Month: October 2004

Is No News Good News ?

Eeek, it’s a week since I’ve posted. Actually, I’ve had a cold, and found myself sleeping whenever I had the opportunity, so that might account for letting things slip. Been continuing to read Austin’s “Zen and the Brain”, which has ben getting a bit technical brain-physiology-biochemistry-wise, and a bit detailed on the teaching and practice of Zen.

As a result of the latter, I’ve resurrected Eugen Herrigel’s “Zen in the Art of Archery” which, although brief, I read none-too-thoroughly first time around. Like D T Suzuki, Herrigel seems de-rigoeur background. Already noticing details I’d missed. The focus on breathing, the straight-arm / clamped-thumb grip, to name a couple.

Talking of brain activity reminds me of Adam Zeman’s talk on the scientific basis for consciuousness at Cambridge Crosstalk Society in June 2003, in collaboration with the Cambridge Centre for Quantum Computation. [Summary here, half-way down.] He also has a book published, which was the basis of his talk. Seem to remember his stuff was more up-to-date / comprehensive in terms of scans with colour maps to document levels of consciousness. Austin’s book is mostly textual in describing this stuff.

Following up the link to Gerald Edeleman, I find a reference to Richard Feynman’s “Meta-Wondering” – I wonder why I wonder why I ….. wonder why I wonder. Nice concept.

Self Organising Motes from Intel

You’ll like these Alex. Saw these demonstrated at FIATECH yesterday. Really neat. Aimed a ultra-low power distributed network architectures for control systems, but the neatest aspect is their individual awareness of relationships to other motes. By negotiation they organise their own network topology. Reminded me of our smart templates approach to self-knowing packets of XML.(Can’t help thinking of the AI / A-Life connotations.)

Obvious “toy” potential – “They’ll be in the shops for Christmas”.

Levels of Causality

And there’s more from Dr Austin. Taking emergent as high and fundamental as low, he talks of higher level emergent properties having causal effects on the underlying structures, such that the emergent properties are “causal realities”. As in Pirsig’s levels of static quality, the high can control the lower, but the lower must only ever support, never constrain, the higher. Never forget your roots.

Quirks Emerge Beyond Our Quarks

Dr Austin again. “Sperry takes over where William James left off. Neurosciences have rejected reductionism and mechanistic determinism on the one hand, and dualisms on the other…. higher level interactions [of the] brain are presumed to be reducible [only in principle] in terms of fundamental physics. How does it help us to know about quarks, molecules and the brain’s high water content ? We have personal quirks which go beyond our quarks …. Interactions of a [complex] system, always much more than the sum of their parts …. our brain develops new emergent properties.” Whahaay, ‘ere we go. See Brian Josephson below.

Who was it said something like “To know about a man’s make up in terms of his chemistry is only of interest if you intend to make fertiliser out of his body” ? Blogged somewhere ealier.

“Thinking with meat” [after Terry Bisson]. Getting there.

Greeley Tangles The Web

The plot thickens further …

I’m now reading Dr Austin’s “Zen and the Brain”. Not surprisngly for a real US medic he spends a fair amount of time apologising for his mystic tendencies and acknowledging christian religious sensibilities, before he dares launch us into his Zen treatise. (I suspect 2/3 of this 800 page tome is down to such political correctness.)

Plenty of homage to Herrigel and Suzuki in laying down the history of modern Zen foundations. Not a single reference to Pirsig – oh well. But a positive citation for a certain Father Andrew Greeley. A Catholic PhD Sociologist of some note apparently, and the very same Andrew M Greeley of the National Opinion Research Center who slammed Pirsig in 1975 for his “bigotry”.

(I just sent Pirsig a question about that reaction a couple of days ago – weird.)

Off The Road

Just finished Kerouac on BA2027. Aren’t west-bound transatlantic flights a great place to read – 90% of the book in the one sitting. I guess I need to understand a little of the circumstances under which it was written – one drug induced sitting ? – published 1955 about 1947 to 1949 period in which the author refers to writing and successfully publishing a first work.

The music and the locations are seductive; the drink, drugs, driving and women plain wild. A great east-west anthroplogical thread in there – the fellahin cultures, the Tao. (We know Pirsig was influenced by Kerouac. He would have read on-the-road immediately prior to his “teaching quality” episodes.)

What did Sal and Dean mean, headed for Times Square in 1948 driving through the tunnel from Jersey, by “We are a bunch of Arabs going to blow up New York” ? Intriguing.