An idea is perfect because it is exactly the way you want it to be, in its own universe it ignore whatever law it wants. If you bring it into this world, it will be hindered by craftmanship and reality.

I think that is what plato ment, could be wrong tho.

Any science that uses instruments or is theoretical I consider symbolic. Someone who studies earthquakes uses machines that he interprets to detect an earthquakes intensity because he can not directly see the intensity as such, for example.

Science is based on the notion that it's in some way progress, and assumed worthy. I also would be careful to pin my happiness on it.

Indeed it is not... Science is a modus operandi, nothing more... It is no different than using a spirit level to test if a wall runs straight...

People make of it what they will, and like religion, most people look at it with the most dismal notions straight from the outset...

What I said is that comtemplating things makes me happy, and science is how I contemplate things. My research uses my eyes and a pen and pad -- sometimes a video camera. But I don't thinks it's the machines that make a scientist. I think its having hypotheses than evidence can support or fail to support (falsifiable).

That's exactly it. That's what science is, it's a system for collecting and analysing data to see which ideas resist falsification... It is not a religion that promises to explain where the Universe came from or how man was created from dust or woman from a spare rib... It is a way of thinking and analysing clearly, nothing more...

it is how everyone understands the world. from cosmologist to toddlers.

does that make them right?

i do not understand what you are saying here.

why should there be skepticism? why would they be worthless? and what constitutes this "grand scale"?

i don't understand what you are trying to say here either.

it depends on what you consider truth. scientist understand that absolute truth can only be gained through a complete understanding of reality. an understanding of this nature is impossible so the things we do understand are not absolute truths. they are aproximations. everything we percieve through our conscious is an abstraction or an aproximation of reality. like you say we define things by contrasting them to other things. the majority of scientist believe that a true understanding of reality is unobtainable. there are a number of people that have claimed to understand absolute truth though. they say it occurs by transcending normal human consciousness. that this understanding lies outside of human rationality and intellect. understanding is even an incorrect term to define the experience, because it is a term referring to the rational mind. this is what buddhist and taoist claim. they have very interesting concepts about truth and reality. there is actually a large number of scientist, from biologist to physicist that have given alot of attention to eastern philosphies such as these. several have even incorporated some of those concepts into their science.

if that is so, then everything you percieve is symbolic and negates any notions of progress. your senses and your perception is as much a tool for understanding reality as is a seismograph. the only difference is in their application.

Using syllogism does not impy negation, only questioning. Symbols and signs is all we can percieve through experience, language..., all we can know. But it occurs to me if we use symbols to interpret as well as using them as tools for science for example, it can create maybe problems in perception in abstract thought and connotation.. im not sure this is making sense but o well' Your perception is not the tool because your senses are not symbols, or are they. do do do do - do do do do

This is a fairly accurate statement... Look at the question of the tree falling in the forest, but let's assume men are standing nearby and hear it...

The tree falls, and a spherical pressure wave propogates as a function of time, that much is obvious... The distance from the pressure wave from the source increases as the wave moves and the energy decreases as a function of the radius squared...

However, the way the human ear works, the energy decrease is perceived logarthimically, so if you have men standing at increasing distances from the source (the falling tree), the energy of the wave will appear to drop off much slower than it does in the maths...

This shows that our sences do not give us an accurate view of reality...

Mathematics never deal with qualities of objects. It measures their proportions, but never treats its concepts(triangularity, circularity) as qualities of an object (in an equation for instance). Then the world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions. -Sussane Langer(philo. in a new key)

Actually, it deals with such things very well... If you are dealing with an object which has three sides, and angles which have a sum of 180 degrees, then you are dealing with a triangle, and if you are dealing with an object which has a circumference equal to Pi by the diameter then you are dealing with a circle...

Qualitative is simply a poor man's quantitative...

Same thing applies to propagation of a pressure wave in space and time...

Your wisdom exceds wittgenstein's.

Man, I really started some kind of crazy mystic shit-talk, didn't I?

Who's he?

Type it into googgle and find out, sigh.

I'm busy and I don't really care who he is... I was curious to know if I was being complimented or insulted...

If you don't know, do you really want to find out?