augustmarsblog

  SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS For many years I was under the impression that if someone’s knowledge had acquired recognition – in the form of university tenure, awards, publications, a position of authority, or respect of his peers – then that knowledge was beyond question, and I could accept that person’s teachings as “gospel”. That trust in expert knowledge was rapidly dissipated when I entered into a career as a NASA research scientist. Within the first few months of my employment, I was called into a presentation on helicopter aerodynamics to be given by the head of the chemistry department of a large eastern university. He proceeded to inform us with a straight face that helicopter lift was actually due to an agitation of air similar to the water motion induced by the agitator in a clothes washer, while he displayed a series of equations to support his theory. Apparently, he did not realize that the theory of helicopter aero

                                                                                          My Unlikely Hobby I often spend a warm summer afternoon sitting in a lawn chair in the shade of that tall pine tree in my front lawn while translating a novel or short story from Russian. I have no interest in visiting Russia or communicating with Russians in any way. This hobby developed in a circuitous way. When NASA had offered a free on-site course in Russian, I enrolled in it because I thought it would help me to translate some Russian publications on ionized gases. I had studied German in college, and had maintained and improved on my translating skills by reading German stories and watching a few German language movies. This ability proved to be of some benefit in translating technical articles, but of even greater benefit in communicating with some of the German aerodynamicists who immigrated after WWII. High school Spanish had been a relatively easy course, college German had been

  Why Dream? One day, when I was browsing through a book shop, I ran across a little book – just a brief booklet, or pamphlet, and I don’t even recall its author or title. I picked it up and began to skim through it. The subject was learning about the inner self through one’s dreams. I had seen articles about dream interpretation before, but none that I trusted, because they seemed to imply that all dreams had a clairvoyant quality. But this book was not like that. The author explained that although dreams nearly always seemed meaningless, they really aren’t, because they speak in their own language which is the language of symbolism. He proceeded to describe a couple of his own dreams, and then explained the meaning of each symbol in the dream. Sure enough, when all of the symbols were in place, the dream story became a kind of fable with a clear moral. Furthermore, when he described a certain problem in his life

  Trinity: The Holy Spirit In previous posts we have reasoned that God the Father experiences only pure love, joy, peace, and beauty, but not the sins and grievances of this world, because to do so would grant them reality. Furthermore, the Son that the Father created in His own image, must be like Him in this respect, since each of us is an extension of the Father Himself. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in this artificial world of bodies, with all of its pains and grievances, searching for some kind of meaning. This situation, left unattended, would leave us hopelessly stranded, with no means of communicating between the two worlds. The Father provided the solution to the problem: the Holy Spirit. He understands both the world of spirit and the natural world, and acts in both worlds. He is like the Son in that He also is a one-in-many being. He consists of children of God who voluntarily accepted understanding of the pain and grievances of this world, and who unite in onene

  The Paradigm The mental conditions that are conducive to innovation had become of interest to me when I found through experience that there were times when I would go for long periods without significantly increasing my knowledge and without inspiration, and then there were times when creative ideas would flow forth freely. One way that I gained some insight into the creative process was through a couple of seminars that were taught by guest lecturers at LRC. One of these lecturers was Joel Barker, who gave an informative course on the paradigm problem as it applies to scientists. A definition of paradigm is: “ a framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community. This problem was brought to light by Thomas Kuhn in his insightful study “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. By attending scientific conferences and administering tests to the a

                                                                               The Envy of the Neighborhood When I'm sitting in the shade working on my translating, I often catch glimpses of the passing parade of strollers, joggers, bicyclers that get their daily exercise by taking advantage of the street layout in this neighborhood. It contains many dead end cul-de-sacs and stop signs at intersections, which discourage fast automobile traffic. Occasionally one will stop to chat briefly, and the conversation often includes a compliment on my beautiful lawn. It's true. Out of about 100 homes in this area, this one is (IMHO) the prettiest. But it wasn't always this way. For years, for decades, I struggled with maintaining a lawn that wasn't embarrassing by its appearance. I dutifully sowed Tall Fescue in March and in good years I would have a decent looking spread of grass in April and early May. And then the assault began. It was attacked by crabgrass, wire grass,

  A WORLD OF DREAMS From the very first dream that I recorded, I had no doubt that the dreams held important information that I needed in my quest; but digging out this information by decoding the symbolism proved to be an awesome task. In the long run it was worth the effort, and I found that often the dreams that were the most difficult to decipher were ultimately the most helpful. To describe the individual dreams, together with their interpretations would require a volume in itself; but in a single chapter I can at least outline the principal themes and some of the lessons that I learned, together with a few of the individual dreams, by way of example. Initially the dreams seemed to have the purpose of encouraging my effort to study them, luring me on until the habit was established. For example, one early sequence of dreams presented a variety of works of art - full color paintings of various genres, abstract sculpture, a stained-glass window of remarkable beauty, a mos

  The Mystery of Sin Let's take a look at that story about Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Everything was fine until they ate that fruit, and then they hid from God because they were naked, and they perceived their nakedness as sin, and punishable by God. But they were naked before they ate of the fruit, and God was okay with that; but somehow eating the fruit caused the nakedness to become a sin. Eating the fruit didn't cause them to sin. It caused their nakedness to be perceived as a sin. What really happened? The answer apparently lies in the question that God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” The source of that revelation was the serpent, a surrogate for Satan, and the revelation was false because, according to Jesus, “ there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. Of course, we are free to consider the wh

ORIGINAL SIN In Kafka's famous novel, The Trial, the protagonist Joseph K. is unexpectedly arrested, investigated, tried, found guilty, condemned and executed, but he never finds out just what crime he committed. Kafka's works are generally considered to be symbolic, and I have often thought that it could have been this “born in sin” doctrine that he had in mind, but I'm by no means certain of it. One of the arguments that is often used by those who accuse God of being unjust is the doctrine of original sin. It is generally defined as: “that sin and its guilt that we all possess in God’s eyes as a direct result of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden.” It is often taught that we are born in sin and we retain that guilt until we are relieved of it by Christ, which, for most, means by the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus's suffering on the cross. One process for accepting that relief is to declare it publicly a

  The Psychology of Innovation Many of us have heard the story of Archimedes’s reaction when he thought of a way to determine the gold content of an object by measuring its specific gravity. It is said that he jumped out of the bath and ran naked through the streets shouting, “Eureka!”. It is this kind of sudden illuminating insight that distinguishes the innovative scientist from those that, while perhaps quite competent in their fields, rely entirely on “tried-and-true” ideas and procedures. I suspect that most of us (including scientists) believe that such moments of glorious inspiration are once in a lifetime events that bless the work of a few fortunate scientists. That belief is erroneous. The creative scientist experiences many of these moments throughout his career, and they are not the result of luck, but of the way that he approaches his research. Once I came to a full realization of the power of this paradigm situation to paral

  The Liar's World In the post on Illusion under the Philosophy label, we concluded that the physical world has an unreal quality. We can't say that it doesn't exist because in some sense it does. It just isn't what it purports to be. Numerous scriptures support this conclusion. For example, we can consider the story of the Garden of Eden. The story of Adam and Eve is itself a symbolic tale, with its own message. Interpreted literally, it makes no sense at all. Eve being the only female, there was no wife available for either Cain or Enos. But the context reveals that there were actually other lands in existence at that time. So, what is the real message of the Garden of Eden? God poses the question: “Who told you that you were naked?”. The answer, of course, was the serpent, symbolizing Deceit, who according to Jesus is, “ a liar and the father of lies”. As a second example, in the book of Job, Satan boasts that he rules the w