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%ETERNAL LAW SCIENTISTS 810216
How can scientists know eternal laws? Is it possible
to know an eternal law with confidence, without oneself
being eternal and unchanging? Can a growing scientist
know for sure that what he has discovered is unchanging?
It would seem that a changing scientist can not be sure
that he has come to know unchanging rules of process. How
can that which is changeable be the standard of judgment
for that which is eternal? Are the swirling ocean waters
to serve as a point of reference against which to measure
the movement of the Rock of Gibraltar? The man who would
be the measure of eternal laws should be less changeable
than the laws!
Those who deal with presumably eternal laws are
tempted to regard themselves as unchanging, and to attempt
to be unchanging. They are tempted to regard permanence
as a virtue---even in their own character. To the extent
that they yield to such temptation they cease to grow, to
learn. They cease seeking out new personal relationships
which will promote personal growth, and instead engage in
the fiction that they are eternal observers---who watch
and understand the operations of eternal laws of nature.
They yearn to be omniscient, omnipresent, and eternal.
To the extent that scientists embody such ideals
they are unsuited to be humane teachers relating to
growing young people who are prone to challenge
traditional impersonal presuppositions, assumptions,
metaphysics, epistemologies, and logic. Such challenges
are prone to undermine the inflexible foundations of the
inflexible scientists and so occasion greater rigidity in
the scientists' manner of approach to the challengers.
The challenges are not likely to be directly based upon
empirical evidence, and so are not likely to be respected
by the empirically prone scientists. Challenges based
upon hunches, intuition, fantasies, feelings, emotions,
and the like---are not respectable to eternal scientists
who respect unchanging objects as the most real basis for
understanding. Hunches, intuition, fantasies, feelings,
emotions and the like are too changeable to be trusted.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty
(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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