[Dixielandjazz] Re: reality/truth

[Charlie Hooks]

on 7/31/02 6:26 AM, Bill Gunter at jazzboard@hotmail.com wrote:

> In the speculation method we assume unobserved things exist and then we go
> about trying to prove their existence. That is just plan foolishness and is
> completely unrelated to scientific methodology.

    Careful here, Bill.  Mathmatics often suggests--"speculates"?--that
situations exist which are completely "unobserved," but which later prove to
have been there, nonetheless.  Pluto, for an obvious example.  We've never
observed black holes, and by definition never can; but the "speculation
method" has supported their existence, just the same.

    "Scientific methodology," based on empirical "observations" of an
assumed material universe, has been all the rage for the last few hundred
years and has paid off handsomely in gadgets and widgets; but the assumption
that the observable material universe is "universal," is "all there is to
it," is preposterously egotistical.  An assumption that our five senses,
evolved to deal effectively with familiar situations, encompass the universe
is, well, to me, mind-bogglingly naive.

    Music, for example and to legitimize this thread, is conveyed by
physical means, but the Idea of Music is not physical, does not proceed from
the physical but only by means of the physical.  Mozart at age 4 was a
physical kid; but where in the Heaven did his genius come from?  Kepler, who
mathmetized the "music" of the spheres, the motion of planets (and showed
they weren't spherical) had a mercenary private soldier father and a camp
follower mother and no education.  His genius came from someplace.

Charlie (the anti-Nominalist) Hooks

PS to whomever complained about topics that may interest the writer but
which have NO place on a jazz-oriented list, this message just in from your
proctologist: they found your head.  [Oh, not really: I'm just being an anus
myself!]

C