Ready to move beyond mere science

A friend wrote, "appearing and being are not exactly the same thing."

I say yes they are. What appears to you is what is. There is nothing outside of you which tells you, or me, that IT, what ever "it" is, IS.

The only way I can know is through me and my senses. My stream of experiences are mine, no one else's. These experiences do not prove the existence of the exterior world or anything in it. I construct that sense-world by attributing my sensations to an unknown universe. The world then is my projected picture of it, symbolic and approximate. We justify, on the whole, the external world by accepting our private evidence that something exists beyond ourselves.

So, I contend, we go about our business thinking that I see, feel, hear--sense--what you think you see, etc., or can. Thus the bases for science and other things. _I_ becomes _we_. And we proceed beyond me and under the illusion that my concrete reality is the same as yours, a "consensual realty." We carry on our oh-so-practical lives on what are defenseless and uncertain foundations.

Thus all is _interpretation_, the business of naming, describing the workings, and understanding. Scientists interpret. Sociologists and others do also. We do. The reality that is, or is claimed, shimmers.

But a rock you say? I should go outside. Find a rock, pretty good size. Take off my shoe and kick it. There, doesn't shimmer so much as hurts a damn lot. There is my reality, you say.

Yes, but that is but one experience, one description, of a rock. Solid so much that it can hurt you if you kick or stumble upon it. But I propose there are different descriptions, and levels of. Solid rocks become vast empty spaces, more empty space than particles that make up the solid of the solid rock in the quantum physicist's view(?). If he be correct and I am correct, we are not talking about the same thing. Different things. Different descriptions. Add to this the idea of a rock, and we have three quite separate descriptions for what we consensually agree is, a rock.

Hard science is but one of at least four ways of knowing. I can examine a rock as a physical thing (hard science). I can examine it in my unforgettable experience of it (phenomenology). My toes still smart. I can look at rocks as cultures have understood them, what they mean to peoples (anthropology and related disciplines). And I can consider rocks as parts of systems that use them physically or metaphorically. That these may make an integrated map of the thing is here left for another time, but I suspect integration is only partial. After all, differences are differences.

To quote an earlier self of mine, credits to others available if asked:

What-is-the-experience-of becomes first person knowing (e.g., phenomenology and related interior sciences). What do we understand, believe, value, etc., becomes first person plural (e.g., interpretive studies such as history, cultural anthropology). Examining it and explaining what and how becomes singular thing research, the object(s) of inquiry for harder (more exterior) science (e.g., biology, physics, etc.). Not least (because all four perspectives are contributors to knowing and understanding) is things plural and how they relate (e.g., systems sciences, political science, etc.).

You don't like the word truth. I don't much like the word science in the way you have limited it. What are we left with? I guess it is an IT. Whatever IT is, and I don't mean information technology, IT is what IT is, based on perspective. And different perspectives, I sincerely assume, are useful. And legitimate. If you like, science (the hard stuff) is done more or less well. And the other fields of inquiry are done more or less well as you have aptly pointed out. We need not throw out any of it though, unless patently worthless or fraudulent.

All for what? Explanation seems to relate specifically to things, whats. Rocks, cells, chemicals, etc. And their interactions. An explanation is a how. How does a cell work?

After one answers that, the question is so what? And this takes one off into another territory, another perspective. That is meaning. And meaning is all about understanding.

Hard science itself is limited. It doesn't give us meaning, arguably the important part. Yes, it is nice to know what a cell is and how it functions. And if you don't have a healthy one, it can do this bit of damage or that. But that is nothing about why, or what to do with the new info/knowledge you have discovered. And _why_ is what the universe is about and wants to know--not that it is, or shimmers, and it works rather mechanically this way or that. Wonderful stuff and it can amaze and enlighten, but in the human end, insufficient.

So I will draw a distinction between _explanation_, which is all fine and good, and _understanding_, which gives me reasons for being. Neither by the way, need remain static. They shouldn't if there is more to learn about all the ITs.

Now to end the rant for the day. I feel as if I have plowed this field before but do the seeds desperately need re-cultivating to grow? New topics surely await. I feel I need to leapfrog forward from these "knowns" into a known I can discover. It lies herein, or without. I am ready to move on.