In the view of religious people in the mystical traditions [...] the world is vast and beckoning, yet our faculties are barely adequate to scratch the surface.
Does it mean that science has got it all wrong, and we need to start again from the beginning? Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel?
Or perhaps science generally is OK, but there is a part of reality that remains unexpored, so we should acknowledge that in this specific part we are “barely adequate to scratch the surface” and should focus on this area knowing that we start almost from zero and that at the beginning a good metaphor is better than nothing. That I could accept. I only find it difficult to believe that creation of Earth and especially the movement of Earth in space belongs to this unexplored part.
Our vision and sense of space has a “metaphorical” relationship to the actual, physical reality that we find ourselves in. In the same sense, language and mathematics [...] have a metaphorical relationship to the raw universe.
Not all metaphors are created equal. Some of them allow much better prediction than others. Mathematics and physics allow us to predict position of Earth very precisely. Now could you make a similar prediction based on “Earth is on the back of giant turtle”? Is imagining giant turtles really the right way to “to look more closely at what experience really is”?
Does it mean that science has got it all wrong, and we need to start again from the beginning? Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel?
Or perhaps science generally is OK, but there is a part of reality that remains unexpored, so we should acknowledge that in this specific part we are “barely adequate to scratch the surface” and should focus on this area knowing that we start almost from zero and that at the beginning a good metaphor is better than nothing. That I could accept. I only find it difficult to believe that creation of Earth and especially the movement of Earth in space belongs to this unexplored part.
Not all metaphors are created equal. Some of them allow much better prediction than others. Mathematics and physics allow us to predict position of Earth very precisely. Now could you make a similar prediction based on “Earth is on the back of giant turtle”? Is imagining giant turtles really the right way to “to look more closely at what experience really is”?