Dear Asa, reading your weekly essays over the last two years has been a real education. There are multiple dimensions of life that your work has opened my mind and spirit to, but maybe the most consciousness-expanding insight you've helped me begin to understand is the false dichotomy between religion and science, evinced by modern society's belief that the gospel message of 'progress' is proven by the miracles of science and technology. Analogy has helped me see, instead, that science and religion exist on a continuum. Understanding this has helped me go deeper into the inner world. So I'm grateful for the work you're doing here. It's a source of sanity and inspiration in the aftermath of the covid scam when I feel as if the world around me is collapsing as the destructive forces of our neglected inner world are breaking through all around us.
A concise and informative summary of your work. I have been connecting your views of science to what I’ve been reading about N=1 medicine. This refers to an individual (N) who carries out and tracks results of his or her own experiments with exercise, diet, and other regimes. I've paid attention to N=1 chiefly because you have started me thinking about things I never used to consider, such as ways to supplement my health awareness.
The N=1 approach contrasts with traditional medical development and the clinical trials that inform it. Instead of standardized tests interpreted by academic gatekeepers (and influenced by big pharma), N=1 uses the technology now available on watches and other devices to track personal experiments. My boxing coach and I use Fitbit to track sleep, heart rate, steps per day, etc. We sometimes look at results before and after drills and sparring rounds. One-on-one, that is useful. For groups, social media would make sharing results readily available, creating a path to collaboration and new experiments.
Advocates don’t see N=1 replacing current research methods but rather complementing them in such areas as brain-body connection.
People today are used to drugs (almost always the focus of research, vs. other measures of wellness) approved by the FDA after long clinical trials. These drugs are developed through individual experience that is “rounded up” or collectivized into scientific “truth” base on large numbers and then given commercial and professional significance and power.
I connect this to your idea that what the word “science” covers is ambiguous and not what it claims to be.
With thanks and appreciation.
(For background, see S. Teal, "N=1 Science," Epoch Times, Oct. 23-29, 2024)
Had no idea that Stranger Worlds and Analogy were so similar in age! (I launched that Substack two years ago in January, although WAMTNG set sail nearly a year before that.)
Two small clarifications or challenges, depending how you take them. 🙂
"As we make machines, so the universe is a machine."
Intellectuals today reject the 'universe-as-machine' metaphor, because they know its history. However, they have switched to the 'universe-as-information', which I've criticised but nobody wants to listen (of course). Luciano Floridi is a key figure in this via 'philosophy of information'. I could not be more disappointed in this development, personally.
cf (for the benefit of anyone eavesdropping, as you've almost certainly already seen this):
Secondly: you rather indulge here in the backprojecting of 'science' in its contemporary meaning to times long before the 19th century. As you may be aware, I caution against this. It matters that Newton is a natural philosopher, not a scientist. Much of the distortion that is your focus here (and elsewhere) flows out of the philosophy or 'science' of the Victorian era. Those who valorise magical science have a reason to pretend they can trace it back to the roots of civilisation, so those of us who question these assumptions have reasons to resist this historiography.
Though some intellectuals may reject the machine metaphor, it remains the prevailing metaphor for science itself and for Neo-Darwinists who call themselves "naturalists." What's more, science can't really do its work without that metaphor. I've written about this before: even the information metaphor is incorporated into the machine as it's seen to be the software running the machine.
As for what science is and its historical roots, I've written about that before as well rather extensively. Considering I discuss the notion of "saving the appearances"--I'm not sure what you're after here. And as for the distortions, they seem to follow from all manner of confusions dating back to Pythagoras.
One of the reasons the mechanism of fundamentalist scientism has had such broad success as a cultural narrative, apart from utilitarian calculus and pragmatic engineering accomplishment, is the coarse simplicity of its assumptions. The paradigm you are suggesting is far more nuanced and difficult to convey in a crude sketch. I think the expression of its intuitions can be discovered, at least implicitly, in various thinkers such as Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Owen Barfield, and perhaps most recently, Iain McGilchrist.
I believe the inherent metaphysics derives from the mystery of the Triune. Erich Przywara asserted the need to approach this reality in a dynamic analogia entis where every positive assertion was cloaked in an ever greater apophatic respect for a pluperfect plenitude that exceeds conceptual capture. I also think William Desmond’s “metaxalogical” inquiry into the multivalent ways of Being congenial. Eschatologically, Gregory of Nyssa expressed the manner in which the phenomena are accounted for as narrative dance encompassed by epektasis. The correlative to such an eschatology is the notion that nature is “analogically open” and “symbolic” not as an external imposition of adventitious allegory, but as discovery of the other that is coincident with linguistic invention.
Thank you, Asa. I am currently working on some editing for a four volume novel sequence that will hopefully appear soonish (it's really one long novel broken into four more digestible volumes.) However, I will place a mental marker to write out something less compact once the current project is sufficiently dealt with.
Dear Asa, reading your weekly essays over the last two years has been a real education. There are multiple dimensions of life that your work has opened my mind and spirit to, but maybe the most consciousness-expanding insight you've helped me begin to understand is the false dichotomy between religion and science, evinced by modern society's belief that the gospel message of 'progress' is proven by the miracles of science and technology. Analogy has helped me see, instead, that science and religion exist on a continuum. Understanding this has helped me go deeper into the inner world. So I'm grateful for the work you're doing here. It's a source of sanity and inspiration in the aftermath of the covid scam when I feel as if the world around me is collapsing as the destructive forces of our neglected inner world are breaking through all around us.
Thank you, Harry. My goal has been precisely that: to reset our perceptions to defaults and open up the possibilities of new perspectives.
A concise and informative summary of your work. I have been connecting your views of science to what I’ve been reading about N=1 medicine. This refers to an individual (N) who carries out and tracks results of his or her own experiments with exercise, diet, and other regimes. I've paid attention to N=1 chiefly because you have started me thinking about things I never used to consider, such as ways to supplement my health awareness.
The N=1 approach contrasts with traditional medical development and the clinical trials that inform it. Instead of standardized tests interpreted by academic gatekeepers (and influenced by big pharma), N=1 uses the technology now available on watches and other devices to track personal experiments. My boxing coach and I use Fitbit to track sleep, heart rate, steps per day, etc. We sometimes look at results before and after drills and sparring rounds. One-on-one, that is useful. For groups, social media would make sharing results readily available, creating a path to collaboration and new experiments.
Advocates don’t see N=1 replacing current research methods but rather complementing them in such areas as brain-body connection.
People today are used to drugs (almost always the focus of research, vs. other measures of wellness) approved by the FDA after long clinical trials. These drugs are developed through individual experience that is “rounded up” or collectivized into scientific “truth” base on large numbers and then given commercial and professional significance and power.
I connect this to your idea that what the word “science” covers is ambiguous and not what it claims to be.
With thanks and appreciation.
(For background, see S. Teal, "N=1 Science," Epoch Times, Oct. 23-29, 2024)
Thanks, Allen. N=1 sounds like a compelling approach to health. Glad to hear that analogy is having a positive impact.
We learn what we already know. All our knowledge is implicit in our brains.
There a tale of a tribal herder, whose tribe does not know Numbers, who can tell if one of his 110 head of cattle is missing. (Number is implicit ?)
Intuitive knowledge. It has been said of psychoanalysis that it's a method for learning how we dont know what we know.
After all, isnt every experiment a training of the mind ?
And if we were more in harmony with ourselves, i suspect we'll have no lasting interest in 'inventions'.
Wonderful overflight of ANALOGY.
Will read Donaldson ... and certainly recommend Michael Levin's work (Tufts)
Thank you, RDM. Must add Levin to the list then!
Hi Asa,
Had no idea that Stranger Worlds and Analogy were so similar in age! (I launched that Substack two years ago in January, although WAMTNG set sail nearly a year before that.)
Two small clarifications or challenges, depending how you take them. 🙂
"As we make machines, so the universe is a machine."
Intellectuals today reject the 'universe-as-machine' metaphor, because they know its history. However, they have switched to the 'universe-as-information', which I've criticised but nobody wants to listen (of course). Luciano Floridi is a key figure in this via 'philosophy of information'. I could not be more disappointed in this development, personally.
cf (for the benefit of anyone eavesdropping, as you've almost certainly already seen this):
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/lost-in-information
Secondly: you rather indulge here in the backprojecting of 'science' in its contemporary meaning to times long before the 19th century. As you may be aware, I caution against this. It matters that Newton is a natural philosopher, not a scientist. Much of the distortion that is your focus here (and elsewhere) flows out of the philosophy or 'science' of the Victorian era. Those who valorise magical science have a reason to pretend they can trace it back to the roots of civilisation, so those of us who question these assumptions have reasons to resist this historiography.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
Though some intellectuals may reject the machine metaphor, it remains the prevailing metaphor for science itself and for Neo-Darwinists who call themselves "naturalists." What's more, science can't really do its work without that metaphor. I've written about this before: even the information metaphor is incorporated into the machine as it's seen to be the software running the machine.
As for what science is and its historical roots, I've written about that before as well rather extensively. Considering I discuss the notion of "saving the appearances"--I'm not sure what you're after here. And as for the distortions, they seem to follow from all manner of confusions dating back to Pythagoras.
One of the reasons the mechanism of fundamentalist scientism has had such broad success as a cultural narrative, apart from utilitarian calculus and pragmatic engineering accomplishment, is the coarse simplicity of its assumptions. The paradigm you are suggesting is far more nuanced and difficult to convey in a crude sketch. I think the expression of its intuitions can be discovered, at least implicitly, in various thinkers such as Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Owen Barfield, and perhaps most recently, Iain McGilchrist.
I believe the inherent metaphysics derives from the mystery of the Triune. Erich Przywara asserted the need to approach this reality in a dynamic analogia entis where every positive assertion was cloaked in an ever greater apophatic respect for a pluperfect plenitude that exceeds conceptual capture. I also think William Desmond’s “metaxalogical” inquiry into the multivalent ways of Being congenial. Eschatologically, Gregory of Nyssa expressed the manner in which the phenomena are accounted for as narrative dance encompassed by epektasis. The correlative to such an eschatology is the notion that nature is “analogically open” and “symbolic” not as an external imposition of adventitious allegory, but as discovery of the other that is coincident with linguistic invention.
Thank you, Brian. Parsing these two paragraphs is an essay in itself! If you feel up to it, I invite an article from you on this subject.
Thank you, Asa. I am currently working on some editing for a four volume novel sequence that will hopefully appear soonish (it's really one long novel broken into four more digestible volumes.) However, I will place a mental marker to write out something less compact once the current project is sufficiently dealt with.