A Short History of Lawns: Why we ought to study history

Simply put, why bother study history? It does not seem to follow any stable rules, and we cannot necessarily predict its future course. So why bother at all? At least meterologists are able to give an idea of tomorrows weather. Criminal psychologists are able to roughly predict a serial killers next move, and a good physician will be able to predict outcomes of health remedies and treatments. It does not seem a good use of time to study ancient Greek warfare to predict and prepare for cyber warfare, though. Our present seems to distant from the past, so what value is the study of history?

The above paragraph is a reductive take on science, and history. Science is not all about predicting the future, and nor is history. Academics, researches and scholars all seek to broaden our perspectives, bleifs and world-views. This has just as much value as the power of predicting the future. History is excellent at this. What? I’ll restate. When we study history, it has a way of making us aware of possibilities and states of affairs that we do not always consider. We study the past not just to repeat it, but to understand it. And when we can understand the past, we can be liberated from it.

Let’s take this further. Each one of us are born in a space in time. This space in time as certain aspects on it that we sometimes see as “natural,” or the way things are. We are ruled by particular values and social norms., and we live under a unique economic, technological and political system. Some of us, the best and smartest of us, fall into the trap of seeing our world as “the natural order,” or as immutable. Many believe what we are experiencing today is inevitable.

So, where were we again? Ah, yes. The study of history loostens the grip we have on the past, and to an extent, the present. It enables us to turn out heads and say “things could be otherwise.” We begin to notice things our ancestors could not always imagine, or did not want us to imagine. As quoted by Historian Yuval Noah Harrari, “By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realise how our very thoughts and dreams took shape- and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but it will at least give us more options.”

Why do people have lawns? Lawns have history. New home buyers, if they be so lucky, might get to choose a kind of lawn for their new house. Where did lawns come from, and what does that have to do with the ability of studying history to open our minds?

Lawns are a cultural invention. Our stone-age hunter gatherers or our Neanderthalensis brethren did not cultuvate designer grass in front of their caves, or thatched huts. the idea of lawns are a French and English invention of the rich aristocrats in the middle ages. Lawns where there to display their expendable wealth. Elaborately.

Elaborate welcoming of Queen Elizabeth – on the Whitehouse lawn

 

A well kept lawn demanded a lot of work. It was a statement. “I’m so powerful and rich I can afford this extravagant luxury.” lawns were not farms, and they had no immediate practical value. The bigger the lawn, the more powerful you were.

We, us, humans, homo-sapiens, identified lawns with power, wealth and status. And probably with a lot of spare time. Yet, when the Industrial Revolution braodened the middle class, and when technology and mass produciton gave us sprinklers and lawn-movers, suddenly a million average-joes could afford to own and maintain a lawn.

 

A petit-atristocratic paradise. Now avaliable to the middle-class American citizen

 

Lawns were still a social signifier of wealth. You could ascertain roughly the approximate wealth or lack of by observing someomes lawn. Now given this very brief history of lawns, let us imagine a young home buyer. Fancy they have read this and understand the history of lawns a bit more. They are still free to roll with a lawn. Or they can shake of the cultural baggage given to us by the rich Dukes and Aristocrats of the middle ages. We can imagine for them a different type of lawn, or none at all – something to perhaps replace it. A new creation.

Simply put, when we study history to know that we cannot always escape the past. But we can imagine the plasticity of time and imagine, and act on imagined possible realities.

Ode to Immanuel Kant: A Poem of Pure Reason

Let us first divide cognition into rational analysis,
and sensory perception
(which Descartes considered valueless)
Now reason gives us concepts,
which are true but tautological,
Sensation gives us images,
Who’s content is phenomenal!

Whatever greets our senses must exist in space and time,
for else it would be nowhere and no-when and therefore slime
The space and time we presuppose before we sense reality,
Must have innate subjective transcendental ideality!

Thus space and time are forms of our perception,
whereby sensation’s synthesizes in orderly array,
The same must hold for rational conception,
In everything we think, the laws of logic must hold sway.

But a problem here arises, with respect to natural science.
While empirical in method, on pure thought it lays reliance.
Although for Newton’s findings we to Newton give the Glory!
Newton never could have found them,
If they weren’t known a priori.
We know that nature governed is by principles immutable,
But how we come to know them is inherently inscrutable.
That thought requires knowledge is a stand-point unassailable,
But for objects of our senses, explanations aren’t avaliable.

Soooooooo, let’s attempt to vivisect cognition,
By critical analysis and hope that we may find,
The link between pure thought and intuition,
A deduction transcendental will shed light light upon the mind.

You may recall that space and time are forms of apprehension,
And therefore what we sense has spation-temporal extension,
Whatever is extended is composed of a plurality,
But through an act of synthesis we form a commonality.

If we are to be conscious of a single concrete entity
each part of its extension must be given independently
combining in a transcendental apperceptive unity
to which I may ascribe the term “self-conscious” with impunity.

The order of
our various sensations
arises from connections not beheld in sense alone;
our self creates
the rules of their relations
and of this combination it is conscious as its own.

While these rules correspond to scientific causal laws
the question of their constancy remains to give us pause;
but once we recollect the source of our self-conscious mind,
to this perverse dilemma a solution we may find.

The self is nothing but its act of synthesis sublime;
this act must be the same to be self-conscious over time.
The rules for combination of its selfhood form the ground
so what we perceive tomorrow by today’s laws must be bound.

These constant laws
whereby we shape experience
are simply those which regulate our reason: that is plain.
So don’t ask why
the stars display invariance —
the Cosmos is produced by your disoriented brain!

Why are some people afraid of Charles Darwin and not Einstein? A short exploration.

I’m going to pick on America. You’ll see why. Here’s the thing. Only 15 percent of Americans (according to a 2012 Gallup Survey) think that homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention. Here’s the rest. *gulps*:

 

– 32 percent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but, God orchestrated this entire show.

– 46 percent believe that God created humans in our current form around 10,000 years ago. As the bible says.

Spending three years in college has NO impact on these views. Ziltch. Na-da. None. This same survey found that amoung BA graduates, 46 percent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 percent think that we evolved without divine intervention.

Even among holders of Masters and Doctorate degrees, 25 percent believe in the bibles creation story.

Obviously, education in America is an issue however this is not what my post here is about. I ask here, that given these statistics, why does the Theory of Evolution provoke massive objections, whereas so one seems to care about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics?

Why don’t American politics ask that their children be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? Why is that implicitly accepted, and Darwinian Evolution not?

Dare I say it, Darwin’s Evolution is less frightening than Quantum Mechanics, no? Lamarck proposed a theory that organisms becametransformed by their efforts to respond to the demands of their environment. Lyell demonstrated that geological deposits were the cumulative product of slow processes over vast ages. This helped Darwin towards a theory of gradual evolution over a long period by the natural selection of those varieties of an organism slightly better adapted to the environment and hence more likely to produce descendants. Combined with the later discoveries of the cellular and molecular basis of genetics, Darwin’s theory of evolution has, with some modification, become the dominant unifying concept of modern biology.

But no one seems scared of Quantum Mechanic and Relativity. The idea of twisting space and time, something appearing out of nothing, and a cat being alive and dead at the same time. America does not protect children form these scandalous (not really scandalous) ideas – so why do they pick on evolution?

I’ll tell you why.

Because people don’t care if space and time are absolute or not. Einsteins relativity makes no one angry. In contrast, Darwinian Evolution destroys cherished beliefs.

Darwin has deprived modern humans of their soul. To understand the Theory of Evolution is to understand that we have no soul. Not only is this terrifying to religious people, but is also scary to secular people. The literal meaning of individual is to be indivisible. Something that cannot be divided.

Evolution rejects this idea. All boilogical entities, according to are composed of smaller and simpler parts that ceaselessly combine and separate. We have evolved gradually, as a result of small changes and combinations, and splits, to our DNA structure.

 

Nature, the Cosmo and Purpose: A brief statement on the Epistemology of purpose in the Universe and why no purpose does not have to entail nihilism

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”

I am going to be brief and to the point with this post:

From the position of the evidence we have avaliable, the present evidence, components such as meaning and purpose are not to be found in the universe as objective qualities or properties of it. Purpose and meaning are the subject dependent projection of human qualities. Insofar as the objective universe is concerned, it is valueless, and has no inherent meaning. It is humans who project and construct meaning and purpose based on our subjective preferences and biases. We impose ourselves, such as meaning, purpose and values upon the universe.

I believe we should only understand our world in terms of accepting that which is comprehensible to us. We ought to only accept that which is in the province of possible and all actual experience and that which is in the province of empirical evidence and sound reasoning.

thus;

I argue on these grounds that we reject any conception or notion of meaning which is entombed in the idea and practice of faith in a mysterious, unknowable and imcomprehensible entity.

and so;

If our lives end up being less happy, then we ought to endure it as such.

but;

An inherent meaning, if there be one, leaves me frightened. A provided meaning from the universe would not be my meaning. it would be some distant, objective and arguably neutral meaning. I would rather have personal meaning. It seems all the more glorious if one behaves with respect and dignity in a valueless universe.

No meaning means that we are free to forge our own meaning.

 

Where Am I? A short story about Personal Identity and the Mystery of Mind

 

“What you are looking for is who is looking – St. Francis of Assisi”

Go on, take a read. The Philosophy of Mind and Personal Identity does not have to be boring. Instead of taking the stairs up the ivory tower, we’re going to take the elevator instead. You wont fall asleep. Or collapse from over-exertion. I think. Try me out. Because I am going to tell you a story, which may or may not have happened. Truth be told it’s up to you if you believe me. But I’m going to tell you it anyway.

A few years ago, while I was still studying at Auckland University, I was approached by government officials who asked me to volunteer for a highly secret and dangerous mission. It’s declassified now so don’t worry. The Department of Conservation and Education in Junction with the Heritage Society wanted to send someone into the Albert Park WWII Air Raid tunnels that have been closed off since their sealing during WWII. The problem was that they had suspected that the bunkers still contained explosives. “Why me,” I pleaded. Because of my undergraduate studies of the Mind-Body problem they thought I would be an excellent candidate. This was to be a dangerious expedition. The idea is to disarm the explosives, and thus open the tunnels for the public to leave their litter and stick shewing gum under the old office desks.

The Albert Park Tunnel System I would be sent into.

More importantly, it had been decided that the person being sent to disarm the explosives should leave his brain behind. So, naturally, it would be kept in a safe space where it could execute its normal control functions by highly technical radio links.

So I would undergo a surgical procedure to remove my brain from my cranuim, and placed in a live support VAT in a headquarters in Onehunga. Each input and output pathway, as it was cut off, would be replaced by trancievers, attached precisely to my brain and to the other nerve stumps in the empty cranium. No information would be lost, and everything would be preserved. “Would it really work?
” I asked. The surgeon replied. “Think of it as a mere expanding or streatching of your nerves in the brain and cranuim that control the body. We’re just making the nerves your brain indefinitely elastic by splicing radio lionks into them. Your brain will be undamaged.”

I was shown the headquarters in Onehunga. I saw the VAT in which my brain would be placed. Then I shook hands with the neurologists, hematologists, bio-physicists, janitors, and electrical engineers. After some discussions, blood tests, psychoanalysis and after them taking a lot of information about me, my desires, tastes and passions, I agreed to go with the procedure.

Finally, the day arrived. My brain was to be removed from my body. I would still be able to control my body, but just from a remote place. naturally, I went under and remembered nothing of the operation. I opened my eyes. I looked around. I asked the inevitable post-surgery question.

 

“Where Am I?”

 

The nurse responded, “Why, you’re in Onehunga!” She handed me a mirror and I was sitting in a chair. I saw my body with a little radio antenne sticking out of my head. That must be sending and recieving information from my brain and back to my body.

“I gather the operation was a success,” I remarked. “I want to see my brain.”

So the nurse led me down the corridor to the lab where my brain was being held. I walked into the room and a cheer when up from my surgery team! They were happy with the sucess. Still feeling light-headed I peered over the glass and saw my brain, covered in circuit chips and wires and other paraphernalia.

So I thought to myself, “Well, here I am, standing looking at my brain in a VAT… but wait…” I said to myself, “shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes’?”

 

I tried to think this. I tried to project it into the tank. “Here am I, Aidan MacNaughton, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes.” Nope, it did not work. Being an undergraduate philosopher, I believed unswervingly that the tokening of my thoughts was occuring somewhere in the complexity of my brain. Yet. Yet! When I thought “Here I am,” where the thought occured to me was here, outside the VAT, where I, Aidan MacNaughton, was standing staring at my brain. How utterly confuzzling.

So I did a thing. I looked at my brain and said, “You are called Jukka.” I look down at my body and said “you are called Jonne.” So here we are, Jukka is my Brain, and Jonne is my Body, but where is Aidan? And when I think “where is Aidan,” where is that thought occuring? Is it in my brain, or, as I look, staring at my brain, is the thought occuring IN where my body stands?

 

Where is the “I” – in the Brain or the Body?