Commenti a: Why Is Sugar Sweet? http://www.giorgiobuccilli.com/2009/09/why-is-sugar-sweet/ Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:31:06 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 Di: Hervé Menga http://www.giorgiobuccilli.com/2009/09/why-is-sugar-sweet/comment-page-1/#comment-197 Hervé Menga Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:27:27 +0000 http://www.giorgiobuccilli.com/?p=833#comment-197 Some ideas coming from the book i am currenly reading (Le macroscope, by J. De Rosnay): You present above only the objective view: you (the human observer) finds the sugar (the object) sweet. But what is the subjective view, the point of view of the sugar? i mean do you think that the sugar "intends" to be sweet for us, humans ? i guess so, but is it also valid for other observers than humans ? may be not. So what makes the difference ? because somebody (a human) had got once the idea to concentrate the juice of the sugar beet into a powder that a human can put in his mouth (or in his coffee). Then, the sugar is not only a "dead" object composed of molecules, it also contains the human knowledge of the sweet taste. And this is the information that the human tongue is perceiving through the human brain : this piece of material contains the human knowledge of the sweet taste. In fact, we do not need to really feel the taste of the sugar. We "recognize" the human knowledge of sweetness directly by looking at the sugar powder: Everybody knows that if he wants to make his coffee sweeter, he can just put some sugar in it! So why sugar is sweet for humans ? because sugar contains human knowledge of sweetness... Now let us return to our good old mechanical engineering world. How can we fix two plates easily (so from two floating plates make one rigid plate). Well, we can drill a hole into both plate, and put a screw and a bolt, and turn the screw into the bolt... What makes the plate-screw-bolt rigid ? We all know, we mechanical engineers... it is because this human knowledge of fixture is included in the screw-and-bolt (in fact it has been included by another human, who had once upon a time this strange idea!!!) Some ideas coming from the book i am currenly reading (Le macroscope, by J. De Rosnay):
You present above only the objective view: you (the human observer) finds the sugar (the object) sweet.
But what is the subjective view, the point of view of the sugar? i mean do you think that the sugar “intends” to be sweet for us, humans ? i guess so, but is it also valid for other observers than humans ? may be not. So what makes the difference ? because somebody (a human) had got once the idea to concentrate the juice of the sugar beet into a powder that a human can put in his mouth (or in his coffee).
Then, the sugar is not only a “dead” object composed of molecules, it also contains the human knowledge of the sweet taste.
And this is the information that the human tongue is perceiving through the human brain : this piece of material contains the human knowledge of the sweet taste.
In fact, we do not need to really feel the taste of the sugar. We “recognize” the human knowledge of sweetness directly by looking at the sugar powder: Everybody knows that if he wants to make his coffee sweeter, he can just put some sugar in it!
So why sugar is sweet for humans ? because sugar contains human knowledge of sweetness…

Now let us return to our good old mechanical engineering world. How can we fix two plates easily (so from two floating plates make one rigid plate). Well, we can drill a hole into both plate, and put a screw and a bolt, and turn the screw into the bolt…
What makes the plate-screw-bolt rigid ? We all know, we mechanical engineers… it is because this human knowledge of fixture is included in the screw-and-bolt (in fact it has been included by another human, who had once upon a time this strange idea!!!)

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