The "secret" of the Polynesian navigation system is the development of a skill so subtle, so vastly complicated, that it is no wonder the anthropological set could not imagine it independently. To the belief inclined, it seems like magic, and to the skeptic folks, it seems like trickery. The navigators read the ocean swells. The surface of the water is as clear to them as a blueprint is to a machinist. Ocean swells are born from the friction created on the ocean surface by the wind. Unlike waves that break on the shore, swells can travel for hundreds of miles and persist for long periods of time. In the simplest case, the direction the swell travels is a guide to its origin, and when gauged by the mental image of the star compass, gives a rough indication of the direction one should travel. Swell A originates in a low pressure area somewhere to the north. It begins its journey in long unbroken crests and troughs at steady intervals. But then swell A intersects at an angle with swell B, which is moving from the west to the east, forming an interference pattern that continues on, but then the wave forms encounter an island which breaks up the swell crests and creates more interference patterns as the water regroups on the other side of the island, then it runs into an ocean current which again changes its surface characteristics, followed by a squall which appears out of nowhere and quickly dissipates but not without leaving its mark on the swell formation. So this chaotic glob of water appears off the bow of the canoe and the navigator, who had to tack back and forth to deal with the erratic winds of the squall turns to his crew and says "steer one half a degree to the left, we should be there by noon tomorrow". Then it gets dark---- and cloudy, can't see your hand in front of your face. The navigator seems to be asleep in the hold, but he can feel the motion of the canoe and he can hear the waves pound against the sides. Two hours later he sticks he head out of the hold, and says "I told you one half degree to the left, instead you let it drift two degrees left and ran us into the strongest part of the ocean current which will cost us four hours sailing time." Muttering something about the difficulty of finding good help these days, the navigator disappears into the hold again to emerge in one hour just at the crack of dawn to make his all important first light assessment during which he will remember every turn the canoe has made in the thirty day journey, his speed, all the course corrections and all the weather changes and wind directions, the sea marks he has observed and the current price of eggs in China. Readers interested in more detailed (and accurate) linear descriptions of natural navigation procedures are again referred to Google.
Different Strokes...
The ability of the Polynesian navigators to find their way across the deep ocean guided only by the stars and the ocean itself is a skill that almost went the way of Dino, et.al.. The loss of the capability to sail from island to island without the aid of modern navigation instruments would not really impact the average daily life in the Pacific, and personally I had rather fly. But the complexity and continuing value of natural navigation is so fundamentally different from "western" thought that it has typically been misunderstood and undervalued. The first, and perhaps foremost, difference is simply one of attitude, although that word does not do justice to the profundity of this aspect of natural navigation. Western folks (or perhaps more accurately during the relevant time period, European folks) viewed the ocean as an obstacle to be overcome; one filled with danger and mystery. To the Polynesian islanders, the ocean was a friendly place- they were truly as much at home in the water as on the land. It was their link to each other. It provided them with both nourishment and guidance, it contained them. Historical scholars have speculated much about why the Polynesian explorations ended around 1200 AD, especially so in that if they had continued they would have arrived in South America, ending their paucity of land mass. There is some evidence that the Polynesians did in fact reach South America. My omnipotent intuition concludes that the explorations stopped because the islanders had populated all the habitable land. To them, land that was not surrounded by the ocean was a strange and forbidding place. [ It's OK to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. ]
Readers may recall my hokey little graphic in the last Pot Poury. The diagram is useful
both in depicting some similarities in the way I think concepts should be approached, and natural navigation, but there is one critical and profound difference. In the diagram I depict myself as a journeyer traveling through a world of information toward a conclusion. The same basic diagram used to illustrate the voyage from one island to another would look like this.
Here the navigator's canoe is represented by the large flashing star (Here) and the target island by the small star (There). But the navigator does not visualize himself traveling from Here to There. Rather, once he has precisely established a mnemonic line from Here, through the stern and bow of his canoe in the direction of There, he essentially waits for the target island to come to him. For purposes of making directional decisions, he visualizes the islands and the ocean surface as moving past the canoe In this diagram, the black line from the canoe to the target island does not represent distances traveled, but rather directions that the canoe is oriented. The proper alignment of Here, the canoe, and There does not convey any information about the location of the canoe on the line, or the speed of movement. That information is gleaned from an enormously complex mnemonic orientation. One line of orientation would be a line from the canoe toward another island, typically an island perpendicular to the line between Here and There. When the voyage starts the known island Over There would lie 90 degrees to the left of the Here to There line. (Over There (now)). As the World Turns [sorry, couldn't resist] the angle from the canoe to Over There moves along the horizon. So at some later point in time the line to Over There crosses the horizon, overlain with the star compass, at the point Over There (later). The angle of difference between the now and later lines give information about how much of the voyage from Here to There has been covered. Now visualize a number of other mnemonic lines between not just islands, but things in the sky, (the sun, moon, stars, clouds); yet more lines corresponding to the swells (direction, interval, shape); and then add more mnemonic lines when certain Sea Marks (Color of the water, various kinds of flotsam, flight of birds, kinds of sea life) are observed. The sum total of the interaction between all these lines is used by the navigator to determine his location.
NOW TO 'SPLAIN A LL THIS IN TERMS OF JIM'S INTUITIVE THEORY OF EVERYTHING...
The intellectual capabilities of our species have remained basically unchanged for at least the last 3000 years (arbitrary time period), nor will they improve significantly in the future. The analytical prowess of the first Polynesian Navigators and the current best scientists are computationally equivalent. [Welcome back to the discussion, Mr. Wolfram.] One of the reasons this is not universally obvious stems from our belief that knowledge is a finite progression —- that is that scientific knowledge started with the four basic elements, fire, earth, air and water, and that this progressive accumulation of knowledge has now advanced into the 11th. dimension, and is therefore drawing ever nearer to the complete knowledge of everything. When we try to grasp some idea of how Ed Whitten develops a mathematical concept, we think in terms of esoteric mathematical constructs— -somewhere beyond calculus and noncommutative geometry—- an almost magical ability to make intuitive leaps into new understanding.
But when our narcissistic arrogance seeks to explain how the Polynesian islanders developed their system of navigation we think in terms of simple arithmetic— that over a period of 500 or 1000 years little bits of environmental observations were added to each other, preserved by the infamous oral tradition, and eventually became a workable body of knowledge. Start with a number. One comes to mind first. Add another number to it, again one comes to mind first. Now we have 1+1=2. Repeat, 2+1=3. Continue. No matter how long the process continues, the next iteration can never lead to an answer that suggests algebra or string theory. It is not possible that the Polynesian navigation system could have evolved as a result of a linear accumulation of knowledge. First, exact knowledge could not have been preserved unchanged from one generation to the next, especially without a written record. Recall the familiar parlour game where a number of people whisper a statement they were told to the next person, and then the first recitation and the last are compared, usually to everyone's amusement. Certainly some level of skill within a given generation might be passed on to the next, but that passage alone does nothing to improve the skill. Improvements in navigation skills happened when individual Polynesian natives started with the known, and made an intuitive leap into the unknown. And that process, at that time, required the same level of computational sophistication as is now required to develop a new level of mathematics.
The Banana Noticing Capacity of our species has remained basically unchanged for at least the last 3000 years (arbitrary time period), nor will it increase significantly in the future. I don't think we really understand a hell of a lot about how we remember stuff. Clearly we can train ourselves to remember more and more stuff, and given our relatively short life span and the fact that the memory making machinery tends to get a little sluggish with age, it is doubtful that anyone's memory capacity gets filled up. [Testimony before congressional hearings notwithstanding.] What I am thinking about here precedes memory processing. Take subject A walking around. Surrounding that subject is a range of perceptible elements. [An example of a perceptible element would be to imagine the person with the keenest hearing in the world. Now imagine a sound making device making a noise of X decibels moving toward the subject. At whatever point the device stimulates the first reaction in any part of the hearing mechanism of subject A, that is the boundary of the range of perception for that particular element.]
And now for another hokey diagram.
NOW TO 'SPLAIN A LL THIS IN TERMS OF JIM'S INTUITIVE THEORY OF EVERYTHING...
The intellectual capabilities of our species have remained basically unchanged for at least the last 3000 years (arbitrary time period), nor will they improve significantly in the future. The analytical prowess of the first Polynesian Navigators and the current best scientists are computationally equivalent. [Welcome back to the discussion, Mr. Wolfram.] One of the reasons this is not universally obvious stems from our belief that knowledge is a finite progression —- that is that scientific knowledge started with the four basic elements, fire, earth, air and water, and that this progressive accumulation of knowledge has now advanced into the 11th. dimension, and is therefore drawing ever nearer to the complete knowledge of everything. When we try to grasp some idea of how Ed Whitten develops a mathematical concept, we think in terms of esoteric mathematical constructs— -somewhere beyond calculus and noncommutative geometry—- an almost magical ability to make intuitive leaps into new understanding.
But when our narcissistic arrogance seeks to explain how the Polynesian islanders developed their system of navigation we think in terms of simple arithmetic— that over a period of 500 or 1000 years little bits of environmental observations were added to each other, preserved by the infamous oral tradition, and eventually became a workable body of knowledge. Start with a number. One comes to mind first. Add another number to it, again one comes to mind first. Now we have 1+1=2. Repeat, 2+1=3. Continue. No matter how long the process continues, the next iteration can never lead to an answer that suggests algebra or string theory. It is not possible that the Polynesian navigation system could have evolved as a result of a linear accumulation of knowledge. First, exact knowledge could not have been preserved unchanged from one generation to the next, especially without a written record. Recall the familiar parlour game where a number of people whisper a statement they were told to the next person, and then the first recitation and the last are compared, usually to everyone's amusement. Certainly some level of skill within a given generation might be passed on to the next, but that passage alone does nothing to improve the skill. Improvements in navigation skills happened when individual Polynesian natives started with the known, and made an intuitive leap into the unknown. And that process, at that time, required the same level of computational sophistication as is now required to develop a new level of mathematics.
The Banana Noticing Capacity of our species has remained basically unchanged for at least the last 3000 years (arbitrary time period), nor will it increase significantly in the future. I don't think we really understand a hell of a lot about how we remember stuff. Clearly we can train ourselves to remember more and more stuff, and given our relatively short life span and the fact that the memory making machinery tends to get a little sluggish with age, it is doubtful that anyone's memory capacity gets filled up. [Testimony before congressional hearings notwithstanding.] What I am thinking about here precedes memory processing. Take subject A walking around. Surrounding that subject is a range of perceptible elements. [An example of a perceptible element would be to imagine the person with the keenest hearing in the world. Now imagine a sound making device making a noise of X decibels moving toward the subject. At whatever point the device stimulates the first reaction in any part of the hearing mechanism of subject A, that is the boundary of the range of perception for that particular element.]
And now for another hokey diagram.
Everything
Noticing
Potential
Potential
Noticing Awareness
The Four Phases of Jim's Unified Field
Theory of Banana Noticing
Theory of Banana Noticing
Perceptible elements within the arc represent things noticed, those outside the arc are not noticed.[Well if you didn't notice them, how did you get them on the page?]
And Where:
Everything is what it says.
Noticing Capacity Is the volume of everything that can be perceived by the sense organs of our species at one time. It is this phase that I suspect remains relatively unchanged over time, and does not vary greatly between individuals. In other terms this would represent the strange attractor basin of noticeable elements, and in terms of Wolfram's Cellular Automata would be every computational series that is not random.
Noticing Potential represents all the perceptible elements that stimulate a response in our perceptive organs. Although we are only aware of noticing part of them at the time they can potentially be recalled, for example through hypnosis, déjà vu, or just pop up in our memories of their own volition. (
Noticing Awareness refers to those elements we consciously use to make decisions, as well as the "uninvited" elements perceived as a result of environmental conditions ( a lightning bolt, that damn yappy dog next door, a traumatic memory). This aspect varies considerably between individuals, and the ratio of deliberately focused elements to awareness of "uninvited" elements can be controlled to some degree through practice, although in some individuals these controls seem to be practically inoperative. (Think GWB)
The volume of perceptible elements within the range of a given person greatly exceeds the capacity of all that person's perception organs combined. Focus for a moment on where you are now. The perceptible elements are practically infinite-- every discernable feature of all the visible objects, every sound, smell, air current, temperature change, various things going on with your body; then a steady parade of thoughts, memories and even perhaps a rogue spike of typically imperceptible wave forms from the twilight zone. The intense focus of athletes during a performance comes at the price of not being able to notice many of the elements they would ordinarily be aware of. When we see a person performing something extraordinary, such as Mau Piailug navigating his canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti through waters he had never seen, we think in terms of awareness and focus. Mau notices and utilizes perceptible elements in the immediate environment that are unnoticeable to others on the voyage. There is a yin yang aspect to his performance. The elements he notices are balanced by the elements he does not notice. Many of the rituals and taboos that were part of the Polynesian navigators voyaging tasks seemed designed to remove from noticing range everything not essential to navigation. No getting laid before a voyage, no food except that prepared especially for the navigator, no duties not directly necessary for navigation, no social interaction with the crew.
It is the return trip from Tahiti that furnishes much of the fodder for my Banana Noticing Ramblings. Friction between the native Hawaiians and the mainlanders resulted in a bit of a riot among the crew as they neared Tahiti. Mau refused to make the return trip, which was done with the aid of navigation instruments. The reason- - Mau could not function in that environment because he could not not notice the dissension among the crew, and that created a situation that exceeded his noticing capacity. (author grabs that smidgin of data and runs)
When the remaining master navigators die, much of their skill and knowledge will be lost forever. Their skills are impossible to learn in their entirety today. First, recall that Mau's grandfather sat him in the tide pools when he was an infant so he would notice the feel of the water, that is, his noticing organs developed what could be described as an interactive learning relationship with the water. It is well established that some things must be learned in infancy or they can only be learned with great difficulty or not at all. Certainly one could sit today's crop of children in the tide pools but they would not learn about navigation because no one knows how to guide their understanding. Mau's training began seventy something years ago on a tiny island with a population of less than 600. Activities on the island centered around the boat house, where navigator neophytes spent many hours each day learning the craft. The boat house activities took place in an island environment that had not yet been invaded with the trappings of technological advancements. There were no bulldozers, boom boxes, cruise ships loaded with cash wielding tourists. The everything was not filled with perceptible elements that could not not be noticed.
Mr. Know It All Intuition contends that what is going or gone away in our current world is the ability of people to develop extraordinary skills, not for sociological or physiological reasons, but because the level of focus on the perceptible elements necessary to learn such skills is no longer possible. It became clear to Mau and his students that they would never be able to develop their navigation skills to his level. Mau himself admitted that he was not able to attain the same level of skill as his grandfather. I agree with the skeptics to the degree that almost all claims of extra sensory or extraordinary abilities are simply frauds. The extraordinary navigation skills, as well as other historical achievements that seem unusually advanced for the time period, developed in environments with a low level of things that must be noticed [call it irreducible background noise if you insist]. Many of the rituals and taboos intrinsic to these extraordinary events had the effect of severely restricting the perceptible elements that must be noticed. Another little gem for my insatiable intuition is that the practitioners of these extraordinary skills attributed their abilities to magic, which indicates that even in that particular time period the skills were rare. Since the pathway to these abilities is so faint and tenuous, it is reasonable that practitioners themselves don't know precisely how they do it and so are likely to attribute their skills to a special communication with some spiritual source.
As much as I hate to disappoint the ghost busters, these skills are not gifts from the valley of the haints, but occur along the borders between the science that we know and the unknown existence string theory and other advanced theoretical thoughts are just beginning to discover. [ As metaphor rather than explanation, it might be that an island 500 miles over the horizon causes changes in the light reflected overhead, changes that Mau can see and we can't.] Once again, the loss of the ability to navigate in blue ocean by mental acuity alone is not important other than as a cultural artifact. Garmin etrex has got that covered. But just to raise the melodrama level a bit, I believe this area of thought has profound implications for us folks, impacting even the survivability of our species. And that leads me to slyly say "Oh, I just noticed that I need to bring in some thoughts on evolution".
Continued>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And Where:
Everything is what it says.
Noticing Capacity Is the volume of everything that can be perceived by the sense organs of our species at one time. It is this phase that I suspect remains relatively unchanged over time, and does not vary greatly between individuals. In other terms this would represent the strange attractor basin of noticeable elements, and in terms of Wolfram's Cellular Automata would be every computational series that is not random.
Noticing Potential represents all the perceptible elements that stimulate a response in our perceptive organs. Although we are only aware of noticing part of them at the time they can potentially be recalled, for example through hypnosis, déjà vu, or just pop up in our memories of their own volition. (
Noticing Awareness refers to those elements we consciously use to make decisions, as well as the "uninvited" elements perceived as a result of environmental conditions ( a lightning bolt, that damn yappy dog next door, a traumatic memory). This aspect varies considerably between individuals, and the ratio of deliberately focused elements to awareness of "uninvited" elements can be controlled to some degree through practice, although in some individuals these controls seem to be practically inoperative. (Think GWB)
The volume of perceptible elements within the range of a given person greatly exceeds the capacity of all that person's perception organs combined. Focus for a moment on where you are now. The perceptible elements are practically infinite-- every discernable feature of all the visible objects, every sound, smell, air current, temperature change, various things going on with your body; then a steady parade of thoughts, memories and even perhaps a rogue spike of typically imperceptible wave forms from the twilight zone. The intense focus of athletes during a performance comes at the price of not being able to notice many of the elements they would ordinarily be aware of. When we see a person performing something extraordinary, such as Mau Piailug navigating his canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti through waters he had never seen, we think in terms of awareness and focus. Mau notices and utilizes perceptible elements in the immediate environment that are unnoticeable to others on the voyage. There is a yin yang aspect to his performance. The elements he notices are balanced by the elements he does not notice. Many of the rituals and taboos that were part of the Polynesian navigators voyaging tasks seemed designed to remove from noticing range everything not essential to navigation. No getting laid before a voyage, no food except that prepared especially for the navigator, no duties not directly necessary for navigation, no social interaction with the crew.
It is the return trip from Tahiti that furnishes much of the fodder for my Banana Noticing Ramblings. Friction between the native Hawaiians and the mainlanders resulted in a bit of a riot among the crew as they neared Tahiti. Mau refused to make the return trip, which was done with the aid of navigation instruments. The reason- - Mau could not function in that environment because he could not not notice the dissension among the crew, and that created a situation that exceeded his noticing capacity. (author grabs that smidgin of data and runs)
When the remaining master navigators die, much of their skill and knowledge will be lost forever. Their skills are impossible to learn in their entirety today. First, recall that Mau's grandfather sat him in the tide pools when he was an infant so he would notice the feel of the water, that is, his noticing organs developed what could be described as an interactive learning relationship with the water. It is well established that some things must be learned in infancy or they can only be learned with great difficulty or not at all. Certainly one could sit today's crop of children in the tide pools but they would not learn about navigation because no one knows how to guide their understanding. Mau's training began seventy something years ago on a tiny island with a population of less than 600. Activities on the island centered around the boat house, where navigator neophytes spent many hours each day learning the craft. The boat house activities took place in an island environment that had not yet been invaded with the trappings of technological advancements. There were no bulldozers, boom boxes, cruise ships loaded with cash wielding tourists. The everything was not filled with perceptible elements that could not not be noticed.
Mr. Know It All Intuition contends that what is going or gone away in our current world is the ability of people to develop extraordinary skills, not for sociological or physiological reasons, but because the level of focus on the perceptible elements necessary to learn such skills is no longer possible. It became clear to Mau and his students that they would never be able to develop their navigation skills to his level. Mau himself admitted that he was not able to attain the same level of skill as his grandfather. I agree with the skeptics to the degree that almost all claims of extra sensory or extraordinary abilities are simply frauds. The extraordinary navigation skills, as well as other historical achievements that seem unusually advanced for the time period, developed in environments with a low level of things that must be noticed [call it irreducible background noise if you insist]. Many of the rituals and taboos intrinsic to these extraordinary events had the effect of severely restricting the perceptible elements that must be noticed. Another little gem for my insatiable intuition is that the practitioners of these extraordinary skills attributed their abilities to magic, which indicates that even in that particular time period the skills were rare. Since the pathway to these abilities is so faint and tenuous, it is reasonable that practitioners themselves don't know precisely how they do it and so are likely to attribute their skills to a special communication with some spiritual source.
As much as I hate to disappoint the ghost busters, these skills are not gifts from the valley of the haints, but occur along the borders between the science that we know and the unknown existence string theory and other advanced theoretical thoughts are just beginning to discover. [ As metaphor rather than explanation, it might be that an island 500 miles over the horizon causes changes in the light reflected overhead, changes that Mau can see and we can't.] Once again, the loss of the ability to navigate in blue ocean by mental acuity alone is not important other than as a cultural artifact. Garmin etrex has got that covered. But just to raise the melodrama level a bit, I believe this area of thought has profound implications for us folks, impacting even the survivability of our species. And that leads me to slyly say "Oh, I just noticed that I need to bring in some thoughts on evolution".
Continued>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There
Somewhere
Over There (now)
Here
Natural Voyaging
Anywhere
.
.
.
.
.
OCEAN SURFACE
SKY
FLOTSAM
ANIMALS
SKY
FLOTSAM
ANIMALS
Over There (later)
.
Noticing
Capacity
Capacity