Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, but that's still CH related.

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graham
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by graham »

CGH wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 9:51 am Reading between the lines I do sense some support for Gaia Week, so thanks to you all. I really value the contribution of Old Blues and your concern that current students get the opportunities they deserve.

I do plan to reach out to the folk at Knepp Estate to see what we can learn from them.

I hear your concerns about Rupert Sheldrake, however having booked him as a speaker in senior chapel and not a lecturer in science I don't feel the need to defend the decision further.

Having heard your concerns I have decided he will not be advertised in the programme as a keynote speaker, just one of many from a range of disciplines and ideologies.

I hope this allays any fears or sadness you may be feeling and reassures you of my best intentions in organising this week for our students.

With all best wishes

Christy
Absolutely, Christy. I also want to apologize for not emphasizing my support for the initiative as strongly as my concern regarding Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. Encouraging students to think about the big picture, regardless of whether it's politics, science or arts, is important and this is a great chance to accomplish that. I think your placement of Sheldrake as a speaker in chapel is appropriate, given the subject matter, and it sounds like the rest of the program is diverse. Thanks for listening to our concerns in such an open way.

If you do manage to get someone from Knepp to come along, please let us (or at least me) know. I have never visited but have read a lot about it and hope to check in out on one of my visits back to the UK in the near future. Its a fascinating project. A couple of friends of mine are staff scientists at Yellowstone National park and have been closely involved with monitoring ecosystem level responses to the reintroduction of gray wolves 25 years ago. Though smaller scale, the Knepp project seems to be yielding similar results, albeit due to the (re)introduction of herbivores rather than predators.
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by Mid A 15 »

Coincidentally an article mentioning Rupert Sheldrake in this week's Catholic Herald.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/i ... -practice/
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J.R.
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by J.R. »

Mid A 15 wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:34 pm Coincidentally an article mentioning Rupert Sheldrake in this week's Catholic Herald.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/i ... -practice/
Well - Interesting reading if nothing else.

(Now - Where can I join the flat earth society ????)
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by sejintenej »

Definitely interesting though I can go along with the doggy bit.
Sent it to a "very different" ex RC priest for his opinion.
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by MrEd »

Gaia Week.

A form of primitive animism. I thought it was a Church of England-based school, something to do with Edward VI as I recall.

Anyone who remembers Mr West might have thought at first glance that the Druids were taking over.
There is a long tradition of hostility to ideas that don't conform to established wisdom. Nevertheless original thinkers persevere in the face of such hostility.
It's sometimes called taking the mickey out of charlatans, if one is being polite.

Where is the proof of the hypothesis?
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by michael scuffil »

What is primitive about animism? It was believed in by the Romans whose culture we were taught to respect, and in the form of Shinto, by most Japanese, whose civilization seems quite advanced.

Incidentally I have no objection to Sheldrake's views whatever. My problem all along is that the ones he is best-known for are speculative rather than scientific, and that because this might attract the mockery of the unimaginative, he should not be associated with an undertaking (an Environment Week) which should have science, not speculation, at its heart. Ditto 'Gaia'.
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coliemore
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by coliemore »

This initiative can be evolved into a new environmental policy for CH based on hard science.
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by JustRob »

LongGone wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:06 pm Any theory based on parapsychology has to meet the “Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof” test. For decades, the Randi Foundation has had a standing offer of $1,000,000 for ANY proof of any such claim, with no takers.
I apologise for resurrecting a dormant topic but I seldom visit this forum and when I searched its entirety for "parapsychology" this was the only reference to it that was found and it appears to be disappointingly disparaging. The commonly used Randi prize criticism is itself invalidated in the preface to the highly informative and well reputed book "Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century" which I recommend to anyone wanting to form a comprehensively informed up to date view on the subject. Also, from my own experiences over the past ten years I would say that first hand experience of parapsychological phenomena within one's own mind is the most extraordinary proof that anyone can acquire and I actually feel sorry for those who have not recognised it in theirs. If only I had recognised its influence on my life much earlier instead of blindly making choices without knowing who or what was guiding me. That is the reason why I feel that we owe it to the upcoming generations at CH to enable them to be open-minded about all the possibilities in life and not confine them just to the ones with which we are comfortable. Ultimately we have to trust them to judge for themselves or else in a more enlightened future they may judge us for having constrained their thoughts.

When as a button grecian back in 1963 I controversially opted not to apply for a place at Cambridge but instead took a job in the City I could hardly have imagined that I may well have been guided by the future fortuitous life that resulted from this decision. However, when in 2011 I quite unexpectedly sat down to fluently write an entire novel without any prior intention to do so I tried to find out how and why I had done that and discovered over the next ten years that the culprit was undoubtedly typical parapsychological behaviour. Then when I attended a study day on conventional psychology I wrecked a conventional experiment by quite unintentionally using parapsychology to fulfil my own intentions. Oops.

When looking at global phenomena such as environmental changes and the relevance of Gaia and such it may also be worth looking at the remarkable Global Consciousness Project based at Princeton University which implies that our minds somehow collectively influence events. The "extraordinary proof" claimed on the website for the project apparently involves a probability of over a trillion to one.

So yes, in whatever context you care to place the debate, please expose pupils at CH to controversial subjects and let them decide for themselves.
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by JustRob »

Sorry, I forgot to mention that that aforementioned handbook on parapsychology also mentioned that of the romantic poets it was Coleridge who in particular made a clear distinction between Imagination, which he regarded as a higher faculty of the mind, and mere Fancy, i.e. fantasy. I would say that discovery stems from imagination while maybe just entertainment arises from fantasy. Distinguishing between the two is no simple task.

CH as a religious foundation involves its pupils in both the natural and the supernatural but there is between those two the whole domain of the preternatural, i.e. the natural behaving almost as though it were supernatural. Some of that science can explain and some it can't yet. Maybe one day science and religion will come to terms somewhere within that domain. For my part I am convinced that my psyche, my soul if you will, resides there with science on the one hand and possibly God on the other. Now isn't that a philosophy worth introducing to pupils?

Parapsychology and Coleridge connected in one post? Good heavens, whatever next?
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by Avon »

JustRob wrote: Sat Dec 11, 2021 4:08 pm
I apologise for resurrecting a dormant topic but I seldom visit this forum and when I searched its entirety for "parapsychology" this was the only reference to it that was found and it appears to be disappointingly disparaging.
By contrast I found it encouraging. Parapsychology is just woo and the older people get the more they indulge it. Hopefully pupils at CH are taught the scientific method and empiricism. That’s in the kitbag you need when you leave CH, not another layer of faux mysticism.

To a degree I’m echoing a master who shall remain nameless who in a rather ranty afternoon told us something along the lines of ‘this school has got it all wrong - don’t fear god, choose your own brotherhood to love, and nuts to the king.’
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Re: Gaia Week at Christ's Hospital

Post by sejintenej »

Avon wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 7:58 pm

By contrast I found it encouraging. Parapsychology is just woo and the older people get the more they indulge it. Hopefully pupils at CH are taught the scientific method and empiricism. That’s in the kitbag you need when you leave CH, not another layer of faux mysticism.

To a degree I’m echoing a master who shall remain nameless who in a rather ranty afternoon told us something along the lines of ‘this school has got it all wrong - don’t fear god, choose your own brotherhood to love, and nuts to the king.’
JustRob wrote
Now isn't that a philosophy worth introducing to pupils?[unquote]

Do you honestly believe that young pupils could understand all that stuff or would they merely obey what they are ordered to believe? I am currently trying to get between Peirce and Saussures' views on Semiotics which is more than enough for my tired old head
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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