Yesterday Shirley and I met for tea at ‘Savour’ here near Mission Bridge on Fourth street, this being my turn to treat Shirley for her birthday. My card’s sentiment, which why I’d bought it, resonated harmoniously with Shirley’s view on her experiences over the last ten years and how she came through this with all gained sageness of our mutual older age.

Become a sage as you age!

We even agreed on: ‘Become a sage as you age!’, instead of the ‘be young but confused’ of earlier days. This may start a war of the ages, all tongue in cheek, as each age has its blessings and challenges. ‘All experience is valid experience’ I like to say, though it may not be approved or desirable.

So, Shirley and I had a good visit and we updated each other on family life and views on the world as it unfolds. We do best with family events and our personal experiences, but less so when it comes to world views and politics. In the latter area we agree to disagree, because we both have strongly held opinions and convictions.

Yesterday, I managed to get the first part draft of my essay - which I call Topicals on my website - ‘Reincarnation Reconsidered’ posted on my website. The idea here is, to show ongoing progress as I compose this essay. This means that the word document that I first write must be saved as a text file and then marked up with html to turn it into a web page. This I did and linked to this on going composition to my web site’s front page, that is its ‘home page’. Now I have to keep all this going!

My reading in Beye’s book on his experience as a gay boy and later man, is coming close to the end of the ‘Sex, lies and humiliation’, the chapter describing his youth experiences. Next come two chapters on his heterosexual married life, which will contain more experiences that I can relate to, I expect!

In my circle of friends, starting way back when I attended my Polytech in Utrecht (1955-59), I encounter a held view that the Vedas and other sacred texts in the India tradition, hold truths and insights that Western science are only now discovering. Yesterday my discussion with Shirley arrived at this point, at which she expressed the above described view.

When asked for an example, Shirley mentioned the quantum theory, saying that it was already known in these old teachings, be it expressed in different terms. This is the type of view about which she and I agree to disagree.

Be that as it may, I recalled this discussion this morning and asked why so many people would hold this kind of view and what its function would be? This position led to a long string of associations and considerations, some of which I do want to record.

The first idea that came up was that this kind of thinking does create order in the world of experience for those who hold this view. And I may add that the theories of science have the same kind of functionality. There are two questions to ask here: ‘Which theory explains most?’ and ‘How can the theory be tested?’

Next I asked myself are there examples of this kind of speculative thought in Western tradition? This resulted in my recalling the writings of Jules Verne, such as ‘Journey to the Moon’ and several others. I always felt that Jules Verne anticipated with his writings inventions and theories that are now present in our daily lives, be it in differing forms and ways.

You can make a similar observation about Maxwell Smart’s `phone in his shoe! Or the `Beam me up Scotty` locater that played such a prominent role in Star Trek. In addition we can observe that science fiction literature in general anticipates future developments.

It is in that sense then, that speculative thought structures our world as well as our future and as such has something to say about our human thought processes, their development and functioning. In other words, we should not just dismiss this kind of thinking, because this is how we function.

Leaving speculative thought behind as a way of ordering the world of our experience, I want to mention early Greek rational analysis. In ‘Ancient Engineers’ the author reports how the Greek geographer Strabo attempts to explain sailing into the wind by means tacking. Strabo does not succeed, but he is making an analytical observation as he looks for a functional explanation of how these sailors manage this kind of sailing using steering ors and sail manipulation.

This kind of thinking was started be the Greeks with some success as we know from some of their philosophy. Yet Aristotle never investigated his claim - read speculation - that heavier objects fall faster, while in Antiquity it was held that we see by means of the light that emerges from our own eyes; later on the Arabs knew differently.

The above description serves as an illustration that Western experiment based analysis emerged late in human development, slowly and with great effort. Its results should not be belittled by equating speculative possibilities with actual experimental manipulation of known and understood ‘laws of nature'. Speculative thought may point the way to potential, but it will still have to be realised by understanding the processes of what we call nature.

Speculative type assertions do order the universe for us and it is important to be able to do that. It helps us predict events that otherwise would be a series of random surprises that would keep us from being more efficient and making improvements.

Based on the model provided by speculative thought - think of creation - we can order events in our lives by means of associations. For example, birds sing when the sun rises. Do all birds do this?

An other observation is that crows fly towards the setting sun at night and the east in the morning, as I observe from my easy chair in my apartment. This kind of observation creates order. The next question is why do these crow do this? Now we start to look for reasons and engae in analysis. We may speculate that crows help the sun set and rise by their action, but that remains to be proven!

In conclusion I would like to make the distinction between speculative thought, associative thought, analytical thought and science based thought. Each having its own function respectively of creating order, accumulating knowledge, finding relations and at least giving partial theoretical understanding with manipulation.

As a closing aside, all this does not say anything about our human feelings and emotions, which are even more important for our daily living!
<10:40am~