Armando de la Torre 1

Definition of science:

• English: sciences that use math as a language. Exact sciences (physics, chemistry)
• Spanish: a system of knowledge and specialization of knowledge (there is theological science, ethical science, etc).

The reason for this is that english comes from more languages than the rest of Europe. English comes from germanic and latin. 

Also because the people on the continental side of Europe were more into humanities, while the British were more into exact sciences. 

Episteme: knowledge that is certain. A greek word that was the first definition of science. 

The english term of science arises after the scientific revolution, the Copernican Revolution, in the 16th century. 

Ptolemy´s solar system (reasons):

• common sense, the sun appears to revolve around us. 
• the Earth was the heaviest thing in the sky because it was made of matter, so it had to be at the center.  
• The stars seem fixed, in the sense that the relation to one another is always the same. 
• The only disorderly object in the heavens were the planets because they never stayed still, they were "Wanderers".

From this they reached the conclusion that everything in the heavens moved in circles, because they are eternal and perfect.
Plato reaches the conclusion that everything in the heavens is eternal and perfect, a circle.

Gödel, Escher, Bach #5

When we pop-up from a system we don't know when to stop. Its like GOD (God over genie), it never reaches a top. That is why the book mentions the G-plot picture as the picture of God. It doesn't matter how far we get, there will always be a level on top of the one we are on.

How far can recursiveness go? How far can God´s recursiveness go? Its like the third level of infinity in a philosopher looks at science, something that we will never get to know.

What makes God understand all of the recursive levels that we can't? Could it be because he is more intelligent?

Meta-Dialogue: feb 21

Most of the discoveries mentioned in the Copernican Revolution were done just by observation. This can be related to Cassandra´s class, which is based on observation, on searching for the details in things, in order to draw the,
By observing, we attach meaning to things. This is what happened with the constellations, they gave them names of people or objects. It also has to do with the formal systems in Godel, Escher, Bach, we give them our own meaning, specifically talking about isomorphisms.

By observing we discover.


Zen philosophy: allowing contradictions.
In order to be in peace with the world, do we need contradictions?
This can be related to Critos dialogue: when we were all talking abut values and it turned out that everyone has different values.


Consistency/Completeness:

How do we measure consistency? Can it be measured by both myself and the mob?
Can one be happy with being consistent with oneself but not consistent with society? One will always have to choose one.
If a system is complete, can it have a meta-system?

4 things to be consistent with (Amable and Walter Castro)
thing
feel
say
do
compared with emerson, that we don't need consistency in our thoughts, these are different because they happen in the moment. Emerson says that what we thing and feel can be one way today and think and feel another way tomorrow. But if in a moment we think and feel one thing and the next moment we don't, then we are a hypocrite. That is why we have to be consistent in these four things.


In order to change society, we have to model an example. Are we modeling for the MPC? Are we being consistent with what we say in class and what we want it to be and our actions? Are we actually taking example or giving example or are we just complaining and not doing anything?

ITS OKAY IF WE DONT SEEM CONSISTENT AS LONG AS WE ARE CONSISTENT WITH WHAT WE FEEL AND THINK.

Difficult Conversations #1

We have to abandon the feeling that we are right. We have to take into account interpretations, feelings, perceptions and values.


What is the point of reading this book?

• to understand people
• to be real and aware of oneself
• to learn how to manage difficult situations
• to get along with people. 

We all have partial truths. We dont know the whole part of the other persons point of view. We all have different interpretations, experiences, etcetera. We can never be inside their heads, so we will never get all of the information that they have.


COULD EXPERIENCES BE A FORMAL SYSTEM?


What is a difficult conversation?

• conversations that stress us
• a conversation we want to avoid. 
• a complex conversation with different factors. 
• when someone is misunderstood. 

Gödel, Escher, Bach #4

Zen mode: admits contradictions. Its central philosophy is based on the different ways one can use in order to find things, apart from logic.


What makes something consistent or inconsistent? The various interpretations that people can have of something. These interpretations can be seen as variables.

Meta-Dialogue: feb 14

Most of the topics we talked about this week have to do with perspectives and observation:

• Chair in Fire in the Equations
• Escher
• Plato
• The Chilean civil war
• Drawing class

It is kind of like putting an isomorphic system on things. Everyone forms their own concepts.
When we form our concepts of things, we always base them on our past history, on our experiences.

With time these concepts change, we have new experiences that affect these concepts (like the concept of the Chilean civil car, it is not the same today as it was 40 years ago). But it doesnt matter if we change our concepts because the context of the things change. You can relate this to self-reliance, because it doesn't  matter if we change our everyday opinion.

Is meaning something that we give to things  or something that we discover?

The Fire in the Equations #1

Epistemology: How do we know what we know.

We had an old wooden chair in front of us, and we had do describe it. This is my first description of the chair:
solid, wood, stiff, damaged and incomplete.

Then I realized that this was not the description that I had to give. I had to describe the shape of the chair to someone who has never seen a chair before, and this is what I came up with:

It has a central piece where you can sit on, made out of wood, with its base being 4 sticks coming out of that central piece  and 2 other sticks interconnecting the 4 base sticks. On top of the central piece, some flat pieces of wood held together by more sticks, made in a certain way in order to support ones back. What is holding all of the wooden pieces together are nails. The wood is solid and rough. The chair is incomplete and worn down.


This exercise  helped us realize the following:

• How do we know which is reality?
• There are infinite perceptions of the same object. We all view objects in different ways, different views and spaces.