Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

PROGRAM NOTES:

(Minutes : Seconds into program)

02:14 Ralph Abraham: Takes issue with McKenna’s and Sheldrake’s interpretation of chaotic attractors. . . . To a mathematician, the word ‘attractor’ does not necessarily imply attraction.

07:23 Rupert Sheldrake:

"But Newtonian physics and the triumph of the mechanistic system, in my opinion, only works because what it was seeking to deny was introduced into it by a kind of subterfuge and pretended that this was a mechanical principle whereas it was something else."

09:37 Ralph:

"The idea of two dimensional time could aid us here." . . . The problem with the teleological approach is that the cause is in the future.

10:54 Ralph:

"The more interesting idea is to make a model for evolution itself." . . . "The determinant of evolution [in the case being discussed] is the free will in the moment as the collective action of the citizens in the present."

13:24 Rupert:

… discuses the concept of morphic attractors as a way of dealing with the fact that somehow, in the present, the person, etc. is subject to the influence of a potential future state that hasn’t yet come into being. "But that future state is what directs and guides and attracts the development of the present system."

14:26 Terence McKenna:

"Well, this is all very interesting." . . . "The modeling task, ne plus ultra, is history. This is where you’re no longer playing a little game to demonstrate something to a group of students or colleagues." . . . "I think the whole reason history has bogged down in the 20th century is because of the absence of belief in an attractor."

20:31 Terence:

"Our cultural phase transition that we are going through, vis a vie machines, may signify that we are not, as I have always thought, very close to the maximized state of novelty, but that we’re out there somewhere in the middle of that wave . . . "

22:41 Rupert:

"I think there’s a very big difference between spoken language and written language."

25:16 Ralph:

"Well, I imagine, just to be contrary, that mathematics preceded not only writing, but mathematics probably preceded language as well." . . . "We could reach a point where we had models that were decent in some sense to aid us in the understanding of complex social relationships."

33:06 Terence:

"[Ralph] do you still cling to the mathematical proof of the impossibility of monogamy?"

34:16 Terence: "And in a way that’s what I see the three of us and others mentionable as doing. We’re trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where it’s such a good idea that it will act as an attractor, and the world will move toward that form."

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