Wrinkle in Time, More Mysteries to Put behind Doors, Biblical Resonances in OotP

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Mike & Susan Gray" <aberforthsgoat at h...> 
wrote:
> 
> Then going back a *really* long way, I thought I'd mention that I find
> Kneasy's theory (the power behind the door is life itself) fascinating.
> I don't think it's at all likely to be what Jo has in mind - I think
> Jo's tastes run more to the ethical than the ontological. But I would
> like to read the book Kneasy wants her to write. 
> 

Kneasy:
I doubt it.
My version would make Titus Andronicus look like a mild family spat.
Yes, Jo is likely to lean towards the ethical and life (as a concept) is
ethically neutral and amoral in the purest sense of the word.
Sure, one can choose to act in a way  that can be considered moral
or immoral, but that's mostly one of the by-products of civilisation,
not a property of life itself. Remember that I'm viewing 'life' from a
much wider perspective than the humano-centric one. Think of it
(life-force, the compulsion to thrive and survive) as say, a plant 
forcing its way through an asphalt parking lot. 


> However, what I thought was really weird, was that Kneasy's theory
> sounded more mystical and spiritual to me than my own. Love as the
> greatest hidden force in the universe *is* a pretty standard idea. I
> think it has Judeo-Christian roots, but just about every common garden
> variety of contemporary humanism has inherited a strain of it. 
> 
> The life force as the hidden power behind the universe is a little
> farther off the beaten path of Western values. It seems like a more
> mystical thing - a sort of biological epiphany or an experience of the
> numinous in carbon. It would be ethically shifty - maybe the life force
> is good and loving and nice, but then again, maybe it isn't. 
> 

Kneasy:
Ethically shifty. That's me.
Love is a bit limiting as a universal power IMO. Do Flobberworms love?
Can they love? If they don't or can't then love ain't universal.
The other 'powers' in the Dept. of Mysteries have much wider effects than
just the human sphere - time, death, physical forces - though the brains
could be considered a counter-argument. Depends on what you consider 
they represent - intelligence, rational thought - or a neatly packaged 
processing system (thus susceptible to study) that enables any cerebrate 
being to experience the universe outside itself. 
But I agree that it's unlikely that Jo is thinking along these lines. Pity.  


> 
> On one side: what's so much more mysterious about carbon based chemistry
> as opposed to any other kind of chemistry? Electrons scurry here and
> there, atoms bash their way into molecules, amino acids muck about in
> central nervous systems, and behold, stuff happens. It's complicated (or
> "chaotic"), but people in the biology business assume that the whole is,
> basically, no less mysterious than what happens when you drop a brick
> out of a window. 
> 

Kneasy:
Some may, but if they do they can't see the wood for the trees. Alternatively
they may be deliberately rattling the bars of the cages of folk like yourself.
Sure, it's possible to regard a living organism as an exercise in chemistry or
sub-atomic physics on the hoof, but that ignores the more interesting 
questions IMO. 

> And yet, on the other hand, what the hell are "natural laws" anyway?
> Since Hume put on his thinking cap, we've had no reason to go on taking
> even the idea of cause-and effect as a given truth - let alone something
> as abstruse as "the laws of nature." (In passing: how much more
> anthropomorphic and bourgeois does it get, fer cryin out loud?). The
> best Kant could do was to make cause-and-effect into a transcendental
> thingy - i.e., we can't prove it's true, but we'd sure as "*%& better
> keep on assuming it is, cause otherwise we can't talk about anything
> anymore. 
> 

Kneasy:
Put not your trust in philosophers. They are, after all, only theorising, and
basing their arguments on what is thought to be known. Their conclusions
may merely be the result of a few electrons shifting orbits in a chemical cycle
in mitochondria located two inches below their hat. 
Wonderful stuff, chemistry.