Zukav - Wu Li Masters

[Otto]

Well, maybe full of Pointmans and von Brauns, but I wouldn't lump
"Wernher" and Zukav together, no, not really.

Yes, Zukav seems to be antithetical to real science, but this is only
the effect of the fact that in the seventies we discovered that there
is neither a religious nor a scientific "truth" that stands forever.
There are some lessons in quantums physics that make a layman scratch
his head, but even a layman can easily discover the nonsense in the
von Braun opening-quote of "Gravity's Rainbow".

What puts a mythical experience and quantum physics "together" (from
Zukavs point of view) is that both categories share some "qualities",
for example the "Ineffability", "the unhappiest quality of the
religious experience", as John Barth ("The Friday Book, p. 50) puts it
referring to the "mysticism"-chapter of William James' "The Varieties
of Religious Experience"* - the fact that some things cannot be
described adequately in common language.

* William James:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WJAMES/ch16_17.html

The understanding that beneath our rock-hard daily world there's a
floating world of sub-atomic particles that constitutes our "normal"
world has consequences for our thinking about the "facts" of the
world. To me what Zukav delivers is "grist for the mill" (to borrow a
title from Alan Watts) - back in 1985 I'd underlined this part late in
the book:

"'Realität' ist, was wir als wahr annehmen. Was wir als wahr annehmen,
ist, was wir glauben. Was wir glauben, basiert auf unserer
Wahrnehmung. Was wir wahrnehmen, hängt davon ab, was wir suchen. was
wir suchen, hängt davon ab, was wir denken. Was wir denken, hängt
davon ab, was wir wahrnehmen. Was wir wahrnehmen, bestimmt, was wir
glauben. Was wir glauben, bestimmt, was wir für wahr halten. Was wir
für wahr halten, ist unsere Realität."
(p. 351 of the German text)

I translate freely:

"Reality" is what we accept as true. What we accept as true is what we
believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we
perceive depends on what we are looking for. What we are looking for
depends on what we are thinking. What we think depends on what we
perceive. What we are perceiving determines what we believe. What we
believe determines what we accept as true. What we accept as true is
our reality."

Nice & circular, isn't it?

Didn't we learn from quantum physics, from the "wave vs
particle"-discussion, that "what we perceive depends on what we are
looking for"? What I like about Zukav's book is that it puts a lot of
information about quantums physics together in a very readable "form"
which makes it a valuable text as secondary literature to Pynchon,
Gaddis and others.

It's been a long way from the "Maxwell Demon" of "Lot 49" to the
Riemann-landscape of "Against the Day", but Zukav's book was always
part of my "references reserve book list".


2009/12/24 Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>:
> OK, no book that sparks a reader's interest (leading to better books) is
> entirely worthless. But Zukav's predisposition -- his conviction that modern
> physics *will* confirm what he wanted to believe before he started,
> validating Ancient Oriental Insight -- is antithetical to real science.
>
> As, of course, is the von Braun epigraph to GR, with its application of
> conservation principles to consciousness. A little more biology in place of
> rocket engineering might have clued him in that
> life proceeds by throwing all kinds of stuff away. The White Visitation and
> T.W.I.T. are full of Zukavs and Capras.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Otto [mailto:ottosell at googlemail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 11:16 AM
>
> Well, he explains at least one or two things that may lead you to
> further exploration.
>
> 2009/12/24 Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>:
>> Zukav may or may not be to one's taste as a pundit of spirituality.
>>
>> As an explicator of modern physics, he's twice the disaster Fritjof Capra
>> is, and that's going some.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroBJsi9y6g
>>
>>
>
>