Without the science of intangibles, the earth is still flat

Abstract

The modern age, leading up to the Information age, has been dominated by Europe-centered science, often termed as the 'New Science'. Even though it is not readily recognized, the root of this New Science lies within Aristotle's theory of excluded middle and old Greek philosophy that confuses between ideal and real. These same principles, which is synonymous with the short-term approach (focusing on tangibles or taking Δt to 0), was supported by the Roman Catholic Church, which, in turn opposed the emergence of New Science. This dichotomy is not clear as the original science (as in process) has been divided into many branches, such as hard science, social science, theology, and others. Because this distinction is not clear, a scientist can be pro-science and pro-Church at the same time. This would explain why most scientists who are credited to have pioneered new science did not confront the fundamental dogmas of the Church. Galileo, for instance, never opposed the original dogma of Catholic church yet he drew the wrath of the church because he opposed the literal (tangible) meaning of the book that was being promoted as the holy book (bible literally means, The Book). In scientific sense, what Thomas Aquinas, the man credited to have revived Aristotelian logic (via Averröes's translation), was to Christianity what Newton was to New Science and Mathematics. Both of them based their syllogism on the first premise that was aphenomenal. It is no surprise that most of the New Scientists are 'believers' of Christianity. Greek philosophical notions of idea or form could not be verified or disproved by experiment, so outside of mathematics, the Greek philosophical approach was sloughed off in experimental science. The problem was that neither the Greek notions of idea and form, nor experimental science, revealed the truths of nature. Yet, those notions were dominant in New Science. Experimental studies had the advantage of helping to eliminate what was outrightly false. In itself, that only eliminates possibilities. It does not automatically tell us what is true or even distill the truth from whatever remains after the false has been eliminated. Einstein made a big leap forward with the notion of thought-experiment, but this has proven difficult to rigourise in terms of modeling. Meanwhile, everything that claims to be rigorous in contemporary scientific modeling is highly suspect precisely to the extent that these models fail to account for multiple and-or singular solutions. The main problem with aphenomenal models (that have dominated the New Science) is their assumption of mechanisms that are not anywhere in evidence in physical nature/reality. The problem with Greek-philosophical abstract ideas and forms is the assumption that whatever exists in reality is just the materialization of the abstract idea. The deficiency in the Greek-philosophic method is the absence of any notion of pathway, while the deficiency of the aphenomenal model is its inherent assumption of 'either with us or against us', leaving no room for the science of intangibles. In this paper, first approximations of Newton's 'laws' as well as other fundamental 'laws' of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics are presented and compared with fundamental traits of nature. It is shown that each of these 'laws' has an aphenomenal basis, making the each of them inherently aphenomenal. The paper then discusses the implications of these 'laws' and how engineering based on these 'laws' would lead to processes that are inherently anti-nature, hence, unsustainable. It is shown that by focusing on tangibles (i.e., eliminate root and pathway from a process), the New Science has become a tool for confirming the prejudice that fueled the investigation. This is contrary to any true scientific investigation that should not allow any prejudice to propagate, let alone form the basis of a scientific process. The paper further argues that with the science of tangibles, doing more of the same science will not advance knowledge and will in fact render a falsehood (from ignorance) into an apparent (perception of) truth. Finally, the paper shows an outline on how to introduce the science of intangibles – the essence of knowledge.