There is an adventurous soul at Carnegie-Mellon who is attempting to discover a so-called process of scientific thinking. This is a lovely example of upside down backward thinking. He provides a computer the same conceptual data that the astronomer Kepler ostensibly had when he formulated the third law of planetary motion. When the computer arrives at Kepler’s conclusions, he proclaims that it has discovered something.
Nonsense! If you feed the same computer the ingredients of a jar of Chef Boyardee it will discover spaghetti sauce. The fundamental flaw in this adventure in fractured reasoning is the notion that any real or whole thing or idea, expressed objectively, is the sum of the parts that in retrospect have given it its' apparent reality. All real, so-called, scientific discoveries are actually creations. They are dramatic demonstrations of the innate capability of mind to assemble previously dissociated conceptions into a whole new and inevitably more unified relationship. It is not only new, but it changes the concepts of its parts as well. The discoverer is expressing a manner of whole mind thinking or recognizing that, in time, invariably leads to an exposé of a totally presumptive à priori singularity of consciousness.
We absolutely guarantee the gentleman that his computer or any other contraption of objectivity is nothing more than a projection of his own self-identity. His sense of reality is established on it. And it will finally tell him or show him exactly what he does or does not want to hear or see in verification of that reality.
So much for so-called scientific inventiveness,
and a noble undertaking it was.
Here is the inevitable dilemma - virtually all consciousness on earth while in a state of continuing maturation or evolution is nevertheless most specifically retrospective. Its apparent reality in space/time is established on the illogical conclusion that cause and effect are particularly sequential, or in truth sequential at all. The assertion or assumption that there were specific objective ideas or occurrences that brought about the discovery of the third law of planetary motion is no more logical than that the idea of a planetary motion law engendered the ideas of the data and occurrences that apparently brought it about.
It was an early Spring morning on the outskirts of Prague. The year was 1608 and the Imperial Mathematician was tired and discouraged. He had spent most of the night in the open, observing the Red Wanderer in the sky, and did not relish returning home to a melancholy spouse and hounding creditors.
First light had appeared and a new day was dawning as a gentle April shower began to fall. He lifted his face and let the soft patter gladden his red-rimmed eyes; then sought shelter in an abandoned thatch roof barn close by.
“There’s a way to measure God’s order” he mused as he settled in the hay. “Out there it’s not finally different than here. I’m sure of it”. He glanced up as a sudden shaft of sunlight exploded over the horizon and beamed through a hole in the roof above bathing the room in a golden glow. There between two rafters glistening brightly with droplets of rain shimmered a finely spun spider web.
He stared intensely for an eternal moment - then “That’s it”,
he exclaimed excitedly. “That’s it of course.”
Getting quickly to his feet he headed for the city to commit his new discoveries to writing and to pacify the clamoring bill collectors as best he could.
