Thursday, 24 June 2021

Natural Philosophers

"Starfog."

On Kirkasant:

"..the natural philosophers knew certain things were possible, even if they didn't know how, and this was half the battle." (p. 730)

Consequently:

 "Once the scientific method had been created afresh, Laure thought, progress must have been more rapid than on Earth." (ibid.)

Natural philosophy: thought about nature;
conceptual philosophy: thought about thought;
natural science: experiments on nature.

Thus, philosophy split into "philosophy" and science. Thus also, Kirkasanters reverted to "natural philosophy" before reinventing science.
 
Laure expects several new sciences to emerge from discoveries made in the Cloud Universe.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm rereading THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS, and I came across that very same idea in the chapter called "Judgment Day": if Hanno and the other Eight Survivors were "immortal," then that should also be possible for ordinary humans. See the discussion Hanno had with Sam Giannotti, one of the scientists he hired to work at the Rufus Institute.

Ad astra! Sean