by sabastious 114 Replies latest jw friends
"Maybe the concepts of flat and spherical will be inadequate to express future conceptions of the earth"
I'm guessing he doesn't mean that it will change shape... only that our perspective will be bigger (as happened when we moved from flat to sphere)... and so we won't use either of those terms, beause they won't be fully adequate?
Peace
tammy
So...
lol
Would that concept of sphere and flat change if we discovered and moved into 4th, 5th, 6th or more dimensions?
no. those other dimensions are simply extensions of the previous ones.
1st dimension is the number line, aka the x-axis
2nd dimension is the cartesian plane which is nothing more than two number lines. one going left and right (the x-axis) and another going up and down (the y-axis)
3rd dimension is a cartesian plane which is nothing more than three number lines. one going left and right (the x-axis), another another going up and down (the y-axis), and one going from front to back (the z-axis) or into and out of the screen.
in each of these dimensions the plot points or the collections build on each other, but remain what they are in their own dimension.
1st - you either have a point, a collection of scattered points, or a collection of connected points(the line)
2nd - the integral of the point from the first dimension is a line in the second and that line in the first becomes and area (squre, circle) in the second. this does not take away the fact that when you take the derivative and go back to the 1st dimension, you are once again left with a point or a line.
3rd - the area becomes a volume (cube, sphere, etc)
FFS the earth isn't flat and never will be, what else is there to say?
And a Newtonian physicist no doubt could have said.
FFS time is a constant and will always be, what else is there to say?
Like I say you seem to lack imagination to think that current scientific conceptions of reality are the last word never to refuted.
I confess that most everything to do with shapes/graphs/etc in geometry is my achilles heel. That is why I asked the question.
peace,
tammy
Thanks RBIH.
Peace,
tammy
Like I say you seem to lack imagination to think that current scientific conceptions of reality are the last word never to refuted.
Science grows and changes constantly - that is a given. I didn't think it was even worth saying.
However that doesn't mean there are many things that are absolutely true and always will be.
Common descent is one - I thought the fact that the earth is not flat was another but in your world even that is up for grabs.
Science does not simply grow, it experiences revolutions in understanding, each of which refutes and replaces what went before. It has always done so and there is little reason to believe we are at the end of the road.
It is extremely important that no single discourse be allowed to claim finality because for a regime of truth that spells tyranny. So it is not an abstract matter for the philosophy of science it is about freedom. There are no irrefutable facts, nor should there be if we value freedom.
You are making a fetish of epistemological certainty which is unfortunate, I would say.
