So it is Easter, a frakkin' lovely day out, and here I am stuck at work. You know what that means...
It's Philosophizin' Time! (Apologies to The Thing.)
Sense Data.
Here at work we use radio telescopes as a means of extending our senses to explore the universe. We see only a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus rely on instrumentation to "see" for us and translate what the instrumentation "sees" into data that makes sense to our senses. Now, according to many philosophers, we shouldn't trust our own senses--never mind sense data that is artificial in nature and collected from such devices as telescopes, microscopes, and remote sensing devices such as the electron microscope, MRI, PET, and CAT scans and the like.
Here's what I think. Every little "t" truth that we vex Nature to give us is but a small fractal facet of the big "T" truth. The more little "t"s we know and learn, the more we know and learn how much more that there is to know and learn (I just channeled Donald Rumsfeld). I don't think that we will ever know and learn the big "T" truth--big "T" truth is a moving target that will always just be out of our grasp. Try as we might, we will never fully know the "T" truth--just a collection of little "t" truths.
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That's a really interesting idea, that the big T isn't necessarily always the same. I think as people grow and "evolve," the big T will always grow and evolve too.
ReplyDeleteso not even the Big T can stay stable???I think we are being morphed by our electronic environment.
ReplyDeleteAre we being morphed by the electronic environment, or is it allowing us to ask better questions of the Universe? I'd say the latter, but my reply is biased on where I work.
ReplyDeleteEach question that is answered seems to bring forth more questions waiting to be investigated and to be answered.
I honestly don't think that we will ever reach the big "T" truth: if we do, we will find it to actually be another little "t" truth, another fractal facet.