The British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, famously the only man besides Einstein to understand Special Relativity, once famously opined that ‘the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.’ This mantra has often been picked up as the expression of a sort of humility before a universe whose richness is matched only by its intense mystery. Human imagination, claimed Eddington, is limited by its conceptions of possibility, which are themselves drawn in line with our present understanding of the world. The dim light of human understanding is forever bordered by a vast expanse of the unknown; and in that epistemic gloom, so goes the thought, lies we know not what.
This might strike many Forteans as a rather pessimistic attitude – surely part of the remit of Forteanism is to step outside the confines of conventional understanding and reach into that unknown. The idea of imposing immediate limitations upon what can and cannot be known unduly limits our engagement with the world. If, as the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus remarked, ‘Nature loves to hide’, then we must search for Her everywhere, and in any way we can, becoming ‘inquirers into very many things indeed.’ Fort had the same idea, arguing that if all things are interconnected, ‘of any underlying oneness’, then ‘it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. ’
Returning to Eddington, then, his complaint that the universe is ‘stranger than we can imagine’ underestimates human ingenuity. If the universe is indeed stranger than we can imagine, then we must expand and push back the boundaries of possibility and imagination. . One way to do this, surely, is to augment our conventional scientific and philosophical imaginations by courting the damned data, the outcast insights, the unwashed and the unwanted. This inclusive epistemology, a theory of knowledge without prejudices, was Fort’s contribution to our sense of the richness and depth of our world, so often painted with the pale palette of scientific orthodoxy and mathematical formalism. What astronomy cannot tell, perhaps astrology can suggest. Or as Fort put it, ‘I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles.’
The BBC is currently making film about Einstein and Eddington with David Tennant as Eddington.
I've come to the conclusion that most science is about validating the present paradigm, and not stretching the boundaries.
Science has achieved only a few paradigm shifts, and usually caused by a rebel outside the establishment. Once an 'establishment' is set up to validate the new paradigm, it is 'old knowledge,' clung to for dear life.
Data is only accepted if it continues to validate. Imagination dies as soon as the established view appears.
Whilst understanding and accepting Eddington's views on the Human imagination being limited; this is open to debate....
For example, I would like to suggest that imagination is limited based on culture or society. I.e. My imagination will be limited because of my cultural upbringing and exposure to science and media. However, if I were to have been brought up in a 'less advanced' society, but still with an understanding of science, would my imagination be as limited?
The idea of "human imagination" is a puzzling one; for one thing, humankind is not a homogenous mass. Human beings vary enormously, in cognitive abilities, education and training, and access to intellectual and practical resources. Humans also occupy particular cultural and historical frameworks, influenced by all sorts of social, political and religious interests.
So, taken all together, our imaginations - personal and collective - are not so much "limited" as highly constrained, or, better, contingent. We are all, as Martin Heidegger put it, "situated" within a particular social and historical framework - much like the point made by Anthony North in the particular case of science.
Eddington was obsessed with an equation of small numbers as a theory of everything. In fact it already exists but has a secret: The Tetrad.
The Tetrad works due to asymmetry while all of science is based on symmetry. 1:2:3:4 is 2:3 as the Perfect 5th and 3:4 as the Perfect 4th, only as an infinite spiral of overtones, not as the closed, logarithmic circle of fifths.
Read "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" trans. by Charles Luk to learn about the Tetrad as the theory of everything. Yang is 2:3 and Yin is 3:4.
This healer sat in full-lotus for 40 days straight in a cave, with no water and no food, Master Chunyi Lin at http://springforestqigong.com
Other qigong masters similarly can transform matter and energy, and spacetime -- through the Tetrad.
I couldn't understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
