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  • http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/people/people.htm

    It's always enlightening and entertaining (for me anyway) to read the history of science to get a sense of how metaphysical ideas have changed but are part of the rational progression of fact-based (as opposed to faith-based) ideas. "Metaphysics" is here defined as in the OED as... more

    Reviewed by zimpf Jun 07, 01:07pm ( 65 reviews ) • lhup.edu

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  • Rated by THMike on Sep 04, 5:00pm

    This idea will never go away it seems (at least not until everybody actually takes and understand a physics class).

  • Rated by zimpf on Jun 07, 1:07pm

    It's always enlightening and entertaining (for me anyway) to read the history of science to get a sense of how metaphysical ideas have changed but are part of the rational progression of fact-based (as opposed to faith-based) ideas. "Metaphysics" is here defined as in the OED as "that branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing." Interesting to note is that "meta" as a prefix in its original Greek meant "sharing, action in common; pursuit or quest; and, especially, change of place, order, condition or nature." Sometimes it connoted, "after or behind." What's interesting is that somewhere along the line "meta" started to get used in ways not in accordance with the original Greek and metaphysics came to be misapprehended as "the science of that which transcends the physical" opening the door to supernatural and mystical connotations that really make it difficult to use the term correctly, even in its less bastardized ways. So today, it is generally applied to "what is immaterial, incorporeal, or supersensible." In "The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand describes metaphysics more succinctly as "the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality." While it is a common mistake, I think she is referring to the world we perceive outside our perceptions as reality, which is where "truth" resides. "Reality" is just what you experience. So there is an ironic paradox in the sense that we are always trying to "know" using epistemologic tools that can't really get at "the truth" by way of "reality." Rand suggests that we have art as way of managing that frustration. Whether they know it or not, everyone has metaphysical ideas about existence and art is "the selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments." My editorial would be that art (created or enjoyed) is the mind's "recreation" in the face of a reality (subjective) that can at best make assumptions with varying degrees of precision (enter science), which if shared by enough other subjective realities using similar precision, we're willing to call "truth." I'll invite some dispute by saying that we can only be relatively sure that space, time, change and imagination (while we have it) go on forever simply because there are no other defaults. So it isn't so much of jump to think of science as an art that lets us use "meta" in it's accurate sense of "sharing" a common understanding, even if we can never truly share the truth. And the search for perpetual motion is one example of the mind's "pursuit or quest," a metaphor ("a descriptive term is "transferred" to or "shared" with some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable.") if you will, that allows for a tolerable and functional "sense of life." In the same way, that "war is diplomacy carried on by other means" art is science carried on by other means, rational imagination. What is so appealing about sites like this is to see the artistry of rational imagination at work. It's when the mind thinks. Art created by the irrational imagination is the mind at play, which can get at the truth by yet another means. Spending time writing this is the mind dawdling and procrastinating on a Sunday afternoon when it doesn't want to get busy doing what it should be doing, which makes "Stumbling" at times, like heroin.

  • Rated by xylude on Feb 08 2009, 10:49am

    Haha, I once had an idea for an infinite flask type deal. I made one out of a two-liter and a small hose. Needless to say, it didn't work.

  • Rated by boirix on Jan 11 2009, 11:07am

    poorly documented

  • Rated by TheQQueen on Nov 08 2008, 5:39pm

    Perpetual motion machines

  • Rated by ArtScience on Aug 23 2008, 12:37pm

    Perpetual Futility, A short history of the search for perpetual motion by Donald E. Simanek

  • Reviewed by Ascilto on Aug 03 2008, 10:59pm

    Can you believe that I met someone who believes this is possible? I told him to kiss my ass - perpeptually.