Topic: Mythology for the Unseen Sciences

Another measure of a culture is how it honors three basic human urges: the inclination towards beauty of art, the desire to measure and manipulate the manifest world, or science, and the pull of the invisible and transcendental which animates religion. Art, science and religion each generate marvelous insights and experiences--and each is susceptible to obsession and to marginalizing the others. When this happens on a grand scale, history has its moments of obsession such as the Inquisition. These unbalanced times are easy to spot in hindsight, but we tend to be hypnotized when they happen in the present (as in our blindness to today’s dictatorship of Big Science).

When these three forces are gracefully balanced, they free our attention to move in another direction, which in the Triple Ripple design of the Afterculture (above) is the opening at the very center of the three ripples. This might be called the directionless direction--the Great Mystery--and it lies beyond the confines of any discipline or methodology. Moving in this direction, people and institutions flower, wisdom grows, and golden ages unfold.

I hope they are hung

Space travel for example, should not matter to people.

I did say that the cost of science was far too high, didn't I?

Do you really think that is all there is to life, ensuring the next breath?

why would it be a good thing to forget that trifle when you remember the Law of Life?

We need to explore the other levels of understanding that we've so neglected--the mythic levels, the levels of relating to the non-human communities around us--but you don't get any further in those levels of understanding by neglecting others.

I would think, if anything, the follies of our science would've already illustrated that.

The folly of science is that it is a religion based of the belief that the world is dead and we are meant to conquer it.

No worries, Chuck. You're no alone. We just happen to be in the minority.

Baruch Cohen of jlaw.com [/url] "]Any analysis that fails to see realistically the Nazi data as a blood soaked document fails to comprehend fully the magnitude of the issue.

The Nuremberg code includes such principles as informed consent and absence of coercion; properly formulated scientific experimentation; and beneficence towards experiment participants.

I don't think that follows at all. We don't exactly hold Mengele up as a model of scientific achievement, and though the results of Nazi experiments have been used fairly continuously, we still routinely have scientists who are utterly fanatical about their work nonetheless delaying it or abandoning it completely because it doesn't comply with much more stringent ethics guidelines than just that.

By the same token, there's no denying that civilization happened, and that there was a body of scientific knowledge we accumulated. Should we jettison that whole body of knowledge because that might tell later generations that it's OK to start a whole civilization in order to get some more scientific data?

No, I don't suggest we should or could have known better. But we know now. So what do we do with that knowledge? What relationship do we want with the world? Now that we know we've made our lives more comfortable based upon disconnection and nonconsensual torture, do we have any new choices we want to make, any new directions we'd like to go in?

Yes, perhaps some who look forward to a, even mildy, technologically supported afterculture might decide to "use the data"

I don't consider it an ethical or moral matter. I believe it concerns what kind of relationship we want to the world; one of true kinship, or one of abstracted "sustainability". One that honors our family ties to stone and tree, or one that perhaps does not...I mean, could it?

I think it is a question between do we give up information that we find useful out of an abstract guilt for the behavior of previous generations -- or even ourselves before we knew better

I see it as even more than that. Regardless of technology, there is plain old knowledge.

(And note, here I am talking about science the tool -- not science the worldview)

I think that is the disconnect -- between the world view and the tool. The tool can certainly be compatible with an animist world view... after all -- its just a tool 8)

I'd like to suggest that neither abstraction nor guilt enter into it. Many animist elders, authors, and speakers (including Derrick Jensen in "A Language Older Than Words") would argue the very tangible and non-abstract relationship that listening to the land creates. Guilt? Forget about the past. What do we want now? Those who our culture has tortured watch us in fear. How do we want to begin to treat them, in a new way?

On some level this truly surprises me - it seems you believe that our culture adheres to a mythology, except in this one instance, that of our "knowledge". I really believe (and observe!) that our knowledge, much like the story of evolution in Ishmael, cannot disconnect from our mythology.

We have a very difficult time with quantum realities because they do not fit our worldview; ironically, discussions have gone on between indigenous elders and scientists where they have realized that indigenous languages assume a quantum universe, and can easily talk about it, whereas putting a quantum understanding in English befuddles it as often as not.

We have done fully human inquiry, used it as a "tool", as long as we have had human bodies and minds, but only recently, towards the end of civilization, have we called it science. What differentiates inquiry from science? The worldview, right?

That's the power of mythology--of our stories. But it's separate from knowledge, the raw data points. It's like the pattern of thread we might weave around pins stuck into a board. You could make an infinite number of patterns, but they would all turn on the same set of points.

Animism is all about the relationships we foster, but I didn't massacre any Jews.

It happened before I was born, before I had any possibility of doing anything about it. In the process, they found a few raw data points. Do I disregard them, or pretend they're unreal, because they were discovered in a horrific way?

Do I disregard the knowledge science has revealed, because it came of a Faustian deal made by my ancient ancestors, a deal I'm even now dedicating all my energies to breaking?

I fail to see how this has anything to do with my relationship with any of the non-human, living commuities that surround me. If I do what I can to stop the vivisectionist, and fail, then how is it a violation of my relationship with the vivisectionist's victims if I don't make an effort to forget everything he came up with?

I don't know, it all seems very ... romantic, to me.

It seems like a simple glorification of ignorance for its own sake.

I fail to understand how ignorance can ever be virtuous.

At the same time, some of the techniques developed for dealing with PTSD seem to be helping 'rescued' elephants to heal. Transporting bull elephants into groups sorely lacking the same is helping to recreate balance in those herds (is herd right for elephants???)

But it is just knowledge. 2+2=4 has nothing to do with worldview. Although kajillions may become obsolete ;-)

[on indigenous languages and quantum reality...] This does not surprise me in the least. In fact, it reinforces some of the ideas I have been working on lately. Beautiful.

But on your real question: inquiry can be anyof a range of endeavors: from logical debate intending to discover some new thing (such as this discussion we are having), or it can be simple (or not so simple) observation (the moon completes its cycle every 28 days) or it can be science (a specific rigorous set of rules -- hypothesis, test, theory test, etc...). So science is one type of inquiry.

I suspect that primitive peoples have done something like science all along, although they may not have followed the precise rigour that western culture has defined.

That's just stupid, Jason. I wasn't suggesting that anything they know is 'scientific' -- I was suggesting that there have probably never been humans that that did not ever have an idea, test it and then accept it or discard it based upon the results of the test(s).

This does not fit to quantum reality, where the data points change depending on the questions you ask.

Nor did 'you' massacre any Indians. But how do you relate to native americans, knowing your culture's past and present aims?

You don't have to pretend anything; you know what they signify. I don't suggest that one can spontaneously "forget" scientific knowledge, or make it unreal. I don't even know what that means. You know their unreality, if you have a new relationship, an animistic relationship, to the victims.

Yes? No? I don't know. What relationship with the world do you want? Don't you think your line of inquiry, and the mythology of Science, will impact this relationship? A Faustian bargain indeed, as he said: "Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici": I, a living man, with the power of Truth, have conquered the Universe. Do you want anything to do with such a "Truth"? A conquering Truth?

Fundamentally changing your line of inquiry will change your relationship to the world. I'd certainly appreciate you abandoning any information you or your ancestors gained from torturing me, and renouncing such tactics. But only I'd appreciate it, and if you don't want to have a relationship with me (or my descendents), than by all means, use the information.

Yes it does, doesn't it? EXACTLY. Do you love the world or not?

A glorification of ignorance, or a glorification of relationship?

Yes, aboriginal knowledge "is not" science. Exactly. But what does that mean? Not useful? Not accurate? Or just "not-science"? Or, according to your link, "Scientific knowledge carries far greater status in our society because it offers us control over the material world in which we live.".

How about simply not massacring them, and relating to them as neighbors? Modern therapeutic knowledge does not impress me terribly much, in this instance, and I don't believe local indigenous peoples, where they still live, do not understand how to bring neighbors back into balance. Why? Because of animist inquiry.

2+2=4 has everything to do with worldview, don't you think? Truly? Not joking here. Mathematical notion exactly emerged out of our worldview, out of civilized worldviews.

Yay! It excites me too. I like that it resonates with you. I've written some about it on my blog...wink wink.

Well, you may find yourself relatively alone in that...you don't consider taxonomy science? Most Astronomy? i could go on, but a lot of Scientists perform Science in many different ways, and the "Scientific Method" actually describes very little of it. No magical "method" exists.

A wee bit insulting, there. Next time we do 10,000 ways, I need to show you some Lipan apache soil substrate studies. Rigor? Wow.

Geez, calm down. I know, and it's a good point. I wasn't refuting you, I was elaborating.

This is the way people behave. It doesn't matter if space travel inspires you now, it will not inspire those who come after us, because it will never be possible and will not even be concievable to people, so will not be thought of.

You'll recall that in the original post that you upbraided him for, Rory made specific mention of germ theory as an example. That's an eminently useful bit of knowledge, I'd say.

You'll recall that in the original post that you upbraided him for, Rory made specific mention of germ theory as an example. That's an eminently useful bit of knowledge, I'd say.

I was right with you up until this point, Scout. How do you know such a thing? Why not leave it at "It honestly doesn't matter what we think will be preserved. What will be preserved or remembered or thrown away will be dictated by the land and the people living on it." hmm?

Perception changes the world on a very fundamental level, and yes, all material reality is ultimately cascading waves of probability ...

but this is getting into the kind of silly thought experiments that make civilized people so ... literate.

The world of our sensuous experience is one where everything changes, but many things change very, very slowly. The mountains will not disappear tomorrow.

The tracks are there for anyone to read; it's up to the tracker to weave the story around them. It might not fit into quantum reality, but it fits easily into our experience of the sensual, living world.

The fact that we can both come to such differing conclusions suggests to me that there is no clear route here, and that this same act that might be appreciated by some of our society's victims might be abhorred by others.

I do love this world, but I didn't mean an adjective form of "romance." I meant it in terms of the Romantic period, Romantic philosophy, Romantic thinking...

Since I fail to see how discarding the knowledge could repair the relationship once the damage is done, I don't see how it could be a glorification of relationship--so I have to stick with a glorification of ignorance.

After all, on a more shallow level, such projection is all you're doing, too.

At Tom Brown's school we practiced speaking with certain things, and then asking eachother what it said... if there was a syncronicity, maybe we really spoke with that entity, if not then maybe our own perceptions and egos muddled what they were really trying to say to us.

Three shamans stand in a room.

People can use different rituals to talk to spirits, what I want to know is, if they all spoke to the same spirit, do they all agree on what the spirit they talked to said.

died in the end?

Therin lies the point. If they agreed, most certainly the consensus would not be that the spirits wish them to marginalize, objectify and torture them.

The problem is that science nearly always creates what it calls "controlled studies" in an attempt to strengthen the credibility of its claims, thereby negating the infinite web of relationships to which its "subject" is married.

The fact remains however that plague is a civilized invention, resulting from large numbers of filthy people living in cramped quarters. ... In the long run, after the cities have starved themselves out and a sustainable number of thriving human tribes are left to roam the open earth, I doubt the theory will be of much use.

It's the consistency that gives me confidence that it's not just my imagination. I compare notes with others who do the same thing independently, and we usually come up with the same stuff.

Reductionism is at once science's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness. What it does well, it does very, very well, but it's a very limited view of the world.

So, do you reject something utterly because it's an extremely good view at a very narrow part of the world? Or do you say, "This is a useful tool. I will stick it in my belt and use it when it's appropriate."

In other words, I don't think the problem is that hammers are bad; I think the problem is when the only thing you have in your toolbox is a hammer.

I don't think ignorance is ever much of a virtue; the greater our knowledge--of any level of existence--the deeper our relationships can be.

The price of some knowledge might be too high, but the knowledge itself is always a good thing.

Even inside civilization's paradigm, the pursuit of knowledge has undermined the very foundations. Biology has overturned the Cartesian dualism it was launched upon. Quantum physics calls into question our assumption that the world is "dead" in any meaningful sense. The problem is not too much knowledge--the problem is not enough.

I'd rather say, "what it does, it does". Does well? How do we measure that?

I hear a possible assumption behind your words that claims that Science corners the market on rigorous testing and experimentation, along with an interest in how parts of a being interact to make the being itself. If so, I profoundly disagree with this. Though indigenous cultures simply make no distinction between the processes of empathy and investigation, a native philospher still uses every tool that enriches their relationship with the world, thus ensuring survival. This includes a use of minimizing variables, a use of controls, etc. But they do it all within a sacred worldview. As always, I can show you how this applies to tracking quite easily.

By tool, do you mean scientific knowledge already gained, or scientific knowledge that we have not yet gained? Or the process of science?

I think we arrive at a problem when we use a hammer on a living being.

I simply want to make clear that any "knowledge" comes from an investigation into a relationship. Investigating how to control a thing yields one kind of knowledge; investigating how to dance with a being yields another kind of knowledge. The greater knowledge of controlling things, the more we will do that. The greater knowledge of dancing with beings, the more we'll do that. These worlds don't overlap (that I can see); one can have a foot in both of them (which many of us do), but it makes one belong to neither.

Well...wow. Hmm. I simply can never divorce knowledge from its context. In my mind/heart (speaking for myself here), I see that as the first step to any flavor of genocide one may perpetrate.

Well, would one, in an experiment, start with a cat and cut off bits until it proves itself alive, or do we start our experiment by assuming its life and investigate its nature from there? I suppose in the first case we may eventually arrive at the same conclusion as what started the second (along with lots of interesting scientific knowledge) but we have a dead cat who really hated us before it died. And once it dies, it won't show us how to catch mice.

In the above case you might say "don't use the tool of science then", but what about investigating a tree? A rock? A mountain? A breath? When exactly does a scientific paradigm of a dead universe acquire usefulness as a tool? What relationship do we give ourselves permission to violate?

I can't tell whether you mean to say "my landbase gave me permission to use past scientific knowledge" or "I consider ignorance for the sake of a relationship romantic and foolish", the latter having some future impact, I'd imagine, while the former simply differs from my own relationship (and therefore I won't argue it).

Destructiveness is not a goal of science, it's a side effect--not one that comes from malice, but from ignorance. They're always trying to make their experiments more humane and ethical, but they're blinded by their cultural assumptions. So obviously, destructiveness has nothing to do with it doing what it does well.

What it does is come up with rigorous, objective knowledge. Science constantly re-evaluates its store of knowledge, and the knowledge it puts into that box is the most objective, rigorous stuff you can ask for. When you find kowledge in the science box, you can count on it being as objectively true as objective truth comes. That's what it means for science to do what it does well.

In the past, science has often used inappropriate tools with the wrong living things--not out of malice, but out of blindness. Their blindness was the same as the blindness of their culture. So what happens if you put a scientist into an animist culture? How does that mix things up? I agree, tracking is the original animist science. I think there could be others, every bit as methodical and rigorous and repeatable as our current science, and conducted with a respect for the living world.

Is flint knapping a problem? It's a problem to step on a cat, but it's not a problem to step on grass.

Whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.
-Chuang tzu

In general, I can't imagine what place would want to have a relationship with it, and then demand that you not learn what it is on some level.

You seem to think that science necessarily means a dead universe. I think science means the scientific method--being rigorous and methodical and logical and rational, keeping your emotions and impressions and intuitions out of it as much as you can...

British scientists have at last discovered that fish do indeed feel pain. Whether they admit it or not, everyone who has ever gone fishing knows this is the case. But for years an intense [and intensely stupid] debate has been carried on in all seriousness in scientific and fishing circles. In order to end the debate once and for all, scientists jabbed fish in the face with hot probes, and provided 'mechanical' and 'chemical stimuli' to the fishes faces as well. Sure enough, the fish seemed to feel pain.

Destructiveness is not a goal of science, it's a side effect--not one that comes from malice, but from ignorance. They're always trying to make their experiments more humane and ethical, but they're blinded by their cultural assumptions. So obviously, destructiveness has nothing to do with it doing what it does well.

This is what science teaches us. You will pull the vacuum-packed frog from its plastic shroud, or alternatively, you will scramble the brains of this live frog, make it as insensate as I am making you, as insensate as my elders made me.

At Tom Brown's school we practiced speaking with certain things, and then asking eachother what it said... if there was a syncronicity, maybe we really spoke with that entity, if not then maybe our own perceptions and egos muddled what they were really trying to say to us.

Destructiveness is not a goal of science, it's a side effect--not one that comes from malice, but from ignorance. They're always trying to make their experiments more humane and ethical, but they're blinded by their cultural assumptions. So obviously, destructiveness has nothing to do with it doing what it does well.

When you find knowledge in the science box, you can count on it being as objectively true as objective truth comes. That's what it means for science to do what it does well.

No need, I'm well aware. I cited quite a few examples of my own in thesis #23 . But because of that, they necessarily accept a slightly less rigorous approach. Methodical? Absolutely. But because it incorporates a sense of the sacred, it necessarily incorporates the subjective .

But I think, given the science-esque practices already found in native cultures, that you could also have an animist science that takes science's methodical rigor while also maintaining a respect for the sanctity of the living world.

Well now, not all living beings are squishy, fleshy things like us.

There's a limit to the usefulness of anthropomorphism, as useful a tool as it is.

Hammer a squishy, fleshy living being, yes, that's bad. Hammering a rock? Is flint knapping a problem?

It's a problem to step on a cat,

but it's not a problem to step on grass.

I think the key is to appreciate that the world is a living place, and that each living thing in it--the rocks, the winds, the trees, the water, etc.--each have their own life, and to approach it as a relationship, rather than just a dead resource to exploit. So, there are living beings--like rocks--where using a hammer is perfectly fine.

So what happens if you put a scientist into an animist culture? How does that mix things up? I agree, tracking is the original animist science. I think there could be others, every bit as methodical and rigorous and repeatable as our current science, and conducted with a respect for the living world.

So, I reject the premise--knowledge doesn't come with a moral attached. Knowledge simply is . Morals enter into it when we start using that knowledge, and what we use it for.

So, if you had first learned of tracking from an old Nazi war criminal who used it while on the lam, would that mean that tracking itself is evil and must never, ever be used?

If you want to make the argument that scientific knowledge has come at far too high a price to get us back to the same place where we started, I'm in full agreement.

I think we might, since you're saying we need to forget everything we learned because it was learned by people ignorant of the knowledge they eventually came to.

Because they did terrible things in their ignorance, it's obviously incumbent upon us to ... become ignorant again.

I don't think I'm understanding your point entirely.

Hmmm, maybe I do understand your point. You seem to think that science necessarily means a dead universe.

I think science means the scientific method--being rigorous and methodical and logical and rational,

keeping your emotions and impressions and intuitions out of it as much as you can

and then going back into that minimalist database you come up with and going through it all again, critically, trying to prove it wrong so you can throw it out.

If my home told me they wouldn't have a relationship with me if I didn't discard my scientific understanding, I'd do it in a heartbeat. There's nothing in this world more important than relationship.

What I'm saying is that I think knowledge, of any kind, deepens a relationship

I don't understand how ignorance could ever deepen that all-important relationship.

Since I've never been asked to abandon that knowledge, and my hope seems to not give a rip-roaring damn about it (except some recent happiness as I've applied some of that knowledge to reverse some of the damage others did with the very same knowledge),

this doesn't make much sense to me. In general, I can't imagine what place would want to have a relationship with it, and then demand that you not learn what it is on some level.

Destructiveness is absolutely a tool of science, simply because science is a minimalist discipline. You must sever its normal connections to the web of life in order to study it 'objectively'. Even if it is studied within its 'natural' context, scientists usually list a series of parameters they are testing for, excluding others which they deem unneccessary.

So, which do you subscribe to? Abram's idea of an inter-subjective world or science's idea of an objective one?

You can't mix a scientist into an animist culture. Science, as we define our pursuit of knowledge, is a disease of the mind. Once you reattach yourself to the universe, you work with a larger set of tools, including one which allows you to narrow your focus and others that allow you to broaden them.

You seem to be laboring under the misconception that leavers do not get to know the beings they share the planet with. I am not sure where you developed this theory nor how to convince you otherwise.

Let us indeed celebrate the powers of technology, and introduce our children to the digital delights of our era. But not before we have acquainted them with the gifts of the living land, and enabled its palpable mysteries to ignite their imaginations and their thoughts. Not before we have stepped outside with our children, late at night, to gaze up at the glinting lights scattered haphazardly through the darkness, sharing a story about how those stars came to be there. Not before they've glimpsed the tracks of Coyote in the mud by the supermarket, or have sat alongside us on the bank of a local stream, dangling a line in the water and pondering an old tale about the salmon of wisdom.

I am not sure that I detect any difference in definition here.

Ultimately science is the creation of civilization, intended to explain the world on civilization's terms-which, as we've established time and again, means that it must serve to protect and affirm the belief that the world is dead. Therefore science is not a hammer but a pair of thumbscrews.

The entire notion of objectivity presupposes that the world is dead and seeks to compartmentalize its many corpses. That's the nifty box that you speak of.

What do you think - do you see my point here?

Umm. Wow. You've got me close to taking a big break from this. Not because of a lack of sincerity on your part, but just because I see a gulf here and I haven't figured out how to bridge it. We obviously see things far more in common than most "thinkers", but this "scientific knowledge" issue remains a major one for me.

I suspect you think by "mixing empathy and observation, by using both intuition and reason", you think somehow it all turns into a muddle, though a powerful and beautiful indigenous muddle.

And that alone, I think, destroys observations. How can intuition possibly bias you, especially if you've developed some skill at it? How can a sacred worldview possible bias you, it gives you a whole universe of useful lines of investigation, that didn't exist before.

"Rigor" again, and "methodical" too. I think you do a different kind of animal tracking than I do. Seriously. Where relevant, an animist inquiry could look just as methodical and rigorous as any scienctific investigation, with the exception that the animist consistenly asks permission to continue, checks in on the relationship, offers gratitude to the beings it learns about, keeps an eye on intuitive evidence, etc.

In a scientific paradigm one does not ask permission of one's study subjects, excepting humans (sometimes). Therefore I think the metaphor of "taking a hammer to them" holds, i.e. an insensitive approach.

To anthropomorphize something means to give it humanlike qualities. Do mean to argue that only humans live? Only cats? Should we draw the line at viruses? At the wind? The rocks? You mean "a limit to the usefulness of animism", not anthropomorphism? You've lost me here.

I don't know...did you ask the flint how it felt about it?

Depends on the step. Iroquois saying: "Walk on the earth as if walking on the faces of the unborn." Did they take the animism "tool" too far, beyond its usefulness?

And if you do that, you've stopped doing "S"cience, in my opinion.

I think you've annihilated any distinction between science and inquiry; you've made it a subset of inquiry, a tool that an animist uses anyway.

Science without its paradigm barely deserves the name; don't you think that science means a certain culture of inquiry?

"Tracking" does not mean "following animal tracks". Tracking gets a capital "T" out of me (and certain other trackers) because we've found no dividing line between where the tracks end and the rest of the universe begins. Tracking serves us as an overarching method for observing all phenomena. So, as you may understand, I see no need for other "categories" of inquiry (something the culture of science created too-categories of knowledge).

Not while we obtain it?

As a skill in empathy, in what likelihood would the Nazi have it? If he had it, how well would he do it? If he did it well, the label Nazi may not paint an accurate picture of him - maybe he participated in the Plot to Assasinate Hitler? Labels don't matter here, another disadvantage of science culture, which makes its name on the use of labels.

Great. So you think you can now use "science" without damaging your relationship with the "object" of your inquiry?

I don't think we need to forget anything - I simply think the abuse of the beings on inquires into will affect your relationship with them. You don't need to forget anything; you can just change your paradigm of inquiry.

Ignorant of what? Ignorant of things that matter? Ignorant of the beauty of the world? Ignorant of the subtle and profound skill of ensuring the next breath, for us and our grandchildren?

Well wait...sorry, you must not mean that, because you pointed to science's small box of knowledge, so OK, you mean 'ignorant of that small box of knowledge'...listen, if you want it, you can have it.

Yes. How could it not?

This method does not belong to science alone.

This merely narrows the object of your study. Don't you mean, keeping your biases out, rather than your emotions etc.? I think you've conflated the two.

Once again, don't you do this in tracking? Why would the universe stand still for us anyway - it constantly changes. This sounds like nothing special, it rather sounds like an attempt to romanticize (thank you) Science.

I have no idea what you mean here.

Back to making sense again? What? Who cares? I don't understand - do you have a problem with the asking and listening? It doesn't sound like it. So where does the 'not making sense to you' enter into it? It doesn't have to make sense. You asked another being what treatment it wanted. If a woman says yes to sex, and then changes her mind midway because it begins to hurt, does she get to change her mind? If you ignore her because she said yes once, does that make it rape? Or Science?

[quote:dda337437c="Willem"] If a woman says yes to sex, and then changes her mind midway because it begins to hurt, does she get to change her mind? If you ignore her because she said yes once, does that make it rape? Or Science?

[quote:dda337437c="willem"] How can intuition possibly bias you, especially if you've developed some skill at it?

In this case, it's not a problem in my relationship--my home's quite happy with what I've done with scientific knowledge of late, as I mentioned. You're the one who seems to have this problem. So I'm asking you--why?

Similarly, one could ask the question, "This spirit may same the same thing to many different people, but do all spirits hold the same opinion?"

If I asked the same land the same questions would it's response be the same for me as it was with you, even though I disagree?

When I say "science" I mean the culture of science, that of civilized inquiry

jason wrote:
willem wrote:
How can intuition possibly bias you, especially if you've developed some skill at it?


Because not everyone has the same intuitions.


Ah, but do all scientists make the same observations? Does skill and persistence play a part in the accuracy of one's scientific observations? Can one acquire intuitive skill, and therefore build a consensual reality with other skilled human observers using intuitive data? Can one create methodically rigorous tests to keep intuition honest? Can one parallel process intuitive data along with 5-sensory data?

So these power-tools don't just damage the "objects" of their design, but also their users.

Florizel -- That's pretty harsh for such conversation, like this, that has worked really hard to communicate complex ideas in an inadequate medium... there's no one 'bad' or 'good' in this conversation (as if there ever is -- but no one is playing the ass) so WTF?

Janene

When this conversation started I would have said, well THERE's the problem right there, science isn't a culture... but after all these pages I understand what the purpose of this frame is, and how and why it applies. I think this is something I am going to have to think on a lot, but I think I get it... thanks Willem! (and Scout and Lisa...)

YES. This is the sense of 'intuitive thinking' that I am trying to get at. Where it is not "just" an emotional, gut reaction, but it is dependable and repeatable and comparable between skilled individuals... and all of those things that science claims to be. If this is, fundamentally the shift: 'science' or this then I am all over this...

Chuck, perhaps you missed my previous comment. Your comments are implied in the statements I have made.

Yeah, man, they are (it's where the idea came from) but I wanted to say them in a much more explicit way, in case anyone missed them, because I think it's a dreadfully important point you made.

This might be a good time to examine the etymology of the word science. It comes from the Lating scientia , from sciens , which means having knowledge , from the present participle of scire , meaning to know , probably--and here's where it gets exciting--akin to the Sanskrit Chyatis, meaning he cuts off , and Latin scindere, to split, cleave. The dictionary tells me there's more at shed (presumably the verb, as in dog hair, not the noun, as in a shack).

So I look up shed , which derives from the Middle English for divide, separate , from Old English scaeden , akin to High German skeiden, to separate , which brings us back to our Latin friend scindere , and from there to the Greek schizein, to split.

We are all familiar of course with the root schizein because of it's famous grandchild schizophrenia (literally split mind ), which is a psychotic disorder characterized by a loss of contact with the enviornment, illogical patterns of thinking and acting, delusions and hallucinations, and a noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life.

Science, scire, scindere, schizein, schizophrenia. A mind spit into pieces.

It should come as no surprise, at least to etymologists as well as regular people with too much time on their hands, that the words scientia , translated to mean knowledge, and science , the main means by which people in this culture are presumed to gain this knowledge, have at their core the notion of splitting off, separating from. After all, the word separate comes from the Latin for self, se , meaning on one's own (which springs from the belief and promotes the fiction that a self is independent of family, community, landbase), and parare , "to prepare." In this culture it is separation that prepares a person for selfhood. It is separation that defines us. Separation has become who we are . It is the illusion of separation, as we shall see, that keeps us enslaved.

Surveillance, and this is true for science as well--indeed, this is true for the entire culture, of which surveillance and science are just two holographic parts--is based on unequal relationships. Surveillance--and science--requires a watcher and a watched, a controller and a controlled, one who had the right to surveil or observe--with knowledge, truth, providence, and most of all might on his side--and one who is there for the other to gain knowledge--as power-- about.

These unequal relationships require a split, a separation. There can be no real mixing of categories, of participants. The lines between watcher and watched, controller and controlled, must be sharp and invioble. Humans on one side, nonhumans on the other. Men on one side, women on the other. Those in power on one side, the rest of us on the other. Guards on one side, prisoners on the other. At Pelican Bay State Prison, where I taught creative writing for several years, I once recieved a chiding letter from my supervisor after I innocently answered one of my inmate's friendly question as to what I was doing for Thanksgiving: to even let him know I was spending it with my mom was to make myself too known--too visable--to this other who must always be kept at a distance.

If this sound a lot like the pornographic relationship, that's because it is. Pornography--cousin to surveillance, and bastard child of science--requires the same dynamic of watcher and watched, the same dyad of unchanged subject gazing at an object to be explored at an emotional distance, the same relationship of powerful viewer looking at powerless object. (This may explain at least some of the popularity of pornography: people who are powerless in every other aspect of their lives get to feel some power as they look at these pictures and read the attached text.) When I read that we must not "make scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners," I wonder whether I am reading a letter by the father of science Sir Francis Bacon to King James I (describing how the methods of interrogating witches--that is, restraint and torture--must be applied to the natural world), or whether I'm reading a description at www.perfectlypussy.com. When I read about using the "Mechanical arts" (that is, once again, restraint and torture) so that "she betrays her secrets more fully...than when in enjoyment of her natural liberty," am I still reading Bacon's words on science, or have I landed at www.fetishhotel.com?

These unequal relationships--insofar as we can even call them relationships--must be oppositional. Predator and prey must not be working together for the benefit of both of their communities, and for the benefit of the land. Instead, from this perspective--this perspective based on selves being separate, and knowledge being gained through splitting off--predator and prey (and this applies to humans as well) must be locked in an eternal battle, good against evil, a battle that ends in Armageddon.

As civilization plays out it's grim endgame, and as those in power move ever closer to their ultimately unattainable goal of absolute control (through absolute surveillance), converting in their efforts the wild both inside and out to devastated psyches and landscapes, it might well be past time to reconsider the premises that underline much of the destructive way of being (or not being) and perceiving (or not perceiving). For in many ways, perception shores up the whole bloody farce.
-Derrick Jensen (Welcome to the Machine)

You'll note I haven't suggested you to forget, to deny, or even to ignore scientific knowledge. I've only persisted in asking how it impacts relationships, and suggesting what impact it may make. Please separate the issue of impact from whatever action you may take in response, whether denail, burning libraries, etc. Consider it like the "food and population" issue, where we must understand it before we jump to "what to do" (i.e. "starving people", etc.).

That's why I consider myself a "fence sitter" on this issue - I understand the ideal presented (dumping all Science - capital S), but then look at what I actually do & use...

"Living up to" something doesn't sound like it leaves a lot of room for just living.

I think Derrick has said, "It's not a bad thing if you use toilet paper so long as you promise to take down weyerhauser."

Does anyone know in which book it is that Jensen talks about the absurdity of the fish depletion thing? That there have been like 10 studies independantly over 10 years saying the same thing, but they all get a moment of "wow this is new", before being forgotten again?

Were running an edit in the paper here on the fish, and that would be sweet to quote.

And I think his reason for saying that is to point out that if we are going to take the lives from of any given species within the biological community than it is our responsibility to make sure that that species is around for future genearations to use also. That's one of the reasons why he wants to see dams blown to bits and pieces. The dams are killing salmon, and he eats salmon, and he would like to see future generations eat salmon too.

Investigating how to control a thing yields one kind of knowledge; investigating how to dance with a being yields another kind of knowledge. The greater knowledge of controlling things, the more we will do that.

how we will teach this knowledge to the children - I've thought a lot about this same question.

I teach through analogy and by exercising the power of imagination.

The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science

The art of tracking may well be the oldest science.

As far as written records are concerned, the critical or rationalist tradition of science can be traced back to the early Greek philosophic schools (Popper, 1963). A fully modern brain had evolved at a time when all humans were hunter-gatherers. Yet the same brain that has been adapted for the needs of hunter-gatherer subsistence, today deals with the subtleties of modern mathematics and physics (Washburn, 1978).

This apparent paradox may be resolved if it is assumed that at least some hunter-gatherers were capable of a scientific approach, and that the intellectual requirements of modern science were a necessity for the survival of modern hunter-gatherer societies.

The art of tracking, as practised by contemporary trackers of the Kalahari, is a science that requires fundamentally the same intellectual abilities as modern physics and mathematics (Liebenberg, 1990). It may even be argued that physicists think like trackers.

A characteristic feature of the scientific knowledge of hunter-gatherers is the anthropomorphic nature of their models of animal behaviour. This anthropomorhic element is not necessarily unscientific. On the contrary, it may well be a result of the creative scientific imagination. Anthropomorphic projection has been noted as an essential and important element in scientific work (Holton, 1973).

In nuclear physics, the experimenter’s preconceived image of the process under investigation determines the outcome of the observations. This image is a symbolic, anthropomorphic representation of the basically inconceivable atomic processes (Deutsch, 1959). When a scientist has such a visual image, the nature of the seeing or sensing is almost as though he/she felt like the object being visualised (Walkup, 1967). In thinking about a phenomenon they are interested in, some physicists, even in highly abstract theoretical physics, may more or less identify themselves with, for example, a nuclear particle and may even ask: “What would I do if I were that particle?” (Monod, 1975).

The symbolic power of useful scientific concepts lies in the fact that many of these concepts have been importing anthropomorphic projections from the world of human drama (Holton, 1973).

In the art of tracking the anthropomorphic way of thinking arises from the tracker’s need to identify him/herself with the animal in order to anticipate and predict its movements. The tracker must visualise what it would be like to be that animal within that particular environmental context. In the process of projecting him/herself into the position of the animal, the tracker actually feels like the animal. In doing this the tracker must ask: “What would I have done if I were that animal?”.

To be able to do this the tracker must know the animal very well. But in the process the tracker superimposes his/her own way of thinking onto that of the animal, thereby creating a model of animal behaviour in which the animal is understood to have certain human characteristics.

Considering the role of the anthropomorphic way of thinking in science, it is by no means obvious why a physicist should think in such a way. On the contrary, it would appear to be a rather paradoxical way to understand highly abstract concepts. On the other hand, it is quite clear why a tracker should think in such a way. This may well suggest that the creative scientific imagination had its origin in the evolution of the art of tracking.

The differences between the art of tracking and modern science are mainly technological and sociological. Fundamentally they involve the same reasoning processes.

The implication of this is that there is no reason why traditional trackers cannot be employed to conduct research in a modern context.

taken from: http://www.cybertracker.co.za/IntegratingKnowledge.html

Out in the bush, Liebenberg noticed that tracking depends on the interpretation of myriad little details. To find an animal, Bushmen don't simply follow footprints, which generally disappear after tens of meters at most. Instead, trackers draw on a vast knowledge of animal behaviors, routines, living and eating habits, terrain, and causal relationships suggested by signs and clues to figure out what the animal was doing and, therefore, where it was going.

"With tracks and signs, you have to create hypothetical, causal connections between them, because you didn't see what the animal did. You have to visualize what the animal did," Liebenberg says. "That's the essence of physics," he adds. "You're dealing with processes you can't see."

Taken from http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb06/2834