Vaguely reminds me of Hegel as Hegel describes in his Phenomenology of Spirit the history of the human kind as a progress of collective consciousness (and as I see it, in parallel the progress of individual consciousness). What Hegel describes, in my perspective, is science as a way of thinking, or rather, science as a way of being, where you find yourself and people find you as you immerse yourself into the journey of the progressive world.<p>Recommend to try the preface of the Phenomenology of the Spirit to get some kind of idea of Hegel's thinking / speculative logic, which I find fascinating.
> Primitive man must have noticed that events did not occur simultaneously...<p>Could not make sense of this statement. Isn't just the opposite true? Whatever happens, happens simultaneously because for us only the present exists.
It seems to me this article uses Physics to justify the view that courts should "abstract new laws" as they deem necessary.<p>This is wholly undemocratic and while it claims to solve one problem (that of legal frameworks growing obsolete) it swaps democracy for 'laws by committee' or 'expert rule'. As a computer scientist I'd call this unscientific or at least a sloppy proposal.
I guess science has always been this contemptuous of both its ancestors and the religious.<p>> The Buddhist finds his answer in a toleration for what he may neither understand nor alter.<p>Huh? There is a rich spectrum of buddhist philosophy (Theravada, Mahayana, Zen, Tibetan) and all profess to demonstrate the ways of perceiving and understanding truth and pre-conceptual reality of this world. Straw man here?<p>> When we try to conceive of the state of mind of primitive man, the first thing that occurs to us is the bewilderment and terror he must have felt in the presence of the powers of nature.<p>Have a physicist and a "primitive man" face the powers of nature and see who's more comfortable with their surroundings.
To see the following in the first page of the article already turns me off reading any more<p>"To get an impression of primitive man's approach to the physical universe ..."<p>The underlying assumption that cultures from 2000 years or more ago are primitive belies the facts that we are unable to do things that they did on a regular basis in various engineering capacities.<p>Just consider that they built structures that still exist today when we have difficulty building structures that last beyond 50 years before they have to be torn down due to failures in the materials.
It seems to me this article uses Physics to justify the view that courts should "abstract new laws" as they deem necessary.<p>This is wholly undemocratic and while it claims to solve one problem (that of legal frameworks growing obsolete) it creates the problem of 'laws by committee' or 'expert rule'.