Re: Larger Issues of “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo” Controversy
koantum Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Fri 13 Feb 2009 06:52 PM PST 

Well whats the difference between common and mutual?

Common understanding is shared by all. (Two people have a shared understanding of a subject to the extent they believe they do.) Mutual understanding: I understand what you believe and you understand what I believe.

besides ones right to hold the beliefs of ones faith, with regard to coming to a common understanding the metaphysical argument died shortly after the Scopes trial.

It died in the 6th Century BCE, when Xenophanes wrote: “Even if a man were to represent to himself the world exactly as it is, he could not discover that this is the case.”

science that can be recognized as constituting a common understanding

That’s what scientists like us to believe. Let’s see how it holds up. Take Roger Penrose’s statement that quantum mechanics, the fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics,

has, indeed, two powerful bodies of fact in its favour, and only one thing against it. First, in its favour are all the marvellous agreements that the theory has had with every experimental result to date. Second, it is a theory of astonishing and profound mathematical beauty. The one thing that can be said against it is that it makes absolutely no sense!

QM is a mathematical toolbox whose only purpose is to assign probabilities to measurement outcomes on the basis of other measurement outcomes. What does this tell us about the nature of Nature? Few physicists or philosophers of science believe that they have the answers, and fewer still believe the answers that have been proposed. So much for science and common understanding.

we are able to have this long distance conversation – with myself here and you there – by virtue of science

Technology, mister, not science. As to science, philosopher of science Michael Polanyi hit the bullseye when he wrote:

In the days when an idea could be silenced by showing that it was contrary to religion, theology was the greatest single source of fallacies. Today, when any human thought can be discredited by branding it as unscientific, the power previously exercised by theology has passed over to science; hence science has become in its turn the greatest single source of error.