Page #7
August 2008
Mother Abigail has a beautiful townhouse near the Governors' mansion in Nevada's capital city - Carson City. But it is her "cabin" at Lake Tahoe that she loves and nurtures. As I drove up to meet her for the first time there on that hot August day my thoughts were very scattered. I make my living with words - but I have no background as an interviewer and very little desire to be one. But "follow the story" had me driving up highway 50 with about 10 million other lost souls on that weekend - bumper to bumper.
Science writing is a gentle art. You learn as you write. The terminology, the doctrine and the search are all absorbed like cool water on a hot day. So I felt certain that I would be able to communicate at an educated level - even though I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Or so I though....
WORDS ARE THE SYMBOLS OF TRUTH:
In order for me to have this conversation with you (the reader) we have to share certain mindsets and presuppositions that will allow us frame our discussion in common terms. I did not share that Weltanschauung with Mother Abigail at first and because it is central to understanding her - I will attempt to teach you (the way she has taught me) to see things from a slightly different perspective.
THE FINGERPRINTS OF GOD
There is religion and there is science. There is creationism and there is evolution. Seems pretty clear cut to me but, as we often learn in life, the black and white choices can be terribly muddled in the middle.
To MA creation is an ongoing process. She smiles gently at those who argue for or against evolution/creationism. She explains that it is only our poor perceptual abilities that constantly force us into these dichotomous choices.
She explains it to me by using the following example:
Science vs/ God - no matter which side you start from you are destined to meet at a point that is defined by the number 4.66920160910299067185320382. (Sure and "thanks for all the fish".. I laugh to myself)
She relates that a young man named Mitchell Feigenbaum settled that entire question long ago. It seems that Mr. Feigenbaum (using science) discovered the fingerprints of God.
When you search for God you seek perfection and transcendence. In science you search for universal truths. So far so good… What young Mr. Feigenbaum did was discover that they are the same. Pick your favorite word to describe the results but here is the play by play.
The Feigenbaum Constant was discovered in 1975 by a whiz kid on pocket calculator. In this veil of tears we find two dynamic systems order and chaos - with a whole bunch of stuff in the middle moving between those two systems.
Well it appears (you can check it for yourself) that as any system moves from Order to Chaos there is a rhythm that is both perfect and transcendental. It is called the Feigenbaum Constant. It is so universal and so exact in its expression that it has been called the fingerprints of God.
Page #8
When you go to explain how such perfection occurs in the movement of fluid in a pipeline, a plague of locusts and every other dynamic system in the universe - you might want to bring a lunch.
See it doesn't matter. Words will just get in your way. MA explains that these mathematical rhythms being found at the edge of chaos simply illustrates how dichotomous our reasoning is. We can't predict what will happen past a certain number of variables and so we call it Chaos.
She teaches that there are rhythms in the Chaos and it is only our lack of perception that fails us. Using perception she explains evolution.
MA is a very religious woman yet she slips seamlessly back and forth between the two worlds. It has been very hard for me to grasp that continuity. I am a non-religious person and have a bit of a problem following some of the finer points.
However, she explains current human evolution in terms that I follow with ease.
She gave me a copy of the following paper with this passage highlighted.
Evolutionary Differentiation In Cognitive Function
"The level of understanding past and present determines the possible level of understanding the future. Non-conscious effects of the past, as produced by classical conditioning, can result in same-level anticipations of future (e.g. Pavlov's dogs salivated before meat powder was present). Conscious awareness of past episodes, however, can result in an awareness of potential future episodes. Mental time travel into the future may be achieved through extrapolation from similar past episodes (prediction by analogy) or, more important for the understanding of humans' extraordinary impact on the world over the last 10,000 years, through the application of semantic knowledge (prediction by theory) about the laws that govern nature."
Thomas Suddendorf
University of Waikato
1994
An examination of the cognitive perception of the human species reveals a wide spectrum of differentiation. Like any biological variation, some changes prove to be beneficial to the individual and others prove damaging or even fatal.
Man has risen to be the dominant species on Earth by natural selection of those individuals with more beneficial cognitive skills.
A careful examination of those perceptual skills which have been most beneficial to mans ascendance reveals:
1. There has been a small amount of advancement in three-dimensional ability. The dexterity necessary to paint on cave walls and fashion stone tools has not, in large measure, been radically improved.
2. Sensory function such as smell, vision and hearing are difficult to quantify, but improvements, if they exist at all, are small. Some might even argue for a diminishing of ability.
3. It is the realm of fourth-dimensional perception where the human species has focused its evolutionary development