biology vs. ki energy
heather mccarville
O.k. so this is one of the best posts I've had the pleasure of reading
in a long time. What a great question! It made me think pretty hard about
many things.
All of this is only opinion but maybe it helps to add to an outcome
which helps you.
I have a science (biological/anatomical) background and work in the
medical field. I have a good understanding of physiology, endocrinology and
how our anatomical structure gives us strength and mobility. All of that is
visible in a practitioner of aikido.
However, there are always instances where people draw from amazing power
and strength. I have also been involved in taekwondo and aikido for years
and have felt that movement of ki within my own body. I have seen some of
the most wonderful aikido techniques from some of the littlest people. I
have also seen delicate and elegant movements from some of the biggest.
It seems to me that it is hard to say exactly where ki comes from. The
Chinese have been using accupuncture and accupressure for thousands of
years. They have a great understanding of energy within the human body.
Western medicine rarely if at all recogizes these energy meridians. I often
wonder that just because we can't see them in terms of gross anatomy, does
that mean they do not exist? There are so many things in our world that
aren't visible but are very much there. Ki energy seems to be one of them.
For some reason, I would like to belive in the mystery that is ki
energy. If even for my own little world I can have the beauty of not
understanding why its there and how it works. I think I enjoy that. It
brings me to the mat and possibly that is what keeps me involved. I like
having a place where there is still wonder and unanswered questions.
Are there any other opinions?
Prometheus
heather mccarville <85769100...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:uq73m0f...@corp.supernews.com...
Heather,
We've had some exhaustive threads on the nature of Ki here in the past.
Before I comment, I'd like to know your definition for precisely what Ki is
and what function it serves etc. I'd like to understand whether you view Ki
as something seperate from, different than, the mechanics and chemistry a
living human body. I'm asking for a working definition for Ki so we may
proceed with a rational discussion.
Prom
>
>
Aaron Nowell
could explain through science and exactitude how the moon came to be made of
cheese. The question I always ask is why is the moon made out of cheese?
Why do people need to explain Ki. To physically name it. I always come
back to the fact that they really don't appreciate it or themselves. I am
no master of Ki. some days it is stronger than others. It never has
anything to do with my physical condition but my mental and spiritual
condition. If I am peaceful, serene then the Ki is strong. So if my spirit
is in harmony(hmm...Ai Ki...) and mentally I am not in conflict with myself
my Ki is strong. On the other hand....it may just be leverage and
biomechanics.
I choose not to think so.
Peace through the study of Budo.
"heather mccarville" <85769100...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:uq73m0f...@corp.supernews.com...
Prometheus
are using Ki as a mental and verbal shorcut to express the complex workings
of living bodies and the energy they generate to function and do work. My
objections to this post are not directed at the existence of this sort of Ki
and instead focus on an entirely different point.
Aaron Nowell <gym...@alltel.net> wrote in message
news:0KVo9.474$UA4.4...@news.alltel.net...
> Very nice sentiment. I also like believing.
Personally, I much prefer knowing.
> I am sure if I needed too I
> could explain through science and exactitude how the moon came to be made
of
> cheese. The question I always ask is why is the moon made out of cheese?
There is an answer to your question though the "cheese" gets lost in the
process :-) Therefore, I'm not sure that you'd find it an emotionally
satisfactory answer. (The cause for which I suspect follows the same logic
behind your objections to any attempt at explaining Ki)
> Why do people need to explain Ki. To physically name it.
> I always come back to the fact that they really don't appreciate it or
themselves.
Actually, I've never needed to explain Ki or to name it. I've merely
responded to those who profess a belief in Ki, those others who insist on it
and insist on naming it. But setting this aside, let's look at the message
and meaning behind your comment here. It's a common retort to the skeptic
who says "what is ki, what exactly do you mean?". You assert (incorrectly)
that by asking such a question the skeptic seeks to strip the poetry from
both Aikido and himself. The implication is that such a person lacks either
the intellect, imagination, or sensitivity to "understand" something like
Ki. Moreover, it hopes to establish that a reductionist approach to certian
aspects of Aikido is somehow deficient. Too often this is the surreptitious
way the mystic, who finds himself unprepared to justify his beliefs, hopes
to marginalize and dismiss the legitimate questioning of the honest skeptic.
Of course your assertion of said "fact" is fallacous. It's an unnecessary
and heavy handed ad hominem response to an honest request. All the skeptic
is asking for are your justifications for your beliefs. For some reason,
this request is met and responded to as a personal attack. It is not.
Unless of course you find a moon made of cheese to be somehow more
satisfying or poetic than reality. This is not the skeptics shorcoming,
it's yours. Such is this discussion of Ki for many people I think. Some
people prefer a universe awash with Ki in the same way they prefer a moon
made of cheese, (I'm being loosely figurative here of course) While the
skeptic finds sufficient wonder in the facts and reality such as it is.
To borrow liberally from Dawkins:
It has become socially acceptable and a bit cliche to boast ignorance, even
disdain, for science and proudly decry it's supposed lack of poetry. This is
done in the hopes of demonstrating a superior appitite for mystery and
wonder than they think science can satisfy. Intrestingly, this habit is a
result of an improper appreciation for the implications of science and the
wonder it genuinely reveals.
I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do
not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which
drives the best of true science, but more importantly it is an appetite
which true science is best qualified to satisfy. Matters like Ki really
come down to parsimony, or economy of explanation. It is possible that your
car engine is driven by some mystic outside energy, but if it looks like a
petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly like a
petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol
engine.
And here is where we most likely part company. I believe there is plenty to
marvel at in a petrol engine. Anyone who can't see the infinite wonder in
the chemical and mechanical workings of a petrol engine simply does not
understand enough about it and the nearly infinite chain of connections and
implications it embodies. (Consider only this one bit of poetry under your
hood: You are hurtling down the highway powered by pre-historic sunlight!!)
People who fail to appreciate such facts are far too quick to dismiss the
parsimonious explanation as unpoetic or unimaginitive, not because the
science lacks wonder but because they lack a proper understanding of the
wonder of science. There is almost infinite wonder in the reductionist
explanations for the workings under the hood of a car. So too this matter
of Ki. There is enough wonder underneath the biomechanical and chemical
workings of the human body to satisfy any romantic, given that he properly
understands it. But the mystic shrugs off such intellectual labor and
instead feigns ingnorance of science. He extolls the virtues of his
mysticism which amounts to little more than a lazy romantic preference, a
guess most often based in emotion, which may or may not be congruent with
the actual facts.
I'm not saying you have to be a scientist in all things- you don't have to
play with a bunsen burner and beaker on the mat - but you should seek to
understand enough about the demonstrable facts of the human body to overtake
your imagined needs and fill that fancied gap. (Or at least understand
enough to stop the nasty habit of maligning the honest skeptic as an
un-romantic, un-imaginative, an insensitive dolt.)
>I am
> no master of Ki. some days it is stronger than others. It never has
> anything to do with my physical condition but my mental and spiritual
> condition. If I am peaceful, serene then the Ki is strong. So if my
spirit
> is in harmony(hmm...Ai Ki...) and mentally I am not in conflict with
myself
> my Ki is strong. On the other hand....it may just be leverage and
> biomechanics.
> I choose not to think so.
To imply that the nearly infnitely complex workings of living bodies and the
application of Aikido to them is mundane if we view it as nothing more than
"just leverage and biomechanics" is to demonstrate a profound lack of
appreciation or understanding of the depth and complexity of the subjects in
question To fill that lack of understanding with a mystical kind of Ki
may well be viewed as intellectually indolent and superflous.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if properly appreciated, there is as
much mystery and poetry in mere "leverage and biomechanics" as there is in
this thing we call Ki and that the latter is merely the mystics way of
explaining the former without burdening himself with the intellectual
requirements of the scientist.
Tao
Kristian Lund
> Chinese have been using accupuncture and accupressure for thousands of
> years. They have a great understanding of energy within the human body.
> Western medicine rarely if at all recogizes these energy meridians. I
often
> wonder that just because we can't see them in terms of gross anatomy, does
> that mean they do not exist? There are so many things in our world that
> aren't visible but are very much there. Ki energy seems to be one of them.
Lurker approaching...
Just thought I would comment on this.
BTW, my opinions on this matter has been more or less expressed by
Prometheus.
My comment is especially in relation to:
> Western medicine rarely if at all recogizes these energy meridians.
But obviously is also pointed at the rest of the above paragraph.
You are absolutely right that Western medicine rarely recognizes energy
meridians - in fact, were it to do so, it would stop being Western medicine
and would become a strange sort of hybrid between science and mysticism.
The reason no scientists believe in energy meridians and the like is that
they have never been demonstrated. There are no peer-reviewed, reproducible
experiments that show acupuncture works!
In other words, there is no reason for assuming these meridians exists
(other that some people claim they do, which is about the same amount of
evidence that exists for Santa Claus and telepathy).
Sorry if I sound harsh, but I have this wonderful piece of evidence in
support of my beliefes that I have to share with you:
James Randi (OK, his JREF foundation) is giving away 1,000,000 $ to the
first person who can perform some kind of miracle/supernatural phenomenon
etc.
This includes acupuncture.
You just have to think up a test in cooperation with some scientists that
you and Randi can agree on and then complete it.
If someone could really do acupuncture, they would have done it and proved
their art to the world - winning one million dollars doing so...
Regards,
Kristian Lund
PS: go see
www.randi.org
for details.
s.mcelvanney
effect...if thats even how you spell it???
Aaron Nowell
will continue to disagree with you. I find Ki to be an amazing thing. It
fills me with wonder. Even if you could/would prove to me beyond a doubt
that it was a physical, tangible force to be harnessed like any other
natural force I would not want to know. This is my failing. Just the
ability to believe in something which I can't name is gratifying to me. Is
my Ki any different than yours? Is Irimi Nage different because you know
the "reason" behind it? I am quite happy being ignorant. Again this is my
failing. Some of us are not as secure in the natural world as you seem to
be. Cause and effect are not my main concerns. As I said, Ki fills me with
wonder, it allows me to see things as a child. With a smile on my face.
Just as O-Sensei said we should train. I am not claiming to have the
answer. Just the one that works for me. Why does my choice to see ki as a
mystery bother you so much? I have not asked you to see it as anything
other than what you like. I was just agreeing with Ms. McCarville.
Peace to you.
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:LsYo9.24612$YR.5...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net...
Prometheus
> Hmmmm.....Probably one of the best written responses I have ever read. I
> will continue to disagree with you. I find Ki to be an amazing thing. It
> fills me with wonder.
Me too! Though my idea of Ki is not mystical nor does it originate from an
external source.
> Even if you could/would prove to me beyond a doubt
> that it was a physical, tangible force to be harnessed like any other
> natural force I would not want to know. This is my failing.
First, Ki practice, the cultivation and exercise of Ki in the Dojo seeks to
do precisely you claim to eschew...harness it like any other natural force.
Second your desire resist a reductionist approach to Ki ceases to be a
failing the moment you admit a simple preference for mysticism, even in
spite of the facts, which you have just done here. I can respect the
romantic who has the intellectual honesty to admit they willfully wish to
ignore the scientific model out of a preference for a more poetic or
mystical explanation. I can understand the romantic who says......"I don't
want to know what makes a rainbow happen". Though I might try to convey how
they have unnecessarly limited themsleves. How thier sense of wonder could
be infinitely multiplied with a proper view of the scientific explanation.
When a scientific explanation such as that for a rainbow is outlined
properly, with the eyes, heart, and mind of a romantic, the sense of wonder
that was felt previously can be multiplied exponentially. I genuinely
believe this is true Aaron. The problem with science is not it's lack of
wonder, it's the lack of appreciation for the sense wonder science
rightfully deserves. Good lord.....the poetry in the science of a rainbow
is limitless! Thousands, no millions of tiny droplets of water, there only
but for a joyfully rare convergence of wind, water, sun, and temperature,
each droplet adrift in a cosmos of air, each a world unto itself, each a
tiny near perfect convex mirror, each catching then refracting a sunbeam
which, to produce the proper effect must enter and emerge from this
spherical prism at a precise and fortutious angle, broken into its
constituent parts only to land in the eye of the beholder, who also must be
present at a joyfully rare moment in place and time, and who's eye is yet
another marvel of nature itself! Boundless!!!
Science is not to promlem Aaron, our appreciation of it is.
> Just the
> ability to believe in something which I can't name is gratifying to me.
Is
> my Ki any different than yours? Is Irimi Nage different because you know
> the "reason" behind it? I am quite happy being ignorant. Again this is
my
> failing.
>Some of us are not as secure in the natural world as you seem to
> be. Cause and effect are not my main concerns. As I said, Ki fills me
with
> wonder, it allows me to see things as a child. With a smile on my face.
What grates on my nerves is the implication that only mysticism can provide
the sense of wonder and awe which you describe. This is what science does
for me......it fills me with a sense of wonder, it leaves me awestruck by
the interconnectedness of things, and leaves me dumbfounded and filled with
joy. It is my opinion that the spirit of wonder which led Blake to
Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and
fairies, is the same spirit that moves great science and scientists. To see
a World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, to hold Infinity
in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in a hour........viewed with the mind
and heart of a poet, this is precisely what science DOES through its
empirical and analytical tools. You just have to view it from it's proper
and righful angle.
> Just as O-Sensei said we should train. I am not claiming to have the
> answer. Just the one that works for me. Why does my choice to see ki as
a
> mystery bother you so much? I have not asked you to see it as anything
> other than what you like. I was just agreeing with Ms. McCarville.
>
> Peace to you.
We do not disagree on the value of wonder or the joy to be felt in the face
of seemingly insoluble mysteries. We merely disagree that such things can
only be found in the halls of mysticism.
Peace also to you.
John Heaney
In article <LsYo9.24612$YR.5...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>,
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Let me preface this by saying that I do not disbelieve in Ki so long as we
>are using Ki as a mental and verbal shorcut to express the complex workings
>of living bodies and the energy they generate to function and do work. My
>objections to this post are not directed at the existence of this sort of Ki
>and instead focus on an entirely different point.
Was that your way of telling me not to chime in? ;)
>Aaron Nowell <gym...@alltel.net> wrote in message
>news:0KVo9.474$UA4.4...@news.alltel.net...
>
>> Very nice sentiment. I also like believing.
>
>Personally, I much prefer knowing.
Of course. We all do. However, we can only know a very limited portion
of the infinite reality. The more you know, the more you appreciate how
much you don't know. Belief fills in the gaps whether you care to admit
it or not.
But that isn't really what I want to address. This is:
>To borrow liberally from Dawkins:
>
>It has become socially acceptable and a bit cliche to boast ignorance, even
>disdain, for science and proudly decry it's supposed lack of poetry. This is
>done in the hopes of demonstrating a superior appitite for mystery and
>wonder than they think science can satisfy. Intrestingly, this habit is a
>result of an improper appreciation for the implications of science and the
>wonder it genuinely reveals.
Dawkins is clearly a nerd. It's easy for me to recognize it becaues I am
one too. So is my wife. We have tried to cultivate nerdiness in my
daughter but it has been difficult. I think she is coming around, but
she is definitely resisting.
>I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do
>not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which
>drives the best of true science, but more importantly it is an appetite
>which true science is best qualified to satisfy. Matters like Ki really
>come down to parsimony, or economy of explanation. It is possible that your
>car engine is driven by some mystic outside energy, but if it looks like a
>petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly like a
>petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol
>engine.
>
>And here is where we most likely part company. I believe there is plenty to
>marvel at in a petrol engine. Anyone who can't see the infinite wonder in
>the chemical and mechanical workings of a petrol engine simply does not
>understand enough about it and the nearly infinite chain of connections and
>implications it embodies.
Regardless of how much wonder a petrol engine deserves, and I do think
it is somewhat less than infinite, it pales in comparison to the wonder
of the human machine. Each of us, as living beings, is more complex than
any engineer could imagine. Students of Aikido study human interaction
and to suppose that they should be just as excited by the inner workings
of a car is almost insulting. Unfortunately, it is true that some people
are no more interesting than a door stop, so I cannot bring myself to
actually feel insulted. ;) I think the allure of an engine is not really
in its complexity, but in its simplicity. Engineering is elegant in a
way that living things are not.
>(Consider only this one bit of poetry under your
>hood: You are hurtling down the highway powered by pre-historic sunlight!!)
>People who fail to appreciate such facts are far too quick to dismiss the
>parsimonious explanation as unpoetic or unimaginitive, not because the
>science lacks wonder but because they lack a proper understanding of the
>wonder of science. There is almost infinite wonder in the reductionist
>explanations for the workings under the hood of a car.
And yet your sole example of the poetry of what lurks under the hood
immediately leaves that domain! It was not a reductionist explanation at
all. And this is what I really want to address...shortly.
>So too this matter
>of Ki. There is enough wonder underneath the biomechanical and chemical
>workings of the human body to satisfy any romantic, given that he properly
>understands it. But the mystic shrugs off such intellectual labor and
>instead feigns ingnorance of science. He extolls the virtues of his
>mysticism which amounts to little more than a lazy romantic preference, a
>guess most often based in emotion, which may or may not be congruent with
>the actual facts.
But this is _you_ talking. Is it really beyond your comprehension that
many, if not most, people don't give a flying fig about science? You are
honest enough to admit, I hope, that humans have been successfully
learning martial arts for thousands of years without the benefit of
scientific understanding. I do believe it is true that one does not have
to be "ki" oriented to master Aikido. On the other hand, it is clear
that one does not need a scientific orientation either.
The problem I have with your view of science, Prom, is that it is
outdated. The reductionist view works only in classical Newtonian
science. But that is a small subset of reality. We now "know" that
reality is composed of a lot of nothing. If you were to enlarge a
hydrogen atom to the size of a small town, you would see an orange size
blob in the middle and a cherry size blob whizzing around the periphery.
Of course, you wouldn't see the latter at all because it would be moving
too fast and what exactly you saw of the nucleous is open to conjecture.
The point is that most of reality is comprised of nothing, quite
contrary to the Newtonian perspective. Matter itself is only another
form of energy.
The reductionist sees physics as addressing the foundation of reality,
providing layers of complexity addressed by chemistry, biology, ecology
psycology, sociology, cosmology, etc. That is not the contemporary view.
These "layers" are now seen as an interlocking network of perspectives
with no one being more foundational that any other.
Science is no more useful in the study of Aikido than mysticism. No
amount of scientific study is going to replace training. You have to
experience Aikido. Aikido is an experience. All that really matters is
that an instructor can communicate enough of his experience to his
students so that they can experience it themselves. What explanation is
used is largely irrelevant, as long as the experience is, in fact,
transmitted from the instructor to the student. Obviously, discussions
of ki would be lost on you, Prom, but a discussion of biomechanics would
be equally lost on someone else. And that's OK because we are all trying
to describe the same thing: an experience.
As to the actual subject of this thread, I can only assume that we all
have had some level of success in the art, in spite of (or because of)
what we believe. I can only conclude from the evidence that what one
believes is moot. But that's OK. It's still a fun topic. :)
Prometheus
news:heaney-BD38FD....@news.east.cox.net...
> I love this subject because it is clearly inexhaustible. :)
>
> In article <LsYo9.24612$YR.5...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>,
> "Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Let me preface this by saying that I do not disbelieve in Ki so long as
we
> >are using Ki as a mental and verbal shorcut to express the complex
workings
> >of living bodies and the energy they generate to function and do work.
My
> >objections to this post are not directed at the existence of this sort of
Ki
> >and instead focus on an entirely different point.
>
> Was that your way of telling me not to chime in? ;)
Not at all.......I merely wanted to avoid a rehash of that which we have
already established.
>
> >Aaron Nowell <gym...@alltel.net> wrote in message
> >news:0KVo9.474$UA4.4...@news.alltel.net...
> >
> >> Very nice sentiment. I also like believing.
> >
> >Personally, I much prefer knowing.
>
> Of course. We all do. However, we can only know a very limited portion
> of the infinite reality. The more you know, the more you appreciate how
> much you don't know. Belief fills in the gaps whether you care to admit
> it or not.
>
In the absence of knowing it is probably more correct to say beliefs base on
suppositions fill the gaps. At any rate, the limits of present knowledge is
an insufficient cause to determine that mysticism must intervene on behalf
of science's supposed lack of poetry.
> But that isn't really what I want to address. This is:
>
> >To borrow liberally from Dawkins:
> >
> >It has become socially acceptable and a bit cliche to boast ignorance,
even
> >disdain, for science and proudly decry it's supposed lack of poetry. This
is
> >done in the hopes of demonstrating a superior appitite for mystery and
> >wonder than they think science can satisfy. Intrestingly, this habit is
a
> >result of an improper appreciation for the implications of science and
the
> >wonder it genuinely reveals.
>
> Dawkins is clearly a nerd. It's easy for me to recognize it becaues I am
> one too. So is my wife. We have tried to cultivate nerdiness in my
> daughter but it has been difficult. I think she is coming around, but
> she is definitely resisting.
>
Dawkins may well be a nerd but he's my kind of nerd and has an ability to
dispel the notion that the scientific method and scientific explanations
lack poetry and wonder. Which is the main purpose of my post.
> >I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we
do
> >not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite
which
> >drives the best of true science, but more importantly it is an appetite
> >which true science is best qualified to satisfy. Matters like Ki really
> >come down to parsimony, or economy of explanation. It is possible that
your
> >car engine is driven by some mystic outside energy, but if it looks like
a
> >petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly like a
> >petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol
> >engine.
> >
> >And here is where we most likely part company. I believe there is plenty
to
> >marvel at in a petrol engine. Anyone who can't see the infinite wonder
in
> >the chemical and mechanical workings of a petrol engine simply does not
> >understand enough about it and the nearly infinite chain of connections
and
> >implications it embodies.
>
> Regardless of how much wonder a petrol engine deserves, and I do think
> it is somewhat less than infinite,
It is nearly infinite if one cares to follow the connective threads between
the workings of that engine on to the related subjects which must converge
to make such a mechanism possible. In this sense, the story of my cars
engine is truly an epic spanning time and space. It's all in how you look
at things John and this was the purpose of my post.
>it pales in comparison to the wonder
> of the human machine.
Furious agreement from me on that point!
> Each of us, as living beings, is more complex than
> any engineer could imagine. Students of Aikido study human interaction
> and to suppose that they should be just as excited by the inner workings
> of a car is almost insulting.
You labor under the assumption that I was making such a comparison. I was
not. My point was not the comparative complexity or wonder between an
engine and a human being, it was that wonder, romance and poetry can be
found in a scientific understanding of even a petrol engine if one simply
cares to view things in a broad enough, and proper context. So too the
biomechanical explanations for Human movement in aikido. The whole story,
even if viewed strictly scientifically, that makes Aikido possible is
possibly one of the greatest most poetic stories that could ever be told.
> Unfortunately, it is true that some people
> are no more interesting than a door stop, so I cannot bring myself to
> actually feel insulted. ;) I think the allure of an engine is not really
> in its complexity, but in its simplicity. Engineering is elegant in a
> way that living things are not.
Again, you labor under a misrepresentation of my position. The wonder
behind the scientific view lays not in the system which it seeks to
understand and describe, it lays instead in the interconnected poetry and
cumulative complexity of wondrous events which necessarily must have
converged to create the system itself. Whether it seeks to observe a
complex system or relatively simple one is irrelevant.
>
> >(Consider only this one bit of poetry under your
> >hood: You are hurtling down the highway powered by pre-historic
sunlight!!)
> >People who fail to appreciate such facts are far too quick to dismiss the
> >parsimonious explanation as unpoetic or unimaginitive, not because the
> >science lacks wonder but because they lack a proper understanding of the
> >wonder of science. There is almost infinite wonder in the reductionist
> >explanations for the workings under the hood of a car.
>
> And yet your sole example of the poetry of what lurks under the hood
> immediately leaves that domain! It was not a reductionist explanation at
> all. And this is what I really want to address...shortly.
I may have to concede this point and should be more careful with the term
"reductionist". But it won't pain me much since my worldview is not and
never has been strictly reductionist. I was merely trying to demonstrate
that if one cares to, there are ways of looking at a natural explanation for
a petrol engine that can be just as poetic and wondrous as a mystic
explanation for the same system.
>
> >So too this matter
> >of Ki. There is enough wonder underneath the biomechanical and chemical
> >workings of the human body to satisfy any romantic, given that he
properly
> >understands it. But the mystic shrugs off such intellectual labor and
> >instead feigns ingnorance of science. He extols the virtues of his
> >mysticism which amounts to little more than a lazy romantic preference, a
> >guess most often based in emotion, which may or may not be congruent with
> >the actual facts.
>
> But this is _you_ talking. Is it really beyond your comprehension that
> many, if not most, people don't give a flying fig about science?
It is not beyond my comprehension but it is to my dismay. We have done a
dismally poor job of conveying the wonder of science to a 21st century
population. There is far more majesty and wonder in the epic discoveries of
astronomy than the mysticism of astrology in my opinion and the fact people
find more to pique their interest in the latter than they do the former is a
matter of unending disappointment for me and a failing grade for science
educators everywhere.
> You are
> honest enough to admit, I hope, that humans have been successfully
> learning martial arts for thousands of years without the benefit of
> scientific understanding.
Absolutely. We have been breeding even longer than that. This of course do
es not mean the activity is better understood by the Stork Theory and I'll
add, in support of my main point, that the scientific explanation for
reproduction is far far more wondrous than infant delivery by waterfowl. So
too it is with Ki (IMHO.)
I do believe it is true that one does not have
> to be "ki" oriented to master Aikido. On the other hand, it is clear
> that one does not need a scientific orientation either.
>
Agreed, and asserting either position was not my point. My point was that
poetry, wonder and awe are not the exclusive property of mysticism.
> The problem I have with your view of science, Prom, is that it is
> outdated. The reductionist view works only in classical Newtonian
> science. But that is a small subset of reality. We now "know" that
> reality is composed of a lot of nothing. If you were to enlarge a
> hydrogen atom to the size of a small town, you would see an orange size
> blob in the middle and a cherry size blob whizzing around the periphery.
> Of course, you wouldn't see the latter at all because it would be moving
> too fast and what exactly you saw of the nucleous is open to conjecture.
> The point is that most of reality is comprised of nothing, quite
> contrary to the Newtonian perspective. Matter itself is only another
> form of energy.
>
All of which I agree with. I might argue for Newtonian physics if my
purpose was to argue the validity of reductionism. Alas that was not, is
not, nor has it ever been my objective. I am well aware of the implications
of quantum theory and equally aware of its misuse by mystics to support
thier worldview. Though I may have myself to blame for using the term
reductionism too frequently and outside it's proper context.
> The reductionist sees physics as addressing the foundation of reality,
> providing layers of complexity addressed by chemistry, biology, ecology
> psycology, sociology, cosmology, etc. That is not the contemporary view.
> These "layers" are now seen as an interlocking network of perspectives
> with no one being more foundational that any other.
>
Same point here again. I am not arguing in this instance for a scientific
approach to Aikido. I am merely to demonstrating that such an approach need
not be devoid of the awe, poetry and wonder one expects to find in the
mystical approach.
> Science is no more useful in the study of Aikido than mysticism. No
> amount of scientific study is going to replace training. You have to
> experience Aikido. Aikido is an experience. All that really matters is
> that an instructor can communicate enough of his experience to his
> students so that they can experience it themselves. What explanation is
> used is largely irrelevant, as long as the experience is, in fact,
> transmitted from the instructor to the student. Obviously, discussions
> of ki would be lost on you, Prom, but a discussion of biomechanics would
> be equally lost on someone else. And that's OK because we are all trying
> to describe the same thing: an experience.
>
Certainly one can hope to "describe" aikido with either approach. Science or
mysticism, either is a suitable tool for describing the concepts and
movements behind Aikido. This I have never disputed. But if one seeks to
understand why this or that movement works.....if one seeks a demonstrable
explanation for the efficacy of such things science wins over mysticism
hands down and need not sacrifice romance in the process. IMHO
> As to the actual subject of this thread, I can only assume that we all
> have had some level of success in the art, in spite of (or because of)
> what we believe. I can only conclude from the evidence that what one
> believes is moot. But that's OK. It's still a fun topic. :)
Indeed it is a fun topic and I hope I have refined my point so as to have
dispelled many of your objections. Though I'm sure you now have new ones
:-)
Prometheus
I thought about your comments/questions during my drive home tonight. As
always you managed several intelligent ripostes and got me thinking harder
about my own views......in this sense you have been a reliable and welcome
foil. The problem that bothered me today was I felt that none of your
responses really spoke to my actual point and I was left with the suspicion
that I had done of poor job of making it.
The post to which you responded was written as a rebuttal to Aaron's
assertion that those who do not seek a mystical approach to Aikido and Ki
"really don't appreciate [it] or themselves". My post was not an argument
for a scientific or Newtonian reductionist approach to Aikido, it was
intended to dispute the fallacious and ad hominem nature of the above quote.
Nor did I intend to debunk the pseudoscientific/mystic teaching methods one
often finds useful in the Eastern arts. I was merely hoping to dispel a
popular myth about science in general. Namely that science is drab and
lacks poetry, that anyone who prefers science over mysticism must as a
result share those traits by proxy, and that said people inherently lack an
appreciation of the subject of Ki and themselves. I wanted to demonstrate
that an appreciation for the scientific method can just as easily imbue us
with the same sense of aesthetic appeal as grand and sweeping poetry. While
you were correct to point out that I used the term reductionism improperly,
pouncing upon this fine point missed the meaning I was trying to convey,
however inept my attempt. Diving into quantum theory only drove us further
(yet in one respect strangely closer) to my point. Quantum theory is after
all rife with seeming oddities, absurdities, and counterintuitive wonders
and therefore is rather interesting an awe inspiring.
My personal approach to ai"KI"do is a blending of both worlds. I appreciate
the mystical explanations and methods such as they are and as far as they
go. But when it comes to discerning the actual truth behind things like the
parlor tricks one often encounters as proof of Ki, I much prefer the tools
of reason and science. Both explanations have the power of aesthetic appeal,
but the scientific explanation has the added benefit of actually being true!
Now I knew the moment I wrote that, you'd be sorely tempted to engage me in
a discussion on the nature of truth. You might even seek to hoist me on my
own petard by using science against me and introducing the Uncertainty
Principle or other such quantum theory.
Before you pounce, I'll admit that there are genuine philosophical
difficulties to be found in the deepest recesses of any discussion of truth.
What do we mean when we say something is true in the scientific sense? Is a
truth just a so-far-unfalsified hypothesis? What status does truth have in
the strange, uncertain world of quantum theory? In the light of quantum
mechanics can anything be said to be ultimately true? These are the issues
the mystic and the philosopher raise to defend their views against what they
percieve to be overly certian language of science.
On the other hand, mystics and philosophers alike have no problem using the
language of "truth" when falsely accused of a crime. "Is it true?" suddenly
becomes a fair and reasonable question with a certain, final, and
indisputable quality to the answer. Few who ask for such truths in their
private lives would be satisfied with your logic chopping sophistry of
quantum theory as a response. Quantum scientists may not know in what sense
it is true that Schrodinger's cat is dead or whether or not it is true that
a quantum particle has a position. But everybody knows what is true about
the statement that my childhood pet Smokey the cat is dead or that my car
occupies a particular parking space. There are lots of scientific truths
out there where what we are claiming or explaining is true in this same
everyday sense. Yes, there are difficulties at the deepest philosophical
depths of truth, but we can get a very long way before we have to start
worrying about them. Premature erection of alleged philosophical or quantum
problems is too often just a smokescreen for mystical mischief.
To take it all back to my original point I'd like to paraphrase something
Feynman said in response to the charge that the scientist misses the beauty
of a flower by studying it:
The beauty that is there in a flower for you is available to me too. But as
a scientist, if I choose to do so, I get the added benefit of being able to
see more. I see a deeper beauty that is not readily available to you and
others. I can see the complicated interactions of the flower which inspire
an even greater sense of awe and wonder, an even greater sense of elegant
beauty. In addition, maybe the color of the flower is red. As a scientist
this provokes more questioning. Does the fact that the plant has color mean
that it evolved to attract insects? This adds a further question. Can
insects see color? And still another. Does a bee have an aesthetic sense?
What, if anything, do a bee and I have in common if both our brains both
respond to the aesthetic appeal of a flower? And so on and so on and so
on..... I don't see how studying a flower can ever detract from it's
beauty. It only adds.
Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my approach to
it, only added.
Prom.
John Heaney
nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>In article <DH0p9.27985$ST4.60717@rwcrnsc53>, "Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Aaron Nowell <gym...@alltel.net> wrote in message
>> news:XI%o9.503$UA4.4...@news.alltel.net...
>
>> > Even if you could/would prove to me beyond a doubt
>> > that it was a physical, tangible force to be harnessed like any other
>> > natural force I would not want to know. This is my failing.
>
>> [...] I can understand the romantic who says......"I don't
>> want to know what makes a rainbow happen". Though I might try to convey how
>> they have unnecessarly limited themsleves. How thier sense of wonder could
>> be infinitely multiplied with a proper view of the scientific explanation.
>> When a scientific explanation such as that for a rainbow is outlined
>> properly, with the eyes, heart, and mind of a romantic, the sense of wonder
>> that was felt previously can be multiplied exponentially.
>
>I've never understood how knowing more about something, or viewing it
>in naturalistic terms, can detract from its beauty. Feynman struggled
>to express his confusion about this point of view, as well:
The most obvious example I can think of is movies, which by their very
nature are fabrications in virtually every sense of the word. But they
are art. The communicate some deeper truth that has nothing to do with
their false nature. Unfortunately, getting to that truth requires some
serious suspension of disbelief. The more you know about film-making,
the harder it is to suspend that disbelief.
Why do computers always burst into flames in movies? They don't do that
in real life. Unfortunately, Bus error at address 0x0103F3BC just isn't
dramatic enough.
There are many, many cases where experiences can be ruined by knowing
too much. That's why the expression, "Ignorance is bliss", is such a
well known one.
> "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere
> globs of gas atoms.
Personally, I think Feynman is speaking figuratively. I don't think he
actually knows of any poets that really think that. The fact is that
scientists tend to specialize. That is the natural result of the
classical reductionist scientific method. Poetry doesn't work all that
well when nobody else has a clue of what you're talking about. That's
why art tends to be about feelings and sex and stuff like that. These
are the things that are common to the human experience. I am happy to
say that I married a biologist. I can share all kinds of moments with
her that are both nerdy and romantic.
John Heaney
nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>In article <heaney-BD38FD....@news.east.cox.net>, John Heaney
><hea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> The problem I have with your view of science, Prom, is that it is
>> outdated. The reductionist view works only in classical Newtonian
>> science.
>
>There is nothing about relativity, or quantum theory, or other
>post-Newtonian theories that denies reductionism.
"Denies reductionism?" I'm not sure what you mean by that. Modern
theories do, in fact, put limits on the classic reductionist
methodology. Life is more than the sum of its parts. Chaos theory is but
one example. A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and it rains in
Amsterdam or wherever. There is, of course, a tremendous amount of
classic science being done. That will never change.
>> But that is a small subset of reality. We now "know" that reality is
>> composed of a lot of nothing. [...]
>
>What does that have to do with the invalidity of reductionism?
How a system behaves is very much about the interaction of its
components. There is a point where you can no longer learn anything
useful by taking it apart. That's why Aikido is an art; not a science.
When you step out on the mat, the number of things you know (or can
know) are a tiny fraction of the number of things you don't know (or
cannot know).
>> The reductionist sees physics as addressing the foundation of reality,
>> providing layers of complexity addressed by chemistry, biology, ecology
>> psycology, sociology, cosmology, etc. That is not the contemporary view.
>
>Talk to a physicist sometime. Reductionism is alive and well.
>(Though there is a post-Wilsonian "effective field theory" camp that
>recently became sociologically influential within the high-energy and
>condensed-matter communities.)
Of course, reductionism is alive and well. I never said nor implied
otherwise. I'm just pointing out its limitations.
>> These "layers" are now seen as an interlocking network of perspectives
>> with no one being more foundational that any other.
>
>Personally, I would say that physics is more foundational than other
>fields, in the sense that all of their features are arguably reducible
>in principle to physical law. However, *in practice*, the situation
>is quite different. We're never going to be able to predict
>psychological behavior by ab initio solution of the Schroedinger
>equation; psychology will always depend on non-physical principles.
We're never going to be able to predict the weather accurately either
and that does depend on physical properties. Emergent behavior is not
limited to living systems.
>> Science is no more useful in the study of Aikido than mysticism. No
>> amount of scientific study is going to replace training.
>
>What does that have to do with the usefulness of science in studying
>aikido? Nobody said anything about "science replacing training". The
>question is whether science can enhance training.
I thought the question was whether or not science was any better than
mysticism in enhancing training. I say no. Both are valid.
>> Obviously, discussions of ki would be lost on you, Prom, but a
>> discussion of biomechanics would be equally lost on someone else.
>
>Your statement makes the implicit assumption that ki and biomechanics
>are contradictory concepts.
That was worded more or less for Prom's eyes. We have history. ;) The
point I was trying to make was that the study of Aikido does not require
a scientific background, which most people don't have anyway. Scientific
explanations are indistinguishable from mysticism for many.
>> As to the actual subject of this thread, I can only assume that we all
>> have had some level of success in the art, in spite of (or because of)
>> what we believe. I can only conclude from the evidence that what one
>> believes is moot.
>
>Your conclusion doesn't logically follow from your assumption.
Well some successful Aikidoka fall into the mystical camp and others
fall into the scientific camp. And here we are still arguing about it.
If the argument could be settled definitively then it would have been by
now. We aren't the only ones on the planet thrashing this around. This
observation (i.e. evidence) suggests that the issue is moot (i.e.
debatable). It cannot be settled.
Aaron Nowell
I can't believe that one little statement has started all this. What a
group of highly intelligent people. I freely admit that I only really
follow about half of what you are talking about. I am not a Scientist, or
even highly educated. I do have 30yrs in the MA, run my on school and gym.
I suppose that I should not have used the phrasing I did. It was not my
intention to assert that by knowing the inner workings of a process I call
ki you don't wonder at it. I also shouldn't have asserted that you do your
self a disservice. I know that I did this, I am sorry. I did not mean for
this to be the focus of my post. The post was meant to show how I "feel"
about ki. And how it makes me "feel". For me, flipping the switch on the
wall and having the lights come on is good enough. I really don't care why.
I do not believe that ki can give sight to the blind or raise the dead. I
do believe that ki is a wondrous thing. I also know that rainbows are
beautiful. I don't really care to know why they come about. I realize
Prometheus that this now puts me in a category of ignorant that you find
lacking. From the tone of your posts you feel as if it your responsibility
to bring the facts to light. Perhaps I, and many more like me prefer the
dark. You didn't answer me. Is irimi nage any different because you can
stop in the middle and explain the process that is or is about to occur? I
have really enjoyed reading this thread, have learned a thing or two. But,
if in this instance ignorance is bliss, I am quite blissful.
Thank you for your patience.
Peace to all of you
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:Of7p9.32400$7I6.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>I thought about your comments/questions during my drive home tonight. As
>always you managed several intelligent ripostes and got me thinking harder
>about my own views......in this sense you have been a reliable and welcome
>foil.
Thanks. I'm having fun too. :)
>The problem that bothered me today was I felt that none of your
>responses really spoke to my actual point and I was left with the suspicion
>that I had done of poor job of making it.
I think it was partly my fault. I think I read the posts out of order
and wasn't exactly clear on what actually prompted your response. On the
other hand, you don't exactly limit your responses to exactly what was
said. You have things on your mind and tend to expand what people say so
you can veer into your own territory. I think you bent what he said a
bit so you could go on about something you are passionate about. It
should come as no surprise that I do the same. :)
>Nor did I intend to debunk the pseudoscientific/mystic teaching methods one
>often finds useful in the Eastern arts. I was merely hoping to dispel a
>popular myth about science in general. Namely that science is drab and
>lacks poetry, that anyone who prefers science over mysticism must as a
>result share those traits by proxy, and that said people inherently lack an
>appreciation of the subject of Ki and themselves.
Like I just said... ;)
Prom, you're losing it. I am not a voice inside your head. You are
having a virtual debate with me in which I am not involved. Time to come
back to reality.
These examples of scientific truths about dead cats and whatnot are
really just common, every day, garden-variety facts. Philosophers and
mystics have pets too, you know. If you want to talk about scientific
truths, which is almost an oxymoron, you have to talk about scientific
theories that are so well supported that they are held to be true.
That's generally as close as you get. Facts are not the output of
science. Facts are the input.
Frankly, I am leery of anyone who deals in the currency of truth;
whether they be scientists, mystics, philosophers or politicians.
>To take it all back to my original point I'd like to paraphrase something
>Feynman said in response to the charge that the scientist misses the beauty
>of a flower by studying it:
Are we having a Feyman appreciation week here? I must have missed the
memo. :)
>The beauty that is there in a flower for you is available to me too. But as
>a scientist, if I choose to do so, I get the added benefit of being able to
>see more. I see a deeper beauty that is not readily available to you and
>others. I can see the complicated interactions of the flower which inspire
>an even greater sense of awe and wonder, an even greater sense of elegant
>beauty. In addition, maybe the color of the flower is red. As a scientist
>this provokes more questioning. Does the fact that the plant has color mean
>that it evolved to attract insects? This adds a further question. Can
>insects see color? And still another. Does a bee have an aesthetic sense?
>What, if anything, do a bee and I have in common if both our brains both
>respond to the aesthetic appeal of a flower? And so on and so on and so
>on..... I don't see how studying a flower can ever detract from it's
>beauty. It only adds.
I could easily see how studying red flowers could get to the point where
if I ever saw another freaking red flower again in my life I'd go
postal. Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
learn about particular flowers that would cause them to lose their
appeal.
>Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my approach to
>it, only added.
I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself is
not art.
j p hutchinson
"Well, just let me stick this needle into your right earlobe."
"Well, my headache's gone, but now I've got this shooting pain in my
right earlobe..."
"Well, let's just put a needle into your left knee..."
"That helps with the headache, but now my knee hurts!"
*doctor knocks him unconscious with a frying pan*
Prometheus
> In article <Of7p9.32400$7I6.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>,
> "Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> >I thought about your comments/questions during my drive home tonight. As
> >always you managed several intelligent ripostes and got me thinking
harder
> >about my own views......in this sense you have been a reliable and
welcome
> >foil.
>
> Thanks. I'm having fun too. :)
>
> >The problem that bothered me today was I felt that none of your
> >responses really spoke to my actual point and I was left with the
suspicion
> >that I had done of poor job of making it.
>
> I think it was partly my fault. I think I read the posts out of order
> and wasn't exactly clear on what actually prompted your response. On the
> other hand, you don't exactly limit your responses to exactly what was
> said. You have things on your mind and tend to expand what people say so
> you can veer into your own territory. I think you bent what he said a
> bit so you could go on about something you are passionate about. It
> should come as no surprise that I do the same. :)
Guilty as charged...........
Actually, I don't think I'm losing it. Indeed you were the one to
introduced quantum physics into the discussion and I just thought I might
beat you to the punch before you used quantum theory to dispute my use of
the word truth. You're just upset cause I let the wind out of that sail
before you could unfurl it. :-)
>
> These examples of scientific truths about dead cats and whatnot are
> really just common, every day, garden-variety facts. Philosophers and
> mystics have pets too, you know. If you want to talk about scientific
> truths, which is almost an oxymoron, you have to talk about scientific
> theories that are so well supported that they are held to be true.
> That's generally as close as you get. Facts are not the output of
> science. Facts are the input.
>
> Frankly, I am leery of anyone who deals in the currency of truth;
> whether they be scientists, mystics, philosophers or politicians.
Well I take your point here but I think perhaps you have missed mine. You
seem to agree that thare are indeed easy to swallow garden variety truths
but then proceed to say you are leery of anyone who deals in the currency of
truth. Quite frankly, you should be more leary of anyone other than a
quantum scientist or full time philosopher who insists on dealing in the
currency of relativism or logic chopping sophisms.
The sort of scientific truth I'm talking about with regard to Aikido is that
very same sort of garden variety truth you seem comfortable with......is my
cat dead or alive? There is an answer that represents truth and one that
does not. Can Ki make me heavier so as not to be lifted? Is it Ki energy
that renders my arm "unbendable"? Unless you expand your definition of Ki
to mean anything and everything, there are truthful answers to these
questions which are better answerd by science than mysticism. But some
people simply prefer a moon made of cheese I guess.
> >To take it all back to my original point I'd like to paraphrase something
> >Feynman said in response to the charge that the scientist misses the
beauty
> >of a flower by studying it:
>
> Are we having a Feyman appreciation week here? I must have missed the
> memo. :)
>
LOL.....I had not realized some else had quoted Feynman when I wrote this.
Too funny!
> >The beauty that is there in a flower for you is available to me too. But
as
> >a scientist, if I choose to do so, I get the added benefit of being able
to
> >see more. I see a deeper beauty that is not readily available to you and
> >others. I can see the complicated interactions of the flower which
inspire
> >an even greater sense of awe and wonder, an even greater sense of elegant
> >beauty. In addition, maybe the color of the flower is red. As a
scientist
> >this provokes more questioning. Does the fact that the plant has color
mean
> >that it evolved to attract insects? This adds a further question. Can
> >insects see color? And still another. Does a bee have an aesthetic
sense?
> >What, if anything, do a bee and I have in common if both our brains both
> >respond to the aesthetic appeal of a flower? And so on and so on and so
> >on..... I don't see how studying a flower can ever detract from it's
> >beauty. It only adds.
>
> I could easily see how studying red flowers could get to the point where
> if I ever saw another freaking red flower again in my life I'd go
> postal. Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
> learn about particular flowers that would cause them to lose their
> appeal.
>
Gosh I feel the same way about mystic mumbo jumbo. Take this bit of new age
psuedoscientific jargon for example:
"This planet has been slumbering for eons and with the inception of higher
energy frequencies, is about to awaken in terms of consciousness and
spirituality. Masters of limitations and masters of divination use the same
creative forces to manifest thier individual realities, however, one moves
in a downward spiral while one moves in an upward spiral, each increasing
the resonant vibration inherent in each of them."
I can easily see how hearing about "cosmic energies", "universaly
permeating life forces" and "mainifesting our own realities" could get to
the point where if I ever heard another freaking mystic mention such things
I'd go postal. Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
frame up in mystic terms that could casue them to lose their
appeal.............
> >Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my approach
to
> >it, only added.
>
> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
> poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
> new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
> beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself is
> not art.
I suppose you can say the same thing about any art form. Sculpture is not
art....it's just the dull process of extracting features from stone.
Painting is not art, it's just the mundane application of pigment to canvas.
A movie is not art, it's just light passed through a series of still images
strung together. You may look at these things and find something you can
wax poetic about, you may very well witness beauty but sculpture itself is
not art. This is of course ridiculous and my point is that the artist,
through his chosen activity, does nothing more than use the tools at his
disposal to create or reveal something for us to appreciate or contemplate.
Whether or not we find his creation or revelation appealing is up to us.
Why then do you insist that the scientist is somehow different than the
sculpture or the painter? Because he merely observes and does not create?
Last time I looked scientists were directly responsible for the creation of
most of artifacts that surround me as well as the fabrics in my clothing.
Not to mention that the highly creative scientist makes the computer artist,
the film director, and the techno musician possible. True, the latter
builds upon the creation of the former to make a more popularly aesthetic
form but please don't tell me that sceince is not a creative process, that
it's nothing but passive observation.
Oh sure, science can be viewed as merely a method, cold and anyalytical like
a steel scalpel. We could take a similarly dreary view of sculpture, just
the slow chipping way of stone aimed at revealing something latent and
hidden underneath. But such a limited view would miss the fact that the
sculpture is using a method to reveal a thing of beauty to us. So it is
with science in my opinion. The sceintist is an artist of a sort, not an
altogether uncreative creature. Someone who reveals both savagery and
beauty for our contemplation. He uses not chisel and stone but the creative
tools of observation, speculation, imagination, theory, and experimentation.
Science IS art in my opinion. The scientist is often wildy creative and
often sees the world in profoundly unique and original ways. There was only
one Einstien, one Newton, one Copernicus after all. Without their highly
unique and creative minds, their profound insights into reality may have
waited decades or generations to be revealed. Like Salvador Dali, Monet,
and Renoir these scientists had a novel way of viewing the current and
accepted forms and delivered unto us new and rather beautiful ways of
appreciating our existence. Just because all the aesthetics of science
don't appeal to everyone, well that's no cause to deny it's creative and
artistic force. Hell, I dont like rap music, but it's still an art........I
think...... :-)
Science has the capacity to reveal tales of beauty and wonder far beyond the
scope of our feeble imaginations. What artist ever imagined the horsehead
nebulea until science revealed it to us? What artist ever envisioned oceans
of methane or nitrogen snow before science hinted at such things? The
revelations of science outstrip our feeble imaginations by a long shot and
like a sculpture working on a blank monolith of stone, they reveal a
universe of greater scope and granduer than any us ever imagined.
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>John Heaney <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:heaney-E5E1A8....@news.east.cox.net...
>> In article <Of7p9.32400$7I6.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>,
>> "Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>>
>>It
>> should come as no surprise that I do the same. :)
>
>Guilty as charged...........
Hehe. Guess we'll have to share a cell. ;)
>> These examples of scientific truths about dead cats and whatnot are
>> really just common, every day, garden-variety facts. Philosophers and
>> mystics have pets too, you know. If you want to talk about scientific
>> truths, which is almost an oxymoron, you have to talk about scientific
>> theories that are so well supported that they are held to be true.
>> That's generally as close as you get. Facts are not the output of
>> science. Facts are the input.
>>
>> Frankly, I am leery of anyone who deals in the currency of truth;
>> whether they be scientists, mystics, philosophers or politicians.
>
>Well I take your point here but I think perhaps you have missed mine. You
>seem to agree that thare are indeed easy to swallow garden variety truths
>but then proceed to say you are leery of anyone who deals in the currency of
>truth. Quite frankly, you should be more leary of anyone other than a
>quantum scientist or full time philosopher who insists on dealing in the
>currency of relativism or logic chopping sophisms.
Point out that damn sophist and let me at 'im!
>The sort of scientific truth I'm talking about with regard to Aikido is that
>very same sort of garden variety truth you seem comfortable with......is my
>cat dead or alive? There is an answer that represents truth and one that
>does not. Can Ki make me heavier so as not to be lifted? Is it Ki energy
>that renders my arm "unbendable"? Unless you expand your definition of Ki
>to mean anything and everything, there are truthful answers to these
>questions which are better answerd by science than mysticism.
I completely disagree. Is my cat dead or alive is an easily observable
fact. If matters of ki were so easily ascertained then we have nothing
to talk about, except poetry, I suppose. You said yourself that your
teacher shows how you can make your arm "unbendable." The question of
whether that is some supernatural force called ki or just a matter of
body mechanics is a question that requires inference. Science is a
methodology to test those inferences. End of story. Mysticism divines
the answers to these questions via contemplation and meditation. End of
story.
My point is simply that it doesn't matter. If the goal is to have an
"unbendable" arm then it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long
as you achieve the desired effect. Personally, I believe in body
mechanics. However, that's only when I'm working on subtle explorations
on my own. When I actually perform unbendable arm in my techniques, I
visualize firehose or laser beam. These images connect more directly to
the feeling I want. I certainly don't actually believe that my arm is a
laser beam, but if I want to instantly go to unbendable arm and I think
laser beam and it works then who is to say that at some level it isn't
actually a laser beam.
>But some
>people simply prefer a moon made of cheese I guess.
I think it is actually a poor example. Everyone knows that the moon is
not made of green cheese. The difference with ki is that ki is energy.
Most energy is invisible to us. It is therefore open to interpretation.
You can say things about energy that you can't say about matter. And if
the proof of what you believe is tested by the effect on your technique
then all kinds of weird things can be shown to be true in Aikido. hehe.
>> Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
>> learn about particular flowers that would cause them to lose their
>> appeal.
>
>Gosh I feel the same way about mystic mumbo jumbo. Take this bit of new age
>psuedoscientific jargon for example:
No argument there. There's a lot of nonsense out there.
>> >Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my approach
>to
>> >it, only added.
>>
>> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
>> poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
>> new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
>> beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself is
>> not art.
>
>I suppose you can say the same thing about any art form. Sculpture is not
>art....
Sophist! Sophist! I found him! There he is! LOL!
>Science IS art in my opinion. The scientist is often wildy creative and
>often sees the world in profoundly unique and original ways. There was only
>one Einstien, one Newton, one Copernicus after all. Without their highly
>unique and creative minds, their profound insights into reality may have
>waited decades or generations to be revealed. Like Salvador Dali, Monet,
>and Renoir these scientists had a novel way of viewing the current and
>accepted forms and delivered unto us new and rather beautiful ways of
>appreciating our existence. Just because all the aesthetics of science
>don't appeal to everyone, well that's no cause to deny it's creative and
>artistic force. Hell, I dont like rap music, but it's still an art........I
>think...... :-)
>
>Science has the capacity to reveal tales of beauty and wonder far beyond the
>scope of our feeble imaginations. What artist ever imagined the horsehead
>nebulea until science revealed it to us? What artist ever envisioned oceans
>of methane or nitrogen snow before science hinted at such things? The
>revelations of science outstrip our feeble imaginations by a long shot and
>like a sculpture working on a blank monolith of stone, they reveal a
>universe of greater scope and granduer than any us ever imagined.
Your such a nerd, Prom. :)
Nevertheless, I have to dispel the myth that you're creating here.
Science is not art. The input to science is observation. The output is a
stack of paper: a theory backed by the evidence of reproducible tests. A
by-product of science is a pile of experiments that range from awesome
to horrific. If there is beauty revealed by science it is only because
scientist are people too. A scientist may also be an artist. But that
does not make science the same as art. The goals, requirements,
standards, and even asthetics are completely different. Actually, I
would argue that they operate at completely different ends of the
spectrum of reality. Art is essentially addressing a subjective reality,
while science is trying to cutting through that subjective reality to
reveal an objective reality.
I like what Jodie Foster's character says in the movie, Contact. "They
should have sent a poet."
Prometheus
> fact. If matters of ki were so easily ascertained then we have nothing
> to talk about, except poetry, I suppose. You said yourself that your
> teacher shows how you can make your arm "unbendable." The question of
> whether that is some supernatural force called ki or just a matter of
> body mechanics is a question that requires inference. Science is a
> methodology to test those inferences. End of story. Mysticism divines
> the answers to these questions via contemplation and meditation. End of
> story.
>
> My point is simply that it doesn't matter.
Only if what is actually happening doesn't matter to you. If your only
concern is the outcome then you are absolutely right. But most of us tend
to want more than a simple outcome with no questions asked. This is reason
for the very existnce of mysticism and science. Because both camps
recognize the value of knowing why. Both the mystic and the rationalist are
seekers of WHY. Both paths are an expression of our desire to KNOW. Both
are an attempt to satisfy our appite for why. Why things are happening or
why things work. It's my opinion that this is a natural desire to be
fostered but that unlike mysticism, science has the proven capacity to be
correct, demonstrable, and repeatable.
Your position runs dangerously close to saying it does not matter whether
storks bring babies or whether they are delivered in a hospital, either way
you end up with a baby. Or science is just another faith or belief system
or myth, with no more justification or claim to truth than any other. It
doesn't matter whether beliefs are true or not, as long as they produce the
desired effect. This is a fallacious line of reasoning and can lead to all
sorts of trouble. Why? Why should we care so much about what's true?
The short version is if you want to save your child from polio, you can pray
or you can inoculate. Now you might get lucky praying and get the desired
result.....and in this one instance John your position holds up, but if you
maintain this mental habit of outcomes over truth and proceed to eschew
inoculation with children 2, 3, and 4, if you persist in dismissing truth
(or at least reliable probability) and instead make outcome your idol, you
are commiting a dangerous and immoral mistake, the price for which your
children will eventually pay.
Truth matters John, as a matter of mental habit a commitment to truth
matters. It matters more than mere outcomes, and that's the real "end of
story".
> If the goal is to have an
> "unbendable" arm then it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long
> as you achieve the desired effect.
Only if what is "actually" happening does not matter to you. See above.
> Personally, I believe in body
> mechanics. However, that's only when I'm working on subtle explorations
> on my own. When I actually perform unbendable arm in my techniques, I
> visualize firehose or laser beam. These images connect more directly to
> the feeling I want. I certainly don't actually believe that my arm is a
> laser beam, but if I want to instantly go to unbendable arm and I think
> laser beam and it works then who is to say that at some level it isn't
> actually a laser beam.
>
> >But some
> >people simply prefer a moon made of cheese I guess.
>
> I think it is actually a poor example. Everyone knows that the moon is
> not made of green cheese. The difference with ki is that ki is energy.
> Most energy is invisible to us. It is therefore open to interpretation.
> You can say things about energy that you can't say about matter. And if
> the proof of what you believe is tested by the effect on your technique
> then all kinds of weird things can be shown to be true in Aikido. hehe.
>
True, a good deal of energy is invisible to us but it is not immeasurable or
undetectable. And now we are back to talking about what Ki is and this is
well traveled ground. If Ki is just the word you are using for any and ever
y energy we already understand then any discussion of Ki is just boring
semantics. If however Ki is some as yet unmeasured, undetected energy one
harneses to make an unbendable arm then what can I say.........I have an
ethereal, undetectable, unmeasurable dragon that lives in my garage. He
guards against burglers and you now what?? We have not been burgled once!!
You can't see him, can't smell him, can't feel him or hear him....but I
assure you he's there and he's doing a great job.
As long as some measure for determining the truth or falsehood of a claim is
secondary to outcomes, one unprovable claim is as good as another.
> >> Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
> >> learn about particular flowers that would cause them to lose their
> >> appeal.
> >
> >Gosh I feel the same way about mystic mumbo jumbo. Take this bit of new
age
> >psuedoscientific jargon for example:
>
> No argument there. There's a lot of nonsense out there.
>
> >> >Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my
approach
> >to
> >> >it, only added.
> >>
> >> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
> >> poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
> >> new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
> >> beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself
is
> >> not art.
> >
> >I suppose you can say the same thing about any art form. Sculpture is
not
> >art....
>
> Sophist! Sophist! I found him! There he is! LOL!
Only by snipping my comment early you cheater!!!!! :-)
Yeah I guess......
> Nevertheless, I have to dispel the myth that you're creating here.
> Science is not art. The input to science is observation.
The input to any art is observation John!!!
> The output is a
> stack of paper: a theory backed by the evidence of reproducible tests.
Such a deliberatly narrow view John, quite frankly it's beneath you.
The output of chemistry is plastics, silicon chips, fabrics, perfumes,
poisons, medicines, etc etc etc. The output of physics and cosmology are
supremely elegant mathematical models capable of making highly accurate
predicions etc etc etc. The output of the marriage of two or more
disciplines gets even more interesting. The output of chemisty/biology/and
gene research is drought resistant wheat, pest resistant corn, fungus
resistant soybeans etc etc etc. not to mention the mouths that would have
otherwise gone unfed. I could go on and on.
It's all there if only one is willing to look with the proper sense of
appreciation John.
> A by-product of science is a pile of experiments that range from awesome
> to horrific.
The same can be said of any other art form. But this too is an
unnecessarily narrow view.
> If there is beauty revealed by science it is only because
> scientist are people too.
The same can be said of any other art form.
> A scientist may also be an artist. But that
> does not make science the same as art.
> The goals, requirements,
> standards, and even asthetics are completely different.
Actaully, YOUR goals, requirements, standards, and even aesthetics are
completely different The output of the creative and inquisitive process
called science is no different that the output of any artistic effort in a
material sense. It is up to US to understand the nature and effort behind
the output and give it the appreciation it deserves. When a chemist
produces a perfume like Channel #5 we have no problem appreciating his
output, when he produces a Buckeyball or a nanotube from pure carbon why do
we feel justified in treating that output as unworthy? When a scientist
manages a full color photograph the Horsehead nebulea in all its splendor we
have no propblem apppreciating its aesthetic appeal but when that same
scientist shows us the COBE image of background radiation left behind by the
Big Bang we turn our noses up and walk away....Why? Particulary when the
latter outputs are far greater feats than the former?
It's the lack of scientific understanding and scientific literacy that
creates the gap you are trying to describe John, not the output of science
itself.
> Actually, I
> would argue that they operate at completely different ends of the
> spectrum of reality. Art is essentially addressing a subjective reality,
> while science is trying to cutting through that subjective reality to
> reveal an objective reality.
>
> I like what Jodie Foster's character says in the movie, Contact. "They
> should have sent a poet."
My favorite line in the whole movie. It was a flawless bit of irony from
Sagan who was a primary shaper of my views.
Prometheus
> fact. If matters of ki were so easily ascertained then we have nothing
> to talk about, except poetry, I suppose. You said yourself that your
> teacher shows how you can make your arm "unbendable." The question of
> whether that is some supernatural force called ki or just a matter of
> body mechanics is a question that requires inference. Science is a
> methodology to test those inferences. End of story. Mysticism divines
> the answers to these questions via contemplation and meditation. End of
> story.
>
> My point is simply that it doesn't matter.
Only if what is actually happening doesn't matter to you. If your only
> If the goal is to have an
> "unbendable" arm then it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long
> as you achieve the desired effect.
Only if what is "actually" happening does not matter to you. See above.
> Personally, I believe in body
> mechanics. However, that's only when I'm working on subtle explorations
> on my own. When I actually perform unbendable arm in my techniques, I
> visualize firehose or laser beam. These images connect more directly to
> the feeling I want. I certainly don't actually believe that my arm is a
> laser beam, but if I want to instantly go to unbendable arm and I think
> laser beam and it works then who is to say that at some level it isn't
> actually a laser beam.
>
> >But some
> >people simply prefer a moon made of cheese I guess.
>
> I think it is actually a poor example. Everyone knows that the moon is
> not made of green cheese. The difference with ki is that ki is energy.
> Most energy is invisible to us. It is therefore open to interpretation.
> You can say things about energy that you can't say about matter. And if
> the proof of what you believe is tested by the effect on your technique
> then all kinds of weird things can be shown to be true in Aikido. hehe.
>
True, a good deal of energy is invisible to us but it is not immeasurable or
undetectable. And now we are back to talking about what Ki is and this is
well traveled ground. If Ki is just the word you are using for any and ever
y energy we already understand then any discussion of Ki is just boring
semantics. If however Ki is some as yet unmeasured, undetected energy one
harneses to make an unbendable arm then what can I say.........I have an
ethereal, undetectable, unmeasurable dragon that lives in my garage. He
guards against burglers and you now what?? We have not been burgled once!!
You can't see him, can't smell him, can't feel him or hear him....but I
assure you he's there and he's doing a great job.
As long as some measure for determining the truth or falsehood of a claim is
secondary to outcomes, one unprovable claim is as good as another.
> >> Actually, I suppose there are any number of things you could
> >> learn about particular flowers that would cause them to lose their
> >> appeal.
> >
> >Gosh I feel the same way about mystic mumbo jumbo. Take this bit of new
age
> >psuedoscientific jargon for example:
>
> No argument there. There's a lot of nonsense out there.
>
> >> >Aikido is just like that flower for me and nothing is lost in my
approach
> >to
> >> >it, only added.
> >>
> >> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
> >> poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
> >> new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
> >> beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself
is
> >> not art.
> >
> >I suppose you can say the same thing about any art form. Sculpture is
not
> >art....
>
> Sophist! Sophist! I found him! There he is! LOL!
Only by snipping my comment early you cheater!!!!! :-)
>
Yeah I guess......
> Nevertheless, I have to dispel the myth that you're creating here.
> Science is not art. The input to science is observation.
The input to any art is observation John!!!
> The output is a
> stack of paper: a theory backed by the evidence of reproducible tests.
Such a deliberatly narrow view John, quite frankly it's beneath you.
The output of chemistry is plastics, silicon chips, fabrics, perfumes,
poisons, medicines, etc etc etc. The output of physics and cosmology are
supremely elegant mathematical models capable of making highly accurate
predicions etc etc etc. The output of the marriage of two or more
disciplines gets even more interesting. The output of chemisty/biology/and
gene research is drought resistant wheat, pest resistant corn, fungus
resistant soybeans etc etc etc. not to mention the mouths that would have
otherwise gone unfed. I could go on and on.
It's all there if only one is willing to look with the proper sense of
appreciation John.
> A by-product of science is a pile of experiments that range from awesome
> to horrific.
The same can be said of any other art form. But this too is an
unnecessarily narrow view.
> If there is beauty revealed by science it is only because
> scientist are people too.
The same can be said of any other art form.
> A scientist may also be an artist. But that
> does not make science the same as art.
> The goals, requirements,
> standards, and even asthetics are completely different.
Actaully, YOUR goals, requirements, standards, and even aesthetics are
completely different The output of the creative and inquisitive process
called science is no different that the output of any artistic effort in a
material sense. It is up to US to understand the nature and effort behind
the output and give it the appreciation it deserves. When a chemist
produces a perfume like Channel #5 we have no problem appreciating his
output, when he produces a Buckeyball or a nanotube from pure carbon why do
we feel justified in treating that output as unworthy? When a scientist
manages a full color photograph the Horsehead nebulea in all its splendor we
have no propblem apppreciating its aesthetic appeal but when that same
scientist shows us the COBE image of background radiation left behind by the
Big Bang we turn our noses up and walk away....Why? Particulary when the
latter outputs are far greater feats than the former?
It's the lack of scientific understanding and scientific literacy that
creates the gap you are trying to describe John, not the output of science
itself.
> Actually, I
> would argue that they operate at completely different ends of the
> spectrum of reality. Art is essentially addressing a subjective reality,
> while science is trying to cutting through that subjective reality to
> reveal an objective reality.
>
> I like what Jodie Foster's character says in the movie, Contact. "They
> should have sent a poet."
My favorite line in the whole movie. It was a flawless bit of irony from
Prometheus
I've been meaning to respond to this. See my comments below.
Aaron Nowell <gym...@alltel.net> wrote in message
news:yMbp9.561$UA4.5...@news.alltel.net...
> Hello;
>
> I can't believe that one little statement has started all this. What a
> group of highly intelligent people. I freely admit that I only really
> follow about half of what you are talking about. I am not a Scientist, or
> even highly educated. I do have 30yrs in the MA, run my on school and
gym.
> I suppose that I should not have used the phrasing I did. It was not my
> intention to assert that by knowing the inner workings of a process I call
> ki you don't wonder at it. I also shouldn't have asserted that you do
your
> self a disservice. I know that I did this, I am sorry. I did not mean
for
> this to be the focus of my post.
Dont give any of this a second thought Aaron. This is a "discussion group"
and all thoughts and opinions should be welcome. If I realy had such a thin
skin I should surf the web or talk a walk instead :-) I actually
appreciated your frankness and honesty. Such things are the grist that get
us going.
> The post was meant to show how I "feel"
> about ki. And how it makes me "feel". For me, flipping the switch on the
> wall and having the lights come on is good enough. I really don't care
why.
I understand what you are saying but I'll suggest to you that the moment you
mention Ki as an explanation for certian phenomena you are demonstrating a
desire to know why things work. If you genuinely do not care, why speculate
or postulate anything at all? Far better to just say "I don't know....it
just works." But you DO care and you have siezed upon a possible
explanation to satisfy your appitite to know. Of course as human being this
is normal....we are sorta hard wired to care which is a whole other thread
:-)
It's allright to care and it's even allright to have a prefference for the
explanation that best suits your disposition so long as it's harmless (More
on that later). My only concern was that you seemed to favor one possible
answer over the other on the basis that one held more poetry (for lack of a
better word). I was only hoping to demonstrate that this need not be true.
> I do not believe that ki can give sight to the blind or raise the dead. I
> do believe that ki is a wondrous thing. I also know that rainbows are
> beautiful. I don't really care to know why they come about. I realize
> Prometheus that this now puts me in a category of ignorant that you find
> lacking.
Ignorant?? Such a pejorative word..... Unnecessarily unaware of equally
beautiful and elegant explanations perhaps........ but not ignorant.
> From the tone of your posts you feel as if it your responsibility
> to bring the facts to light. Perhaps I, and many more like me prefer the
> dark.
Yeah, I'm sure I have a forceful tone. It's probably becuase I'm confident
in my POV. Sorry about that. In my defense though, a "discussion group" is
by it's nature populated with nothing but voluntary participants who are
here to exchange ideas. I do feel free to express an opinion, even a
forceful one in such an environment, and even disagree. If we were
introduced in different circumstances however, say over lunch or at work, we
would probably never even have mentioned Ki right?
> You didn't answer me. Is irimi nage any different because you can
> stop in the middle and explain the process that is or is about to occur?
Absolutely not, an irimi nage is not different merely because I can present
one explanation and you another. But that's not what really under the
microscope here is it? It's not the efficacy of technique we have been
discussing.....it's the probability of which explanation for why the
technique works that is under scrutiny. And that is a different matter all
together.
Take for a moment your light bulb analogy. When we flick the switch the
bulb goes on for either of us. I assert that the bulb lights up when I hit
the switch because a Fairy lives in the bulb and the Fairy is trained to
light and douse a lantern whenever he hears the switch. You on the other
hand insist that light bulbs works as a result of electrical currents and
fillaments and so on. Now it's certianly not a question of whether or not
we get different results when we flick the switch, because of course we
don't. But there is a profound difference between our understanding of how
those results are acheived. Some say this does not and should not matter so
long as the light goes on or off predictably for each of us. I happen to
disagree.
Knowing what you know about light bulbs and electricity, what should you say
to me if I shrugged my shoulders and said "I much prefer Fairies Aaron, I
like the way Fairies make me "feel". I may be ignorant but ignorance is
bliss and I'm very blissful, and at any rate, I prefer to stay in the dark".
(??)
You might choose to respect my feelings and say nothing. That might even be
the right thing to do. But what if it occured to you there was a potential
for me to harm myself by doing something like looking for the Fairy while
the switch was on.......or telling my children that there were Fairies
living behind the glass in light bulbs? What responsibility do you have
toward me then? Do you have a responsibility to "bring the facts to light"
or is it better to let me persist in my delusion?
These are the questions I grapple with as we banter back and forth
here.........
> I have really enjoyed reading this thread, have learned a thing or two.
But,
> if in this instance ignorance is bliss, I am quite blissful.
>
> Thank you for your patience.
> Peace to all of you
Peace to you too. (P.S. don't go looking for Fairies, you might get hurt
and you'll undoubtedly be disappointed)
John Heaney
nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>In article <heaney-177B30....@news.east.cox.net>, John Heaney
><hea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> In article <ao2t4s$18t$1...@crib.corepower.com>,
>> nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>
>> >I've never understood how knowing more about something, or viewing it
>> >in naturalistic terms, can detract from its beauty. Feynman struggled
>> >to express his confusion about this point of view, as well: [...]
>
>> The most obvious example I can think of is movies, which by their very
>> nature are fabrications in virtually every sense of the word. But they
>> are art. The communicate some deeper truth that has nothing to do with
>> their false nature. Unfortunately, getting to that truth requires some
>> serious suspension of disbelief. The more you know about film-making,
>> the harder it is to suspend that disbelief.
>
>> Why do computers always burst into flames in movies? They don't do that
>> in real life. Unfortunately, Bus error at address 0x0103F3BC just isn't
>> dramatic enough.
>
>> There are many, many cases where experiences can be ruined by knowing
>> too much.
>
>I don't agree, even with your movie example. Knowing about
>film-making doesn't detract from _my_ enjoyment of a movie.
Assuming you know enough about film-making for it to be a problem, I
would hazard a guess that you would be enjoying the execution of the
production; not the movie itself. Another example would be a magic show.
Of course, it's just illusion, but if you know how it is done then you
can't really enjoy the illusion. You can only enjoy the execution of the
illusion. You can't enjoy a joke if you get the punchline first. You
can't enjoy a surprise if you know it is coming. The are experiences
that require ignorance. Once the ignorance is gone, you are trading one
experience for another.
>> The fact is that scientists tend to specialize. That is the natural
>> result of the classical reductionist scientific method. Poetry
>> doesn't work all that well when nobody else has a clue of what
>> you're talking about.
>
>Well, I agree that it would be hard to write poetry about spinning
>globes of methane and ammonia, as Feynman suggested. But whether a
>scientific description _detracts_ from the beauty of a subject is a
>different matter.
It does if I need to spend 12 years getting a phd just to understand it.
Really, just forget about methane in favor of a more mundane example.
I'm showing you a stack of pictures of beautiful __fill-in-the-blank___
and I'm prattling on about this exposure and this lighting, blah, blah,
blah. How long before you tell me to show you the damn pictures already?
This is so obvious it isn't even worth arguing anymore.
John Heaney
nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>In article <heaney-BC6DCB....@news.east.cox.net>, John Heaney
><hea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> In article <ao2uj1$898$1...@crib.corepower.com>,
>> nur...@crib.corepower.com (Nathan Urban) wrote:
>
>> >In article <heaney-BD38FD....@news.east.cox.net>, John Heaney
>> ><hea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> >> The problem I have with your view of science, Prom, is that it is
>> >> outdated. The reductionist view works only in classical Newtonian
>> >> science.
>
>> >There is nothing about relativity, or quantum theory, or other
>> >post-Newtonian theories that denies reductionism.
>
>> "Denies reductionism?" I'm not sure what you mean by that.
>
>I mean, demonstrates that reductionism can't work.
In the classical Newtonian physics, his theory was that if you knew the
positions of all the particles of the universe and all their velocities
then you could predict anything out to infinity. We know that isn't
true. That's what I was referring to. It isn't just quantum mechanics
either. It's also chaos theory, which acts on a macroscopic level.
>> Life is more than the sum of its parts.
>
>Whatever that means.
It means that sufficient complex systems exhibit emergent behavior that
cannot be predicted by looking at the parts.
>> Chaos theory is but one example. A butterfly flaps its wings in
>> Peking and it rains in Amsterdam or wherever.
>
>That doesn't contradict the reductionist idea that weather is
>ultimately the result of fundamental physical laws, and nothing else.
>It just puts a practical limit on what we can use those laws for.
>None of this contradicts the idea of reductionism. Something that
>contradicts reductionism would be to postulate that there are
>large-scale behaviors that can't, even in principle, be reduced to the
>action of physical law -- e.g., postulating that ki is some mystical
>phenomenon undescriable by physics.
I think the reductionist view says a bit more than that. It also says
that natural phenomena is inherently predictable. But that is wrong.
There are a great deal of natural phenomena that do fall in this
category. But there is also lots that don't.
>> >> But that is a small subset of reality. We now "know" that reality is
>> >> composed of a lot of nothing. [...]
>
>> >What does that have to do with the invalidity of reductionism?
The smallest units of matter do not, in fact, follow the classical
Newtonion view of reducing the world into well-behaved objects.
>> How a system behaves is very much about the interaction of its
>> components. There is a point where you can no longer learn anything
>> useful by taking it apart. That's why Aikido is an art; not a science.
>
>I think we can learn a lot about aikido by studying it scientifically.
>Whether it helps us be "more practically effective aikidoka" is one
>thing, but it's always interesting to understand why the techniques
>work. (e.g., "unbendable arm" works, in part, because you're avoiding
>the tense situation of having your biceps and triceps fight each other.)
I said, "There is a point where..." The implication is that there is
value in taking apart the movements of Aikido and viewing them from a
scientific perspective. But then you have to leave that aside and just
do it.
>> When you step out on the mat, the number of things you know (or can
>> know) are a tiny fraction of the number of things you don't know (or
>> cannot know).
>
>So?
So there is a limit to what you can gain by studying Aikido
scientifically.
>Anyway, you seem to have digressed from what I was asking. I repeat
>my question: what does the fact that the universe consists mostly of
>empty space have to do with reductionism?
Only that there is a context for reductionism. Discovering the inner
workings of the atom was probably the first big shock for physicists. It
was at that point that it became clear that they couldn't just keep
taking things apart and understanding them in the same classical way
that they had previously. Chaos theory has done the same at the
macroscopic level. Of course, philosophers have known this for a long
time.
>> >Personally, I would say that physics is more foundational than other
>> >fields, in the sense that all of their features are arguably reducible
>> >in principle to physical law. However, *in practice*, the situation
>> >is quite different. We're never going to be able to predict
>> >psychological behavior by ab initio solution of the Schroedinger
>> >equation; psychology will always depend on non-physical principles.
>
>> We're never going to be able to predict the weather accurately
>
>Depends on what you mean by "accurately".
You obviously don't watch the Weather Channel.
>> either and that does depend on physical properties. Emergent
>> behavior is not limited to living systems.
>
>I never said otherwise. What I said is that weather depends on physical
>laws, and only on physical laws, and is in that sense reducible to the
>foundational science of physics.
You said that "psychology will always depend on non-physical
principles", implying that this unpredictability that we have been
discussing is only a factor of living beings; a result of free will, I
suppose. I'm simply pointing out that it isn't limited to living things.
Purely physical systems are also unpredictable (i.e. chaotic). In the
sense that you mean, both weather and human behavior must be reducible
to the foundational science of physics, unless you are going to argue
for the existence of the soul.
>> >> Science is no more useful in the study of Aikido than mysticism. No
>> >> amount of scientific study is going to replace training.
>
>> >What does that have to do with the usefulness of science in studying
>> >aikido? Nobody said anything about "science replacing training". The
>> >question is whether science can enhance training.
>
>> I thought the question was whether or not science was any better than
>> mysticism in enhancing training. I say no. Both are valid.
>
>Of course they both work. (Whether they are both "valid" depends on
>what you mean by that.) Personally, I'd place more value on science
>than mysticism as far as potential to enhance training goes: mysticism
>doesn't provide a systematic framework from which new knowledge can be
>induced. But since I'm not aware of any attempts to apply scientific
>methods to enhancing aikido training, I can't say whether this is
>borne out in reality.
Well, first, we have never really defined the term mysticism. I don't
particularly like the word, but have been willing to accept it because
it doesn't really impact my real argument. I don't consider supernatural
forces. When I think of mysticism, I think of intuitive processes
derived via meditation. I think Aikido is a meditative activity. I think
it is an essential aspect of the art. If it were not so, I don't think I
would still be doing it.
Kristian Lund
news:Mb%o9.6892$QY.4...@newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net...
> Didn't they do a study that showed that actupuncture was a placebo
> effect...if thats even how you spell it???
That is how you spell it, and yes I am sure there is a placebo effect.
Which is another way of saying that the effect is all in ones head and not
in the treatment itself.
The placebo effect is taken serious by all practitioners and scientists
today - and sometimes used with great succes. Mostly, however, it is
something you have to guard from when doing testing of a drug. Saying that
some treatment has ONLY placebo effect is saying that it does not work.
Now, what I would like to see was a test whether something like acupuncture
has a 'better' placebo effect than traditional 'western' medicine - which
would give us a good handle on how to, well... handle all these new age
treaments...
Kristian Lund
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I completely disagree. Is my cat dead or alive is an easily observable
>> fact. If matters of ki were so easily ascertained then we have nothing
>> to talk about, except poetry, I suppose. You said yourself that your
>> teacher shows how you can make your arm "unbendable." The question of
>> whether that is some supernatural force called ki or just a matter of
>> body mechanics is a question that requires inference. Science is a
>> methodology to test those inferences. End of story. Mysticism divines
>> the answers to these questions via contemplation and meditation. End of
>> story.
>>
>> My point is simply that it doesn't matter.
>
>Only if what is actually happening doesn't matter to you. If your only
>concern is the outcome then you are absolutely right. But most of us tend
>to want more than a simple outcome with no questions asked. This is reason
>for the very existnce of mysticism and science. Because both camps
>recognize the value of knowing why. Both the mystic and the rationalist are
>seekers of WHY. Both paths are an expression of our desire to KNOW. Both
>are an attempt to satisfy our appite for why. Why things are happening or
>why things work. It's my opinion that this is a natural desire to be
>fostered but that unlike mysticism, science has the proven capacity to be
>correct, demonstrable, and repeatable.
Actually, I don't quite agree. I think the mystic is more interested in
how than why. The mystic uses meditation to discover highly subjective
truths; not the objective ones that science is interested in. You seem
to deny subjective truths altogether. Is there nothing that you believe
is true for you, but not for anyone else?
>Your position runs dangerously close to saying it does not matter whether
>storks bring babies or whether they are delivered in a hospital, either way
>you end up with a baby. Or science is just another faith or belief system
>or myth, with no more justification or claim to truth than any other. It
>doesn't matter whether beliefs are true or not, as long as they produce the
>desired effect.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen you write. I know damn well
where babies come from and I know I can't flap my arms and fly or any
other stupid thing you can come with that is impossible. No one here is
saying anything about doing impossible things. No one here is saying
anything about science being irrelevant or useless or false in any way.
All anyone is saying, that I've seen, is that science has its limits;
either because certain phenomena is not repeatable, or is highly
subjective (i.e. personal), or because science simply hasn't gotten
around to it yet, but, damn it, I need to make a decision right now.
>The short version is if you want to save your child from polio, you can pray
>or you can inoculate. Now you might get lucky praying and get the desired
>result.....and in this one instance John your position holds up, but if you
>maintain this mental habit of outcomes over truth and proceed to eschew
>inoculation with children 2, 3, and 4, if you persist in dismissing truth
>(or at least reliable probability) and instead make outcome your idol, you
>are commiting a dangerous and immoral mistake, the price for which your
>children will eventually pay.
>
>Truth matters John, as a matter of mental habit a commitment to truth
>matters. It matters more than mere outcomes, and that's the real "end of
>story".
Maybe when you live a little longer you'll see how arrogant this
statement is. Science does NOT have all the answers; not by a long shot.
Biology, in particular, is mainly about statistics. When you have to
innoculate your owns kids for polio you need to ask youself whether or
not you're putting your kids at risk because the fact is that polio is
all but irradicated. Most of the polio infections in the US have been
caused by vaccinations; not communication from another person. You need
to struggle with moral questions about your concern for your child
versus your obligation to the community. You need to do your own
homework and fight your doctor to get the dead vaccine rather than the
live vaccine because doctors are not scientists. They are dispensers of
treatment and have protocols affected as much by economics as by
science. And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
Budo is about life and death decisions in the immediate sense. No time
to take a study. No time for experiments. Whatever science you
incorporate into your training, which I'm sure is absolutely minimal,
when the shit hits the fan it is intuition that you rely on. It is some
synthesis of automatic reactions that occur too quickly for conscious
thought. So when all is said and done it is, in fact, results that
matter.
>> If the goal is to have an
>> "unbendable" arm then it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long
>> as you achieve the desired effect.
>
>Only if what is "actually" happening does not matter to you. See above.
For most people, it really doesn't matter. It really only matter to me
in the academic sense. I have some understanding of the biology involved
and do not believe in any external supernatural energy source. But that
belief does not impact my use of that energy at all. I still have an
experience of unbendable arm and that is all that really matters insofar
as the execution of my Aikido technique. For most people, who have no
biology education, a biological explanation would have no more meaning
than an explanation using the vagaries of ki. In fact, ki glosses over a
whole bunch of details that simply have no bearing whatsoever on
executing technique.
>> Personally, I believe in body
>> mechanics. However, that's only when I'm working on subtle explorations
>> on my own. When I actually perform unbendable arm in my techniques, I
>> visualize firehose or laser beam. These images connect more directly to
>> the feeling I want. I certainly don't actually believe that my arm is a
>> laser beam, but if I want to instantly go to unbendable arm and I think
>> laser beam and it works then who is to say that at some level it isn't
>> actually a laser beam.
>>
>> >But some
>> >people simply prefer a moon made of cheese I guess.
>>
>> I think it is actually a poor example. Everyone knows that the moon is
>> not made of green cheese. The difference with ki is that ki is energy.
>> Most energy is invisible to us. It is therefore open to interpretation.
>> You can say things about energy that you can't say about matter. And if
>> the proof of what you believe is tested by the effect on your technique
>> then all kinds of weird things can be shown to be true in Aikido. hehe.
>>
>
>True, a good deal of energy is invisible to us but it is not immeasurable or
>undetectable.
Actually, you are wrong. Researches have stuck electrodes all over
bodies to pick up the electrical impulses of muscles firing. They have
filmed muscles working using all sorts of processes that pick up heat
and energy at various frequencies. However, all of these are
approximations. You cannot measure every bit of energy associated with
an appendage moving in real time. You can only approximate and
extrapolate. Furthermore, even though you can objectively verify the
kinds of energy associated with body movement and you can estimate the
associated energy signature, no one walks around with this equipment in
their daily lives. We actually familiarize ourselves with our own energy
signatures through a very highly subjective process called training. You
learn to associate what it feels like with what effect it has. That is
learning via experience.
>And now we are back to talking about what Ki is and this is
>well traveled ground. If Ki is just the word you are using for any and ever
>y energy we already understand then any discussion of Ki is just boring
>semantics. If however Ki is some as yet unmeasured, undetected energy one
>harneses to make an unbendable arm then what can I say.........I have an
>ethereal, undetectable, unmeasurable dragon that lives in my garage. He
>guards against burglers and you now what?? We have not been burgled once!!
>You can't see him, can't smell him, can't feel him or hear him....but I
>assure you he's there and he's doing a great job.
And here again you go off into some fantasy. I have news for you, Prom.
No one has yet detected a graviton particle. Yet, that is the current
best scientific theory on the mechanism of gravity. Despite that,
virtually every little kid on the planet learns to use and interact with
gravity through a very simple process called living.
>> >> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying. Science is not
>> >> poetic. It is not romantic. You may discover interesting and exciting
>> >> new things that you can wax poetic about. You very well may witness
>> >> beauty. Observation is the cornerstone of science. But science itself
>is
>> >> not art.
>> >
>> >I suppose you can say the same thing about any art form. Sculpture is
>not
>> >art....
>>
>> Sophist! Sophist! I found him! There he is! LOL!
>
>Only by snipping my comment early you cheater!!!!! :-)
Oh no, no, no. Your comments below only make it ever so obvious.
>> >Science IS art in my opinion. The scientist is often wildy creative and
>> >often sees the world in profoundly unique and original ways. There was
>only
>> >one Einstien, one Newton, one Copernicus after all. Without their highly
>> >unique and creative minds, their profound insights into reality may have
>> >waited decades or generations to be revealed. Like Salvador Dali, Monet,
>> >and Renoir these scientists had a novel way of viewing the current and
>> >accepted forms and delivered unto us new and rather beautiful ways of
>> >appreciating our existence. Just because all the aesthetics of science
>> >don't appeal to everyone, well that's no cause to deny it's creative and
>> >artistic force. Hell, I dont like rap music, but it's still an
>art........I
>> >think...... :-)
I'm not saying art and science do not share some aspects. I'm also not
saying there is not relationship between the two. Science is often, but
not always, a tool used in the advancement of art. Art is often, but not
always, a tool used in the advancement of science. They just are not the
same. One is not the other. In fact, they are quite opposite each other
in a certain key respect. The domain of art is subjective reality. The
domain of science is objective reality.
>> Nevertheless, I have to dispel the myth that you're creating here.
>> Science is not art. The input to science is observation.
>
>The input to any art is observation John!!!
>
>> The output is a
>> stack of paper: a theory backed by the evidence of reproducible tests.
>
>Such a deliberatly narrow view John, quite frankly it's beneath you.
Actually, I just checked and it isn't. ;)
>The output of chemistry is plastics, silicon chips, fabrics, perfumes,
>poisons, medicines, etc etc etc. The output of physics and cosmology are
>supremely elegant mathematical models capable of making highly accurate
>predicions etc etc etc. The output of the marriage of two or more
>disciplines gets even more interesting. The output of chemisty/biology/and
>gene research is drought resistant wheat, pest resistant corn, fungus
>resistant soybeans etc etc etc. not to mention the mouths that would have
>otherwise gone unfed. I could go on and on.
These are by-products; not products. Science is the input to
engineering, which produces plastics, silicon chips, etc. Engineering is
a very critical stepping stone between science and production.
>> A scientist may also be an artist. But that
>> does not make science the same as art.
>> The goals, requirements,
>> standards, and even asthetics are completely different.
>
>Actaully, YOUR goals, requirements, standards, and even aesthetics are
>completely different The output of the creative and inquisitive process
>called science is no different that the output of any artistic effort in a
>material sense. It is up to US to understand the nature and effort behind
>the output and give it the appreciation it deserves. When a chemist
>produces a perfume like Channel #5 we have no problem appreciating his
>output, when he produces a Buckeyball or a nanotube from pure carbon why do
>we feel justified in treating that output as unworthy? When a scientist
>manages a full color photograph the Horsehead nebulea in all its splendor we
>have no propblem apppreciating its aesthetic appeal but when that same
>scientist shows us the COBE image of background radiation left behind by the
>Big Bang we turn our noses up and walk away....Why? Particulary when the
>latter outputs are far greater feats than the former?
Unworthy??? Who said anything about unworthy? It's statements like this
that reveal the enormous chip on your shoulder. If science products
beautiful artifacts then it is purely coincidental. Science is not after
an aesthetic outcome, art is.
>It's the lack of scientific understanding and scientific literacy that
>creates the gap you are trying to describe John, not the output of science
>itself.
But any idiot can appreciate art.
>> Actually, I
>> would argue that they operate at completely different ends of the
>> spectrum of reality. Art is essentially addressing a subjective reality,
>> while science is trying to cutting through that subjective reality to
>> reveal an objective reality.
>>
>> I like what Jodie Foster's character says in the movie, Contact. "They
>> should have sent a poet."
>
>My favorite line in the whole movie. It was a flawless bit of irony from
>Sagan who was a primary shaper of my views.
If you thought Sagan was attempting an ironic statement then you missed
the point of the whole movie. Yes, it was a bittersweet moment, but not
ironic. She was coming face to face with the fact that, for all the
scientific training she had, she had no means of communicating what she
was seeing. Yes, it was an emotional moment and her fluster offered some
indication of the awesomeness of the event. Nevertheless, much of the
emotional value of the moment was a reflection of her own limitations.
The whole point of the movie was to illustrate the difference between
subjective truth and objective truth. Did she love her father, even
though she couldn't prove it? Did she have this experience, even though
she couldn't prove it?
Ki is the feeling of your body. It is the subjective connection that you
have to the objective world. Asking if it is just biology or some
supernatural energy is not only irrelevant, it is entirely missing the
point.
JSP
> > "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere
> > globs of gas atoms.
>
> Personally, I think Feynman is speaking figuratively. I don't think he
> actually knows of any poets that really think that. The fact is that
> scientists tend to specialize. That is the natural result of the
> classical reductionist scientific method. Poetry doesn't work all that
> well when nobody else has a clue of what you're talking about.
I don't quite agree here. The poetry works well, it's just that maybe
not so many people can access it. I have a book of Welsh poetry. I can
read a bit of Welsh, but not enough to enjoy the poems. Does that stop
them being poetic? Does that mean that Welsh poetry doesn't work very
well?
My own background is mathematics, and I think there is amazing poetry in
number, but it's not a poetry of words, and I know that in most cases it
can only be shared with others who have an understanding of number.
Aikido is poetry, but if you'd be hard pressed to write a poem about
Irimi nage that would impress anyone who did not know Aikido. The
poetry is felt.
--
John
An optimist thinks the world is as good as it could possibly be,
A pessimist fears this is true.
John Heaney
"JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>"John Heaney" <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:heaney-177B30....@news.east.cox.net...
>
>> > "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere
>> > globs of gas atoms.
>>
>> Personally, I think Feynman is speaking figuratively. I don't think he
>> actually knows of any poets that really think that. The fact is that
>> scientists tend to specialize. That is the natural result of the
>> classical reductionist scientific method. Poetry doesn't work all that
>> well when nobody else has a clue of what you're talking about.
>
>I don't quite agree here. The poetry works well, it's just that maybe
>not so many people can access it. I have a book of Welsh poetry. I can
>read a bit of Welsh, but not enough to enjoy the poems. Does that stop
>them being poetic? Does that mean that Welsh poetry doesn't work very
>well?
It means that the audience is Welsh, I suppose.
>My own background is mathematics, and I think there is amazing poetry in
>number, but it's not a poetry of words, and I know that in most cases it
>can only be shared with others who have an understanding of number.
Are we to take you word for it or take Prom's lead and say, "Show me the
Monet!" OK, that was a bad pun. But seriously, is there anything you can
do to explain this further?
>Aikido is poetry, but if you'd be hard pressed to write a poem about
>Irimi nage that would impress anyone who did not know Aikido. The
>poetry is felt.
I guess Aikido would be poetry in motion, although, I believe that is
just a figure of speech. I don't think kinetic art can literally be
poetry. Anyway, I think non-Aikido people can be impressed by Aikido in
an aesthetic way.
JSP
Well yes, but the starting point depends on your current level of
mathematical understanding.
There is a 'poetry' in perfect numbers, where the sum of the factors is
the number.
Pi is an amazing number. It describes the circle, the shape of the
stars, even the course of rivers, but you can't even write the number
down.
The point being that the poetry is there, you just might have to learn
something to see it.
Even written poetry in English is like that. Some of the famous poets
do absolutely nothing for me, I just cannot connect with what they're
talking about. The fact that an audience is small, or requires
particular knowledge does not mitigate against poetry.
Have we wandered a bit off topic here?
Prometheus
> Maybe when you live a little longer you'll see how arrogant this
> statement is.
Interesting, you have absolutely no idea how old I am or what sort of life
experience I've had. This is just another surreptitious ad hominem way the
mystic tries to dismiss the honest skeptic and it amounts to no rebuttal at
al. It's an indicator of a failed argument John.
> Science does NOT have all the answers; not by a long shot.
True. And this statement of fact only tells me that you are of the "god of
the gaps" mentality. Wherever knowledge leaves off is where you insert
superstition instead of being secure enough to simply admit you don't know.
It is a common response of the mystic to point to the limits of science in
an attempt to legitimize their particular form of making things up.
> Biology, in particular, is mainly about statistics. When you have to
> innoculate your owns kids for polio you need to ask youself whether or
> not you're putting your kids at risk because the fact is that polio is
> all but irradicated.
Totally missed the point. The point is that if mysticism EVER approached
sciences ability to produce predictable results I'll eat my hat.
> Most of the polio infections in the US have been
> caused by vaccinations; not communication from another person. You need
> to struggle with moral questions about your concern for your child
> versus your obligation to the community. You need to do your own
> homework and fight your doctor to get the dead vaccine rather than the
> live vaccine because doctors are not scientists. They are dispensers of
> treatment and have protocols affected as much by economics as by
> science. And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
> you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
Once again, you can pray over your wife, you wave your hands and attempt to
cleanse her Ki or Chi, you can even lay healing crystals under her pillow
etc. All of these things may be valuable in terms of the psychological or
emotional comfort they may bring to both the person with the illness and
their loved ones but none of them have a demonstrated ability to actually
cure cancer beyond the statistical spontaneous remission rates.
>
> Budo is about life and death decisions in the immediate sense. No time
> to take a study. No time for experiments. Whatever science you
> incorporate into your training, which I'm sure is absolutely minimal,
> when the shit hits the fan it is intuition that you rely on. It is some
> synthesis of automatic reactions that occur too quickly for conscious
> thought. So when all is said and done it is, in fact, results that
> matter.
You are jerking around like a cat on a leash here John. I've repeatedly
said that one need not bring a bunsen burner to the mat. What I HAVE said
is that off the mat, in a philosophical debate about KI such as we have
here, there must be rules of cognitive thought and epistemology. I've
illustrated how the mystic refuses to to do this and pointed to the likely
explanation as to why. Primarily becuase his superstition does not hold up
under such clarity and scrutiny. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
> >> If the goal is to have an
> >> "unbendable" arm then it doesn't really matter what you believe, as
long
> >> as you achieve the desired effect.
Unless of course you believe in Ki but for some reason have not been shown
the deceptive parlor trick sleight of hand required to actually make it
work. In which case you'd be standing there all day trying to muster your
Ki. LOL
Why is it that you feel so compelled to use the language of science to
legitimize your superstition? Is it becuase you know, unconsciously perhaps,
that science lends an air of legitimacy to your views?
>
> >And now we are back to talking about what Ki is and this is
> >well traveled ground. If Ki is just the word you are using for any and
ever
> >y energy we already understand then any discussion of Ki is just boring
> >semantics. If however Ki is some as yet unmeasured, undetected energy
one
> >harneses to make an unbendable arm then what can I say.........I have an
> >ethereal, undetectable, unmeasurable dragon that lives in my garage. He
> >guards against burglers and you now what?? We have not been burgled
once!!
> >You can't see him, can't smell him, can't feel him or hear him....but I
> >assure you he's there and he's doing a great job.
>
> And here again you go off into some fantasy. I have news for you, Prom.
> No one has yet detected a graviton particle. Yet, that is the current
> best scientific theory on the mechanism of gravity. Despite that,
> virtually every little kid on the planet learns to use and interact with
> gravity through a very simple process called living.
That's a pretty wide gap you are trying to bridge there John. I'm not even
sure what it means.
Why is it when I make any attempt to present my POV the mystic finds it
necessary to assert that I am "angry" or have "a chip on my shoulder"?
Neither of these things are true....I merely argue with my intellect and
convictions. It's a non-sequiter to insist that I'm an angry person. Such
statements are just more attempts to marginalize the skeptic in an attempt
to dodge the sharp end of his questions.
> >It's the lack of scientific understanding and scientific literacy that
> >creates the gap you are trying to describe John, not the output of
science
> >itself.
>
> But any idiot can appreciate art.
Debatable.
>
> >> Actually, I
> >> would argue that they operate at completely different ends of the
> >> spectrum of reality. Art is essentially addressing a subjective
reality,
> >> while science is trying to cutting through that subjective reality to
> >> reveal an objective reality.
> >>
> >> I like what Jodie Foster's character says in the movie, Contact. "They
> >> should have sent a poet."
> >
> >My favorite line in the whole movie. It was a flawless bit of irony from
> >Sagan who was a primary shaper of my views.
>
> If you thought Sagan was attempting an ironic statement then you missed
> the point of the whole movie. Yes, it was a bittersweet moment, but not
> ironic. She was coming face to face with the fact that, for all the
> scientific training she had, she had no means of communicating what she
> was seeing. Yes, it was an emotional moment and her fluster offered some
> indication of the awesomeness of the event. Nevertheless, much of the
> emotional value of the moment was a reflection of her own limitations.
>
> The whole point of the movie was to illustrate the difference between
> subjective truth and objective truth. Did she love her father, even
> though she couldn't prove it? Did she have this experience, even though
> she couldn't prove it?
And if you understood the underpinnings of Sagan's work you'd have
understood that he felt that science did reveal a certian kind of poetry. A
poetry that went unappreciated by the general public due to the poor state
of scientific literacy.
>
> Ki is the feeling of your body. It is the subjective connection that you
> have to the objective world. Asking if it is just biology or some
> supernatural energy is not only irrelevant, it is entirely missing the
> point.
Hence, Ki is anything about being alive and therefore it is nothing in
particular and so nothing at all......
JSP
And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
> you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
As it happens, last week my wife finished her courses of radio and
chemotherapy.
Fortunately, in this case, science seems to have done the trick.
John Heaney
"JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>"John Heaney" <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:heaney-4D6BEF....@news.east.cox.net...
> And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
>> you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
>
>As it happens, last week my wife finished her courses of radio and
>chemotherapy.
>Fortunately, in this case, science seems to have done the trick.
My wife finished her treatment about 4 years ago, although she is still
taking Tamoxifen. Nevertheless, the point was that we had to make many
decisions along the way with no assurance offered from scientists or
doctors. It's all percentages. In fact, my wife lost a couple of organs
unecessarily (i.e. no malignant tumors in them) simply because there was
no way to determine whether the procedure was necessary without removing
them.
Good luck to you and your wife. If there's anything I can do to help
(e.g. talking or listening), send me an email.
JSP
> In article <aocidp$jmjln$1...@ID-154862.news.dfncis.de>,
> "JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >"John Heaney" <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
> >news:heaney-4D6BEF....@news.east.cox.net...
> > And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
> >> you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
> >
> >As it happens, last week my wife finished her courses of radio and
> >chemotherapy.
> >Fortunately, in this case, science seems to have done the trick.
>
> My wife finished her treatment about 4 years ago, although she is
still
> taking Tamoxifen. Nevertheless, the point was that we had to make many
> decisions along the way with no assurance offered from scientists or
> doctors. It's all percentages. In fact, my wife lost a couple of
organs
> unecessarily (i.e. no malignant tumors in them) simply because there
was
> no way to determine whether the procedure was necessary without
removing
> them.
Fortunately, my wife's was found very early (hypocondria can be useful!)
so not too much damage was done. Tamoxifen comes next.
> Good luck to you and your wife. If there's anything I can do to help
> (e.g. talking or listening), send me an email.
And to you and yours.
Prometheus
John,
I'm sorry to hear that about your wife. I too am married and can only
imagine in the most approximate way how trying that whole ordeal must be.
Philosophical discussions are one thing......the nitty gritty of life is
quite another. I find a good philosophical discussion entertaining but get
no pleasure whatsoever from witnessing the hardship of others. I wish
nothing but continued good luck to both of you.
Prom.
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>> Maybe when you live a little longer you'll see how arrogant this
>> statement is.
>
>Interesting, you have absolutely no idea how old I am or what sort of life
>experience I've had. This is just another surreptitious ad hominem way the
>mystic tries to dismiss the honest skeptic and it amounts to no rebuttal at
>al. It's an indicator of a failed argument John.
First, it doesn't matter how old you are or what life experiences you
have had. If you continue to live longer then you will continue to have
more life experiences. Hopefully, along the way, the realities of life
will temper the arrogance of your idealistic viewpoints.
Second, I don't consider you an honest skeptic. You do much more than
ask questions and many of them are rhetorical anyway.
Third, I don't think I have met many people as adept as you at
disguising your own ad hominems.
>> Science does NOT have all the answers; not by a long shot.
>
>True. And this statement of fact only tells me that you are of the "god of
>the gaps" mentality. Wherever knowledge leaves off is where you insert
>superstition instead of being secure enough to simply admit you don't know.
>It is a common response of the mystic to point to the limits of science in
>an attempt to legitimize their particular form of making things up.
And what do you insert? By your own admission, it is not science. What
is it then? Educated guesses? How is that any different? Whether or not
you break out a calcuator, roll dice, recite some long pseudo-scientific
words, meditate or break out the tarot cards, it all amounts to the same
thing in the end. You incorporate all the conscious and subconscious
parts of the brain to trick yourself into feeling comfortable enough to
make a decision with the full knowledge that you don't have enough
information. We all have our "gods of the gaps."
>> Biology, in particular, is mainly about statistics. When you have to
>> innoculate your owns kids for polio you need to ask youself whether or
>> not you're putting your kids at risk because the fact is that polio is
>> all but irradicated.
>
>Totally missed the point. The point is that if mysticism EVER approached
>sciences ability to produce predictable results I'll eat my hat.
Then you need to define what you mean by mysticism. It seems to me that
you label anyone who does not comply with the rigor of scientific
analysis at every opportunity is a mystic. By that definition, you
should start deciding what sauce you would like to go with that hat.
>> Most of the polio infections in the US have been
>> caused by vaccinations; not communication from another person. You need
>> to struggle with moral questions about your concern for your child
>> versus your obligation to the community. You need to do your own
>> homework and fight your doctor to get the dead vaccine rather than the
>> live vaccine because doctors are not scientists. They are dispensers of
>> treatment and have protocols affected as much by economics as by
>> science. And god forbid your wife should ever be faced with cancer. Then
>> you will assuredly come face to face with the limits of science.
>
>Once again, you can pray over your wife, you wave your hands and attempt to
>cleanse her Ki or Chi, you can even lay healing crystals under her pillow
>etc. All of these things may be valuable in terms of the psychological or
>emotional comfort they may bring to both the person with the illness and
>their loved ones but none of them have a demonstrated ability to actually
>cure cancer beyond the statistical spontaneous remission rates.
I have said nothing at all about praying, cleansing ki or using healing
crystals. This is you putting words in my mouth, rather than behaving as
an honest skeptic and simply asking me what I did, in fact, do. This is
your clever way of using ad hominem attacks. It's an indicator of a
failed argument, Prom.
Furthermore, psychological and emotional comfort are often critical
elements of any such treatment. And that is demonstrated scientifically.
Contemporary cancer treatment devotes a great deal of resources
specifically in these areas. There are deep relationships between
pschology and physiology. People have understood this for thousands of
years. They just didn't call it pschology and physiology.
>> Budo is about life and death decisions in the immediate sense. No time
>> to take a study. No time for experiments. Whatever science you
>> incorporate into your training, which I'm sure is absolutely minimal,
>> when the shit hits the fan it is intuition that you rely on. It is some
>> synthesis of automatic reactions that occur too quickly for conscious
>> thought. So when all is said and done it is, in fact, results that
>> matter.
>
>You are jerking around like a cat on a leash here John. I've repeatedly
>said that one need not bring a bunsen burner to the mat. What I HAVE said
>is that off the mat, in a philosophical debate about KI such as we have
>here, there must be rules of cognitive thought and epistemology. I've
>illustrated how the mystic refuses to to do this and pointed to the likely
>explanation as to why. Primarily becuase his superstition does not hold up
>under such clarity and scrutiny. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
Because these are YOUR rules. Just because some of us don't want to play
by them, doesn't mean we are mystics or superstitious. The fact is that
ki is something you experience; like gravity. You can talk to death
about gravity and gain a certain understanding of it. But sooner or
later you are going to have to start paying attention to your own
personal experience of gravity. Otherwise, it's just academic. It's
debatable, moot.
>> >True, a good deal of energy is invisible to us but it is not immeasurable
>or
>> >undetectable.
>>
>> Actually, you are wrong. Researches have stuck electrodes all over
>> bodies to pick up the electrical impulses of muscles firing. They have
>> filmed muscles working using all sorts of processes that pick up heat
>> and energy at various frequencies. However, all of these are
>> approximations. You cannot measure every bit of energy associated with
>> an appendage moving in real time. You can only approximate and
>> extrapolate. Furthermore, even though you can objectively verify the
>> kinds of energy associated with body movement and you can estimate the
>> associated energy signature, no one walks around with this equipment in
>> their daily lives. We actually familiarize ourselves with our own energy
>> signatures through a very highly subjective process called training. You
>> learn to associate what it feels like with what effect it has. That is
>> learning via experience.
>
>Why is it that you feel so compelled to use the language of science to
>legitimize your superstition? Is it becuase you know, unconsciously perhaps,
>that science lends an air of legitimacy to your views?
Sounding less and less like and honest skeptic with every question you
ask. I am not superstitious. I am very much a man of science. I have a
very good grasp of what science is and what it's limitations are. It is
for that reason that I am able to point out why your statement misses
the target.
It is true that we can detect electrical signals in the muscles of the
arm. They are amplified and used as control signals to control
prosthetic arms. However, we do NOT have the technology to detect these
signals in anywhere near the resolution of a real arm. Therefore, these
signals no more give a "picture" of ki than electrodes in the brain give
a "picture" of thoughts in a subject's brain.
>> >And now we are back to talking about what Ki is and this is
>> >well traveled ground. If Ki is just the word you are using for any and
>ever
>> >y energy we already understand then any discussion of Ki is just boring
>> >semantics. If however Ki is some as yet unmeasured, undetected energy
>one
>> >harneses to make an unbendable arm then what can I say.........I have an
>> >ethereal, undetectable, unmeasurable dragon that lives in my garage. He
>> >guards against burglers and you now what?? We have not been burgled
>once!!
>> >You can't see him, can't smell him, can't feel him or hear him....but I
>> >assure you he's there and he's doing a great job.
>>
>> And here again you go off into some fantasy. I have news for you, Prom.
>> No one has yet detected a graviton particle. Yet, that is the current
>> best scientific theory on the mechanism of gravity. Despite that,
>> virtually every little kid on the planet learns to use and interact with
>> gravity through a very simple process called living.
>
>That's a pretty wide gap you are trying to bridge there John. I'm not even
>sure what it means.
What it means is that it is not necessary to detect some invisible
"kion" particle to prove the existence of ki any more than it is
necessary to detect some invisible graviton particle to prove the
existence of gravity.
>> >> >> I don't know, Prom. Your selling, but I'm not buying...
>> >> >> ...science itself is not art.
>> >> >
>> The whole point of the movie was to illustrate the difference between
>> subjective truth and objective truth. Did she love her father, even
>> though she couldn't prove it? Did she have this experience, even though
>> she couldn't prove it?
>
>And if you understood the underpinnings of Sagan's work you'd have
>understood that he felt that science did reveal a certian kind of poetry. A
>poetry that went unappreciated by the general public due to the poor state
>of scientific literacy.
I've read lots of Sagan's work. If I missed this gem then I'm glad.
Poetry is not a natural phenomena to be revealed. Poetry is an
expression of humanity. The Grand Canyon may indeed inspire poetry, but
it is not itself poetry.
>> Ki is the feeling of your body. It is the subjective connection that you
>> have to the objective world. Asking if it is just biology or some
>> supernatural energy is not only irrelevant, it is entirely missing the
>> point.
>
>Hence, Ki is anything about being alive and therefore it is nothing in
>particular and so nothing at all......
Not just anything about being alive. It is not your body any more than a
wire is electricity or a pipe is water. It is not the tune going on in
your head any more than the words on your screen are the light that
reaches your eyes. Ki is energy.
John Heaney
"JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I'm not sure how far you go with Prom's science is art thesis and I'm
kind of getting lost in threads. Let me just say that mathematics is a
kind of language and, so, is expressive. I'll concede that mathematical
expression could be poetry. Where I draw the line, though, is in saying
that mathematics itself is poetry. That would be tantamount to saying
that English is poetry, which is clearly wrong. English is used to
express poetry.
Also, I'll agree with your opinion that pi is an amazing number and
obviously has inspired poetry, even if few can appreciate it. But I will
not concede that pi itself is poetry. Pi is universal constant (we
hope), which would place the author of that poem...out of reach.
>Have we wandered a bit off topic here?
It was inevitable. :)
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>I'm sorry to hear that about your wife. I too am married and can only
>imagine in the most approximate way how trying that whole ordeal must be.
>
>Philosophical discussions are one thing......the nitty gritty of life is
>quite another. I find a good philosophical discussion entertaining but get
>no pleasure whatsoever from witnessing the hardship of others. I wish
>nothing but continued good luck to both of you.
Thanks, Prom. I didn't mean to throw a wet blank on our fun. Feel free
to resume normal programming. :)
JSP
> >Have we wandered a bit off topic here?
>
> It was inevitable. :)
But no-one's mentioned Hitler yet.
Damien Sullivan
--
Damien Sullivan
Phoenix, AZ
"JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aohn5u$mjebd$1...@ID-154862.news.dfncis.de...
John Heaney
"JSP" <some...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>"John Heaney" <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:heaney-270492....@news.east.cox.net...
>
>> >Have we wandered a bit off topic here?
>>
>> It was inevitable. :)
>
>But no-one's mentioned Hitler yet.
Well thanks for putting the period at the end of that sentence. :)
DC
Damien Sullivan wrote:
> Hitler
Thats no good. To invoke godwins law, I believe you need to compare
someone or their opinions to hitler/the nazis.
--
_______________________________________________
DC
"You can not reason a man out of a position he did not reach through reason"
"Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice."
"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is
never sure." Segal's Law
j p hutchinson
DC wrote:
>
>
> Damien Sullivan wrote:
>
>> Hitler
>
>
> Thats no good. To invoke godwins law, I believe you need to compare
> someone or their opinions to hitler/the nazis.
>
That damn Dr Goebbels, he's almost as bad as Hitler!
DC
Sorry still no good, it needs to be sombody involved in the thread. Use
me if you like ;-)
Kristian Lund
> mystery bother you so much? I have not asked you to see it as anything
> other than what you like. I was just agreeing with Ms. McCarville.
I just have to comment on this, I know the question was not for me.
Oh... and one sidenote: I love that you guys have long discussions about the
"poetry of wassname", I really do.
OK, the problem I have with the above statement is that the premiss behind
any discussion (this is my claim) is to get a the truth.
If I write a newsgroup and claim something, then you can all assume that I
believe this to be the truth and what springs from that initial post would
(should) be a discussion about whether what I said IS indeed the truth (and
in what way, with what limitations, etc.)
Of course, If I wrote:
I think that P
Then it would be absurd to go into a discussion of whether it is true that I
believe P.
But I would still be inviting you all to comment P (and not my belief in P).
Therefore - if you stake a claim (especially on a newsgroup) people will
discuss is.
> Why does my choice to see ki as a mystery bother you so much?
Translates to "Why does my belief that P (Ki is a mystery) bring a response
from you?"
The answer is: because you stated it (and this is a newsgroup and we all sit
around commenting strangers beliefs because we do not have lives...)
This leads me to:
Is the discussion not really about whether a mystery needs to be a complete
unknown, or whether something we know something about can still be a
mystery.
BTW: My way of dealing with science (because I have trouble believeing in a
purely deterministic universe) is this:
I know there is a very good chance that science has the right explanation
for this here sunrise and why it speaks to me. But that is just a
probability, a induction, a theory.
What I know is that it speaks to me!
Regards,
Kristian Lund
JSP
"DC" <sws9...@rdg.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3DAD3152...@rdg.ac.uk...
>
>
> Damien Sullivan wrote:
> > Hitler
>
> Thats no good. To invoke godwins law, I believe you need to compare
> someone or their opinions to hitler/the nazis.
Do you think Hitler believed in Ki?
DC
>>Damien Sullivan wrote:
>>
>>>Hitler
>>
>>Thats no good. To invoke godwins law, I believe you need to compare
>>someone or their opinions to hitler/the nazis.
>
>
> Do you think Hitler believed in Ki?
Quite possibly, he and his cabinet were into all sorts of occultism and
so on.
j p hutchinson
DC wrote:
>
>>> Damien Sullivan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hitler
>>>
>>>
>>> Thats no good. To invoke godwins law, I believe you need to compare
>>> someone or their opinions to hitler/the nazis.
>>
>>
>>
>> Do you think Hitler believed in Ki?
>
>
> Quite possibly, he and his cabinet were into all sorts of occultism and
> so on.
>
According to Return to Castle Wolfenstein :D
DC
>>
>> Quite possibly, he and his cabinet were into all sorts of occultism
>> and so on.
> According to Return to Castle Wolfenstein :D
:-)
Carla
I'll await the flames but....
Surely talk conveys information - information that may or may not be true,
if an absolute truth on the matter involved even exists. Someone could
memorise every work on a subject, that doesn't necessarily mean they
understand it. IMHO, understanding is surely only attained through thought
and reasoning? I could read everything Newton ever wrote on gravity and go
around saying "I understand gravity". Einstein would disagree with me.
Both theories have been 'disproven', or at least shown to not be able to be
demonstrated practically under certain circumstances.
There's nothing I'd rather see than indisputable proof of the existance (or
non-existance, as the case may be) of Ki, but then I'd equally love to see
indisputable proof of almost anything. The 'invisible dragon' thing is all
well and good, and 'naturally' likely to get a humerous or negative
response, but surely the important questions were what is a dragon, and what
is invisibility? Once you've agreed those, it makes the process of
reasoning its existance so much easier.
So isn't the first question to ask 'what is Ki?', and once we can agree that
to reach, through reason, an answer as to whether it does, or may, exist -
and perhaps more importantly, a better understanding of Ki, whether it is a
psychological phenomenon or something distinctly different?
Prometheus
Carla,
You touched on a central point and the main question of my post "Ki and
epistemology."
What is Ki?
Ask ten people get ten different answers. This does not speak well for the
prospect of starting off on the right foot.
Prom.
Karel Koskuba
>> >here, there must be rules of cognitive thought and epistemology.
Unless you have sufficient data (understanding of how body works),
what's point of cognitive thought and epistemology? The only way (so
far) you are going to get sufficient understanding is through experience
- I think that's John's point.
>> > I've
>> >illustrated how the mystic refuses to to do this and pointed to the
>likely
>> >explanation as to why. Primarily becuase his superstition does not hold
>up
>> >under such clarity and scrutiny. Why is this so hard for you to
>understand?
Not all mystics are superstitious. Some (most?) try to reach
understanding by resorting to the use of their subconscious - rather
like Carla's friend Einstein.
>>The fact is that
>> ki is something you experience; like gravity. You can talk to death
>> about gravity and gain a certain understanding of it. But sooner or
>> later you are going to have to start paying attention to your own
>> personal experience of gravity. Otherwise, it's just academic. It's
>> debatable, moot.
Of course, ki is closely related to gravity. But once experienced, it
can be explained (unlike gravity).
>IMHO, understanding is surely only attained through thought
>and reasoning? I could read everything Newton ever wrote on gravity and go
>around saying "I understand gravity". Einstein would disagree with me.
Two points:
- I would think that shows that "only thought and reasoning" isn't
enough!
- what did Einstein know of gravity? He constructed a model that
explained certain things. If getting a workable model is
'understanding', then how come all you people have trouble with 'ki'?
There isn't a better model so far.
>There's nothing I'd rather see than indisputable proof of the existance (or
>non-existance, as the case may be) of Ki, but then I'd equally love to see
>indisputable proof of almost anything.
Exactly, so why pick on ki?
>So isn't the first question to ask 'what is Ki?', and once we can agree that
>to reach, through reason, an answer as to whether it does, or may, exist -
>and perhaps more importantly, a better understanding of Ki, whether it is a
>psychological phenomenon or something distinctly different?
'Reason' will not enable you to reach any new understanding. You can
only 'reason' about what you already know. Without experience (gained
by, for example, experiments) reason is sterile.
If you are wondering whether it's a 'psychological phenomenon', you need
to get more experience (i.e. practice more) :^)
--
Regards,
Karel
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>What is Ki?
>
>Ask ten people get ten different answers.
Yeah, sure. Ask ten people what gravity is. You'll probably still get
ten different answers. But in both cases, there are elements of
commonality.
Prometheus
The difference John is that there is an objective, veridical, and testable
"correct" answer to the second question. And before you go off on the
difference between Newtonian Laws of Universal Gravitation and Einstein's
theories of General Relativity, remember that GR does not invalidate
Newton's laws it builds on them.
Prom
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Why should I when you keep doing it for me? :)
I just point out that no one has ever detected a graviton.
Prometheus
John,
Your response regarding gravitons is a complete non-sequitur and therefore
fallacious.
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>John Heaney <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>news:heaney-B23D91....@news.east.cox.net...
>> In article <RlVr9.89055$uF6.3...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>,
>> "Prometheus" <buj...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >John Heaney <hea...@cox.net> wrote in message
>> >news:heaney-28F7CB....@news.east.cox.net...
>> >> In article <UBJr9.87917$oq6.24047@sccrnsc01>,
>> >> "Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >What is Ki?
>> >> >
>> >> >Ask ten people get ten different answers.
>> >>
>> >> Yeah, sure. Ask ten people what gravity is. You'll probably still get
>> >> ten different answers. But in both cases, there are elements of
>> >> commonality.
>> >
>> >The difference John is that there is an objective, veridical, and
>testable
>> >"correct" answer to the second question. And before you go off on the
>> >difference between Newtonian Laws of Universal Gravitation and Einstein's
>> >theories of General Relativity, remember that GR does not invalidate
>> >Newton's laws it builds on them.
>>
>> Why should I when you keep doing it for me? :)
>>
>> I just point out that no one has ever detected a graviton.
>
>Your response regarding gravitons is a complete non-sequitur and therefore
>fallacious.
It was no more of a non-sequitur than your mention of GR.
Any answer that does not include gravitons is merely a description of
gravity, not an explanation of what gravity is. Since we have not yet
actually detected gravitons we are left with qualitative descriptions of
gravity in the same way we are left with qualitative descriptions of
gravity. You objective answer to gravity, I suspect, has the benefit of
being quantifiable. That distinction, though, comes from the ease of
getting quantifiable data on inanimate objects versus animate ones. I
don't think we have the technology to get anywhere near measuring the
effect of ki.
That, of course, is not the point of studying ki. So not only is it
extraordinarily difficult to quantify ki, it is also quite useless.
Prometheus
Karel Koskuba <ka...@golem.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:OGUjk7CNw$r9E...@golem.demon.co.uk...
And yet Karel, you employ reason in an attempt to lead us all to a new
understanding regarding the limits of reason. LOL. Thus you employ the
very principle you hope to dethrone !!!!
John Heaney
"Prometheus" <neol...@attbi.com> wrote:
>And yet Karel, you employ reason in an attempt to lead us all to a new
>understanding regarding the limits of reason. LOL. Thus you employ the
>very principle you hope to dethrone !!!!
Live by the sword and die by the sword, as they say. :)
Karel Koskuba
>> only 'reason' about what you already know. Without experience (gained
>> by, for example, experiments) reason is sterile.
Prometheus <neol...@attbi.com> writes
>And yet Karel, you employ reason in an attempt to lead us all to a new
>understanding regarding the limits of reason. LOL. Thus you employ the
>very principle you hope to dethrone !!!!
I don't think my reasoning has a great chance of success. But it may
trigger an experience of insight - and that could lead to a new
understanding
:^))))
--
Regards,
Karel
David Rosenthal
repeating something already said.
Someone said "practice more to understand ki". Does that mean that ki
is purely subjective? Ask 10 people and get 10 different answers. Do
the answers about ki have any commonality? What points of do they
agree on? What points do they differ on? Can ki be demonstrated on
the mat by multiple aikidoka? Do they agree on what they are doing?
My background, so that you may understand why I ask these question,
and maybe even find some answers:
I have taken Tomiki Aikido for over 8 years. After a long layoff I am
considering returning to it. One of the prime tenants of the Tomiki
system is that if we can not test something on the mat, if we can't
consistently reproduce it, we don't teach it or use it.
John Heaney
David Rosenthal <drose...@lands.mine.nu> wrote:
>Someone said "practice more to understand ki". Does that mean that ki
>is purely subjective?
I would not say purely subjective, but highly subjective.
>Ask 10 people and get 10 different answers. Do
>the answers about ki have any commonality?
By and large, if you don't get caught up in desire to explain in too
much detail then, yes, there is a great deal of commonality.
>What points of do they
>agree on?
Probably the most profound commonality is that the descriptions of using
ki invariably begin with "It feels like..." That, to me, is the whole
point of studying ki. It means that you have stepped out of the
analytical mode of the mind, which is necessarily removed from the here
and now, and are now focused on the actual experience you are having or
living in the present moment.
>What points do they differ on?
Once you leave the subjective experience and try to explain things in
objective ways then you are open to all sorts of divergent perspectives.
The problem, as I see it, is that all these "objective" explanations are
really metaphors for what is essentially a subjective experience. If you
look at such explanations in this light then you will find that they
could actually be describing the same things.
>Can ki be demonstrated on
>the mat by multiple aikidoka?
Of course.
>Do they agree on what they are doing?
See above.
>My background, so that you may understand why I ask these question,
>and maybe even find some answers:
>
>I have taken Tomiki Aikido for over 8 years. After a long layoff I am
>considering returning to it. One of the prime tenants of the Tomiki
>system is that if we can not test something on the mat, if we can't
>consistently reproduce it, we don't teach it or use it.
With all due respect for Tomiki, I think this philosophy is too
idealistic. It is idealistic in the same way that science is idealistic.
The fact is that you cannot create ideal circumstances in Aikido. There
are too many variables. Every single attack and application of technique
is a unique event, no matter how contrived the practice is. If one
really followed the stated tenet then as soon as you came across one
person that didn't respond to atemi you would abandon the whole concept
of atemi. That is an absurd outcome.
You simply cannot apply those kinds of idealistic principles to Aikido.
The principles of Aikido are really about how you map your subjective
experience to objective reality. They aren't about describing the world
in an objective way, but rather, how you open yourself to the world so
that you can experience it in a way that is true for you.
Karel Koskuba
>In article <cqogru8bl26mnlnb1...@4ax.com>,
> David Rosenthal <drose...@lands.mine.nu> wrote:
>
>>Someone said "practice more to understand ki". Does that mean that ki
>>is purely subjective?
>
>I would not say purely subjective, but highly subjective.
I would the sensations associated with it are subjective. 'Ki' itself
stands for a certain way of using the body - in that it's pretty
objective.
>Probably the most profound commonality is that the descriptions of using
>ki invariably begin with "It feels like..." That, to me, is the whole
>point of studying ki. It means that you have stepped out of the
>analytical mode of the mind, which is necessarily removed from the here
>and now, and are now focused on the actual experience you are having or
>living in the present moment.
I can experience playing the piano but that doesn't mean I don't know
what I'm doing.
--
Regards,
Karel