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Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 2/28/2002 1:45 AM (GMT -6)

Got my computer back today. FINALLY finished hooking it back up. Minor glich (THANK GOD) Anyways...I stumbled on this and had to get on this. Didn't want to steal the thunder of Tom's "Transcendence" thread...so I'll put this here. I am have insomnia right now...

The Sun, "Reality", and Human Conceptions of the Two

The sun is literally a burning ball of many gases that burn hot as "hell" (excuse the pun) At any rate, what "energies" do we DEFINITELY know about the sun from a merely human standpoint. For our sakes, let's forget about modern science telling us MORE FULLY what the sun is. Let's go on straight phenomenological info. We'd probably say that the sun is A big bright yellowish circle that moves across the sky that gives of light and heat. Now, let's look at this. A big bright yellowish CIRCLE that MOVES ACROSS THE SKY that gives off LIGHT and HEAT.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's assume that this is before modern science could give us more accurate info than this, for whatever reason. No telescopes. No satelites. No nuthin. If you were to ask a person the question "What is the sun?", they would probably tell you the answer I've specified above. Now, would this answer be correct? Yes, but INCREDIBLY incomplete. Even though, different people have different perspectives on more DEFINITE ideas about the sun, a general consensus, most likely, could come about. But even with this concensus, there would be MANY questions that would lead to speculation:

1) Why is the sun so bright?
2) Why does the sun appear yellow to us?
3) How does it give off heat and light?
4) How does it give off SO MUCH heat and light?
5) Why does the sun appear to be circular when you wear shades?
6) Is the sun a "true" circle?
7) How does it move across the sky like that?

These could be important questions, true. But could they ever really be answered by any more than speculation? Nope. We could conduct experiments around the world. We'd come to the conclusions that SOME areas of the world are hotter year round than others. We's also come to the conclusion that some times of the year the sun has different positions in the sky, even when it's still moving as usual across the sky. We EVEN find out that there is some places where it can STAY daytime for weeks at a time! Wow. How can the sun do such different things at such different places??? Without ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION about the sun, if we were to somehow guess or deduce some important information about the earth (like it rotated or that it was spherical), this information would NECESSARILY inform the way that we think about the sun. Hmmm. Maybe because of the spherical nature of the earth, some areas of the earth are "closer" to the sun than others...and THAT helps account for the "heat increase" in those places. In other worlds, knowledge about the EARTH would definitely help gaining knowledge about the possible earth/sun relationships, but there would still be a lot of speculation going on. Hmmm...

Then some people look at the people asking all these questions. They find them slightly disturbing but also amusing. Sometimes they might get indignant. They may think to themselves...

Why do these people spend so much time trying to analyze the sun? It seems that they spend MORE TIME asking questions about the sun, than truly enjoying it's radiant beauty and basking in its life-giving warmth? Isn't that enough for us to know? To know that it's STABLE, beautiful, sometimes harsh, but ALWAYS a ample source of heat and light for us?? Isn't that enough?? Isn't that all the "reality" we need to understand?

To be sure, some of the persons who ask these questions may well agree with the sentiment somewhat. As a matter of fact, many of them ask the questions BECAUSE they want to know more about this "gift of life" called the sun. AND indeed some of the questioners may be more on the analytical than the "appreciative" side (though not to extremes) In their analyses, these questioners notice that there are some pretty interesting speculations about the sun that seems to direct people's lives. One group of people believe the sun to be a circlar chariot of some sort that drives aross the sky. Another group of people believe that is is brother to the moon and they take shifts between night and day to patrol the sky. Another group STILL believes that the sun is some weird lantern type deal that some invisible guardian keeps with him on his hip as he walks from one edge of the horizon to the other. It is obvious that THESE peoples DO enjoy the radiant beauty and warmth of the sun...but they also form beliefs and WORLDVIEWS around this phenomena that affect human existence. Wouldn't it be cool to try to get our worldviews as close to the way things "actually are" as possible? Doesn't asking all these questions about the sun and the earth help us do that? Yeah. Moreover, wouldn't finding out more about the sun actually IN TURN help us find out more about the EARTH ITSELF, given the obvious sun/earth that we experience everyday? Hmmm...then maybe we should continue, but more cautiously, given the well-placed questions of the "appreciative" people out there.

Now, time passes. Somehow someone is actually able to use some materials to create some type of telescope thing that can produce an ACTIVE IMAGE of the sun on a certain surface. We can either choose to accept this "image" or not. If we do, THEN we have something VERY interesting. Before all we could see was a yellow circle that gave off heat and light. Unfortunately, we couldn't get much more than that. But the REAL TIME IMAGE on the surface now tells us a little more. It's like a little facsimile of the surface of the sun. We can tell little flares emerging from the sun. We can even, over time, see dark patches that seem to MOVE over time. The closest thing to the flares that we experience on this planet is fire. Hmmm...wait a second. Fire burns, gives off HEAT...and gives off LIGHT! HmmmMMM! In looking at this image of the sun, we may gathered a VERY important piece of information: we have some good reason to believe that the sun (whatever it is) gives off energy by BURNING. Something is BURNING on the sun. Some people may not thing this tells us much, but it does. It REMOVES some speculative ideas about the sun. And that helps narrow things down a bit. If we accept this "image" as being true, we can compare and contrast this image with the worldviews of other people. In doing this, we find a number of things. First of all, the "burning" aspect that we have just found seems to COHERE reasonably with many "truths" of various worldviews. Take the "lantern" one for example. A lantern "believer" could say:

"Ah, see there! This image actually helps show what we've been believing. At the very least, one cannot say that it OUTRIGHT contradicts our belief."

But, second of all, the image DOES rule some things out or make some things questionable. For example, if some people thought that the sun was merely a relection of light off of a circular surface of ICE...the image would surely at least give that worldview serious problems to consider.

But let's go deeper. Let's say that you have people all over the world who ACCEPT the validity and truth of this image. Will these people all have the same view of the sun because of this? Will the Eskimo have the same view of the sun as the Brazilian? Will the "Westerner" have the same view of the sun as the "Easterner"? Will the Carribean person living on a beach have the same view of the sun as the Arabian who moves in the midst of the scorching desert? Will the artist who often paints (and sometimes just watches lovingly) sunsets and sunrises have the same view of the sun as person who uses the produce some type of energy? I think the answer is a resounding no. Even though all of these people may fully believe in the image's information, that information will be filtered through those various people's life expereriences, knowledge, and inclinations. If two of these people were to get together and talk about the sun, wouldn't there be a possibility that their "testimonies" about the sun could be VERY different, even though they both agree on the "Image"? What do YOU think?

Now, let's go back. It's seems that even when we DIDN'T have an image to look at, our information about the sun was amazingly incomplete with a lot of room for speculation. There was, and always will be, a significant GAP between our perceptions and conceptions about the sun...and the sun's ACTUALITY. Though we may have "true" information about it, it's on a terribly limited scale. So much so, that the way we think about the sun may only be correct ON A CERTAIN LEVEL OF PERCEPTION. It could be that on a "higher" level of understanding, the information gleaned there would be somewhat contradictory with that on a "lower" level of understanding. At any rate, many MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE theories could be constructed with little problem. It MAY even be the case that we'd have to accept the "reality" of ONE level over another, given a certain circumstance...to avoid rank contradiction and to more fully respesent reality. All this said, many (or ALL) of the beautiful speculations about the sun's reality could be flat out wrong.

But then we come upon an "authoritative source" that claims to give us an IMAGE of the sun. Now, of course, the image lacks MANY things that the sun does...otherwise, we probably wouldn't be able to take it. And it is completely kept in consideration that this is the case! The image is NOT sun's TOTALITY; it is a perspectival image on OUR level. But it gives us significant information that leads to more realistic ideas about what the sun is and what it is not. It gives us reason to think that certain ideas about the sun are more "truthful" than others. None of the information and speculation that we've done so far is just TOSSED, but it is evaluated in light of the image.

Given our understanding of:
1) the perspectival nature of our perception
2) the necessary epistemological distance incurred by #1
3) the vast amount of mystery created by #1

it would seem that the best that any good sun-loving person could come to some understandings...

_________________________________________

EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRANSCENDENCE: It would be wise to assume that the sun is MORE than we know it to be. The full information about the sun extends well beyond our attempts to know it. This is not to say that we cannot have "true" knowledge about the sun, but we can say that we have PRECIOUS little and even THAT knowledge can be very suspect given all the possibilities of reality. This is an important concept because it acknowledge that there is a LINE OF RELATION between the trascendent reality and our perceptions and conceptions of said reality. Truly, something transcendent could be completely above ALL of our human faculties...but that transcendent thing would nothing short of NON-EXISTENT to us. There MUST exist some type of relationship between the transcendent and that which is transcended. Because we have SOME EXPERIENCE of the sun, the line of relation exists...and we can reasonably say that the "sun" (which is a designation for a "reality" that we perceive) could be MORE than what we experience. Enter epistemological transcendence.
_________________________________________

MODELS, MODELS, MODELS: ALL we can ultimately have is models. Models that help us interpret and understand our world. Of course, different models have different criteria for their use. To say a model of the sun is "useful" or "practical" begs the question: "Useful and practical FOR WHAT??" Adding more ambiguity, you can have different people using different models for different reasons exhibiting roughly the SAME essential behavior or thought processes about the sun. HOWEVER, what can be done is analysis done WITHIN and BETWEEN worldviews for consistency, coherence, adequacy, and applicability. Of course, when two or more worldviews are in it, there must be an agreement on criteria. But discussion is nonetheless possible. The "circular chariot" man CAN DIALOGUE WITH the "sun as moon's sibling" woman. But but should come to an understanding that ultimately BOTH OF THEM may be wrong...even if there are mutually exclusive aspects between them.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL HUMILITY Absolutely...positively...NO ROOM for dogmatism in any fashion. There are far too many inadequacies dealing with human perception, far too many possible levels of factors not understood between us and "reality", and far too many possible realities to CONCEPTUALIZE...for any person to say that they have THE truth. To be sure, some can make a certain criteria their ABSOLUTE and appropriate said truth accordingly...giving one some type of COMMITMENT to an idea. However, this doesn't change the fact about just how little this "knowledge" is in the big scheme of things. We may accept the solar "image" to be true and use it to provide more insight into the reality of the sun...but as we have seen, the evidence may NOT be incontrovertible and, as we have seen, there is still much ambiguity even WITHIN the set of people who hold to the "image" Remember, humility is the closest that we will EVER get to objectivity.

Let the theologian/believer who has an ear, hear what the pedantic insomniac has to say to large bodies of thinking people.

**yawn** Goodnight...er..umm...good morning.

PS: Perhaps I COULD be a decent teacher...who knows...

Love God. Love People. Love Truth. Dedicate your all to that which you love.

Edited by - Mephi2K on 02/28/2002 06:49:00 AM

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