Are you aware that you almost never make any practical sense?

Take me for example. I'm conducting my own scientific research. At the moment, I am studying the wind dispersal of terrestrial flightless invertebrates like collembola and mites. First, I want to know if they are dispersed by wind. If yes, I want to know how patterns of wind dispersal relate to patterns in meteorological conditions. Is a dispersal event more likely to take place on a dry, sunny day compared to a rainy day? Does wind enter into it?

At no point have I felt like I'm spiralling out of control. I don't think that goes for any of the scientists I know. I don't really feel like I'm exclusively studying my own capability of studying either .. I'm pretty sure it was invertebrates and wind dispersal. I'm even able to provide some pretty good answers to some of the questions I posed before I started my work.

So what's the point? The point is that people like me and others who do scientific work is finding out stuff about the world we all live in, wether it's why the sun shines, how many years it's been since antarctica seperated from pangea or if a species of collembola can survive being dessiccated for long periods.

In other words, we are figuring stuff out. Without such knowledge, how are we even gonna understand our own impact on the planet we live on, something you at least do seem to care about.


I don't know what you have against science, but I'm fairly certain it can't be my studies in the arctic that does it. Science just wants to answer the hows and whys. I agree that philosophy like the basics of society and morale theory should be perhaps more important in education and that will also help us put scientific knowledge like that gained from stemcell research to good use. I think religion, however, splits peoples and societies as much as it unifies. It misleads just as much as it guides. It also hinders inquiry more than it promotes because it provides all the easy, but practically useless answers.

you have to understand i'm speaking on two levels. i absolutely agree that the sort of research you do is useful and helpful and wonderful because it is driven by a desire on some level for love and harmony. i also recognize that there is a lot of science where this is not at all the case, where technology is developed simply to market the development of further technology, where we're told we need to keep upgrading because products are getting 'better,' where everything that is built is built to be obsolete so that we clutter the planet with useless items... we research into building more and more destructive weapons for the sake of 'deterrence' when really the better our weaponry gets the more likely we are to destroy ourselves. on top of this we keep tapping our energy resources, develop better ways of distracting ourselves from the problem, better ways of marketing products nobody actually needs... obviously there's a huge flip side to science where it's not being used in a reasonable manner. the larger problem is WHY do people feel the need to keep buying these new products, to spend money to look and live like superstars, etc. this to me is the destructive flip side of science where it used as a tool simply to satisfy irrational desires, and ultimately what renders desires like complete instant satisfaction or self-destruction irrational is religious 'feeling'. now you could completely disagree here and say it is simply 'reason' and i would feel no reason to argue that point, all i'm really getting at is that science needs a justification beyond science.

I think you got your science mixed up with social trends, war, fashion, market forces and other things that I don't think should be confused with science.

Science wants to find the answers to questions. Why? Because we don't have the answers yet. That's it. Science doesn't want to sell lipstick or make weaponry. Those are goals pushed by market forces or possibly governments. If you have a problem with them, I'd say you have a problem with your society, not science.

As I wrote earlier at some point, the scientific community didn't produce the atom bomb. The manhattan project was led and pushed by the US Army. Even if you remove the scientific community, military forces like the US armed forces are still gonna employ scientists to make more devastating weapons.

Sometimes, scientific knowledge can be used for the wrong ends and so I agree morale philosophy and, I would say, particularly basics on society is so important to teach people today. Every democratic nation is ultimately governed by it's people. If they don't even know what a society is, why we have it and how it works, how are they supposed to know how to shape it?

Has Sleepy Jack finally gone to bed? I have yet to argue with him today...

Did you take the trouble to read the posts before that? There was discussion about Florida, I said I hated it. Plus it was over 2 months ago...don't you have something better to do?