barrington interview

Norwood, Frederick Hudson · 16 Oct 2014, 20:21 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu (Norwood, Frederick Hudson)
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 20:21:33 +0000
Subject: (urth) barrington interview
In-Reply-To: <BLU175-W362ED23735C90898A2049ACFAB0 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU175-W362ED23735C90898A2049ACFAB0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <0DA454A32913114C9CC19BB781FB907D013584 at ETSUMB2.etsu.edu>

1) I didn't say that.
2) Whoever said it, I think you misunderstand what it says.

Rick Norwood

-----Original Message-----
From: Urth [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Lee
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 3:51 PM
To: urth at urth.net
Subject: (urth) barrington interview

>Rick Norwood: Humans and pre-humans have made numerous constructions 
>that transcend the limitations of the homind condition.
>Cave paintings, however fanciful, record the existence of people with 
>culture and behaviors that are discernable across a gap of tens of 
>thousands of years, utterly beyond an oral tradition.

You are saying humans are not capable of art or history. I truly do not

understand that statement. 

>Telescopes made by Galileo allowed humans to see far beyond their natural 

>capacity for sight.

Yes, all tools allow humans to exceed the limitations of their own physical bodies.

Math is also a tool which allows humans to exceed their own physical limitations.

But telescopes do not allow people to see to the ends of the universe or through a

black hole. Neither can the tool called  "math". All tools have such limitations and thus 

I think human/earthly tools cannot be asserted to be "universal" in their application.

>Robert Pirkola: Mathematics is a developing body of knowledge, technique and application 

>that is by no means closed at this point and cannot be talked about as though it is a 

>fully-known "thing".

If math is redefined to mean not just what calculations we do now but also

all possible future versions  of math, including what we find alien races are 

doing then I am much more open to the statement that math is universal.

But I'm not sure that's a fair definition. I take Rick's "telescope" to mean what

we today call a "telescope". If "telescope" is redefined as "all possible future 

viewing devices as used by all possible species in the universe" then I would 

also have to accept the statement that a telescope can see everything in the

universe.

And that seems like a different conversation than what we started with.

>b.      If we are in the dark about their [null-math areas] existence, then they must have no influence over 

>the portions of the universe that we are aware of, and if that is the case, I feel obliged to call their 

>existence, "existence".

Robert, I am assuming you meant to say you do NOT feel obliged to call any null-math areas of the universe

as "existing".

As Antonio observes, you are making some interesting arguments. So, I presume that if we encountered an

alien species with which we could communicate, and they told us about a null-math portion of the universe,

you would tell them they are wrong and that it doesn't exist. (at least from our perspective).

Let's get metaphysical and observe that we ALREADY have encountered a portion of the universe which is not

amenable to math, science or even logic. That place is: "Your own, subjective subconscious"

We cannot plausibly use math, science or logic to explain the world of our own dreams. Does the subjective

world of our own subconscious exist?  Or is it imaginary? 		 	   		  
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