Wednesday, July 17, 2013

astro picture for the day/ thought for the day - James Burke connections and social conditioning




The above picture is of the Earth and the Moon off in the distance.  The picture is taken from a Gemini program spacecraft.  The U.S. space program started from the Mercury program, to the Gemini, to the Apollo. I can't find any farely good pictures of the Earth from orbit from the Mercury program.  I'm pretty sure the Yuri Gagarin flight didn't take very good quality views.  So, I found quite a lot of good pictures of Earth from orbit during the Gemini program days.

Why do I put a Gemini picture up?  Because of James Burke's connections idea. I of course make a bit of connections between James Burke's connections and Jacob Bronowski's ideas, in my "Origins of Mathematical Knowledge." I point out certain peculiar connections that are similar to Jacob Bronowski's ideas, and argue that maybe some if not a lot of James Burke's other connections are weak or not really a connection at all. Surelly the long bow did not lead to the invention of the cannon? But, maybe there were various connections like social connections between the Knight, the Knights influence on the economy and technology(Jacob Bronowski like connections) and the longbow.  It's not that the one can logically deduced the long bow from Knights on horseback, but different almost purely human connections. These types of connections are similar to an interesting social connection of the space program(both Soviet and American).

Basically, the space program led to the environmental movement.  When people saw how finite the Earth's resources were from space, they became more concerned than ever before for the environment.  People had their concerns before.  But the views of the Earth form orbit created another wave of environmentalism - almost a religion.  What to say about that?

Well, there's all kinds of influences like this.  Like maybe some people grow up with technological accidents, and so are influenced to hate science and technology.  Others profit from it, and so embrace science and technology. This could be generalized to social conditioning.  People grow up told to like certain things, and hate others.  They don't ask questions and shed their social conditioning.  They hate/like no matter what.

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