthesis, proteins, etc. The problem with this is that the botanist is unable to explain sentience. Unable to explain the concept of “I”.

Let us borrow a metaphor from the book "I am a strange loop" (good read if you have not checked it out) to delve deeper in this topic.

If you were in a traffic jam that was five miles long, you might want to know what is causing it. This is impossible to do by looking closer and analyzing it. A scientist could say “let’s find the cause of the traffic jam” so he would look at a car, upon finding no answer he would look even closer and analyze what the car is made of. So the scientist would come to the conclusion that the cause of the traffic jam is the fact that steel, when put together, cause each other to move slowly. This of course is not true.

From a philosophical standpoint we know that the reason for a traffic jam can be discovered by looking at the line of traffic as a SYSTEM. We would see that rather than looking deeper, we could take a step back and see that the jam is caused by an accident in another lane. That is causing drivers in your lane to drive slowly to see the accident.

This logic causes me to be wary of science that we see today. Time and time again we hear of scientists learning of more and more things on the micro level of discovery, and through these discoveries the scientist claim to know MORE about the system, this is utterly false. As we have discussed, the individual parts of a system are NOT good indicators of how or what the system is as a whole.

This argument can be applied to more than just a traffic jam. IT can also be applied to non-physical systems and even more so, the nature of truth itself. For instance, an atheist cannot know 100 percent than a religious person is incorrect in their assertions that an all knowing creator created the universe.

The reason behind this is because the atheist will reference things such as statistics and individual discoveries that go against the theory of religions. The problem of course is that the knowledge of the atheist is just part of a system, which cannot describe how the entire system works.

This problem can be shared by the religious proponent of an all knowing god. They will have things like faith and miracles that will describe how they are correct, but these miracles and faith are also individual points that cannot explain how a system works.

Let’s even take an event that involves two nations. Let’s say nation 1 sinks nation 2s boat. It would be stated by nation1s media that all of nation 2 is responsible for the sinking and there has to be a war. Well the event of sinking a single ship by nation one could not possible have taken place by ALL of nation 1! It was probably just the actions of a single part of the entire system. This is a perfect example of how in today’s society we are taught to move away from the macro and into the micro way of thinking.

What is necessary is a rethinking of how we look at the universe. Clearly a melding needs to take place in order to advance as a species.

What makes you think that there wouldn't be a scientist that would take a step back to see the cause? Looking closer at things shows us that all things are the same or all things are energy. Looking closer has benefits and taking a step back has its benefits depending on the situation.

Would you discourage someone from taking a closer look at themselves to see whats bothering them?

reply to post by Ralphy


Of course not! I just mean in general it seems that we need to look at the big picture.