A Model, a Map, and a Metaphor Walk into a Bar

Despite yesterday's thankless effort, I'm still several chapters ahead of you all, when the original plan was to keep the chapter-to-post ratio at 1:1. 

Fortunately, I don't think these chapters will require nearly as much yada yada on my part, since the first involves a conventional debunking of scientism, the next a critique of reductionistic biology, and the third an expose of the problems of institutional science, for example, the crisis of replication and the scam of peer review; important subjects, no doubt, but not exactly falling under the purview of my vast cosmic responsibilities. I'm happy to delegate such busywork to others.

It's one thing to critique scientific materialism, another thing entirely to see directly the reality it obscures. Any curious and intellectually honest person can do the former, but the latter involves some spiritual qualifications. 

Perhaps Schuon's best book on the subject is Logic & Transcendence, in which he pretty much destroys any and all isms once and for all. It's one of those few books I read at least once a year, not so much to refresh my memory as to test my eyesight. 

Again, Schuon sees and describes the principial world that is eclipsed by such things as bonehead scientism. Nevertheless, the latter is relentless and pervasive, so it helps to read something that not only razes it to the ground but provides a panoramic view of what lies behind it -- like a beautiful forest behind an ugly urban skyline.

However, in a certain way, I suppose we could say that this involves a transition from left to right hemisphere, so long as we don't reduce it to that; the RH may be necessary but could never be a sufficient condition for what is seen and known via the intellect, otherwise we are in the absurd position of reducing God -- or truth, or beauty, virtue, transcendence, unity, et al -- to a neurological location in the head. 

As I've mentioned before, we have an LH and RH because reality is the way it is, not vice versa.

Analogously we have two eyes because they reveal a third dimension that cannot be appreciated by one eye alone. Likewise, we have two ears so as to perceive the 3D stereo image revealed by a bitchin' sound system. If one speaker is broken you'll still hear the music, but its dimensional presence -- its depth -- will collapse. 

True, but now I'm remembering how exciting the Beatles' new single sounded out of a tinny mono speaker from the AM radio in our Ford Country Squire station wagon in 1966. Does this tell us anything important about reality? Come to think of it, I also remember this demonstration album my father had, showing the magic of stereo -- for example, a jet airplane taking off from left to right.

But that 3D image was far less magical than the Beatles in 2D. In fact, it wasn't magical at all, just a kind of parlor trick. And now I'm wondering how much of the technology that surrounds us is just a kind of distracting substitute magic. What does it matter if we have 13.2 Dolby Atmos home theater if the movies are all crap?

In chapter 11, Science's Claims on Truth, McGilchrist alludes to the idea that knowledge and understanding are by no means synonymous, and I suppose all the LH knowledge in the world won't add up to an RH understanding of things, no? You can have two, or five, or twelve speakers, but mono will still be mono. 

We're getting far afield, and I don't know if there's a fruitful analogy buried in here, but there's a relatively new technology called "digital extraction" that can take a mono recording that never existed in stereo, and create a multichannel stereo mix. I guess it reminds me of what Schuon does with those old mono religions -- dusts them off and extracts all the metaphysical information buried in them. 

Now, speaking of metaphor, 

All understanding depends on metaphor. What we mean when we say we understand something is that we see it is like something else of which we are already prepared to say "I understand that"..... It's metaphors all the way down.

For example, science works with models, and what is a model but an "extended metaphor"? Gosh, back in grad school I remember learning about all sorts of different models of the mind. But how can you even model something that is wholly immaterial, nonlocal, immeasurable, transcendent, etc.? 

The only accurate model would be the thing itself, but we don't even have any idea what the thing -- consciousness -- is. I eventually came to believe that bestwecando is observe the ever-evolving space between O and (¶), or pay attention to that luminous movement from the ineffable to the ineffable.

Here's a good crack: "The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance." 

Which is very Gödelian when you think about it, because it's like saying the price of completeness is eternal inconsistence, the price of consistence is eternal incompleteness, or the price of any manmade model is transcendence of the model. 

The price of any knowledge of any kind is that it is not Absolute, only a reflection of the Absolute (otherwise it wouldn't be knowledge). 

I'll end this wooly post with a comment at the end of the chapter:

One gets the suspicion that 18 or so years of formal schooling in the sciences may ablate the right hemisphere.