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Dream Quest, v. 1, issue 1, July 1947
Page 7
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THOUGH WITH RULE AND LINE (sic) by Jack Speer My first text tonight is from Eddington, Gifford 12:5-- " 'Knowableness to mind' is moreover a property which differentiates the actual world of our experience from imaginary worlds in which the same general laws of Nature are supposed to hold true. Consider a world -- Utopia, let us say -- governed by all the laws of Nature known and unknown which govern our own world, but containing better stars, planets, cities, animals, etc. -- a world which might exist, but it just happens that it doesn't. How can the physicist test that Utopia is not the actual world? We refer to a piece of matter in it; it is not real matter but it attracts any other piece of (unreal) matter in Utopia according to the law of gravitation. Scales and clocks constructed of this unreal matter will measure wrong intervals, but the physicist cannot detect that they are wrong unless he has first shown the unreality of the matter. As soon as any element in it has been shown to be unreal Utopia collapses; but so long as we keep to the cycles of physics. This is the potential, that was derived from the interval, that was measured by the scale, that was made from the matter, that embodied the stress, that expressed the potential, that was derived from the interval..........7 we can never find the vulnerable point, for each element is correctly linked to the rest of the cycle, all our laws of Nature expressed in the cycle being obeyed by hypothesis. The unreal stars emit unreal light which falls on unreal retinas and ultimately reaches unreal brains ... Of the infinite number of worlds which are examples of what might be possible under the laws of Nature, there is one which does something more than fulfill those laws of Nature. This property, which is evidently not definable with respect to any of the laws of Nature, we describe as 'actuality' -- generally using the word as a kind of halo of indefinite import. We have seen that the trend of modern physics is to reject the way in which we recognize the properties when confronted by them. We recognize the actuality of a particular world because it is that world alone with which consciousness interacts. However much the theoretical physicist may dislike a reference to consciousness, the experimental physicist uses freely this touchstone of actuality. ... Each of us is armed with this touchstone of actuality; by applying it we decide that this sorry world of ours is actual and Utopia is a dream. As our individual consciousnesses are different, so our touchstones are different; but fortunately they all agree in their indication of actuality -- or at any rate those which agree are in sufficient majority to shut the others up in lunatic asylums. "... If actuality means 'known to mind' then it is a purely subjective character of the world; to make it objective we must substitute 'knowable to mind.' The less stress we lay on the accident of parts of the world being known at the present era to particular minds, the more stress we must lay on the potentiality of being known to mind as a fundamental objective property of matter, giving it the status of actuality whether individual consciousness is taking note of it or not." THE second text i will not quote, but synopsize. In Destiny
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THOUGH WITH RULE AND LINE (sic) by Jack Speer My first text tonight is from Eddington, Gifford 12:5-- " 'Knowableness to mind' is moreover a property which differentiates the actual world of our experience from imaginary worlds in which the same general laws of Nature are supposed to hold true. Consider a world -- Utopia, let us say -- governed by all the laws of Nature known and unknown which govern our own world, but containing better stars, planets, cities, animals, etc. -- a world which might exist, but it just happens that it doesn't. How can the physicist test that Utopia is not the actual world? We refer to a piece of matter in it; it is not real matter but it attracts any other piece of (unreal) matter in Utopia according to the law of gravitation. Scales and clocks constructed of this unreal matter will measure wrong intervals, but the physicist cannot detect that they are wrong unless he has first shown the unreality of the matter. As soon as any element in it has been shown to be unreal Utopia collapses; but so long as we keep to the cycles of physics. This is the potential, that was derived from the interval, that was measured by the scale, that was made from the matter, that embodied the stress, that expressed the potential, that was derived from the interval..........7 we can never find the vulnerable point, for each element is correctly linked to the rest of the cycle, all our laws of Nature expressed in the cycle being obeyed by hypothesis. The unreal stars emit unreal light which falls on unreal retinas and ultimately reaches unreal brains ... Of the infinite number of worlds which are examples of what might be possible under the laws of Nature, there is one which does something more than fulfill those laws of Nature. This property, which is evidently not definable with respect to any of the laws of Nature, we describe as 'actuality' -- generally using the word as a kind of halo of indefinite import. We have seen that the trend of modern physics is to reject the way in which we recognize the properties when confronted by them. We recognize the actuality of a particular world because it is that world alone with which consciousness interacts. However much the theoretical physicist may dislike a reference to consciousness, the experimental physicist uses freely this touchstone of actuality. ... Each of us is armed with this touchstone of actuality; by applying it we decide that this sorry world of ours is actual and Utopia is a dream. As our individual consciousnesses are different, so our touchstones are different; but fortunately they all agree in their indication of actuality -- or at any rate those which agree are in sufficient majority to shut the others up in lunatic asylums. "... If actuality means 'known to mind' then it is a purely subjective character of the world; to make it objective we must substitute 'knowable to mind.' The less stress we lay on the accident of parts of the world being known at the present era to particular minds, the more stress we must lay on the potentiality of being known to mind as a fundamental objective property of matter, giving it the status of actuality whether individual consciousness is taking note of it or not." THE second text i will not quote, but synopsize. In Destiny
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