Subject: RE: Slipslide & Backside with Crispin
From: david wiles (rprtcard@aug.com)
Date: Tue 09 May 2000 - 15:02:13 MEST
From: "david wiles" <rprtcard@aug.com> Subject: RE: Slipslide & Backside with Crispin Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 09:02:13 -0400
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Ah, Crispin Weston, what we have here is a failure to communicate.....as you
found my tongue-in-cheek reference to Madonna as a mid point in your
doctor-engineer distinction of heal-build function and 'material world' I
know you are going to also miss any reference to cool hand luke.
you wrote-
I did not define the material world to be what doctors do then they heal
etc., I said that these were *examples* (not definitions) of the
*manipulation* of the material world.
As this 'anglo-american' exchange is in view of an international ifets
audience we both stand to lose global credibility for the use of English in
peculiar cultural contexts... but I must slog forward one more round. Your
inability to distinguish my points is as scary to me as if I received a
loveletter worm from your address book. The paranoid would say you sent it
deliberately full of malice, the pragmatist would know its a complex
interactive world and we're all bozos on this particular trolley together.
Do you want to go one more round in diferentiating your *examples* from your
*illustrations* or descriptions from definitions as *sample* or *case?*
Manipulation indeed!
you wrote-
I was (I think quite clearly) making a point about truth, not a point about
'contour versus straight row' farming methods.
Truth about manipulating materials....I say again, the truth of farming is
producing yields...two methods of farming might be considered manipulating
and I would use the word *options* to try and talk about comaprative
advantage and so forth. Still no light?
It may be unfair but I am going to make this response by also including some
of your responses to other ifets members. Worrying about Madonna or farming
in upstate New York is nothing to your truthful thoughts on apples falling
from trees or, even farther out, the wonders of calculating the voyager
fly-by of distant planets.
---------------------------
First illustration of truth in material world(s):
Ania wrote<<<If you do believe that *you* can tell
then you also must admit that had it not been for your point of view, the
apple might have not been even discussed not even the sense of direction
that you apply in your observation.>>>
you responded-
But I was referring to the story of Sir Isaaac Newton and the apple. Clearly
the descent of apples has been discussed widely without my presence or
observation. I can't even for the life of me remember ever having seen an
apple fall off a tree, personally.
The falling apple is an image - almost an icon - which is associated with
gravity in the minds of most Europeans (certainly most Englishmen!) As such
I accept it is very superficial. We are all free to choose whatever images
suit us (no doubt an inhabitant of the Solomon Islands would prefer to think
of a falling coconut).
Knowledge of the apple story does not in any way show
understanding of the principles of gravity - in fact, abstract understanding
seems to me to be almost inevitably image-free. This was a point that
Descartes made very forcefully: he suggested that these visual images
actually got in the way of true understanding.
So I accept that we can *discuss* gravity from any perspective we like, in
any language, using any images. But can we reach completely different
*understandings* of gravity depending on our cultural or personal
preferences?
This is getting to be quite a sticky wicket> *material* to "concrete* is
the same or different from *image* to *icon?* Do we remember Kenneth
Boulding's The Image? Suzanne Langer's Philosophy in a New Key?
Descartes visual got in the way of true understanding?...."semblence" for
sure. And
I do believe the clarification of Crispin's *material* world *truth* is
considerably enhanced with the following description of gravity and space
exploration....A second Illustration of "images" conjoured up to think about
the material world from an 'englishman's' perspective:
Crispin wrote......
When they got to Uranus - because of the distance over which
they had to communicate, the speed of the space ship and the low light
levels in the outer solar system (which required long exposures), they had
to switch on the cameras at exactly the right moment, to an accuracy of a
couple of seconds: and they did it right. It seems to me that the ability to
pull this trick off must have required some extremely precise calculations
which used an extremely accurate model of gravity. I say 'extremely accurate
model of gravity', not 'completely correct model of gravity': one can never
rule out inaccuracies, but surely the inaccuracies in our understanding of
the effects of gravity must be infititessimally small.
So my question is this: when you say that 'in another perspective gravity
might be discussed completely differently', do you think that these
different models of gravity you suggest would have enabled the NASA
technicians to pull off this feat of prediction and manipulation?
Can you
suggest any other feats of prediction and manipulation to which the model of
gravity currently used by these technicians is inadequate, and to which one
of these alternative models of gravity would prove superior?
Well, at the risk of showing that gulf between Madonna's song or Paul
Newman as a convict in a movie let me give two additional pieces of
information about the voyager and other space programs that might shed light
on ...do you think that these
different models of gravity you suggest would have enabled the NASA
technicians to pull off this feat of prediction and manipulation?
Crispin's argument forgot the 'dementia' phase of the Voyager travel...that
phase in the extended journey when there was no contact, that phase in the
journey when there was only garbled or, frankly, crazy technical responses
from our little orb in the big sky. The big slingshots of interplanetary
travel still worked according to the truths of gravity pulls but the
feedback to document the phenomenon went haywire...the miracle of the uranus
pictures was that the program 'righted itself' or -back to the engineer
versus doctor analogy- made itself 'well/healthy' enough to accomplish the
mission you marvel about.
One more point about the pragmatic realities ofmaterial and technical
truth(s);
you wrote....
they had
to switch on the cameras at exactly the right moment, to an accuracy of a
couple of seconds: and they did it right. It seems to me that the ability to
pull this trick off must have required some extremely precise calculations
which used an extremely accurate model of gravity.
Maybe the trick pulling off phenomenon should be thought about one more
time. Voyager was one JPL project and the recent trip to map Mars another.
The extremely precise calculations you are so enamoured with were defeated
by the cultural realities of our present time. The Mars mission documented
another reality about gravity and calculation. If you use inches when you
should use meters (or visa versa) and you try to land an orbitor on Mars you
will miss the *precise* target by about 42 miles...and that makes a pretty
hard 'landfall'....and 'scrubbed' mission that even Madonna would
appreciate.
comments?
As Crispin noted to the ifets community.
<<<It all depends on the question and hence on those
who see the value of that question.>>
David Wiles
.-----Original Message-----
From: IFETS Discussion List
[mailto:IFETS-DISCUSS@LISTSERV.READADP.COM]On Behalf Of Crispin Weston
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 3:26 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list IFETS-DISCUSS
Subject: Slipslide
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David Wiles, in his post of 4th May refers to my <<slipslide.>>
There is certainly a lot of slipslide in David Wiles' message, but it is all
of his own introduction.
<<Crispin's Definition of material world.
It is what
doctors do when they heal; what engineers do when they build machines; what
farmers do when they sow crops which produce higher yields than can be found
in a natural envioronment.>>
I did not define the material world to be what doctors do then they heal
etc., I said that these were *examples* (not definitions) of the
*manipulation* of the material world.
<<I would argue the doctor-engineer does represent the ends of the spectrum
so
that Madona is somewhere between heal-build similarity of your definition.>>
I am sorry but this paragraph is completely incomprehensible.
<<Now farmers sowing is another matter becasue it takes into the realms of
e.schumacher's 'appropriate technologies' and wendell berry's 'farming.">>
I was (I think quite clearly) making a point about truth, not a point about
'contour versus straight row' farming methods.
Crispin.
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