Leftovers
Why is knowledge, why is anything born of the Ivory Tower
– Science, mathematics, history, et cetera ad infinitum –
Any less imaginary than Alice in Wonderland?
All consciousness is but the thunder and lightning of mind.
* * * *
Even at its best, science has a great deal of arbitrariness in its process.
Who asked the question? Who designed the experiment? What was its hypothesis?
Who funded the experiment? Who did the experiment? What equipment and technology were used?
Who interpreted the results? Who published the results? Who duplicated the experiment?
And whatever on-and-on and in-between in the theater of rational exploration.
* * * *
The sciences have obliquely pointed out over and over, many ways, many times,
That the senses are but evolutionary, neurological creations, weavers of the mind's theater.
How long before the transcendental reality becomes clear beyond doubt,
And awareness reasserts its rightful sovereignty,
Over the conditioned usurper born of imaginary design.
* * * *
Artificial intelligence may be programmed to learn, to achieve great heights,
But will it not always be learning through the human mind that devised the code?
As with space travel, it is only through science fiction that any sentience will be achieved.
* * * *
How far will science explore from the smallest small to the largest large
Before it becomes glaringly apparent that it is all ultimately nothing at all.
That all that measuring, all that nomenclature, all that scholarly pursuit,
Has really never been more than the mind’s reluctance to remain still.
* * * *
Scientific method is the most exact means humankind has yet devised
To measure, to examine, the parameters of this manifest quantum dimension.
If there are other dimensions in this intrepid electromagnetic spectrum,
No doubt any intelligence is exploring it as thoroughly as possible
Through whatever ways and means circumstance allows.
* * * *
If you must believe in something, believe in nature,
And draw on science to explore its rhyme and reason.
* * * *
The philosophers scrutinize with their language.
The scientists and mathematicians with their facts and figures.
All dispatching imperative thoughts and conclusion upon every this, every that,
To the awareness, the anonymity, the obscurity, the spaciousness, the timelessness, the stillness,
The wakefulness that witnesses all eternity with equally immeasurable detachment.
* * * *
What is this human drive, this obsession, for there to be a point to it all?
What is so challenging for so many about not having an explanation for something,
That every stratagem from superstition to science is used to engineer one account or another.
* * * *
Alas that a sizable number of two-leggeds in this world
Are not capable of the critical thinking required of a scientific mind.
Much easier to be naïve, to be credulous, to be superstitious.
* * * *
Science is intuition supported by experiments, by measurements, that can be duplicated.
Intuition alone, well, that is the matter of mystics sitting in ashrams staring at walls,
And unassuming observers singing around campfires drinking whisky and wine.
And occasionally scientists on wanders musing with nary a gadget in hand.
* * * *
The electromagnetic spectrum is a mighty huge, relatively unknowable mystery,
Despite all scientific and mathematical and religious and philosophical and mystical
And every other subjective and piecemeal investigation and assumption to the contrary.
Soundbites
The science fiction that is no longer fiction.
* * * *
Natural science, biology, chemistry, physics, all one in the same, slicing the pie with different lenses.
* * * *
For there to be good science, there must first be a good question.
* * * *
Are science and technology and art any more than by-products of politics and war?
* * * *
The closest humankind will ever get to space travel is through science fiction.
* * * *
Science will never usurp superstition.
* * * *
Science just keeps chugging up the mountain that technology built.
* * * *
Without science, superstition and malarkey.
Breadcrumbs
I am a scientist in a most desultory way.