It’s Turtles All the Way Down

September 27, 2009 at 10:01 pm (Read It, Think About It)
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Turtle Island

Turtle Island

I think I first saw the expression “Turtles all the way down,” when I read Carl Sagan’s Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. He recounted it as a conversation between a Western traveler and an Oriental philosopher.

I don’t have that book handy, but it is also told in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time which is on a nearby shelf (actually, I have both the illustrated edition, and the “in a nutshell” versions which I found easier to understand).

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever”, said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

If you search a bit online, you’ll also find it called “The Infinite Turtle Theory” and find that it has found its way into a good number of cultural works. I myself have pinned the saying to several web pages I have online.

Although Hawking relates the anecdote more to point out something about ridiculous theories that can’t be proven, others actually use it as a way to discuss an infinite regression belief about the origin and nature of the universe.

When I encountered it, I immediately thought of it as a variation on ancient beliefs that the world is borne through the universe on the back of an animal. In many Native American creation myths, it is a turtle that holds up the world called “Turtle Island.”

I also found that it might possibly be similar to some Indian classical texts, including the myth that the tortoise Chukwa supports the elephant Maha-pudma who holds up the world.

The reference to Bertrand Russell may be from a 1927 lecture he gave titled “Why I Am Not a Christian” during which he said:

“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.”

But you could go back to John Locke in 1690 (“An Essay Concerning Human Understanding“) where he refers to an Indian who said the world was on an elephant which was on a tortoise “but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied — something, he knew not what.”

A more modern allusion to it supposedly came from William James (father of American psychology) who supposedly had a conversation with an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle.
“But, my dear lady”, James asked, “what holds up the turtle?”
“Ah”, she said, “that’s easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle.”
“But would you be so good as to tell me what holds up the second turtle?”
“It’s no use, Professor”, said the lady, avoiding a logical trap. “It’s turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way!”

Ah yes,  we will never get to the bottom of some things.

Infinite regressions. What existed before the universe existed?  If God created the universe, what created God?

It’s turtles all the way down.

Hindu

Chukwa supporting the elephant Maha-pudma

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Philosophy 100

September 27, 2009 at 6:30 am (Read It, Think About It)
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Usually, the beginning course in college is coded as “101.” You take psychology 101 and English 101 and philosophy 101. Sometimes, courses considered below college level (remedial or basic skills, for example) are coded as 099 or 001, 004 etc.

I think many of us, whether we have ever attended college or not, have studied some Philosophy 100. It may not be college, but it’s hardly remedial. It is the philosophy we learn and develop each day in living.

Of course, you can get some college philosophy these days without attending an institution of “higher” learning or paying any tuition. I was reminded of that once again while watch that font of knowledge, the NBC Today show.

They had a distinguished Harvard philosophy professor earlier this month and gave him (as commercial TV commonly does) about 4 minutes to convince us that philosophy is still worth studying today.

That professor, Michael Sandel, is a popular Harvard professor. They estimate that 15,000 students have taken his courses over 30 years.  I suppose he was promoting his book “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” but I thought he did a nice job considering the short time allowed. (He actually gets cut off mid-sentence to go to commercial!)

There is a 30 minute video of him in action on the Harvard site in a lecture on Justice: A Journey into Moral Reasoning.

There is also a 45 minute BBC video of Sandel talking about the prospects of a new politics of the common good. He asks and attempts to answer questions like:  Should immigrants pay for citizenship? Should we pay schoolchildren for good test results, or even to read a book?  And he calls for a more robust public debate about such questions, as part of a “new citizenship.”

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Full Moons and New Moons

September 26, 2009 at 4:19 pm (Full Moons)
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I have been writing here about each of the full moons and what they mean in different cultures.  There must be an interest in the topic because they are consistently in the top posts for the site. In looking at my lunar calendar for the upcoming month, it occurred to me that there are probably some readers who don’t really know what the difference is between a full moon and a new moon.

We have a new moon coming up on October 18th.

newmoonTo astronomers, the phrase “new moon” means the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon, in its monthly orbital motion around Earth, lies between the Earth and the Sun. Therefore, it is said that it is “in conjunction” with the Sun as seen from Earth.

The dark (unilluminated) portion of the Moon faces almost directly towards us on  Earth, so the Moon is not visible to the naked eye.

If you search online, you may find photos that address the original meaning of the phrase new moon. That would be when first visible crescent of the Moon is seen.

That is a rather imprecise event because it takes place over the western horizon in a brief period between sunset and moonset. Therefore the exact time/date of this appearance would be based on your geographical location.

So, to be astronomical, this “dark moon” occurs when the Moon is invisible from the Earth. That moment when it is in conjunction does not depend on location.

Culturally, the first crescent marks the beginning of the month in lunar calendars such as the Muslim calendar, and in lunisolar calendars such as the Hebrew calendar, Hindu calendars, and Buddhist calendar. In the Chinese calendar, the beginning of the month is marked by the dark moon.

In the Hindu (Indian) calender, it is believed that new moons can create negative changes in the mental plane. The goddess Kali is worshiped on new moon night to relax these fluctuations.

Some Chinese Buddhists keep a vegetarian diet on the new moon and full moon each month.

The new moon signifies the start of every Jewish month, and is considered an important date and minor holiday in the Hebrew calendar.

The new moon is also an important event in the neopagan, nature-based religion, Wicca.  Each full moon, and in some cases a new moon, is marked with a ritual called an Esbat.

In astrology, the casting of an astrological chart or horoscope is actually a representation of celestial entities – the position of the Sun, Moon, and planets – at the moment of the event (such as a birth).

The proper English name for Earth’s natural satellite is, simply, the Moon (capitalized). Moon is a Germanic word, related to the Latin mensis (month).  In English, the word moon exclusively meant Earth’s moon until 1665. Then,  the word was extended to refer to the recently discovered natural satellites of other planets, which were given distinct names in order to avoid confusion.

Lunar_libration_phases_ani

lunar libration

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Autumnal Equinox

September 22, 2009 at 12:05 am (Read It)
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It’s fall – or it’s spring – depending on where you are when you read this today.

The Autumnal Equinox 2009 will occur today, September 22, at  21:18 UTC (17:18 EDT or 14:18 PDT).

To scientists, an equinox is either of two points on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect.

To most of us, it’s one of two times a year when the Sun crosses the equator, and the day and night are of approximately equal length. When the Sun passes this point, on about 23 September each year, nights begin to grow longer than days, and continue to do so until the Winter Solstice in December

During today’s autumnal equinox, the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator, from north to south. We mark this time as the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. On the other side of the globe, yesterday marked the start of spring with their vernal equinox.

During the next 3 months, the sun will continue to shift southward, bringing cooler weather to the Northern Hemisphere, and warmer weather to the Southern Hemisphere.

Is a solstice just another word for an equinox? No. The Summer and Winter Solstices mark when the Sun is farthest north or south and the length of time between Sunrise and Sunset is the shortest of the year while the equinoxes mark the equal points in between.

For more information more about why we have changing seasons, go to crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/season.php.

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My Perpetual Motion Machine

September 20, 2009 at 7:52 pm (About Paradelle, Do It, Think About It)
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radiometerwindow

I’ll bet you recognize the light-bulb looking object shown here on my windowsill, but I suspect you don’t know much about it.

The first one I remember seeing was not in a science class, but in the window of an doctor’s office that I passed many times as a kid. I was fascinated by the fact that it turned without any power source. Was it a perpetual motion device? No, because it required sunlight to move. Was it my introduction to solar power? Sort of, but not accurately.

I wanted one and I finally ordered from a science supply catalog. It has been spinning near all of my desks for about 40 years.

I had heard the term “perpetual motion” and was intrigued by the notion of movement that goes on forever. The idea of something that perpetually (indefinitely) produces more energy than it consumes fascinated me.

Somewhere along the way, I was exposed to the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and also, disappointingly, implies that such a perpetual motion machine cannot exist.

When I was about ten years old and deeply absorbed by my basement chemistry sets and “lab,” the idea of creating a “perpetual motion machine” took hold of me for a time. The idea of making something that broke a law of nature seemed like the biggest thing you could do. It was like being a Newton or an  Einstein. (I similarly remember that when my fifth grade teacher told us that every word in English had a vowel in it, I wanted very mucgh to find one that did not have a vowel.)

My quest for that machine that does not violate conservation of energy, but (like my radiometer) produces work by spontaneously extracting heat from its surroundings, thereby cooling them down, and converting the heat energy into mechanical work, never succeeded. It I had succeeded, you defininitely woould have heard about it.

It turns out that such machines are forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics.

My radiometer (AKA light-mill) was invented by the English physicist Sir William Crookes. It consists of a set of vanes reflective on one side and blackened on the other and mounted on a sensitively balanced spindle in a partially evacuated vessel. When exposed to light, the vanes rotate.

Why? As the blackened vanes become warmer and repel air molecules from the surface,  the slight difference in air pressure created causes the vanes to rotate.

The speed of rotation is affected by the pressure within the vessel. Higher pressure will increase drag and will be the dominant force affecting the vanes while at low pressure the molecular recoil will dominate. If the pressure is reduced too far there will be too few recoiling molecules to drive the vanes.

The type that bears Crookes name (mine is one of those) is an early-model radiant energy-detector. A variant type is the Nichols radiometer that operates on a different principle, and is more sensitive than the Crookes type.  As an eponym, radiometer usually means a Crookes radiometer.

I recommend that you go ahead and buy a radiometer and be inspired by its seemingly perpetual motion. It’s also another great science “toy” for parents to introduce their kids to science.

MORE
The Properties of the Force Exerted in a Radiometer

Crookes_radiometer

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Remembering Dog Days

September 19, 2009 at 11:45 am (About Paradelle, Think About It)
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I don’t own a dog right now. I always had one when I was a kid. But my wife was raised in a pet-free zone and developed a fear of most dogs, so we never had one, though my sons always asked about getting one.  She actually had a good relationship with the dog I had when we were dating. Romper was a cutie and very smart (okay, so everyone says that) and at first used to squeeze between us on the couch because she was jealous.

As much as I love them, I know that dogs and other pets really tie you down, so I was not heartbroken about being dog-less. I figure somewhere in my retirement years I will want a dog again.

What got me thinking about dogs was listening to a podcast from the How Stuff Works guys about whether or not dogs perceive time. (You can download them all free in iTunes.)

It’s actually not that clear about whether or not dogs have a sense of time. From what I heard and then read, it seems divided between the scientists (No) and dog owners (Yes). Of course, we might have to adjust our thinking about time from our human perceptions a bit.

Time is a human construction to allow us to order our lives and all our time-keeping devices have changed how modern man perceives time. Animals don’t seem to care that much about it.

Albert Einstein once explained the principle of relativity by saying, “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”  He’s right that we all perceive time a bit differently and as individuals view the human construct of Time differently in different situations.

Because we remember events in a particular order, that structures our perception of time. Even the non-psychic amongst us can predict the future – the sun will rise in the morning, a TV program will be on at 8 PM, in 48 hours I will be back at work. That means that we have a sense of continuity, personal history and self-awareness.

dogclockDo dogs and other animals have any of these same abilities?

Does it remember what it ate yesterday? Does it know when it will be time to eat again?

One of the researchers on animal cognition referenced in the podcast is William Roberts. He says that animals are “stuck in time” – meaning that without being able to form memories, animals only live in the present. In other words, they can’t go back to memories and can’t predict forward.

Those are theories that almost any dog owner wil refute.

Owners would point to things like any training they have given their dog. as proof of a memory bank.  Roberts would say No and point to the way young children are trained to do things.

By age four, kids have learned to crawl, walk etc. but can’t recall where or how they learned them.

So, then you have to get into types of memory.  The four year old doesn’t have episodic memory (the ability to remember particular events in the past).

Just because my Romper knew what “stay” meant, it doesn’t mean she had a memory of when she learned that command.

They also point to some research with pigeons. (Right away, I have a problem with the leap from pigeon to dog, but…) Pigeons have an “internal clock” that allows them to learn when and where food would be available and dogs might use circadian oscillators to do the same. Those are those daily fluctuations of hormones, body temperature and neural activity that we also have. The pooch might use those to “predict” when it’s time to be fed or when the kids are coming home from school.

So, they don’t really “remember” the “time” of those events, but it’s a biological state at a particular time of day that they are reacting to as a stimulus.

The researchers have tried to test animals’ “working memories” (those are the short-term memories) and their “reference memories” (long-term) to see how well the animals recall sequences of events. They found that pigeons and primates (where are the doggies?) did fairly well at these tasks, but their memory faded fast. They concluded that that they were probably learning going from weakest memory to strongest memory, rather than actually “learning” or “remembering” a sequence.

Other researchers found that pigeons and monkeys performed well at reference memory tests in which they needed to remember a sequence after a delay between learning and testing [sources: Straub, D'Amato]. But, it took extensive training for the animals to learn these sequences, suggesting to Roberts that the ability did not come naturally to them. From these tests, it seems that animals would perceive time differently from humans, who have a relatively reliable and sophisticated memory of sequence of events.

While we might pack things for a trip, including dog food and bowls,  your dog will not be concerned.

Let me pause here to say that I find this Zen-like “living in the moment” world of dogs rather appealing.

How about Mr. Squirrel caching away food for winter? Isn’t that his 401K plan?  The researchers say they do it simply do it out of instinct. When your dog buries that bone or toy, is she saving it for the future or just having fun digging holes?

Feel free to post your dog tales as comments below – I’m sure all you dog (and cat and parrot and…) owners have evidence to contradict the research.

I won’t even get into the theory that goldfish have only an 8second memory storage.

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The Dancer Gene

September 13, 2009 at 8:23 pm (Think About It)
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dancers

Research published in the September 2005 issue of Public Library of Science Genetics suggested that genetics may in part explain why some people are more interested in dance than others.

Okay, maybe you’re not very concerned about dance. I’m no dancer. can’t do it. But I have been known to do some dancer photos and paintings in my life, and I certainly appreciate that they have – something that I don’t have in me.

What interests me about the story is that there actually might be a gene for dance – and therefore, a gene for poetry, painting etc.

So, the researchers studied performing dancers, dance students, competitive athletes, and some people who were not dancers or athletes. The dancers were more likely to have variants of one gene that in animal studiesseems to influence social communication and bonding. They also are more likely to have a gene that regulates the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has been linked to the experience of spirituality.

Are  dancers more spiritual and with a greater need for social contact? I would agree with that. But it’s also true of people in religious service. Do those genes make them want to dance or make them better dancers? That I don’t see.

What do you think? Are these things in our genes?

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Harmony, Balance and Food

September 13, 2009 at 3:03 am (Consume It, Do It, Read It, Think About It)
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Mandala arrangement via washokufood.blogspot.com

Mandala arrangement via washokufood.blogspot.com

Japanese-style meals are called washoku. The kanji (the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system) for washoku are:

和食

which mean literally “harmony” and “food.”

Harmony seems to be a key principle in traditional Japanese cooking – and that seems to be something quite foreign to American cooking. If my readings are correct, in Japan, food is less viewed as something eaten to energize and run the body and it is more likely to be viewed as an experience.

Washoku is about harmony and balance both in nutrition and aesthetics. I suppose it is a kind of food philosophy of  balancing colors, flavors, cooking methods, and the five senses.

Five also seems to be significant. (I am no expert on this – so correct me if necessary.) For example, go shiki (five colors) is a principle that says the meal should have a variety of colors: red, green, yellow, black, and white. It makes me think of more recent “research” that shows positive effects in adding more colors (of vegetables) to your diet. Good nutrition and visually appealing. The latter is, I suppose, the “presentation”part that adds ten dollars to your entree in a fancy restaurant.

The principle of go kan (five senses) would encourage the cook to think beyond taste and nutrition to the touch, sound, smell, sight of the meal.

“We are nourished by the presentation as we nourished by the food,” says John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life.  I met Loori at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York’s Catskill Mountains when I was on retreats there. (How I was rejected by the Zen students because of my snoring is a good story for another day.)

More principles of washoku include go mi (five tastes) to balance flavors, go ho (five ways) to encourage a variety of cooking methods, and go kan mon (five outlooks), to guide you in your respect and appreciation of the meal and in the way it is eaten.

Though I have over my adult life approached Buddhist teachings through retreats, classes and home practice, I never went as far as full-time Zen monastic training. I never made it through the Eight Gates of Zen which is a kind of Western version of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path.

One thing I have held onto is zazen, formal seated meditation. Za means “sitting”  and zen (from the Sanskrit “dhyana”) means meditation.  Explained simply, it is the practice of concentration with a focus on your breath.

When I first tried it, my wife asked what I was supposed to try to accomplish. I said, “The object is to sit and empty your mind of everything.” “You should be great at it,” she replied.

But it’s not that easy.

Washoku I think what interested me recently about washoku is that the principles work quite well with my non-food life too.

Making careful decisions about what to include and what to exclude. Paying attention to the season and occasion. Balancing amounts (portions) of things – measured restraint and balance.

And wouldn’t it be nice if everything was also arranged visually to be balanced and harmonious?

Balance, harmony, restraint, simplicity, naturalness.

And now a nice cup of cherry blossom tea…

What is the true path to culinary enlightenment? This video segment,  “Zen and the Art of Cooking,” looks at how some chefs achieve inner harmony from cooking – including the author of Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, Elizabeth Andoh – and how they find their Zen through their relationship with food.

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Armchair Adventuring

September 12, 2009 at 6:00 pm (Do It, Think About It)
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Summer is over. School is back in session. The time is over for adventures, right?

Himalayas

Himalayas

Of course not – people are headed for the Amazon and the Himalayas, and are hiking the Dolomite’s, kayaking, rafting, mountaineering, diving off a tropical island and climbing a glacier.

I’m not doing any of those things in the next few months.

My only shot at those adventures right now is vicariously. Some of those will probably be inspired by the recent arrival in my mailbox of the 2010 NOLS catalog. That’s the National Outdoor Leadership School founded in 1965 by mountaineer Paul Petzold.

Maybe even better for us armchair adventurers are their virtual catalog and online videos. Ah yes, backpacking through the Brooks Range north of the Arctic Circle. Warming up with some sea kayaking in sunny Baja, Mexico.

Of course, NOLS wants me to take a course, not just look at the photos. I would love to go to North America’s highest peak, Denali, or to the Southeast Alaska archipelago.

Alas, my own adventures will be closer to home. Not so far from Paradelle. But there are woods and rivers here, and the ocean is not so far away. And there are books and a fireplace and a hot drink quite nearby.

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Semi-otics

September 7, 2009 at 12:16 am (Read It, Think About It)
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I was an English major as an undergrad and with all those literature courses, I can’t help but see symbols all over the place. So, it’s not a surprise that I have been paying attention to Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol.

I freely admit that I read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and I watched both movies and I will do the same for this new book. I am a sucker for the symbols, the conspiracies and the unraveling of it all. I’m not about to get into a discussion on Dan Brown’s books as literature. They are correctly located in the Fiction section of the bookstore and I’m sure Dan Brown is happy with that label.

And the Internet is a great place for conspiracies, symbols and all that goes with them.  The Lost Symbol website is full of mysteries for potential readers.

I looked at the opposing view websites too when I was reading the books.  thetruthaboutdavinci.com was a site I found in a booklet that was handed to me by a Bible-holding man outside a bookstore when The DaVinci Code came out.

The new book’s story supposedly covers 12 hours following Robert Langdon (who wasn’t Tom Hanks when I read the book, but is now). Compression of time means a face pace.

I read that the opening line of the book is “The secret is how to die.”  Of course, the books are being hidden like a Harry Potter new release. The book website tis counting down to the September 15th date.

So what’s up with the wax seal on the cover, the  hieroglyphics, oddball doorknob leading to who knows, the Washington Monument, the Solomon Key?

I joined a Facebook group for the book, but it kept me sending me puzzles to solve. ( Is the “Lost Symbol” the Constellation of Orion?  What is this ciphered pictogram?)

My view of D.C. from the top of the George Washington Masonic Temple.

My view of D.C. from the top of the George Washington Masonic Temple.

Dan Brown says his novel is based on five years of research and is set “deep within the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons and will explore the hidden history of our nation’s capital.”

On a trip to D.C. this year I did visit the George Washington Masonic Memorial and learn that George Washington was a member of the Freemasons (along with a good number of the other funding father types).

Lots of secret society stuff going on there. It’s  not bricks and mortar, though Freemasonry traces its origins to the stonemasons’ guild. Freemasonry employs the tools and instruments of stonemasonry to teach a system of morality, friendship and brotherly love. The standard emblem of Freemasonry is the square and compasses.

Very interesting tour. Got my picture taken with a Knights of the Templar banner.

But George?

Washington was initiated, in 1752, into the Masonic Lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia. General Lafayette and General Washington shared not only a close friendship but membership in the Craft, a commonly used name for Freemasonry.

All the conspiracy stuff is online, of course.

Although Washington’s correspondence with the Masonic Lodges is replete with Masonic references to the Great Architect of the Universe, his response to a Christian clergyman conspicuously avoids mention of Jesus Christ or acknowledgment of personal Christian faith.  Washington also defended American Freemasonry and denied that American Masonic societies were connected to English Freemasonry or contaminated with the subversive principles of the Illuminati.
- http://watch.pair.com/GW.html

Still, I know that Freemasonry isn’t semiotics. I came upon semiotics when I was reading The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco back in 1983 and went digging for some information about the author. Semiotic studies (semiology) is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.

Umberto Eco’s own website actually has an article “About God and Dan Brown.”   I guess Eco is paying attention to the clues too (though he doesn’t give the book a good review).

There was speculation about the book’s content years before this when a publisher’s representative let “slip” that Brown’s new novel would be The Solomon Key.

The book may turn out to be a text version of one of the National Treasure movies (Yeah, I watched them too – and enjoyed the ride.)  It’s probably “semi-otics” rather than full-blown semiotics, but I’m going to stop writing now and go back to reading The Secrets of Masonic Washington: A Guidebook to Signs, Symbols, and Ceremonies at the Origin of America’s Capital so that I am prepared for The Lost Symbol – and for my next trip to Washington, D.C.

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