Above the clouds

How deep the shadows seem to lie in thought
(Upon the days of springtime where you dwell) ;
Apparently to keep attention caught
In traps and snares whose making none can tell.

What monsters dare to cast their empty stares
When you, in spirit, have no wish to be
O’erthrown by shady, truthless, void despairs?
Or brought to nought by their temerity?

So false, and false again, is that fey cloud
That tries to mar the Summer’s entrance –  vain
It is to interfere with one too proud
To take his gaze away from heaven’s grain.

You raise your eyes beyond the stellar  heights
And there your soul partakes of fair delights

Jamie MacNab

(For J.I.)

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In memoriam

They say if I but listen to the wind,
My soul should speak to me in ways unheard,
But felt – as if by touch divine ; and kind,-
In ways the noisesome world would make absurd .

But as I contemplate this little patch,
In which we laid you wrap’t in holy trust,
No calming silent words do come that match
This fairest ruin ever brought to dust.

But don’t they also say there is a throne
Beyond, to which the inner ear is tuned?
“Be stilled!  Direct your thoughts to that alone.”
And lo!  There comes a golden voice fair-booned.

If many mundane loves I let go free,
With all my Breath and Life I yet love thee.

Jamie MacNab

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A worthy knyght

It goes without saying that war is never pleasant, and yet history from the earliest times and in all places is very largely the story of wars.  Such is the testimony to the nature of Man.  It is a wonder that the more-or-less peaceful civilisations ever got off the ground.

And yet they did get going and they even flourished to produce wonderful works in all the arts – building, literature and music – to name only three.  But it seems to me that all civilisations have been martial, even when refined ; and their soldiers were looking two ways : outwardly to deter foreign aggression : inwardly to deter dissent.  Just as amidst life there is death, so amidst peace there is armed force.  Much can be written about why this was so ; and much also about the periods of exception.

Given the polarity that exists in Man’s nature – the willingness to fight and the desire for peace, it is perhaps not surprising that poets and playwrights have tried to capture the dilemma.  And not only capture it, but to tame it, not least in the imagination.  Thus it is that we have some wonderful literature to meditate upon.  And it seems to me that the best came out of those violent times of wild kings and ambitious princes – the Middle Ages.

Here’s a piece by Chaucer in which he maintains the tradition of encouraging people to think always of talking themselves up towards becoming more peaceful, honourable and honest with themselves.  Literature like this must have acted as a continual persuasion which, over many centuries, did lead to the general improvement in us.  This kind of writing is far from unique in those days.

As Saint Augustine said, “To become the person you want to be, you must first pretend to be that person.”

A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,
And evere honoured for his worthynesse.
At Alisaundre he was whan it was wonne.
Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle nacions in Pruce ;
In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce,
No Cristen man so ofte of his degree.

Geoffrey Chaucer

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Surprise

Time and place have mystical qualities.  If we consider an eclipse, for example, its occurrence depends upon the more or less exact relation between three or more objects ; but what is surprising is that the appearance of the eclipse is more or less exactly predictable long in advance.  This suggests a mechanical sort of universe.

It suggests a universe where everything runs like clockwork.  Indeed, a universe that is a clockwork ; a clockwork that was wound up long ages ago and which has been running its predictable revolutions ever since.  All motion came from that primal winding-up.

One might expect many interesting things from a mechanical universe ; but voluntary motion is perhaps the very last thing one should expect.

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Reasonable rhymes from Vienna

Well, everyone knows how I like Freud.  🙂

A straightforward diagnosis

My dear Doktor Freud, you must come to my aid,
For  disequilibrium makes me quite fade.
When I fly in a plane or ride on a bike,
A bott.  of best brandy I must first tike!

Professorial knowledge, I’ve heard it well said,
Is your hallmark, dear Freud, so to you I have fled ;
Will you tell me now clear how you practise your art,
So that I, on vacation, may sober depart?

———-<>———-

“How to use psychological principles free
From suggestions that might so happily be
Of ze greatest potential for doing some good
Is a question of seeing ze trees from ze vood.

“For particular problems pose purposive pains,
While pandemical ponderings put people on planes
In a panicky predisposition to pine
For ze pleasing and practical fruit of ze vine.

“Now ze plane and ze pine are not multiple things,
For the one comes in squadrons, while t’other has rings ;
The collection of nouns and the tension of verbs
Gives a dual condition to specialised herbs.

“But you dendritophobia is mostly a mask
For concealing profounder conditions which ask
For a more comprehensive review of your past,
So enabling my science to give healing at last.

“That you ruminate deeply while high in a tree,
And expect to find solace in swigs of brandy,
Is suggesting neurosis involving a beach ;
For, while dad was a fisherman, mum was a peach.

“If my best psychological therapy’s well,
Then the interconnections should come to gel
The traces of reason that pull in train
The idea of my fee, which will free you from pain.”

Jamie MacNab

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Remembrance

Possibly one of the most poignant poems ever written in English.  It is one of those meditations where archaisms, such as thee and thine, are indispensable ; without them, the sheer intimacy evaporates and the thoughts become mere platitudes – as in so many modern poems.  Here the poet is doing her job, as did her great predecessors.  Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth ( to name only a few) rescued many fine words from oblivion and breathed new life into them ; and they are with us today.

Remembrance

COLD in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Sever’d at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers
From those brown hills have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lighten’d up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But when the days of golden dreams had perish’d,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherish’d,
Strengthen’d and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Wean’d my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

Emily Bronte

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More models

It is, of course, well-known in the science of psychology that the world that we say we know is in fact composed of cognitive models of that other world – the world around us.  Experimental psychologists tend strongly to the view that our knowledge consists of memories ; and those memories are comprised of particular configurations of chemicals within the system of neurons that the nervous system is made of.

There appears to be no simple geometrical relation between those neuronal configurations and the outside world. Thus there must be some mechanism that ensures that the cognitive models do in fact relate accurately and consistently to the world around us. If this were not so, then each of us would perceive the material world in a quite different way to our neighbour.

So much for the material world and our modelling of it. But there is yet another world.

This is the world of what we might (to avoid getting too technical) call ideas or opinions. This world is also composed of memories ; but memories that are understood in terms of language – of words. This world seems to be almost infinitely plastic – we are free to use words fairly indiscriminately. This world of opinions or notions is important to us, because we use it to communicate with each other.

If all communications between people were of a friendly nature, then any errors of perception, or misunderstandings, could easily be resolved by discussion. But there are some who seem drawn, or maybe impelled, to be uncompromisingly aggressive towards others ; they use harsh words that seem to be intended to cause offence and even pain ; these offensive ones make scurrilous references to the characters and life-styles of others.   But it is important to remember that, since the offenders have no means of knowing the truth of the accusations they make, their word-pictures exist only within their own minds.  Such offenders have created an inner world for themselves which bears little or no relation to the world outside them. I think there is a word for this.

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A sociologist’s lament

Lamentable verse

And what is it that made my engine stop?
Perhaps it was a gasket that went pop.
So simply diagnosed and put to right.
But what the cure if faults are out of sight?
What if its sickness has a very crop –
A thousand minor ills – that make a blight ;
No one of which might please me to secure
A remedy that works, and can endure?
An engine knackered is a sorry beast,
The right prognosis dire without a feast
Of engineering tricks and things that sure
Involve a drastic overhaul at least.
So look you not to put your civic life
Aright without fair measure, then, of strife.

Jamie MacNab

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A step beyond

The sun is but a step away

Beneath the feet of younger generations
I bide my time as cousins should.
The seasons come, as do the years,
To nutrify my dwelling place
With healing water, goodness-laden ;
All that’s needed for life and limb ;
All, that is, but the light of sun.

For how many  generations have I lain?
Cast by fate and forgotten of men.
Do they write of me, the lost child,
In glowing terms of remembrance?
Do I live in their hearts?

Jamie MacNab

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Aspects of idealism

Something to meditate on.  We say that we live in the World.  We say that we know the World.  What is the difference between the World, on the one hand, and what we know of the World, on the other?

We live in a phenomenal world, a world of mental images consciously perceived. Surely the World (universe) is exactly what we collectively know about it ; it is the collective phenomena ; no more and no less.  If so, then the world would seem to be coterminous with human consciousness.

Of course, this need not mean that there is nothing outside of our consciousness ; but that which is outside of our consciousness is not the World.

I can remember words Pascal the wise
Left us to ponder , which gave rise
To other ideas, paler than his own.
All worlds and suns, and even yet
The brightest stars that nature did beget,
Compare with dust in light of human mind.

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Folded Cross

Now, here’s a poem that captures a paradox for me ; captures it and spots a kind of solution to it.  It is by the poet Jaime, who blogs here and there on matters literary – and to great effect.  This poem concerns the recent discovery of an Anglo- Saxon treasure in Staffordshire.  In particular, it concerns a gold cross that is mysteriously folded.

Folded Cross

To fold a cross into a pocket,
the soft gold arms doubled inward
re-forming its branches into
the pliable, human and wayward.

Along these paths of gold,
creatures intertwine,
course out from round garnet
to round garnet. Their fluid
motion caught mid tangle.

Who has done this?
Creased one mystery into another.

Artisan? Merchant? Thief?

Bending the cross’ four directions,
thin mirrors of the planet,
into the center—

Jaime

23 May 2010

——————————————————

As I remarked to Jaime when I first read her poem,  these lines were worth waiting for.

Of the primary mystical symbols, the cross and the circle, it is the cross that puzzles. The circle is completeness and harmony ; it repeats itself for ever ; it raises no questions ; it is where nothing new happens.

The cross, on the other hand, is a clash ; it is a paradox that screams to be resolved ; it spreads into the unknown, the unrepresented ; it is a disturbing and painful symbol.

When the contradictions of the cross are apparently resolved by turning it in on itself, then there is a hand at work – Nature? Chance? Or, as Jaime suggests, Artisan?

This is a poem to reflect on.

If you wish to find more of Jaime’s work, I know she blogs on WordPress and on My Telegraph.  As far as I can tell, she lives in the Isles of the West ; in Tir nan Og, perhaps.  🙂

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Poles apart?

To those who have been blessed with the ability to see them, the waves and particles that the physicists talk about must seem like things poles apart.  The wave must seem to be the very opposite of a particle.  And yet, I have heard people say that the one is convertible to the other.

It’s odd how the human mind goes round in circles (or is it spirals?) always returning to the same fundamental ideas.  Or is it odd?  Perhaps we return to those fundamental ideas, not as a result of some quirkiness in the human brain, but because they happen to be true.

It is said that the human body is made of atoms, and even smaller things.  But, since these entities are not known through our senses, can it be said that they are truly material?  Since they are known only through our reason, all we know of them are cognitive models ; in other words, they are psychical things ; spiritual things.

If that is so, then the body is better described as the physical expression of the spirit.  It is as if body and spirit are two poles – not separate entities – of which one is representative of the other ; and, as such, they are inseparable except in thought.

They say the world is made of things opposed ;
Of polarities must all that is be.
No other kind of world that one might see
Suggests itself to reason, or be posed
As being true to nature and to law.

Jamie MacNab

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A rose to remember

Just one of the satisfying things about retirement is that one is out of the rat race ; in fact, one is out of all races.  And this is satisfying because the rat moves so fast, as fast as the hare ; and, like the hare, it overlooks many things that the tortoise knows well.  It isn’t a question of whether the tortoise leads a better life than the hare, but of whether it is better to sample both kinds of life.  We might say that the hare is a doer, while the tortoise is a thinker.  The hare enjoys life ; the tortoise contemplates it and meditates upon it.

While I was scribbling some notes about the double-life of the rose plant I was already thinking about its triple-life.  I posted the double-life a few minutes ago, so you can see it as it appears next to this one.

So, in its double-life, the rose lives as a physical thing in the flower pot ; and also within the brain of the beholder ; in these two places it grows day by day.  What is remarkable about the rose in the brain is that its entire life can be captured, as it were, by the observer ; and that life can be enjoyed again and again simply recalling it.

But I am getting ahead of myself here ; for to recall something is to bring it into conscious awareness.  But memories in the brain are not conscious ; they are merely the physical arrangements of brain cells.  It is those physical arrangements that we consult when we want to re-enjoy the colours, scents and other things that define the rose for us.

The hare is content simply to enjoy these things, but the tortoise likes to think a little deeper about that enjoyment.  The tortoise says, “Hold on now, you have told me that the rose has its life in the flower pot ; then that it has a second life in the neurones of the brain.  That is mysterious enough.  But now you are telling me that the rose has a third life – a life enjoyed as my conscious memories of it.”  To which, I can only reply in the affirmative.  The third life of the rose is a remarkable one, for it is potentially immortal.

It is fairly clear to us that the life of the rose in the pot follows the arrow of time.  It begins as a cutting ; it sprouts buds and roots ; it grows taller and spreads wider ; it flowers ; it reproduces ; and eventually, after a number of seasons, it perishes.

Not so in my conscious awareness.  For here, I may give the rose many new lives, simply by recalling what I have seen it do in its pot.  I can recall the rose at any episode in its life and hold that episode for as long as I like ; I can stop the arrow of time.  I can even recall the life of the rose and run it backwards, seeing the rose first in its old age and then at progressively earlier ages until it becomes a mere cutting again.    I can reverse the arrow of time.

The rose as I understand it in my mind has a sort of immortality.  It will live in my mind for as long as my mind exists – and potentially for much longer than the rose in the pot exists.

So far so interesting.  So far so mysterious.  But the tortoise will not let the matter rest there, for he is a thinker ; and all thoughts lead on to other thoughts.

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Growing roses

Things that grow generally fascinate us ; there is a mystery to life that we cannot quite get our heads round.  Is life itself a material thing?  or is it a non-material thing that happens to be associated with material things?  I read once that some ingenious experiments were carried out which involved weighing a dying animal at intervals before its actual death and continuing those weighings after death.  The aim was to see if there was a larger decrement in weight at the moment of death, which would signify that life itself had mass – i.e. that life was a material thing.  The concerns of people are so interesting, aren’t they?

But planting a young rose in a patio pot can be interesting, too.  Just looking at it is interesting.  At the beginning of its life, it might appear to be very much like a dead twig protruding from the soil.  As we gaze, we can become aware that we have formed a percept of a dead-looking twig.  And we remember it.

But what do we mean by a percept?  And what do we mean by remember?  Let us leave psychology to one side and think instead of neurology.  Neurologists tell us that we process the visual information of the rose by modifying our brain cells.  Thus the image of the dead-looking twig is stored in our brains as a modification of some cells.  The image causes some of our cells to grow in highly particular ways.  Thus the physical structure of the twig is re-presented to us as a physical structure in the brain – and it was the twig that caused it.

If we were to leave the rose unseen for a month or so, and then return to it, a similar remarkable event occurs.  As we gaze at it, we notice that the twig has formed  a small bud ; we form a percept of this changed form ; the brain cells modify themselves again by growing a little more, in proportion to the new growth on the twig.  And we remember this, too.

Now that we have more than one percept of the rose, we can say that we are forming, or growing, a concept of it.  We can say that we are forming the concept of its growth.  We can do this because we remember both percepts and the temporal order in which they were formed – and we compare them.

If we repeat this experiment over a number of months, we assemble many percepts of the rose as it changes its form – leaves appear ; flower buds appear ; the flowers open ; new colours appear ; the rose becomes taller and also spreads out.  Thus we form a more complete concept of the growing plant.

And we note that, as the rose grows, so does our brain.  The physical growth of the rose causes a corresponding physical growth in the brain.  It is as if the rose enjoyed two lives – one in the pot and the other in our head.

So the rose lives within us.  And its life within us is physical, for it is neurological.  A real growth of the plant produces a real corresponding growth in the brain.

What would a poet make of all this?

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Good deeds and bad

One of the main attractions of psychology is that it is nearly all about putting old fine wines into new jazzy bottles.  The downside is that sometimes the flavour is lost in the process (and sometimes the spirit, too).  But that’s all right because, once having identified the vintage, you can always go out and buy a case of the real stuff.

There is a strange breed of psychologists called the Behaviourists.  They are strange because they actually deny psychology ; they have evicted Psyche from her dream castle and concentrate their attentions not on the mind and soul but on simple behaviour.  They are not interested in what people think but in what they do.  Hence their name – behaviourists.

They are, of course, quite wrong-headed ; but that is not to say that they are uninteresting, nor that they fail to give us things to think about (I hope they will forgive me for that lapse).  To see how useful behaviourist ideas can be we have only to look at the bricks they use to build their own castle of dreams.

For example, they ask the question, “How can we ensure that people behave correctly?”  And, to find the answer, they first look at what people actually do and then try to work out why they do it ; in other words, they form hypotheses about behaviour.  And then they do experiments on people in order to either affirm or deny their hypotheses. It is a very good method.

Our mature behaviour is derived entirely from our learning to modify our nature-given biological drives, our fundamental urges to do something.  Where these drives or urges ultimately come from is of no concern to them.  And there are three basic bricks used to build the behaviourists’ Castle of Learning (their school of life).

One of these building blocks is the concept of reward.  Out of all the deeds that you might do sometime in the next two seconds or so, there are some that will give you a sense of pleasure or satisfaction ; that is your reward for doing the deed.  And, because you received that reward, you are more likely to do it again.  Thus the deed – your behaviour – has been reinforced.  You have learned a Good Deed ; and, as long as you continue to receive that reinforcement, you’ll go on doing it.

Now, you might have spotted weaknesses in this concept, but it doesn’t matter because we are dealing only with the basics here.

Another building block in behaviourism is – you’ve guessed it – the concept of punishment.  For, if you behave in a way that gives you a feeling of displeasure or dissatisfaction then (rather obviously) you will be less likely to repeat it.

So far so simple.  But this interplay between rewards and punishments is often very subtle, and it is here that behaviourism becomes first interesting and then fascinating.  Just to scratch the surface as it were, we might ask, “Which is the more effective as an aid to learning?  The rewards or the punishments?”  Stuff to ponder.  But, before we commit the sin of speculating and swapping anecdotes in search of an answer, we must remember that the behaviourists have done the actual experiments ; and these contain some surprises as well as some treasured chestnuts.

Now for an ancient truth.  Behaviourism, like all the sciences, has yet to tell us anything we didn’t already know.  It has yet to produce any new wine.  But it has raised our awareness, our consciousness, concerning ancient truths ; and it has dressed them up in bright new bottles so that we can savour them afresh, according to our taste ; but that is all it has done.  Now there’s a Platonic thought for you.

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In the name of the law

The modern world owes a great deal to the pagans of old.  Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid were all pagans ; and Abraham, too, who changed ideas of deity most radically.  But all these people are notable, not because they were traditional pagans, but because they saw that there was a way out of  the limitations that the old ways of thinking placed on our understanding of the world and of ourselves.  They raised the general level of consciousness of mankind.  But they were not revolutionaries in the modern sense ; they did not cast off all the accumulated knowledge of their ancestors.  Instead, they explained where the errors lay, and then applied corrections.

They were essentially conservative rather than radical ; they did not pretend to have the Big Secret that would make a utopia tomorrow ; rather, they had a map that promised to lead to something better.  And who can doubt that their ways of thinking were better?  Could the world of such capricious and egotistical deities as  Moloch or of Zeus and Athene have led to the benign practical outcomes we see in modern life?   And this is to say nothing of the even wilder-sounding deities of the North.

What I find most interesting about the break from traditional paganism is the two forms it took.  The Greeks, who were the most disputatious and questioning of any race seen on earth, followed the path of reason ; which led them to lay the foundations of the physical sciences.  On the other hand, the Hebrews followed the path of reason which led them to lay the foundations of a moral science.  Of course, the line of division is not as clear-cut as I have described but, broadly speaking, it seems to me that we owe our concepts of the physical laws to the Greeks and of the moral laws to the Hebrews.

But I also think that the fuller fruits of these ancient trees of knowledge did not begin to appear until the trees were grafted to each other, or even synthesised, mainly (but not wholly) in Europe.

It also seems a shame to me that, while the New Paganism in Europe has clung to the physical laws, it has all but abandoned the moral laws.  The growing cult of individualism has over-reached itself ; it now sees no need of moral laws.  Rather, morality is now a matter of opinion – just as it was when the wayward gods and goddesses ruled the minds of men.

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Reason be our guide

Just as the diehard materialist believes that all knowledge comes from some primaeval event such as the Big Bang, so the diehard theist believes that all knowledge comes from the Creator.  It is significant that neither of these beliefs is supportable by any direct sensory evidence of the everyday kind, but both are derived from reason.  Both are rational constructs which, by general consent, can be said with assurance to exist only in human minds.  Much may be said about these two contrasting beliefs by way of qualification and many elaborations may be made.

But, if we are to reach  an understanding of the materialist and the spiritual points of view, then it is important to clear up some common errors.  Perhaps the most important error, and the one therefore to be avoided,  is that of literalism.

There was no Big Bang, just as there was no lady called Eurynome.  And we must come to accept that there are no such intrinsically material things as electrons and protons, just as there are no such intrinsically material things as imps and demons.  It is a matter of serious debate, however, whether such rational entities might become material things, and whether they might take this form or that.

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The Funeral of Youth

The Funeral of Youth

The day that YOUTH had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends,
Those scatter’d friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When YOUTH kept open house,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,
No quest of his unshar’d —
All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar’d,
Followed their old friend’s bier.

FOLLY went first,
With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers’d;
And after trod the bearers, hat in hand —
LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned
And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY,
Who had to catch a train, and LUST, poor, snivelling boy;
These bore the dear departed.
Behind them, broken-hearted,
Came GRIEF, so noisy a widow, that all said,
“Had he but wed
Her elder sister SORROW, in her stead!”
And by her, trying to soothe her all the time,
The fatherless children, COLOUR, TUNE, and RHYME
(The sweet lad RHYME), ran all-uncomprehending.

Then, at the way’s sad ending,
Round the raw grave they stay’d. Old WISDOM read,
In mumbling tone, the Service for the Dead.
There stood ROMANCE,
The furrowing tears had mark’d her rouged cheek;
Poor old CONCEIT, his wonder unassuaged;
Dead INNOCENCY’s daughter, IGNORANCE;
And shabby, ill-dress’d GENEROSITY;
And ARGUMENT, too full of woe to speak;
PASSION, grown portly, something middle-aged;
And FRIENDSHIP — not a minute older, she;
IMPATIENCE, ever taking out his watch;
FAITH, who was deaf, and had to lean, to catch
Old WISDOM’s endless drone.

BEAUTY was there,
Pale in her black; dry-eyed; she stood alone.
Poor maz’d IMAGINATION; FANCY wild;
ARDOUR, the sunlight on his greying hair;
CONTENTMENT, who had known YOUTH as a child
And never seen him since. And SPRING came too,
Dancing over the tombs, and brought him flowers —
She did not stay for long.
And TRUTH, and GRACE, and all the merry crew,
The laughing WINDS and RIVERS, and lithe HOURS;
And HOPE, the dewy-eyed; and sorrowing SONG; —
Yes, with much woe and mourning general,
At dead YOUTH’s funeral,
Even these were met once more together, all,
Who erst the fair and living YOUTH did know;
All, except only LOVE. LOVE had died long ago.

Rupert Brooke

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Getting the description right

It cannot be seriously doubted that nowadays people are more scientific than at any previous time.  Despite its obvious shortcomings, the technological successes of science have seduced millions into believing that it is the only way to describe the workings of the world properly.

One of the most unfortunate things to emerge from our love affair with science is that it has encouraged the more extreme believers into using the scientific method as the only way to describe people properly.   In the departments of the learned, gone are such words as soul, spirit, will, love, hate, and so on.  In biology, genetics, medicine, and even in philosophy, people are more and more regarded as physical machines, meat machines, in which the only processes are the ‘bottom-up’, causative ones ; the ‘top-down’, purposeful processes are not even considered worthy of study.  Even the lovely, tragic Psyche has been dismissed from psychology.

I wonder if the more enthusiastic believers have thought deeply about what follows from their infatuation with this view of science?   It seems to me that supposed causative determinants of personality and behaviour have two major sources : the first is the genes : and the second is behavioural conditioning.

In the case of genetics, it is supposed that our bodily character is determined by the arrangements of certain molecules and their interactions ; and this bodily character is the only character we have.  These genes, these arrangements of molecules, are themselves composed of simpler molecules which have their recent origins in the soil and ultimately come from stardust and the Big Bang.

However we dress this belief up, on its own it cannot account for moral behaviour without involving a lot of faith in unspeakable mysteries.  One may contemplate a molecule or an atom or an electron for ever and have no hope of discerning any sign of personality – nor any hint of moral behaviour – in them.  Nor any sense of purpose.  Atoms, etc., just do what atoms do.

In the case of behavioural conditioning we encounter something similar.  The child, the collection of genes, behaves in ways that are determined by its environment – principally by its parents and other influences.  And the parents, et al, are themselves no more than assemblies of genes.

What distinguishes a saint from a sinner?  The mere arrangement of his genetic molecules and/or the conditioning he has received.  And he has had no control over either ; and he can never have control over either.

In the best traditions of the best novels, I will leave it to you, dear reader, to work out where such extreme beliefs will lead ; to work out the consequences for a society that accepts these beliefs without some serious questioning.

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The nature of things

I have mentioned before that, while I admire Freud, I am not a Freudian.  It is quite possible to see the virtues in a person without agreeing in the least with his or her ideas ; just as it is quite possible to see the  merits of a theory or of a hypothesis without buying into it completely.  Also it is more than likely that one may form an opinion of an idea only to discover later that the idea actually has a quite different interpretation from the one first seized upon.

I once read, in passing, that Freud considered the possibility that consciousness ‘arose from the very atoms themselves’.  And there is much that arises from that idea.  But in my haste my first thought was, “But this is typical Victorian materialism ! – a product of the Great Mistake that typified that otherwise great age.”  And, if I hadn’t more recently encountered another great thinker, I should probably still hold that opinion of Freud.

The mistake I made was so common that perhaps I may be forgiven ; it was the mistake of failing to ask the right questions.  I had forgotten the advice of Aristotle.  My first question to Freud ought to have been, “What do mean by the word ‘atom’?  I had assumed that he meant ‘the smallest indivisible particle of matter’ ; hence my judgement that he was proposing a materialist notion of consciousness.  (By the way, I had also forgotten that Freud was a near contemporary of Rutherford, and would have known of him.)

But further reading and further contemplation reveals that we do not have sufficient evidence that atoms are material things at all.  It all depends on how we look at the world and how we shape our arguments about it.

It depends on whether we are ‘outward lookers’ or ‘inward lookers’ – and on whether we are able to look both ways.  It depends on what we mean by empirical science.

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Causes and reasons

I suppose that, like most people, I grew up largely in a state of wonder.  I wondered constantly at the way the world is and how it came to be and how it might come to be.  Of course, a child does not articulate this wonder consistently, accurately and persistently ; it consists mainly in fleeting, silent questions which seem to come from nowhere and are soon gone, to be replaced by other thoughts.

But a few of these questions pop up often enough to become habits ; they are always there and, at first we are conscious of them.  But, as the habit entrenches itself, the questions become unconscious and, as such, simply form an influence on our character.  The point about unconscious thinking is that it shapes our character without our being aware that we are even doing it, and so we are largely unaware of why we are the way we are.

So it is, too, that while one person might feel attracted to being a mechanic (say) another is attracted to being a writer.  It is easy enough to infer that one has had some early encouragement towards mechanics, while the other has not.  But it also happens that some people develop interests which have been actively discouraged in early life.   And, in either case, it is nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly what early thinking was going on.

For most of us, we are reasonably satisfied with our personality or character.  After all, it has ‘worked’ for us, hasn’t it?  We have largely enjoyed our lives.  But it happens that we do become aware of certain dis-satisfactions also ; in which case, we might feel inclined to take an interest in our character-formation.  Indeed, we might feel a need to undertake a little character-reformation.  And our starting point might well be with our unconscious thinking.

I remember from long ago  wondering why it is that some people tend to see ultimate reasons for things, while others see ultimate causes.  There is certainly a fundamental difference in the kind of thinking going on here, and many people take these things very seriously ; some even devote their lives to the study of ultimate things.  I guess that a person of a theological persuasion will be interested in ultimate reasons, while an astronomer (for example) will be more interested in ultimate causes.

It seems that a certain tradition has grown up within each way of thinking about the world.  The person in search of ultimate reasons looks mostly inward, while the one in search of causes looks outward.  Thus it is, perhaps, that the theological type sees evidence of his Ultimate Reason for things wherever he looks within his own mind and in its rational functioning.  On the other hand, the astronomer sees evidence of his Ultimate Cause wherever he looks outward into in the sky ; everywhere he sees evidence of the big bang, whether it be in the orderly arrangements of the stars or in the ‘debris’ from the great primal event itself.

Saint Francis was an inwardly-looking man:

God be in my head
And in my understanding

God be in my eyes
And in my looking

God be in my mouth
And in my speaking

God be in my heart
And in my thinking

God be at my end
And at my departing.

St Francis

Taken, I am told, from a Book of Hours – a 1514 service book used in Clare College, Cambridge

After Psalm 121:8 : May the Lord keep our going out and our coming in from this time on and for evermore.

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Keeping it simple

Having been in engineering for most of my life, I have also found the attractions of science to be almost irresistible.  There is something neat about it.  The scientist begins by making an observation and proceeds to ascertain the causes of it.  After many such investigations, and when sufficient data has been accumulated, he then feels confident enough to propose a law which will account for his observations.  And, using that law, he then feels able to make some predictions of a more general nature.

Let me say at once that I see nothing wrong with this method.  It is, after all, the foundation a good deal of our technology ; and that technology can be seen to work.  The weakness of science does not lie in its method but in attitudes towards it.  The method has proved so successful that it has seduced many into believing that it is the only valid method of describing the natural world.  So successful has it been that many, perhaps the majority, of people pour scorn on any attempt to devise another.  This is especially true, I think, of the people of the West.  But there are objections to it, and there are many of them, so they will need to be severely summarised.

In the first place, science investigates the causes of natural events ; but there is no mention of purposes.  A scientist will perhaps tell us what happens, but is silent on why a thing happens.  A scientist will tell us of a natural physical law, but offers no opinion on why the law exists.  Also there is the question of what is observed.  Out of all the events occurring in an experimental condition, only certain of them are selected for observation.  Thus science deals with abstractions, with simplicities ; and by its nature is partial in the data it considers worthy of investigation.

So, all in all, science as it is done now is successful in what it attempts to do ; but its methods are limiting and, therefore, it cannot offer more than an abstract view of the world.  Therefore it cannot provide complete knowledge of nature, however hard it tries.

The physicist, AN Whitehead offered this insight : science is the application of commonsense to an idealised world.  But the world is not ideal ; it is not a laboratory ; and there is much going on in nature that science knows nothing of.

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Information is power

An interesting article, by Philip Johnston, in today’s Daily Telegraph ; see here.  It seems that our esteemed NHS is a source of information on all of us, and available to just about anyone who knows how to go about it.

Also I wonder how many people in the NHS are/will be/ interested in parting with a little of our information for a decent consideration?  All in the interests of science, of course.

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Singing as it should be done (maybe)

When I was a lad Kenneth McKellar was well on the road to fame and fortune ; he even appeared on the B&W television.  I have to say that at that time I did not think too highly of him, but only because is voice seemed unsuited to folk songs.  Teenagers expect rustic songs to be, well, rustic ; rough around the edges at least.  But McKellar’s voice was crystal-clear and his articulation faultless.  He sounded more like an opera tenor than a country swain a-coming through the rye or reeling about at Mairi’s weddin’.  I never bought even one of his discs, even when I had deserted into the RAF and could have afforded to.  He just wasn’t right for the job.

One thing I did not know about him then was that he had, indeed, trained as an opera singer.  And a personage no less great than Sir Adrian Boult (if I remember aright) had declared him to be the best singer of Handel the twentieth century had produced.  Forget your Pavarottis et al – McKellar was into the popular scene and courting the plebs long before them.  He abandoned opera only because he hated the travelling involved.

I have no wish to sound dangerous, but it was just a week or two before McKellar died that I was browsing the net for Scottish music that I came across a host of his old vinyl discs now being offered on CD.  So I invested in some.  I hope I was not being prescient.

And what a delight his singing is!  What a pleasure to listen to his masterly control of voice.  What an idiot I had been to have failed to appreciate all this when I was young.  If you go on to YouTube, I’m sure you will find some of his music and see what I mean.  If not, why not go to Amazon (as I did) and take the buying plunge.

And he was not only into Scottish songs – the English and Irish are all there, too ; and he does charming duets with Patricia Cahill, singing Ae fond kiss and This is my lovely day.  Among the delights, I found him singing that quintessentially English song, Greensleeves (which I recall learning in Primary School).  If Henry VIII really did write this, then I reckon his lost lass had a lucky escape ; if only because, in light of what we now know of Hal’s love life, some of the sentiments are … um … slightly chilling.  I mean, what was going through his mind when he wrote, “Alas my love, you do me wrong/to cast me off discourteously…”  One can hear the sharpening of axes.

Greensleeves

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

Chorus:

Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my lady greensleeves.

Your vows you’ve broken, like my heart,
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?
Now I remain in a world apart
But my heart remains in captivity.

chorus

I have been ready at your hand,
To grant whatever you would crave,
I have both wagered life and land,
Your love and good-will for to have.

chorus

If you intend thus to disdain,
It does the more enrapture me,
And even so, I still remain
A lover in captivity.

chorus

My men were clothed all in green,
And they did ever wait on thee;
All this was gallant to be seen,
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

chorus

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,
But still thou hadst it readily.
Thy music still to play and sing;
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

chorus

Well, I will pray to God on high,
That thou my constancy mayst see,
And that yet once before I die,
Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

chorus

Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu,
To God I pray to prosper thee,
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.

Chorus

By Henry VIII (maybe)

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The modesty of wisdom

The tale is told of how Socrates was confronted by a citizen of Athens who posed a question for him.  “Socrates,” the man asked, “Why does the Oracle at Delphi describe you as the wisest man in the world?”

The answer he got was something of a surprise : “I can only think that it is because I know nothing.”  Then Socrates added, “But I have opinions on nearly everything.”

Clearly Socrates was attaching what we would take as a special meaning to the word ‘knowledge’ ; he took knowledge to be something that was infallible and incontrovertible.  It seems that , for him, to have knowledge of a thing was to apprehend its reality ; knowledge was not a matter of opinion, it was not a matter of truth or falsity ; nor was it a matter for partiality.  This view opens up many possibilities for discussion.

Socrates was one of those very rare people who did not merely invent some new mathematical technique or some new machine ; he proposed a whole new way of thinking about ourselves and the world we live in.  The consequences were tremendous, and we live with them to this day.

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The Truth is out there … really

Man is a truth-seeking creature.  How’s that for a statement of belief?  And it is a statement of belief ; for there is no proof of it.  And yet I have come across very few people who do not believe it, either explicitly or implicitly.  But what is Truth?  How often do we seriously consider that question?  For doesn’t it so often lead to a debate which has all the appearances of a mere fog of words?

So, one way or another, we tend to escape the fog and develop a handy argument which puts Truth into some kind of framework ; and from there we can explore further.  For me, such a handy framework came from one of my unofficial mentors, the physicist AN Whitehead.  He put it something like this:

When an individual regards an event or an object, he forms in his mind an Appearance of it.  This is how it appears to him.

If two people regard the same event, then each has his own Appearance of it.

If the two people cannot agree on what they have seen, then we have simply two Appearances to deal with.  But if they can agree, then they have reached a Truth about it.

For example, if two people see a small flock of birds fly by, they might each have the Appearance of  seven birds ; and since they agree on this figure, they are satisfied that they have discovered a Truth.

But suppose the flock is much greater in number?  One person might have the Appearance of fifty birds, and the other an Appearance of sixty.  Here, they have discovered no Truth ; each will say to the other, “My figure is true and yours is false.”

But, suppose the observers have doubts about what they have seen?  Then they might well agree on a compromise figure ; they might agree that there were fifty-five birds in the flock.  Thus, by negotiation, they have reached a Truth.

But note : this Truth of fifty-five birds is an opinion and not reality ; the truth has not told us how many birds were really there.  So, what is Reality?  Surely Reality is just itself, and not a matter of opinion ; and it is nonsense to ask whether it be true or false.

So, in this world wide and long, there are countless Appearances and many Truths.  But there is only one Reality – and we don’t know what that is.

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