Modern science is in danger of fragmentation and of becoming a study of artificial abstractions which become increasingly severed from reality.
As translated from Maurice Merleau-Ponty in L’Œil et l’Esprit
“Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always will be that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general – as though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our own use.”
Introducing the Goethean method brings back the connection between the investigator and the subject under investigation.
This review by Bo Dahlin investigates science education in relation to a phenomenological approach.
An example of the two approaches to investigation can be seen in the contrast between Newton and Goethe in their methods of studying colour. There has been much debate about the rights and wrongs of these approaches with sides being taken. Would it not be more fruitful to look at both, not as competing theories but as two different ways of looking at the phenomena. Newton is trying to exclude the investigator from the processes while Goethe is trying to understand how things stand in relation to the investigator. They are not investigating the same thing. Goethe was studying colour while Newton was studying optics.
With the advances in knowledge brought about by modern science we can now apply the Goethean participatory method to the world around us with added wonder. By including the pole of Goethean science, modern science is rescued from its one-sidedness and we get science which is unified in its polarity.
Why not? What is the function of physical brain activity?
You’ll have to forgive me, but I haven’t found time to watch two and a half hours of video yet. Is there perhaps one that you feel is most informative?
Ah, and you nearly had me convinced that sense perception required physical activity. I guess that is optional, then.
The description is not the thing. Regardless of how we choose to describe light or photons, they do exist. You are having classical map-territory confusion here.
That particles at the quantum level are not acting like macroscopic objects does not turn them into “mathematical descriptions”.
I didn’t quite follow him. There was something about how specializing into a field threatened democracy and how learning about “spiritual energies” would remedy this.
A consciousness of self relies on there being something we can distinguish from self. Without this it would be like one hand clapping. Our senses provide us with this awareness of this “not-self”. Consider the ear, it is designed to be the focal point for receiving external vibrations, which produce brain activity which allows us to hear and remember external sounds. The three bones of the ear are equivalent to the limbs with their sense of touch. The malleus feels the vibrations through the eardrum through touch. The whole is reflected in the parts.
Although sound is focused through the ear, people can feel sound using their whole body as the sense organ. Rose Ayling-Ellis feels the vibrations through her body as she dances on UK TV currently. And Dame Evelyn Glennie who is profoundly deaf, has this to say
This is implied by what you said. That very low levels of brain activity can result in very vivid experiences. Some of the experiences the patients relate concern events which happened in locations which were remote from where they were at the time. And some to do with events that occurred minutes and even hours after the patients were pronounced brain dead.
Do you consider the breaking down of brain cells such as neurons brain activity?
So “pure thinking” cannot work directly with vibrations but has to receive that information as electrochemical activity in the brain? Why is thinking limited like that?
Contradiction alert! So we can perceive stuff like vision and sound without brain activity? Then why use brain activity at all? And what causes it to be “not so reliant”.
Are you sure you are not making stuff up as you go again? Do you have citations for these claims?
Visible light is electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic force is carried by photons.
Look, no math!
The fact that most people are wrong about photons doesn’t turn photons into “mathematical expressions” either.
Thinking is not limited to pure thinking. There are levels of thinking. You can think about a piece of music you like and your thinking will be heavily influenced by feeling. It may inspire you to sing or dance in which case your thinking is heavily influenced by will. You may think about the physical processes that allow you to hear the music and so this thinking might be more detached than the previous thinking. People can train themselves in an attempt to think in a way that gives them complete control of their feelings and will. That would be pure thinking. This is an aspiration for some people, something to be aimed at even if is never achieved.
We can only experience the sights and sounds of the world through our senses and brain activity. We are developing beings. We have bodies, but they are developing bodies. The first part of our lives concerns the growth and development of the body and mind. After the body has matured it begins to decline while the mind continues to develop. Without this bodily preparation we would not be able to continue developing mentally into rationally thinking self-conscious beings.
I take full responsibility for any statements and claims I make.
There is no such thing as visible light. What we see is the effect of light interacting with matter. In order to see the effects of light it must first be attenuated.
You have described a photon in terms of its wave-like properties, but this misses out its particle-like properties.
I ask you what a photon is, being fairly certain that you don’t really know. Even Richard Feynman says that he doesn’t know what a photon is. All he could do was to describe it in mathematical terms. It was the same with Newton and gravity. He did not claim to know what gravity is. The only thing he claimed to be able to do was to describe it in mathematical terms.
When I said a photon is a mathematical expression this is what I was getting at. The only thing that can be ascertained about it is given in mathematical terms.
It’s not that most people are wrong about photons, it’s the fact that nobody understands what they are. Even Richard Feynman claimed he did not understand them.
I’d like to thank you Corneel, for bearing with me here. I appreciate the effort you are putting in.
My pleasure. Will look at your comments when I have a bit more time.
Why? You claim some people have interacted with the deceased and gotten a experience similar to interacting in life without any senses or brain activity. Then why is the self only capable of perceiving the physical world filtered through electrochemical brain activity? This is a strange limitation.
Would you argue that Rudolf Steiner is just a bunch of words, since you have to use words to describe him to me? Is there no difference between a description and the thing it describes?
The fact that Richard Feynman did not understand what photons are doesn’t turn photons into “mathematical expressions” either.
I’m not making claims for other people. I have merely pointed out the claims that they themselves make.
I don’t see why it is strange to think of the brain as a filter rather than a transmitter of information. I would describe it as a transceiver/filter. Most of our sense experiences are filtered out from our consciousness otherwise we would be overwhelmed by it all. The demonstration of the person in a gorilla suit walking over the basketball court is a classic example of this.
We all know the Necker cube. I don’t see that as an optical illusion, I see it as an optical limitation. We are limited to seeing it as either a two dimensional image or a cube in two different orientations. But we have access to a higher form of seeing, that is seeing as in understanding. I understand that it is a flat image and the addition of a third dimension is a product of my mind which I have added to the reality.
Now in my opinion we are in the midst of a higher reality that is also filtered out. On death the life “body” which is normally maintaining the life of the body, becomes loosened from the physical body which now no longer acts as a filter. This can lead to the person (ego) experiencing what some relate as a panoramic life review. This is not time dependent as watching a movie would be, it is perceived as a unified whole. Death is not an event but a process.
People who have experienced the beginnings of the death process and return to tell the tale often say that they cannot put into words what they have experienced. They can only describe it in terms of images that those around them can understand, but this does not do it justice.
I did not know Steiner in person so all I have is words. But if we think about the various ways of knowing a person we can make comparisons. Say you have read the autobiography of a famous woman and others agree that it is an accurate account of her life. An outfitter who has no idea who she is has been tasked with making an outfit for her. She takes all her measurements, decides on designs and colours which suit her build, complexion, hair and eye colour. Who knows her best? Is it you who has only words to go by, or is it the outfitter who has met her in person and measured her up, but has been told nothing about her?
I know Steiner through his words and stories about him that have been captured in print. I know there was a person behind the words and I also know there is light behind the description of a photon.
I regard photons as quantities of light and I regard light as fundamental. As Goethe put it, “colours are the deeds of light, its deeds and sufferings. Matter does not break light apart into separate colours, it merely blocks its path by various degrees. And this blocking we experience as colours.
So what are photons then? They are quantified light, no more no less.
Rolf Sattler is an interesting person who is a great admirer of Goethe, but has been critical of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy. Jeffrey Mishlove has interviewed him a few times and these interviews might be considered a competition to see who can smile the most. 🙂 🙂 (The emojis are a poor representation of the reality, 😉 )
He highlights the limits of language and warns against the habit of giving people labels. He empathizes with Sorin Kierkegaard who said, “When you label me you negate me”. I think we should remember that thought when we interact with each other here. This medium gives us an extremely narrow picture of the people we share our discussions with.
Here is one of the interviews. Below is a copy of the structural differential diagrams on the wall behind him. It represents the difference between reality and our interpretation of reality. The diagram on the right is a bit more clear, in which reality is represented at the top, then below it our perception of reality, next comes our description of what we perceive and finally inferences from those descriptions. Words can never capture the experience a person has.
So let me get this straight: the reason why the self needs to learn about the physical world through brain activity, instead of just accessing visual or auditory stimuli directly, is because otherwise it is unable to focus its attention?
That will make the afterlife very interesting, I imagine: all those souls suffering from ADHD.
This person does not exist, Charlie. She really is only a description. Photons have real world counterparts.
No, they are not “quantified light”. You are still ignoring the significance of the fact that the energy from electromagnetic radiation is quantized. If photons were just measuring units I could use fractions, but there is no such thing as “half a photon”.
If we were so organized as to have full knowledge along with perception then this would be a given for which we could take no credit. The fact that we need to work things out for ourselves through our own efforts allows us the opportunity to act freely. It is a matter of either being knowing automata or forging our own path towards freedom.
Being allowed freedom entails that I feel as though I am cast into a void which only I can traverse. It does not surprise me that people like Brian Greene might think that we are alone in a lifeless universe.
ADHD is a condition which applies to the time and space of earthly life. We cannot say that it applies to any higher realms. Many people who relate experiences of NDEs talk about a feeling of calm serenity with a subsequent loss of any fear of death. As in this discussion between Jeffrey Mishlove, Karen Newell, Eben Alexander, and Kenneth Pelletier.
Does Joan Collinsexist, or is she just a stream of “fundamental particles”?
If photons are indivisible why do single photon experiments still produce interference patterns? Waveforms are continuously variable down to zero amplitude. You imagine photons to be particulate whilst ignoring their wave-like aspect.
Well, a photon can interfere with itself. The paper you cite is NOT a single photon experiment, by the way:
Do you understand that a single photon does NOT produce an interference pattern? Large numbers of single photons do, however, iff which-path information is absent.
You’re wrong about “continuously variable down to zero amplitude” too. Seriously, learn some physics. “Quantified” is not synonymous with “quantized” ffs.
Photons create interference patterns because they have wave-like properties. That is part of the dual nature of light. This is actually explained in the document you linked to.
I fail to understand how this bizarre denialism supports your position that darkness and light are polar opposites. There is no such thing as a “darkness source”, you cannot produce a beam of darkness and there are no “skotons”. Darkness is the absence of light. Period. Goethe was undoubtedly a smart guy, but his ideas about darkness and light were wrong.
Ignorance is bliss.
Attention deficit does not apply to “higher realms”. Calm serenity does. Got it!
Now, I admire your creativity in coming up with ad hoc rationalizations for brain activity. Still, I remain unconvinced that it merely serves as a noise filter to focus our attention. After all, how does electrochemical activity know what is of interest and what not?
Yes to both, I suppose. But without the “just”; nothing wrong with consisting of fundamental particles. Some of my best friends are made of fundamental particles. Come to think of it … all of them are.
My turn: Does Joan Collins exist or does she remain a description in words and images until you meet her in person and made her an outfit? If the former, why did you make such a fuss about photons being described using math? Are words better than math?
It doesn’t really matter if this article entitled, “Single Photon Interference”, does not actually demonstrate single photon interference so long as you agree that a photon can be demonstrated to interfere with itself. In other words it behaves as a wave in that situation.
Yes, a single instance is insufficient to reveal the pattern. The interference pattern is produced because each photon travels through both slits in a wave-like manner even when the act of observation gives it particle-like qualities.
In it’s configuration as a wave what is stopping light from being reduced in intensity all the way down to zero? Are you saying that its particle-like nature is somehow more primal than its wavelike nature? “Quantified” may not be synonymous with “quantized” but quanta do need to be quantified if they are to be used in calculations. I’d like to get some more details about this if I were ever to make a conclusive claims. I have many questions that I would like to get answered.
For example, Planck’s constant is related to wavelength, but how does it relate to amplitude? If a beam splitting crystal can convert a single photon into two photons with the same cumulative energy as the single photon is it theoretically possible for each of the two resulting photons be split in the same way?
Photons are not all equal in terms of energy.
Arthur Zajonc:
The clockwork Newtonian universe in which everything acted in the comfortable, reliable consistency of time and space has been dissolved by the findings of modern physics. One second and four billion years, one meter and a billion light years, may seem vastly different in relation to us human observers, but apart from this relativity to us, what is the actual difference?
I’ve talked about this before. The source of light can be measured because of its radiant quality. The sun is a source of light and we can measure its position in relation to other cosmic objects. Darkness has an enclosing, enveloping quality coming from all directions like an infinite sphere. There is no single point of measurement. Light and darkness, “photon” and “skoton”, are related as point and plane are related. If we could imagine something like a “skoton” it would not be a point source, it would be planar, impervious to Cartesian coordinates.
But knowing my own ignorance is not so pleasant.
If only it were that simple.
Electrochemical activity does not know anything, it is a physical process. You admire my creativity, not the creativity of brain activity in my head.
The brain does not focus our attention, we do. We filter out detail both consciously and unconsciously. If I get a glimpse of a scene which upsets me I can shut me eyes or look away. I consciously filter out the unpleasant scene. Of maybe the ticking of the clock in my room has been excluded from my awareness of it, but I can bring it back into my consciousness by thinking about it.
But fundamental particles come and go. These were not the same fundamental particles they were born with. Are you sure they are still the same friends? 🙂
I can know Joan Collins through her biography in a way that I do not get from any knowledge I could gain from any individual cells of her body. In the same way I can know light through what Goethe called its “deeds”, the colours and effects it produces. All that I can really know of photons is their mathematical relationships.
Then again we are left with the question why the self needs to learn about the physical world through brain activity, instead of just accessing visual or auditory stimuli directly. Back to square one.
Ah yes, the ship of Theseus. Well, no. The selves of my friends have all changed since we were children. How about you? Do you still have the same self you were born with?
No, that is not “all you can really know”. You just refuse to deal with the fact that the existence of photons helps explain a number of physical phenomena that require light to have particle-like properties, most famously the photoelectric effect.
Is there any way to empirically verify any of those “enveloping planar” properties of darkness or are these conveniently inaccessible to closer scrutiny again, like archetypes and souls?
It’s a question of freedom. With our earth bound intellect at this stage in our development we experience the world with what Owen Barfield referred to as “onlooker consciousness”. As self-conscious beings, perceiving the world through our senses gives us the impression that we are somehow inside our heads looking out on a separate external world. As Barfield put it, we are outside the world unity. The evolution of human consciousness has taken us from “original participation” to our present “onlooker consciousness” and we can gain for ourselves individually a further stage of consciousnes which he termed, “final participation”.
Barfield:
It is through this feeling of separation that our present sense bound consciousness gives us that we can attain freedom. If we were to bypass this process and apprehend reality directly, then we would not be doing so as free self-conscious beings.
In essence, yes. My consciousness level drops away every night when I go to sleep, but when I regain it in the morning I know it is me who has woken up. I can look back on my first memories and remember my activities as a very young child. My body may have changed and many of my habits have changed but I can still recognise myself throughout this biographical memory. It took me a year or two to “wake up” after I was born, but since then I can take responsibility for my memories.
I’m not sure how you can be a spokesperson for the selves of your friends. In this regard your view is at the very least a superficial opinion.
I know that light has various effects on matter. But when you speak to me about particles i can think about dust particles in a sunlit room and stuff like that, but photons thought of as particles have properties that I don’t see dust particles having. So what do we mean by particle? Do we witness dust particles interfering with themselves?
Well we could get into Olbers’ paradox and the expansion of space but I dread to think where that discussion would lead. If space is expanding that implies it is expanding into something. If the stars and other light sources are not what is doing the expanding then what is? Is it the darkness enveloping these objects that is expanding? Or is it that matter is moving out into the darkness was there prior to the light sources radiating towards its surrounding periphery? Can there be such a thing as space without the darkness surrounding the light?
Also the fact that there is a complementary spectrum to the Newtonian spectrum tells as the the colours we see is dependent on both light and darkness which are both invisible to our sight.
True freedom means being locked in? I swear, sometimes your comments read like something straight out of “1984”.
Well, at least someone who thinks he is you.
Yes, our behaviour changes as we age, which fits the idea that thoughts are physical processes associated with the brain. Our mind ages as our body ages.
When you speak to me about waves, I can think about waves in the sea. But light has properties that sea waves do not have. So what do you mean by waves? Do we witness light gently bobbing up and down? It’s nothing to do with icky mathy concepts like interference, I hope?
You are wielding a double standard, Charlie. Light having particle-like properties does not mean photons are tiny marbles.
Dude, do you know what space is?
I don’t see why not. So, how do we test those questions?
Uh, no. It tells us that you can make other colours by mixing primary colours.
Obviously not. But there is a path towards freedom. You cannot become a responsible adult without passing through a childhood in which you have little say in how you live your life. Freedom is not handed to us on a plate.
Who would that person be if not me?
Of course my behaviour changes as I age. That is called learning from experience. But I still see it as my behaviour. Do you think that your mind has deteriorated between the first year of your life and the present? Your mind can still advance as your body deteriorates.
Do you remember when you were losing your baby teeth? You knew that this was happening to you and you can say, “I was losing my baby teeth”. It is this experience of selfhood that is a constant in your life. Only an “I” can experience itself in this way.
Of course it has to do with interference. It is the pattern of bands seen when photons are sent to a screen via a beam splitter.
So what does it mean to be a particle, and why would this be favoured over wave-like properties?
Does anyone? We are beginning to find out that there is more to it than once thought.
Well physicists have theorized about quantum fields in which even the vacuum of space is considered to have zero point energy. And if peripheral forces cannot be given Cartesian coordinates then they cannot be mathematically manipulated in the same way that physical forces can. For physical measurements we go from precision to probability, from precise values to imprecision.
All colours are produced by the interaction of light and darkness. The nearest we can come to seeing light and darkness is through the perception of white and black. But these two sets of polar opposites are not the same. Only the latter pair are visible.
So brain activity makes sure that we deserve our freedom when we attain “final participation”?
Just returning your joke about my fundamental particle friends not being the same as when I got to know them.
You are not acting like a baby or a child just because you learned stuff. Children really have different behaviours, preferences and personalities. You are not the same self as you were when you were a child. That is because your brain has physically changed.
LOL. Is that it? That proves light is a wave? Very well, in the linked video you can see the impact of single photons building up the interference pattern. No math whatsoever. Mathematical expressions do not usually make an impact, agree?
Who says I prefer one over the other? I have no problem with wave-particle duality.
All those things you need in your explanations seem to be really hard to detect, don’t they?
No, our thoughts and actions determine how free we are. Brain activity is an integral aspect of my body as is heart activity and skeletal muscle activity. But unlike the heart and muscles brain activity does not involve gross movement. A baby expends a great deal of effort in learning to control the will, a very old person expends much more energy in thinking than in physical exercise. If they are lucky they might consider themselves to have had a good fulfilled life and they might feel at one with the world. Their life would be a microcosm of the path from original participation, through onlooker consciousness and then on to having an inkling of final participation.
It is not the fundamental particles that change, it is our understanding of them that changes. They have properties that go beyond the physical objects we experience around us.
You are speculating as to what it means to be “a self” while ignoring your own experience of selfhood which has been with you from the time you began to accumulate memories.
Yes I agree. What we are seeing on the screen is the effects of pulses of light at the lowest level to which we can manipulate it. But just because we are incapable of splitting it any further is our problem not its problem.
Okay. It’s just that there is a built in bias in that they are called “fundamental particles”.
Hard to perceive with the senses but they can be grasped by the mind. We do not detect fundamental “particles” we detect their effects.
Trying again: What is the function of physical brain activity? If you have already explained that, then I have missed it.
Tip: “I don’t know” is actually an option.
Sure and I recall having had a body all of the time. Unless I am gravely mistaken, it was the same body. Of course, my body has changed since childhood, but so did my mind: I haven’t played with legos for years. My body is me. Always has been.
Did you notice we have come full circle?
Why would we be incapable of splitting it any further if light does not consist of quanta? Are there lumps in the substance? Do we need to stir light a little before sending it through the slits? Don’t you think that it is time to admit that the existence of photons has some support beyond “mathematical expressions”?
Sorry, but my mind graps no point-wise or peripheral forces and I fail to see any explanatory merit in them.