Jim's Intuitive Theory of Everything
(Formally Haints 2)
Back in the real world intuition alone is seldom considered the final arbiter, especially the intuition of another. That is as it should be. But in this section to qualify each intuitive idea with authoritative support would be way too clumsy for my taste, even where it might be possible. I have already invited the reader's attention to some of the general areas from whence my intuition springs, and with that caveat I will let my intuition run wild. The first order of business would seem to be to understand how existence came into being; whether in fact the universe had a beginning, and if so how did the forces that started the process of existence do that without already existing themselves, which would seem to beg the question. I believe that I have resolved this issue.
It all started with the Big Bang. Well, not really it all, just the universe we live in. Scientists are able to understand the Big Bang mathematically back almost to the instant of beginning, but there their formulas fail and begin to produce nonsensical results. The reason for their flummoxment is quite simple [warned 'ja]. There is no beginning, rather there is a reversal. Vibration is a universal condition. The perception of movement led string theorists to understand that the bottom of everything is a one dimensional, vibrating strand of energy. That holds true universally. From the jumping back and forth between orbital paths of the electrons around the nucleus to the ebb and flow of tectonic plates everything is vibrating, although not necessarily synchronously. This condition is not limited by size. What science has labeled the Big Bang is metaphorically a phase of the beating heart of our universe. Lungs would be more accurate, but heart is so much more anthropomorphically comforting. Just think of the systolic and diastolic pressures as being sort of like exhalation and inhalation and you'll get the picture. Our universe is expanding, that is it is in the systolic or exhalation phase. Eventually that process will reverse and our universe will become what we perceive as a black hole, which is a universe in the inhalation phase, then when the inhalation phase reaches maximum density it will explode outward again within which another universe will form. The reason universes very different from the one we observe exist is a function of chaos. The state of things at the initiating conditions cannot be precisely duplicated, thus the actual structure of a given universe cannot be predicted, only observed.
Gravity has always been the most contumacious of the so called four fundamental forces, refusing to fit in with the orderly mathematical march toward the theory of everything. This intractability stems from the observation that gravity seems so weak in comparison to the other forces. The conundrum began to unravel a bit following Whitten's 1995 string theory conference at which he presented the 11th. dimension. Not only was science faced with a whole range of existence billions of times smaller than anything proposed before, but now they were confronted with something billions of times larger than anything previously imagined, a single membrane of energy upon which surface the entire universe rests. The apparent discrepancy in energy between the fundamental forces dissolves with the determination that gravity acts over vast distances while, for example, the Strong Force operates only across the confines of a nucleus. [One small step for string theory, a giant leap for intuition.]
What piques my curiosity is not just the vastness of the brane itself, but whether it would be the only big thing we haven't discovered before. A common element in scientific research is that of surprise. Every trip into space, every loop around the Fermilab accelerator has the potential, and frequently delivers, an unexpected result. The net result of these surprises continually pushes the scientific frontiers well beyond the point that previously had been considered the end. My intuition absolutely insists that discovery of the brane will lead to the discovery of previously unknown forces and entities. The concept is not all that weird, mainstream science spends billions to identify and measure things that we had no proof existed.
Frankly, my patient reading friends, I seem to have been stuck here for weeks, and the key I press most often is delete. I guess I can't get away with just ignoring the psychics and the sceptics, although I consider both of them a pain in the ass. It would take a very large book to present even the most parsimonious synopsis of the claims made about what is commonly called extra sensory perception. Thousands and thousands of unexplained events have taken place that are touted as gateways to some higher level of awareness and capabilities. Yet for all the claims, none of these gateways have been able to obtain a patent or a spot on the Big Board, and telekinesis is not even being considered as an Olympic sport. To turn the argument that so many people have had so many unexplainable experiences that there has to be some truth there on its head, if there was some truth there then some systematic gateway would have developed by now. Psychology, acupuncture, weather prediction, sport betting points, horse whisperers---- so many things the gateway to which was not subject to tangible, repeatable evidence nonetheless developed into recognized and accepted practices.
But if something sorta like these "paranormal" things sometimes happens, string theory might provide a potential explanation. String theory, or M theory, mathematics suggest the presence of very large objects in addition to the infinitesimally small strings. When Whitten described the 11th. dimension membrane large enough to contain our entire universe, he opened up an entirely unbeknownst vista of existence. The possibility that "our" membrane might be only one of many such membranes floating around in a vast higher dimensional existence is just the tip of the iceberg, or rather quasar. For example, developing the hypothesis that the apparent weakness of gravity is the result of its energy being spread across vast distances, thus making the energy measurable in a relatively small space such as the earth minuscule in comparison to the total energy of gravity suggests the bizarre possibility that there may be other forces spread out over areas so vast that our instrumentation is not sensitive enough to detect them. [author stands hesitatingly on the limb. He looks nervously back toward the trunk and thinks "oh man, that's a looong way from here".] For example, perhaps consciousness, or thoughts, is really a force. That is that when we observe synaptic activity firing up in various parts of the brain in response to different stimuli, that "something" is pushing the neurotransmitters down the axons and across the synapses. And if something similar to that is true, we can't be absolutely certain that these "force waves" would necessarily be confined to the skull. What enables attractors to attract; what shapes the self similarity of fractals?
As mentioned earlier, Wolfram observed that the instances where science can make precise, linear predictions about events is really quite limited. Almost all scientific predictions encompass "variations too small to count" or "areas of unknown too insignificant to make a difference". Now we know that things that seemed entirely insignificant or were not even noticed can sometimes snowball and produce chaotic behavior in a system that previously had been periodic. Did these trouble making things just materialize out of the ether? I vote no.
Try this intuitive bouleversement on for size. We perceive only a small part of existence. We have long accepted the fact that we don't perceive everything. For example we can see only part of the color spectrum, hear part of the sound waves. Imagine a bunch of forces, constructs, entities, floating around in existence. Each of these membranes, these things, is quite normal and orderly within the typical dimensions of its existence. Sometimes these things bump into each other and combine to produce a reaction atypical to either or all of them. And even consider the possibility that some particular individual, under extraordinary circumstances, might sometimes perceive traffic along dimensions not typically perceptible, just as that at some point overlooking a chasm, one might hear an echo, while only a short distance away, or under different atmospheric conditions, one might not. So from my free floating intuitive perspective, perceptions that are considered paranormal do occur, but only as random, atypical events. Real when it happens, but not systematically repeatable.
But I think there may be a bit more there than the occasional rogue psychic wave. And I think there is conceptual evidence of that readily knowable by all of us. Some examples. Most people are familiar with the extensive process of testing that must happen before a new drug is approved for the market. First a host of chemical expectations must be established; eventually a potential new drug is tested on animals and compared with known or placebo formulations. Almost all these drugs fail to produce the desired result and are discarded. Eventually very limited, double blind studies are permitted. Only after exhaustive studies, typically involving hundreds of subjects over an extensive period of time, and once all the effects and side effects are understood and quantified, and with a whole lot of luck, a new drug may finally make it to market.
Science is recognizing that natural substances used by scientifically primitive peoples sometimes work as well or better than the drugs that have gone through the rigorous drug testing programs of modern medicine. So here is the question. Who did these primitive people use for test subjects? How could they isolate variables, keep records, compare notes between peers, learn how to process the materials to produce positive results? Picture a small band of early natives in an isolated rain forest valley. One day a native ventures into a new part of the forest; he is digging around tree roots looking for grubs and tubers to eat. He sees several new tubers he has never seen before. He begins eating them along with the grubs and other insects. He picks up one tuber that doesn't look all that different from the others. He doesn't eat it. If he does he will die of poison before he can get back to camp to warn the others. Instead he takes it back to camp, dries it, pounds it into a poultice and puts it on his infected ankle. He gets well. Out of an environment containing many thousands of different plants and insects, and only a small number of people, all with short life spans and no research funds, how could this event happen by trial and error? Try to make the numbers add up.
[This is the point to which I was referring in my March 21 update wherein in search of a simple metaphor, I stumbled across such a treasure of data that my intuition started to believe in reincarnation (just my intuition, not all of me). A tiny bit of that fun run is relevant here, which I will now play for your listening pleasure and/or edification. Without meaning to offend the anthropologically sensitive, I will consider only the Polynesian folks from about 500 BC forward. The Polynesian predecessors may well have been the Lapitaonions, who also might have possessed deep ocean navigation skills, but if they wanted to be included in my blog, they should have left better records.]
Hundreds of years before the rest of the world gained enough confidence to sail beyond the sight of land, Polynesian seafarers, most likely from the Caroline Islands near the coast of New Guinea, sailed their canoes into the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. Archaeologists estimate these explorations began around 300 BC, and by 1000 AD, the Polynesians had discovered and settled virtually all the habitable islands in millions of square miles of the Pacific. Unique among the world's great empires, the Polynesian expansion did not involve warfare--- not necessarily as a matter of principle, there was simply no one to conquer. Whether these early voyagers were driven by economic factors, population pressures, or simple wanderlust is as unknown as it is unimportant. The extraordinary thing about their travels is that they made their way across thousands of miles of open ocean without the aid of a single navigational instrument, chart, or written record. How they accomplished these feats was almost relegated to the speculative historical archives along with the great Pyramids and Stonehenge. Fortunately, enough of the oral traditions have survived to preserve the basic Polynesian navigation system.
The heart of the Polynesian navigational system is a mnemonic construct that is typically described in modern terms as a star compass. The navigator visualizes himself, or rather his canoe, at the center of a 360 degree horizon marked with the rising and setting positions of selected stars. Even the bare knuckles version of this system tracks 36 stars, or 72 precise points, on a featureless, invisible mental horizon that changes position with the seasons. Eventually, master navigators maintained constant awareness of the tracks of more than 200 stars that were as familiar to the navigators as the letters on the keyboard are to us (or in my case, much more familiar). The use of this algorithmic visualization as a guide required much greater sophistication than simply "following yonder star".
The primary schools of anthropological thought argued for decades that the early Pacific inhabitants were far too primitive to have purposely expanded across the ocean. These scholars hypothesized that the original inhabitants simply drifted on the ocean currents, and that rather than being skilled explorers, they were forced to move on by population pressures, perhaps exiled from their home islands, or had been blown off course by storms, and arrived within sight of their new lands as a function of chance. This hubristic illogic by those schooled in western navigation might still be given credence but for serendipity.
Mau Piailug was born on Satawal, a small island in Micronesia only a mile wide and one and a half miles long. He was one of very few, perhaps as few as five, and no more than fifteen, master navigators still alive to whom the ancient skills had been passed. The serendipitous events began to develop in the 1970's. Mau, who was then in his fifties, was very disappointed and disillusioned by the young men of Micronesia. They had been seduced by western ways and had no interest in investing in the extreme discipline and years of study it took to become a navigator. After all, navigation was more easily and accurately determined by western technology. Just as hand held calculators freed our children from the agony of memorizing the multiplication tables, so today anyone can determine their position within a few feet just by pressing a couple of buttons on their GPS receiver.
Meanwhile, serendipity's other half was forming in Hawaii. Three men, Ben Finney, an anthropologist; Herb Kane, a Hawaiian artist; and Tommy Holmes, a sailing junkie, all shared a belief that the Polynesian ancestors, rather than being primitive flotsam, had been skilled navigators who had methodically colonized the Pacific. To establish their hypothesis, they founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society and constructed a replica of a double hulled canoe from Hawaiian antiquity, with which they planned to sail to Tahiti without the aid of navigational instruments. Unfortunately, there was no one alive in Hawaii who knew how to do that. Their search finally led them to Mau Piailug, who agreed to be their navigator, even though he had never been to Tahiti or sailed that far south, so the star configuration he would encounter would be quite different from the night sky he was used to. [When asked how he would find the way, Mau said his teachers had told him the way to Tahiti, although they had never been there either. [ Factoid documentation for later use.] Eventually, the replica canoe set sail with Mau as navigator, and with no navigation instruments other than Mau's skill, they sailed the 2,500 miles to Tahiti in 33 days. This single voyage was solid evidence that deep ocean navigation without instruments was possible, but it did not totally silence the sceptics. Nonetheless, publicity about the voyage contributed to a cultural renaissance of sorts which resulted in several native Hawaiians determined to learn the ancient wayfinding skills.
Mau Piailug's services were again requested and he promptly agreed to become their teacher. Mau's primary goal at this point in his life was to pass on the knowledge he had lest it be lost forever. Students and teacher thus came together; in Mau's case a long way from his homeland where his knowledge was no longer valued, and in the case of the Hawaiians an opportunity to reclaim part of their past. This union eventually put to rest speculation about how the Pacific was colonized. Unlike so many other evidences of past accomplishments, researchers did not have to speculate about how the far flung islands were populated. One of the favorite activities of the anthropological set has been to develop theories about how ancient events were accomplished, and then to make a documentary to demonstrate how their particular speculation was possible. These recreations are seldom, if ever, conclusive, and even if they do seem possible, do little to placate the fringe element that claims "them aliens done it". In this case the knowledge was passed on in the proper format for scientific acceptance---- namely that the results could be duplicated under controlled conditions. An argument could certainly be made that there was little tangible value in keeping the skills alive. Satellites are much easier and reliable to communicate with than stars, and a small group of people trying to revive part of their past is essentially a social event on a par with the recreation of civil war battles, or American Indian ceremonies.
From my perspective, the value of these procedures goes far beyond just the ability to sail from one place to another without the aid of instrumentation. But before I go running off into the ether again, the native navigation skills deserve a closer look if only to support the notion that the early pacific islanders were far more sophisticated than the knowledge typically attributed to primitive folks. One of Mau's first students was Nainoa Thompson, who would eventually become the first Hawaiian to navigate the deep ocean without instruments in 600 years. It took Nainoa over two years just to grasp enough of the essential skills to voyage on his own. Imagine yourself trying to learn even the first lesson. Mau is standing on a tiny atoll with a 360 degree view of the horizon. Without the aid of a chart, diagram or any pointing tools other than his finger- - OK, maybe a stick and some stones he can move around on the ground--- he starts the star compass lesson. Nainoa (or you if you can visualize it) is standing beside Mau and must learn to identify with certainty the rising and setting points of 36 stars. Give it a try the next time you are out in the dark. Pick a single star not part of an obvious constellation like the Big Dipper. Point out that star to someone else. Turn 180 degrees and wait a long time for the star to set. Point it out. Now turn 180 degrees again and point out to each other the precise point on the horizon the star first appeared. Now do that 71 more times. Yeah, right. But that is just the beginning, because if you don't have a clear view of the star you are looking for exactly at the moment it rises above the horizon, you must extrapolate its rising point, and you can't just imagine a straight line from the star to the horizon because the path of the star varies from the vertical at different latitudes. The navigators do not simply memorize the star compass. They become so familiar with it that it appears to be hard wired in their brains. They use a plethora of signs to help them find their way, but everything they use is gauged in relation to the star compass. Nainoa couldn't master the star paths in the way they were originally taught, just verbally. Fortunately, he was able to make use of a planetarium, a laser pointer, and copious written notes to learn the celestial paths. While these Hawaiian students were able to master enough rudimentary skills to navigate between Pacific islands without modern instrumentation, none of them will ever become master navigators. One reason for that is adults can't truly learn the complete skills. Recall from the chapter on Words that the youngest deaf children used a sign language with far more subtleties than the older children were able to master. When Mau was a baby, his grandfather would set him in tide pools at various points of the island so he would learn the different "feel" of the water in different places, and by the age of four he was sailing and learning the ocean from his grandfather. But even to master the Dolly Parton Wild West Extravaganza version of ancient wayfinding is a major accomplishment. While learning the paths of the stars is a Herculean memorization task, it is not the most difficult part of natural navigation.
.
(Formally Haints 2)
Back in the real world intuition alone is seldom considered the final arbiter, especially the intuition of another. That is as it should be. But in this section to qualify each intuitive idea with authoritative support would be way too clumsy for my taste, even where it might be possible. I have already invited the reader's attention to some of the general areas from whence my intuition springs, and with that caveat I will let my intuition run wild. The first order of business would seem to be to understand how existence came into being; whether in fact the universe had a beginning, and if so how did the forces that started the process of existence do that without already existing themselves, which would seem to beg the question. I believe that I have resolved this issue.
It all started with the Big Bang. Well, not really it all, just the universe we live in. Scientists are able to understand the Big Bang mathematically back almost to the instant of beginning, but there their formulas fail and begin to produce nonsensical results. The reason for their flummoxment is quite simple [warned 'ja]. There is no beginning, rather there is a reversal. Vibration is a universal condition. The perception of movement led string theorists to understand that the bottom of everything is a one dimensional, vibrating strand of energy. That holds true universally. From the jumping back and forth between orbital paths of the electrons around the nucleus to the ebb and flow of tectonic plates everything is vibrating, although not necessarily synchronously. This condition is not limited by size. What science has labeled the Big Bang is metaphorically a phase of the beating heart of our universe. Lungs would be more accurate, but heart is so much more anthropomorphically comforting. Just think of the systolic and diastolic pressures as being sort of like exhalation and inhalation and you'll get the picture. Our universe is expanding, that is it is in the systolic or exhalation phase. Eventually that process will reverse and our universe will become what we perceive as a black hole, which is a universe in the inhalation phase, then when the inhalation phase reaches maximum density it will explode outward again within which another universe will form. The reason universes very different from the one we observe exist is a function of chaos. The state of things at the initiating conditions cannot be precisely duplicated, thus the actual structure of a given universe cannot be predicted, only observed.
Gravity has always been the most contumacious of the so called four fundamental forces, refusing to fit in with the orderly mathematical march toward the theory of everything. This intractability stems from the observation that gravity seems so weak in comparison to the other forces. The conundrum began to unravel a bit following Whitten's 1995 string theory conference at which he presented the 11th. dimension. Not only was science faced with a whole range of existence billions of times smaller than anything proposed before, but now they were confronted with something billions of times larger than anything previously imagined, a single membrane of energy upon which surface the entire universe rests. The apparent discrepancy in energy between the fundamental forces dissolves with the determination that gravity acts over vast distances while, for example, the Strong Force operates only across the confines of a nucleus. [One small step for string theory, a giant leap for intuition.]
What piques my curiosity is not just the vastness of the brane itself, but whether it would be the only big thing we haven't discovered before. A common element in scientific research is that of surprise. Every trip into space, every loop around the Fermilab accelerator has the potential, and frequently delivers, an unexpected result. The net result of these surprises continually pushes the scientific frontiers well beyond the point that previously had been considered the end. My intuition absolutely insists that discovery of the brane will lead to the discovery of previously unknown forces and entities. The concept is not all that weird, mainstream science spends billions to identify and measure things that we had no proof existed.
Frankly, my patient reading friends, I seem to have been stuck here for weeks, and the key I press most often is delete. I guess I can't get away with just ignoring the psychics and the sceptics, although I consider both of them a pain in the ass. It would take a very large book to present even the most parsimonious synopsis of the claims made about what is commonly called extra sensory perception. Thousands and thousands of unexplained events have taken place that are touted as gateways to some higher level of awareness and capabilities. Yet for all the claims, none of these gateways have been able to obtain a patent or a spot on the Big Board, and telekinesis is not even being considered as an Olympic sport. To turn the argument that so many people have had so many unexplainable experiences that there has to be some truth there on its head, if there was some truth there then some systematic gateway would have developed by now. Psychology, acupuncture, weather prediction, sport betting points, horse whisperers---- so many things the gateway to which was not subject to tangible, repeatable evidence nonetheless developed into recognized and accepted practices.
But if something sorta like these "paranormal" things sometimes happens, string theory might provide a potential explanation. String theory, or M theory, mathematics suggest the presence of very large objects in addition to the infinitesimally small strings. When Whitten described the 11th. dimension membrane large enough to contain our entire universe, he opened up an entirely unbeknownst vista of existence. The possibility that "our" membrane might be only one of many such membranes floating around in a vast higher dimensional existence is just the tip of the iceberg, or rather quasar. For example, developing the hypothesis that the apparent weakness of gravity is the result of its energy being spread across vast distances, thus making the energy measurable in a relatively small space such as the earth minuscule in comparison to the total energy of gravity suggests the bizarre possibility that there may be other forces spread out over areas so vast that our instrumentation is not sensitive enough to detect them. [author stands hesitatingly on the limb. He looks nervously back toward the trunk and thinks "oh man, that's a looong way from here".] For example, perhaps consciousness, or thoughts, is really a force. That is that when we observe synaptic activity firing up in various parts of the brain in response to different stimuli, that "something" is pushing the neurotransmitters down the axons and across the synapses. And if something similar to that is true, we can't be absolutely certain that these "force waves" would necessarily be confined to the skull. What enables attractors to attract; what shapes the self similarity of fractals?
As mentioned earlier, Wolfram observed that the instances where science can make precise, linear predictions about events is really quite limited. Almost all scientific predictions encompass "variations too small to count" or "areas of unknown too insignificant to make a difference". Now we know that things that seemed entirely insignificant or were not even noticed can sometimes snowball and produce chaotic behavior in a system that previously had been periodic. Did these trouble making things just materialize out of the ether? I vote no.
Try this intuitive bouleversement on for size. We perceive only a small part of existence. We have long accepted the fact that we don't perceive everything. For example we can see only part of the color spectrum, hear part of the sound waves. Imagine a bunch of forces, constructs, entities, floating around in existence. Each of these membranes, these things, is quite normal and orderly within the typical dimensions of its existence. Sometimes these things bump into each other and combine to produce a reaction atypical to either or all of them. And even consider the possibility that some particular individual, under extraordinary circumstances, might sometimes perceive traffic along dimensions not typically perceptible, just as that at some point overlooking a chasm, one might hear an echo, while only a short distance away, or under different atmospheric conditions, one might not. So from my free floating intuitive perspective, perceptions that are considered paranormal do occur, but only as random, atypical events. Real when it happens, but not systematically repeatable.
But I think there may be a bit more there than the occasional rogue psychic wave. And I think there is conceptual evidence of that readily knowable by all of us. Some examples. Most people are familiar with the extensive process of testing that must happen before a new drug is approved for the market. First a host of chemical expectations must be established; eventually a potential new drug is tested on animals and compared with known or placebo formulations. Almost all these drugs fail to produce the desired result and are discarded. Eventually very limited, double blind studies are permitted. Only after exhaustive studies, typically involving hundreds of subjects over an extensive period of time, and once all the effects and side effects are understood and quantified, and with a whole lot of luck, a new drug may finally make it to market.
Science is recognizing that natural substances used by scientifically primitive peoples sometimes work as well or better than the drugs that have gone through the rigorous drug testing programs of modern medicine. So here is the question. Who did these primitive people use for test subjects? How could they isolate variables, keep records, compare notes between peers, learn how to process the materials to produce positive results? Picture a small band of early natives in an isolated rain forest valley. One day a native ventures into a new part of the forest; he is digging around tree roots looking for grubs and tubers to eat. He sees several new tubers he has never seen before. He begins eating them along with the grubs and other insects. He picks up one tuber that doesn't look all that different from the others. He doesn't eat it. If he does he will die of poison before he can get back to camp to warn the others. Instead he takes it back to camp, dries it, pounds it into a poultice and puts it on his infected ankle. He gets well. Out of an environment containing many thousands of different plants and insects, and only a small number of people, all with short life spans and no research funds, how could this event happen by trial and error? Try to make the numbers add up.
[This is the point to which I was referring in my March 21 update wherein in search of a simple metaphor, I stumbled across such a treasure of data that my intuition started to believe in reincarnation (just my intuition, not all of me). A tiny bit of that fun run is relevant here, which I will now play for your listening pleasure and/or edification. Without meaning to offend the anthropologically sensitive, I will consider only the Polynesian folks from about 500 BC forward. The Polynesian predecessors may well have been the Lapitaonions, who also might have possessed deep ocean navigation skills, but if they wanted to be included in my blog, they should have left better records.]
Hundreds of years before the rest of the world gained enough confidence to sail beyond the sight of land, Polynesian seafarers, most likely from the Caroline Islands near the coast of New Guinea, sailed their canoes into the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. Archaeologists estimate these explorations began around 300 BC, and by 1000 AD, the Polynesians had discovered and settled virtually all the habitable islands in millions of square miles of the Pacific. Unique among the world's great empires, the Polynesian expansion did not involve warfare--- not necessarily as a matter of principle, there was simply no one to conquer. Whether these early voyagers were driven by economic factors, population pressures, or simple wanderlust is as unknown as it is unimportant. The extraordinary thing about their travels is that they made their way across thousands of miles of open ocean without the aid of a single navigational instrument, chart, or written record. How they accomplished these feats was almost relegated to the speculative historical archives along with the great Pyramids and Stonehenge. Fortunately, enough of the oral traditions have survived to preserve the basic Polynesian navigation system.
The heart of the Polynesian navigational system is a mnemonic construct that is typically described in modern terms as a star compass. The navigator visualizes himself, or rather his canoe, at the center of a 360 degree horizon marked with the rising and setting positions of selected stars. Even the bare knuckles version of this system tracks 36 stars, or 72 precise points, on a featureless, invisible mental horizon that changes position with the seasons. Eventually, master navigators maintained constant awareness of the tracks of more than 200 stars that were as familiar to the navigators as the letters on the keyboard are to us (or in my case, much more familiar). The use of this algorithmic visualization as a guide required much greater sophistication than simply "following yonder star".
The primary schools of anthropological thought argued for decades that the early Pacific inhabitants were far too primitive to have purposely expanded across the ocean. These scholars hypothesized that the original inhabitants simply drifted on the ocean currents, and that rather than being skilled explorers, they were forced to move on by population pressures, perhaps exiled from their home islands, or had been blown off course by storms, and arrived within sight of their new lands as a function of chance. This hubristic illogic by those schooled in western navigation might still be given credence but for serendipity.
Mau Piailug was born on Satawal, a small island in Micronesia only a mile wide and one and a half miles long. He was one of very few, perhaps as few as five, and no more than fifteen, master navigators still alive to whom the ancient skills had been passed. The serendipitous events began to develop in the 1970's. Mau, who was then in his fifties, was very disappointed and disillusioned by the young men of Micronesia. They had been seduced by western ways and had no interest in investing in the extreme discipline and years of study it took to become a navigator. After all, navigation was more easily and accurately determined by western technology. Just as hand held calculators freed our children from the agony of memorizing the multiplication tables, so today anyone can determine their position within a few feet just by pressing a couple of buttons on their GPS receiver.
Meanwhile, serendipity's other half was forming in Hawaii. Three men, Ben Finney, an anthropologist; Herb Kane, a Hawaiian artist; and Tommy Holmes, a sailing junkie, all shared a belief that the Polynesian ancestors, rather than being primitive flotsam, had been skilled navigators who had methodically colonized the Pacific. To establish their hypothesis, they founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society and constructed a replica of a double hulled canoe from Hawaiian antiquity, with which they planned to sail to Tahiti without the aid of navigational instruments. Unfortunately, there was no one alive in Hawaii who knew how to do that. Their search finally led them to Mau Piailug, who agreed to be their navigator, even though he had never been to Tahiti or sailed that far south, so the star configuration he would encounter would be quite different from the night sky he was used to. [When asked how he would find the way, Mau said his teachers had told him the way to Tahiti, although they had never been there either. [ Factoid documentation for later use.] Eventually, the replica canoe set sail with Mau as navigator, and with no navigation instruments other than Mau's skill, they sailed the 2,500 miles to Tahiti in 33 days. This single voyage was solid evidence that deep ocean navigation without instruments was possible, but it did not totally silence the sceptics. Nonetheless, publicity about the voyage contributed to a cultural renaissance of sorts which resulted in several native Hawaiians determined to learn the ancient wayfinding skills.
Mau Piailug's services were again requested and he promptly agreed to become their teacher. Mau's primary goal at this point in his life was to pass on the knowledge he had lest it be lost forever. Students and teacher thus came together; in Mau's case a long way from his homeland where his knowledge was no longer valued, and in the case of the Hawaiians an opportunity to reclaim part of their past. This union eventually put to rest speculation about how the Pacific was colonized. Unlike so many other evidences of past accomplishments, researchers did not have to speculate about how the far flung islands were populated. One of the favorite activities of the anthropological set has been to develop theories about how ancient events were accomplished, and then to make a documentary to demonstrate how their particular speculation was possible. These recreations are seldom, if ever, conclusive, and even if they do seem possible, do little to placate the fringe element that claims "them aliens done it". In this case the knowledge was passed on in the proper format for scientific acceptance---- namely that the results could be duplicated under controlled conditions. An argument could certainly be made that there was little tangible value in keeping the skills alive. Satellites are much easier and reliable to communicate with than stars, and a small group of people trying to revive part of their past is essentially a social event on a par with the recreation of civil war battles, or American Indian ceremonies.
From my perspective, the value of these procedures goes far beyond just the ability to sail from one place to another without the aid of instrumentation. But before I go running off into the ether again, the native navigation skills deserve a closer look if only to support the notion that the early pacific islanders were far more sophisticated than the knowledge typically attributed to primitive folks. One of Mau's first students was Nainoa Thompson, who would eventually become the first Hawaiian to navigate the deep ocean without instruments in 600 years. It took Nainoa over two years just to grasp enough of the essential skills to voyage on his own. Imagine yourself trying to learn even the first lesson. Mau is standing on a tiny atoll with a 360 degree view of the horizon. Without the aid of a chart, diagram or any pointing tools other than his finger- - OK, maybe a stick and some stones he can move around on the ground--- he starts the star compass lesson. Nainoa (or you if you can visualize it) is standing beside Mau and must learn to identify with certainty the rising and setting points of 36 stars. Give it a try the next time you are out in the dark. Pick a single star not part of an obvious constellation like the Big Dipper. Point out that star to someone else. Turn 180 degrees and wait a long time for the star to set. Point it out. Now turn 180 degrees again and point out to each other the precise point on the horizon the star first appeared. Now do that 71 more times. Yeah, right. But that is just the beginning, because if you don't have a clear view of the star you are looking for exactly at the moment it rises above the horizon, you must extrapolate its rising point, and you can't just imagine a straight line from the star to the horizon because the path of the star varies from the vertical at different latitudes. The navigators do not simply memorize the star compass. They become so familiar with it that it appears to be hard wired in their brains. They use a plethora of signs to help them find their way, but everything they use is gauged in relation to the star compass. Nainoa couldn't master the star paths in the way they were originally taught, just verbally. Fortunately, he was able to make use of a planetarium, a laser pointer, and copious written notes to learn the celestial paths. While these Hawaiian students were able to master enough rudimentary skills to navigate between Pacific islands without modern instrumentation, none of them will ever become master navigators. One reason for that is adults can't truly learn the complete skills. Recall from the chapter on Words that the youngest deaf children used a sign language with far more subtleties than the older children were able to master. When Mau was a baby, his grandfather would set him in tide pools at various points of the island so he would learn the different "feel" of the water in different places, and by the age of four he was sailing and learning the ocean from his grandfather. But even to master the Dolly Parton Wild West Extravaganza version of ancient wayfinding is a major accomplishment. While learning the paths of the stars is a Herculean memorization task, it is not the most difficult part of natural navigation.
.
Continued
2008 Update and general overhaul. When I first published this I inserted a link here that led to this convoluted, hilarious apology from a search engine about why it could not find the requested page. Once again real life imitates fiction and the link no longer works, probably because the talented but irresponsible author failed to keep his web host paid.
