Sorry for last transmission. Hit the wrong key again and Billy Gates got
me.
Try again.
Hammond wrote: " BTW, thanks for finding yourself able to say something
to me without being unnecessarily critical. Whether that is brilliance
or tact I'm uncertain, but it certainly is rare."
You must be referring to my exchanges with Vernon. I was cahstized
privately by another on this list for poking fun at Vernon; I responded
that my posts meant to poke fun at Vernon's claims and not Vernon's
person, and that I apologized if I had been unclear in this.
You had written: " Well, it means that the first people awoke after they
had biologically appeared 6,000 years ago and discovered that a
"15-billion year old world" had been instantly (on an Evolutionary time
scale) been "Created by God".. fossils, and all." and I asked
>
> Interesting. Does this mean you are in substantial agreement with
Gosse's > claims in OMPHALOS?
Your response is puzzling. You wrote : " Well, you and I and Steven J.
Gould and a lot of other enlightened people can appreciate a spellbinding
preacher like Gosse who could spin a yarn that would entertain the
hardest bitten heretic and yet preach the word of God. Certainly
something a cloistered academic like myself could never do, but something
you and SJG can approach. No, I'm afraid Gosse was more of a masterful
preacher while I'm simply a physicist (after all he could get their
attention and dazzle, entertain and confound them, I can't)."
The historical record does show that Gosse was a leader in his church,
the Plymouth Brethern, but how good a preacher he was I have no idea; his
son'e biography of him, FATHER & SON, published about 1910, does not
bring out that attribute to any extent. His book, OMPHALOS, which I
reviewed in the most recent PERSPECTIVES, sets forth his claims, which
sound a lot like yours. BTW, a copy of that review is on my website,
along with other notes on Gosse. A most interesting character.
Thank you for linking me with Gould (above). he is a great writer; of
course he is not a preacher, since he is a non-theist. I am also not a
preacher, although I have taken the pulpit as a guest in various churches
on occasion, and I am certainly not in the same class as Gould as far as
writing ability (or speaking ability) is concerned.
You wrote: " I talked to Julian Jaynes on the telephone a number of times
in the early 1980's and certainly regret his passing a few years ago. He
was a very enlightened and alert man, and made a significant contribution
by developing public awareness of Sperrian Brain Lateralization with his
book. In fact, my Psychometry theory has now confirmed that Sperry is
one axis of the brain in Psychometry and does account for one axis of the
BI/2P System. Again, experimental proof was not Jaynes' department..
guessing the right answer and getting the public's attention was more his
line of work. He had a sense of humor too... in fact told me that he
was having the book translated but had discovered that there was no word
for "Bicameral" in German."
That is fascinating. I had not heard of his passing. His book is a
"keeper" on my own library shelf. He made me think in different
directions, and that always makes me glad. I am surprised by your last
sentence; German is so flexible in making up new terminology. But my own
German was never very good and is now almost 45 years in the past since I
last used it to any extent.
Again -- sorry for the incomplete version of this which got sent.
John Burgeson (Burgy)
www.burgy.50megs.com
(science/theology, quantum mechanics, baseball, ethics,
humor, cars, God's intervention into natural causation, etc.)
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