Ignorant Science

WARNING:  This is brambly rambly

I sort-of-love science. I love science ideas...but often, I hate scientific explanation. I have anal mental hangups. Let me give an example: I love reading about science...I am currently reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. This is a very light overview of the quest for the everything theory. Here is my problem. It offers, like most lay-person friendly book, no mathematical proof for many of the "facts". I do not have the math-tools to really understand the proofs if they were given, but I NEED to understand further. For instance, lets take the cosmically recent fact that the universe is expanding.

 Ok. But first, how do we know how far away things are in order to understand this. So, lets take the simple question of "how far away is the sun"? We have not physically measured this distance, so how then. I am RIGHT NOW doing a simple internet search to figure this out and here is where I run into annoying problems... One explanation given was using the concept of trigonometric parallax. Building up to this, the author was trying to explain that given certain bits of information you can conclude others.

 Taken from THIS article:

 "Very often in math (and in other subjects) when there are three possible pieces of information, if you know two of them, and you know how all three pieces of information are RELATED, then you can figure out the third piece of information..."

  Ok, right...

" FOR EXAMPLE, if you know that a relative of yours lives sixty miles away (that's one piece of information), and you know that you are traveling to that person's house in a car that is going thirty-miles-per-hour (that's a second piece of information)..."

HOLD THE HAY-NONNY-NONNY, that is NOT a second piece of information!  To know that your are going 30 MPH you need to know distance and time.  Of course to actually know at what speed the car is traveling you use this frame-work to plug tire rotation speed etc...

'"... you can figure out that it will take you two hours to get to that relative's house. (The amount of time, the two hours, is the THIRD piece of information which you did not have but were able to figure out from the other two bits of information, which you did know). So there you knew the distance, you knew the speed you were traveling, but you did NOT know how long it would take, and you were able to figure it out!"  END QUOTE

So here is my rabbit hole problem.  What he said works.  But it's not exactly right.  You are taking standards and building them up.  We know a car travels at 30 MPH because the speedometer says so.  Its says so because of previous test given to show X distance traveled over X time, appropriated to the vehicle's specifics.   You can verify the speedometer by measuring a fixed "speed" between a set distance and a set time.  But you CAN'T REALLY KNOW THE SPEED WITHOUT THE OTHER TWO.  You can ASSUME (and it usually works) the 3rd (distance, or time) if you are given speed and one of the others, but you can't really know it because the speed depends on time and distance.  Whereas time, and distance stand alone without the requirement for the any other.  Of course this is not exactly right either, as distance is dependent on relationships and reference between something and something else, and time...don't get me started on time.

I am not done trying to understand how we "know" how far away the sun is through trigonometry, but this is an example of why I find it so damn hard to learn.  I realize that "Um, it works".  But the more you learn about science, the more you realize that the current wisdom says that there is a lot of stuff that goes against common sense, and I would really, really like to believe it...but I need to understand it.  And when logic comes in...it is hard.  

Also, I should have paid more attention in school and maybe I would not have such a hard time with math.

Why am I driven to science when it makes me so mad?  Because...Science v. Religion is serious.  In the scientific community science is seen as Superior to religion because it relies on fact instead of speculation.  I, in  my academic retardation, see much of science as speculation.  Speculation that works, but speculation non the less.  No one has seen an electron.  So in my heart of believe that science and religion are compatible.  I want to know the best of science to see if it works itself out instead of its apparent FAITH based framework.

So, back to the internet to learn something.  If anybody knows anything about this, please help.  And if you help, I am probably going to get mad and argue with you...but I want to...and I love you...so please....in the voice of a dying mutant.... Please.....help.......me.......

Presumptivetivs

I was just slogging through some old blogs from various persons and realized that it seems 2010-2011 was about the time that everybody stopped blogging. Facebook I guess. I was about to close everything out and then thought...I am going to retro blog. It's been a whole year...It's so old fashioned it's cool again. Blogging. Actually...It's a nicer way to think...and go back and read through things. Slightly more private and focused. Right now is... changing. Mind-slurry. I bet I won't post again for another year. But if that's a lie...it's about to get hella-dramatic around here.