Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Problem With Mental Pictures...
...is that they are not real. We all deal in mental pictures. Einstein made popular in science the "thought experiment" in which he imagined how a system, otherwise completely unobservable, would behave, and upon "witnessing" that behavior he could and did develop explanatory theories. This is a unique kind of mental picture because the systems Einstein imagined were very well defined and constrained, making their behavior predictable.
Scientists have since expanded on this technique and use it to imagine what it looks like when, for example, two sub-atomic particles collide, even when our own observations and theories tell us that sub atomic particles are not actually billiard balls. In this case we are building a mental picture of some portion of the systems behavior to help us to understand that which is not merely unobservable, but in fact incomprehensible, at least in its whole.
Some mental pictures are simply prejudicial. Say, for example, the mental picture that I as one of God's "frozen chosen" (Presbyterian) had of a Pentecostal worship service before I ever attended one. And how many of us picture Mormon services as some sort of polygamist orgy? In the case of these mental pictures, our prejudices help define how the picture looks, taking limited facts and shaping them to our liking.
That prejudicial effect is even part of the mental picture described in the paragraph before last. Scientists use the billiard ball picture of sub-atomic interactions because they are very familiar with billiard ball interactions - they have a prejudice to seeing things that way.
Having laid this ground work I want to talk a little about prejudice and a little about the distinction between unobservable and incomprehensible. Let's start with prejudice. When Christians approach the subject of the environment, we bring with it a prejudice that man, because he is sinful, will always be a bad actor. We assume that if we do it, it is bad for the environment. The question is, is this prejudice accurate, and if it is, does it reveal all, or as in the case of the billiard ball prejudice, only part of the picture? We'll tackle the first question now and return to the second in a minute.
The actions of man upon creation cannot be assumed to be bad. Man is clearly capable of doing good, or bad, in anything he does. Thus we murder and we heal. We destroy, and we create - but are those different things. When DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa, he destroyed the paint he applied to the canvas - it became something different, it became a painting. Since we are unable to create ex nihlio I would argue that any creative act we undertake, is destructive of something else.
Now let's talk about the difference between unobservable and incomprehensible. The weather is observable, but I will argue it is incomprehensible. Anybody can go outside and see what the weather is, and if a lot of somebody's do that and tell each other what they see, we can even observe the weather on a global scale - But does that mean we comprehend it? To the extent that we can record our observation and read them, yes, but that we understand why there is a thunderstorm in Utah and a drought in Mississippi, no we do not comprehend. Oh, to be sure, we form mental pictures of what is going on in the weather, even mathematical ones, but they are incomplete, they only tell part of the story, as the billiard ball picture for sub-atomic collision.
The problem is when the prejudicial meets the incomprehensible. Our prejudices often want to portray the incomprehensible as the comprehensible. So, my prejudices gave authority to the mental images I have, they attempt to portray the part of the picture I hold as reality. And that is where we get into trouble.
When it comes to something like global warming, we all want to make sure we do not "destroy the planet." I would argue that there is a prejudice that says we are even capable of doing so that gives our partial pictures of the weather an authority they do not deserve. We are prejudiced to thinking we are even capable of destroying the world. It's God's world, not ours. We can alter it, we can bend it, but only He can ultimately destroy it. Our sinful nature prejudices us into believeing we have more power than we really do.
The basic core of being a Christian is giving up to God - putting Him on His throne, making our lives His and this world His. When we do that, the question ceases to be preventing destruction and starts to be how best to shape the world.
We need to know our prejudices and we need to know the difference between the observable and the incomprehensible. Do you?
Related Tags: environment, global warming, Christianity, Christian environmentalism, Christian perspectives on the environment, observation, comprehension, prejudice
Scientists have since expanded on this technique and use it to imagine what it looks like when, for example, two sub-atomic particles collide, even when our own observations and theories tell us that sub atomic particles are not actually billiard balls. In this case we are building a mental picture of some portion of the systems behavior to help us to understand that which is not merely unobservable, but in fact incomprehensible, at least in its whole.
Some mental pictures are simply prejudicial. Say, for example, the mental picture that I as one of God's "frozen chosen" (Presbyterian) had of a Pentecostal worship service before I ever attended one. And how many of us picture Mormon services as some sort of polygamist orgy? In the case of these mental pictures, our prejudices help define how the picture looks, taking limited facts and shaping them to our liking.
That prejudicial effect is even part of the mental picture described in the paragraph before last. Scientists use the billiard ball picture of sub-atomic interactions because they are very familiar with billiard ball interactions - they have a prejudice to seeing things that way.
Having laid this ground work I want to talk a little about prejudice and a little about the distinction between unobservable and incomprehensible. Let's start with prejudice. When Christians approach the subject of the environment, we bring with it a prejudice that man, because he is sinful, will always be a bad actor. We assume that if we do it, it is bad for the environment. The question is, is this prejudice accurate, and if it is, does it reveal all, or as in the case of the billiard ball prejudice, only part of the picture? We'll tackle the first question now and return to the second in a minute.
The actions of man upon creation cannot be assumed to be bad. Man is clearly capable of doing good, or bad, in anything he does. Thus we murder and we heal. We destroy, and we create - but are those different things. When DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa, he destroyed the paint he applied to the canvas - it became something different, it became a painting. Since we are unable to create ex nihlio I would argue that any creative act we undertake, is destructive of something else.
Now let's talk about the difference between unobservable and incomprehensible. The weather is observable, but I will argue it is incomprehensible. Anybody can go outside and see what the weather is, and if a lot of somebody's do that and tell each other what they see, we can even observe the weather on a global scale - But does that mean we comprehend it? To the extent that we can record our observation and read them, yes, but that we understand why there is a thunderstorm in Utah and a drought in Mississippi, no we do not comprehend. Oh, to be sure, we form mental pictures of what is going on in the weather, even mathematical ones, but they are incomplete, they only tell part of the story, as the billiard ball picture for sub-atomic collision.
The problem is when the prejudicial meets the incomprehensible. Our prejudices often want to portray the incomprehensible as the comprehensible. So, my prejudices gave authority to the mental images I have, they attempt to portray the part of the picture I hold as reality. And that is where we get into trouble.
When it comes to something like global warming, we all want to make sure we do not "destroy the planet." I would argue that there is a prejudice that says we are even capable of doing so that gives our partial pictures of the weather an authority they do not deserve. We are prejudiced to thinking we are even capable of destroying the world. It's God's world, not ours. We can alter it, we can bend it, but only He can ultimately destroy it. Our sinful nature prejudices us into believeing we have more power than we really do.
The basic core of being a Christian is giving up to God - putting Him on His throne, making our lives His and this world His. When we do that, the question ceases to be preventing destruction and starts to be how best to shape the world.
We need to know our prejudices and we need to know the difference between the observable and the incomprehensible. Do you?
Related Tags: environment, global warming, Christianity, Christian environmentalism, Christian perspectives on the environment, observation, comprehension, prejudice
