Replying to LO29253 --
Dear At and LO,
This contribution is dedicated to a small French town in South West France.
At you wrote concerning Newton...
At last, who wrote the following?
"Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another;
and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the
particles of light which enter into their composition? The
changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very
conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted
with transmutations."
He also wrote in a similar vein ... "The changing of bodies into light,
and light into bodies is very comfortable to the course of Nature, which
seems delighted with transmutations." Opticks or A Treatise of the
Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light, Book III, Pt
1, Query 30 You also mention the work of Rupert Sheldrake, can you please
mail me in private to give me some more info. to reflect on that article
or book At? I have for about eighteen months now been very interested in
one form of weak forces;-) and/or another regarding Sheldrake's
metaphysics, especially his angles on angels;-) and one day I hope to
share some of the images this has educed;-)
Soft and gentle things...Mmmmmm. "God is subtle but he is not malicious."
;-)))))) Who wrote that At?
Rupert Sheldrake understands, I think morphogen(et)ic process and I, alas, do
definitely knot. A pal of mine , an entrepreneurial kinda ;-) fella, shared
the other day some mutually abridged thinking with me that he'd only just
had
with an academic friend a few days prior, -a kind and gentle act for an
isolated soul, it was all about free energy, constraints, channels and the
like metaphors...you can tell, it's a complex issue;-) Well, I was
thinking
about the pioneering attitude of academe and entrepreneurial spirit;-)
colliding into some agreement or arrangement and think now to quote Alfred,
Lord Tennyson to the benefit of both gentlemen,
"Forward, forward let us range, Let the great world spin for ever
down the
ringing grooves of change"
Let me know how the now "three body collision" proceeds gents;-) Now, if
that entrepreneur would to sit under an ample apple tree, reflect upon the
refractions inhering to inflections upon some silvered disc he might see
that roundedness, spinning and webs are a very groovy triumvirate. I may
be in a wrong groove HERE At and LO, so please both you and all others
correct me as you sense the need to curtail some non elliptical orbit.
Most people like rationality, a straight line preferred going from point
'A' to point 'B'. Give them sight of a 'bendy line' and immediately they
see a straight line gone wrong;-) (Agyris et al) Give them an Escher print
and ....it's off to the asylum;-)
Today I was driving my motor car and a thought popped into my mind. I
thought how it was that most people really come alive when they appreciate
proximity to death. Especially so when it is their own death they see
close by. This can cause metanoia.
My little thoughts became, "People need to appreciate death to appreciate
life." Later, about half an hour ago I picked up a very good book on non
linear leadership and the opening paragraphs state, "life is killing us."
The next paragraph talks about the illusion of control. It calls TQM
re-engineering, JIT et al old wine in new bottles.
In context it means we apply straight lines where there could be bendy
lines. Like motorways are designed to bend to keep us alive ;-) Let me
quote the authors and it is they who quote Warren Bennis to make the point
drive home ;-) (sorry just couldn't stop myself), ... Bennis calls this
the First Law of (Academic) Pseudo-dynamics, " routine work (straight
lines) drives out non routine work (bendy lines) that is pursuance of
fundamental change and the better vision so smothering to death all
creative planning, all fundamental change." [Bennis 1993b:73]
Simple enough, and I do appreciate that 'bendy lines' are not really so
radically different from 'straight line' mentality, but maybe it's a step
in the right direction;-) for the frozen ones among the community we all
share? As people have often said, Start where the client is! Or do we
mean im-patient? Whatever. Just to try, as Wheatley nicely put it,
"walking with soft eyes" can be an eye opener.
Maybe I have created a cartoon of a small man or small men and women
afraid of failure, surrounded by tangles of straight lines gone hopelessly
loopy through the collisions they endure on the trip to infinite vanishing
points on this ever revolving rounded globe;-)
Prigogine quotes Karl Popper in Popper's book, The Open Universe: An
Argument for Indeterminism, " Common sense inclines, on the one hand, to
assert that every event is caused by some preceding events, so that every
event can be explained or predicted....On the other hand, ....common sense
attributes to mature and sane human persons the ability to choose freely
between alternative possibilities of acting." (All the dots are
Prigogine's) William James called it "the dilemma of determinism." For
Prigogine both are speaking about a fundamental of fundamentals,
Time....which as dear Albert Einstein said is ... "an illusion."
Makes you think...that little bendy contribution...might cause some "blue
mist" ;-)
I want to say something and today is a day as good as any other to write
it down. Dirac wrote "Beauty and truth go together in theoretical
physics." Prigogine wrote "Time precedes existence." I believe that
beauty and truth go together in art and maybe that is too obvious to say.
I also believe Time precedes existence and proceeds existence too;-) Maybe
that isn't so obvious to say. This for me creates a very great unending
circle with neither start nor end, in a way it creates in me a vast sense
of collapse via which anything is possible. It links for me with the
triune, Creator, creates, creation. I believe it, I can even do it. When I
have done it I HAVE SEEN THE FACES OF ANGELS IN THE PETALS OF MO(U)RNING
FLOWERS.
We have to be very gentle now because art is coming to meet science,
Prigogine notices that if Vermeer, Van Gogh, Beethoven had died in
childhood then what they created or discovered may never have contributed
to life on our common life on earth, but he seems to think that sciences
fundamental laws would have come to light because of its coherence. I am
not so sure. He is not sure "...there is some truth in the contrast"
Prigogine recognizes the present ness of the past and future in the human
condition where all things may intermingle and I see it as a most sacred
space created for us out of the relations, Creator, creates creation.
Prigogine recognizes continually the many bending and perilously thin
pathways that create the delicacy of our shared life, wherever and however
it is lived by quoting from his own historical path. Imagine tens of
millions of lines in a contained space, what would that look like...a
great web of relationships? "- As we follow the narrow path that avoids
the dramatic alternatives of blind laws and arbitrary events, we discover
that a large part of the concrete world around us has until now, slipped
through the meshes of the scientific net, to use Alfred Northead's
expression."
"Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another;
and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the
particles of light which enter into their composition? The
changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very
conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted
with transmutations."
Can we see the circle and make it a globe;-) Angels like photons may easily
pass through the net of a too straight-forward a conscious understanding.
" I see...humanity in deadly sleep...
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion...
I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe
And behold the loome of Locke, whose woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the water wheels of Newton: black cloth
In heavy wreathes fold over every nation: cruel works
Of many wheels I view, wheel within wheel, with cogs tyrannic,
Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in eden, which
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and
peace..."
Will'm Blake, Mystic, poet and 'non-linear' theoretical social scientist;-)
They say Einstein dreamed of escaping to the fresh air of mountains from amid
the carnage of his world. It was his driver. For Newton at seventy, "Ahead
lay fresh mountains." a new entropy landscape carved by tiny, minsicule, ever
so gentle free-energy gradients;-)..." more blank sheets upon which to make
his mark."
May I close this longwinded and self interested contribution by quoting
myself froma personal note to some friends? OK then.
Citation.
-All week a gentle wind called free-energy swirled around the lake that
sits like a pear shaped diamond in the field behind the house, beyond
which the wooded river brought forth swirling mists. I kept seeing ghosts
and from the wood we listened to the braying of a donkey, never found,
never seen. Time is a central theme for all arts. (Prigogine)
"And yet, and yet, denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying
the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret
consolations....Time is the substance I am made of. Time is the river
which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is the tiger that destroys
me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me; but I am the fire.
The world, unfortunately, is real; I unfortunately, am...."
Below is the spontaneously arisen watercolour created in the afternoon of the
morning -during the day of all the above ;-) I dedicated the image to Djemila
and we left a high resolution copy on a CD.
Then I burned the original painting on the fire in the evening.
Can you see that how the fire ignited the stream ;-) and the stream the fire?
At the edge of the village, Sunday and our first morning home in England, the
'east field' was filled with donkeys. We saw them. Silent
Prigogine? Craziest idea? "Trajectories are not primary objects, but
rather
the result of a superposition of plane waves"
Love,
Andrew
end citation
P.S. You might go now to www.google.com and just type in word, a name of a
local town to gentle Djemila in most tranquil, peaceful, light sodden
France the word is "Oradour".
"Light is the architecture of the human spirit." Len McComb RA 1977 {Len
gave me some 'sacred space' when I needed some to become an artist,
myself.]
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.