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notes
2    English translation by H.J. MacGillavry:
     A fence of boards with space between
     through which the landscape could be seen -
     An architect who saw this thing
     came suddenly one evening
     and took the space away with him
     to build a great house, neat and trim.
     The boards, however, stood bereft
     with nothing left in every cleft.
     A hideous and gruesome sight.
     The State withdrew it overnight.
     The architect escaped away
     to Afriq- or Amerikay.

3    J.M. Burgers, 'Experience and conceptual
     activity, a philosofical essay based upon
     the writings of A.N. Whitehead'
,
     MIT Press, 1965, pages 9-10.
4    E. Schrödinger, 'My view of the world',
     Cambridge UP, 1964.



















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(website version 2.30 - august 2007)


prologue

     Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun,
     mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun.

     Ein Architekt, der dieses sah,
     stand eines Abends plötzlich da -

     und nahm den Zwischenraum heraus
     und baute draus ein grosses Haus.

     Der Zaun indessen stand ganz dumm,
     mit Latten ohne was herum.

     Ein Anblick grässlich und gemein.
     Drum zog ihn der Senat auch ein.

     Der Architekt jedoch entfloh
     nach Afri- od- Ameriko.

     (Christian Morgenstern - Galgenlieder) 2


Modern physical and/or philosophical cosmologies disregard two important classes of evidence:
• On one side there are "the notions of our thinking, the notions of value, the notions of purpose and of intention, of responsibility and of having a task". (J.M. Burgers) 3
Dissatisfied with this situation, E. Schrödinger turned to scholastic Vedânta, in which all creation is thought to be illusory and all is Brahman. 4
• The second evidence disregarded is that all material records - such as particles, elements, stars, nebulae, the continental crust we walk on and all furniture, curtains and books in our living-rooms - result from processes that took place in the past.

No records result from processes still to come.

Some physical cosmologies forget the boards (of the `Lattenzaun').
They take all the `Zwischenraum' (space between the boards), with which they build a great abstract house.
They furnish this house with particles, strings and branes or with polyeders as pixels. Or they leave it empty and erase the spiritual phenomena and material records from their models. Then they need a life-line, to bring back some vitality and they need causality to give it direction.
First they disregard the evidence - and then have to smuggle it in again.

continued


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