Lets Talk Science
- Thread starter DR OSMAN
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Amen to that.
BestCaseScenario,
There are several topics in science, which would be interesting to debate, without adding too much jargon or stupefyingly numb mathematics, since this is a general forum and not a science journal, and we are all laymen who want to grasp the reality around us using the information that is available to us, and interpreting it according to our knowledge and the knowledge of others.
This thread, as you rightly said, started by the young man who wants immediate answers to all of life's scientific mysteries, maybe more confining as he narrows himself to the hard sciences. He will eventually wise up to the fact that there are no answers for everything. As Hamlet said "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
My own taste, as I mentioned, is more eclectic (forgive me Basra). Maybe I will share my thoughts in another thread.
The science of the small, the quantum world is as fascinating as the science of the big, the cosmos. The interplay between physics, biology and chemistry is fascinating as well. Then there is the hard problem of science, the question of consciousness. In this day and age of machine learning and artificial intelligence, what does it mean.
I will look at these issues and share my thoughts and hopefully engage you and other, so that we learn from each other.
You will forgive me if I wander , sometimes, into the metaphysical, but confining oneself to hard science I think is not the spirit of science. The spirit of science is enquiry and scepticism, which hopefully leads to knowledge (or enlightenment, if you have a spiritual bent).
BestCaseScenario,
There are several topics in science, which would be interesting to debate, without adding too much jargon or stupefyingly numb mathematics, since this is a general forum and not a science journal, and we are all laymen who want to grasp the reality around us using the information that is available to us, and interpreting it according to our knowledge and the knowledge of others.
This thread, as you rightly said, started by the young man who wants immediate answers to all of life's scientific mysteries, maybe more confining as he narrows himself to the hard sciences. He will eventually wise up to the fact that there are no answers for everything. As Hamlet said "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
My own taste, as I mentioned, is more eclectic (forgive me Basra). Maybe I will share my thoughts in another thread.
The science of the small, the quantum world is as fascinating as the science of the big, the cosmos. The interplay between physics, biology and chemistry is fascinating as well. Then there is the hard problem of science, the question of consciousness. In this day and age of machine learning and artificial intelligence, what does it mean.
I will look at these issues and share my thoughts and hopefully engage you and other, so that we learn from each other.
You will forgive me if I wander , sometimes, into the metaphysical, but confining oneself to hard science I think is not the spirit of science. The spirit of science is enquiry and scepticism, which hopefully leads to knowledge (or enlightenment, if you have a spiritual bent).
I hope yall didn't miss out watching the amazing falcon test flight today
I cried. The launch was so powerful, now we are one step closer to Mars,
and how beautiful isn't that flying car
Skip to 29 if you want to get into to teh show straight away.
@DR OSMAN you'll love this
@Nalle it's great to see you one of favorite posters in this thread who can actually hold it down and cover these intensive topics. And yes their will be tears
and more damn tears And moments of how did I miss that
and plenty of this is just to damn hard to continue
Moments of damn that makes sense
When there is no answer it may lead to us abusing each other
As we travel thru the evolutionary process of our mental states we reach a beautiful I can touch the sky
And finally come down and know nothing in science remains the same and what we know will most likely be debunked later as new evidence presents itself and end up in this 'skeptical' state for the rest of our lives...
But we don't get to that skeptical and critical thinking skills that easily and must traverse the whole process of our mental evolutionary states cause we won't know what the final state looks like if we don't.
Must mention some other great contributors who can hold down these tough ass topics are
@BestCaseScenario @CangeeroBear @Naissur @Black Dahlia
@Weydamal does seem promising also but he could do the runner like @Cognitivedissonance and @Inquisitive_ when times get tough
I must say the above posters even though we may not agree on a number of matters, we know how critical it is to answer the creation cause if we can't get that right, we gonna have a huge problem understanding god.
The funny thing if we find these topics which are damn so hard and is basically only god's 'creation' imagine trying to figure out the creator, we might just take a pass on that huh lol
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Don't hesitate to venture into any subject you desire. It doesn't hurt to learn new perspective.
I hope yall didn't miss out watching the amazing falcon test flight today
Skip to 29 if you want to get into to teh show straight away.
@DR OSMAN you'll love this
Meeting the Martians might be sooner than we thought.
Cant wait to meet extremophiles! , bacteria , ameobe and tardigrades here we come!!!
I hope yall didn't miss out watching the amazing falcon test flight today
Skip to 29 if you want to get into to teh show straight away.
@DR OSMAN you'll love this
Great launch. With all the hollerin going on, it sounded like a rock concert for geeks and nerds
This article from new York times touched on something you mentioned earlier. Plants may be conscious. Here is the experiments that led some to conclude Plants are no different from animals and humans in that regard.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/plants-consciousness-anesthesia.html
"Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
Plants don’t get enough credit. They move. You know this. Your houseplant salutes the sun each morning. At night, it returns to center.
You probably don’t think much of it. This is simply what plants do: Get light. Photosynthesize. Make food. Live.
But what about all the signs of plant intelligence that have been observed?
Under poor soil conditions, the pea seems to be able to assess risk. The sensitive plant can make memories and learn to stop recoiling if you mess with it enough. The Venus fly trap appears to count when insects trigger its trap. And plants can communicate with one another and with caterpillars.
Now, a study published recently in Annals of Botany has shown that plants can be frozen in place with a range of anesthetics, including the types that are used when you undergo surgery.
Insights gleaned from the study may help doctors better understand the variety of anesthetics used in surgeries. But the research also highlights that plants are complex organisms, perhaps less different from animals than is often assumed.
“Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska, a plant cell biologist at the University of Bonn in Germany and co-author of the study. “They’re living organisms which have their own problems, maybe something like with humans feeling pain or joy. In order to navigate this complex life, they must have some compass.”
Plants sometimes use that compass to deal with stress, competition or development. They take in information from their environment and produce their own anesthetics like menthol, ethanol and cocaine, similar to how humans release chemicals that dull pain during trauma. These may act within the plant itself or float off in the air to affect neighboring plants.
Our anesthetics work on plants too, the study confirmed, although what exactly they’re working on is unclear."
Visit link to finish reading.
This is not a new question. Charles Darwin performed similar experiments on plants, especially insectivorous plants like the sundews or Venus fly trap, using anaesthesia to test the the sensory reactions of these plants. He discovered that these plants reacted to the anaesthesia and recovered sensibility after a period of time. This led him to ask whether plants have a nervous system similar to that of animals. The French scientist Claude Bernard also performed similar experiments.
While plants do respond to external, chemical and electrical stimuli in the environment, as any living organism will, this does not necessarily connote that plants have a consciousness in the human sense. They have consciousness in the sense of being aware and responding to their environment, but whether thy have emotions, thoughts, feelings etc in the animal sense is not established. To even begin answering this question, you have to ask, what is consciousness and where does it reside? In animals, including humans, it's thought to be a function of the brain . The question then is, does a plant have a brain, and if so, where is this brain. Some have postulated that the nervous system or primitive brain of a plant resides in the roots. However all these are speculative theories.
We are still debating whether animals are conscious in the human sense. As you know there are ethical considerations when you determine if an animal or plant is conscious in that sense. Would you eat an animal or plant if it was determined to be conscious.But this is a complex subject. We barely understand what human consciousness is , let alone animal and plant.
Nonetheless it's an interesting subject, and is mostly theoretical for now. You may not need to worry about enjoying your regular meals, at least for now.
That is an interesting video, I think it's a matter of time also before another earth is found. Consider the fact there is billions of stars and planets, we are bound to run into 1 or more that have the same features as earth. What are the features needed for earth?
We can work out the distance each planet needs to be the sun to foster life just using our distance. Or you can work out how big aun has to be and what sort of distance is needed from it's heat source to foster life without burning or freezing. The further u go from the sun the colder it gets is just logical and the closer you are to it the hotter.
Now the question is even if we do find the right planet in the right distance, are there any other factors that need considering? What causes 'rain' is an immediate one that needs answering, I think it's a mix of different air systems colliding air at different pressures, I am not sure but it will need to be tested what causes rain. But I know it has something to do with the air cause look at a freezer it's just air and pressure and u can get water or ice depending on pressure.
We can work out the distance each planet needs to be the sun to foster life just using our distance. Or you can work out how big aun has to be and what sort of distance is needed from it's heat source to foster life without burning or freezing. The further u go from the sun the colder it gets is just logical and the closer you are to it the hotter.
Now the question is even if we do find the right planet in the right distance, are there any other factors that need considering? What causes 'rain' is an immediate one that needs answering, I think it's a mix of different air systems colliding air at different pressures, I am not sure but it will need to be tested what causes rain. But I know it has something to do with the air cause look at a freezer it's just air and pressure and u can get water or ice depending on pressure.
There must be degrees of difference between Humans and the rest when it comes to consciousness obviously.
Have you ever read anything on the subject from an Islamic perspective? Medieval scholars engaged plenty of thought about this.
There is a theory called panpsychism which is advocated by some physicists, the most famous of which is probably Roger Penrose. In this theory, the entire universe is inhabited by consciousness, which is produced by the quantum vacuum or empty space. In other words the universe itself is conscious. Therefore all beings plug into this consciousness. There are parallels of this thought in the Hindu Brahman , Buddhism and Taoism.
What about Islam. In Sufi Islam there is the concept of wahdat al wujud ,or the unity of being or existance. In other words there is only one reality or consciousness from which all other realities are derived. The famous medieval Andalusian sheikh Ibn Arabi has written several books on this. On death the sufi adept passes away into this reality. This is the concept of fana, or passing away, where the soul is united with the ultimate reality , that is , God. Fana comes from the famous sura Ar Rahman in the verse 26 that says:
Kullu man calayhaa faan
wa yabqaa wajhu rabbika
duljalaali wal ikraam
whatsoever is on the earth shall pass away
and the face of thy Lord, full of majesty and honor
Shall abide for eternity
The Hanbalite polemicist Ibn Taymiyya found this to be heretical, because it meant that no distinction could be made between the universe and God.
The sufi heretic Al Hallaj was executed for proclaiming, in a fit of ecstacy, the he was the haqq or ultimate reality.
It's true that this question of the ultimate reality, the ultimate truth, the ultimate consciousness was debated by medieval Muslim scholars. It led to some being branded as heretics and some were executed.
Today it is being discussed by physicists. Many of our modern Muslim scholars, influenced by a literalist, parochial Wahhabi tradition, will consider such notions as heretical. They are more interested in mundane issues such as the length of the beard, where to place the hands during prayer and so forth.
The great scientific debates which the medieval Muslim scholars were famous for during their period are all but absent from their modern descendants.
I have read a good research paper that touches on this which was written by a Muslim professor who resourced earlier medieval scholars. I was impressed by the paper and it is like six to seven pages in word document form. Would be delighted if you spent time reading it and share your opinion on here brother. .
PS: Muslims lost their prestige when they gave up on scholarship and science and became a mirror image of the same medieval Christians they used to educate. You just have to look a the middle east and see what became of them. Their priorities in life is banality. Really backward people with great religion.
Here is the link, scroll down and click on where it says "download paper". .
https://syarafuddinsulaiman.wordpre...of-consciousness-from-an-islamic-perspective/
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Overhyped , mars would the worst place to start a civilisaion.It would be more beneficial to go to moons of Saturn or other planets such as Jupiter.Sure it would take long and be hella expensive but Titan can be morphed easily to suit our needs.
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