The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativism

Posted on June 14, 2007 by admin

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. Although it has come to be known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, it rather was an axiom underlying the work of linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his colleague and student Benjamin Whorf.

Put simply, the hypothesis argues that the nature of a particular language influences the habitual thought of its speakers. Different patterns of language yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of representing the world perfectly with language, because it acknowledges that the mechanisms of any language affect its users. The hypothesis emerged in many formulations, some weak and some strong.

History

The position that language anchors thought can be traced to Wilhelm von Humboldt's essay Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium (“On the comparative study of languages”), and the notion has been largely assimilated into Western thought. Karl Kerenyi began his 1976 English language translation of Dionysus with this passage:

“ The interdependence of thought and speech makes it clear that languages are not so much a means of expressing truth that has already been established, but are a means of discovering truth that was previously unknown. Their diversity is a diversity not of sounds and signs but of ways of looking at the world. ”

The origin of the SWH as a more rigorous examination of this familiar cultural perception can be traced back to the work of Franz Boas, the founder of anthropology in the United States. Boas was educated in Germany in the late 19th century at a time when scientists such as Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann were attempting to understand the physiology of sensation.

One important philosophical approach at the time was a revival of interest in the work of Immanuel Kant. Kant claimed that knowledge was the result of concrete cognitive work on the part of an individual person—reality (“sensuous intuition”) was inherently in flux and understanding resulted when someone took that intuition and interpreted it via their “categories of the understanding.” Different individuals may thus perceive the same noumenal reality as phenomenal instances of their different, individual concepts.

In the United States, Boas encountered Native American languages from many different linguistic families—all of which were quite different from the Semitic and Indo-European languages which most European scholars studied. Boas came to realize how greatly ways of life and grammatical categories could vary from one place to another. As a result he came to believe that the culture and lifeways of a people were reflected in the language that they spoke.

Sapir was one of Boas' star students. He furthered Boas' argument by noting that languages were systematic, formally complete systems. Thus, it was not this or that particular word that expressed a particular mode of thought or behavior, but that the coherent and systematic nature of language interacted at a wider level with thought and behavior. While his views changed over time, it seems that towards the end of his life Sapir came to believe that language did not merely mirror culture and habitual action, but that language and thought might in fact be in a relationship of mutual influence or perhaps even determination.

Whorf gave this idea greater precision by examining the particular grammatical mechanisms by which thought influenced language. He argued his point thus:

“We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language […] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.”

— (Language, Thought and Reality pp. 212–214).

Whorf's formulation of this “principle of linguistic relativity” is often stereotyped as a “prisonhouse” view of language in which one's thinking and behavior is completely and utterly shaped by one's language. While some people might make this “vulgar Whorfian” argument, Whorf himself sought merely to insist that thought and action were linguistically and socially mediated. In doing so he opposed what he called a “natural logic” position which he claimed believed “talking, or the use of language, is supposed only to 'express' what is essentially already formulated nonlinguistically” (Language, Thought and Reality p. 207). On this account, he argued, “thought does not depend on grammar but on laws of logic or reason which are supposed to be the same for all observers of the universe” (Language, Thought and Reality p. 208).

Whorf's close analysis of the differences between English and (in one famous instance) the Hopi language raised the bar for an analysis of the relationship between language, thought, and reality by relying on close analysis of grammatical structure, rather than a more impressionistic account of the differences between, say, vocabulary items in a language. For example, “Standard Average European” (SAE)—i.e., Western languages in general—tends to analyse reality as objects in space: the present and future are thought of as “places”, and time is a path linking them. A phrase like “three days” is grammatically equivalent to “three apples”, or “three kilometres”. Other languages, including many Native American languages, are oriented towards process. To monolingual speakers of such languages, the concrete/spatial metaphors of SAE grammar may make little sense. Whorf himself claimed that his work on the SWH was inspired by his insight that a Hopi speaker would find relativistic physics fundamentally easier to grasp than an SAE speaker would.

As a result of his status as a student and not as a professional linguist, Whorf's work on linguistic relativity, conducted largely in the late 1930s, did not become popular until the posthumous publication of his writings in the 1950s. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis influenced the development and standardization of Interlingua during the first half of the 20th century, but this was largely due to Sapir's direct involvement. In 1955, Dr. James Cooke Brown created the Loglan constructed language (Lojban, a reformed variant of Loglan, still exists as a living language) in order to test the hypothesis. However, no such experiment was ever conducted. Linguistic theories of the 1960s—such as those proposed by Noam Chomsky—focused on the innateness and universality of language. As a result Whorf's work fell out of favor. An example of a recent Chomskian approach to this issue is Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct. Pinker argues from a contravening school of thought that holds that some sort of universal grammar underlies all language. The most extreme proponents of this theory, such as Pinker, argue that thought is independent of language, and that language is itself meaningless in any fundamental way to human thought, and that human beings do not even think in what is called “natural” language, which is to say in any of the languages that we actually speak or write, but rather, we think in a meta-language that precedes any spoken language; this language of thought is called “mentalese”. Pinker refers to “Whorf’s radical position,” and argues vehemently against the Whorfian idea that language contains thought and culture, going so far as to declare, “the more you examine Whorf’s arguments, the less sense they make.” (1994, p. 60)

A more 'Whorfian' approach is represented by George Lakoff, who has argued much of language is essentially metaphor. For instance, English employs many metaphorical tropes that in one way or another equate time with money, e.g.:

    spend time
    waste time
    invest time

A Whorfian interpretation would be that this usage influences the way English speakers conceive the abstract quality of “time”. For another example, political arguments are shaped by the web of conceptual metaphors that underlie language use. In political debates, it matters a great deal whether one is arguing in favor of the “right to life” or against the “right to choose”; whether one is discussing “illegal aliens” or “undocumented workers”.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s advances in cognitive psychology and anthropological linguistics renewed interest in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Today researchers disagree—often intensely—about how strongly language influences thought. However, this disagreement has sparked increasing interest in the issue and a great deal of innovative and important research.

Experimental support

The opposing idea — that language has absolutely no influence on thought at all — is widely considered to be false (Gumperz: Introduction to Gumperz 1996). But the strong version of the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis, that language determines thought, is also thought to be incorrect. The most common view is that the truth lies somewhere in between the two and current linguists, rather than studying whether language affects thought, are studying how it affects thought. Earlier, the bulk of the research was concentrated on supporting or disproving the hypothesis; the experimental data have not been able to disprove it.

Investigation into the recall of linguistic entities confirms that the brain stores associations between semantic concepts (like the idea of a house) and phonetic representation (the sounds that make up the word “house”). The initial sounds are more important for recall purposes than later sounds. Relationships between semantic concepts are also stored, but indirect relationships between unrelated concepts can be inadvertently triggered by a “bridge” through a phonetic relationship. For example, the recall of the idea of a house can be sped up by exposure to the word “Home” because they share the same initial sound.

Criticism

Many psychological experiments concern the means by which the brain processes, stores, and recalls information. Some studies concerning the storage of linguistic utterances (e.g. when listening to someone speak, or when reading a book) suggest that in most cases the brain stores the actual words recorded by the senses for only a very short period of time and that for people with the capability to hear spoken language, this representation is phonetic, even for written language. (This is related to, for example, the relatively high frequency of spelling mistakes involving homophones like “there” and “their”.) Unless special effort is made at rote memorization, longer term storage of utterances involves distillation into a simpler semantic representation. Thus when people are asked to recall an utterance, they are generally able to easily replicate the meaning – they capture the “gist” of what was said or written – but are unable to reproduce the exact wording (though in many cases they do not realize they are using slightly different words than the original speaker [see Telephone game]). The existence of a semantic representation distinct from phonetic representation raises questions about how closely tied the two layers are, or need to be.

The processing and storage of spatial information (one aspect of “thought”) appears to involve some non-linguistic aspects. For example, some experiments consider the problem of object comparison. Imagine a cartoon drawing of a house. Now imagine two copies of that drawing. The first is rotated clockwise 90 degrees, so the house is lying on its side. The second is only rotated 45 degrees, so the house is simply tilted. Suppose that these three drawings are mixed in with similar drawings in random rotations, which do not actually represent houses. The experimental subject is shown the picture of the house and asked to identify which drawings in the lineup are the same. Studies which have performed this experiment show that the time it takes for someone to correctly recognize the tilted versions of the same picture is proportional to the amount of rotation. This leads to the hypothesis that the brain is “mentally rotating” the candidate pictures to attempt to match the reference copy, and that it takes longer to rotate through 90 degrees than 45. Experimenters assert that this process is possibly independent of either the semantic concept of “house” or the word that represents it and this raises doubts about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Psychological studies of animals indicate that they are able to process and store certain types of spatial information (such as geographical information about territory and food sources). This and the close relationship between spatial memory and the visual system suggests to some researchers that these aspects of the brain may have evolved before spoken language.

Linguistic determinism

Among the most frequently cited examples of linguistic determinism is Whorf's study of the language of the Eskimo people, who were thought to have numerous words for snow. He argues that this modifies the world view of the Eskimo, creating a different mode of existence for them than, for instance, a speaker of English. The notion that Arctic people have an unusually large number of words for snow has been shown to be false by linguist Geoffrey Pullum; in an essay titled “The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax”, he tracks down the origin of the story, ultimately attributing it largely to Whorf and suggesting the triviality of Whorf's observations. (Whatever the conclusion to the snow debate, it should be noted that Whorf's developed thought focused on ubiquitous grammatical categories, especially covert ones, not lexical sets.)

These ideas have met with some resistance in the linguistic community. Numerous studies in color perception across various cultures have resulted in differing viewpoints. (Berlin & Kay, 1969; Heider, 1972; Heider & Oliver, 1973; Rosch, 1974; Miller & Johnson-Laird, 1976)

A recent study by Peter Gordon examines the language of the Pirahã tribe of Brazil. According to Gordon, the language used by this tribe only contains three counting words: one, two and many. Gordon shows through a series of experiments that the people of the Pirahã tribe have difficulty recounting numbers higher than three (Gordon, 2004). However, the causal relationship of these events is not clear. Critics have argued that if the test subjects are unable to count numbers higher than three for some other reason (perhaps because they are nomadic hunter/gatherers with nothing to count and hence no need to practice doing so) then one should not expect their language to have words for such numbers. That is, it is the lack of need which explains both the lack of counting ability and the lack of corresponding vocabulary.

Fictional presence

George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is a striking example of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity in fiction, in which a language known as Newspeak has trimmed and supplanted Modern English. In this case, Orwell says that if humans cannot form the words to express the ideas underlying a revolution, then they cannot revolt. All of the theory of Newspeak is aimed at eliminating such words. For example, bad has been replaced by 'ungood,' and the concept of freedom has been eliminated over time. According to Nineteen Eighty-Four's appendix on Newspeak, the result of the adoption of the language would be that “a heretical thought … should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”

Jack Vance's science fiction novel The Languages of Pao centers on an experiment in modeling a civilization by tweaking its language. The future planet of Pao, inhabited by peasant cultivators who bow passively to absolute monarchy and are prey to foreign invaders, creates three castes – of warriors, merchants, and technicians – each with a specifically-tailored language designed to instill the appropriate skills and mindsets. As a result the planet overcomes its foreign military invaders and economic exploiters, but becomes dangerously divided into mutually-hostile castes – and this is overcome by developing yet another language, a “pastiche” which combines elements from the languages of the three castes as well as the planet's original language, this Pastiche becoming the language of the reunified, versatile society.

In Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune and its sequels, the Principle of Linguistic Relativity first appears when a character (Lady Jessica) with extensive linguistic training encounters a foreign tribe (the Fremen). She is shocked by the “violence” of their language, as she believes their word choices and language structure reflect a culture of enormous violence. Similarly, earlier in the novel, her late husband, Duke Leto, muses on how the nature of Imperial society is betrayed by “the precise delineations for treacherous death” in its language – the use of highly specific terms to describe different methods for delivering poison.

Samuel R. Delany's novel Babel-17 is centered on a fictional language that denies its speakers independent thought, forcing them to think purely logical thoughts. This language is used as a weapon of war, because it is supposed to convert everyone who learns it to a traitor. In the novel, the language Babel-17 is likened to computer programming languages that do not allow errors or imprecise statements.

Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash revolves around the notion that the Sumerian language was a programming language for the human brain. According to characters in the book, the goddess Asherah is the personification of a linguistic virus similar to a computer virus. The god Enki created a counter program or nam-shub that caused all of humanity to speak different tongues as a protection against Asherah.

In Iain M. Banks's science fiction series, The Culture has a shared language, Marain. The Culture believes (or perhaps has proved, or else actively made true) the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that language affects society, and Marain was designed to exploit this effect. A related comment is made by the narrator in The Player of Games regarding gender-specific pronouns in English. Marain is also regarded as an aesthetically pleasing language.

Suzette Haden Elgin's science fiction novel Native Tongue describes a patriarchal society in which the overriding priority of the oppressed women is the secret development of a “feminist” language to aid them in throwing off their shackles.

Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed takes place partly on a world with an anarcho-communist society whose constructed language contains little means for expressing possessive relationships, among other features.

Gene Wolfe's novel The Citadel of the Autarch (part of The Book of the New Sun) presents a counter-example to the SWH: one of the characters (an Ascian) speaks entirely in slogans, but is able to express deep and subtle meanings via context. The narrator, Severian, after hearing the Ascian talks, remarks that “The Ascian seemed to speak only in sentences he had learned by rote, though until he used each for the first time we had never heard them . . . Second, I learned how difficult it is to eliminate the urge for expression. The people of Ascia were reduced to speaking only with their masters' voice; but they had made of it a new tongue, and I had no doubt, after hearing the Ascian, that by it he could express whatever thought he wished.”[2]

Ayn Rand's novel Anthem presents a collectivist dystopia where the word “I” is banned, and any that speak it are put to death.

Robert Silverberg's novel A Time of Changes describes a society where the first person singular is considered an obscenity.

Ryan North's webcomic Dinosaur Comics discusses the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in its September 27th, 2005 strip.

In Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Mike is able to do things that most other humans can't do, and is unable to explain any of this in English, however, once others learn Martian, they start to be able to do these things – those concepts could only be explained in Martian.

In Jorge Luis Borges's Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius the author discovers references in books to a universe of idealistic individuals whose language lacks the concept of nouns and has other peculiarities that shapes their idealism. As the story progresses the books become more and better known to the world at large, their philosophy starts influencing the real world, and Earth becomes the ideal world described in the books.

Quotations

“ Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached… We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69) ”

“ We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way – an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf, 1940, pp. 213–14) ”

Computer parallel

Kenneth E. Iverson, the originator of the APL programming language, believed that the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis applied to computer languages (without actually mentioning the hypothesis by name). His Turing award lecture, “Notation as a tool of thought”, was devoted to this theme, arguing that more powerful notations aided thinking about computer algorithms.[3]

References

   1. Kerényi, Carl; translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (1996). Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton,             N.J: Princeton University Press, xxxi.
   2. Wolfe, Gene, The Book of the New Sun (New York: SFBC, 1998) pg. 776.
   3. Iverson K.E.,”Notation as a tool of thought”, Communications of the ACM, 23: 444-465 (August 1980).

India: On the quest of its destiny

Posted on June 14, 2007 by admin

Vol. LVIII, No. 49, New Delhi, June 17, 2007

June 17, 2007

Page: 15/33

Home > 2007 Issues > June 17, 2007

Think It Over

India: On the quest of its destiny

By M.S.N. Menon

Twice, in our long history, India was almost overwhelmed. Once by
Islam. And then by Christianity. But India’s heritage has within it an
inexhaustible power for self-renewal. It rises like a phoenix.

What has the future in store for India? I am not sure. The future is still hidden from us.

But is there a purpose in the life of nations, in the life of
the universe? On this, we know even less. But a universe without a
purpose makes everything meaningless. Today, we come to the end of our
life without knowing why we have lived!

There is, however, one consolation: That we are only at the
morn of human history. True, we have gained greater control over
nature, but not over ourselves. When we see the great contrast between
what science has been able to achieve and the crudeness, cruelty and
vulgarity of our lives, as we live them, we are driven to despair. Carl
Gustav Jung warns: Misguided development of the soul must lead to
psychic mass destruction.”

Today, men face multiple threats—of climate change, pollution
and a new flood. If we escape these calamities, we are threatened by
another—the slow cooling of the planet.

Is mankind then doomed? It is still too early to say. The
earth is no more than a place of sojourn in most religions. The Hindu
says: We are here for a short stay and that we are to go back to where
they came from—only to start a new cycle of birth and death. We Hindus
are happier. Others fry in hell for eternity.

But there are other views. Darwin says: Life is evolving into
higher and higher forms. The appearance of life, mind and
consciousness, one after the other, has been the greatest miracle of
nature. Many more such miracles are awaited. Man has a long long way to
go.

Man is not final, says Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian mystic.
Man is a transitional being, he says. Beyond him awaits the “divine
race, the superman”, with super-consciousness. Aurobindo sees a
progressive divination of the human race.

We are actors in this cosmic drama that is unfolding before
us, not mere onlookers. The Gita says: Ceaseless action is the lot of
man!

But the ways of the world differ. Europe has chosen one way,
we Hindus have chosen another and the Muslims have their own way. Each
has its merits. They must be left free to seek their different ends. We
must not force on the world one way as the Christians and Muslims are
trying to do. Why? Because their way is not perfect. They are full of
absurdity.

Prof. Max Mueller, an authority on ancient India, says: “I do
not deny that the manly vigour, the public spirit and the private
virtue of the citizens of European states represent one side of the
human destiny.” But surely, he says, “there is another side to our
nature and possibly another destiny open to man.” And he points towards
India—leading the meditative, reflective way.

The two ways are not hostile to each other. They are in fact complementary.

Life in India may be dreamy, unreal, impractical, Max Mueller
concedes, but, he asserts, India may look upon European notions of life
as short-sighted, fussy and in the end most impractical because it
involves a sacrifice of life for the sake of life.

The most distinguishing feature of the Indian character is
transcendence. The Indian mind is intuitive, bent on transcending the
limits of empirical knowledge.

But not all is right with the way the West has chosen.
Aurobindo calls the commercial civilisation of the West “monstrous and
asuric” (demonic). That the way to the morsel will take us to
fulfillment is a misplaced hope. An insatiable desire for increasing
satisfaction is at the root of this tragedy, the very thing the Buddha
identified as the root of human misery. But is this tragedy inexorable?
Not necessarily. Because we all can be guided by reason.

Say Dr Radhakrishnan: “It is the good fortune of India that
every time there is great spiritual confusion, exponents of authentic
religious thought spring up to remind us Hindus of the fundamental
truth of Indian culture.” Such was the case with Vivekananda and
Mahatma Gandhi.

Twice, in our long history, India was almost overwhelmed. Once
by Islam. And then by Christianity. But India’s heritage has within it
an inexhaustible power for self-renewal. It rises like a phoenix.

And its people, for long in their slumber, are wide awake
today. In about sixty years, India has come to be recognised as a great
power. It may even occupy the third place among the great powers in the
not too distant future. But are we preparing for this day?

“We are in a race to save humanity,” by Ervin Laszlo

Posted on June 12, 2007 by admin

I just came across this article, excerpted from a talk by the systems theorist Ervin Laszlo, in the March 2007 issue of Auroville's monthly news magazine 'Auroville Today'. It struck a powerful resonance with me, so I decided to type it here for SCIY's readers. ~ ron

“We are in a race to save humanity”

Extracts from a talk by Ervin Laszlo, former member of the Auroville International Advisory Council

“The problem humanity is facing today stems from the fact that the West has forgotten that it is part of the larger ecological system which sustains all life on Earth. Humanity has come to believe that the environment is separate, less important than the economy, and that it can do what it likes with it. This is an evolutionary mistake.

This tendency began 10,000 years ago when Homo sapiens began manipulating the environment and domesticating animals, but it has only become critical in the last 200 years with the advent of mass-production and high-energy technology.

The consequence is that today we are out of synch with the natural world, and this has many adverse impacts. For example, there is no longer any doubt that global warming is due to human impact. If the rise in temperatures continues, it is predicted that the 21st century will be the warmest century for the past one million years. The monsoon may not come to India or other countries that depend on it, Europe may become either very dry or very cold, and there is real doubt if the planet will be able to feed 6.5 billion or more people living on it. In fact, James Lovelock, [the proponent of the Gaia theory] estimates that the world will only be able to support about 200 million people if the present trends of consumption continue.

Do we have enough time to avert such a catastrophe? Some scientists, like Lovelock, believe it is already too late — that we have already reached a ‘tipping-point’ beyond which everything will go quickly downhill. Others, like myself, are more optimistic. But there is very little time.

Positive feedback systems and cross-impacts mean that everything is happening faster than predicted a few years ago: temperatures are rising, the ice is melting, and the greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane are being released into the atmosphere faster than ever before. We are now in a race to save humanity. The planet will survive, but humanity, like 99% of all complex species which have ever existed, may not. And this would be a loss, for in us nature and the cosmos have started to become self-aware.

To understand where we stand today it is necessary to understand how complex systems evolve. Complex systems do not evolve bit by bit. They evolve until they reach a ‘chaos point’. At that moment, there is a collapse of the old system and a new dynamic comes into play. Then anything can happen, except it’s impossible to maintain the status quo, and it’s impossible to revert to a former state of being.

Today, we are facing two crises, one in the biosphere and the other in human consciousness. If we are going to cope with the challenges facing the biosphere, there must be a new human consciousness. It must recognize we are as much part of this planet as the birds and trees, and evolve in response to that. Once we feel this, we will automatically try to preserve our planet.

Another way to reach this is that we must sense our unity, we must feel connected, both to each other and to the biosphere. But we are already connected. This is something spiritual leaders have said for millennia, and it’s something that the human race has lived and experienced for millennia — otherwise it would never have survived for so long. But now it helps to know that we have scientific evidence for this.

For example, it is known that at the quantum level of reality there is no such thing as separation. If a particle is broken apart and the two parts sent in opposite directions, if the spin of one part is changed, the spin of the other changes instantaneously — at several magnitudes the speed of light — even though the parts may be separated by thousands of miles. It is a phenomenon known as ‘non-locality’.

There is also the phenomenon of ‘teleportation’, where two atoms are allowed to interact with each other, and the resulting change in state is immediately picked up and mirrored by a third atom which has no obvious contact with the original two. This is akin to energy transmission by a guru or healer which may be picked up thousands of miles away by somebody in a receptive state.

Brain research reinforces this phenomenon. Normally, the two hemispheres of the brain operate almost independently — and their respective brain waves are quite different. However, in deep sleep or meditation they become harmonized. More interestingly, when several people who already know each other meditate at the same time, and one of them receives some kind of stimulation, the brain waves of the others pick it up immediately and show the change. What happens in the brain of one is immediately reflected in the brain of the others.

How to explain all this? If connections exist between objects which are separated in space and time, one either has to accept they are mysteriously connected — which puts one outside the realm of science — or accept they are connected by something which is not visible or perceivable but which is real. What could this be?

In science, this is called the ‘field’. Science knows about four universal fields — the electromagnetic, gravitational and the two nuclear fields (strong and weak) — and some strange quantum fields. However, few scientists have dared to suggest there is yet another kind of field, a field that carries information without conventional means of energy, which can penetrate any barrier, and which transcends space and time. Quantum physicist David Bohm performed experiments and showed that there is an effect like this which he terms ‘in-formation’.

How does it work? Everything in the world emits energy. If one’s energy field radiates outwards and encounters another object or person, it gets reflected back from that object or person’s field. The two wave-fields, the source and the reflection, interact. If they are on the same frequency there is a field conjugation (union) or what is called an ‘adaptive resonance consonance’. At that point, an exchange happens and information gets transferred from one to the other. So if you enter into communication with another person who has assumed a similar mind-set and consciousness to yours, you can exchange information instantly.

We all have this capability, but now we need to develop it very fast so there can be a new union between cultures and between humans and nature. And it is happening. To my mind, there is an almost miraculous acceleration of this new consciousness, which I sometimes refer to as planetary consciousness. Even in biological terms, I’m sure that the genetic code of the children born today is different from ours. As living systems are open, as there is always an energy interchange between them and their environment, the new generation’s DNA must have been modified by the crisis we are living through, perhaps making them more able to adapt and survive.

But still we need to buy time; to delay the coming of the ‘chaos point’ regarding the biosphere until this new consciousness has fully established itself. If the crisis happened today, we would be as unprepared for it as we were for the tsunami.

This is where places like Auroville can play a vital role. For as this new consciousness spreads by what the scientists term ‘adaptive resonance', wherever you have a higher concentration of people who sense and act upon their unity, it can be picked up by receptive people anywhere. This is why those who are engaged in living and developing this planetary consciousness bear a tremendous responsibility for the evolution of all humanity.”

The Kogi Indians of Columbia: 'The Heart of the World'

Posted on May 16, 2007 by admin

Tairona – Kogi

The Tairona were a precolombian civilization in the region of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the present-day Magdalena and La
Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America which goes back to the
1st century AD and showed documented growth around in the 11th century.
The Tairona people formed one of the two principal groups of the
Chibcha and were pushed into submarginal regions by the Spanish
conquest. The Kogi indigenous people who live in the area today are
direct descendants of the Tairona.

Knowledge sources about the precolombian Tairona civilization
are limited to archaeological findings and a few written references
from the Spanish colonial era. A major city of the Tairona and
archaeological site is today known as Ciudad Perdida (Spanish for “Lost
City”), it was discovered by treasure hunters in 1975. The Tairona are
known to have built terraced platforms, house foundations, stairs,
sewers, tombs, and bridges from stone. Use of pottery for utilitarian
and ornamental/ceremonial purposes was also highly developed.

Tairona Gold Pendants – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

The Tairona civilization is most renown for its distinctive
goldwork. The earliest known Tairona goldwork has been described for
the Neguanje Period (from about 300- 800 AD) and its use within the
Tairona society appears to have extended beyond the elite. The gold
artifacts made comprise pendants, lip-plugs, nose ornaments, necklaces,
and earrings. Gold cast Tairona figure pendants (known as “caciques”)
in particular stand out among the goldworks of precolumbian America
because of their richness in detail. The figurines depict human
subjects – thought be noblemen or chiefs – in ornate dresses and with a
large animal mask over the face. Many elements of their body posture
(e.g., hands on their hips) and dress signal an aggressive stance and
hence are interpreted as evidence for the power of the wearer and the
bellicose nature of Tairona society.

Reference

Kogi

The tribe known as 'Los Kogui' are today's custodians of the Tairona
culture. They have a population of approximately 12,000 people. The
Kogi plant crops and live off the land. They prefer not to mix with
outsiders. Few Colombians, or those from the outside worlds, are
allowed to enter their mountain. They marry in their culture. The Kogi
constantly move about from place to place, between their different
abodes spread among the different levels of the Sierra Nevada mountain
range. This is looked upon as taking care of their nutritional needs
without abusing the environment.

The Mountain

The Sierra Nevada, in the shape of a pyramid, rises from the sunny
coasts of the Caribbean tropics to the chilly, snow-capped peaks that
reach a height of 17,000 feet above sea level, all in only 30
horizontal miles.
Within just fifty kilometres the northern slopes descend from snow
capped peaks to the turquoise waters, tropical jungle shores and coral
reefs of the Caribbean ocean.

Day and night are of equal length all year round.

The area has every eco-system in its 17,000 km2 area (8,000 sq.
miles) You can find coral reefs, mangroves, arid deserts, rain and
cloud forest, and in the higher elevations, plains and snow-capped
peaks with temperatures close to 20 degrees C. The highest peak is the
Pico Simon Bolivar at 5,775 metres.

In 1965, archeologists found the remains of a lost Tairona religious
center and called it the 'Lost City.' It is a three-day hike in dense
jungle to witness a true wonder of the past. It is believed that there
are two more lost cities.

These highlands are inhabited by the Gods and the spirits of
the dead. A universe of signs and symbols, this territory is a
veritable “open book” which is their bridge to the world and their
collective history.

The Kogi believe the Sierra Nevada to be the 'Place of
Creation' and the 'Heart of the World'. They call themselves the Elder
Brothers of humanity and consider their mission to care for planet.
They understand how the planet works as an integrated unit rather than
the separation of all things in our worlds.

Much like other ancient tribal civilizations, that still exist on the
planet, they believe themselves to be the custodians of the planet
Earth here to keep things in balance.

Spiritual Connections

They achieve this through meditation wherein they communicate with all
living things on the planet – humans, animals, plants, rock, etc.

They live in Aluna, an inner world of thought and potential. From Aluna
they astral travel or remote view to places both on and off the
physical planet. Their sacred lands are perceived as a metaphysical
symbol of cosmic forces within the whole world – an oracle of the
natural balance and health of the planet.

As with other indigenous tribes, Kogi society has changed
little in the past five centuries. They survived as a culture because
the Kogi focus all their energy on the life of the mind as opposed to
the life of a body or an individual. Fundamental to that survival is
the maintenance of physical separation from their world and the rest of
humanity. They are very protective of their sacred space and the dense
jungle is not kind to tourists.

They worry about the destruction of the rain forest as well
as the planet itself. This area embraces some of the most biologically
diverse tropical rainforests on the planet. The Kogi are inseparable
from the rainforest habit in which they have lived since the dawn of
time.

Through oracle propheices and message with Spirit, they are
aware of a great change that is coming now to planet Earth. Their
Mountain is dying, symbolizing this transition. Similar to what many
other tribes around the world see is a world that was about to be
destroyed by the misuse of consciousness. Then they saw the emergence
of light consciousness as part of the process of humanity emerging as a
race of beings in higher evolved light bodies. This strongly connects
with the metaphysical teachings of our times.

Kankurua huts

To penetrate a Kankurua is to enter into contact with the nine
worlds and the nine states of consciousness that make it up. Some say
they have moved beyond verbal language, using tones to create colorful
images in their minds rather than thoughts expressed as sentences. Some
Kogi speak telepathically to each other.

According to Drunvalo Melchizedek …

The Kogi do not see us as 'sleeping' as many of the
Hindu and Oriental religions do. The Kogi see humans as dead, shadows
of the energy of what they could be. This is because they do not have
enough life force energy and consciousness to be classified by them as
real people.
The Kogi set out to find out why the 'dead ones' were still on Earth.
As they searched the living vibrating records of this reality, they
found exactly where and why it had happened. Some of the 'dead ones'
had become alive, and had created a dream with enough life force to
save the world as we know it.

They created a parallel world where life could continue to
grow, a world where the dead could become alive. The Kogi were so
specific to locate exactly who these people were that were creating
this change that had altered the world's destiny.

The Kogi see these people with living bodies with light around them,
people who had activated their Light Bodies or in the ancient terms,
their Mer-Ka-Ba.

Shamanic Practices – Coca Plant

Shaman are called Mamas

Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of
childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of
the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who
control Kogi society.

All major decisions and shamanic work are done by Divination. All is
the world of Aluna, so the Mamas see a reflection of the physical world
first in the spiritual world. If Aluna is the Mother, then the Kogi
listen to the Mother by divining. This lost technique of divination is
what keeps the Kogi world in balance and order.

The Mamas – as with other spiritual tribal leaders around the world -
are worried that the Younger Brother has not heeded the first warning.
If the Sierra Nevada or the Mother dies, the world will also die.

They use the coca bush for many things. Myths reveal that it
was the Aluna herself who instituted coca chewing among the Kogi and
who gave a lime gourd to her first son, as a symbolic wife. Other myths
tell that coca was originally discovered in the flowing hair of a young
girl who let her father only participate in its use. An envious and
jealous young man transformed himself into a bird and, after watching
the girl bathing in the river, seduced her. When he returned home and
changed back into human shape, he shook his hair and out of it fell two
coca seeds.

Small plantations of coca shrubs are found near all Kogi
settlements, and provide the men with tender green leaves, plucked by
the women. All adult men chew the slightly toasted leaves, adding to
the moist wad small portions of lime. Coca shrubs are planted and
tended by the men but the leaves are gathered by women. Periodically
the men toast these leaves inside the temple, using for this end a
special double-handled pottery vessel. This ritual vessel made by a
Kogi priest can be used only for the toasting of coca leaves.

When chewed with coca, lime is a substance which helps the
mucous membranes in the mouth absorb the alkaloids in the leaves. The
Kogi produce Lime by burning sea shells on a small pyre carefully
constructed with chosen splints. The fine white powder is then sifted
into a ritual gourd which is carried by all men.

The Lime container consists of a small gourd which is slightly pear-shaped
and perforated along the top. While all lime gourds consist of the same raw
material, the wood of the stick which is inserted into it, must correspond
to the patriline of the owner. Each patriline uses a different wood taken
from the trees belonging to certain botanical species. The length of the
stick may vary from 20 to 30cms. and, together with the degree of surface
polish, these various characteristics identify its owner. An initiated Kogi
man will easily recognise the patriline of his companions, simple by looking
at their lime sticks.

The symbolic importance of the lime container and its stick is
manifold. In one, most important image, the gourd is a woman. During
the marriage ceremony the mama gives the bridegroom a gourd with these
words: “Now I give you a lime gourd; I give you a woman.” He then hands
the bridegroom the lime stick and orders him to perforate with it the
gourd at its upper end, thus symbolising the act of deflowering the
bride.

Both men and women say quite openly that coca chewing has an aphrodisiacal
effect upon male sexuality, and newly wed couples are very outspoken about
this. Male initiation, marriage, and habitual coca chewing are three
elements which coincide at a certain period in a young mans life. Young men
sometimes say that they dislike coca chewing but most of them, sooner or
later, yield to the pressures exercised by the priests and the older
generation, and adopt the habit.

While slowly chewing some twenty or thirty toasted leaves, the man will wet
the lower and slightly pointed end of the stick with saliva and will insert
it into the gourd. Withdrawing the stick again he will put the adhering
lime into his mouth. Immediately he will rub the stick around the top of
the gourd in a circular motion. Eventually, this daily repeated action of
rubbing the stick on the gourd surface begins to form a thin layered crust
of yellowish-white lime that covers the upper part of the container. Some
old lime gourds display a disc shaped accretion of up to 10cms. in
diameter, carefully fashioned by the gourd's owner.

The many symbolic meanings of coca chewing and of the physical objects
involved in this act, form a coherent whole. In macrocosmic perspective, a
lime gourd is a model of the universe; the stick when inserted, becomes a
world axis, and knowledgeable men will be able to talk at great length,
explaining the structure of the universe in terms of levels, rims or
directions appearing on the gourd.

On another scale, the gourd can be compared to the Sierra Nevada; the
lime-splattered upper part are the snow peaks, and the stick is the world
axis. Certain mountain peaks, crowned with white, rocky cliffs, are the
Sun's lime containers, and so are all the temples and houses.

The coca plant is an integral part of the Kogi way of life, deeply involved
with their traditions, religion, work and medicine. Perhaps the most
ancient use of coca in South America is its employment in shamanistic
practises and religious rituals. The mild mental excitation induced by
chewing the coca leaves enables the shaman to enter more easily into a
trance state in which he could communicate with the spiritual forces of
nature and summon them to his aid.

Large scale deforestation and clearing of the jungle is posing a massive
threat to the natural habitat of the Sierra Nevada and its flora and fauna.
In recent years the sinister illusion of the marijuana cultivation practised
by settlers from inland and fueled by encouragement by the Columbian and
International mafia has destroyed vast areas of the jungle.

Twentieth Century

As the world becomes 'smaller' – and 'old' meets 'new' – even the
most ancient civilizations will become part of the evolution now
occurring for all of humanity as a race. Nothing in human history ever
remains the same as we move through our journey back to our spiritual
origins.

In 1990 the Kogi decided they must speak out to the rest of the
world. They had survived by keeping themselves isolated but they
decided that it was time to send a message to the Younger Brother. They
could see that something was wrong with their mountain, with the heart
of the world. The snows had stopped falling and the rivers were not so
full. If their mountain was ill then the whole world was in trouble.

The Mamas sent one of the Kogi who spoke Spanish to contact a
British film maker who was in Colombia at that time. They asked the BBC
to make a film to tell the Younger Brother about their concern. It was
called 'The Elder Brother's Warning 'or' The Message from the Heart of
the World'. Alan Ereira, the producer, has also written a book about
the Kogi called The Heart of the World.

Since the film was brought out many changes have taken place. The film
had a major impact on the Colombian Government and also on the grave
robbers. The grave robbers felt that they should stop because they felt
bad about disturbing their ancestors. There are now two Kogi members of
parliament. The Tairona Heritage Trust was set up to support the Kogi
and to buy back some of the original Kogi lands to give them a passage
to the sea.

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Life Lessons: What can we learn from science? (Guardian Unlimited)

Posted on January 25, 2007 by admin

Provocative responses by scientists to question: “What is the one thing everyone should learn about science?” — from Guardian Unlimited via RYD.

Martin Rees Astronomer Royal and professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge

“I'd like to widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead — for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that exist then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

“Our concern with Earth's future is, understandably, focused upon the next 100 years at most — the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. But awareness of this longer time horizon, and the immense potential that human actions this century could foreclose, offers an extra motive for proper stewardship of this planet. …”

Life lessons

What is the one thing everyone should learn about science? Spiked
asked 250 scientists – here we bring you some of the most provocative
responses

Thursday April 7, 2005

Guardian

Seth Lloyd Professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

You do not have
to be a scientist to do science; you can be a child, a computer, or an
intelligent rat. As long as you can verify a result, it is part of
science.

Freeman Dyson Emeritus professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton

Science is
about uncertainty. We do not yet know the answers to most of the
important questions — nature is smarter than we are. But if we are
patient, and not in too much of a hurry, then science gives us a good
way to find the answers.

Richard Dawkins Charles
Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science at the
University of Oxford, and a science writer and broadcaster

I wish
everyone understood Darwinian natural selection, and its enormous
explanatory power, as the only known explanation of “design”. The world
is divided into things that look designed, like birds and airliners;
and things that do not look designed, like rocks and mountains. Things
that look designed are divided into those that really are designed,
like submarines and tin openers; and those that are not really
designed, like sharks and hedgehogs. Darwinian natural selection,
although it involves no true design at all, can produce an uncanny
simulacrum of true design. An engineer would be hard put to decide
whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

Lewis Wolpert Emeritus professor of biology as applied to medicine at University College London

I would
teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world,
and that for any set of observations, there is only one correct
explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as
it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology
— from medicine to industry.

Kathy Sykes Collier professor of public engagement in science and engineering at the University of Bristol

I would
teach the world that science is not about truth, but is about trying to
get closer to the truth. This is important because, too often, people
look to scientists as having the “truth”. What we have is wrapped in
uncertainties, caveats and simplifications.

John Gribbin Astrophysicist and science writer

I cannot
improve upon the comment of the American physicist Richard Feynman:
“The most important information … is the atomic hypothesis … that all
things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in
perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance
apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”

Bernard Lovell Astronomer and founder of Jodrell Bank Observatory

I would
teach the world that fundamental scientific research is neutral, but
the dividing line between good and evil in the eventual use of the
results of research is often thin and tenuous.

In the
first half of the 20th century, research into the structure of matter
led to a detailed knowledge of atomic structure, and to a knowledge
that in certain transmutations, there was a loss of mass. The second
world war led to the enormous concentration of technological effort,
to convert this knowledge into devastating weapons of mass destruction,
instead of providing atomic power for the benefit of humanity. That
contrast between the good and the evil, in the eventual use of
research, confronts us today.

Simon Baron-Cohen Professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, and director of the Autism Research Centre

I would
teach the world that scientists fall in love — with experiments. An
experiment can be beautifully stunning. Experiments are not just about
proof — some of them have an intrinsic elegance, that you just want to
go back to and look at again and again. Take men with two X
chromosomes. This puzzle of nature just called out for the experiment,
conducted in 1990, to search the two X chromosomes in such individuals
— to find a bit of the Y chromosome, that might have broken off and
become integrated into one of the X chromosomes. It just had to be
there. And sure enough, it was. What we now know to be the SRY gene —
the sex-related Y gene — had got into the X chromosome. And this is the
gene that turns on the process to grow testes, and become male.

Antony Hoare Senior researcher at Microsoft Corporation

I would
teach the world that scientists start by trying very hard to disprove
what they hope is true. When they fail, they have a good reason for
believing what they hope is true, and can even convince others of its
truth. A scientist always acknowledges the possibility of error, and is
less likely to be mistaken than one who always claims to be right.

Harry Kroto Professor of chemistry at Sussex University, and joint recipient of the Nobel prize in chemistry

The methods
of science are manifestly effective, having made massive humanitarian
contributions to society. It is this very effectiveness which the
purveyors of mystical philosophies attack, because they recognise in it
the chief threat to the belief-based source of their power and
financial reward.

Michael Baum
Emeritus professor of surgery and visiting professor of medical
humanities at University College London, and chairman of the
Psychosocial Oncology Committee of the National Cancer Research
Institute

I would
teach the world that science = imagination + humility². If only
politicians were ruled by the scientific principles of conjectures
(hypothesis generation) and refutations (controlled experimentation),
then the world would be a better place. To quote the 19th-century
British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley: “The tragedy of science is the
slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

Susan Blackmore Science writer and broadcaster, and visiting lecturer at the University of the West of England in Bristol

Frighteningly,
most people do not understand Darwin's great insight. What people miss
is the sheer inevitability of the creative process. Once you see it
—copy, vary, select; copy, vary, select —you see that design by natural
selection simply has to happen. This is not like Isaac Newton's laws,
or quantum physics, or any of the other great theories in science,
where one can ask “why is this so?” It simply has to be the case. Then,
the scary implications follow. If everyone understood evolution, then
the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans
might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.

John Sulston One of the leaders of the Human Genome Project, and joint recipient of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine

We have to
accept responsibility for the survival of the human race, instead of
praying about it. The prize, if we can embrace this humanist
philosophy, is an infinite and unimaginably exciting journey ahead of
us.

Brian Davies Professor of mathematics at King's College London

Without
doubt, the most important single scientific discovery ever made was the
connection between electricity and magnetism. This was discovered by
the 19th-century British physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, at the
Royal Institution in London; and it was systematised by the
19th-century Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, at King's College
London.

This
discovery led directly to the electric motor and dynamo — the basis of
all electrical power — and also to telephones, radio, television, and
computers, upon all of which advanced civilisation now depends.

Eric Drexler Founder and emeritus chair of the Foresight Institute, and inventor of the term 'nanotechnology'

Physical
technology evolves towards limits set by physical law, and a technology
approaching the limits set by physical law must build with atomic
precision. Molecular machinery provides a way to accomplish this.

In
today's biological cells and in future manufacturing, large molecular
structures can fit together and work together, forming molecular
machine systems.

Marcus du Sautoy Professor of mathematics at Oxford University, presenter of the BBC TV programme Mind Games

I would
teach the world how the Greeks proved, more than 2,000 years ago, that
there are infinitely many prime numbers. In my mind, this discovery is
the beginning of mathematics — when humankind realised that, by pure
thought alone, it could prove eternal truths of the universe.

Prime
numbers are the indivisible numbers, numbers that can be divided only
by themselves and one. They are the most important numbers in
mathematics, because every number is built by multiplying prime numbers
together — for example, 60 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 5. They are like the atoms of
arithmetic, the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers.

Stanley Feldman Emeritus professor of anaesthesiology at Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School

I would
like it to be universally known that whatever we eat, it is broken down
into basic building blocks of food in the gut, before it can be
absorbed into the blood.

The
cholesterol in the food you eat is not the same cholesterol as that in
your blood. Whatever meat you eat — whether it be prime organic Angus,
or chopped-up scrag end from an old cow — it ends up as the same amino
acids in your blood. No matter what the source of the fat, it is
essentially the same fatty acids that enter the bloodstream. We are not
what we eat.

Richard Fortey Senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, and science writer

Everyone
should know about plate tectonics. We all relate to our own landscape —
it is what gives us our sense of homeland. Yet the ultimate controls on
the shape of the Earth are based upon the slow movement of the tectonic
plates. To understand these geological forces gives us all a new
respect for our planet — an awareness of how it has been sewed together
over 4,000m years, and how it continually remakes itself.

Through
geology, we understand our identity. It is sad that geology is
sometimes regarded as a “dry” science, for it underlies everything.
Geology is a kind of unconscious mind for the world.

Lynne Frostick Professor
of physical geography at the University of Hull, and director of the
Hull Environment Research Institute and the Environmental Technologies
Centre for Industrial Collaboration

I would
like to teach the world about climate change, and the role of every
human being in causing it. This is far and away the biggest threat to
our planet. We will only fight the more serious consequences of climate
change if every individual accepts responsibility, and if every
individual modifies their behaviour.

Robert Garfinkle Lunar section historian at the British Astronomical Association

I would
teach the world the famous quote, attributed to Galileo Galilei, eppur
si muove — Latin for “but still it moves”. It lays the groundwork for
understanding the Earth–moon–sun system. Without this orbiting
triangle, life as we know it might not even exist on Earth.

I would
want my students of science to understand that from this simple
17th-century quote flows all of our knowledge of our place in the local
universe. Our movement about the sun creates our seasons, and gives us
the joy of the changing night sky. The changing seasons, in conjunction
with the movement of the moon around the Earth and — to a lesser extent
— around the sun as well, cause the tides, ocean currents, and
worldwide temperature and atmospheric pressure variations, thus causing
the weather and ocean movements. This movement helps to promote life in
the seas, and the formation of rain clouds — basic building blocks for
all life.

Peggy Lemaux Cooperative extension specialist in plant biotechnology at the University of California at Berkeley

I would
nominate the basic formula for photosynthesis: CO2 + H2O +
sunlight/chlorophyll —> O2 + C6H12O6. Why is this so important?
Because without this chemistry, life on earth would not be possible.
Glucose (C6H12O6) is the basic energy source for all living organisms.
The oxygen released as a photosynthetic byproduct, principally of
phytoplankton, provides most of the atmospheric oxygen vital to
respiration in plants and animals. And animals, in turn, produce carbon
dioxide (C02) necessary for plants. Therefore, photosynthesis is
considered the ultimate source of life for nearly all plants and
animals, by providing the energy required to drive their metabolic
processes. Without this important reaction, life on this planet would
cease.

Dr Robert Maynard Senior medical officer at the UK Department of Health

The
principle of refutation put forward by the philosopher Karl Popper, in
his books The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Conjectures and
Refutations, is my choice. Popper argued that scientific knowledge
advanced most reliably by the development and refutation of hypotheses
— much more reliably than by the accretion of evidence in support of
theories.

He said
you cannot prove that all swans are white by counting white swans, but
you can prove that not all swans are white by counting one black swan.
Popper's approach is now accepted, in principle, by many scientists.
And yet much research is still based upon induction — upon the
collection of facts to support our ideas. Erecting hypotheses that can
be falsified, and designing experiments capable of doing so, is the
hallmark of the true scientist. In fact, it distinguishes the scientist
from the non-scientist.

John McCarthy Emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford University, and inventor of the term 'artificial intelligence'

Find the
numbers, and compare them. As the physicist Lord Kelvin said in 1883,
in a lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers, “when you can
measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know
something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot
express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory
kind”.

Channapatna S Prakash Professor in plant molecular genetics at Tuskegee University, and director of the Centre for Plant Biotechnology Research

I would
teach the world not to be afraid of the genetic modification of our
crops, and to accept GM crops, as they can help to feed the growing
world in an environmentally sustainable manner. There is much
apprehension and confusion about this technology, especially in Europe.
This has led to the needless slowdown of the application of
biotechnology in agriculture.

If the
world were to embrace GM crops, then we could conquer hunger and
poverty much more easily, cut down the use of chemicals on farms, help
mitigate the cutting down of tropical forests to expand the area of
agriculture, bring more reliability to farming, make farming more
profitable, help developing countries through crops that are hardier
and tolerant to drought, improve food safety, and improve the nutrition
of crops. GM crops are as safe as conventionally developed crops. The
fear of this technology is unnecessarily holding back progress, and is
denying the fruits of that progress to the developing world, where it
is needed the most.

Martin Rees Astronomer Royal and professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge

I'd like to
widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead — for
our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that
we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many
tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun,
however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be
humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures
that exist then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or
amoebae.

Our
concern with Earth's future is, understandably, focused upon the next
100 years at most — the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren.
But awareness of this longer time horizon, and the immense potential
that human actions this century could foreclose, offers an extra motive
for proper stewardship of this planet.

Matt Ridley Founding chair of the International Centre for Life

Science is
not a catalogue of facts, but a search for new mysteries. Science
increases the store of wonder and mystery in the world; it does not
erode it. The myth that science gets rid of mysteries, started by the
Romantic poets, was well nailed by Albert Einstein —whose thought
experiments about relativity are far more otherworldly, elusive,
thrilling, and baffling than anything dreamt up by poets.

Isaac
Newton showed us the mysteries of deep space, Charles Darwin showed us
the mysteries of deep time, and Francis Crick and James D Watson showed
us the mysteries of deep encoding. To get rid of those insights would
be to reduce the world's stock of awe.

Roderich Tumulka Researcher in physics at the Mathematics Institute at the University of Tübingen

Paranormal
phenomena do not exist. Magic, witchcraft, mind-reading, clairvoyance,
faith healing and similar practices do not work and never have worked.
It makes a crucial difference whether we imagine ourselves surrounded
by supernatural beings and happenings or whether instead we see
ourselves in a world that science can help us understand. Many
scientific principles, concepts, or discoveries need not, despite their
importance, be understood by the public, but just by the experts. The
question of the paranormal is different in this respect.

Stuart Zola Professor
of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Emory University, and
director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre

I would
teach the world the importance of staying actively intellectually
engaged throughout our lives, especially as we become elderly. There
are good data now that point to the fact that continuing to challenge
yourself late in life — taking up a new hobby, learning to play a
musical instrument, doing crossword puzzles, etc — actually helps to
maintain cognitive function, and protects against the onset of
cognitive decline.

Gerardus 't Hooft Professor
of theoretical physics at Utrecht University and joint recipient of the
Nobel prize in physics, for his work on the quantum structure of
electroweak interactions

Is it
really true that the world wants to hear only one thing about science?
And then continue after that, with its ongoing religious, superstitious
and political disputes? Maybe the world wants to hear only one thing
from me. What could that be? All the important things that the world
has already heard from my colleagues might be incomplete — my
colleagues may have forgotten to tell the world something. What could
that be? I do not know.

·
This research was carried out by Sandy Starr at spiked and supported by
the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta).
The full results will be published at
www.spiked-online.com/einstein
at the end of April, alongside an online debate and a series of films
made by the science communicator Alom Shaha. A debate will take place
at the Royal Institution in London on the evening of Tuesday 10 May,
bringing together some of the scientists who took part. To book
tickets, telephone the Royal Institution on 020 7409 2992.

Posthuman Destinies

Science, Culture, Integral Yoga

Tag Archives: SCIENCE & TECH./CONSCIOUSNESS