OF HIS DISCOVERY of the curved nature of the universe as associated with his Theory of Relativity, Einstein has the following parable to offer: "when a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it...." Luck or not, Einstein's notion of the interconnection between "space" and "time" in the form of spacetime revolutionized our perceptions of the grand palace that is the cosmos, and his words are of particular interest to SfACST because of the suggestive value they have toward our interests.
This is to say, more specifically, as identified above, SfACST 's aim is to examine ways in which modern scientific knowledge itself may possibly be "curved" in a way not that different from the discovery that Einstein made. And if this is an accurate assumption (as the society maintains it is), then the SCIENTIFIC attempt to explore modern scientific principles becomes not only a necessity, but an imperative if we are to continue progress in our knowledge of the universe and of ourselves.
Charles S. Peirce, 19th century American logician and philosopher, anticipates just such a realization in his statement that: "no present actual thought...has any meaning, any intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts, so that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual...." Put in other words, our "thoughts" are always progressively emerging, always in a "process" of becoming in a way not unlike the expanding universe.
Peirce's use of the term "virtual" is, strangely enough, quite apropos, for the degree to which the Internet is a dynamic, emerging field of "future knowledge" itself, so it is the appropriate "space" for a society dedicated to the creative advancement of scientific thinking. Indeed, it might be suggested that the Internet is the only place in which a group of thinkers dedicated to forward-thinking explorations about science might occur. For in this way, means become synonymous with ends, much as the way Einstein, through his thinking, abolished the falsely held notion that "space" and "time" were separable and "absolute."
Before we proceed further, it is important for us to define more carefully what we mean by "science." The English word, "science," comes from the Latin root scientia, meaning "to know" more generally, and more specifically, "to know in a systematic fashion." The term is likewise akin to the Latin word "scindere," which means "to cut." Whatever its origins, in the late 20th century, the word "science" has taken on a variety of meanings specifically referring to the systematic and rigorous study of nature (i.e. the physical universe.) In line with the goals of the society, we intend that the term "science" be taken in the broader sense of scientia: that is to say, scientific thinking, in its fullest form, is marked and characterized by rigor and systematic examination of all phenomena, including, but not limited to, the physical universe.
In particular, such requires a more circumspect attention to the nature of ourselves as thinking beings, and the ways in which our assumptions may affect our conclusions and our view of the world. It is at this point that we would like to introduce the term "worldviewing," for the more radical implications it has about our participation in the way we perceive the world
As a term borrowed from the vocabulary of the late theoretical physicist David Bohm, worldviewing connotes the more active role by which we ourselves "participate" in the act of "viewing" the world and our determinations about it. Worldviewing is thus a more progressive term that recognizes that "knowledge" is an activity that is marked by a relation between a knower and something known: the character of the knower affects how the knower will view the subject to be known. As such, the notion of "worldviewing" acknowledges that knowing is in many ways a self-recursive exercise, that a given worldview tends to form and inform itself simultaneously.
Consequently, the discipline that we must therefore practice (and which the society advocates as the true discipline of science), is that we must become more aware of the relationship between ourselves looking at the world and ourselves making decisions about it. For all "worldviews" must necessarily be recognized as tentative in nature because worldviewing is contingent on an ever-increasing stream of new data and conclusions about them that are a part of human cultural/intellectual development. The natural change of cultures, societies, and ways of living over time, all certainly point to the way "progress" itself leads us individually and collectively to modify our worldview (e.g., Einstein's vision of the universe versus that of Copernicus').
Acknowledging human worldviewing as a more appropriate term for representing our attempts to know the world, it is also helpful to recognize that two kinds of problems exist for those seeking to gain a disciplined scientific vision of it: namely, that there are both convergent and divergent problems to be known.
To clarify, convergent problems are readily answerable, while divergent problems are only answerable in a tentative fashion. For instance, the problem of 2 + 2 readily converges to a single and undisputable answer: 4.
Natural science is mainly
(if not exclusively) concerned with convergent problems such as this. When an answer is discovered, the problem evaporates/is solved.
On the other hand, divergent problems are a bit more problematic. Provisional answers can be given, but no definitive answer can render the divergent problem obsolete. Indeed, divergent problems often lead to the multiplication of more questions. For example, the divergent problem of human consciousness does not have a single answer. Many theories can be posed as to its nature, but it can never be fully disposed of as a problem.
This does not mean that as the complexity of a given divergent problem increases, that what is known necessarily decreases. To the contrary, the questions which are raised by provisional answers add to our knowledge of the problem. Divergent problems thus frequently have the paradoxical character of being maximumally defined in scope when they are minimally determined by would-be "convergent" methodologies. Again, this is certainly true of human consciousness; if anything SfACST will attempt to testify toward its existence as a divergent problem.
SfACST, therefore based on the above illustrated principles related to scientia in its broadest sense, worldviewing as a progressive, participatory activity, and the recognition of the existence of both convergent and divergent problems in the natural world thus makes its important plea for our need to find a new direction for and identity of ourselves as scientific-thinking beings. And we need only reference such curious problems as that of language as a "triadic phenomenon" and the "uncertainty principle" as associated with the new physics to offer strong indicators for just such a new inquiry as we propose to explore.
HPM, DH
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