source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 18:50:00 -0800 Subject: "wuzzat?" From: Gary Morrison Neil said: > When the term "organizing fields" came up the other day, in relation to > the ability of humans to pick up "cosmic" types of wavelengths...Gary, I > think the spirit is the organizing field that holds the fabric of the > body and mind together I think it's very important for us to realize that we've been discussing three fundamentally different types of topics here: 1. Things that we know about. 2. Speculations about unknown relationships between things that we know about to other things. 3. Things that are irrelevant to science in the first place. Electromagnetic waves are an example of the first. Electromagnetic waves are no more mysterious than E-mail. As with sound waves, everything about them - their frequency, amplitude, and waveform - can be precisely quantified and measured. The are a quite simple physical phenomenon as natural as a rock falling when you drop it. An example of the second is the possibility of as-yet-unknown medical or psychological effects of electromagnetic waves. Since one of these two things, the electromagnetic waves, are scientifically well-understood, possible correlations can be located scientifically. It makes no sense, however, to speculate about such correlations mystically. If I were to say that on my way to work this morning I had an overwhelming deja vu experience, what value could possibly come from also suggesting that this was caused by an electromagnetic phenomenon? That's irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is the freaky sensation of that experience, and could mislead people about the nature of Electromagnetics. The third general sort of topic we've discussed are mystical, religious, and metaphysical. Whether God has set me on a personal quest to bring new musical resources to the public and other composers is irrelevant of the precise reason why xylophone bars vibrate with nonharmonic partials. Divine influence has no precisely quantifiable basis (and if you'll pardon the pun I'll add "Thank God!"), so electromagnetic waves also have nothing to do with it. By no means am I suggesting that imply that mystical ideas are unimportant, or meaningless. In fact, when we're on our death beds, many of us will conclude that they are the ONLY meaningful ideas. They're just not of much concern to science, nor is science of much concern to mysticism. They contribute very little to each other. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 20:43 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA08640; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 20:43:05 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA16619 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id LAA23553; Tue, 25 Mar 1997 11:32:07 -0800 Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 11:32:07 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu