From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,sci.philosophy.meta,soc.history,talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.newage,rec.arts.books,sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: William Irwin Thompson
Date: 12 Nov 92 18:18:44 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1992Nov11.024550.5168@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter) writes:
>jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
>>This essay mixes up acute observations, unsupported dicta and mere
>>metaphors.  If challenged I'll mention some of each.  The trouble with
>>gurus, and I suppose he is one, is that their writings are not
>>refereed, and this makes them intellectually self-indulgent.
>I think I agree with all of these comments. In fact, one reason I hoped to
>find discussion of Thompson on the net was that I was looking for 'peer
>review', so to speak, of his ideas. Ironically, he states in the same book:
>
>  One of the basic differences, I think, between true scientists and
>  scientific merchandisers or scientific hustlers is that real scientists
>  have a compassionate bond with their colleagues; they do not abandon
>  them to take on a messianic posture with delusions of grandeur and
>  manic superiority. Such scientists are still in the social condition of
>  working in labs, doing research, and trying to communicate with their
>  fellows under conditions that admit the possibility of being wrong.
>  There is a fellowship and a companionship to science that the New Age
>  scientist is forced to abandon to become an ex-scientist. Ex-scientists 
>  generally take an early success and then launch off into a commercialized
>  market to speak to people who can only admire them but never understand
>  them. They get used to the addiction of admiration and are willing to
>  sacrifice comprehension for admiration.
>
>PS: re the essay I posted and your three categories of proposition, I might
>say that "acute observations" include war and the transformation of
>culture, and perhaps the racial stereotypes of popular electronic culture;
>the "unsupported dicta" ideas such as "the transformation of the
>atmosphere has been accelerated by decades"; and "mere metaphors", the
>paragraph about Rumpelstiltskin and the New Testament. But I would be
>interested to see more of what you thought.
>  The ideas that I find most intellectually provocative are the
>connections he seems to be trying to make between myth, folklore and
>esoterica, and biology and cognitive science. An example of this in the
>essay is the way in which he equates cyanobacteria with elves and
>anaerobes with elementals. In effect he seems to be saying (to me), "You
>can regard the various microbial communities as cognitive systems, which
>store information, interact with their environment and learn, over the
>course of millions of years; and some of this history of learning, and the
>history of their interactions with human beings, has passed unconsciously
>into human culture as legend and esoteric lore." (He has expanded on these
>ideas elsewhere.) Does anyone care to comment?

Please see my reply to the same posting.  If these ideas interest you 
I would recommend your looking into Rudolf Steiner.  You are right
about Thompson, his ideas are intellectually provocative, though he 
is very assertive.  The absence of this tendency in Steiner was one
reason I was drawn to his work.  Another was the palpable practical
results of it (e.g. education, art, architecture, medicine), so it
was not just writing. If Thompson still interests you, then take the
ideas without the push and work them out.  He is nothing if not
stimulating.  I think I'll buy one of his books.   He reads like
someone in his mid forties.  Is this true?

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranormal,alt.cascade