Love Truth

otherwise known as Philosophy.

XH agrues that Science is not Philosophy. but i believe that Science is a subset of Philosophy. it is the search for truth about the nature of the world, hence Natural Philosophy and as such a subset of Philosophy.

and XH further argues that beside Science all other forms of Philosophy pales in comparison. he argues that all other forms of Philosophy do not deal with the Truth but what Truth ought to be and only Science reveals the Truth.

my take is that Science reveals our best claim to be the Truth given our current understanding and knowledge.

XH further argues that Science is knowledge and not a belief system. my question in response to this is an old one: what is knowledge? what does it mean to know something? some would say, and i agree, that knowledge is reasonable belief. [ed: i wanted to extend this thought further, but realise that it's too late in the night... perhaps another day...]

interestingly, there's a scene in Small Gods where this great library of a city full of philosophers was burning down and 2 characters, Didactylos and Urn were trying to decide which books to save. Urn argued for those to do with Natural Philosophy as these contained information that would be useful to Mankind. Didactylos argued against it. he felt that those were useless as they do not" show people how to be people" (which i take to mean educating people how to lead meaningful lives).

somehow, they managed to take out every single book (read Small Gods to find out the details).

interestingly, later on in the book, Urn used his knowledge of Science to build this contraption that was supposed to be used to fight this tyrant. but the tyrant died (got killed by a falling tortoise) and the weapon was turned against Urn's own people. Urn of course protested, but to no avail. fortunately, all's well that ends well.

i think it shows that Science in itself has no value. it is only the application of Science that gives it value. just like fire, which can be both destructive and constructive depending on how it is being used.

more importantly, the bigger the fire, the stronger the flame, the more wisdom it takes to use it appropriately. similarly, the greater th power, the more wisdom we require to wield it meaningfully.

alas, as i've said many times, we are now in a stage where we have more power than we know what to do with. we are like babies wielding the power of Gods. the advancement of Science has far outstripped the advancement of our Wisdom, leaving us in a precarious situation.

Humanity's fate rests on a knife's edge sitting on a precipice.