An inclusional worldview
APN
Are Russian Scientists More ‘Realistic’ Than ‘Western Scientists’?
0February 1, 2010
by ted lumley
in APN
Continuing inquiry into the ‘demographics’ of how people split into polarized opposition of views, is leading me to the notion (not yet a conclusion) that Russian scientists and perhaps the Russian people in general have a different ‘polarization of views’ profile than in ‘the West’.
What has led me to further explore this possibility is the remarkable difference in the proportion of scientists favouring ‘local forcing of climate change’ (CO2-forcing) versus those who favour ‘celestial forcing of climate change’, in ‘the West’ and in ‘Russia’ respectively. A rough estimate based on what is reported in the media and also through email exchanges with scientists is that, in the West, there is perhaps an 80% – 20% split in favour of ‘local [CO2} forcing of climate change’ while in Russia, the proportion seems to be inverted, with an 80% – 20% split in favour of ‘celestial [solar cycles, orbital deviation cycles] forcing of climate change’.
It seems fair to say that such differences in scientific views between Russia and the West haven’t been seen since the days of the cold war where, for example, many Americans believed that the 1959 Russian (Luna 3) pictures of the ‘dark side’ of the moon were faked.
So, what is the origin of this dramatic difference in scientific view? (more…)
Author’s Subtext: Invisible Spatial Origins of Material Dynamics
0January 9, 2010
by ted lumley
in APN
What was I thinking when I wrote ‘The Invisible Spatial Origins of Material Dynamics’?.
The assimilation of ideas of others is an everyday activity, and, most often, the ‘cognitive engine’ we employ in this activity is ‘untouched’ by the ideas we are ‘processing’, but in philosophical discourse, it often happens that there are ideas that concern the ‘cognitive engine’ itself, that require ‘real-time’ modifications to the cognitive engine in order to be ‘properly processed’ so that the ideas can be shared and discussed.
If, bundled in with the ideas, are some ‘instructions’ for modifications to the cognitive engine necessary for the proper processing of the ideas, and if the engine modifications are not made but the ideas are processed with the pre-existing cognitive engine, the ideas that ‘come through’ may be severely ‘bastardized’and confuse the dialogue.
[It may also be the case that our acculturation has been putting ‘governors’ on us that restrain the natural scope of our cognitive powers.]
That presents a problem to the writer (‘moi’, in this case) because it asks quite a bit of the reader. That is, if he tinkers around and tunes his cognitive engine for this reading, will he be able, at the same time, to get everything back together the old way? (more…)
The Invisible Spatial Origins of Material Dynamics
0January 8, 2010
by ted lumley
in APN
Consider the parallelism between Gabor’s Theory of Communication and human understanding of, for example, sediment deposition and/or climate change..
Gabor’s theory of communications augments a purely tangible (‘real’) time sequence of information elements into a ‘complex’ (‘real’ + ‘imaginary’) information signal. Gabor developed this ‘quantum physics compliant’ communications theory based on Pauli’s formulation of the ‘uncertainty principle’; i.e. wherein ‘time’ and ‘frequency’ are understood to be interrelated.
Gabor compares this to augmenting a ‘rotating vector’ with a ‘rotating field’ (which is 90 degrees phase shifted from the rotation of the vector). Tied up in this arguably more comprehensive ‘communications theory’ are the modes of understanding associated with ‘observation’, ‘experiencing’, ‘perception’ and a quality of observation that is termed in German ‘anschaulichkeit’§ (‘intuitively real’ or true to nature).
Imagine the rotating pinwheel appearance of a ‘hurricane’. (more…)
Author’s Subtext:-The Political Hijacking of Scientific Inquiry
0January 3, 2010
by ted lumley
in APN
The paper by Forbes and Stammler, ‘Arctic climate change discourse: the contrasting politics of research agendas in the West and Russia’, … brings home to me just deeply mired we are in ways of understanding that are the source of chronic social dysfunction.
The Nenets of Siberia and Northern Europe may be one of the last ‘communities’ on earth that have avoided co-optation by forms of social organisation that put anthropocentric self-interest first, as is bundled into ‘sovereignty’ and ‘democratic nation states’ (democracy is clearly anthropocentric in that it fails to respect and protect the rights of ‘wildlife’).
Where we are working together for the furtherance of man’s interests, we are letting the quality of the overall ecosystem space that we are included in ‘flap in the breeze’. However, if we are working together for the sustaining of the quality of the overall ecological space that we are included in, we will benefit in a sustainable sense (without the obscene exploitation of the natural space we are included in, as is occurring when we put the fulfilment of our species or race’s or sovereign nation-state’s self-interests first). (more…)
The Political Hijacking of Scientific Inquiry
0January 2, 2010
by ted lumley
in APN
Around the globe there is a rising awareness that ‘politics’ is in the process of hijacking scientific inquiry. While the ‘global warming obsession’ may be bringing this situation into the central foreground of our attention, it is by no means a recent or a single-issue based development, but an endemic socio-political process with deep psychological roots.
There is a dysfunction here wherein ‘man’ as the ‘child-of-nature’ sees himself as the ‘parent-of-nature’. The inverting of the true relationship parallels our popular error in treating storm-cells in the flow of the atmosphere (children-of-the-flow) as the source of the turbulent flow (as a disturbance with its own local agency) or as ‘parents-of-the-flow’.
The storm-cell is the ‘result’ of the flow and so too is ‘man’ the result of the dynamic space of nature. The intended use of ‘result’ here is ‘spatial’ rather than before-and-after ‘time-of-existence’ oriented; i.e. the flow continues on while the storm-cells gather and re-gather within it.
Western man, however, has promoted the notion of ‘progress’ wherein ‘modern man’ is ‘superior’ to ancient man and/or to ‘aboriginal cultures’ that retain an ancient world view.
This notional ‘superiority’ of modern man has been based on ‘what modern man can do’; i.e. on his ability to predict and control what unfolds. However, since the days of Galileo, where Galileo found that it was easier to describe the motion of material objects as if they were moving in a vacuum (generalizing the laws and principles of motion so as to remove the spatial-relational particulars), our scientific habit has been to model dynamics in these general ‘situation-free’ or ‘spatial-medium-free’ terms. Thus, as McLuhan observed in ‘Understanding Media’, we are very skilled at specifying how we are going to construct machinery and at predicting its operations and output, but in terms of what really transpires, it matters little if the machinery is producing Cadillacs or cornflakes, what ‘really’ matters is how our relationships with one another and the environment are transformed by such operations. (more…)
The Source of ‘Hollowness’ in Rational Thought
0December 28, 2009
by ted lumley
in APN
The global warming debate is opening up a portal for us to examine the source of the seeming ‘hollowness’ of rational thought, and it is a ‘crack’ in the rational defence system that we cannot afford to allow to re-seal before we get our investigative crowbars in there.
It is not that difficult to explain what is happening. The difficulty is in believing the explanation, because what we have come to accept as our ‘standard reality’ (a somehow stark and cold ‘rational’ reality) is over-simplified in a manner similar to the way in which Ptolemy’s geo-centric reality was over-simplified relative to Copernicus’ helio-centric reality; i.e. both views give answers that are consistent within their respective frameworks, but which differ in the comprehensiveness in which they ‘model’ our observations and experiences.
We all know that something is wrong with our rational world view; i.e. it always ‘hangs together’ but it ‘feels’ ‘incomplete’. As researchers such as Joseph Chilton Pearce have observed, the heart plays a role that is absent/denied in our rational world view. Our real-world observations/experiencing of human, animal and natural behaviour in general suggests that there is a ‘compassionate mind’ at work at the same time as the rational mind, but science (rational model based science) is not willing to concede this point. (more…)
Finding the ‘Silver Lining’ in the ‘Global Warming Debate’
0December 18, 2009
by ted lumley
in APN
Pamphlet as distributed to the local island community, December 18, 2009
Finding the ‘Silver Lining’
in the ‘Global Warming Debate’
The Aboriginal Physics Newsletter,
ted lumley www.goodshare.org/wp/
Christmas and the New Year are coming and that’s when we try to look on the positive side of things. Or maybe a better way to put it is that we relax so that the sharp cutting edges of current issues become blunt and, like toy rubber knives, let us laugh about things that normally put a stern look on our faces and stiffness in our spine. (more…)
Author’s Subtext: Opinion-Editorial on ‘Global Warming’
0December 13, 2009
by ted lumley
in APN
Well, what was on my mind as I wrote the ‘Opinion-Editorial’ on ‘Global Warming’ was not ‘global warming’ per se, but the different psychologies that are ‘operative’ in the discussion. I see three in operation which were first ‘categorized’ for me by ‘Missy and Larry Hein’ of Metairie Louisiana (Larry has since rejoined the cosmic flow, as he might have put it).
Larry Hein S.J. Ret. and his 'Angel-dog' Missy
Larry Hein S.J. Ret. is a retired Jesuit priest who claimed (tongue-in-cheek) that his ‘angel dog’ Missy (his pure intuitive aspect) was teaching him and that he was merely her mouthpiece and a slow learner who was meanwhile trying to assimilate Missy’s teachings. Larry was tuned to the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and pointed me to some of his ‘forbidden’ letters which suggested to me that his ‘curious’ manner of sharing his ideas on religion was probably prudent; (more…)
An Opinion-Editorial on ‘Global Warming’
0December 13, 2009
by ted lumley
in APN
The statement “rising temperatures are causing widespread melting of ice” is a commonly heard statement that flags a problem in our culture, in our popular manner of conceiving dynamics, not only in the media and public at large, but also in much of science. It lies at the root of current widespread public fear of ‘global warming’.
A ‘rising temperature’ is an observation; it has no ‘power of causality’. The observation that temperatures are rising informs us that ‘something is going on in the world’ but it does not inform us as to ‘what is going on’.
There is nevertheless a simple ‘correlation’ there, between ‘rising temperatures’ and ‘ice melting’, in some places but not everywhere (not where the temperature remains below 0 degrees Celsius). Our cultural habit (this will be explored in a moment) is to capture this correlation in terms of ‘time’; i.e. ‘WHEN the temperature rises above 0 degrees Celsius, ice turns to water and WHEN the temperature falls below 0 degrees, water turns to ice.’. The alternative is to capture this correlation ‘spatially’; i.e. ‘WHERE the temperature rises above 0 degrees Celsius, ice turns to water and WHERE temperature falls below 0 degrees, water turns to ice’.
This difference in the way we formulate our observations is not trivial. It was the source of fundamental disagreements between Albert Einstein and Henri Poincaré, contemporaries in the development of relativity theory, as is discussed in Peter Galison’s book ‘Einstein’s Clocks, Poincarés Maps’.
Psychologically, the choice of formulations makes a big difference. (more…)
Author’s Subtext: – Global Warming? …
0December 9, 2009
by ted lumley
in APN
Because of the emotions tied up on the issue of global warming, there is a danger that when one ‘opens one mouth’ or ‘writes a few words’, they are likely to be summarily dismissed by those who feel that the world can be divided into two groups, -those who support the man-made global warming hypothesis, and, -those who do not support the man-made global warming hypothesis.
So, there is difficulty in sharing inquiry into the topic of climate variance, man’s activities and the relationship between the two, since such inquiry tends to be seen as a ‘re-opening’ of inquiry that has already been ‘settled’, the result being that everyone is identified as being ‘a member of one or the other of two groups’ so that ‘further inquiry into the topic’ is CLOSED, apart from developing more detailed understanding WITHIN one or the other camp.
There is, of course, another ‘line of inquiry’ and that is; ‘what is the source of this division of opinion on this topic of climate variance, human activity, and the relationship between the two.’ (more…)
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