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On the eve of Muhammad’s Prophetic mission, the uninviting and harsh city of Makkahhad little to boast by way of science. Arabs excelled in poetry and genealogies–both oral traditions going back for centuries–but they had no science except for certain bedouin techniques of folk medicine and astronomy. The great scientific and cultural centers of the…
Dartinol Report for History 102By Jasper GreenwaltHealy HighDecember 7, 2083 Meditation used to be different before Dartinol. It was a struggle to keep your mind on your breath, and most people simply didn’t have the will power. Whereas now it takes a few days to reach The State, it used to take decades. In the…
Meta 134. 1999/08/24. Approximately 849 words. Below is an announcement about Clifford Pickover’s latest book entitledSURFING THROUGH HYPERSPACE UNDERSTANDING HIGHER UNIVERSES IN SIX EASYLESSONS. The book is on the spirituality of higher dimensions, such as thefourth dimension. Among other things, he discusses the possibility of Godhovering in the fourth dimension, only inches away from us….
In this forum on Science and Religion, we have had postings on Christianity and Science, Judaism and Science, as well as on Islam and Science. We can keep adding to the list: Buddhism and Science, Hinduism and Science, Voodoo and Science, etc. In each instance, the erudite exponent will demonstrate (at least to his/her) own…
The main difficulty I have with Holmes Rolston’s essay on “Possibility Space” is in his statement: “We face questions about the increase of complexity and diversity, about contingency and inevitability in such increase, about novelty and progress.” Looking over my notes from the April 19 presentation, I am struck by the comment that Rolston presents…
Regarding the second contribution in Meta 115, claiming that variations in the laws of physics do not make life improbable: I have found very interesting the web page I arrvied at via this discussion, namely http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/avoid/intel.html by Prof Stenger (Hawaii). This is by far one of the best argued purely physicalist discussions of the anthropic…
Meta 119. 6/29/99. Approximately 467 words. Below is a message from Vic Stenger at the University of Hawaii in responseto George Ellis on the “Toy Universe” thread (see Meta 116). Thediscussion revolves around the anthropic principle and the “fine tuning” ofthe fundamental laws of physics. We also have dueling webpages at<http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/avoid/intel.html> (Vic Stenger’s “ToyUniverse”) and…
I have just come back from a quick trip to the old German city of Jena, close to Weimar. By one of those unfortunate accidents of history, Jena found itself on the wrong side of the border through the Cold War, so having suffered through thirteen years of the Third Reich and four years of…
I know I have wandered into difficult terrain. What makes science Islamic, or in other words, what adds a religious dimension to science is a problematic question because the answer depends on certain definitions which are not universally recognized. But let us try to look at the question from the perspective of Islamic tradition which…
What possibility spaces are needed to get from beginnings to where we have now arrived, in Earth history?