Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Isese, Quantum physics and climate change

Hi toyin, physics crosses spirituality in the questions that arise in both. Where did we come from, and, indirectly what is this world we inhabit. The only answers i like as credible are scientific; the only answers that lead us to speculate without experimentation and mathematics are spiritual. They are separate realms of speculation, if you will,but address similar questions. It is a mistake to answer the questions of one domain with answers from the other.

But each should inspire the other. The questions science is led to ask—where did we come from, where is the universe headed—how could we not explore them when ancient texts that purported to provided answers are still held to be holy or revered. Their holiness should have zero, nothing, to do with their meaningfulness as current answers to those basic questions in terms of our knowledge of today. But they are rich texts when opened to all the other relations and issues that swirl around them. If you take any myth with its gods, its tales can provokethe deepest of reflections. But if you misapply them, hoist them onto the wrong pedestal, you've actually betrayed them.

A last point: the beauty of science is less that it provides answers than that it opens questions; the beauty of scripture is the same. 

Those who misuse them claim they authorize answers that exclude others. 

An example of the misusers: the authorizers of fatwas who ban books, like Satanic verses. Those were people who didn't even read it, or understand it, because if they had, they wouldn't have banned it.

When it is banned, so too are our own interpretations; we are all victims of the fatwas of today, the censors of today.

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2023 12:37:38 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Isese, Quantum physics and climate change

 

We need to be careful though not to describe physics as identical with spirituality.

They may be analogous,comparable, but not identical.

Thanks

Toyin

On Thu, Jul 13, 2023, 5:29 PM 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Kenneth  Harrow 

Entraction.    Thanks for taking me  into a new  territory. I would have to take a good look. 

Augustine 

On Thursday, July 13, 2023, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

hi augustin

i think it is fair to say quantum is recognized as established physics, and has not been questioned as such for almost 100 years; at least since bohr in the 1930s.

in any rate i lean on it, and relativity, heavily in my recent book Space and Time in African Cinema. I also depend on Karen Barad for my approach to the issue of the inter-relationship among things, what i call entr'acte.

i use that concept to argue, much as you do, that the energy and matter of the  universe is interconnected; and that much as the observers in a quantum physics experiment cannot be objectively separated from what they observe, so too is it the case in cinema that the film being observed and the viewers, as well as filmmakers, are engaged in entr'action continually. in the process, what is being created is not only the film we experience, but time and space as being created by that entr'action.

if we want to find religious beliefs that correspond t these notions, it wouldn't be hard, as you are doing. i consider those beliefs metaphorical expressions of the concept of the inter-reactions of the world.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2023 4:19 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Isese, Quantum physics and climate change

 

Quantum  physics  which is said to be non sensical by physicists explains  very well the behaviour of matter at the atomic level and its the heart ofvthe digital economy 

In the same vein isese might  ,by the adherents  of other faith  be non sensical and embarsssing but at a fundamental level it impacts very positively and patently on those who practice it

Before the arrival  of foreigners  on yotuba soil the yorubas had   igblo oba .the kings forest.igbo dudu  the dangerious forest,igbo olorun. Gods forest but yorubas were told these were all nonsese so the forest were cut down for furniture and construction   one of  the major reasons for climate crisis today  the wòrld should listen to the yorubas  who have a propensity for livin in armony with nature

Ìsese calls for return to the spirit it calls for spiritual  rejuvenation. Spiritual rebirth. It is pragmatism  in usa .empiricism in Europe  but spirituality in Yoruba world the spirit dying or dead then the environment decays along with it.the spirit  dead or ding gives rise to political decay.

,social decay,economic ,decay,infrastructural decay and more so the need to return to the spirit. For the rebirth  and the re awakening  of the yoruba

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