Cree Anthropology

One important thread in the development of Pirsig’s ideas, starting with Northrop and the aboriginals of “Latin” America (and all points “East” of western thinking), continued in the North American Indian anthropological forays with Verne Dusenberry. A descendent of said anthropologist points out that Dusenberry’s book is back in print with Oklahoma University Press.

Some interesting Dusenberry biographical points just in the site blurb which might explain Pirsig’s remarks that Dusenberry had a better knack than he did, when it came to interacting with the indians on their own terms. He was an adopted son.

Is that snow on the top of my reading list ?

[Note also error in the Laverne Madigan details in the Pirsig timeline – to be corrected.]

On Bullshit

“The simple truth ” I don’t know, I just like it that way ” simply won’t do, so into this vacuum rushes the bullshit” a quote from Design Observer (Harry Frankfurt) via Adrian Trenholm comments on Johnnie Moore’s blog “Sophistry”. A story where a subject finding no credible patterns to explain something, concocts complex fiction. (Not quite the same point because this subject has deliberately been given no obvious easy explanation, but it does show how people prefer seemingly sophisticated explanations to simple ones. But, careful with that razor Occam !)

Johnnie also presents this antithesis, on exposing emotional honesty, in a Buddhist context, but without comment. What’s your point Johnnie ?

McLuhan has Connections Taped

Mark Federman makes a connection between this Canadian political taping story and Watergate, following recent “Deep Throat” revelations. Interestingly the story has it’s own justification “Everybody … tapes all their conversations with politicians.”

And people are surprised ? Actually I can remember being shocked in a previous life when a colleague told me he taped every conversation with his manager.

How Quickly We Forget

The royal we that is. I blogged when I first spotted Skype that it came from the same guys that brought us Kazaa – P2P technology being fundamentally analogous to semantic networks, that I had been following and blogging about those technologies generally. I’d forgotten until I read this BBC story.

The Ant Man

Hofstadter’s metaphor for the brain / mind as a colony of ants makes only one reference to E O Wilson, as author of “The Insect Societies”. Been meaning to add E O Wilson to my reading list.

One quick google throws up this exchange, something I’ve alluded to many times about a number of physicists. Stephen Hawking recently said that the human race won’t last this millennium unless we start to colonize space. Do you agree ? E. O Wilson ” I admire Hawking but I think he’s completely wrong. All of the evidence shows that we can turn Earth into our permanent, safe home.” [via Salon] Interestingly, the photo of Wilson in this article has him with a large model of an ant, very like Escher’s Mobius Strip. Just noticed I was reading these Hofstadter passages whilst sat in the “Little Creatures” brewery in Freo.

Wow, didn’t realise Consilience was so recent (1998). “Insect Societies” pre-dates Hofstadter (obviously, he quotes it) but Wilson also published Pullitzer prize-winning “Ants” in 1991. The word “consilience” (meaning little more than convergence, of ideas across diverse domains) was apparently coined by William Whewell, in The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1840 [Wikipedia]. The word is listed in the 1913 Websters [OneLook]

The biologist (sickle-cell) S.J. Singer apparently said : “I link, therefore I am.” (Quoted from Consilience)

As a 1998 book, I can see why Consilience was a reactionary undertaking. For example Bjorn Lomborg is an interest of mine (not because I agree with him, I’ve not read him, you understand, but) because of the intense debate he caused, and the questions he raised about motives for doom & gloom arguments. E O Wilson’s review of Lomborg is wholly negative, and bemoans the scientific resources expended countering his suggestions. Interestingly in this article, neither Lomborg, nor his inspiration Julian Simon, is quoted as saying anything controversial, quite the opposite. “primary research on the environment, generally appears to be professionally competent and well balanced.” There is no question that, in the process of creating a political movement and seeking the scientific evidence to support it, environmentalists have sometimes made both factual and strategic errors — who hasn’t? But environmentalists are not devious puppeteers controlling the heartstrings of the hoi polloi and the purse strings of politicians. The skeptical environmentalist is jousting at windmills, whereas the people he denounces are fighting real battles. If the words of Lomborg’s nemesis-turned-idol Julian Simon come true — if “the material conditions of life continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time” — it will be with the help of, not in spite of, the environmental movement. [Kathryn Shulz in Grist]

The point for me … Lomborg’s error is in implying a “conspiracy theory” angle to erroneous (spurious, secondary) bandwagon-jumping motives on eco-arguments. No amount of objective scientific debate can sustain or refute that. Only something like common sense. A bit like the quote made against Dawkins – “the atheist who has done more than any other for the cause of religion”; scientists arguing objectively against Lomborg, and using mainstream media to do it, are digging their own graves, spreading the meme “with 3,000 footnotes.” (Me too, BTW)

Interestingly Dawkins mocks “the great convergence”. Interesting too that induction (the basis of the original Whewell definition of consilience, induction from two directions to the same conclusion) is much undermined anyway since Popper.

Schopenhauer

Said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” which reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s 3 stages of reaction to technological breakthroughs: (a) It’s completely impossible. (b) OK, it’s possible, but it’s practically useless. (c) Well, I said it was a good idea all along.

Anyway I’m browsing the BBC In Our Time / History of Ideas “Greatest Philsopsopher” debate / vote.

Hofstadter and Zen

I’m well through Godel, Escher, Bach.
(Started Hofstadter’s “GEB” here.)

Hofstadter is almost apologetic in his introduction about his apparent espousing of Zen philosophy, almost distancing himself from it to maintain credibility with serious scientific peers. It’s actually pretty clear in the book that he is not ultimately sympathetic to it anyway, but he does provide a good summary of where it fits as a world view, which for me suggests he does really “get it”.

His baffling “MU Offering” dialogue does not itself actually provide much enlightenment on the Zen koan and string folding stuff, but the following chapter “Mumon and Godel” is excellent.

“Zen is holism, carried to its logical extreme. If holism says that things can only be understood in wholes, not as sums of their parts, Zen goes one further in maintaining that the world cannot be broken into parts at all” [by the duality of the words we subjects use to name distinct objects within it.] “Zen, eg in its koans, is trying to break the mind of logic.”

Zen breaks this logical comfort zone, but doesn’t itself provide any real alternative. To study it is to miss the point of it. The “way” is unattainable, to name it is to lose it.

As well as drawing parallels in subject matter and ways of looking at reality between Zen and Escher, he also draws on frequent examples of Magritte and I notice also that “The Mind’s I” has Magritte’s “The False Mirror” on the cover. Magritte is a recurring theme.

[Post-note : If M hade been a note in post-Bach musical notation, as is E, my guess is Hofstadter could just as easily have named his book Godel, Magritte, Bach with no loss of meaning. Ultimately, he makes almost as much reference to the work of Magritte as he does Escher.]

It’s becoming apparent that GEB is mainly about languages, mathematical and typographical, the communication of information, and the properties of encoding on multiple levels, patterns within and upon patterns. ‘There is no such thing as an uncoded message. There are only messages written in more or less familiar codes; when familiar it ceases to appear like a code.” Reminded me very strongly of all language being metaphors, just that some metaphors are so long established they are dead, are no more, ceased to be, fallen off their perch, pushing up the daisies, gone to meet their maker. (Pythons, with apologies to Lakoff)

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[Post Note: Hofstadter takes his linguistic, syntactical, algorithmic ideas to the extreme in the creation of semantics here “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies“. Some things do get “created”. Recommended.]