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Old 07-04-2012, 12:30 PM   #60
Dave de Vos
 
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Dojo: Shoryukai, Breda (aikikai) & Aiki-Budocentrum Breda (yoseikan)
Location: Baarle-Nassau
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 348
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Re: Ki to the Highway

Quote:
Matthew Story wrote: View Post
A couple of you have asserted that there are things in aikido that cannot be explained by physics, or at least by physics as we currently understand it. Can anyone point to a specific instance of this? That, I think, would hit the proverbial nail on the head and make this thread into a single coherent conversation.
Some things cannot be explained in detail by physics. That means that the phenomenon is just too complicated to explain in detail from first principles (in such detail that you would be able to write a computer program that calculates a simulation of the process). This does not mean that the phenomenon is supernatural.
Turbulence is an example from physics itself. Richard Feynman called it "the most important unsolved problem of classical physics". It's still unsolved.
Even though we can't explain it fully, the concept is not useless. We can still use it when describing the flow of gasses and fluids on a more abstract level, like in propellor design or meteorology.

The workings of a living body are also far from being fully understood. It's much less understood than the workings of a star for example. Not because supernatural things are happening, at least I don't think so. It's just that the living body has not yet been researched as exhaustively as astrophysics, because a living body is far more complex than a star.
If it hasn't been researched exhaustively, we don't even know what we don't know.

Last edited by Dave de Vos : 07-04-2012 at 12:44 PM.
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