Reified metaphors and the reconciliation of science and religion

Reified metaphors and the reconciliation of science and religion

By Tristan Torriani (12 July 2009)

One of the great problems of modernity is the reconciliation of science and religion and so understandably it was a central concern for Rudolf Steiner. Is this reconciliation possible? I think it is, but as in any meeting of minds it requires that both sides adopt a flexible attitude. Science has developed extremely sophisticated procedures of measurement, testing, explanation and conceptualization that we rely on for our survival and happiness in our daily lives. So it is not possible to live without incorporating scientific concepts and the world view that comes with them. But although science is necessary, it is not sufficient for a meaningful life. We generally talk in this context about values, but do not explain clearly what is a value. Is it a thing outside of us that determines what is the worth of something else? If so, where are they? It looks like we tend to imagine values as Platonic Ideas (or Forms), that are transcendent and would serve as a foundation for our beliefs. This leads to dogmatism, for claims about Platonic Ideas cannot be verified intersubjectively. Another solution is to refer to norms that can be found in sacred texts such as the Bible, but this recourse to Divine Authority does not prevent moral dilemmas from appearing. In such cases we need to exercise what Kant called our practical reason or pure will to examine the inner consistency of moral and political arguments. That is why philosophy mediates between science and religion.

If religious descriptions and explanations are understood literally as they are in the popular religions, this means that the causal agents in the events described in sacred texts should also be observable by science. If a statue of Our Lady starts crying tears, scientists can try to explain the phenomenon using physical concepts. Religious authorities may elaborate other explanations that include spiritual forces as causal agents over and above the material forces studied by the scientists. It seems to me that religious explanations are in this way "supervenient" (over and above) in their relation to scientific explanations and are used to transcend and to contextualize them. Very often the hard nosed scientist is not interested in this spiritual dimension because he or she considers it unreal. This lack of interest makes reconciliation impossible because human cognition is limited by the will. We are not purely intellectual animals. We are rational but our rationality is always practical (in the Kantian moral sense).

Spirituality is only accessible to those whose will is pure and open to it. And to experience it one has to accept the language of metaphor. Let us grant that the literal language of scientific concepts tells us what reality in fact is, for otherwise we would be liable to suffer the abuses of pseudoscience. It is common among spiritual searchers to deny completely the reality of the material world. I think this is a bad idea because it denies our scientific knowledge. In addition, it creates a dualism between mind and matter which becomes unbridgeable. There is only one reality, and it is material. But spiritual people find in this material world energies and forces that skeptics consider to be just a figment of their imagination. Spiritual searchers often have to rely on metaphors that they make real (or reify) so that we end up accepting them as literally true. It is a question of linguistic meaning on the one hand and spiritual interest (or its absence) on the other that determine whether science and religion are compatible or not. The spiritual person has to recognize that he or she is using reified metaphors, while the scientist needs to recognize that many people cannot relate to themselves, to others and to the world in the reductionist terms of scientific language. Moreover, if we are to live in a free society in which people can interpret the world as it makes more sense to them, this should not be a problem. It only becomes a problem when we become obsessed with the idea that only one view can be correct.

Peter Stoney's Fiddle Fretter Works Fine

Peter Stoney is an Irish-Canadian violinist and violin teacher who developed an adhesive nylon fretboard that can be glued on the violin's fingerboard (check out his site http://www.frettedfiddle.com/). In case you are interested in it but still skeptical, I can assure you that it does indeed work because I have tried it recently. It is a serious product and Mr. Stoney ships it by mail to anywhere in the world inside a large letter envelope. The nylon adhesive fretboard is so thin and flexible that it does not require a box. The fret distances are correctly calculated and the frets do not buzz. The cost and complication of installing metal frets on a violin would be considerable. Mr. Stoney's products spares us from all the risk and aggravation of trying out a fretted violin. 

As a former guitar player I always appreciated the utility of frets for chords, and indeed they do sound better on the fretted violin. Left hand pizzicato comes out much clearer and in tune. It is also great to be able to play in tempered intonation. This can be a really "ear-opening" experience even for experienced violinists. 

One of the usual objections against frets on the violin is that one loses the ability to use intonation as an expressive device. This is true for classical soloists, but for the vast majority of amateur violin players, frets offer secure and easy tempered intonation. That is an advantage not to be dismissed out of hand. Unless you are an advanced amateur who will be able to maintain your technique consistently, you will eventually welcome the utility of frets.

Another objection against frets is that they hinder vibrato. I must admit that this is true. However, vibrato is often misused by amateurs to disguise poor intonation. Since only a very faint vibrato is possible with frets, this has the positive effect of forcing players to pay more attention to the quality of their tone and bowing. So one makes a virtue out of a necessity.

Yet another objection is that if one plays with frets, one has to place the fingers right behind them and not where we would put them on the normal fingerboard. Therefore, if you play with frets you may not be able to play fretless in tune later.  This is also true, but again, if you are an amateur who can only play once in a while, you will probably prefer to play only with frets anyway. 

The bottom line is that the world of the classical soloist is so different (even opposed to) that of the amateur, that what makes sense for one is counterproductive for the other. Fretted string instruments are the most appropriate for amateurs and as the violin becomes more popular it seems reasonable to expect that the fretted violin will be accepted as the best option for millions of players around the world. Mr. Stoney has come up with a very ingenious product which may some day become as common as the shoulder rest is today. We live in a complicated, hurried and violent world in which it makes no sense to spend extra time improving one's intonation on a fretless instrument unless you are intending to become a professional soloist. Congratulations to Mr. Stoney for his idea and I wish him success.

Spinoza on Free Speech

Source: Spinoza, Baruch - A Theologico-Political Treatise (1670)

CHAPTER XX. That in a Free State every man may Think what he Likes, and Say what he Thinks.


(20:1) If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. (20:2) However, we have shown already (Chapter XVII.) that no man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be com-
pelled so to do. (20:3) For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. (20:4) All these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot
abdicate even with his own consent.

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Tristan Torriani - Lydian Jazz Funk (Synth Power Trio)

Lydian Jazz Funk composed by Tristan Torriani. Performed by Tristan Torriani (Roland Juno 106 Synthesizer), Renato Hoffmann Penteado (bass) and Ricardo Primi (drums). This is a garage tape recording from around 1987.

Schubert Military March Theme, Op. 51 for solo violin

Tristan Torriani - Lydian Jazz Funk

Lydian Jazz Funk composed by Tristan Torriani. Performed by Tristan Torriani (Roland Juno 106 Synthesizer), Renato Hoffmann Penteado (bass) and Ricardo Primi (drums). This is a garage recording from around 1987.

Adoniran Barbosa - Tristan Torriani

Roger Waters to perform at apartheid wall when it falls

Source: Roger Waters to perform at apartheid wall when it falls (PressTV)

Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters says he would perform a concert in a flash the moment Israel's apartheid wall is torn down.

(...)

Waters said he hopes "this thing, this awful thing, is destroyed soon".

The wall is "an obscenity for other people in the world. It looks okay to Jews here and maybe in other places where they live, but people around the world see it as a weird way to live," the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.

He stated that the instant the illegal apartheid wall is torn down, he will perform a concert at the site, similar to his performance at the site of the Berlin Wall in 1990, shortly after it came down.

Susan Boyle: Her sadness - and our shame

Susan Boyle: Her sadness - and our shame  (Telegraph.co.uk)
Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle is paying the price for instant fame - and we should look to ourselves for the culprits 
 

By Nicci Gerrard 
Published: 7:00AM BST 02 Jun 2009


Who feels ashamed? Who wants a de-tox? Who's ready for a Campaign for Real Life?

When Susan Boyle first took part in Britain's Got Talent, she became an international sensation overnight. Tens of millions of people have watched her on YouTube (apparently more than watched Obama's inauguration). She has been invited on to the Larry King and the Oprah Winfrey shows. Paparazzi have camped outside her door. There are thousands of articles, tens of thousands of blogs about her. There's a Susan Boyle fan site. You can buy a Susan Boyle T-shirt. 
 

She's now known as SuBo (every celebrity has to have a logo). She seemed a symbol of authenticity – in a world obsessed with appearance, here was a 47-year-old woman who wasn't pretty, wasn't skinny, wasn't groomed and glossed and highlighted and buffed and plucked and tweaked and manicured and waxed and styled, but who seemed ''real''. She walked out on stage, opened her mouth and – my God, how astonishing – this woman had a nice voice. The judges looked taken aback and moved, the audience became hushed.

I watched Susan Boyle on YouTube and afterwards I dearly wished I hadn't – not just because of the sheer humiliating ugliness of a spectacle where celebrity judges patronised a dumpy, unmarried, middle-aged woman, where the audience tittered and gave derisive wolf-whistles and where she compliantly wiggled her hips while everyone seemed shocked and delighted and a bit embarrassed that even the unbeautiful can have talent, but because from the very start it was so obviously a fake, a set up. The ''surprise'' – that someone looking like her – could win was just another clever construct. Those gasps of theatrical delight and surprise and those crocodile tears were just part of the show. This is not real life, this is a drama – a nasty, demeaning drama, with a vulnerable, unprepared, star-struck woman at its centre and media-savvy judges licking their lips on the sidelines. 

Chinese have head start in perfect pitch league

Source: Chinese have head start in perfect pitch league (Brisbane Times)

In a study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America , researchers tested 203 music students for perfect pitch by asking them to identify 36 piano notes. The students disclosed their musical education and ethnicity, and which languages they spoke and how fluently.

More than 90 per cent of students who began musical training between ages 2 and 5 and spoke an East Asian tonal language very fluently had perfect pitch, compared with less than 30 per cent of Caucasian speakers of non-tonal languages who started to learn music at the same ages. Because the East Asian non-fluent tonal speakers and the Caucasian non-tonal speakers had similar test results, the researchers concluded that their performance was based on language skills rather than ethnicity.

Ron Paul - Current Conditions or Just a Bad Dream 5/19/09

Forgetting Tristan Anderson

Forgetting Tristan Anderson
By Tristan Torriani (22 May 2009)

Lying on his hospital bed and trying to regain control of his body, Tristan Anderson may not be aware that US president Obama and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu met a few days ago. On March 13th, 2009, Anderson, 38, a peace activist from Oakland, California, was shot in the head by Israeli military as he took photographs of a demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. He has already undergone three brain surgeries in which part of his right frontal lobe was removed. He also lost his right eye. He is now in intensive care in Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv but has no medical insurance and will need substantial financial assistance to continue his treatment. The state of Israel is not going to foot the bill although it has received millions of dollars in aid from US taxpayers since its creation decades ago.

This is not the first time that an American citizen is hurt protesting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Six years ago, Rachel Corrie, 23, another American International Solidarity Movement activist, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah. But for some reason there is very little coverage in the mainstream media of all this or events such as the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. Whether Anderson or Corrie were even mentioned at all in the Obama-Netanyahu talks is hard to tell.

There are several important conclusions one can draw from this current situation. Former US president Jimmy Carter has tried to bring the Holocaust of the Palestinian people to the attention of the world, but the inhuman Israeli blockade of Gaza continues unabated and nobody seems capable of stopping it. Since Netanyahu rejects the two-state solution, this probably means that in due course all Palestinians will be either killed off or expelled from their land. All the talk about a peace process was just a ruse to create false hope in people of good faith. Israel's actions show that it believes that aggression is the best way to solve its issues with other nations. This is a very significant conclusion, for what we have been taught to regard as Western civilization is to no small degree actually Jewish and Israeli. The same applies to the Islamic world, and, last but not least, to Freemasonry as well. Our world is much more Judeocentric than we realize, partly because we are distracted by the anti-colonial critique of Eurocentrism promoted by the academic Left and partly because of the Christian Conservative reaction to it, which confuses European and Middle Eastern traditions.

When ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato or Aristotle said that man was a rational animal, they did not mean that all humans are capable of acting rationally at all times. What they postulated was that there was a conceptual link between reason and virtue. This means that morality and politics could and should be subject to the judgment of reason. The Judeocentric tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam does not see things this way. Zionism is predicated on a religious belief system even though it presents itself as a secular ideology. All three religions regard Jews as the chosen people of God, a master race of humanity. This is a very Un-American and Un-European mentality. The decline of Christianity in the West is to a great degree a result of this realization among European-descended peoples, and it is in my view inescapable. With improved living conditions and the influence of modern science and technology, Europeans realized that considerable material progress could be achieved in the world. Unfortunately for humanity, however, during the Hellenistic period, particularly in the dispute between the Greeks and Jews in Alexandria, fanaticism and insanity prevailed. The Roman Empire was unable to immunize itself against the spread of a religion that exploited its inner social divisions and fell apart in the West. In the East, Constantinople held its own till its fall to the Turks in 1453. To this day Europeans are still liable to being forcibly converted to Islam. Current EU legislation forbidding the expression of critique towards Islam or Judaism (Christianity seems not to deserve protection) will certainly facilitate this process.

Besides the connection between reason and virtue, as distinguished from faith and dogma, the ancient Greek philosophers also realized that people have a need to draw conclusions from what they see in the world, to think about it and to share their impressions with others in the public sphere. They understood that the best political system for that would be one in which there was free speech. They realized that if people disagreed about how many people died in a certain event, the solution was not to accuse them of spreading "hate" and to send them to jail, but to allow for an evidence-based discussion in a safe and civil environment. This is the real European and American tradition we can read about in the great books. With the ascendancy of fanaticism and the decapitation of legitimate European and American elites in the West after the two World Wars of the twentieth century, there has been a progressive erosion and disfigurement of our civilization. What could not be destroyed has been perverted, such as "human rights" legislation aimed at forbidding the fundamental right of free speech. All of this is incredibly evil not only for Europeans and Americans, but for humanity as a whole. Unfortunately, non-Europeans are easily deceived by pandering and resentment. They are made to believe that now, with the multicultural destruction of Europe, their time of supremacy is arriving. But this is an illusion, for their force and energy are being manipulated behind their backs by an elite that understands their proclivities better than they themselves do.

With the destruction of European nations and their right to free speech we enter into another Age of Darkness. Nothing good will come out of the current trends we are seeing. The whole world realizes that America's industry has been off-shored, its politics are rotten and its culture is garbage. Many Americans are now unable to remain in denial because the increase of conflicting information generates doubt and cognitive dissonance. They still do not want to believe that they have been deceived and betrayed but the realization is being forced upon them. Many are still confused because they could not get the big picture. Our education has been dumbed down and our relation to our European heritage has been poisoned by anti-colonial propaganda. For this reason the majority of Europeans and Americans have been brainwashed to even desire the demise of their own civilization and have also been conditioned to hate and to denounce anyone who tries to preserve it and to demand social conditions that guarantee its perpetual continuity and development. European cultures, languages and traditions cannot survive if the peoples that originated them are extinguished or adulterated. The acquisition of even a superficial understanding of European civilization requires enormous effort which can only be rewarding if we identify ourselves deeply with the subjects we are studying. Otherwise it becomes a chore we do just to survive in a competitive world. For this reason only European-descended individuals can develop the psychological structure to bear such a burden of study. No human being can understand the Other as he understands himself. And no Other can become something that he is not except by make-believe and deception. The essential identification that is indispensable for the highest achievement is beyond our grasp when we seek the Other. We must seek ourselves and do the best we can with what we are.

We live in an age of great insecurity, and so did the ancients. Plato tried to solve the insecurity of his time by postulating absolutes he called ideas. These were supposed to be the foundation of eternal values. However, in his late dialogue Parmenides, he had to admit that his theory of ideas was riddled with aporias. Nevertheless, it has become a default strategy in the West to appeal to absolute values in times of crisis. But philosophy has developed other ways of understanding ideas and values since Plato's time which are more tenable if perhaps less impressive. In the twentieth century, philosophers came to realize that much of what we tended to take as givens in nature, mind and language could be brought under our conscious control. For all their love of memory, the ancient Greek thinkers "forgot" that it is we as speakers who establish values for our societies. We have since tended to disregard language because we felt that words needed to be buttressed by reality. Unfortunately, we got things the other way around. Worse, we became suspicious that emphasis on language was tantamount to the promotion of anti-social relativism. The truth is that the ingrained reflex of resorting to the absolutes of Plato and Aristotle in practice leads to the unilateral imposition of dogmas by a church or a state. Perhaps this is unavoidable in real life situations. There has never been a state that has been free of such institutional impositions. But changing conditions sooner or later make the free discussion of certain topics necessary and unavoidable. That is when we need to consider the best of what philosophy and science have to offer. And the linguistic view of philosophy is the least inconsistent we have.

Not only do we have insecurity, but also insanity, as Ron Paul has recently stressed while speaking in the US House of Representatives. This insanity is all the more shocking in the context of the Enlightenment rationality we still live by for the time being. One component of this insanity is the hypocrisy and self-contradiction which comes from the way in which political power is exercised. The means used in our current politics are always deceptive and the ends pursued are generally not for the common good. However, our political system demands that political measures have at least such an appearance so that the majority population does not rise against the elite that is hijacking the government. It is a remarkable quality of a republic that when it has been subverted from within its policies clearly betray the deception by appearing "insane". The powers that be today are desperately trying to destroy democracy in its own name by distorting language. That is why terms such as 'tolerance', 'hate', 'education', 'art', 'culture' and 'marriage' are also under semantic siege. The enforcement of "politically correct" language is a form of mind control and a way to restrict free speech.

Individuals such as Rachel Corrie and Tristan Anderson have grown up in this context and, with their characteristically European altruistic spirit, sacrificed their lives and well-being to make known to the world that another Holocaust is going on in Palestine as we speak. They meant well, but were crushed nonetheless. President Obama has not shown any concern about them, for his White House Chief of Staff is, after all, no one less than Rahm Emanuel, an ardent Zionist. The International Solidarity Movement which led Corrie and Anderson to their fatal encounter with the Israeli military has been accused of irresponsibility. But there are also Jews and Israelis with a heavy conscience in it, such as Tristan's girlfriend Gabrielle Silverman. It is not clear what such peaceful activism can achieve against the powerful military and intelligence forces of today. Regrettably, the resources of modern science and technology are not in the hands of decent people. Shortly after last Christmas, they decided that it was time to kill more than a thousand Gazans, including women and children. As usual, the mainstream media, which is Zionist, tried to blame the Palestinians themselves in the hope of convincing us that they deserved to be killed. Is this consistent with the teachings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Freemasonry? Or is it consistent with racism, deception and inhumanity? Is this the best the New World Order can achieve? None of this was "inevitable" and there will be hell to pay for all these crimes against humanity, for they will unleash the most primal urges of hatred and revenge in an unending cycle of violence.