Yeah, I'm talking here about the Engineering Method again. I get
inspired by talking to people who argue with me sometimes - read
if you like. I put it on my profile so I don't lose it... [snip]
That's why I mention my preference for the Engineering Method;
there's not a whole lot written up on it - I only discovered it
a few weeks ago: It does not mock past methods. (before that, I
thought science and engineering were two parts of the same
thing, but they're not - not always)
Rather, it uses the term ''State of the Art''. Ancient days
modeled reality using their State of the Art; it was the best
available methods given the resources they had at hand.
Bridges were built that stood for thousands of years; even if
the theories of the nature of reality at the time involved the
things you said above. Even if the engineers of the time
believed such theories about the nature of things, nonetheless,
they build bridges that worked.
Our current state of the art for modelling the physical realm is
Physics and its accompanying partner: Mathematics.
They tend to work very well together much of the time, although
sometimes they are at odds with each other and have allowed us
to create some marvelous things and helped to make further
predictions and discoveries.
But other areas of science are poorly supported by mathematics;
and some areas of human life are poorly represented by the
sciences and have better models that are more effective.
The experience of consciousness is poorly modeled by all of the
sciences - every place I researched through journals (that's
where I look first as I like to know science's state of the art)
- when you get to the area of experience, they always turn to
either Buddhism or Meditation or other models that are more
highly developed at describing consciousness.
That doesn't mean that that is necessarily correct: in fact,
I've found it very annoying that the sciences, outside of
psychology, has done a generally poor job in that area and I
wish someone would pick up the ball already. And psychology...
well, it has a lot of good in it but it has a LOT of work to be
done there. Oftentimes a middle school coach knows how to
destress an athlete better than a psychologist. (Run around the
track five times is pretty good advice for destressing)
