The future of science, as Francis Bacon once said, lies in the ultimate unification of the mind of man with the nature of things.

I was wondering as I read your post whether you have any arguments or evidence for your assertions, or whether you expect them simply to be accepted at face value. Or should they be accepted because they produce resonance in some readers? Or is it because Francis Bacon said something or other. Of course, what he meant was that science tries to know what the nature of things is like. Nothing quite so mysterious as you think.

It seems that the platonic was infatuated with the universal, and its maths were focused on the universal. Then descartes and newton came along and purported the individual and not the universal.

I think it would appropriate today to do without either. There is just the calculus.

Western Philosophy has often had a love affair with the universal, the individual, and that which binds the two- the word; logic.

Part of my argument is that I can't see how an object could exist independently.

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Is one of your premises that you " can't see how an object could exist independently"? Well, I can't see why it cannot. So I guess we are even.

What do you think would happen if some disaster caused every person on the planet to die (perhaps a plague). Do you think that Mount Everest would vanish?

Part of my argument is that I can't see how an object could exist independently.

"The intellect, owing to the operation of ignorance, wrongly transfers its sense of unconditionedness which is its ultimate nature to itself in its mundane nature."[117] Thus, inherent existence is wrongly applied to the mind-body complex; we take our determinate, conditioned existence as unconditioned and self-existent....

For with the positing of an absolute "I" there is the necessary "not-I" to oppose it. The individual is then forever divided from and in conflict with the world. Since this separation is taken as absolute, their relation is inconceivable and there is no hope for reconciliation: we are bound to a life of continual conflict and frustration....

Following the pattern of this error which gives rise to the false sense of "I," the intellect then posits substantiality upon every object it finds. It distinguishes objects and invents distinct names for them, then takes the apparent difference it has created as a real given. "To seize the determinate is really to allow oneself to be misled by names; it is to imagine that different names mean separate essences; this is to turn relative distinctions into absolute divisions."[119] As a result, not only is the individual person in conflict with the world, but the world is now in conflict with itself. The parts, conceived as independent entities, are isolated from each other and the organic unity that relates them in harmony is lost.

It seems that the platonic was infatuated with the universal, and its maths were focused on the universal. Then descartes and newton came along and purported the individual and not the universal

I'm in tune with your sentiments here but I think your terminology is innaccurate.

I think you're actually protesting against materialism, or the idea that the universe comprises blind indifferent forces ultimately reducible to the laws of physics. I think that this attitude would necessarily be one of scientific realism, but a philosophical realist is something else, and not necessarily materialist at all. In fact, 'realism' in philosophy used to refer to Platonism and the idea of 'real universals' and was basically a religious philosophy.

In this medieval scholastic philosophy, however, "realism" meant something different-indeed, in some ways almost opposite-from what it means today. In medieval philosophy, realism is contrasted with "conceptualism" and "nominalism". The opposition of realism and nominalism developed out of debates over the problem of universals. Universals are terms or properties that can be applied to many things, rather than denoting a single specific individual-for example, red, beauty, five, or dog, as opposed to "Socrates" or "Athens". Realism in this context holds that universals really exist, independently and somehow prior to the world; it is associated with Plato. ... Nominalism holds that universals do not "exist" at all; they are no more than words we use to describe specific objects, they do not name anything.

For Plotinus, man "is in some sense divine, and the object of the philosophic life is to understand this divinity and restore its proper relationship with the divine All and, in that All, to come to union with its transcendent source, the One or Good" (Cambridge, 222). Plotinus's philosophy is difficult to elucidate, precisely because what it seeks to elucidate is a manner of thinking that precedes what one terms discursive thought. Discursive thought is the sort of thinking we do most often in a philosophical discussion or debate, when we seek to follow a series of premises and intermediate conclusions to a final conclusion. In such a thinking, our minds move from one point to the next, as if each point only can be true after we have known the truth of the point preceding it. The final point is true, only because we have already built up one by one a series of points preceding it logically that are also true. In the same way, the meaning of the sentence I am now speaking only builds itself up by the addition of each word, until coming to its conclusion it makes a certain sense built of the words from which it is constituted. Because discurive thinking is within ordinary time, it is not capable of thinking all its points or saying all its words in the very same moment.

But Plotinus wishes to speak of a thinking that is not discursive but intuitive, i.e. that it is knowing and what it is knowing are immediately evident to it. There is no gap then between thinking and what is thought--they come together in the same moment, which is no longer a moment among other consecutive moments, one following upon the other. Rather, the moment in which such a thinking takes place is immediately present and without difference from any other moment, i.e. its thought is no longer chronological but eternal. To even use names, words, to think about such a thinking is already to implicate oneself in a time of separated and consecutive moments (i.e. chronological) and to have already forgotten what it is one wishes to think, namely thinking and what is thought intuitively together.

You can take this or leave it as far as whether you believe it or not. The point I am trying to get at is that unless you have some ability to enter or imaginatively re-create, this 'mode of thinking' then nothing much about forms, ideas, universals, metaphysics, and so on will make a lot of sense. The reason it makes sense to me, is that I practice Zen meditation, and despite their considerable differences, Platonism and Zen have far more in common than either of them do with scientific realism. Scientific realism is an outlook on life which generally rejects anything mystical, idealist, metaphysical.

:a-thought:I didn't start off intending to type so much here.

Some particles existed in an abstract way before they were proven to be real.

I think scientific realism (contemporary philosophical realism) leaves the bulk of human life unaddressed. Like the lady said: when it comes to falling in love or joining the Communist Party, they ain't got much to contribute.

As always, I say they're both right and they're both wrong.

I think scientific realism (contemporary philosophical realism) leaves the bulk of human life unaddressed. Like the lady said: when it comes to falling in love or joining the Communist Party, they ain't got much to contribute.

As always, I say they're both right and they're both wrong.

My first impulse in reaction to your post was to say that scientific realism must not be deep.

But then I thought that surely there must be depth to scientific realism. But I find myself at a loss to say where that depth might be.

I thought that surely there must be depth to scientific realism. But I find myself at a loss to say where that depth might be.

doesn't it make more sense philosphically to describe the underlying physical matter within the blob of wax as being real than to say that each of the ten thousand forms are what is real?

What if we take an object: let us say a two pound 'blob' of wax.

Let us then say that there exists in the world two thousand manufacturing plants which are capable of transforming the blob of wax into ten thousand useful or purposeful forms.

Does it then make sense philosophically to define each of the ten thousand different forms as posessing a full and final status that we could call real?

Considering that there are underlying principles regarding the blob of wax that are more basic than the ten thousand forms, doesn't it make more sense philosphically to describe the underlying physical matter within the blob of wax as being real than to say that each of the ten thousand forms are what is real?

What does "more basic" mean? "More real" by any chance?

By more basic I mean something like the chemical composition of the wax.

I know that. But why does that make it "more real"?