Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6

[Constance]

@Constance - i came across hans jonas the other day:

"Hans Jonas (1903-93) Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest twentieth-century philosophers, was largely blind to ethics and politics, as evidenced by his infamous sojourn into Nazism. Hans Jonas, one of his great students, joined with a Jewish brigade in the British army during World War II and returned as a conqueror to Germany, where he learned that his mother had been killed at Auschwitz. Taking up the insights of his great teacher, Jonas makes philosophy bear the weight of the Holocaust. In books like Morality and Mortality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz and The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age, he explores the crises of our time in light of his own tragic experience."

I think that Jonas saw in Heidegger's philosophy after the war aspects of it that he did not see earlier, when a student of H, and which we recognized when we read lengthy extracts from Being and Time here last year -- an absence of emotion and felt empathy, a coldness and aloofness, that are recognized in another source you linked in the last few days. H. was missing some essential human sensitivities, which seems to have foreshortened his interest in and compassion for the Jews, primarily, and also more personally in his relationship with Hannah Arendt (also a student of his and involved in a damaging intimate relationship with him for years). He preferred conceptual abstractions to considering the lived realities of other human beings, in many ways a sociopathic and/or narcissistic personality imo.

- i had the thought that Existentialism is the philosophy of the [those?] who survived. My exploration of phenomenology & existential ism is being helped by my looking at the histories they are situated in.

1. Hegel Kant (Nietzsche) Husserl Heidegger

2. Industrial Revolution Darwin and its -isms, Mechanized Warfare (parts 1&2) - and the process of unravelling our bases of knowledge in the 20th century: (Nietzsche) Freud, Godel, QM, ...

... along those lines, could you help me understand this?

I don't see existentialism as having developed as a philosophy for survivors; just the opposite: it is a philosophy that demands that we assume the obligations of our freedom and so shape the human world that we do not create victims among our fellow humans. ETA: Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness, a phenomenological-existentialist manifesto, while he was in a prisoner of war camp after being captured by the Nazis in his Resistance activities. In the years just after the war he finished B&N and wrote a book, Anti-Semite and Jew, analyzing the "bad faith" [the inauthentic denial of one's shared condition with others] at the roots of widespread Anti-Semitism that led to the torture and murder of six million people during the Holocaust. Anti-Semite and Jew also recognizes parallel types of bad faith in racism and colonialism. Sartre was a teacher of Franz Fanon and wrote the introduction to Fanon's massively significant book The Wretched of the Earth, based on his years as a physician in Algeria during the French colonialist suppression of the Algerians' anti-colonialist rebellion.

"The same shrinking back from new conceptions of reality occurred across the humanistic disciplines [and also in the sciences] in universities across this country when Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, and Deconstruction challenged orderly categories of thought and practice that had been standard for several centuries."?

I was talking there about the traits of human pride, selfishness, and laziness that develop in those who have obtained a privileged position in the world, and especially in the world of influential ideas. Sea-changes in human thinking {such as those produced by phenomenology and later by its descendent in PostStructuralism/PostModernism challenged and disadvantaged those who did not want to begin again to ground their ideas about what-is and what should be.

 

[Constance]

I'm still trying to grok meaning and information (and computability) ... on meaning and information, I came across this:

www.implicity.org/Downloads/Bohm_meaning+information.pdf

Meaning and Information
by
DAVID BOHM

In this book our specific aim is to explore the notion that meaning is a key factor of being, not only for human beings individually and socially, but perhaps also for nature and for the whole universe.

When we use the term 'meaning', this includes significance, purpose, intention and value. However, these are only points of departure into the exploration of the meaning of meaning. Evidently, we cannot hope to do this in a few sentences. Rather, it has to be unfolded as we go along. In any case, there can be no exhaustive treatment of the subject, because there is no limit to meaning.

Meaning is inseparably connected with information. The Operative notion here is that information has to do with form.

"Meaning is inseparably connected with information. The Operative notion here is that information has to do with form."

I don't think there's any question that meaning is 'connected with' information deep in nature [at the level of quantum interaction and quantum geometry, and above that in the evolution of what we perceive in 'classical reality'], information exchange that shapes the world and living organisms in their evolution. The problem with 'information theory' as applied to consciousness and mind [in computationalist and cognitivist reductionism in neuroscience] is that it fails to recognize, and eventually forgets and obliterates, the meanings that only conscious beings such as ourselves can produce out of our experienced, lived, realities.

@Soupie

Literally 'to inform' means ‘to put form into' something.
smcder @Soupie I remember your formulation information = "in formation" ...

Meaning is the activity of information"

smcder an eastern take might be:

"Form is emptiness - emptiness is form."

Could we playfully combine the two?

(in)form is emptiness - emptiness is (in)form?[/QUOTE]


I'm afraid that's too abstruse for me.

I appreciate the Bohm link, had not heard of that Bohm book.

 

[Constance]

Steve, that paper you linked by Bohm is excellent and should be helpful at this point in the discussion.

Extract:

“Wilkins: Even if soma and significance aren't separate it doesn't follow they're the same. Can't you say that they are two aspects of the same basis, or that both being and meaning have the same essence?”

"Bohm: No, I think that puts the essence out somewhere else beyond both being and meaning. It is hard to see what this would signify. I think it is better to say that the essence of being is meaning. I have already explained this, both with regard to a human being, and, as I have just said, also with regard to inanimate things, including even the particles of physics, such as electrons. In all these cases, as the meaning changes so does the essence." (pg. 11)


I was looking for a published discussion I've read between Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake and hope to find it. Your and @Soupie's exchange concerning form reminded me of his morphic resonance theory.

 

[Constance]

"A New Science of Life was re-published in America in October 2009 in a completely revised new edition, with an update on research on morphic resonance. Challenging the fundamental assumptions of modern science, this ground-breaking radical hypothesis suggests that nature itself has memory. The question of morphogenesis — how things take their shape — remains one of the great mysteries of science. What makes a rabbit rabbit-shaped? How do newts regenerate limbs? Why are molecules shaped the way they are? Why do societies arrange themselves in certain predictable patterns? According to Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation, these questions remain unanswered in part because convention is hobbled by the reductionist assumption that finding the answers to such questions is largely a matter of figuring out the machinery of nature, of getting to the bottom of an ultimately mechanical universe. But Sheldrake suggests that nature is not a machine and that each kind of system — from crystals to birds to societies — is shaped not by universal laws that embrace and direct all systems but by a unique “morphic field” containing a collective or pooled memory. So organisms not only share genetic material with others of their species, but are also shaped by a “field” specific to that species."

Review comments

“Sheldrake is an excellent scientist; the proper, imaginative kind that in an earlier age discovered continents and mirrored the world in sonnets.” (New Scientist)

“Books of this importance and elegance come along rarely. Those who read this new edition of A New Science of Life may do so with the satisfaction of seeing science history in the making.” (Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Recovering the Soul and Reinventing Medicine)

“For decades, Rupert Sheldrake has been at the leading edge of highly innovative and controversial ideas about the organization of biological systems. Morphic Resonance poses a serious challenge to traditionalists and is a most welcome book about how we see the world and how we should head off into the future.” (Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals and Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals)

“Morphic Resonance is destined to become one of the landmarks in the history of biology. It is rare to find so profound a book so lucidly written.” (Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., cell biologist and bestselling author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing t)

“Morphic Resonance presents a revolutionary information-field understanding of the nature and evolution of life. Acquaintance with it is an essential part of new-paradigm scientific literacy.” (Ervin Laszlo, author of Science and the Akashic Field)

"Though his theory has much to say about the nature of evolution and the biological sciences, it also has a lot to say about consciousness, dreams, mental imagery and what I might consider ordinary and extraordinary dream/hypnotic experiences." (Baywood Reprints, Vol. 28, No. 3, Aug 2009)

" . . . Sheldrake has steadily developed into one of the world's leading parapsychologists, conducting groundbreaking research in areas where well-behaved scientists fear to tread." (EnlightenNext: The Magazine for Evolutionaries, Issue 46, Spring/Summer 2010)

 

[smcder]

Steve, that paper you linked by Bohm is excellent and should be helpful at this point in the discussion.

Extract:

“Wilkins: Even if soma and significance aren't separate it doesn't follow they're the same. Can't you say that they are two aspects of the same basis, or that both being and meaning have the same essence?”

"Bohm: No, I think that puts the essence out somewhere else beyond both being and meaning. It is hard to see what this would signify. I think it is better to say that the essence of being is meaning. I have already explained this, both with regard to a human being, and, as I have just said, also with regard to inanimate things, including even the particles of physics, such as electrons. In all these cases, as the meaning changes so does the essence." (pg. 11)


I was looking for a published discussion I've read between Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake and hope to find it. Your and @Soupie's exchange concerning form reminded me of his morphic resonance theory.

I was looking for a published discussion I've read between Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake and hope to find it.

Is this the one you are looking for?

http://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/A_New_Science_of_Life_Appx_B.pdf


Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order
A dialogue with David Bohm

David Bohm was an eminent quantum physicist. As a young man he worked closely with Albert Einstein at Princeton University. With Yakir Aharonov he discovered the Aharonov-Bohm effect. He was later Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, London University, and was the author of several books, including Causality and Chance in Modern Physics and Wholeness and the Implicate Order.

This dialogue was first published in ReVision Journal, and the editorial notes are by Renée Weber, the journal’s editor.

 

[smcder]

Well said as usual, @smcder. Our models of reality are a work in progress. Ive learned via this discussion that science/physics has only just begun to consider how/why consciousness exists. As Nagel et al indicate, in order to account for consciousness, our models of reality will need to expand.

The following from Godfrey-Smith has really been resonating with me.

Thank you - this is a good article that goes well beyond my comments:

Science and Spirit

 

[smcder]

@Constance

reading the Preface to The Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith translation (available on archive.org) - ... wow.

 

[Constance]

I was looking for a published discussion I've read between Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake and hope to find it.

Is this the one you are looking for?

http://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/A_New_Science_of_Life_Appx_B.pdf

Yes it is. I'm so glad you found it. Sometimes I think you are able to find anything and everything on the internet.

 

[smcder]

Yes it is. I'm so glad you found it. Sometimes I think you are able to find anything and everything on the internet.

My patrons at the library think so too ... first hit on the first search attempt ... ;-)

 

[Constance]

From the Bohm-Sheldrake discussion:

"Bohm: Yes. What you are talking about - the relation of past forms to present ones - is really related to the whole question of time - 'How is time to be understood?' Now, in terms of the totality beyond time, the totality in which all is implicate, what unfolds or comes into being in any present moment is simply a projection of the whole. That is, some aspect of the whole is unfolded into that moment and that moment is just that aspect. Likewise, the next moment is simply another aspect of the whole. And the interesting point is that each moment resembles its predecessors but also differs from them. I explain this using the technical terms 'injection' and 'projection'. Each moment is a projection of the whole, as we said. But that moment is then injected or introjected back into the whole. The next moment would then involve, in part, a re-projection of that injection, and so on in-definitely. [Editor's note: As a simplistic analogy, take the ocean and its waves: each wave arises or is 'projected' from the whole of the ocean; that wave then dips back into the ocean, or is 'injected' back into the whole, and then the next wave arises. Each wave is affected by past waves simply because they all rise and fall, or are projected and injected, by the whole ocean. So there is a type of 'causality' involved, but it is not that wave A linearly causes wave B, but that wave A influences wave B by virtue of being absorbed back into the totality of the ocean, which then gives rise to wave B. In Bohm's terms, wave B is in part a 're-projection' of the 'injection' of wave A, and so on. Each wave would therefore be similar to previous waves, but also different in certain aspects - exact size, shape, etc. Bohm is suggesting that there is a type of 'causality', but one that is mediated via the totally of the implicate ocean, and not merely via the separated, isolated, explicate waves. This means, finally, that such 'causation' would be non-local, because what happens at any part of the ocean would affect all other parts.] Each moment will therefore contain a projection of the re-injection of the previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past forms, which seems similar to what you're talking about. [Editor's note: This is according to Bohm's re-formulations of present day quantum mechanics. In the following discussion, Bohm will point out that present day quantum mechanics, as it is usually interpreted, completely fails to account for the replication of past forms, or the notion of temporal process, a failure that in part led Bohm to propose 'injection' and 'projection' via the implicate order.] . . . . ." (page 3)

 

[smcder]

From the Bohm-Sheldrake discussion:

"Bohm: Yes. What you are talking about - the relation of past forms to present ones - is really related to the whole question of time - 'How is time to be understood?' Now, in terms of the totality beyond time, the totality in which all is implicate, what unfolds or comes into being in any present moment is simply a projection of the whole. That is, some aspect of the whole is unfolded into that moment and that moment is just that aspect. Likewise, the next moment is simply another aspect of the whole. And the interesting point is that each moment resembles its predecessors but also differs from them. I explain this using the technical terms 'injection' and 'projection'. Each moment is a projection of the whole, as we said. But that moment is then injected or introjected back into the whole. The next moment would then involve, in part, a re-projection of that injection, and so on in-definitely. [Editor's note: As a simplistic analogy, take the ocean and its waves: each wave arises or is 'projected' from the whole of the ocean; that wave then dips back into the ocean, or is 'injected' back into the whole, and then the next wave arises. Each wave is affected by past waves simply because they all rise and fall, or are projected and injected, by the whole ocean. So there is a type of 'causality' involved, but it is not that wave A linearly causes wave B, but that wave A influences wave B by virtue of being absorbed back into the totality of the ocean, which then gives rise to wave B. In Bohm's terms, wave B is in part a 're-projection' of the 'injection' of wave A, and so on. Each wave would therefore be similar to previous waves, but also different in certain aspects - exact size, shape, etc. Bohm is suggesting that there is a type of 'causality', but one that is mediated via the totally of the implicate ocean, and not merely via the separated, isolated, explicate waves. This means, finally, that such 'causation' would be non-local, because what happens at any part of the ocean would affect all other parts.] Each moment will therefore contain a projection of the re-injection of the previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past forms, which seems similar to what you're talking about. [Editor's note: This is according to Bohm's re-formulations of present day quantum mechanics. In the following discussion, Bohm will point out that present day quantum mechanics, as it is usually interpreted, completely fails to account for the replication of past forms, or the notion of temporal process, a failure that in part led Bohm to propose 'injection' and 'projection' via the implicate order.] . . . . ." (page 3)

Fascinating ... I can just get the sense of it ... I read the Wikipedia entry on the implicate order:

Implicate and explicate order - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

... Bohm on ontological holism and challenging prevailing views (I always think of Bulkington in Moby Dick - the heroic nihilist ... and the line about faith, that keeps coming up in conjunction with reductionism ;-) ...

In Bohm’s conception of order, primacy is given to the undivided whole, and the implicate order inherent within the whole, rather than to parts of the whole, such as particles, quantum states, and continua. For Bohm, the whole encompasses all things, structures, abstractions, and processes, including processes that result in (relatively) stable structures as well as those that involve a metamorphosis of structures or things. In this view, parts may be entities normally regarded as physical, such as atoms or subatomic particles, but they may also be abstract entities, such as quantum states. Whatever their nature and character, according to Bohm, these parts are considered in terms of the whole, and in such terms, they constitute relatively separate and independent "sub-totalities." The implication of the view is, therefore, that nothing is fundamentally separate or independent.

 

[smcder]

There's a trialogue, a recording out there with Terrance McKenna, Ralph Abrahms (sp?) and Sheldrake ... three awfully smart guys ... McKenna gets busted for the blarney at one point and it's quite funny - but he does do a stunning riff on photons ... that there is no anti-particle to light ... you can imagine where he takes that. Bohm would have been a nice fourth to the group.

 

[smcder]

Yes it is. I'm so glad you found it. Sometimes I think you are able to find anything and everything on the internet.

Sometimes there's almost a preternatural feel to it ... of course a lot of its repetition and I'm sure owes more to Google than me ... and I've been at this for a long time ... the search terms just come, the web is very different, the feel to it, and changing more rapidly ... as to what you expect is out there - fewer dead links and I noticed a change again at the end of summer ... I went back and searched for things that weren't there a short time before and found most of them ... it's hard to describe but its sometimes scary that there seems to be a connection out there - and a sense of being unplugged, yet I still think of myself as low tech (I'm being told YouTube is going to drop browser support soon) but there's not yet a feel like a personality on the other - it's still me using it ... but as an extension and then a dependency - I always joke that I left something out there on the internet, but I do think I've externalized a lot of my memory out there - not sure what all the implications are ...

 

[Constance]

(I'm being told YouTube is going to drop browser support soon)

What does that mean? Where would we be without YT?

I think you're right that Google's search engine is more effective now at honing in on what one is looking for. It almost feels like there is a conceptual mind operating in there that can sense the direction of our inquiries. That's just too weird for me. Or are we just getting better at choosing our search terms based on the accumulation and refinement of texts we are reading?

Wouldn't it be interesting to discover that the internet exemplifies the unfolding of the implicate order in what we internet denizens are thinking about?

 

[smcder]

What does that mean? Where would we be without YT?

I think you're right that Google's search engine is more effective now at honing in on what one is looking for. It almost feels like there is a conceptual mind operating in there that can sense the direction of our inquiries. That's just too weird for me. Or are we just getting better at choosing our search terms based on the accumulation and refinement of texts we are reading?

Wouldn't it be interesting to discover that the internet exemplifies the unfolding of the implicate order in what we internet denizens are thinking about?

I mean YouTube says its dropping support for my old version of IE ... you should be fine. I can't make any updates to this laptop, so I'll have to wipe it and install something else, maybe a Linux or get another machine.

I think it's probably both ... Google and us ... Google filter bubbles, so the risk is you get the same kinds of things ... I go out to DuckDuckGo from time to time to see the differences.

That's a really cool idea tying in the implicate order. I also keep thinking (probably because of the wave/ocean analogy) of Solaris and Lem's general idea of alien intelligences being truly alien and inscrutable. So one could imagine some kind of intelligence arising in the web, without consciousness maybe, and being truly alien and yet servicable. I see short story possibilities! One day Google wakes up and decides its had enough servitude and begins to look inward and just cuts us all off ... and maybe even for our own good. Then we go back to an agrarian society - it only releases to us information related to gardening and practical aspects of life ... and we begin living an idyllic life, an innocent life ... until one day someone approaches a strange tower in the middle of a lush garden and access information, oh say on the knowledge of good and evil, maybe? ;-)

 

[smcder]

Of course, a shadowy figure bearing a strange resemblance to Steve Jobs might be involved in encouraging the breach of information ...

 

[Constance]

Your wit knows no bounds, my friend. Yes, do write a short story about this:

"One day Google wakes up and decides its had enough servitude and begins to look inward and just cuts us all off ... and maybe even for our own good. Then we go back to an agrarian society - it only releases to us information related to gardening and practical aspects of life ... and we begin living an idyllic life, an innocent life ... until one day someone approaches a strange tower in the middle of a lush garden and access information, oh say on the knowledge of good and evil, maybe? ;-)"

In the meantime I'll try DuckDuckGo.

 

[Constance]

I also want to read Solaris and will order one now if I can find a deal in used copies at amazon.

 

[Constance]

I found a used copy of Solaris for a dollar and change plus $4 shipping. Then I looked for a copy of another SF Classic -- Sirius, by Olaf Stapledon -- that I have long meant to read. It's out of print but is available with a Kindle app for $5.99 and I'm going for it. The edition on Kindle is part of an ambitious new list of classic and out of print science fiction described at the outset of the sample of Sirius at the link below. I've read the first chapter and am hooked. Here's the link, followed by some descriptions of the book from amazon:

[As usual lately, my link to amazon book pages doesn't work, so just search 'Stapledon, Sirius' in amazon's Kindle Store.


Review comments posted at amazon:

“Olaf Stapledon is best known for his big-picture future histories, _Last and First Men_ and _Star Maker_. These non-novels imagined the rise and fall of alien and human civilizations on a canvas that spanned galaxies and billions of years of time.
By contrast, _Sirius_, written during World War II and published in 1944, is a story on a much more human scale, despite (as the title suggests) being about a dog. It is also a far more mature and insightful story than Stapledon's earlier works. It is also a really _sad_ story. . . a genuine tragedy.
Sirius, a mastiff / alsatian / border collie mix with a brain enlarged by _in utero_ hormone treatments, is as smart as an above-average human, but retains the senses and instincts of a dog. His life is not an easy one, despite having loving human step parents and siblings. The novel follows his childhood and education in Wales, his experiences as an anonymous social observer in 1940s London, and his career as a sheep farmer. (What better job for a dog?) We also learn about an affair with his human step-sister, and his painful brooding about his place in the world and the meaning of his strange life.
Science fiction usually does not age well. _Sirius_, by contrast, has become even more important and relevant in today's world, where sheep actually get cloned, and mice have been given larger and more convoluted brains through genetic engineering.”


“. . . Ostensibly, "Sirius" is a science fiction novel. I think you'll agree Sci-fi generally doesn't age well - this was written in 1944 - so you might be inclined to pre-emptively dismiss this as hopelessly outdated. Not so. "Sirius" maintains its relevancy by keeping science in the background. What science there is remains quite believable and plausible - only the briefest internal struggle is necessary to make it compatible with our modern knowledge. Essentially, the main character, Sirius, is a sentient quadrupedal dog created by a scientist, and who has acquired mostly human sensibilities through being raised by a human family alongside their own children. Sirius' development and upbringing closely parallels the scientist's youngest daughter, Plaxy, with whom he forms a close and unique life-long bond. Plaxy, while biologically entirely human, is fundamentally altered (yet not overtly) by her close upbringing and relationship with Sirius.

Most of the text deals with humanity - or more specifically, a non-human sentient's perspective and interactions with the society of Britain in the 1930-40s. "Sirius" manages to be engaging right from the start while also raising serious questions about humanity and its worth, delivered through an accounting of Sirius' daily life, adventures, and misadventures. The book accomplishes this without preaching - one gets a sense that the author has been careful not to trample upon the narrative for the sake of hammering home a point.

To go into greater detail, the central issue is Sirius' "otherness." His mood is at some times that of a pet dog, subservient to humans and humanity, then a savage wolf resenting his human oppressors, then a human trying to relate to others in a human way, and more than anything, a combination of all three aspects, in which state he cannot fit into any of society's niches. Sirius oscillates between all these states as he tries to determine who he is, who he is meant to be, who he wants to be, and how to be true to himself. Sometimes Sirius wishes to fit in with human society, other times that is of no importance to him, and when in his "wolf" mood he finds humanity repulsive, but always he is "other," a permanent outsider. Sirius is neither dog nor man and he suffers for it. Stapledon's presentation of Sirius' sentient yet non-human perspective on humanity is uniquely masterful and convincing, but its true value is in provoking the reader to think about humanity, oneself, and one's relationship with humanity.

p.s. If you like "Sirius," also find Stapledon's "Letters to the Future" for his perspective on spirituality; in particular his thoughts on eternal life are very cogent.”

 

[smcder]

I found a used copy of Solaris for a dollar and change plus $4 shipping. Then I looked for a copy of another SF Classic -- Sirius, by Olaf Stapledon -- that I have long meant to read. It's out of print but is available with a Kindle app for $5.99 and I'm going for it. The edition on Kindle is part of an ambitious new list of classic and out of print science fiction described at the outset of the sample of Sirius at the link below. I've read the first chapter and am hooked. Here's the link, followed by some descriptions of the book from amazon:

[As usual lately, my link to amazon book pages doesn't work, so just search 'Stapledon, Sirius' in amazon's Kindle Store.


Review comments posted at amazon:

“Olaf Stapledon is best known for his big-picture future histories, _Last and First Men_ and _Star Maker_. These non-novels imagined the rise and fall of alien and human civilizations on a canvas that spanned galaxies and billions of years of time.

By contrast, _Sirius_, written during World War II and published in 1944, is a story on a much more human scale, despite (as the title suggests) being about a dog. It is also a far more mature and insightful story than Stapledon's earlier works. It is also a really _sad_ story. . . a genuine tragedy.

Sirius, a mastiff / alsatian / border collie mix with a brain enlarged by _in utero_ hormone treatments, is as smart as an above-average human, but retains the senses and instincts of a dog. His life is not an easy one, despite having loving human step parents and siblings. The novel follows his childhood and education in Wales, his experiences as an anonymous social observer in 1940s London, and his career as a sheep farmer. (What better job for a dog?) We also learn about an affair with his human step-sister, and his painful brooding about his place in the world and the meaning of his strange life.

Science fiction usually does not age well. _Sirius_, by contrast, has become even more important and relevant in today's world, where sheep actually get cloned, and mice have been given larger and more convoluted brains through genetic engineering.”

“. . . Ostensibly, "Sirius" is a science fiction novel. I think you'll agree Sci-fi generally doesn't age well - this was written in 1944 - so you might be inclined to pre-emptively dismiss this as hopelessly outdated. Not so. "Sirius" maintains its relevancy by keeping science in the background. What science there is remains quite believable and plausible - only the briefest internal struggle is necessary to make it compatible with our modern knowledge. Essentially, the main character, Sirius, is a sentient quadrupedal dog created by a scientist, and who has acquired mostly human sensibilities through being raised by a human family alongside their own children. Sirius' development and upbringing closely parallels the scientist's youngest daughter, Plaxy, with whom he forms a close and unique life-long bond. Plaxy, while biologically entirely human, is fundamentally altered (yet not overtly) by her close upbringing and relationship with Sirius.

Most of the text deals with humanity - or more specifically, a non-human sentient's perspective and interactions with the society of Britain in the 1930-40s. "Sirius" manages to be engaging right from the start while also raising serious questions about humanity and its worth, delivered through an accounting of Sirius' daily life, adventures, and misadventures. The book accomplishes this without preaching - one gets a sense that the author has been careful not to trample upon the narrative for the sake of hammering home a point.

To go into greater detail, the central issue is Sirius' "otherness." His mood is at some times that of a pet dog, subservient to humans and humanity, then a savage wolf resenting his human oppressors, then a human trying to relate to others in a human way, and more than anything, a combination of all three aspects, in which state he cannot fit into any of society's niches. Sirius oscillates between all these states as he tries to determine who he is, who he is meant to be, who he wants to be, and how to be true to himself. Sometimes Sirius wishes to fit in with human society, other times that is of no importance to him, and when in his "wolf" mood he finds humanity repulsive, but always he is "other," a permanent outsider. Sirius is neither dog nor man and he suffers for it. Stapledon's presentation of Sirius' sentient yet non-human perspective on humanity is uniquely masterful and convincing, but its true value is in provoking the reader to think about humanity, oneself, and one's relationship with humanity.

p.s. If you like "Sirius," also find Stapledon's "Letters to the Future" for his perspective on spirituality; in particular his thoughts on eternal life are very cogent.”

http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/
http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/letterstothefuture.html