03 Philosophy
Consultant: I definitely enjoy our philosophical conversations with you. At first, I confess, the Writer seemed too emotional to me. You, Engineer, were too rational. And the only common thing that united us then, as it seemed to me, was that together we graduated from one "applied mathematics" at the university, there are common themes and a common language. But then our life paths diverged, and when we began to communicate again, I asked myself – "why be together again if we have become so different?" Is nostalgia for adolescence a sufficient condition for friendship?
Writer: Heartless bastard!
Engineer: I agree.
Consultant: Wait a minute, let me finish! Engineer, do you remember how we argued about communism and capitalism? I had just finished my second managerial education and was trying to explain to you that “it's easier to break than to build”. That it is possible, probably, to return the plundered factories, but then they also need to be competently managed and developed. It is wrong to make a revolution, demolish the existing organization and say that you have done your half of the work and someone else has to continue somehow.
Engineer: I didn't say that. On the contrary, we then invited you to a meeting of our cell, so that you made a presentation about management to us.
Consultant: It was during the preparation of the presentation that I understood the main idea, which now I find more and more confirmation – we do not hold the whole one at a time! We, like those sages, hold some trunk, some tail, some something else. The elephant appears only when we get together and start communicating. Remember this picture?
Engineer: Sure. Square, triangle and circle are projections of a three-dimensional object onto orthogonal planes. If we position ourselves so that everyone can clearly see only one side, then everyone will see his own figure, different from the rest.
Consultant: Everyone will have their own truth. And until we get together and discuss something in common, but from different points of view, we have no chance to understand what we are really dealing with. One lives in the world of triangles, the other in the world of squares, and so on.
Writer: In the world of shadows. And if there is no source of light, then – generally in darkness.
Consultant: The most striking thing is that as soon as you have gathered an understanding of the subject from the three shadows, you can now change the lighting at any angle – you will still recognize this particular object in any shadow.
Writer: It's like a teacher who knows his topic well.. He can answer the question not with a quote from a textbook, but the way the answer is refracted in a specific situation, taking into account how old the student is in front of him and what are his abilities to perceive information.
Engineer: By the way, about perception. But an object, not a scientific object, but the one that is drawn on the board – after all, it can smell, make sounds, taste different, have different temperatures from different sides. Imagine how our brain, simultaneously collecting information from different receptors, collects a holistic multidimensional object and keeps it in focus and dynamics of change.
Writer: It seems to me that the person himself for another person is the most complex object, which is somehow collected in pieces in the head and then lives there. And every time you interact with this person, the projections of the whole are rechecked, something is added or removed, the model of this person is refined in the head.
Consultant: This is despite the fact that, as the Engineer says, we do not see the person directly. There are photons flying to the retina of the eye, there are sound waves, there are molecules of smell, the warmth of touch, and all this is combined with the image of this person in memory, which is refined with each new portion of information. Returning to our previous conversation: there is a person somewhere in the external environment, and in our head we see him only as a float on the surface of our consciousness… People, like fish in the ocean of life, touch our sensory hooks, fishing lines are pulled, and we sit on the shore of our consciousness and talk with floats :(
Writer: Have you ever wondered what “consciousness” is? Tell me, how many fingers do you see?
Engineer: Two.
Consultant: I do confirm, two. But what's the catch? It is the usual test for the presence of consciousness. When a person falls unconscious, after he is brought to his senses, he is asked about the number of fingers to make sure that it is adequate.
Writer: It turns out that you know that there are two of them. And you know. And I know. And we have “co-knowledge” or “co-science”! Latin roots confirm the same meaning: consciousness – shared knowledge. An interesting lesson is to take a close look at English words starting with “co-” and “con-”.
Engineer: It turns out that consciousness is somehow connected with language? We are with you in the Russian mind, the British in the English mind, the Chinese in the Chinese. And when we learn other languages, do we expand our consciousness?
Consultant: Square, triangle, circle…
Engineer: I disagree. “A chair” is “a chair” everywhere despite the wording of the language.
Writer: And what about different associations and connotations?
Engineer: It turns out that there is a certain capacity of the language, and it depends not only on the number of words, but also on the number of connections between them. Just like with human neurons! According to the latest data that I heard, there are about eighty billion of them, and there are more neural connections that these neurons form among themselves than there are stars in the sky! Some incredible numbers.
Consultant: I heard that a child, when he is born, has many more neurons than an adult. During growing up, those neurons that were not activated and did not begin to participate in neural connections die off. How a sculptor gradually removes everything superfluous from a single piece of marble and the figure remains.
Writer: The main question is – what is superfluous in our brain? Returning to the language. From the age of one, my wife and I taught our son three languages at once – English, French and Russian, of course. Courses for toddlers, tutors. The first words he began to speak in English. Apparently, because the words are shorter – "cat", "dog"… The idea to develop a child through learning different languages from childhood belonged to my wife, and at first I looked closely, but then I realized that there was no overload, languages were learned playfully – and I calmed down. It is interesting that during a conversation, the son freely switches from one language to another, never mixes them up. If I see an object, for example, an apple, then the Russian word “apple” appears in my head, which I can “translate” in the same head into “apple” in English. Just the way we learned languages – translation. And the son saw an apple for the first time, when he did not know any name, he just saw a tasty object. Heard three different names and remembered. That is, in my head “object – word 1 – then word 2”, and in his brain all connections are immediately ignited “object – word 1”, “object – word 2”, “object – word 3”.
Consultant: This is how our sciences are divided. Biologists have one language, chemists have a second, physicists have a third, but an apple is one object!
Engineer: Again – a square, a triangle, a circle…
Consultant: Yes, the world is complex and diverse. First there was philosophy, which posed general, existential questions. As knowledge accumulated, differentiation began, splitting into various sciences, in each of which related knowledge accumulated, its own language appeared. So much so that scientists have ceased to understand each other. But, by the way, there is a demand for the integration of sciences under one roof. All innovation is the result that appears at the junction of the integration of what was previously separated. To go far – as a consultant, I very often organize an environment in which employees from different departments finally begin to understand each other, although they seem to have spoken the same language before. And from this new understanding, there are explosions of efficiency.
Engineer: Now it is clear why our Doctor of Science is called “PhD” – Doctor of Philosophy. Ph.D. in mathematics, Ph.D. in physics, and so on. I just now realized.
Consultant: Apparently yes. How different methods relate to the same science. Similarly, different sciences belong to the same philosophy. And if a separate science answers the question – "How is the world organized in the plane of certain knowledge", then philosophy tries to answer one main question – "How is the World actually organized?"
Writer: Philo-sophy – from Greek – is the love of wisdom. But, if we are talking about a real questioning about the organization of the world, then religion appeared earlier. Appeared and developed. From answers to the questions “why the thunder is thundering” and “why the wind blows”, to the monotheistic religions of our time. At the same time, I consider it a profound delusion when they immediately slide down to the question “Who organized the World?” And argue whether “He” exists. From this all the problems. Religion answers precisely the question "How the World is organized" and "What is the place of human beings in the World?" The very word “religion” – “re-ligare” from Greek – reconnection, reconnection of what is already connected. Take two points in space. How many lines pass through them? One. The only one. And when we draw this line, or describe it by laws in science, there is a connection in our minds of two points, which are already connected, without you and me. In this sense, the concrete philosophy, which describes the World better than anyone else, approaches the concept of "religion".
Engineer: Personally, I can draw many lines through two points.
Writer: But only one of them will be a straight line, a trajectory along which the light travels!
Consultant: I'd rather stay on the philosophy floor. It is no longer as crowded as on the floors of methodology and science. In addition, the higher you are, as they say in our management, the less pressure on you from above! :) But I won't climb to the floor of religions. I'm afraid that at this altitude I may not have enough oxygen. In fact, historically, different peoples approached the ultimate foundations in different ways, so it turns out that there is nothing new – the same square, triangle, circle. You, the Writer, even though you say temptingly, that everything is simple and clear there, and the light in one straight line passes through two points. Well, do you at least admit that the light can be of different colors?
Writer: My light definitely shines and warms me, I will not tell about others and I will not impose. Each lamb will be hung by its own tail. See you again, my friends!
04 Knowledge and Faith
Writer: Who wrote this?
Engineer: I wrote this. This is the definition. You yourself said that no one understands what “love” is, and cannot express it in words if they ask what it is. I thought for a long time, found some elements, but finally the puzzle came together after reading the book you gave me.
Consultant: Bravo! The best writers and philosophers of all times pounded their foreheads in an attempt to express what “love” is, and our Engineer thought and thought and gave a definition! By the way, what book did the Writer give you?
Engineer: The Holy Bible. The Old Testament and the New Testament.
Consultant: ?!
Writer: What Gospel have you read in the New Testament? From Matthew, from Mark, from Luke, or from John. There, of course, all the books have the same story of Christ, but the first three were written independently for different communities: Matthew wrote for the Jews who believed in Christ, Mark wrote his Gospel for the Gentiles who believed in Christ, Luke has many historical details about the childhood of Jesus and his mother, Mary. And John wrote, knowing about the books already written, and his predecessors' stories are more supplemented than repeated.
Engineer: I read everything. Old and New Testaments – from Genesis to the Apocalypse. I can’t read books differently. I always read it completely first in order to understand the boundaries: what is at stake and what is not in the book. And then I go back to the moments that were hooked.
Writer: There are fifty books in the Old Testament, if you count non-canonical ones! I can't even believe that you have mastered everything.
Engineer: It was difficult, I will not hide it. But it was precisely while gnawing through the stories of the Old Testament with me that an insight happened, as our Consultant says. Just don’t be offended, it’s you who go to Church, and I am a man of science, I love facts and cause-and-effect relationships. Let me tell you in order how I saw it.
Consultant: It's getting more and more interesting!
Writer: Calm down, let him tell us what he understood…
Engineer: Let's start with the fact that laws are not invented, but discovered. The real laws, I mean, are related to the organization of the universe. Apples fell to the ground before Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation, and will continue to fall. In any case, first some pattern is caught, a hypothesis is made, the collection of facts begins, the identification of cause-and-effect relationships, the hypothesis is corrected. And only then, when the facts obtained by scientific methods are not refuted by experiments, a law is postulated. And even in this case, the field of application can expand, and new experiments will lead to a new law, in relation to which the old law will be a special case, working on a partial subdomain – one of the projections of a more multifaceted reality.
Consultant: Square, triangle, circle.
Writer: Don't interrupt! Please continue.
Engineer: It must be admitted that there are incidents in science. For example, the laws open to the microcosm do not work for the macrocosm and vice versa. String theory tries to combine the quantum mechanics of the microcosm and the general theory of relativity of the macrocosm, but we are already talking about at least ten dimensions of space-time.
So back to the laws and the Bible. In the Old Testament there are ten commandments, read – laws. There are only two in the New Testament, but they replace the previous ten. What are these laws about? About social behavior. What to do and what not to do. At first I thought, "Isn't Moses taking on a lot?" – where did he get these ten laws, why exactly these. And so, reading one of the countless stories about who gave birth to whom, who went where, who exterminated whom, it dawned on me: “Jews are a unique people!” It is not known why, but from the very ancient times they began to write down everything that happened to their people. Methodically, meticulously, in detail. For many hundreds of years, they have been fixing the facts of the life of the Jewish people with perseverance, which would be the envy of laboratory assistants and sociologists. And it turns out, having such records, one could see social patterns unfolding over the centuries, which is absolutely impossible for one person to do, observing the facts only during his life, even having the stories of his parents, who, as a rule, are also rejected in the heat of youthful immense energy.