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Old 01-07-2013, 05:26 AM   #32
Alex Megann
Dojo: Southampton Aikikai
Location: Southampton
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Morihei Ueshiba's Use of the Term "Aiki"

Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote: View Post
Again - because I'm sure this will be misinterpreted by someone - that light is both wave and particle in nature does not mean that it is" half wave" and "half particle." Nor is it "both." It is, simultaneously, 100% each.
Ellis Amdur
Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote: View Post
I agree with Ellis. I believe that Morihei Ueshiba was using a certain kind of what has been called 'cultural logic' and I also believe that this is very hard for people to grasp, especially those who have been brought up to think in another kind of cultural logic.
I think Ellis's analogy is actually pretty profound.

The mathematics of quantum theory is precise and extremely accurate, and mostly unambiguous: in particular, it has little to say about whether a photon is a wave or a particle. It is only those of us in the "real" world who insist on trying to describe tiny particles using languages that have evolved in the human-sized universe, and so get flummoxed when an entity like a photon appears to sit simultaneously in what seem to us incompatible categories.

I don't speak Japanese, but I know enough to understand that exact translation between languages, especially of the esoteric sayings of Morihei Ueshiba, is often impossible, since the meanings of words tend to be highly dependent on the cultural context. Peter's differences in "cultural logic" between Ueshiba's world and ours are a little like the artificial paradoxes that occur when we try to describe quantum behaviour using English (or even Japanese or Urdu).

Alex
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