Is there room for science?
Aug 10
I’ve known for a long time that science plays a huge part in my life. But it was only when I intentionally began to document this journey of mine that it became apparent how important it really is to me. Every time when I’m reading a book, or research a particular topic, my mind is constantly asking all sorts of “verification” questions. Has it been proven? Is it repeatable? Can we simulate it?
Lately I’ve been completely absorbed in anything related to our mind. The conscious, and the unconscious, how they relate, how our neural networks function and so forth. I’ve been especially intrigued by how our brain store and retrieve information, aka memories. One question that I’ve yet to answer is: What comes first, the electrical “firing” giving rise to a thought or the thought itself?
Logically one might say, the electrical impulse. But, how is that possible? How could the electrical impulse be fired before I’ve even thought about having the thought? Ha ha, I’m making myself confused. Do you see what I’m trying to get at though? What gives rise to the electrical impulse? How does it know where to travel? Which neurons to connect with? And why does it fire in the first place? Arguing that the impulse comes first would in some sense argue that we’ve no free will. Okay, perhaps a stretch considering that we’d still need to understand how each cognitive impression affects us, but still. If we fully understand the brain we should also be able to fully realize when a particular thought will be raised, no?
It’s mind-boggling. Perhaps because I’m not particularly educated on the topic, but it almost feels like a question similar to that of the universe. What comes outside the universe? Or what gave rise to the universe in the first place? It’s a kind of chicken and egg problem. All this reading about neural pathways, neurons, cations etc. spawned a thought about or cognitive abilities and in particular how we learn new things.
Here’s my written down thought, completely unedited and stupid :-)
When observing something a particular pattern will rise inside our brains which when observed long enough will become “static” and memorized. When we’re trying to recall something we are simply doing random “firing” in our brain to find the particular pattern which was created when we first observed that particular object.
I know, it’s not exactly an amazing thought but well, it gives a clue about how I function. I am constantly asking myself questions, attempting to answer them and understand everything I see around me. Hopefully this will help me in finding a guiding purpose. I do think I’ve learned something today that will give me an edge, mixing science and spirituality, finding where they converge and which questions cannot be answered by science, or spirituality.
… see you soon wonderful world.
“see you soon wonderful world” I love that! You raise some really interesting questions. I too think science is the most rational, logical, structured way of finding the truth about phenomena…but can it ever explain everything? Can it ever explain the unknown? The key to the puzzle we don’t know and understand? Maybe we have to go with gut instict and theories some of the time too… I think science helps me with my instinct but I like to think instict keeps me fully alert and highly suspicious of ‘science’… so much ‘science’ can be completely falsified… such as the case with animal experimentation. Balance and logic! Thanks for sharing! x
Hi, thanks for stopping by Flynn! :-)
I too don’t believe that science can be used to answer everything. In order to make leaps in science you’ll have to make leaps in faith. I’ll be attempting to find the synergies between philosophy, psychology and science.
Science I believe can be used to provide a solid foundation, the sort of framework for working with philosophy and psychology. Sometimes though, one will have to venture beyond the framework and attempt to establish whether or not the framework still holds true. To see if boundaries can be expanded due to perhaps newly found empirical evidence and such.
Using science to arrive at a conclusion is certainly possible, but it will only be through philosophy and psychology we can make it useful.
Gut instinct is an interesting phenomena and I actually have began studying this and plan on posting my thoughts regarding this. Much of it can be found to originate from basic functionality of our brain.
From a purely scientific perspective our brain has a certain number of basic functions. Process input, store and retrieve information and a few other motor skills. What I find especially intriguing is how it all connects, and enable us to do the things we can.
But in its purest form I don’t, at the moment, believe there are any particular mysteries about the brain, such as having a fourth, fifth or more dimensions. But, perhaps… who knows. While we might be able to observe only three dimensions, spatial cognitive abilities, and the fourth (time)… I don’t completely rule out more dimensions perhaps only accessible through a deep meditative trance state.
But I feel one has to be pragmatic and start somewhere. I will attempt to understand some of the basic underpinnings and connect them with philosophy of life and psychology.
Regarding animal experimentation I agree. Even though we might have some particular similarity to the subject (mice or what have you), it’s foolish to assume that a reaction in mice is the same as in humans. I also feel people look at the wrong things. It’s too much looking at symptoms rather than cause. Treat the cause, solve the problem. Treat the symptom and you’ve accomplished nothing.
Thanks for your time, hope to see you around!