Re: Out of Control

["S.K. Harrison" <skh23ca@yahoo.com>]

> From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr."

> Start with an interest in permaculture; collect
> literature and learn, synthesize and put it to 
> work in one's life; go online and collect more 
> information (mostly free), learn even more, 
> gain expertise. Seems many tens of thousands of
> people are doing this every year.

This begs the question, How many people are *not*
doing this every year?

(We have over 6 billion people on this planet, so
even 1,000,000, to take an arbitrary number,
represents only a minute fraction of the total
population--by my calculator, approximately
0.0002% of the population of the planet.)


> That is a very inadequate and short-sighted
> view of electronic information collection,
> management and retreival.

Actually, Mollison mentioned it only in passing.
And I did more than "inadequate" considering I
wrote a couple of paragraphs and not a thesis
paper.

A little charity, please.


> I note that he has no detectable online
> presense.

This looks like a red herring to me. He worked as
a scientist with the Aussie CSIRO for years, so
he's got a sufficient familiarity with academic
modes of information sharing. And even though he
did this work decades ago, before the advent of
powerful computers, his observation remains
accurate. Verbal and numerical information lacks
the memorable vivacity of song or dance.


-------------------------------------------------
> From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>

> Oral, patterned learning is more efficiently 
> retained by our meat computer and in our 
> bodies. 

Thank you Toby for that fine rephrasing of my
point. In line with your examples, here's my
little contribution (c/o Linnaea Liz, for those
who may know her):

Sedges have edges,
Rushes are round,
Reeds are hollow,
Grasses are sound.


> David Abram's marvelous "Spell of the
Sensuous."

Wow! I checked this out at Amazon and was glad to
see mention of phenomenology, which I've begun to
study only in the last couple months. 


Also, Toby, you mentioned a knowledge of
semantics, so you may be interested in my
favourites re its application to permanent
culture:

1) techniques for cultivating observation skills
(techniques which have a phenomenological
flavour, incidentally),

2) the novel notion of neuro-semantic
environments *as environments unique to humans*
(environmentalism becomes more than
clearcutting),

3) in speech and writing, the trained habitual
avoidance of most forms of the verb 'to be',
except as auxiliary verb and as the 'is' of
existence. This promotes recognition of the world
as action or process (cf. Bucky Fuller's "I seem
to be a verb.")


>
------------------------------------------------

> From: "souscayrous" <souscayrous@wanadoo.fr>

> And Sean, however deft your touch with the
> prospectors pan, as you sift the
> coarse ore of human language between general
> and specific, all that will
> ever remain is fool's gold.  Wittgenstein was
> the disciple of Russell but
> even he could not enclose meaning.
> Aye, and Godel's theorem too!

Anyone can observe that we encompass so-called
"meaning" to a reliable extent. If this were not
the case, some other species would have been
favoured by natural selection and none of us
would be here attempting to communicate right
now. Our efficacy with complex symbol systems
distinguishes us as humans.


> NB Contact me offlist if you wish to pursue
> this thread.

Thanks for the invite, but I've explored these
themes on other lists. I'm here for languaging as
it pertains to permaculture.


>
------------------------------------------------

> From: Bob Howard <rmhoward@omninet.net.au>

> Life is a
> chemical language. Most obviously that language
> is chiral - that is - it contains
> molecules that are only left or right handed
> (in a 3 -D sense). Chemists have yet to
> demonstrate how to create from non-chiral
> precursors chiral products. In this sense
> the vitalist heresy has yet to be overthrown.

I doubt that we need learn how to create chiral
products to have a chance to overthrow vitalism.
We can chuck this ghost in the machine with the
help of a little Occamite observation.

In spite of that criticism I remain interested in
the differentiation of life from non-life. But y'
know, although I ain't a chemist, your
explanation seems like it's missing something.
Can you tell me more about chiral products? If
you can, I'd like you to flesh-out the comment
about the left or right-handedness of molecules
and how it pertains to the aforementioned
differentiation.


>
------------------------------------------------

> From: Claude  Genest <genest@together.net>

> Thi sthread reminds me of the George Carlin
> post a while back who made the
> wry and astute observation about our being
> awash in information, yet short
> on knowledge...

Somewhere, I picked up a scale which orders the
value of the different products of language. From
least to most valuable it looks like this:

1. Data
2. Information (data cohering in a theory)
3. Knowledge (a theory applied)
4. Wisdom (the synthetic result of the foregoing)

-------------------------------------------------
Sean

_______________________________________________________
Build your own website in minutes and for free at http://ca.geocities.com