Month: November 2011

So in practice the working rule is, when times are easy popular democracy is OK, when the going gets tough what we need is a meritocracy of peer-appointed technical experts.

I’m good with that. In practice, as I keep pointing out to over-confident UK electoral reform people, we need a balance of both. Both houses fully elected would be a disaster. There needs to be conservatism with “wise” custodians and only slow change according to popular fashion, and there needs to be liberal freedom (of speech and criticism, naturally, and) of popular mandates. An element of “elitism” in the conservative core is inescapable – the liberal freedoms need to act as checks and balances, not as an over-riding veto. Trust can only be mutual, working relationships cannot be built on criticism alone.

Oh, what was I saying about wisdom & criticism, see here.

“Critics say” they are undemocratic, short-term fix.

Shows what wisdom critics have.

Sheldrake’s conception of socio-cultural & intellectual fields which influence and are influenced by the living things within them – and contain that socio-culturo-intellectual memory.

Doesn’t seem in the slightest contentious – memes & memeplexes, Pirsigian levels of static patterns (of quality). Doesn’t seem in the slightest undermined by a holistic computer / machine / system metaphor of living / thinking things, things which perceive natural morality. Humans are “special” (a species as distinct as any) but not privileged.

Morphic resonance, the idea that new forms arise more easily within fields that have similar patterns of form – sounds just like “fit”, as in survival of. Why do people want to see “revolutionary” ideas in what is clearly common sense.

Formative causation. Laws of physics as “evolving habits” rather than mathematically fixed laws. Now that is more radical, but even then not entirely unique or original – a pan-Evolutionary model. Physics always was “nature”.

Sheldrake interviewed on PBS some years ago.

Interestingly in the closing words of that interview he reverses Shakespeare’s words (as I did)

“Such dreams as stuff are made of.”

[Also interestingly, I notice I first use the phrase in reviewing Pinker here in 2002, though even then it was clear I’d heard it somewhere before.]

The project for navigators (through life). Interesting blog, but can’t work out who “Matthew” is.

Interesting del.ici.ous aggregation on Pirsigian philosophical topics – no idea who it is.

Jeez. Who says they’re “being callous” ?

They’re probably doing what half the world was doing at that point, in front of their TV’s, reflecting with whoever was close to them on the awe-full significance of the event a few hours earlier in front of them. They just happen to have a ring-side seat.

In an effort to debunk brain myths, Claudia Hammond at the Beeb attempts to play down the significance left-right brain effects. Of course boiling anything down to two “objects” is absurd reductionism. Of course left and right brain are hugely connected. But as the final sentence admits they work in complementary ways, their behaviour and their effect on each other, are quite different.

One is master, the other is emissary, but the emissary is getting too big for its boots.