Evidence for God

Well, I think the OP has their answer now...

aruna said:

I don't deny the "you just wouldn't understand" argument. In this case, it's true, but it seems you take this as insulting? Why? What is wrong with not understanding something, if you have not spent time studying it? I freely admit that I know little about physics beyond what I learned in high school, and if, in discussing physics, a physicist told me "you just don't understand" I would not feel insulted. It would probably be the truth. Equality in any subject is not a given. Why the pretence? Why the offence?

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Because you're assuming I've read little or nothing in "this area" you're discussing.

If you want to understand a subject, you must spend some time, a lot of time, studying it. How much time have you given to understanding Advaita? How many books on the subject have you read? How many teachers of it can you name, right off the bat?
As far as connecting spiritual or mystical things to quantum mechanics, the first popular book was "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav. I tried to read it and only managed to page through it. I did manage to read Martin Gardner's review of the book in his "Science: Good, Bad, Bogus."

I read a Paul Davies book many years ago, one of apparently several he wrote tying scientific findings to God (Davies also won the Templeton Prize), but I didn't agree with much of it, nor did I get anything out of it. This was even during a time in my life where I was "open to spiritual things."

aruna said:

How many hours have you spent in advaitic meditation? Your misconceptions of what it entails (equating it with telekinese, for example) lead me to believe that your answers to all these questions is "not much", or even, "nothing".

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You dismiss telekinesis and other psychic powers, but I (or perhaps more appropriately, someone who sees these things as part of reality) may ask how much you've read in that area, and how much you've tried to practice those things.

aruna said:

Here, as in every other area of life, it's "show me your credentials". Guesswork and preconceptions are not enough. If I made a totally stupid assumption on physics (or American politics, or sport, or any area in which I have no or little experience) I would expect to be called on it; to be told "you just don't understand". Why not here? Why do you find it mean-spirited or belittling?*

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Saying "you just don't understand" implies a deep "understanding" that someone else cannot have without some "conversion," some change, not just in knowledge, but belief.

"Totally stupid assumptions" are usually quite easy to clear up and explain with a paragraph or so.

You wrote of this thing as "a place where science and spirituality meet" - that's something I did read extensively on during my years in AA, as I felt if God were responsible for my "so-ber-i-e-ty" (as it is often pronounced in "The Program"), and God were all powerful and all these other things, then what else could God do? The harder I looked, the less I found of God or anything truly spiritual, and the more I found of belief. God, spirituality, metaphysics, whatever, these all exist in the minds of those who believe in them, and nowhere else that I've seen.

aruna said:

Do you feel that people who have given decades of their life on spiritual study/meditation, and have perhaps made some progress, might not know "a little" more than you on the subject? Do they have nothing of importance to say? Are their conclusions not worthy of respect? Do 5000 years of collective wisdom mean nothing?

I kind of feel that the answer to all those questions is "NO".

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You're correct, the answer is no. I feel the same about astrology, palm reading, and many other things that people have been studying for thousands of years, and I haven't read a lot about those things. I was "curious" for a few years and read interesting things on many sides, but again found nothing outside of people "wanting to believe" that justified the belief.

One mundane (as in non-spiritual) belief that turned out false is "Facilitated Communication" - my first knowledge of it came through a PBS Frontline episode on it. FC supposedly allows uncommunicative victims of autism and Down's syndrome to communicate through a "facilitator" who would take the person's arm and "help" point to letters on a letterboard, thus spelling out words and sentences. Parents were of course very happy to see their children being able to say anything in any way, but in every test done it was clear that the facilitator was the only one communicating.

aruna said:

In fact, I suspect that your basic underlying attitude, and initial, spontaneous response, to all I've said here is an unequivocal "Bullshit". How scientific is that?

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That's an excellent question. Am I unscientific because I don't investigate every single claim I read on a message board? Do I have contempt prior to investigation?

The basic difference between me and you isn't the knowledge you, or whoever authors you read, have of these things, it's that you and they have BELIEF that these things are true, that there's some spiritual or mystical aspect of or connection to quantum mechanics. I do not believe this, and no amount of studying/reading about it is going to convince me.

Okay, I'll hedge. If I "study" this enough I may have "experiences" as you have had from your meditation, and if I'm awash in this enough I'll believe as you believe. But I already had a few years believing in the existence of spiritual/nonphysical things, and I'm not interested in going back.

aruna said:

It doesn't bother me; it's to be expected and I'm used to it, and I have no intention of arguing my case -- argument leads nowhere. But that "bullshit" response says more about you than about the subject itself!

* or maybe you were saying I might interpret your accusation ("you just wouldn't understand") as mean-spirited or belittling? No, I don't! It's perfectly true!

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It's quite simple. I don't "understand" because I don't believe.

As one famous guru asked in the 1970's, "What is your conceptual continuity?"

Since the amount of self-interested fantasy that is or could be claimed far exceeds the amount of truth in the world (and is a massive waste of time to boot), many reasonable people apply a staged approach before they'll investigate a claim. They'll ask questions like:

Is the claimant credible? Reliable? Scrupulous? Competent? Well-qualified? Alternatively, is the claimant self-interested?

Are the claims repeatable on demand? Are they sufficiently unusual? Are they independently confirmed by well-qualified observers? Has there been some effort to rigorously test and dismiss ordinary explanations?

Somewhere after that comes testing, and somewhere after testing comes investigation as to how and why. I don't consider that protocol bias but pragmatism. Frauds and ratbags are plentiful, as you can tell by looking at the James Randi site . People who genuinely have something to demonstrate tend to know it and self-select.

Ben Bradley, can you understand without believing?

Can you expand on that? Your question seems too short.

To partially answer it, I can understand that OTHERS believe.

Another partial answer for what you might possibly be asking: I understand things I no longer believe, but of course my understanding was different when I believed.

I find it very interesting that you put quote marks around the word experience when talking about the possible results of meditation.

There's been research on the topic, at any rate.

So I'd propose that such experiences are more than valid, if far from magical.

Sometimes I can understand things I don't necessarily believe. It depends.

When things are dark and times are tough and things are out-of-your control, it's easy to want to believe that there's something greater than you that will help you see through.

On the other hand, what I've never understood about the "no atheists in a foxhole" argument — well, it always seems to me foxholes would make an atheist out anyone. Looking at all the carnage, destruction, and evil in the world, it makes a lot of sense to me that one would completely reject God and believe there is no higher being, or else, he's a cruel motherfucker.

And on yet another hand, I can see believe in a God just because it makes more sense to you, personally, than there not being a God, and religion or faith is comforting to you.

Nonetheless, in the case of some benbradley's thoughts on AA, I cannot understand why anyone would willingly turn their will over to someone else, "higher" or not. I'm not God's pawn, and I'll solve my problems on my own.

I can understand lots of reasons for believing in God. But there are also lots of reasons I absolutely cannot understand.

I think you touched an interesting point, AMC: the role of sympathy in evidence.

I think that sympathy lowers the bar on many kinds of evidence. If we have sympathy for the accused, we'll accept a much lower degree of evidence for remorse, say. If we like someone personally, we'll tend to accept much more improbable claims from them because we like them. Or if someone suffers the same as we have, we'll tend to credit them more than if they haven't.

I feel that I can understand something when I can reliably predict it. So if someone is telling me a story, I feel that I understand the story when I can guess what will happen, or at least explain why that happened and not something else. So in that respect, I can 'understand' the stories about a YHWH or Jonathan Livingstone Seagull or whatever...

But understanding isn't sympathy. I feel that I can understand why people want to transcend physical existence (through heaven, Nirvana or whatever else); I just have no sympathy for it. Or to put it better: I only have sympathy for it when I think a person is suffering extreme anguish and despair, doesn't want to die but doesn't know how to live.

When I think they have a good life or could have a good life, I have no sympathy for what I see as a sort of narcissistic self-interest: to be so important to the enormity that is reality that they're worth preserving in their own right. It's hard for me to see why any of us is that important; reality seems to work just fine without us.

I'll believe something based on physical evidence, but lacking sympathy for most circumstances I tend not to believe happy little stories just for their own sake.

But this is very important if we are trying to establish objective truth, rather than gain collusion for our beliefs: we don't want to present our evidence to a sympathetic listener. We want an unsympathetic listener who nevertheless understands. So if we demand a sympathetic listener to evaluate our evidence then we're really acknowledging that our evidence may be unable to stand up outside our own bias. In other words, on some level, we may think we're kidding ourselves.

I suggest that magick and mysticism are more art than science, and as such are all but impossible to reproduce repeatedly under laboratory scrutiny. I've seen enough things and had enough experiences to know that there is enough evidence for my satisfaction.

If this were a court room, I'd march enough witnesses with anecdotal testimony to convince any jury at least enough to doubt the claim that there is no mystical level to the universe. Most likely that jury would issue a verdict of convinced. However, in science, the slightest inconsistancies in a theory invalidate it. And, within the realm of science that is as it should be. Not everything can be viewed scientifically. Like art.

But, I find far too much condensention from those who rely only on science for their world view in this thread, when science itself has a long way to go to figure the universe out.

I do not place limits on the abilities of the human mind and I can see a much bigger picture of the universe than those of you with the blinders of science on can.

Those of you who hold in contempt the possibilities of magick and mysticism, the favour is returned.

Diana Hignutt said:

I suggest that magick and mysticism are more art than science, and as such are all but impossible to reproduce repeatedly under laboratory scrutiny. I've seen enough things and had enough experiences to know that there is enough evidence for my satisfaction.

If this were a court room, I'd march enough witnesses with anecdotal testimony to convince any jury at least enough to doubt the claim that there is no mystical level to the universe. Most likely that jury would issue a verdict of convinced. However, in science, the slightest inconsistancies in a theory invalidate it. And, within the realm of science that is as it should be. Not everything can be viewed scientifically. Like art.

But, I find far too much condensention from those who rely only on science for their world view in this thread, when science itself has a long way to go to figure the universe out.

I do not place limits on the abilities of the human mind and I can see a much bigger picture of the universe than those of you with the blinders of science on can.

Those of you who hold in contempt the possibilities of magick and mysticism, the favour is returned.

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I respectably submit that you are being unfair to science. Slight inconsistencies certainly do not invalidate a theory. For example, Newton's theory of mechanics is incorrect but still useful. Einstein's theory of mechanics reduces to Newton's theory when the velocities involved are tiny compared to the speed of light.

There are many validations of mystical phenomena which would be acceptable to science. You really have to look at these things case by case. But you don't have to do things consistently, just more often than is predicted by chance. I've often heard mystics claim that science invalidates them when they get just one failure. That's false. Science deals with probabilistic phenomena all the time.

My feeling is that far more people are blinded by the possibility of mysticism and refuse to see the scientific explanations when they exist. After all, mysticism is cool, and even many scientists love fantasy. I would be far more sympathetic to the mystic point of view if even one unequivocal mystic phenomena had been shown to exist under hard laboratory conditions. Just one, Diana. One. Science has saved my life several times. Just say the word "smallpox" and I enter into a sort ecstatic trance. Science rocks.

ChristineR said:

I respectably submit that you are being unfair to science. Slight inconsistencies certainly do not invalidate a theory. For example, Newton's theory of mechanics is incorrect but still useful. Einstein's theory of mechanics reduces to Newton's theory when the velocities involved are tiny compared to the speed of light.

There are many validations of mystical phenomena which would be acceptable to science. You really have to look at these things case by case. But you don't have to do things consistently, just more often than is predicted by chance. I've often heard mystics claim that science invalidates them when they get just one failure. That's false. Science deals with probabilistic phenomena all the time.

My feeling is that far more people are blinded by the possibility of mysticism and refuse to see the scientific explanations when they exist. After all, mysticism is cool, and even many scientists love fantasy. I would be far more sympathetic to the mystic point of view if even one unequivocal mystic phenomena had been shown to exist under hard laboratory conditions. Just one, Diana. One. Science has saved my life several times. Just say the word "smallpox" and I enter into a sort ecstatic trance. Science rocks.

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Fair enough. I love science too. I don't want to come off as a Luddite. I believe that science will one day find the mechanism by which magick works. I have seen magick work with my own eyes, I have experienced Samhadhi, the union of subject and object. But science says my experiences are worthless and anecdotal.

I further maintain, that Mystisicm rocks. Can it be used as a tool to the detriment of humanity? Sure. So can science.

Bartholomew said:

I find it very interesting that you put quote marks around the word experience when talking about the possible results of meditation.

There's been research on the topic, at any rate.

So I'd propose that such experiences are more than valid, if far from magical.

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The reason I put experience in quotes is that some people interpret some experiences as mystical or magical.

Diana Hignutt said:

I suggest that magick and mysticism are more art than science, and as such are all but impossible to reproduce repeatedly under laboratory scrutiny.

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Poets produce poems; painters produce paintings; musicians produce music. All of those can be done under laboratory scrutiny; we know that the artist produces the art. We can observe process and product.

A magickian has a process too, but under clinical conditions what it produces is excuses. If magicians were painters, we'd wonder whether they'd ever painted at all.

If this were a court room, I'd march enough witnesses with anecdotal testimony to convince any jury at least enough to doubt the claim that there is no mystical level to the universe.

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Yes, but people are very suggestible, aren't they? That's why cold reading, for example, works so well. And rain-making is also persuasive -- if we make a fuss and there is rain then we can claim credit; but if there's no rain yet the audience feels sympathy for us, they'll say that it does feel a bit damper than it did this morning.

Popular opinion isn't an arbiter of truth. If it were, then fad diets would work.

I find far too much condensention from those who rely only on science for their world view in this thread, when science itself has a long way to go to figure the universe out.

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We certainly shouldn't be condescending when we deal with the unknown, Di, because we're all in the same boat.

But I'd suggest that human claims of magical power are not unknown. They're a very familiar quantity. We have thousands of years of belief and history that we can examine. And where the practitioner permits it we can examine process and product too.

We notice the same patterns of behaviour, deception and excuse occurring time and again:
And psychologically, I've yet to personally meet someone who believes in magic, where that belief isn't tied closely to their sense of self-importance. If there's one thing magical thinking does produce reliably, it's that people think more of themselves in consequence.

I do not place limits on the abilities of the human mind and I can see a much bigger picture of the universe than those of you with the blinders of science on can.

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And this just in: writers who trust to science for knowledge are unimaginative!

Those of you who hold in contempt the possibilities of magick and mysticism, the favour is returned.

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I hope that nobody here has contempt for people who believe in magic. Because if they do, they'll be holding their own families and friends in contempt.

My own feelings about magical thinking are mixed. I understand why people need to feel self-important and in control. I just have little sympathy for it. I save my sympathy for the circumstances that make people feel that way in the first place.

Where I get all antimagical is where people advise each other, or profit from others' gullibility. In my view of the good and right, advice comes with ethical obligations to be competent and not self-serving, and it's immoral to use trickery to profit from the scared and gullible. That's not contempt though; it's concern.

Ruv Draba said:

Where I get all antimagical is where people advise each other, or profit from others' gullibility. In my view of the good and right, advice comes with ethical obligations to be competent and not self-serving, and it's immoral to use trickery to profit from the scared and gullible. That's not contempt though; it's concern.

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Yes, and it's not mysticism either. I think it should be clear that science has its hand in "magic" as well. Not understanding something is what makes it "magic." I don't see how - in that regard - there's any difference between mysticism and science.

"Why do you (what causes or motivates you to) have compassion for so and so terrorist?"

"How did you split the atom?"

I think both questions have answers. To me, the first can be explained in terms of mysticism (or poetry) but not in terms of science. The second, in terms of science but not in terms of mysticism (or poetry). If a scientist can't explain to me how to split an atom so that I can understand it, splitting the atom is effectively magic to me. So when a small group of scientists tell insurance companies that women don't need pap smear tests every year, insurance companies don't cover pap smear tests every year. They have the science at hand "to prove it".


Science's objectivity is "in theory" and, more importantly, "in its own theory" only. It cannot be shared by everyone, except in theory.



AMC

Yes. I think one can be a mystic and not believe in magic. Since Aruna's already challenged me about sweeping statements on the '3Ms' of magic, mysticism and metaphysics, here are my definitions:

Magic/magick: rituals and philosophies that seek to subject consequence to will without a physical intermediary
Mysticism: pursuit of communion with or understanding of, ultimate reality, essential truth, prime cause or divinity
Metaphysics: investigation into the principles underpinning reality

From the above, there's plenty of mysticism that isn't magical. For instance people who meditate to try and enhance perspective. There's potentially some magic that isn't mystical. For instance, a person who thinks they can do telekinesis without explaining how it works.

In terms of aims, I find it hard to separate mysticism and metaphysics. Traditionally though, mysticism often holds that the universe is alive/conscious, or there's a God behind the curtain. Metaphysics doesn't always hold that. Mysticism wants to apprehend everything, while metaphysics may be happy to go at it piecewise.

Operationally, mysticism and metaphysics may use quite different tools.

Concerning magic, I'm technically skeptical (which means I'll accept proof if it's supplied), but in practice I consider human forays into magic bad for us psychologically and socially. I feel that people who get caught up in magical thinking get stuck in a rut.

Concerning mysticism, I'm literally baffled. I don't know why anyone wants to commune with everything, why they think they can or what they would do differently if they could -- other than doing magic with it.

If we take the magic out of mysticism then I've joked that it looks like poetry to me. I can understand poetry, but I wouldn't use it as more than inspiration. I've also acknowledged in the past that some mystics make very good scientists -- more than that, some of our best scientists have been mystics. But it seems to me that even our best scientists sometimes get terribly confused when mysticism takes hold in their minds. So I often think of mysticism as creativity given too much rein.

I think that metaphysics is a doomed area of pseudoscience that doesn't actually know what it's talking about. I think it endeavours to connect science to mysticism, but modern science relies on empiricism for all but its conjectures, and I can see no way for empiricism to ever get mystical. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics, so the ontological proofs of Goedel and St. Augustine are examples of metaphysics. But to me, those proofs confuse words with objects -- in other words, they're almost exercises in magic.

There we go.

Ruv Draba said:

Traditionally though, mysticism often holds that the universe is alive/conscious, or there's a God behind the curtain. Metaphysics doesn't always hold that. Mysticism wants to apprehend everything, while metaphysics may be happy to go at it piecewise.

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Isn't it alive? Aren't we both conscious? Are we distinct from the universe?

Concerning magic, I'm technically skeptical (which means I'll accept proof if it's supplied).

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I feel that people who get caught up in magical thinking get stuck in a rut.

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Likewise.

Concerning mysticism, I'm literally baffled. I don't know why anyone wants to commune with everything, why they think they can or what they would do differently if they could -- other than doing magic with it.

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Pleasure? Meaning? Cultivate compassion? Peace of mind or heart? Perspective?

If we take the magic out of mysticism then I've joked that it looks like poetry to me. I can understand poetry, but I wouldn't use it as more than inspiration.

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"inspire" -in the spirit. It's the spirit that tells us why we should do a thing. But I agree, it probably doesn't know the best method.


AMC

AMCrenshaw said:

Isn't it alive? Aren't we both conscious? Are we distinct from the universe?

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AMC, I have all kinds of problems with these questions because I think they depend on what you mean; and what you mean may depend on what you would do with the answers if you had them.

For example, when we think of other humans as being conscious it's partly because they can talk to us about stuff we care about. And the more they do that, the more persuaded we are of their consciousness (consider that historically, some humans were considered talking beasts, and you'll see what I mean).

I'm happy to extend such a behavioural validation of consciousness to apes say -- they're clearly self-aware in ways we can recognise (because they can remove lipstick from their faces using a mirror); they're articulate in ways we recognise (because they can use sign-language to communicate concepts and understand our own). I'm happy to speculate about the consciousness of other animals -- elephants etc... though the less human-like they become the more fuzz I have to introduce into my functional definition to make it fit.

Take it to something like ants and trees, and I no longer know what consciousness means. I only understand something when I can predict and explain it, and I've never seen a definition of consciousness for ants or trees that jibes with any rational sense of what consciousness could mean. I understand that poetry can create an emotional meaning for this, but I don't use poetry in my decision-making, and while poetry occasionally yields emotional insights, I don't think it's capable of yielding accountable, decision-making truths.

Now extend the question to something big and complex, like the biosphere, or all the visible stars, or something even more numinous like the whole universe -- including those parts that are guessed to exist but which have no causal interaction with us. I no longer even know what the parts are like, much less how they behave or what anthropomorphic qualities might be attributed to them. (How does a universal consciousness work when its parts are so causally disconnected that they can't talk to themselves?) It's all poetry, all fantasy -- and whatever the aesthetics of saying it's this way or that way, none of it will change a jot how I might behave.

So if the questions are about feeling nice and connected and part of something bigger, then my answer is: I don't care. I say to my more poetically-minded friends: it's your life to appreciate as you see fit; please make up whatever stories feel best to you. But if the questions are about telling each other how to live then I do care, and I'll insist on grounding the questions in meanings that are based on common experience. Else, my concern is that we're creating yet more superstition to encumber us.

Pleasure? Meaning? Cultivate compassion? Peace of mind or heart? Perspective?

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Some of these relate to 'aesthetics', which to me is subjective and personal. Others may relate to idealism, narcissism and self-importance which bother the heck out of me (if meditation can't reveal the value of Planck's constant, what makes us think it can reveal genuine truths of the Universe?) But compassion I see as a functional matter, and I don't believe that one needs some Uber Theory of Connectedness to care about human or animal suffering. In fact, the more dogma we place between what we see and what we feel, the less I think we really see and the more I think we just feed our prejudices. Compassion benefits from understanding, empathy and generosity; I've never seen it benefit from dogma at all.

"inspire" -in the spirit. It's the spirit that tells us why we should do a thing. But I agree, it probably doesn't know the best method.

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Here I think we veer off on tangents.

'Inspire' for me means creative ideas and perhaps some enthusiasm to persue them. It doesn't mean insight, or instantaneous knowledge. I call that 'intuition' -- our ability to draw connections between stuff we know and stuff we don't. Intuition can help yield inspiration, but a key component of inspiration also comes from outside us -- an idea, a paradox, some beauty, or the like.

I'm a fan of creative ideas -- even silly ones. Silly ideas can be very constructive. What I'm not a fan of is leaning on pre-conscious thought as a substitute for meticulous investigation and rigorous questioning -- because the subconscious gets free rein in our intuitions, and it's a self-interested, deceitful beast that'll happily lie to us to stay comfortable or feel important. In my experience emotional conviction is the subconscious grabbing the reins -- and the subconscious unchallenged is no friend to truth.

What I'm not a fan of is leaning on pre-conscious thought as a substitute for meticulous investigation and rigorous questioning -- because the subconscious gets free rein in our intuitions, and it's a self-interested, deceitful beast that'll happily lie to us to stay comfortable or feel important.

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Here's what I think.
People act out of volition, which is formed somehow, composed of many-a-thing, and influenced by many-a-thing more. When we ask, why did you do this? We're asking for a reason, a motive, an intention, an explanation, a cause. Many people don't act on the decisions of their logic/reason alone, thankfully. But are one's actions, if not self-consciously logical, completely useless except by pure chance?

Not sure why it's been an either/or. I use a hammer for nails and a saw for wood, but sometimes a saws-all for nails or a hammer to bust through wood ...







What I don't understand is the hidden idea that poetry can't be rigorous, or somehow held to standards of communicability. And the idea poetry can't communicate using reason? No, instead, to the tell the truth a poem may tell a lie. (Which can make a poem dangerous or pathetic, but surely, we've never been lied to by scientists. I simply would rather not be told "How to live my life" by anybody, even if I get to pick up clues from all over.)

I would say there are degrees of transparency in the realm of metaphor- some metaphors are dense and "hard to understand", while others are clearly mapped-out, allegorical. Allegories don't require much attention to get its message, which always sticks. Other kinds of poetry require a conversation. As per usual, the depth of questioning depends on the interlocutors themselves.


AMC

AMCrenshaw said:

When we ask, why did you do this? We're asking for a reason, a motive, an intention, an explanation, a cause.

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I don't think we ask 'why' for a single reason. Sometimes we're asking 'how are you different to me?' Sometimes we want to know 'how do I get you to do/not do this in future'? I often have difficulty answering 'why' questions until I know what someone plans to do with my answer.

Many people don't act on the decisions of their logic/reason alone, thankfully.

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Thankfully to you, maybe. But to me, a lot of folks' behaviour looks a bit mad. Doubtless to others, I can look a bit cold and abrupt at times. [Perhaps if I were less cold and abrupt, that would matter more to me. ]

Not sure why it's been an either/or.

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Not my choice. Peoples' decision-centres connect as they connect. A few people are able to synthesise logic and emotion together. But many just shatter logic with their emotion, and stitch together the pieces with invention. Some just charge ahead with logic, and let the emotional carnage sort itself out. I try and steer a middle path, but when push comes to shove, you know which side I most favour.

What I don't understand is the hidden idea that poetry can't be rigorous, or somehow held to standards of communicability.

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That's easy to test: what are the qualities of rigorous communicability? I'd suggest that unambiguous meaning would be high on the list. That's one thing poetry doesn't do well. (Ask your old pal T.S. Eliot -- he refused to say what his poems meant )

But rigor is exactly what is required to understand T.S. Eliot's poems (at least from his perspective).

Nonetheless, communicative poetry is more "opaque" than "obscure" - more "rich" than "vague" , etc.

AMC

AMCrenshaw said:

Nonetheless, communicative poetry is more "opaque" than "obscure" - more "rich" than "vague" , etc.

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None of which is what we want in logic, mathematics or scientific parlance though, because it damages rigor. We're fine for models and theorems to be rich in application, but we don't like individual terms to be opaque and have multiple meanings. We want to know that a cat is not a dog, that sodium is not calcium, and that one is not three. In poetry though (and likewise in mysticism and magic), a cat can be a person, sodium can be a colour, three can very easily be one, and 'pompetus' might mean nothing at all.

You've also forgotten that poetry can include scientific or mathematical parlance any time it likes. There's Calvino's Cosmicomics -- a fantasy to be sure. And there's Saturday by Ian McEwan. If you haven't read that, the moral of the tale is, check out what can be included in fiction!


Opacity and richness may not be good terms for science, but they refer to a poem's accessibility/communicability. I think the more opaque a poem is the more detailed and precise its imagery and ideas are. Richness doesn't describe the phenomenon of there being multiple meanings, but simply multiple things to be interested in. There are only multiple meanings where there is interpretation, and that doesn't change no matter what mode of knowing we discuss.


AMC

It's very rare that scientific parlance in a poem means exactly what it means in science, unless it's a Tom Lehrer song.

I've read Saturday. It's fiction about a surgeon, and presumably well-researched, and it's not poetry so I'm not sure your point.

I think the more opaque a poem is the more detailed and precise its imagery and ideas are.

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Intentionally ambiguous is not intentionally unambiguous, and adolescent poetry is proof that murk isn't always smarts.

Scientific language works hard to remove multiple or vague interpretations exactly because they lose rigour. Biologists for instance, reclassify life just to avoid unintended confusion (such as with the archaea microorganisms)

Whether there is any alternate interpretation possible isn't relevant. What's relevant is that any variation in interpretation is scientifically undesireable, and removed wherever possible.

It's fiction. And "the point of it" exists in the realm of metaphor, in the question of whether a dog can be a cat. And it seems that in some places outside of poetry, it's allowed. Well-researched?

Opaque doesn't mean the same thing in poetry. You would prefer it retain its mundane meaning - ambiguous. It's really a description of the thickness of the poem -- how much there is to know vs. how much is in the poem itself. A poem, like one of T.S.Eliot's 4Q, seeks basically to be self-contained, and might succeed if the reader has read and understands Heraclitus, the Upanishads, Shakespeare, et al; not-coincidentally, such a person is Eliot's ideal reader.

The 4Q are all opaque poems. There's a lot packed in to the poems. It's the packed-in that creates opacity. I wouldn't call a single Quartet "intentionally ambiguous," nor..."adolescent". Maybe you see the difference maybe you don't.


AMC

Song For Baby-O, Unborn

Sweetheart
when you break thru
you'll find
a poet here
not quite what one would choose.

I won't promise
you'll never go hungry
or that you won't be sad
on this gutted
breaking
globe

but I can show you
baby
enough to love
to break your heart
forever

-- Diane Di Prima



Summarize your thoughts on the role of the poet?