I once heard a highlander interrupt a lecture on the cosmos with one question: but who turned the crank — physics has been describing the crank ever since.
Great read. In a way you also hint at some open questions. We still don't really understand gravity, for example. We know what it does and how it works, but that's it. I like to think about what came before the Big Bang, and when I see phycisists reach for an answer (mostly it ends with "Nobody knows") I wonder if that's a physics question or a philosophical one.
Oh yes! Which is why I linked to The Elegant Universe. When I first read it, I was very surprised by how metaphysical it got, even though it is based on earlier discoveries and potential future ones. I think the question of what went before is philosophical; from Epicurus to St. Augustine, you'll see them tackle this inquiry from different perspectives.
—you have a theory, you test it, in a controlled environment, you find it works or there is contradicting evidence. Key word "controlled".
It is, now, mid-2026. The world is literally burning up. The drive for profit growth, ad infinitum, directs elections in the dominant Western economies, directs foreign policy, motivates war crimes. Theories need testing. Capitalism has failed its test. It had free reign, no sanctions, no invasions, no military encirclement, no threats of nuclear annihilation, other than those it now makes on us all.
The scientific method uses hypothesis(thesis), antithesis(evidence that contraindicates the hypothesis) and synthesis (new hypothesis that attempts to resolve the contradictions while preserving anything that is valid). It is empirical (evidence-based). I think physics still uses that method? It seems that the other sciences do.
I am a physicalist. I just think we have not fully grasped the implications, and that it isn't a reduction.
I'm a substance monist, I think substance is material, rather than ideal.
I know our brains interpret reality and believe maths is the most precise form of interpretation we've got.
My explanation for motivation is physical, it uses evidence in sciences that assume physics not to be wrong. See my ethics document about an “is-must” normative scientific realism. It's got full citations.
I've been articulating these positions since 2013, some a few years earlier.
I had not yet read Lenin, Marx and Engels back then, but I have since.
Then I was not a communist, just a radical, atypical Nietzschean determinist who loved Spinoza's ethics and was really into neuroscience.
Heraclitus deduced that existence is relational thousands of years ago. Same time as Buddhist thought, which grew from Hindu mysticism that was contemporaneous with Heraclitus.
Aristotle made "physics" the term used to name physics. He also made “metaphysics” while claiming brains are for cooling blood.
Marx rejected Hegel's metaphysical origin and named it “materialism”.
Nietzsche deduced that existence only means anything in terms of relation and is as good as infinite and needs to be affirmed or despised. Preferably affirmed, but not naively.
Foucault summed it all up with "there is no power, only power relations".
I just think that dialectical logic seems to be what we've been using all along, when things have worked.
I'm not sure I'd say I'm platonic about maths, and maths is a language; any usable mathematical symbol can be described in natural language, it's just not as efficient to do so.
I think poetry, done well, is a formal language. There's this fetishism of maths in the modern era.
I once heard a highlander interrupt a lecture on the cosmos with one question: but who turned the crank — physics has been describing the crank ever since.
precisely!
Great read. In a way you also hint at some open questions. We still don't really understand gravity, for example. We know what it does and how it works, but that's it. I like to think about what came before the Big Bang, and when I see phycisists reach for an answer (mostly it ends with "Nobody knows") I wonder if that's a physics question or a philosophical one.
Oh yes! Which is why I linked to The Elegant Universe. When I first read it, I was very surprised by how metaphysical it got, even though it is based on earlier discoveries and potential future ones. I think the question of what went before is philosophical; from Epicurus to St. Augustine, you'll see them tackle this inquiry from different perspectives.
—you have a theory, you test it, in a controlled environment, you find it works or there is contradicting evidence. Key word "controlled".
It is, now, mid-2026. The world is literally burning up. The drive for profit growth, ad infinitum, directs elections in the dominant Western economies, directs foreign policy, motivates war crimes. Theories need testing. Capitalism has failed its test. It had free reign, no sanctions, no invasions, no military encirclement, no threats of nuclear annihilation, other than those it now makes on us all.
The scientific method uses hypothesis(thesis), antithesis(evidence that contraindicates the hypothesis) and synthesis (new hypothesis that attempts to resolve the contradictions while preserving anything that is valid). It is empirical (evidence-based). I think physics still uses that method? It seems that the other sciences do.
I am a physicalist. I just think we have not fully grasped the implications, and that it isn't a reduction.
I'm a substance monist, I think substance is material, rather than ideal.
I know our brains interpret reality and believe maths is the most precise form of interpretation we've got.
My explanation for motivation is physical, it uses evidence in sciences that assume physics not to be wrong. See my ethics document about an “is-must” normative scientific realism. It's got full citations.
I've been articulating these positions since 2013, some a few years earlier.
I had not yet read Lenin, Marx and Engels back then, but I have since.
Then I was not a communist, just a radical, atypical Nietzschean determinist who loved Spinoza's ethics and was really into neuroscience.
Heraclitus deduced that existence is relational thousands of years ago. Same time as Buddhist thought, which grew from Hindu mysticism that was contemporaneous with Heraclitus.
Aristotle made "physics" the term used to name physics. He also made “metaphysics” while claiming brains are for cooling blood.
Marx rejected Hegel's metaphysical origin and named it “materialism”.
Nietzsche deduced that existence only means anything in terms of relation and is as good as infinite and needs to be affirmed or despised. Preferably affirmed, but not naively.
Foucault summed it all up with "there is no power, only power relations".
I think there are many methods by which we can view a question. I am not so platonic about mathematics; I think it is a useful tool for precision.
It is all an argument; mathematics is just a more compact and precise way to argue rather than using language (and it's universal to us, too).
I just think that dialectical logic seems to be what we've been using all along, when things have worked.
I'm not sure I'd say I'm platonic about maths, and maths is a language; any usable mathematical symbol can be described in natural language, it's just not as efficient to do so.
I think poetry, done well, is a formal language. There's this fetishism of maths in the modern era.