I recall a list of some criteria of science, maybe not the best list, but at least as a point of reference that there exists such a list, whatever the actual list be as may be agreed or as have been agreed by the science community.

“ The following 32 concepts include SOME of the key ideas used in the ENSI/SENSI program.
1. Science deals only with natural patterns and mechanisms.
2. Understanding science enables one to differentiate it from pseudoscience and non- science.
3. Scientific knowledge is uncertain, tentative and subject to revision.
4. Scientific explanations and interpretations can neither be proven nor disproven with certainty.
5. Scientists use a variety of criteria to compare explanations and select the better ones.
6. Human values deeply influence science (its terminology, the questions asked, and the criteria used for choosing among theories).”

I took 1-6 from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/info.fs.html where the 32 are located. I reproduce 6 as they are sufficient to outline the scientific method to determine when it is applied to other fields.
If we cursorily glance at Christian Science, do Christian Scientists apply the scientific method? Do their method hold up to the list (whatever agreed list) of science methodology? Does Mary Baker Eddy’s claim that it is Christian Science and their Christian Monitor paper and their Christian Science Reading Room, make Mary Baker Eddy’s method a scientific method?
Any field or fields that claims to follow the scientific methodology should be able to back up their claim and assessment by impartial philosophers of science.

What is philosophy?

“1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
3. A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
5. The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
7. A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory: an original philosophy of advertising.
8. A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.
[Middle English philosophie, from Old French, from Latin philosophia, from Greek philosophiā, from philosophos, lover of wisdom, philosopher. See philosopher.]” http://www.answers.com/topic/philosophy

Taking the cue from ‘wisdom’ what then is wisdom?

“Wisdom (Wis”dom) (-ducr/m), n.
[AS. wi¯sdo¯m. See Wise, a., and -dom.]

1. The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity. “We speak also not in wise words of man’s wisdom, but in the doctrine of the spirit.” Wyclif (1 Cor. ii. 13). ” Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” Job xxviii. 28. “It is hoped that our rulers will act with dignity and wisdom that they will yield everything to reason, and refuse everything to force.” Ames. “Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.” Coleridge.
2. The results of wise judgments; scientific or practical truth; acquired knowledge; erudition. “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.” Acts vii. 22.

Synonyms — Prudence; knowledge. Wisdom, Prudence, Knowledge. Wisdom has been defined to be “the use of the best means for attaining the best ends.” “We conceive,” says Whewell, ” prudence as the virtue by which we select right means for given ends, while wisdom implies the selection of right ends as well as of right means.” Hence, wisdom implies the union of high mental and moral excellence. Prudence (that is, providence, or forecast) is of a more negative character; it rather consists in avoiding danger than in taking decisive measures for the accomplishment of an object. Sir Robert Walpole was in many respects a prudent statesman, but he was far from being a wise one. Burke has said that prudence, when carried too far, degenerates into a “reptile virtue,” which is the more dangerous for its plausible appearance. Knowledge, a more comprehensive term, signifies the simple apprehension of facts or relations. “In strictness of language,” says Paley, ” there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always supposing action, and action directed by it.” “Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.” Cowper.”

http://www.selfknowledge.com/108259.htm

Does it then suggest that knowledge is not equivalent to wisdom? Or at least to Cowper above.

What is understanding?

Is it closer to knowledge or wisdom? If used in context of closer to knowledge, then it is not necessarily closer to wisdom. If by greater understanding be greater knowledge, then, we have faster computers every year the world wide web where we did not before, because knowledge has become greater, our understanding of such technology has increased. While there maybe overlap between knowledge and wisdom, they are not mirror image of the other.

We make assumptions to live. We assume we do not exist before we were born and we cease to exist when we die. Our language and concepts embrace such a clear division, and we allocate some space to ideas of rebirth or reincarnation and eternal life in heaven, to areas we call religion. We make such assumptions about commencement and end of life, human life, to define infanticide and homicide, and thus there are no contradictions or un-necessary need of reflection or contemplation.

What answers do we look for? Answers that help us to

(a) Survive and thrive
(b) Grow and develop where we are with other humans , other sentient life and nature
(c) Make sense of our life, human life, other sentient life , nature, earth, solar system and universe, and our place in it, and our life span whenever it may end (of that we are unable to tell)
What assumptions do we make when we seek those answers –
(a) We assume the world is material
(b) We assume the world has no inherent existence
(c) ….
(d) ….
(e) ….
(f) ….
(g) ….
(h) ….
(i) ….

For (a), science and its criteria of “1. Science deals only with natural patterns and mechanisms.” tends to lend credence that world is material or matter. (fine distinction of energy, wave aside)

For (b) the assumption can be derived in either of or both ways
(i) Analytical reasoning
(ii) Quieting the analytical mind and allowing the intuitive mind to surface and operate and comprehend the world or reality

It seems Dalai Lama uses (b) (i) and (b) (ii)
Are we ever devoid of assumptions? Can we ever be? Is it a human trait to exist with assumptions and an uncommon human trait to be without assumptions?

However, these tools must exist, because otherwise how would eddie justify the claim that reliable ways of finding answers are important for a knowledge-generating enterprise?

The scientific method can be applied in a lot of fields. Whatever your method of finding an answer in Philosophy, it’s always accompanied by a comparison to the world outside your head. If your method is useful in leading to greater understanding, that may be used as evidence of the method’s correctness.

Some I think see it the other way, in which “…reliable ways of finding answers are important…” is an a priori assumption. but this has only developed in response to it’s being a useful assumption and one that doesn’t lead to contradictions further down the line. If it wasn’t so, it’d have been discarded.

It’s when you don’t do this that religion sets in.

Recently I find that some of Dalai Lama’s explanation, helped fill some gap in my understanding of my life, and of life, even as I think atheists should be atheists, and agnostics should be agnostics and Christians be Christians.

On the one hand, if memory does not fail me, there are projections ( whether scientific or not) that

#(a) the universe will one day come to an end

#(b) our species will one day be extinct or die out.

I cannot vouch for these, except that ( if memory does not fail me) I think I read them in an article or two, and have tugged these articles in a kitchen drawer for future re-reading or reference. Incidentally, if one is not concerned about personal mortality, and whither after, would one ponder over the mortality of (a) and of (b) ( assuming of ‘mortality’ can borrowed and used in these other context, and if not, then at least for this isolated occasion).

On the other hand, my Catholic cousin, forwarded me one of those types of emails that circulates from friends to friends, and some even travel quite far. It was a made up story of a man in long black gown who entered a Church one day and told everyone, he was going to take them down, if anyone of them was willing to stay and take a bullet for Jesus Christ. He elaborated that those who would not take a bullet for Christ could leave unharmed. So 2000 people left, leaving 20 standing in Church. He then told the pastor, he could begin the service now for the real believers. I did not have to ask my cousin, but I knew she and her husband, would have been among the 20. I also thought I would have done the same for Buddhism. Later I thought, only if I knew it was more probable than not, that such act would have more probable than not helped in some way to preserve Buddhism for others ( not specifically but subsumed in the latter mentioned after this as a mode I happen to know) and more probable than not in some way helped the evolutionary progress of our species.

Though I have not read Hegel, the skimpy third or fifth or hundred account of some of his ideas interpreted by others ( unless cross checked in many ways, an interpretation is but an interpretation and limited to the understanding of the interpreter, seems to suggest to me, that there are striking points of convergence between Hegel’s analysis of perception of reality and of reality, and buddhism’s and Dalai Lama’s perception of reality and of reality. Constraints prevent an attempt to match the two different analysis to see how and where they converge and why they converge. But my inclination is that such comparative work could or would be done or undertaken one day in the far future, as one part of our species evolutionary progress for our evolutionary progress, before we become extinct in (b).

Selenadreamy@aol.com

Speaking only for myself, these are my favorite sort of posts, because I understand them better than I do QM or General Relativity, agree with them thoroughly, and feel that they are a necessary and useful counterpart to all the contrary opinions I am surrounded with (such as three full-time religion channels in my “basic cable” package).

However, his need to find “meaning” in why we are we, in particular, this infamous contingency, confuses me to no end. It’s just spontaneous symmetry breaking. Evolution could have gone this way or that. It went this way, and that’s all there is to it. The notion that it’s “unlikely” is simply silly. Any single given outcome is unlikely. It’s just another ludicrous restatement of the anthropic fallacy.

However, the hillbilly senator with his corny superstition is just another straw man. Of course we should be concerned about fools like him in power, and we are. Very nice, we are all on the same page there.

Before I address spirituality itself, another word about emergence. There is a lot of debate about whether new scientific principles emerge, ones that override the more fundamental levels, or whether the emergent principles are just complex statistical behaviors that could *in principle* be reduced to physics. Certainly there is no proof of the former, but for the line of reasoning I am about to follow, the latter will do just as well.

If physics in the aggregate leads to chemistry,
and chemistry in the aggregate leads to biology,
and biology in the aggregate leads to evolution,
and evolution has led us to a global human society,
then what does that global human society lead to?

Well, not necessarily anything. It could just lead to global environmental collapse. But I postulate, for my own understanding, that there are emergent mass psychological effects within the human species. Human mass psychology is a funny thing and poorly understood, even in statistical models. But I think over human history, something has emerged from humanity, that is real, but is not simply reduceable to any single person; and that people who experience it directly tend to label it Spirit because they don’t know what to call it. What exactly it is I have no more idea than anyone else.

So that, for me, is how I reconcile a scientific worldview with the various spiritual experiences I have had. I think they’re real, and have meaning, but that both the reality and the meaning are created by us.

Obviously this is not itself a scientific idea, as it makes no predictions and can’t be falsified. It’s a conjecture based on a desire to reconcile personal experience with rational thought. It’s the only idea I have yet found that can encompass both.