Replying to LO28346 --
Dear Organlearners
Ray Harrell <mcore@nyc.rr.com> writes
>We too have the term dense in a cultural sense to
>mean "does not understand" however you used the
>term Creator to mean that which is not created by
>humans i.e. natural science and then spoke of cultural
>science. You then jumped to linguistics or what I
>would term "diction". Not fair guys. Jumping around
>is no answer to a seriously posed statement.
Osyio gvlvquodi Ray,
I am sorry for jumping around that day. My mind was that day actually very
jumpy. I wrote to Alfred, used to my jumping mind, forgetting about other
fellow learners.
>What was incredibly complicated harmonically
>often was not complicated at all, in playing it on
>the piano or a musical instrument. That is, it was
>not so difficult to push the keys down, but to
>communicate the intricacy of range, distance,
>duration, thick and thin textures, color, volume,
>harmonic movement and repose, all elements of
>harmony, to a live audience in such a way that they
>would "get" the composer's intent was an act of
>virtuosity.
It reminds me of Beethoven. His became famous already before the age of
thirty, not as a componist, but as a pianist. He was not famours for
pushing the keys flawlessly down as others did, but for the incredible
meaning which "flowed" from his fingers despite hitting notes wrongly here
and there. The "flowed" in quotation marks mean also something else. He
was the first pianist to keep his hands steady over the key board and let
the vingers do the talking!
It also reminds me of Faraday, the greatest experimentalist ever in the
basic sciences. He, for example, discovered that electricity can be
generated by moving a magenet over a wire. Without that discovery we would
not have been able to set up large electricity networks. Anyway, he was a
Christian who seriously believed that God created the universe. To use
musical metaphors -- God is the Composer and the universe is the
Composition. He saw his own calling as to perform the hidden parts of this
Composition.
>(snip) ... and you have density that is as thick and
>layered in meaning as any chemical "unknown"
>given to a Physical Chemistry Doctoral student for
>his final exam. In short fellows it IS "Dense." And
>yes complicated but complicated is not a description
>of anything but numbers, i.e. more than one. On the
>other hand "Dense" is a description of the aural
>texture of the musical tapestry.
Please forgive me for saying it, but I suspect that you, like Andrew
Campbell, had some nasty experiences in your school years of mathematics
or hard-core science (chemistry and physics). Yes, I do use numbers
because of having made measurements. But I never begin with hard-core
thinking after having made measurements. This is how it is for me.
My thinking begins much earlier by "observing" something. I use the
quotation marks to stress that I use all five my senses and not only my
eyes.
Sometimes I would suddenly relate it to some earlier observations. What
are the things which made me link that present observation to past
observations? On other times I would ponder over what will happen when I
change this or that thing. This would often lead to wild speculations.
However, it all boils down to becoming aware of patterns (texture you
might say ;-). Some of these patterns can then be checked by measurements
while others have to be checked by logic. Many patterns cannot be checked
by the systematics of measurement or the systematics of logic. They need
to be checked by designing a systematics which would fit them. All these
other systematics then (for me) have to flow coherently into each other as
well as that of logic and measurement so as to have as few independent
systematics as possible.
I want to encourage you to read John Ziman's book
The Force of Knowledge -- The scientific dimension of society.
It is very readable book and explains well the "why" and the "how"
of scientific thinking through the ages. In the preface he writes of
this book in a profoundly honest manner:
"You may describe it .... as a teaching scientist's 'do-it-yourself'
repair of his own defective education and wounded conscience,
written down for the benefit of others facing the same problems."
>Love to you both
The same to you. Which word will it be in the following list? gvgeyui,
adageyudi, adagaue, tsilvquodi, tsi
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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