All Posts (522)

Sort by

Learning Is Both Social And Computational, Supported By Neural Systems Linking People

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — Education is on the cusp of a transformation because of recent scientific findings in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning that are converging to create foundations for a new science of learning.


See also:

Writing in the July 17 edition of the journal Science, researchers report that this shift is being driven by three principles that are emerging from cross-disciplinary work: learning is computational, learning is social, and learning is supported by brain circuits linking perception and action that connect people to one another. This new science of learning, the researchers believe, may shed light into the origins of human intelligence.

"We are not left alone to understand the world like Robinson Crusoe was on his island," said Andrew Meltzoff, lead author of the paper and co-director of the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. "These principles support learning across the life span and are particularly important in explaining children's rapid learning in two unique domains of human intelligence, language and social understanding.

"Social interaction is more important than we previously thought and underpins early learning. Research has shown that humans learn best from other humans, and a large part of this is timing, sensitive timing between a parent or a tutor and the child," said Meltzoff, who is a developmental psychologist.

"We are trying to understand how the child's brain works – how computational abilities are changed in the presence of another person, and trying to use these three principles as leverage for learning and improving education," added co-author Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist and co-director of the UW's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.

University of California, San Diego robotics engineer Javier Movellan and neuroscientist-biologist Terrence Sejnowski are co-authors. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The National Science Foundation has funded large-scale science of learning centers at both universities.

The Science paper cites numerous recent advances in neuroscience, psychology, machine learning and education. For example, Kuhl said people don't realize how computational and social factors interact during learning.

"We have a computer between our shoulders and our brains are taking in statistics all the time without our knowing it. Babies learn simply by listening, for example. They learn the sounds and words of their language by picking up probabilistic information as they listen to us talk to them. Babies at 8 months are calculating statistically and learning," Kuhl said.

But there are limits. Kuhl's work has shown that babies gather statistics and learn when exposed to a second language face to face from a real person, but not when they view that person on television.

"A person can get more information by looking at another person face to face," she said. "We are digging to understand the social element and what does it mean about us and our evolution."

Apparently babies need other people to learn. They take in more information by looking at another person face to face than by looking at that person on a big plasma TV screen," she said. "We are now trying to understand why the brain works this way, and what it means about us and our evolution."

Meltzoff said an important component of human intelligence is that humans are built so they don't have to figure out everything by themselves.

"A major role we play as parents is teaching children where the important things are for them to learn," he said. "One way we do this is through joint visual attention or eye-gaze. This is a social mechanism and children can find what's important – we call them informational 'hot spots' – by following the gaze of another person. By being connected to others we also learn by example and imitation."

Infants, he said, learn by mixing self-discovery with observations of other people for problem-solving.

"We can learn what to do by watching others, and we also can come to understand other people through our own actions," Meltzoff said. "Learning is bi-directional."

The researchers believe that aspects of informal learning, the ways people, particularly children, learn outside school, need to be brought into the classroom.

"Educators know children spend 80 percent of their waking time away from school and children are learning deeply and enthusiastically in museums, in community centers, from online games and in all sorts of venues. A lot of this learning is highly social and clues from informal learning may be applied to school to enhance learning. Why is it that a kid who is so good at figuring out baseball batting averages is failing math in school?" said Meltzoff.

Even though it appears that babies do not learn from television, technology can play a big role in the science of learning. Research is showing that children are more receptive to learning from social robots, robots that are more human in appearance and more interactive.

"The more that interacting with a machine feels like interacting with a human, the more children – and maybe adults – learn," said Kuhl. "Someday we may understand how technology can help us learn a new language at any age, and, if we could, there are countless schools around the world in which that would be helpful."

"Science is trying to understand the magic of social interaction in human learning," said Meltzoff. "But when it does we hope to embody some of what we learn into technology. Kids today are using high-powered technology – Facebook, Twitter and text messaging – to enhance social interaction. Using technology, children are learning to solve problems collaboratively. Technology also allows us to have a distributed network from which to draw information, a world of knowledge."


Adapted from materials provided by University of Washington.
Email or share this story:
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/asia/17daylight.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Hi Seoul' 2008. Spring.

Image via Wikipedia

Peeling Back Pavement to Expose Watery Havens
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
SEOUL, South Korea — For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting this bustling city.

The waterway had been a centerpiece of Seoul since a king of the Choson Dynasty selected the new capital 600 years ago, enticed by the graceful meandering of the stream and its 23 tributaries. But in the industrial era after the Korean War, the stream, by then a rank open sewer, was entombed by pavement and forgotten beneath a lacework of elevated expressways as the city’s population swelled toward 10 million.

Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools.

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon is part of an expanding environmental effort in cities around the world to “daylight” rivers and streams by peeling back pavement that was built to bolster commerce and serve automobile traffic decades ago.

In New York State, a long-stalled revival effort for Yonkers’s ailing downtown core that could break ground this fall includes a plan to re-expose 1,900 feet of the Saw Mill River, which currently runs through a giant flume that was laid beneath city streets in the 1920s.

Cities from Singapore to San Antonio have been resuscitating rivers and turning storm drains into streams. In Los Angeles, residents’ groups and some elected officials are looking anew at buried or concrete-lined creeks as assets instead of inconveniences, inspired partly by Seoul’s example.

By building green corridors around the exposed waters, cities hope to attract affluent and educated workers and residents who appreciate the feel of a natural environment in an urban setting.

Environmentalists point out other benefits. Open watercourses handle flooding rains better than buried sewers do, a big consideration as global warming leads to heavier downpours. The streams also tend to cool areas overheated by sun-baked asphalt and to nourish greenery that lures wildlife as well as pedestrians.

Some political opponents have derided Seoul’s remade stream as a costly folly, given that nearly all of the water flowing between its banks on a typical day is pumped there artificially from the Han River through seven miles of pipe.

But four years after the stream was uncovered, city officials say, the environmental benefits can now be quantified. Data show that the ecosystem along the Cheonggyecheon (pronounced chung-gye-chun) has been greatly enriched, with the number of fish species increasing to 25 from 4. Bird species have multiplied to 36 from 6, and insect species to 192 from 15.

The recovery project, which removed three miles of elevated highway as well, also substantially cut air pollution from cars along the corridor and reduced air temperatures. Small-particle air pollution along the corridor dropped to 48 micrograms per cubic meter from 74, and summer temperatures are now often five degrees cooler than those of nearby areas, according to data cited by city officials.

And even with the loss of some vehicle lanes, traffic speeds have picked up because of related transportation changes like expanded bus service, restrictions on cars and higher parking fees.

“We’ve basically gone from a car-oriented city to a human-oriented city,” said Lee In-keun, Seoul’s assistant mayor for infrastructure, who has been invited to places as distant as Los Angeles to describe the project to other urban planners.

Some 90,000 pedestrians visit the stream banks on an average day.

What is more, a new analysis by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that replacing a highway in Seoul with a walkable greenway caused nearby homes to sell at a premium after years of going for bargain prices by comparison with outlying properties.

Efforts to recover urban waterways are nonetheless fraught with challenges, like convincing local business owners wedded to existing streetscapes that economic benefits can come from a green makeover.

Yet today the visitors to the Cheonggyecheon’s banks include merchants from some of the thousands of nearby shops who were among the project’s biggest opponents early on.

On a recent evening, picnickers along the waterway included Yeon Yeong-san, 63, who runs a sporting apparel shop with his wife, Lee Geum-hwa, 56, in the adjacent Pyeonghwa Market.

Mr. Yeon said his family moved to downtown Seoul in the late 1940s, and he has been running the business for four decades. He said parking was now harder for his customers. But “because of less traffic, we have better air and nature,” he said.

He and his wife walk along the stream every day, he added. “We did not think about exercising here when the stream was buried underground,” Mr. Yeon said.

The project has yielded political dividends for Lee Myung-bak, a former leader of construction companies at the giant Hyundai Corporation. He was elected Seoul’s mayor in 2002 largely around his push to remove old roads — some of which he had helped build — and to revive the stream. Today he is South Korea’s president.

Even strong critics of the president tend to laud his approach to the Cheonggyecheon revival, which involved hundreds of meetings with businesses and residents over two years.

A recent newspaper column that criticized the president over a police raid on squatters ended with the words “Please come back, Cheonggyecheon Lee Myung-bak!” — a reference to the nickname he earned during the campaign to revive the stream.

The role of Seoul’s environmental renewal in Mr. Lee’s political ascent is not lost on Mayor Philip A. Amicone of Yonkers, a city of 200,000 where entrenched poverty had slowed a revival project. Once the river restoration was added to the plan, he said, he found new support for redevelopment.

Yonkers has gained $34 million from New York State and enthusiastic support from environmental groups for the river restoration, which is part of a proposed $1.5 billion development that includes a minor-league ballpark. The river portion is expected to cost $42 million over all.

A longtime supporter was George E. Pataki, who helped line up state money in his last year as governor, Mayor Amicone said. “Every time he’d visit, he’d say, ‘You’ve got to open up that river,’ ” he added.

Part of the plan would expose an arc of the river and line it with paths and restaurant patios that would wrap around a shopping complex and the ballpark. Another open stretch would become a “wetland park” on what is now a parking lot.

Mr. Amicone, who has a background as a civil engineer, said the example of Seoul’s success had helped build support in Yonkers. In an interview, he recalled the enthusiasm with which Mr. Lee, then Seoul’s mayor, toured Yonkers in 2006 and discussed the cities’ parallel river projects with him.

“Whether it’s a city of millions or 200,000, the concept is identical,” Mr. Amicone said. “These are no longer sewers, but aesthetically pleasing assets that enhance development.”

Jean Chung contributed reporting.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…

Human Insect Brain

This is a interesting Science Daily post on how many of our problematic brain problems are related to "survival" brain functions in insects. Human-like Brain Disturbances In Insects: Locusts Shed Light On Migraines, Stroke And Epilepsy ScienceDaily (July 3, 2009) — A similarity in brain disturbance between insects and people suffering from migraines, stroke and epilepsy points the way toward new drug therapies to address these conditions. Queen's University biologists studying the locust have found that these human disorders are linked by a brain disturbance during which nerve cells shut down. This also occurs in locusts when they go into a coma after exposure to extreme conditions such as high temperatures or lack of oxygen. The Queen's study shows that the ability of the insects to resist entering the coma, and the speed of their recovery, can be manipulated using drugs that target one of the cellular signaling pathways in the brain. "This suggests that similar treatments in humans might be able to modify the thresholds or severity of migraine and stroke," says Gary Armstrong, who is completing his PhD research in Biology professor Mel Robertson's laboratory. "What particularly excites me is that in one of our locust models, inhibition of the targeted pathway completely suppresses the brain disturbance in 70 per cent of animals," adds Dr. Robertson. The Queen's research team previously demonstrated that locusts go into a coma as a way of shutting down and conserving energy when conditions are dangerous. The cellular responses in the locust are similar to the response of brain cells at the onset of a migraine. Noting that it's hard to drown an insect – due to their ability to remain safely in a coma under water for several hours – Mr. Armstrong says, "It's intriguing that human neural problems may share their mechanistic roots with the process insects use to survive flash floods." The Queen's study is published in the current edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. Other researchers on the team are Corinne Rodgers and Tomas Money who are also in Dr. Robertson's laboratory. The research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702170207.htm
Read more…

The Inspiring Boom in "Super-Earths"

Source: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/may/07-inspiring-boom-in-super-earths/article_print
Print this page

The Inspiring Boom in "Super-Earths"

05.07.2009

At last we are finding rocky planets like our own. But some are pretty weird: The smallest may have a mineral-vapor atmosphere that condenses as lava rain or rock snow.

by Stephen Battersby

A recently discovered planet with the unpoetic name Corot-7b, orbiting a yellow-orange star 450 light-years away, is the smallest confirmed super-Earth—a dense, compact planet unlike the many gas giants spotted elsewhere in our galaxy. This find hints that the universe may teem with rocky worlds, including some that may genuinely resemble ours in size and temperature.

Corot-7b is the first such planet whose size has been measured, proving that it truly is a compact, dense world. But it may have plenty of company. Several other super-Earths have been identified in systems much like our solar system, with small planets closer to the star and giants in the outer orbits. Astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Car­negie Institution of Washington thinks this structural similarity gives a reason to suspect that these planets, too, are rocky bodies that formed much the way Earth did.

“We’re seeing strong hints that super-Earths are very common,” says Scott Gaudi, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University who estimates that more than 20 percent of stars have such planets. That could translate to some 50 billion super-Earths scattered throughout the Milky Way.

In the 1990s the first discovered exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) were Jupiter-like giants, betrayed by the slight gravitational wobbles in the motion of their parent stars. The size of those wobbles depends in part on the planets’ mass. As instruments improved, astronomers detected smaller wobbles caused by smaller planets, until in 2004 a team using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope was arguably the first to find a super-Earth, 55 Cancri e. Others were revealed when their gravity briefly magnified the light of a distant star, a process known as gravitational lensing. The OGLE project at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile picked up two super-Earths this way in 2005.

In February astronomers announced the discovery of Corot-7b. It was found by a third technique: As it transited its parent star, it blocked a little of the star’s light, and the European Corot satellite detected this periodic dimming. The amount of blocked light reveals the size of the planet—in this case, less than twice the diameter of Earth. “It is the smallest radius measured of any exoplanet,” says Corot team member Jean Schneider of the Paris Observatory.

So far about 20 super-Earths have been found. All are expected to be small planets with a rocky surface, though they may have a wide range of temperatures and atmospheric conditions. Astrophysicists also suspect that some super-Earths could contain water, as either an ocean or an ice shell. It should be possible to check: Rocky planets with water would probably be less dense than those without it, and a combination of the transit and wobble methods reveal a planet’s density.

The new planet’s mass and density are not yet known precisely, but a joint effort by the Kepler spacecraft that launched in March and the W. M. Keck telescopes could provide such data for this and other planets. Designed to detect transits, Kepler might find and measure hundreds of super-Earth candidates. Back on the ground, the Keck telescopes will home in on the newfound objects to determine their mass and confirm that they are planets (not stars).

Super-Earth researcher Diana Valencia of the Côte d’Azur Observatory thinks that rocky exoplanets should resemble ours in another crucial way. “I believe that plate tectonics are likely,” she says. That could be significant for life, because the cycling of elements into Earth’s crust and out of volcanic eruptions helps keep our planet habitable by stabilizing atmospheric temperature.

Arguably the most hospitable super-Earth yet detected is Gliese 581 d, 20 light-years away. Although this planet circles a feeble red dwarf star, simulations indicate that it probably has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, which may keep its surface warm enough to hold liquid water.

Corot-7b is less promising. It probably rotates with one side always pointed at its star. That side must be extremely hot. “Calculations show that it is more than 2000 kelvins [3000°F],” Schneider says, which would melt rock into a sea of lava. He thinks the planet might have a mineral-vapor atmosphere that condenses as lava rain or rock snow on the cold nightside.

Astronomers hope to analyze the atmospheres of these and other super-Earths by examining the starlight filtering through them, perhaps using the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. This analysis could even hint that some planets are not just habitable but actually inhabited. “Carbon dioxide and water in a planet’s atmosphere would be signs that a planet might be rocky and habitable, while oxygen and methane would be strong indicators that it may harbor life,” Boss says.


BuzzWords

Super-Earth
A dense planet composed mainly of rock and lacking a thick, Jupiter-like atmosphere.

Exoplanets
Planets that orbit a star other than our sun. To date, more than 340 such planets have been discovered.

Transiting
The movement of a celestial body in front of a bigger one, partially obscuring it.

Corot
A space telescope launched in 2006 that detects small variations in light, allowing researchers to study star structure and find exoplanets.

Gas giants
Gaseous, low-density planets many times as massive as Earth and composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.

Kepler
A NASA space telescope that will monitor more than 100,000 stars in our galaxy for the periodic dimming associated with transiting planets.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…

Short Term Climate Change

Global average radiative forcing estimates and...

Image via Wikipedia

Climate Experts Warn That Short-Term Snapshots Of Temperature Data Can Be Misleading: Focus Instead On The Bigger Picture

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2009) — In the hotly debated arena of global climate change, using short-term trends that show little temperature change or even slight cooling to refute global warming is misleading, write two climate experts in a paper recently published by the American Geophysical Union — especially as the long-term pattern clearly shows human activities are causing the earth’s climate to heat up.


In their paper “Is the climate warming or cooling?” David R. Easterling of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and Michael Wehner of the Computational Research Division at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory note that a number of publications, websites and blogs often cite decade-long climate trends, such as that from 1998-2008, in which the earth’s average temperature actually dropped slightly, as evidence that the global climate is actually cooling.

However, Easterling and Wehner write, the reality of the climate system is that, due to natural climate variability, it is entirely possible, even likely, to have a period as long as a decade or two of “cooling” superimposed on the longer-term warming trend. The problem with citing such short-term cooling trends is that it can mislead decision-makers into thinking that climate change does not warrant immediate action. The article was published April 25 in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We wrote this paper, which was carefully reviewed by other researchers and is scientifically defensible, to clearly show that even though our climate is getting warmer, we can’t expect it to do so in a monotonic way – or that each year will be warmer than the preceding year,” said Wehner. “Even with the climate changes caused by human activity, we will continue to see natural variability including periods of cooler temperatures despite the fact that globally averaged temperatures show long-term global warming.”

“It is easy to ‘cherry pick’ a period to reinforce a point of view, but this notion begs the question, what would happen to the current concerns about climate change if we do have a sustained period where the climate appears to be cooling even when, in the end, the longer term trend is warming?” write Easterling and Wehner.

The research was funded by the DOE Office of Science’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research through its Climate Change Prediction Program.

Citing an accepted climate modeling scenario in which no efforts are made to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, the earth’s climate is expected to warm by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the 21st century. The authors point out that this is consistent with other simulations contained in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007), which was recognized with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

“Climate scientists pay little attention to these short-term fluctuations as the short term ‘cooling trends’…are statistically insignificant and fitting trends to such short periods is not very meaningful in the context of long-term climate change,” the authors write. “On the other hand, segments of the general public do pay attention to these fluctuations and some critics cite the most recent period as evidence against anthropogenic-forced (human-induced) climate change.”

The authors used both observed climate data from 1901-2008 and a series of climate model simulations performed on supercomputers to study the occurrence of decade-long trends in globally averaged surface air temperature. They found that it is possible, and indeed likely, to see periods as long as a decade in the recent past which do not show a warming trend. The authors even found that running computer simulations for the 21st century with significant increases in greenhouse gas emissions showed some decades with lower or static average temperatures.

One such example can be found by looking at data from 1998 to 2008, which shows no real trend, even though global temperatures remain well above the long-term average. According to the authors, the unusually strong 1997-98 El Niño contributed to unusual warmth in the global temperature for 1998, so that without similar dramatic changes, the following decade does not appear to be warming. A similar interpretation can be made by looking at the short-term data from 1977-85 or 1981-89, “even though these periods are embedded in the 1975-2008 period showing a substantial overall warming,” Easterling and Wehner write. In the first example, dropping data from 1998 and looking at 1999-2008, the researchers found a strong warming trend.


Journal reference:

  1. David R. Easterling, Michael F. Wehner. Is the climate warming or cooling? Geophys. Res. Lett., 2009; 36: L08706 DOI: 10.1029/2009GL037810
Adapted from materials provided by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2009, May 5). Climate Experts Warn That Short-Term Snapshots Of Temperature Data Can Be Misleading: Focus Instead On The Bigger Picture. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 5, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/05/090504141047.htm
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…

Ants really are random wanderers

Ants really are random wanderers Seemingly blind search can make sense in practical and mathematical terms By Jeremy Hsu LiveScience updated 2:04 p.m. ET, Mon., March. 30, 2009 Ants don't march in predictable patterns to search for crumbs, as you might have thought by watching them. Instead, new research suggests they roam randomly. This is not a matter of ant versus human intelligence, because a seemingly blind search can still make sense in both practical and mathematical terms. "The beauty of a mathematical random walk is that it eventually visits all points in space if you walk long enough — and it always returns to its starting point," said William Baxter, an experimental physicist at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Of course, Baxter notes, you might have to walk a long time to get back to the start. But a person who tries a search pattern, such as sweeping back and forth, can run into more trouble with unexpected obstacles. Baxter's research stands out from others' by using a controlled environment and a single ant, as opposed to studying foraging ants in the wild. Tracking single ants allowed him to see how a single ant decides to search an area that is free of food, chemical clues or obstacles. Each small ant walked down a string from its colony to the study area, where the ants normally expect to find an area with food. However, Baxter and his colleagues removed the food while conducting the experiment. The ant search patterns often crisscrossed previous paths, but none of the ants ever intentionally retraced their steps. A few backed up for a few millimeters on occasion, but only rarely. A next step could involve repeating the experiment with pairs of ants to see if a foraging partner changes the search pattern. "Will the mathematical model change? I have no idea," Baxter told LiveScience. "But biologists have known for years that groups of ants can accomplish tasks that single ants cannot." Ants are known to communicate chemically and leave trails for others, which points to their cooperative intelligence and socially sophisticated ant societies. So for finding crumbs, two pair of antennae may turn out better than one — or the ant pairs might wander just as randomly as before. The research was presented at the March meeting of the American Physical Society in Pittsburgh. © 2009 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29960401/
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…

Q full vs Q dynamic vs Q normal

1. It gets more flow than qFull because the water in the pipe has more than just the bed slope to push it - it also has the water surface slope.
There is about a 5 meter head pushing the water out if you the bed slope to the water surface slope - see the HGL Plot.
2. The Q dynamic or St. Venant flow uses ALL of the information you have about the condition in the link (see the next image) so the flow is greater than Qfull and Q normal flow. The information includes the hydraulic radius and cross sectional areas for upstream, midpoint and the downstream ends of the links.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…

The Art of Water

"Tao Te Ching", Calligraphy by Gia-F...

Image via Wikipedia

The Art of Living

Posted By Stewart K Lundy On March 10, 2009 @ 1:21 pm In Philosophers & Saints, Writers & Poets

little gidding makoto fujimura [1]
“Little Gidding” by Makoto Fujimura [1], 2007.

Ignorance is the source of knowledge, silence is the source of noise, and stillness is the source of change. The emptiness of the future provides the possibility for movement. This is the principle of conservatism: preserving not only possibility, but the very possibility of possibilities. This impulse is conservative, but never at the expense of future generations. Conservatism is the art of living.

“The best people have a nature like that of water. They’re like mist or dew in the sky, like a stream or a spring on land. Most people hate moist or muddy places, places where water alone dwells. . . . As water empties, it gives life to others. It reflects without being impure, and there is nothing it cannot wash clean. Water can take any shape, and it is never out of touch with the seasons. How could anyone malign something with such qualities as this.”

— Ho-Shang Kung in Red Pine’s translation of the Tao Te Ching [2].

Why the example of water? Water is inherently conservative, conforming to its conditions yet remaining essentially the same. Water prefers stillness. If it is a stream, it runs downhill until it finds a resting place; but it is always in the process of changing, yet it is always only water. In the same way, the essence of conservatism is always the same, even though its conditions constantly change. Were conditions to cease their perpetual flux, conservatism comes to rest as a tranquil pond. The goal of conservatism is tranquility.

In itself, conservatism is tranquil. In relation to the ever-changing human condition, conservatism is always adapting. Conservatism is “formless” like water: it takes the shape of its conditions, but always remains the same. This is why Russell Kirk calls conservatism the “negation of ideology” in The Politics of Prudence [3]. It is precisely the formlessness of conservatism which gives it its vitality. Left alone, the spirit of conservatism is essentially what T.S. Eliot calls the “stillness between two waves of the sea” in “Little Gidding” of his Four Quartets [4]. Conservatism is both like water and the stillness between the waves—the waves are not the water acting, but being acted upon; stillness is the default state of conservatism:

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity

Like the Greek concept of kairos—acting in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right moment—this sort of waiting is simply careful conservatism. Conservatism is responsive, reactionary, reserved. Conservatism waits. Perhaps this is why conservatism is most needed in the modern age of mobility. Being careful, and above all patient is crucial to doing something right. Realizing that one does not know the best way of doing anything guarantees not that one will find the best way, but that one might not find the worst way. The same principle applies to knowledge: conservatism (hopefully) does not pretend to know the definitive way, but rather professes the virtue of ignorance with the quiet hope of finding knowledge.

Which is purer? Claiming to know when one does not, or claiming not to know when one does? True knowledge is ignorance—like Socrates’ maxim, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” To proclaim one’s ignorance sincerely is to remain open to one’s historical, cultural, and cosmological place. Admitting one’s indebtedness requires a healthy dose of humility [5]. As my father says, “Humility is in short supply and has a short shelf life.” To merit anything, we must first exist; therefore, existence is wholly unmerited grace. Accepting the gift of one’s place and giving it to others is humble graciousness. The knowledge we receive is a gift, not something we have merited. The default state of all human beings is ignorance. We are born into the world ignorant and only after that find knowledge. As C.G. Jung observes in Man and His Symbols [6], with the birth of consciousness come the faults of knowledge. It is no coincidence that the Fall came when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge. Was the acquisition of this knowledge itself sin? The first sin was more likely what John Milton says in Book III of Paradise Lost [7]: ingratitude.

Since the aboriginal catastrophe [8], our knowledge has expanded and we have become more conscious of ourselves, for better or worse. The conscious life is definite and directed. Everything of which we are ignorant is indefinite and undirected. But our ignorance is the source of our knowledge. The conscious life remains a static ecstasy [9], a perpetual process always adapting to the environment. If done well, this is the art of life.

According to Okakura Kakuzo’s short work, The Book of Tea [10], this conservative impulse is the “art of being in the world.” Isn’t this “art of life” precisely the virtue Alasdair MacIntyre claims we have lost in his After Virtue [11]? Humility, gratitude [12], and the pursuit of virtue affirm nature as normative not because it dictates morality but because it is a gift. Nature surely does not mean to us what it did to the Scholastics, but I wish we could rediscover the earth as our home. The loss of a normative sense of nature has set up the world against the earth in a destructive manner. We can thank the likes of William of Occam, Francis Bacon, and Descartes for the loss of nature and the birth of modern science. It used to be that nature was seen as the artwork of God, as an acheiropoieta (an icon “not made by human hands”). But no longer do we see nature as an icon, giving glimpses of God; instead, we see nature as blocking us from God. Instead of seeing truth through the physical world, fideism sees truth in spite of the physical world and its natural counterpart, atheism, limits truth to the physical world. Speaking of the spiritual realm as “supernatural” is only a step away from speaking of the “unnatural” realm. The natural-supernatural divide has cut off access to God. The death of God followed the death of nature. Before, creation was seen as the art of God; now, creation is dead and so is its Creator.

Much has been attempted to restore the meaning of creation. Ironically, in a post-mythological era, the religious name “Gaia” has reached the height of its mythological significance. The environmentalism of this epoch is a desperate attempt to recover the lost “art of being in the world.” Some of this comes out in the absurd religious impulses such as neo-paganism which try to recreate the mythical value of the cosmos. I fear none of these attempts to “go back” will succeed. The more technology separates us from nature, the more separated we will feel from God. But we cannot spontaneously return to the “simple life.” In fact, calling any life “simple” means that we no longer live it. In the same way, calling something “unconscious” means that we are no longer unconscious. The simple life will always remain the goal, but attempts to force it destroy simplicity. There is something enviable in those quiet lives which are never trespassed by questions of “place” or “limits” or “liberty.” None of us live simple lives, and certainly none of us who write about simplicity. If someone writes about something, he considers it a problem. Aristotle and Plato wrote about politics not because politics worked, but because politics didn’t work. If something were not first a problem, I doubt whether there would even be a word for it. I write about the “art of life” because it is a problem and because I do not grasp it. The people who best live the “art of life” have probably never heard of it.

Technology and art are at odds like never before. We have lost sight of the truth. Technologically, we are more advanced than we have ever been. But what about artistically? There are few artists today who consider the ontological bearing of art, and even fewer who use art to communicate grace [1]. As tools are necessary for art—brushes, pigments, canvas—so technology is simply a tool for the art of living. Technology is in its essence incomplete [13], waiting to be fulfilled by its use as part of art. Today the technology of living, which focuses on youth, longevity, and pleasure subverts the art of living which focuses on maturity, sustainability, and truth. The art of living has been replaced with the technology of living. I do not know how we can return to the art of living.

Related posts:

  1. Limbaugh vs. the Front Porch [5] DALLAS, TX. I am bemused, appalled, and fascinated —...
  2. David Brooks Does (In) Edmund Burke [14] SOUTH BEND, IN. Edmund Burke’s reputation has suffered much...
  3. Prosperity, Myth and Liberty [15] E.D. Kain identifies a paradox in modern American conservatism...
  4. The (“Post-”) Modern Cave: An Allegory of the University [16] Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Imagine human beings brought up from...
  5. Freedom Among Themselves [17] CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. E.D. Kain had a fine quote from...

Article printed from Front Porch Republic: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com

URL to article: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1197

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.makotofujimura.com/

[2] Tao Te Ching: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1562790854?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1562790854

[3] The Politics of Prudence: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932236554?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1932236554

[4] Four Quartets: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156332256?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0156332256

[5] humility: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=781

[6] Man and His Symbols: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440351839?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0440351839

[7] Paradise Lost: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140424393?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0140424393

[8] aboriginal catastrophe: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312253990?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0312253990

[9] static ecstasy: http://www.kritikmagazine.com/college/getting-from-a-to-b

[10] The Book of Tea: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1604596430?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1604596430

[11] After Virtue: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0268035040?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0268035040

[12] gratitude: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1118

[13] incomplete: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061319694?ie=UTF8&tag=borked-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0061319694

[14] David Brooks Does (In) Edmund Burke: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=985

[15] Prosperity, Myth and Liberty: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1031

[16] The (“Post-”) Modern Cave: An Allegory of the University: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1717

[17] Freedom Among Themselves: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=758

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Read more…