ecomono
Junior Member
like tuning in a radio
Posts: 83
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Post by ecomono on Feb 2, 2009 8:17:23 GMT
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 2, 2009 8:28:03 GMT
Tom Siddell has discovered the secret of making blatant exposition interesting.
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Post by geminisun on Feb 2, 2009 8:39:01 GMT
I'm surprised at Kat. I know she focuses on science, but she and Annie hang out with a ghost and her boyfriend turned into a bird. I think there's some point at which disbelief just has to be suspended.
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Post by zingbat on Feb 2, 2009 9:15:06 GMT
Wait, so does this mean that you can't apply the scientific method in order to understand blinker stones and the like? That if you try to test a hypothesis about how they work, you just can't get any helpful data? No matter what you do? Does etheric stuff not follow any set of consistent rules?
That seems to be what Mrs. Donlan is saying, but... seriously?
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Post by mudmaniac on Feb 2, 2009 9:17:03 GMT
In Katie's eyes, Mort is most likely a floating nano-colony of microbots. they form a cloud to constitute his translucent body, or spread out over a large area to collect airborne particles and assemble them into solid objects.
Alister was administered an advanced gene altering retrovirus.
sometimes some people just see things as the sum of their parts.
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Post by penguinfactory on Feb 2, 2009 10:25:02 GMT
Wait, so does this mean that you can't apply the scientific method in order to understand blinker stones and the like? That if you try to test a hypothesis about how they work, you just can't get any helpful data? No matter what you do? Does etheric stuff not follow any set of consistent rules? That seems to be what Mrs. Donlan is saying, but... seriously? I think it's more that you can't find out exactly what causes them to work. We already know the blinker tone and Reynardine's abilities, for example, have consistent rules to them. |
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Post by Midnight Meadows on Feb 2, 2009 13:32:06 GMT
Infodump! INFODUMP! It's about freakin' time... I'd say Tom owes us at least three or four big ones by this point, considering how little he explains and often craftily skirts around having to do so. But then again, that's part of why we love Gunnerkrigg, eh?  |
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Dominic
Junior Member
touched by his funk
Posts: 65
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Post by Dominic on Feb 2, 2009 13:44:43 GMT
"Etheric sciences", I do like that approach. It means that they do try to get as far as possible by reasoning (there has to be some sort of pattern to etheric interaction) but won't cry when the fundamental causes can't be analysed with physics. I think. Eat that, Kat.
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Post by zingbat on Feb 2, 2009 14:57:43 GMT
I'd still like to see Kat try her hand at analyzing the blinker stone, with the knowledge that its underlying principles may not be explained by the physics that we currently know.
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Post by theoldwolf on Feb 2, 2009 15:54:07 GMT
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Chrome
Full Member
The Shiny One
Posts: 232
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Post by Chrome on Feb 2, 2009 16:05:59 GMT
Well, Kat's still basically a preteen at what, 12? Maybe 13?
Her mother may have gone through the same stages, only to find a comfortable balance between the etheric and the scientific in her mind. That's probably this process that Kat has to go through.
Given some time, she'll find a way to reconcile the two. Just right now, all she sees are the difference because she's young, and still generally loyal to the more scientific side of things. It's not to say she can't suspend disbelief - she knows when she has to. She just doesn't know where to really keep that boundary just yet.
Example: You know how in science magazines they have these sections about new discoveries, inventions, etc? More often than not, I'm boggled by how amazingly strange science can be, and how thin that boundary between unexplainable, and explainable really is now. Kat's just learning that the boundary is probably more of a squiggley than a straight line....just like in the real world here.
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Post by paythel on Feb 2, 2009 16:34:31 GMT
 Uhm, does no one think that science is in essence logical deduction and the fruits of said logical deduction? One first sets several base assumptions pertaining to the matter at hand (usually from an original body of knowledge), then observes said matter, forming what would seem to be logical conclusions, and then adding these conclusions to the general body of knowledge. I would consider this basic process, and the rigor of its carrying out, to be the basic tenant of science. Now, in our reality, astrology(as far as I know) is simply a set of beliefs about the world that hasn't been accepted into the public, 'formal' body of knowledge, for generally, tests have had testers concluding that the beliefs, the assumptions of astrology are false. As such, it is branded false, and if you 'use' astrology, set assumptions drawn from it, you are considered unscientific. This, I imagine, could apply to beliefs in astral projection, teleportation, or really any religion, but I digress. So, I'm not quite sure what is meant when in the world of Gunnerkrigg Court, where say... the teleportation of the blinker stone was possible, Kat considers the teleportation 'unscientific' (Although to be honest, matter transference is teleportation in fancy words, and thus she doesn't. Which would make her reaction strangely illogical). And now with this page, where Anja poses the description of magical things being that which 'can't be explained by scientific methods'... It would mean that the processes by which these magical things are and work are illogical, or beyond our ken, even if it were explained to us. Uhm, right? But regardless, I love this comic!
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Post by zingbat on Feb 2, 2009 17:00:43 GMT
Paythel: Yes! I think that as well, which is why I have a little trouble when fantasy stories start getting into the ways that science can't explain the stuff in their world. Maybe it's just because I've grown up in this universe, in which we *can* (as far as we can tell) divide things up into "stuff we understand" and "stuff we don't understand... yet", but any world that has things in it that can't be explained by consistent processes or rules that can be deduced from observation just kind of makes me want to throw up my hands and go "What a stupid universe!" I still like this comic, too, though... although I may be a little less enchanted with Mrs. Donlan than previously (also, how on earth did she manage to let Kat get this far in life without imparting this sort of knowledge to her? Way to neglect your daughter's education, Anja ) |
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ding
Full Member
Posts: 129
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Post by ding on Feb 2, 2009 17:48:15 GMT
The exciting field of Etheric Sciences is able to answer many questions plain vanilla Science cannot in part due to the Etheric Table of Elements having four to five additional elements not found on the Periodic Table of Elements. However, the Etheric Table still has fewer elements than the Alchemic Table of Elements, much to the embarrassment of Etheric Scientists everywhere. Ha! ;D Alchemy Table has a "wine" symbol. I'm thinking alchemists studied wine exhaustively! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol |
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Post by fjodor on Feb 2, 2009 20:19:31 GMT
Etheric science, I think it's a beautiful term.
Science is nothing more than a structured approach to testing and validating hypotheses. You whip up a theory about how stuff works, you try to find a logical set of related actions and reactions and set up a lab where you see under which controlled circumstances your theory is valid, or you draw the conclusion that the theory is false, and try to think of another theory to test. That's really all there is to science. Depending on your field of expertise, you have to have more skills or specialist knowledge, but in essence you do not have to be a genius to be a scientist.
I guess Kat's real problem is that she cannot accept that there are things that will not obey conventional scientific laws. The very term 'etheric science' sounds like an attempt to classify magic under science. The scientific part of it will be to find out how magic can be used, and not how it can be understood. All in all very much in line with Coyote's remark that the Court is trying to create a God. In order to do so, they will need to be able to control or use the etheric powers. Labeling magic as science would be a justification.
It is also good to note that Kat is more than a scientist. She was a scientist when she came up with the protein crystal test, and when she was investigating Shadow2, but when she made the antigravity shuttle, she was engineering. In my opinion that's a big difference.
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Post by etcetera on Feb 2, 2009 23:39:31 GMT
In Katie's eyes, Mort is most likely a floating nano-colony of microbots. they form a cloud to constitute his translucent body, or spread out over a large area to collect airborne particles and assemble them into solid objects. Alister was administered an advanced gene altering retrovirus. sometimes some people just see things as the sum of their parts. You sound like Stargate Atlantis.  I would like to hear more about Etheric Sciences before I comment on this one, Anja. |
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Post by warrl on Feb 3, 2009 0:05:02 GMT
The blinkerstones already don't obey ordinary scientific laws.
The use of a blinkerstone may in and of itself be reproducible and predictable, within certain bounds...
but it's, as far as any sort of physical analysis is concerned, an ordinary gemstone. They can't distinguish a blinkerstone from certain other gemstones by ANY means EXCEPT asking a blinkerstone-user to attempt to use it.
Further, they can't identify a blinkerstone-user by any means other than seeing if a person can use a blinkerstone.
And the identified uses and attributes of a blinkerstone:
* Apparently it has some idea who owns it or has permission to use it (a rock that understands the concept of ownership?), and it is responsive to the fact of its owner thinking about it even when not in contact with that owner by any identifiable means
* It can create energy, or possibly channel it from no identifiable source with no identifiable channel or communication mechanism, and cause that energy to assume a specific shape
* It can teleport, or maybe be teleported, we don't know which.
So at present, all "science" can say about that is "It just works... we can try to work out the rules by which it works, but we've done our best to find *why* it works and are stumped."
(There's more that I suspect blinkerstones can do, but only in the figurative hands of a true master such as does not currently exist as far as we know. We've seen the effect of it... I think I'll either start a new thread for this later, or put it in "Wild Speculations".)
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ding
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Posts: 129
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Post by ding on Feb 3, 2009 0:19:35 GMT
I guess this explains the symbols. But why does the author choose to end all chapters with the Antimony symbol?  The metal antimony symbolizes the animal nature or wild spirit of man and nature, and it was often symbolized by the wolf.
www.rsc.org/chemsoc/visualelements/pages/alchemist/alc_antimony.htmlWow, that's really clever... The natural sulfide of antimony, stibnite, was known and used in Biblical times, as medicine and in Islamic/Pre-Islamic times as a cosmetic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntimonyGuess that's why Annie wears makeup.  Reyardine in ethereal form wears the Mercury symbol. Alchemists were convinced that mercury transcended both the solid and liquid states, both earth and heaven, both life and death.www.rsc.org/chemsoc/visualelements/pages/alchemist/alc_mercury.htmlWhich makes sense, because transcending death is exactly what Reyardine was doing. www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=55 And Eglamore wears the symbol for Lead from time to time... www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=56Alchemists understood lead to be the parent metal to the seven alloys, and is characterized as a doting, overbearing oaf.No, not really. Any other symbols out there? Went looking for the eye but couldn't find anything resembling it enough... |
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Post by King Mir on Feb 3, 2009 1:33:44 GMT
but it's, as far as any sort of physical analysis is concerned, an ordinary gemstone. They can't distinguish a blinkerstone from certain other gemstones by ANY means EXCEPT asking a blinkerstone-user to attempt to use it. Further, they can't identify a blinkerstone-user by any means other than seeing if a person can use a blinkerstone. That's not what the comic is suggesting. It is suggesting that the etheric properties of the blinker stone are not apparent by it's physical properties. Presumably, a blinker stone is a specific "monocrystalic" red gem, not just any shiny rock. It is in some ways like how we don't have a good model for what causes charge to build up in thunder clouds. Nothing about water droplets suggests that the should build up charge like they do. And yet, undeniably it does happen. |
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Post by King Mir on Feb 3, 2009 2:20:44 GMT
So, I'm not quite sure what is meant when in the world of Gunnerkrigg Court, where say... the teleportation of the blinker stone was possible, Kat considers the teleportation 'unscientific' (Although to be honest, matter transference is teleportation in fancy words, and thus she doesn't. Which would make her reaction strangely illogical). No she doesn't. She just can't explain it. She probably used the term "matter transference", because to a technically minded person like her that's the word that comes to mind when describing something changing places like that. Unlike us readers of fantasy comics, who encounter "teleportation" in our literature. To Kat Teleportation no doubt refers to quantum entanglement. Yeah, that part is strange. 'can't be explained by scientific methods' could just mean that that scientific tools, like microscopes, have been ineffective it. On the other hand, Scientific method is contrasted with the "methodology" of alchemy., which is apparently a synonym fore magic. But how is magic a methodology? Magic is apparently distinct from ethereal tenant, otherwise the court would not pursue it. Overall I'm quite confuse what Anja is trying to say. My best guess is that ethereal science is the application of scientific principles to all things "ethereal". The problem with this is that it is unclear what qualifies as ethereal. There was a time when most things couldn't be explained by the scientific method. But at no point was there a branch of science for things that we don't understand. Yet Anja seems to be defining ethereal science as just that. Perhaps further explanation will clarify things. |
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Chrome
Full Member
The Shiny One
Posts: 232
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Post by Chrome on Feb 3, 2009 3:32:17 GMT
As goes that old saying about science being indistinguishable from magic to some people, I tend to see it the other way around. Magic is something that hasn't yet been explained scientifically at our current level of advancement. Doesn't mean that we never will. Just means that someday we could. 200 years ago, someone would've seen computers, electricity, TVs, and cars as magic. Stuff their science couldn't explain. We don't see it as magic now, because we have our scientific explanations for why it works. I wouldn't want to be the one trying to explain the technology of 200 years from now to people today, given our current rate of rapid technological and scientific expansion. Right now, some of that stuff is probably considered impossible. And we'd never know until someone figured it out, and moved it from "unexplainable" to "oh yeah I know how that works." Even science fiction doesn't always hit on the really strange stuff. Granted some things we'll probably never be able to answer, empirically or by calling it magic. But I always like to think that scientists are open-minded enough with the method's approach, that if they see something clear and replicable that revises a couple of theories, they'll go with it. At least they're not stuck with the whole issue some religious people have with the "I've been told it's true, therefore it's true" thing. At the very least, the etheric sciences in the Gunnerkrigg world seem to run by their own set of rules. Perhaps there are scientific laws, and there are etheric laws in the GKverse? |
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Post by zingbat on Feb 3, 2009 4:06:45 GMT
hahaha, I like what somebody posted in the Comments under the comic:
"Sorry, Kat. As the scientifically-minded person in a fantasy comic, your job is to always be wrong. Get used to it.
Meagen, 02.02.2009, 12:52pm"
Doesn't it always seem to go like that, though?
Maybe this time it'll be different. Kat'll get her hands on the blinker stone and come up with a whole Theory of Blinking.
...
Also, I would like to point out that we're still not entirely sure why gravity works the way it does, but no one has ever tried to say that we should classify it as "etheric" because of that.
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Post by karakai on Feb 3, 2009 4:54:29 GMT
Yea but when you think about it, why does ANYTHING work the way it does? Take combustion; When certain types of metals undergo combustion, you can get green, and I believe even pink. Now scientists came up with an explanation of it, but why did it turn out that way in the first place? How do living organisms, on such complex levels, function as they do? Why are humans the only animals that went down the path we're currently on?
Science is very akin to religion in the sense that it provides a what or why, or sense of knowing, to the previously deemed unknown. Religion has gained the strict label we know now, but is it really that far from Copernicus' Heliocentric Theory which was ostracized in his time, but accepted as general knowledge today?
Any form of understanding depends on the person whom the information is told, and secondly how they interpret it. Conversely if they are not willing to accept ideas or the change of their own ideas, it's pretty moot.
Went on a little tangent, but my point is everything we have today as far as theories and generally accepted laws are completely subjective, and don't necessarily define what they are labeled to be. :b
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Klex
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[REDACTED]
Posts: 170
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Post by Klex on Feb 3, 2009 7:35:27 GMT
Any other symbols out there? From what I can recall.  Gold - the court  Bismuth - The union of scientific and etheric means  I never found what that is. I assume it's the symbol of Gillitie.  And that would be Kat's symbol, again, I don't know what it is even though I spent much time on this one. |
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Post by auburngrl on Feb 3, 2009 10:19:59 GMT
As far as Kats symbol goes it looks like either an incomplete symbol or a combination. Here is my guess.... it almost looks like the symbol for Sulfur which is one of the pure element and is said to have been representative of the multiplicity of human nature and the eternal aspiration to reach enlightenment.
Now if this is the case then we know already that Kat is a fundamentalist in that she wants to stick only to the sciences and not really even conscider the realm of the mysical or etheric.
Anya wears the eye symbol. This is not a alchemist symbol from what i can find so i am left to conclude that this is a link possibly to the eye of horus which is a symbol believed to protect against evil (makes sense that they put it on Rey) orrrr the general symbol of the all seeing eye in which case anya is definately more etheric-natured than we know.
If i am correct and this is a combination then we know why Kat is struggling. She has both parts in her but the Sulfur side (the natural side if you will) is more dominant at the moment.
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Post by zingbat on Feb 3, 2009 10:42:57 GMT
Yea but when you think about it, why does ANYTHING work the way it does? Take combustion; When certain types of metals undergo combustion, you can get green, and I believe even pink. Now scientists came up with an explanation of it, but why did it turn out that way in the first place? How do living organisms, on such complex levels, function as they do? Why are humans the only animals that went down the path we're currently on? Science is very akin to religion in the sense that it provides a what or why, or sense of knowing, to the previously deemed unknown. Religion has gained the strict label we know now, but is it really that far from Copernicus' Heliocentric Theory which was ostracized in his time, but accepted as general knowledge today? Any form of understanding depends on the person whom the information is told, and secondly how they interpret it. Conversely if they are not willing to accept ideas or the change of their own ideas, it's pretty moot. Went on a little tangent, but my point is everything we have today as far as theories and generally accepted laws are completely subjective, and don't necessarily define what they are labeled to be. :b Hmm... that's not quite what I meant by "why". In fact, it was probably a pretty bad word choice on my part. I guess what I meant is more like "how does it work"? Using that sense of the word "why", we actually do know why, for example, different metals burn different colors (excited electrons emit light as they drop to lower-energy orbits, and the intensity of the various wavelengths of light emitted thus depends on the energy states that the electrons can be in, which is different for each element). But as far as I know---which is admittedly not as far as I would like (why you gotta be so hard, physics??)---we still aren't entirely sure what it is that causes things that have mass to attract other things! Einstein came up with the idea that what we call gravity is actually space-time being warped or curved, which is a pretty neat idea, but I think it breaks down at the quantum level, so we're still not really sure how gravity works. Maybe someone else on these forums is a physicist and can correct the monstrous errors that I've probably made, but the point is that even now we still aren't really sure what it is about mass that causes gravitational attraction. I think. Or, maybe we are and I just haven't heard about it yet, but certainly at some point in the not-very-distant past we just didn't know. But, despite all this, gravity still falls and always has fallen solidly in the domain of science. Science isn't really concerned with whether there is some sort of reason or design behind the laws of the universe as we know (or don't know) them; the point of science (well, one of the points) is to investigate and determine exactly what those laws are. That's one of the big differences between science and religion, in that religion can and does concern itself with whether there is a larger reason behind, for example, humans' having turned out the way they did. That kind of question just isn't the kind that can be answered using the scientific method. So although science and religion both try to explain things about our universe, they actually are answering very different questions. One last thought: science (and the theories and laws that we have today), if done correctly, actually is as OBjective as possible. Every new hypothesis that someone comes up with must be based on observations of the physical world and has to be tested rigorously and stand up to the scrutiny of many many other scientists who will do their best to pick holes in it. If i doesn't stand up to such scrutiny, if there isn't good data or calculations or other evidence to back it up, that hypothesis will be discarded. But if there is good evidence, you might just end up with a scientific revolution, in which older theories are replaced with a brand spankin' new one that does a better job. Oh geez. I am SO SORRY for the length of this post. If it helps, at least every paragraph can sort of stand alone... |
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Post by paythel on Feb 3, 2009 12:32:11 GMT
Well, every event is caused by absolutely everything that came before. Each and every moment, each original condition proceeds according to whichever laws govern the universe to form the next. Of course then, it raises the question of first cause, first event. I would say that to the best of my knowledge, we have no formal answer at the current moment.
Rather, science is method for the discovery of the unknown. Essentially logical deduction and honesty. Also a measure of faith in our senses and what seems logical to ourselves.
Religion is rather the same, imo. It splits from what most would consider science in the identity of that last bit, "what seems logical". For example, the faith in an infallible :edit interpretation of a text, eg. The Bible oops
That would be true, of course. But I am of the opinion that the vaguely similiar way all of us have been introduced to language and the world in general have produced the ability for us to be vaguely similiar in the way we define terms and understand concepts, and so I believe that most of what we have today in theories and generally accepted laws have are core-ed to a point, no matter how nebulous.
Shovel: Science, so far as you could label it an entity, would be concerned with such, for it would have implications about the reality. Y'know, since should a universe be designed, then that is a facet of information, and so is that designer.
Additonally, I'm not quite certain, but I believe the idea is that mass causes reality to 'implode'. Perhaps not the greatest word I could think of, but well. And so, uh. If you imagine reality as a rubber sheet, then as you place an a ball on it, the sheet caves in. As such, anything nearby is dragged to it. Of course, the model is a horrible one, since the objects are part of reality as well, and soforth, but well, and I really should leave it to someone else to explain better.
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Post by karakai on Feb 3, 2009 18:40:10 GMT
Shovel you're explaining your ideas, and well. No apologies for length! LAUGHING ON LINE
And on that topic, due-ly noted. But I always thought science was about what and how, or at least that's how I came to understand it. First would be the definition of 'what' (ie the laws of physics, etc.) and then the attempt to explain how (gravity for example).
'Why' does seem to be a pesky word, eh?
Paythel, I think it's hard to put logical in one sense or another with science and religion. It's kind of like your conscience, which varies from person to person. It's logical to stay warm in winter, yet there's the polar bear club haha. Logic seems more subject to the 'eye of the beholder' schtint.
I absolutely LOVE using that against people >:3 "Why'd you do that?!" "Why did my parents have me? And their parents them? Why did they come on the boat to America? Why.." lmao
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Post by todd on Feb 3, 2009 23:25:18 GMT
One thought on why Kat's being the sceptic here (though in light of what she's already seen, it does seem a bit odd that she'd be so ready to believe that magic doesn't exist): one of the necessary elements to a good story is conflict. So, to keep this from being just bald exposition, one of the girls has to show scepticism towards Anja's statements about magic, at least for a while. And Annie being the sceptic, in light of *her* past (raised by death-gods, for example) would be even more improbable - so the role goes to Kat.
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Post by paythel on Feb 4, 2009 3:34:53 GMT
ABsolutely! That's exactly why I refer to what is held as scientific fact as simply the body of formally accepted ideas, and what is held as 'religious bullshit' as the set held by a different group of people. Neither has any grounding in reality except by what groups of people would consider logical. And that, is really no grounding in reality at all.
Also, in case I was unclear, every event is caused by EVERYTHING that came before. AFIAK. Or if not, a great deal of it.
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Uhm, does no one think that science is in essence logical deduction and the fruits of said logical deduction?
