On Jul 16, 2018, at 6:46 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Joe:

Fascinating -- yes, "time" is, in many ways, the problem we face (or, rather, our failure to understand it), from which we get the one-way 2nd-Law and all of its distracting after-effects . . . <g>

For what it's worth, my Center's work in China wrestles with these topics and, in particular, we seem to be the only people (at least in the geo-political circles in which we march around in circles) who have noticed that China has scrapped "Marxism" and replaced it with "Daoism" as well as the YIJING (aka "The Book of Changes.")  Yes, this is an "existence in motion" attitude (at the highest cultural levels) and, alas, we have nothing with which to "answer" it.

As Kurt Lewin, the founder of modern Social Psychology, once put it, "There's nothing more practical than a good theory" and, indeed, we seem to be *very* much in need of one (which is to say, we're already in a *new* paradigm and all the old ones don't work anymore) . . . !!

Mark

P.S. When I first visited Turkey, trying to meet some *authentic* Sufis was one of my goals.  One afternoon, my girlfriend and I were standing at Tunel Square when a fellow approached us with what we thought was an odd (and bold) question, "Excuse me sir and madam, are you Sephardic or Askenazi?"  "Neither," was my answer, "We are Khazar!" (no, not accurate but meant to elevate the conversation -- she's Jewish and I'm Catholic.)  "Oh!  I see," he replied, "Then you will want to see the real Sufis, not the fake ones down the road put there to entertain the tourists."  He proceeded to do just that -- at an out-of-the-way Musicological Institute on the outskirts of Istanbul (filled with secret police.)  I still have my Sufi "rosary" from that trip.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__turkeytravelplanner.com_go_Istanbul_Sights_Beyoglu_galata-5Ftekke.html&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=aCjQsYS6Xivfj4FgTwf9dZ1uvco8enpQDur-PX_kSKI&s=uIFVd8vPr0uJLOdgqYuGP_AXVgMVIXJF54QYa6BRbVE&e=

Quoting Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]>:

Dear Colleagues:


I understand everyone has busy intellectual agendas, but I thought I'd share an interesting parallel discovery from the past weekend (beyond the recent discovery of neutrinos from a distant galaxy!). My wife and I were flying back from England, reading next to each other on the plane. I was reading Roberto Unger and Lee Smolin's The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time as part of my efforts to understand the cosmos and our broader TOK mission. My wife, who's a Sufi Muslim, was reading Sadegh Angha's (41st Sufi Master) The Hidden Angles of Life in her efforts to understand the cosmos from a religious worldview. Here's what we were reading at the same time from our respective books:


Joe, the scientist, read on p. 8: “If, however, everything is time-bound (a key argument of the book), that principle must apply as well to the laws, symmetries, and constants of nature. There are then no timeless regularities capable of underwriting our causal judgments. Change changes. It is not just the phenomena that change; so do the regularities: the laws, symmetries, and supposed constants of nature.”


Farnaz, the spiritualist, read on p. xi: “(T)he laws of physics are fundamentally and essentially variable (for example, there is much evidence and documentation that most of the constant principles of nature and those influenced by gravity are in fact not constant). Existence itself is in motion.” (emphasis in the original)


Just some food for future thought. If I arrive at any great insights from all of this, I'll be happy to share. At the same time, perhaps others on the list have had their own "a-ha" moments in terms of understanding the evolving nature of the universe, the constancy of change, and the implications that nature's laws might best be viewed from a cosmological, historical perspective. Yours kindly, -Joe


Dr. Joseph H. Michalski

Associate Academic Dean

King’s University College at Western University

266 Epworth Avenue

London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 2M3

Tel: (519) 433-3491, ext. 4439

Fax: (519) 433-0353

Email: [log in to unmask]

______________________
eiπ + 1 = 0


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