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Modern times

 

 

Today it seems obvious that we each can have no knowledge of the world around us that we have not obtained through the direct application of our senses; or indirectly through the reported application of someone else's.

For each of us the world is as it seems.  But to reach an understanding of the actual world behind the appearances, illusion needs to be recognised and accounted for.  And when dealing with indirect experience we need to guard against deliberate untruth and artistic flights of imagination and intuition of others that may have intervened in the process.  I have discussed this in more detail elsewhere on this website.  What grounds do we have for believing that we move things through actual physical contact?

Thanks to Hume and his successors by 1901 Einstein could demonstrate that Newton’s laws are inconsistent with Maxwell’s equations (relating to electro-magnetic radiation, such as light and radio waves).  While accurately describing the universe at slow speeds Newton’s laws provide an increasingly poor approximation of reality as objects move towards the speed of light relative to each other.  

Suddenly we understood that matter and energy are manifestations of the same thing and that far from being contrary to common experience, all material interactions are at a distance; mediated by invisible forces. Today we would say that when we push, pull, lift or hold we never actually touch an atom in the object of our action, because at the sub atomic level everything is separated by invisible forces; at a distance.

A century after Darwin, to the present time, and this scientific method has yielded insights to vastly more of the mysteries of the universe.  Many of these discoveries have been made and insights developed within my lifetime.  

When I was at school an atom was an infinitesimal, unimaginably small, object that was only known about very indirectly through the results of experiments.  Today we have computer chips with features a few atoms across and commercial fabrication equipment capable of placing a single atom into such a structure. The structure of DNA was unknown when I was a child.  Today we have documented the information sequence that is responsible for determining the underlying properties of each of the cellular colonies that is each of us; the Human Genome. 

In addition to humans we have done this for many other animals and plants and are well on the way to determining the role of each code segment in determining the characteristics expressed in each colony (animal or plant).

This has often involved a complete change of thinking.  No longer can we believe in absolute authority; that those who came before are inevitably wiser than we.  For example in 1949 Fred Hoyle derided the concept that the universe had a finite beginning with the derogatory term ‘The Big Bang’ and when I was in high school the ‘steady state universe’ was still the preferred but somewhat controversial model.  This was resolved while I was at University with the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson; for which they won the Nobel Prize1978. The Big Bang was suddenly vindicated. There are many other examples in which real evidence has falsified an earlier misunderstanding.

Largely because of Hume, there are few educated people today, including some theologians, who can any longer believe in miracles; or that consequently, believe the miracles reported in the Bible were not simply natural events given supernatural explanations.  Indeed some fundamentalists seem not to realise that discovering natural evidence for a Biblical event, like the flood, is to deny its miraculous nature.  For some theologians reported miracles are like the images prayed to by some Christians; an essentially worthless, earthly, thing that provides a focus for their prayers to the otherwise inconceivably transcendent; or a simple badge of faith.

As Sportin' Life sings in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess on the subject of miracles:

The t'ings dat yo' li'ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.

Yet elsewhere people are still being killed and moved off their lands on the basis of revelations and claimed reality drawn from the Bible.   

The Bible is undoubtedly a finely crafted poetic expression of great emotional power.  Following Armstrong’s convincing analysis the later books of the Old Testament certainly inspired that great Jewish project: the welfare state.  In Christian and Muslim times it has provided many with a motivation for personal sacrifice and charity in the interests of our fellow man.  But it has for over three millennia also provided the justification for uncountable wars, atrocities and deaths in the name of God.

Now US President Obama has told Israel that returning to the 1967 borders key to any future peace.  Predictably Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected any withdrawal to what he called ‘indefensible’1967 borders that would ‘jeopardize Israel's security and leave major West Bank settlements outside Israeli borders’. 

These are the same settlements that are the principal cause of Middle East conflict; having been continually and illegally expanded by zealots who believe that they have a, Biblically sanctioned, God given, right to the land.  How can they possibly believe this?

It’s a pity that more people do not have access to the inspiration and rationality that was the Scottish enlightenment, and David Hume.

 

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Travel

South Korea & China

March 2016

 

 

South Korea

 

 

I hadn't written up our trip to South Korea (in March 2016) but Google Pictures gratuitously put an album together from my Cloud library so I was motivated to add a few words and put it up on my Website.  Normally I would use selected images to illustrate observations about a place visited.  This is the other way about, with a lot of images that I may not have otherwise chosen.  It requires you to go to the link below if you want to see pictures. You may find some of the images interesting and want to by-pass others quickly. Your choice. In addition to the album, Google generated a short movie in an 8mm style - complete with dust flecks. You can see this by clicking the last frame, at the bottom of the album.

A few days in Seoul were followed by travels around the country, helpfully illustrated in the album by Google generated maps: a picture is worth a thousand words; ending back in Seoul before spending a few days in China on the way home to OZ. 

Read more: South Korea & China

Fiction, Recollections & News

Recollections of 1963

 

 

 

A Pivotal Year

 

1963 was a pivotal year for me.  It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University;  the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated. 

The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there. 

Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.

The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.

Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.

But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.

Read more: Recollections of 1963

Opinions and Philosophy

Electricity Pricing

 

 August 2012 (chapters added since)

 

 

 

Introduction

 

The present government interventions in electricity markets, intended to move the industry from coal to renewable energy sources, are responsible for most of the rapidly rising cost of electricity in Australia.  These interventions have introduced unanticipated distortions and inefficiencies in the way that electricity is delivered.

Industry experts point to looming problems in supply and even higher price increases.

A 'root and branch' review of these mechanisms is urgently required to prevent ever increasing prices and to prevent further potentially crippling distortions.

Read more: Electricity Pricing

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