Noumena, Cognita and Dreams

The Alfred Waterhouse Experience

2012-01-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Deep reds and blacks at Easneye create a moody atmosphere.

For the second time in as many weeks and for quite unconnected reasons I had the privilege to visit an architectural marvel that is now a concentration of devotion and piety. This time it was Easneye Mansion which currently houses All Nations Christian College, deep in a rolling Hertfordshire woodland. Designed circa 1870 by Alfred Waterhouse for the Buxton family, Easneye mansion indulges Waterhouse’s flare for Gothic-Romanesque overstatement that we also find at his famous design, the Natural History Museum.

Like the subject of my last post (The Pleasaunce) Easneye was the residence of a devout and philanthropic family. In fact one of the Buxtons was in the Clapham sect. The Buxtons, it seems, had family and/or friendship links with the Batterseas at the Pleasuance (and also connections with the Gurneys and Elizabeth Fry in Norfolk) . These links are not really a surprise given that both families were into a philanthropy that grew out of a common faith. However, in time their properties passed into the management of other Christian users.

For obvious cultural reasons Gothic-Romanesque, particularly the kind of melodramatic and theatrical depiction of it we see at the Natural History Museum and Easneye, has become associated with death; the horror film makers and the computer games designers love such architecture for its mood generating properties. However, in spite of these associations the current occupants of Easneye have a faith that lifts the mildly depressed ambiance; perhaps few other communities could carry this trick off in such a somber looking pile; and so they should; Christianity is about the defeat of death and fear.

My visit was, in fact, the first time I had ever sampled the milieu of a missionary college. I was only there for half a day, but from what little I saw I was generally impressed by an ethos focused on maintaining high intellectual standards; missionary preparation doesn't mean just being fitted for khakis.

Further pictures and comments on Easneye can be seen on my Facebook album here

The Edwin Lutyens Experience

2012-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

Aerial view of the Pleasaunce

I arrived at “The Pleasaunce” in Overstrand (Norfolk) in the dark of a January evening. After making my way to my room and consulting some floor plans I was struck by the rambling complexity of the building. My first thought was that it must have undergone a considerable number of extensions and changes. I could see no vestige of a medieval hall pattern and my first impression was that it was entirely Victorian or Edwardian. I doubted that a sane architect would build such an informal collection of volumes, surfaces, angles, nooks, and crannies from scratch – in fact its sheer ramification would make it difficult to conceive and implement in one grand slam project. I concluded therefore that it must be an accretion of improvisations.

But then I read the historical blurb in my room. It was a Lutyens. Perhaps then, the late Victorian/Edwardian taste for buildings with an appearance of historical development might explain it. If so it was a remarkable feat; such a pile would require considerable planning in order to reconcile the elements of a seemingly random jumble of spaces. But my mind was to change again. On this web document giving a short history of The Pleasaunce we read:

Deprived of the opportunity to start afresh on the site, Lutyens adopted the solution of disguising the existing villas in a plethora of different architectural elements, forming one of his most odd and perverse designs. As Gavin Stamp put it, the house is “full of clever tricks and eccentricities and touches of Art Nouveau but, as an overall composition [it is] a disaster”.

So it turned to out to be an accretion of improvisations after all. Stamp calls it an “overall disaster”; it’s certainly uncoordinated and Lutyens may have used the excuse to augment to indulge in a series of unconnected architectural essays and experiments making it up as he went along. It is a fact that contriving an appearance of history, given true history’s quirky twists and turns, is very difficult to carry off with authenticity; inventing history is like trying to think of random numbers at one sitting – humans can seldom produce something with an authentic historical ring. Not surprisingly then The Pleasaunce is not a one sitting design. Perhaps the difficulty of creating intricate designs in one shot has something to do with the mathematical fact that only a very few complex patterns can be reached by small short-time algorithms. It is an irony that there are huge continents of apparent random complexity out there that in actual fact are far more demanding of computational resources than are symmetry and order.

It may be that a playful incongruity is precisely what Lutyens had in mind as he designed the Pleasaunce. If so the joke is on us and he is laughing from the grave; he’s achieved what human beings find difficult to achieve; that is to disconnect from their associations and generate something new, something random even.

As I have remarked before in a blog post about Sizewell hall, it is perhaps rather appropriate that a building celebrating arts and crafts should now be a retreat for the Christian community. The arts and crafts movement was a reaction to rapid industrialization; this reaction included a return to the appreciation of hand crafted and natural looking materials. Likewise the Christian community have also reacted to the dehumanising aspects of a machine society by seeking out the human face of Christianity; in particular its irrational and feeling side. In fact they have been knocked for six and destabilized by an encroaching modernity; they often have great difficulty in coming to terms with and making sense of the kind of culture industrialized society throws up.

The architecture of the Pleasuance is also very apposite to the Christian community for another reason. If The Pleasaunce is an eclectic disaster the same could be said of an overall perspective of Christianity. Of course, Christian sectarians attempt to disconnect themselves from the eclectic church by connecting with some purist sect that attempts to “restore” a version of christianity founded on the fancied natural bedrock of the faith, eschewing and purging all other influences. But in effect sectarians simply create another incongruous carbuncular annex atop the rambling development that Christianity has always been. Sectarians simply can’t come to terms with chaotic eclecticism of their faith. In fact during my stay at The Pleasaunce I heard a story that one party of guests (fundagelicals, by the sound of it) left their holiday early because they couldn’t tolerate the presence of another Christian group; stuff like that is all too typical of my overall experience of Christendom I'm afraid to say. What a bunch of pillocks I’ve thrown my lot in with! But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s an overall disaster; you’ve got to see the funny and ironic side of Christianity to enjoy it and come to terms with it.

Christian Restorationists periodically drop their worship-warehouse rebuilds on traditional church and tell us they have been dropped from heaven.

The Paranormal Part 2: Warning: Don’t watch this at home

2011-11-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

The above youTube video by James Fox is probably the best collection of testimonies I have seen from ostensively reliable witnesses claiming to have come face to face with inexplicable (aerial) objects. I don’t advise watching this video if this kind of thing causes you deep disquiet; stick with what you do understand. In fact, even a seasoned Ufologist might “confront the subject with dread” (David Jacobs, The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters 2002 edition). The witnesses in the video are not the kind of people whose claimed sighting is woven into some weird and imaginative mythology, but instead their anecdotes stand out as stark and mysterious anomalies in their otherwise relatively humdrum existences. The people concerned often remain perturbed, frightened even, by what they think they have seen. The experiences, if not the phenomena themselves, are very real, too real for comfort, in fact.

However, I don’t myself rush to conclusions about little green or grey men. UFO sightings are of similar anecdotal quality to sightings of ghosts, alien animals, little people, road ghosts, the virgin Mary, angelic encounters, ghost aircraft, ghost vehicles, cattle mutilations, alien abductions and the whole gamut of the occult. In fact, general occult anecdotes imperceptibly blend into one another and into the UFO phenomenon and form a single body of inexplicable texts that do the rounds in our society. The very bizarre nature of all these texts makes one wonder if one is even thinking about them in the right way if one expects them to unravel into a rational narrative: Welcome to the world of waking dreams. The nearest I have myself come to such bizarre accounts is when my father suffered from Charles Bonnet syndrome as he started to go blind in old age (See Part 1 of this series). If we ever solve the problem of, say, ghosts then I suspect we would also have solved the problem of UFOs and vice versa. The whole gamut of occult texts is of a piece and we must cope with them as a whole. That we must never forget.

(The first part of this series can be seen here:
http://noumenacognitaanddreams.blogspot.com/2011/02/paranormal-part-i-noumena-cognita-or.html)

"Auschwitz" by Francesco Guccini

2011-10-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here's another song by Francesco Guccini with compelling (disturbing even) lyrics, as translated by my brother in law Jonathan Benison.

I’ve died – died with hundreds
I’m dead – I was a baby
Up the chimney, I went up in smoke
And now, I’m in the wind

At Auschwitz, it was snowing
The smoke rose up slowly
In the cold, cold of winter
And now, I’m in the wind
And now, I’m in the wind

At Auschwitz, so many people
All held in one great silence
It’s strange – still I’m unable
To smile – here in the wind

I ask, how is it that a man
Can kill his fellow man
And yet, we’re in our millions
Here in the wind – dust in the wind
Just dust, out here in the wind

Still thunders the cannon
And yet still it hungers
Blood – the beast that is man
And still, we’re carried by the wind

I ask, when will it be
That man will have learned
To live without killing
And the wind will find its peace
And the wind will find its peace
And the wind will find its peace

Italian lyrics:

Auschwitz

Son morto con altri cento, son morto ch'ero bambino:
passato per il camino, e adesso sono nel vento.
Ad Auschwitz c'era la neve: il fumo saliva lento
nel freddo giorno d'inverno e adesso sono nel vento.
Ad Auschwitz tante persone, ma un solo grande silenzio;
è strano: non riesco ancora a sorridere qui nel vento.
Io chiedo come può l'uomo uccidere un suo fratello,
eppure siamo a milioni in polvere qui nel vento.
Ancora tuona il cannone, ancora non è contento
di sangue la belva umana, e ancora ci porta il vento.
Io chiedo quando sarà che l'uomo potrà imparare
a vivere senza ammazzare, e il vento si poserà.

From: http://www.frascolla.org/FG/01.asp#t5

The song appears on Guccini’s album “FOLK BEAT N.1” (1967)

“Letter” by Francesco Guccini

2011-10-11T03:30:00.000-07:00

(See also here)

Translation:

The cherry-tree in the garden has come into bloom with the new sunshine
The neighbourhood is soon filled with snow from the poplars and with words.
At one o’clock on the dot the clatter of plates reaches the ears
The TVs’ thunderous rumble meets the unfazed indifference of the cats;
As you can see, everything’s normal in this pointless sarabande
But blowing through this unchanging pattern of life is the whiff of a question,
The prickly presence of an eternal doubt, what’s past seething like an ants’ nest,
Troubling those who leave it till winter to wish it were summer again.

The streets are coming back to life, a perfect finishing touch to the world,
Mother and daughter brazenly parade the same face and round bottom,
Identical in the head, no history, challenging everything, no limits,
Their strutting briefly outdone by the wailing of swallows and children;
As you can see, nothing out of the ordinary in this cumulus of life and death,
But, sobering thought, I’m not unhappy stuck in this rut of wishes and fate,
This over-shiny net, these goals we dream up for ourselves,
This unquenchable thirst, of those who hold back, unwilling to fly.

Slowly the roses wither, clusters of fruit appear on the apple-trees,
High up, clouds pass silently through the strips of cobalt-blue sky;
I lie stretched out on the fantastic green-grass plane of my past
But just-like-that age dispels all I believed and have not been;
As you can tell, everything’s just fine in this world free of worries,
As life skimmed past me, I correctly discussed the set topics,
My enthusiasms never lasted long, lots of philosophising stances,
A life of amusing encounters turned tragic, some too close for comfort, some not close enough.

But the times gone by, who will return them to me? Who’ll give me back the seasons
Of glass and sand, who can bring back rage and gestures, women and songs,
The lost friends, books I devoured, the simple enjoyment of appetites,
The healthy thirst of the parched, the blind faith in poor myths?
As you can see, everything’s as usual, just that time is pressing and the suspicion arises
That it’s not a big deal to be weary and breathless at the end of a race,
To be anxious as people are the day after, or sad at the end of a match,
No big deal the slow aimless unfolding of this thing that you call life.

Translated by Jonathan Benison

Italian text :here

The Cosmic Perspective Part 3

2011-08-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the third (and last) part of an essay I wrote in 2000 AD....

Matter is beautiful and unreal, but there's loads of it out there.

The actual nature of matter is profoundly mysterious, but it is, nevertheless, very common and our bodies and minds are composed of the same mysterious medium that the Great Artist has used in enormous quantities elsewhere in the universe (*1). But as we look out across the cosmos it is clear that the endless cubic miles of sparingly filled volume tell us one thing: That living things, such as our selves, are highly unrepresentative arrangements of matter and what distinguishes us from the relatively prosaic formations scattered across the depths of space is that we are an extremely rare form of matter. This rarity is not just a physical fact but is also true in an abstracted mathematical sense, because of all the myriad upon myriads of the things which can be contrived using the medium the Creator has chosen, living things clearly represent a very, very, tiny fraction amidst the relative banality of all that is mathematically possible. To secure the existence of living entities taken from such a small fraction requires something of unprecedented power to make an extremely precise selection from the enormous but abstract realm of mathematical possibility. Think of it like this; prior to their existence those highly atypical permutations of material particles we call life can be thought of as lost combinations of matter, lost as might be the key to a highly complicated combination lock. Humanly speaking the activity of seeking a lost combination amounts to a kind of computation and computations of all types necessarily involve the knowledge and thought embodied in a context of calculations within which the sought for result is to be found (*2). Likewise, retrieving the extremely rare configurations of life must surely involve the application of Divine knowledge and thought because I don't think for one moment that living things sprung from nowhere, as if by magic, into the Divine mind; if they did one might question if something bigger and better than God himself created that complex idea out of nothing. Therefore, it is likely that God actually did some kind of mental work in the act of conceiving the creation, mental work that amounted to an assembling of the idea in the mind of God. Now here is a crucial question: Just as there exists the question of whether the knowledge and workings encapsulated in a calculation should be packaged together with the product of that calculation, so a similar question arises in regard to Divine creativity: That is, has God chosen to give us some kind of revelation as to the magnitude of the knowledge and thought He invoked in the act of creating life? My guess is that he has done so and in the absence of better guesses I have been able to draw only one conclusion about the meaning of the scale of the universe; that the spacio-temporal dimensions of the cosmos are a revelation of the enormous mathematical costs of seeking and finding highly complex living configurations of matter. In a sense, the surrounding cosmos is not the creation - living things are the creation - but our surroundings, most of which are seen as they were billions of years ago, symbolise the scaffolding and other trappings of a work in progress; a work that was ultimately to be the home of an exceedingly rare organic configuration - humanity. (*3)

Given the vast mathematical space of possibilities from which living configurations have been extracted, the great canvass of the universe is, at the very least, an eloquent comment on the priceless rarity of living conscious material beings such as ourselves. The cosmos is a grand statement on the physio-mathematical cost of life and the living planet is an oasis of interest amidst the relative banality of its astronomical surroundings. "For a single rose a field of thorns was spared", goes a Jewish saying; a picturesque metaphor apposite to the hard mathematical truths of creating organised complexity, truths which imply that something as beautiful as a rose comes with an unavoidable cost. Likewise, the ample and seemingly superfluous cosmic dimensions are ironic allusions to the truth: We may well ask "Doesn't it all seem rather of a waste?" when, in fact, "waste" may be exactly what the universe is! Not all waste, but 99.9999....% of it is waste, waste in the sense that it symbolises the necessary collateral output of an ultimately purposeful activity, output not unlike the workings of a vast calculation. And in case we should have any doubts, the generation of waste is clearly within the Divine prerogative as is testified by the many natural processes that generate what we would evaluate as waste. In the cosmic case the waste we see represents Divine workings on an unbelievable scale; the unavoidable mathematical waste products similar to the workings of a vast calculation, a calculation needed to arrive at highly sophisticated end results; namely, ourselves and the living forms with which we share the planet.

The Turing Bombe: Searching for rare solutions.

If this guess is correct then we have before us the extraordinary irony that whilst on the one hand the vastness of the cosmos could be construed as conferring upon us our utter insignificance (as the psalmist provocatively suggests in Ps. 8:3&4:), yet the true interpretation is precisely the opposite. The vast and beautiful overall appearance of the heavens is like some breath taking work of art, an elaborately prepared canvass, which when looked at closely reduces to rough smudges of oil paint, but it is, in fact, a sophisticated piece of finesse with an ironic message. That work of art actually tells us of our staggering uniqueness as living configurations and of the astronomical mathematical costs of creating such configurations. Perhaps the Creator would not have bothered with the universe beautiful though it is, but for living things: "The whole universe was created for the Pentateuch" asserts another Jewish saying, a saying which well expresses the lengths the Creator goes to sieve out that which He seeks and that which He desires. If it was required to search a whole universe for something extraordinary beautiful or desirable it seems that the Creator will do it; and it seems that we are the one sought for case in that Universe.

...Final part added 24/09/2001...

The creation is an extraordinary Divine achievement and its underlying lesson is cost, cost of staggering proportions; literally the computational cost of seeking and finding the incredibly elaborate material juxtapositions we call living things. An alternative view is to regard the creation as a display of magic; the primitive notion that raw brute power precipitates existences from nowhere without effort, without work, and without thought. In a word magic embodies the idea of something for nothing and in the magical context the dimensions of the created order seem unintelligible and superfluous, and perhaps even something to be denied (*4) I don't believe in magic, but I do believe in the Divine propensity to support costs of incredible magnitude. The creation is a virtuoso display of seeking and finding the combinatorial novelties called life, but the Divine person seems to be prepared to go much much further in His seekings and to pay a far greater price than the physical costs of solving mere computational problems, which to Him are no doubt trifles. One cannot underestimate how far God is prepared to go in bearing cost. In fact His main motivation seems to be that of bearing cost for the sake of that which He loves; for it seems that all the achievement of the creation is the mere base and show case, as it were, in which He has set some even greater and more wonderful act of seeking and finding: I am talking, of course, of the costs of redemption. The cost of finding human organic forms, lost in the mathematical pathways of computational complexity, although very great, is nevertheless finite, but in contrast it seems that the price of redemption, the cost of seeking and finding the morally lost involves a far greater Divine personal cost than that of creation. For unlike the creation the work of redemption required, even of an infinite God, the kind of giving we call sacrifice; that is, giving where the giver gives in such proportions that his wealth is compromised. Because somehow, and to us incomprehensibly, in the work of redemption God gave up His greatest possession, namely, the unity of the Godhead. Perhaps no greater sacrifice can be imagined than of Him who has most to give and therefore has most to lose: He who had all things gave up all things, and thus, in a sense, God gave up being God and He revealed that His love was a far greater force to be reckoned with than His hold on honour, glory, strength, power and wealth (Philippians 2:6ff). Thus, He chose to live, not just the humble life style of a primitive Palestinian artisan, that even by our standards was unthinkably crude and basic, but to also suffer loss of honour, shame, pain and above all the nameless horrors of a kind of self-rejecting schism in the Godhead. This is how far He is prepared to go in bearing cost for that which He loves and seeks. If finite resources are required to create finite beings why are the infinite resources of the Godhead needed to redeem finite beings? Perhaps it has more to do with the resources needed to cross the infinite gap that separates us from Him.

Footnotes

*1 That we, our very selves, are material concomitants is apparent from the fact that in Earthly life even our thoughts and feelings are inextricably mixed with the distributions of matter and electric fields within our anatomy and brains. But this mapping between physical matter and our thoughts and feelings, rather than demystifying the mind, probably points to the deeply mysterious nature of matter, a fact that any one who has studied physics understands.

*2 There is often an attempt to disguise the non-trivial nature of the creation by suggesting that the processes needed to form living things can be quite banal. But whatever way you look at it far from trivial conditions are the logical prerequisite of life: Whether appeal is made to the off-the-peg information found in the wonderful complexities of random sequences or the enormous computational resources needed to arrive at complex configurations from scratch, we are dealing with qualities whose existences are in themselves remarkable and deeply mysterious. Ultimate truths, whether we believe them to be simple or complex, being the outermost explanatory context, cannot themselves be explained with reference to greater things; thus, standing as peculiar one-offs they will thereby seem strange and inexplicable.

*3 I have fought shy of affirming a too literal relation between God's creative mental act of conceiving creation and the expansive cosmos by suggesting that the latter is only representative of the former. Thus, cosmic dimensions may only symbolise a mathematical point about the singularity and cost of life by juxtaposing it with its prosaic alternatives by way of an enormous cosmic tableau that contrasts the novelty of life against overwhelming numbers of discarded cases. Certain aspects of physics, however, may suggest a more literal connection between the development of the universe and God's act of creation; if this is true, one may then wonder if omniscient Divine Intelligence could not have short cut what sometimes appear to be the inefficient and haphazard random workings we see in the universe. But a closer definition of the nature of intelligence leads one to believe that its power is to be found in the ability to explore pathways and possibilities in abundance, almost regardless of efficiency. The ease with which we ourselves draw conclusions may blind us to the fact that what comes easily to us actually involves an enormous number of neural events and a very large database of knowledge.

*4 Young Earth Creationists and Christian geocentrists both have difficulties accepting with the size of our space-time context and our physical insignificance. They cope with the apparent slight on our significance with a denial of our physical circumstances; Viz: denial of the temporal dimensions of the cosmos and the non-centre place we have on its stage.

The Cosmic Perspective: Part 2

2011-08-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

I was always fascinated by the stars. The extreme dimensions of the velvet black void they inhabited first came to me as a child when I learnt that those delicately twinkling points of light were in fact suns in their own right; huge balls of nuclear fire dwarfing the Earth and even, in many cases, our own sun. It was obvious to me even then that it must take a very, very great distance to diminish the light of something as bright as the Sun to such an extent that it became a barely discernible shimmering fairy light. The vast distances of the heavens thus dawned on me for the first time.

My cigarette card collection of the planets also fascinated me. These showed the planets as perfectly spherical objects with surfaces as smooth as a billiard ball, but marked with the diffuse and patchy details discernible in Earth based telescopes. One of those cards even illustrated Mars with the mysterious Schiaparelli canals, now thought to be an illusion. But my pre-space vehicle collection was soon obsolete: As the transmissions of robotic probes came back across millions of miles of vacuum, high resolution scans displayed one feature which removed any remaining mystique that the planets may have: They showed each planet to have texture. Texture! That great destroyer of mystery! As the filmmakers well know, anyone or anything can look beautiful and ethereal under blurred and misty focus! Remove that inadequate focus and the object is seen for what it is. And so it was with the planets; gone was the veil of the Earth’s atmosphere and the attenuating effects of countless miles of intervening distance to reveal, in some cases, a wrinkly and gritty earthy texture. We saw pictures of mountainous landscapes, tumbled and complex fields of dust and rock, and the long defunct riverscapes and flood plains on Mars. Grab a handful of beach sand at Gt. Yarmouth and I don't suppose it feels much different to a handful of dust from one of the rocky planets. The gas giants, like Jupiter, showed chaotic weather systems, and high speed winds that evidenced violent change on an enormous scale. These entities were as changeable as anything on Earth.

None of these revelations, I suppose, were really unexpected or upset any fundamental ideas, but any vestigial feeling that there might exist out there something really mysterious, like those ineffably sublime crystal spheres of the middle ages or the little green and gray men of more recent years, was finally dispelled by the compellingly down to earth reality (so to speak) of those pictures from space. Yes it was marvelous, but perhaps only because objects that had been out of reach for the entire history of man were now shown to be so earthy. To ancient people for whom the reaches beyond the atmosphere were utterly unreachable the heavens were the location of sacredness, the domain of unearthly principles, perhaps even the dwelling place of ineffable beings. But they cannot be so for us and, in fact, in a post enlightenment milieu we never really expected them to be anything radically different: There might be the occasional exotic object like a black hole or a neutron star but even these are just an extreme application of a physical paradigm hammered out in near Earth vicinity. When it comes down to fundamentals there is nothing out there, it seems, that is of a radically different quality to what is found on Earth.

The empyrean looses its mystique:The planets are not sublime and ineffable.

Mystery is provocative and when something loses its mystery it may also lose its fascination. As one ponders the data that has come back from outer space giving proof positive that the planets are little more than tiny textured pieces of rock or gravitationally concentrated balls of gas embedded in billions of cubic light years of emptiness, one might plausibly claim that this loss of fascination is precisely what has happened to the heavens. In fact one might even feel that there is a touch of banality about what it has taken multi-million dollar hi-tech projects to reveal; just more of the same - gas, dust, rocks, magnetic and gravitational fields and above all plenty of space; nothing out there to really excite the casual observer for long, unless (s)he is perhaps an astrophysicist trained to be excited by theoretical nuances. For the average observer it might all feel, well, rather boring.

But whilst the postmodern atheist may dismiss any substantial existential interest in the heavens, the irony is that for the theist, particularly the theist who believes in a deeply personal God, the demystification of the heavens has cleared the ground of superstition to reveal an overwhelming mystery, a mystery that has simply taken on a new form. For whatever the demystification of outer space has cost in terms of a public interest deficit, there remains that one really mind blowing feature that we all appreciate, namely, the sheer scale on which those physical parochialities are fashioned. Lots has been written about the dimensions of outer space, but illustrations of those dimensions never fail to leave an impact: It is a place where something the size the solar system (a structure traversed by a beam of light in as much as 10 hours) which if scaled to the dimensions of a pin head still leaves the Galaxy, on the same scale, as an object with a colossal 1000 mile diameter. These immense distances are only rivaled by the depths of time: Distance and time are intimately related in space by the travel time of light and some of those distant Galaxies are seen as they were billions of years ago. For the theist, given that these grand dimensions are the work of a Deity, the questions start crowding in and the mystery of the heavens is raised to new and provocative heights of subtlety. It all seems a rather uneconomical creation for what one might expect to be a parsimonious God, a God who could surely be more selective. What's it all about? What's He up to? In fact as most of what we see in the heavens is the distant past, perhaps we should ask what has He been up to? Why fashion so much time and space, when, if as some seem to think, God need only utter the right word of magic for something to almost instantaneously to jump into sight? Does He really require so much space and time? Doesn't it all seem rather of a waste?

Deep Space: A waste of space?

The Cosmic Perspective: Part 1

2011-08-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here is the first part of an essay I wrote in 2000 AD....

Power Paradigm: Give the old V2 some portals and you've got a fifties sci-fi rocket. As for reaching the stars, it’s about as effective as climbing a church spire; if you've still got one to climb.

In the science fiction genre of the 1950s space travelers were often depicted using WWII V2 style rockets, up until then amongst the fastest thing man had invented. With their powerful and sleek lines those machines at least looked up to the job. After the war a burgeoning rocket technology dramatically shrunk the planet with vehicles that could reach their destination within minutes. Surely, I remember thinking as a boy; these were the tools with which we were going to conquer space. Moreover, in outer space the remarkable speeds of rockets would be enhanced because their progress would be unhindered by atmospheric drag. In fact, whilst engines burn space vehicles never reach a terminal velocity (unless it be the speed of light) and just keep getting faster and faster. But the sleek sci-fi rockets of the 50s were misleading; those smooth bullet shaped hulls might give them a fast look, but sharp aerodynamics, although creating an impression of speed and power, does nothing to improve performance in the high vacuum of space, and the ungainly and fragile looking pioneer 11, an essay in naked machinery, is as equally up to the job and as the sci-fi V2 based rockets. In fact Pioneer 11, as it was catapulted past Jupiter in 1974, reached a speed of over 106,000 miles an hour and became amongst the fastest of all man made objects. At that speed one can circle the Earth four times in an hour or make the trip to the moon in just over two hours.

Given that we are capable of such technological power surely we can make vehicles that can rapidly consume astronomical distances unhindered as they are by atmospheric resistance? But as everyone knows there is that one very basic, simple and unsophisticated snag which confounds the best technology; space is simply too big even for the fastest vehicle we can think of, let alone construct. Rockets may be able to eat up the miles on Earth, but the beckoning depths of space are so immense that we may as well send an arthritic snail on an round trip to Australia as send a rocket to the stars. However, a more practical proposition than trying to get there is the Hubble space telescope, which, like pioneer 11, is another piece of space bourn Information Technology. It is an incredibly powerful instrument many orders of magnitude more acute than the first telescopes. It is capable of resolving some of the surface details on a ten pence coin placed 50 miles away. With this power it has extended our sight across the universe and way back towards the beginning. But even in its keen gaze the most distant galaxies, huge objects though they are, seem as insignificant flecks of light.

Compared to Neolithic man who first cast his eyes into the heavens, we are unbelievably more powerful. But the cosmic leviathan (Job 41) makes a mockery of that power and has the potential to soak up and consume everything we can throw at it as if our existence was inconsequential. That sense of our apparent inconsequentiality on the enormous astrophysical stage is just another special case of a more general malaise of ultimate futility which plagues our society at so many levels and means that theists must come to terms with, and begin to understand, the COSMIC PERSPECTIVE....

Information technology: Pioneer 11 beams down its messages. Naked machinery replaces naked power.

Rationality and Mystery.

2011-05-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

This why I love palladian architecture: Symmetrical, elegant, unembellished, clean and in this case of Bath stone without stain or blemish, looking as though it has just been built. However, during a recent visit to Basildon Park I found parts of the interior just a little more fussy that I would have expected or liked; perhaps the restorers over did it.

Basildon Park is a late palladian construction (1776) which makes my identification of the neo-classical Ickworth house (1795) as "unusual palladian" look not quite so bad. Both display a clean and symmetrical rationality of build that dispels any sense of gothic mystery. Ickworth in particular is abstractedly platonic almost to the point of being surreal and thus is ironic.

Talking about the surreal: Gothic flavoured mystery and legend are being revived at musty old Blickling hall this summer (18th-19th June) with a Tudor Pageant that features the "Return of the Queen". Blickling Hall's facebook page bills it thus:

Blickling returns to the 16th century with a spectacular Tudor Pageant at the childhood home of Anne Boleyn.

The "Queen", I guess, is none other than Anne Boleyn of whom, last time I looked, there was no definitive evidence that she was at Blickling Hall in her childhood. But, hey, this is myth and legend and myth and legend intrigues and fascinates; above all they are often far more meaningful than bland history. Perhaps it will result in a few more sightings of the ubiquitous Anne at the Hall and that's bound to be good for the heritage business. For the record, I never saw her whilst there, but don't let that put you off; Blickling is one of the most romantic and mysterious settings I have had the pleasure to frequent.

Blickling Hall, like all the spookiest and creepiest places, has turrets and pinnacles

Evocative Scenes at Blickling Hall

2011-04-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

See and feel the troposphere at Blickling Hall; all 30,000 feet of it

Here is Flickr album by Kenny Gray, house steward at Blickling Hall. It contains some very professional looking pictures of the Jacobean Hall and its environs (along with other curious and interesting material). Kenny has managed to juxtapose the Hall and its grounds with some stunning skyscapes and lighting effects.

Light and sky combine together to prompt our minds to imbue scenes with moods. These moods are taken from a rich repertoire of qualities, qualities that are intangible, unseen and yet when evoked are strangely pervasive; everywhere and yet nowhere. Mood manipulation makes art work. The Romantics knew all about the effects of sky and light on our psyche and it’s no surprise that the word “atmosphere” has become so closely associated with ambiance. (See also here)

Hardwick Hall

2011-04-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

Hardwick Hall: Square, Imposing and crystalline.

Hardwick hall was the home of the Elizabethan heiress, Elizabeth Shrewsbury. “Bess”, as she was known, was born c1527 into a relatively unimportant gentry family*. In those days women could only make social progress via marriage and/or inheritance and in Bess’s case she was blessed with four advantageous marriages outliving each successive husband, and each time she got a little richer – quite a bit richer, in fact, until she was the second richest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth. Some credit can, I suppose, be given to Elizabethan England in as much as it was not impossible for a woman to become so rich and influential. Bess was in her early sixties when her last husband died in 1590 and shortly after that she started building Hardwick hall as a powerful statement of her position in society. Later generations of her family, however, moved their principle seat to the fashionable baroque pile of Chatsworth, and Hardwick became a little neglected; this may partly explain why even today it has the touch and feel of a time capsule sent from the Elizabethan world.

I recently visited Hardwick hall and I don’t think I have been to a prodigy house that feels so atmospheric and original. This is probably down to a combination of the subdued lighting (always necessary from a conservation point of view), the ancient tapestries filling the walls, and above all the rush carpeting whose smell permeates the place (this is an original Elizabethan touch created by the National Trust who now own the house**); was this how the house smelt in Bess’s day? The famous staircase at Hardwick fulfilled all my expectations of an impressive and idiosyncratic formal processional way to Bess’s great chamber on the second floor. The great chambers of prodigy houses are normally found on the first floor, but as second richest women in the land perhaps Bess was signaling her extra special status by placing her state rooms one floor above the usual level. The great chambers of this time were a far cry from the days when the medieval lord dinned on his dias in the communal entrance hall. The withdrawal of the Lord’s and Lady’s presence from the hall to the great chamber in the upper regions of their houses was a sign of a richer stratified society, as the population was now dispersed over a wider spectrum of wealth.

The National Trust guide book bills the hall as “Hardwick hall, more glass that wall” and this is a reference to its collection of huge closely spaced windows, no doubt a secular application of all that had been learnt from the perpendicular period of ecclesiastical architecture. Like everything else about the house these expensive windows were another conscious display of wealth and ostentation.

Bess was the kind of person who, if it came to a choice between art and impressiveness would likely opt for the latter; for, to my eye the house is more imposing than it is beautiful. The rectangular, unfussy and heavy lines of the hall and the expanse of glass are reminiscent of the 60s modernist tendency to build square glass buildings. Large areas of glass signal optimism, extraversion and self-belief. Moreover, glass as the quasi-invisible crystal wall has that slight otherworldly feel about it, a reaching to heavenly realms perhaps. It probably says a lot about Bess and how she thought of herself.

The renaissance period to which Hardwick belongs was a time when ostentatious displays of individual wealth were less inhibited by a feudal religious milieu; feudalism with its straight jacket on aspiring social mobility was departing. Renaissance humanism promoted the exercise of human gifts, and gloried in the genius of human creativity. It is in the heat of this creative humanist context that an authentic spirituality becomes aware of the potential dangers of an enslaving pride and self indulgence. A studied detachment from the glory of one’s own works and/or wealth is always in order. And yet spiritual detachment can itself go horribly wrong: Having moved amongst some very pious people I have seen how meekness is so easily misinterpreted as the subjection of one’s humanity, and this subjection, Screwtape wise, can itself become a point of pride that manifests itself in affected displays of self-abasement that suppress creativity energy. Accordingly, the pious so easily imprison themselves in an inauthentic humility and become pray to sectarian religion. I have have come to despise what the religious sects stand for – the oppression of humanity and its self expression in favour of the submission to a bland group think based on the lie that salvation is achieved through the imprisonment of the soul. A memorial stone epitaph in a Norwich church warns us about a pious masquerade: “A scholar without pride, a Christian without bigotry, and devout without ostentation”. Ostentation, pride and bigotry are the temptations of the religious ascetic as well as the rich.

When I visit a building like Hardwick I find it a very difficult leap of the imagination to try and recreate in my mind its halcyon days when such buildings would have been considered state of the art. Today it is difficult to see past the dust, the staining, the warping and the general damage these structures have accumulated in their passage through time. In particular, the now faded tapestries of Hardwick would have been far more vibrant than we see today; they are shades of what they once looked like. The ambiance of modernity that would have pervaded Hardwick hall 400 years ago is impossible to duplicate today; although the National Trust do all they can to assist the imagination of the visitor. In its day Hardwick was where it was at and its lady was a towering dignitary whose subjects looked up to. Important though it once was, Hardwick has suffered that inevitable diminishment in significance with time: At one time it was a mountain dominating the social landscape. But as we look back through the distance of time it is seen to be little more than a largish foothill in the cosmic perspective of history.

Footnotes

* It is possible Bess’s family had come up through ranks from the ex-peasant yeomanry; in which case it says a lot for social mobility post-black death.
** I have since learnt that the rush carpeting concept pre-dates the NT, but the NT gets the credit for maintaining and replacing the carpeting as it wears out.

Curious Norwich

2011-03-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently a much eroded and reduced outlier from the 15th Century. Why did it survive as the modern world developed around it? What did the original street it occupied look like? Or is it a Tardis that's got its period wrong? See here for the Curious Norwich album.

Musical Interlude: Is it a Dream?

2011-03-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

For Classix Nouveaux fans, here's what claims to be a rare low budget original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAiKC1FEc-A&feature=related

The Paranormal Part I: Noumena, Cognita, or Dreams?

2011-02-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

What is reality?

Towards the end of his long life my father’s sight started to deteriorate. During this degeneration he suffered from Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a hallucinatory condition common to the early stages of blindness. In my father’s case the hallucinations were largely of buildings that weren’t there. I was reminded of my father’s casual interest in architecture and the large number of postcards he had collected of the cities he had visited during wartime. In fact in one of his visions he saw the buildings surrounding his house in a state of destruction. Occasionally he also hallucinated people in and around the house and this rather spooked my mother for whom it was no doubt too reminiscent of a haunting for comfort.

As far as I am aware no one has a good theory on CBS; the best I’ve heard is that deprived of the bright and complex patterns of sensory input the visual cortex becomes sensitive to random perturbations and goes into a kind dream state. A particularly strange feature of CBS is that it often synthesizes its visions into the daily context; for example, illusory people will appear to be interacting with the physical surroundings. When sufferers of CBS report seeing people in their houses one cannot help but think that a more generalized version of CBS may throw light on the nature of ghosts and all sorts of occult events. Moreover, it is possible that CBS analogues may also apply to the sense of sound, smell and touch, not to mention a whole array of internalized intuitions that crop up now and then, such as the sense of somebody being present.

I’ve never got to the bottom of the positivist’s question of whether reality and perception are one and same or whether physical reality goes beyond the sum total of perceiving agents (Which according to Berkley includes God Himself) and is something other than perception, the noumenon, the thing-in-itself. But whatever the answer to that question we do know that as far as the solitary perceiving agent is concerned the world, the cosmos moreover, is effectively only what (s)he is conscious of. From the first person perspective reality is a mode of consciousness and therefore if there are sophisticated hallucinations that occur under an altered state of consciousness, then as far as the first person is concerned those perceptions are reality – of sorts. But having said that it seems that the visions experienced under altered states of conscious don’t usually follow the coherent, rational and strictly systematic logic we associate with the “really real” physical world; as science has shown us the logic of the really real is immaculately coherent, highly synchronized and faultlessly consistent. Without this coherence and consistency there would be no really real world with the touch and feel of physicality and solidity. The physical world passes the physical equivalent of a kind of Turing test for reality in as much as no matter what test you submit to it all but invariably it returns the observations that you would expect if that reality was really there. In contrast, however, the occult fails this test; for as soon as we move into altered states of conscious and the like, things get much less coherent and much more vague and anomalous: If a CBS vision appears, it usually fails to synchronise with the other senses, or if one looks again perhaps it has gone or changed. Like ghostly apparitions these visions lack a coherent integrity and integrateness with one’s wider experience. Both CBS and the occult fail the “Turing test” of reality. Like the actors who have mere bit parts in a play the actors of the occult make a brief appearance, but their character parts are not worked out in sufficient detail to have the multidimensional depth of presence we are used to in the physical world. Ergo, their attenuated reality is that much less instantiated.

I have never been witness to anything one that might call ghostly or paranormal. Even though I spent three years working (cleaning after hours, in fact) in one of England’s premier haunted houses , many times on dark winter evenings, I never heard, smelt or saw anything ghostly. However, from time to time stories and rumors did the rounds, but it always seemed to happen to other people; do people bring their ghosts with them? Sometimes I would stop and listen silently; absolutely nothing on all occasions – even the sense of a spooky ambiance was absent.

Anne Boleyn is, of course, Blickling’s celebrity ghost and there are some famous reports of encounters with female apparitions that are usually assumed to be Anne; although I have to say they are remarkably consonant with the generic grey lady reports that one hears of so often in haunted locations. In particular the stories of two encounters at Blickling are repeated time and again: One involves men delivering the Ditchley portrait of Anne’s’ mother, Elizabeth I, to the long gallery of the Hall. The delivery men were met by an old fashioned looking lady who signed for the portrait. But Blickling’s house steward was confounded when the men told him that the picture had already been signed for by a lady in the long gallery. The puzzled house steward examined the paperwork and found no signature on the dotted line. A search of the house yielded no sign of the spooky recipient of the portrait. Another story of an encounter with the lady of Blickling hall was provided by the butler to Lord Lothian, the last private owner of the hall. The butler approached a women dressed in grey standing by the lake, a lake a few yards far from the walls of the hall. She responded to the butler’s enquiry with “That for which I search is lost forever”. The butler looked away for a moment. He turned back only to find her gone.

Because of the similarities and analogies between the paranormal and the altered states of perception such as we see in Charles Bonnet syndrome and dream states, I have, as a kind of hobby, taken to using a sort of Freudian analysis to interpret ghost stories – looking on them as products of the imagination, and/or the Jungian deep collective mind which encodes meanings into stories, pictures and symbols. However, to call it “Freudian analysis” is really to put a respectable scientific gloss on a folk activity that has a lineage going at least as far back as Joseph’s interpretations of the dreams of Pharaoh ’s butler and baker.

My first foray into this area was with the famous lake-side sighting of Blicking Hall’s “Anne Boleyn”. Whatever the actual ontology behind this report, whether an hallucination or even an invented story, it nevertheless retains some highly symbolic elements that can be interpreted as a subliminal message of a modern malaise. The results of my “analysis” can be found toward the end of this blog post. Unfortunately information about the butler’s state of mind is not available to us, but I suspect if he did have some kind of hallucination it may also have connected with his circumstances in some way. I have a feeling, however, that these grey lady reports would come out of Blickling Hall whether Anne Boleyn’s visits were historical or not: What is crucial is that she is such a subliminally significant figure that even the rumour of her being connected with a place is enough to help trigger reports.

I call it “analysis” but frankly that term makes something which is very evanescent and insubstantial sound as though it is readily tractable to “hard science”. But then perhaps even history as a discipline would not want to make a claim to being analytical in the hard science sense. Equivocation is the name of the game. The past is one of those objects that is starting to pass out of the realm of “Turing testability” for physicality*. History cannot be tested at will, its evidence is often partial, and many of its practitioners have to accept that their theories may ultimately have no high standard of proof. Accordingly, Historians are not just people who can remember lots of facts, but they tap into a very wide experience of the human situation in order to interpret historical data with great feats of their imagination.

To embark on a creative task like interpreting the meaning of ghost reports one needs the free imagination of the artist and mythologist in order to join the dots with a grander imaginative narrative. As with the historian it too requires one to draw on one’s knowledge of the total human situation: history, psychology, religion, art, literature, ascetics, science, philosophy etc. What one ends up with is probably little more than conjecture, conjecture that perhaps shouldn’t be taken too seriously. But if that is all we have to got to go on then we must remember that epistemic beggars can’t be choosers.

However, as we shall see in the next part the quasi-Freudian/Jungian approach to the paranormal is far from original.

...to be continued...

Footnote: * The case of history is an indication that a negative on the "Turing test" for reality may be down to the object simply being epistemically inaccessible rather than it being intrinsically incoherent and fragmentary.

Ugly Norwich

2011-01-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

Get the prozac ready: As dreary as the grey skies that sometimes hang over Norwich
("Heck!" said the architect, "there's not enough room for a door and a window, so I'll just make a little lean-to like so...")

What makes a building ugly? In this facebook album of pictures taken in Norwich it seems that one of the problems is context – buildings that would otherwise be passable become ugly blots in an inappropriate setting and this is certainly true in Norwich with its sometimes dissonant mix of old and new buildings: Modernism, functionality, and the hardnosed practical world of office and factory don’t sit well with the romantic, the quaint, the arcadian cottage, and the homely; we like to keep these two worlds apart (except solicitors). Other buildings however (see my picture above) would have a struggle looking anything but ugly in any context.

I suspect that the overriding factor in determining ugliness is one’s mental context and the associations triggered by the building. Viz: What does the building signify to you? Does it trigger a sense of boredom? Does it look run down, neglected and dirty? Is it threatening in some way? Is it associated with danger? Does it signify either values or a life style you dislike? Get the mental associations right and a building can look beautiful: Perhaps even the building I have pictured above, if rendered in brilliant shinning white and with flamboyant canopied windows, could look exciting and beautiful on a summer’s day; but it wouldn't be "Norwich".

City Office Block vs. Bucolic Cottage: Norwich is not well known for getting its building contrasts right

***

For centuries, perhaps since the rise of the merchant classes and gentry toward the end of fourteenth century, the attitude to building in Norwich has been "Let's just do it guys!". In the doing we have been left a hotch-potch of monuments typical of an Anglo-Saxon market free for all. And yet unplanned and unsystematic though it is the net result of many architectural foibles can often be unconsciously quaint and charming. But sometimes, as we see above, this outcome is hilarious.

Christmas Wonderland

2010-12-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

Blickling Hall Sphinxes maintain their guard at the Temple Avenue entrance

Here are some seasonal photos of Blickling Hall grounds.

Creswell Crags

2010-11-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Creswell crags is a small limestone gorge not far from the Derbyshire peak district. Amidst the soft rolling landscape of a modern arable setting it cuts an anomalous and peculiar scar on the landscape (ignoring the far bigger scar created by the nearby opencast mining operation). But what makes the gorge stand out most is that it is a time capsule from an era far older than anything else I have yet dealt with on this blog.

During a recent visit to the Crags I was impressed by the depth of time this small Limestone gorge and its collection of caves represent. Quite apart from the geology of the crags (which presumably started with the formation of a layer of limestone strata in carboniferous times) the impressive human interest value of the site goes back many thousands of generations, right back, in fact, to over 40,000 years ago when Neanderthals occupied the gorge. According to Creswell Crags’ wiki page its caves not only hosted Neanderthals but also saw phases of human occupation around 30,000 years ago and then again around 14 to 13 thousand years ago. The latter were seasonal hunter gatherers who arrived from the continent and used the caves during the cold British summer of a glacial interstadial. It was this latter group who left the recently discovered (2003) sensational cave art – sensational because it is the only known cave art in Britain.

The Paleolithic human prehistory of Creswell Crags makes the other ancient sites I have mentioned in this blog look more like memories of yesterday; even the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures of Britain are recent by comparison. From our perspective a time of 13000 years ago might feel as though the benefits of the end of the ice age were just round the corner, but no; the end of the ice age was still 3000 years off and that equated to hundreds of generations of these nomads' short and hard lives; life as they knew it was going to continue for them just as it had for many generations before that. For these people each year was just another year in what to all and intents and purposes was an endless cycle. I doubt they had much sense of history. A sense of history requires, like a landscape, features to act as landmarks in order to give it character, identity, distinctiveness and a sense of time passing by. The concept of an historical progression may never have occurred to them

Given that today we are familiar with the idea of some kind of origin from which history unfolds and changes, it raises the question of just how a people trapped in a seemingly endless cycle viewed the world. What were their beliefs about the origins, nature and purpose of their world? Did they even have such beliefs? Whatever they believed, it would, of course, have been mediated from one generation to the next by an oral tradition that was propagated down the centuries and millennia. I tried to put myself in the position of one of these wandering cave dwellers: In the dark caves at night as sleep stole over them, did they have questions in their minds about their lot? Did they wonder if life had always have been like this and for how long? Did they wonder what life would be like thousands of years hence? Could they even conceive such questions? Or perhaps they were assured that their oral traditions provided all they needed to know and thought no more of the matter. When one draws back and imagines these people contemplating such questions, there seems to be as much chance of an ant crawling around on the face of a mountain grasping his full context. Or alternatively if our ant is the ant equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist he can postulate that the mountain is no bigger than a cosy ant hill and thus feel less lost in his surroundings.

Do the artworks at Creswell Crags give us any clues about the beliefs of these hunter-gatherers? Trouble is, the very meaning of the cave art is itself an enigma. All we can do is use our imagination and knowledge of similar cultures in an attempt to connect with these ancient peoples. The archeo-anthropologists are probably best qualified to speak on this issue: The cave art may have been a teaching aid for trainee hunters, helping them to identify their quarry, perhaps via some form of ritualized initiation. There appears, however, to be no cosmological questions addressed by their art: Only what was needed to survive in a harsh environment was upper most in the minds of these people.

The humble cave dwellings of the Creswell Crags nomads differs markedly from the other two places we visited on the same trip – the impressive Elizabethan Wollerton Hall in Nottingham and Castle Acre priory – both very modern constructions by the standard of this post. After the deep time signified by Creswell Crags, these places, which in comparison go back to times we know so much about, seem prosaic and commonplace. As a living space Wollerton Hall, in particular, is as far removed from the setting of Creswell Crags as could possibly be:

…and yet on turning a corner in this now museum I came across a sight that for obvious reasons reminded me sharply of Creswell Crags:

....yes, a row of trophies bagged by that now politically incorrect animal the trophy hunter. What was once common place necessity 15000 years ago, in later times became the privileged pass time of the rich in an agriculturally based economy. The trophy hunter displays his trophies because his respect for his quarry reflects some glory and dignity upon him. So perhaps this vestigial hunter instinct throws some light on the enigmatic cave art of Creswell Crags.

Symbol, Legend and Destiny at Sutton Hoo

2010-09-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

Whilst holidaying in the Colchester area for a few days the wife and I visited the Saxon Ship burial site at Sutton Hoo. The 7th century site is the nearest thing we have to archaeological evidence of the first king of England, possibly the Anglo-Saxon king, Raedwald.

The Sutton Hoo area is the stuff of legends and those legends have given it a reputation for mystery, the sinister and even the preternatural. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure were initiated by the visions of a psychic on eve of the second world war, circumstances which helped recall the legend that King Arthur would return from his grave in his country's hour of need. Arthur may actually have been a Celt battling against the invading Saxon’s but the language of myth and legend does not make fine distinctions; rather it is the vague associative and symbolic language of dreams. Perhaps because a pagan ambiance still haunted the mounds of Sutton Hoo it seems to have become an execution & burial ground for miscreants during the mediaeval 9th and 10th centuries. Much later in the 20th century the general area had a military presence with all the associated inscrutability of the armed forces. The wider environs played host to the famous Rendlesham forest UFO incident of Christmas 1980.

Truth, legend and myth form an inseparable union at Sutton Hoo. When the Romans left Britain in AD 410, the commentary of history was interrupted for a while and an information black-out descended. When history did eventually re-emerge in Bede’s writings we find Anglo-Saxons inhabiting these Islands. The Anglo-Saxons connect Britain to Iron Age prehistory via their link with migrations from the continent. Effectively then, the “dark ages” represent a time when prehistory almost reasserted itself in England.

When I look at the mounds at Sutton Hoo, which have been deliberately constructed high above the Deben Estuary to be visible*, I wonder if their connection with prehistory might throw light on the beliefs of the much more distant and mysterious pre-roman cultures who pockmarked Southern England with many earthworks. Ultimately, however, Anglo-Saxon “prehistory”, cheated the black-out of the dark ages and emerged via the back door: When the Anglo-Saxons became Christianized and learnt to write, their oral traditions were caught in the net of history by a new generation of Anglo-Saxon scribes such as Bede. A few words of history (or even of legend) is worth a thousand archeological artifacts.

The oral traditions of the Saxons, which would have been told and retold in the heady fireside atmosphere of their thatched halls, may not be the most reliable of sources. Moreover, Bede glorified this history by depicting it as the out working of destiny rather than serendipity. But to be fair to Bede when history is observed retrospectively it does look like destiny; we can see the precursors and antecedents that the chaotic vicissitudes of time uses as the seeds of great things. It is very tempting to feel you are part of a people destined for greatness as the story of Israel indicates. Small beginnings are thus glorified. To Raedwald's subjects his glory would be easy to interpret as part of a Divine plan, although in the context of his times he is seen to be a small time king. But in the wider perspective of world history he is not insignificant: In Raedwald prehistory was emerging into history and paganism into Christianity; these were the seeds of the world to come. That the minor language Raedwald spoke was in due course to become a world language propagated by a seafaring nation is fittingly portended in Sutton Hoo’s burial ship. Thus the events in this corner of the England 1300 years ago stand in the main stream of English history, even world history. As the National Trust guide to Sutton Hoo says:

...they formed the nation which fought under Harold II at Hastings in 1066, were ruled by Norman Lords, and were gradually awarded rights by royal charted and won them in Parliament. Gathering with other ancient peoples, they made Britain a world power.

The Anglo-Saxon governmental ethos eventually merged with that of the Normans to give us the institutions of a country that lead the world out of rural arcadia into the modern industrial age. It is thus very easy to impute mystique to the site at Sutton Hoo and see the portents of destiny. This in turn helps fuel the legends which surround it; from the ghostly psychic visions to those close encounters of the second kind.

Gulls wheel over the mounds at Sutton Hoo during our visit

* "Hoo" comes from "haugh", which translates as "high"

Modern Norwich

2010-09-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I used to think that modern Norwich would one day look like this.

Ostentatious Norwich , quaint Norwich , now modern Norwich. All the buildings in this latest Album have been constructed in my life time, from the late fifties onwards. I remember being excited as a child seeing these smooth and clean lined modern buildings going up. I easily and enthusiastically connected with modernism; in fact if I had had my way old Norwich would have been flattened and something looking like a city from the old Dan Dare adventures thrown up in its place. Modernism, to my mind, was all about a potent and formidable functionality. Why was there any need to indulge a taste for quaint and finicky filigree when the best art were these structural conquests demonstrating a mastery of science and technology. A towering wall of steel, glass and concrete was not only the best symbol of that conquest but it was also the best form of art. The elegant repeated sequences set up by many floors and windows spoke of the elementalism, order and precision of mathematics. Fourier was right: From this simple periodic pattern all functions could be constructed. An elemental mathematical periodicity was the key to the universe.

One of the first modern buildings in Norwich

Norwich by modern standards is not a big city and neither are its buildings very large, but in the 1960s the common 17th 18th , 19th century vernacular buildings of Norwich were being dwarfed by constructions that in comparison seemed huge especially to a child. There is a line in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" that expresses it well for me: The Time Traveler is on his machine as it plunged into the future and he describes what he saw:

… so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. ..presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind – a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread – until at last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought might appear when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time…..

As I read that passage as a teenager I no longer wanted to be Dan Dare, but Wells’ Time Traveler instead. Just like the Time Traveler I was seeing the future fast developing around me. But as I read further into the book I was in for the shock that Wells had carefully prepared for his readers. The Time Traveler eventually emerged into a world that cut across his expectations and which he struggled to understand; yes, technical advances had been put into place but paradoxically and ironically they had brought about a humanity that had “devolved” into two competing species; the whimsical Eloi and the practical Morlocks. Both species were a shadow of their distant ancestors. The Time Traveler called it the “Sunset of Mankind”. Just like the Time Traveler I too found a strange place waiting for me in maturity; the Eloi vs. the Morlocks was a fine metaphor for the heart of man vs. the head of man, a dichotomy everywhere to be found.

Norwich Today: Is that Dan Dare's Rocket I can see?

The Haywain

2010-08-28T04:23:00.000-07:00

The Haywain by John Constable

I was brought up with a copy of John’s Constable’s Haywain (see above) hanging in my parents’ lounge. As a child I was puzzled why a wagon and its horses should be driving down the course of a small river; or was it stationary? Other than that I gave the painting little thought, although I did unconsciously imbibe the mood of peace, tranquility and beauty that the mind, unbidden, attaches to it. I have a modicum of artistic skill but art has not been my area of study, so unsurprisingly it is only in the last few days I have discovered the solution to the riddle of Constable’s evocative work.

Recently I happened to be in Ipswich, helping to escort my wife’s Spanish students. We visited Christchurch mansion where there is a display of Constable’s paintings. At the end of my visit I purchased a small book on Constable’s work by Ian St. John (entitled Flatford, Constable Country). According to St. John the Haywain is fording the river Stour from the near bank (where wheel ruts can be seen entering the river) with the purpose of collecting sun dried hay from the meadows over the river. Corn reapers can, in fact, be seen working in the distance. St John also points out those easily ignored disconnected incidentals which richly and randomly embroider real life: A fishermen can be seen coming through the undergrowth on the far bank to his moored boat and a kitchen maid is on the landing stage of Willy Lot’s house collecting water.

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, houses the largest collection of Constables outside London.

As far as I’m concerned, however, there remain riddles in composition of the The Haywain: The wagon and its team of horses doesn’t seem to be taking the most rational course to the other bank; according to St. John they are heading for the right hand fork of the river and thence up onto the bank. To my eye there is an awkward discontinuity in the trajectory of the Haywain and I suspect this is because elegance of composition was the overriding factor in Constable’s mind; for example he laterally compressed Willy’s Lot's cottage to bring in to the painting a more varied roof line thus improving composition.

Constable’s painting is a snap shot of arcadian life in the early 19th century. The stasis and silence of paintings whatever the content, dresses the subject with a peaceful ambiance and even more so if the painting depicts a rural setting. However, in spite of the idyllic content of the painting and the apparent aimless deportment of the Haywain itself the subject matter is, in fact, very dynamic: Constable’s rural contexts depict the countryside as a place of work. In the early 19th century that work was in many cases hard and long and I suspect its workers hit their beds at the end of the day very ready for sleep. I’m reminded of Darwin’s statement to the effect that the seeming tranquility of country hedgerows hides an unseen struggle for survival.

But the inhabitants of Flatford where the Haywain was painted were, I suspect, more placid than we are today: Although there were justifiable rebellions in the face of poverty (e.g. the Swing riots of 1830) their society had only just started on the road to industrialization and they did not know that plenty, like poverty, can also cause vexation: Contemporary media and advertising allow comparisons to be made between peer groups, raising expectation and the desire for status & one-up-man-ship; there always seems to be something better to attain or gain, especially as the apparent social mobility of modern society suggests that the opportunity for extraordinary levels of betterment are in principle open to all. Restlessness leading into outright discontentment is inflamed when expectations are dashed. One might own a 50 foot luxury yacht, but a nagging angst can set in if most of one’s peer group own 100 foot yachts. And when one does achieve one's goals of wealth and status there is a strong desire to hold on to them, at all costs. (Phil 3:7-12) *

But the composure of the arcadian idyll didn’t equate to a lack of self-awareness. Constable stood back and took stock of his conditions of existence through his art. Naturally enough for an artist like Constable his appraisal was intuitive and instinctual rather than analytical. Remarking on his painting called “The Lock” Constable wrote:

..its light cannot be put out, because it is the light of nature – the Mother of all that is valuable in poetry, painting or anything else – where an appeal to the soul is required. The language of the heart is the only one that is universal.

Constable’s paintings attach a sense of beauty, grace and dignity to the workplace that was Flatford and glorify it. These very human qualities are less an intrinsic property of the situation-in-itself than they are an extrinsic property arising from the atmosphere our minds impute to that situation. Mood is, as Constable suggests, the language of the heart and mood is more easily conveyed by art rather than by science. In the case of The Haywain, the enigmatic and seemingly purposeless orientation of its wagon and horses adds to the ambiance of composure and serenity.

Willy Lot's Cottage and the Haywain ford today.

* Footnote: It is reckoned that the hill forts dating from the iron age which pockmark Britain were a response to growing agricultural abundance. This abundance provided the opportunity for the ambitious to compete with their peers in the control of that abundance. Once control was achieved there then arises the need to hold on and protect one's wealth and status from the grasping hands of one's fellow humans; the hill forts were a means to this end.

Quaint Norwich

2010-08-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

Norwich at its Quaintest

My last post linked to my album of photos of “Ostentatious Norwich”. This post links to my Quaint Norwich album. This is what most people think Norwich is all about; the past.

The album shows buildings mostly ranging from Tudor to the 17th century. The 1507 great fire of Norwich ensured that there is little pre-Tudor architecture in Norwich apart from stone ecclesiastical buildings going back nearly a 1000 years and few of the more substantial high status structures of the wealthy from the 14th and 15th centuries. Many old houses in Norwich are rendered timber framed structures with the original wattle and daubing now replaced with brick infills and cladding, and thatching replaced by tiles. Seventeenth century houses are noticeably common in Norwich and are usually distinguished by the large dormer windows that housed weaving and spinning garrets: In the 17th century Norwich was getting rich on the textile industry, but it all fell through when power strapped Norwich could not support the mechanized spinning and weaving of the industrial revolution.

I like to think of the timber framed houses of Norwich as the final sophistication in an evolutionary development going right back to the wattle, daub, wood and thatched structures that were the architectural staple of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron age periods. The walls of these structures were, as are the timber framed houses of Norwich, not thick and represented the urgent need to at least get a thin barrier between one self and the elements. Throughout these ages the dwelling places of the living used materials largely derived from organic sources – wood, thatch, animal dung and wickerwork, but for the land of the dead stone was used - and that is as true of Norwich's legacy architecture with its mix of timber framed houses and stone churches as it was in the days of Stonehenge.

These eventually became this...

..but it was evolution rather than revolution

In Yer Face Façades

2010-07-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of Norwich buildings constructed in an era not long out of living memory. They are mostly from the late 19th century and Edwardian era. (Excepting the medieval Castle and the late medieval Guild hall, which I’ve added for comparison) Why did these people build in such a fussy, baroque way? Would we build like this today? What was different then?

Now, you can’t build big in a cramped ex-medieval city like Norwich, a city that as far as its street lines are concerned is effectively a jumped up Saxon village of cart tracks. But you can guild the lily. The ostentation of these buildings suggests the desire to signal high status and wealth. The builders were a confident people who believed in themselves. They were perhaps just a little pretentious: Some of the buildings look really out of place when set against the more cottagey and bucolic buildings of Norwich. The lack of any attempt to blend is perhaps another indication of an almost egotistical confidence

The feeling I get is that that the sleep of these builders was undisturbed by self doubt. The Titanic and the First World War were a few years off.

Best viewed across park land, this grand façade, plonked in a narrow Norwich street, can't be viewed from sufficient distance take it in. Frankly it's a joke; it wouldn't be much more inappropriately positioned if dropped into a bronze age village.

The Heart of Northwic

2010-06-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

The King of Hearts, ancient courtyard house

Phil (my son) and Lizzy’s wedding was held at the King of Heart’s music centre in Norwich on Saturday 26th June. The weather was excellent, the bride lovely, and the venue fascinating and unique in many respects. The perfect day, in fact.

The courtyard, last Saturday

The King of Hearts is a courtyard house built in the fifteenth century (pre-Tudor, although inspection reveals that not much of the original fabric now exists. See above for courtyard). This puts the King of Hearts in Norwich’s “Oldest Houses” league. However, the historical significance of the site itself actually goes back even further, perhaps more than a thousand years to the Anglo-Scandinavian days of the ninth century. My remarks which now follow are based on the historical reconstructions suggested by archaeologist Brian Ayers in his book “Norwich” (English Heritage 1994)

It is likely that Norwich developed as a string of Anglo-Saxon settlements along the banks of the Wensum. Those settlements had names like “Coslany”, “Westwic”, and “Conesford”, names now only heard as an echo in contemporary street names. The largest and most important of those settlements was “Northwic”. The latter came to dominate the cluster of settlements and in due time they all subsumed under the name of “Northwic” or “Norwich”. Archeological evidence suggests that Northwic was a fortified settlement with what is now Fye Bridge street and Magdalen street running down the centre of the settlement. The fortified town was protected on three sides by a bank and ditch earth works, the line of which is evidenced by a combination of archeology and modern street lines. Protection on the forth side was provided by the river Wensum. Entrance to the town was via a ford or causeway crossing the Wensum at the point where we now find Fye bridge. Thus, the King of Hearts stands just inside the fortified Anglo-Scandinavian town where the main gateway to Northwic was once found. Opposite the King of Hearts, on the other side of Fye bridge street, stands the church of St. Clements. It is surely significant that St Clement was a popular Saint in Scandinavian countries, the patron saint of sailors. Let Brian Ayers continue the story:

“A characteristic location of churches to St Clement in towns is near the river, often at the main river crossing, as in Bedford or Cambridge and in Norwich (at Fye Bridge, first recorded in the twelfth century but almost certainly in existence in the pre-Conquest period). The location of St Clement, in the heart of the area probably known as Northwic, suggests that the centre of Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Norwich was on the north bank of the river Wensum, the Danes co-occupying that part of the growing city which was apparently most densely occupied by the Anglo-Saxons”

So, in short the King of Hearts is a location rich in historical associations. It harks back to the beginnings of a nation with a strong tradition of proactive maritime venturing and whose up and coming post-mediaeval merchant class had started building comfortable homes for themselves, like the King of Hearts, in England’s second city, a city that at that time covered an area greater than Southwark and London combined. Of course they had no clue what conclusion the history they were creating was driving toward but this go-getting middle class were to prove fertile ground for the reformation message of individualism. They were eventually to threaten the power of both monarchs and religious authorities. In due course they lead the world into the industrial revolution that made the modern world. Norwich was a parliamentarian city with a healthy scepticism for the mystique of authoritarian traditions. It’s not often that a wedding takes place at such a significant and meaningful venue, a venue that in a metaphorical sense was one of the gateways to the modern world.

Maids then...

Maids now...

Time Traveler or Time Waster?

2010-03-17T05:32:00.000-07:00

Isn't that just archetypical. See here for some more time wasters

Heritage Custodians Behaving Badly

2010-03-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

National Trust’s Heritage Custodians have some quite off the wall ideas about bringing history to life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custodian: The term Custodian may refer to:

• Janitor, a person who cleans and maintains buildings.

Under Wikipedia’s reference for “Custodian” the above is as near it gets to a definition of the National Trust’s job. It’s not surprising then that the National Trust may feel they have an image problem and are looking to reinvent themselves as a creative, edgy, risk taking breed. I have to confess that some of the comments I have made on this blog about the role of the NT heritage custodians may not have been helpful in this respect: I have hinted that NT properties have a fossilized feel about them when compared to owner occupied mansions. I have likened the NT to Canute figures engaged in the impossible task of trying to halt the eroding seas of time.

In the light of these remarks I was fascinated to read the January edition of the NT’s “Arts Buildings and Collections Bulletin” (or “ABC” for short. See here ). The lead article of this edition is entitled “The Curator: No-Sayer, Custodian, Interpreter, Impresario or Host?” In the article the current chairman of the NT converses with a district curator and they discuss the role of the Trust. The chairman affirms that their “baseline” is preservation of heritage, but goes on to say that the NT’s PR calls for creative and dynamic thinking. To this end the two interlocutors bandy radical ideas about the work of the NT, and we hear talk of it as an interpreter of history, a creative story teller of history, the presenter of historical theatre, and the “Jim’ll fixit” for visitors wanting to play at being invited guests at prestigious historical venues. In order to get away from that fossilized feel of NT sites they even moot the idea of giving some of their houses the cluttered homely look of a truly lived in mansion. Here are a few comments I have extracted from the article:

You’ve described various aspects of curatorship. You’re suggesting that the curator has a mediating role, and even that the curator is almost an impresario…… I see the curator of the future as having a more creative task, to unlock the spirit of a place, to tell its story, to hold a microphone up to it and let it speak….The genius of the curatorial profession is not to impose the dead hand, but the opposite: to find what is unique in a property and bring it to the fore. …. Only the curator can release their stories. I suppose my concern—and again this is controversial —is whether the peculiar skills that the Trust curator brings to this task are sufficiently broad ……It seems, then, that a curator should take risks and stick his or her neck out; a curator should say: ‘This is my creation, it’s my doing, and I take responsibility for it’.

This is curatorship with attitude – preferably a dynamic creative attitude. The ideas being submitted here promote the notion of a proactive NT – and don’t we all want to look proactive. Today’s NT doesn’t want to just bring history to a halt in the resin blocks and cabinets of the museum, but also sees itself as bringing history to life, even a maker of history and not merely a passive preserver of it. To this end the article tells of some idiosyncratic redecoration and interpretation that took place in a property during the 60s that is now part of the history of that particular property. One curator’s creative work of interpretation is another’s object of iconoclasm and so history ever moves on in incremental steps, even under NT “conservation”.

Particularly intriguing, I thought, was the acknowledgment that managed decay may be one of the stories the NT would like to tell and reference was made to the ephemeral nature of some fragile artifacts and buildings owned by the NT that are now crumbling to dust. Thus, the NT invites the visitor to see the irreversible processes of decay at work, processes that ultimately entail the loss beyond recovery of both buildings and artifacts, providing all the more reason to value them.

Under the current chairman, the NT is an organization that, whilst it has no chance of rivaling Disneyland, would nevertheless like to move away from the stuffy tranquility associated with the work of the heritage custodian. However, like the organic bleached specimens one finds in preservation jars one has to say that there is an inevitable air of unreality about a preserved heritage site: The fact is such sites have no chance of looking as they did in their halcyon days when they probably looked at once both newer and yet older than they do under the auspices of a heritage custodian: Newer because time was yet to have its way with them and older because clutter, grime and damage were more likely to accumulate in a real work-a-day environment. The heritage custodian is thus caught between the preservation jar and the creation of a bogus show of clutter, grime and damage. It seems that authenticity at heritage sites is an in principle impossibility. In the final analysis we must accept them for what they are - museum pieces.

(I have commented on some of the above issues in previous postings – see here, here and here)

The Riddle of the Sphinx

King Canute has been misinterpreted. The true story is, I believe, that Canute was a wise king whose apparently quixotic act was intended as an acted parable demonstrating that no matter how powerful a man may be there are things over which he has no control. Likewise, there is no human way to stop history and we are all destined to be ephemeral players who are very much trapped inside it, whoever we are. The Canutian message may be an important lesson the heritage custodian can teach us. The players inside history may be tempted to believe that history has ended with them. That history creeps forward slowly and imperceptibly like the hands of clock, even in a museum. Moreover, people of the pre-industrial era lived in times far more technologically stable than our own; decades, even hundreds of years could pass with little change and yet history eventually passed them by: One must always be mindful of the nonlinear processes of chaos.

Museums, old halls, and gardens cluttered with decaying stone ornamentation will forever be associated in my mind with H.G. Wells’ book “The Time Machine”. In that book Wells’ Time Traveler happens upon a museum of the future. The museum’s custodians have long since departed and now the museum, along with its surrounding disheveled garden setting, are slowly starting to suffer the ravages of time; their short day of quasi-stasis has ended. When the Time Traveler comes across the fossil bones of a megatherium eroding under the leaky roof of the museum we are reminded of the depths of time and repeated cycles of deposition and erosion this fossil has already witnessed and which are now slowly restarting. Accordingly, our attention is drawn to the outermost frame of human history:

Wells' time traveler .. has to learn to accept his limitations as a human being and to become perceptive to the cosmic perspective, the view of human reality that an impartial external judge might have. (Benison, “The Time Machine”, Cideb Reading classics, 1994 Page XXXVIII).

There is a sense in which we all find ourselves in a position similar to Wells’ time traveler in as much as we inevitably inhabit somebody’s future, surrounded by their defunct and decaying artifacts. Moreover, in the absence of a specialist’s acquaintance with history, we, like the Time Traveler see these artifacts uninitiated by an historian’s knowledge. We therefore experience the full force of their mystery and enigma. They were not put there to pique our curiosity or to provide intelligible clues as to their story. Therefore like Wells’ Time Traveler we must find within ourselves the curiosity and native wit needed to unlock their history, and above all their meaning. As so often is the case when we happen across the legacies of the past there is, as there was for Wells’ Time Traveler, no kindly NT interpreter waiting to explain it all to us; instead we are thrown on our own resources and thus have to make our best guess as to the story, meaning and purpose of what we see. In "The Time Machine" the mystery of story and meaning is symbolised by a stone sphinx set in the garden world of the future.

The Riddle of The Sphinx: Answer the riddle and the sphinx will let you pass.

The adventure in which we find ourselves is no less exciting than that of H.G. Wells’ Time Traveler who was faced with almost impenetrable riddles of history and meaning. A mood of deep mystery pervades all historical sites. For the insatiably curious problem solver whose daily bread is enigma, it is great comfort to know that the supply of mystery is all but inexhaustible.

Stuff the sphinx, I had better get back to my job.

Help, My Irony Meter has Exploded

2010-02-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

In my last post I alluded to the terrorist/guerrilla threat faced by the West as “a war with a hidden and inscrutable foe difficult to understand and cope with; a foe over which advanced military technology has little effect.” I have just finished watching Adam Curtis’ documentary “The Power of Nightmares” on DVD (an Xmas present). If Curtis is anything to go by then it seems that that foe is even more difficult to understand and cope with than I thought.

According to Curtis there never was a formal Islamic terrorist network. That network, he claims, has been talked up by those who, through a combination of paranoia and occupational raison detre, have a profound interest in believing it to be true; chiefly, it seems the American neoconservatives. The neoconservatives, who in the main came to the fore on the back of rumours about the Soviet global threat (which was in fact a decrepit empire in decline) have their origins in the theories of Leo Strauss. Strauss was a political philosopher who advocated the cynical propagation of socially unifying myths (or “noble lies”) which he believed give meaning and purpose to societies, thereby stiffening their moral fiber and civic ethos. Unlike Strauss, however, it seems that the neoconservatives themselves weren’t and aren’t cynical, but really believed the “noble lies” they were telling.

If Curtis is right what are we left with? We are left with something even more untouchable and invisible than an underground conspiracy: Namely, an idea or myth of war that serves two classes of warring protagonists; firstly the neoconservatives for whom a rumour of war is a socially unifying myth; secondly the Islamic extremists for whom it acts as a rallying cry galvanizing them into belligerent action and in the process picking up many who are disaffected, alienated and looking for meaning, value and purpose. According to Curtis there isn’t a physical terrorist network to destroy, but instead something that floats around in the conceptual ether; a conceptual virus akin to one of those indestructible conspiracy theories. This fanciful perspective brings out the hero element on both sides of the conflict in that by joining the fight they can become part of something significant and important, a player in a cosmic drama of good vs. evil.

At this point the ironies come in thick and fast.

Curtis tells us that the neo-conservatives were partly voted into power by the religious right. And yet there is a contingent of the Western religious right represented, for example, by the deceased New Zealander Barry Smith and Alex Jones, who believe America to be in the hands of the conspiratorial illuminati. Jones, in particular, claims that the 9/11 attack was a false flag operation carried out under the Bush administration in order to unify the nation and put it onto a war footing. Conspiracy theory’s seductive simplifying assumption of a unified and inscrutable adversary pulling the strings in the background is caught in the act of working against itself.

It is ironic that the neoconservatives are largely against the global warming scare. They claim that global warming is a myth being peddled by the liberal community and bound up with that community’s self interests and desire to control. Clearly Leo Strauss would be proud, if only the neoconservatives were quicker off the mark at exploiting this “noble lie”; the neoconservatives lost their opportunity to weigh in early on the right side. Trouble is, it is a “lie” that may be inclined to conflict with a free market ethos and thus not have been to their liking. “Noble lies” feel nobler if they serve one’s own interests first.

I am not aware that Curtis is in any sense a believer in anything, but towards the end of the production he notes that Western societies, a la postmodernism, no longer believe in anything. This, he says, makes them all too vulnerable to the “power of the nightmare”; for they fear those individuals, especially fundamentalists, who do believe in something and are who prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to impose their vision on society.

If as Curtis claims the neoconservatives with their close ties to the religious right have views that trace back to the theories of Leo Strauss, then where does that leave the religious beliefs espoused by so many of their supporters and which those supporters claim to be the seat of their morality and social cohesion? Is that religion to be regarded as a “noble lie”? In fact would they want us to believe that “noble lie theory” is the explanation of religion? That is, does religion have nothing to it other than to serve as a “noble lie”?

James Cameron's Avatar

2010-01-22T05:46:00.001-08:00

Beware: Human Pestilence Invades

I recently went to see the film “Avatar” in 3D, a film directed and produced by James Cameron. I don’t think I need heap any more praise on the visual spectacle of the film which, without doubt, was superb. Instead I would like to comment on the story line.

The plot of the film is “Independence Day” in reverse. In “Avatar” we find human beings from Earth playing the role of the evil advanced aliens intent on invading, exploiting and ransacking another planet, a planet called Pandora, home to a technically primitive race. The purposes of these Earthly aliens, against whom resistance is otherwise futile, are ultimately foiled by one of their own genetically engineered undercover agents who falls in love with a female Pandoran and starts to identify with his lover’s race. Interestingly, a pre-film trailer advertised an animated children’s film where once again the plot was built around the premise of invading Earthlings threatening a peaceful alien society. In the shift from the nervous helplessness of the cold war period to proactive Western military initiatives our social milieu seems to be on the move once again.

“Avatar” is popular filming at its best and most typical. In many ways it resembles pantomime; the film employs expected formats and templates known to work at an entertainment level, making it easy and fun watching. It contains scenerios and characters readily recognizable and lacking in ambiguity; we know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and therefore we know who to cheer and who to boo. The film as a whole is an ensemble of tried and tested cinematic clichés. Many scenes have counter parts in other blockbuster productions and the feeling that “I have seen and/or heard that somewhere before” (and probably many times) pervades the whole production. Like the medieval mystery plays it is secure formatted entertainment that isn’t going to spring any nasty surprises; fulfillment of one’s expectations of the direction of the plot is part of the enjoyment.

Some aspects and themes of the film are timeless; like, for example, a love story complicated because it transcends a cultural or racial divide and a denouement showdown between hero and villain. (I remember writing a story with such an ending when I was twelve!). However other types and themes are specific to contemporary culture, especially the use of character types who today we love to hate: There was the corporate coward; a villain of little physical presence and courage who viewed the world only through corporate interests and profit, thus greatly simplifying his picture of reality; to him the Pandorans were mere “savages”. But the main villain of the piece was the brutal military commander who was looking for the first pretext to use military muscle instead of diplomacy and understanding; to get to those exciting slap-stick drama scenes we were all waiting for you just knew he would eventually get his way. Connecting the interests of the two bad guys was the anonymous and faceless corporation that employed them to clear the way, at any aesthetic cost, for its profit making.

Above all, the film taps into contemporary Western culture’s nagging guilt and anxiety; guilt about what it has done to more “primitive” societies in the past and the conduct of recent wars; anxiety (and guilt) over environmental stress caused by an industrialised free market society. The Pandoran culture is reminiscent of the American Indians, Black Africans and Australian Aborigines - all cultures that have suffered under Western contact. The military hardware used to subdue the Pandorans looks like a more advanced version of that used to brush aside the ramshackle militia of Iraq and Afghanistan. But as with Iraq and Afghanistan so with Pandora; easy victory in a war using conventional hardware merely acted to usher in the real war; a war with a hidden and inscrutable foe difficult to understand and cope with; a foe over which advanced military technology has little effect. In ‘Avatar’ the real foe turned out to be the planet Pandora itself and it was by this device that Cameron developed his environmental theme. Hinting at Lovelock’s concept of Gaia, Cameron depicts a planet enveloped by some kind of mother Goddess. The Pandorans pray to this deity and worship her. They have a mystical connection with her and consequently live in harmonious relationship with their Eden like environment - unlike the attacking Earthlings who have lost both their connection with the divine and their Eden. We therefore know that these fallen invaders will begin to destroy that environment for the sake of gain once they get their hands on it. At the prayer of the plot’s hero Pandora’s Gaia Goddess raises up the wild life of the planet to help defeat the invading aliens, a twist that echoes the Earth virus defeating the Martians in War of the Worlds. Like the Egyptian charioteers who pursued the Israelites across the Red Sea the forces of Earth were overwhelmed.

The Earthling’s military campaign to oust the Pandorans was referred to in the film as “shock and awe”. The destruction of the huge tree house of the Pandorans was very reminiscent of 9/11. Thus it is clear that Cameron consciously incorporated themes of contemporary interest and relevance into his film. But perhaps with less self awareness Cameron alludes to one overriding and recurring theme that I return to time and again in my blogs; that is, Avatar is yet another manifestation of fundamental tensions I have variously expressed as analysis vs. intuition, cognition vs. feeling, left brain vs. right brain, mechanism vs. Aquarius, machinery vs. the life force, science vs. mysticism, reason vs. fideism etc; in short all that is conveniently labeled under the rubric of what Karen Armstrong refers to as Logos verses Mythos. In the film the Earthlings are portrayed as an evil science obsessed and machine wielding race who use their analytical knowledge to conquer for the sake of personal gain, but there is something vital missing from their divide and conquer analysis of situations; namely, a mystical holistic factor that the Pandorans well understand, an understanding they express with the aid of their mythic religious symbolism. However with a nervous glance over his shoulder at the all conquering authority of science in our culture Cameron pays lip service to science: He hints that the Gaia Goddess of planet Pandora is an outcome of the intertwining roots of Pandora’s trees which form some kind of huge planet wide neural network larger than any human brain. In the film this realization never dawns on the one track male minds but instead comes to a sensitive female scientist (another cinematic cliché). The analytical minds of the Earthlings are too focused on the simple and elemental – in this case securing the crystalline mineral riches of Pandora - to see the wood from the trees so to speak.

In spite of Cameron’s ultimate concession to analytical science Pandoran culture is imbued with mystical and archetypical religious motifs; with prophecies, portents, prayers and an incarnate savior destined to bring hope and salvation. It is therefore difficult to take Cameron’s “scientific” rationalization too seriously. Certainly the toy town rationalists are unlikely to be satisfied with Cameron’s scientific gloss because it lends kudos to religious practice and therefore ultimately subverts their purely “logos” outlook: OK so you might have at the back of your mind that the deity you are relating to is actually some kind of planet sized neural network. But this scientific patter merely puts a technical negligee on a ritualistic and mythical mysticism that doesn’t conform to the analytical standards of scientific evidence and thus is no block to religious and superstitious practice - in fact quite the reverse; it adds scientific kudos to religion!

But that scientific negligee so easily falls away. In the final analysis an experienced theism is less about the theoretical ontology of deity than it is about a how one relates to that Deity. A child may have all sorts of erroneous ideas about the ontology of his parent but that doesn’t stop him/her relating to the personality of that parent. Thus it is possible for the self same relationship to migrate to a different conceived ontological object. Likewise, it is very easy to regard any pseudo scientific patter about Gaia as an apology to science, or itself merely a mythico-metaphorical understanding of deity, an understanding that can, if needs be, be discarded all together in favour of a much more grandiose metaphor of God. The Divine Personality is primary and the conceptions of the exact nature of the ontology reifying that personality is secondary. Therefore just how individuals relate to deity is relatively tolerant of idiosyncrasies in those individuals’ beliefs about the ontological nature of deity. And here is an example: Christians relate to the Father via Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost; this is the Holy Trinity. On occasions, however, Christians have attempted to fine tune their conceptions of Trinitarian ontology. The resulting nuanced differences in Trinitarian doctrine have lead to sharp disagreements and even mutual accusations of heresy and blasphemy. But nevertheless in spite of mutual animosity, and even loathing, caused by the theological hair splitting there is little that Christians can do to stop other Christians claiming Christ their own and relating to the Father via Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost.

Today, in some quarters God Ontology has changed beyond recognition and become bound up with pseudo scientific patter about God like aliens. The UFO contactee stories run parallel to our social milieu and like an accompany dream life may contain a Freudian encoding telling us something about our waking world. Does the new “Westerners as alien conquerors” ethos portend a change in these contactee stories? Will we hear of UFO occupants being shot down and enslaved in Area 51? Will abductees bring back stories of alien Grays who are terrified by the influence that human technological and industrial activity is having on the Earth and/or cosmos? There is, it seems an underlying sense of guilt and failure in the face of a vision of human beings as sinfully proactive protagonists who spoil and desecrate. It is surely ironic that there are echoes here, as in Cameron's film, of the timeless stories of Eden, the human fall and a loss of connection with the Divine.

Robot Brains: I bet he can't he see the wood from the trees.

The Custodians of Time

2009-12-03T02:10:00.000-08:00

The Custodians: Some people have a rather idealised view

I have remarked before on the heritage custodian’s role in preserving the property of the past, suggesting that its main task is to bring about a kind stasis should a heritage site fall into its hands. However, in my last post I hinted at the difficulties of this role: “…. it has fallen to the National Trust to carry out the difficult task, Canute like, of doing its best to halt the eroding seas of time and preserve the country’s treasures.” At the time of writing little did I know just what these NT King Canutes are up against.

Recently I was privileged to get an insight into these difficulties when a curator of a heritage organization expressed the imponderables of his job using as an illustration a particular property in his care.

The story is this. Between the wars “the Lord of the Manor” was well into politics. This and, his devotion to Christian Science, may have tempered his interest in his home. The upshot is that he furnished his home comfortably but not extravagantly with medium quality contents. He also did away with the heavy and fussy Victorian décor and restored the Georgian 18th century interior makeover, a style probably more sympathetic to the first stirrings of modernism seen between the wars.

It was in this state that the heritage custodians eventually acquired the house. According to the curator we must appreciate that a house with its collection of items is not just a house plus a collection. As the curator made clear, the configuration of the contents is itself an exhibit because that configuration tells us how its original occupants lived.

OK then, the custodian takes possession of the house and puts it into “deep freeze”. Job done; history for that property has come to an end, and it now awaits judgment day. Or has it ended? Seemingly not. To cut a long story short let me express it in abstracts: Like the random walk of Brownian motion a heritage site is constantly being perturbed this way and that by a myriad causes. These numerous perturbations, over a period of time, add up to something significant, something in fact that we call history. Blow the custodians, history is intent on moving forward.

Heritage custodians are up against the engine of history and that engine has the ability to completely transform all that it finds in its path. Ironically, as it turns out, the custodians are themselves the main agent of change, if unwittingly. When a prodigy house owner hands over his home to a heritage custodian the owner may take away some of the contents thus leaving a rather inappropriate arrangement. This arrangement can only be made good by rearranging the remaining contents. Thus, the configuration of the exhibits starts to shift as soon as the custodian takes control. Moreover, certain items may have to be moved for environmental reasons. The custodian has to decorate from time to time and decoration may not capture exactly what was there before. If décor and content restoration become too fussy the house then becomes a fanciful simulacrum. (Hever castle?) Priceless decor may have been covered up by later owners of a house. Thus depending on the aims of the custodian the question arises as to whether this anachronistic decor should be uncovered. In fact in the particular connection in point a ceiling became water damaged and had to be removed. Underneath a richly decorated ceiling from an earlier period was discovered. But now there was an unconformity between the ceiling and the 18th century style of the room. Should the custodian cover the old ceiling in order to produce a style consistency? And occasionally the forces of time itself step in directly and bring unstoppable change; flood and fire damage being the main culprits.

However as I have already remarked, one of the biggest causes of change is probably the custodian himself and this is a consequence of the custodians changing and uncertain goal posts. Should the custodian do a straight “deep freeze” or should he also rearrange and modify a property on the basis of ambiance, artistic taste, bringing to the fore any material that is of particular historical interest? The dilemmas resulting of these competing criteria means that their resolution is likely to vary as successive custodians are influenced by changing phases of knowledge, opinion and fashion. Changing opinions and fashion? But isn’t that one of the major engines of history? Yes it is; the custodian, then, isn’t just the preserver of history but like everyone else the maker of history as well. There will come a day when the custodians activity is far back enough in time to for it to attract an aura of nostalgia and thus will be of historical interest itself. The custodian’s history will then become history.

The Custodians: This is more like it; watch what you're doing with that broom handle mate or those exhibits will be history.

Symbolism at Blickling Hall

2009-11-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

The following post is based on my notes taken at a lecture at Blickling Hall delivered by Dr Vic Morgan of the University Of East Anglia (UEA) on 25/11/09. The lecture was entitled “Symbolism at Blickling Hall”. These notes are only an approximate transcript of the lecture because I have interpreted much of Dr. Morgan’s material, and supplemented it with interpolations. Therefore please approach these notes with caution. However, many thanks to Dr Morgan for an intriguing and stimulating lecture without which the following expanded commentary could not have got off the ground.

Introduction
The prodigy houses of the renaissance and Jacobean period were social spaces intended to convey status and meaning via architectural configuration and the trappings of decor. The symbolism inherent in the arrangement of space and use of decor were derived from a pervasive set of contemporary values and symbolic language. These values and symbols were European wide and constituted a guiding set of principles understood by all. This commonality of thought amongst Europeans meant that these values and their reification in architecture were implicitly understood by the people of the day, especially the aristocracy who were the peer group the owner of a prodigy house was trying to impress.

The residual medieval notion of everyone having their station in society and their respective work space was reflected in the layout of the house. The multitude of tasks demanded by the day to day running of the hall necessitated some complex layouts.

The corridor was absent in the houses of this time and only later introduced when there was a greater premium on personal privacy. The prodigy houses came out of the mediaeval period, a period when the great hall was the main focus, living area and banqueting room of the house. It was a very public space, being frequented by a Lord’s subjects and peer group (in mediaeval times invited guests may even have slept in the hall). This was to change in the course of the next 200 years from 1600 as society became more commercial, instrumental and individualised. In due course the hall of the house became vestigial, serving the purpose of a grand ante-chamber to the main action which was situated elsewhere in the building.

Each age is inextricably joined to its historical precursors and this is reflected in vestigial practices and artefacts that are not entirely lost in later stages of history. For example the medieval lord’s hall probably had its roots in the traditions of the Bronze Age and Iron Age, times when chieftains would occupy the largest structure in a village surrounded by their lieutenants and cohorts; the latter would frequent the chieftain’s one room house in order to receive instructions. In the more socially integrated and intimate societies of ancient times the chieftain achieved privacy in his relatively public living space by means of niches and screens. In short, the Bronze Age chieftain’s large round house is the precursor of the prodigy house.

The building of prodigy houses was driven by two key human motivations: Aggrandisement and emulation. The monarchies of European countries endeavoured to set themselves both apart and above the rank and file nobility, thus fuelling the drive to create buildings that made overwhelming statements about the high status, wealth and power of the monarch. In turn the nobility sought to emulate these high status buildings.

The countries of Europe where linked by a diplomatic service and a flow of printed material. In particular printing made available relatively cheap architectural images (Printing was first used in Europe in the mid fifteenth century). These features facilitated communication, freeing up the flow of ideas and fashions in architecture. The diplomatic service kept alive interest in what one’s neighbours were up to, thus leading to an aristocratic version of keeping up with the Joneses.

Architectural features common to houses of the Renaissance period were: 1. The Piano Nobile, 2. The Escalier, 3. The Enfilade, and 4. The King’s side and Queen’s side. (The latter is not dealt with in these notes)

The Piano Nobile.
This was the floor on which the prestige rooms were situated. These rooms were usually to be found on the first floor (or at least found on a raised basement above ground level; my own observations suggests that “raised floor” is the generic concept covering most cases), thus employing all the symbolic connotations of height. This floor was distinguished by larger windows and decorative embellishments. Even some 20th century prestige buildings have their main living space above ground level.

For its day Blickling hall is somewhat retrograde in its design (unlike the earlier Elizabethan Hardwick hall). The layout of the hall is reminiscent of a castle. This may have had something to do with the fact that the hall had to fit on the footprint of the old house and was thus constrained by the moat. The principle room (i.e. the great hall) is on the ground floor. At yet in having a raised piano nobile the ground floor location of the great hall creates a fitting tension between the passing medieval ethos and the later taste for raised floor living. Blickling hall looks both forward and backward. A much less equivocal treatment of raised floor living can be found at the 18th century Palladian structure of Holkham hall. Blickling was built at the same time Inigo Jones was carrying out his first essays in the use of a very systematic application of classical elements that was to become the Palladian style of the 1720 ~ 1760 period. In fashionable terms, then, Blickling hall was moving into obsolescence as soon as it was built. But its haphazard collection of classical features was soon to receive an internal makeover when the 18th century neo-classicists moved in and took the obsession with system and symmetry to new heights.

The Escalier
The escalier is the staircase required to reach the raised piano nobile. Grandeur in the design of the escalier was used to the full in order to convey the status of the home owner. These stairs may be external or internal. They were used for the reception of ambassadors and visitors and crafted around the theatre of diplomacy. The willingness of the home owner to deign to meet a diplomat or visitor could be signalled in how far the owner was prepared to go in his condescension of the escalier. The original escalier of Blickling at the east end of the great hall was established within these traditions. Only later in the 18th century did the architect Thomas Ivory design and build a symmetrical staircase that made a more obviously superlative statement with the purpose of awing the visitor. By then lords no longer lived at the dais end of the great hall, but somewhere “up there” in a nether world beyond the grand staircase.

The Enfilade
The enfilade is a linear suite of rooms whereby access to each room could only be achieved by walking through the preceding rooms. The rooms became more private as one moved through the sequence. The doors of the rooms were lined up so that it was possible to look down the entire suite, thus showing off the dimension of the range to full effect. The prodigy houses follow this principle. The sequencing proceeds from the most public rooms to the most private rooms and roughly follows the order below.

Hall: The main focus and social centre of the building, later to become an impressive antechamber to the rooms where the real action took place.

Parlour: A smaller more intimate room than the hall allowing for the entertainment and private conversation with selected guests.

Great Chamber: Of medieval origin this room is where the owner of the house dinned and slept.

Drawing Room: As the grandeur of the great chamber evolved it lost its privacy and intimacy. In order to restore the latter, rooms of greater privacy budded off. These more private spaces were preceded by an ante chamber that became the drawing room. In later times it became a private sitting room.

State Bedroom(s): As the great chamber lost its privacy and intimacy the state bedroom eventually became the sleeping quarter of the house.

Closet: Once again increasing public encroachment forced the budding off of even more private rooms for dressing and preparation etc.

Long Gallery: A large well lit walking and recreation area for all guests and visitors.

At Blickling (circa 1620) Sir Henry Hobart’s architect Robert Lyminge had to work around the constraints of the site, most notably the moat of the original house which imposed a short side view of the hall from the south. Lyminge also incorporated the older structures of the original house on the north and west sides of his design, finishing off the early Tudor west range with a tower in order to give an integrated appearance. Later in the 18th century Georgian architect Thomas Ivory, in an act of sympathetic retro styling, remodelled the west wing making it look more Jacobean, thus effectively finishing off Lyminge’s concept. (However, in my opinion the clean elegance, system and symmetry of the Georgian taste has produced a rather austere range that doesn’t go well with the more fussy Jacobean style.) The plaster work in the ceiling of the northeast tower may reflect the original pattern of the parterre garden. Lyminge was immersed in European wide fashions and styles and incorporated these styles and fashions into the building of Blickling, thus signalling its prodigy house status.

(click to enlarge)

This schematic shows how access to the rooms of the house is sequenced. Using an even more abbreviated schematic this sequencing could be represented with a system of concentric circles, where a visitor’s distance from the centre of the system is an indication of the level of privilege bestowed on the visitor. This concentric pattern of access privilege is very general and is particularly clear in the design of temples and religious monuments. It is as applicable today as it was then.

Query/Puzzle: Compare the above diagram with Page 11 of the 1978 Blickling Hall guide which states: “The arrangement was unusual by Elizabethan standards, since the entrance to the hall was placed in the centre, rather than at one end leading into a screens passage”

Some houses are “time capsule” houses; that is, they are frozen relics of the time in which they are built. Blickling hall on the other hand is a “palimpsest” house in that it has been reused and overlaid again and again. It effectively embodies and tracks the evolution of changes in the fashions of human society. It is not a snap shot in time, but rather an accretion of layers; an object smeared out over a long period of time. I personally find these “palimpsest” houses more interesting than those frozen in time: They embody subtle and sometimes enigmatic clues as to their history; quirks of design that only make sense in the light of their evolution. For example, citing an historical reference and also the partitioning of the Long Gallery wall at Blickling, Dr. Morgan suggested that a much deeper and more elaborate frieze once existed in the Long Gallery than is now seen. These teasing clues hinting at a hard to get mystery hold a greater fascination than that which is clearly presented.

Symbolic Decoration.
Sir Henry Hobart and his architect Lyminge were also into esoteric symbolism, a symbolism understood by the intellectual elite of the day whose centre was London. Many of the great houses copied features and symbols from London houses which have long since been demolished. Sir Henry Hobart moved in these central intellectual circles which included Ben Johnson. Lavish use of symbolism is most prolific in the public areas of the house. The symbols where not intended to be glanced at, but their meanings contemplated. These symbols often carried moral messages. There was also a linkage of hall and garden patterns that is now lost, of course.

The Jacobeans abhorred blank spaces and filled them with symbols. Many of the symbols were copied from printed pattern books which where adapted across Europe. Hence the symbols used at Blickling often look suspiciously like those found in European prints (See the front door “bondage” figure for example. See also Serlios “Five books of architecture”). Some of the patterns used are whimsical. One particular pattern at Blickling shows a wood structure realised in stone work. The stonework retains a representation of the nail that held the wooden parts together. Thus at Blickling a artisan’s prosaic necessity becomes a decoration. This is reminiscent of ancient Egyptian practices of creating mock structures in stone, such as pillars made from bunches of reeds.

The Jacobean use of symbolism was very piece meal, ad-hoc and fussy; unlike the later English Palladian movement which was very systematic and frugal in the use of pattern.

Also to be found in renaissance houses was personal symbolism which was used by the owner to convey his values; see for example the personifications of Justice and prudence at the entrance of Blickling hall. Also on the west side Dutch ends we find the mythical figures of Atlas bearing the burdens of the world and Hercules. These where well known parts of the symbolic dictionary of the day and were used by home owners to make a statement about themselves.

Remarks, Observations and Reflections
1. Status, fashion and style were and are huge motivators. Materialism is much less a case of hoarding creature comforts to oneself than about them being a form of symbolism that make statements about one’s place in the social scheme of things; what others think about you is very important, and if you are rich enough to take control of that thinking by means of status symbols, then overstatement and extravagance are likely outcomes. But ‘more’ is not necessarily ‘more’ and sometimes subtler statements that allude to one’s culture and learning are also called for; in particular symbolism that indicates one’s initiation into select and elite communities may be sought for. Mind you, there is, however, a dilemma to manage here. In boasting one’s status there goes along with it the risk of appearing to be playing above one’s station in one’s target peer group. It’s another version of the prisoner’s dilemma; either one swings in with one’s supportive peer group or defects by sending out signals of superiority and the desire to get one over on them.

2. Blickling hall is a bit like a piece of Geology; in some areas time has completely erased older layers to be replaced by newer layers. In other places old structures are still present but have been layered on top by later periods. In some places relict layers have been recovered. All told Blickling hall is a testament to changes in fashion, human thinking and the forward march of a history; a march that seldom leaves things unchanged. In the wake of this change enigmatic clues are left for the clever interpreter to understand. And yet it has fallen to the National Trust to carry out the difficult task, Canute like, of doing its best to halt the eroding seas of time and preserve the country’s treasures. For the NT the motivation is no longer status, but heritage.

3. For me personally one interesting if not significant fact is that Blickling hall was built not long after Kepler had published his 3 laws of planetary motion. Kepler, like Blickling hall itself, looked both back to the past and forward to the future. In line with the renaissance ethos of the day for Kepler preferred to think of symbols not just as pretty patterns, but deeply meaningful signs. It is therefore not surprising to find that Kepler’s first published attempt at understanding the planetary configuration employed esoteric symbolism. This attempt dates to 1596 (predating his three laws) with the publication of his “The Mystery of the Universe”. In this publication he propounded the notion that the proportions of the orbits of the five known planets could be derived from an elegant concentric nesting of the five regular solids. Today this layout seems a fluky mathematical curio but to Kepler, who was imbued with renaissance ideas of the symbolic and mystical significance of the five regular solids in all their mathematical perfection, this scheme pointed to a divine plan. For Kepler this apparent concentric cosmic “ground plan” must have signalled something about the character of the Divine sentience behind it, just as the symbols of a renaissance house told something of its owner. In renaissance Europe minds met in the appreciation of mystical symbols. Thus for Kepler his scheme was a meeting of the minds of God and man.

4. It is perhaps not surprising that “The Mystery of the Universe” made Kepler’s name because it readily connected with the renaissance mind. Needless to say, today we remember Kepler less for his concentro-symbolic solar system than for his three laws. Kepler, however, must have been puzzled when he discovered these laws, laws which employed not esoteric symbolism but eccentricity and ellipses. In due time they proved to be the better device for joining the dots of observation than his initial mathematical symbolism. Kepler’s laws portended the future of science, but if these laws had any meaning it must have eluded Kepler. It was the first indication that tracking down the divine plan wasn’t going to be found in obvious symbols plastered across the cosmos and that plan was going to turn out to be a much more slippery customer altogether. In short the cosmos was going to prove to be no renaissance house writ large. Still, it’s just as well; if Kepler had cleared the board in 1596 what mystery would we have to ponder on today? If anything, since late renaissance times, the mystery of the cosmos has deepened.

3D Ground plan of the Cosmic Enfilade: Science and the renaissance taste for mystical and deeply meaningful symbolism came together briefly at the end of the sixteenth century, with the publication of Kepler’s “The Mystery of the Universe” in 1596.

An Englishman's Home: A visit to Bodiam Castle.

2009-11-09T14:44:00.000-08:00

Moated Manor House or True Castle?

A visit to Bodiam castle is undoubtedly a requirement for all those who want to get as near as they can to the touch and feel of a pivotal time in English history – the late 14th century. When Edward Dalyngrigge built the castle in 1385 (needless to say it was his social inferiors that actually built it) the English aristocracy was in the middle of the hundred years war with their French counterparts over the disputed French crown. Thus, as far as aristocracy was concerned the late 14th was business as usual; fighting over land inheritance and making sure serfs did their part in their Lord’s battles and in the tilling of his land. Dalyngrigge returned from France rich with the spoils of war and further enhanced his social position by marrying into wealth. He got too big for his manor house (and probably for his boots as well) and applied to the King for a license to crenellate his relatively pokey manor house; as the license says:

“…he [Dalyngrigge] may strengthen with a wall of stone and lime and crenellate and may construct and make into a castle his manor house of Bodyham…”

Somehow the ambitious Darlyngrigge managed wangle it so that the Kings permission became a license to build an entirely new castle, which he did further down the valley.

But times were changing. The Black Death in the mid fourteenth century had begun to make it a suppliers market for serf labour and this eventually led to the rise of a middle class of yeoman farmers who started to work in the service of profit rather than the service of noble masters. The peasant’s revolt of 1383 used startlingly modern slogans about the equality of man, and was among the first signs that feudalism was on the wane. But obviously Darlyngrigge, who played his part in the suppression of the revolt, didn’t think so. It is likely that in his mind his new castle was as much a deterrent to an upstart peasantry (or a rising middle class of yeomen) as it was to the French aristocracy.

The best ideas in defense

Bodiam castle is a monument to the fag end of the mediaeval period. There have been remarks to the effect that in the building of the castle Darlyngrigge’s taste for style, statement and comfort compromised its strength; the last of the castles and the first of the stately homes. The castle, situated in its wide moat, certainly conveys a sense of both romance and strength. Its structure incorporated all the best ideas in defense, but it is clear that Darlygrigge wanted to show it off to full effect and visitors coming from the east were taken on a circuitous “best views” sight-seeing tour round the castle before entry could be made. If an appearance of strength acts as a deterrent then Darlygrigge’s eye for theatre could be construed as a psychological defensive measure in itself.

Darlyngrigge, however, really had little time to enjoy that status symbol and fashion statement that was his castle – he died a few years after its completion leaving the legacy of an iconic building for future generations to savor the fancied air of chivalrous nostalgia and mystery. Dalygrigge is a fine example of that well known historical phenomenon whereby those in changing times seem to have no inkling whatever of the direction of historical drift or even that their times are fundamentally changing. From our modern perspective, with as much detachment as we survey his castle, we can survey the sweep of history that swept past Dalyngrigge leaving his castle a romantic and nostalgic ruin. But like many a high flier before and after him Dalyngrigge was a man jealous of his dignity, pride and status, which in turn meant that his emotions, motives and values were very much bound up with the cultural expressions of his day. In spite of his opinion of himself Dalyngrigge, to us, seems an unconscious play thing of history; a man who, in the final analysis, didn’t make history but who was in the rearguard of a culture that history was sweeping away.

And yet in spite of changing times the castle at Bodiam remained a home for aristocrats for more than 200 years – a period of time which measured backwards from our day takes us right back to the first stages of the industrial revolution, and which suggests that times in renaissance England were in, one sense at least, relatively settled. But is history ever settled? I fancy I see cusps of change and turning points everywhere in history, and so I wonder if history ever passes through settled times, times when it is just more of the same. Whatever the answer to that question, it is clear, however, that Dalyngrigge was so taken up with the ephemeral values and ambitions of his times as to be unaware of the greater context that ultimately passes final judgment on his (and our) doings. But far greater dignity and honour comes to those for whom immediate status and position is something they are not enslaved to.

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

We think of the medieval world as imbued through and through with Christian religious values – and so it was. And yet the kernel of the Christian message, a message expressed in terms of servant hood, humility, sacrifice and grace was difficult to spot.

Status, style and comfort; but that was then

Autumn Holiday

2009-10-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

After our holiday in the Isle of Wight here are some of the places the wife and I visited:

Mottisfont Abbey, Romsey:

This is not in fact an abbey but a stately home built on the site of an abbey. The abbey dates from the 13th century, but after the dissolution the abbey estate was given by Henry VIII to one of his cronies, Lord Sandys. Sandys didn’t demolish the abbey, but built his house around it using the old walls as the basis of his Tudor mansion. Later in the mid 18th Century the Tudor house was given a Georgian makeover. Today, therefore, the visitor is confronted with a Georgian facade that from the front betrays little sign of the ecclesiastical bones under the surface of the building. In fact the concept of a convincing façade permeates the whole building; from the mock painted “faux marbling” of the long gallery, through the extremely clever trick perspective artwork of the dining room, to the stunning trompe l’oeil effects of the Whistler room; these are just some of the amazing spectacles that make a visit well worth it. But peel away the two-dimensional veneer and a more ancient history is revealed: In the Yellow room some of the original abbey walls with their heavy early gothic stone work have been exposed, looking very incongruous in the Georgian setting. For the post dissolution builders the original abbey no longer held any sacred authority or sense of fearful holiness; it was a bygone that could be covered up and forgotten.

The Sediments of time: Georgian window layered on Gothic arch

In Georgian times English society was morphing into something completely different; an industrialised culture. But like Mottisfont house itself with its gothic vaulted undercroft, one still finds here and there the signs of a strange medieval ethos at the foundation of our civilization. One marvels at how society can so radically change its rationale and philosophy.

Bembridge Mill, Isle of Wight:

This mill was built at about the same time as the Georgian alterations were being made to Mottisfont abbey. A mill is one of those early non-miniaturized machines that one can actually get inside of and walk round; it is full of wheels, shafts and cogs. Bembridge mill wasn’t just about brute power, it was also about the control of power; it had a centrifugal regulator governing the separation of its grinding stones. The mill “reads out” the information from the relatively delicate regulator via a serious of levers that effectively acted as transducers; the lever arms increase in thickness as they get closer to their job of having to raise a ½ ton grinding stone.

The aristocratic background of Mottisfont abbey contrasts with the lower class of millers who understood and operated the mill. Conceptually speaking the mill was a precursor and symbol of the industrialised world to come. It is ironic that this lower class of millers were totally unaware that they were dealing with the basic concepts of mechanism, energy, power and control that were eventually to dominate the rationale of an industrialized and instrumentalist society. I was reminded of the fact that my schoolboy introduction to physics was via pulleys cogs, and levers.

Compton Bay, Isle of Wight.

Compton bay has strata that straddle a good part of the cretaceous period, and it seems to be a good place for fossil hunting. (We were there looking for fossils until nearly sunset) The thickness of strata are measured in thousands of feet and I always marvel at the depth of time they represent as evidenced by the very different conditions under which the strata formed, sometimes separated by periods of uplift, folding, tilting and erosion. And here’s the peculiar part: If physics is fundamental those prosaic looking principles derived from levers, cogs and pulleys are reckoned to be sufficient to describe the prehistory of the changing face of our planet.

A Lower Cretaceous fossil we found in Compton bay (to me it looks like a form of coral[?])

The Thursford Collection

2009-09-04T04:44:00.000-07:00

Tawdry, garish, ostentatious, baroque and loud, but there is much more to the fairground organ than meets the eye or ear. *

For the August bank holiday the wife and I visited the Thursford collection, a private museum of yesteryear farm and fairground machinery; traction engines, steam engines, carousels and organs.

As I have always been interested in machinery I thought I would be especially interested in the traction engines – well I was, but as am not a musical person I was surprised to find that I was even more interested in the fairground organs. The loud and gaudy exterior of these machines, usually to found in the raucous environment of the fairground has always been a put off for me, but on a second harder look within the subdued light and tranquility of the Thursford environment, however, these machines proved fascinating and their complex reality readily connected with my interest in computers.

The technology of mechanically reproducing sounds of all qualities simply from the vibration modes of a single surface recieving input from some kind of recording medium was not developed enough in the latter half of the nineteenth century to provide fairground music of sufficient body and quality. The fairground organ solves this problem by hiding behind its ostentatious exterior what is effectively a real orchestra: a large ensemble of wind and percussion instruments operated by compressed air. In the machines at Thursford this mechanical unmanned orchestra is programmed by books of punched card. The picture below was taken behind the ornate façade and you can see the racks of punched cards on the left. Also visible is the card reader as well as the pump supplying the compressed air.

Fairground organs are a fine example of a machine that can be programmed with a next to infinite combination of possibilities and this quasi-universality is, of course, very reminiscent of computers. It follows, therefore, that fairground organ music can be digitally analyzed into a set of punched hole instructions. Everything that happens during the playing of one of these wonderful machines is tokenized in the formal patterns on the cards. And yet if one didn’t know otherwise this reductive analysis gives no hint at all of the astounding holistic experience of standing in front of one of these organs as the whole show is powered up and its complicated rhythms, patterns, and harmonies fill the airwaves. That in the main fairground organs have been reserved for catchy popular music so easily reproduced on their tireless mechanics has unfortunately cheapened the experience. Moreover, association with the ungenteel and flamboyant culture of traveling fairground folk unconnected with the values of landed society have not helped place fairground organ music into the realm of fashionable high culture.

But as time moves on the associations of fairground organs with low culture will recede and the beauty and cleverness of these machines may be better appreciated. Call me musically naive but if one pays attention to the music generated by a fairground organ one hears a veritable wall of sound perfectly blending the rhythms and harmonies of its large ensemble of instruments. into a seamless whole. Give the machine another set of punched cards and a new wall of sound seems to come from nowhere, tirelessly and faultlessly reproduced.

As one stands in the front of one of these performing machines sight and sound all meld into one facade, but behind the scenes analysis and reductionism holds sway. The fairground organ is, needless to say, a fine metaphor of the experience vs. mechanism dichotomy. It all may start with an initial taking for granted of an experience that seems integrated to the point of indivisibility, but when curiosity kicks in there is a desire to look behind the scenes, to undress nature, to view its back end as it were and analyse it. In the case of a fairground organ, however, it’s a short walk round to the back of the machine to see how the show really works. But the sharp contrast between experience and underlying mechanism remains. On one level, everything one experiences is explicable in terms of mechanism; there is nothing that happens in a fairground organ performance that cannot be described without reference to the formalities of the punched cards and the model of computation model represented by the mechanical hardware. And yet although the sound is analyzable into an carefully orchestrated ensemble in the final analysis this formality of structure fails to capture the experience itself; formality is a good predictor of structure but a poor predictor of quality.

We must thank the private collector George Cushing who has left us with such a fascinating and beautiful legacy.

George Cushing 1904-2003
https://www.thursford.com/default.aspx

* footnote
The times on my photos look dodgy; I was supposed to be at work at that time. The explanation? The clock on my camera is 2-3 hours slow. The proof? The Thursford collection doesn't open until 12 o'clock mid day!

A History of History

2009-07-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

During our yearly visits to London escorting her Spanish english language students the wife and I get a chance to visit a museum or two with them. (Usually the British Museum). Yesterday we spent some time in the Enlightenment gallery of the BM. The two photos below tell a strange story about the Enlightenment; unlike the other histories depicted in the museum European Enlightenment history is in part a history of the European’s view of history. The Enlightenment was a time of increasing self-awareness.

The Artifacts of the Enlightenment; somebody else's history. Basically it's a museum in a museum

The accompanying legend: A meta view of religion can threaten a parochial religion. (click to enlarge)

The Wars of the Enlightenment: We try not to mention Trafalgar to this lot, but if you're taking them round London it's difficult.

Pending Position Statement

2009-06-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

As a result of direct inquiries I intend to produce, at some stage, a position statement regarding my views on Christianity. However, I am currently absorbed with one two other matters that I am following up; hence this promissory note.

The Last Enemy

2009-04-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

Over the Easter break the wife and I visited my daughter and son-in-law and also my father-in-law and his wife (in Eastbourne). During that time we visited Hever Castle, the British Museum, the London Aquarium, and Beachy Head. In the great association game of life every concept is connected to every other concept by a few links in a kind of conceptual “small world”. So, I asked, what links all these visits? Life and death seemed a good bet and sure enough they ran through the whole of our long weekend like the letters in a stick of rock.

1. Hever Castle
Hever castle was built in the 13th century but it has been so altered and renovated that it would probably be unrecognizable to the original builders. In Edwardian times the interior was completely “updated” in a romantic Tudor recreation by the wealthy and enthusiastic American medievalist W.W. Astor. Although little that the visitor sees is original, the interior is beautifully decorated with finely carved woodwork and paneling and no expense has been spared. The overall aspect is of a cozy homely castle. Hever is just how we imagine the rich Tudors lived, either because it is has become the standard by which we judge all things Tudor or because it really does accurately portray the Tudor environment. All said and done W. W. Astor did the country a huge favor by helping to create a beautiful building and setting that may well otherwise have become ruinous desolation.

In spite of its slightly synthetic feel Hever castle has an authentic history. In the mid 15th century Hever passed into the hands of Geoffrey Bullen, a man with no known aristocratic lineage, a man who may well have been one of the peasant beneficiaries of the breakup of feudalism brought about by the Black Death. His very intelligent great granddaughter, Ann Bullen, did her finishing school in fashionable France, and in what may be one of the best PR maneuvers in history subsequently changed her name from Bullen to the French and elegant sounding “Boleyn”. Thus began a legend as a member of an obscure family moved to take up a pivotal place in the history of the nation; as everyone knows Anne went on to marry the opportunistic reformer Henry VIII. History suggests that it was Henry’s affair with Anne that precipitated him reviewing his relations with Rome and sowing English antipathy to the catholic cause, antipathy that grew as the reformation got underway. This paved the way for an independent England. In the to-and-froing between Catholicism and Protestantism over the next century and half English mercantile interests were more often than not bound up with the Protestant cause, and so the English middle class, who were such an important force in the industrial revolution, were better served by Protestantism. Since a commercialized Britannia and its industrial revolution in effect created the modern world, it is therefore arguable that the young Anne Boleyn was not just a pivotal character for English history but also for world history.

2. British Museum
The next day saw us visiting the Egyptian rooms of the British museum. As we wandered through these rooms I was struck once again by just how much Ancient Egyptian life style was thrall to the last enemy - death. From the monumental stonework of pyramids and elaborate rock cut tombs, to embalming and elaborate funerary rites, death was big business for the Egyptians and consumed a large part of their economy. But who can blame them; death confounds men of all cultures. Life seems full of promise, colour and rich experience, but then it is all so easily snuffed out, rudely truncating human purposes, often leaving questions of truth, justice and fairness dangling. It just doesn’t make sense. With man death is unfinished business and the many lose ends it leaves demand a solution. The Egyptians, it seems, were sure they had a solution. For them this life was just a beginning and the best part was to come; the husk of their mummified bodies were sown as seeds for a future life, a life that they believed must surely must go on beyond the grave eternally. But as I looked at the funerary effigies, the sacred models, the amulets and the dried out blackened corpses lovingly prepared they were more moving than any monumental engineering effort made with huge stones. There was a pathos here, like a child's game of let's pretend, all so ultimately ineffectual. This just wasn't how the world worked and yet on an engineering level they had considerable skill, a skill that incongruously contrasted with their almost childish take on spiritual realities.

3. London Aquarium
Our next visit was to the newly opened London Aquarium, an appropriate place for someone like myself who is interested in evolutionary theory. Baring a few star fish and jelly fish most of the swimming organisms on view where roughly bullet shaped alimentary canals, no doubt a body plan emanating from the Cambrian explosion. Although I couldn’t quite see where the bizarre looking sea-horse fitted in, this was the environment of the first eras of vertebrate history. Evolution, I hardly need say, requires death to work - like a laborious computer algorithm it is a search, reject and select method repeated many times over. Thus, in evolution death paradoxically becomes the means of genesis and the passage to pastures new. Perhaps it would not have been such a surprise to the Ancient Egyptians who viewed death as a beginning to new life. But the unchanging eternity of the Egyptian after life is at much at odds with earthly morphological disequilibrium as it is with the thermodynamic disequilibrium of the wider cosmos.

4. Easter day service
The same issues of death, seeding, rebirth, eternity and escape from the last enemy were back on the agenda for the next day when we attended an Easter Sunday communion service at my daughter’s local C of E church, Henry VIII’s church. Instead of the elaborate funerary monuments, rituals, and interment of the husk of the cadaver, which was in any case largely for the Egyptian upper class, Christian rebirth is universally available and extremely simple to appropriate and practice. All who call on the name of Christ shall be saved and communion symbolizes the daily death to self, the ongoing daily renewal of the soul and ultimate assurance of eternal life, when as in Ancient Egypt, the dead body is sown for life everlasting.

5. Beachy Head
Our final outing was a walk on the chalk downs of Beachy Head with father in law and his wife. These downs are made of chalk to a depth of hundreds of feet thick, formed by the gentle deposition of millions of carbonaceous bodies of Coccolithophores as they perpetuated endless cycles of, birth, life, bodily renewal and death. Beachy Head forms a mound of chalky limestone of greater height than the Great Pyramid which is also made of (a harder) limestone. As we sat in the Beachy Head restaurant having our dinner my father in law reminded us of a book by Richard Hilary called “The Last Enemy”. It was this conversation that gave me the title of this post. Richard Hilary was a World War II fighter pilot who started his career with a self consciously chosen philosophy of self serving. This philosophy of self, he believed, provided the only arguable rationale to life, if such it could be called. And yet in a kind of conversion experience Hilary discovered a spark within him that could not endure a life of service to self. He was surprised to stumble across this seed of compassion whose growth he could not staunch.

Summing up
The Black Death of the fourteenth century help bring Europe out of the feudal era but it took until the century following the sixteenth century reformation before the popular medieval mindset started to go the way of feudalism. With the reformation salvation and the defeat of the last enemy became folk possessions rather than belonging exclusively to an institution. But the decentralization of the liturgy of death was accompanied by another form of decentralization symbolized by the Copernican system, science’s Wittenberg door. This first step in cosmological decentralization was to ultimately threaten man’s view of himself, whether catholic or protestant. Thanks to Henry VIII and the desire created in him by the socially ambitious Anne Boleyn, England was maneuvered into Protestantism. One of the consequences of this was that English resistance to the Copernican system, which thanks to Galileo had become a bogy of the Catholic Church, was lowered. (Conversely England made heavy weather in accepting the very convenient but “papist” Gregorian calendar). The break up the medieval mind set brought man face to face with the role that mechanism and symmetry play in the cosmic order. Today localised physics and cosmic decentralization have now been developed to the extreme: highly speculative Multiverses have been envisaged where symmetry has gone mad: Everywhere and everywhen looks the same and probability is spread evenly and thinly over the possible states a particular universe can assume. However, asymmetry cannot be completely expunged from our thinking about the cosmos; in the final analysis something must be a special case and sheer existence, something rather than nothing, is the one-off that challenges hyper symmetry. But who would have guessed that a country girl made good would inadvertently help put the whole world on track for the frenetic industrial age of plenty, an age when these issues would ultimately barge their way on to the modern conceptual agenda and rustic innocence lost to material ambitions and a spiritually alienating materialist vision.

A verse allegedly* written by Anne Boleyn goes:

A captive, I in this dread Tower, scenes of childhood gaiety recall,
They comfort bring in this dark hour, now gaiety hath flown,
Through Blickling’s glades I fain would ride, soft green sward,
Sequested shade, no cruel intrigues to deride my simple rustic day.
A child, I watched the timid fawn, gentle eyed, steal to the lake.
With thirst to quench when mists of dawn had from cool waters fled.
Strutting peacocks, shimmering blue, roseate arbour, scented walk.
Gladly I left, ’tis strangely true, for pageantry at court.
False vanities my pride hath tricked, this place of damp and anguished stone
By sullen river surges licked, doth mock my hopeless lot
Oh, were I still a child in stature small
To tread the rose-lined paths of Blickling Hall.

According to Hever castle’s guide “The ghost of Anne Boleyn is almost as famous as the lady herself was in life holding the record for the most sightings of any spirit. Since her execution in 1536, Anne is said to have been spotted 30,000 times in 120 locations, including Hever, Blickling and the Tower of London”. There is a story told at Blickling Hall that a butler intercepted a “grey lady”, presumed to be Anne’s shade, standing by Blickling’s lake, who in reply to the butler’s inquiry responded “That for which I search is lost forever”. The veracity of this story is an immaterial as Anne’s ghost, because given its compelling symbolic content, it might almost explain those many sightings as some kind of collective dream emanating from the subconscious, rich in Freudian meaning. For the world has grown up, partly in thanks to Anne, a world that can’t unlearn what it’s learnt. As a culture we have long since left behind the rustic innocence of the ambitionless contentment described in the above verse, although like Anne’s ghost we may from time to time nostalgically and wistfully revisit it. We have lost the apparently tranquil agrarian world just as the first farmers who lived a life of backbreaking toil had lost the freely roaming world of the hunter gatherers. Like Anne many yearn for a fanciful romantic Acadian idyll, and Anne’s plight is symbolic expression of that fancy and the subliminal unresolved angst with the modern world. And yet the stasis of the idyll only serves to bring to the surface human restlessness and ambition as it did for Anne, although we are often ill at ease with the products of our ambitions and strivings. The fact is humanity is built more for the journey and the pilgrimage than the destination. For destinations, unless they be God himself, are partial, incomplete and ultimately unsatisfying to the heart of man – and, if Anne is to be believed, woman as well. But we must be careful in our peregrinations – they can become nightmares if journeys are conflated with destinations. It helps, I think, to develop a studied detachment from this world’s vaunted goals, the sort of detachment that John Bunyan was well aware of. We are then ready for the last enemy.

Footnote
* I have doubts about the authenticity of this verse

Alan J Cowcher 1951-2009

2009-02-19T03:50:00.000-08:00

It was with great shock and deep sadness that I learned of the sudden death of Alan J Cowcher, a friend I had known since school days (from 1960 in fact). He was a person who, like myself, had a rather narrow focus and range of talent. My first memories of him are of his interest in two things: car number plates and clocks. Providence smiled on him when in adult life he secured a job in the car licensing department of Norfolk County Council, a place that could no doubt make use of his ability to recall car number plates and also his ability to add up in his head at lightning speed. (Compared to myself).

Alan’s regular, reliable and faithful nature in many ways found metaphorical expression in his other chief interest, an interest in clocks, an interest I shared. I remember him constructing a Meccano clock (see above) when he was young, a construction that lay bare the mechanism of clockwork. In later life Alan joined a clock club and repaired and restored traditional clocks in his spare time; he did a excellent job with two of my own clocks.

The home in which he lived with his parents, was quiet and tranquil. My memory of entering the hall of his house was that its peaceful ambiance resounded only to the gentle but firm tick of a grandfather clock displaying the phases of the moon above its dial. This spoke of a regular world, comprehensible and predictable and this was matched by the routine of the household itself. Like me Alan had the good fortune to be born into a stable and generally happy family. Alan and his family were part of my upbringing too. His was the second home I experienced, along with my own, where the regular routine of the household was surrounded by an ordered, well stocked and well kept garden. These were formative experiences for me and the help inculcate the feeling that the cosmos was a truly comprehensible and benign place! It made me feel glad to be alive; there was work to be done probing that cosmos; like a clock it could be disassembled and put back together again. That outlook has never left me, thanks in part to Alan and his home. And yet as his death shows the unexpected occasionally breaks in with evidence that our context is in turn part of a larger context.

Don't Bank on it.

2009-02-15T07:13:00.000-08:00

I'm really fed up with Banks at the moment (who isn't!); particularly Lloyd's bank. Last Friday Lloyd's refused to accept my power of attorney over my mother's affairs on the basis that they require a doctor's report on my mother's health. The doctor says that his report on the power of attorney document is all Lloyd's need and he's not doing another report. Hence an impasse has resulted and I am unable to get at my mother's money in order to pay for her care. If Lloyds are now trying to be a bit cautious with their money (No: make that our money) haven't they bolted the stable door after the horse has bolted? Funny thing that on the very same Friday Lloyd's refused to accept my powers of access we hear that their shares have gone through floor and they are looking for a bail out. I'm beginning to get a very bad feeling about all this.

However, the good news is that Barclay's have accepted my power of attorney and this means I can transfer all the money to my mother's Barclay's account: except that I've just heard news that Barclay's have gone a little too far with account accessibility - they accidentally left their safe doors unlocked over night; well that at least means I can get at my money easily.... but then so can everyone else.

What I really want is a nice secure mattress to bank under.

Hmmm... These people look like a safe bet.

Poor neddy, he should never have been sold that loan by the Lloyd's call centre.

The University of Big Disappointments

2008-12-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

During a recent visit to the University of East Anglia (UEA) I recalled my first sight of it in 1966 when I was 14. I remember it well: I was cycling with a friend along Colney lane one spring day. This lane overlooks the Yare valley in which the university is situated. As we cycled along the lane a gap opened up in the hedge and revealed a vista across the valley and a panoramic view of the huge university complex spread out below us. At that stage no news of its construction had reached me and so it was a complete surprise. Nearby Norwich, where I lived, is a medieval town with an unsystematic warren of ancient narrow streets lined, by and large, with a hodge-podge of old and traditional looking buildings. The sudden and unexpected appearance of this radically modern building was the shock of the new. With raised walkways and its clean unusual elemental architecture it could have been a scene from 60s sci-fi: Perhaps I was looking at some precognitive vision of Norwich as it would look in the centuries to come, or perhaps aliens had come to Earth and started building a city in the rural hinter land of Norwich. For a teenager who was well into science, technology and progress this building was like seeing the future now. It was an exciting place; an ultra modern factory of knowledge and science, the cutting edge of progress.

But now whenever I visit the University with its streaked and stained concrete surfaces a slightly somber mood hangs over the place, a mood very similar to that which I associate with my visits to Sizewell ‘A’ nuclear power station. Just like Sizewell ‘A’ power station UEA is symbolic of many of my childhood hopes and dreams connected with 60s modernism. I was in my teens in the second half of the sixties so perhaps I can be excused of a youthful optimism that bought into the modernist dreams of the sixties. In particular I was convinced that when I got older:

1. Everything would be atomic powered and electricity would be too cheap to meter. In any case I believed practical fusion power to be just round the corner.

2. There would be regular tourist flights to the moon. The American moon program was well under way and gave credence to such a notion.

3. Artificial intelligence would be on a par with human intelligence.

4. Physicists would have discovered a theory of everything.

Of course, none of these dreams have been fulfilled: Atomic power has many hidden costs and has been dogged by an almost superstitious dread that nuclear energy is akin to promethean fire. The problems with fusion power have and remain very difficult to crack. Space travel is an enormously expensive investment and (unlike the Columbian frontier) holds little prospect of an economic payback. Marvin Minski’s AI triumphalism has been replaced by a successor who says that our attempts to emulate human level AI may resemble an ape climbing a tree and thinking he has made the first steps to the moon. Human beings may not be bright enough to solve the problems needed to implement human level AI. That may also go for a Theory of Everything: as the quip goes, String Theory seems to be smarter than we are.

The modernist optimism of the sixties is understandable: Given the enormous strides in flight, transport, electronics, space travel, computers, warfare, biochemistry and physics that had been made in my father’s life time between 1912 and 2004 it is easy to forget that an unexpected law of diminishing returns can kick in anytime. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb rightly warns us, straight extrapolation is always a dangerous thing in the face of non-linearities and the utterly unforeseeable. The hidden costs of atomic power could never have been guessed at and who would have anticipated the postmodern diffidence associated with science and hi-tech. The distances between the staging posts of outer-space increases exponentially and defies the divide and conquer strategy of incremental space hopping. Human level AI may be up against staggering complexities that we have little hope of emulating. And is there any a priori reason why the fundamental physics of the cosmos should prove scientifically and intellectually tractable?

All good reason, then, to throw oneself on the providence of God you might think, a providence encoded perhaps in the apparently random. Well yes, I agree, but then don’t forget what religion has offered us recently: the Toronto blessing, gold fillings, Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, bullying authoritarianism, religious cults, spiritual spin, crowd hysterics, Young Earth Creationism, dogmatic theological casuistry, an assortment of conspiracy theorists, Barry Smith’s failed millennium prognostications, failed prophecies, failed healings, gnosto-dualism, legalism, fideism…. Religion has no grounds to crow.

Ross-well

2008-10-31T05:36:00.000-07:00

I wouldn’t normally comment on the furor over the recent school boy antics of Ross and Brand (But did I laugh – like a good schoolboy myself I laughed AT Ross and Brand as they merrily got themselves into trouble. So carried away were they by their mischief making that they never saw the visit to headmaster’s office coming!). However, the incident has brought to my mind an interview some years ago on one of Jonathan Ross’ shows when his guest was a UFO abductee. Heck! I thought, Mr. Ross is going to have a field day here with some very cruel humor. Well, I didn’t turn out like that at all.

I was already familiar with abduction case in question and I could probably find it in my “Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters”: Two young men are travelling in car at night on a country road. They briefly see a strange illuminated object in the sky which disappears behind a shoulder of land. They round a corner and there it is right in front of them dropping a curtain of light onto the road. Too late to stop they pass into the curtain. They seem to come straight out the other side, except that whilst passing through the curtain, the interior of the car appeared to momentarily drop away into a silent blackness. Later they find they have ‘lost time’ and hypnotic regression reveals an abduction experience..blah.. blah..blah. The two men are deeply disturbed, sometimes returning to the site, taking measurements as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their experience and try to come to terms with what has happened.

So, Mr. Jonathan Ross now steps onto the stage of this mysterious drama. True to form Ross started with some rather jocular comment. However, from the demeanor of the abductee Ross was very quick to pick up that this was a man whose experience had left a very deep impression and was in state of extreme disquiet. Ross changed tack quickly and questioned his guest thoughtfully and sensitively. Ross' own demeanor suggested that he was now taking the man seriously, a man who perhaps needed help. Gone was Ross’ sly and knowing looks into the camera. In this instance Ross showed great sensitivity to the man’s plight. Whatever the nature of the experience it was clear that it was real in the sense that it was very real to Ross’ guest. It may not have been ‘real’ real, but the man didn’t look as though he was lying and Ross understood that. Ross as a presenter has, no doubt, very good person to person skills when he wants to, and his quick change of tack is a sign of Ross' ability to quickly size up a person . In this case his assessment is evidence of the genuineness of his interviewee. Perhaps Ross himself was taken aback by the gravitas of his guest.

This story does suggest that at heart Ross isn’t a cruel man; and does he need someone to put a good word in for him at the moment! However, more disturbing is the import of the story brought to us by Jonathan Ross’ guest. It is an apt Halloween story containing a dark warning that the demonic still marches on the edge of human consciousness and dreams, if in an altered garb matching the culture of our day. What is the nature of this mysterious world, this archetypical reality? If I could answer that one I’d know the difference between noumnena, cognita and dreams.

As Authur C Clarke once said in one of his books. “There are forces in the universe of which we know nothing ....such knowledge is not meant for man”*. If an atheist can say that, then on this Halloween evening the take home lesson is: stay well clear of the occult in whatever guise it is found.

*This was said by Clarke in connection with spontaneous human combustion in his chronicles of the strange and the mysterious.

A Visit to Fountains Abbey

2008-10-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Fountains Abbey in the late afternoon of a cool damp autumn day. A somber brooding mood pervaded the ruin. To me these atmospheric relics of past human activity seem to be the clues in a cosmic puzzle, almost as if I were in some total emersion game punctuated with provocative cryptic pointers here and there as to the meaning of the human predicament: “Here is your next clue….”

This vast derelict monastery was occupied for nearly four hundred years; the monks must have thought it would go on until kingdom come, but as with so many human endeavors they had no hope of foreseeing the vicissitudes of change. We look on the Abbey now and listen to the audio guide, barely able to connect with the motives and thinking of the men (yes all men) who built and maintained a community in a culture whose world and raison d’etre was so different from our own: in fact today we have all but lost the concept of a civic raison d’etre. Even a ‘believer’ like me finds it difficult to understand the highly civic manifestation of Christianity of the middle ages, although perhaps we can see the beginings of it in religious cults like the Mormons.

The ruin of the Fountains Abbey is perhaps the nearest medieval equivalent of Stonehenge and Karnak, all being the product of a priestly class, a sign of a labour surplus, a sign of social wealth, but not just wealth, but also evidence of a civic weltanschauung. The monks of Fountains abbey started in a small way after a spat with the clergy of York minister. Like so many before them and many after them, these devout rebels wanted to clear the ground of the religious elaborations subverted by secular wealth and cares, and make a space for themselves to think and worship in simple rustic austerity. They yearned to get back to how they thought things should be, and in order to do so they imposed the time honoured monastic solution to worldly corruption: that of separation and, initially at least, asceticism. And so the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains got started in 1132. The monks lived following the monastic community Rule of St. Benedict. This rule was authoritarian and article driven, as has been the way of many Christian communities before and after Fountains. However, a successful disciplined community ethic is often the road to wealth and a subsequent and necessary involvement in economics and politics as a result. Fountains Abbey became an economic powerhouse and grew rich with the proceeds of the wool trade; ironically in this very material way they blessed the medieval world, increasing its wealth and standard of living; for themselves at least

It is ironic that the disciplined monastic separation of the monks at Fountains in time confronted them with the real challenge that a life of grace faces: grace is not expressed in some ethereal contemplative realm divorced from material reality but in the way we handle secular affairs and cope with the temptations these affairs throw up. Riches are not in themselves wrong and a naïve faith thinks abstinence and separation to be the way of salvation. In the uneasy relation between social riches and spirituality the fault is not in the riches per se, but in a wise and detached handling of them. But as a potential channel of temptation, they too easily become our master and idol.

A Visit to Hatfield House

2008-09-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hatfield house (1611) is the sister house of Blickling Hall (1624). Both were designed by the same architect and have many common architectural features; most notably the very characteristic “Tower of London” style lead domed turrets. However unlike Blickling Hall, a National Trust property, Hatfield House is still owned by its hereditary peerage. It does, moreover have a very significant place in British history; tradition has it that in the grounds of Hatfield house Elizabeth I received news of her accession to the throne.

Entry to the hall for touring visitors is literally by the backdoor. Naturally enough the back of the house, although not unattractive, is not as grand as the front. In fact the rear of the building with its sheer plain sides presents a rather forbidding impersonal aspect, an aspect that makes few concessions to the eye and a restrained conscious boast to the visitor. We were not, unfortunately, shown the front of the house and so I could only imagine the view of the privileged visitor who approaches from this side. As with Blickling the frontal façade of Hatfield was clearly designed to speak silently about the wealth, status and taste of the owner.

When approached from their fronts both halls have the shock effect of making a sudden appearance as if revealed by magic, heightening the drama of the approach. Not to be upstaged by a huge surrounding landscape seen at a distance Blickling shields itself with a bank of trees until a turn in the road suddenly reveals the hall in all its glory. Likewise, the very long drive of Hatfield House goes over the horizon of a gentle hill whose crest when mounted has the same effect of providing a sudden shock appearance*. As the visitor continues to draw closer to the front of both houses they find themselves ultimately surrounded and embraced by the wings thus filling their vision on three sides.

The builder of Blickling hall had the disadvantage of being limited by the moated footprint of the previous structure it replaced and was thus unable to present its long side to the visitor; unlike Hatfield house whose long gallery is perpendicular to the line of approach and joins together two large wings. The immediate impression of Hatfield is that it is bigger than Blickling, although I don’t think it is as big as it looks. However, unlike Hatfield house the Blickling visitor is privileged to enter via its main door and thus can experience all the fanfare intended in the traversal of a succession of carefully partitioned spaces. In times past this was reserved only of a rich peer group; they were the people the owners of the house were trying to impress – the servants, who used the back way, weren’t worth impressing.

The people you were trying to impress – yes, that’s what made a place like Hatfield House tick and in fact, because it is owner occupied, it still does. During our tour of Hatfield House I thought of other owner occupied mansions I have visited – Holkam, Athelhampton, Somerlayton: some grand, some less grand. Strange to think that even in these days when the mystique of social position has lessened somewhat, the heredity aristocracy who go back to Norman times along with the Yeomen Gentry who rose to prominence after the back death are still amongst us. They are now a hidden class of people whose signifiers of social status, even today, take the average man into an entirely unimaginable scale of wealth. Most of us compare differences in our houses, estates, vehicles and employment, if only unconsciously, but these differences are absolutely minute compared to the scale the remnant aristocratic and gentry class are still working with. The differences in the estates of say Althelhampton and Hatfield are measured in hundreds of acres and millions of pounds. These estates have no need for strenuous genealogical research because that information is probably in the public domain anyway, sometimes embedded with characters of historical significance. To survive however, the great estates have often had to forge links (perhaps through marriage) with the owners of capital and production. Moreover, they have moved from the exalted position of an institution claiming a divine right to be served to one that assumes a more egalitarian position in the economic nexus of the nation by become a service provider; mostly through tourism.

During our tour of Hatfield House I was struck by the atmosphere of belonging, collection and ownership that pervaded the place, an atmosphere that needless to say is entirely absent in a National Trust property. Being owner occupied the stewards seem less nervous and far more relaxed about their charges than the staff of a National Trust property who do not own the property. Moreover, there is perhaps less evidence of visitor control. Even so the interior of Hatfield house is trove of priceless treasure – not least the original rainbow painting of Queen Elizabeth. But the collection is alive as it changes and grows under its owners. The owner occupied estates have a living and dynamic feel that the NT, almost by definition, cannot easily achieve. In fact chief exhibit in these owner occupied homes are the aristocrats themselves; a remnant who connect us with a bygone age thus giving us a sense of what things used to be like.

The National Trust performs a kind of house clearance service for aristocrats and gentry who are strapped for cash and decide to sell up. But the original owners are inclined to take away or sell the best pieces of their collection, as did the Marquis of Lothian at Blickling when he sold his copy of the ‘Blickling Homilies’, a book that now resides at Princeton University in America. When it comes to artifacts the job of the NT is rightfully described as preservation, preservation, preservation; that and Tourism. In contrast an owner-occupier still has an active interest in his collection in a way that only an owner can have – this gives the heredity estates a going concern and less fossilized feel about them. However, what else can the NT do but hold a priceless collection in suspended animation for the nation?

What role do the treasured artifacts in our stately homes play in the economy? Unlike assets such as an oil field or a factory they don’t appear to do anything. They don’t assist production in anyway, so whence comes their value? One role seems to be that of acting as a kind of currency. Looking at them is like looking at a million dollar bill and just like currency their value is in what people agree and believe they represent. But they are more than just the representation of wealth. They are less a paper money stash than a gold reserve, an end in themselves. It is wrong to think that valued things only have a value by virtue of the end they serve. There are some objects that we regard as an end in their own right rather than a means. The end of the production line has been reached when we value an object for its own sake.

So why do we value historical artifacts so much? Being beautiful one-offs they are, of course, a demand in short supply. But why is it so breathtaking to come close to an artifact like the rainbow picture of Queen Elizabeth? She herself would have seen and commented on the picture and so it is an artifact with which we can connect with the past, a means by which we can come within one link of a prestigious character from history. And history Matters. Why? Because we care about and work for futures that will ultimately become history. We will be judged by the history we create. The passing of all human doings into the resin block of history is part of the human predicament.

Footnotes

* I'm not sure if this is correct as it is a conclusion is based on a half remembered observation.

Wedding Photos

2008-08-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

The photos of my daughter's wedding are now available on
http://www.ashtonlamont.co.uk/client-area/amy-po/index.html
Some samples:

Family History

2008-08-03T13:56:00.001-07:00

My mother (seen above with my father, many, many years ago) has recently moved into a residential care home for the elderly. Whilst clearing her house of stuff I found an employer's reference (pictured below) given to her when she finished her work as an operator on a decoding machine at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre during World War II. The reference intriguingly reads:

Foreign Office S.W.1
30th August, 1945

I have pleasure in stating that Miss M. J. Coby was employed in this Department from 22.11.43 to the present time when her services were no longer required owing to the termination of the work for which she had been engaged.

At the conclusion of her employment her grade was temporary assistant at a salary of £3:8:0 a week (exclusive of war bonus).

During service with the Department she performed her duties in a very satisfactory manner.

During her service she was employed in important and highly specialized work of a secret nature. The Official Secrets Acts preclude giving any information in connection with these duties.

At the end of the War in Europe my mother was offered work in Japanese decoding, but she wanted to get back to Norwich and her family and took the reference instead. Prior to 1974 she always referred to her time at Bletchley as “At the Foreign Office”. It was nearly 30 years after 1945 with the publication of F.W. Winterbotham’s 1974 book “The Ultra Secret” that the true significance of being “At Foreign Office” started to emerge. Even now many people who passed through World War II have never heard of Bletchley Park and its role in revealing the military secrets of Nazi Germany. On the whole German military equipment and preparation was much better than that of the Western Allies and Allied military hardware took time to catch up. Quality hardware like the Lancaster Bomber, the Flying Fortress, the Mustang, and the Spitfire Mk IX (and later Marks) were not immediately available. In fact, only right at the end of the war did Britain and America achieve tank parity with the Comet and General Pershing tanks. In the face of this lack of preparedness Bletchley Park, along with the invention of Radar, provided the Allies with a much-needed advantage in the information war. In one sense the Park was the portent of a revolutionary new power, not the power of brute force but the power of information and the ability to process it; it was ushering in the age of the computer with theoretical geniuses like Alan Turing in the vanguard. Bletchley hosted the world’s first programmable electronic computer built by Tommy Flowers – The Colossus. This computer was specially designed to find the keys needed to decode the scrambled text produced by the German's 'enigma' enciphering machine.

My mother’s time at the “Foreign Office” started with an interview in London accompanied by her mother. Even though she went as a mere short hand typist she was nevertheless asked the standard question put to potential codebreakers: Did she do crosswords? The answer to that question was 'yes' but what really mystified her was why she was given a sheet of random text and told to type it out. Presumably she reproduced it with sufficient accuracy and speed to satisfy her interviewers and was offered the job of temporary assistant. She moved to a billet in Wolverton near Bletchley (a billet she hated) and began work in Hut 8, Naval Section, on a decoding machine. The decoding machine required the keys provided by Colossus to set them up, but once set up they would turn enigma enciphered text into readable German.
Her boss was somebody she referred to as “Willy” Alexander. I not sure where the name “Willy” came from: perhaps it was nickname because it seems that the Alexander concerned was none other than Colonel Hugh O’Donel Alexander whose Wiki entry reads as follows:

In February 1940 Alexander arrived at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre during World War II. He joined Hut 6, the section tasked with breaking German Army and Air Force Enigma messages. In 1941, he transferred to Hut 8, the corresponding hut working on Naval Enigma. He became deputy head of Hut 8 under Alan Turing. Alexander was more involved with the day-to-day operations of the hut than Turing, and, while Turing was visiting the United States, Alexander formally became the head of Hut 8 around November 1942.

In October 1944, Alexander was transferred to work on the Japanese JN-25 code.

In mid-1946, Alexander joined GCHQ, which was the post-war successor organisation to the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park. By 1949, he had been promoted to the head of "Section H" (cryptanalysis), a post he retained until his retirement in 1971.

So, my mother may have even had contact with the great Alan Turing whose face she says is familiar.

During her work she frequently saw references to U boat numbers embedded in the decoded text her machine was generating and understood enough about the tactical consequences of what she was doing to realize that they were now revealed and their number was up, so to speak. Even so I don’t think even she was fully aware of the strategic importance of the messages passing through her machine. Only in retrospect, and that only with slowly dawning realization, did she understand how her apparently humble job fitted in the great scheme of things. A lesson there for us all perhaps.

Bletchley park is the historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of the modern computer. It is open to the general public as a museum.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Hut 8 has been refurbished is also open to visitors.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/489740

Getting to the Church on Time

2008-07-20T10:30:00.001-07:00

My daughter's fiancee was obviously worried about his bride being late for the wedding service, so he ordered a Maserati Quattroporte to do the job - see above: just another excuse to publish a picture of a fast car, with glamorous blonde, on my blog.

The scheme worked because she arrived a few minutes early. Only one problem: the Bride's maids arrived ten minutes late - in a Jaguar. If Jaguar speak to me nicely I will consider erasing this post. The administration costs for removal of entries on Noumena, Cognita and Dreams is £1499.50

Italy Part 4: Plate Tectonics

2008-06-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

The landscape around Bassano-Del-Grappa in North Italy is formed on a phenomenal scale. We were only in the foothills of the Alps, and yet a zigzagging car journey (many thanks to Jon and Danielle) took us 6000 feet up mount Grappa (about 2000 feet higher than Ben Nevis) to the fortification where the Italians repelled an Austro-German attack during the First World War. This battle, fought in an epic setting, deserves a bit more than the stub page it has on wiki.

The gorges and valleys (carved in metamorphic limestone I think) were far bigger than anything I’ve seen in England, making Cheddar Gorge and the Derbyshire Dales look like rabbit scrapings. No surprise I suppose: Derbyshire was carved from a gentle doming effect caused by subsurface magma. The Alps, which continue to form, are the result of a massive collision of continents and the long drawn out earth quaking tumult of that collision continues to this day.

Bassano-Del-Grappa

Italy Part 3: The Final Solution

2008-06-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

The Italians seem to have the ability to indulge their baroque architectural fancies without incurring that tacky and tasteless look. Perhaps it’s just as well that English architects gave the baroque period a miss and stuck with the clean Palladian, otherwise I wonder if the English could have carried it off as successfully as the Italians.

Anyway, here is a picture of the interior of Farrara Cathedral, lavishly Baroque at least in the sense of being sumptuously carved and painted (since it is actually structurally Romanesque), and yet it still succeeds in conveying a sense of lightness and elegance.

Coming to this Catholic temple cold one might have expected amidst all this lavish detail to find somewhere an effigy to a gloriously towering confident god, awesome and fearful to behold. However, in spite of the encrusting layers of religious elaboration that the Roman Catholic faith has accreted over the years it nevertheless retains the peculiarly Christian image of God, an image that never ceases to bring the genuine God seeker up with a jolt; the cruel image of a suffering, emaciated and humiliated God, the God of the cross. This is the God who gave up all for human salvation, even his claim to the Godhead. It was here in Farrara Cathedral that that image was centre stage:

Somehow the irony of finding this epitome of desolation and pain at the centre of a palace of décor fit for a king makes it all the more compelling. I’m no fan of Popes, priesthoods, processions and pomp, but piercing the accretions of many years of tradition, here we have it, the core of the faith – the God who in suffering and sacrifice leads from the front, the God who for a while made Himself lower than the worshippers who come to his Temples so that those worshippers might be raised up.

Italy Part 2: Perspective

2008-06-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

Our day in Venice was one of those hyper-reality experiences, an experience very reminiscient of my one time visit to old Jerusalem: Both cities are a complex warren of narrow streets and both are so familiar as a consequence of their prolific media representation that I suffered a slight sense of disconnection and a pervading feeling that I was not really there - the hyper-reality experience.

For me Venice will always be the home of 'perspective'. Italian architecture, or at least what I have seen of it, is, like the latin language, very consistent and regular. The regularity and cubism of the architecture, means that when ever I see paintings of Venice the perspective lines running through it jump out of the picture. The ubiquitous water table provides a natural horizon, reference points, vanishing points and an x/z plane that pervades the whole environment. In order to implement a sketch all one needs do is visualise a cartesian system parallel with this plane and then construct the necessary perspective lines. The details are then served up automatically by the logic of perspective. Once I had grasped the principles of perspective when I was young, it always seemed to me to be a miracle the way my drawings sudddenly became three dimensional.

Italy Part 1: Field Systems

2008-06-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

On a recent holiday in Italy I noticed the very different aspect the field system presents to the 'eye in the sky' when compared to the equivalent English aspect. See the two photos above taken in descent. The first photo shows the field system in north Italy and the second the field system around Stansted airport. The Italian field system is far more linear than the English system; the Italian component fields are linear strips.

Why does this difference, which is so striking to the eye, exist? Both countries, I assume, had feudal strip systems. In both countries the feudal system began to break up after the Black Death - at least it certainly did in England and the up and coming Yeomen farmers made a grab for strips that were no long tilled by a depleted population. My guess is that these farmers expanded their fields until they hit the more irregular boundaries described by the hedgrows, woods, and roads. So why does Italy retain a strip system? What is it about the Italian history and setting that is so different?

You're Not Going to Believe this...

2008-05-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, take a look at this on the Christian web site "Network Norwich", and compare it with this! Once again Views News and Pews (or at least its historical department, Noumena, Cognita and Dreams), well ahead of the game as usual, preempts a backward 'prophetic' Norwich church in raising a pertinant issue: this time the church's failure to come to terms with men's interests. The linked "Network Norwich" article reports on a new Christian web site that plumbs the depths of Men's interests in all things fast and long by indulging some men's penchant for fast cars. In the linked article the creator of the site says this:

The aim of the web site is to bring like-minded guys together through a specific website where interests can be shared, ideas can be voiced and events can be organised. It is trying to dispel the preconceived idea that Christian men hug trees, drive 2CVs and wear open toed sandals with socks! It is also trying to show that it is okay as a Christian bloke to talk about bhp, piston rings, rear ends (female), con rods, erection lengths, dump valves, vaginas, split rims, grease nipples, breasts and fast cars in general.

Well, I did warn you that weren't going to believe it...

Fame and Fortune: At Last!

2008-05-20T14:37:00.001-07:00

Fame and Future has come to me all in one day (Last Saturday)

Firstly the fame. Whilst playing around with a ‘who links to me’ facility I discovered that my blog was linked from a Wiki article. That might sound great but when you hear the full story it’s down hill all the way. For a start the link is wrong. The link was in fact made to this blog from the Wiki page on Sizewell hall (see picture above), but really the link should have been to my specific post on Sizewell Hall here. Just imagine it: All those serious minded believers who associate Sizewell Hall with tear soaked enounters with the Divine, expectantly link to my blog and find content about Phallic Paradigms, Jeremy Clarkson’s school boy antics with cars, and haunted halls.

But in any case it looks as though the link won’t last long. If the authors of the Sizewell Hall article don’t delete the link themselves, then it is likely that Wiki moderators will; a moderator’s note at the head of the page claims that the article is flagged for possible deletion because it may fail to meet Wiki’s general notability guidelines. That is, Sizewell Hall isn’t notable enough to justify a Wiki page! I have to grudgingly admit that the Wiki moderators may be right: Sizewell Hall must be hard up for reflected glory if they are using my blog as a reference. Shucks! It doesn’t look as though I will be getting even the fifteen minutes of fame promised by Andy Warhol.

OK, so that’s the fame, now here’s the fortune. On the same day I found the Sizewell Hall article I received a cheque in the post, and here it is:

That’s right, a cheque for 27 pence. Now, if I had overpaid the window cleaner I might expect him to take off 27 pence from my next bill rather than send a cheque by post, but we are talking dumb big business systems here: The cheque was, in fact, from that mega bucks insurance group Aviva. Doubling the cost of the transaction by posting the cheque second class at a cost of 27 pence is just about as stupid as those legendary cheques written by computers for £ 0.0. I can just see it now: an Aviva computer 'anxious' to ensure that a financial zero sum game involving millions of pounds actually does end in a zero sum rather than a balance of 27 pence triggers a printer to churn out loads of minor adjustment cheques. These cheques are then mail merged and envelope stuffed entirely mechanically. The signature on the cheque doesn’t smudge (yes, I tried smudging it with some spit) so clearly the cheque has never seen a human hand. I have a few shares in Aviva and this small correction apparently has been generated by a change in their dividend share reinvestment scheme. 27 pence won’t even buy a packet crisps, but Aviva shares have been dropping so fast recently (not surprisingly given their concept of efficient business practice) that I am beginning to wonder if 27 pence worth of Aviva shares is about the only thing I can afford to buy with my new found fortune. As you can see I really know the kind of company to invest my money in. I've a good mind not to cash the cheque: it will leave 27 pence unclaimed on Aviva's books. Let them stick that in their damn computer and process it; hope it goes into an everlasting loop.

So what a great day Saturday turned out to be: 27 pence better off and 5 minutes worth of my measly quota of 15 minutes of fame squandered on a soon to be deleted link!

A Visit to Holkham Hall

2008-04-11T03:25:00.000-07:00

Holkham hall is a mid 18th century building situated in North Norfolk. As with all Palladian constructions lines of symmetry abound, inside and out. The general plan of the building follows the usual layout of a central block flanked with identical wings linked by corridors. Consequently the face on view of the hall boasts its maximum dimension, thus impressing the visitor with its size. However, unlike other Palladian buildings Holkham does not use long spindly extended corridors to its wings to artificially accentuate its breadth. In fact not only does the Hall have very short corridors but also it is effectively two Palladian mansions back to back, thus having a much greater depth than some other neo classical homes.

The sumptuous interior of Holkham is well known, especially the breath taking colonnaded entrance hall. The décor is as ornamented as it could be without looking baroque and the interior just succeeds in retaining the clean, elegant and elemental feel that is a feature of pristine classicism. From the outside, however, I would not personally rate the building as particularly attractive; the wings, for example, look like workhouses. But perhaps this is appropriate: Holkham hall is not owned by a heritage trust who are doing their best to the halt forces of decay and fossilize it, but it is still a working concern – the Lord and Lady remain in residence and as of old the Hall is the hub of a farming estate, although income has been supplemented with tourism and the sale of rustic products.

Holkham Hall was built at the beginning of the industrial revolution when wealth was still primarily bound up with land ownership. As a great farming estate Holkham would have been amongst societies key wealth producers. The Lords of Holkham held one of the country’s chief means of production. Like the owners of the other great estates they used the then modern neo-classical architecture and statuary to signal their leadership status; they were where it was at, a new pinnacle of culture and civilization rivaling Rome. They thought of themselves as the “new Romans” but, in fact, one better: Technically they were more advanced than the Romans and these Christianized patricians, in their impressive celebrations of classical statuary and myth, were not afraid to contrast the barbarism of Rome unfavorably with their own Christian values and morality

After the medieval years of looking up to and feeling inferior to the classical world, western civilization, by the 18th century, had not only overhauled classical civilization but were poised to far exceed it. But it is ironic that the estate owners, who were at the center of the agricultural revolution with its new revolutionary farming techniques, were helping to bring about the demise of their landed class. The labor hungry industrial revolution would not have been possible without the efficient farming methods used by the great halls, freeing labor from direct contact with the land. When the industrial revolution got well underway and created a superstructure of industry and work far removed from the tilling of the land, wealth and power shifted away from the gentry: the factory owners, and not the hereditary land owners with their lineages and blood connections, were now vying to be the front runners. The factory owners were technically savvy, and the patrician class of the 18th century with their classical pretensions was in decline. Command of technology and not classics was the badge of the new modernism. The exuberant celebrations of classicism we find in the homes of the gentry became quaint and out of touch. The dynamic and frenetic pace of an accelerating industry with its ever-changing face of technical innovation was leaving behind the ponderous patrician wisdom of a bygone era.

Phallic Paradigm

2008-03-31T13:40:00.001-07:00

So after 8 years of reliable service I have at last got rid of my beloved old automatic Carlton. Here it is posing beautifully at the old castle:

and here is my 'new' automatic Vectra 'Elegance' posing at the classico-modernist Holkham hall:

With 0.2 litre less of engine and 10 inches shorter you can see that this is tauntamount to the opposite of an enhancement pill. Getting a bit greener is a pretty sacrificial business. But is it an improvement? Stylistically I think 'No'. The Calton with its deeper (albiet less fashionable) window area not only afforded better visibility, but accentuated its sheer missile like length. And of course for a male sheer length is the meaning of life. The engine also sounded better, albeit a bit noisier and rougher; that perhaps may have something to do with the transverse arrangement of the Vectra engine and emission controls. However, although the Calton with its engine management and ABS was a high spec. in its day (long gone), the Vectra is festooned with even more gismos and this gives it an advanced feel: a product of a creeping information technology and marketing one-up-man-ship that attempts to fuel demand with a constant round of functionality upgradings. Can the human brain wrap itself round yet another thick manual of functionality? I'm still trying to get through the damn fat square manual that came with my wrist watch.

But the underlying technology of the latest vehicles, although highly refined, still comes out of the Victorian era of pistoned heat engines. Like a mine that has been thoroughly worked out and has now hit a period of decreasing returns, Internal Combustion can only be enhanced with increasing effort, research and investment. ICE vehicles are definitely on the refinement part of the development curve as computerisation attempts to squeeze out more and more from less and less. What a contrast the modern car is: an amalgom of the steam and the computer ages.

As for me I am still waiting for those revolutionary paradigm shifting atomic powered cars that they promised us on the sixties. Now that really would be a masculine statement: a car with a hull like a nuclear submarine. The Green party can go and hang.

Power Houses

2008-02-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

I recently visited Sizewell ‘A’ power station (seen above). Whenever I visit this power station the same memory is invoked. I remember seeing it as child in the mid-sixties when it had not long been built. Its corrugated aluminum façade was still an un-oxidized metallic silver sheen, sparkling in the sun. Metallic silver, in those days, was the colour of the future and above all, of progress; one saw it everywhere in connection with high tech or science fiction: spacesuits, aircraft, rockets, concept cars and concept fashions. As a child I was excited by that 'the future is here' feeling as I viewed the glistening power station. I readily tuned into to the hopes of modernism and aspirations of technological and scientific progress.

It was very appropriate that the moon was hanging over the station when I took this photograph – another half a decade after my first visit to Sizewell ‘A’ and that other science based project, man on the moon, would be fulfilled. Atomic power and space travel, those great projects of heroic science, went hand in hand into a hopeful future. Atomic power was going to provide electricity that was going to be too cheap to meter. Moreover, fusion power, a cleaner enhancement of atomic power, was just round the corner. Space flight would look like 2001 Space Odyssey by the end of the millennium and AI machines of great intelligence would soon be a reality, perhaps in a lifetime. None of these hopes, of course have been matched by the story on the ground, or in space.

The gray oxidized hull of the now decommissioning power station was forbidding in the half-light when I photographed it. The inflated expectations of the sixties about the possibilities of space flight and atomic power, like the somber discolored bulk of Sizewell ‘A’, have lost their sheen of optimism.

Sizewell ‘A’ is a gentle 25-minute walk down the beach from the Christian conference center where I was staying and here is a picture of that conference center:

The contrast with Sizewell ‘A’ is breathtaking: Built in 1922 Sizewell Hall is reminiscent of Lutyens, the garden city builders, and the periodic return to the arts and crafts of the romantics as they react against the cold functional complexity of modernism. The romantics seek a return to rusticity, an age when things were simpler, warmer, and more human - days when heartfelt yearnings and intuitions were chief oracle, and not the dispassionate and incomprehensible scientific expert. It is appropriate then that Sizewell Hall is a conference center for a movement that so often displays a sharp reaction against scholarship and learning in favour of simple ‘heart knowledge’. The view of creationism that some Christians promulgate typifies it: They draw a line round the first passages of Genesis confidently stating that this boundary clearly and unambiguously delimits all one need know about creation, completely ignoring the textual hints of dark tunnels leading way out beyond their limiting artifice, tunnels suggestive of a much bigger, perplexing and less comfortable world out there. The Southern Baptist fundamentalist is apt to trace all ills back to man’s fall, and thereby is less troubled by the mystery of suffering and evil. His 6000-year-old creation is easy to accommodate mentally and in a sentimental Kincaidian way it is as cozy as his living room.

Temperamentally I gravitate toward science, its pristine logic and its hopes of progress. But the somber discolored bulk of the now redundant power station as it decommissions, conjures up a sad nostalgia as I recall naive childish hopes. I have also had to cope with the dashed hopes of the evangelical movement as it recovers from a period of inflated religious expectations. When I first visited Sizewell Hall with my current church in 1994 it was the year of the emerging Toronto Blessing. There followed a short period of optimism whilst the picture, for a while, remained unclear. But now in 2008 we look back on a trail of false prophecies, half-baked and bizarre blessings, disgraced evangelists, failed promises of revival, polarization, and crowd control by spiritual spin and spiritual bullying. How could a group of people who make so much of 'Holy Spirit discernment' be so easily fooled? The frank, candid and challenging question has to be posed: Is Christianity real or is it just a product of crowd dynamics?

Evangelical Christianity, like scientific triumphalism, has had to adjust to a more sober assessment of its expectations. The spiritual lessons here for both atheist and evangelical are priceless: On the one hand, the epistemic arrogance of the Godless as they believe that they have found self–sufficiency in a scientific tree of knowledge, has been challenged. On the other hand with the discomfiture of evangelicalism, there is a mellowing and an embracing amongst evangelicals of a more open concept of the Gospel. At least I hope so.

Cathedral Capital

2007-12-27T06:24:00.000-08:00

Norwich Cathedral is around 900 years old. Although some parts of the Cathedral were built in the light and airy styles of late mediaeval gothic the earlier architectural legacy of the Normans with its much heavier construction techniques predominates. Gothic architecture wears its God striving mystique on its sleeve, but the older lumpen Romanesque of the Normans conveys a sense of Divine mystery via its archaic and primitive feel rather by recourse to platonic ideals of beauty. As I sat I in one of the aisles of the Cathedral as midnight approached on Christmas Eve my aspect was thoroughly dominated by the pillars of huge girth that march up and down the aisles. My eye sought relief from the oppressive heaviness of the Norman architecture by turning its gaze up toward the lofty nave with its breathtaking vista of three successive tiers of colonnades. The primeval feel of the building gives it an otherworldly atmosphere; perhaps the sort of thing Tolkein had in mind when he described the ancient halls of Moria.

Compared to Norman architecture gothic, particularly perpendicular gothic, with its delicate traceries and minimalist pillars and buttressing, is closer to the modernist ideal of material efficient constructions. A fine example of perpendicular architecture is found in the church of St Peter Mancroft that borders the south side of Norwich market place. Built in the fifteenth century, the slenderness of its stone pillars and large windows, which together maximize light, floor space, and uninterrupted lines of sight, anticipate the modern era of reinforced concrete and steel constructions.

But although perpendicular gothic parallels the modern practice of creating a thin elegant weather covering rather than a cavern of stone, the church builders of renascence England did not know that they were closing in fast on the disruptive social non-linearities of modern times. For romanesque and gothic churches had one thing in common; they were both effectively sink holes for the surplus labour of their respective social settings; something alien to our culture with its constant tension between investment and spending.

Whenever I am in a large romanesque or gothic church, I find it difficult to empathise with the social ethos that lead to their construction. Like the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt it is clear that mediaeval and renascence society had an agricultural surplus large enough to sink a vast amount of labour into massive stone celebrations of their religion. Although these constructions may have served intangible social mores revolving around a sense of community and religious purpose, they had no productive purpose that the modern industrial mindset can comprehend. Once constructed, that was it; the labour embodied in these fantastic buildings went no further and served no direct productive end; unlike the industrial period when investment in the construction of say, a large factory is intended to facilitate or enhance further production. In the modern world investment is the name of the game and capital is invested to further increase capital, thus leading to the unstable exponentials and non-linearities of modern society.

From a modern perspective with its values of investment, betterment, and change, often all motivated by the search for profit, the mediaeval ethos of social stasis and massive construction projects that fossilized surplus labour is difficult to understand. What exactly motivated these people? Was it just about the maintaining the power of the priesthood via an oppressive stone symbolism whose sheer magnitude cowered the lower ranks of society into submission, or did that society genuinely have the glory of God in their minds? - Perhaps a bit of both. If that is so then the modern mind does have a significant point of contact with the minds of medieval and renascence times – namely that of having inseparably mixed motives. The medieval priest supported the status quo because his desire to maintain his station within it was in inseparable union with his motive to glorify God. Likewise, today’s entrepreneur may wish to better society through his innovating efforts but he is unlikely to be able to resolve this altruistic motive from a desire for personal profit. Mixed motives are very difficult, if not impossible, to resolve into their components. Sin, the word with the 'I' in the middle, is inextricably mixed with human motives (Romans 7:15-25) and that's why the saviour came.

Aping 2001

2007-11-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

OK then, I'll face it, we've had a building cock up at my address. HAL: "Look Tim, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. ..."

Tim Reeves' Big Day Out: MPH07

2007-11-10T07:10:00.001-08:00

I had a very enjoyable day at MPH07. Some of the vehicles on show were spectacular and, needless to say, so were the prices. Here’s the vehicle I bought with my initials on the front as an extra:

The sticker on the back of this car will read "My other car is a wreck".

The spectacular theme continued in the arena performances presented by Clarkson, Hammond and May with breath taking internal combustion engine based stunts: car football, a flying car, and formation hand break turning. Four motorcyclists not only managed to squeeze themselves into a spherical iron cage but also managed to ride at speed as well. It was not just the wall of death, but floor and ceiling of death as well. So precisely coordinated was their riding that a dangerous collision was only small fractions of a second away:

With its 80% male attendance this was a show for the lads. It fulfilled all those stereotypical notions of testosterone charged males fascinated with danger, risk taking and fast sleek phallic looking machines. And if Richard Hammond’s recent antics are anything to go by, Top Gear’s blustering presenters are not pseuds but really do engage in risk taking. But as well as dangerous antics the show was also about being naughty boys and breaking the rules. Jeremy Clarkson drove his range rover up a 38 degree slope, but gleefully told us beforehand that Rover only recommends a maximum slope of 35 degree. Clarkson was pushing the envelope and certainly not doing as he was told:

It was all a refreshing change from today’s church experience, an experience so crushingly and slushily feminine in style, intuitions and behavioral expectations, that it habitually expresses the faith in quasi-sensual and romantic terms. Its notion of risk is that of listening to the prophetic intuitions of the limbic mind when you know that the prophetic hit rate in recent years has been all but zero.

Most Haunted Mansion

2007-11-05T06:40:00.001-08:00

In a Halloween publicity stunt, the National Trust has published a list of its top ten most haunted properties. Blickling hall, the Jacobean mansion near Alysham in Norfolk has hit the number one spot. But how was this list arrived at? Was it done by carefully counting and collating reports and giving them a verification weighting, or did the National Trust dowse Sian Evans abdomen with a pendulum in order to get a gut reaction? The house manager at Blickling provides a few clues:

We are absolutely delighted to be at the top of the most haunted chart. This will give Blickling a very scary five skull rating in the national guide to haunted halls. The house staff always look forward to coming in and being scared witless by our team of ghosts who have worked hard for this position and put in a very spirited performance. They are good workers who enjoy their work and always moan about their tasks, although they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the cleaning staff who also do a lot of moaning (especially on pay day). With a celebrity ghost like Anne Boleyn we definitely have a head start here at Blickling, but we will be giving all our hard working ghosts a Halloween bonus and pay rise.

So, if you are an employee at Blickling your best bet is to take a white sheet with you to work and scare the living daylights out of a visitor of two - you might get a pay rise and bonus. Not a ghost of chance of that I suppose. I wonder if anyone has spotted my pay slip lurking in a dark corner at Blickling? I wouldn’t believe it if they said they had .....there I go again, moaning; must have caught the habit from the spooks.

Unnaturally Natural

2007-10-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of my latest outing: Sheringham park, (north Norfolk, England) a ‘natural’ landscape garden designed by Humphry Repton, (late 18th Century) the man said to be Capability Brown’s successor. Creating a well-composed photo in one of these ‘natural’ landscape gardens is a synch: just go to the contrived viewpoint, pick up the symmetries and then click! Unfortunately a dull misty day obscured the sea, but notice that the tree line carefully parts to reveal the sea in the background. ‘Natural’? My foot! In art classes I was told to carefully compose my paintings into foreground, middle ground and background. Mr. Repton has done it for me in this picture! I must go back sometime and take the same picture on a sunny day.

Going Places

2007-10-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to going here, here on Friday week. After all the stately homes I fancy something where the pace is a little less stately.....

This is stately......

(Notice pedimented radiator and corinthian column grill)

This isn't......

('Grin' rather than a 'grill'!)

Felbrigg Hall

2007-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

We recently had a family outing at Felbrigg hall and here are some of my impressions.

The site itself goes back much further than the building. Like many other place names in the east of England ‘Felbrigg’ is of Scandinavian origin, a relic of Viking evasions, meaning ‘plank bridge’. The Viking plank bridge, which has long since gone of course, probably crossed the marshy valley that the hall now overlooks.

The present Felbrigg hall was built circa 1620 concurrently with Blickling hall ten miles to the south, perhaps even sharing architects and resources. Compared to Blickling, Felbrigg was originally a very modest affair, consisting of little more than the basic banqueting hall design of medieval origin, along with some withdrawing rooms for the lord and lady. However, over the years Felbrigg has been added to time and again, and this explains its rambling diversity. It is an architectural accretion of many layers.

In contrast with Felbrigg, Blickling hall was conceived all of a piece. Once implemented its plan was so grand and coherent that few would dare to substantially alter it without fear of violating its original concept. The changes that were made in the eighteenth century by the Norwich architects Thomas Ivory and son (whose old Georgian home is a near neighbour of mine) to rationalize its relatively muddled north and west ranges simply reinforced its mathematically elemental plan. As one walks up the imposing lawn and yew boarded forecourt confronted by what the guide book calls a ‘a fantastic elaboration of skyline’, the aspect is so breath taking, dramatic and dominating that few would dare think that it could be bettered in its symmetry and perfection. The best side of Blickling openly boasts its grandeur and shouts “Don’t touch!” But the upshot is that once inside it is very easy to take on board its layout and it is difficult to get disoriented. The building, in spite of its size, alas, does not easily convey that ‘lost’ feeling. For those who like myself, enjoy a bit of mystery and feeling a little disoriented and challenged, Blickling’s layout is too easily understood.

Felbrigg couldn’t be more different. The approach from the visitor’s car park does no justice to the hall at all. At first I was left wondering if Felbrigg has any good sides to show off to the visitor. In the end I decided that the road curving round from the west to south sides showed the hall at its best and I guessed that this was the route by which guests were ushered into the grounds by the owners who, as was the wont of the landed gentry, did all they could to impress their connections by accentuating the drama of introducing them to their lands and premises.

Felbrigg has a charm that none of the grand stately homes can emulate. Once inside the rambling building I had some difficulty retaining a sense of direction and position. I felt a little defeated and I liked that feeling - it’s similar to the feeling one has in a challenging maze. Later the next day I tried retracing my steps round the building in my minds eye, but was unable to complete it correctly without consulting the plan in the guide. With its idiosyncratic history of extensions Felbrigg, if nothing else, is the most homely of all the stately homes I have so far visited. Felbrigg hall has an ‘open ended’ incomplete feel that allows further extension. In one sense the complexity and extendibility of its plan makes it much grander than is suggested by its physical dimension.

Blickling Hall

2007-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Blickling Hall near Aylsham (Norfolk, England) was built on the eve of the enlightenment in 1620, approximately one hundred years after the reformation. Its Jacobean architecture is a pastiche of Elizabethan features and an unsystematic smattering of classical elements – pediments, pillars and entablatures. At the time of its construction the seeds of its fashionable demise were being sown by Inigo Jones who was already engaged in a much more systematic application of classical features in his first Palladian essays. A few more years and the owners of Blickling would find themselves in the neo-classical revival. Its Jacobean façade would become an unfashionable legacy no longer signaling that its owners were where it was at. In spite of the later neo-classical makeover of its interior Blickling Hall has a strong medieval feel. The Hall was built on the site of a moated manner house and this determined its rectangular castle-like footprint. Its four corners are occupied by square towers capped by lead pinnacled roofs similar to those on the tower of London. The Hall is entered via a bridge over the now dry moat. The walls of the bridge are ornamented with decorative pseudo turrets pierced by arrow slits. The bridge leads into a passage that opens out onto a courtyard in an arrangement very reminiscent of a castle gatehouse. Beyond the courtyard is the main door into the Hall itself. Blickling Hall is, in fact, at the end of a metamorphosis which slowly compromised the strength of the feudal castle and transformed it from an efficient crenellation where military potential was paramount, into homes which retained enough vestigial features of the castle to signal aristocracy. This slow victory of style over content can be traced from Bodium castle through Oxborough Hall to Blickling itself.

When Blickling Hall was built in the late Renaissance the mediaeval social order was long since defunct. History, however, is always a work in progress and its artifacts often blend past and future in uneasy union. The sense of symmetry which had begun to inform the architects of Blickling’s day militated against the mediaeval legacy that required the 'entrance' hall to be the center and hub of the building; this is why it is called a 'hall'. Unlike the later and modern practice that made the entrance hall an antechamber to the spaces where it really happened, the ‘entrance’ hall in Blickling’s day was the banqueting and entertainments focus of the house. What created an issue for Blickling’s architect was that medieval halls were asymmetrically arranged about their entrance. On one side of the entrance was a wooden screen with doors leading to the main space where the Lord dinned on his dais. On the other side doors lead away to the kitchen, pantry and service areas. This asymmetrical arrangement was originally found at Blickling, but this conflicted with an increasing desire for symmetry, an aspiration emerging out of the Elizabethan era and running its course into the neo-classical architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where a thoroughgoing symmetry was vogue.

History was slipping and sliding into a new synthesis and the resulting incoherent pastiche of Blickling’s design parallels, in many ways, the state of science at that time. In 1620 nearly 80 years had elapsed since the publication of Copernicus’ posthumous slight on the earth-centered universe – the first of a serious of apparent demotions of man’s position in the great scheme of things. Galileo’s partly self-imposed battles with the authority of the Catholic Church over this very matter had commenced. In the meantime, around the early 1600s, and concurrently with the building of Blickling, Kepler was publishing his 3 laws of celestial mechanics. Kepler, like the Hall itself, looked both to the past and future. His astrological work paid a wage and his mediaeval obsession with the platonic mystery of the five regular solids lead to his initial mathematical foray into celestial mechanics; but his neat scheme of concentrically nesting these solids in order to mathematically justify the position of the planetary orbits eventually went the way of Bode’s law into redundancy. Nevertheless the notion that there was a mathematical patterning behind the cosmos was an anticipation of the future. Kepler’s later three laws governing elliptical planetary paths have stood the test of time, at least as worthwhile approximations.

The spirit in which Kepler understood his three laws is indicative of the transitions of his time that gave rise to the paradoxical blending of past and future. To Kepler, the three laws were mathematical patterns imposed from above by God. In this sense Kepler’s underlying philosophy was little different from that which drove his soon-to-be-redundant application of the five regular solids. For Kepler mathematical patterns were imposed by God on nature in much the same way the Elizabethans and Jacobeans imposed highly regular and symmetrical patterns on their gardens and parks That a distant part of a planetary orbit should relate via some simple mathematical relation to another part widely separated from it would have preseneted no intuitive difficulty for Kepler simply because in Kepler’s view God in his wisdom had designed it to be like that.

Another stage in the beginnings of a sea change came just under 100 years later with the advent of the Newtonian revolution. Although the highly devout Newton probably thought more on the lines of Kepler than the French interpreters who followed him, his system of mechanics had the potential to be interpreted as ‘local’. That is, Newtonian Physics can be simulated computationally using a set of autonomous local ‘cells’ with inputs and outputs from their neighbors. Each cell doesn’t need to know about any overall pattern – it manages its affairs locally using some relatively simple rules governing how it interacts with its near neighbors. Even forces such as gravity, which in Newton’s day seemed to be a mathematical pattern that instantaneously permeated space, can be reduced to these ‘local’ terms. It turns out, of course, that Kepler’s elliptical patterns, which to him where just givens, are a product of one of these locally managed systems. There was during the eighteenth century a flurry of interest in extremum principles as way of interpreting Newton. This approach suggested that the mechanics of the cosmos was subject to an overall plan, but the philosophical gravitas of these principles was severely compromised by the realization that they contained no more information than the simpler and easier to handle local interpretation.

And so was born the ‘local’ physical paradigm - all that is required is a set of fairly basic, simple and definitely non-sentient units whose output in response to an input is determined by some relatively basic rules; you then turn the mathematical handle and out pops an overall pattern – or to use the vogue expression, the patterns emerge bottom-up rather than being imposed from above. As later thinkers went onto to conjecture, perhaps even sentience itself can be reduced to these local systems. The local paradigm sees the dynamic ordering agent behind the cosmos not as a supreme sentience overseeing it but rather as simple units responding to near neighbors using elementary algorithms. Thus, according to this paradigm order comes from below rather than from above. It envisages the cosmos as laissez faire rather than a command economy where each non-sentient unit autonomously looks after itself without heed to orders from on high.

Laissez faire or central planning? As Kepler, unbeknown to him, was sowing the seeds of the local paradigm, the first 100 years of Blickling Hall witnessed a turbulent period in English politics when this dichotomy was not just a philosophical issue but was being fought over, although the partisans would not have been able have to think of it in those terms. The Stuart kings of the day believed in the divine right of kings to rule with or without a parliament. Charles I wore this belief on his sleeve and this helped to precipitate the civil war of 1642. It was top-down power vs the more distributed power of the up and coming middle classes. In his last words before execution Charles I opined:

For the people, truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody, but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consist in having government - those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share in government ... that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.

The issue surfaced again when James II attempted to use his divine right to bring Catholicism back to England. He was consequently deposed in the bloodless revolution of 1688. In spite of the feudal top-down pretensions signaled by the dated architecture of Blickling, the owners of the Hall weighed in on the side of the parliamentarians. They were the Whigs of their day.

The laissez faire vs. central planning question is one that finds no consensus resolution even today, either in science or politics. In politics we have the paradox of capitalists and socialists both having prima facia cases for claiming to be the true champions of freedom and of accusing the other side of being the true enemies of liberty. In the physical sciences it is not clear that locality of interaction is all there is to it; if all global patterning emerges from an array of simple locally communicating non-sentient nodes there remains, of course, the enigma of both the origins of the nodes and their rules of behavior. Moreover, the strange and curious global patterning arising from their combined effort makes one wonder if the local rules governing their behavior are in actual fact subject to global mathematical constraints applying a ‘field’ of influence analogous to the effect that a background sea of chemical concentrations has on the signaling behavior of neurons in the brain. At the very least it does seem that quantum mechanics has put non-locality back on the physical science agenda. (Note to self: compare Thinknet selections)

Non-local ontologies hold out the prospect of some kind of global top-down management of local matters. This top-down management takes the form of background constraints transcending the normal neighborhood relations between nodes and their time-like communications. In this case it’s as if the units are connected together in some space of relations transcending ‘space’ space. It is not possible to detect this kind of global organizer by attempting to discover locally transmitted signals because the constraint makes itself felt in bulk effects only. Theists will find non-local ontologies easier to swallow, because the notion of some kind of background influence managing the affairs of the cosmic order without detectable local communications taking place is analogous to Divine presence and power. Contra wise, atheists may find non-local ontologies less acceptable because they look suspiciously like the thin end of the theist wedge.

***

Looking out of a window of the west range of Blickling provides an aspect across the beautiful vista of a landscaped park designed by the Reptons in the late eighteenth century. To create this informal park the Reptons removed three long avenues of trees that converged on the Hall, emphasizing its centrality. The natural appearance of the Reptons’ landscaping suggested indifference to the presence of the Hall. The fashion for landscaping was a sign of an increasing awareness of a natural world that was is stark contrast to the world of man, the world of artifice. This contrast is very marked in the estates where the elemental geometry of a neo-classical mansion is set against the informal landscaping of their surroundings. The landscape gardens were designed to look natural, unmanaged, a product of insentient nature. It is as if the men of the enlightenment period were pondering nature, now unsure of their place in it, whereas before it was taken for granted that like the old avenues of trees at Blickling all the ways of nature lead to man, the pinnacle of creation. But now questions and doubts were arising in the minds of men; in times past these questions wouldn’t have surfaced in their consciousness. That Paley published at all is a sign that points of doubt needed shoring up and this amounted to an acknowledgement that these points of doubt now existed. In a few more tens of years the scientific study of nature was to throw up some deeply disquieting surprises for mankind and further apparent demotions of his cosmic place. These surprises would lead men to question their status in the great scheme of things. The view that man is an epiphenomenona of impersonal dispassionate principles operating in a local paradigm has a hold on the minds of many.

Does God Exist?

2007-07-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

I thought it at last time to bring together a summary of the reasons why, over the years, I have tended to answer that question with a ‘yes’. The following are just summaries of topics I have or could expand further. Although I have a backlog of scattered writings on this matter, this is the first time I have attempted bring to together the strands from a variety of fields into a summary. The list below is likely to expand, but this is how it stands at the moment:

1. Scepticism: A thoroughgoing and honest scepticism includes a sceptical attitude toward dogmatic atheism.

2. Scepticism, if too thoroughgoing leads to an evasive postmodern antifoundationalism, or alternatively, in a self-referencial loop, it starts doubt itself and acknowledges that there is, after all, such a thing as rational belief (in something).

3. The Contingency Conjecture: Computational theory tells us that although finite mathematical explanatory structures may (or may not) succeed in compressing cosmic variety into a few fundamental principles, it is not possible to compress those explanatory structures to nothing at all. Thus, a finite Cosmos can never be founded on logical necessity - it is a reification of the possible. ‘Possibility’ rather than self-sufficient necessity is the most salient logical character of the Cosmos. Hence, the hunt is on for Aseity, the self-entailing agent of creation.....

4. Aseity: Since the contingency conjecture suggests that the cosmos cannot explain itself and entails no contradiction if it did not exist, then my conclusion is that our cosmos should not exist. Since our contingent world, both its physical laws and substance, do exist then somehow it has been created from a logical and informational vacuum. The conjecture is, therefore, that there is something infinite out there with the property of aseity which both creates and sustains our contingent cosmos. (This is a reworking of the cosmological ‘argument’)

5. Exceptions to Occam’s Razor: Although the assumed a-priori organization of the cosmos makes it amenable to compressed explanatory structures, there is no logical guarantee that this should always be the case: a-priori complex entities can conceivably embed and explain simple elements. Hence Occam’s Razor cannot be used to challenge the a-priori complexity of a Deity.

6. Idealism: The idealism of Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel and the logical and linguistic positivists compel us to acknowledge that the notion of non-sentient noumena is at the very least a deeply problematical concept. For these philosophers the a-priori perceiving and thinking mind has a central place in their philosophy and they expose the difficulty of conceiving reality without mind. This prompts one to wonder if sentience, and especially Divine sentience in all its complexity, is, in fact, a given and primary phenomenon. At the very least it looks as though it is meaningless to talk of noumena without invoking the concept of an up and running sentience.

7. Self-Referencing Consciousness Cognition: All attempts to “explain” conscious cognition using noumenal concepts like atoms, fields, computation and information are themselves, in the final analysis, artifacts of conscious cognition. In short the Mind can only be described in terms of its own mental artifacts (much like a computer language compiler can be written using the language it compiles). This kind of self-referencing and self-explaining property of mind may be the human analogue of Divine Asiety

8. End Time Simulation Logic: This is the joker in the pack: Recently some physicists have mooted the idea that we may be part of some kind of giant simulation, thus suggesting we are authored by a super background intelligence that looks suspiciously like a Deity! See my blog on Time Travel for this one!
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

9. The Declarative Universe: Well, if physicists can moot such exotic ideas then so can I. In this connection let me note a suspicious looking similarity between my Thinknet AI project and the way quantum mechanics works, and this hints, once again, that intelligence/sentience is an a-priori feature our universe. The nature of our world has a concordance with thought and computation. As one friend once suggested to me our contingent world is like a giant thought being sustained in a vast mind. (My friend wasn’t a philosopher, but based his idea on Acts 17:30). When we think of computer simulations we tend to think in terms of procedural algorithms following their determined path, but my own speculations suggest that the cosmic 'simulation' is closer to the declarative programming model rather than the procedural model. 'Simulation' may, in fact, be the wrong word: Since the contigent cosmos has no logical reason for existing it can only ever be a 'simulation'; for something that cannot exist of its own necessity 'simulation' is as real as gets. For us 'simulation' IS reality.

10. The Quantum Matrix: At the quantum mechanical level it really does look as though the cosmos is some kind of 'simulation' that only goes as far as simulating what is necessary. There is, I believe, a lack of symmetry down at the Quantum level suggesting a parsimonious use of information. Moreover, the quasi-random walk envelops of Quantum Mechanics only become “particles” when particles interact; at all other times those envelops merely measure possibility. In short the parts of the 'simulation' that are an unnecessary computational overhead are missing...

11. Chance: That great incompressible, randomness, is, it seems, at the heart of the quantum cosmos; it looks as though quantum randomness is not computationally generated but is an absolute and given input. Thus, the most complex and contingent thing we can think of, namely randomness, is posited as “just there”. Randomness, given time, is, in fact, ringing the changes on everything there possibly could be! It is far from being a trivial concept. What do they mean that the universe is “just chance”! Well, as I have already said there are exceptions to Occam’s razor and absolute randomness is one of them! Randomness is a case where the complex embeds and explains the simple (e.g. the simple binary outcomes of coin tossing are embedded in a complex sequence). Perhaps the vast information resources of contingent randomness point to that conjectured entity of infinite complexity, which sustains our contingent world. Whatever that entity is, if it exists, there is one thing we can say about it: it is highly complex.

12. Evolution: Resourced by the vast information supplies of a-priori randomness, current science conjectures that there has been enough time in our cosmos for those resources to innovate complex intelligent adaptive systems which, of course, being adaptive lock themselves in. However, whether these adaptive systems have been arrived at from the information content of random input or not, their self-sustaining character hints at something profound: that is, that in the vast platonic spaces of possibility there are self sustaining structures, which although they do not have logical necessity, are nevertheless a consequence once the complexity of randomness is posited. Likewise aseity may be a self-sustenance arising from some kind of preexistent infinite complexity. It is undoubtedly beyond our ability to imagine, but in the infinite platonic world of mathematics there may be an incredibly complex and infinite sentient configuration that has such great powers of self-sustenance that its existence is guaranteed to be eternally ‘locked in’. (This is a reworking of the ontological ‘argument’)

13. Evolution: For the process of evolution to work (if it works) so many contingent precursors are required, not least a good supply of a-priori randomness, that it is no where near the logically self-sufficient 'creatorless' process that some think it to be. I am making no comment here is to whether or not evolution has actually happened - I am just commenting on its contigent status.

14. Other Minds: I believe, (although I have to admit it is more hope than belief) that it is possible to explain the human mind in full using conceptual artifacts like, atoms, neurons, information and computation. But in affirming this one must be aware that any such explanation is self-referencing – it is using the conceptual artifacts of conscious cognition to explain conscious cognition. The formal structure of such explanations, even if they succeed in covering everything, are not the thing-in-itself, but rather another mind’s view of other minds. Thus, ‘other minds’ present themselves to us as noumena. However, unlike ‘material’ noumena which empiricism suggests have a debatable meaning, we do at least know what it is like to be a mind – in contrast we certainly don’t know what it is like to be, say, an atom! Hence the noumena of conscious cognition have a better philosophical basis than ‘material’ noumena. Along with Searle I agree that there is an irreducible first person ontology in personhood. The 'third person' language of formal explanation simply disguises the fact that such explanations are, in the final analysis, cognitive artifacts and conceal the implicit role of the first person perspective required to formulate these explanations from cognita. So, if human personality is ultimately irreducible it is an ominous sign for dogmatic atheism.

15. Metaphysical World: Our Weltanschauung, if we have one, is only ever tested with a few experiential samples here and there. That Weltanschauung informs us about a world well beyond anything that can be tested even in principle. Given these sampling limitations complex objects like personality, society and God are not amenable to easy cognitive apprehension and have little chance of being “proved” with a small set of experiential samples. It is no surprise, then, that given the partiality of human experience and cognition and an entity whose prime posited attribute is that of complexity and/or personality, God, if he exists, has a very debatable ontology.

16. Keyhole Science: Science, as the careful social formalization of the testing procedure, puts further strictures and controls on our anecdotal experience and consequently reduces the experiential sampling keyhole even further. Science’s “guilty until proved innocent” criterion is a strict filter that helps block spurious claims and as such it is analogous to the precautionary strategies used in courts of law. However, as with legal courts, the unavoidable cost of the fussy epistemological method of science is that it is going to make heavy weather of complex domains, like politics, sociology, personality and above all theology; it also cannot easily cope with experiences that come in ones and twos.

17. Limits of Scientific Epistemology and Authority. For the man in the street (or field), science’s observational samples reach him via social texts. Moreover, the universality of scientific theories has more to do with the positing of all-embracing theoretical structures, which of necessity are textual. Hence, for the man in the street science is a textual phenomenon, and for the intelligent layman epistemology is largely a matter of handling texts. In fact for all of us knowledge about the grand sweep of the cosmos mostly reaches us through the texts of society, and it is our cognitive reaction (or lack of reaction) to these texts that is pivotal in forming and testing our Weltanschauung. In this respect science texts have no special authority apart from their appeal to our general mental toolkit of perception and reason. The social texts of formal science must therefore take their place side by side with historical and theological texts.

18. The God Instinct: History suggests that there is an instinctual/intuitive human understanding that the cosmos doesn’t contain its own explanation and that it points to something sentient beyond it (See for example Romans 1:19-20 and the history of human relations with the notion of Deity)

19. Theodicy: The existence of suffering and evil doesn’t so much challenge a belief in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient loving God, as it does leave us with an existence dilemma: Are we really prepared to say that God should not have dragged our world out of contingency because of its burden of suffering and evil? Are we prepared to forego our own existence, because that existence is bound up with suffering and evil?

20. Generalised Copernicanism: Human Cosmic Insignificance, it is sometimes suggested, is a clear sign of our unimportance in the cosmic scheme of things and therefore evidence that there is no loving personal God. However, if we regard the universe as some kind of massive computation, the huge size of the cosmos may be connected with the “computational byproducts” of an important end result. As a wonderful Jewish saying goes: “For a single rose a field of thorns was spared”.

The above are rather general and speculative pointers suggesting that some highly complex entity with the property of aseity sustains our contingent world much like a mind sustains a thought. However, frankly, on the basis of the above alone the case for theism is no more obliging than the case for atheism. That’s always been my problem – I could no more convincingly rule in theism as I could rule it out. At best the points above provide a prima-facie case for theism. But even if I concluded that the above points convinced me of the existence of a deity, they reveal very little about the nature and motives of that deity; at most they point in that direction but provide no personal introduction. In fact a personal introduction may be impossible because ‘God’, if that’s the right name to use of Aseity, may be an utterly alien impersonal entity or principality. In that case it is likely that attempts to take the matter further would be fruitless. (However, one might wonder why an impersonal Aseity would sustain the high personality we find at the top of the complexity ladder. Moreover one might expect complex human nature to reflect something of the complexity of Aseity)

If that’s where it ended I think I would be agnostic, unsure where to go next. Actually, to be honest, I think know where I would go next – probably into disbelief; or at least disbelief in the existence of a gracious personal God: as far as the latter is concerned absence of evidence is truly evidence of absence because it seems to me very likely that any gracious personal God would reveal himself more clearly. Thus, in the absence of a clearer revelation my conclusion is that there is likely to be no gracious personal God. Agnosticism about the existence of a personal loving God is not a consistent position.

However, my approach has been as follows: If there is a loving personal God and, moreover, a God of grace, that God is unlikely to leave us bereft of some kind of special revelation as to His nature. To cut a long story short I believe the revelation of God I have sought for is that found in the Christ of the Bible, the only quality revelation I have discovered. Why I think that Jesus Christ is THE revelation of God would itself be the subject of another list, but I will leave that for another time. I have to admit that it has all been a bit of gamble: “Go for it and see what happens: nothing ventured nothing gained”. Nonetheless, I believe that God graciously meets the sinful seeker where he is at. Moreover, once one has apprehended the Revelation in Christ, the rather general philosophical list above starts to provide insights into God’s glory, grace and day-by-day providence.

But there is one tremendous irony here. If I were to compile a list of reasons for not believing in the existence of God the items in that list would largely be drawn from the counter evidence provided by the behavior of many a fundamentalist Christains! In short, most of my intellectual time is spent protecting my faith, not from atheism, but from other Christains! Evolution and Creation? No problem, solve that one over breakfast! Suffering and Evil? Give me a harder problem! Inter-Christian spiritual rivalries? Gulp! In a world of competing spiritual grandees a spiritual low ender like me is pretty much out of the picture! Reach for The Open Gospel....
(http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html)

Giving Up Hope

2007-07-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

Look at these two logos; one is the logo of the Norwich School of Art (seen after attending their degree congregation last week) and the other is a logo from a secular wedding I attended yesterday (or ‘wedfest’ as it was named). The two logos do seem to have a passing resemblance: tangled, scribbled, looping lines; splashes of separated elements; lack of symmetry; they are essentially a chaotic profusion of marks conveying a mood of frenetic incoherent activity. The wedfest logo vaguely reminds me of the pile of detritus collected after sweeping the floors and paths of the Old Castle where I work: string, paper, dust, the odd bird carcass (killed by the cats), and miscellaneous plant matter. The meaning or story behind these logos is difficult to decipher. But are they intended to have meaning? Perhaps not: they connote and celebrate postmodern styles, if not content. Postmodernist art strives to break free of all obliging constraints of coherence, unambiguous meaning, and even the aethestic process itself. However, there is no escape from Sherlock Holmes’ science of deduction: “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of the Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other” says Holmes. If nothing at all postmodernism has at least alerted us to the complexity of life, its eclectism, its mish mash of elements that at first sight do not cohere. But in spite of it all Holmes’ logician could tell us a thing or two about the splashes of paint, or the sweepings from a floor. Moreover, the overriding symmetries relating the two logos shown here give the lie to the postmodernist dream of an overarching and thoroughgoing irrationalism.

For those who embrace the great contradiction of postmodernism as a doctrine with content rather than just a style, life is regarded as a constant experiment, a constant breaking down of old barriers, assumptions and laws. All in good enlightenment tradition were it not for the fact in philosophical postmodernism experiment is not just an end in itself, but is, in fact THE END. For the absolute antifoundationalist life is an experiment with no hope of finding a coherent conclusion. “Since I gave up hope I feel a lot better,” sings Steve Taylor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Taylor) in one of his songs parodying the postmodern mindset.

Degree of Success

2007-06-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Current Projects List

2007-06-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

1. Disorder-Order thesis write up.
2. Apply Disorder-Order concepts to algorithms
3. Continue ten-four creationism discussion with Hal.
4. Thinknet program enhancements.
5. Sermons in Stone: Photographic study of NCBC architectural history.
6. Complete "Mathematical Politics" blogging
7. "Noumena, Cognita, and Dreams" write up.

Seven is the perfect number, but the above babies are far from perfect.

Slickworth House

2007-06-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

Ickworth House, with its central rotunda and symmetrically curving wings is unusual amongst Palladian* buildings, although in other senses it is typical: its architecture revolves round a common core of geometrical elements - straight lines, isosceles triangles, cylinders (sometimes corrected to look like cylinders) circles, rectangles, right angles, spheres, golden proportions and the five orders. Above all Palladian architecture is obsessed with arranging these elements symmetrically, although as with its limited mathematical repertoire the symmetry of Palladian architecture is restricted to only a few axes of symmetry.

In my first childhood experiments with art I quickly mastered the depiction of simple mathematical shapes like boxes, cylinders, ellipses and the effects of perspective and shadow. I almost exclusively drew only those things like machines and buildings that can be drawn using this repertoire of geometrical constructions – vegetation, animals and people I found difficult and these remained beyond my powers for a long while, and even now I find them tricky. I have always connected with Palladian architecture primarily because it is so mathematically elemental. At Ickworth I spent a good while just staring down the stair well of the rotunda. With its layers of arches, stairs and portals created by reflecting the Roman arch it looked like something out of Esher. As a child I would have gone home got out my ruler and pencil and drawn this scene – and of course I could draw it because there was little it contained that could not be depicted using straight lines, and the mathematical repertoire I had at my disposal.

Although there is a beauty in the elemental perfection of Palladianism, its very perfection, in my opinion, prevents it from aging with grace. Part of the problem is that much of it is just show: rendering scored to look like stone falls off to reveal relatively coarse brickwork. Subsidence, cracks and 'imperfections' in the rendering stand out as gross anomalies amid mathematical precision. This reified platonic universe of ideal forms is easily disrupted by a world in change and decay and these show up Palladianism for what it is: a toy town world of very basic mathematics.

Grime also looks out of place set against the purity of the platonic. At Ickworth the curving facade of the wings were time stained and they reminded me of the discolored forbidding concrete facades of ugly modern buildings. The aleatory processes of staining were incongruous against the simple mathematical elegance of a facade best seen when the rendering is clean and crisp. Notice also my picture of the rotunda. I quite unintentionally composed the picture slightly askew and asymmetrically and to my eye this jars against the line of a building that demands symmetry and perpendicularity.

Late in the afternoon I left the world of Ickworth where all was (ostensively) mathematical harmony, peace and stillness to be confronted the very next day with the frenetic chaos of the Old Castle (where I work cleaning) as it suffered the denuding dangers of flash floods. A staircase became a noisy turbulent weir, a low-lying wall sprung a ground water leak through bubbled friable plaster, and there was the aftermath of mud and silt. This was the real world. Palladianism is often identified with an intellectual unemotional outlook and aggrandized as an apotheosis of reason. But in a sense it is the outlook of the child in development, the child who is beginning to grasp some elementary mathematical tools. But it mustn’t end there. That child must learn to put those elementary pieces together into fantastically complex forms in order to render the real world and to move on from toy town Palladianism. My experience in the Old Castle of a frenetic confusion, a sense of hopelessness that gropes for faith in the face of complex forces and objects is far more true to life. This was the real “high tech” world of a created order where one’s mathematics hardly feels up to the task of depiction. The juxtaposition of these two very different experiences at two very different stately buildings on two consecutive days couldn’t have been more eloquently symbolic.

* Palladian? I wrote this before I discovered from one authority that the Palladian period ended in the 1760s, about 30 years before Ickworth was built.