It Isn't Logic, ... it's Tragic!: What's the Matter?

Montreal, September 23, 1999

http://rampages.onramp.net/~emlumley/virus.htm

A year ago, prior to coming to Montreal, I went for a full physical check up, and when it came to the blood work options, I asked for an HIV check. The doctor asked if I was in a 'high risk' category for AIDS exposure and I told him, 'no, I was not', but that I was heading off into a new phase of my life and was thinking of it more in terms of a 'used car warranty' kind of checklist.

This seemed to make sense to him, ... and so he checked the little box on the laboratory options sheet, which included HIV testing along with a range of other, standard checks.

While my pattern of living was not one to give cause for concern, ... simply 'asking the question' seemed to bring on some shadowy thoughts, and I noticed myself thinking, .... what if it comes back 'positive', ... almost like a little girl who wonders if she is going to get pregnant from holding hands. Almost, but not quite, since the virility of the HIV virus was said to be such that a single instance of exposure, to oneself or to one's non high-risk partner, could make the difference, ... and the thought of receiving an HIV-positive test result was in itself pretty scary, ... with its associated visions of exotic drug therapy, ... and then only to delay the 'Human Immunodeficiency Virus' on its relentless progression towards an inevitable result, ... fullblown AIDS.

Yesterday, my whole perception of HIV and AIDS underwent an astonishing and disturbing overhaul. Perhaps my naivety puts me in a small minority, since I don't read many newspapers, nor watch much television news, ... but pity the one who is in such a minority and is on the receiving end of an HIV positive bloodtest result.

My story of an HIV awakening starts innocently enough, ... I put these three words into the Alta Vista (advanced) internet search, just like this, ... "verwandt and kepler and matter", ... and I was dropped right into the middle of this extraordinary story on HIV and AIDS.

My quest had been to further explore the difference in meaning that people take away from the same word usage, for example, ... wherein the phrase 'autour du monde' (around the world) could be interpreted in the voyeur terms of 'oscillation', as when your imagination of someone repetitively visiting Seattle ==> Hong Kong ==> Bangkok ==> Delhi ==> Bahrain ==> London ==> New York ==> Seattle, is in terms of tracing out their path on a flat wallmap. The alternative visualization being to imagine the trip from the point of view of immersion and rotation, ... as if you were actually doing the trips, ... and as you went around the earth, your body doing forward rolls with respect to the stars, as the new horizons kept coming up to meet you. Not that you'd actually conceptualize it in terms of the forward roll geometry, ... but that you'd see yourself continually advancing towards and over the new horizons as you 'chased the setting sun'.

This 'voyeur versus immersed' geometry was the same difference Kepler discussed in terms of the system of sun and planets as being an 'archetype for harmony and structure' which applied to 'human intellection' and illustrated the relationship between 'intuitive intellection' and 'ratiocinative intellection', ... 'intuitive intellection' (relational inquiry) associating with 'immersed perception', .. looking 'from the inside outwards', ... as if from the center of a spatially coherent (harmonic) system outwards, ... as the sun looks out upon its planets or as an earth based person looks out towards mars and jupiter, .... and 'ratiocinative intellection' (rational inquiry) associating with 'voyeur perception' (aka 'perspective' in the terms of art and architecture), ... looking 'from the outside in', ... as if from the sphere of rotation of the earth and looking at venus, mercury and the sun 'oscillating' as if on a flat plane, ... like the traveller oscillating 'autour du monde' on the flat wall map.

The difference in what you take away from these two modes of visualization, ... of 'autour du monde' for example, ... has nothing to do with 'eyesight', but with mental conceptualizing, and it cannot be nailed down 'in words', because it is a 'feeling'. I would denote this respective choice of feelings as being; 'involved' and 'relativistic' for the immersed-in-space-time view, and; 'detached' and 'non-relativistic' for the voyeur flatspace view. This is because, in order to feel like you are actually making the trip, you must, in effect, feel yourself making forward rolls in space SIMULTANEOUSLY as the western horizon comes towards you. You are not looking, in a fully detached fashion, at the global map 'out there' on the flatspace screen of your mind's eye, ... you are instead seeing and feeling yourself as being involved in a 'co-dynamical' relationship with the earth, ... you simultaneously doing your forward rolls in space-time as the earth spins on its axis towards you, ... your own movement being a simultaneous reciprocal rotation 'relative' to the rotation of the earth.

At any rate, ... that was what I was wanting to explore in my search for "verwandt and kepler and matter", ... to see who else, if anyone, was working on better understanding this effect, which seems to be the source of much confusion and misunderstanding amongst people. Kepler had referred to 'material' not in the standard neutral and inert sense which we do in our western culture, but in the sense of 'kindred' or 'cognate', ... reminiscent of the Lakota writing on the 'inanimate' in nature which gives respect and reverence even to a rock; "... unmoved ... from time without end ... you rest ... in the midst of the paths ... in the midst of the winds ... you rest ... covered with the droppings of birds ... grass growing from your feet ... your head decked with the down of birds ... you rest ... in the midst of the winds ... you wait ... Aged one."

Now when the translators of Kepler keep replacing the 'kindred' notion of matter in his german usage with 'material' in english, ... might not something be being lost in the translation? Particularly when Kepler gives glowing tribute to Proclus in his epilogue to Harmonice Mundi which sums up his view of the cosmos?, ... Proclus, who said; "What is therefore Nature? God is Nature, and Nature is God: understand it thus: out of God there arises something next to him. Nature is therefore a certain invisible fire, by which Zoroaster taught that all things were begotten, to whom Heraclitus the Ephesian seems to give consent."

Of course, Kepler was in the process of bringing a multitude of such real and imaginary experiences into connection in his mind, ... particularly the movements of sun and planets. On the imaginary side, he explored in depth, the differences in perception one would have if viewing the system solely from the sun, ... where only 'simple intellect' (intuitive intellection) was possible and the observer could not see the circular oscillations of the planets around the sun, as if on a flatspace screen, ... because without a center 'out there', there could be no circular oscillatory image, and sun-based observers would be standing on the center whilst they looked outwards. Only in the imagination can one see the center that one is standing on or 'coming from' as one looks 'outward', ... thus seeing the center 'out there' in one's viewfield represents a fundamentally different perceptual geometry.

This sense of space-time, relative motion and 'observer effect' was critically important to Kepler, since it was at the base of understanding the solar system, ... a difficult to achieve understanding which we now take for granted. The Ptolemaic view, where the earth was assumed to be in the center, ... made it seem to the earth observer that the outer planets, such as Mars, moved in strange orbits which looped back on themselves, putting little loopy cusps on the overall circularity of the orbit, ... something which had been explained away in the pre-Copernican Ptolemaic system, by means of 'epicycles' which were essentially tautological, in the same way that the Aristotelian logic which underpins mainstream science is tautological. It is a structure which we impose on nature for our convenience, ... to give us a suite of relationships within the tautological system, which are like 'rules of thumb' with respect to the phenomena we impose them on, ... but which do not explain what is going on but give us a way of sharing 'compressed' explanations and making predictions.

This tautological shortfall of logic was the 'common geometry' which linked my search for "verwandt and kepler and matter" to a german scientist who was claiming that HIV is not a virus, but simply a protein chain, and that it has nothing to do with AIDS!!!, .... that the HIV - AIDS link was the false artifact of logical thinking rather than a reality, ... the false artifact of abstract rational scientific inquiry, ... taken to the extreme and flying in the face of our real, experiential observation. The further assertion being that our reverence for rational scientific inquiry (as opposed to relational scientific inquiry) is so strong in the science and culture, .... that we have continued on with the myth of HIV being the 'cause' of AIDS for over a decade, in spite of well-articulated minority refutations coming out of the scientific and medical communities. This german scientist viewed HIV in the same context as 'epicycles' , ... in the same context that I have written about in reference to the mad search for 'the violence gene', ... reductionist, causal logic taken to insane limits.

What evidence does he give and cite to back his assertion that there is no link between HIV and AIDS? He points to tons of it out there, and there's much more out there than what he points to, as I discovered, but here's one tidbit that made me start to take my 'deutschen verwandt' seriously;

* * *

"In the 1980s, total mortality for hemophilia increased in all age groups above nine years of age, and age at death shifted markedly to lower ages, decreasing from 57 years of age in 1979-1981 to 40 years of age in 1987-1989."

The only sound explanation: The introduction of AZT (see above: chemotherapy).

"About 50% of people with hemophilia in the U.S. had been HIV infected by early 1986, when screening and treatment of the clotting factor concentrate stopped HIV spread. Still, the long latency of the virus (as long as 15 years for 50% progression to AIDS in this group) caused death rates to rise for long after the window of new HIV infection closed."

On the one hand a sudden increase "by a factor of approximately 900%" in one quarter and on the other hand a latency of the virus as long as 15 years !!! !!! !!!"

* * *

This data very simply and very clearly suggests that the HIV-positive diagnosis is killing people rather than AIDS.

So how did the german scientist explain his claim?, ... how did he see it possible that modern science and our scientific culture could perpetrate such a monstrosity on itself?

What he said, as captured in web dialogue, was that our culture is overestimating modern science and scientists; "... Galilei [ist ein] stellvertreter für die ganze Problematik. Galilei kämpfte mit einer 100 Jahre alten Theorie (Trägheitssatz und Relativitätsprinzip sind noch viel älter) nämlich nicht nur gegen konservative Kreise sondern auch gegen Kepler, der erstmals wesentlich über Aristarchos von Samos hinausgegangen war, indem er die sakrosankten Kreise und die gesamte Epizykel-Theorie zertrümmerte und moderne physikalische Gesetze einführte!"

["Galileo is representative of modern science. Galileo fought with a hundred year old issue of theory [Copernican versus Ptolemaic view of world] (Inertial and Relativity principles are, today, even older), not only against conservative [resistant] circles but also against Kepler, who had been the first to surpass substantially the astronomy of Aristarchus of Samos, smashing the sacrosanct circles and the whole epicycle theory and by introducing modern physical laws."]

In other words, he is saying that just as Galileo did, so is today's modern science taking things too logically and literally, ...too superficially, ... and in the process, usurping the deeper scientific reasoning, ... the relational reasoning in scientific understanding.

'Wolfgang' gets right down to the essential madness going on here, ... the madness of science following 'logic' in spite of Goedel's 1930 theorem on the innate incompleteness of logic, and in spite of common sense experience which contradicts logical argument; ...

"Neville Hodgkinson schreibt über E.P.'s 'Widerlegung' von Duesberg: "But the paper, with its 251 references, is a definitive demonstration that not a single scientist has proven the existence of "HIV" as a unique and distinguishable molecular entity." Als Wissenschaftskritiker und in Anbetracht eines Buchtitels von N.H. "Aids: The failure of contemporary science" erstaunt mich so eine Aussage. In echter Wissenschaft kann ein einziges logisch korrektes Argument mehr Gewicht haben als 1000 Referenzen."

What Wolfgang is saying, in short, is that in our rational inquiry-obsessed culture, ... one argument, deemed logically correct, can override a thousand real-life examples which experientially and relationally refute the logical argument, .... that one argument deemed logically correct can lead the world down the garden path, needlessly terrorizing and killing thousands upon thousands of people and concealing the true issues.

Phwweeeeeeuhhh!

Right now, you're probably saying, like me, ... 'pinch me and wake me up from this nightmarish fantasy, right?'

Moving along, ... if we can establish that Wolfgang is a crank, ... we'll feel a bit better, ... so who is this Wolfgang fellow? What he says is;

"I see myself as a scientist in the tradition of Johannes Kepler. My background is philosophy (especially linguistics and epistemology) and science in general (especially physics and evolution theory). I studied computer science (1982 - 1987). For me sound logical reasoning and an unprejudiced attitude are by far the most import things in science. Also Kepler's explanation of life which was quite similar to mine was ridiculed and fought."

Uh, oh, .... there's another Emile loose about the hoose!

But this Wolfgang type is too far geganging, ... isn't he?, ... running against the whole establishment and the US Center for Disease Control, who are still not only standing by the HIV theory, they are saying that the testing for HIV is extremely accurate, as in this excerpt from a public service notice;

* * *

How Accurate is the HIV Antibody Test?

View/Print pdf version with Adobe Acrobat Reader

This information has been provided by CDC NAC, from Guide to Information and Resources on HIV Testing, 1997

Q. How accurate are the HIV antibody ELISA and the HIV antibody Western blot?

A. When used together, the results from this two-part testing are greater than 99% accurate. The HIV antibody ELISA is a screening test and the HIV antibody Western blot is a confirmatory test. Results from an HIV antibody ELISA test should never be used alone to report a positive final result.

* * *

Is this a 'mexican standoff' between a few cranks and the scientific establishment?

Hardly, ... if you surf the web, you can see an abundance of well-thought-out argument against the HIV - AIDS link coming from around the world, ... from solid scientific sources, ... some of whom are likening this nightmarish socio-scientific-industrial scenario to the religious exploitation of disease to bolster conversion and repentance in the middle ages.

Like I say, ... I may be the last to know about this, .... maybe there was general annoucnement put out this summer when I was out on the Gulf Islands, ... but if you missed the notice as well, and want to take a look and assess things yourself, ... you can get into the middle of the web of links on this HIV myth topic at http://www.duesberg.com/kintro.html, ... where you will first see a brief on Professor Duesberg as follows;

* * *

"Welcome to Peter Duesberg's HIV/AIDS research web site. Peter H. Duesberg, Ph.D. is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his subsequent work in the same field, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health (see his biographic sketch).

On the basis of his experience with retroviruses, Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis in the pages of such journals as Cancer Research, Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, Journal of AIDS, AIDS Forschung, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapeutics, New England Journal of Medicine and Research in Immunology. He has instead proposed the hypothesis that the various AIDS diseases are brought on by the long-term consumption of recreational drugs and AZT, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS.

This is Duesberg's official site, containing his written works on the subject, as well as other scientists that support his views, such as Kary B. Mullis, and Professor Walter Gilbert - both Nobel prize winners (Kary Mullis won the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction technique, for detecting DNA, which is used to search for fragments of HIV in AIDS patient. Walter Gilbert, professor in molecular biology, won the 1980 Nobel prize in chemistry.)

Prof. Duesberg's findings have been a thorn in the side of the medical establishment and drug companies since 1987. Instead of engaging in scientific debate, however, the only response has been to cut-off funding to further test Professor's Duesberg's hypothesis."

* * *

And if it seems curious why such a successful scientist should commit political Hara Kiri by going against his own establishment, ... the story gets curiouser and curiouser, as one reads the introduction to his site, by Kary Mullis;

* * *

Introduction by Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, I993

"IN I988 I WAS WORKING as a consultant at Specialty Labs in Santa Monica, CA, setting up analytic routines for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). I knew a lot about setting up analytic routines for anything with nucleic acids in it because I invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction. That's why they hired me.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), on the other hand, was something I did not know a lot about. Thus, when I found myself writing a report on our progress and goals for the project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, I recognized that I did not know the scientific reference to support a statement I had just written: "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

So I turned to the virologist at the next desk, a reliable and competent fellow, and asked him for the reference. He said I didn't need one. I disagreed. While it's true that certain scientific discoveries or techniques are so well established that their sources are no longer referenced in the contemporary literature, that didn't seem to be the case with the HIV/AIDS connection. It was totally remarkable to me that the individual who had discovered the cause of a deadly and as-yet-uncured disease would not be continually referenced in the scientific papers until that disease was cured and forgotten. But as I would soon learn, the name of that individual - who would surely be Nobel material - was on the tip of no one's tongue.

Of course, this simple reference had to be out there somewhere. Otherwise, tens of thousands of public servants and esteemed scientists of many callings, trying to solve the tragic deaths of a large number of homosexual and/or intravenous (IV) drug-using men between the ages of twenty-five and forty, would not have allowed their research to settle into one narrow channel of investigation. Everyone wouldn't fish in the same pond unless it was well established that all the other ponds were empty. There had to be a published paper, or perhaps several of them, which taken together indicated that HIV was the probable cause of AIDS. There just had to be.

I did computer searches, but came up with nothing. Of course, you can miss something important in computer searches by not putting in just the right key words. To be certain about a scientific issue, it's best to ask other scientists directly. That's one thing that scientific conferences in faraway places with nice beaches are for.

I was going to a lot of meetings and conferences as part of my job. I got in the habit of approaching anyone who gave a talk about AIDS and asking him or her what reference I should quote for that increasingly problematic statement, "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

After ten or fifteen meetings over a couple years, I was getting pretty upset when no one could cite the reference. I didn't like the ugly conclusion that was forming in my mind: The entire campaign against a disease increasingly regarded as a twentieth century Black Plague was based on a hypothesis whose origins no one could recall. That defied both scientific and common sense.

Finally, I had an opportunity to question one of the giants in HIV and AIDS research, DL Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute, when he gave a talk in San Diego. It would be the last time I would be able to ask my little question without showing anger, and I figured Montagnier would know the answer. So I asked him.

With a look of condescending puzzlement, Montagnier said, "Why don't you quote the report from the Centers for Disease Control? "

I replied, "It doesn't really address the issue of whether or not HIV is the probable cause of AIDS, does it?"

"No," he admitted, no doubt wondering when I would just go away. He looked for support to the little circle of people around him, but they were all awaiting a more definitive response, like I was.

"Why don't you quote the work on SIV [Simian Immunodeficiency Virus]?" the good doctor offered.

"I read that too, DL Montagnier," I responded. "What happened to those monkeys didn't remind me of AIDS. Besides, that paper was just published only a couple of months ago. I'm looking for the original paper where somebody showed that HIV caused AIDS.

This time, DL Montagnier's response was to walk quickly away to greet an acquaintance across the room.

Cut to the scene inside my car just a few years ago. I was driving from Mendocino to San Diego. Like everyone else by now, I knew a lot more about AIDS than I wanted to. But I still didn't know who had determined that it was caused by HIV. Getting sleepy as I came over the San Bernardino Mountains, I switched on the radio and tuned in a guy who was talking about AIDS. His name was Peter Duesberg, and he was a prominent virologist at Berkeley. I'd heard of him, but had never read his papers or heard him speak. But I listened, now wide awake, while he explained exactly why I was having so much trouble finding the references that linked HIV to AIDS. There weren't any. No one had ever proved that HIV causes AIDS. When I got home, I invited Duesberg down to San Diego to present his ideas to a meeting of the American Association for Chemistry. Mostly skeptical at first, the audience stayed for the lecture, and then an hour of questions, and then stayed talking to each other until requested to clear the room. Everyone left with more questions than they had brought.

I like and respect Peter Duesberg. I don't think he knows necessarily what causes AIDS; we have disagreements about that. But we're both certain about what doesn't cause AIDS.

We have not been able to discover any good reasons why most of the people on earth believe that AIDS is a disease caused by a virus called HIV. There is simply no scientific evidence demonstrating that this is true.

We have also not been able to discover why doctors prescribe a toxic drug called AZT (Zidovudine) to people who have no other complaint other than the fact that they have the presence of antibodies to HIV in their blood. In fact, we cannot understand why humans would take this drug for any reason.

We cannot understand how all this madness came about, and having both lived in Berkeley, we've seen some strange things indeed. We know that to err is human, but the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is one hell of a mistake.

I say this rather strongly as a warning. Duesberg has been saying it for a long time.

* * *

Heavy duty!!! , .... but maybe there's something in the air or food in California, to screw up their thought patterns?

Oops, ... what's this coming up on the web, from 'down under'? .... it doesn't have the 'smell' of a crank, but it seems to be saying that HIV is no more than a protein chain, ... and in terms of viral implications, ... that HIV as a virus doesn't even exist? The implication out there on the web seems to be that we are rattling around between two empty hypotheses, ... one which falsely links HIV to AIDS and one which falsely links a protein chain called HIV to the notion of a 'virus'.

* * *

http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/perthgroup/geneva/

Presentation by Eleni Papadopulos et al. Department of Medical Physics, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF HIV AND THE HIV ANTIBODY TESTS Geneva, June 28th 1998

The only way to prove the existence of a virus is to isolate its particles. It is only by doing this that we obtain pure particles to inspect, and analyse, and to introduce into fresh cell cultures to prove particles make more of the same. After all, no matter how viral-like they may look, this is what particles must show us before they ever earn the title, virus.

Have HIV experts gone to all this trouble? No. The only reason we have HIV is antibodies. A few antibodies amongst the plethora in AIDS patients that react with a few proteins present in the lymphocyte cultures of AIDS patients. When it is all said and done, it's not just that antibodies are used to prove some individuals are infected with HIV. For the HIV protagonists, antibodies are the proof that they have isolated HIV.

Shortly, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos will guide us through a close look at this proposition. As she does take special note of the history of the discovery and demise of the world's first human, leukaemia retrovirus, HL23V. As in the case of HIV, Gallo and his colleagues claimed that antibodies elevated certain culture proteins to the status of a virus. Their reasoning was then and still remains a scientific impossibility. When it was discovered that such antibodies were induced by a wide variety of stimuli that had nothing to do with viruses, and they occurred in far more healthy people than could have ever had the virus to cause leukaemia, HL23V disappeared from the annals of science. This is why most of you, and most HIV experts, have never heard of it. Yet in the AIDS era we have the same method used to prove the existence of HIV, and a large number of instances of HIV antibodies where there is no HIV. But we still believe in HIV.

The message for us tonight is plain and simple. HIV might exist but there is no proof that it does exist. As you listen to what is still the best evidence for HIV, imagine it is 1983, you are the consummate, disinterested scientist, living in Paris, working at the Pasteur Institute and charged with the task of discovery. Try to decide, each one of you, what you discovered. Was it a retrovirus HIV or have you let down your guard and allowed the immune system to trick you once again with antibodies which mean something entirely different but which you have mistakenly, once again called a retrovirus and HIV?

* * *

As others go on to say, (http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/news/ifaspr3.htm), Toxic treatments directed against an ill-defined and possibly nonexisting agent pose a serious risk to human health. If the international establishment which propagates the belief that "HIV" is the cause of the conditions called "AIDS" as if it were a scientific fact and as if "HIV" had been isolated, continues to ignore all the data telling otherwise, it would expose itself to legal action on the grounds of several human rights violations.

For a 'Keplerian' scientific reasoner, such as myself, ... the key passage in Eleni's presentation is the following;

"When it was discovered that such antibodies were INDUCED BY A WIDE VARIETY OF STIMULI THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH VIRUSES, and they occurred in far more healthy people than could have ever had the virus to cause leukaemia, HL23V disappeared from the annals of science. . . .Yet in the AIDS era we have the same method used to prove the existence of HIV, and a large number of instances of HIV antibodies where there is no HIV. But we still believe in HIV."

We continue to 'believe' the prevailing scientific perspective on HIV because we have followed the narrow path of rational inquiry, ... logical, causal inquiry, .... whose underlying space-time axiom, ... that reality is a 'sequential unity and plurality', we embrace on a quasi-religious basis. Even to the point that we are more concerned with the identification of HIV, whatever it is, ... and the accuracy of that identification (99 percent certain) than we are with the fact that in 30 percent of the actual cases of AIDS, ... there is no sign of HIV. And is it not curious that the incubation period for HIV, the elapsed time required to bring on fullblown AIDS, keeps getting extended, ... almost as if the establishment is hedging its bets, saying that 'yes, the HIV-AIDS link is definitely there, ... it's just taking a little more time to manifest itself in AIDS, that's all'. Meanwhile people continue to be terrorized by testing positive by HIV and become unwitting participants in the self-fulfilling of the prophecy of an HIV-AIDS link, by being encouraged to take AZT until their human immune system is actually broken down and they die of self-induced AIDS.

In the game of pool, ... in relativistic, curved space-time which characterizes the reality we live within, 'what evolves' is not the product of causal dynamics, ... the causal dynamics view we credit with being 'the way nature works' is instead, no more than a simplified way of describing things, ... 'analytical backfill', if you wish. The reality we live in is more completely described in terms of relational interference , ... in terms of 'container-content-coevolution'.

Nevertheless, you can, if you wish, interpret the outcome of a game of pool in terms of the causal dynamics of shot-making out of the context of how the evolving 'shape' of the containing environment, the reciprocal disposition effect, is an overriding consideration which speaks to whether 'the shots are made or not'. You can, if you wish, interpret the outcome of highschool massacre in terms of the causal dynamics of the perpetrators, ... the 'shot-makers', .. out of the context of how the evolving 'shape of the containing environment, the reciprocal disposition effect, ... is an overriding consideration which speaks to whether the "the shots are made or not". You can, if you wish, interpret your HIV positive test in terms of the causal dynamics of the HIV - AIDS link out of the context of how the evolving 'shape' of the containing environment, the reciprocal disposition effect,... is an overriding consideration which speaks to whether 'the shot will be made or not'.

'The Choice' [1] between seeing reality as a 'SIMULTANEOUS unity and plurality', .. as the result of many things simultaneously interfering, as advocated by Kepler, ... or as a 'SEQUENTIAL unity and plurality', the result of a thin line of causal consequences, as advocated by Galileo and Descartes, ... and most of the modern scientific establishment, ... is of course, heavily influenced by our western education and by the advice of those around us whom we love and trust.

* * *

[1] 'The Choice', http://rampages.onramp.net/~emlumley/choice.htm

Return to '98/'99 Update Page and Index of Essays