Like ptolemaic epicycles?

I think you’ve got you a real insight there.

“My impression of the scientific world today is that the scientific community is crowding up against a paradigm shift–maybe on the scale of the decade or so before einstein or newton.”

Something that I’ve learned from crunching algebra related to the Navier-Stokes equation and 6 DoF trajectory equations is that natural truth tends to be simple and elegant. For example, if while working some algebra I made a transcription error, the complexity of the resultant equations would grow exponentially until they became unworkable (this was a signal that I had made a mistake). However if I kept the algebra error-free then eventally there would be a collapse in complexity and I’d have a simple answer.

I’ve noticed that many of the latest physical theories have undergone an exposion in complexity, e.g. String Theory, etc. Normally this indicates that the theories are wrong.

Would Sam’s star shine just as brightly for one believing in a Theory of Everything? That’s what I’m doubting.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 1 Cor. 13:12-13

Just as Frodo doesn’t know the way but will bear the ring nevertheless, we also don’t know everything now, but instead we have faith, hope, charity. Maybe the not-knowing is the precondition for the faith, hope, charity. Seekers after a Theory of Everything, not content with mere faith or hope or charity, I fear, would like to skip those prerequisites, leaving lots more room for tyranny.

Here’s an informative and optimistic bit from zombietime:

http://www.zombietime.com/lefts_big_blunder/

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I liked the last line from zombietime:

“Yet it may very well be that an army of glum, dispirited and pessimistic conservatives will reluctantly trudge to the polls on November 4, each one imagining they are the only remaining person in the entire country voting for McCain, and lo and behold — they’ll turn out to be a silent majority after all. ”

I’ll be one of those dispirited and pessimistic conservatives voting quixotically for McCain but I’m not optimistic about a suprise happy ending…

A young man had just learned from his spiritual teacher that the young man is “god” – this an attempt, I think, to create an immediate experience of God, and empower that feeling. The young man, flush with a sense of his own godly power, leaves for the marketplace, where he sees life in all its raucous chaos. An elephant comes down the street, the man on his back warning, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” People scurry out of the way.

Well, in India, the elephant is a manifestation of God, and the young man thought that surely, this “God” would recognize him. As the elephant approached, the man on the elephant’s back shouting, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” the young man thought, “He is God, I am God, I will stand my ground and he will go around.”

Surprise, surprise, the elephant walks by, swings his trunk and sends the young man flying. Full of hurt anger, the young man returns to his spiritual teacher and tells him what happened, finishing with, “You lied to me!”

The teacher leans close, looks at the young man, and says, “You fool! Didn’t you hear God telling you to get out of the way?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pi0pG_SPSk

http://www.zombietime.com/lefts_big_blunder/

Perhaps a Seekers soundtrack would be apt …

The scientists joke that –in the Higgs Boson particle they’re looking for at CERN–they’re looking for the God particle–because this is the particle that gives the other particles their mass.

(The joke is that these folk are all materialists. As Ezra Pound put it–there are no ideas but in things. However, the standard model today hangs on nothing.)

imho things will change whether they find Higgs Boson or not–that’s just my wag because in the last couple years scientists have been talking about dark energy and dark mass.

scientists are perplexed. stuff doesn’t quite fit their model. if they find the higgs boson they will wind up with a complete model that doesn’t scale to fit the observed data on a macro scale. If they don’t find the higgs boson particle then their model is wrong.

Either way the standard model is wrong.