Recently a wonderful example of development of hypothesis for biophysics was published. Since this advancement in our understanding of the dynamics of the genome overturns previous assumptions about the looping of DNA, it neatly fits the principle of hypothesis generation. The previous false notion that the genome was static is indicative of a broader psychology prevalent in science overall.
My role in these pages is to elucidate that type of higher hypothesis governing how scientific inquiry itself necessarily evolves. It is upon that platform that we may search out and garner revolutionary advances for the advancement of civilization. Properly situating (cf. Leibniz on analysis situs) the mechanisms of biophysics as a substantive process of organic biospheric development.
The psychology of analyzing what are referred to as "systems" as fixed lifeless remnants is inherent to the creation of the manifold crises confronting humanity across fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to astronomy. We see this in the ironic crisis of astrophysics quite starkly that the more we advance in creating instruments of searching the universe more profoundly across the electromagnetic spectrum, the less we seem to know! The very idea promulgated by generations of mathematicians that the mere labeling of points in the "probability space" of matrix manipulations somehow is equivalent to knowledge, illustrates this problem in the extreme.
In contrast to this sort of static worldview, as Heraclitus many centuries ago elucidated -- reality is not thing-like. It is a process of becoming ever more perfect, or better yet less imperfect. Now, for the lower realms of reality that process whether it be inorganic or biophysical is not willful. It evolves according to its own universal dynamics. The human mind however is of a qualitatively higher ordering principle. It need not physically evolve into a more biologically "fit" organism. For the human mind taken as the entirety of the development of civilization, is by its very nature composed of unfolding revolutionary change when we are performing in coherence with the aforementioned Hericlitian principle.
Eratosthenes first measured the circumference of the earth from the shadows cast by the sun. Today, humanity's fitness to survive will be measured by our ability to conquer that same thermonuclear fusion that casts those shadows. Thus, Prometheus will truly be unbound.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
The Process of Becoming and Scientific Hypothesis
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