Help Remaking America by George Shollenberger, Idea 100 + XXIX (Intelligent Design, XIIc)

In this blog on Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985 ) and her contribution to man’s knowledge of God’s Intelligence Design will discuss Chapter 1 of her 1942 book on "Philosophy in a New Key."

As I said in an earlier blog, Langer says that man must face new problems and must solve them continually. So Langer is saying that life forms a continuum and has no end. Such a continuum is consistent with my scientific proof of God and is also consistent with scriptures, which speak about new and more beautiful worlds. Langer points out that this continuum exists and is confirmed by the great solutions made by the physical sciences for two centuries. However, she also points out that the physical sciences did not deliver solutions to the life sciences such as the mental sciences and the human sciences.

I found her last points to be true when I conducted research on the national crime at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1971 to 1994. In this period, crime was not eliminated by any mental science, any social science, any psychological science, any economic science, or any technology. Today, life scientists cannot depend on the physical sciences. Based on the work of many linguists in the 1920s, Langer says that our senses can produce data only with symbols.

The problem with symbols is that they that must be given a meaning. The symbols used by the physical sciences have received their meanings from cause/effect relations, which are called physical laws. However, cause/effect relations do not apply to the symbols of the life sciences.

Langer seeks life science symbols and their meanings in a series of books. In 1953 she publishes, "Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art." Then, she wrote a 3-volume book on "Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling" (1967, 1972, & 1982). The 3-volume book was abridged by Johns Hopkins University.

While producing this blog, I began to reflect on my research work at the U.S. Department of Justice. After a few minutes, I learned why Langer’s work in the life sciences is not expanded by the U.S. government. I concluded that this expansion has been impeded by the Republican party and its belief that criminals are born. This belief is stated when a Republican says, ‘the key should be thrown away after a criminal is jailed.’ The Democratic party believes that environments can create criminals. I agree with the Democrats because in 1988 I concluded that criminals can be created by the national symbolic language of the USA.

During the Reagan/Father Bush administrations, the Republican Director of the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice sought crime predictions based on physical and mathematical laws. These predictions were never found. More recently, mathematical physicists influenced U.S. bankers to accept their predictions of human behaviors on real estates transactions called ‘swops.’ In 2009, the U.S. government had to bailout these banks to save the U.S. economy.

It is time to separate the physical sciences and life sciences. But I don’t believe that these two sciences will become separated as long as the Republican party holds any cause/effect belief in any human activity.