Some powerful paradigm was forcing them into viewing the data as an anomaly. That paradigm I believe was Aristotelian Logic. A-Logic divided the world into pairs of opposites which are in opposition to one another, by the definitional rules of A-Logic and not necessarily by the facts of the world. A-Logic defines pairs as being either/or, Non-contradictory and having no middle overlapping ground. A is A or A is non-A. There is no other choice by definition of the rules of A-Logic. A and non-A are exclusive, contradictory and oppositional pairs of choices.
Here is a list of pairs formulated as opposites in opposition: Life or death, True or False, Good or Evil, Man or Woman, Citizen or Barbarian, the Sun or the Moon, Black or White, Big or Small, Arts or Science, Science or Religion, Feelings or Logic, Heart or Mind, Emotions or Intellect, Mind or Body, Body or Soul, Objective or Subjective, Light or Dark, Sweet or Sour, Up or Down, In or Out, Word or Image, Monotheism or Polytheism, Yin or Yang, Active or Receptive, Verbal or Spatial, Intellectual or Intuitive, Interior or Exterior, Time or Space, Right or Left, Day or Night, Nurture or Nature, North or South, East or West, Seed or Egg, Sight or Sound, the Yankees or the Cubs, San Francisco or Los Angeles, West Coast or East Coast, Coasts or Interior, New York or Los Angeles, New York or Kansas City, San Francisco or Kansas City, Europe or America, Romantic or Classical, Reason or Madness, Part or Wholes, Yoni or Lignum, Starch or Protein, Fat or Thin, Conscious or Unconscious, Tea or Coffee, Democrats or Republicans, Jew or Moslem, Jew or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, Sunni or Shiite, Wine or Beer, Carnivore or Vegetarian, Oral or Written, Holmes or Watson, Chaos or Order, Awake or Sleeping, Word or Thing, Map or Territory, Freud or Jung, Plato or Aristotle, Apollo or Dionysus, Sacred or Profane, Adult or Child, Beauty or Ugly, Hot or Cold, Wet or Dry, Analog or Digital, Business or Residential, Urban or Rural, Clothed or Naked, Abstinence or Promiscuous, Love or Lust, Saint or Sinner, Friend or Lover, Husband or Wife, Parent or Child, Teacher or Parent, Cowboy or Indian, Cops or Robbers, Liberal or Conservative, Dynamic or Static, All or Nothing, etc.
By putting these words, these ideas, into the �or� relationship did you feel that all of these pairs were assumed to be at war with the other. That feeling is your semantic reaction, the recognition that an idea has with it a bodily feeling. Although A-Logic uses and allows for the conjunctive �and� relationship, it is the �or� relationship that is more important to A-Logic. The �or� relationship comes out of the A or Non-A dichotomy. A and Non-A as both being valid, containing some truth, is an unacceptable possibility in A-Logic. Thus making the �or� model as the more fundamental, the more significant model of A-Logic. The �or� model defines the world that way and it does not matter whether it is logically valid upon examining any of the facts as they present themselves in observing physical reality. The facts are made to bolster the rules and definitions of A-Logic.
The pairs are assumed to be at war and facts are found to �prove� the validity of this opposition. In actual reality there is no reason to believe that the Sun is in opposition to the Moon. In actual reality Black is not in opposition to White, a man does not have to be in oppositional war with a woman. Life is not in opposition to Death, they are continuous phases of transformational states of all things. In actuality, not all pairs are at war with each other. Not all pairs contradict each other. There is another way to conceptualize the world, but A-Logic as the foundational model forces its definitions and assumptions unto the facts.
The oppositional pair model of A-Logic that acts like the �rules of playing cards� in Brunner and Postman�s experiment. It was the transformation of A-Logic from an collection of ideas into a system of beliefs bordering on dogma, that was metaphorically speaking similar to the idea that all images of spades in a deck of playing cards are black and all images of diamonds are red. It was this belief, this dogmatic acceptance of, A-Logic that prevented what was clearly being shown to be ignored. The belief in the idea determined what must be true seeing. Our scientists were stuck with the oppositional pair model of A-Logic and this idea was so powerful a belief and a belief that was buried deep in their unconscious mind that nothing could challenge it. Nothing could challenge it because you can not challenge a belief that is unconscious. If you don�t recognize that you are wearing sunglasses you can�t ask how were those sunglasses made. If you aren�t aware that People are shaped by ideas, you can�t figure out that you are being shaped by some set of ideas that prevents you from acknowledging data. When an idea becomes an belief, or becomes a dogma, that process of acceptance is unconscious and therefore below conscious awareness. That process goes on unnoticed and therefore unchallengeable because it lies hidden within the unconscious.
I have been using the words: Ideas, Beliefs, and Dogma. Let�s place these concepts onto a continuum, which means I believe they can flow one into the other given the correct set of circumstances. Ideas are the dynamic end of the continuum, beliefs are the middle ground of the continuum and dogma is the static end of the continuum. With this conceptual continuum you can take any idea you have and locate it on that continuum. A specific idea can be dynamic and thus interactive with other ideas and new facts and thus the idea can change and grow to use the metaphor of organic life. Or an idea can become static and eventually progress along the continuum till it becomes dogma. As static dogma the idea metaphorically becomes an nonliving object. Such an idea loses it ability to change or grow. It is a fixed unchangeable object. It becomes an A-logic oppositional assumption which means there becomes only one choice in dealing with dogma. You either accept that dogmatic idea as 100% valid and thus a member of the True Believers of that dogmatic idea or you do not accept that dogmatic idea as 100% valid and become the enemy of those True Believers. That is the nature of dogma. It is the defining seed of the True Believer. True Believers live in the A-Logic world of �Us� vs. �Them�. True Believers live in a world shaped by the metaphorical model of warfare.
Withregards to the nature of subatomic elements such as the photon and the electron this dogmatic contradiction created by the oppositional pair model of A-Logic was dealt with directly by Niels Bohr. His solution ushered in a more sophisticated Non-Newtonian physics with his theory of complementarity. His theory of complementarity says that these particles can have wave and particle qualities which can be demonstrated depending on the tool/ instrument/ experiment created to examine the phenomena. And that these attributes are not by definition in opposition to each other. These attributes complement each other and offer a fuller and more complete understanding of the phenomenon.
We have come full circle, but perhaps you still do not feel that this is so monumental a contradiction. Perhaps to you this is not so revolutionary? Was there really such a monumental contradiction going on here? Why can�t an object exhibit a multitude of qualities at the same time, why does one have to be considered to contradict another? You and I live in a world which has been shaped by the results of and recognition of Bohr�s theory of Complementarity. We live not in the early 1900�s but sometime after this and our world has already been transformed by the ideas that came after and as a result of Bohr�s theory. Our sunglasses were made by this post-complementary model/idea. To Bohr, before he realized and formulated his realization into the theory of complementariness, for he and his contemporaries there was seemingly no explanation for the contradiction.
In addition to Bohr�s theory of complementarity there was and is another model to resolve the problem of opposition. Consider this: in our everyday life we use five tools to examine the world around us and we get as many a five different results from those tools all referring to our examination of an object at the same time. How is this possible? The five tools I am referring to our bodies physical senses of eyes = sight, ears = hearing, skin = touch, nose = smell and tongue = taste. With those five instruments we can conduct a variety of experimental observations with an object, say an apple. We can smell, taste, touch and see the object. To discover that the apple is green, tart, hard, smooth, sweet smelling and sweet tasting is not surprising. Nor is any of this contradictory. That is the nature of our bodily senses interacting with any object. Our bodies can interact simultaneously with an object and yield a variety of different kinds of sensory data and experiences. Each of the sensory collects data independently and simultaneously; and this data is used collectively to give us a holistic awareness and holistic knowledge of any given object. None of the sensory data is in opposition to each other. None of the data is considered as exclusive. All the data is considered inclusively.
Using the metaphor of our bodily senses as a model, what is going on in the slit experiment is not so different from what our bodies do all the time. Each detector is gathering information independently and simultaneously and the results is a multitude of sensory information. The fact that an apple is green and tart is not odd, nor is greenness and tartness in opposition to each other. Using this analogy of the bodies multiple senses the observed fact that a photon, or seemingly any sub-atomic particle, can be detected as having wave-like properties and particle-like properties is not necessarily odd. The multiple attributes are inclusive and are not in opposition. The multiple attributes complement each other, as in Bohr�s theory of complementarity.
If we think of the wave detector as our nose and the particle detector as our tongue, for instance, we are always getting two different kinds of sensory information about things we eat. It is not the fact that the sensory information is of two different types that is the problem it is the pre-supposition concerning that information. That pre-supposition comes from our old friend Aristotle and Descartes. Conceptual division is not the same as actual division. Conceptual division is not inevitably opposition or contradiction. Opposition and contradiction are possible assumptions which may or may not be valid.
Descartes further the divide that Aristotle began. Descartes pronounced, based on Aristotelian theoretical modeling, a complete separation and a complete incongruence between our mind from our bodies. This led him and the Western scientist following in his conceptual footsteps to rely more on conceptual mental tools and to ignore their bodies natural tools and therefore fail to use their bodies as metaphors for model building. Descartes believed that the bodies sense were the source of distortion and illusion, hence not to be trusted as reliable. Descartes and all the followers of Descartes, being the scientific community who inherited his worldview, cut themselves off from their bodies and retreated into their heads, their minds. This is so important I am repeating myself, in splitting the mind and body, and concluding that the mind is the source of fundamental reliability, �I think therefore I am�, Descartes fostered a reliance on the metaphors and tools of the mind. Which fostered an ignoring and down playing of the metaphors and tools which could be derived from the body.
We know, because our bodies senses tell us so, that a thing can have more than one identity, more than one property or quality at any one time. A thing can be smelt, touched, tasted, seen, and heard. It is the context of which tool, which sense we are using to interact with and observe the world around us. Using this metaphor of multiple contexts derived from multiple tools to analyze a thing we can discover that, I am a husband, a writer, a Jew, a Taoist, a skeptic, a believer, a Democrat, a male, a Caucasian, a citizen of California, a citizen of the United States, a human being, etc., all depending on the differing tool I use to consider myself by. The multiple definitions need not be opposite or contradictory. They could be and they are in fact complementary, a way to define a thing in more completeness, more holistically, more in touch with the model of our whole body and not just models of the mind.
A-logic, one of the foremost tools of the mind, assumes and defines all attributes exclusively in terms of opposition and contradiction. A-logic�s assumptions fail to allow for non-opposition and non-contradiction as a possibility. A system of logic can be devised that allows for attributes to be non-contradictory and non-oppositional and such a system would be, according to the rules of A-logic, a non-A-logic system, or to use another term, a Null A-logic system. That is the system that Alfred Korzybski set out to explain and define in his 1933 book Science and Sanity.
To reveal the underpinnings of A-logic and its assumptions that underlie our conceptual Western Civilization worldview, I will examine in more depth Descartes famous Meditations and the resultant origin of the Mind-Body Problem. Rene Descartes is associated with the origins of the idea that the Mind and the Body are two radically different things. That the Mind and the Body are and must be oppositional pairs.
�His next task is to reconstruct our knowledge piece by piece, such that at no stage is the possibility of doubt allowed to creep back in. In this manner, Descartes proves that he himself must have the basic characteristic of thinking, and that this thinking thing (mind) is quite distinct from his body; the existence of a God; the existence and nature of the external world; and so on. What is important in this for Descartes is, first, that he is showing that knowledge is genuinely possible (and thus that skeptic must be mistaken), and, second, that, more particularly, a mathematically-based scientific knowledge of the material world is possible.
Descartes' work was influential, although his studies in physics and the other natural sciences much less so than his mathematical and philosophical work. Throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries, Descartes' philosophical ghost was always present: Locke, Hume, Leibniz and even Kant felt compelled to philosophical engage (often negatively, of course) with this philosophical giant. For these reasons, Descartes is often called the 'father' of modern philosophy. �
Descartes sets off on a voyage to discover facts that are utterly without doubt and to find a foundation of absolute certainty. He begins by recognizing that he can be deceived by his senses. �All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes misled us; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.� Already we can see A-logic at work. Descartes is assuming that he can have 100% certainty and that prudence and wisdom can only be built upon a foundation of 100% certainty. A-logic presupposes absolute all or nothing relationships and will can not explicitly recognize that anything less than 100% is valid or useful. Thus, because of the underlying assumptions of A-logic Descartes is forced to conclude that if there was one instance of being misled by his senses then all sense data can not be trusted. Descartes is forced by A-logic into an all or nothing result. This is the beginning of his problem and why his analysis does in fact result in a distorted understanding of the nature of humanly conceived reality.
Descartes notes that his own body and all physical objects have a general nature and with A-logic he believes that the list he makes of significant general properties of these objects is an exhaustive list, he assumes he has left nothing out. He is assuming he is infallible. �To this class of objects seem to belong corporeal nature in general and its extension; the figure of extended things, their quantity or magnitude, and their number, as also the place in, and the time during, which they exist, and other things of the same sort.� �By body I understand all that can be terminated by a certain figure; that can be comprised in a certain place, and so fill a certain space as therefrom to exclude every other body; that can be perceived either by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell; that can be moved in different ways, not indeed of itself, but by something foreign to it by which it is touched [from which it receives the impression]; for the power of self-motion, as likewise that of perceiving and thinking, I held as by no means pertaining to the nature of the body;� His body and all physical things have extension and are able to be recognized through the senses. They can be divided up into segments, they exists in some divisible point in space and in time, that having extension means they can be measured, their quantity or magnitude can be discerned. This is the important fact that all objects of a physical sort has the ability to be measured as a point in space and measured as a point in time.
Descartes then sets out to list the properties of the soul, of the Mind. He first says that walking and nutrition are perhaps such attributes but concludes that without nutrition the body will not function the sense of self does not cease, and that it is the body that does the act of movement such as walking. Then he considers �Perception�but perception too is impossible without the body.� Lastly he lists thinking. �Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain,� Descartes notes that the significant nature of the self is the mind and he identifies himself as a thinking thing. That a thinking thing, a mind, a soul, a self, is that which has the ability to be aware of itself, to reason, to dream, and to will acts. Descartes concludes, �But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives.�
�And although we suppose that God united a body to a soul so closely that it was impossible to form a more intimate union, and thus made a composite whole, the two substances would remain really distinct, notwithstanding this union'.
Descartes further notes that: �I here remark, in the first place, that there is a vast difference between mind and body, in respect that body, from its nature, is always divisible, and that mind is entirely indivisible. For in truth, when I consider the mind, that is, when I consider myself in so far only as I am a thinking thing, I can distinguish in myself no parts, but I very clearly discern that I am somewhat absolutely one and entire;�This would be sufficient to teach me that the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body...�
For Descartes the nature of physical things is there extension and divisibility. The Mind, being so defined by Descartes as having no extension, is therefore not a thing that he can conceive of that can be measured or apprehended by the senses and is also a thing that he can not conceive of as being divisible. Therefore he concludes that the mind must be something absolutely different than physical things such as his own body. Being absolutely different he further assumes and concludes that they can not directly affect each other. This assumption is neither inevitable nor necessary. But it is an added assumption that Descartes makes.
What is the Mind? Rene Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637) posited that the body was matter in motion and the source of emotions, desires, instincts, and physiological process. The Mind, according to Descartes desire to fulfill the needs of A-Logic, must be a non-material intellectual faculty whose nature was totally different than anything else in the material universe. The mind must be indivisible, since matter he knows is divisible. The mind must be the opposite of matter, not by means of observation first and then coming to results, but because the tool Descartes is using, A-Logic, demands the creation of another thing, the other thing, the Non-A opposite in the A-Logic duality. Since he is certain matter (A in his duality) is divisible, then by the requirements of A-Logic rules there must be an oppositional duality of A with mind as the non-A. The mind being the non-A it must be indivisible.
Therefore for Descartes, the mind and the body have been forced by the rules of A-Logic to become two unique and oppositional substances that somehow interact with each other. Since then many have others have entered the fray and proposed all sorts of ways to describe and overcome the difference between the mind and the body. I believe using Null-A Logic that the mind and the body are two sides of the same thing. I, and Ken Wilber, consider the body as the external aspect of the holon (a term which I will define shortly) and the mind as the internal aspect of the holon. The Body and the Mind are a single holon. Mind/Body model metaphorically refers to Albert Einstein�s conception of space/time. Einstein made us realize that it is not space and/or time, two separate things, but rather there is a uniform interrelated entity properly referred to as space/time. One does not exist without the other. They are aspects of each other. I am analogizing that this is the same with the Body and the Mind. They are best written Body/Mind, one unity which can be intellectually divided. But is in actuality, in its true nature, it is a holonic object that is not actually divided.
Descartes fails to and does not conceive that the mind could be divided into a portion of conscious thinking and unconscious thinking. Descartes needs to make a oppositional pair by the unconscious demands of the beliefs of A-Logic. Descartes is forced by the beliefs of A-Logic and fails to imagine another set of choices. Descartes fails to imagine that the mind could be divided into word thinking and imagine thinking. That the mind could be divided up into sensory processing and conceptual idea processing. Or any number of other possible ways to imagine the mind as both a whole and a part. The Mind, like all things, is a Holon, as Arthur Koestler defines it, and thus by the nature of all things it is not just the whole unit that Descartes fixes upon but a thing made up of all most endless divisions of partness further divided up into interrelated wholes which are parts which are wholes and so on.
Descartes assumes that he can and has list all the significant properties of the physical things and of the mind. Descartes does not doubt his own ability to reason and list all significant properties. These two factors I believe are a direct result of his dependence on A-logic and the unstated assumptions upon which it is based. Out of this bias Descartes creates a vast divide between the body and the mind.
