Taking A Bite Consider an apple. The Honeycrisp apples have been quite delicious, here in Colorado this year—so let’s consider a Honeycrisp apple. My first direct experience of the Honeycrisp apple is visual: shape and color. The apple is basically round, and mottled red-green-gold in color, with a small brown stem. The next experience is tactile. When I pick the Honeycrisp apple up, it …
Science & Spirit
Practice Notes: The S.S. Phenom
Imagine … A beautiful ship—named the S.S. Phenom—made exclusively of cedar planks. This S.S. Phenom is a medium-sized steamship used primarily to ferry tourists over the balmy waters of the Caribbean Sea, between island beaches renowned as vacation destinations. The ship’s owners are under contract with a local travel agency, and enjoy a lucrative regular schedule of trips between and around …
Practice Notes: Objectivity & Subjectivity
I recently shared a couple of love poems written by A.R. Ammons. But this poet is best known for poems which reference scientific laws and theories of various sorts. For instance: Substantial Planes It doesn't matter to me if poems mean nothing: there's no floor to the universe and yet one walks the floor. ~ A.R. Ammons Science & Poetry What I appreciate …
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A Logical Duet
Every now and again, I find it useful to review logical principles that are central to rational discourse, yet often misunderstood or just botched in the heat of the moment. Here are two all-time favorites … 1. Correlation & Causation Just because two events are correlated doesn’t mean that there is a causal relationship that exists between the two. As pictured above, a hot sunny day may …
Ways of Knowing
In a previous post—Mercury Rising—we considered various measuring devices—used by scientists to record information about large, medium-sized and very small phenomena. One device briefly considered was the human body-mind itself. Now, let’s continue our exploration by taking a closer look at the human body-mind as a measuring apparatus. In particular, let’s address the question: what counts as …
Mercury Rising
In a previous post—Star Light, Star Bright—I posed the question: What is meant by “observation” in various physics paradigms, and how does this relate (if at all) to Awareness as the final, ultimate perceiver/observer? And, as we saw, what is meant by “an observer” differs quite dramatically, between Newtonian, special relativity, and quantum mechanical paradigms. And this is quite …