Benjamin's Posterous

family man, tech enthusiast, software consultant, minimalist, salsa beginner, striving to be green, fueled by Colombian coffee
 

Wittgenstein and a Friend

Meeting a friend in the corridor, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) said:

WITTGENSTEIN
Tell me, why do people always say that it was natural for men to assume that the sun went around the earth rather than the earth was rotating?

FRIEND
Well, obviously, because it just looks as if the sun is going around the earth.

WITTGENSTEIN
Well, what would it look like if it had looked as if the earth were rotating?

Filed under  //   reason   science  
Posted May 15, 2010
 

Transcript from the movie “Creation”

This is one of my favorite scenes. Charles, Emma and Reverend Innes are picnicking and pondering nature...

 

CHARLES
Actually I was remembering how the tropical seas teemed with living particles that seemed to surround the Beagle with a luminous glow and leave a glistening pathway through the night.

Puzzling. So much beauty for so little purpose

REVEREND INNES
So little purpose! They were helping to light the ship’s way.

EMMA
Well said, exactly.

CHARLES
John, are you familiar with the works of Thomas Malthus?

REVEREND INNES
He married his first cousin didn’t he?

EMMA
So did I.

REVEREND INNES
Yes, but I wasn’t suggesting that…

CHARLES
Course you weren’t. Anyway Thomas Malthus calculated that if… well, if every trout, say, had a hundred or so offspring and so on and so forth throughout the generations, we’d be knee deep in trout in just a few decades. How would you respond to that?

REVEREND INNES
I’d  respond to that by saying that most of the eggs are destroyed or eaten so that the numbers remain stable. That’s the beauty of God’s plan.

CHARLES
It doesn’t strike you as an exceedingly wasteful plan, these myriad lives created only to be immediately extinguished?

REVEREND INNES
Providing food for others.

EMMA
Cheese and cucumber?

CHARLES
Thousands John. Thousands die so that only a few may live. Is not the general sum total of happiness in some sort of massive deficit?

REVEREND INNES
Charles, it is really not my duty to speculate on the mind of God but it does seem to me that nature is at peace.

JOSEPH HOOKER
* sighs * There is another view: that all of nature is a battlefield. Remind me where I read that.

Filed under  //   reason   science  
Posted May 5, 2010