Anne joined us today so thought best to go over the three enquiries that in my opinion philosophy is all about
1. What we know about the world
The Greeks Romans thinkers thought that if you divided any substance continuously you would come to halt when you reached an atom a solid object the building block of life. Science now tells us that an atom is not solid it is almost empty space. There is a trillion atoms in a grain of sand. The center of an atom is called the nucleus. Tiny electrons spin around the nucleus in shells a great distance from the nucleus. If the nucleus were the size of a tennis ball, the atom would be the size of the Empire State Building only round.
Total stellar population in our galaxy the Milky Way
Recent numbers give about 400,000,000,000 (400 billion) stars, The Hubble Space Telescope has found there may be 125 billion galaxies in the universe."
There are far more stars in the Univese than grains of sand on all our shores of this world
Most astronomers believe the Universe began in a Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead. Then it suddenly exploded
Modern ideas of the world compares favourably with Alice in Wonderland.
2. How do we know the world?.
All the five senses rely on electrical signals to the brain. The nose analyses molecules of scent and then turns that into an electrical signal, so does all the other organs. The eyes transmit digitally a picture as an electronic signal to the brain so that all of the world as we know it is in our own brain. You are now "seeing" inside your head. If true there are no "things" no more than there are "things" in a television film. And there is no person looking at what is happening otherwise you have the same problem how does the person see. There can be no movement. So is it true?
3. Who am I?
The prize is finding yourself or enlightenmight. But maybe there is no "I" and we are free now.
