Episode 39

The sixth of several episodes in which Juliet and I ramble conversationally around a mind map I made. The six topics we randomly selected (not all covered in this episode) were "'solar' v. 'lunar' consciousness", "animal communication", "the Mayan calendar", "singularitarianism", "faster-than-light communication", "the Uncertainty Principle". A seventh, "rogue", topic was "'scientism' and materialism".

Continuing to look at materialism (both its philosophical and economic variants), in particular why some people are more susceptible to it than others, I end up describing a deeply archetypal dream I had back in 1993. We then step out into the sunlight for the first "Reality Report picnic", switching tack and looking at the role of mathematics in shaping perceptions of reality. Juliet proposes a radical explanation for the medieval herbalist "doctrine of signatures" which leads on to the nature of placebo effects.

Some relevant links:

• brain hemispheres
• Laszlo (a.k.a Humble Pious)
• Jesus turning water into wine
• Jesus' parable of the lamp under the bushel
• King Missile, "Jesus Was Way Cool" (1990)
• "platonist" v. "constructivist" philosophies of mathematics
• "quantocentrism"
• M. Watkins, The Mystery of the Prime Numbers (Secrets of Creation vol. 1, 2010)
• Ludwig Wittgenstein on the "worship" of science
• scientism
• the "doctrine of signatures"
• placebo effects
• Indian peacock (Pavo cristatus)