The focus on left brain learning and the neglect and denial of the importance of the right starts early. It is like a tree that has one side in sunlight and the other in darkness. Undeveloped. Unbalanced. The tree might mistake this for the normal state of a healthy tree. Perhaps that is a poor metaphor for what results from social and cultural programing.
The pervasive metaphor of everything-as-mechanism is rarely, if ever, interrogated, and indeed leads directly to the imperative that everything that is not obviously mechanism - biology, psychology, society - be engineered to more closely resemble mechanism. This is implicit in terminology such as 'social engineering' or 'human resources'. This reduction of humanity to mere life, and reduction of life to mere mechanism, was identified by the mystic Rudolph Steiner as one of the three principle demonic influences, what he termed the Ahrimanic.
It seems to me that a way out of this prison is to deploy a different metaphor: everything-as-spirit (or consciousness or whatever term one prefers). It may be notable that the Japanese, who have a deep cultural influence from the animistic worldview of Shintoism that ascribes spirit even to 'inanimate' objects, have proved somewhat more resistant to the coronavirus mass psychosis than most other countries. Even their science fiction, filled with transhumanist themes such as cyborgs and giant robot suits, is suggestive of making machines more organic, rather than making life more mechanical.
At the level of fundamental physics, much of the 'mysterious' behavior of quantum systems - uncertainty, observer effects, and the like - is really only bizarre if one insists that subatomic particles are dumb matter. If one instead assumes, as Leibniz did in his Monadologie, that the fundamental particles are possessed of the basic elements of consciousness, awareness, and free will, their behavior becomes perfectly sensible. From such a foundation an entirely different worldview emerges. It speaks to the monomaniacal dedication of the left-brain insistence on a mechanical universe that, despite the plethora of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the suggestion that electrons might have tiny minds is never even entertained.
Great points John. It does seem that quantum physics quickly did away with the machine metaphor almost a century ago but inexplicably the biological sciences have embraced the machine metaphor more radically than even classical physics ever did! I must write about the history of the machine metaphor in Western science.
Anyway it's good to make acquaintances with another fictional character who has a new lease on life and is speaking into our current circumstances! And all the way from Barsoom no less (look out for that Musk character, he's planning on invading your planet). Hope your Substack does really well.
You're well-read I see; first person to get the reference, at any rate, this nom de guerre being rather less famous than your own.
I'm not sure quantum physics really did move away from the machine metaphor. Most of the interpretations (Copenhagen, Many Worlds, Pilot Wave, etc. ... there are quite a few) are attempts to salvage this, often, at least to my mind, at the expense of violating Occam's injunction against the unnecessary multiplication of entities. Quantum information theory ('it from bit') does tend to move away from this direction, if you squint a bit, though they rarely say so directly.
I'd be most interested in an essay regarding the mechanical metaphor vs alternatives. McGilchrist has something to say on the subject, I'm sure.
There's a multi-university project going on at the moment in Australia https://www.cqc2t.org/ - I know some people involved, experienced professors, at the top level (at least the ones I know) don't/can't use the machine metaphor. Nevertheless I'm sure, because of the pervasiveness of the metaphor, that there would be many who do still think in mechanical terms - or at least force their theoretical musings into that frame. Most of the practical outcomes (or hopes) are closely, if not absolutely, tied to the machine model (encryption/computation, and the hardware/software driving the tech, etc) so I can see how it would be difficult to disentangle (no pun intended) from the metaphor.
Yes McGilchrist has a lot to say about this - I'll cover more.
The focus on left brain learning and the neglect and denial of the importance of the right starts early. It is like a tree that has one side in sunlight and the other in darkness. Undeveloped. Unbalanced. The tree might mistake this for the normal state of a healthy tree. Perhaps that is a poor metaphor for what results from social and cultural programing.
https://youtu.be/Q2O9k91Jvsg
It's a great metaphor. Certainly it starts at school and the answers start there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrxX9TBj2zY
I think it can even start before school
The pervasive metaphor of everything-as-mechanism is rarely, if ever, interrogated, and indeed leads directly to the imperative that everything that is not obviously mechanism - biology, psychology, society - be engineered to more closely resemble mechanism. This is implicit in terminology such as 'social engineering' or 'human resources'. This reduction of humanity to mere life, and reduction of life to mere mechanism, was identified by the mystic Rudolph Steiner as one of the three principle demonic influences, what he termed the Ahrimanic.
It seems to me that a way out of this prison is to deploy a different metaphor: everything-as-spirit (or consciousness or whatever term one prefers). It may be notable that the Japanese, who have a deep cultural influence from the animistic worldview of Shintoism that ascribes spirit even to 'inanimate' objects, have proved somewhat more resistant to the coronavirus mass psychosis than most other countries. Even their science fiction, filled with transhumanist themes such as cyborgs and giant robot suits, is suggestive of making machines more organic, rather than making life more mechanical.
At the level of fundamental physics, much of the 'mysterious' behavior of quantum systems - uncertainty, observer effects, and the like - is really only bizarre if one insists that subatomic particles are dumb matter. If one instead assumes, as Leibniz did in his Monadologie, that the fundamental particles are possessed of the basic elements of consciousness, awareness, and free will, their behavior becomes perfectly sensible. From such a foundation an entirely different worldview emerges. It speaks to the monomaniacal dedication of the left-brain insistence on a mechanical universe that, despite the plethora of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the suggestion that electrons might have tiny minds is never even entertained.
Great points John. It does seem that quantum physics quickly did away with the machine metaphor almost a century ago but inexplicably the biological sciences have embraced the machine metaphor more radically than even classical physics ever did! I must write about the history of the machine metaphor in Western science.
Anyway it's good to make acquaintances with another fictional character who has a new lease on life and is speaking into our current circumstances! And all the way from Barsoom no less (look out for that Musk character, he's planning on invading your planet). Hope your Substack does really well.
You're well-read I see; first person to get the reference, at any rate, this nom de guerre being rather less famous than your own.
I'm not sure quantum physics really did move away from the machine metaphor. Most of the interpretations (Copenhagen, Many Worlds, Pilot Wave, etc. ... there are quite a few) are attempts to salvage this, often, at least to my mind, at the expense of violating Occam's injunction against the unnecessary multiplication of entities. Quantum information theory ('it from bit') does tend to move away from this direction, if you squint a bit, though they rarely say so directly.
I'd be most interested in an essay regarding the mechanical metaphor vs alternatives. McGilchrist has something to say on the subject, I'm sure.
There's a multi-university project going on at the moment in Australia https://www.cqc2t.org/ - I know some people involved, experienced professors, at the top level (at least the ones I know) don't/can't use the machine metaphor. Nevertheless I'm sure, because of the pervasiveness of the metaphor, that there would be many who do still think in mechanical terms - or at least force their theoretical musings into that frame. Most of the practical outcomes (or hopes) are closely, if not absolutely, tied to the machine model (encryption/computation, and the hardware/software driving the tech, etc) so I can see how it would be difficult to disentangle (no pun intended) from the metaphor.
Yes McGilchrist has a lot to say about this - I'll cover more.