What's the value of astronomy?

[Asker of Questions]

 

What's the value in studying distant stars, planets, galaxies, etc. given that we will never be able to travel to or communicate with whoever may live in those places? To me it's just interesting to sit here and ponder the scale of it all, i.e. the galaxies in this picture look so close you should be able to just hop from one to another, but the distance between them is so vast you couldn't make it from one to the next if you moved at the speed of light and lived for thousands years. Is there value in having your mind blown just for the f*** of it?

 

Edited September 29, 2015 by Asker of Questions

[StrictlyLogical]

When purported values are contradictory it is safe to say some or one of them is not a value.

Here we have a situation where there is a form of pleasure, and intellectual challenge, perhaps you could call it a hobby (I assume you are not an astronomer by profession), and importantly the subject of interest is reality itself, the hobby being understanding and gaining knowledge of an aspect of that reality.

Without debating the particulars, knowledge of reality always has at least some possibility of value even if one cannot understand how to use it at the time, this combined with the enjoyment of obtaining the knowledge leads to little inconsistency.

As long as you remember to pursue other values in order to sustain your life, contemplation of the wonders of actual reality is not a vice.

 

What direct value today's astronomy, physics, and astrophysics, may have to your decendants millennia from now and what wonders of technology and exploration they will produce due to the advances made now, and whether you care about that now... are hypothetical and very personal issues.  Certainly all new knowledge is built upon prior knowledge and the knowledge of today by definition is what will help to advance knowledge in the future.  If you love your decendants enough perhaps pondering their hypothetical future is a value to you now.

Edited September 29, 2015 by StrictlyLogical

[Hermes]

The easy answer is that it does not need to have any other justification than that it makes your life better. If you find life-affirming enjoyment in the discovery and understanding then that is all that is required.

On a deeper level, consider the simple fact that a modest telescope like a 4-inch refractor or a 5-inch reflector, even a 70mm National Geographic "department store" telescope will reveal that many stars perceived as solitary objects to the naked eye are pairs and multiples. For thousands of years - even 200 years after Galileo - we always assumed that the stars were individual objects, more-or-less randomly distributed. You can find the truth for yourself if you care to invest in the instrument and invest your time.

I started another discussion on this here that garnered some response.

https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/34192-any-other-astronomers-here/

And I posted this:
https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/34132-the-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-of-2020/

[Hermes]

On 9/29/2015 at 10:30 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

What direct value today's astronomy, physics, and astrophysics, may have to your decendants millennia from now and what wonders of technology and exploration they will produce due to the advances made now, and whether you care about that now... are hypothetical and very personal issues.  

It can be the difference between life and death here and now if you are ever caught outside the city with a failed vehicle. Which way is north? 

One of the direct applications of astronomy in the 18th and 19th centuries was establishing local lines of latitude and longitude in order to draw the borders on maps. Here and now, any certified training in surveying for real estate begins with knowing how to establish your local position without a pre-existing map.

Again, the practical applications are secondary to your own eudaimonic gains. All of these arguments apply also to that other easy hobbyist toy, the microcope. Have you ever seen your own cells? If you think it does not matter, read about Do-it-Yourself genomic hobbyists who pursue their own treatments. (Biohackers reviewed on my blog here https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/10/biohackers.html )

 

[Boydstun]

Professional astronomy of the past led to discovery of mathematics that was useful not only for insight and understanding of astronomical phenomena then being explored, but useful later in other science and technology to this day. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel

(Celestial Mechanics and the Development of Mathematics - begin at five minutes- and applications, e.g., getting to the moon using less fuel, less money)

Edited February 14, 2021 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

 

Dramatic Improvement in resolution of radio-frequency observation of galaxies,

through 70,000 small antennae spread across nine European countries. 

[Boydstun]

On 8/18/2021 at 7:17 AM, Boydstun said:

 

Dramatic Improvement in resolution of radio-frequency observation of galaxies,

through 70,000 small antennae spread across nine European countries. 

Using the Low Frequency Array, numerous supermassive black holes have recently been found which spew jets of matter into intergalactic space, distances 140 times the diameter of the Milky Way. Porphyrion

Edited September 25 by Boydstun

[DavidOdden]

On 9/29/2015 at 7:50 AM, Asker of Questions said:

Is there value in having your mind blown just for the f*** of it?

Other posts have addressed the utility of astronomy, but not the actual question posed. I thought it might also be good to address this question. The main reason why nobody addressed this question is because it isn’t a literally-interpretable request for discussion, but we can remedy that. First there is the question of what you mean by “having your mind blown”. In a somewhat literal interpretation, destroying your mind is the antithesis of “value”, it leads to death, when your head literally explodes. So you must not mean that. Second, I don’t understand the meaning of “just for the f*** of it”, I assume you mean “without any purpose at all”, or “at random”. I do not think that a person can truly act at random, without some external controlling device (i.e. a random number generator that determines your actions). Humans choose their actions, and despite rhetoric to the contrary, it is not a random choice, it is based on some purpose – possibly a very stupid purpose or possibly based on terrible logic. There is no "just for the f*** of it".

People often choose an action because they conclude it will yield an immediate physical good, such as food or lumber, or a stand-in for goods – money. This is one type of life benefit. Receipt of money can be immediate, but money itself is a delayed good, a potential – you can use it to buy food or lumber, or whatever. That’s why we moved from a barter economy. The ability to see a future benefit is also a rational purpose. It is always possible that the projected good will fall apart, that’s why I kick myself for buying a Kaypro rather than an IBM (just kidding). Because man’s nature is to survive by reason and reason is the faculty that integrates perceptual knowledge into conceptual knowledge, expanding knowledge has the potential to facilitate man’s survival.

However, every individual must arrange values in a hierarchy, so that you can decide “what should I do?”. While knowledge is valuable to man, generically, not all knowledge is equally valuable to all men. I place more importance on understanding the tone changes in the Logoori counterfactual conditional that I do on understanding string theory. I imagine others have those two purposes in the opposite order in their own hierarchy. There is no “universal hierarchy of values”, because not all humans have exactly the same nature. Some things, like “being the rational animal”, are universal for men (and not applicable to dogs). So in asking if there is value in something, that has to mean “does anyone find that thing to be relatively important”. So, compared to what? I suspect that faced with the choice “You can know all of these facts about stars, but only on the condition that you die 5 minutes later”, most people would not chose that offer of knowledge over existence. When you flesh out “of value – to whom – and compared to what?” the question becomes unanswerable. If you just look at the picture especially on a web page, your immediate emotional reaction may be minimal and if that is as far as you go, then it is of little value to you compared to e.g. someone giving you a Testarossa. Astronomers make a different use of this information, just as I make a different use of a Logoori person saying “if they had seen”, and astronomers just don’t care.