Perfect Tommy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} perfecttommy) wrote,@ 2003-12-29 10:43:00 |
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On the Nature of Ether
I've been working on a Weird Science manifesto, and I noticed that I was throwing around the word 'ether' like confetti. I need to back up and define what ether is, so that I can work from a strong foundation.
Historically, ether was the hypothesized medium through which electromagnetic waves, such as light, travelled. According to wikipedia.org, "Aether was thought to be a fluid which was transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, continuous, and without viscosity." Experiments showed that if ether were to exist, it had to have some very bizarre properties; so, the principle of reductionism eventually won out, and the simpler model (namely that electromagnetic waves are simply unlike physical waves, and need no medium) replaced the increasingly baroque theory of ether.
Inspired by the Sons of Ether, I've reclaimed the ether for broader purposes. Philosophically, ether is a non-analytic, non-reductionist medium for information and energy. Rather than hiding under jargon, I'll explain what I mean by example.
Consider a stand-up comedian—a bombing stand-up comedian. He gets heckled, and doesn't deal with the heckler very well. The audience is generating such an aura of hate that it is almost palpable. You are uncomfortable being in the room, but it would make you more uncomfortable to leave. Now, what is 'really' going on, analytically, is a complex informational transaction: body language and tone of voice of the comedian and the audience members, pheromones, recall of personal experiences, microtemperature changes as blood pressures rise, and who knows what else are all influencing your emotional processors to cause this sensation of discomfort. Analysis might give us some insight (ether is not anti-analytic, after all) but, paradoxically, hypothesizing an 'unnecessary' medium through which emotions propagate is a more convenient explanation than keeping track of a hundred different factors coming in through five senses.
Another example is that of a friend you know very well, to the point that you are frequently thinking the same thoughts and finishing one another's sentences—it might as well be telepathy (the common name for etheric coupling between two mental morphic fields), even if it's 'really' shared experience plus familiarity with gestures and speech patterns. Reductionism suggests that we leave it at that simple explanation; but, because ether is a non-reductionist medium, we allow it to remain as part of our model for what is going on. And that is useful because we can use our hypothetical medium to attempt other experiments that might not be suggested by the reduced model—perhaps you and your friend would make a really bitchin' rhythm section, telepaths that you are.
Ether is the ultimate paracausal medium. It is the medium through which complex systems feed back information upon themselves in their dance of self-organization. It is the medium through which ki travels along the body's meridians. It may be detectable, as in bioelectricity or pheromones or homeopathic aggregates, or so invisible that even statistical inferences register it slightly if at all, as in psychic abilities. Its objective validity is irrelevant; for example, synchronicities may be the oversensitivity of the subconscious to a particular environmental message, or coded information delivered to your door by the ether net: the end result is the same.
According to philosopher Karl Popper, a science that isn't falsifiable isn't a science at all. So it is a valid complaint that ether can be used to explain virtually anything. But science be damned—this is Science!
I've been working on a Weird Science manifesto, and I noticed that I was throwing around the word 'ether' like confetti. I need to back up and define what ether is, so that I can work from a strong foundation.
Historically, ether was the hypothesized medium through which electromagnetic waves, such as light, travelled. According to wikipedia.org, "Aether was thought to be a fluid which was transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, continuous, and without viscosity." Experiments showed that if ether were to exist, it had to have some very bizarre properties; so, the principle of reductionism eventually won out, and the simpler model (namely that electromagnetic waves are simply unlike physical waves, and need no medium) replaced the increasingly baroque theory of ether.
Inspired by the Sons of Ether, I've reclaimed the ether for broader purposes. Philosophically, ether is a non-analytic, non-reductionist medium for information and energy. Rather than hiding under jargon, I'll explain what I mean by example.
Consider a stand-up comedian—a bombing stand-up comedian. He gets heckled, and doesn't deal with the heckler very well. The audience is generating such an aura of hate that it is almost palpable. You are uncomfortable being in the room, but it would make you more uncomfortable to leave. Now, what is 'really' going on, analytically, is a complex informational transaction: body language and tone of voice of the comedian and the audience members, pheromones, recall of personal experiences, microtemperature changes as blood pressures rise, and who knows what else are all influencing your emotional processors to cause this sensation of discomfort. Analysis might give us some insight (ether is not anti-analytic, after all) but, paradoxically, hypothesizing an 'unnecessary' medium through which emotions propagate is a more convenient explanation than keeping track of a hundred different factors coming in through five senses.
Another example is that of a friend you know very well, to the point that you are frequently thinking the same thoughts and finishing one another's sentences—it might as well be telepathy (the common name for etheric coupling between two mental morphic fields), even if it's 'really' shared experience plus familiarity with gestures and speech patterns. Reductionism suggests that we leave it at that simple explanation; but, because ether is a non-reductionist medium, we allow it to remain as part of our model for what is going on. And that is useful because we can use our hypothetical medium to attempt other experiments that might not be suggested by the reduced model—perhaps you and your friend would make a really bitchin' rhythm section, telepaths that you are.
Ether is the ultimate paracausal medium. It is the medium through which complex systems feed back information upon themselves in their dance of self-organization. It is the medium through which ki travels along the body's meridians. It may be detectable, as in bioelectricity or pheromones or homeopathic aggregates, or so invisible that even statistical inferences register it slightly if at all, as in psychic abilities. Its objective validity is irrelevant; for example, synchronicities may be the oversensitivity of the subconscious to a particular environmental message, or coded information delivered to your door by the ether net: the end result is the same.
According to philosopher Karl Popper, a science that isn't falsifiable isn't a science at all. So it is a valid complaint that ether can be used to explain virtually anything. But science be damned—this is Science!
