Emile: ... though I can't see you or hear you, ... I know, implicitly, that you are present, ... and I just want to let you know that I appreciate your courage in coming in for this interview, and I will do my best to make this a worthwhile opportunity for you to communicate your views to the general public.

Hole: .. I can indeed sense that, and I truly appreciate your harmonious intent.

Emile: ... To start off with, ... can you give us an overview of the discrimination charges you are bringing against the wwhhestern culture?

Hole: ... You know, ... every time I hear the 'whheuhh' sound, as in 'word' and 'western', I get very angry. That damned 'W' is always coming in to cover up, to whitewash over the reality of who I am and what I mean.

Emile: ... Are you saying that people prefer 'whole' to 'hole'?

Hole:... That's exactly what I'm saying, ... 'W' is the joker and the trickster, who slips in there and changes the meaning of things, ... 'East' becomes 'West', ... 'Here' becomes 'Where', ... 'Man' becomes 'Woman', ... it changes the wwhhole nature of things.

Emile: .... uh, .. yes, I see what you mean, that the prefixing of a single letter can change the whole context of a word, ... and now that you mention it, I feel very conscious as these 'W' words come off my tongue. And somewhat in that context, ... I think our listeners are probably curious to know your first name.

Hole: ... sure, here it goes again. What comes into your mind when you see 'A. Hole' in front of you? Do you not think that to be blatant discrimination? The word 'ass' may be common, ... but it has, in its own right, been given a very positive connotation, ... 'she's got a great ass', for example, ... but in my case, my name is always used in a deprecatory sense, ... as in, 'this place is a real hell-hole'.

Emile: On the other hand, ... I thought Lao Tsu paid you the greatest of complements, in his well known poem;

"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the HOLES which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there."

Hole: ... My charge of discrimination is certainly not against the eastern cultures who have clearly given me my due, ... the Zen circle which is annotated; 'The hole which must be filled, ... enter through here', ... is on most of my tee-shirts. People are not afraid of me in the east, meanwhile, in the west, people can't even stand having 'holes' in the conversation.

Emile: ... In my capacity as a media representative, I know exactly what you mean. The economic system seems to see a hole in term of troublesome waste, ... and strives always to fill it in.

Hole: ... yes, ... well I don't mind being filled in, in an act of pleasure and appreciation, ... but I am tired of simply being abused all the time, just because I am here and just because there is this colossal prejudice against my kind in the west.

Emile: ... Do you find any similarity between white prejudice against blacks and your own situation?

Hole: ... Deep down, ... I think there are indeed common roots. The western culture is a culture of purification, ... it is always trying to break things up into bivalent categories, 'good', 'bad', ... 'true', 'false', ... 'white', 'black', ... 'big', 'small', ... 'whole', 'hole', ... and the respective members of these pairs of opposites are tainted with a 'good' OR 'bad' connotation. The bivalent 'euclidian space' view of reality is at the bottom of this. In the east and amongst the aboriginals, this bivalent view is seen simply as a sub-reality to the more general multivalent, non-euclidean space' view, where explicit opposites are understood to be my children, ... my 'virtual' children.

Emile: ... You are claiming, then, to be the 'true reality'.

Hole: ... How thou doth mock me!. You use the word 'true' in a bivalent context, as if there is a 'true' and a 'false' and nothing else. My claim is merely that pairs of opposites emerge from my 'hole'.

Emile: ... I hear snickers from our audience, ... and I must admit, ....your words do invoke a rather curious imagery.

Hole: ... The problem with you westerners is that you live in a delusionary world of materialism where everything is a 'thing' and that's all she wrote. You have long forgotten that you are 'contained' in something and that container 'sucked you into being' by the process you call 'evolution'. That 'thing' that sucked you into being is no 'thing' at all, ... it is 'moi', ... yours truly, ... A. Hole.

Emile: ... I see what you are saying, ... in our euclidian space convention, ... space is a degenerate aspect of the material, ... it becomes nothing, ... we see it as inert, sterile and void and while extending on out to infinity, adding up to nothing and thus being far from able to 'gather itself together' to induce coherent transformation in our world.

Hole: ... Precisely, ... while if you were to use non-euclidian space, like the aboriginals and eastern cultures, you would recognize that space is self-referential, and 'pulls' on things, ... like the space between the balls in the game of pool, which is a non-euclidian space because it emulates the outer surface of a sphere, ... this 'shape' or relational interference configuration is itself, in evolutionary flow, an active but unbounded entity which participates in the precipitating of actuality, ... of physical phenomena.

Emile: ... So space actually sucks!

Hole: ... The listeners are snickering at you this time, ... but yes, you are correct, and in your culture, this suppressed and therefore secretly desired imagery of the suck-hole often rises up and makes itself manifest in private. Thus the credits which are due me, in the domain of the open and honest pleasure and appreciation I furnish, ... are not only concealed and suppressed, but are tainted as being 'evil', ... and those who publicly admit to appreciating me are ridiculed, even though the reality which contains them and which they are a part of, is one unified suck-hole.

Emile: ... So what you are saying, is that the sky-container which envelopes us all, is at the same time, pulling on us, .... er 'sucking' on us.

Hole: ... You notice you had to switch terms to get to your thought, ... because a language based on substantives cannot 'get to' the notion of immersive interpenetrational dynamics, ... that is the domain of 'field' rather than 'matter'. You can use all the structure you want but you can never make explicit this notion of a constituent being transformed by an enveloping 'container-suck', as the lotus bud is sucked into blossomhood by the warm inhalation of the tropics, ... or as the anemone flowers forth so colorfully, in the sucking of the tidal flow.

Emile: ... very interesting. Come to think of it, I've heard a description of a tree being given in this 'suck-hole' fashion, ... where the atmosphere, which also contains the earth or lithosphere and the hydrosphere, ... sucking on itself, so to speak, ... sucking on its atmo-litho-hydro constituency and thus bringing the tree into existence, ... like sucking on the flesh of your arm until all the little blood vessels show up in a dendritic crimson.

Hole: ... Now you're getting the picture, ... but there's also a self-referential 'cycling' involved, ... it's not a static picture, ... interpenetration is never a one-way street, it always has a cycular resonance.

Zeus (who has been listening intently): Emile, ... tell Mr. Hole about the time we spent at the ruins of Wittgenstein's cabin near Skjoelden Norway, ... the experience we wrote about in 'The Co-littoral Shores of Perception'.

Emile: ... yes, that's right, it was very much in the vein of what we're discussing here. When we went to the Wittgenstein Archive in Bergen, ... we asked the archive staff about Wittgenstein's views on Heraclitus, since we could feel the congruency, ... and using their new computer system which was capable of searching the mass of unpublished documents they had been transcribing, ... we came up with nothing, basically. Then we spoke with Ilse, a Wittgenstein researcher and friend of the family, who happened to be there at the archive, ... who told us, ... yes, Heraclitus was Wittgenstein's favorite, and that's why he would only publish his work in proposition form and would never write a book to 'tell it the way it was', ... and she gave us a copy of his notes where he makes this remark about not being able to write a book, and commenting "alles fliesst', everything is in flux, ... referring to Heraclitus'; "Upon those that step into the same rivers different and different waters flow . . . They scatter and ... gather ... come together and flow away . . . approach and depart."

Zeus: ... here, I've found the bit from our 'co-littoral' essay which describes what the experience when we visited the site of his old cabin in Skjoelden;

"In spite of the draining-down of his energies, Emile's thoughts continued to spiral onwards and upwards and they turned next to the ruins of Wittgenstein's cabin outside of Skjoelden, at the head of Lustrafjord in Norway. Emile's intuition had impelled him to rent a car and drive from Bergen to a meeting he had to attend in Trondheim, so that he could visit this site which had been so important and revitalizing to Wittgenstein. It had been a serendipitous choice as the mid-June weather blossomed into a luxuriously warm and sunny day, and he felt totally bathed in the perfume of blossoms and ripening fruit as he made his way along the north shore of Sognafjord towards Skjolden. He had fortuitously arrived at the ruins of the cabin precisely at midnight, after a twenty minute walk through the bush. The site was still bathed in the ample light of the 'white nights' of the northern latitudes, and as he sat in solitude on the old decking of the cabin, overlooking the serenity of the lake to the south and the head of the fjord beyond the town, it suddenly came to him why the Heraclitean notion of 'alles fliesst', ...that everything is in continual flux, had been so firmly embedded in both the content and geometry of Wittgenstein's thoughts and writings.

On either side of this narrow glaciated valley, the sheer faces of thousand foot cliffs rose vertically upwards to meet the blue, ... and from hidden, snowclad crestal hinterlands, the snowmelt poured forth in magnificent torrents which rushed over the cliff-edge to become skyborne in the abyss, ... cascading their watery loads in rude abandon onto rocky outcrops far below, and raising ghostly monuments of mist which caught and coloured the last of the fading northern light. As one looked southward and slightly upward, one's peripheral vision stereo-imaged the waters tumbling in over the rocky lips on either side of this deep and narrow cleft, giving the perspective of a passenger on the titanic watching the sea pour in through an overhead breach in the hull. But rather than signalling the depressing collapse of man's engineered attempt to top his own mother nature, the rising ridges of rock rose up like giant earth-limbs, kicking out into and teasing the sky to bring forth the living, thundering deluge which moistened the bush round Wittgenstein's co-littoral cabin-site and tickled it with deeply sonorous and ever-changing rumblings.

Emile had sensed what he knew Wittgenstein must also have sensed from this same holy ground, ... the circle-flow of life, ... waters running to fjords, thence to the sea and once again skyborne, .. lifted up to the heavens by wind and sun, .. and, ... having enjoyed the view, parachuting gently back to earth as a myriad of unique crystalline forms, each a captured memory of space-time skyplay at the moment of delivery of newborn structure from etherial essence, ..... simple molecular forms turning their back on single's status to re-emerge from cloud-chrysalis in the glittering new finery of harmonic collaboration. .... circles within circles, spheres within spheres and harmonies within harmonies.

Emile was now growing very tired, ... and feeling the onset of a deep sleep, he leaned back and was no longer present to witness .... "

Emile: I remember it well, ... how could anyone who visits such a site, fail to have it etched in their memory, ... the feeling of being contained within the very breath of life. And to think that we are part of a culture which would have us be blind to the transformation, rebirth and metamorphosis inherent in nature, .... seeing life instead in the strange loop form as Escher mocked it, ... as a 'waterfall' where the water, after falling, circles back around to become the river-source of the waterfall without ever undergoing a 'constituent- to-container' transformation, ... without ever having to shed the fetters of materiality and rejoin the mothering sky, the unbounded whole within which all materiality resides, ... according to Einstein and the general theory of relativity, ... although to make such references brings on the baggage we attach to all of science, even relativity, and tends to take the poetry out of it, ... like finding beer bottles and old tires while snorkling a barrier reef.

Hole: ...Now you are beginning to get a feel for why I have launched this discrimination suit, ... my whole geometry is being tainted by the western culture, ... I am continually abused.

Zeus: ... But surely that's not the whole story, Hole, ... because western art and literature does you proud, does it not?

Hole: It does and it doesn't. It's true that gifted painters, sculptors and architects, even, put unbounded negative space in the primacy over explicit, bounded structure, ... but this effect seems always confined to the subliminal level. After reading the poetic story, 'Vol de Nuit', by St. Exupery, .... about a mail service pilot being caught in thick overcast covering the entire eastern slopes of the Andes as he arrived from france over south america, ... unable to find a hole anywhere in the overcast and thus, ... though the words were never 'mouthed', ... doomed. And my heart went out to him as he searched in vain for ME!, ... and I wanted so to embrace him and say, .... here, take me, I am yours, ... and through me you can return safely to earth, and live once more...

But when I asked others of their feelings about this story, ... they told me the message was that you should never take off on a long journey without doing a weather check.

Zeus: ... Will you be asking for damages? ..... in your discrimination case, I mean. I think that this would certainly be in order.

Hole: ... My whole philosophy is of harmony of whole-and-part, ... it is a philosophy which decries the use of rigid structure for community or other regulatory needs, ... and so it is with great sadness that I have chosen to revert to this 'lawsuit' as a means of being heard, ... in my attempt to bring back into awareness the sacred role of holes, unbounded features of the whole that they are, and thus part of the unity of our containing whole. And when I am mocked with jokes such as, ... 'do you know the difference between a mailbox and an elephant's arse, ... and, 'if not', ... I'm not going to have you deliver MY messages', ... I have the urge to say, ... but can you show me the difference between your mouth and an elephant's arse?, .... where is the boundary between this noisy hole in your head, and the excremental conduits of which you speak of? All hole is unbounded hole as Lao Tsu intimates, ... it gives utility to that which would otherwise, 'in its own right', be worthless.

Emile: ... I'm impressed with the points you bring forward in this case, Hole, ... and the more impressed I become, the more dismayed I am by seeing the state of our culture in the light of its inability to get in touch, once again, with such deeper awareness. As we come into this new millenium, ... I am conscious of the return of the 'holes' or 'zeros' in the designation of these times, ... often being abbreviated as '00', ... and through these drafty holes I can feel the suck-winds of Yin pulling us towards a needed rebirth.

Zeus: .... I, too, am so impressed, ... and my mind goes once again to topics upon which we have previously reflected, ... as in our essay 'The Profane Parent-Child Geometry of Western Scientific Culture', where we cite from Dr. Youqin Wang's essay 'Oedipus Lex: Some Thoughts on Swear Words and the Incest Taboo in China and the West'. Dr. Wang discusses how the word 'motherfucker' , or 'ma te de' in chinese, is used very differently in the east and the west, with there being no suggestion of incest in the east, as there is in the west, ... and he goes on to share his intuition that this east-west difference in linguistic profanity is but 'the tip of the iceberg', ... and that we are instead looking at some deep-rooted geometrical wiring faults in the west.

Emile: ... Indeed we are, ... as in the notion that material man stands above nature in the hierarchy of things, ... that the constituent is the master of its own container, ... the child, the father of its own mother, ... and the western culture, by embracing an unnatural primacy of Aristotelian materialism, ... the euclidian space paradigm in which the only thing that matters is 'thingness' itself, since you, Hole, and the unbounded containing unity which you are an inseparable feature of, ... are seen as 'nothing', 'nichts', ... 'diddly squat', ... 'rien'.

Hole:... Hold on now, ... I came here to be interviewed, not to be the object of further vicious discrimination!

Zeus: ... He's right, Emile, lay off!

Emile: ... Sorry, Hole, .. my intent was not to be discriminatory, but to review these aspects of your case, ... but I realize that a sensitivity is needed here, ... whose bounds I have clearly transgressed, and I apologize for it.

Hole: ... No problema, ... I realize that your comments are well-intended, ... it's just hard for me to take, sometimes.

Emile: ... Well, we've covered quite of bit of ground in this short session, ... which seems to be the way it goes when dealing with things in a geometrical context, ... one simple geometrical image can open up a whole pandora's box full of material images from our life experience. ... Before we conclude this interview, Hole, ... are there other subject's you'd like to discuss, ... or any thoughts you'd like to share?

Hole: ... Yes there is. I've read your essays which speak of the wholeness of the aboriginal traditions, ... and how it relates to the wholeness inherent in the general theory of relativity, ... could you please summarize this for me, ... in case there is utility there that I might be employed during the sessions in court.

Emile: ... I'd be glad to, and it is really very simple and common sensical, ... so the judge and jury would have to be rather absent-minded, ... if you don't mind me using that term, ... to miss the point.

Our regulatory processes in the west are all science based as you know, ... and they are keyed to the euclidian paradigm which sees only 'material things' and pays no attention to the containing space within which these constituent 'things' reside, ... a containing space which gives contextual meaning and dynamic, circulatory life to these constituents. By some colossal oversight in western assumptions on space-time perception and inquiry, regulatory process ends up being based on explicit structures, ... the management of the 'tangible', ... out of the context of the containing relational context.

Now, everything we've been speaking about, and all of our life experience, tells us that we live by virtue of our containing space, ... as the general theory of relativity suggests, the explicit is simply an apparent feature of the 'containing space', or containing 'ether' as Einstein continued to call it. And if the judge asks about this, you can quote from Einstein and Infeld's 'Evolution of Physics', ... where they make the point that 'field' is in the primacy over matter and thus matter is a 'sub-feature' of the living cosmos. They say, ... and here you can hear Einstein's voice;

"We cannot build physics on the basis of the matter-concept alone. But the division into matter and field is, after the recognition of the equivalence of mass and energy, something artificial and not clearly defined. Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy."

Hole: ... This is indeed very useful to me, though I am not certain of how the court might receive it. But why is it that these things are not more in the public presence? .... but, no, don't answer that right now, ... please continue with your train of thought.

Emile: ... Well, the notion of space being in the primacy over matter comes directly from our common experiencing of things emerging and being subducted, ... like the plate tectonics on the earth, and our own continuous cycle of life and death etcetera, ... the highly detailed structures of things goes away somewhere, and then re-emerges in even greater detail, ... complex order is continuously created in this cycling which cannot come into being by material-causal process since it is 'inclusionary' and self-referential. Such self-referential phenomena cannot be treated of in terms of euclidian causal-dynamics. Meanwhile, relativity is all about 'self-referentiality' where there are no external reference yardsticks and clocks to perceive things by. For example, the 'peptides' or 'molecules of emotion, as Candace Pert calls them, ... which give us this distibuted sense of emotion, as if we feel it 'in the gut', ... are actually enfolded 'tetrahymena', ... so our evolution is an inclusionary, self-referentially enfolded thing wherein space-time is an active participant. That this inclusion is unbounded in space-time is evident as Candace reflects on how she speaks to this subject;

"... I'd like to conclude my presentation with my final slide, that of a single-celled animal, the tetrahymena. This is a creature so widely studied in basic science laboratories that it has earned the title of 'the workhorse of biology". What is truly amazing is that this primitive unicellular animal makes many of the same peptides, including insulin and the endorphins , that we humans do. On its single-cell surface, Blanche O'Neil found opiate receptors just like the ones in our brains. These same basic building blocks are found in the earliest and simplest forms of life as well as in the most complex ones. . . . I like to bring the tetrahymena to your attention because it both illustrates an important biological fact and gives me a chance to end my lecture on a philosophical note. Think about what it means that the same basic informational network found in the tetrahymena is still to be found in us. If these peptides and their receptors --- the molecules of emotion --- have not only been conserved since their origins in the earliest and simplest forms of life but have continued to grow into the incredibly elaborate psychosomatic network we have discovered in the human body, we have to conclude that their role in evolution has been a powerful and critical one. To me, this is a stunning demonstration of the unity of all life. We humans share a common heritage, the molecules of emotion, with the most modest of microscopic creatures, a one-celled being, even though evolution has caused us to develop into trillion-celled creatures of astonishing magnificence. I leave you with that thought, and thank you for your attendance at my lecture today.

The houselights come up as the image on my slide screen fades, and I am once again aware of the real, live people who have been sitting out in the audience, the ears and eyes and hearts and minds my talk has been directed to --- the trillion-celled creatures themselves."

Zeus: ... While she used the term 'building block' for the tetrahymena, ... it is clear that she is not referring to a 'building block in its own right', ... but giving contextual meaning to the 'building block', by the unbounded space-time which contains it and which envelopes everything, ... her audience, ourselves, as the atmosphere contains todays waters of the ocean which also contain hundreds of millions of years old sedimentary rocks miles deep within the lithosphere, though we may think of this geometry in the reciprocal, euclidian mode, ... seeing the rock 'in its own right', ... as 'containing' the paleo seawater within its pores. Yet when that water is withdrawn from the rock pores at great depth, along with hydrocarbons as in oil wells, ... it is common for more water to come in to take its place, ... revealing to us that space-time is a continuum, as Heraclitus also admits.

Hole: ... Emile, continue, if you will, as this story of relativity becomes more and more consistent with lived experience. Candace Pert and Einstein seem both to be saying that space-time, or the containing and circulating ether, is the unbounded continuum which is the source of all material structures and which ensures the unity in nature, ... an imagery which makes of nature, a living cosmic continuum.

Emile: ... Yes, if you hold Einstein's comment on seeing the 'stone' in terms of field in your mind, ... and at the same time bring in connection Heraclitus's 'relativistic thoughts on evolutionary, space-time flow, ... the coresonance is intense. Kirk, Raven and Schofield, the Cambridge authorities on pre-socratic philosophy note that; " [Heraclitus saw] ...aither as' the brilliant fiery stuff which fills the shining sky and surrounds the world; this aither was widely regarded both as divine and as a place of souls." ... "... fire, by the regularity with which it absorbs fuel and emits smoke, while maintaining a kind of stability between them, patently embodies the rule of measure in change which inheres in the world process, and of which the Logos is an expression. Thus it is naturally conceived as the very constituent of things which actively determines their structure and behaviour --- which ensures not only the opposition of opposites, but also their unity throught 'strife'."

So space is the 'mother' of 'things' according to the general theory of relativity, ... and more than that, space-time is unbounded, so it wraps around everything in the past and around us in the present without there being any 'boundaries' involved. This notion is easily seen in the non-euclidian space convention, already spoken of, which emulates the self-referentiality of things dynamically and relationally interfering as if on the outer surface of a sphere. If you have things in motion on the outer surface of a sphere, ... and their motion is referenced to themselves; i.e. if you regard this space as if you were in it instead using euclidian perception where you are implicitly like a voyeur God looking down on it and using your external yardstick reference and clock reference, ... then the patterns of engagement which are engendered never 'go away', ... they simply continue to self-enfold relativistically, the old within the new patterns, just as the prokaryotic cells are enfolded as organelles in the eukaryotic cells and the tetrahymena are enfolded in the psychosomatic system of the human body. More this, ... this same unbounded mediating space enfolds us even as we are discussing these past and present structural details.

While our western acculturation has us see this as being a strange geometry, .... the indigenous traditionalist sees it in an entirely natural light, ... that we are all enfolded in 'the wind which was always here'. David Abram, in 'The Spell of the Sensous' goes into this relativistic enfoldment as captured in the beliefs of the indigenous peoples, ... beliefs which avoid external reference mechanisms, such as an external 'heaven' and an external 'hell', ... an avoidance which is also required by both the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Abrams observes;

"However, most indigenous tribal peoples have no such ready recourse to an immaterial realm outside earthly nature. Our strictly human heavens and hells have only recently been abstracted from the sensuous world that surrounds us, from this more-than-human realm that abounds in its own winged intelligences and cloven-hoofed powers. For almost all oral cultures, the enveloping and sensuous earth remains the dwelling place of both the living 'and' the dead. The 'body' --- whether human or otherwise --- is not yet a mechanical object in such cultures, but is a magical entity, the mind's own sensuous aspect, and at death the body's decomposition into soil, worms and dust can only signify the gradual reintegration of one's ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too are born."

Zeus: Yes, this ecological view of our world, while not 'compliant' with the doctrine of the western churches, has much appeal to members of these religions in times of bereavement. As we noted in 'A Birthday Essay ...', many choose to pay respects to those close to them who have died, through poetry coming from indigenous tradition, such as 'The Circle Again: Birth and Death'

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow;

I am the diamond glimpse in the snow;

I am the gentle autumn rain;

I am the sunripe golden grain.

And when you wake in the morning, hush.

I am the swift uplifting rush

of circling birds and circling flight;

I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there; I do not sleep.

Emile:, ... Yes, there is indeed natural and comforting feeling which emanates from this 'pagan' poem, ... and I'm not surprised at its frequent use at Christian bereavement ceremonies.

Hole: ... I've also noticed that periods of silence are given in respect to those who have died. This seems to me to be a recognition of the 'commons of silence' as it is termed by Illich and 'medium' as spoken of by McLuhan, ... wherein a kind of sacredness is seen in the common 'space' within which we insert our words, ... but where, like the artist's brush strokes, ... the context of the word draws from its relational interference with its containing space, .... analogous to the relationship between space and matter, as in Einstein's metaphor of the stone, and as in the game of pool. And by the way, I did see film 'The Color of Money', as you suggested, and it was an excellent example of how the unboundedness of the relational interference on the pool table extended on out into the lives of the protagonists. But what I wonder about is, ... how is this awareness lost in the formal hustle bustle, management, education and regulation of the western culture-dominated world?

Emile: ... I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, Hole, ... but the western myth is that the container, ... our containing cosmos, ... is seen as being decidedly and euclidianly 'dead', ... and that 'life' is seen as something that hatched along the linear course of time, ... that there exists some little linear tick-mark on year such-and-such where a lightening bolt flashed down into a soup of inorganic minerals, and 'behold', ... there was life! Thus, Hole, ... rather than being sacred, YOU are seen in the western myth as inert 'dead matter', ... 'nothing', .. un grand 'zero'.

Hole: ... But that is absurd, ... how can something as fundamental as 'life' come from nowhere, ... come from a dead container? I thought that western society was a scientific and 'reasoning' society.

Emile: ... The western cultural heritage includes the Aristotelian notion of an objective reality, ... a fixed reality that exists in its own right, ... a reality seen as a non-relativistic ensemble of 'dead' material components floating, ... no, not even floating, but somehow scattering and drifting by virtue of some mysterious 'action at a distance' effects, ... within an inert and non self-referential void which really doesn't deserve mention since its only 'material things' which count in this view. This is all that the euclidian space convention allows. This differs radically from the space-time flow notion of Heraclitus which is relativistic and self-referential and requires the non-euclidian space convention in order to be visualized. As for reasoning men, ...

Zeus: ... Tell Hole what Newton said about this idea of sole-sourcing material things as a means of explaining our reality, .... remember, in his letter to Bentley? .. "It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason, why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another, at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it."

Emile: .... yes, thanks for reminding me, Zeus. Newton was a very religious man, and he was well aware of the pantheism of Kepler, and of Kepler's borrowing from the ancient egyptians and the neo-platonists with whose ideas Kepler had found much resonance, ... and it was, of course, Kepler's three laws which Newton had strip-mined for his own 'mathematical principles', ... dropping out the whole-and-part harmonic aspect. In fact, Newton, in a way, apologized for such 'drop out', associated with Kepler's notion of space 'adorning' matter with 'whole-and-part harmony', in the author's preface to his 1687 'Principia';

"I wish we could derive the rest of the phaenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from physical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they all may depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy."

Hole: ... Well, the seeds of doubt in the dead, euclidian mechanistic notion of reality were certainly well sown in Newton's written legacy, ... and the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to have drawn from this, ... but how is it that the rank and file of science, ... the vast majority or scientific reasoners in the western culture, ... do not 'pick up' on the primacy of unbounded space-time in these views?

Zeus: ... Emile, it seems to me that our friend Hole is ready for a philosophical view into the split between todays physicists, ... and that it may be apropos to share with him a recent dialogue between a physicist and a transdisciplinary 'bootstrapping' researcher on this very question.

Emile: ... Yes, ... it is not a technical exchange that Zeus is speaking of, although the topic is in regard to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, ... it has to do, really, with the space-time assumptions which underly our perception and inquiry. The basic split in the views of physicists emerges in the response from the bootstrapper;

* * *

"dear henry,

in your note "From Einstein Nonlocality to von Neumann Reality" At 06:28 PM 3/8/00 -0800, you wrote:

[Heisenberg's famous quote that;]

>``The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles

>has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality

>concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents

>no longer the behaviour of the particle but rather our knowledge of this

>behaviour.''

>

>This conception of quantum theory espoused by Bohr, Dirac, and Heisenberg

>is called the Copenhagen interpretation. It is essentially

>subjective and epistemological, because the basic reality of the

>theory is `our knowledge'.

.... and later you write;

>As mentioned above,

>the usual way of dealing with these explicit faster-than-light-transfers

>in relativistic quantum field theory is to say that their appearance shows

>that the theory cannot be interpreted realistically: the theory {\it must}

>be about ``our knowledge'', as Bohr and company claim, rather that about

>reality itself. There is no puzzle about the fact that our knowledge

>about a faraway system can sudden change when we acquire here information

>about some system that is strongly correlated with that far away system.

>But it is maintained that reality itself cannot behave in this way.

>

>That is indeed the widely held prejudice. But there is no theoretical

>or empirical evidence that supports it. Indeed, both theory and the

>nonlocality experiments appear to contradict it. It is thus a metaphysical

>prejudice with no scientific basis. Scientific theories should be judged on

>the basis of the criteria mentioned above, rather than on the basis of a

>pure metaphysical prejudice.

... in the light of henri poincare's work on space-time conventions, it seems that it is a metaphysical prejudice, instead, that we can get to a 'reality' which lies beyond our 'knowledge'. as poincare pointed out, many hypotheses, rather than being hypotheses about reality, are often disguised 'conventions'. since our knowledge 'stands on the ladder' of our space-time conventions, ... thus, our hypotheses 'stand on the ladder' of our knowledge.

in the non-euclidian space convention which preserves space-time as a continuum, rather than splitting space-time apart, the observer can detect simultaneous changes in remote regions of a system simply because he can become the 'eyes' of the topologically definable 'reciprocal disposition', .. the unbounded space of the non-euclidian convention which contains the material constituents.

the 'reciprocal disposition' or possibility space of the non-euclidian convention, by the precepts of the general theory of relativity and as seen through the non-euclidian space convention, constitutes a superspace which contains, as a secondary subspace, 'actuality space', the euclidian space and time which frames constituent materials and material-causal behaviors. the observer using the non-euclidian convention, then, by associating with the relativistic relational interference based 'shape' of the possibility superspace (as the skilled pool player associates with reciprocal, inter-billiard-ball space, in the simulated spherical space of the game of pool), has access to information regarding possibility transformations in remote regions simultaneous with the movement of any material constituent within the dual-level space. the movement of a ball 'over here', can therefore 'nonlocally' (at the same time) alter the possible movements or 'possibility state' of a ball 'over there'. thus the principle is established in general, ... in informational terms and by the use of the relativistic, spherical space convention, ... that changing the actual state of a constituent at one location can, at the same time, change the 'possibility state' of a constituent at a remote location.

indeed, tapping into this principle of 'non-locality' is what wins pool games.

... and, as you say, there is no puzzle about this;

> There is no puzzle about the fact that our knowledge

>>about a faraway system can sudden change when we acquire here information

>>about some system that is strongly correlated with that far away system.

.... but where you say;

>>But it is maintained that reality itself cannot behave in this way.

... your statement here PRESUPPOSES THE EXISTENCE OF an accessible 'reality', while the argument of Bohr, Heisenberg, Prigogine and others, which supposes that 'knowledge is as deep as we can dig', ... cannot possibly be associated with such a proposition as you make here, which builds upon the presumed existence of a 'reality itself'.

in these next sentences, you 'set up' this auto-synthetic proposition as a target to shoot down;

>>That is indeed the widely held prejudice. But there is no theoretical

>>or empirical evidence that supports it. Indeed, both theory and the

>>nonlocality experiments appear to contradict it. It is thus a metaphysical

>>prejudice with no scientific basis.

i would contend that the metaphysical prejudice which is involved in this discussion, is the assumption of the existence of a 'reality itself' which lies beyond our knowledge. while our experiential 'common sense' gives us a sense of 'knowing', it takes a religious leap of faith to conjecture the existence of an objective world 'beyond our ken'."

* * *

Hole: ... So, the majority of physicists have a kind of religious belief in the existence of an objective reality which exists, ... independent of their knowledge, and the scientific theory which forms part of their knowledge, ... and they feel that they are working their way towards a discovery of this 'objective reality', ... is this right?

Emile: ... Indeed it is so, ... and you can see now your challenge in taking this discrimination suit to the western courts, ... for all of western regulatory and management process is based upon science and, of the sciences, physics is termed the 'queen' because of its stewardship of our concepts of space-time and inquiry into reality. And amongst physicists, ... there appears to be a majority who believe that there is an absolute reference, ... a 'bivalent reference' which in effect, plugs us in to the absolute notions of 'true' and 'false', and by implication 'good' and 'bad', ... and that while our science is 'not quite there yet', in uncovering this absolute reality, ... 'the check is in the mail so to speak'.

The 'information' which is spoken to in statements such as "our knowledge about a faraway system can sudden change when we acquire here information about some system that is strongly correlated with that far away system." is not the instantaneous information of the unbounded 'possibility space' of the non-euclidian space convention of relativity, ... but instead, 'information' which is seen as being composed of binary 'bits' or 'zeros', ... 'trues' or 'falses'. This is in spite of the work of Dr. Denis Gabor, whose quantum physics compliant information theory shows that the basic units of information, which he called 'logons', 'leaked' one into the other, rather than being of 'closed form'. Today's science continues on, approximating everything in terms of absolutes, and portrays Gabor's 'logons' in terms of an explicit or non-leaky, entity, ... a weighted complex exponential, which .....

Zeus: ... and this bivalent way of perceiving leads also to the notion of an 'absolute good', which the Pope speaks about in his current encyclical, 'Fides et Ratio', 'Faith and Rationality', ... which Emile discussed in his essay 'Fides et Ratio and the Deus Absconditus'. The church has, since St. Augustine, at least, been stewarding the Aristotelian doctrines of rationality, ... and the discussion concerning the teachings in the encyclical brings out the religious nature of reductionist scientific thinking, .. which is firmly attached to the notion of an objective 'reality in itself'. The Pope says, in the encyclical;

"If something is true, then it must be true for all people and all times." and;

"Hypotheses may fascinate but they do not satisfy. Whether we admit it or not, there comes for everyone the moment when personal existence must be anchored to a truth recognized as final, a truth which confers a certitude no longer open to doubt."

... and as Emile commented;

"...[this] represents an alignment with Parmenidian-Aristotelian philosophy and an excluding of Heraclitean views . Heraclitus would say that one can never step into the same river twice, and that the supreme truth is not a 'thing' or 'proposition' but the harmonic ordering in an ever-changing nature, which if one can tune into it profoundly, represents an embrace of the divine in rather different imagery than can be gleaned from these just-cited words from 'Fides et Ratio'. The imagery of a 'final certitude' is certainly reminiscent of modern reductionist science and the quest for the TOE, the 'theory of everything', the materialist meta-rule of all meta-rules, but it is imagery which is in radical opposition to that of being 'in the Tao', where one let's go of absolutes and 'becomes one' with the divine evolutionary order in nature.

. . . An old Taoist tale puts it as follows, and had I known this and been able to share it with the 'spirituality-over-doctrine' oriented priest I knew as a teenager, I'm sure he would have smiled and nodded his head and perhaps even erupted into his characteristic hearty yuk, yuk, yuk laugh, not only in appreciation of the apparent 'truth' in the tale's harmonies, but in appreciation of the process of honest, co-resonant sharing.

* * *

Long ago, an old man and his son lived together in a small village. They were considered rich by the other villagers because they had a horse. One night a violent storm came, and a lightening bolt struck the fence-post of the horse's enclosure, smashing the fence and frightening the horse, which ran off into the night.

The next morning, passing villagers observed the loss, and moaned, 'Oh, what a terrible thing has happened!' The old man simply replied, 'Maybe yes, maybe no.'

A month later, the horse suddenly returned, bringing with it many wild stallions and mares. Once the horses entered the repaired enclosure, the old man and his son closed the gate. Now when the villagers came by, they were very excited. 'Oh how rich you are,' they shouted, 'what a wonderful thing has happened!' The old man simply replied, 'Maybe yes, maybe no.'

Three months later, as the son was attempting to saddle a wild stallion, the horse kicked the young man, shattering one of his legs and leaving him crippled. When the villagers heard of this they cried with sorrow. 'Oh, what a terrible thing has happened!' And the old man simply replied, 'Maybe yes, maybe no.'

A year later, the emperor's men came to the village and forced all able-bodied young men to join the army. They went off to a war in which almost all of them were killed. The emperor's men did not take the son because he was a cripple and unfit to serve in their army. Though the villagers were mourning the loss of their sons, they said to the crippled man's father, 'How fortunate you are. Certainly this was a good thing.' And the old man simply replied, 'Maybe yes, maybe no.'

This story is said to go on forever, unbounded in space-time, up to and including the present day. It is the story of an unpredictable unfolding of evolutionary flow in which all absolutes are up for grabs. As in Goethe's 'Faust', not even Mephistopheles can be taken as absolutely 'evil' since without him, how could 'God's work' be done, --- without conflict and opposition, there can be no life, no dynamic, no evolution, and without evolution, there can be no mechanism for redemption even. The Parmenidian philosophy which underlays the absolutist notions in 'Fides et Ratio' is not consistent with nature, and is not intended to be, apparently, since nature is assumed in the scriptures, to be a lesser thing than man and a naturally degenerative entity which like man, will require a divine intervention if it is to be redeemed. However, if redemption is 'good' and it entails the excising of 'evil', then without evil, there could be no redemption and 'evil' must thus also be 'good'. This type of internal goedel's theorem type contradiction is characteristic of absolutist conceptual systems. They are abstract systems of the mind which do not reconcile with nature.

In summary, 'Fides et Ratio', is a Papal encyclical which stresses the transcendency of 'ratiocination' or 'rationalism', as calibrated by the good doctors of the Church who establish the associated reference standards and doctrines based on the 'universal knowledge of good',

At the beginning of his conclusion, the Pope says; "Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its prime reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgement about the right conduct to be chosen here and now."

... The 'Fides et Ratio' philosophy advocated by the Pope and the Vatican Councils, from all appearances, in no way characterizes the implicit philosophical positions of all Catholics, nor does it characterize the belief systems of most Catholics I have known and know. In practice, the 'Fides et Ratio' philosophical stance seems to be eschewed by many, ... by priests even, whose implicit philosophical demeanors more closely resemble non-judgemental Tao-ist kinds of outlook. Since the latter 'intuitive way' is more in tune with natural relativistic process such as evolution, its increasing embrace, implicit or explicit, gives humankind the opportunity for rapprochement with 'mother' nature.

In fact, for those subscribing to non-absolute, non-judgemental outlooks, whether or not counting themselves as members of organized religions, the hope is that the natural, ever-changing harmonies we are intuitively reaching out to embrace will progressively characterize the individual and collective 'we' who are reaching out for them. "

Hole: ... What I hear you both telling me is that, within the culture, and within those who count themselves as member of religious affiliations, ... there exists representatives of both the 'space-over-matter' and the 'matter-over-space' perceptual orientation, ... and I am thus exposed to drawing either a 'Jean Valjean' or an 'Inspector Javert' as a judge in my discrimination suit, ... is this correct?

Emile:... Precisely, ... but the good news is that you have as much chance of drawing a Jean Valjean here in Quebec as you do anywhere in the western world.

Zeus: ... Yes, in the first trial.

Hole: ... euuhhh, ... I don't understand.

Emile: ... What Zeus is inferring is that since the majority in the power structure are of the Inspector Javert mindset, ... if the first trial judge decides in your favor, they may 'fire' the judge and re-try you with a new Javerian judge. This has recently occurred in the case of a land rights appeal by the Crees where judge Jean-Jacques Croteau had made a Valjeanian decision last December, and the superior court of Quebec has just announced this Wednesday, that Croteau will no longer be in charge of the case and that a new judge, Danielle Grenier, will be henceforth dealing with it. The court gave the explanation that; "L'objectif fondamental de notre systeme judiciare vise a assurer que toutes les procédures soient équitables et paraissent équitables aux yeux d'un observateur raisonnable. .. Le tribunal est d'avis que, dans les circonstances particulieres de cette affaire, ... il y a lieu d'accueillir la requete en récusation." , ...or in english, ... "The fundamental objective of our judiciary system is to assure that the process is fair and that it appears fair in the eyes of a reasonable observer. The tribunal is of the opinion, in the particular circumstances of this case, ... that there is cause to challenge the appeal". What is being challenged is the judgement of Croteau, made in favor of the Crees in regard to violations by commercial woodproducts companies, of the 'James Bay Convention' concerning the rights of the Cree nation to certain lands, including hunting, fishing and trapping rights. Included in Croteau's decision was the judgement that Quebec must revise its legislation in regard to forestry management within six months. When the woodproducts industry appealed, Croteau's judgement was suspended by the superior court and the case dossier was taken away from Croteau.

Hole: ... Yes, ... I see, ... the 'reasonable observer', .... 'the universal knowledge of the good', ... all very non-relativistic and saying nothing of natural harmonies.

Emile: ... I'm afraid so, Hole. The Javerian judgement is based on 'the facts' assessed in the light of the subjective 'knowledge of the good', .. and as our culture itself is wont to say, ... "'facts' simply mark the point where our investigations cease.", which gives plenty of scope for the 'reasonable man' to chop the facts off and trim the edges, so as to capture a space-time region which favours his own personal views and interests.

Hole: ... That's not the kind of 'reasoning' that came to my mind, by the uttering of 'reasonable observer'.

Emile: ... This question of referencing judgements to 'facts' brings us back around to the ground of the 'religious assumptions' of the physicists, ... in the general theory of relativity, 'facts', like matter, can only exist as secondary, derived entities. As the systems scientist Heinz von Foerster says, ... behind every fact, there is a liar, ... or more generously, as Professor Kosko says in his discussions on inclusionary reasoning (in 'The Fuzzy Future');

"You cannot prove a fact.

A proof assumes that some statements or premises are true. Then it derives a conclusion from them. You would have to assume at least one fact of the world to derive a fact of the world. But to assume that a fact is true is to reason in a circle. The point is to prove a fact is true. Suppose you assume that the sky is blue. Then you can derive the fact that the sky is either blue or red. So what? The truth of the conclusion still depends on the truth of the assumption." ... "no-one has found a binary fact of the world. No one has gotten the science right to more than a few decimal places. Maybe no one ever will. Maybe even God could not produce a binary fact. Or maybe a God is just the thing or force that can produce binary facts."

As professors Kosko and von Foerster are suggesting, ... 'facts' simply mark the point where investigations cease', ... so the Javerian judge has a lot of scope in coming up with a judgement custom-tailored to the [selected] 'facts'.

Hole: ... But you mentioned other judges, ... judges who think in a more Valjeanian or non-euclidian manner, as is the way of the indigenous peoples, ... can you tell me more about these judges and their thinking, so that I might be better positioned to appeal to this type of judicial thoughtflow during the discrimination trial?

Emile: ... in her essay, 'Two Years After Delgamuukw', Antonia Mills, a professor of First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, ...discusses 'The Continuing Battle Over Respect for First Nations Interests to Their Traditional Territories', and in it, she reviews the outlook and decisions of Supreme Court of Canada Justice Antonio Lamer;

... "On December 11, 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada handed down a watershed decision in Delgamuukw V. Regina/the Queen (Delgamuukw v British Columbia. File No 23799). In that decision Chief Justice Antonio Lamer said, "We are all here to stay," reversing the presumption that the Indigenes/Aboriginal or First Nations people would die off, or be killed off, or would "acculturate" and become good western citizens. Most importantly, the Delgamuukw Decision recognized that Aboriginal Peoples have exclusive rights to their traditional territories, that aboriginal rights are rights to the land, and that this includes subsurface deposits. The rights of First Nations go beyond subsistence activities or activities at contact, and include contemporary uses.

... This is a profound decision, recognizing as it does First Nations as those who have a first right in the land. Imagine the ramifications of this Decision as applied through out North and South America. These ramifications will play themselves out over the coming millennia, for First Nations/Aboriginal Peoples or Indigenes will continue to play an increasing role in the use of their Lands with which they are deeply identified, countering the heartlessness of capitalistic exploitation and globalization."

Hole: ... Yes, the notions of the unboundedness of space-time in his comment 'we are all here to stay' is very appealing, ... and rather than invoking the feel of referencing to arbitrary, anthropocentric 'fact', ... it has the kind of ring which suggests he is representing more than just 'people' is his assessment, but also the trees and animals and entire containing ensemble of nature, since all of these must be party to any sustainable agreement.

Emile: ... This was my thought on hearing his remarks as well, ... and this seems to be greatly reinforced by Antonia's further comment in regard to Chief Justice Lamer's 'Marshall Decision' of September 17, 1999, concerning the rights of First Nations to sell fish, ... a decision which cites and is founded in part on the Delgamuukw Decision.

... "In 1993 Douglas Marshall, a Mi'kmaq Indian living in Nova Scotia, "sold 463 pound of eels without a licence during the close season with illegal nets, for which he was charged." When this was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, it found that he was within his rights to do so, based on its interpretation of the 1760-61 Treaty between the Mi'kmaq and the British government. An earlier 1752 Treaty with the Mi'kmaq (separate treaties were negotiated with a number of different Mi'kmaq communities) had stated that they were allowed "to trade for a modest living." However there is a question about whether that Treaty was still valid given that --- Only six years prior to the signing of the treaties, the British Governor of Nova Scotia had issued a Proclamation (May 14, 1756) offering rewards for the killing of and capturing of Mi'kmaq throughout Nova Scotia which then included New Brunswick. The treaties were entered into in a period where the British were attempting to expand and secure their control over their northern possessions [in competition and conflict with the French]. The subtext of the Mi'kmaq treaties was reconciliation and mutual advantage. (R. v. Marshall, [1999] 1. S.C. R. 26014, para. 3).

.... Another feature of the Marshall Decision is that it recognizes that Treaty negotiations are conducted orally and states, where a treaty was conducted orally and afterwards written up by representatives of the Crown, it would be unconscionable for the Crown to ignore the oral terms while relying on the written ones.... While the treaties set out a restrictive covenant and do not say anything about a positive Mi'kmaq right to trade, they do not contain all the promises made and all the terms and conditions mutually agreed to...the British-drafted treaty document does not accord with the British-drafted minutes of the negotiating sessions and more favorable terms are evident from the other documents....It is the common intention of the parties in 1760 to which effect must be given. The trade clause would not have advanced British objectives (peaceful relations with a self-sufficient Mi'kmaq people) or Mi'kmaq objectives (access to the European "necessaries" on which they had come to rely) unless the Mi'kmaq were assured at the same time of continuing access, implicitly or explicitly, to a harvest of wildlife to trade.

The Marshall Decision goes on to say, - This appeal should be allowed because nothing less would uphold the integrity of the Crown in its dealings with Mi'kmaq people to secure their peace and friendship, as best the content of those treaty promises can be ascertained. If the law is prepared to supply the deficiencies of written contracts prepared by sophisticated parties and their legal advisors in order to produce a sensible result that accords with the intent of both parties, though unexpressed, the law cannot ask less of the honour and dignity of the Crown in its dealings with First Nations.

... In short Antonio Lamer, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who presided over the Delgamuukw Decision and this Marshall Decision, has produced another astonishingly fair response to a contested First Nations right denied by the Indian Act. "

Hole: ... Yes, it is clear that if the 'facts' ceased their investigations at the 'letter of the law', ... the letter of the 'colonial law', ... instead of going back through unbounded space-time to the original implicit intent of the two peoples, ... at least as articulated by the Crown and intended by the Valjeanian sector of the colonial populace, ... then the thinking could never have reached the issues of implicit intent as Chief Justice Lamer's Marshall decision did, ...to wit that; " ...nothing less would uphold the integrity of the Crown in its dealings with Mi'kmaq people to secure their peace and friendship, as best the content of those treaty promises can be ascertained."

Emile: ... A decision clearly based on harmony of whole-and-part, as contrasted with a subjective and non-relativistic referencing to literal 'facts' and colonizing 'law' which can be shaped to convenience like potter's clay. Lamer's validation of the role of oral tradition. The indigenous peoples oral tradition is very much connected to their notion of space-time.

David Abram discusses this at length in 'The Spell of the Sensuous'. For example, in cyclical systems as in circular resonance, ... space and time cannot be split apart, and what the indigenous peoples have always understood, is only now being rediscovered in western science. For example, ..." ...the Lakota define the year as a circle around the border of the world. The circle is a symbol of both the earth (with its encircling horizons) and time. The changes of sunup and sundown around the horizon during the course of the year delineate the contours of time, time as a part of space."

In consequence of this connected concept of space-time, the Hopi language embraces two modalities of existence, the 'manifested' and the 'manifesting' where the 'manifested' corresponds to an 'objective reality' or euclidian 'actuality' while the 'manifesting' corresponds to the non-euclidian 'possibility space'. As Abram says;

"The 'manifesting', on the other hand, comprises all that we call future, 'but not merely this', it includes equally and indistinguishably all that we call mental --- everything that appears or exists in the mind, or, as the Hopi would prefer to say, in the *heart*, not only the heart of man, but the heart of animals, plants, and things, and behind and within all the forms and appearances of nature, in the heart of nature itself...

The 'manifested,' in other words, is that aspect of phenomena already evident to our senses, while the manifesting' is that which is not yet explicit, not yet present to the senses, but which is assumed to be psychologically gathering itself toward manifestation with the depths of all sensible phenomena. One's own feeling, thinking, and desiring are a part of, and hence participant with, this collective desiring and preparing implicit in all things --- from the emergence and fruition of the corn, to the formation of clouds and the bestowal of rain. Indeed, human intention, especially when concentrated by communal ceremony and prayer, contributes directly to the becoming-manifested of such phenomena."

Hole:. ...Those are indeed heart-warming geometries to me, and it seems also to Chief Justice Lamer, for his remarks in summarizing his judgement seem clearly to come 'straight from the heart', rather than from well -sculpted 'facts' cranked through the 'machinery of law.

Emile: ... Indeed, ... and it should also be remembered that those who have had a mind to reference things mechanically to the rules, could anchor and rationalize their decisions, particularly in the pioneering days of colonialism, to the 'fides et ratio' based pronouncements of the religious hierarchy. In the case of the indigenous 'savages', ... there were some special provisions, such as the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" of 1493, ... which the indigenous peoples would today like to see removed from 'the books' as a sign of good will. Their complaint has appeared in the media as follows;

"APPEAL TO THE VATICAN AND POPE JOHN PAUL II,

Revoke the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" of May 4, 1493!

On November 28, 1998, Pope John Paul II called "Christianity's 2,000th anniversary a year of mercy," as reported by AP, saying "the church will seek forgiveness," "atonement," and that he "wants the church to enter the third millennium with a clear conscience."

We, the undersigned, join with indigenous peoples everywhere in calling upon Pope John Paul II to revoke the 1493 Bull "Inter Caetera." We recognize that this would be a spiritually significant step towards creating a new way of life, and a step away from the greed and subjugation in a history that has oppressed, exploited and destroyed countless numbers of indigenous peoples throughout the world.

The Bull "Inter Caetera," like many other edicts issued before it by the Vatican, established Christian dominion and subjugation of non-Christian peoples and their lands. It has yet to be revoked. (rev. 10/19/99)"

Hole: ... Emile, you have given me new hope in pursuing my discrimination suit. I can see that there are people in the establishment, ... Valjeanians, as you refer to them, ... who are moving the culture back towards Holeness, ... that my name and what I stand for may well be on the road to rehabilitation in the world community.

Zeus: ... Hold on a sec, you two, ... I was reading where Chief Justice Antonio Lamer has retired and that a new and possibly more Javerian Chief Justice has taken over,

Hole, Emile and Zeus, together: .... motherfucker!

* * *

<><><><><><><<><>>|

The story of '0', ... aka 'A. Hole', is a story of the differing 'identities' of east versus west, of redman traditions versus whiteman traditions. It is a story one can't 'get to' via the constrained dimensionality of the language of the western whiteman, which lacks the notion of an unbounded space-time continuum, ... or, in other words, ... the notion of a nature whose essence is 'flowfield' rather than structural ensembles. In order to 'get at it' using the communications tools of the west, ... one has to do as Wittgenstein suggested and extend the tools and then 'walk the discussion' from the 'extended tool domain' down on and into' the familiar constrained tool territory. This sets up a vantage point which exposes the shortfalls in the old familiar territory and exposes it for what it is, ... aberrant ground. As Wittgenstein used to say in his lectures at Cambridge, "What I am trying to teach today is the transition from what is not obviously nonsense to what obviously is."

To keynote this brief epilogue, we can review the words of one of the greatest living scientific-philosophical thinkers, Jules Henri Poincaré (1854 - 1912). While he may be 'dead' in an explicit, tangibly measurable 'structural' sense, ... his implicit identity, or 'niche-identity', as defined by the transformation he induces in his containing space-time, ... is still alive and active. That is, his thoughts persist in having an active, transformative presence in the world today, .. and here I am thinking in informational terms rather than in terms of ghostly structures, lurking in the shadows and whispering in peoples ears without making himself visible. It's not that I have anything against such colourful fantacising, (differing only slightly from the fantasies which check out against an agreed rule-set to merit a community-approved 'reality' label ), ... it's just that I want to keep this epilogue 'grounded' in scientific knowlege, ... what we know which has been reconciled with our collective experience, rather than the raw melanges of observation and imagination we are capable of. Again, there's no bias here, ... the point is that we don't need to go beyond our agreed collective, experiential knowledge, to be able to demonstrate that the 'official' western views of reality are radically incomplete, and that through our responses based on these incomplete views, our reality is becoming progressively more discordant. The disagreements between native peoples and theory of relativity based perceiving and responding, on the one hand, and the mainstream western approach to perceiving and responding, on the other hand, exposes this incompleteness in the western view.

Poincare, in his 'Science and Hypothesis', makes one or two upfront statements which ring particularly 'true', and are cited as follows. I include the original French, where I can in dealing with philosophical issues, because I feel that the subtleties risk being 'dropped out' in translation, and thus english translations by authors who did not 'get' Poincaré's 'intent' (from his overall, geometric, 'whole-and-part' context), ... may seriously weaken the re-presenting of his thoughts. The original text therefore serves as a reference for anyone questioning the translator's interpretation, in this case, mine.

LA NATURE

CHAPITRE IX Les Hypothèses en Physique

RÔLE DE L'EXPÉRIENCE ET DE LA GÉNÉRALISATION. -- L'expérience est la source unique de la vérité : elle seule peut nous apprendre quelque chose de nouveau ; elle seule peut nous donner la certitude. Voilà deux points que nul ne peut contester.

* * * THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE AND GENERALIZATION. -- Experience is the unique source of truth : it alone may teach us something new; it alone may give us certainty. These are two points which no-one can contest.

Mais alors si l'expérience est tout, quelle place restera-t-il pour la physique mathématique ? Qu'est-ce que la physique expérimentale a à faire d'un tel auxiliaire qui semble inutile et peut- être même dangereux ?

* * * But if experience is everything, what role remains for mathematical physics? What does experimental physics have to do with such an associate, which appears useless and perhaps even dangerous?

Et pourtant la physique mathématique existe ; elle a rendu des services indéniables ; il y a là un fait qu'il est nécessaire d'expliquer.

* * * And yet mathematical physics exists ; it has rendered us undeniable services ; here is a fact which demands an explanation.

C'est qu'il ne suffit pas d'observer, il faut se servir de ses observations, et pour cela il faut généraliser. C'est ce que l'on a fait de tout temps ; seulement, comme le souvenir des erreurs passées a rendu l'homme de plus en plus circonspect, on a observé de plus en plus et généralisé de moins en moins.

* * * It's not sufficient to observe, it is necessary [for physics] to make use of its observations, and to do that it is necessary to generalize. This is what we have done all along ; only, as the memory of past errors has made man more and more circumspect, he has observed more and more and generalized less and less.

Chaque siècle se moquait du précédent, l'accusant d'avoir généralisé trop vite et trop naïvement. Descartes avait pitié des Ioniens ; Descartes à son tour nous fait sourire ; sans aucun doute nos fils riront de nous quelque jour. "

* * * Each century makes fun of the preceding one, accusing it of having generalized too quickly and too naively. Descartes had pity for the Ionians ; Descartes, in turn, makes us smile ; without any doubt, our sons will one day laugh at us."

Over-generalization comes in many forms. One of the most insidious forms is to overgeneralize the model so that the answers to one's questions come out misleadingly crisp. While there have been many benefits accruing from western science, ... this false crispness has become its scourge. The story of 'A. Hole' is a story about over-generalization of this particular type, ... the over-generalization of our conception of 'space-time' as 'euclidian space' and 'linear time'. A type of generalization well understood and warned about elsewhere in Poincaré's same work, 'Science and Hypothesis'.

But the Hopi indians, and the indigenous peoples of North America, are not making this over-generalization that we of the western european culture are, ... but neither are they laughing. Hopeful our sons will laugh about it, and the sooner, the better, .... music and laughter seems more natural and more ontogenetically satisfying that what our world community and environment are currently experiencing as we hang on to our bankrupt paradigm with 'stiff upper lip', like a polo player in a bull riding event.

What, more specifically, is the overgeneralization on our observations of nature?

It is that you can't generalize the geometry of nature in terms of numbers without a huge dropout of essential 'relational' information.

'Numbers', ... 'numerical measurements', are what our culture is all about. 'Numbers', as we use them in our culture today, constrain us to dealing in explicit, tangible 'identities'. This is an informational environment in which we have ourselves believe that information of all types is renderable in terms of the numbers 'one' and 'zero', ... 'true' and 'false'. After we have generalized our observations of nature down to bivalent numbers, ... we can only build the one's and zeros back up into 'structural' edifices, ... and there is no longer any way, in this binary informational medium, ... to deal with the notion of space, because space is not a structure, ... it is an unbounded continuum which participates in the 'making' of physical phenomena, ... a continuum which connects experience over space-time in a seamless way.

If the architect designs and constructs a university campus, ... that design, in its own right', does not include space-time evolutionary aspects, ... of the flow of students and teachers, from the town, through the campus and on to employment, and to alumni supporters of the campus. The campus design per se does not include the induced transformations causes by the structures, ... the cafeteria crowds, ... the waders in the fountain, ... the cross-grained pedestrian traffic in the piazza, ... the designer must sort through the implicit, induced relational interference effects in his head and let it guide his hand as he makes his designs, ... just as the pool player must consider the relational interference effects which induce and modulate the space-time evolution of the 'ball structure' as he makes his shots.

Informationally, the geometry of space-time transcends the structural generalizations we make from the observations. The realm of structure and actuality is smaller than the realm of possibility which domiciles the actuality, ... and observations generalized DOWN TO measured actuals, ... observations stripped of space-time relational phase information, ... are incapable of carrying the essential information associated with induced space-time evolutional patterns.

In turbulent flows, ... for example, if we drop a large rock into the middle of a mountain streambed, ... what happens? We induce transformation in the flow patterns of the stream, and those transformations are a co-function of the flow and the structure, ... if we place the rock there when the stream bed is dry, nothing happens. Similarly, the campus may look good and problem-free before the people start flowing through it. But depending on the flow levels, the rock will induce different types of space-time evolution, ... even upstream from the rock, ... anticipatory space-time effects. The upstream water molecules seeming to react to what is coming up for them, in their future, ... they are informed by the future.

If we choose not to deal with the shortfall resulting from our over-generalization of our observations, ... if we choose to stay within the structure-only assumption, what choices do we have when we experience a troublesome flow-pattern? ... We can add, delete or modify the structure, right? But when we add, delete and/or modify the structure, ... what happens? .... The induced space-time interference patterns co-transform, right?

Measurements in 'structural' or 'actuality' space do not inform us on the implicit relational interference patterns of 'possibility space', yet western notions of management and regulation stand on the ladder of this overgeneralization of observations in terms of 'structure' and 'actuality'. What has not yet happened, the possibilities, are of more fundamental importance, ... just as the 'hole' in Lao Tsu's clay vessel gives it utility, ... that utility associates with unbounded space time, ... connecting the interior of the vessel with the farmers in the field and the crop harvesters and the food preparers and so on. What goes on in the unbounded space-time of possibility transcends the explicit identity of that bowl, ... it can, in fact, smash the bowl and make a new one. Similarly, in the unbounded space time which contains the campus structures, ... new architects and engineers will flow through,... evolving and maturing perhaps to the point of dismantling and replacing the campus structures.

We cannot get to a view of possibility space by using the euclidian space convention. It is only capable of holding measured structures. We cannot get to a view of environmental dynamics in the unbounded space immersing the clay vessel by structural studies of the clay vessel.

Numerical measures are an overgeneralization of our observations of the kind of complex natural geometry which we are immersed in today. Since numbers exist 'in their own right', out of the context of time, ... they effectively 'split' space and time, ... our basic observational essence, apart. How did our acceptance of this over-generalization, which has now become a critically important overgeneralization, come about? When did it come about? Why did it come about?

It seems that the stage was set for the splitting out of numerical measurements or 'structure' from natural geometries back in the sixth century B.C., in the times of Heraclitus, Parmenides and Pythagorus. While Heraclitus had an intellectual interest in 'understanding the way the world works', the situation was very different in the 'Pythagorean camp', ... ".. the impulse underlying Pythagoreanism was a religious one, and the Eleatics Parmenides and Zeno propounded metaphysical paradoxes which cut at the roots of belief in the very existence of the natural world." ('The Presocratics', Kirk, Raven, Schofield). Heraclitus was said to be 'haughty' and 'supercilious' and his famous quote, directed at Pythagorus (and Hesiod, Xenophanes and Hecataeus), that 'learning of many things does not teach understanding', ... was given as evidence. It seems time to review the evidence.

What was Pythagorus' 'religious interest'?

"In the sixth century B.C., Pythagorus of Samos was one of the most influential and yet mysterious figures in mathematics. Because there are no firsthand accounts of his life and work, he is shrouded in myth and legend, making it difficult for historians to separate fact from fiction. What seems certain is that Pythagorus developed the idea of numerical logic and was responsible for the first golden age of mathematics. Thanks to his genius numbers were no longer merely used to count and calculate, but were appreciated in their own right. He studied the properties of particular numbers, the relationships between them, and the patterns they formed. He realized that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by the inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths that were independent of opinion or prejudice and that were more absolute than any previous knowledge." ('Fermat's Enigma', Simon Singh).

Pythagorus apparently gathered his mathematical skills on his travels throughout the ancient world, and particularly from the Egyptians and Babylonians, ... who, by contrast, ... "saw mathematics as merely a tool for solving practical problems; the motivation behind discovering some of the basic rules of geometry was to allow reconstruction of field boundaries that were lost in the annual flooding of the Nile. The word itself, geometry, means 'to measure the earth'."

Pythagorus, thus, flipped the tool, ... the tool of extracting numerical measure from observations of the geometries of nature, ... into the primacy, ... so that he could get rid of 'the innacuracies of perception'. In essence, this gives rise to the notion of a 'reality in itself' which is beyond our knowledge. A reality which, after centuries in its embrace, ... we see our knowledge as 'closing in on', ... a reality which has somehow transcended the knowledge which has parented it.

This is a very different thought from Poincaré's; "Experience is the unique source of truth : it alone may teach us something new; it alone may give us certainty. These are two points which no-one can contest."

What the western culture has done, in its management, educational and regulatory processes, is replaced its own 'experience' with a structural model of reality based on a generalization of its own experience'. It has done this by splitting apart space-time and adopting the euclidian space convention, ... foundations which are incapable of going beyond numerical measurement and structural configuration.

Structural reality in itself has become the reality of the western culture, as is evident from current debates in physics, as cited in yesterday's 'A. Hole' essay.

Was there any 'mourning' for the abandonment of space-time as a participant in physical phenomena?, ... an abandonment of space-time 'holes' which link seamlessly to the immersing space-time whole and enable the usability of structure, and the sustained re-creation of structure?

Was there any mourning for the death of immanent 'no-thing', 'silence', the 'zero'?

"... the deeper meaning of the zero symbol [which had meanwhile been used to denote an 'empty position' and so distinguish between the numbers 52 and 502, for example] had been ignored by all the ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle. He had argued that the number zero should be outlawed because it disrupted the consistency of the other numbers --- dividing an ordinary number by zero led to an incomprehensible result. By the sixth century the Indian mathematicians no longer brushed this problem under the rug, and the seventh century scholar Brahmagupta was sophisticated enough to use division by zero as a definition for infinity." ('Fermat's Enigma').

In other words, the notion of 'reciprocation', ... the reciprocal of numerical, measured structure, was meaningless in the structural conception of reality.

That's where we appear to be today in mainstream western science. The euclidian space convention continues to be the dominant paradigm for science, and mainstream science embraces the notion that all information can be reduced to bivalent 'zeros' and 'ones', ... where 'zero' is a degenerate 'one' rather than a 'living' reciprocal disposition.

Clearly, there is no way to conceive of the 'manifesting space' of the Hopi's which corresponds to the 'possibility space' of general relativity, given the binary assumptions of western science.

Thus our management, education and regulatory processes are constrained to work in 'structural mode'. If we build a structure, whether a material structure or a regulatory structure which induces unanticipated transformation in the containing environment, ... our only option in this structural reality, is to modify, delete or add structure, and this is indeed what we do. Unfortunately, ... all this serves to do is to shift and re-arrange the features of structually-induced turbulence.

The reality common to the general theory of relativity and to the indigenous traditionalist is larger than this structural reality of western mainstream science and it, in fact, 'contains' it as a special case, ... the case where the reciprocal to the material structure; i.e, its containing environment, ... has zero interference effect, ... where the 'coevolutional coefficient' between container and constituent goes to zero.. That is, where space does not participate in shaping the structural reality, ... where the 'campus' and the 'rock' are seen 'in their own right', detached from the context of their containing environment.

So what is the other option in this larger, curved space of possibility, the space of the 'manifesting'? The other option is to view the structural reality as the child of its containing space (aka as a child of its 'aither', 'field', 'evolutionary dynamic', 'flowfield'). This is indeed what our experience informs us, ... and as Poincaré says; "Experience is the unique source of truth : it alone may teach us something new; it alone may give us certainty. These are two points which no-one can contest."

The Crees of Quebec are 'referencing to' their experience first, and to rule structures second. They know what this 'other option', this response to 'manifesting' option is and what it means; i.e. that as constituents within the evolutionary flow, we must 'tune-in' to the flow and co-evolve with it. We cannot blindly impose structure into the flow, ... as the rock into the stream or the campus into the community, ... without considering 'reciprocal effects' of the rock with respect to the stream, .... the campus with respect to the community and environment. And we cannot limit the consideration of reciprocal effects to downstream 'cause-and-effect' results, ... to what 'the structure will do', ... to what will happen downstream of the structure as a direct mechanical result, as in the example of a factory making cornflakes or cadillacs (McLuhan).

Perhaps the rock will induce turbulence upstream from the rock, ... an effect of unbounded space-time, ... which will cause the stream to overflow it's banks, ... eroding a new channel, and leaving the rock on dry ground, ... a paleo stream bed which will never again see the fresh mountain waters flowing within its paleo banks. Perhaps the same will be true of the campus, ... the exacerbation of an upstream traffic problem, .... or an exposure to education which changes the outlook of its potential clientele and inspires them to go elsewere, ... induced transformational effects which are invisible to the structural analysis.

Our experience, meanwhile, does inform us on 'possibility space' or 'manifesting space', ... and we can use this experience in evolving our understanding of 'the way the world works', if our generalization process does not proceed to trash it. As cited in the essay, the indigenous peoples hold this aspect of experience close to their hearts, and retain it in their generalization process; i.e. they retain the 'manifesting' aspect of observation, ... " the manifesting' is that which is not yet explicit, not yet present to the senses, but which is assumed to be psychologically gathering itself toward manifestation with the depths of all sensible phenomena. One's own feeling, thinking, and desiring are a part of, and hence participant with, this collective desiring and preparing implicit in all things --- from the emergence and fruition of the corn, to the formation of clouds and the bestowal of rain. Indeed, human intention, especially when concentrated by communal ceremony and prayer, contributes directly to the becoming-manifested of such phenomena." ('Spell of the Sensuous', David Abram).

Perhaps Abram's description is too 'soft' for one's preference. No matter, ... we can return to the metaphor of the game of pool, but however we want to look at it, ... euclidian space, the default convention of the western culture which underpins mainstream management, education and regulatory process is a gross over-generalization of our observations which is inducing rising levels of dysfunction in our society as well as our environment within which our society is an immersed constituent.

My recommendation to youth who may come across this essay, is to join in with with 'A. Hole' and the indigenous traditionalists, take a leaf out of Poincare's book, ... and start laughing, ... let your laughter flow forth loudly and unabated, ... bend over, stand up, dance around, ...point the finger at the generals of structural generalization and laugh some more. The paradigmatic re-birthing will then take care of itself.

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