On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, Jacqueline Mullen wrote, at the end of a long and
wonderful contribution:
[There is] "a need to not only ponder our
> theoretical base, our presuppositions, but also the need to experience
> life WITHOUT them. Yes, I think one can theorize about the mechanic of
> dancing and directly experience the music of life, just not at the same
> time."
Yes. The first time I looked at an amoeba, in a high school biology
class, I saw something different from what I'd expected, and I learned
something that's been an image for me ever since of human thinking and
growing:
I had pictured amoebas as little blobs of jelly, squirming around in
their habitat, uniformly gooshy little sacs of protein mush. But
watching through a microscope, I saw that *no* part of an amoeba is ever
mush. At any given moment, some part of the creature is solid, and the
rest is essentially a muscular fluid -- animated water. AND THE CREATURE
MOVES BY CONVERTING THESE TWO STATES BACK AND FORTH. It is never
entirely fluid, and it is never entirely solid -- at least, not while
it's in motion.
Later, this became a model for me of how to think logically, and
constructively, about anything at all. It became a model of how to use
human reasoning: as long as there's something solid, anything else can
go to fluid and be examined. And what's solid today can very well become
fluid tomorrow: in fact, that's under my [i.e. our] control.
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
The Residence is at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
...........................................................................
. . . . There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio, . . . .
. . . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy... . . | _ .
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