Thursday, November 20, 2008
An Answer
If you suddenly start to feel that everything is wrong with something (the something can be anything- a person, a concept, a rule, a guideline, etc. etc.), then you are making a mistake.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The flight of a bird
A bird is sitting on a railing on the 3rd floor. Some distance apart, there is a window on a wall. There is a roof over the window to prevent rain from entering the room. The bird leaves the railing, flies towards the ground tracing a smooth curve, reaches a lowest point, then begins to ascend never breaking the smoothness of its trajectory and lands on the roof of the window.
How the hell in this whole big maddening world did the bird achieve this feat? One explanation that comes to mind is the one that I have often heard about humans- that the brain did all the calculations in the negligible time available to it (and boy, if that is indeed the correct explanation, it sure did everything fast!). I don’t know if there is scientific proof of this claim or not, but I can’t digest this explanation either for the bird or for us humans.
A bird’s brain is far less developed than a human’s (according to whatever I have heard and read till now) and that’s why I cannot believe that the little-birdy-brainy did all those calculations. Let’s talk of the humans now.
As far as I know, a photon has never been observed- it is just an imaginary concept developed to make things easier to understand and explain. Is not distance such a concept as well? And in fact, the whole big field of measurement (of any quantity)- it is based on conventions and imaginary concepts which help in explaining and understanding and stating things. Measurement is an attempt to express everything quantitatively. Measurement is based on numbers and even numbers are imaginary concepts- no one has ever seen or heard or touched or smelled or tasted a number! They exist just in our minds! And so all these calculations that we do to explain things- motion, trajectories, speeds, distances, etc. etc. are just one possible way of explaining things (and it’s definitely a very inefficient way because so much still remains to be understood, so much that science still can’t explain).
Is it not possible, then, that the mind has a much better, a far far superior method of understanding and doing things, that enable it to make decisions in almost no time? If this be true, then is not limiting the perspective of science to measurement only, and trying to explain everything in terms of that, a mistake? Is it not possible that the brain- both of a bird and a human, and for that matter, any brain is much more than just fast calculations? What if there are no calculations? What if the brain does not need them? What if the brain works on a far superior technology?
Can these possibilities be ruled out?
How the hell in this whole big maddening world did the bird achieve this feat? One explanation that comes to mind is the one that I have often heard about humans- that the brain did all the calculations in the negligible time available to it (and boy, if that is indeed the correct explanation, it sure did everything fast!). I don’t know if there is scientific proof of this claim or not, but I can’t digest this explanation either for the bird or for us humans.
A bird’s brain is far less developed than a human’s (according to whatever I have heard and read till now) and that’s why I cannot believe that the little-birdy-brainy did all those calculations. Let’s talk of the humans now.
As far as I know, a photon has never been observed- it is just an imaginary concept developed to make things easier to understand and explain. Is not distance such a concept as well? And in fact, the whole big field of measurement (of any quantity)- it is based on conventions and imaginary concepts which help in explaining and understanding and stating things. Measurement is an attempt to express everything quantitatively. Measurement is based on numbers and even numbers are imaginary concepts- no one has ever seen or heard or touched or smelled or tasted a number! They exist just in our minds! And so all these calculations that we do to explain things- motion, trajectories, speeds, distances, etc. etc. are just one possible way of explaining things (and it’s definitely a very inefficient way because so much still remains to be understood, so much that science still can’t explain).
Is it not possible, then, that the mind has a much better, a far far superior method of understanding and doing things, that enable it to make decisions in almost no time? If this be true, then is not limiting the perspective of science to measurement only, and trying to explain everything in terms of that, a mistake? Is it not possible that the brain- both of a bird and a human, and for that matter, any brain is much more than just fast calculations? What if there are no calculations? What if the brain does not need them? What if the brain works on a far superior technology?
Can these possibilities be ruled out?
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