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Review:Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism
Erik Davis, a journalist in his own right, and a self-admitted geek is the author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, + Mysticism in the Age of Information, a book which purports to attempt to understand and explain how technology, magic and mysticism aren't really all that far apart. Davis makes an interesting arguement, and this is an issue that I've given some thought about to before. The perception of engineers, scientists and technical people is not one of fuzzy, soft images; it's a hard, straight edge image. But if you spend much time talking with anyone of that ilk, you soon realize that this group, like any other one, is one that has it's idosyncratic tendencies.
This image is one that hasn't come up accidentally - in many ways, the image of the technical person as a pure-logic person is one that has been built up and developed by the community of technical persons itself. This image of science as unquestionable and infalliable is one that quickly corrodes if you spend much time inside of graduate and scientific communities, watching the politics run rampant. But on a broader level, this image of science as a monolith began to fall apart with Schrodinger and Einstein and the notion of relativity. Kurt Godel also contributed to this notion in discrediting the Principa Mathematica
So, the issue of exploring this in literature, and exploring what in some ways is the unacknowledged side of the technological community. Recent issues like Joe Firmage's The Word is Truth, geeks fascination with shows like X-Files, and movies like Star Wars belies the notion of the one-sided, all logical personality.
Davis does an excellent job exploring the roots of our present technological society in the alchemical secret societes of the Middle Ages, and the present day raise in paganism amongst technologists. This is perhaps the strongest segement of the book, dealing with the religion issues, and why people like us choose alternatives or non-conformity.
The book has several drawbacks, the most glaring of which is the book's seemingly dual personality. While its research and tone are that of a book that wants to be an academic book, there are numerous points in which the facts cited, or a point is made that seems more soft-cover, and less hard-cover, if you can forgive my analogy. My other complaint, and one that shows my true colors as a history major - the book rests on itself on too few references. While I appreciate and understand Davis' points, and would recommend it to my fellow geeks, I wouldn't recommend this book to a non-technical person. The feel of the book in many ways is one of a book written for the commuity, and one that will work within the community, but not something that those outside the community would appreciate.
In the end though, for this audience, I recommend it. It's an academic read, but if you need a break from learning Perl, then this book is worth picking up. It can be slow at times, but ultimately is worth the time spent.
Buy this book at Amazon.
An old time science fiction write named Theodore Sturgeon had a saying that "90 percent of everything is crap". I mostly kind of agree, although Mandrake 6.0 is only about 4 percent crap.
This in its self is almost enough to explain the entire appeal of psychoactive drugs: the desire to experience something that is different and "wrong" according to the normal rules of reality.
Seeing as how I'm not Catholic, and have never been to church of any sort, I could very well be wrong where I said 'the standard Catholic exorcism ritual'.
There may not be one nowadays, and may have never been a 'standard' exorcism ritual.
However, from what I've read many of the magic-dabblers were part of the vast clerical system of the Church. Not necessarily ordained clergymen, but largely overeducated and underemployed Church worker drones, who would know the religious rituals in practice at the time.
...I will say this much. Our science, as much as it's hyped, can only DESCRIBE the world we perceive, and its objects, in terms limited by our own very human perceptions.
Anyone who really believes that our science truly DEFINES the nature or structure of anything it deals with is deluding themselves.
You're welcome.
I actually feel sorry for the poor bastards. Here's the Church, telling them that God is all-powerful, and that the Church's interface with God is complete and absolute. But yet, when you attempt to "hack the Church" by commanding a demon to appear (using the same language and steps the Church tells you will command demons)... nothing happens.
The logical conclusion of course is that the Church has been feeding you bunk, and can no more command demons than it can, say, turn water into wine, or raise the dead. It speaks to the political and spiritual power of the Church at that time that the idea that the Church could have "made it all up" never seems to have occured to any of them. They all seem to have assumed they did something wrong.
Science is a wonderful thing! Can you imagine a would-be necromancer approching the Pope: "Uhh, your Holiness, I think your exorcism ritual is broken. I tried the same ritual to try and get a demon to appear, and it didn't work, so I think if one shows up, your ritual won't make it go away"...
God is all-powerful by definition. However, the Church of the time did not - and still doesn't - have a perfect interface to God. So you're right, the Church was feeding them bunk if it claimed to control demons and such.
The Church did not, however, make up the new testament events because it didn't have to. I seriously doubt such a hoax could have been accomplished anyhow.
You have a point.
Hey, it's alright with me if you want to make stuff up to comfort you through the darkness - but keep it to yourself, okay? Don't proselytize, evangelize, or criticize those who are "ignorant" of your beliefs.
Hey there MuppetBoy, ;). Logical Positivism, for example, is positiviley primitive in comparison! And theorists like Derrida were anticipated by the Buddhist logic schools by nearly 1,500 years (these schools are by definition deconstructionist). Western philosophers are just now beginning to catch up to the Indians and Tibetans on this one, but still have a lot of work to do.
Actually, I'd beg to differ on the scientific coherence part in the higher schools. The Madhyamika-Prasangikas (the highest school in Tibetan pedagogy) uses the most powerful system of logic ever devised. It's uses a technique called "prasanga," which means consequence in Sanskrit. This school is also sometimes called the Consequence school for this reason.
This system is based on demonstrating the absurdity of following your opponent's line of reasoning in debate (and debate is what Tibetans do best: they begin debating this stuff as kids in the monasteries and do it all the time; it's incredible to watch this stuff!). Namely, if you claim X, then following this to its logical conclusion it would absurdly entail the conclusion Y.
The technique of prasanga never makes any assertions itself, it merely refutes assertions of others. So in this way it can never make any claims that are demonstrably false. All this is based on the Indian Buddhist masters Dignaga's and Dharmakiiti's logic.
A lower school (Madhyamika-Svatantrika) in the Tibetan pedagogy uses "autonomous" syllogisms, meaning that they do state a thesis, making assertions that can then be knocked down with prasanga technique. The Prasangikas arose as a reaction to the Svatantrikas.
So in my opinion, the technique of prasanga is unequalled by any logic school extant, including the logic of Aristotle, etc. It's Manjushri's Sword to the max (like Occam's Razor, only much sharper
Furthermore, since prasanga is used primarily in dealing with the fundamental nature of reality and in what way phenomena exist (and don't), there is no conflict whatsoever with science. Buddhism and science are in no way inimical to each other: they deal with completely different aspects of reality.
Science attempts to divine the how of phenomena, in other words, how they function. Buddhism deals with the basis of reality itself, so goes far deeper than merely determining how phenomena function and behave, to the level of dealing with the nature of phenomena.
Hope that clarifies some!
(oh, and you can safely ignore anything coming from the NKT!)
Heh... if cause and effect are illusions then it is not reasonable to suggest a cause for those illusions... Then again, when a sentence begins 'cause and effect are illusions' any attempt to continue with 'therefore' or 'thus' is meaningless.
It occurred to me that there's a lot in common between computer hackers and medieval dabblers in magic.
Basically, hackers figure out ways to modify technology in order to obtain a desired result, and then share their work. The magic-dabblers were trying to figure out ways to modify theology to obtain their desired result, then share their work.
(Hm. I wonder if there's an old manuscript in a library somewhere titled 1600, Ye Hacker's Quarterly)
In at least some cases, 'demonic' magic was based on the standard Catholic exorcism ritual. In the exorcism, you invoke the authority of various heavenly figures, and with that authority command a 'demon' to leave the afflicted person.
The hacked version took the same ritual, and invoked the same names, but instead of commanding the demon to leave, commanded it to appear (in a harmless form) and perform some useful service for the magician.
Did any of this actually work? Probably not, or history would be rather different. Science would never have gotten a foothold if demons could just do the work.
Interestingly, some 'spells' are actually called 'experiments' in the spellbooks which have survived.
I suppose that many of the 'magicians' could be considered 'script kiddies' since so many used the same age-old formulas and rituals, rather than coming up with anything new.
On the other hand, we now have Edward O. Wilson writing about 'Consilience' (in his excellent book of the same name), and how he feels that barriers between the sciences will continue to blur and fall, and how eventually even the humanities will start to mingle with science.
(WARNING: off-topic exegesis on hyper-technical aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Read at your own peril!) Hey there MuppetBoy! Great (slightly off-)topic stuff! Just to clarify, the Buddhist Mind Only school (Cittamatra) does not actually claim that everything is only mind and that external phenomena do not exist. Mind Only philosophy is a bit subtler than that (and even many scholars have misrepresented it). It posits a "mind-basis-of-all" (alaaya-vijnaana) in which there is no duality of subject and object -- not that external phenomena are nonexistent. What Mind Only is saying is that phenomena are rendered incorrectly due to incorrect mental imputations (parakalpita) onto dependently originated phenomena (paratantra), and that by removing one's wrong projections one sees the world as it is: in its true, perfected nature (nirvana). Mind Only philosophy is considered a species of wrong view by the "highest" school in Tibetan Buddhist pedagogy -- the unequalled logic school of the Madhyamika-Prasangikas, which refines the insights of Mind Only and refutes incorrect aspects of that philosophy. (your hair-splitting Tibetan philosophy geek metamatic@hotmail.com)
You say:
Oh my child! So near the answer, and yet so blind to it!
Science is not a destination; it's not an Answer. Science is a means of travelling, so that you can find your own answers. Science is a journey.
Throughout recorded history, Religion has provided Answers. "The will of God is Thus" followed by an explicit description of what the Supreme Being wants you to do, say, think, and eat.
Something good happen to you? God is rewarding your good behaviour. Something bad happen? God is punishing your sins. Something truly horrible befall a large group of innocent people? "God works in mysterious ways, it is not for mortals to question the Divine"
But yet, time and again new knowledge surfaces that directly contradicts a firmly entrenched religious dogma. The earth is round, the sun is the center of the solar system, the universe is older than 6000 years.
There is no Answer provided by Religion that is not in direct danger of being debunked. Not only does no religion hold a monopoly on Truth, there's not a one that can stake a claim on a single truth!
Science, on the other hand, discards the arrogance of religion. There is no dogma in science. Instead, science tells us:
The sense of wonder at the universe that you describe the the cornerstone of science! How great and wonderful is the universe! How great and wonderful the journey to try and understand it! How sad that you miss the connection between the two!
Overlooking the gratutitous use of FNORDs, an excellent post! One other luminary that may have some bearing on this is Richard Bandler, who is one of the co-inventors of NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming. In fact, Bandler and Wilson are doing a series of talks together...
Far too much, our language defines how we understand things, something that is well explored in Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, and Robert Anton Wilson's works.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
There are many things which are good about Star Wars and The X-Files (though the new season sucks), but the science fiction isn't one of them.
Star Wars may be set in a futuristic universe, but it is ultimatly a Campbellian passage-of-the-hero story.
I wouldn't call X-Files sci-fi by any measure. It might borrow a little from the genre, but again it isn't really part of the story.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
/. probably don't. Seems the only culture around here is flaming and buying computer hardware. Then again, other "cultures" are crap too. So in all fairness, everything is shit.
What culture do we have? Watching star wars? Coding? Bah. Most people on
"So in all fairness, everything is shit."
Yup, there's the old glass is half empty attitude, sounds good to me.
Alright, first I suppose I should give a background before I go on my little tirade... I am a student of both Science and Theology... and lately the two of them have been at odds. When I say "lately", I mean it in a more broad sense than most of you might... I mean it in terms of Millenia, not in terms of the Rennaissance since. However, I recently came across an unabridged copy of a particular book that I recommend to anyone with an attension span longer than their arm (a rarity, these days) and an interest in this issue... the book is called "Isis Unveiled", and it is a two book set written in the Nineteenth Century by a Madame Blavatsky. In this book series, the two books, named in relation "Science" and "Theology", are so forward thinking that one might think they were written yesterday. The books have an underlying subject (that I won't get into), but what I will note is the difference that the book "Science" makes in the level of technology compared to the level of intelligence... for the book Science cites evidence that the peoples of the East Indies may have known of such things as the Heliocentric System, the round Earth, the Solar System and the concept of being a planet in a Universe of Planets, and even theories of Evolution and such. I have also noted in some of the snippets shown that other more contemporary theories beyond the day of this book, such as the Theory of Relativity, may have been well known in the days of these peoples. So why should I care, do you say? Well... if this is true, and the evidence that was cited in this book was proven to be true (I have not found this out yet)... then our "modern" thought and science may not be so modern after all. And this book also tries to prove that there was a source for the learning of the peoples of the Indies... from a race we devolved from.
I know it all sounds crazy... and many of the more "scientific" in here will probably shoot me down without even considering it. But just for a second, just wonder if it was possible... if a people who were so religious might also have been scientific to a degree at least as high as we are.
Ancient Gnosticism is the search for Gnosis in one's self... to find yourself, in contemporary terms, and in so doing to reveal the shard of "God" within you. This book's very title makes a direct reference to that. The Gnostics of old learned their secrets from the peoples of the East Indies... and we KNOW that the Gnostics existed...
*shrug* It's all theory, of course. *grin*
Know ye not, that ye are Gods???
*grin* If I were a moderator, I would have to give that at least an "Insightful" *LOL*... Excellent comment. Better than mine...
"A warning to all Pragmatists... be careful not to cut yourself on Occam's Razor!!!" -- Me.
Often it is forgotten that in the field of science True means "not inconsistent with currently accepted theories".
This is not a cause for confusion so long as it is remembered that the rules governing the acceptance of theories boil down to reproduciblity and simplicity.
Unfortunately, it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that (for example) cause and effect are only illusions caused by something we don't yet perceive (or can't). If this suggestion is accepted, then reproducibility is a moot point.
It is also reasonable to question the metric of simplicity. The reason simplicity appeals to us is because it makes our lives easier.
For example, it is possible to design a geocentric universe but the resulting mathematics are so complicated that nothing useful can be derived (such as what trajectory to use to launch a probe to the moon). Therefore, we reject a geocentric universe as False.
Unfortunately, we use the same words True and False in daily conversation where they have quite different meanings. For example, "Is it true that Bill Clinton is a liar?".
Science really has nothing to do with Truth, it has a lot to do with Usefulness.
There is a big, wide gulf between (proper) science and mysticism, new-age, and all that. The recent (last few decades) drift away from science and onto "alternatives" is a cause for worry not only for scientists, but also for all who care for the future of humanity.
Among the scientists who cared was the late Carl Sagan. His last book, and IMHO his most important one, was " The Demon-Haunted World ". This is a must read both for those who care about our future on one hand, and for those who think that there might be something in mysticism on the other hand.
- Tal Cohen
I've long explained to non-computer people that computing in practice is too much like magic - it is a collection of arcance sequences and irrational invocations, memorised by the practitioners as "spells that work", without them neccesarily knowing how or why.
;^)) is still as weak as the X-Files, new age hippies, down-shifting and the odd eastern-inspired religious cult phenomena.
I'm looking forward to the day when I don't get told "you must follow these exact steps, if you get any two in the wrong order it won't work but we don't know why".
Any but the most specialist computing niches are now too large and too genereal for deep understanding to be feasible. So we rely on too many arbitrary black boxes, hence the popular success of OpenSource (yeah, preaching to the converted I know) so that instead of having to remember "that's the way it is" we can read the source and replace some of the magic with a bit of science.
I think this idea was inspired if not blatantly stolen from Weinberg's "The Psychology of Computer Programming" (1973 and still true).
As for why the magic/mysticism imagery is so popular right now ?
Fin-de-siecle always produces a swing towards mysticism, this coming at the peak of quite a sustained period of vicious technological acceleration, and I'm surprised the "backlash" (I think "whiplash" may be more accurate, but probably that word is banned for our friends in Oz
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
All pagans please forgive me; but I don't think paganism is a natural thing for anybod raised in the West to be drawn to.
Some of us were raised in the West by pagan parents, you know.
Sagan tells it like is in that book. I think /. should do a review of the demon-haunted world instead. He is open to the possiblities but not so open his brain spills out. People are searching for something with the downfall of organized religion and the world around us has all the beauty and curiousity we need if we would just open our eyes.
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Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
While I enjoyed this post and felt it was spot on most of the time, I would like to point out that there are more objective interpretations of the QM formalism than the Copenhagen Interpretation. For an interesting discussion of this and a different interpretation, check out the transational interpretation.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
yeah, i first saw this last (sunday) night, and now it has suddenly appeared as the most recently posted article on monday morning...
i think something suspicious is afoot.
if it wasn't for the fact that i'm on ethernet, i'd do that silly "no carrier" thing in an attempt to make you all think i'd disappeared because of my suspicions... but that wouldn't make sense anyway, because how does one hit the submit button without a carrier? hmmm?
and why do stories keep migrating?
It is one thing to say that science is laden with politics and subjective opinions, and quite another to say that this equates it to myth and mysticism. I don't think you can say that our myths or mystical insights or even our cultures or governments are better than they were two thousand years ago. Different, yes. Better, probably not. They seem to fit our perception of the world more or less as well as they ever have, and do just about as good or bad a job of explaining and controlling the world as they ever have.
But our science is indisputably better than it was 2000 years ago, and it's "fit" to the world as we experience it improves almost monotonically over time. Perhaps this is why we pang for better myths and greater mysteries, since the old ones don't seem to work as well even though our need for them continues unabated.
This may be why many of us try to mix science and myth, attempting to empower each with the other. This may be a mistake. Our myths and mysteries might not belong with science's notion of continual progress and refinement. The mystery of the meaning of our existance may never be satisfied by any amount of physical or biological explanation. Our relationship to each other and the world might be much more effectively described through our myths than through our neurochemistry, no matter how far we advance that science.
That said, there is a sense in which our relationship to the mysterious can and should be a progressing one. Each of use should strive to better understand the incredible mystery that surrounds and infuses each of us: our selves.
Another book along those same lines as those mentioned would be Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind".
And to really bend your brain a little bit, think about this quote by M.C. Escher.
"Isn't it fascinating to realize that no image, no form, not even a shade or color, "exists" on its own; that among everything that's visuably observable we can refer only to relationships and to contrasts?"
When you extend that quote, and take it deeper, you begin realize that you can only refer to relationships and contrasts between all things. A formula in physics, for example is just a mathematical embodiment of that relationship and/or contrast. I first came upon this concept when I started thinking about AI, and how to create/code one. I realized that there was no one fundemental concept that I could code into a computer to have it learn everything in relationship to that.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
What?
Science is not a quest for the "truth". Science is a methodology of finding and encoding new ideas about the relationship between things. This is not the "truth", it *is* a map of our world, but it is *not* the truth.
Relgion isn't that truth either, it's just a map to guide our behaviour. .
I also suggest you read a little more before making sweeping generalizations of all religions and philsophies. It makes you sound a little less ignorant in the long run. (if you can't figure out what that means, go read the Tao Te Ching)
Believe nothing, no matter where you have read it or who has said, even if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -Buddha
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
For the most part, I agree with you. However, a strong argument could be made against the veracity of:
They [Science] seem to fit our perception of the world more or less as well as they ever have, and do just about as good or bad a job of explaining and controlling the world as they ever have.
simply by bringing up the untold havoc human beings are wreaking on ourselves and our environment. With our greater scientific understanding, do we really have a better fit with our world now than our forebears did? It is precisely because the current dominant belief system, Science and Technology, does not give us a full enough understanding of our world that we are in such trouble (global warming, species extinction, etc.)
To me it seems that Science & Tech. - knowledge of the physical bit-by-bit world, needs Mythos - as understanding of self in relationship to the large r world, very badly indeed. I deliberately seperate Science, the art of knowing (implying understanding), from Science & Technology, the art of manipulating (which doesn't require understanding).
I'm not about to run off into the woods and leave my computer behind. But there are too many things in _my direct day to day experience_ which Science (of both contexts) simply doesn't explain satisfactorily. Maybe mythos will help me understand more. And maybe not, but at least mythos is pointed in that direction and not blindly insisting that if my super-duper-fantistic latest-generation scientific-measuring-device can't see it, it doesn't exist.
Anyway, I think we fit our world worse than our ancestors did theirs. Maybe we can change that.
I would say that your analogies are pretty accurate.
As a matter of fact, my experience is that many students and practitioners of Magick and other spiritual paths are also hackers, though of course the reverse does not hold. Out of the 9 people I know who are running Linux, 7 of them are also studying Magick.
There is even an online bookstore, Ibis Books which specializes in Magick, and is running on Linux.
The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."
... hmmm I'm really tempted to try and archive this discussion.
Nicely put... there are also the "brains in a vat" and "what's under your nuttshell?" problems that force us to define our reality not in terms of an absolute "truth" but as a subset of our perceptions. Therefore the subjective truth of any "thing" is in its perception. Where a computer or the internet may be well defined in terms of its technological aspects, the practical accomplishments that it makes are not and are sometimes incredible enough to be described as "magick".
from the parent:
Davis does an excellent job exploring the roots of our present technological society in the alchemical secret societes of the Middle Ages, and the present day raise in paganism amongst technologists.
IMHO this is an excellent thesis that is near the foundation of TechnoPaganism. It and several other ideas that expunged and I have explored are steadily coming together on our TechnoPaganism site. Quite a bit of this content manifests itself earlier in newsgroups (alt.techno-shamanism and the like) and we're hoping to start an open list serv.
Part of my admiration for this sort of thing is that it's totally decentrallized. Noone has really made a definitive claim to be the originator or leader of TechnoPaganism (with maybe one exception aside: I liked his previous website better). There are a few authors of TechnoPagan content, but no deffinative scripture (allthough this artice is quoted enough to be close, mirrored here if wired is too slow). So we're trying to take a more anthropological than phillosophical approach to this (as such we've separated our personal beliefs from general TechnoPaganism).
With that regard I'd like to invite anyone that has any sort of interest in this to join a discussion on it and possibly help write a FAQ or two (TechnoShamanism, may cover a wider social/cultural community).
DISCLAIMER: Please realize that we're not trying to "get" anything from this but hightened spirituality. This is on my PC which is not exactly a monstrous web server and my HTML skills are not as devistatingly awesome as some. Consider all material contained therein GPL'ed.
Geeks' fascination with Star Wars and the X-Files isn't a sign of irrationality; rather it's the plaintive cry of the oft-mocked, saying "Look! Good science fiction!". Both of the above have achieved phenomenal success despite being in such a marginal genre. [Some of] our nerdly brethern are fanatical about these because they're not only sci-fi that can be held as exemplars, and they show the masses that we're not completely sad bastards. Some of our opinions are worth listening to.
Other than that, I can't comment on the review as I haven't read the book.
Davis also had an excellent piece in Feed on Star Wars.
He also write s for the Village Voice.
This is not exclusive to science... seems to me every human endeavour is somewhat fueled by our deep rooted craving for myth ("espace mythique"). We just can't live without experiencing suspension of reality and religious space (cf. Mircea Eliade among others). The irony here is that science's discourse is wrapped in 18th century rationalism.
---------- ovidius naso
see http://www.xeper.org and
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/chad/208
I haven't read the book (Techgnosis), but I've read about it, and it is hardly the sort of thing that advocates psuedo-science and mysticism. It could be perceived as a critique to those who believe that stuff, because it assumes that these mystical ideas are human inventions, and like the technology of the modern era, they are simply products of our innate dreams and desires.
Besides, this is extremely revelant, because geek culture has always had interest in the mythical and occult. We recognize the falsity, but are amused by it, because these imaginary systems are usually coherant and creative, in their own bizarre logic. I mean, how many of you don't know people who Magic, read fantasy, play role playing games (of any genre), or do other such things? Where do you think the computer terms "daemon", "wizard", and "guru" come from?
I haven't read Davis' book, but my general perception is that magic is "illusion" (that is something made to appear different than it really is) and consequently a lie. So I'm not certain about the applicability of the trilogy.
While I haven't read this book yet, I suspect that its subject matter runs in close parallel with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics which attempts to demonstrate the alarming similarities between the conclusions of modern theoretical physics, and Eastern (and other) mysticism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read.
;) The point being that we shouldn't be looking to pick sides on the issue, but to back up and see that they're both sides of the same coin.
From the brief skimming I have done of the other comments posted so far in this discussion, I can see that most of them embody the same knee-jerk reaction that die hard science-types (such as myself) tend to have when non-scientific possibilities are even mentioned.
Anyone who believes that science and mathematics are the answer to everything, and can possibly describe the totality of existance should do some reading on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Alfred Korzybski's (sp?) General Semantics, and contemplate the implications of a set containing itself (a theory [a member of the set of "real" things, "Reality"] describing the "reality" [set] that contains it, FNORD).
The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."
The similarities between the conclusions of modern physics and those of ancient mysticism (and those of acid-heads) are too numerous and large to ignore. Two seemingly diametrically opposite methods of modeling reality have come to extremely similar conclusions. These include observer created reality, the illusion of indivisible particles, the interconnectedness of all existance, etc. etc. etc. I'll let you do the reading so as not to come off sounding like some new-age lunatic
R. Buckminster Fuller (imho, one of the greatest thinking minds of the century) once decided to test one of the theories of General Semantics, that we continually 'hypnotize' ourselves with our speech, by not talking for a full year. When he started talking again, he had a completely new way of modelling reality (and created some very interesting geometric shapes that seem to be 3 dimensional projections of 4th dimensional gemoetries). His patterns of speech also changed radically, for example he refused to say "the universe" and instead insisted on saying simply "universe" to emphasize that what he was referring to was a process, not a thing, as the language leads us to think of it. He also said "I seem to be a verb," and "God is a verb," which have thoroughly confused and enlightened many people since.
I'll conclude before I get too far off on a tangent, and encourage you to at least do some reasearch on the similarities here. There's a wealth of information out there on the 'net, and in print. I would highly recommend The Tao of Physics, Godel, Escher, Bach, and Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.
-Anthony DiMarco
"If you don't see the FNORD it can't eat you. Dont' see the FNORD. Don't see the FNORD."
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Has anyone here read C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man? Although it was published fifty-some years ago, it presents some similar ideas about the relationship between Science/Technology and Mysticism/Magic.
While the main focus of the work is on education, it also advances a line of reasoning which implies that the goals of science and magic are identical. Both seek control or "conquest of Nature". Magic attempts to do this through spirits and spells, while Science has done it though logic and technology. The main difference is that scicence succeeds where magic fails. He says that "You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medival survival and Science the new thing that came to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better [Lewis was a professor of Medival Literature]. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole, we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men".
I strongly agree with his view of the situation, because so many of the trends he identified have continued into our time. Anyone who is interested in the effects of science-worship on society should read some of his writings, such as Abolition of Man or his science fiction trilogy.
--Luke
first this is wilson's site.
and for more on R. Buckminster Fuller
also bob wilson's The Illuminati Papers explains Quantum physics, etc in easy to digest terms...
PBS.org has some info. on bucky. ( try seaching for "Buckminster Fuller" )
wish i had more time to write but i should be working...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
I can't disagree with a book I haven't read. However, if the point is to make the connection with magic and mysticism based on plumbing the spiritual or intellectual depths of geekdom, there are probably simpler explanations for this phenomenon.
:-) )
For the sake of argument, one could say that it's all sociological.
Magic and Mythology: The power of a wizard comes from esoteric knowledge. Knowing the secret spell and how to use it. The appeal of a mythological hero is the hero's journey towards virtue. The hero achieves virtue by performing some heroic (pun intended) deed, sometimes with the assistance of a god or wizard, from whom the hero learns some of the secrets of the universe.
Heroes often show some of the traits associated with chivalry: loyalty, honor, fidelity and courage. This is probably one reason of the appeal of such things as SCA to geeks, for example.
Knowledge and virtue, that's the thing that makes so much of this stuff appealing to geekdom. Because society often places greater value in quite different things.
Certainly in capitalist societies like the US you reap more rewards by being aggressive, competitive, reckless (risk-taking), and self-assured than by being smart; which is a major reason why Microsoft and Mr. Gates are so thoroughly despised by a lot of us.
Geeks (in the US at least) begin their education in the ways of the world early on. In school, your place in the social pecking order is inversely related to knowledge and virtue. The US high school is particularly brutal in this regard, but I think that all over the world, kids who are overly excited about knowledge are ostracized by their schoolmates and vice-versa.
So there's nothing for the young geek but to retreat from the world. Geeks band together and form what to them is the ideal society: an aristocracy of the intellect.
The interesting thing about it is that you can't really characterize it as escapism. You know full well the consequences of choosing to be different (not being popular), yet you do it anyway. It's a conscious choice, one which you know has a downside.
Paganism seems to me another such deliberate choice. All pagans please forgive me; but I don't think paganism is a natural thing for anybod raised in the West to be drawn to. You will yourself to be a pagan, because nature worship is in direct conflict with all the major Western religions. If you are already withdrawing from the values of mainstream society, paganism helps make the point forcefully. Plus it has all these cool magic spells and stuff, which is a symbolic reminder of the importance of esoteric knowledge.
There's also the debauchery (or so I'm told
Unfortunately, many scientists choose to dogmatically follow Science as if it were a religion
Dogma is something people (usually ignorant people) blindly accept. It is presented without proof and it usually doesn't allow for debate. In short, it is what we call religion. In fact, a religion without dogma could scaresly be called a religion since it would lack structure.
The whole purpose of science, on the other hand, is to prove facts. The only way you can do that is through free inquiry. To accuse science of dogmatism is to totally miss the point of why science exists.
And so the fascination with non-scientific viewpoints will only increase...
In other words, we're going back to the dark ages? Can't argue with you there, my friend. The public schools of this country (of which you so obviously are a graduate) bring the ignorance of the past closer to us with every decade. In fact, I'll remember not to use big words in my further remarks for fear they have stopped teaching them already.
Sadly, the West has yet to learn much about wisdom.
Sadly, people who think "falsity" is a word find their way to Slashdot.
If you think that Eastern mysticism is the real Truth, you should live by those principles - next time you get sick, invite an Eastern mystic to your house instead of a Western doctor. With any luck you will bring your life expectancy to that of dogma free Tibet (around 55 years if I'm not mistaken). You see, the Truth sounds great in badly written Hollywood movies, but in practice, it is no more than the set of beliefs of a few million oppressed peasants in a dirt poor, far away corner of the Earth. Indoor plumbing would impress these people a lot more than Eastern (or Western) philosophy could ever hope to, and I don't blame them. It's practical, convenient, and unlike the Truth, it works.
Science...can never, by definition, prove anything about the ultimate nature of reality
The main reason I replied to this comment (and god knows, I don't usually respond to off-topic posts) is the poster's utter arrogance of rejecting science while continuing to use it's fruits. He even wrote that stuff on a computer! While absurd, Luddism was at least consistent in it's methods - they really destroyed technology. I think MuppetBoy (a great name for an Eastern philosopher, by the way) should do us all a favor and never use his computer again.
The acceptance of mysticism (Eastern, Western, or any other kind) IS in contradiction with science. When I was unfortunate enough to suffer through kidney desease several years ago, the medical techniques that saved my life were not based on idle speculation about the cosmos, they were a result of years of experimentation and research. While these require a lot more imagination and creativity than your average prayer/chant/initiation ritual, they do have the distict advantage of seeking out the truth about the physical world, and therefore working. I think that anyone who rejects the principles that underlie scientific research and then turns around and accepts its benefits is just a tad hypocrytical.
Besides solving trivial human problems like failing kidneys and viral infections, science is the only way to answer the really large questions: how big is the universe, what part do we play in it, how did we start out, and where are we going. Most of these questions were satisfactorily answered only in this century with some (are we alone, for example?) waiting to be answered as we speak. When non-scientific systems try to tackle these problems, they almost invariably fall into the trap of placing us at the center. With the risk of making this post even longer than it already is, let me explain why I think that's wrong.
It is perfectly natural for an apple worm to think that the apple contains the whole world, but it's not true. It is just as natural for uninformed people to think that the Earth, or the humanity living on it, is all there is, but that's not true either. There're infinite worlds in this universe and ours is pretty inconsequential compared to others. Although the previous statement was proven by years of hard work by many smart people, it is self apparent as well. Just think of what you thought about the world and your place in it when you were a kid. As most people grow, their horizons widen, and most of them, at least, realize that the world is bigger and more diverse than they had previously imagined. Most religions place people and their particular surrondings at the center of the universe, revealing the narrow horizons of those who created such systems.
The reason science and religion cannot be complimentary is that while covering the same ground, one seeks the truth (and then checkes it again and again against the evidence) while the other just hypothesizes about things. Unless you think that "truth" is an empty word, you have to come to the conclusion that one pretty much excludes the other's possibility.
And so the fascination with non-scientific viewpoints will only increase as it becomes more and more apparent how very weak and fragile Science really is. There are, of course, more ignorant ways of reaching the same fascination with non-Science, but I'm not sure it makes a difference in the end how you arrive. In some ways, a non-naive understanding is more tainted than the simple understanding because the sense of wonder is still completely intact. The most ignorant and ultimately irrational) thing I can think of is a closed mind. Unfortunately, many scientists choose to dogmatically follow Science as if it were a religion, when in fact it is scarcely more than a tool for developing technology at this point.
Ultimately, the question that always bothers us in our private moments and which Science is powerless to explain is "WHY *anything* at all?" It really makes one wonder. And in the end, I think that a sense of wonder at the universe is more worthwhile and useful than any scientific knowledge. Sadly, the West has yet to learn much about wisdom. This is the problem with the Cult of Science and the Cult of Youth.
a really excellent book on this same subject is called "Quantum Questions : Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" by ken wilber.
it is really quite interesting to hear what einstein and heisenberg themselves have to say about mysticism.
this is a great text, because wilber selects telling comments, in their own words, from some of the key big names of modern physics. well edited and insightfully commented, wilber presents a strong case that these physicists were indeed not philosophical materialists, and some were outright mystical. (Thomas Brophy, PhD--physics).
I came to this book from an interesting angle- as a technically trained Pagan. Usually I can breeze through books in an evening- but Techgnosis is so dense with ideas and memes that it has taken me weeks to chew through it, and I'll probably have to reread it to pick up bits I missed the first time.
:-)
Science and logic rule my thoughts and perceptions, and that was sharply brought to focus when I attended a 'psychic fair' this past weekend, and looked with pity upon all the 'lost souls' with their nebulous reliance on fickle 'spirit'. They, and their religiously shackled counterparts truly do live in a 'demon-haunted world'.
On the other hand, my training and study in various theologies and mystical systems (rosicrucian, kabalah, geomancy, among others) has had some uncanny parallels in the scientific and electronic world that I live in. I consider myself a 'lay' scientist; a generalist, rather than a specialist, and the 'big picture' is surprisingly 'magickal' if you step back and take a look at technology through a different filter. Look at what a lot of us do: we literally spin 'straw' (code) into gold- real capital. We command what our ancient alchemical 'hackers' would gawp at as 'daemons'- and even give them that name. At our sides sit humming boxes that do nothing that anyone ordinary can see- but we know what goes on inside them, most of the time!
And remember what Arthur C. Clarke once said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Now, pass that remote control, please!
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. --Mark Twain
I have noticed a tendancy among some of my friends to ascribe all kinds of mysticism and secrets to the experiments of Tesla and other great experimenters/hackers.
:-)
:-]
Tesla systematically did a lot of early work on AC power and the functioning of coils and capacitors and tuned circuits. Since he was the first to carefully research and document some of the properties of AC tuned circuits and magnetism, he made up his own words as he went along. When an EE goes back and reads his original notes and patent filings, modern concepts just leap off the page. Since Tesla's time, the words used to identify concepts and units of measurements (reactance, inductance, Hertz, Ohms, Farads, Amperes) have been codified by the scientific and engineering communities.
So when a modern EE looks at Tesla's work, it is pretty straight forward, but when someone not directly schooled in electronics looks at Tesla's work, they see magic. I know someone who has searched the web using Tesla's words, and not finding any modern engineering books using those same words assumes Tesla is being forgotten or written out of the history books. It is not true, just the words have been changed to honor the great hackers of yesteryear.
Two of the biggest corrections to be made are Tesla's discovery of "cold light", which is now called fluorescent light, and his lack of understanding of the additive effects of surface eddy currents on extremely large coils which caused his graphs to show "negative energy" or free energy. Makes the conspiracy nuts go crazy that Tesla found free energy and cold light sources but they don't exist today.
Some of the people whose names we use all the time:
Nikola Tesla == Magnetic density
James Watt == Electrical power
Alessandro Volta == Electromotive force
Andre Ampere == Current
Michael Faraday == Electrical capacitance
Heinrich Herz == Frequency of periodic phenomena
When I'm old I expect to see the Torvalds == unit of bug-free code, and the CmdrTaco == unit of flamage
the AntiCypher
[whoa, I received 8.3 kiloTacos today
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Geocentric universes are useful for a few things, including celestial navigation. There, it makes the math easier to assume the sun revolves around the earth, and the predictions work out to within a few feet. <shrug>.
Also consider: At the moment, quantum mechanics is the most "real" of the ways we can look at things. But the math is too bloody complex for Qmech to do much with, say... complex molecules. So we step back to chemistry, which is less complex, but has more "fuzzy areas." The chemical calculations get too complex to deal with all the chemical reactions going on in, say, a single bacterial cell. Enter molecular biology...
And in the vein of Science+Religion, the Principia Discordia says much the same thing as I said above: "The world consists of chaos and order... we perceive these through a set of preconceptions. Change these preconceptions and the same stuff will appear differently ordered/disordered."
(Just like us, to invent a parody religion where a paradigm shift is a religious experience!)
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
Yep, read the book!
-=Knowledge of software commands does not mean mastery of concepts=-
I find it interesting that few here have addressed the real issue here ; that technology *is* mysticism to the general populace.
;-)
Just as the mystics of old wielded a well known - to them - power, so do we that design code and hardware. We, the 'techno elite' in a way, design what they use and rarely even now do we consult the users on what they want. Rather, we design what we think will work, because we believe, quite rightly most of the time ( but not all the time ) that the users don't know what they want specifically enough to translate to a design. There is little difference here betweeen what we do and what the mystics of old did.
I don't think that mysticism and science are mutually exclusive if one simply starts from the point of 'This is something we do not understand' - by definition, we have not yet figured out which angle to look at the problem to find an answer. Who is to say which one is the best angle, or even which view is 'right'?
Just a couple of thoughts
Prediction is not to be sneezed at, of course. If I enter a room that previously held only you and your cat, I'm likely to think of it as being occupied by three entities: you, me, and the cat. There is no logical necessity to divide up the atoms in the room that way: I might instead perceive one eight-legs, one four-arms, one three-heads, and three separate torsos. But if there is also a bowl of cat food in the room I'm more likely to predict what will happen if I remember that four of the legs are furry and attached to a single torso. This perception is so useful that our eyes and brains are specially adapted to picking out the cat, and each other, and each others' smiles and frowns. We've gotten pretty good at not tripping over the cat, and not too bad at drying each other's tears and helping each other laugh.
Science works in part by slowing down our instinctive recognition of patterns, so that the patterns themselves can be frozen into recipes that will work for anyone. The artificial patterns so created are more awkward than the instincts they came from; but they enable us to work in areas where our instincts work poorly, spanning billions of years and galaxies of stars. To do the work of science, we must sometimes lay aside our instincts for a while. If we obeyed the ideology of scientism, though, we'd suppress our instincts entirely (or pretend to).
Consider the classical Elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth. They're not useful in predicting the weather. They are the weather. The ideology of science would tell us that because analyzing the movement of air and water between the sun and the earth into finer and finer partitions helps us predict storms better, it is therefore the right way of looking at weather, the only way. It's certainly one right way, a clever extension of the common sense that tells us to come in out of the rain.
But what about the other sense, the one that tells us to dance in the rain, that the rain is sacred, that we need her, that water falling from the sky is a miracle? What of the correspondences we make between rain and ocean and dream and daring and intuition? They certainly don't follow the approved procedure for scientific hypotheses. In the jargon, they cannot be falsified: there is no test we can make to disprove the hypothesis that dreams and the ocean are connected, or that the rain is sacred.
To an ideologist of science, that's the end: if something's not a scientific truth it's not worth talking about. For me that was the end, too, for long decades (though I was occasionally wistful). Finally it occurred to me that the reason we pay attention to science is that it's useful: the weather report helps us live our lives more conveniently. The sense of the sacredness of rain and soil and wind and fire is useful too: it helps us want to live. From a purely pragmatic point of view we're justified in paying at least as much attention to the sacred as to the weather report!
The above doesn't prove the truth of the statement "the rain is a sacred thing"; it simply argues that we shouldn't throw it out as meaningless, any more that we would throw out a statement like "the earth revolves around the sun." What tells me that rain is sacred is not argument but the experience of Rain; what the argument does is persuade my worried rational gatekeeper to turn a blind eye and let ecstasy slip through the gates.
Or a gate. The pragmatic argument doesn't quite comfort me when I think of spirit, when I think of the Earth or a deity as a conscious, aware being. Science isn't in the habit of considering our planet to be conscious.
Science isn't in the habit of considering people to be conscious, either. In principle, so the story goes, if we knew enough about the physical world we could predict everything, including the electrical impulses in my brain that caused my fingers to press the keys to write these very words. The strange thing about this story is that there is no particular reason for there to be any consciousness accompanying the key presses. The physics would work just as well if I were an automaton. Consciousness is an unexpected, unpredicted bonus.
If you moved into a new house, and everything was just as you expected it, except for the elephant in the bathroom, you might change the way you think about houses and elephants. You'd probably be more inclined to accept the possibility of elephants living in the mall, or in the Empire State Building.
Just so with consciousness. Since science doesn't predict consciousness in you and me, the fact that it doesn't predict consciousness in the Earth either is not very startling. We need other ways of knowing to tell us that answer.