A reflection on Science, utility, and repetition:

“What is useful is true,” say engineers. I don’t begrudge them this. Yet, I find it only true in that it is useful for engineers to stick to applying known principles to their problems. Wandering in the clouds of what-might-be, really doesn’t help them build bridges.

But, we have two words: “useful” and “true”. We can blur the lines. Words are pliant things. Still, I find it useful to separate the two.

Newton’s mechanics were useful. Back when Newton proposed his mechanics a rubber-sheet universe was less useful. But, it would be odd to say our relativistic universe is true today, but was not true in the days of Newton. That’s just not how Science works to many of us.

What is useful changes; but what is true, isn’t supposed to. I had an engineer-type friend who would throw out the engineer’s slogan whenever we approached a nearby subject. Perhaps it would solve all problems, if we were engineers engaged on a project. Comparing and contrasting useful and true is not useful when trying to find the best weight distribution for a bridge.

I hope on day to fully justify the use of etymology in my discussions. It follows along the line of finding the original need for the word. For what purpose did people mint the word? We haven’t quite been successful in uncovering where the word cam from. But it has a proximate meaning to meaning related to usual.

This lines up with where I had it before I began the search. I reasoned that something that is of great value is not typically called “useful”. We find calling a cyclotron “useful” a bit of an understatement. But also I found a resonance with the word handy, which also carries the hint of “ready”.

Frequently pegged as a luddite, by the urbane atheist, I get people who challenge my notions about Science. To some, the value of Science has been the explanation it provides. I don’t agree.

I argue that the main value of Science is technology. I’m aware that we have a whole body of Science called “pure Science”. But we just would not engage in “pure Science” were there no technology. Gadgets and chemicals fund research. The public would hardly pay people to provide the service of looking at things endlessly.

Plus, technology and not story best maps to predictability. I expect my computer to come on and it does. I expect it to publish my words to the world, and it does. I expect to be able to program it and sometimes I can make it do some snazzy things.

Therefore the prediction has an intimate relation with my interaction with the fruits of technology. However, the consistent event of falling down had many explanations.

In a utilitarian way, I can operate with the abstraction of machine as an expression of expectation. The successful machine does what designer expected when he designed it (because the materials tend to lend a pattern of expectation) and what I expected when I bought it. The results matter, the interlacing together of details is only important in that it does what I want.

However, explanation invites us to try to weave invisible threads among the pattern of repetition. The hicks weren’t wrong in that the frost regularly appeared on the window pane. They weren’t wrong if they were to invent scrapers to remove the frost. It was in explaining it by “Jack Frost” that they embarrass us moderns. And it was entirely that explanation that had no bearing of the treatment of frost on windows.

Once, men of good reason thought that all bodies fell toward the center of the universe as a reason why things fell to the ground. It made a certain sense: the ground was where heavy materials tended to cluster, and they were impacted into the surface. And since many of them knew that the earth was a sphere (they did indeed), they were invoking a 3-dimensional center.

However, that the earth was the center of the cosmos was immaterial to technology that solved the problem of keeping things from falling and lifting up heavy things to keep them temporarily from “center-seeking”.

Thus as I said before there is less value in Evolution or the Big Bang, primarily used to provide closure to the world, than there is with the Toaster. The lack of technology throws us back to a dark age, not the lack of a story to tie our origin into naturalistic philosophy.