R. Buckminster Fuller. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1970)

     R. Buckminster Fuller. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1970) Fuller has a deserved reputation for inventing the geodesic dome, except for the fact that it’s devilishly difficult to make it leak proof. Reason: the differential expansion and contraction of the geodesic frame and the covering. It works best with membranes, and worst with sheet wood and sheet metal. I enjoyed the airy and open feel of the USA’s geodesic dome at Expo 67. I have no idea how it performed in the Montreal winters, though.
     Fuller in his day had a reputation as a visionary, and in one sense he was: he understood that the Earth is a system, and that making it habitable over the long haul, that is millennia, requires system thinking, which at the time he wrote the book was still an arcane ill-understood subject. This book was received as his Best Word on the subject, but rereading it forty-some years later it is depressing. Fuller loves portmanteau words, no doubt intended to express his vision of the allatonceness of the system he is trying to describe. But his vision is surprisingly narrow. He has no inkling of the complexity of biological systems. I mean, he can’t be faulted for not knowing what we now know, that the interconnections in an ecosystem are generally counterintuitive and surprising. But back then there was a lot of ecological knowledge out there already, yet Fuller blithely assumes that engineering will solve the problems. The metaphor of Earth as a spaceship indicates both the breadth of his vision and the narrowness of the knowledge base on which he builds it.
     Fuller does have the ability to pose serious questions. He notices that the economic system is not built to maximise wealth, but to maximise money, which is not at all the same thing. his solution is an economic system that will deprive the Great Pirates of their power. And that solution shows the problem with his solutions generally: he states them in terms of desired outcomes with hardly any indication of how to achieve them. Thus he gives us a vision of a prosperous peaceful Earth that will sustain humankind for ever, more or less, without much in the way of processes or methods to achieve it.
     Fuller helped spread the word on systems and how necessary it is to think about them. If for no other reason, this book is worth reading. But it gets tedious pretty quickly. I stopped halfway through. That’s all you need to get the thesis: that unless we create an economic system that respects Earth as a system, we will destroy it. **

Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw

     Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw [D: Cedric Messina. John Gielgud, Sian Phillips, Barbara Murray. Daniel Massey et al] Bernard Shaw’s Play produced in 1977 for TV as “Play of the Week”. A nice example of why staging plays for the camera doesn’t work. The set is obviously a set, larger than one built for a theatre, but still a set. The acting is large as for a theatre, and doesn’t work for the camera. The sound is inconsistent, and in places distracting: for example, the "stone" steps are clearly wooden. Intercutting the stage action with black and white clips of Zeppelins attacking England doesn’t help. The blocking of the characters is clearly intended for a theatre audience, and doesn’t work for the camera. The director uses overhead shots, but all they do is emphasise the staginess. The absence of a laugh track hurts the production. In a theatre, the audience reacts, which energises the actors. Reactions by other members of the audience help one follow the performance, too. But for some probably purist intention, there is no laugh track, no musical score, just the silence of the sound stage.
     Shaw’s script doesn’t help, it’s one of his wordier plays. Of course all his plays are wordy, but the best ones have a narrative arc keeps the talk focussed. Here there are the usual Shavian witticisms and pseudo-paradoxes, but too often they distract rather than create character or illuminate relationships. I gather from various socio-political remarks that Shaw intended the play to critique the property-owning classes, and to riff (once again) on how the marriage market destroys romance. Or something like that.
     This effort is of historical interest: this is how culture was once done on TV. Nine years earlier, Zeffirelli made his Romeo and Juliet, showing how to translate Shakespeare’s scripts from stage to screen. He cut and paraphrased the dialogue, and frequently used the camera instead of words, thus paying Shakespeare the compliment of professional respect. But some critics panned the movie because Zeffirelli showed that Shakespeare’s scripts could make great movies. I think Shaw’s plays can make great movies, too. This Heartbreak House is merely a photographed play, and more’s the pity. *

Sam J. Lundwall. Alice’s World (1971)

 

    Sam J. Lundwall. Alice’s World (1971) A Confederation mission to Earth 50,000 years after the Exodus finds a world in which people's hallucinations are real and fulfill their deepest desires. The Captain ends up the supreme commander of an invasion force engaged in and endless war. One of his crew members lives in a blissful liaison with her mate. This is Ray Bradbury country crossed with Lewis Carroll, where science and fantasy mix, where reality and dream are indistinguishable, where Alice creates and uncreates the world around her. Lundwall does a better than average job of conveying the experience of his characters, especially the irony that the Captain understands fully that the dreams of humankind have become real, yet is trapped by them as much as everyone else.
     Well done pulp fiction, the kind that in the 1960s prompted endless arguments about whether it’s Literature. Of course it is. Wikipedia has a good article on Lundwall at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_J._Lundwall ***

Quantum theory and consciousness

     Quantum theory and  consciousness

     Efstratios Manousakis is member of the Department of Physics, Florida State University, in Tallahassee. He has written a paper, Founding quantum theory on the basis of consciousness [1], which purports to show that a Global Stream of Consciousness guarantees our observations of quantum events.
     In his introduction he writes,
     Von Neumann[2], using projection operators and density matrices as tools to describe the apparent statistical character of measurement, was able to show that the assumed boundary separating the observing instrument and the so-called observed object can be arbitrarily shifted and, therefore, ultimately the observer becomes the “abstract ego” (in Von Neumann’s terms) of the observer.
     He goes on to write,
     In this paper quantum theory (more generally, the description of nature) is founded on the framework of the operation and on the primary ontological character of consciousness, rather than founding consciousness on the laws of physics. It is discussed that quantum theory follows naturally by starting from how consciousness operates upon a state of potential consciousness and more generally how it relates to the emergence or manifestation and our experience of matter. In addition, it is argued that the problem of measurement and the paradoxes of quantum theory arise due to our poor understanding of the nature and the operation of consciousness.
     It seems to me that Von Neumann’s theorem and Schrödinger’s Cat together imply that the observer has no special status. The wave function collapses when a quantum event occurs. That quantum event results in a chain of events, the last of which is the observation. I see no reason to infer that the observer has an ontological status different from the instrument. That is, the instrument would record the event whether or not an observer was present.
     An instrument is an entity whose state changes whenever it interacts with its environment. Every such interaction requires some exchange of energy. Quantum events are changes in local energy, one quantum at a time. This implies that any entity is an instrument. Hence von Neumann’s theorem. What we think of as an instrument is an assemblage of such entities constructed to magnify the energy changes until they affect our senses.
     As von Neumann shows, we, the observers, are the last in a chain of energy exchanges. We need not be. We could be entirely absent. But the changes would still occur, and the instrument would still change state. For that matter, the instrument need not be present. The quantum events would still occur. That quantum events are in principle unpredictable is irrelevant. What matters is that they happen.
     What’s more, we believe firmly that those events do in fact occur. Otherwise we wouldn’t trouble to invent ways of detecting them.
     Manousakis introduces a number of concepts, such as “potential consciousness”, “stream of consciousness”, etc. These amount to a claim of special ontological status for the conscious observer. He constructs an argument to imply a Global Consciousness which binds all our individual streams of consciousness together. This amounts to a variation of Berkeley’s argument for the existence of God. The use of quantum theory doesn’t make the argument any more valid than Berkeley’s version.

Notes:
2. Efstratios Manousakis, Founding quantum theory on the basis of consciousness, (Found. Phys. 36 (6)). Also published on line: DOI: 10.1007/s10701-006-9049-9 http://dx/doi.org/10.1007/s10701-006-9049-9

1. J. Von Neumann, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Chap. VI, pg. 417 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955).

William Strunk Jr & E B White. The Elements of Style, 2nd edition (1972)

     William Strunk Jr & E B White. The Elements of Style, 2nd edition (1972) I first read this marvellous book several decades ago. I can’t recall who recommended it, but I owe them thanks. Strunk‘s course and his little book were legendary at Harvard.  His advice, allowing for changes in usage, is still sound. Know and understand grammar. Know and respect the rules of usage. Revise and rewrite. That’s it. There isn’t any more.
   The Rules give examples that exemplify this advice. Most of the rules still stand. E B White revised the examples of bad usage, and added a chapter of general advice on the craft of writing. Some of the bad examples have either disappeared or become accepted, but that should not dissuade a writer from ignoring current usage. Good usage in any era consists of writing for the reader.
     When I taught composition, I stressed that writing should be clear, concise, and correct. In that order. Rereading Strunk’s book and E B White’s addition to it, I see that these three words sum up their counsel. ****

Howard Engel. The Man Who Forgot How to Read (2012)

     Howard Engel. The Man Who Forgot How to Read (2012) Afterword by Oliver Sacks. Engel went out to get the paper one morning, and found he couldn’t read it. He drove to the Emergency Department of the nearby hospital, where they confirmed that he’d had a stroke in the left occipital area of his brain, a part of the visual cortex necessary for the decoding of print and writing into words and hence into meaning. But he could still write. The technical term is alexia sine agraphia, non-reading without non-writing. This made him a rare case, which is one reason that Oliver Sacks not only agreed to see him, but also agreed to write an afterword for the Benny Cooperman mystery Engel eventually wrote, the only one I’ve not read yet.
     This memoir begins with reading. It was Engel’s life, the essence of his imaginative and intellectual interaction with the world around him. To lose that could have been to lose everything. But during six weeks in rehab, plus every day since then, Engel found ways of coping with this deficit. It’s a powerful read, a page-turner. I read a few pages one late afternoon, and devoured the book in bed. It’s not only the futile attempt to imagine alexia that keeps you going, it’s Engel’s wry humour, his clear-eyed vision of himself and his situation, his gratitude for his family and friends. He’s a mensch, someone you would like to know. He’s a damn good writer, too.
     Recommended. ****

Louis L’Amour. Callaghen (1972)

    Louis L’Amour. Callaghen (1972) Another tale of a drifter, a private in the US Army a few days away from his discharge, who entangles himself in a situation he’d rather not be a part of. But his sense of honour and duty compel him to do what he can.  He can do quite a lot: rescue the passengers of a stage coach robbed by a couple of nasties, defend them and his military patrol from Mohaves, defeat those very same nasties when they come after him and the remaining passengers, and of course win the respect and love of a good woman. A nicely done adventure romance, with the usual L’Amour tropes. I read all but half a page while waiting for a minor procedure. The ER doc had to tend a couple more urgent cases than mine, so I had plenty of time. But I waited till I got home to read that last half page. Worth the wait. **½