<b>The Evolution of Scientific Thought - For those interested in the study of science or history

Page twenty six

The Evolution of Scientific Thought:

For those interested in

Science or History

The following pages set out the scope and content of 8 lectures, given annually over the last 5 years..

To challenge your thinking I have added some of my own conjectures and speculations about key theories: Remembering that they are all just theories.

You can obtain a copy of these 8, 90 minute lectures as email attachments. (Approx 90 A4 pages)

Just send AUS$20 together with your name and email address to:

Burnard Morey 40 Laurie Street CLOVERDALE 6105 West Australia

THE EVOLUTION OF

SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

Burnard Morey

BSc DCH FAIM FRACI

The Evolution of Scientific Thought

Foreword

This series of lectures is a non-technical, non-mathematical exploration of the evolution of man’s thinking about the universe and the world around us, from Stonehenge until the end of the twentieth century. It formed the basis of a series of lectures in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and again in 2005, to The University of the Third Age in Perth, an extension service of the University of Western Australia,. You will meet many of the key players in this great saga, and the controversies that surrounded their discoveries and ideas. It helps us appreciate what a weird and wonderful world we live in, where, despite all our knowledge, we seem no nearer to solving the riddle of the universe – just a little more mystified.

An Introductory Thought

The more we speculate, and think scientifically, and the more we discover, the more we realise that we live in a very weird and bizarre World or Universe; which Einstein referred to as, ‘this strange world’. It surprises many scientists that we are able to understand it at all, and they see this as a very significant fact. It implies that mind, or consciousness, and physical reality, are somehow inter-related at the most fundamental level, as some interpretations of the Quantum Theory suggest. (see The Field, and the Intention Experiment, by Lynne McTaggart)

I suspect that at the most profound depths of reality it is not strange, weird, or bizarre at all, just very simple. Let me use music as an analogy.

When you listen to a Beethoven Symphony, for example, the sound or harmony is extremely complex. It is a combination of the individual sounds of each instrument, which in turn have their own characteristic sounds: violins, cellos, basses, flutes, oboes, clarinets, trumpets, drums & symbols, even human voices.

But each of these individual characteristic sounds is built up from what are called fundamentals – simple harmonic notes of different frequencies stretching on either side of what we have called middle C, which has a frequency of 256 vibrations per second. As these fundamentals are played together, they resonate; their waveforms interact and create harmonics and beats, such as chords, where you do not hear the individual notes but a composite sound – either pleasantly harmonious or discordant, which is a subjective judgement. And these in turn interact to create the even more complex harmonies or discords, which Beethoven weaves into his symphony. What you hear is nothing like the fundamental sound waves from which all this grew, in fact, you may find it difficult to appreciate that such simple sounds, or waves of energy, evolved and ended up as a Beethoven symphony.

As human beings, we are no different. Our highly convoluted harmonious or discordant natures and personalities also are built up from the resonating interaction and the evolution of all our simple memories of learning, sensory experience, and thinking, making each of us as individual and as complex as that Beethoven Symphony. We evolve individually in much the same way that all of creation evolves – the resonating interaction of energy waves, in this case memory patterns.

So I feel it is the same with the universe – a very profound but simple series of fundamentals, energy waves (in this case, electromagnetic), which through evolution over an infinity of time have woven themselves into the weird and bizarre universe in which we find ourselves living today. It is like the complex musical symphony; we only hear and see the final harmonies and discords, and not the simple fundamental depths from which it all evolved. In fact, these harmonies and discords are still evolving, and will continue to do so through infinity of time, because we live in a continually creative and creating universe (See lecture 6 on Evolution). Many, maybe most, of these evolutionary changes remain hidden from us because, not only are they spread over enormous eons of time, but also because of our personally limited vision and perception; our blinkered and biased view and interpretation of reality. Even the Instigator of this infinite symphony is invisible to our limited perception and understanding. What we see and hear and experience shows no similarity to the simplicity out of which it is all formed. We’ll glimpse that weirdness later when we consider the implications of the more recent thinking of scientists.

CONTENTS