[Avodah] kol hamoseif gorea

[hankman]

RRW wrote:

And StarTrek has taught me about space warp and travel faster than the
speed of light. Since Zefram Cochrane hasn't yet been born, we don't
know the HOW yet. [Google Cochrane and space warp for more information]

CM responds:

I too enjoyed science fiction. I hope that we are not wondering into and creating Torah fiction.

RRW wrote:

My 7th grade rebbe -- a Morocccan -- told us that the Zohar talked about
radios and space travel. Well Jules Verne also had a man in the moon in
the 19th century -- fired out of a cannon IIRC.

CM responds:

Can you cite the actual Zohar? I find that when such nebulous and unsupported claims are made they are often baseless and sometimes based on a fanciful interpretation of the source if one exists at all, eg., a kol nishma misof ha'olam ad sof ha'olam and voila you have radio or if someone could see misof ha'olam ad sof ha'olam and shazam you have the Hubble Telescope etc.

RRW wrote:

Da Vinci foresaw helicopters 

CM responds:

Because he had a very rudimentary (by our standards) understanding of the HOW, not because he guessed the WHAT (and irrelevant to our discussion).

RRW wrote:

Point? Even if Hazal knew of every WHAT re: future advanced medicine
does not mean they knew any of the HOW'S.

So could Hazal say -- one day man will land on Moon? Yes!

CM responds:

In terms of clear Torah sources, there are NONE that I am aware of that speak of WHAT, only those that speak of the HOW. The medroshim about "Histakel be'Oraisa ubara alma" and "behiborom" - "behaiborom" clearly discuss the blueprints of the universe, the natural laws that govern our universe and how it operates, this is the HOW. We have no sources for radio, telephone, airplanes, nuclear plants etc., etc., and no reason to assume Chazal could find these directly through intensive limud haTorah. This is not true of the HOW which does purport to be embedded in the sodos of Torah as per the medroshim above. Could they then perhaps have applied the HOW they could derive from the sodos haTorah and applied them in an engineering sense to a WHAT - who knows - maybe.

This then brings me back to the questions of my earlier posts.

Kol Tuv

Chaim Manaster
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