Wtf? “God Wrote the Rocks” (which I love, and am grateful to the Solstice post a few months ago for pointing me to it) serves as excellent contrast to “Humans Wrote the Bible.” These rewritten lyrics are just bizarre. The “book of earth”, “book of night”, “book of names”? “Humans write the book of truth” seems to be missing the whole point! It sounds good as long as you don’t think about it, which strikes me as contrary to the whole “rationalism” schtick.
Also, the original lyrics are already pretty irreligious deism: this attempt at secularizing them is misguided in addition to being poorly executed.
Many of these seem reasonable. The “book of names” sounds to me like the Linnaean taxonomy, while the “book of night” sounds like astronomical catalogues. I don’t know as much about geology, but the “book of earth” could be geological surveys.
This kind of science is often not exciting. Rutherford referred to it as “stamp collecting.” It is very useful for the practice of future generations of scientists. For example, if someone wants to do a survey of various properties of binary star systems, they don’t have to find a bunch of examples themselves (and worry about selection effects) because someone else has already done it and listed them in a catalogue. It is nice to celebrate this kind of thankless work.
The closing lines are weird: “Humans write the book of truth… Truth writes the world.” This sounds like constructivist epistemology. The rest of the song has empiricist epistemology: Truth is determined by the external world, not written by humans. Maybe something like “Humans can read the book of truth.… Truth comes from the world.” (Although this adds syllables...)
Wtf? “God Wrote the Rocks” (which I love, and am grateful to the Solstice post a few months ago for pointing me to it) serves as excellent contrast to “Humans Wrote the Bible.” These rewritten lyrics are just bizarre. The “book of earth”, “book of night”, “book of names”? “Humans write the book of truth” seems to be missing the whole point! It sounds good as long as you don’t think about it, which strikes me as contrary to the whole “rationalism” schtick.
Also, the original lyrics are already pretty irreligious deism: this attempt at secularizing them is misguided in addition to being poorly executed.
I think “book of X” can be usefully “translated” as beliefs about X.
The book of truth is not truth, just like the book of night is not night.
I think “book of names” can be read as human categoristion of animals (giving them name). Although other readings do seem plausible.
Many of these seem reasonable. The “book of names” sounds to me like the Linnaean taxonomy, while the “book of night” sounds like astronomical catalogues. I don’t know as much about geology, but the “book of earth” could be geological surveys.
This kind of science is often not exciting. Rutherford referred to it as “stamp collecting.” It is very useful for the practice of future generations of scientists. For example, if someone wants to do a survey of various properties of binary star systems, they don’t have to find a bunch of examples themselves (and worry about selection effects) because someone else has already done it and listed them in a catalogue. It is nice to celebrate this kind of thankless work.
The closing lines are weird: “Humans write the book of truth… Truth writes the world.” This sounds like constructivist epistemology. The rest of the song has empiricist epistemology: Truth is determined by the external world, not written by humans. Maybe something like “Humans can read the book of truth.… Truth comes from the world.” (Although this adds syllables...)