Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
24. Modern Physics, Knowing by Making, and the Closed Circle of Man
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/024-modern-physics-knowing-by-making-and-the-closed-circle-of/

[0:00] Okay, So you should stop here now. It's going to be five to five. Okay, okay. So we'll start here with reading eleven next time, It'll have to be two weeks from now because of the tile and other things going in my house. Okay, I'd be my wife's going to be away for a few days, and I'd be there with a tile man. I've got to pay him She puts the tile in the right place and so on.

[0:24] I sometimes almost do exactly what my wife wants, That's right. Kind of funny. Yeah, I opened the wrong jar the other day. We're gonna make some, you know, some of these tomato sauce or spaghetti, and I used the wrong sauce. It doesn't seem to have the consistency, and it seemed to be, you know, enough. And I just grabbed with the ball. I just thought they're all the same, you know, and opened it up.

[0:53] So you know that's that's that's very funny. Oh, our Andy cat we had to put down this weekend. Oh yeah, A little philosopher cat. Oh, I see. Too rational. Yeah, yeah. kind of funny, you know, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas discusses, you know, Plato's opinion, you know, that the souls of the cats and so on are immortal, right? Huh? Of course, he refutes this. You know, I mean, it's kind of interesting, huh?

[1:24] Yeah, yeah. You see, because then you have, you know, the moderns who know souls are mortal, right? Right, right. And Plato, who's gone to the other extreme, in the sense where the the the all the animals have an immortal soul, and of course the truth is is in the middle, ah, between these two extremes, huh? Yeah. I just reading what's in in the book of the Summa there today.

[1:45] Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas uses that phrase more or less, right? Hmm. You know the man who falsely says, either more or less than the truth, right? Do you see that phrase in Shakespeare? Hmm. Like Faustus says, right? They say more or less than the truth. They are knaves and the sons of darkness. So reading

[2:13] eleven, yeah. Um, something confused me both last week and this week. that I don't understand. Like Einstein, you quoted him saying that matter is condensed energy, and Heisenberg saying energy is in fact the substance from which all elementary particles. Yeah. I think using substance here in the sense of a kind of matter, right? That's one meaning of substance matter. Well Aristotle in the metaphysics when he talks about substance, you know, he speaks of matter as being substance, and then form in the genus of substance and the composition of the two, right?

[2:50] But the moderns tend to think of substance just in the sense of what matter, That's one meaning of substance. Okay, so he doesn't mean it as

[3:05] energy isn't that like an accident or a property? I mean, it's not. No, no. Well, see, you see, for the modern physicist, energy seems to be enable you to do things, right? So it seems like a mover, right? But then you can generate mass, right, from energy. Oh. So energy seems to be the source of matter so far as they understand it, right? Source of matter. As if you understand matter as being mass, right?

[3:38] Okay. You have to be careful because all this is is a mathematical science. You don't really have any matter there. Schrodinger, right? I mentioned Schrodinger, right? You know, he says the modern atom consists of no stuff at all. There's no matter there. He compares it to Plato's theory of matter in the Timaeus, right? Or the Pythagorean Timaeus has a geometrical theory of earth, air, fire, and water, but there's no matter there, just geometrical figures.

[4:14] So when you study, when you have a mathematical, I guess sure he was a as a witness, because he's the man who perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, which is used in talking about the atom, right? And he showed the mathematical equivalence of wave mechanics and quantum mechanics, which is also used in talking about the atom, right? So he's the man who most of all can speak about the mathematical, you know, picture of the atom, right?

[4:40] And he says there's no stuff there. That's why the communists, you see, were for a while getting nervous about modern physics because matter seemed to be disappearing from the scientific picture of the world. Of course, Marx Marxism is based on the idea that matter is the beginning of all things, right? But it's a very strange kind of knowledge because there's no matter in mathematics. So when you study nature mathematically, there's no matter there.

[5:10] And so sometimes, sometimes the physicists have some inkling of this, so they'll say that we're shadowing, but not containing, right? Say, and there's no motion there really either, huh? No motion, modern math. No motion in math. So you're studying, you're studying matter in motion with mathematics that contains neither matter nor motion. So you have a very strange kind of knowing. Very, very weird, huh?

[5:44] Do you agree with Einstein that matter is condensed energy? I'd always thought energy was not the same as. Well, see, you see, at first they had a conservation of mass as well as a conservation of energy, right? But then they realized that mass is not always conserved, huh? Okay. So if they accelerate particles, and you have a lot of kinetic energy, as they would call it, you could end up with particles after one of these collisions that have more mass than the original ones.

[6:15] Yeah. So mass is, it turns out to be something subordinate to energy, right? So Einstein's equation equals mc squared, you know, makes this equivalent. So you have to be very careful, you know, that that these words like mass and force, you know, they seem to have some, you know, resemblance to matter and move words, so on, but they're really not the same thing at all, huh? Because they're all defined by some way you measure things and so on.

[6:46] So they're not really, you know, for the first time I said to Kasurik, you know, is this force that the physicists talk about that? But we mean when we talk about mover. He just laughed in my face. You know, I can be so naive. Kusnig is a tough guy, you know.

[7:04] But the more you study these things, the more you realize that you got to be kind of careful, right, with these words, huh? Because they resemble the words we have in daily life or in philosophy, but they don't really

[7:20] correspond to the same thing, right? It's kind of a technical language, and it's a very, very kind of strange thing, huh? And you got to be very kind of careful to make a transition between one and the other.

[7:35] I tried to do what you talked about the other week. I spent two and a half hours just going through all the notes I had from the beginning of natural philosophy and just thinking about them and thinking if I could teach them. You know, really was really was fruitful. Really was good. That's all I did during my study period. I never read anything new. Is that is that a good approach?

[8:01] Yeah, I mean, and even the physicist, the Heisenberg, in his in his nuclear physics book, there, which you know, these lectures he gave, you know, to scientific people and technical people, right, engineers and so on. And the first chapter is about the early Greeks, right? He says anybody who wants to understand nuclear physics should go all the way back to the Greeks and follow you know these ideas from the Greeks up, right?

[8:24] And you know, even Einstein, you know, who's not so much into the Greeks, but he says we reverence ancient Greece as the cradle of Western science, huh? Now, cradle might seem to be a diminutive thing, but he said, but the word reverence is a strong word, right? We reverence ancient Greece, and the Schrödinger I was speaking of, he says, science is the Greek way of looking at things, and no one has ever had science, he said, who has not come in contact with the Greeks.

[8:54] Well, that's not a definition of science, but it's a compliment to the Greeks, right? But you know, the point is, you know, with the Greeks, everything is Greek almost, huh? I mean, I mean, tragedy and geometry. I was going to give a little paper one time on tragedy and geometry, right? Geometry is is very what rigorous, you know, and reasonable, and tragedy, you know, is imaginative, like fiction is.

[9:19] But they're the fathers of geometry and tragedy, right? It's kind of amazing to see that the Greeks, right? You could say tragedy is Greek way of looking at things too, right? You know, because they're the ones, you know, that the the the dumb Romans imitated, huh? You know, you have Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, which is imitating a comedy of Plautus, which is imitating a comedy of Menander, I guess, right?

[9:44] And someone learned in in grammar explained to me that the Romans couldn't understand their own language, so they tried to impose Greek grammar upon the Latin language, and that's how they got all messed up in their cases. When you learn the cases in Latin, right? You have the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative, right? When I say Greek, you don't have the ablative; you have these four cases, right?

[10:16] The Romans said, "Well, we have something like the Greek nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative." So they they took over those four, and then they they put the ablative, right? They didn't have anything like that in Greek, so they just added it on in fifth place and then we also put it, right? Okay. Well, now in Greek, you know, the genitive is used for what is imagined to be before the action of the verb.

[10:43] The accusative is what is after the action of the verb, and the dative is what is with the action of the verb, right? So the order very perfectly, right? Genitive, dative, accusative, right? But the Latins actually, their language, used the ablative, where the Greeks would use the what? Genitive, huh? Yeah, where the Greek sometimes points it out in his commentaries, right? You know, when he's you know speaking Latin about a text in Greek, so ablative doesn't belong down here, right?

[11:19] If it's has a similar function to genitive, so it's all fouled up the order here. And the dative in Latin is actually after the accusative because we'd say, "I gave the book to you," right? So the book is closer to "I gave" than "you are," right? "I gave the book to you." So the dative should be down here in Latin because they have the same function as the dative in in Greek, right?

[11:45] It's understood as being with the verb, before the verb, with the verb, after the verb. So they get all fouled up, right? And then he says, "In English grammar, we got even more fouled up because we try to imitate the Roman grammar, which is based upon trying to impose the Greek grammar on the Roman language, right?" Because the Roman language doesn't even have all the parts of speech.

[12:09] Doesn't have the have the article, right? The Greek language has all the parts of speech, but the Romans didn't. When you read Thomas sometimes in Medieval things, they realize there's you know there's no article there, so they start to invent an article. See Thomas uses it sometime, and they said even more in Cajetan than in Thomas, you know. That's the defective language there, missing a part of speech.

[12:37] You know, but I mean, the point was that the Romans couldn't figure out, right, from their own language, they couldn't reflect enough upon it what the grammar was in their language. You see, the Greeks were able to figure out the grammar of their own language.

[12:53] See, well, then the Romans imitated. So that's grammar, right? Then in tragedy and comedy, they tried to imitate the Greeks and. And either copied the what the what do you call it the the plots and so on the Greek comedies and tragedies right and so on. Part of the two is read Homer and Virgil, and you can see Homer is far superior, you know, to to to to Virgil, much more poetic, much more interesting.

[13:31] Of course, in philosophy, the Romans compared to the Greeks and all, you know, you know. So, poetry, grammar, all these things. Romans are good at law, you know. I'm good at you know. They're more practical in some ways than the Greeks. You know, you have to be tough in the world, right, and so on, right? But uh? All the other things are clear to the Greeks

[14:08] Okay. Thank you. Okay. see you. Are you able to explain the? Are you able to explain the experiment of the black body radiation and what was the? Why it didn't come out according to Newtonian? Well, Not really. I can't explain it. No. Okay. Because I was reading. Yeah. He doesn't really explain it. No, no, no. But apparently, what what happened was that that they were getting into is getting into, and I've heard the infinite energies and things of that sort.

[15:02] Huh? Strange consequences if you follow this according to Newtonian, the laws of physics up to that time, right? You end up with impossible consequences, huh? And

[15:19] it's easy to see. I I think you know when you get into the atomic theory with Bohr, how it is getting into contradictions, huh? Because because if electron is changing its orbit, right, from a higher to a lower orbit, then it's losing maybe energy, right? And energy has to be emitted, right? According to the the theories, right, that you had in classical physics. But since if you look at that as a change of what place, right?

[15:48] Then there should be a continuous loss of energy, and therefore a continuous what emission of energy that is being lost. But they've been studying the energy being emitted for some time, right? And it didn't have that continuous character; it was jump-like.

[16:08] And so that that made them you know question the idea. Should this really be imagined to be a what? A change of place, right? Because a change of place is continuous, right? But the emission energy is not continuous. So it's here and then it's here, but never went through the middle, right? Well, then they began to wonder whether this is really change of place anymore, right? And now it's time to break down the idea that there's only what change of place in the world, huh?

[16:45] And when Heisenberg you know compares energy to matter, he will say we can only know matter through the forms of matter, which is very close to what Aristotle was saying in some ways. You know, because the first matter, it's only the ability, right? So you only know it by its forms. You don't know it by itself. He's saying something very much like Aristotle, right? But he had to be careful in his comparisons, right?

[17:15] Because modern science is very strange knowledge. You know, you know, I've thought for years about that opening line of Bohr, and they say, you know, he really went over and over these essays until they're exactly what he wanted to say. But you know, I always quote this thing, you know, that the why I quoted it for you people, right? The task, you know, a science is to extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order.

[17:45] You know, I have used that text in the philosophy of science, you know, to indicate the two parts of experimental science, right? The empirical part and the theoretical part, right? To extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order, right? Okay. But now, when I get to think more deeply about that passage, they say, "Look how strange it is to extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order.

[18:10] What are you reducing to order? Well, if you take the words as they stand, it's our experiences being reduced to order. Okay. Ah, why in the philosophy of nature, in Aristotle there, um, he's trying to find order in the things that we have common experience of, huh? So he's looking for order in the things, huh? Um,

[18:46] aren't the scientists doing that? What are they doing? You know, and so I said, I said, I said to to Warren Murray one time, "These things just bored me, but he says Warren said, yeah, you know, isn't that strange, right? Huh? And it's in a way, look at

[19:10] what Kant says, right? Huh? What Kant says, we don't know the thing in itself, right? Right? All we know is the phenomena, right? And the phenomena takes on certain, you know, form in our experience, right? Huh? And so really, what we're ordering in Kant is what our experience of the world, but not, but we're not we're not knowing the order of the world, right? The order we're knowing is the order in our experience of the world, but it's not an order in reality.

[19:41] You see, that's kind of strange, right? But I am still not altogether sure that's exactly what they're doing or only what they're doing, you know. But that's exactly the way Bohr speaks about it, you know. I said, does he know what he's doing, or is that what he's doing? You know, you see. I see, you know, similar statements in other scientists. So I say, you know, that's something very strange, right?

[20:09] Huh? The natural philosopher, you know, Aristotle, he's trying to talk about an order in things, not an order in our experience of things. That kind of strange,

[20:37] isn't it? I haven't been very strange, myself. Huh To distract me about that is to extend the range of our experience and reduce it. It must be for a bad experience, right? And reduce it to order, right? So we're not finding order; We're ordering something.

[21:08] When Aristotle is looking at this, what's going on in change here, right? He's seeing an order, right, in change, right. I say he's finding, right, or recognizing an order in change. That

[21:28] something is dry before it becomes wet, right? That's a before in things, isn't it? You are sick before you become healthy. You are healthy before, but before is order, right? This is an order in things, right? And

[22:00] again, well, the thing I did last time, you know, from from your what you want to say, your father, there, right? The thing about the major sources, yeah. Well, I mean, you look at those passages from Weizsäcker you know my context, I would have said, you know, that sounds just like Karl Marx. And Weizsäcker's not a Marxist at all, right? He's speaking as a scientist, huh? You know, I think of the phrase there was.

[22:42] Let's see, right here. Yeah, this is these quotes on page five. Here, the other thing, or the text, right here. The thinking of our science was in Weizsäcker, the world view of physics, right? The thinking of our experience proves itself only in action in the successful experiment. To experiment means to exert power upon nature. The possession of power is then the ultimate proof of the correctness of scientific thought.

[23:08] You see how much that is the extension of Bacon and so on, but but even more radical, right? He says the limits of the applicability of certain concepts or laws appear to us only in the form of the impracticability of certain experiments. For instance, the determination of an absolute speed, right? That's referring back to to relativity theories, huh? Or in the form of the mutual incompatibility of position and impulse of an electron.

[23:39] Concepts like relativity, complementarity, which you have, in Niels Bohr and invariance under transformation groups take account even an abstract theory of this operative character of science. Exponents of an older ideal of science are often surprised at the seeming naivete with which we quote. Confuse right the non-demonstrability of the situation with its non-existence. In truth, our science has merely adapted its conceptual form at one more degree to the fact existing since Galileo that its ultimate criterion of truth is the experiment.

[24:16] We have only to inquire rigorously whether an experiment is impracticable for us because of inadequate technical means or ideas, or for every and any experimenter because of conflicts with the positive law of nature.

[24:31] Now, in the second reading here, but as we try to penetrate to the last foundations of nature in infinitely small, which is what Heisenberg and those scientists are trying to do, right? Or to our outermost borders in infinitely distant, like Einstein is trying to do, right? We grow aware that our plain picture of the world was only an aspect of the immediate background. In those remotest reaches of nature, only that is still comprehensible to us, which is of our making, or which at least could be of our making.

[25:00] That's strange, then. It has become clearer than ever before that knowledge and power belong together, right? We have to give up forming concepts about objects which cannot become the object of a subject, at least in principle. Pragmatic science is the view of nature that is fitting for a technical age.

[25:24] But especially that second paragraph: in those remotest reaches of nature, only that is still comprehensible to us, which is of our making, or which at least could be of our making, huh? Kind of strange, huh? But just but you know Marx was saying something like that, right? eh? And the question of the decidedness of our thought is a practical question, right? You know, Um, it's only by making something that we know it.

[25:57] We only know what we make, right? You see, the consequence of saying that is then that man is entirely enclosed in the world of his own making. He knows only what he makes.

[26:11] And if you go back, you know that text I gave you of Thomas here in the order of comparison and reason, right? It's only in the natural order that reason is knowing an order not made by itself, right? But here and now in natural science, you know nothing that you have not made. Only know what you make. Of course, man is the beginning and the end of all that he makes.

[26:31] So if he knows only what he makes. He's the beginning and the end of all he knows. So he is God, right? You see, To himself, right? See, In other words the circle. I usually call it the circle has been closed around man. Right? He's living entirely in the world of his own making. Well, of course, he's frustrated with such a world because the world of his own making is inferior to himself, right?

[26:58] Right. See, just as the world God made is inferior to Himself, right? But God, on the seventh day, He rested from all He had made. And Thomas says, "What that means is He didn't find His end or His perfection or His His happiness in what He had made. " That's pretty gratuitous in His part, right? He found His happiness in Himself, in His own infinite perfection, right?

[27:20] So He rested from everything He'd made. He rested in Himself. See, well, man can't rest himself because he's not the universally perfect thing that God is, right? But he can't get out of the circle because he knows only what he has made himself, and that's necessarily inferior to him. So he's going crazy. That's actually what happened. He's going crazy, you know. And he sees no way out of it.

[27:46] See, because the only place out of it is in the state of natural things, You know. You see, But uh, what's his name? you know, I mean, uh, uh, I have another group of readings here that with the modern philosophers showing their connection with this. But I mean, Kant in the second preface, there he sees that, right? And he says the same thing that he says: that reason knows only that which it is made, right?

[28:15] And Kant kind of saw as a characteristic of this science. He makes an interesting comparison. to. Kant there, you know, he says the geometers found out that they couldn't what? Just look at these figures and know them. They have to do something with them, right? Okay. Aristotle talks a bit about that. He draws, you know, he he's drawing upon that to point something else out, right? Aristotle's pointing out that um, uh, uh,

[28:50] um, in a theorem say like this here, right, you know, are these three angles equal to to right angles, right? We can look at those three angles all day long. You're not going to see that they are, right? But if you do something and you draw a straight line, let's say through the vertex, parallel to the opposite side, then right away you see that these are equal.

[29:16] By the previous theorem, it's simple. pi right? You see, so I do something, okay? And then you know the angle inscribed in the semicircle is that always a right angle? You know, I forget who does, but I just take the semicircle and you draw a line like that, right? Now you've got two triangles, so you got what? Four right angles, right? Okay, but here you have two, so these four angles you got what?

[29:55] Equivalent of two right angles, left, right. Okay, and since these are all really the same circle, this equals this, and this equals that. So these two are exactly half of these four. Therefore, must be right angles, right? But you got to draw that line. You got to, you know, you got to do something, right? See. And Aristotle points out, you know, Aristotle points out, and says he draws the line, and he's showing that something is is understandable, but it's an act, right?

[30:22] The line is only an ability; it's only able to be understood, but when you make it actual, right, then you actually understand it. So he's showing the connection between understanding something and being actual. But Kant, he takes this as as a sign that you have to make in order to know. See, you know what you are making. See, and then he said, "Well, when when Torricelli, you know, and Stahl gives these famous examples, Galileo with the rolling balls and so on, then they just when they experiment, they suddenly dawn upon them that the only way we can really know these things is to what make them, right?

[31:00] " And a whole light dawned upon them, and now they're on the sure way of science and like the geographers were, right? See, so for for for Kant, the thing to be learned from geometry and to be imitated in natural science is that we have to make something to know it, right? Right. And in a way, in geometry, it does go back to the kind of making, doesn't it?

[31:31] Because you know, I was no count. Just goes back to the kind of making because I told you my discussion with the students today on that. I asked them, "Why does the radius what? How do you know the radius? Not radius, but how do you know the diameter

[32:03] bisects a circle into equal parts? " See. Okay. Well, yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of the way the way uh, Thales did, it, right? Okay. And then you say, "Well, if the two lines don't course- coincide, then the radii are not all equal, right? " See, okay, but then then the student might think, "Well, that's as arbitrary as saying that the, you know, that the diameter they want to say that the diameter by definition bisects a thing, right?

[32:29] Because that's part of the definition of it, right? " I say, "No, it's not part of the definition of of the definition of the diameter is a line drawn from any point in a circle to the center through the opposite side. That's the definition of it. It's not the definition of diameter that divides into equal parts. See. Okay. But they want to avoid the problem of showing that this is so, right?

[32:52] By saying that that it's a line bisecting the circle, right? But that's not what it is. Okay, but then they might think, you know, that I'm what being as arbitrary when I say that all the radii are equal. You know, you say that's by definition what a circle is, right? See, but we kind of get around that by saying that the circle is generated by rotating a line around one of its endpoints, right?

[33:15] And therefore, you know, all the points on the circumference have to be equidistant because they're generated from that endpoint of it, right? Then you kind of avoid the arbitrariness, right? But then you're going back and reconstructing the what? You're constructing the circle that you know, right? And because I made it by rotating a straight line around one of its endpoints, that's why all the points of the circumference are equidistant from a point in the interior called the center, which is the definition, right?

[33:46] So we have to make these things, right? You know, I think that's is part of the reason why Euclid begins with the point, right? You have to break these things all the way down to the point and. then. construct them from the point upwards, right? To really know them. So the motion of a of a point makes a line, as Plato said, right? Well, then it has no width, the line, because the point has no width, right?

[34:12] Just length, right? You see what I mean? And then the line rotating makes a circle, and you go on from there, right? And you make the equilateral triangle, with these two circles and you go on, right? So you have to make these things to know them, huh? So there's some truth to that, right? And that's partly why we call it liberal art, because there's a making there, right?

[34:36] Natural philosophy is not liberal art, but geometry is, right? So in a way, you know what you're making there. So Kant sees that that the that the success of geometry is in a way involves our kind of making what we know there, right? Okay. And then we know what we made, right? And then he said that when they started to experiment, huh? And he gives three famous experiments, I guess, one of Galileo's, and one of Torricelli's, one of Stahl, and so on.

[35:16] And then he says a whole light dawned upon them, right? That this is the way we can know the natural world, right? But we have to make what we're going to know, huh? Because experiment in a sense is made by us, right? Okay. So we only know what we make. Say,

[35:36] well then Marx deduces the consequence of that, right? If man knows only what he makes, then man knows himself as the beginning and the end of all he knows, right? We don't even talk about something that we haven't made, because you you know, you're talking about something you don't even know about. You get no knowledge, right? You know, you couldn't know about, right? Right?

[36:04] You couldn't know about anything that man is not the beginning and the end of, right? So it becomes practically, you know, kind of practical, you know, pragmatic atheism, right? Not really, could be a very serious consequence, right? But Marx, in a way, you know, he's very close to what Weizsacker is saying there, right? Or Weizsacker is saying that, right? And if you look at the texts of the key texts of Marx and the Weizsacker, you know, they seem to be saying the same thing, although Weizsacker is in no way a a Marxist, or you know, he's a Lutheran, right?

[36:37] But he's no way a Marxist. You know, Westminster. I don't know if he's a believer or not, but you know, he's certainly not a Marxist right? But I mean, it lends itself to that Marxist uh, interpretation, or conclusion. You know? Interpretation, huh? Or conclusion.

[36:59] No, when... Especially you say this is the only knowledge, right? Even in the knowledge of experimental science, like when I read Kant, it always impressed me that he was exaggerating or making. Yeah, yeah. It seems in experiments, it's still you're trying to see something in nature. Yeah. Well, you see, you see. Notice, huh? you could, you know, Weizsacker is a man. took as a witness here, you know.

[37:37] But I mean, you know, in that page and page six, there, the second paragraph in that second reading from Weizsacker, uh, only that is still comprehensible to us, which is of our making, or which at least could be our making, right? You see, you find statements like that in other scientists, right? You

[37:57] know, and if that's the only kind of knowledge you're accustomed to, right? Then you're closed. Your mind is closed, right? Closed, enclosed in the world of our own making, you know? One time, a conversation. Warren and I were having a number of years ago, you know, and

[38:24] you know the kind of the source of the source of the of the mental anguish of the, I don't call it the anxiety, of, the modern mind is that they're trying to live in a world entirely of their own making. They try to do that? see? once they do that, they're living in a world that can never satisfy them. See, a world that's inferior to them, right?

[38:51] And you know They don't see any way out of it, but they can't possibly be satisfied with such a world, huh? So, makes them crazy in the end, you know. They're going out of their mind, right? Because they can't get out of this world, you know. It's like it's like solitary confinement, kind of a kind of a

[39:19] solitary confinement of the human race. Yeah, I mean, I don't, you know, I haven't read much, but I mean, I hear you know that solitary confinement is, you know, they can't leave man in solitary confinement too long in the prison system because they go what? They go insane, yeah, yeah. So I mean, modern man is trying to to live in solitary confinement. No wonder he's he's getting crazier and crazier.

[39:46] You know, this postmodernism and stuff, right? You know, someone gave me a copy of a recent, not the very recent, I think it was, article there by Riley there. I don't. Is he? Is he the music critic for for one of those Catholic magazine so it might have been the same guy, but anyway, he's talking about you know, Schoenberg and other people who started these crazy things, you know, completely want to deny anything natural about music and so on.

[40:19] I mean, was that one crazy, you know, these guys? But it's kind of a good article, you know, on their madness, you know. But I mean, that's a reflection of the modern mind.

[40:38] I heard something else. I was on the radio there, where they, they're, I guess they're they're accepting now into some of the museums the the

[40:50] Norman Rockwell paintings, right? Which are kind of you know they used to frown down upon, right? Because they're not the most profound paintings, but they're they're kind of you know true to human nature, you know. You've seen the Norman Rockwell used to be on covers of these things and so on, and people kind of like them because they they speak to us of you know of American values, so-called, right?

[41:13] And people want to be confirmed in these, right? Of course, modern art doesn't confirm your American values. It doesn't mean anything, right? And and but the art critic was saying, you know, that people like this stuff actually, you know, and you know modern art is you know he was speaking, you know, modern art is is unpopular art, right? But you have to be initiated into the life because by fancy you don't like it at all, right?

[41:38] Because you know, it's like this crazy music, you know, and it's it's it's it's beyond you know, like Marcus. Remember the Marcus? These things they're beyond satire because they're just so asinine. But one of these pieces of music they had was where you know they come on stage, right? They sit down for I don't know, ten fifteen minutes. They don't play a single sound, and they get up and leave.

[42:06] To put up with that, you know, it just has to be, you know. You're mad, you know? but I mean, this is this is in its own way kind of madness, you know. That

[42:32] so I mean, you look at that. I mean, then you look at that statement of Bohr, right? you know, that, uh, the task of science to extend the range of our experience and reduce it to order, right? What we know is the order of our experience.

[42:49] We don't know any order in the things that we experience. but we know it's the order of our experiences. It's kind of strange, isn't it? You find statements you know this sort, huh? Or

[43:03] Man's cut off from the real world, you know. That might be the same kind of thinking of people saying, "Well, Saint Thomas was created a great system." He didn't. He didn't. No. No. No. Is it? Then you'd be knowing what he made. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, and if you're sophisticated, let me. I have to go back, you know, to you know, spring, summer, fall, winter, which I think is kind of an order in things, you know, around here anyway, right?

[43:46] I don't think it's an order, you know, made by me, or it's an order by experience, you know. But I freeze sometimes of the year, and other times of the year I I'm too hot, and so you know, but I think there's something out there, you know. that. That, uh, is before or after something else.

[44:06] So. Even though when they talk about their making in experimental science, their making is, it's not even like the demiurge that has matter and makes everything else. There's, there's a lot that they're not making. Yeah. You know, when they do an experiment. Yeah. And the results Yeah. come are because of the natures of the things that Yeah, yeah, yeah. bring out. So, would you say that's right, that like these statements, even with experimental science?

[44:46] Yeah, like with Louis de Broglie, you know, when they speak of this, this order, right? You know, in some way affecting an order that's, that's, it's in things, right? You know? But, but still, it's an order that is what? Louis de Broglie speaks to that, right, sometimes, huh? but still the order that we're knowing is not the order in things, right? We're knowing an order that may, in some not quite understood way, reflect an order that's outside, right?

[45:22] But, uh, uh, and that- and some of them take that seriously, you know, but it does, right? You know, but it- but it's still not a knowledge directly of the other order wherein things.

[45:45] Then, like, it seems there's different kind of experiments, maybe. Like, I don't know if you remember that experiment of, um, um, Tinbergen where he's trying to find how the wasps find their hole. Mhm. So he put a circle of pine cones around the hole. Mhm. And the wasps came in and out, and when the wasp was gone, he took the circle and moved it over here. Mm-hmm.

[46:10] And the wasp went, but there was no hole there. Mm. So you realize the wasp kind of sees like a pattern or something. Yeah. And so he's he's making something, um, and doing an experiment Mm-hmm. that you don't have in nature. Mm-hmm. Um, but he's, it seems he's not just knowing a reflection. No. Despite that, he comes to know nature itself. No, no, no. They say this, this, there may be some exaggeration to this, right?

[46:38] But you do see them saying this, you know, so. Uh. Yeah. See, notice what Heisenberg says in this particular one here, the physicist on page 4, there, the bottom paragraph.

[46:58] It has become clear that the desired objective reality of the elementary particles is too crude an oversimplification of what really happens, right? For if we wish to form a picture of the nature of these elementary particles, we can no longer ignore the physical processes through which we obtain our knowledge of them, right? While in observing everyday objects, the physical process involved in making observation plays a subsidiary role only, right?

[47:23] And that's really what philosophy is more closely related to, right? In the case of the smallest building particles of matter, every process of observation produces a large disturbance. We can no longer speak of the behavior of the particle independently of the process of observation. There's some truth to that, huh? The atomic physicist has had to resign himself to the fact that his science is but a link in the infinite chain of man's argument with nature, and that it cannot simply speak of nature in itself.

[47:52] Science always presupposes the existence of man, and as Bohr has said, we must become conscious of the fact that we're not merely observers, but also actors on the stage of life, right? Um.

[48:08] Okay. Or in this other passage on the top of page 5 there, science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scientific method of analyzing, explaining, and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention, science alters and refashions the object of investigation.

[48:42] Right? Now, I mean, I mean, to some extent, you can go back to the principle we saw Aristotle there in the central question of philosophy, right? Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are, right? You know? And there may be some confusion of that in the modern scientists, right? And certainly in Marx, right? Okay. But you say, if we know only by making, right, then we know only what we make.

[49:12] Mm. So that's in a sense saying, right, that, uh, we can't by an experiment know something that we didn't make, right? That might be not altogether true, right, huh? You know, an experiment might help you know something about what's there apart from your experiment, right? But if you thinking like most people think, that the way we know must be the way things are, right? Right? And if the way we know is by making, all we can possibly know is what we make.

[49:47] Yeah. We couldn't possibly know things themselves because we have to make in order to know. If we don't know what we made, we can make anything then, right?