The Hierarchy of Scientific Knowledge

[Divine Insight]

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I've created the image above to help everyone understand the hierarchical structure of scientific knowledge.

The sciences of Biology and Genetics reside at the top level of scientific knowledge. An understanding of the principles of biology rests upon the knowledge and understanding of Chemistry since all of biology operates on principles of chemical reactions, and complex macro molecules.

Beneath the science of Biology we have Chemistry. Chemistry is the science of how atoms themselves behave and form bonds between themselves to form the various types of molecules that ultimately give rise to biology as well as other inorganic macro materials.

Chemistry then rests upon physics. Physics is the study of the fundamental laws, forces, and particles which ultimately make up the atoms. At one time in history atoms were believed to be the smallest possible constituents of nature, but in modern physics this has been shown to be false. The atoms themselves are made up of smaller constituents often referred as 'particles'. However it is now understood in physics that these particles can also be describe mathematically as waves. In fact, the current scientific interpretation is they are actually just waves of probabilities, or waves of potentiality that do not become manifest until they are observed in an act of observation.

Physics is then held up by what is often called "The Queen of the Sciences" which is mathematics. Mathematics is pure abstract thought that has no tangible basis. In fact, the very concept of number itself is defined within mathematics as being a property of an empty set. An empty set is a collection of things which does not contain a single thing. So mathematics disappears altogether at the level of number and becomes only abstract thought.

What holds up mathematics?

Well according to many mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists, mathematics resides in the Mind of God.

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"If we do discover a theory of everything...
it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason
for then we would truly know the mind of God."

- Stephen Hawking





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[McCulloch]

Well according to many mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists, mathematics resides in the Mind of God.

Which ones? Do they mean the same thing as you do by the word God?

[SailingCyclops]

What holds up mathematics?

Well according to many mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists, mathematics resides in the Mind of God.

Well, up until this point you have used well defined and understood tools and scientific disciplines which all have evidence to back them up. You then go off the rails by introducing an undefined and unscientific term, "God". What exactly is this "God" you refer to? Unlike all the other well-known fields of knowledge you mentioned, you leave this one blank. Could it be this is merely a figment of your imagination? If not, please define it, and show evidence that it belongs in your "Hierarchy of Scientific Knowledge". Otherwise it's the same pure nonsense as ascribing the base of all knowledge to Santa Clause.

[Divine Insight]

Well according to many mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists, mathematics resides in the Mind of God.

Which ones? Do they mean the same thing as you do by the word God?

I don't know. I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and discuss the details with them.

I quoted one scientist in the OP that has referred to the "Mind" of God, and this seems to be a fairly commonly shared idea. That the very concept of "God" has something to do with knowledge, information, or possibly even an ability to think or reason.

It does appear to me that scientists think of "The Mind of God" as being a reference to very well-organized source of information at the very least. After all, the basic concept they are comparing this with with is the knowledge of mathematics, which is not only seen as information, but it's also seen as very well-structured information. Information that we deem to be very logical or reasonable or at the very least, very well-organized and predicable.

You may be familiar with the observation of the scientist Eugene Wigner on "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics". Mathematics seems to have an uncanny ability to correctly predict and describe the physical universe, to a point where this effectiveness seems unreasonable. That is to say that it seems to describe the behavior of the universe and predict new behaviors far more than should be expected if were were just making it up. In other words, there appears to be something fundamentally true about mathematics that goes far beyond the idea that humans are merely dreaming it up.

This of course is a controversy within mathematical community itself. Do we invent mathematics or discover it as truth?

Many people hold that the latter is true. If this is correct, this suggests that mathematics must exist independent of our own conscious whim. And it is from this idea that it is suggested that mathematics must exist in "The Mind of God", or course this was an idea that Plato held as well.

But the bottom line in all of this is that this "God" (whatever that might be) is indeed being thought of as a "Mind". Or a source of very well-organized information.

If we consider that such a "Mind" actually exists in whatever form we might imagine that to take, our next question would be to ask, "Is this Mind dynamic?"

In other words, is it an actual thinking mind (which implies that its alive, or potentially conscious) or it is just a static source of well-structured rules of some sort that have no actual life or dynamic capability at all?

I would love to sit down and ask Dr. Hawking his views on this. However, without even doing that I can get some idea of how he might answer just by seeing a quote that he had spoken:

[center]What is it that breathes fire into the equations
and makes a universe for them to describe?

- Stephan Hawking [/center]

Based on this sentiment I would suspect that Dr. Hawking imagines that the Mind of God may be dynamic as well.

So based on these observations alone, I would suspect that this hypothesized, "Mind of God" is indeed some sort of "Mind" (or source of information) that may very well be dynamic.

A dynamic Mind is a thinking Mind, and a thinking Mind could indeed be thought of as being "alive" and conscious at least in some sort of way. Perhaps not necessarily in a way that we might deem to be sentient. We certainly don't have any reason to place that attribute on this Mind at this point in time. But we seem to be justified in placing at least static information on it, if not dynamic informational processing abilities.

I'm not sure if my idea of "God" goes much beyond this. Other than to perhaps point out that if the above hierarchy is correct at all (i.e. that everything ultimate does arise from this "Mind of God" which holds and thinks in mathematics, then it may well be that we are an extension of this "Mind of God".

Also since we are dynamic, why should we believe that the Mind of God is not? After all, it appears to be giving use to us? How could a non-dynamic Mind give rise to a dynamic reality?

How could a non-dynamic Mind (or information source) breathe fire into a dynamic universe if that original information source is not itself already dynamic?

So yes, these scientist may very well be using precisely the same concept of "God" that I have in my tiny mind.

[Divine Insight]

Please define it, and show evidence that it belongs in your "Hierarchy of Scientific Knowledge".

Hopefully my previous post helped to shed some light on how this is being defined.

[Angel]

Psychology? Shouldn't the human mind and the study of it be the most important science? We can't know and understand anything, let alone, perceive anything without the mind.

[Divine Insight]

Psychology? Shouldn't the human mind and the study of it be the most important science? We can't know and understand anything, let alone, perceive anything without the mind.

I've heard many arguments over whether or not Psychology should be considered to be a science. Some claim that it's not, others passionately claim that it is. There seems to be some controversy along these lines but it appears to me that there is a large consensus that it doesn't officially qualify as a science.

Here are some articles that reject psychology as an official science:

Is Psychology Science?

The Trouble with Psychology

In the conclusions section of the first article linked to above they conclude:

At this point it must be clear to the intelligent reader that clinical psychology can make virtually any claim and offer any kind of therapy, because there is no practical likelihood of refutation – no clear criteria to invalidate a claim. This, in turn, is because human psychology is not a science, it is very largely a belief system similar to religion.

So they are pretty much equating Psychology to a belief system similar to religion.

That's a pretty low blow for someone who's trying to hold Psychology up as a science.

Here's a map from the second article showing the Land of Kansas (i.e. The Land of Science) versus the Land of Oz (i.e. the Land of Pseudoscience):

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I personally think this is a bit unfair because they even classify religion as "Pseudoscience" when some religions don't even have enough credibility to be given that label, IMHO. But then again, other religions do have some scientific credibility.

I personally feel that Psychology as a bit more credibility than religion because it's at least based on observations of behaviors, and reactions, etc, of test subjective. So it quite a bit further in the land of Kansas than in the land of Oz.

Still one thing that keeps Psychology from being an official objective science is because it is ultimately the study of something that can only be subjectively known.

There is no real way to objectively observe, test, quantify, or otherwise measure someone's objective conscious mind. It's innately a subjective experience that cannot be observed or known objectively.

Some Hypocrisy Here

There does seem to be a bit of hypocrisy here however, because the sciences of Neuroscience and other biological studies of the brain, often claim to make scientific hypotheses and conjectures about the very nature of conscious awareness.

But they have just crossed over their line in to making objective statements about what can only be known and experienced subjectively.

I'm not saying that all of Neuroscience or Biology of the brain is therefore pseudoscience. But I think when they attempt to make scientific statements claiming that they can offer a purely secular scientific account for this subjective experience of conscious awareness, they are crossing over their own taboo borders.

So there does seem to be a bit of hypocrisy and ambiguity in precisely how science currently deals with the subject of subjective conscious awareness.

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I would also like to add as a personal observation that scientists seem to have no problem tossing Mathematics firmly in Kansas as a "Science". Yet mathematics is not based upon empirical evidence. On the contrary mathematics is based on pure thought, and therefore should itself be cast into the land of Oz. At least in terms of its underlying foundation. It truly is Pure Philosophy that actually holds up physics as in my original graphic. In fact, physics wouldn't even be possible with Mathematics, because this is basically what physics entails. This is largely due to the work of Isaac Newton and his predecessor Galileo. They were the ones who truly made the discovery that the world can be described and predicted using Pure Mathematics, and that was really the birth of Modern Science.

So science firmly stands upon the foundation of Mathematics, which itself doesn't really stand on anything. Mathematicians are still arguing over whether mathematics is invented in the minds of men, or discovered as some mystical preexisting property of all that exists..

And this is precisely where the concept of "The Mind of God" comes from.

[SailingCyclops]

Please define it, and show evidence that it belongs in your "Hierarchy of Scientific Knowledge".

Hopefully my previous post helped to shed some light on how this is being defined.

You seem to be anthropomorphizing mathematics, which is an abstract discipline capable of explaining the physical laws of nature. Mathematics is not the source of any knowledge, it merely allows us to explain how things work. It gives us humans a sense of order, an understanding. The universe works the way it does whether or not we understand it. "Knowledge" such as it is, resides in us humans alone. If humans and mathematics did not exist, those same laws would operate as they do today irrespective of "knowledge".

[Divine Insight]

You seem to be anthropomorphizing mathematics, which is an abstract discipline capable of explaining the physical laws of nature.

I think you misunderstood. It was never my intent to anthropomorphize anything. I'm simply recognizing, as do many other mathematicians and scientists, that mathematics represents well-organized information.

Where is there any anthropomorphizing in that?

Mathematics is not the source of any knowledge, it merely allows us to explain how things work. It gives us humans a sense of order, an understanding. The universe works the way it does whether or not we understand it. "Knowledge" such as it is, resides in us humans alone. If humans and mathematics did not exist, those same laws would operate as they do today irrespective of "knowledge".

You must be thinking of mathematics solely in terms of the symbols and formalisms that we jot down on paper to represent these quantitative relationships.

But in truth, that is not mathematics. This is just one symbolic form of writing it down. In fact, if aliens came here their mathematics would appear to us to be totally alien. Yet it would necessarily be conveying the very same information.

So mathematics is not the symbolic formalisms we invent to express it as a language, but rather it is the actual information that is being expressing through those symbols.

You say, "If humans and mathematics did not exist, those same laws would operate as they do today irrespective of knowledge".

I disagree. Those laws are mathematics.

That is the knowledge that we call "mathematics".

In other words, this comes down to the question of whether we are inventing mathematics or discovering mathematics as a truth of nature.

If mathematics is the truth of nature, then it has nothing to do with us or with anthropomorphism necessarily. But it does have to do with knowledge.

And it is this concept that is being referred to as "The Mind of God".

No anthropomorphism is required. But a recognition of well-organized information or knowledge as a fundamental truth of reality is required.

[SailingCyclops]

Where is there any anthropomorphizing in that?

When you start ascribing mind and consciousness to it. Those are strictly human attributes, or more accurately the attributes of a biological life form.

In fact, if aliens came here their mathematics would appear to us to be totally alien. Yet it would necessarily be conveying the very same information.

It would be describing the same universe. It is conceivable that an alien brain could be so powerful that it could understand the workings of the universe by pure thought, without the aid of language or mathematics.

So mathematics is not the symbolic formalisms we invent to express it as a language, but rather it is the actual information that is being expressing through those symbols.

I think of it more as a way of describing how the universe works.

You say, "If humans and mathematics did not exist, those same laws would operate as they do today irrespective of knowledge".

I disagree. Those laws are mathematics.

That is the knowledge that we call "mathematics".

We will have to agree to disagree here. Mathematics is the tool, the language we humans use to describe the laws of nature. If the english language was much more complex, and our brains much more intelligent and fast, where a single word could accurately describe the motion of the planets visually in our brains, it would be another way to say the same thing mathematics does. Who knows what several billion years of biological evolution can accomplish (or possibly has accomplished in some alien species). All I am trying to say is that the descriptive language of a thing is not the thing itself. A biologist's technical description and analysis of a rose is not the rose.

In other words, this comes down to the question of whether we are inventing mathematics or discovering mathematics as a truth of nature.

We are discovering the workings of the universe by using the language of mathematics.