Re: Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 15
Peter,
Thank you. I feel that these discussions are wandering away from the original purpose of your column, which (I think) has been to examine kotodama and its relevance to aikido (personally, I have been practicing aikido now for 40 yrs and have never felt a burning need to study kotodama in order to understand it better--but that is just my take), and I can almost audibly hear your other readers yawning over this dialogue! We may need to agree to disagree until we can talk about this in person. And who knows whether or not we will agree then!
I have a brother who lives in the U.K. and who is extremely proficient at and has coached me on doing The Times crossword puzzles. They are entertaining and can very easily devour a Sunday afternoon. I don't look for hidden significance in them though, as that is hardly their purpose (I think we can at least agree on that!). But the fact that anagrammatic meaning can be found so pervasively within English spellings of words is at least worthy of note.
I also firmly believe in the validity of the scientific method. But I also believe that the scientific method does not justify scientific reductionism, which (as I said in the book) is similar to religious fundamentalism in more ways than one.
Odano's thought experiments and speculations to do with the nature of energy are scientific in the best sense of the word. A number of physicists at the cutting edge are now talking about hyper-dimensionality and non-locality; I have not talked with them, but I have a sense that they would be open to many of Odano's arguments.
Furthermore, honest science readily admits that there are many elements of the human experience that science cannot touch. Art is one of them. Culture is another. So is meaning. So is spirit.
For example, modern science is beginning to get a pretty good handle on how the brain functions in a mechanical sense. It can measure "brain waves" and it can tell which parts of the brain are active during different thought processes. That said, it cannot see into the mind (it cannot see thoughts and meanings for example). Contemplative practices, on the other hand, can. Science does not disprove the validity of contemplation and contemplation does not disprove the validity of science; both are valid, but within different domains of understanding.
At the same time that these domains are different, however, they are also not unrelated. A thought does exhibit a particular brainwave, for example. A word does have a particular meaning. Again I would have to disagree with the notion that the sounds attributed by the Chinese to their ideographs are arbitrary: The construction of language is an extremely complex process, extending over generations, and requiring agreement on the part of the members of the particular cultural group that it represents. Not arbitrary in any sense of the word.
Why exclude facetiousness? Personal preference. Also simple cause and effect: Facetious in, facetious out. I prefer not to waste my time.
Let's agree to disagree!
Best,
Steve
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