Ichthys Cybernetics

Something in Lighter Vein - The Fine-Structure Constant

2012-02-11T07:15:00.004+02:00

I thought we needed to consider something in a lighter mood...

Recently I came in possession of Arthur I Miller's Deciphering the Cosmic Number, the Strange Friendship of Wofgang Pauli and Carl Jung. The book is in itself enthralling reading but I knew very little about this so-called, "cosmic number".

I discovered it was the mysterious number 137 that obsessed Pauli and Quantum Physicists ever since Sommerfield came upon it in 1916. It is called the "Fine-Structure Constant". Not knowing much about it and how it is derived (it seems not many, if anyone, knows either) I turned to the Wikipedia article where I was sure to find the answer. I was none the wiser but the entry had this wonderful quote from Richard Feynman. He referred to the fine-structure constant in these terms:

“There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e - the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to 0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!" (Richard P. Feynman (1985). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press. p. 129)

What caught my eye was where Feynman says, "You might say the 'hand of God' wrote that number, and 'we don't know how He pushed his pencil.'" What a tremendous figure of speech!

Perhaps we do know how God “pushed his pencil.” If Yahweh wrote in Hebrew, as we are told by those who claim to be in the know, he did, then probably we need to read his works the way one reads Hebrew....backwards! And from bottom to top! Which, according to Prof. Higgins "is absolutely frightening." (My Fair Lady, Act I, Scene I)

Whatever our speculations, I am reminded of words attributed to Galileo:

"Philosophy is written in the grand book of the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood until one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one wanders about in a dark labyrinth."

Oh, just by the way, Arthur Miller tells us in the prologue to his book (p.xvii) that the sum of the Hebrew letters of the word "Kabbalah" equals 137. Now how is that for a scary, frightening synchronicity!

Picture credit and another fine article: "The fine-structure constant and the nature of the universe, Ye cannae change the laws of physics. Or can you?", The Economist, August 31st, 2010. http://www.economist.com/node/16930866

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

isiZulu on our Galactic Stoep

2011-12-08T17:16:00.001+02:00

isiZulu Greeting on Voyager 1: "Siyanibingelela maqhawe, sinifisela inkonzo ende...." The message translated to English is "We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

-http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/languages/nguni.html

The world in which we live is more miraculous than we know. There are things which go on in our world about which we know nothing.

-Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

The two Voyager spacecraft were launched in August and September of 1977 and spent more than 11 years exploring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before officially heading off toward interstellar space in 1989. As of 2011 they are still operating and now leaving our Solar System. On board is a Golden Disk of data, recordings, and images. Greetings in several languages assumes there is intelligent life out there. Some examples:

Amoy (Min dialect)
"Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."
Arabic
"Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday."
English
"Hello from the children of planet Earth."
Gujarati
"Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact."
Hebrew
Peace
Nguni (Zulu)
"We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

For more see: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/greetings.html

The greetings may have been in jest but express a deep unconscious longing to connect with life out in so-called "Outer Space". They give voice to the hope that we are not alone in the incomprehensible vastness of the Universe. These greetings sound almost like a heartfelt response to the message of the Hosts of Heaven themselves: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward everyone!" (Luke 2:14) The Zulu greeting is especially significant.

"We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

I am fortunate to have been born and now retired in the Kingdom of the Zulu, KwaZulu-Natal living among a proud and beautiful people, the Zulu. In the Nguni languages, iZulu means "heaven, or sky". The Zulu are Sky People.

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa is one of the more colourful and controversial of the Zulu. He is a sangoma or Zulu shaman. He has sought to preserve Zulu tradition and folklore in several books, notably Indaba, My Children and Song of the Stars, the Lore of a Zulu Shaman. See http://credomutwa.com/about/

In Song of the Stars, Credo Mutwa writes about extraterrestrial life. He says:

Life can take many forms. Look at the forms that life can take on this planet alone. Here in this bush, there are insects you could easily mistake for rocks or for pieces of bark -- until one of them stings you, that is. Life does not have to consist of bipeds who move and breathe and smoke cigars as we do. I have said it before and I say it again -- the universe is a gigantic chamber of possibility where everything has the chance and the right to happen; and so we must not have cut-and-dry theories regarding just how life should look. Life could surprise us! (p.143)

He then describes the "many kinds of extraterrestrial creatures" he is aware of, the Muhondoruka, the Mutende-ya-ngenge, the Mvonjina, and others.

In an astonishing interview with Andreas Müller (For Full Text see http://www.kornkreise-forschung.de/textCredoMutwa.htm), Mutwa relates stories about Star Peoples and Crop Circles in Africa.

Art: Credo Mutwa

Sometimes large fields of corn and millet were planted. These were sacred to the goddess and were offered to the vast armies of birds to eat. No human being could enter the sacred cornfield.

The sacred fields were ploughed far from the ordinary millet, maize and corn, as they were left unfenced. Over centuries, people had discovered that the star gods sometimes communicated with human beings through these sacred fields. Time and again, strange circular depressions were seen in the centre of these fields. These depressions were called Izishoze Zamatongo, the great circles of the gods.

These circles were an amazing sight to see. The gods never cut the stalks of corn or millet when they form these depressions. It appears as though a great circular, disk-shaped force has descended on the field. It pressed the corn firmly into the ground, without breaking the stalks or damaging the plants. Then the force appears to spin, resulting in the strange spiral appearance of the fallen stalks. Words cannot describe such a phenomenon, which I have seen more than thirty times in the course of my life as a traditional healer. Whenever a circle appeared in the fields, the people rushed to erect a fence of poles around the circle. They would dance and perform other sacred rituals honouring the star gods and the Earth Mother.

-Credo Mutwa, Isilwane The Animal - Tales and Fables of Africa, Foreword

Ngiyabonga kakhulu Vusamazulu! You made us not to forget where we come from, to understand our myths, stories, and customs and to learn more about them.

Voyager Links:
Other Languages: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/languages/languages.html
More about Voyager: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/index.html
Voyager Timeline: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline.html
Check where the Voyagers are now: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/index.html

For further reading:
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell Series)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-Reaches-Outer-Space-Collected/dp/1577312090/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323156095&sr=1-1

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Pulse Beat of a Planet!

2011-12-03T11:30:00.001+02:00

Every second 200 lightening strikes occur somewhere on earth in order to keep reestablishing electrical balance between the earth and the ionosphere. These lightening strikes energize the 'flute' and vibrate the resonating cavity. The 'flute' vibrates waves that bounce off the ionosphere and then off the earth, back and forth. The resulting 'song' incorporates information from the ionosphere which reflects the universe and information about everything that occurs on earth. Usually this 'music' is described in terms of its beat or frequency. The beat frequency is called the Schumann Resonance... It is likely that the nervous system of the human being evolved in relationship to the Schumann Resonance, which, among other things, functions as a timing mechanism for optimal biological functioning... This wave guide is not empty, but rather is embedded with information from the entire universe. The rhythm like the beats of a drum holds within it a symphony that each of us receives and interprets in our own way. Imagine the changing light of a star or the light of the changing moonlight impacting the ionosphere in a way that can be decoded or heard by the human brain. Likewise, on the side of the earth's crust, the other side of the musical instrument, all activity on earth modulates its bit of information, whether an action or a thought, into this vibrating field. To be tuned to the earth's electromagnetic field is to be literally tuned to the universe.

-http://www.envirohealthtech.com/ecfaq.htm

Science Fiction? At Technical College the only two subjects I passed with distinction were: Space Physics and Microwave Techniques. Microwave Techniques fascinated me as much as did Space Physics. I probably felt there was a connection between the two. And indeed there is!

One section of the Microwaves syllabus was "waveguides" and "standing waves".

A waveguide "is a hollow conductive metal pipe used to carry high frequency radio waves, particularly microwaves". At Ultra High Frequencies one is no longer working with copper wire conductors to convey electrical impulses but literally a plumbing system! In our case we were working with electro-magnetic microwaves. In the case of sound waves, caves and stethoscopes are "waveguides" too. Similarly, we “conduct” light waves by means of optical fibres.

A standing wave occurs when the wave within the conductor appears to be stationary as in the ripples of a pond that appear not to be moving. This happens when the wave guide is in resonance or tuned to a particular “beat” frequency. One then has what is called a resonating cavity. Drums and acoustic guitars are resonating cavities or chambers. Standing waves also occur in river rapids and ocean swells.

Wikipedia: A standing wave in a rectangular cavity resonator

The Earth-Ionosphere Complex is also a waveguide with its own resonating frequency but operating not at Ultra High frequencies (UHF) but at Very Low Frequencies (VLF). A recent report of io9 explained:

The Earth pulses with a special kind of resonant wave. The Schumann Resonance has long been dubbed 'the Earth's heartbeat,' and it has only been spotted from below. Recently, though, satellites have found signs of this electromagnetic heartbeat leaking up into space.

The heartbeat of the earth goes at about eight cycles per second. Like many other heartbeats, it's regulated by electricity. When lightning strikes the earth, it creates electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere. These waves are caught between the ground and the upper atmosphere, sixty miles up. Most of these waves are dampened and shake themselves to nothing.

Others, with just the right wavelength and frequency, just keep going. The wavelength is the circumference of the earth (or twice the circumference, or three times, or four, and so on). This means that the troughs of these waves will always line up, as will the crests. When crests combine, they get bigger. And with lightning hitting the earth over four million times a day, these waves keep getting the boosts they need. The waves don't sweep across the surface of the earth. Instead they're like standing waves, that just pulse at their troughs and crests - a resonant heartbeat. Scientists call this heartbeat The Schumann Resonance.

(See also the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances)

What is intriguing about the phenomenon is that it could explain many so-called "paranormal" occurrences. Schumann resonance excitations have been linked to upper atmospheric "transient luminous events" (TLE) curiously called "sprites", "elves", "gnomes", "jets", and so on. Intense Solar activity could also modulate TLEs. Some high altitude "unidentified flying object" sightings might simply be TLEs. However I would hesitate to discount all UFOs as TLEs! That would spoil many a ghost story. Some TLEs are real epiphanies such as the Shekhinah, the Annunciation at Bethlehem, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, or even the Day of Pentecost!

More startling than an extraterrestrial invasion, however, is our tampering and exploitation of this extremely delicate membrane and shield around our Planet. The reported "leakage" has probably been occurring all along and only now being detected. But what if it is a symptom of something suddenly seriously out of kilter? In a paper by Richard Alan Miller and Iona Miller, The Schumann's Resonances and Human Psychobiology, the authors raise concerns about projects such as the very controversial HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) Project. It is not a little worrisome that some of these projects are military. They write...

We live in a matrix of oscillating fields; the tiniest fluctuations in one interlocked field carry over perturbation into others. Many times per second, pulses travel completely around the world between our planet's surface and the ionosphere sending coordinating signals to all organisms.

These signals couple us to the global electrostatic field. Named for their discoverer, these Schumann Resonances (SR) provide the orchestrating pulse for life on our planet.

We all march to the cadence of this cosmic drummer - our planetary heartbeat, which sets the tempo for health and well-being. Damaging this planetary pacemaker could spell doom for life as we know it. In the name of progress and defense, this pacemaker is now threatened, while vast amounts of public money are spent on this exploitation.

(Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp)

Solar Activity also influences the resonating frequency of this Global Ventricle. Some believe there is a correlation between Cosmic and Solar Activity, the Schumann Resonance Frequency, and psychological behaviour, health, and altered states of consciousness. (http://www.neilcherry.com/documents/90_n4_Schumann_Resonance_and_suicide.pdf, http://www.neilcherry.com/documents/90_n2_EMR_Schumann_Resonance_paper2.pdf) It is supposed that Earthlings are electromagnetically coupled to the rhythms of the Spheres. Gregg Braden speculates, suggesting that the Schumann Resonance is increasing, affecting cellular resonance. We perceive this as time speeding up, he says. (For more about Tesla, Braden, and others see http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_tesla2.htm) Schumann's Resonance has in recent years taken on spiritual, mystical, esoteric, and theological connotations indicative of the growing connectedness between Science and Spirituality.

Much of this is highly speculative but as I learnt way back in the late 1960s at a more practical, hands on level, if you damage, dent, puncture, modify, or perforate your waveguides there could be unexpected consequences. The characteristics of the system, in this case, our planetary eco-system including the manner in which we interact with our environment and others could be affected! We know, for instance, what happened when the Ozone Layer was ruptured. Whether Conspiracy Theorists have valid grounds for concern or not, it would still be wise not to rush in where angels fear to tread. We need to think twice about harmful atmospheric fracking. An ionospheric hernia might not be all that pleasant!

In conclusion, may I direct readers to an interesting forum thread where Michael Persinger (PhD Behavioral Neuroscience) was quoted:

All behavours, including consciousness, are generated by and correlated with brain activity. The activity can be conceived as complex matrices of electromagnetic patterns and their associated chemical changes. Weak intensity complex magnetic fields generated by the earth and by human technology affect consciousness and experience. The critical factor is not the intensity of the fields but their patterns and the information contained within the patterns. Those patterns that are most similar to the natural temporal configurations of brain activity are most effective.

The brain activity associated with consciousness responds to the subtle changes in geomagnetic activity. These changes include alterations in the occurrence of dreams, enhanced electrical sensitivity of groups of brain cells (and the more extreme form, electrical seizures), and the ability to focus during the day.

Because all human beings are immersed within the ---> geomagnetic field we are intrinsically connected to it and to the secondary fields that arise from this connection. Very small changes in the activity of the earth's magnetic field due to alterations in solar activity can affect all human beings. These direct effects are primarily upon the subtle but complex electromagnetic fields that interact with everyone's consciousness due to the marked similarity of the characteristics of our brains and our genetic history.

This creates the potential for the function of every person's brain activity to be changed---> without their awareness.

And that is scary!

More Links:
Magnetic Activity And Schumann Resonance: http://quake.geo.berkeley.edu/ncedc/em.intro.html
For the "Ham" enthusiast - how to construct your own Schumann Resonance detector: http://www.vlf.it/re_2/schumannsearch.html

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

The Soul of Safrica

2011-11-29T12:52:00.000+02:00

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

-Krishnamurti

Let there be a place for everyone under the sun - and everyone to take their lawful place - even the bushman to tame nature and to dance for the rain.

-Henry Jansen alias Xam

The National Coat of Arms of South Africa captures the very essence of our land and people. As such it is our National Icon!

Every South African should reflect long and and deep on its profound symbolism. It is well worth reading about it at the "National Coat of Arms" site. I find it profoundly spiritual. For personal reasons the Khoisan element is especially interesting which is more fully explained on the Linton Panel page The human figures in the Coat of Arms derive from the Linton Stone, now preserved in the SA National Museum in Cape Town:

Credit: Dr Ben Smith, Wits Rock Art Institute.

The panel shows people capturing a power the /Xam called !Gi. The San sought and used this power for the benefit of their community. It allowed for the healing of the sick and for the healing of divisions within society. San rock art was believed to be rich in this special power.

Credit: Dr Ben Smith, Wits Rock Art Institute.

This delicately painted figure has power that we can all share in. It was intended to have special power as it was painted straddling a line of !Gi. Within the new Coat of Arms the figure will continue, as its painter intended, to channel its power for the benefit of all.

This caught my attention. What is this !Gi?

!Gi refers to what has been variously described as "supernatural potency", "magical power", "spiritual energy", or simply "spirit" or "soul" and even “sorcery" depending on the context. Some Christians may have difficulty with some of these concepts but without going into the anthropological explanations or theological implications, I think of !Gi as the "wind" that Jesus speaks of, "the wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth" (John 3.8). Or we can think of it as the Shekhinah of God permeating all of Creation. Hinduism speaks of the Atman - the Universal Life Principle, and Taoism of Qi.

"The people who possess !gi are called !gi ten, meaning 'those who are full of supernatural power", writes Cherrie Rhodes. However we may wish to think of !Gi, the intention of our National Coat of Arms is that Holy Spirit Power is for "the benefit of the community, the healing of the broken and divided". This is the essence of ubuntu ...

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
-Desmond Tutu, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy )

To read:
Lewis-Williams, D.J. & Challis, S, Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art
Lewis-Williams, D.J. and Pearce, D.G., 2004. San Spirituality: Roots, Expressions and Social Consequences. Double Storey, Cape Town.
Solomon, A, The myth of ritual origins? Ethnography, mythology and interpretation of San rock art. South African Archaeological Bulletin, http://www.antiquityofman.com/Solomon_myth_ritual.html
Rhodes, C, Shamanism Across Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the !Kung and Ainu,

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Panspermia: The Mantis or the Stork?

2011-11-28T12:47:00.003+02:00

Genomic analysis, based on increases in genome size and the evolutionary record, indicate that genes began to evolve and to undergo duplicative events billions of years before the formation of this planet, at least 10 billion years ago. This does not mean that life began 10 billion years ago, but rather that the ﬁrst gene was fashioned approximately 6 billion years before the creation of Earth. The genetic evidence supports extra-terrestrial abiognesis... (p.12) ...the first gene was fashioned billions of years before the creation of Earth (p.19).

-Rhawn Joseph and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe,

"Genetics Indicates Extra-terrestrial Origins for Life", Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Volume 16,

http://journalofcosmology.com/JoC16pdfs/27_JosephWickGeneticOriginsLife.pdf

Ironically, it was genealogy that led me to reflect on exobiology - the evolution of extraterrestrial life and its possible migration to Earth. And it wasn't simply the bizarre idea that the Hottentotsgot (the praying mantis) of my Khoi forbears, thought by some to have been a "Sky God", had genetically engineered us! Rather, it was a more sober, scientific pursuit that led me in this direction.

Family tradition maintained that the Garvies of Perthshire, Scotland were from somewhere else. A family oral tradition insisted that the Garvies were descended from John Garbh, seventh MacLean of Coll, through one of his sons. This son was wounded at the Battle of Inverkeithing in 1651, and did not return to Coll. His three sons (or grandsons) John, James and Patrick rented Upper Balgarvie, Lower Balgarvie, and Mill of Balgarvie in the parish of Scone. From them stemmed the Garvies of Perthshire where my great grandfather Laurance was born two centuries later.

To date I haven't found source documentation to substantiate this tradition. It is simply one of our many Garvie ancestral legends and now part of the corpus of Garvie mythology. In an attempt to verify this I then resorted to y-DNA analysis. I was hoping to find a genetic connection between the Garvies of Perthshire and the Macleans of Coll. Unfortunately no such proof has been found. We have far too few Garvie and Maclean DNA samples to confirm a genetic connection. All we can say at this stage is that both the Garvies and the Macleans share strong Celtic DNA material in common. We must still find the documentary and genetic "missing links" to solve this puzzle. But it was this conundrum that got me thinking about the bigger picture, the origin of life on planet Earth.

In recent years, astrophysicists have discovered a vast number of "extrasolar planets", "islands" in far flung Galactic Hebrides, that could and probably harbours life far beyond our wildest imaginings...

Extrasolar Planets

An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System we take for granted and imagine is extraordinarily unique.. As of November 23, 2011, some 704 extrasolar planets (in 578 planetary systems and 83 multiple-planet systems) have been identified.
A substantial fraction of stars have planetary systems - data from the HARPS mission indicates that this includes more than half of all Sun-like stars. Data from the Kepler mission has been used to estimate that there are at least 50 billion planets in our own galaxy.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet

Unashamedly, Earthlings are searching for habitable planets that they could one day colonize! This archaic "colonial mentality", now projected on a cosmic scale, is to my mind, just a little too presumptuous. What if it happened the other way round, that instead, Earth had been colonized? There is a surprising proponent for this view. Dr Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA-molecule and Nobel Prize Winner has suggested just this!

Panspermia

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 - 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson. He, Watson and Maurice Wilkins were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

During the 1960s, Crick became concerned with the origins of the genetic code. In 1966, Crick took the place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where Orgel was to talk about the origin of life. ..... Many molecular biologists were puzzled by the problem of the origin of a protein replicating system that is as complex as that which exists in organisms currently inhabiting Earth. In the early 1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel technology, a process they called “Directed Panspermia”.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick#Directed_panspermia

Dr. Francis Crick suggests in his book Life Itself: Its Origins and Nature (1981) that primordial life was shipped to Earth in "spaceships" of some kind. Crick makes this startling proposition: "Life did not evolve first on Earth; a highly advanced civilization became threatened so they devised a way to pass on their existence. They genetically-modified their DNA and sent it out from their planet on bacteria or meteorites with the hope that it would collide with another planet. It did, and that's why we're here."

Terming his model "Directed Panspermia", Crick suggested that a "spaceship" carrying "large samples of... microorganisms" was sent to the Earth billions of years ago by an extraterrestrial civilisation - either as an experiment, preparation for colonisation or a genetic Noah’s Ark of some sort. (Crick, F. H. C., and Orgel, L. E. "Directed Panspermia", Icarus, 19, 341 (1973), quoted in David Darling’s Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight)

Dr Crick is not alone in these views. Sir Fred Hoyle in his Life from Space, took a similar view. He rejected chemical evolution in favour of propagation from space or panspermia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_chemical_evolution

It is speculated that our DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilization. They programmed the molecules so that when we reached a certain level of intelligence, we would be able to access their information, and they could therefore "teach" us about ourselves, and how to progress. (For more about so-called "Junk DNA" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA) The Universe could be teeming with life.

Sumerian and other mythologies, even passages in the Bible, tantalise us with stories of our celestial origins. Crick and others have suggested there might be DNA evidence that could substantiate this. Just as Garvies suspect that their origins go back to the distant Isle of Coll so Earthlings infer they've come from some far away planetary island in the Cosmos! But our limited historic and genetic records continue to tease us.- had we been pollinated from afar?

Eccentric? Science Fiction? Till more evidence comes in, it may seem so. But we live with the "missing links" and the questions! To think that we already have all the answers is presumptuous to say the least. So the Khoikhoi idea of a Celestial Mantid, a Khoi Prometheus, that once gave their ancestors the gift of fire and their distinctive clicking language, might not be as far fetched as sceptics might think! Sober biologists and cosmologists are entertaining similar ideas. And if not a Praying Mantis, then perhaps a Galactic Stork really did bring us, just as our parents taught us!

For further study:

Exopolitics, http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_salla.htm

Also see Wikipedia articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Star Lore of the Khoi and San

2011-11-27T16:15:00.001+02:00

"My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-conscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls, and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos."

-D.H. Lawrence

The Khoisan were the nomadic, indigenous peoples the Portuguese navigators and Dutch settlers encountered in the Cape Peninsula in the 15th and 16th Centuries. The European settlers called them Hottentots but are today collectively known as the Khoisan. They comprised three distinct groups:

the Strandlopers (literally "beach walkers"). These were beachcombers living off shellfish and generally dwelt in the caves along the coast. They were the "Sea People".
the Khoikhoi (literally "men of men") were pastoralists. They were the "Herd People".
the San who were hunter-gatherers. They were the "Bush People". The Khoikhoi called them the Sankhoi.

Eva Krotoa was Khoikhoi whose grandfather was a Strandloper.

Unfortunately many of the traditional beliefs and legends of the southern Cape Khoi were lost in time. However the stories and rock painting records of the Khoisan from other parts of southern Africa have thankfully been preserved.

Sky Legends and Star Lore of the Khoi and the San

* A girl child of the old people had magical powers so strong that when she looked at a group of fierce lions, they were immediately turned to stars. The largest are now in Orion's belt.

* A strong-willed girl became so angry when her mother would not give her any of a delicious roasted root that she grabbed the roasting roots from the fire and threw the roots and ashes into the sky, where the red and white roots now glow as red and white stars, and the ashes are the Milky Way.

* When the Pleiades appear in the east, little ones are lifted by their mothers and presented to the stars. The Pleiades are considered friendly and the children are taught to stretch their hands toward them.

* According to the Namaquas, the Pleiades were the daughters of the sky god. When their husband (Aldebaran) shot his arrow (Orion's sword) at three zebras (Orion's belt), it fell short. He dared not return home because he had killed no game, and he dared not retrieve his arrow because of the fierce lion (Betelgeuse) which sat watching the zebras. There he sits still, shivering in the cold night and suffering thirst and hunger.

-Compilation by Dave Laney, SAAO
http://www.astronomy2009.org.za/fileadmin/files/education/astrocd/resources/South%20Africa/HartRAO/Ch08_Star_Patterns_06a.pdf

The Khoi appear to have revered their ancestors and elevated them as sky gods. These were the "Sky People". Generally the belief was that Earth People become Sky People. Sometimes it may have been thought that the Sky People returned to the Earth when meteors or comets were observed. Some early European writers believed the Khoi were moon worshippers. The Khoikhoi Supreme Being was Tsui Goab ("Wounded Knee"). He was a chief by the name of Tikqua who had progressed and after many transmigrations on his eventual ascension became the Sky God. (http://www.vanhunks.com/cape1/vanhunks1.html)

Of peculiar interest is the Khoi reverence for the Praying Mantis. "Khoi and San mythology refers to the praying mantis as a god. The word for the mantis in Afrikaans is hottentotsgot (literally, the god of the Khoi)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis) The San say that the praying mantis gave them words and fire.

The Hottentots-god
by Henry Jansen alias Xam

One day all the animals got together and decided to destroy the one; namely the Hottentots-god. He was too fine and small, and usually sat in every tree and bush for days on end and never did anything. Elephants flattened every tree to get rid of the Hottentots-god. Lion roared that the earth shook and even the hyena lifted its last leg. Then a big drought arrived and everyone started to suffer, as there was no rain to feed the plants or the animals. Then they realized that the Hottentots-god always prayed for rain, but by then it was too late...

[Let there be a place for everyone under the sun - and everyone to take their lawful place - even the bushman to tame nature and to dance for the rain.]

Hjalmar Thesen's haunting story, The Echoing Cliffs, ends with Liklik looking into the eyes of Kwiknee. There has been a massacre and Liklik says to her, "Look long, my little one, for we shall not see it again... Tonight there will be many new stars in the sky, our friends will be watching over us."

Kwiknee shivers and moves closer to Liklik and replies, "When the moons of one hand have shone over the ocean, your child will be born. This I tell you now, while my heart grieves for the people we shall not see again... My eyes are your eyes, my ears are your ears. My eyes look with yours towards the place where the sun sets and a home that will be the home of your children."

Indeed! Our souls are “in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos”! I owe something of this to my own ancestors.

Note:
The origin of the belief in the Sacred Mantis is obscure and the connection with the Alien Mantids of UFO lore is at best perhaps curious but largely conjecture. Or is it? See the somewhat bizarre reports of "Praying Mantis like Aliens" at http://www.ufobc.ca/Beyond/prayingmantis/index.htm and http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread299896/pg1 . Outlandish ? See my next blog!

Further reading:
Penny Miller, Myths And Legends of Southern Africa.
Hjalmar Thesen, The Echoing Cliffs, 1963, Hutchinson & Co.

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

11th Great-Grandson of a Khoi-Strandloper

2011-11-26T11:20:00.002+02:00

Today her documented legacy lives on, as paradoxically as her life, in at least three million previously classified ‘white’ descendants of her daughter, Pieternella, who married Dutch farmer Daniel Zaaiman. According to lineages provided by genealogist Keith Meintjes, these descendants include former premiers Paul Kruger, Jan Smuts and FW de Klerk.

-Sharon Marshall

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

What's up with the Sun?

2011-09-13T08:08:00.001+02:00

A few days ago, a kind friend "facebooked" me...

Hi Colin. Others have been telling me of unusual solar activities happening soon what do you know about them? Your last blog was in May?

I commented there but perhaps I need to add a few more reflections here.

Indeed many have noticed an apparent increase in some very "unusual solar activity". Now this might simply be because we are observing the sun more intensely than ever before with much more sophisticated technologies than we had hitherto. Secondly one notes that perhaps what one is observing is not all that unusual. Solar activities have caught the attention of astronomers now for several centuries but it is the intensity and frequency of these that might be curious and catch our attention now.

"The Sun is churning with activity, today," reported the CQ Amateur Radio Magazine Facebook page a day or two ago. Radio Amateurs take a special interest in solar activity because we are interested in its effects on radio propagation and communication at short wave frequencies. "Churning" is perhaps putting it mildly. The sun right now is a seething cauldron. Lately the sun has been in a state of incredible agitation and disturbance.

Photo: Sunspotwatch

Following an unexpected period of dormancy the Sun has suddenly awakened from its deep slumbers and been unusually active of late. You can follow it at http://sunspotwatch.com/ and http://spaceweather.com/ Also see http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/category/space-weather-2/. There has been lots of spectacular solar flare activity and many incredible photos and videos.

Please note that the direct observation of the Sun's surface with or without an optical device is extremely dangerous, and "requires both knowledge and close attention to safety precautions." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

I am asked, "What do I know about them?" Quite frankly, nothing! I don't think anybody really does. We know so little. Even those said to be in the know are merely scratching at the surface. Many are mystified. Indeed the entire Universe is one amazing, unbelievable mystery! I have just been reading a fascinating article titled "31% of Universe Is 'Pure Mystery' and the Brightest Places in the Universe". Read it in order to learn a little bit more.

On a more esoteric note, some have attributed this sudden increase in Sun Spot turbulence; Earthquakes; Volcanoes; Hurricanes; Political and Economic Upheaval; etc to the now disintegrating Comet Elenin alluded to in my previous blog. For more about this check the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_collision. Much of that is purely channeled speculation and the re-presentation of ancient Sumerian mythology and remains unsubstantiated by current scientific observation. Nevertheless the human spirit is insatiably intuitive and curious and should not, in my view, simply be discounted or disregarded. Intuition, dreams, and wonder are often the gateways to hitherto never before realised scientific discoveries.

Mysterious, awesome, astonishing, beautiful, alarming as these very unusual Solar Events may appear I am reminded of something Emerson once said, "Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are." Indeed! We too easily discount ourselves as mere grovelling earthlings when really, we are celestial beings beyond comprehension.

One also looks with awe at the massive outbursts and disturbances out there in the cosmos and one has the distinct feeling that one is witnessing events within one's own seething fractured self. As Jan Smuts once said, "There is a crack that runs through the universe and that crack runs through me." The Universe is one enormous mirror in which we see ourselves and our own individual and planetary conditions reflected.

[Apologies for not blogging since May! May I blame it on Solar Flare Activity? As has been reported there have been power grid outages in some places. Communication satellites have had to be disabled. GPS has been behaving erratically misguiding many of us. All attributed to these recent Solar Storms we are now observing. I must have experienced something of a Solar triggered Writer's Block!]

For further reading:
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

The Ancient Study of Sunspot (Sic) in China and Its Modern Application (Zhongguo Gudai Taiyang Dianzi Yenjiu Yu Xiandai Yingyong)

Something's Coming...and it's not just Comet Elenin!

2011-05-28T09:58:00.000+02:00

"We are born at a given moment in a given place and like vintage years of wine we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything else." -Carl Jung

This June is a very significant month for me. On the 15th I will turn 65, technically the date I should have retired. But that was prematurely snatched from me and will be a subject for another time. More important now is what makes June 2011 so significant to me. Not anything I imagine that would matter very much to others except perhaps a little tinge of curiosity. For me however, something more astonishing than Harold Camping's Rapture and much more exciting than the expected imminent Ascension of New Agers.

Between 1st June and 1st July 2011 there are three eclipses, the so-called "Mid-year Eclipse Triad" of 2011: 1 June, 15 June and 1 July. Our Winter Solstice falls on 21 June. Now Mid-Year Eclipses are something really cool for Geminis! They are Gemini Eclipses. What makes this even more interesting for me is that my birth coincided with an eclipse too, the 14th June eclipse of 1946.

Observing the 2002 Solar Eclipse (Photo: C Young)

I've dubbed these mysterious coincidences between the macro- and microcosms, "AstroSynchronicities". Carl Jung said, "these [cosmic] influences are nothing but unconscious instrospective perceptions of the collective unconscious." Or to rephrase that, these are reflections of a far bigger picture of which we are not always consciously aware. In that sense the Mid-year Eclipse Triad of 2011 becomes for me "sacramental": an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible reality. It evokes the sense of wonder and mystery that I tried to describe in a previous blog.

Lyrics from "West Side Story" beautifully expresses this mystical feeling of anticipation, expectation, and cosmic connectedness or harmony I feel:

Could be!

Who knows?

There's something due any day;

I will know right away,

Soon as it shows.

It may come cannonballing down through the sky,

Gleam in its eye,

Bright as a rose!

Who knows?

It's only just out of reach,

Down the block, on a beach,

Under a tree.

I got a feeling there's a miracle due,

Gonna come true,

Coming to me!

Could it be? Yes, it could.

Something's coming, something good,

If I can wait!

Something's coming, I don't know what it is,

But it is

Gonna be great!

With a click, with a shock,

Phone'll jingle, door'll knock,

Open the latch!

Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon;

Catch the moon,

One-handed catch!

Around the corner,

Or whistling down the river,

Come on, deliver

To me!

Will it be? Yes, it will.

Maybe just by holding still,

It'll be there!

Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy,

Meet a guy,

Pull up a chair!

The air is humming,

And something great is coming!

Who knows?

It's only just out of reach,

Down the block, on a beach,

Maybe tonight . . .

Comet Elenin? I almost forgot. Just wait and see! Meanwhile, google it or see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2010_X1

oOo

For further reading:

Carl Jung and Astrology
http://www.chartplanet.com/html/carl_jung.html

Synchronicity
http://www.chartplanet.com/html/synchronicity.html

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

The Footprints of God: The Relationship of Astrology, C.G. Jung, the Gospels

Deep-Space Ambiguity

2011-04-15T08:22:00.002+02:00

As the hart panteth for the water brooks, so panteth my soul for Thee, O God.

(Psa 42:1)

Deep Space. Deep Space Tracking Station. Deep Space Network. Deep Space Communications Complex. I wondered, "Why not Far Space?" And Far Space Tracking Stations and Networks? Why Deep? "Deep" seemed subliminally, spiritually, and deliberately ambiguous to me.

Webster's Dictionary [1880] defines:

Ambiguous [Lat. ambiguus, from ambigere, to wander about with irresolute mind] Doubtful or uncertain, particularly in respect to signification; equivocal; as, an ambiguous course; an ambiguous expression.
What have been thy answers what but dark,Ambiguous, and with double sense-deluding. Milton

"Nebulous".....now there's another spaced-out synonym.

"Deep Space" terms seem to suggest not only something "far out" but also "deep within". For me "deep space" has a psychological or spiritual connotation. At Hartebeesthoek, one of the original three Deep Space Instrumentation Facilities of the early 1960s, we were not only probing deep space, we were also, unconsciously perhaps, engaged on a journey inward.

Heart Nebula

Even the etymology of "Hartebeesthoek" implied something more. The word derives from Dutch, from hart deer + beest beast + hoek corner. Hart is akin to "horn" and refers to the antlers. The "hartebeest" is an antelope. Merriam-Webster traces the word "deer" to "Middle English, deer, animal, from Old English deor beast; akin to Old High German tior wild animal, Lithuanian dvasia breath, spirit". In Afrikaans, though not etymologically related, hart not only means "deer" but it is also the word for "heart". In Psalm 42:1 the hart becomes the symbol of the spirit. So Hartebeesthoek came to symbolise for me that "corner" within my own heart that encompassed the immensity of deep space!

The Hindu Scriptures must surely count among the most beautiful and inspiring in the World. The Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads are among my favourites. In the Chandogya Upanishad is this beautiful "deep space" gem:

OM. In the center of the castle of Brahman, our own body, there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus-flower, and within can be found a small space. We should find who dwells there, and we should want to know him.
And if anyone asks, "Who is he who dwells in a small shrine in the form of a lotus flower in the center of the castle of Brahman? Whom should we want to find and to know?" we can answer:
"The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars; fire and lightning and winds are there; and all that now is and all that is not: for the whole universe is in Him and He dwells within our heart." (Chandogya Upanishad 3.13.7)

It is a thought not alien to Christianity either.

In the words of Augustine (De Lib. Arb., II.41), "Wherever you turn, by certain traces which wisdom has impressed on her works, she speaks to you, and recalls you within, gliding back into interior things by the very forms of exterior things."

William Law (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life) put it this way, "The outward world is but a glass, or representation of the inward; and every thing and variety of things in temporal nature must have its root, or hidden cause, in something that is more inward."

"All our greatest philosophers and theologians unanimously assert that the visible universe is a faithful reflection of the invisible," says Nicholas of Cusa (Of Learned Ignorance,I.xi).

Scanning the skies with deep space antennas is, in a way, a scansion of, and a panting for the Divine Imprint within.

In conclusion, a thought for Holy Week...

"Think, dear friend, reflect on the world that you carry within yourself. And name this thinking what you wish. it might be recollections of your childhood or yearning for your own future. Just be sure that you observe carefully what wells up within you and place that above everything that you notice around you. Your innermost happening is worth all your love. You must somehow work on that." -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

"Deep-Time Eyes"

2011-04-12T12:42:00.002+02:00

Lord, I was blind; I could not see
In Thy marred visage any grace,
But now the beauty of Thy face
In radiant vision dawns on me.
-William T Matson

What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth . . .. The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots . . .. When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-coloured surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich colour spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

-Yuri Gagarin

It is the Season of Lent. Good Friday is coming. So is Easter.

Visiting my optician the other day got me to thinking about these things, especially short- and far-sightedness. Fifty years ago today, 12th April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go into Space. Though Gagarin never saw God out there he certainly saw "Beauty", beauty in a way no person had ever seen before.

Recently a Methodist minister had introduced me to a fascinating online discussion series on "Evolutionary Christianity" (http://evolutionarychristianity.com) hosted by Michael Dowd. I heartily commend these conversations to you too. The talks included a galaxy of theologians, scientists, and writers, some who I had previously read or heard speak. They were familiar, trusted voices. Although originally an Advent series of meditations, I made these hour long meditations my Lenten study for this year. What a marvelous time-shift this has proved to be!

Speakers included: Charles H Townes, Owen Gingerich, Richard Rohr, Jim Burklo, Denis Lamoureux, Bruce Sanguin, Mary Southard, Diarmuid O Murchu, Ursula King, Sally Morgenthaler, Philip Clayton, Ian Lawton, Joan Roughgarden, Matthew Fox, Spencer Burke, Brian Mclaren, Michael Morwood, Gretta Vosper, Ted Davis, Tom Thresher, Paul Smith, Doug Pagitt, Ian Barbour, Kevin Kelly, John Polkinghorne, Linda Gibler, Michael Dowd, Gloria Schaab, William D Phillips, Joan Chittister, Ross Hostetter, John Cobb, John F Haught, John Shelby Spong, Karl Giberson, Ilia Delio, Kenneth R Miller, and Gail Worcelo. All Christian scholars and researchers of renown, some Nobel Prize Winners, sharing what they had in common, namely, their love for Jesus as disciples of his and the amazing mystery of evolution they had come to appreciate. It was for me an incredible experience listening to these speakers.

One of the notions that immediately caught my attention was what Michael Dowd, the host of the discussions, called "deep-time eyes"....that is, the ability to look deep down into the mystery of cosmic time and space and there to see and experience the presence of God manifest throughout evolutionary time and realise our own connectedness to all creation.

Evolutionary Christianity points to those who value evidence as divine communication. Whatever our differences, we all have deep-time eyes and a global heart. -Michael Dowd

Though I still see as if "through a glass dimly", I can identify at least four influences in my life, a "Quarternity" if you like, that has affected my own seeing. There are two places and two people: Hartebeesthoek Deep Space Tracking Station - the Sterkfontein Caves; and, Teilhard de Chardin - Jan Smuts.

Hartebeesthoek Deep Space Tracking Station

It was at the Hartebeesthoek Deep Space Tracking Station that I was first introduced to notions of "deep space" and "deep time". The operations at a Tracking Station centred around concepts of space and time. For instance, this idea was especially embodied in what is called "Round Trip Light Time" (RTLT).

In space technology, the round-trip delay time or round trip light time is the time light or radio signals takes to go to a spacecraft and return. (See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-trip_delay_time). One was constantly being reminded of the relationship between space and time. Every space probe at every moment required of us a constant awareness of this ever changing variable....the RTLT. Nothing was static. Though minuscule in the great expanse of Space, RTLT made one ever conscious of the incredible immensity of the Universe. RTLTs were commonly measured in minutes or hours. However, set against the backdrop of countless Galaxies measured in billions of light years away one was overcome by the incomprehensible wonder of it all. Though occupying minute slivers of space and time, we needed to acquire deep-space-time perspectives or deep-space eyes to see it.

RTLT was also a reminder of the vibrancy of the cosmos we found ourselves in. Everything was in motion. We are part of an amazing, dynamic, living organism. Spacecraft. Earth. Moon. The Planets. The Sun in it course round the Galaxy. The Galaxies themselves. Potential was everywhere. Everything was alive and pulsating, a cosmic symphony rather than a meaningless cacophony of noise! One became conscious as Gagarin did, of beauty and wonder. If the Earth and Spacecraft were stationary bodies the RTLT would simply be a static straightforward measure of the distance between the two. But not so, all was in flux. Earth, planets, and spaceprobes were all engaged in a complex dance of orbits and trajectories. One needed to disentangle the vast deep-space-time relationships that bound farflung worlds to each other in an timeless embrace in order to make sense of it all. Soft-landings on the Moon were much more enchanting than two lovers throwing kisses to each other between passing trains. One appreciated the elegance of Space-Time Physics and the precision of the interconnecting laws of nature. I slowly began to understand a little about concepts such as the "dilation of time" and "time slips" and its significance to faith and spirituality, prayer and meditation These were ideas which some have developed further such as Gregg Braden in his book The Isaiah Effect. At Hartebeesthoek I found my deep-space eyes. As Yuri Gagarin once said, "I could have gone on flying through space forever."

But there was more. As observed in a previous blog, not far from Hartebeesthoek were...

The Sterkfontein Caves

In close proximity to the Tracking Station are the Caves. Everyday on my way to work and home again we would drive by Sterkfontein. One cannot drive past these caves without being affected. Whereas at Hartebeesthoek we looked up into the sky here one looked down deep into the earth. Here was a constant reminder that our biological histories goes far back to the dawn of evolutionary time, more years than one can easily imagine. Perhaps not the deep-time of deep-space but here, right on my door-step in Southern Africa on my way to work, was a place where biological and geological time had coalesced the very star-stuff of cosmic space and time and brought forth hominid life and eventually of us all! For me this was a daily engagement with the huge questions of life, existence, being, and the ongoing passage of time. One just had to cultivate the "deep-time eyes" that Michael Dowd speaks about.

Sterkfontein (Afrikaans for Strong Spring) is a set of limestone caves of special interest to paleo-anthropologists located in Gauteng province, Northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa near the town of Krugersdorp. The archaeological sites of Swartkrans (Afrikaans for Black Cliff) and Kromdraai (Afrikaans and Dutch for Crooked Turn) (and the Wonder Cave) are in the same area. Sterkfontein was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000 and the area in which it is situated, was named the Cradle of Humankind." -Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterkfontein_caves

It was here at the Sterkfontein Caves that I found my deep-time eys. There I first saw into the beckoning eyes of the Taung Child, Mrs Ples, and Little Foot. It took the Caves of Raymond Dart and Robert Broom to open my own evolutionary-eyes as I gazed with them into the fossil record that was being uncovered.

Two Places... but there were also Two People whose thought affected me: Teilhard de Chardin and Jan Smuts. I was only one year old when, in 1947 at the invitation of Smuts, Teilhard planned to visit South Africa. Unfortunately a serious heart attack prevented him but he was able to visit South Africa in 1951 and again in 1953. Just two quotes will suffice:

Teilhard de Chardin

In his, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard has a marvelous section on "the perception of space-time" (p.238ff) in which he speaks of our difficulty with depth perception. He says...

"We have all forgotten the moment when, opening our eyes for the first time, we saw light and things around us all jumbled up and all on one single plane. It requires a great effort to imagine the time when we were unable to read or again to take our mind back to the time when for us the world extended no farther than the walls of our home and our family circle.

"Similarly it seems to us incredible that men could have lived without suspecting that the stars are hung above us hundreds of light years away, or that the contours of life stretched out millions of years behind us to the limits of our horizon."

He then makes this profound statement...

"The least molecule is, in nature and position, a function of the whole sidereal process, and the least of the protozoa is structurally so knit into the web of life that its existence cannot be hypothetically annihilated without ipso facto undoing the whole network of the biosphere.... Time and space are organically joined again so as to weave, together, the stuff of the universe." (p.240)

The other influence was...

Jan Smuts

Smuts, writing in Holism and Evolution (p.336f) shares similar deep-time thoughts...

"For we are indeed one with Nature, her genetic fibres run through all our being, our physical organs connect us with millions of years of her history; our minds are full of immemorial paths of pre-human experience.

"Our ear for music, our eye for art carry us back to the early beginnings of animal life on this globe. Press but a button in our brain and the gaunt spectres of the dim forgotten past rise once more before us; the ghostly dreaded forms of the primeval Fear loom before us and we tremble all over with inexplicable fright. And then again some distant sound, some call of bird or smell of wild plants, or some sunrise or sunset glow in the distant clouds, some mixture of light and shade on the mountains may suddenly throw an unearthly spell over the spirit, lead it forth from the deep chambers and set it panting and wondering with inexpressible emotion. For the overwrought mind there is no peace like nature's, for the wounded spirit there is no healing like hers. There are indeed times when human companionship becomes unbearable, and we fly to nature for that silent sympathy and communion which she alone can give.

"Some of the deepest emotional experiences of my life have come to me on the many nights I have spent under the open African sky, and I am sure my case has not been singular in this respect.

"The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear."

Teilhard and Smuts shared the same view. Over time such has also been my experience. The conversations at "Evolutionary Christianity" develops this further and has provided us with a much needed theological and scientific framework with which to look with renewed confidence into the future.

Conclusion

I opened with the verse from William Matson's hymn, "Lord, I was blind! I could not see / In Thy marred visage any grace". Deep-time eyes are not blind to our apparently fractured universe. There are fault lines that appear to be intrinsic to the very fabric of Nature. One need not look too deep into space before one encounters violent solar reactions, barren sterile worlds, and battered and inhospitable planets like Venus and Jupiter. One is ever mindful of tragedies that have cost the lives of Astronauts and Cosmonauts. Similarly Sterkfontein is not without its stories of woe. The Taung Child may have been the victim of some prehistoric bird of prey (See http://www.profleeberger.com/files/Taungbirdofpreybc.pdf). More recently, a diver tragically lost his life in the Caves. Without deep-time Gethsemane eyes we may not see the signs of grace in these marred images of cosmic tragedy and loss, death and decay.

Will we ever plummet the mysteries of our deep-space, deep-time experiences? Probably not as long as we are myopic in our theologies of Nature and Creation. We may well lament the loss of our deep-time, deep-space eyes, as Adam and Eve did, as described in the apocryphal book, once they had been banished from the Garden...

And Adam said to Eve, "Look at thine eyes, and at mine, which afore beheld
angels in heaven, praising; and they, too, without ceasing.

"But now we do not see as we did; our eyes have become flesh; they cannot
see in like manner as they saw before." (I Adam and Eve 4:8ff)

Deep-time eyes, redeemed eyes, invites us to look deeper and further into the evidence that is before us than we may have hitherto. As Michael Dowds would remind us, deep-time seeing leads to a long-time hope.

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Hartebeesthoek - 50th Anniversary

2011-03-04T10:56:00.002+02:00

Reflections of a Sixties "Tracker"

The Iconic 85' Dish (1965)

I want to be with you under a Southern Sky

Feel the earth move as I see you walking by

I want to take you to the moon and back tonight

Sleep with angels in the shelter of a perfect Southern Sky

In the stillness and forgiveness of a perfect Southern Sky

-Mango Groove

March 2011 marks the Golden Jubilee of the Hartebeesthoek's 85' Deep Space Dish Antenna located in the foothills of the Magaliesberg. Today this precision instrument is no longer used by NASA for its Space Programme but is dedicated instead to Radio Astronomy. Nevertheless, the story of the beginnings of the Hartebeesthoek Tracking Station is worth recalling not only for its historical significance but also for the impact it had on my own life.

It was at Hartebeeshoek that I first started work. Back in the 1960s with the Space Race at its height, a career in Space Research, was many an aspiring young boy's dream. Hartebeesthoek left an indelible mark on my life that I continue to appreciate. I will always remain indebted to colleagues and mentors, lecturers and trainers, engineers and technicians, storemen and security personnel, secretaries and librarians, mess and bunker room staff, far too many to record by name, who in one way or another, had a formative influence on my life.

DSIF-51 Staff Photo (1970)

In the late 1950s NASA required round the globe tracking coverage for its proposed deep space unmanned missions. Goldstone (DSIF 11, 1958) in California and Woomera (DSIF 41, 1960-1972) were obvious choices. The third element in the envisaged Deep Space Network (DSN) fell in the longitude that would make either Spain or South Africa suitable options. While NASA preferred Spain, South Africa had a geographical advantage that could not be ignored. The launch path of the space probes from Cape Canaveral passed directly over South Africa. This was a critical phase in the launch of a spacecraft. Invariably DSIF-51 would be the first to confirm or otherwise a successful launch and trajectory. Another deciding factor was the so-called "Southern dwell" of the planets at that time which gave South Africa and Australia a geo-astronomical advantage. The geographical position of South Africa was therefore of considerable strategic advantage. Despite some serious political and diplomatic qualms, the choice eventually tilted in South Africa's favour. NASA's first global Deep Space Network, Goldstone-Woomera-Hartebeesthoek, was linked by means of existing and developing communication lines to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Control Centre in Pasadena, California.

Sputniks and Explorers fired our young imaginations. I had just commenced High School when, in September 1960, an agreement was concluded by NASA with the South African government and the CSIR for the construction of the Deep Space Instrumentation Facility (DSIF 51, 1961-1974) north-west of Johannesburg. It would operate under the auspices of the National Institute for Telecommunications Research (NITR) of the CSIR. NASA was anxious to have the facility operational in time to provide essential support for the first launch of the Ranger missions to the Moon. This was scheduled to commence in July 1961. "To prepare the site, erect the antenna, install and test the equipment, and train personnel in its operation, under the pressure of a high profile mission like Ranger, posed a formidable challenge for everyone involved," wrote NASA historian Douglas J Mudgway (1: p23). This was no mean undertaking. I followed the progress with a great deal of interest not realising that I'd one day be working there.

The iconic, almost eight storey high, parabolic dish antenna is to this day still a monument to the vision of the original planners, negotiators, construction and installation engineers, and of project and station managers. Construction work began in November 1960 and was completed by July in good time for the anticipated Ranger Missions. This huge undertaking involved construction of roads and the preparation of the site, the trucking and shipping of sophisticated equipment and components from the USA to Hartebeesthoek. Staff had to be employed and trained. The erection of the 85' antenna started in January 1961 was completed in 69 days on the 25th March 1961. Extensive electronic and communication installations had to be tested and calibrated. Despite heavy summer rains impeding the laying of foundations, the erection of buildings, and provision of on-site power generators, Hartebeesthoek was ready for operations by the 1st July 1961. Unfortunately the worsening political situation in South Africa prevented NASA from participating officially in the locally arranged Opening Ceremonies (1: p 25). Eventually the political situation would lead to the closure of the Tracking Facility in June 1974 whereafter the facilities were commissioned for purposes of Radio Astronomy. It is now know as the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HRAO).

Despite the turmoil of the 1960s, Hartebeesthoek made a vital contribution to space research during those crucial, early years of space exploration. It provided tracking support for upto 38 spacecraft over its 13 years of its operation. Some of the projects included:

The Pioneer Missions into Deep Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_program
The Ranger Missions to the Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_program
Lunar Orbiters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_program
Surveyor Lunar Landings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor_Program
Mariner IV to Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_IV
Mariner V Mission to Venus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_V
Mariner VI to Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_VI
Apollo 15 Mission to the Moon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15

At one point Hartebeesthoek, in 1963, held the record for long-distance communications. "Our DSIF station had the distinction of being the first in the DSIF network to successfully transmit a Command to Mariner 2. It was also the last station to contact Mariner, and as such holds the world's long distance communication record of about 54 million miles," said Dr Naude, President of the CSIR. Of course this has since been surpassed by larger tracking antennas and more sophisticated electronics. But at the time it was a notable achievement.

(For mission images see: http://www.hartrao.ac.za/other/dss51/missions.html)

"....a key element in all of those dramatic spacecraft events, the DSN shared their excitement, but saw a quiet , unreported drama of its own. There were occasions when the success or failure of a multimillion spacecraft, the reputation of NASA, or the recovery of critical science data from a far planet, lay in the hands of the DSN and, not infrequently, those of a crew member at a distant tracking station.... often though, the determined, sometimes heroic, efforts of engineers and technicians in laboratories at JPL, and in control rooms and antennas at remote tracking stations, provided drama enough for those of us who were aware of it." (1: xxi)

Celebrating the Fifth Anniversary of the International Tracking Networks in 1963, Dr S M Naude, president of the CSIR, remarked, "The tracking of satellites and space probes is an arduous task. There are moments of tense drama which even the veteran tracker cannot resist, but there are proportionately more humdrum moments when machinery and instruments have to be cleaned and overhauled. The responsibility, the excitement and the routine of tracking call for special qualities of personality and character, and I am profoundly grateful that these are evidenced in abundance in the work of Dr. Hewitt, Mr. Hogg, Mr. Botha and the 80-odd scientists and technicians who man the combined Radio Space Research Station. Credit is also due to their wives and families for accepting the irregular hours of work at the station...the D.S.I.F. station crew was divided into three shifts of 10 people, each shift working for about 18 hours a day." (3)

Tracking staff included engineers and technicians from South Africa, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece. Though proudly a facility based in Africa, South Africa's discriminatory legislation expressly excluded many from participating in this adventure into Space. This was to be its nemesis. I myself had to go to Pasadena and Goldstone in California before I really even became aware of this glaring anomaly and injustice.

Some of us, were not only fortunate but privileged to have been trained and employed as technicians in Space Communications at Hartebeesthoek from 1965 till December 1972. I, for instance, had the chance of a life time, to go to JPL and Goldstone for further training on one of the Mariner Mars missions. Many equally deserving South Africans were excluded from such opportunities.

I became acutely aware of the injustice. The writing was on the wall. 14th August 1971 American Congressman Charles Diggs, visited South Africa which included an inspection of Hartebeeshoek. The Apartheid policies of the South African government had become an embarrassment. Sanctions were being imposed. The American presence at Hartebeeshoek came increasingly under scrutiny. Larger tracking dishes and more sophisticated equipment no longer gave South Africa the leverage of its strategic geographical advantage. The Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex (MDSCC) now came into prominence. The closure of the Hartebeesthoek Tracking Station was finally announced in July 1973. The closure of DSIF-51 ironically resulted in long term positive spinoffs for both myself and for Hartebeesthoek itself.

For myself, in 1969 the Anglican Dean of Pretoria, the Rev Mark Nye had called for a space programme of the human spirit "to tackle the far more difficult problems of man in his relationship to himself, to society and to God. If men can provide the resources, the skills, the astronomical sums of money, to put two men on the Moon, why cannot they direct themselves equally successfully to the ordering of their own lifes?" (Sunday Times, 10/6/69) This challenge couldn't be ignored much longer. By the time of Congressman Diggs' visit, I had already sensed a call to ministry. Diggs was a Baptist and an ardent Civil Rights and Anti-Apartheid Activist. His visit, unpopular as it was, precipitated my decision to move on. I had come to the end of my contractual commitments and obligations to Hartebeesthoek. I resigned and candidated for the Methodist ministry at the end of 1971. There were now other important, more urgent frontiers and missions beckoning me.

For Hartebeeshoek and others there were positive outcomes too. Highly skilled and experienced staff in some of the most advanced electronic technologies of the time were dispersed further afield, some were employed by local industries, others went abroad, a few remained at Hartebeeshoek. The impact of this kind of migration of skills and experience is immeasurable. Hartebeesthoek continued to advance the exploration of the Universe through its Radio Astronomy programme operating first under the CSIR, then the Foundation for Research Development (FRD), which later became the National Research Foundation (NRF) in 1999. Cooperating with Radio Astronomers in many parts of the world including South Africa, Hartebeesthoek has continued to provide invaluable support in groundbreaking 21st Century Space Research.

Dr George Nicolson, who headed up the Radio Astronomy Observatory, wrote, "When in 1974, NASA decided to close the Hartebeesthoek station, prohibitive transportation costs and the spirit of cooperation which exists among scientists all over the world resulted in some of the radio-tracking equipment being left behind for the use of the CSIR radio astronomers. The Hartebeesthoek Deep Space Station then became South Africa's Radio Astronomy Observatory...." (4). This expertise and technology remained in the country and has evolved to become one of the most significant research facilities in the country. A new era in South African astronomy had been born.

Unfortunately, toward the end of 2008, the large bearing of the 85' dish antenna failed. This was a serious setback but it didn't daunt Hartebeesthoek. According to the HRAO website, the 85' antenna that had given faithful service for almost fifty years "was immediately shut down to prevent further damage. After extensive engineering investigation and consultation, the decision was taken to repair the telescope." Acquiring and replacing a main bearing of this huge 200 tonne structure was in itself a major engineering feat. This remarkable achievement is documented on the pages of the HRAO website at http://www.hartrao.ac.za/news/100906_26m_repair/index.html. The fifty year old antenna was given a new lease of life and is operational once again, a worthy monument to South Africa's historic role in space exploration.

Working at Hartebeeshoek was for me not only a vicarious journey into Outer Space but it was also a virtual journey into my own Inner Space. In no small measure the experience was enriching, extending the boundaries of my own limited horizons and prejudices, broadening and deepening my understanding of my origins and place in an unimaginably vast Universe. The further we looked out upon the vast expanse of our Universe, listening to the miniscule signals coming from a lonely distant spacecraft the more conscious I became of a Transcendental Reality holding it all together. Often I would go outside at night and see the Dish pointed skyward focused on some remote, invisible star or probe in Space and I would become blissfully mindful of something that Jan Smuts once wrote. He was no stranger to the Magalieberg, he said:

"...we are indeed one with Nature, her genetic fibres run through all our being, our physical organs connect us with millions of years of her history; our minds are full of immemorial paths of pre-human experience." (7: p.333)

...and then I'd remember that not very far from Hartebeesthoek where I was standing, peering ecstatically deep into the dark night sky were the Sterkfontein Caves. And I instinctively felt a profound connection between the two. I had come a very long way.

A recent visit to Hartebeesthoek (2010)

Hartebeesthoek has also come a long way. We wish "Harties" another fifty years of many more exciting discoveries as it continues to probe ever further into our "perfect Southern Skies"!

oOo

For more about the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatorysee http://www.hartrao.ac.za/
and for some stunning photos see http://www.hartrao.ac.za/gallery/

References:
1. Douglas J Mudgway, Uplink-Downlink, A History of the Deep Space Network 1957 - 1997, NASA 2001
2. G Gray-Cobb, "The radio space research station, Hartebeesthoek", The Transactions of the SA Institute of Electrical Engineers, April 1964, p 163
3. Dr S M Naude, Speech "U.S. International Tracking Networks' Fifth Anniversary", The South African Engineer, March 1963.
4. Dr G D Nicolson, "Tuning in on the Universe", Scientiae, March 1980. p 10
5. Doug Hogg, "South Africa and the Exploation of Space", Scientiae, February 1975.
6. DSIF: Johannesburg, JPL Technical Memorandum No 33-224, 1965.
7 Jan C Smuts, Holism and Evolution, Macmillan (Third Edition), 1936

Related Blogs:
http://ichthyscybernetics.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-love-principle-of-first.html
http://ichthyscybernetics.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-love-continued-programming-and.html

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Compassion - "Hook, Line, and Sinker"

2011-02-12T15:21:00.002+02:00

"We pray for our own country and for all who have authority and influence that they may serve their fellows in wisdom, honesty and compassion."

-The Methodist Service Book B8

"Past the seeker as he prayed
came the crippled and the beggar
and the beaten. And seeing them...
he cried, 'Great God, how is it
that a loving creator can see such things
...and yet do nothing about them?'...
God said,'I did do something.
I made you."
-Sufi Teaching

"In schools all over the world, little boys learn that their country is the greatest in the world, and the highest honour that could befall them would be to defend it heroically someday. The fact that empathy has traditionally been conditioned out of boys facilitates their obedience to leaders who order them to kill."

-Myriam Miedzian

Compassion...does it still matter? In a TV news broadcast last Sunday it was said "South Africa doesn't love!". Crime and disregard for others is rife. I would like to think that for all our grave faults, SA can still be a caring, compassionate nation. Though wanting in many respects we are an "Ubuntu Nation" at heart. Compassion can be more than just a principle enshrined in our Constitution to which we just give lip-service. It must take root in our hearts.

Photo Credit: http://imgur.com/NhC4m

There have been horrific times when the Church too has been abusive, hurtful, exclusive, and dismissive. Both Nation and Church can be awfully cold and callous at times. It continues to this day. Almost everyday I meet people who have been Nation or Church "wounded". Yet, for all our depravity, there is a stream of compassion that, given the will, can be counted for a river.

Some years ago I was invited to present a series of studies on the diverse religious expressions in our Durban North community. Martin Prozesky and Patrick Maxwell described KwaZulu-Natal as a veritable "World Religious Heritage Site". KZN is religiously speaking, quite unique. I delivered the series under the title, "Rivers of Compassion" - a title I borrowed from Bede Griffiths - mindful of the subject and the context . It was intended to be an appreciation of the various spiritualities in our community focusing on the universal need to care, to love, and be loved. Sadly the announcement provoked an outcry from some members of our community, notably Christians. It was most astonishing. There were letters to the local press and angry complaints to the minister. The negative response underscored just how deeply prejudiced we are. Very little compassion was spared in the objections, criticisms, and vitriol that followed.

I didn't need to justify myself. Here was a serious instance of group projection. Human nature is too readily inclined to see splinters in another's eye than to discern even a twinkle of divine grace. Casting our own inner "shadows" onto others isn't peculiar to Christians though. One need only read the deidicated religious groups on Usenet newsgroups to realise this. Scapegoating goes back a long way in human history. It is a universal malady. Jesus repeatedly challenged such narrow-minded bigotry. I had myself been deeply enriched by men and women of other faiths. I had been drawn to Christ through a Swami just as Chrysostom had been preveniently influenced by his “pagan” teacher, Libanius. Upon my conversion I was attracted to Methodism with its "theology of love". John Wesley once wrote something that was to mould my own spirituality:

"Above all, remembering that God is love, he [the Christian] is conformed to the same likeness. He is full of love to his neighbour, of universal love, not confined to one sect or party, not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions or in outward modes of worship, or to those who are allied to him by blood or recommended by nearness of place. Neither does he love those only that love him or that are endeared to him by intimacy or acquaintance. But his love resembles that of Him whose mercy is over all His works. It soars above all these scanty bounds, embracing neighbours and strangers, friends and enemies - yea, not only the good and gentle, but also the froward, the evil, and unthankful..... This is the plain, naked portraiture of a Christian."

-John Wesley, Letters, II, 376-80

"Universal Love" was what I sought and endeavoured to preach. Wesley spoke of an all encompassing, sacrificial love and concern for others. It was a vision I desired to instill in others. It was the inherent principle of Africans too known as ubuntu.

Some time after the "Rivers of Compassion" series I accidentally came across a booklet by Izak Labuschagne titled Ubuntu, the Constituitionally Legislated State Religion of the New South Africa (http://www.izak.co.za/UBUNTU.htm) that made a rather startling reference to me. Ubuntu is the African notion of humaneness but in this severe critique the author equates it with "secular humanism". Ubuntu is of course much more than that. Anyway, in the view of the author, syncretism in the Church was undermining the Christian Faith and playing into the hands of the so-called "New World Order". Quoting me, he wrote:

.... the Church has fallen for it hook line and sinker. Last year the Methodist Church in their [sic] rivers of compassion lecture by Rev Colin Garvie stated:-

"Join us on a journey of discovery and understanding as we sail some of the world's great rivers of compassion - the Yoga of the Gita - the Zen of Suzuki, the Sufism of Rumi and the Ubuntu of Kaunda - to the great ocean of Christian love. In this series of four sessions we will undertake a surprising voyage of spiritual enrichment as we explore the concept of Divine Love and Compassion found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Traditional African Religion. Not only will we gain a deeper appreciation of our neighbours religion but begin to experience the down to earth mystery of what Methodists refer to as "Perfect love".

I was one of an esteemed company:

Africa Enterprise did a newsletter in August 1995 sporting the title "UBUNTU - AE style" in which they laud Ubuntu as an important "Bridge Building Encounter".

Rallying Dr Edward Cain the author continued...

Have you read Dr. Ed Cain's 'Signposts on the SACC, the Rustenburg Declaration, TEASA, Media Spotlight's Vol. 14 on the 'Parliament of the World's religions'? Have you taken a good look at SABC's Koinonia program and how that pushes interfaith? Have you listened to Religion on the line on radio? How easily we are brainwashed through gradualism.

In the estimation of many the SACC, Rustenburg Declaration, etc could hardly be thought of as a wishy-washy compromise of the Gospel. On the contrary. We were apparently guilty not only of syncretism, humanism, but also gradualism. What had become of the compassion, I wondered? What astonished me more however was that the author and I had so much in common and yet we were worlds apart! We...

both were descendants of Wakkerstroom Afrikaner families
both attended the same school in Potchefstroom
both had been Methodists
both testified to be "born again" disciples of Jesus
both had been Local (Lay) Preachers
both had been called into the Ministry
both...

How could we both, with so much in common, end up on the opposite ends of the faith spectrum? That is something for the psychologists and theologians to puzzle over. How was it that we had such diverse approaches to such critical issues? I really didn't know. My objective was simply to follow Christ as my Redeemer and live compassionately in harmony with my neighbours. That was God's distinct calling on my life.

I can't speak for my brother but two recent publications re-assured me in my understanding of God's will humanity. Of course my critics will immediately dismiss both the authors and titles as provocatively liberal, syncretistic, and even anti-christian. For myself, I could only be true to what God had laid upon my heart to proclaim, which, in the words of Gerald Jampolsky was simply to “teach only love”. This was consistent with my Wesleyan Theology and my call to discipleship.

The first book is Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. The second comes from the 14th Dalai Lama, Towards the True Kinship of Faiths. Both books are about tolerance and compassion written by two highly respected authorities. Despite the misgivings of my detractors I have no hesitation in commending both these references to all who care for and love their neighbour and indeed, even their enemy. Without undermining or demeaning any person's spiritual tradition these and other authors point us to what Wesley described as the "love [that] resembles that of Him whose mercy is over all His works."

Early in my own Christian walk, spurred by the idealism of youth and the injunctions of Christ we used to sing at our Wesley Guilds the popular hymn...

When I needed a neighbour
Were you there, were you there?
When I needed a neighbour
Were you there?
And the creed and the colour
And the name won't matter
Were you there?
http://www.namethathymn.com/hymn-lyrics-detective-forum/index.php?a=vtopic&t=1145

Call it what you will...brainwashing, indoctrination, political or religious hysteria, the thin edge of the wedge, New age, or New Order, for me compassion is the summum bonum of the Christian faith. Compassion transcends our petty divisions. May we constantly give effect to our liturgical prayers and "serve our fellows in wisdom, honesty and compassion." None are exempt from this service of love. It is an imperative from the Lord himself. "The creed and the colour and the name" doesn't matter on the Jericho Road! In the words of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, "A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." (Tutu, Desmond, No Future Without Forgiveness. ISBN 0-385-49690-7.)

oOo

"Indeed, when the dust of this crisis finally settles, the most iconic image of the protests may be that of the Christians who formed a human chain around Muslim protesters in Tahrir Square, so that they could safely perform their Friday prayers. That image of Christians protecting Muslims at prayer calls to mind a similar event that took place last year, after the bombing of Saints Church in Alexandria [when....] thousands of Egyptian Muslims gathered at Coptic Churches across the country, forming human chains of protection around their Christian countrymen as they observed Christmas Eve mass."

-Read more in "Christians and Muslims, We Are All Egyptians"

by Dr. Reza Asla on the God's Politics blog: http://ow.ly/3RSYZ

Please visit:
The Charter for Compassion http://charterforcompassion.org/

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Astrotheology and Exotheologians

2011-01-16T14:59:00.006+02:00

Multi-National United Agent: MNU! We're serving eviction notices.
Alien: What is "eviction"?
-Movie, "District 9"

Tradition has it that Enoch, Abraham, David, John the Apostle, and later John Philoponus were all "astrotheologians" of note. They pondered God and our place in the Universe. Some even assumed or recognised the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.

A few days ago an article by Alok Jha in the Guardian, "Earth must prepare for close encounter with aliens, say scientists", drew my attention to one of our most seminal "astrotheologians" today, Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, California. Indeed, I believe he coined the word!

Over the past few decades there has been a radical shift in theological attitudes. Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other things, that other worlds could be inhabited. Very serious consideration is now being given by theologians such as Prof. Peters, not only to the likelihood of life outside our Solar System but also to the implications of possible extra-terrestrial intelligence or "ETI" contact. This matter is no longer pseudo-science discussed only in covens of New Agers but a subject of the utmost import and taken seriously by leading academics and scholars.

In a paper presented to the Royal Society, Prof. Peters considered issues that are increasingly becoming the domain of a new generation of theologians. His paper addressed the following questions:

Will confirmation of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) cause terrestrial religion to collapse?
What is the scope of God’s creation?
What can we expect regarding the moral character of ETI?
Is one earthly incarnation in Jesus Christ enough for the entire cosmos, or should we expect multiple incarnations on multiple planets?
Will contact with more advanced ETI diminish human dignity?

These are thought provoking questions which makes Prof. Peters' paper worthy of serious study. In addition to his own research, he rallies the views of Tillich, Pannenberg, Rahner, Wilkinson, and others. His conclusion is that we won't see the demise of the major religions which is good news indeed. On the contrary, our theology, faith, and spirituality could well be refined and enriched by ETI encounters:

"Theologians will not find themselves out of a job. In fact, theologians might relish the new challenges to reformulate classical religious commitments in light of the new and wider vision of God’s creation."

"Traditional theologians must then become astrotheologians ... What I forecast is this: contact with extraterrestrial intelligence will expand the existing religious vision that all of creation - including the 13.7bn-year history of the universe replete with all of God’s creatures - is the gift of a loving and gracious God."

I would encourage reading his paper here in full as well as some of his published books.

The discovery of ETI need not be a crisis of faith.

There is no doubt that extra-planetary evolution and exobiology is going to impact dramatically on how we do theology in future. Of course our reading and understanding of scripture and the revelation of the Divine through nature and world faiths will be challenged and re-appraised by scholars, cosmologists, and mystics. There will be reflection and revisions as never before as we become exposed to new terrestrial and extra-terrestrial insights. These are exciting times.

Besides questions of theological import ETI visitations will present huge challenges at a social level. Such issues were well illustrated in the South African movie "District 9". The movie tag line was: "You are not welcome here." South Africa has addressed massive social and political questions of racism, xenophobia, sexual orientation, etc. in an historic and conciliatory spirit. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Even so South Africans haven't always been caring toward strangers or those of different orientation. The analogy of the South African experience isn't all that remote to a real and possible ETI incursion. Like other nations we are also inclined to ostracise more than to welcome. We pay lip service to our Ubuntu creed. Sometimes our churches are just as exclusive.

ETI encounters presents social issues of cosmic proportion cleverly portrayed in "District 9". We cannot be naïve and pretend this will not be the case. Are we as Earthlings really ready to explore our prejudices and fears around "exophobia" – the fear of those from beyond, for instance? We are called upon to stretch our hearts, feelings, and imaginations to accommodate distinctions, differences, and complexities never imagined before should we ever encounter ETIs. Will the encounter be friendly or ... fraught with suspicion and pre-judgments? Are these "Visitors" here to devour or milk us? Will their intentions be congruent with our sense of morality and spiritual values of hospitality and goodwill, if we have any? Can we overcome our inbred propensity to hostility and risk extending a hand of cosmic friendship when we are so fuelled by repressed memories of abductions and kidnappings? Will we be able to stand tall and own our rightful place in the Universe as truly intelligent beings as well? Or do we raise a white flag of surrender and come out with hands up? What will be the rules of engagement? We have many questions to grapple with. The discussion must begin.

Biblical scholars suggest that the sin of Sodom, when visited by Angelic Beings, wasn't sodomy but rather inhospitality, violence, and the intended sexual violation of strangers. Will we repeat history, this time on a global scale, and forever alienate our Visitors? Though caution and circumspection would naturally be the order of the day, flagrant inhospitality could have most dire and awful consequences for the human race. I would hope that if Christians were to err that we would be inclined to err on the side of hospitality, grace and goodwill. If we cannot muster such grace, can we then ever expect more of ETIs than we would expect of ourselves?

In another paper, "The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society", presented to the Royal Society by Martin Dominik and and John C. Zarneck, the authors believe that ETI could well be a "cosmic imperative" in the Universe. In other words, life out there is a lot more common than we suppose and we may not be as unique as we imagine. Dominik and Zarneck explain...

"So if there are alien civilizations at a comparable stage of evolution, one might expect that they do not differ that much from our own. However, with the Sun just about half-way through its lifetime as a main-sequence star, with about 4.5 billion years remaining, that ‘comparable stage’ might constitute a rather short transient episode, and advanced extra-terrestrial life might be inconceivable to us in its complexity, just as human life is to amoebae. ... The detection and further study of extra-terrestrial life will fundamentally challenge our view of nature, including ourselves, and therefore the field of astrobiology can hardly be isolated from its societal context, including philosophical, ethical and theological perspectives."

But on the other hand we could quite unique! The secret longing ETIs have for human contact may not be so much their need for genetic material as some propose but rather a pearl of far greater price, their desire to know the redemptive, filial relationship people of faith enjoy with the Living God.

We stand on the threshold of one of the Universe's greatest adventures. We are about to be introduced to the Cosmic Community! We do not know for sure. Of this we can be sure, the continuance of the Earthling Race will depend on our response to the Realities impinging on us now!

Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

-Deuteronomy 10.19

oOo

For more see
Exoploitics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exopolitics#Exopolitics and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Salla
Ted Peters: http://www.plts.edu/peters.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Peters
Books:

More books by Ted Peters:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ted-Peters/e/B001IXO62Q/ref=sr_tc_2_rm?qid=1295115742&sr=1-2-ent
John Philopnus:
Place, Void, and Eternity: Philoponus : Corollaries on Place and Void : Simplicius : Against Philoponus on the Eternity of the World (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)
On Aristotle "Physics 5-8" (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)
Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Disclosure!

2010-12-25T12:57:00.004+02:00

Christmas is a time of the unveiling of Celestial Beings. It is a season of epiphanies and manifestations. Some would call them "Extraterrestrials". Recently we shared some thoughts of John Wesley on the subject. Other notable Christians have also expressed their views:

Billy Graham:

“Some reputable scientists deny and others assert that UFOs do appear to people from time to time. Some scientists have reached the place where they think they can prove that these are possibly visitors from outer space. Some Christian writers have speculated that UFOs could very well be a part of God's angelic host who preside over the physical affairs of universal creation. While we cannot assert such a view with certainty, many people are now seeking some type of supernatural explanation for these phenomena. Nothing can hide the fact, however, that these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency.” - Angels God's Secret Agents, p.21

Billy Graham ministered to many US Presidents notably President Richard Nixon. President Nixon reportedly confided to some, knowledge of ET life. One of these was Jackie Gleason http://www.openminds.tv/gleason-ets/. Had President Nixon confided to the evangelist too? We may never know but Billy Graham is correct saying "these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency". Indeed, it is said these sightings have suddenly spiked since October 2010 and could increase into 2011. This week, New Zealand was the next in a series of countries to have declassified its UFO files http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10695989. Yesterday Argentina announced the formation of a commission to investigate the UFO phenomenon http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/breaking-news-argentine-air-force-announces-committee-to-study-ufo-phenomenon-1. Julian Assange of Wikileaks also indicated that among the US Diplomatic Cables now being posted. are references to UFOs http://www.examiner.com/ufo-in-canada/wikileaks-to-release-ufo-bomshell. Some are expecting more government disclosures soon.

CS Lewis:

"The dangers to be feared are not planetary but cosmic, or at least solar, and they are not temporal but eternal. More than this it would be unwise to say. ..... . . there would be indications enough in the narrative for the few readers - the very few - who at present were prepared to go further into the matter....What we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning." - Out of the Silent Planet

"The eldila are very different from any planetary creatures. Their physical organism, if organism it can be called, is quite unlike either the human or the Martian. They do not eat, breed, breathe, or suffer natural death, and to that extent resemble thinking minerals more than they resemble anything we should recognize as an animal. Though they appear on planets and may even seem to our senses to be sometimes resident in them, the precise spatial location of an eldil at any moment presents great problems. They themselves regard space (or “Deep Heaven”) as their true habitat, and the planets are to them not closed worlds but merely moving points - perhaps even interruptions - in what we know as the Solar System and they as the Field of Arbol." - Perelandra

Though Science Fiction, CS Lewis' Sci-Fi Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, like his Chronicles of Narnia helps the Christian to wrestle with the theological implications of our new cosmologies and planetary life. Lewis' interest in astronomy and the "idea of other planets" began as a young boy. "The idea of other planets exercised upon me a peculiar, heady attraction, which was quite different from any other of my literary interests." (Surprised by Joy, II)

Conclusion
We live with the questions. Graham and Lewis helps us, living in the "Space Age", to reflect on such matters. Whether there will be any official disclosures in the very near future remains to be seen. At this Christmas time, however, more startling, the most astonishing of all possible disclosures, is the epiphany of the Christ child two-thousand years ago. No headline could be more amazing than that heralded by a Star to Astrologers from the East or that of a host of Celestial Beings "leaked" to Shepherds in fields watching their flocks by night. Billy Graham was correct in rebuking his close friend, President Richard Nixon, once when Nixon described the Apollo 11 mission as the "greatest week in the history of the world since Creation." It wasn't:

Let earth and Heav’n combine, Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs divine, Th’ incarnate Deity,

Our God contracted to a span, Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made Man.

He laid His glory by, He wrapped Him in our clay;

Unmarked by human eye, The latent Godhead lay;

Infant of days He here became, Infant of days He here became,

And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.

See in that Infant’s face, The depths of deity,

And labor while ye gaze, To sound the mystery

In vain; ye angels gaze no more, In vain; ye angels gaze no more,

But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love, That hath the Saviour brought;

The grace is far above, Of men or angels’ thought:

Suffice for us that God, we know, Suffice for us that God, we know,

Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh t’appear, Widest extremes to join;

To bring our vileness near, And make us all divine:

And we the life of God shall know, And we the life of God shall know,

For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love, And sanctified by grace,

We shall from earth remove, And see His glorious face:

His love shall then be fully showed, His love shall then be fully showed,

And man shall all be lost in God

- Charles Wesley

Books:

Christianity and UFOs

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-and-UFOs/lm/R1ETCGCGITF223

Walter Hooper, C.S.Lewis, A Companion & Guide

Billy Graham, Angels God's Secret Agents

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Factorials: A Christmas Postscript

2010-12-23T09:23:00.005+02:00

I had just posted my previous blog about Kevin's fascination with factorials when Kevin's wife asked about the origins of the Christmas Carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", on Facebook. That was quite serendipitous...

Verse 12
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me:
Twelve Drummers drumming,

Eleven pipers piping,

Ten lords-a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing, Eight maids-a-milking,
Seven swans-a-swimming,
Six geese-a-laying,
FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!
Four calling birds,
Three french hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Whether the carol was coded with Gnostic or Roman Catholic allusions didn't concern me that much. Instead the coincidence reminded me of the magic of Pascal's Triangle. (See http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/~judyann/LP/lessons/12.days.pascal.html.)

Pascal's Triangle

1 1

1 2 1

1 3 3 1

1 4 6 4 1

1 5 10 10 5 1

1 6 15 20 15 6 1

1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1

1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1

1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1

1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1

1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1

1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1

Pascal's Triangle is used for determining Probabilities, Combinations, and even Fibonacci Numbers. With the aid of Pascal's Triangle one can also:

find the number of new gifts given each day of "The 12 Days of Christmas.".
the number gifts given on each consecutive day.
the total number of gifts given by a particular day.

Embedded within the triangle of arithmetic data is useful information. Uncovering this detail evokes a sense of wonder, the same wonder scientists, poets, and exegetes experience when they "see" something more in the ordinary. Wonder is a moment of disclosure or revelation. We might call this process of discovery "mathematical deduction", "data processing", "the scientific method", "hermeneutics", or "exegesis" depending on the discipline we come from but the sense of satisfaction is the same. Contemplating Pascal's Triangle yields unexpected moments of surprise much as the thought that there's an oak within an acorn might.

With Twelve Drummers Drumming in my ears and Pascal's Triangle in my mind's eye, my Christmas thoughts turned to two fascinating Advent theological insights:

The Logos

"And the Word (logos) was made flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory." (John 1:14) The Neo-Platonists and especially Philo used the word logos in a dual sense. For Plato and Philo the logos was the collective term for the Ideal World. The Divine Word contains within itself the archetypal forms of all things from which everything else is manifest, "made flesh", much as information leaps out at one from Pascal's Triangle. Philo spoke of the logos in a twofold sense (http://www.duke.edu/web/classics/grbs/FTexts/44/Kamesar.pdf):

i. Logos endiathetos. This was the Transcendent Word, the Uncreated Template or Archetype.

ii. Logos prophorikos, the Manifest Word or created type.

"Some theologians distinguished between the logos endiathetos, or the Word latent in the Godhead from all eternity, and the logos prophorikos, uttered and becoming effective at the creation." (http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/logos.htm) In a symbolic way Pascal's Triangle (Logos endiathetos) embodies patterns that come to be manifest (Logos prophorikos), incarnated, or projected, and applied in the created world.

(Compare "Archetypes" and "Projection" in Jungian Psychology. For a helpful article on Philo and the distinction he made see http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/hhp49.htm. Also Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos. And Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 9.)

Recapitulation

"Recapitulation" is the doctrine originally expressed by Irenaeus that all things are "summed up" in Jesus Christ. John Paul II explained: "God's saving plan, "the mystery of his will" (cf. Eph 1: 9) for every creature, is described in the Letter to the Ephesians with a distinctive term: to "recapitulate" all things in heaven and on earth in Christ (Eph 1: 10)...Irenaeus extols the one Lord, Jesus Christ, who in the Incarnation sums up in himself the entire history of salvation, humanity and all creation: "He, as the eternal King, recapitulates all things in himself" (Adversus Haereses, III, 21, 9)." Theologically Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all Cosmic space and time. Another theologian, Julie James, wrote: "Irenaeus describes Humanity and God as coming together in Christ, an eventual restoration of the separated Human into the original divine form. Since the dawn of mans' entrance into the world, God has had a dialogue with humanity through the prophets, through his Divine Word, through rules and guidance, drawing mankind ultimately to the final goal of divinity, the Omega point." Irenaeus anticipates the Christogenesis of Teilhard de Chardin. Christ is the summation of all there is.....by analogy, the Divine Logarithm, the Beginning and the End. He encapsulates and recapitulates all. He is the "capstone".

oOo

Long ago, Magi from the East looked up into the night sky and were amazed by an astonishing configuration of the planets and stars. Suddenly it was pregnant with meaning just as Pascal's Triangle came to be for me. They discerned patterns hitherto never recognised before. Suddenly the ordinary took on a radical new import, wonder, and significance for them. The Divine was swaddled in a manger as revelations are swaddled in Pascal's Triangle. Immanuel! It could be a "partridge in a pear tree". It is the smile on an infant's face...

Still the night, holy the night!

Son of God, O how bright

Love is smiling from Thy face!

Strikes for us now the hour of grace!

Ecstatically Factorial!

2010-12-17T09:37:00.003+02:00

"Following in the way of the Ancients, we are in complete agreement with them in saying that, since there is no other approach to a knowledge of things divine than that of symbols, we cannot do better than use mathematical signs on account of their indestructible certitude."

-Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, I.xi

Nowadays now that I am more prone to senior moments, a friend of mine speaks ecstatically about what I'll call "mathematical moments", moments when he's been raptured by the discovery of a new mathematical insight such as Mandelbrot Sets or the Golden Ratio. These are a cause of celebration for Kevin. Kevin becomes quite animated as he shares his story.

There was a young man from Trinity,

Who solved the square root of infinity.

While counting the digits,
He was seized by the fidgets,
Dropped science, and took up divinity.
-Author Unknown

The other day Kevin shared one such exquisite moment when, in a flash of inexplicable insight, the elegance of factorials had dawned on him. For Kevin, it was a singular "red letter day" in his life. He cannot explain shy it should have affected him in such a profound way other than it seemed as if it was a moment in which the Universe fell into place for him. Something similar happened to me when once my lecturer in “Space Physics” remarked that the spiral was the key to creation. It was one of those rare "Aha!" moments. Kevin admits he isn't even sure he fully understands what factorials are. Nor do I but he did get me to thinking that, if anything, such moments of awesome wonder might have something to do with the elegance and beauty of Factorials in particular and of Mathematics in general.

Davis and Hersh in their The Mathematical Experience explain that...

"The aesthetic appeal of mathematics, both in passive contemplation and in actual research pursuit, has been attested by many..." (p.168f)

Aristotle wrote:

"The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful." (Metaphysics, M 3, 1078 b)

Thomas Dubay says in his “have to read book”, The Evidential Power of Beauty, Science and Theology Meet, "...that mathematicians, at least the most alive of them, can burst into ecstatic joy over a newly discovered equation." (p.130)

Dirac went as far to say that it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit the experiment! For some, such beauty might present itself in algebra. For others it could be the sublime theorems of Geometry. Trigonometry is the means of grace too. But for Kevin, it was Factorials.

The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions. ~Ronald L. Graham

What is a factorial? In mathematics, the factorial of a positive integer n, denoted by n!, is the product of all positive integers less than or equal to n. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system)

For example:

1! =1x1 = 1

2! =2x1 = 2

3! =3x2x1 = 6

4! =4x3x2x1 = 24

5! = 5x4x3x2x1 = 120

6! = 6x 5x4x3x2x1 = 720

Or we could express it this way:

The factorial of 4 is 4 times the factorial of 3.

The factorial of 3 is 3 times the factorial of 2.

The factorial of 2 is 2 times the factorial of 1.

The factorial of 1 is 1 times the factorial of 0.

Or:

4! = 4 x 3!

3! = 3 x 2!

2! = 2 x 1!

1! = 1 x 0!

Cause and Effect. The one is the consequence of what has gone before. This is called "recursion". Each new term is generated by recalling a particular function that has gone before. The factorial of a number is that number multiplied by the factorial of the number before. Though factorials and fractals are not to be confused the processes of recursion and iteration are similar. Fractals are patterns within patterns within patterns. Factorials are numbers.

"Everything in the universe exists because of a cause and effect relationship. Any thing you wish to examine exists as an effect something else that existed before it. .....you get the regression going back. But as in all recursions, the regression must stop so later "things" can exist," explains one writer. 0! can be thought of as the First Principle or Primal Cause.

Factorials occur in many business, engineering, and science calculations such as in "permutations", "combinations", and "calculus" . For example, permutations or the possible number of rearrangements of objects in relation to each other has long amused the human mind.

Wikipedia again:

The rule to determine the number of permutations of n objects was known in Hindu culture at least as early as around 1150: the Lilavati by the Indian mathematician Bhaskara II contains a passage that translates to:

The product of multiplication of the arithmetical series beginning and increasing by unity and continued to the number of places, will be the variations of number with specific figures.

Or consider this example. This is so elegant...

....where e is the mysterious, transcendental number

e = 2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757247... ...

that can never be fully resolved.

Common or Briggian Logarithms are calculated to the base 10, Natural or Napier Logarithms are calculated to the base e.

Mathematics is akin to an icon, a window into a deeper mystical essence. It could even be sacramental in a way, a means of grace...an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. As Davis and Hersh remind us, mathematics is a fit subject for thoughtful contemplation. It has evoked wonder and bliss in the hearts of many. Mathematics is a symbolic representation of the Universe of which we are an integral part.

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology. ~Hilda Phoebe Hudson

Oh! I almost forgot, by definition, 0! ≡ 1. Go figure!

For further reading:
1. HE Huntley, The Divine Proportion

2. PJ Davis & R Hersh, The Mathematical Experience

3. CC Clawson, Mathematical Mysteries, The Beauty and Magic of Numbers

4. T Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

The Cosmic Sea

2010-12-10T09:10:00.000+02:00

When I was a kid I was assured that radio waves propagated itself through something illusive called the "Aether". I was told that...

"... the easiest way to break into the wireless game is to put up an aerial and hook up a receiving set to it; you can then listen-in and hear what is going on in the all-pervading ether around you, and you will soon find enough to make things highly entertaining... There is a strikingly close resemblance between sound waves and the way they are set up in the air by a mechanically vibrating body, such as a steel spring or a tuning fork, and electric waves and the way they are set up in the ether by a current oscillating in a circuit." (Frederick Collins, The Radio Amateur's Handbook, A Complete, Authentic and Informative Work on Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony).

I took that to be gospel even though way back in 1887 already, Michelson and Morley conducted experiments to detect the so-called "aether drift". They ruled out the existence of the aether. "This, in turn,", says controversial physicist, Ken Seto, "led to the erroneous conclusion that there was no substance of any kind occupying space." Subsequent experiments arrived at similar conclusions. Albert Einstein agreed. So, by the time I came to read Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics in 1965 I needed to unlearn the Doctrine of Aether from Collins' "authentic and informative work on wireless". The Aether was now but a figment of the imagination.

But then, in 1987 EW Silvertooth performed experiments with more sophisticated equipment and detected the existence of the Aether! (Experimental Detection of the Ether", Speculations in Science and Technology, Vol.10, No.1, page 3 (1987), http://160.114.99.91/astrojan/silverto.pdf). I was in a quandary once again. It seems that Collins and my old wireless textbooks might be correct after all! Oh, the shifting sands of physics and theology.

I don't know with absolute certainty whether the Aether exists or not. I cannot say whether it can be measured or not. No doubt Heisenberg's “Uncertainty Principle” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle) applies here too. I don't know if Ken Seto is a "genius or a madman" (http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.physics/2005-02/8496.html). I have no means of validating Silvertooth's conclusions. Does the Aether permeate all that is? We live with the questions. Whatever, this is a healthy reminder to me that even respected scientists can be at odds with each other. This also brought my attention to something more. It was South African philosopher-statesman, Jan Smuts, who suggested that we are much more than just the sum of our anatomical parts. There might be more to the Aether than meets the eye too.

Jan Smuts wrote in his Holism and Evolution....

"This whole is not an artificial result of its parts; there is something more than the parts, and this something appears to be in definite relation with them, influenced by them and again influencing them... "

(From Holism and Evolution, p.78)

In another remarkable passage Smuts wrote:

"For we are indeed one with Nature, her genetic fibres run through all our being, our physical organs connect us with millions of years of her history; our minds are full of immemorial paths of pre-human experience.

"Our ear for music, our eye for art carry us back to the early beginnings of animal life on this globe. Press but a button in our brain and the gaunt spectres of the dim forgotten past rise once more before us; the ghostly dreaded forms of the primeval Fear loom before us and we tremble all over with inexplicable fright. And then again some distant sound, some call of bird or smell of wild plants, or some sunrise or sunset glow in the distant clouds, some mixture of light and shade on the mountains may suddenly throw an unearthly spell over the spirit, lead it forth from the deep chambers and set it panting and wondering with inexpressible emotion. For the overwrought mind there is no peace like nature's, for the wounded spirit there is no healing like hers. There are indeed times when human companionship becomes unbearable, and we fly to nature for that silent sympathy and communion which she alone can give.

"Some of the deepest emotional experiences of my life have come to me on the many nights I have spent under the open African sky, and I am sure my case has not been singular in this respect.

"The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear."

(From Holism and Evolution, p.336f)

Intuitively we know we are part of, even integral, to a greater whole. By some mysterious ethereal thread we are spiritually connected to all space and all time. Mystics and Scientists testify to this. Gregg Braden writes about the "Divine Matrix". Paul said something similar to the Greeks, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as also certain of your own poets have said, `For we are also His offspring.'" (Act 17:28).

Eager for Thee I ask and pant;
So strong, the principle divine
Carries me out, with sweet constraint,
Till all my hallowed soul is Thine;
Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea,
And lost in Thine immensity.
- Charles Wesley, MHB 299

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

Thoughts of a Confused "Boer"

2010-11-27T03:31:00.001+02:00

I asserted my independence outside of the pulpit and the congregation to exercise the full rights of citizenship, to use my voice as well as my vote for what I believed to be the better policy. I incurred still greater displeasure as a pro-Boer.

-AE Garvie, Scottish Theologian, 1899

Boer leader and philosopher, Jannie Smuts, once said:
"There is a crack that runs through the universe and that crack runs through me!"

I'm not sure what he originally meant by that but I suspect he was speaking about our fractured natures.

By some strange coincidence I may have inherited something of a broken Boer trait too. Though of Scottish-German descent providence has wrapped me around with the Boer character. I have previously written about my interest in genealogy and family history. For some inexplicable reason my lot has repeatedly been linked with that of the Boers. Two stories come to mind.

The first from my father's line, is a reference from Richard Meinertzhagen's Kenya Diary (1902-1906). The Garvies of Kenya, including my grandfather, were granted certain land rights in Nandi territory, Western Kenya. This didn't impress Capt. Richard Meinertzhagen of the King's African Rifles. The Anglo-Boer War was still fresh in the minds of the British. To some, Boers were a despicable breed. No matter the fact that the Garvies weren't Boers but Scots, never mind that these very Garvies served British regiments back in the Transvaal Republic as Laurance Garvie put it, "I have had five sons all through the Campaign fighting the Battles for their King and Country...I have been two years and four months exiled from my home" to Meinertzhagen the Garvies were Boers to be spurned.

On the 13th April 1905 Meinetzhagen recorded: "The only European settlers in the whole of the Nandi country are two Boer families called Garvie and Steyn. They have recently come from the Transvaal and are related to the ex-President of the Orange Free State. They all seem terrified of the Nandi and have been applying for a guard of my men... After the guard had started Garvie came to see me and told me I could not now have the room I had chosen but could have another one, which was not suitable. I told him he must abide by my first choice or not have the guard. He said he would sooner have the guard, so I did not recall it. But this afternoon the guard returned with the report that the room had been changed and that they had been put in with the pigs. So I withdrew the guard. These Boers are indeed slippery customers." Donald Sutherland Garvie's grave sin appears to be that he had fallen in love and married a Boer girl, Cornelia Steyn! I am happy to say that once the facts became known, Meinertzhagen and the Garvies seemed to have gotten on famously.

The second story, from my mother's line, is detailed in Albert Blake's Boereverraaier (Boer Traitor). A chapter is devoted to how my second great-grandfather, Oupa Frederick Koch was shot by the Boers in a skirmish during the Boer War near Wakkerstroom. His son, Hendrik was executed by firing squad having being found guilty of treason by a tribunal set up by Chris Botha, the brother of Louis Botha. The family were branded "Verraaiers, Traitors" and ostracised. However the historical record suggests that the tragic event was a horrible miscarriage of justice. Frederick Koch's gravestone reads, "Shot by L.Badenhorst and his men at Roodepoort although innocent."

Do I now forever harbour resentments because both Brit and Boer judged us harshly? On the contrary, tragic and unjustified as these incidents might have been, I draw inspiration that rather than being worthless farmers or traitors my forebears were in fact pioneers and reconcilers to be honoured and admired. History is riddled with ironies. Donald Sutherland Garvie introduced “bioscope” to Kenya. A Nairobi newspaper obituary reported that Donald was "formerly the leading spirit of the newspaper the ADVERTISER... He belonged to the quiet and unostentatious sphere of true gentility". The Magistrate of Wakkerstroom wrote, "The late Mr. Koch was a Burgher of considerable influence and standing in the neighbourhood and when he saw that the cause of the Boers had failed he and his whole family surrendered and... he did everything in his power to assist the British in bringing the war to a conclusion."

I am this strange confluence of prejudice and bitterness but more. When I despair, when I feel misunderstood, negated, broken, fractured, and hard done by my colleagues and compatriots, I remind myself of my two Boer stories and realise there is always another story yet to be told. A crack may well run through us as Smuts asserts, but cracks can also be redemptive breakthroughs. Vladimir Nabokov said, "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." I'm beginning to see through my cracks now!

For further reading:
Errol Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers
Richard Meinertzhagen, Kenya Diary (1902-1906)
Albert Grundlingh, The Dynamics of Treason: Boer Collaboration in the South African War of 1899-1902

Albert Blake, Boereverraaier, Tafelberg, 2010
Piet Beukes, The holistic Smuts: A study in personality
Alfred Ernest Garvie, Memories and meanings of my life,

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

What the Bleep...

2010-11-08T09:52:00.003+02:00

Following my previous blog, I was asked, "On what side of the 'Extraterrestrial Debate' do you fall?" John Wesley had his reservations. Among Christians there have been doubters, believers, sceptics, and those who hold that extra-terrestrials are down right sinister. I, on the other hand, identify with those who believe extraterrestrial life is not only a reality but that public disclosure is imminent.

I was reading Paul Perry's marvelous book Jesus in Egypt: Discovering the Secrets of Christ's Childhood Years recently. Perry's Coptic Christian guide intimates that "Western researchers start by not believing something and then gather evidence until it is proven. On the other hand, religions such as as the Coptic Church start by believing something until it is disproved" (p,48). This is also the difference between the Scientific Method and the Faith Method. As with Thomas the Doubter, some insist that "seeing is believing" while others are persuaded that "believing is really...seeing". They can complement each other. Indeed, in recent years these two approaches have begun to merge. So, what do we make of UFO observations?

Over the years I have had what I regard to be genuine UFO sightings. Some I have been able to explain. A few not. Very recently I observed what I could only describe as an "unidentified flying object". I reported the incident to MUFON (http://www.mufon.com/) (Case No. 25378) as well as to our local Astronomical Centre in Durban:

Interested in Astronomy, I was observing the daytime, 11th September 2010, occultation of Venus by the Moon from Durban, South Africa when this unexpected sighting occurred. It was overcast all morning and there was considerable cloud when the occultation started at 14h43 local time. By 15h57 (13h57 GMT) when Venus reappeared the Moon and Venus were clearly visible through my 8x32 binoculars. Seeing Venus was a magnificent experience. While scanning for the crescent Moon I saw just slightly east of the Moon a luminescent green, triangular object with bright star-like lights at each corner. It was almost directly overhead and somewhat smaller than the Moon. The object then slowly moved off in a southerly direction and disappeared after two or three minutes. I couldn't see it with the naked eye.

The distinctive green first caught my attention and distracted me from the Moon. My initial thought was that it was a microlight but on reflection it seemed far too high and I heard no sound. Not expecting anything else I was somewhat surprised at the sighting. After I lost sight of it I felt a little incredulous and disappointed that it had gone before I could track it further. Unfortunately I was alone at the time so had no one to verify it for me. Since the original sighting there has been a suggestion that what I observed was the equally mysterious TR-3B. (Interested readers may wish to Google it: http://www.google.co.za/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4PRFA_enZA403ZA404&q=TR-3B)

While the local Astronomical Centre had not received reports to confirm my observation, interestingly there was a similar report posted on the MUFON site (Case No. 25379) of a similar observation made in the USA. It was reported immediately after mine but had occurred earlier:

Event Date: 2010-09-11 12:10 GMT
City: Manchester
Region: Connecticut
Country: US
Longitude: -72.5214754
Latitude: 41.7759324
Shape: Triangle
Distance: Unknown
Description: i was in my room doing a couple of chores and my father was outside standing in the driveway looking around in his binoculars and he noticed something had moved close to the moon which was very bright and triangle like so he came back in and told me so i went to check it out which it was true a triangle like object was extremely close to the moon, id say by looking at it almost touching the moon. at first we thought it was a really bright star that was just a coincidence to be near the moon but then it started to look like it was kinda moving back and forth but you barely see it like vibrating. the motion was quite dead still. my feelings on this are unsure and i dont know what to say about this and if its something then im glad ive seen something but if its just nothing then its fine no harm done.

Whether there was a connection between what was seen in America and what I saw from South Africa I can't say but the coincidence was intriguing.

I cannot substantiate what I observed. I discounted any optical anomaly in the binoculars. It wasn't a lens flare. What I saw had for me the force of self-evidence. To another it may be of little consequence, at best an interesting curiosity perhaps but “So what?”. So yes, it may have been subjective in that sense but that didn't make it any less real for me.

I am reminded of the story about Christopher Columbus related in What the Bleep Do We Know!?. The story is possibly apocryphal but it illustrates a point. The story goes that when Columbus' ships anchored near the Caribbean Islands the local Islanders couldn't see them at all because it was so unlike anything they had ever seen before. They couldn't see it even though the sailing ships were there on their horizon. The reason that they never saw the ships was because they had no prior knowledge or experience that large clippers existed. It wasn't part of their world view. They were familiar with dugouts. But a shaman started to notice that there's ripples out in the ocean that he'd not seen before. But he sees no ship. He starts to wonder what was causing this unusual effect? So every day he goes out and looks and looks and looks. And after a period of time, he's able to see the ships. And once he sees the ships, he tells everybody else that ships exist out there. Because everybody trusted and believed in him, they begin to see them too.

What to do if we find extraterrestrial life? What if disclosure is imminent?The question is already being asked and argued by cosmologists, scientists, and world leaders as happened at recent meetings of the Royal Society (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39675346/ns/technology_and_science/) Our natural response might be to stereotype Celestials as evil but that need not be the case. We are naturally xenophobic. The aggressors in this universe seem to be the Earthlings. As a Christian I am informed by my faith. The disclosure of celestial life might mean some revision of my own earthbound theology but I would certainly hope we could respond not only with biblical discernment but also with a gracious biblical hospitality. We may already have entertained "angels" unawares. The Wikipedia article on "Hospitality" illustrates the degree of the kind of Christian hospitality I envisage with this remarkable story from 17th Century Scotland:

The chief of Clan Lamont arrived at the home of the MacGregor chief in Glenstrae, told him that he was fleeing from foes and requested refuge. The MacGregor welcomed his brother chief with no questions asked. Later that night, members of the MacGregor clan came looking for the Lamont chief, informing their chief that the Lamont had in fact killed his son and heir in a quarrel. Holding to the sacred law of hospitality, the MacGregor not only refused to hand over the Lamont to his clansmen, but the next morning escorted him to his ancestral lands. This act would later be repaid when, during the time that the MacGregors were outlawed, the Lamonts gave safe haven to many of their number. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality

MacGregor rendered refuge. Have we the truly "catholic” spirit to do that? Do we have the heart to extend a welcome to visitors even from Outer Space if need be? I trust so.

When I explain to some that on September 11, 2010 I saw Venus in clear daylight I see them shaking their heads in disbelief. "You don't see 'stars' in the day light," I am told. The overwhelming majority of Earthlings never see stars on a Saturday afternoon. Nor had I ever seen one till then. But I saw it. Venus! It also so happened that I saw something more besides...

For further investigation:
Exopolitics, South Afica http://www.exopoliticssouthafrica.org/index.html
MUFON http://www.mufon.com/

For further reading:

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

John Wesley and the "Extraterrestrial Life Debate"

2010-10-04T18:53:00.004+02:00

"The desire of knowledge is an universal principle in man, fixed in his inmost nature. It is not variable, but constant in every rational creature, unless while it is suspended by some stronger desire. And it is insatiable: 'The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing;' neither the mind with any degree of knowledge which can be conveyed into it. And it is planted in every human soul for excellent purposes. It is intended to hinder our taking up our rest in anything here below; to raise our thoughts to higher and higher objects, more and more worthy our consideration, till we ascend to the Source of all knowledge and all excellence, the all-wise and all-gracious Creator."

-John Wesley, "The Imperfection of Human Knowledge" Sermon 69.

It may come as a surprise to many that John Wesley (1703-1791) even entertained the thought of extraterrestrial life. We imagine that to be the exclusive preoccupation of the Space Age. But not so. Initially, Wesley by his own admission assumed that the universe teemed with life but later adopted a more cautious, if not agnostic, view. He was very much a child of his age, “imperfect in knowledge”, ever reliant on his own limited sources but always ready to investigate and accept new verifiable discoveries.

Prof. Michael Crowe in his paper, "A History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate" has shown that humans reflected on the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe from antiquity. During Wesley's time astronomers such as Thomas Wright (1711-1786), Johann Lambert (1728-1777), and William Herschel (1738-1822) entertained the likelihood. In 1698 Christiaan Huygens' Celestial Worlds Discover'd: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the planets was published posthumously.

The Plurality of Inhabited Planets Debate of 1764
In 1763 Wesley published his three volume work A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation; Or, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy. Shortly thereafter, a letter from a certain "Philosophaster" to the London Magazine (http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021269660), challenged a number of Wesley's assertions, particularly his apparent rejection of life elsewhere in the universe. "Philosophaster" says...

"And, in page. 143, you tell us 'you doubt we shall never prove that the primary (planets) are (inhabited) and so (you say) the whole ingenious hypothesis of innumerable suns and worlds moving round them vanishes into air.' Not so indeed, the hypothesis, having much more to be said in its favour than against it, is more likely to be permanent than evanescent."

Then, by analogy he argues that it is reasonable to assume life on the primary planets and adds...

"It is more reasonable to suppose that in the indefinitely great space of the universe, are placed innumerable suns, which (tho' they appear to us like so many small stars, yet) are bodies not behind our own sun either in bigness, light, or glory; and each of them constantly attended with a number of planets, which dance round him, and constitute so many particular systems: Every sun doing the same office to his proper planet, in illustrating and cherishing them, which our sun performs in the system to which we belong. Hence, we are to consider the whole universe as a glorious palace for an infinitely great and every where present God, and that all the worlds, or systems of worlds, are as so many theatres, in which he displays his divine power, wisdom and goodness."

He continues...

"Let us suppose the earth viewed from one of the planets (not from Saturn, for at that planet our mighty globe cannot be see, but as a very small spot transiting the sun's disk, now an then) some intelligent beings there who were,
Slaves to no sect, who sought no private road,
But look'd through nature up to nature's God,
would argue that our earth must be inhabited in much the same manner that we argue that the other planets are inhabited: But the superstitious would oppose this doctrine and call it mere, uncertain conjecture."

The Need for Evidence
Wesley engages his critic. (See http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021277671 or WW vol.13, page 473ff.) The arguments for and against might seeme naïve today. Wesley acknowledges there could be mistakes in his Natural Philosophy. He is not writing a science text book in the modern sense but wishing instead to demonstrate God's wisdom and grace in creation as the title of his book suggests. Wesley then quotes in more detail what he had written explaining why he doubted that there was life elsewhere in the universe. He had written, he says citing Huygens:

"It is now almost universally supposed, that the moon is just like the earth, having mountains and valleys, seas with islands, peninsulas and promontories, with a changeable atmosphere, wherein vapors and exhalations; and hence it is generally inferred, that she is inhabited like the earth, and, by parity of reason, that all the other planets, as well as the earth and moon, have their respective inhabitants." (I take this to be the very strength of the cause. It was this consideration chiefly which induced me to think for many years, that all the planets were inhabited.) "But after all comes the celebrated Mr. Huygens, and brings strong reasons why the moon is not, and cannot be, inhabited at all, nor any secondary planet whatever. Then" (if the first supposition sinks, on which all the rest are built) "I doubt that we shall never prove that the primary are. And so the whole hypothesis, of innumerable suns and worlds moving round them, vanishes into air."

Wesley further maintained that astronomical measurement and consensus in his time was not sufficiently accurate nor consistent to be reasonably conclusive. Consequently he wasn't all that sure that the universe was as vast or as old as some astronomers were claiming where there was such disparity. He then proceeds to dismiss "Philosophaster's" reasons why the planets should be inhabited:

"In order to prove that the planets are inhabited, you say,

(1.) “The earth is spherical, opaque, enlightened by the sun, casting a shadow opposite thereto, and revolving round it in a time exactly proportioned to its distance. The other planets resemble the earth in all these particulars. Therefore they likewise are inhabited.” I cannot allow the consequence.

(2.) “The earth has a regular succession of day and night, summer and winter. So probably have all the planets. Therefore they are inhabited.” I am not sure of the antecedent. But, however that be, I deny the consequence.

(3.) “Jupiter and Saturn are much bigger than the earth.” Does this prove that they are inhabited?

(4.) “The earth has a moon, Jupiter has four, Saturn five, each of these larger than ours. They eclipse their respective planets, and are eclipsed by them.” All this does not prove that they are inhabited.

(5.) “Saturn’s ring reflects the light of the sun upon him.” I am not sure of that. And, till the fact is ascertained, no certain inference can be drawn from it.

(6.) “But is it probable God should have created planets like our own, and furnished them with such amazing apparatus, and yet have placed no inhabitants therein?” Of their apparatus I know nothing. However, if all you assert be, the probability of their being inhabited, I contend not.

(7.) “They who affirm, that God created those bodies, the fixed stars, only to give us a small, dim light, must have a very mean opinion of the divine wisdom.”

"I do not affirm this; neither can I tell for what other end He created them: He that created them knows," says Wesley.

Wesley is suggesting that one cannot infer intelligent life elsewhere simply because there happens to be life on Earth. Earthlike planets doesn't prove anything. Without proof, planets within the so-called "Goldilocks Zone" wouldn't easily convince him. He isn't happy with conjecture. He wants solid evidence. He then offers a word of advice, he cautions against at simply jumping to conclusions when the evidence is so tenuous:

"Before I conclude, permit me, Sir, to give you one piece of advice. Be not so positive; especially with regard to things which are neither easy nor necessary to be determined. I ground this advice on my own experience. When I was young, I was sure of everything: In a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before: At present I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to man."

He ends:

"Enlarge the bounds of creation as much as you please; still it is as but a drop to the Creator: - And still the power of His almighty hand Can form another world from every sand! Were this done, there would be no more proportion than there is now between Him and His creatures. In this respect, one world and millions of worlds are just the same thing. Is the earth a cipher, a nothing, to the infinitely great, glorious, wise, and powerful God? So is any number of worlds which can be conceived: So is all finite being to the infinite."

Revisions
Wesley's Natural Philosophy underwent considerable revision thereafter. The 1763 three volume work was followed in 1777 by a five volume edition. This was republished after his death in 1809. In 1810 and 1836 reworked editions appeared, edited by Robert Mudie. The 1777 edition illustrates Wesley's growing acceptance of the rapid new advances in astronomy. Wesley included not only his reply to Philosophaster but added, "I do not deny, but only doubt the present system of astronomy." He concedes, however, the immensity of the universe and includes the speculations of the early Greek philosophers and Church Fathers on the possibility of plural inhabited worlds:

"And this notion of a plurality of worlds, was generally inculcated by the Grecian philosophers. Plutarch, after having given an account of it, says, 'That he was so far from finding fault with it, that he thought it highly probable there had been, and "were, like this of ours, an innumerable, though not absolutely infinite multitude of worlds, wherein were, as well as here, land and water, invested by sky.'.... Origen, in his Philosophumena (Bk 1, Chap. xi. No longer ascribed to Origen but Hippolytus, Ed.), treats amply of the opinion of Democritus, saying, 'That he taught that there was an innumerable multitude of worlds, of unequal size, and differing in the number of their planets ; that some of them were as large as ours, and placed at unequal distances; that some were inhabited by animals, which he could not take upon him to describe : and that some had neither animals nor plants, nor any thing like what appeared among us.' For that truly philosophic genius discerned, that the different nature of those spheres required inhabitants of very different kinds." (Vol.5, 1809, chap.XVI p.98ff)

Following his death in 1791, the 1810 and subsequent editions were re-worked by Robert Mudie editing out much of the more speculative polemic and inserting words that, though written 200 years ago, have a wonderful modern ring about them and yet, still echo the enquiring spirit of Wesley:

"...since the discoveries and observations of Dr. Herschell on the nebulosity of the heavens, very different conjectures and theories have been substituted. It now appears a more probable and rational conjecture, that our solar system is but one of innumerable systems; that the universe is of infinite extension, and occupied by an infinite multitude of worlds; that the sovereignty of the Creator is not limited to a comparatively insignificant and solitary world, or system, but that it is infinite as his wisdom, and extensive as his power. By the application, and great improvement of telescopic powers, the ideas of the universe has been much enlarged-; assisted and corroborated by handmaids of philosophy, science, and analogy. And we derive new views and prospects of the constituent parts of nature, and of universe, from recent experiments, and the great improvements, and discoveries in chemical philosophy. Hence we contemplate the universe as a boundless expanse, interspersed with contiguous systems; and worlds, suspended at distances proportionate to their mutual powers of attraction, and capable or reciprocating causes and effects hence we contemplate the nebulous patches of the heavens, as so many systems, and the galaxy as a zone of systems; and hence also we contemplate the sun as the centre of its particular system, comprehending the worlds which revolve round it as their common centre." (http://wesley.nnu.edu/john_wesley/wesley_natural_philosophy/part5chapter1.htm)

Here is the beginnings of a major ontological shift in appreciating our place in the universe...we are beings with an ever evolving capacity to contemplate "the universe as a boundless expanse". We can now ponder as never before, "Are there others out there with a similar or even more advanced intellectual capacity than our own to know, to dream, to wonder, to praise?" We "raise our thoughts to higher and higher objects", as Wesley said. We are inclined to agree with Robert Mudie that "it now appears a more probable and rational conjecture, that our solar system is but one of innumerable systems; that the universe is of infinite extension, and occupied by an infinite multitude of worlds; that the sovereignty of the Creator is not limited to a comparatively insignificant and solitary world, or system, but that it is infinite as his wisdom, and extensive as his power."

Celestials and Extraterrestrials
In recent years compelling new evidence has come to light. Some believe that the discovery and disclosure of intelligent extraterrestrial life is imminent. While Wesley was somewhat reluctant to recognise life on other planets he does speak with greater assurance about another species of celestial beings - angels. In fact a hierarchy of them. He is in no doubt about their existence. Noting that reported "encounters" with so-called "aliens" bear many of the characteristics and marks of what has historically been said about angels we might extrapolate and draw yet further insights from Wesley. On the subject of angels, Wesley wrote:

"Many of the ancient Heathens had (probably from tradition) some notion of good and evil angels. They had some conception of a superior order of beings, between men and God, whom the Greeks generally termed demons, (knowing ones) and the Romans, genii. Some of these they supposed to be kind and benevolent, delighting in doing good; others, to be malicious and cruel, delighting in doing evil. (Sermon 71, http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/71/) .... It has been frequently observed that there are no gaps or chasms in the creation of God, but that all the parts of it are admirably connected together, to make up one universal whole. Accordingly there is one chain of beings, from the lowest to the highest point, from an unorganized particle of earth or water to Michael the archangel. And the scale of creatures does not advance per saltum, by leaps, but by smooth and gentle degrees; although it is true, these are frequently imperceptible to our imperfect faculties. We cannot accurately trace many of the intermediate links of this amazing chain, which are abundantly too fine to be discerned either by our senses or understanding....spirits, pure ethereal creatures, simple and incorruptible; if not wholly immaterial, yet certainly not incumbered with gross, earthly flesh and blood. As spirits, they were endued with understanding, with affections, and with liberty, or a power of self-determination; so that it lay in themselves, either to continue in their allegiance to God, or to rebel against him." (Sermon 72, http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/72/)

Wesley pleads for cautious circumspection and the constant need for rational discernment and vigilance. We may not be alone in the universe after all. Wesley quotes Hesiod who claimed, "Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen." He concedes that not only are there vast uncharted inhabited heavenly realms out there but some alien-beings may even already be walking unrecognised among us or... may always have been here, unrecognised! We have entertained angels unawares.Whatever encounters there could be, Wesley's prayer would be that it be in the spirit of a discerning, universal redemptive love...

Let earth and heaven agree,

Angels and men be joined,

To celebrate with me

The Saviour of mankind!

For further study:
Michael J Crowe, A History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate, http://www.michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/Crowe.pdf

Laura Bartels Felleman, John Wesley's Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation: A Methodological Inquiry, The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith, Vol.58,No 1, March 2006
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2006/PSCF3-06Felleman.pdf

Randy L Maddox, John Wesley's Precedent for Theological Engagement with the Natural Sciences, Wesleyan Theological Journal 44.1 (Spring 2009): 23-54
http://152.3.90.197/docs/faculty/maddox/wesley/Wesleys_Precedent_with_Science_WTJ.pdf

Wesley's Sermon 69, "The Imperfection of Human Knowledge," http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/69/
Wesley's sermons 71, "Of Good Angels", http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/71/
Wesley's sermons 72, "Of Evil Angels", http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/72/

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

When I Consider the Crystal Night Skies...

2010-09-18T11:03:00.000+02:00

When I Consider the Crystal Night Skies...

The other day, a friend having read my previous blog where I quote Carl Sagan without any comment, wondered, "Why no comment?" What could I say? What more could I add? Very succinctly, Sagan had said it all. One considers the immensity of time and space and one is lost for words and left with a sense of the numinous, the misterium tremendum. With a dramatic force of words and imagery Sagan ponders our apparent insignificance against the vast staggering expanse of the universe. Though the Psalmist had no Voyager I, no means of looking back at himself as Sagan did, yet he too was awestruck:

'I often think of the heavens your hands have made, and of the moon and stars you put in place. Then I ask, "Why do you care about us humans? Why are you concerned for us weaklings?"' (Psa 8:3-4 CEV)

The KJV says, "When I consider...". There couldn't be a more appropriate word! Joseph Parker of City Temple reminds us that "sider comes a long way up the track of language; it was born sidus... Sidus means star; it is the root of sidereal heavens, the starry heaven, the stellar universe... Con-siderealize -- when we star together -- put the planets into syllables and words and paragraphs; when I considerealize, make a lesson book of the stars; when I punctuate my discourse with milleniums, then I pray". (CTP vol.1 p.228) Whether as an astronomer Sagan was ever led to pray, I don't know, but the starry skies affected David. Who wouldn't be?

Job certainly was, he hears God asking him:

'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? "Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?' (Job 38:4-7 KJV)

In Contact, Sagan writes:

"There were so many pieces of the sky to look at, so many hundreds of billions of stars to search out. You couldn't spend all your time on only a few of them. She was troubled that in their haste to do a full sky survey in less than a human lifetime, to listen to all of the sky at a billion frequencies, they had abandoned both the frantic talkers and the laconic plodders."

Perhaps I am one of those "laconic plodders". I am privileged to live under African skies. Far from the city lights that isolate and alienate us from the immense "Out There", the days and nights are beautiful beyond words. One can only but gaze in silent reverence. At night, I can't suppress the temptation to go and take a quick quiet look at the stars no matter what predatory danger might lurk out there in the African veldt. And what do I look at?

Sometimes, if I am looking up at the moon, I always look for the first lunar landing spot, where Armstrong touched "soil" as it were, where incarnate earthdust first mingled with moondust. Perchance I might even spy footprints, humanity's imprint upon the moon. I imagine it is me and I look back at earth and at myself and wonder, "Who am I really?"

I also always look at another very particular star though in fact I cannot see it with the naked eye but I know where to look. It is Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri is the brighter of the two Pointers of the Southern Cross. Proxima Centauri is a smaller companion of Alpha Centauri orbiting it. Next to the Sun, Proxima is our nearest star, hence its name. It is special for me in a very parochial sense...it was first discovered by a Scottish-South African astronomer, Robert Innes. I imagine there's a planet there much like ours and on that planet, conscious intelligent life is looking back at us asking, "Who are they? What on earth are they doing?"

What can I say? Nothing! Like Job I am lost for words:

"Behold I am vile (lit, "insignificant") What shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth." (Job 40:4)

What happens when we gaze upward and outward? Peter Senge et al explains:

'If you gaze up at the nighttime sky, you see all of the sky visible from where you stand. Yet the pupil of your eye, fully open, is less than a centimeter across. Somehow, light from the whole of the sky must be present in the small space of your eye. And if your pupil were only half as large, or only one quarter as large, this would still be so. Light from the entirety of the nighttime sky is present in every space - no matter how small. This is exactly the same phenomenon evident in a hologram. The three-dimensional image created by interacting laser beams can be cut in half indefinitely, and each piece, no matter how small, will still contain the entire image. This reveals what is perhaps the most mysterious aspect of parts and wholes; as physicist Henri Bortoft says, "Everything is in everything."' (Presence, by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers)

Sagan quotes William Blake (in Contact):

Little fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience, "The Fly," Stanzas 1-3)

When I gaze upward, then suddenly, "I-a-fly" senses.... Someone has "brushed my wing"!

oOo

Apollo Lunar Landing Sites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ApolloLandings.jpg
More about Proxima Centauri http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
And more about Robert Innes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Innes

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/

Carl Sagan: Look again at that dot...That's home!

2010-08-26T18:13:00.000+02:00

For more about Carl Sagan see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Tough Times Dads Go Through - A Tribute to a Father

2010-06-20T06:07:00.001+02:00

It is Father's Day today. Dad would've been a 100 this year. As kids we seldom realised the sacrifices our fathers made and the sufferings they endured. Dads go through tough times too, tougher than we could ever imagine. I only appreciated this long after my father was no longer there for me to express my own indebtedness. He was a good man. It is only now that I can appreciate the hardships he endured. When I go through tough times I then think of Dad. It gives me perspective and I am enthused with new hope again. In fact, I don't really know what tough times are, when I think of Dad!All the while I thought I was the only one who had it tough.

During WWII, my Dad, Arthur George Garvie (1910-1977) was a Corporal in the South African, Umvoti Mounted Rifles. He went to war in North Africa in 1941. He was taken POW at Tobruk in 1942 and was held at several POW camps in North Africa and Italy as were thousands of others. He then escaped in 1943 and joined the Italian Resistance, the Partisans, but was captured again and transferred to Stalag VII A at Moosburg, Bavaria.

You can read something of the grim story and see some of the dismal pictures by going to the Moosburg, Stalag VIIA pages at http://www.moosburg.org/info/stalag/indeng.html . He never spoke about his deprivations. He was gracious enough to spare us that. I was only to catch a glimpse of the suffering and anguish years later from a close friend who had been with him during that time. Dad did however leave me a few notes he had kept while at Stalag VIIA. These can be read at http://www.moosburg.org/info/stalag/garveng.html . Today I simply want to recognize something of the suffering that led to that and and pay tribute to the triumph of his spirit.

On the day that Pearl Harbour was attacked, Sunday the 7th December 1942, the South Africans entered Tobruk in Libya to take up defensive positions. Rommel and the Afrika Korps had till then been in hot retreat. However, during the Allied occupation, the harbour was subjected to innumerable air attacks. Tobruk had the reputation of being one of the most frequently bombed towns during the war. Meanwhile Rommel was advancing with new reinforcements. The South African Springboks gallantly held the Gazala line for six months.

Then Rommel attacked Tobruk. On that fateful Saturday the 20th June 1942 Rommel took the initiative. All hell broke lose. The panzer attack started at about 6.00am to the south-east and continued into the afternoon. By nightfall the South Africans were engulfed. Small pockets of South Africans fought desperately and grimly. General Klopper faced the outright massacre of his men or surrender. "Gentlemen," he grimly admitted, "it would be foolish to continue." He surrendered. 28000 men were taken Prisoners of War. Dad was one of them. Nothing could be more humiliating and dehumanising than surrendering and being taken a prisoner by the enemy.

The prisoners were first handed over to the Italians. The conditions in the transit camps were terrible. Day after relentless day the indescribable nightmare increased. Historian, John Bosman described the dismal situation, "....the sight of masses of Prisoners of War dejected, unshaven, dirty and unkempt, was... depressing. The thought of these men who just a few days previously had represented the cream of manhood, degenerating to such a low ebb in so short a time, was incomprehensible. The reason for this was that most of them had been without food and water for several days. When the only available water tanker arrived periodically throughout the day, there was an uncontrollable rush by hundreds of prisoners... It was a degrading spectacle to see men lying on the ground lapping up puddles of precious liquid, to the amusement of the Italian sentries." There was overcrowding, inadequate water and sanitation, very little food and a lot of dysentery.

A few days after the fall of Tobruk, Padre Chutter, the Divisional Chaplain, addressed the men. Dad was probably one of that very discouraged congregation. The padre's memorable theme was, "If you don't dent your environment, your environment will dent you." He implored the men to "squeeze goodness out of the circumstances". He urged them to use their brains, to release the spiritual within them, and to return home better balanced - to take captivity captive! That was precisely what Dad was to do. He squeezed goodness out of the circumstances.

Dad's friend and fellow soldier, Alan Hackland, described what happened:

"We were taken Prisoners of War at Tobruk on the 20th June 1942 and removed from Tobruk by road transport to Benghazi on the North African Coast. After about seven days we were camped out and guarded in the desert.

"We stayed in the Benghazi POW camp for about fourteen days. It was a dreadful camp without water or toilets and only a few dry rations were issued. Arthur had a bad time because at Tobruk he had teeth trouble and toothache and had all his teeth pulled out. He was waiting for his mouth to harden before having dentures fitted. Hard and dry army biscuits had to be soaked before he could eat them and there was little water to soak them in. I can remember him holding them in his mouth in an effort to moisten them before he could swallow them."

"We arrived by ship at Brindisi on the heel of Italy after about three days at sea. Brindisi was a transit area and we soon moved on to Lucca in the north. The boat trip over was a real nightmare. We were down in the hold of the ship. I was actually wet from water leaking in past the propeller bearing and no rations were issued. The toilet was a wooden trough up on deck washing from a pump into the sea. There was nothing to hold onto and many missed the trough in their efforts not to fall overboard. From the hold of the ship we queued up on a rope ladder and only three POWs were let out at a time so those holding on to the ladder with upset tummies often soiled those below them. Seasickness was also rife and I can remember one of my men who was very green around the gills and lying down near the toilet trough begging me to throw him overboard. This I naturally did not do!

"We arrived at Lucca in northern Italy on Sunday the 26th July 1942 after two nights and one and a half days enclosed in a cattle truck without rations, without water, without sanitary accommodation. We were now 36 days in captivity. At one stop Italian women fed us fresh grapes through the cattle truck bars and these gave most of us runny tummies ... We were so tightly packed in the trucks that it was impossible for everybody to lie or sit down at the same time. Rest was rationed."

From Lucca the POWs were moved to Gravina. There Dad managed to escape.

"On Wednesday the 7th April 1943 Arthur was sent out on a working party and I lost touch with him. We were together for 291 days since Tobruk. All ranks below the rank of sergeant were forced to go out on working parties, which gave them extra rations, and an escape from boredom. On returning home after the war his brother informed me that Arthur had escaped in Italy and joined the Italian Partisans and fought alongside them against the Germans."

Dad was eventually recaptured. The Partisans were executed in his presence including the woman who had hid him. This affected Dad deeply. From there he was taken to Moosburg where he remained.

On his birthday toward the end of 1944 Dad asked that haunting question which we all need to ask: "Yesterday I turned thirty- four. Yes - 34 years of doing what? My answer of course must be very disappointing, but I thank our Loving Father for His Wonderful Love in drawing me into His Bosom... I have received so many blessings these last two months and His Spirit has led me into so many truths... At times I have felt pleased that the war had not ended for I may have missed this Wonderful of Blessings and experience of Jesus working in me." He squeezed goodness out of the circumstances.

On Christmas Eve 1944 just after midnight he was moved by a profound, ineffable spiritual experience that was to sustain him for the rest of his life. In the dark barrack light he scribbled a note to my mother:

"The time is now a quarter to one in the morning... I do feel so happy. Can you believe that I could be happy although so many miles away from you and in a POW camp? Oh yes I can... Oh it is Wonderful and I just cannot go to sleep although I should be according to orders... Lately things have been very difficult. We kept coming against obstacles and many times we came near to despair but Praise be to God Who gives us the Victory!"

He was then interrupted and couldn't complete what he was writing but a few days later he added... "I was sorry I could not put my thoughts down then for now the beauty and lustre has been partly lost. In any case words could never have described in full the grand feeling. It is sacrilege in any case to try and describe in words. I merely now make note of it for I feel you shared that same Heavenly feeling with me and when we do meet (may it be soon Dear Lord) we can think back on Christmas eve 1944." There can always be a Christmas at life's darkest hour. He squeezed goodness out of the circumstances.

On April 29th, 1945 the prisoners of Stalag VIIA were liberated by the advancing American 7th Army. A medical report described the awful conditions:

"One can only say conditions in the barracks were deplorable. Grossly overcrowded and dirty in the extreme. ...There had been no coal in the stalag since the end of February...there was no heating and all fuel for cooking was scrounged...The stalag in the beginning of March contained about 17,000 and was already overcrowded with many sleeping on the floor. Conditions were bad...in South Lager the only water supply was by a motor water tank and there was no lighting... North Lager (had)...one tap for 2000. Conditions became rapidly worse with the constant arrival of new prisoners until finally when released there were some 30,000 people in the stalag." (Maj.L.W.Lauste, 1945)

Nobody should ever be put through such deprivation. Many have been through worse. Emaciated, Dad was taken across to Britain at the beginning of Spring where he was allowed to recover. Dad was back home in Ladysmith by late August 1945. I was born nine months later...a child of the homecoming!

Let us honour our fathers today remembering especially those who might be held hostage or are captive somewhere longing to be home with those they love. They point us to the Heavenly Father.

Service Record:
Disembarked Suez 14th August 1941
Reported Missing 20th June 1942
Confirmed POW 5th September 1942
Released POW arrived at UK 16th May 1945
Disembarked Cape Town 3rd August 1945
Discharged 5th May 1946

See:
Battle of Gazala and the Fall of Tobruk, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gazala
South Africa, 2nd Infantry Division. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Infantry_Division_%28South_Africa%29
The Umvoti Mounted Rifles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umvoti_Mounted_Rifles
Moosburg, Stalag VIIA, http://www.moosburg.org/info/stalag/indeng.html

Bibliography:
Bosman, John. Providence Was My Guide. Unpublished Manuscript.
Chutter,J.B. 1954. Captivity Captive. London: Jonathan Cape.
Lauste, Maj.L.W. 1945. Medical Report on the Hospital and Camp Stalag VIIA Moosburg Germany, from March 7th, 1945 to April 26th, 1945. AG(POW)1527/VIIA, Military Archives, SADF.
Leigh, M. 1992. Captives Courageous. Johannesburg: Ashanti Publishing (Pty) Ltd.
Pitts, J. 1989. The Star World War II 1939-1945. Johannesburg: Struik.
Rosmarin, I. 1990. Inside Story. Cape Town: W.J.Flesch & Partners (Pty) Ltd.
Sampson, D. 1981. After Tobruk: The Conducted Tour. Durban: Private

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

The Return of Hayabusa - A Birthday Blog

2010-06-18T09:22:00.003+02:00

I am in awe at some of our recent space endeavours. One remarkable story is that of the recent return of the Japanese space probe, Hayabusa, just two days before my birthday. It set the theme for my own personal reflections. Wikipedia has a good article about the Hayabusa Mission...

"The Hayabusa, formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendezvoused with Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, colour, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and attempted to collect samples but it is not clear whether the sampling mechanism worked as intended. Nevertheless, there is a high probability that some dust was trapped in the sampling chamber during contact with the asteroid, so the chamber was sealed, and the spacecraft returned to Earth on 13 June, 2010."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa

Hayabusa, appropriately named after the falcon, was an amazing project from the outset. One can hardly imagine firing a relatively miniscule probe to travel that distance, rendezvous with an asteroid, itself in the cosmic scale of things minute, touch down on it not once but twice with "pin-point precision", and then return spot on target after a seven year trip across billions of miles to deliver by parachute a small precious canister containing, scientists hope, what might be a little sample of "star-dust" to the Australian outback. Hayabusa, its mission accomplished, then disintegrated in a blazing ball of fire on re-entry in one final act of glory.

Hayabusa utilized robotic precision landing and hazard avoidance technology that we can only marvel at. The asteroid explorer was once given up for dead and even suffered some faults but has now returned its cargo safely home. The guidance algorithms were astonishing. It boggles the mind. Quite apart from its scientific mission, whether successful or not, just the achievement of going that distance and then to return with such precision is a technological wonder in itself.

NASA's Edward J Weiler once said, speaking about landing a spacecraft on the far larger Mars, that. "Doing something to that accuracy is like trying to hit a hole-in-one, but you tee off in Washington and hit the ball 10,000 miles and hit the hole-in-one in Sydney, Australia… and you have to remember -- that hole is moving." Hayabusa's mission was so much more precise. The asteroid Itokawa by comparison to Mars is but a relative speck of interplanetary debris only 535 × 294 × 209 m in size! Scientists have logged another remarkable achievement of human curiosity and endeavor in the record books of history.

"We all thought the mission was over more than once," Andrew Cheng of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland said. "But unbelievably, they managed to find a way to carry on. I guess that's the samurai spirit."

Pondering the story of Hayabusa I am mindful of the words of the Psalmist who in sheer awe of Divine Endeavour exclaimed...

"I will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret, and intricately wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuity were fashioned, when as yet there were none of them." (Psa 139:13-16 KJ21)

oOo

See the report in AOLNews: http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/a-little-dust-will-make-japans-hayabusa-spaceships-trip-worthwhile/19511547
More about the Asteroid Itokawa at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25143_Itokawa

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za