From: stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com (Todd I. Stark)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: More ki/qi/chi & science
Date: 23 DEC 92 09:30:02
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
NNTP-Posting-Host: DWOVAX


<1992Dec22.225250.980@pages.com>, kevin@pages.com (Kevin Sven Berg) writes...
>In article <1h53slINN65m@usenet.pa.dec.com> stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com (Todd I.  
>Stark) writes:
>> 
>> Case in point, there is a rich tradition of philosophers on the European 
>> continent (especially France and Germany) who would have no problem with the 
>> notion of Ki, and even some (though not all) who also would support the value 
>> of scientific inquiry.   The failure of Ki to be the dominant topic of
>> interest in scientific journals in most fields is hardly a matter
>> of ideological oversight.  Similar concepts have arisen many, many times
>> in different forms over time.  Those that have been discredited and
>> remain so were mostly discredited on specifics, not on general principle.
>> 
> 
>What may be of interest to many in this newsgroup, is where to start
>looking for such references. Perhaps some of the European readers can
>be of some assistance here. (???)

You could start with Hegel (a cartoon guide of course, he's a lifelong study
all by himself); work briefly and optimistically through Bergson, stop for
just a glance at the existentialists and kinder phenomenologists (some are
adamantly anti-science, but some are not) and by the time you get to Whitehead 
and the process philosophers, you'll find that they have changed
the meaning of time in such a way that scientific descriptions have no
problem with various mystical insights.  That's the quick version.  :-)

My personal feeling is that the
possibility of the popular 'systems' view that permeates much of science
has some of its intellectual roots in this line of succession.  In the future, 
maybe we can add the philosophy developing around non-linear dynamics and 
self-reorganizing natural systems to the list (just speculation on my
part), and that a vital essence such as represented by Ki can be seen
in these terms.  I'd guess others can come up with a better development of 
these ideas, I'm just winging it on my way out on vacation ... :-)

>> this concept doesn't appear intact in many technical journals.  They
>> don't organize their experience in the same manner as the traditional
>> Chinese healer.
> 
>Is this due to the language of description/manipulation (Mathematics)?
>The experiential sense is not present in Mathematics, whereas the
>Chinese healer is at least sympathetic to a degree of mysticism
>(knowledge via direct subjective experience); otherwise s/he practices
>by prior example.

Yes, mathematics (as it exists today) has a distinct set of rules and 
organizational properties that don't reflect the structure of all kinds of 
human experience.

> 
>> The best you can do is test for anomalies and then try to put a 
>> new hypothesis together in properly precise mathematical terms to explain 
>> them.   I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it might resemble Ki
>> in many ways, and not by coincidence.  ;-)
> 
>I wonder what it would take for the opposite to be true: could one 
>come to a mystical understanding of reality (in this case ki)
>through Mathematics. I suppose that one's even more weird than puting
>chi on a scale...

I doubt anyone could answer this, mathematics is as subject to change as
any other symbol system.  Who's to say that body sensation, mystical
wisdom, and muscial rhythms can't be somehow represented with a somehow
expanded mathematics.  I doubt that more than one or two people would
be able to understand it if it could, though.  Mathematical brilliance is
one of the least democratically distributed faculties there is.  :-)

>Waiter, Check please...
> 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays !!

>Kevin
>-- 
>Kevin Sven Berg               /    /    /    /  P /  a /  g /  e /  s

						todd
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| Todd I. Stark				  stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com           |
| Digital Equipment Corporation		             (215) 354-1273           |
| Philadelphia, Pa. USA                                                       |
|  "I'm in a hurry, I don't know why.  All I really gotta do is live and die" |
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