Okay so then what are we left with
well what we're left with is intuition
intuition and what is it and how does it
work well it's a feeling into things
that comes - answers and leaves no trail
that's the thing it leaves no trail so
you you you have it but you haven't the
argument for it and so it's power must
reside in its truthfulness so the power
of intuition lies in its ability to
express truth in contravention to the
forward flow of logic and casuistry well
is it always to be this for you know how
the dow is presented as this Eastern
concept that you can barely wrap your
mind around and it hovers at the edge of
intelligibility well really in these
so-called obscure oriental philosophical
stances always turn out to have a
corollary in western thinking and the
corollary to the dow - Taoism is
intuitional ism is you know an ability
to sense the the constraints and
opportunities in the moment and act
through it intuition an intuition is
always presented in the dominator
society as one vague - feminine three
unreliable but this is simply because of
this bias toward deductive and inductive
systems whose falsity I have just
demonstrated to you in fact in the felt
domain of experience called living
intuition is how most of us even
the most self-defined as non intuitional
are operating intuition is a kind of
field processing of both the foreground
and the background of experience
it's a gestalt understanding that is
subliminal and that leads the whole
organism through an invisible set of
Creoles
towards the maximizing of some kind of
the goal science runs on induction which
is a very low-grade form of logic it
means you do something over and over
again and if it happens the same way a
hundred times you have confidence that
the hundred and first time it will
happen the same way
intuition doesn't work like that
intuition as I said the other night
leaves no trail and most of us are
accustomed to thinking of intuition as
something feminine mysterious
unexplainable and sort of magical and
also I think because we live in a male
dominant society we undervalue it if
someone has if someone claims intuition
our position is probably one of prove it
doubt in the face of the assertion you
see but there's an interesting thing
about intuition that I don't think many
people understand or have bothered to
look at which is did you know I'll bet
you didn't know mathematics is based on
intuition there's it now half of
mathematics would rise with a screech of
horror this statement
but the other half of mathematics calls
itself intuitional mathematics
okay well now what's going on here
probably if you are not a professional
philosopher of science you are
accustomed to associating mathematics
with science rather closely this is
because science in order to give itself
legitimacy has very slyly appropriated
mathematics especially in the 20th
century to its purposes but if we talk
about what is called pure mathematics
which is the great love of
mathematicians the other kind of
mathematics is applied mathematics and
that's for engineers and technologists
and is not you know what moves them to
the edge of their chair but if we think
about pure mathematics it is an activity
carried on in the mind based on
deductive truth deductive not inductive
in other words a statement is made it
can be anything
all Grey's are non ex this is just a
statement we don't yet know what this is
going to be about all Grey's are non ex
all greens are f sub 1 what we're
putting in place our set of statements
that appear nonsensical but what we will
assert is that we should seek a
relationship between them and that that
will then show us something and this is
how mathematics really works it has very
little to do with number it has to do
with the conceptualizing of
relationships conceptualizing them and
then exploring your intuition about
these conceptions and then the third and
very late stage is you write a formal
statement of your cognitive activity
around these
Auctions so you see mathematics is
entirely intuitional it leaves no track
it is drawn from this other domain well
why has it been appropriated by science
well for a very funny and not well
understood reason mathematics has been
appropriated by science because
mathematics has an uncanny ability to
describe nature completely uncanny now
you may ask you may have never asked
yourself why is mathematics such a
powerful tool for the description of
nature maybe you've thought that
somebody else can answer this and that
it's not a problem well I've got news
for you it is a problem nobody has any
good ideas about why mathematics
describes nature but notice that
mathematics is an intuitional activity
and intuitional activity describes
nature without the intercession of
inductive science inductive science is a
kind of naive holdover from Greek
democracy and theories where everything
is conceived of as clearly conceivable
and operating according to known laws
but in fact the deeper structure of
nature is not modeled out of an
examination of data obtained by
measurement that isn't how it works
these days the deeper description of
nature is achieved by taking weird
objects from the frontiers of
mathematics these things dreamed up in
the confines and depths of the human
mind and inside computers and then
laying them over nature and seeing my
gosh there's a one-to-one correspondence
between let us say the multi dimension
catastrophes described by Rene Tom and
the dripping of a faucet the turbulence
in a brook the voting patterns in a
ghetto all of these things are seen to
be easily modeled by by extremely exotic
mathematical objects discovered through
intuition within the mind well what does
this mean well it means if it means
anything
I mean before we draw the deeper
conclusion what is the conclusion on the
surface it must be that the unaided
human mind is more capable of correctly
modeling nature than the human mind that
works through the methodological
inductive approach called science and in
fact this is clearly true because the
world described by science a scientific
description of this room would say very
little about all the important things
going on in it a scientific description
of this room would leave out personality
would leave out linguistic intent would
leave out the uniqueness of each of us
for science we are merely members of the
human species again this flattening this
reductionism this betrayal of the
quintessence of the phenomenon in a
desperate effort to achieve closure in
the modeling process and so then you do
achieve closure but the model is always
inadequate it's always inadequate so
then there's this sense of frustration
we can't we can't get closure with the
model unless we tell a lie unless we
deny the complexity the interrelatedness
the soul thus the spirit Ness the
mindfulness all of these things are for
science what are called secondary
properties
they are at the phenomenal they are only
an aspect of your point of view like an
iridescent on a butterfly's wing or
something like that in fact that is the
classic reductionist definition of
consciousness it is an iridescent that
appears on the surface of neural
processing that we mistake for true
being and yet somehow we are embedded
within this arid essence and it is from
within this iridescent that we launched
the descriptive models that then deny
our existential validity well so this
has been an honor mystic exercise is one
way of putting it and there must be
others okay so then what is the path of
intuition in relationship to nature that
is different from the path of science in
a way it's only a shift of emphasis
William Blake said attend the minut
particulars attend the minut particulars
this is very good very good advice for
science and it is very good advice for
mathematics and what I'm suggesting here
tonight is that we have misconstrued
mathematics and have bought the notion
that it is a part of science when
actually it stands ready to empower
intuition and to sweep science if not a
way at least into a more proper role
more befitting it's extremely limited
application to the higher orders of
reality that we really care about I mean
science is really it's the plumbing
level of reality
