Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Chimps created tools like humans' over 4,000 years ago

ronjon — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 12:46:35 -0700

Jane Goodall publicized tool use among chimps in the 1960s, but the first written record of it comes much earlier, from a 17th-century Jesuit priest in Sierra Leone who described how a chimp with palm nuts “and with a stone in its hand breaks the nuts and eats them.” How much further back does this habit stretch, and how did chimps acquire the skill? Did they learn tool use from humans, invent it themselves, or did both humans and chimps inherit the trick from a common ancestor who lived more than 5 million years ago?

A team of archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary is seeking answers in what appears to be a collection of stone hammers from a chimp-occupied rain forest site in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Dated at 4,300 years old, the rocks—which bear nut starch grains and the hallmarks of chimp hammer use—suggest that the chimpanzee practice of using tools to crack nuts stretches back millennia, if not further. ...

'The Road to Reality,' by Roger Penrose

ronjon — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:42:20 -0700

If Albert Einstein were alive, he would have a copy of 'The Road to Reality' on his bookshelf. So would Isaac Newton. This may be the most complete mathematical explanation of the universe yet published, and Roger Penrose richly deserves the accolades he will receive for it. That said, let us be perfectly clear: this is not an easy book to read. The number of people in the world who can understand everything in it could probably take a taxi together to Penrose's next lecture. Still, math-friendly readers looking for a substantial and possibly even thrillingly difficult intellectual experience should pick up a copy (carefully--it's over a thousand pages long and weighs nearly 4 pounds) and start at the beginning, where Penrose sets out his purpose: to describe "the search for the underlying principles that govern the behavior of our universe."

Beginning with the deceptively simple geometry of Pythagoras and the Greeks, Penrose guides readers through the fundamentals--the incontrovertible bricks that hold up the fanciful mathematical structures of later chapters. From such theoretical delights as complex-number calculus, Riemann surfaces, and Clifford bundles, the tour takes us quickly on to the nature of spacetime. The bulk of the book is then devoted to quantum physics, cosmological theories (including Penrose's favored ideas about string theory and universal inflation), and what we know about how the universe is held together. For physicists, mathematicians, and advanced students, 'The Road to Reality' is an essential field guide to the universe. For enthusiastic amateurs, the book is a project to tackle a bit at a time, one with unimaginable intellectual rewards. ...

'In Our Own Image: Humanity's Quest for Divinity via Technology,' by Debashis Chowdhury

ronjon — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:43:28 -0700

This looks like an interesting book. ~ ron

Once in a few billion years, the conditions are right for life to transcend itself into a higher level of existence. Having spent more than a billion years in the form of single walled bacteria-like (Prokaryotic) cells, a happy set of circumstances happened about 1.5 Billion years ago that gave rise to Eukaryotic cells with a well defined cell nucleus. Those were heady times, and the Eukaryotic cells then went on to create all multi-cellular creatures, including plants and animals including humans. The experience of what it meant to live life changed completely!...

The exciting times are back again! In this very century, mankind will invent the technologies that will give us capabilities we have thus far associated only with Divinity. What is lacking now is a level of wisdom, and unity of purpose amongst us humans. If we can develop this transcendental wisdom, and inculcate a joint sense of identity and purpose as humanity, ours is the opportunity to transform our collective existence into a vastly more powerful presence. ...

Resurgence Magazine: Promoting creativity, ecology, spirituality and frugality

ronjon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:38:04 -0700

...Resurgence publish[es] articles that are on the cutting edge of current thinking, promoting creativity, ecology, spirituality and frugality.

While the corporate world advocates "free trade" Resurgence questions trade without responsibility and money without morality. While our governments define the "national interest" and its politicians pursue power at all costs, Resurgence argues for politics with principles. While technology invades our lives in the name of speed and efficiency, Resurgence advocates science with a soul.

But Resurgence not only offers a critique of the old paradigm, it gives working models for an emerging new paradigm. Resurgence is packed full of positive ideas about the theory and practice of good living: permaculture, community supported agriculture, local economics, ecological building, sacred architecture, art in the environment, small schools and deep ecology. ...

Quantum Jazz: “The meaning of life, the universe and everything,” by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

ronjon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:24:45 -0700

Quantum jazz is the music of the organism dancing life into being, from the top of her head to her toes and fingertips, every single cell, molecule and atom taking part in a remarkable ensemble that spins and sways to rhythms from pico (10-12) seconds to minutes, hours, a day, a month, a year and longer, emitting light and sound waves from atomic dimensions of nanometres up to metres, spanning a musical range of 70 octaves (for that is the range of living activities). And each and every player, the tinniest molecule not withstanding, is improvising spontaneously and freely, yet keeping in tune and in step with the whole.

There is no conductor, no choreographer, the organism is creating and recreating herself afresh with each passing moment. Quantum coherent action is effortless action, effortless creation, the Taoist ideal of art and poetry, of life itself...

It’s about the physics of organisms in place of the physics of dead matter in mainstream biology and the world at large. It is why we are stuck in debates about the hazards of mobile phones and genetic engineering, or the benefits of complimentary medicine. There is nothing in mainstream biology that deals with wholeness or coherence, nothing that tells you how, because the whole body is interconnected, even very weak electromagnetic fields could be harmful or, if appropriately applied, beneficial. And because we fail to see nature as an interconnected whole, life appears entirely as a struggle for survival of the fittest, one against all and all against nature. We wage wars and exploit our planet to death. ...

"This Quantum World," by Ulrich Mohrhoff

ronjon — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:15:15 -0800

This is a fascinating website. Ulrich Mohrhoff teaches math, physics, and quantum philosophy at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in Pondicherry, India. He has developed a new perspective re the ontological implications of quantum mechanics known as the "Pondicherry Interpretation," which has been called "startingly original." ~ ron

...Scientists are the myth makers of our time. If a story is believed by a large fraction of the scientific community, it becomes part of our (socially constructed) reality.
Take electromagnetic waves. Even if you agree with me that we cannot observe them directly, you will probably insist that we can observe them indirectly: their effects are all over the place.
But it isn't their effects. The jiggling of that charge over there isn't the effect of an electromagnetic wave acting on it. It is the effect of my jiggling this charge here. The rest — the generation of an electromagnetic wave here, its propagation, and its action on that charge over there — is a myth. ...

Jaron's World, April'06. "Why Not Morph?: What cephalopods can teach us about language."

ronjon — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:05:09 -0800

Jaron Lanier is one of my heroes. Graced with an off-the-scale IQ, he is sometimes known as the "Father of Virtual Reality," in deference to his invention of the 'Data Glove,' one of the first practical interfaces between "meat reality" and VR (which landed him a front page article in the Wall Street Journal, with a photo of his now famous unruly dreadlocks). He is both a top computer scientist and a virtuoso musician who can play over 100 different instruments, including virtual instruments of his own invention. He has held research and teaching positions at a host of prestigious academic institutions, and is on a first name basis with many of the world's elite intellectuals, with whom he has an ongoing dialogue about a wide range of scientific and philosophical topics. For me, his monthly columns in 'Discover Magazine' are a continuing source of fascinating new ideas, so I'm pleased to share some of them here on SCIY. I hope you enjoy them. (ron)

... If cephalopods someday evolve to become intelligent creatures with civilizations, what might they do with their ability to morph? Would we be able to communicate with them? Perhaps they offer a useful surrogate for thinking about one way that intelligent aliens, if and wherever they are out there, might one day present themselves to us. By trying to develop new ways of communicating using morphing in virtual reality, we do at least a little to prepare for that possibility. We humans think a lot of ourselves as a species; we have a tendency to suppose that the way we think is the only way to think. Maybe we need to think again.

"Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century" ('Business Week' review)

ronjon — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 16:48:52 -0700

Ok, this review convinced me. I'm going to order my own copy of this new book, created by Alex Steffen, the executive editor of the amazingly informative website "Worldchanging.com," which Rich alerted us to in a recent post to SCIY. ~ ron

...Part encyclopedia of socially conscious companies and movements, part picture-book (it includes gorgeous color photographs by leading photographers such as Edward Burtynsky), and part how-to instructions on becoming a greener consumer or business, the nearly 600-page volume is an invaluable resource you can use without booting up your computer... And to justify the dead trees required to produce the tome—and set a compelling example for readers—publisher Harry N. Abrams printed each copy on 100% recycled, chlorine-free paper. Abrams also purchased wind credits (from www.renewablechoice.com) equal to the amount of electricity needed to manufacture the book.

Review of Roger Penrose's "The Road to Reality," by Michael Shermer, 'Skeptic Magazine'

ronjon — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 01:50:04 -0700

Science may be conservative — with so many goofball theories floating around, it has to be — but "The Road to Reality" shows just how radical scientists can be in accepting, or at least seriously testing, hundreds of remarkably revolutionary ideas that have been proposed since the time of Plato and Aristotle about how the world works. -- Beginning with such deep mysteries as whether mathematical truths are discovered or invented, [Prof.] Penrose reviews the relationship between mathematics and the physical world; the geometry of logarithms, powers, and roots; real-number and complex-number calculus; topology, surfaces, and symmetry; finiteness and infinity; the geometry of space and time; Maxwell’s and Einstein’s fields; the Big Bang and speculative theories of the origins of the universe; the relationship between gravity and quantum theory; “spooky action-at-a-distance” experiments (about which more in just a moment); and some final speculations about the state of physics today and what might be in store for us in the 21st century. In short, this is the most comprehensive work of physics since Richard P. Feynman’s 1963 classic three-volume set, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. ...

AncientX.com: The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

ronjon — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:53:59 -0700

This is a fascinating, though quite speculative, website:

The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve just a few thousand years ago, by some fundamentalist interpretations. Science informs us that this is mere fiction and that man is a few million years old, and that civilization is just tens of thousands of years old. Could it be, however, that conventional science is just as mistaken as the Bible stories? There is a great deal of archeological evidence that the history of life on earth might be far different than what current geological and anthropological texts tell us. Consider these astonishing finds: ...

"Evolutionary Letter #3," Barbara Marx Hubbard's "Evolutionary Edge"

ronjon — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 01:24:40 -0700

Here's one example of the many, many people and organizations inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and deeply involved in "the wake up call for humanity." Barbara is an old friend and former colleague who is an amazing example of someone who has been deeply vitalized by personal experiences of the sacred. (She's well over 70 years old and keeps on going in spite of a serious bout with cancer that would have hospitalized or killed most of us.)

"It is clear that we have reached “Critical Mess.” Our problems cannot be resolved by doing more of the same. The dysynergy among these problems is rapidly leading to devolution. Yet, out of the crisis, even in the last few months since the awareness of global warming, there has been an increase in mass awakening. This crisis is vital for the next stage of our evolution. It is the wake up call for humanity. ..."

"Accelerando," by Charles Stross

Ron — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:00:00 -0700

This Topic contains the entire text of the remarkable new science fiction book "Accelerando," by Charles Stross.

I recommend reading it for a mind-blowing near-future drama documenting a series of "Singularities" caused by continuing exponential evolution of science and technology. It presents in vivid terms one scenario for the intricate potential interactions between science, technology & culture. It's fine food for thought and discussion about how Integral Yoga might interact with and perhaps modify such singularities.