Key to YOUR Unknown Universe??

I'm watching PBS "Black Hole Apocalypse." Well-done entertainment science, reflecting how main-stream thinking about "black holes" evolved and how they're perceived around the beginning of the 21st Century.

To me, the most interesting -- and telling -- aspect of the program, one with deep implications, is that even folks labeled "scientist" -- from Einstein on -- are "amazed" etc. by ideas about things they previously knew nothing about.

This subliminal reaction to new knowledge is quite a good demonstration of what Feynman and Elder Dan knew about the quirks of Western Thought -- that is, about how we Westerners non-consciously learn to think about and model what we think of as "reality."

Elder Dan reveals the rock-bottom base-line quirk of Western Thought like this - - -

Lakota elder Dan: "We didn't see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something made it what it was." --Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002 p. 165

So, as a result of a deeply imbedded habit of Western Thought, rather than always instinctively knowing -- as Elder Dan knew -- that things which exist outside the verbally and symbolically constructed current "Cosmic Egg" we think of as "reality" will always exist -- and even expecting to recognize a few of those things now and then -- even our scientists are often surprised when they do discover previously unknown things they weren't expecting.

Einstein for example didn't like either black holes or quantum mechanics and so, despite the evidence, quipped, "God doesn't throw dice." So even our scientists may be emotionally reluctant to acknowledge especially "outside the box" discoveries, even that such things actually exist.

Steven Hawking redeemed his profession by quipping in return, referring to black holes, "God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them."

And of course, you don't know the names of any of the things you do not know exist. But even when you do - - -

Seminal physicist Richard Feynman: "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."

So even with things you have names for, there is outside-the-box information that you haven't explored yet.

In fact, such outside-our-own-personal-Cosmic-Egg-things are something that should be an instinctively recognized part of everyday life -- but rarely are. [Men Who Stare At Spoons for example.]

U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, with a glimmer of understanding, famously if fumblingly and disingenuously attempted to explain this situation as part of an excuse used to murder hundreds of thousands of the men, women and children who lived in Iraq - - -

"...there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know. ..." --There are known knowns - Wikipedia

It is, of course, "the unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know" which should be the catagory we are always instinctively aware of. But, because of that deeply imbedded habit of Western Thought usually aren't. That catagory rarely crosses our minds.

Elder Dan, remember: "We didn't see that you had to name everything to make it exist." If we haven't named something -- all those unknown unknowns for example -- we can't know they exist. 

Here's the obvious but subtle Big Picture - - -

Seminal semanticist Alfred A. Korzybski: "The map is not the territory."

That is, the words are not the things they symbolize, and like a map, leave huge amounts of detail and information out. So, as Shakespeare put it, "There are more things in heaven and earth than you have dreamed of."

---

P.S.

THE Law serioussoundbytes

ALSO OF INTEREST?

The Universal Skeptic | GoldenSources FEYNMAN, MARCUS AURELIUS, Why no definitive answers to questions?

 The nature of "reality" via Bohr, Feynman, Quantum Mechanics -- AND "The State" --UNCOMMON SENSE

Semantics and the Ultimate Nature of Reality: Korzybiski, Russell, Bryson -- and Lakota Elder Dan --GoldenSources

Semantics vs. Slavery --GoldenSources

Feynman, Korzybski, lrw, Lakota Elder Dan, Al Gore, Philip K. Dick, Robert Fisk, Mika Rasilla show how lack of semantics smarts leads to defacto slavery

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