From: "Pierre Petiot" <p_petiot-AT-euronet.nl>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 01:15:03 +0000
Subject: Re: Soul and Body Two


Hi, 

> >I have seen better and more accurate description of this in the works 
> >by Ilya Prigogine.
> 
> Thanks.  I don't aim for accuracy.

The point is that Prigogine is more creative than the absence of 
Prigogine.

Once more, thinking is your responsibility.
Mine is just to give the best information I am aware of...
That's what I did...

If you had given hints to be aware of Prigogine's work, I would not 
have felt the need to provide you with this hint.

> >> How can I dismiss science?  How?  When the whole idea of science 
> >> animates the dualistic provocation of lived experience and colorful 
> >> conjecture which we call progress?  "Arbitrary" is more like it.  The 
> >> "soul" (only a metaphor!) is always out there, ready to pass through 
> >> some receptive body....  
> >
> >Then you are not Hegelian either...
> 
> I am a "Moorean," if I must be labelled.

There is no shame into using thoughts of previous thinkers.

As regards myself, I cannot build an adjective based on Petiot that 
could ever sound like "Moorean", because it would immediately sound 
totally ridiculous (at least in French)
So my birth protects me against lots of harm. 

I am just blessed...

> >> On what level are we speaking here?  Of what degree...?  I'm no 
> >> scientist, but does the carbon atom receive... oh, what shall I 
> say... 
> >> extra-material influences that affect its responses to external 
> forces 
> >> at a future date?  
> >
> >I thought some recent experiments about "non-locality" 
> >were suggesting that. 
> 
> You mean carbon atoms receive emotional and intellectual (etc.) effects 
> from their experiences of art, music, poetry... Wow!

Not at all.
I just sticked to your words:

"extra-material influences that affect its responses to external 
forces"

which by a sort of chance are not that far from (I think) 
what experiences about non-locality seemed to be showing.

Now, there is a sentence by Prigogine that says
"far from the equilibrium, matter becomes sensitive..."
and he gives quite concrete examples of what that exactly means.

But you are free to refuse integrating these data into your own 
thinking, and to enjoy the consequences.

> >> Does an atom EVOLVE... not physically, but 
> >> SPIRITUALLY?
> >
> >I thought that life was based on the properties of Carbon ?
> >So a carbon atom evolves in a way after all.
> >"spirituality" is what evolution produces after a time so long that 
> >no human being can get a decent representation of it.
> 
> I don't follow.  Perhaps my mysticism prevents me from replying to 
> someone who seems to be my total antithesis.

I do not think so, and I am probably just as mystic as you are if not 
worse.
But, I do not refuse to incorporate scientific results into my own 
mystical way of thinking, which - I have experienced - makes it more 
accurate and wide and above all much more beautiful.

I might be you total antithesis (although I do not think so at all)
but NOT on the mystical ground...

Accuracy, Edward, is exactly the distance between new and old.
This because what is new, most often starts as a slight difference 
with the old.
Here is the reason why I invoked accuracy.

Now, if I had a god, I would love it, and I would like to see it new 
each day. Since my God - so to say - is time, I am rarely 
disappointed.
But my religion forces me to attempt seeing a god new each day, and 
my love forces me to caress the shape of my god as precisely as I can.


> >> act."  When you leave behind a WORK, you also leave behind a greater 
> >> body... an _incorruptible_ body.  
> >
> >Let's be serious...
> >Information can be duplicated, that's all.
> >(It is an important property nevertheless, may be a sufficient one 
> >for defining "information")
> 
> Information is not duplicated, but rather iterated, dissemintated (to 
> borrow two terms from Derrida).  There is no such thing as a precise 
> duplication (or for that matter an imprecise duplication), for each time 
> the piece of information is received by an individual, it is placed in a 
> new context: the life-realm of that individual, with its own system of 
> relations and interpretations.  We do not merely receive information and 
> duplicate it in our minds, we process it in an unique way... call it the 
> raw material of new information... an endless movement, an "infinite 
> conversation."

Could you be nice enough to admit, that this network we are using is 
based on a quite accurate duplication of information.
(-: at least I hope :-)

DNA has even error correction mechanisms.

Now, PROVIDED information has been duplicated enough
it WILL be "endlessly" interpreted.

So Genius or not, duplicate !

4 Billions of years of duplication 
("fortunately" not TOO accurate...)
that's the best approximation we have of immortality.

Now what you said about "context" and "unique way" is correct (I 
think), but my own position would me more to wonder how such things 
are possible.

I do agree about the image "infinite conversation"
(and if you knew me better, you would probably complain that I agree 
too much with this image in the daily life...)
 
> >> Exactly.  And I would argue that metaphor began with religion.
> >
> >I think we have plenty of evidences that the reverse is true.
> >Metaphor was there first, and some misuse and misunderstandings led 
> >to religion.
> 
> But isn't metaphor itself a misuse and misunderstanding of language?  

No, I think it is simply the very basis of it.

> I'll defer to you, however, and revise my statement: religion was the 
> direct outgrowth of metaphor, almost a simultaneous birth.

In human terms, maybe.
But DNA is also a language, and hence also something like a metaphor.
When the metaphor is good enough, we live.
When the metaphor is not good enough, we die.

Now, we will agree that bacterias have no religion.
Although they are metaphors.

> >> Yes.  But it is a combination that can, and has, produced genius.  
> >> IMMORTAL genius.
> >
> >What will the crabs and the scopions think about the human immortal 
> >genius when mankind has disappear ?
> 
> We can only speak of immortality relative to our existing context -- the 
> human world.  

With this restriction, I can agree with you.

> The term "immortal" is a metaphor that is a product of our 
> human world, and it doesn't take oblivion into consideration.  When our 
> world, our existing context, passes into oblivion, so will "crabs" and 
> "scorpions."  But, and here is how you contradicted yourself, if the 
> crabs and scorpions are capable of thinking at all, then our collective 
> immortality and perhaps even our genius will remain immortal!
> 
> No.  I'm not being serious.  Sorry.
> 
> >Information can be duplicated, that's all.
> >But ain't THAT strange ?

> Formation in duplication is quite strange... as strange as a 
> scorpion-man (see Gilgamesh)...  

Sorry, I have no competence on Gilgamesh... And I regret it.
 
> "Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written ... can be 
> _cited_, put between quotation marks; in so doing it can break with 
> every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner 
> which is absolutely illimitable" (Jacques Derrida, _Signature Event 
> Context_ 1988, p. 12).

(-: Shit, this Derrida is definitely not precise nor rigorous.
    I think he should learn a bit of computer science.
    Then he would be less enthousiastic about
    "infinity of new contexts"
    and
    "absolutely illimitable" :-)

I was just trying to draw attention on some very simple and very 
important properties of very common things, for which I do not have 
any reasonable explaination.
Duplication of information is one of these.

I shall have to stop this discussion here, I apologize.

Sorry for getting in.



Pierre PETIOT 
http://www.euronet.nl/users/p_petiot/index.html
email: "Pierre Petiot" <p_petiot-AT-euronet.nl>