In modeling atmospheric convection in the 1960s, a meteorologist and mathematician at MIT, Edward Lorenz, came up with a mathematical model showing that small perturbations in input parameters result in huge deviations in output, the “butterfly effect.” In other words, in theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in China could bring about a storm in New York City. This is another way to express sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Getting up two minutes late, one may end up missing the bus, which in turn costs one the job interview. As a result of pushing the brake pedal one second earlier a person’s life can be saved. Such slight changes in daily actions are actually signs of how tiny changes are relevant with our lives and how sensitive the future is to the present. Such dependence is called nonlinearity and many scientific problems, such as the well-known Navier-Stokes equations, have been awaiting a solution because of this complexity. In contrast to a deterministic approach, which is based on the idea that the knowledge of the past enables one to make future prediction, a nonlinear (or chaotic) approach claims that the future is not that straightforward.

In contrast to what we used to believe, chaos does not mean complete disorder. Some complicated long-term events may have a hidden order. Being bound by time prevents us from knowing the future. It is in this sense, that time can be said to be another dimension, so that together with the other three, our living environment is formed. To be able to control or observe time-dependent events, the individual of this four-dimensional space may need to move outside of time. To understand this idea better we may analyze the well-known butterfly example. In Figure 1, the behaviors of three different variables are shown on the horizontal time axis, where they are very irregular, complicated and chaotic. However, when the same motions are transformed into another space where time is hidden, what we see is an interesting order between these three variables.

Chaos and spiritual life

The human being’s spiritual life is also sensitive to small changes. We are continuously exposed to our personal desires and Satan’s whispers. One small sin is an invitation to worse ones which eventually accumulate and trouble the soul. Similarly, every good deed, no matter how small, has the potential to become a ticket to paradise. It just depends upon the situation in which it was performed and the level of sincerity in our heart. Giving water to a thirsty dog is not an extraordinary act, but in the particular case mentioned in a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, this sincere act was significant enough to purify a very sinful person, while another went to hell because of letting a cat starve. In another tradition, the Prophet says, “When a person first commits a sin, it falls as a black dot in (the clean slate of) his heart; if he refrains, repents, and seeks forgiveness, it is however erased; if, on the other hand, he were to persist in sin, the dot will gradually expand until it covers the entire heart.” The Prophet then explained, “This is the state of sealing the hearts that God warned (us) of in the Qur’an: Nay the sins they have accumulated have covered their hearts like a seal” (Mutaffifin 83:14). Likewise, in his Risale-i Nur collection Nursi says, “Sin, penetrating the heart, will blacken and darken it until it extinguishes the light of belief. Within each sin is a path leading to unbelief. Unless that sin is swiftly obliterated by seeking God’s pardon, it will grow from a worm into a snake that bites the heart.”1 Likewise, initial tiny scruples can grow exponentially and destroy hope in the heart in an unexpected way. Nursi explains this in the following way:

O you afflicted with involuntary evil thoughts and fancies, such things resemble a misfortune. The more you dwell on them, the more they grow. If you ignore them, they dwindle away; if you exaggerate them, they swell; if you belittle them, they die down. If you fear them, they become grave and make you ill; if you do not fear them, they become slight and remain hidden. If you do not know their real nature, they persist and become established; if you recognize their nature, they disappear.

. . .

Satan first casts a doubt into the heart. If the heart does not admit it, he offers a blasphemy and causes the mind to recall some unclean memories and pictures, some ugly scenes that resemble blasphemy. This causes the heart to despair. People experiencing such thoughts think that they are acting wrongfully toward their Lord and so feel great agitation and anxiety. To free themselves, they flee from the Divine Presence and want to plunge into heedlessness and forgetfulness.2

From the human being’s perspective, each time-dependent event can have very complicated consequences but it always bears God’s signature and His divine order. He is the only One Who knows the future, as stated in the verse: “They said, ‘Why hasn’t a miracle come down to him from his Lord?’ Say, ‘Only God knows the future.’ Therefore, wait, and I will wait along with you” (Yunus 10:20). It may not be possible to see tomorrow, but we should be aware that each small change we make affects our future. Many scholars lived in such a way that they were always carefully watching their hearts to take immediate action on small deeds or scruples. For every event or option we face, the decision is up to us to, like whether we smoke or not, whether we lie or not, whether we get up early or not and so on. These sets of small decisions play a role in terms of the future we do not know. Although they are small, they have such a big impact and should not be underestimated. Even reading this article was one of these small things you had the choice to do or not to do!

Notes

1. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Flashes, The Second Flash, Sözler Publications, Istanbul:2000, p. 22.

2. Nursi, The Words, Twenty-first Word – Second Station, The Light, Inc., NJ: 2005, p. 288.

References

Gleick, J., Chaos: Making a New Science, New York: Penguin.

Lorenz, E. N. “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.” J. Atmos. Sci. 20, 130-141, 1963.

Strogatz, S., Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. Perseus Publishing.

]]> https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/beware-of-others/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://107.21.79.195/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/beware-of-others/ In My Fair Lady, a satirical movie based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Henry Higgins makes a wager with his friend that within six months he can transform a coarse Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady who can take her place in high society. After making his bet, Higgins starts his experiment simply by getting her to have a bath and change her dirty clothes. Immediately afterwards, he begins working on her vulgar accent; as he believes that diction is what really sets the classes apart. He has no doubt that as soon as she acquires perfect upper-class diction, she will be ready to deceive others and disclaim her plebeian origins.

Upon brief contemplation of the relationship between language and identity, it is not easy to deem Higgins totally unjust in classifying people according to their diction, since there is a strong relationship between the language we use and the personal and social identity we have. A Harvard graduate, who also studied at Columbia and the Sorbonne, David S. Thomson, confirms this: “No one can speak without broadcasting his origins, his role in life, and ultimately his identity. For the language that every individual uses is the product of the entire social forces that affect his behavior: the society in which he lives, his class, his occupation, and his own unique experience“ (p.109).

Here, Thompson summarizes how we acquire our language, verifying that to classify people based on their way of speaking is not completely inappropriate.

On the other hand, how we are perceived in the eyes of others, namely our perceived identity, is also shaped by the language we use. In other words, just as language is a product of our social and personal identity; our identity is formed and molded in accordance with the way we use language. On the whole, language is a distinctive characteristic that reveals the social status of people and affects who they are and whom they are seen to be. Most people automatically start judging a person favorably or unfavorably as soon as they hear them talking and when they detect a certain kind of accent or dialect, it is usually enough to deduce whether they belong to a higher or lower status in society. According to the studies of Colin Baker, the author of Attitudes and Language, “people’s attitudes toward dialects and their speakers consistently reveal that speakers of the standard dialect are considered more intelligent, better looking, and wealthier than speakers of nonstandard dialects” (in Dubrow and Gidney p.109).

Even so, there is not always a direct parallelism between people’s accents and the personal and social identities they have. Neither classifying a person who speaks with a standard accent as educated and intelligent, nor labeling others whose speech have traces of a non-standard language variations as unlettered and substandard would be right. Furthermore, when the linguistic characteristics of people are manipulated in order to produce stereotypes based on their national or social affiliations, it turns into an issue that needs careful attention.

Noticeable examples of such stereotypical representations are not scarce in many animated movies, in which language variations are widely used as a quick way to build character and affirm stereotype. They are frequently used to represent national tensions through portrayal of villains and not-so-likeable characters. In a broader picture, it would be true to argue that many movie producers use language variations in a stereotypical fashion which teaches children to discriminate ethnocentrically and maintains the status quo by creating fear of “the other.”

Due to the nature of animation, the majority of animated movies rely heavily on language to mark characters’ personalities. To build characters and convey their messages, producers basically make use of two kinds of language variations: foreign accented English and a range of English dialects. Linguistically, Julia R. Dubrow and Calvin L. Gidney define foreign accent as “the product of the interference of one linguistic system with another language system” while defining dialect as “simply, a variety -any variety- of a language.” Yet, the outcome of language variations is more significant than their actual meanings. Since these language variations are labeled as non-standard forms in a language system, they do not enjoy equal prestige and are associated with low quality. Upon their studies on evaluation of accented speech, Josiane F. Hamers, a professor of psycholinguistics, and Michel H. A. Blanc, who is an emeritus reader in applied linguistics, conclude that “any accent different from the accepted norm is less positively evaluated than the norm itself” (p.224). On the other hand, numerous researches have shown that standard-accented people are rated relatively highly for intelligence, education, wealth, and kindheartedness as opposed to people who speak with foreign accents and dialects. At this point, a question comes to mind; if there are standard-accented people, then what is a standard accent? In order to clarify what standard language is, it is practical to quote Dubrow and Gidney, as it is possible to find an answer to this question embedded within one of their sentences: “Generally, those dialects spoken by people who enjoy social prestige, power, and wealth are more favored than the dialects of people of more limited power, wealth, and social prestige; the former come to be known as the standard dialect.” It is noticeable that they do not define standard dialect in a linguistic manner. Instead, they point to a common acceptance of what constitutes norms of language variations in the society in relation to socioeconomic status. Regarding the power of pronunciation varieties, another authority in the area of sociophonology, Rosina Lippi-Green, even claims that accent is “a litmus test for exclusion,” supporting the argument that language variations are not just varieties of language but have more profound meanings concerning the identities of people (p.64). In our case, such linguistic characteristics, namely foreign accents and dialects, are used to representthe superiority, inferiority, amiability, and unfriendliness of characters.

A significant aspect of animated movies that should not be overlooked is studied by Harold Schiffman, a professor from University of Pennsylvania. He argues that the accents used in some animated movies are usually “non-authentic”-differing from the accent that would be used in real life- and that they are present to create an effect. That is, characters in the movies do not speak with a non-standard dialect or foreign-accented English because the characters in the movie have different origins. On the contrary, the linguistic variations are usually manipulated to build stereotypes or to indicate villain or hero status.

In order to illustrate the claim that producers use language varieties non-authentically to create an effect in its animated movies, we can provide some solid examples. For instance, racial stereotyping is evident in the movie Aladdin, which takes place in a mythical Arabian Kingdom. Throughout the film, evil characters are depicted with long beards, dark skins, and wicked laughs as well as with heavy Arab accents, whereas the lovable characters, Aladdin and Jasmine, are drawn light-skinned, and attractive, and, interestingly, Aladdin and Jasmine sound all-American. Noticing the non-authentic use of accents in the movie, Yousef Salem, a former spokesperson for the South Bay Islamic Association, accuses the film of being discriminatory against Arabs:

All of the bad guys have beards and large, bulbous noses, sinister eyes and heavy accents, and they’re wielding swords constantly. Aladdin doesn’t have a big nose; he has a small nose. He doesn’t have an accent. What makes him nice is they’ve given him this American character, [. . .] I have a daughter who says she’s ashamed to call herself an Arab, and it’s because of things like this. (in Giroux)

As in the movie Aladdin, negative portrayals of Arabs build stereotypes that affect child viewers. They learn that bad guys sound a certain way, look a certain way, and come from a certain part of the world. According to Lippi-Green, such depictions teach children “to assign values on the basis of variation in language linked to race, ethnicity, and homeland” (p.80). Undoubtedly, the accents of characters in the movie are not chosen randomly. On the contrary, they are present in their exact places to create a certain effect.

Another instance of stereotyping clearly shows itself in the movie The Lion King, which was the highest grossing film of the year in 1994. In the film, while the powerful and noble Lion King Mufasa speaks with a mainstream US English accent, his brother Scar, who is evil and plans the murder of his brother so as to be the king, has a heavy British accent. As the story takes place in Africa, authentically, both characters should have the same African dialect or they could both speak with mainstream US English without any implication as to the characters’ origins or characteristics. Conversely, the voiceover for Scar is provided by Jeremy Irons, who has a distinctive British accent, whereas the voice over for Mufasa is provided by James Earl Jones, who speaks with a mainstream US English accent. Scar’s British accent is there to draw audience attention, to help children distinguish his character as villainous in contrast to that of Mufasa, who has characteristics of a hero. Not only does such a portrayal reinforce ethnocentrism-imposing the idea that the one who speaks with standard American English, namely Americans, are superior to others-but also highlights the stereotype that the British are rather snobbish through Scar’s arrogant manners and feelings of superiority towards the rest of the animals in the movie. Another example from the same movie is that the malicious and sinister hyenas do not have standard American English accent although they live in the same jungle. Henry A. Giroux from Pennsylvania State University states that “racially coded language is evident in The Lion King where [. . .] Shenzi and Banzai, the despicable hyena stormtroopers speak through the voices of Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin in racially coded accents that take on the nuances of the discourse of a decidedly urban, black and Latino youth.” It is an undeniable fact that these dialects are chosen on purpose in order to represent the villainous hyenas as racial and ethnic minorities speaking with an inner-city street dialect.

Yet another example of stereotypical depiction comes from Lady and the Tramp. In the movie, specific accents are manipulated in order to create an effect in the minds of the viewers. With chopsticks in their hands, cymbals on their heads and with their distinct accents, the Siamese cats represent Asians. Disgracefully, the cats are depicted as sinister, cunning, manipulative, and treacherous, creating stereotypes suggesting the Yellow Peril. Furthermore, it would be unjust to overlook the portrayal of Native Americans as savages in both Peter Pan and Pocahontas.

Although such stereotypical depictions are not confined solely to these animated movies, the abovementioned examples are more than adequate to support the argument that subtle ways of creating fear of “the other” and undermining dialogue and mutual acceptance is widespread in children’s animated movies. Consequently, children grow up with groundless stereotypes that seep into their conscious as well as their subconscious. But what exactly are the ramifications of stereotyping? Why should we be cautious about it? Stereotyping, which has detrimental outcomes, is defined by Stuart Price as making simplistic and usually negative social identifications of certain groups, in which the “supposed attributes of the group are applied to all those identified-rightly or wrongly-as group members” (in Barton). Moreover, According to Ron and Suzanne Wong Scollon, stereotyping also has social and political ends. In their book Intercultural Communication, they write:

Characteristics of the group are not only overgeneralized to apply to each member of the group but they are also taken to have some exaggerated negative or positive value. These values are then taken as arguments to support social or political relationships in regard to members of the groups. (p.168)

Unhappily, at a very young age, due to watching such movies and other social influences, children learn to stereotype, and the images constructed in their minds may affect their perspective throughout their lives. As a matter of fact, not only negative stereotyping but also positive stereotyping is harmful because although it seems to be innocent, categorizing people confines our perception of others and distorts reality. All in all, stereotypes “blind us to others” as well as limiting our understanding of intercultural dialogue through impeding communication and mutual understanding between groups of people (Scollon p.169).

In addition to producing prejudice against “the other” in the minds of children, another effect of non-authentic language variations is causing low self-esteem for young viewers with non-standard accents. It is very clear in certain animated movies that language variations are heavily used to determine hero versus villain status. That is, the bad guys are made distinctive through their non-standard accents while the friendly characters speak with standard American accents. Statistics show that of the characters who speak Standard English, 73.5 % are positive characters while only 19.9 % are negative. On the other hand, only 37 % of the representations of persons with foreign accents are positive (Lippi-Green p.92). Obviously, producers do not give specific accents to specific characters by accident. In contrast, this data conveys a message regarding the deliberateness of their preferences. There is also evidence that in animated movies mothers and fathers are most likely to have mainstream accents while foreign accents are usually assigned to “villains, servants, and silly characters,” and negatively portrayed characters in some way (Wynn). Such discriminatory representation may cause minority children to grow up with the idea that some positions are open to them in the world while some are not. They see heroes, lead characters, caring mothers, and good fathers all speak with mainstream US English accents in the movies, and observe that non-standard accented characters are negatively portrayed, which eventually affects their self-esteem. On the other hand, for American youth it produces prejudice against other racial and ethnic groups. It creates hard-to-forget stereotyped images of foreigners in their minds and teaches them to discriminate.

It is reasonable to claim that by indicating negative characters with foreign accents, another intention of producers’ is to create fear of “the other.” Interestingly enough, there is a strong correlation between the foreign policy of the US and the choice of foreign accents to indicate evilness. According to the article “The good, the bad, and the foreign: The use of dialect in children’s animated television”, during the late 1990s, villains were noticeably Russian, Eastern European, or German, reflecting the Cold War and World War II alliances. The Lady and the Tramp was released in 1955, soon after the Korean War and in the middle of a cold war fear with China. Accordingly, the negative representation of the aforementioned Siamese cats reflected the fear of the “Yellow Peril.” Nowadays, Arab characters are also having their share of a similar political and ideological stratagem under the impression of reality. James Monaco, the author of How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia, discusses the relationship between movies and politics impressively. In his book, after emphasizing that there is no film that does not display a political nature even though it might seem trivial, Monaco points out to the power of film “to recreate reality” through producing “a fantasy of [its] own that eventually comes to be accepted as real” (p.262). Producers use this specific power of films to maintain the status quo and to create fear of the other through stereotypical representations of racial and ethnic groups. Lippi-Green is also in agreement with this claim as she states, “a study of accents in animated cartoons over time is likely to reveal the way linguistic stereotypes mirror the evolution of national fears” (85). Unfortunately, through animated movies, children are exposed to such ideological strategies and they fall prey to these ungrounded-but strongly established-fears.

In addition, while they are raised to be scared of “the other,” children who grow up with the idea that the others are “deviant, inferior, unintelligent, and a threat to be overcome” (Giroux) become increasingly ethnocentric. Under the influence of ethnocentrism, children think themselves superior to other cultures and cannot feel empathy for others. This in turn leads to a lack of intercultural communication and dialogue between nations as well as individuals. Yet again, Lippi-Green presents a concluding argument regarding the unfavorable effects of animated movies on children, “what children learn from the entertainment industry is to be comfortable with ‘same’ and to be wary about ‘other’, and that language is a prime and ready diagnostic for this division between what is approachable and what is best left alone”(p.103).

Since the stereotypical portrayal of characters construct a skewed view of foreign people, children learn to be suspicious about other groups of people.

The main risk of misrepresentation of “the others” in the animated movies lies in the fact that for a great number of children, the film industry is a key socializing agent. In real life, children usually do not have many opportunities to get to know people of other ethnic or national origins. Therefore, a great deal of information they have comes from what they see in the movies.

Besides, they do not watch them with skepticism; in other words, they trust what they see and their “tabula rasa” is filled with distorted and biased facts whose nature is determined by the producers. A quick glance at the statistics reveals how enormous and far-reaching the effect of animated movies is on the lives of children. According to the internet movie database, The Lion King and Aladdin as well as Beauty and the Beast ranked among the one hundred most profitable films ever made, by the number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. Adding to that the number of rentals and video interactive games leaves us with astonishing figures. However, behind the innocent fantasy world animated movies build up, there is a noteworthy reality that awaits young viewers.

As a result of stereotypical representations, children get positive or negative messages about the characters, and they apply them in real life to judge others on the basis of their accent, appearance, or national origin. Therefore, I suggest we be more mindful about the effects movies will have on young viewers and stay wide-awake while our younger siblings or children are watching their favorite animated movies. What we innocently believe to be a fantasy world might have serious effects for the young viewers and their worldviews later on. I believe we would be better to teach children to beware of stereotypical representations instead of teaching them to beware of “the others.”

Safiye Unal-Yigit is a sociologist living in Houston, Texas.

References

Barton, Geoff. Homepage. 11 Nov. 2004. 19 Nov. 2004. http://geoffbarton.co.uk/index.php

Dubrow, Julia R., and Calvin L. Gidney. “The Good, the Bad, and the Foreign: the Use of Dialect in Children’s Animated Television.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. May 1988: 105–120. General Reference Center Gold. Library, Houston Community College. 22 Oct. 2004. www.galegroup.com

Giroux, Henry A. Animating Youth: the Disnification of Children’s Culture. 1 Nov. 2004. www.neiu.edu/~ermeiner/girouxdis.htm

Hamers, Josiane F., and Michel H. A. Blanc. Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge, 1997.

Monaco, James. How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Schiffman, Harold F. “Language and Authenticity.” Home Page. 10 Oct. 2004 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

Scollon, Ron, and Suzanne Wong Scollon. Language in Society 21: Intercultural Communication. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1995.

Thomson, David S. Language. New York: Time-Life, 1975.

Wynn, Mary E. R. Linguistics. Course home page. 2003. Dept. of Linguistics. California State

U. 20 Nov. 2004. http://hss.fullerton.edu/linguistics/cln/spring01_articles/wynn-eng.htm

Halima was making her shopping list when the door bell started ringing wildly like there was a fire somewhere. She dropped the pen and went to the door. Yes, she guessed right! Her fist grader had returned from school. “What’s the matter, son? Is that the proper way to ring the bell? Your baby brother is sleeping. Your grandpa is performing the noon prayer. Do you want to disturb everybody?” she asked, frustrated that all the shopping items had fled her mind.

“Mom, Mom,” her son replied in great excitement as if he had not heard a word of her reproach, “Can you buy me a Change-former? Pleeeease?” he begged with urgency. “A what?” She was all ears now. “A change former is a robot machine. It flies like a plane, it floats like a boat and it goes like a car too. Gabriel has one and it’s so cool!” Halima could tell his fascination by his failure to take a breath.

“Oh, peer pressure and techno-mania,” complained Halima to herself. She took a deep breath knowing her words might throw her son into a fit. “Ahmed, listen dear. They are called transformers and you already have plenty of toys.” “But Mom,…” he tried to object. “No buts,” she insisted. “Now go to your room, change your clothes and sit with Grandpa until I come back from shopping.” “Can I come with you too?” He made one last attempt.

Perhaps he could sway her if only he could show her how cool the Change-formers were. “No,” Halima answered firmly. She knew better than to bring him along just to face a possible tantrum in public. She put on her beige jacket, adjusted her brown scarf in front of the mirror and turned toward him saying, “Now, be a good boy!” She kissed him on his cheek as she hurried to the door avoiding his angry eyes. The door slammed as if to reinforce the rejection. “Thank God,” she took a deep breath, “we didn’t face a storm this time.” The boy disappointedly went to his grandpa’s room.

Ahmed found him sitting in a crisscross position with his hands opened, palms up and his lips in gentle motion. Ahmed was immediately soothed by the serenity of the supplication, although he did not know what his grandpa was asking for. He sat in his lap and put his little pink hands over his grandfather’s large bony ones. He wished his grandpa would pray for his mom to miraculously change her mind and come home with a Changeformer in the shopping bag. Grandpa finished his supplication and rubbed the palms of his hands over his face, and then kissed Ahmed’s hands with great love. Ahmed turned toward his grandpa and poured out his heart, confident that Grandpa could fix any problem whatever it was. Grandpa listened carefully. “Ahmed, my dear, you already have many transformers.” “I do? Where?” he asked anxiously. “Look out of the window,” whispered Grandpa. Ahmed looked hard and in disappointment said, “There’s no transformer out there, just the apple tree.” “Exactly!” exclaimed Grandpa, challenging Ahmed to think harder. “I don’t understand.”

Ahmed was puzzled. “Don’t you remember? That tree in the winter was all naked and looked dead. Two weeks ago it was in full bloom; now it is covered with green leaves. Isn’t that a transformer?” Ahmed smiled at the analogy but he wasn’t ready to surrender. “Trees don’t move,” he replied. “Ok then, bring me the family album.” Ahmed got up and went to the bookshelf wishing he could read Grandpa’s mind. He got the big album and sat back in his Grandpa’s lap. They opened the album together. The first photo was a snapshot of Ahmed as a newborn in the hospital crib. “Who is this?” asked Grandpa, feigning surprise. “That’s me!” exclaimed Ahmed, thinking, “Grandpa looks so funny when he pretends he doesn’t know.”

“No way,” objected Grandpa, “He doesn’t look like you. He is too small. No hair, no teeth. Can’t walk. Can’t talk.” “Grandpa!” Ahmed was really amused. “That’s me as a baby. I grew up and changed a lot in six years.” “You did?! So you are a Change former! Or should I say a transformer?” Ahmed’s eyes brightened with the light of recognition. As he turned the pages of the album one by one, he understood what Grandpa meant. Everyone in the family had changed in those six years. Wow! Every human is a transformer! Yet, something still puzzled him. “Grandpa,” he objected one more time, “Humans can’t fly.” “Bring me that colorful book on the top shelf,” ordered Grandpa. Ahmed stood up swiftly to fetch it, filled with curiosity. “Look at this page. Can you read it?” challenged Grandpa.

“The life cy-cle of a but-ter-fly,” Ahmed read with the typical I–can–read–all–by–myself pride of a first-grader. He looked at the pictures and observed the eggs, the caterpillar, the cocoon and finally the pretty butterfly. He had studied butterflies earlier this year in school, but he had never looked at them this way. His grandpa smiled at him and caressed his head. “You know, Ahmed, every living being is an amazing transformer. In fact, nothing in creation is in perfect rest. But it’s important to see beyond the transformations.” “To see what?” asked Ahmed in excitement. “To see the Ultimate Artist behind every piece of artwork. The Qur’an tells us that God is Al-Musawwir. That’s an Arabic word meaning “the Perfect Giver of forms or colors.” “Al-Mu-saw-wir,” repeated Ahmed as if trying to make a mental note. “Come, let’s take your little brother and go outside,” Grandpa proposed all of a sudden. “I have one more exciting transformer to introduce to you who is fun and cool.” They could tell his seven-month-old baby brother had awakened because of the loud giggle coming from his room. Grandpa lifted the baby out of the crib. Ahmed tickled the baby’s chubby tummy, asking, “How is big brother’s cute transformer?” He received a big toothless smile as a reply. Grandpa dressed the baby and helped Ahmed fasten his shoes. Outside everything spoke of spring and powerful transformation. They started walking toward the lake. “This is the perfect time to hunt for transformers,” commented his grandpa while pushing the stroller. He had put a big jar and a small net in the stroller’s basket. Ahmed was very impatient to meet the mysterious creature. Meanwhile, Halima turned the key and opened the door. She had forgotten to take her purse on her way to the market and needed to come back home in rush hour traffic.

“Well, I will go tomorrow, God willing,” she con soled herself. “Maybe it’s better this way. At least I will have time to finish my shopping list before then.” The house was silent. “Where has everybody gone?” she wondered. “They must have gone for a walk around the lake,” she thought when she saw the stroller was missing. “Good thinking, Father. You are priceless!” Halima started preparing dinner. She was almost done when the doorbell rang again, this time gently. She hurried to open the door.

Ahmed stood there as happy as can be, holding a big jar half full of water with something swimming in it. “Welcome,” she greeted them, smiling at Grandpa with a look that said “Father, you are a gem.”

“What’s this?” she asked Ahmed. “Prepare to meet my transformers,” he said solemnly. Halima bent a little and through the glass she saw two little tadpoles swimming frenziedly. “They look like fish but they are not, and they will turn into frogs in six weeks. Mom, can we please keep them till then?” Halima didn’t want to break his heart a second time so she consented, “Ok, my son, but promise to take good care of them. They have a right to live and we don’t own them.” Ahmed put the jar on the kitchen counter and went to wash his hands. Dinner was ready and Daddy would be home soon. In fact, they could hear his car pulling up in the driveway. Halima set the table. At dinner her husband listened with great interest to his son talk about what he had learned during the day. “Daddy, you know, these creatures are the best, better than any robot. They are perfect and don’t need batteries to work. Besides, Grandpa told me that engineers use living creatures as models when they design robots. God surely is the best of designers. He is Al-….” He paused trying to remember.

“Al Musawwir,” Grandpa jumped in to help. Everyone around the table seemed to enjoy this conversation even more than the delicious food. Two hours later, after she had finished washing the dishes, Halima took the unfinished shopping list out of her bag. She added a couple of items. Ahmed was sitting close by looking at the tadpoles. “Ahmed,” she called.” I am finishing my shopping list. Is there anything you want me to buy for you?” “No, Mom, thanks,” he replied without looking at her.

“Are you sure?” she asked in a reminding tone. He turned his head this time, winked at her and replied, “Maybe I don’t need a transformer after all….”

]]> https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/halwat-and-uzlat-privacy-and-seclusion/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://107.21.79.195/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/halwat-and-uzlat-privacy-and-seclusion/ Literally meaning solitude and living alone, halwat and ‘uzlat (privacy and seclusion) within the context of Sufism denote an initiate’s going into retreat to dedicate all of his or her time to worshipping God under the guidance and supervision of a spiritual master. He or she seeks purification from all false beliefs, dark thoughts and feelings, and conceptions and imaginations that separate him or her from the Truth, closing the doors of his or her heart to all that is not God, and conversing with Him through the tongue of his or her inner faculties.

Seclusion is one dimension of privacy; austerity is another. The first step in privacy is completed in forty days, therefore known as the forty-day period of austerity. When the spiritual master takes the initiate into privacy, he takes him or her to a quiet room, where he prays for the initiate’s success, and then leaves. In that room, the initiate lives an austere life, utterly alone. He or she eats and drinks little in that room of seclusion, which is regarded as a door opening on nearness to God. Bodily needs decrease and are disciplined, carnal desires are forgotten, and all time is dedicated to worshipping God, meditation, reflection, prayer, and supplication.

In its aspect of the avoidance of people and austerity, privacy dates back to the early days of Sufism, even to the great Prophets. Numerous Prophets and saints, most particularly the glory of humankind, upon him be peace and blessings, spent portions of their lives in seclusion. However, their original system of privacy and seclusion has undergone undesirable change over time. The seclusion of Prophet Abraham, the forty-day periods of Prophet Moses, the austerity of Prophet Jesus, and the privacy of the prince of the Prophets have been practiced in different ways by many people, and have therefore undergone certain alterations.

Such changes can be regarded as natural to some extent, for in as much as seclusion is related to an individual’s moods, temperament, and spiritual capacity, only perfect spiritual masters can know and decide how long and under what conditions an initiate must be kept in seclusion. In the early days of his initiation, Rumi underwent many forty-day periods of austerity in seclusion. However, when he found a true, perfect master, he left seclusion for the company of people (jalwat). Many others before and after him have preferred being with people, rather than avoiding them.

Austerity, one of the two dimensions of privacy, means keeping a tight rein on carnal gratification and urging the spirit to rise to human perfection, with which it is enamored.1 Only through austerity can the carnal self be restrained, forced to renounce evil impulses and passions and submit to the commandments of God, forced to adopt humility and be the soil of a flowerbed:

Be like earth so that roses may grow in you

For nothing other than soil can be a medium for the growth of roses.

One can receive a certain Divine grace through austerity. Some can adorn their knowledge with high morals and their religious acts with sincerity and pure intention, thereby gaining mannerliness in their relations with both God and people. Others find themselves tossed this way and that in their relationship with their Lord, and continuously search for ways to get nearer to Him. There are still others who, like a moth just out of its cocoon, spend their lives among spiritual beings who may be regarded as the butterflies of the celestial worlds they have just reached.

What is essential to privacy is that the initiate must seek nothing other than God’s pleasure, and must constantly wait in expectation of that Divine favor. The initiate must not be idle while waiting for this favor, but rather wait with the eye of his or her heart open, in the utmost care and excitement, so that no Divine inspiration or gift that may flow into his or her heart will be missed. They must wait with the courtesy and decorum appropriate to being in the presence of God. The following words of La Makani Husain Efendi express this meaning very aptly:

Clean the fountain of your soul until it becomes perfectly pure.

Fix your eyes on your heart until your heart becomes an eye.

Give up doubts and put the pitcher of your heart to that fountain.

When that pitcher is filled with the water which gives delight,

Withdraw yourself and submit to its Owner His home.2

When you leave it, God doubtless comes to His home.

Never let the devil-robber enter the home of your heart,

For once he has entered, it is very difficult to throw him out.

It is true that God is absolutely free of all time and space constraints, and that His relationship with the believer occurs on the “slopes” of the believer’s heart. For this reason, the heart’s “emerald hills” or “slopes” must always be ready to receive the waves of His manifestations so that, in the words of Ibrahim Haqqi of Erzurum, the King may descend to His palace at night.

God Almighty decreed to Prophet David: Keep that home empty for Me so that I will be in it.3 Some have interpreted “keeping the heart empty” as purifying the heart of all that is not God, and as not having relations with others without first considering God’s pleasure. The following words of Rumi express this most appropriately:

One wise and sensible prefers the bottom of the well,

For the soul finds delight in privacy (to be with God).

The darkness of the well is preferable to the darkness people cause.

One holding on to the legs of people has never been able to arrive with a head.4

One must seclude oneself from others, not from the Beloved.

Fur is worn in winter, not in spring.

Since the purpose of seclusion is to purify the heart of the love which is not directed toward God and to be always with the Beloved, those who always feel the presence of God while living among people and who continuously discern the Divine Unity amidst multiplicity are regarded as always being with God in seclusion. In contrast, however, the seclusion of others who, although they spend their lives in seclusion, have not purified their hearts from attachment to whatever is other than God, is a deception.

Those who always feel themselves in the presence of God do not need to seclude themselves from people. Such people, in the words of Rumi, are like those who keep one foot in the sphere of Divine commandments and turn the other, like a compass needle, round the world. They experience ascent and descent at every moment. This is the seclusion recognized and preferred by the Prophets and saints.

God Almighty once said to Prophet David: O David, why do you seclude yourself from people and choose to remain alone? David, upon him be peace, answered: Lord, I renounce the company of people for Your sake. The Almighty warned him: Always keep vigil, but do not keep aloof from your brethren. However, seclude yourself from those whose company is of no benefit to you.

Notes

1.As the spirit is from God, it innately longs for Him and is enamored with perfection. The carnal soul or self, on the other hand, is enamored with animal desires.

2.“Home” signifies the heart, whose Owner is God.

3. Al-Qushayri, Al-Risala, 327.

4. That is, one who relies on people to attain his or her goal will fail.

]]> https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/peer-instruction-a-better-way-to-learn/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://107.21.79.195/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/peer-instruction-a-better-way-to-learn/ Teaching and learning are two common human activities. If we need to name a great difference between humans and animals, this is the one. As Nursi points out1 almost from the very moment of birth an animal seems to have been trained and perfected elsewhere, whereas people are born knowing nothing of life and their environment and so must learn everything. Learning more and the correct things improves one’s life. So, we are all concerned with how we can learn more efficiently, and, in turn, how we can teach more efficiently.

Education becomes more formal at school. There are a great many different teaching styles inspired by different educational philosophies. Likewise, there are very many learning styles based on different personalities. Every person is created differently and every person may have a slightly different learning style. However, at schools where mass teaching is done, teachers need to decide on a certain method. There are some traditional methods and some novel ones. Here we will focus on peer instruction,2 a non-traditional teaching method developed over the last decade based on physics education research, and later applied in other science teaching as well. We will also try to extract lessons from the peer instruction experience to guide us not only in learning in the classroom but also in everyday informal learning practices.

Eric Mazur is a professor of physics at Harvard University. About a decade ago, Mazur discovered that his students could not correctly answer seemingly simple qualitative questions, despite being able to work through much more difficult quantitative problems. He was shocked as he was considered to be one of the best instructors in the physics department. Mazur began to document the disparity between student performance on the two types of questions, by including on his exams paired qualitative and quantitative questions on a single physical concept. He soon confirmed that for his students, success in solving traditional physics problems did not imply that they understood the underlying physics. Many physics instructors across the United States shared Professor Mazur’s experience. Mazur started developing what is now known as peer instruction.

As the name suggests, peer instruction promotes learning through interaction with one’s peers in the classroom, in addition to listening to the instructor. This is very new, considering that many remember science classes in the form of a plain lecture, where the only player is the instructor, and the students are the audience, except for a few outgoing students who are not always appreciated by their peers. Peer instruction transforms the students into active players during the class. This is actually common sense in all our education experiences. If you just listen to an idea, you will understand very little, and retain very little. If you think about the subject matter, try to apply it in different circumstances, and finally teach it to someone else then your chance of comprehension and retention greatly improves. This is what the instructor achieves through peer instruction. The students are gently pushed toward thinking, discussing, and finally teaching each other, and so they learn more and better.

Every class in peer instruction includes three or four short mini-lectures followed by (or sometimes preceded by) a conceptual question. Students are assigned prior reading so as to come to the class prepared and to have at least some familiarity with the new concepts and terminology. Each mini-lecture’s goal is to highlight certain concepts and give the students further insight. Very different from traditional physics lectures, the instructor does not feel obligated to solve many example problems where a lot of math is needed. That is done through homework and during the problem sessions, which are usually administered by teaching assistants. Between mini-lectures three to five conceptual questions are distributed. Each conceptual question is a qualitative multiple-choice question that gives students and the instructor a means to assess what students have learned. Most questions are asked twice. In the first stage, the instructor shows the question on a projector screen and reads it aloud. Each student is asked to think individually about the answer. No talking is allowed. At the end of this first one- or two-minute period, the instructor asks the students to show their responses. This can be done with flashcards, or electronic transmitters (clickers). A flashcard may have the choices (A, B, C, …), or the instructor may prefer to use color flashcards. Some schools provide students with clickers (or students buy them), and the instructor has the receiver that is connected to a computer.

After receiving the answers from the students, the instructor assesses the situation. If there are only a few correct answers, then the question was asked prematurely. If there are only a few incorrect answers, then the question was too easy, no more time is devoted to that concept. However, in most cases the instructor selects a question to which 30–70% of the answers will be correct. Then, in the second stage, without giving the correct answer, the instructor asks the students to turn to their peers sitting next to them, and discuss the answer and its reasoning. This is peer instruction. These interactions between students have proven very useful. At the end of the second stage, which typically lasts two to three minutes, the instructor asks the students to show their responses to the same question once again. It has been shown that most of the time the number of correct answers goes up. Clearly, success is conditional on the pre-class reading, a mini-lecture that highlights the concepts, and selection of the carefully designed conceptual questions. Based on the responses, the instructor can decide whether to elaborate on the topic or proceed to something new.

Here is a conceptual question3 that may be asked while studying the law of gravitation:

The Moon does not fall to Earth because…

1. it is in the Earth’s gravitational field.

2. the net force on it is zero.

3. it is beyond the main pull of the Earth’s gravity.

4. it is being pulled by the Sun and planets as well as by the Earth.

5. All of the above.

6. None of the above.

At this point we suggest that the reader should think about this question before reading the next paragraph, which includes the correct answer at the end. If possible, ask someone near you and discuss your reasoning.

This question is carefully designed with choices representing various misconceptions. For example, any student with some introductory knowledge of physics will accept that if the net force on an object is zero, then the object will not move, so it is tempting for some students to say, “Oh, yes. The Moon does not fall to Earth. This means that the net force on it is zero!” Or, everybody has a direct experience of the gravitational pull of the Earth. You jump and you fall to Earth. You cannot escape. Again, it is tempting to say that the Moon is beyond the main pull of the Earth’s gravity, but that is not true because if there were not enough gravitational force on the Moon, it would escape the Earth’s orbit. Option 4, for example, is correct as a statement. By virtue of having a mass, the moon is pulled by the Sun and other planets. One might tend to think that there is a balance between the gravitational forces applied by the Earth and other heavenly objects. But, no, that is not the actual reason for the Moon not to fall to Earth. None of the options alone gives the correct answer. Since two of the options (2 and 3) are incorrect, the correct answer to this question is option 6, “None of the above.” The correct answer is that the Moon orbits the Earth as well as being pulled by its gravitational force. The reason the Moon keeps changing its direction is the gravitational pull of the Earth. The Moon was given an initial speed so that it does not fall. If the Moon should stop at any instant, it would fall to Earth.

To reiterate our main point, peer instruction causes students to think through and apply a general principle to different cases through conceptual questions and teach each other what they have just learned. That is, our brain becomes much more active, and it is forced to synthesize difference pieces of information, rather than keeping busy with factual information only.

Research has shown that peer instruction improves the learning gains of the students greatly.4,5,6,7 Peer instruction has been used in astronomy, chemistry, biology, and mathematics as well. How can we benefit from the peer instruction experience to improve our everyday teaching and learning practices? Before trying to answer this question, let us remember occasions when we learn and teach in our daily lives. We teach and learn when we talk to our friends. When we browse through a newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch a TV program, we are bombarded with information. We read books hoping to learn something from them.

The first message we should receive from the success of peer instruction is that passive listening and watching only injects a lot of information in a short time into our memories. Because such information is not processed with an active mind, or we do not try to apply it in different situations, we should be aware that such information might not be so reliable in general. The irony is that many people in the twenty-first century look to the TV, movies, and radios for information. On the TV screen we see twenty-four pictures every second, that is, about a quarter million pictures daily, if we watch TV for three hours per day. In order for TV and radio to be useful, as peer instruction shows, viewers and listeners need to stop and think about what they have just seen and listened to. If possible, then turn to a friend, discuss what you have just watched and get their opinion. Try to teach what you have just learned and see the reaction of people around you.

When we read we have more time to think. We should gently push our brains to make connections with what we know, and what we have just read. What is the purpose? What is the message? Why is this significant? Then again, try to teach it to a friend, enter into a short discussion. This can really help minimize misconceptions and refine our understanding. It will help us assimilate the information, and make it our own. As Nursi puts it, “A learned guide should be a sheep not a bird. A sheep gives its lamb milk, while a bird gives its chick regurgitated food.”8 Yes, we should try to digest information, and our chances of digesting it improves with continuous thought, meaningful discussions, and when we try to teach someone else, just like what happens in peer instruction.

Notes:

1.Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words, The Twenty-Third Word, Fourth point, NJ, The Light: 2005, pp 331–32.

2.http://mazur-www.harvard.edu/research/detailspage.php?ed=1&rowid=8.

3.Eric Mazur, Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997.

4.D. Meltzer, and K. Manivannan, Am. J. Phys. 70, June 2002.

5.Mark C. James, Am. J. Phys. 74, August 2006.

6.Catherine H. Crouch and Eric Mazur, Am. J. Phys. 69, September 2001.

7.T. J. Bensky, Am. J. Phys. 71, November 2003.

8.Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Letters, Seeds of Truths, NJ, The Light: 2007, pp 445-458.

Rainbows in all directions across the horizon,

Touched by all these dazzling colors, humankind.

Angels look on them with praise.

Their faces to the ground, their hearts God’s abode,

A heavenly invitation is their belief.

Humankind is an exalted ore made of dust and mud,

An incomparable mirror deep and brilliant,

Reflecting the infinite, facing the beyond.

Strive, and you can attain your essence!

Be one with your soul, boil with your spirit!

Wail a bit more, shedding tears.

Sprout slowly like a bud,

Follow the light until you are there,

Roots in the soil, eyes fixed on the light.

This mysterious struggle broke out in the heavens

And will go on until Doomsday.

Never stop! Stretch and run, for victory is on the horizon!

]]> https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/citadel-of-the-self-incompleteness-theorem/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://107.21.79.195/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/citadel-of-the-self-incompleteness-theorem/ What is consciousness? Is it established in the brain, or distributed throughout the whole body? Is it physical? Can I jump out of my own consciousness? These are the questions that have occupied the minds of thinkers for centuries. This article does not promise answers but more questions.

Thinking about thought and understanding our own understanding encapsulates an inherent difficulty: self reference. Self reference is the ability of a complex system to reflect upon its own existence. No matter how it might be the basis of our consciousness, it brings inconsistencies. With self reference we are able to build sentences like “This sentence is wrong.” This very well known paradoxical statement is the point in our immense potential that makes us different from all other creatures, and it is the point where we start to perceive our weakness at comprehending our own selves. Self reference is the means of knowing our own reality, but it only gives a blurry glimpse of it. A mathematical theorem shows that we will never be able to capture our own reality in a clear picture, there will always be inconsistencies. The theorem is known as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem after the famous mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978). Gödel used mathematical reasoning in exploring mathematical reasoning itself. In this article the implications of this theorem for self consciousness will be investigated.

The scientific study of mathematical reasoning begins with the concept of formal systems. In formal systems there are axioms and rules. The axioms are the very basic statements that are accepted as true by default (e.g. any two points in space can be joined by a straight line). The rules are common notions that are consistent with the rules of the nature (e.g. things that equal the same thing also equal one another). Formals systems apply the rules to axioms in order to reach true mathematical propositions (valid theorems).

New valid theorems are built on the existing ones and the formal system is iterated for exploring mathematical reality; hence, the formal system learns the mathematical truth with formal iteration. The structure and the development of formal systems are similar to that of human beings: babiesare born with some built-in knowledge of the environment (axioms), and new knowledge is acquired through learning in the guidance of physical laws (rules). Just like human beings, a formal system that is rich and complex enough can make reference to its theorems, as in “This theorem is right” or to its own self as in “This formal system is consistent.” Gödel’s theorem universally states that the formal systems that can make self reference suffer from an inherent incapability to comprehend the “self.” A formal system cannot be sure that it is consistent because the theorem “This formal system is consistent” cannot be proven inside the system, which makes the system incomplete. In fact, the existence of such a theorem is the sole source of inconsistency. Consistency and completeness are required in a formal system to reach reality. Therefore, with the ability to reflect upon itself, a formal system cannot decide on the true nature of its own reality and lacks a complete understanding of itself. The Gödelian argument applies only to systems that are rich enough to have self reference, and interestingly richness of the systems brings about its downfall. It is analogous to the concept of “critical mass” in nuclear physics. A radioactive substance will blow up only beyond a critical mass; otherwise it will stay stable.

Though the system is intrinsically incapable of having a complete understanding of its own self, intelligence outside of the system can decide on the system’s consistency and can fully comprehend it. The need for an outside agent to comprehend reality is exemplified by the analogy of an ant walking on a Mobius strip (Fig. 1). A Mobius strip is a two-dimensional surface with only one side, unlike a regular strip which has two sides. It can be easily made by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then merging the ends of the strip together to form a single strip.

If you start drawing a line from a point on the Mobius strip, you will reach the point you started. This is a characteristic of a round three dimensional shape, like cylinder (Fig. 2). When an ant walks on a Mobius strip, it will cross the location that it started at (Fig. 3). The same will happen when it walks on the surface of a cylinder. An ant on these geometric shapes will not be able to differentiate between the two-dimensional Mobius strip and three-dimensional cylinder, and hence will not comprehend the true natural geometry of the system that it is in. Only an agent outside of these shapes can understand the true geometry of the shapes, just like an intelligent agent outside the formal system fully comprehending the system. The question is, can an ant ever get out of the geometry that it is in? Sure, it can step outside of the Mobius strip, but yet again it will be on another geometric shape that it cannot comprehend. Similarly, new theorems can be added to the formal system that patch the existing holes and make the system step outside itself, but this improved formal system still suffers from the same problems caused by self reference.

The futile struggle to jump outside of the system is beautifully illustrated in another painting by Escher (Fig. 4). Escher explains his painting Dragon (1952): “However much this dragon tries to be spatial, he remains completely flat.Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings. But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.” Hofstadter adds in his seminal book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, “No matter how cleverly you try to simulate three dimensions in two, you are always missing some ‘essence of three-dimensionality.’ The dragon tries very hard to fight his two-dimensionality. He defies the two-dimensionality of the paper on which he thinks he is drawn, by sticking his head through it; and yet all the while, we outside the drawing can see the pathetic futility of it all, for the dragon and the holes and the folds are merely two-dimensional simulations of those concepts, and not a one of them is real. But the dragon cannot step out of his two-dimensional space, cannot know it as we do.”

Consider an intelligent creature living on a two-dimensional plane, and we are observing its world from above, but it can not see us since there is no such thing as “above” in its world. In his free time, the creature wanders on the plane to seek new realities (theorems) of its world and learn them. We accidentally touch the plane that he is living in with one of our fingers; obviously the creature will only see the two-dimensional projection of the adjacent finger surface. I am sure it will be surprised to experience an object appearing out of nowhere, and even more surprised to see the shape suddenly disappear when we withdraw our finger. It will question the consistency of the system that it is living in and ask, “Is my world inconsistent?” Then, it might go crazy while figuring out what has happened or simply patch the informational hole in its world by saying, “Sometimes things of the shape that I saw might suddenly appear and disappear in my world.” Our creature will be happy again after resolving the unfortunate inconsistency, but can it be sure that the system of knowledge (theorems) is complete? We will not let our unlucky creature rest and we will put a cup on him; since the two dimensional projection of the touching surface of the cup draws a circle, the creature will be surrounded by a circular prison again appearing out of nowhere. It will be surprised but this time devastated also. Then, there will come another patch to its knowledge about the system: “Sometimes, a circular prison can suddenly appear and enslave me.” As you can imagine, there are infinitely many operations that we can apply to the two-dimensional world of our poor creature, and each one of them will lead to a patch in the system of knowledge of its world. However, it will never be able to generalize the newly added theorems (due to anomalies) since neither the rules nor the existing two-dimensional theorems are well suited to grasping the three-dimensional operations that are applied. The two-dimensional world of the creature will never be complete: there will always be phenomena that it cannot explain with existing theorems. Let us put our creature to the hardest test of all time: pick it up from its plane, take it to our three-dimensional world, let it experience the extraordinary “third dimension” and then let us put it back on the plane where it belongs.1 I cannot imagine the struggle of the creature to tell its fellows what it experienced “out there.” Could its folks ever understand? The reader might have pitied the two-dimensional creatures with their inability to understand the “real” world. Well, it might be that we are, as human beings, just one more dimension better than them: what if there is a fourth dimension?2

Mathematical reasoning suggests that a formal system can talk about itself but it cannot jump out of itself. Even it speciously achieves that by adding new theorems, it becomes an improved formal system with a new boundary but the same inability. Can we jump out of ourselves and self-transcend? If we could do it, we would be able to comprehend our own physical reality, but even then we are inside another reality beyond the usual that we can’t fully comprehend. We are always limited by a boundary that is set by the “self.”

The exploration of the “self” is tightly related to the query of the soul or the spirit. The Qur’an addresses this issue in Isra 85: “They ask you about the spirit. Say: ‘The spirit is of my Lord’s Command, and of knowledge, you have been granted only a little.’” The verse is a declaration of the inability of human beings to comprehend their own spirit. More importantly, it indicates that the reality of us as human beings will be communicated to us through information sources that can jump out of the system3. Can we ever be able to fully comprehend the true nature of humanity and of our reality without knowledge from the divine?

Notes

1.This allegory might be compared with the concept of ascension. See the verses on the Ascension of the Prophet (Qur’an 4:14) and angels (Qur’an 70:4).

2.See the verses about the higher dimensional operations on our 3D world (Qur’an 21:82 and 27:38–39).

3.Messengers of the Creator. See Qur’an 2: 136, 213.

Reference

Hofstadter, Douglas R. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 1999, Basic Books.

]]> https://fountainmagazine.com/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/the-construction-of-intelligence-in-terms-of-cultural-differences-between-east-and-west/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 http://107.21.79.195/all-issues/2008/issue-61-january-february-2008/the-construction-of-intelligence-in-terms-of-cultural-differences-between-east-and-west/ As human beings, we live in societies that create their own systems of meanings through the process known as culture. This system of meanings is encoded in language and other symbols and maintained by a set of institutions over time (Serpell 1994).

As cultural differences continue to be an important part of life, we need to examine how different cultures make sense of the world in terms of the meanings that represent the mind, and within which the concept of intelligence is defined. First, I will explore some basic philosophical views about the conception of intelligence which I believe constitute the root of cultural constructions of the notion.

Historical conceptions of intelligence

Some scholars of the past, such as philosophers, writers and theologians, explored intelligence but did not attempt to define the nature of intelligence. For example, in the Odyssey, Homer distinguished between good looks and good thinking. He remarked that one may have a poor physical appearance but may speak in an articulate way. Another man may be handsome but lack the ability to communicate well with others. Plato made his comments regarding the nature of intelligence in Theaetetus. In the dialogue, Socrates asks Theaetetus to imagine that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax that is of different sizes in different men. The block of wax can also differ in hardness, moistness and purity. Socrates suggests that when the wax is pure and sufficiently deep, the mind will learn easily and will not be subject to confusion. Because impressions in the wax are clear, it only will think things that are true. However, when the wax is impure or very soft or very hard, there will be defects in the intellect. People whose wax is soft will be good at learning but be apt to forget. People whose wax is hard will be slow to learn but will retain what they learn. People whose wax is shaggy or gritty, or whose wax is a mixture of earth and dung will have only indistinct impressions. Those with hard wax will have the same because there will be no depth to their thoughts (Sternberg 1985).

In the Posterior Analytics Book, Aristotle conceived of intelligence in terms of “quick wit.” For example, an intelligent person seeing someone in conversation with a man of wealth might conclude quickly that the person is seeking to borrow money from the wealthy man.

Cultural conceptualization of intelligence

In recent years, researchers have found that people in Eastern and Western cultures often have fundamentally different ideas about intelligence. Richard Nisbett, in The Geography of Thought, argues that these differences are due to the different cognitive styles of both cultures, including how intelligence is understood. He suggests that people in Western countries tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate, while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully.

I think, as Nisbett says these differences between Eastern and Western views of intelligence are related to differences in the basic cognitive processes of people in those cultures. In most cases, Western notions of intelligence are not shared by other cultures. For example, at the mental level, the Western emphasis on speed of mental processing (Sternberg 1981) is not shared by many cultures. In contrast, people in Eastern countries may even be suspicious of the quality of work done very quickly and emphasize depth rather than speed.

Similarly, Chen (1994) found three factors underlying Chinese conceptualizations of intelligence: nonverbal reasoning ability, verbal reasoning ability and memory. These factors differ substantially from American people’s conceptualizations of intelligence which have mostly mental attributions, such as: practical problem solving, verbal ability and social competence (Sternberg 1981).

About Eastern notions of intelligence, Das (1994) has suggested that in Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, intelligence involves waking up, noticing, recognizing, understanding, and comprehending but also includes such things like determination, mental effort, and even feelings and opinions (Sternberg and Kaufman 1998). In a related study, Yang and Sternberg reviewed Chinese philosophical conceptions of intelligence. The Confucian perspective emphasizes the characteristic of benevolence and of doing what is right. Again, Taoist culture emphasizes the importance of humility, freedom from conventional standards of judgment, and full knowledge of oneself which appears well-correlated with Plato’s “Know yourself” notion.
Differences between cultures in conceptions of intelligence have been recognized for some time. In a study, Gill and Keats (1980) reported that Australian University students value academic skills and the ability to adapt to new situations as critical to intelligence, while Malay students emphasize practical skills, such as speed and creativity, as well as both social and cognitive attributes in their conceptions of intelligence.

Studies done in Africa provide evidence of substantial differences in the notion of intelligence. Serpell (1974, 1977, and 1982) found that people in Zambia emphasize social responsibilities, cooperativeness, and obedience as important to intelligence; intelligent children are expected to be respectful of adults. In Zimbabwe, the word intelligence means to be prudent and cautious, especially in social relationships (Dasen 1984). As in many Eastern countries, service to the family and community, politeness and respect for elders are seen as the key to intelligence.

In his study. The Geography of Thought, researcher Nisbett, compares the Greeks and the Chinese in order toshow the different cognitive styles of East and West, which in turn causes different conceptions of intelligence. The Ancient Greeks were known for their strong sense of agency, the ability to exercise free will, while the Chinese found their belief system in harmony. The Greeks also had a curiosity about the nature of the world. They were not satisfied just to make systematic observations about the world; they were also interested in the underlying principles of their observations. Debate and confrontation were discouraged in Chinese society, whereas they were encouraged in Greece. The Eastern way of life is based on the principle that the life is ever-changing and filled with contradictions. It was interrelationships that defined the Chinese; who they were with would define who they were and what roles they were to fulfill. The sense of identity was defined by social context, by individual attributes while in Greece, objects and people would be analyzed separately. These fundamental differences in thought patterns have implications that extend to all aspects of life.

At this point, the differences seen in the individualistic culture of the West and the collectivistic (Petersen 2004) culture of the East need more attention to provide a better picture of the notion of intelligence in terms of its cultural construction.

Different thinking styles of East and West

There are some assumptions which are thought to be true by most Westerners. That is, they are individuals with characteristics that make them distinctive; moreover, we want to be unique. Westerners are in control of their own behavior and feel better when they believe that they can choose and control the outcomes of their actions. They are goal-oriented and success-driven (Nisbett 2004), and relationships can sometimes interfere with attaining success. Personal success and feeling positive about oneself are important for the sense of well-being.

Conversely, Easterners are less concerned with personal success; they are far more group driven (Nisbett 2004). Their sense of well-being is related to their being in harmony with those around them; moreover, rules that apply to relationships are not universal, instead relationships are dictated by the context and are unique to the roles each holds in that context. This collective sense of the East extends also to language. For example, in the Japanese language, there are many words for “I,” each dependent on the situation. Who “I” am is different when I am with a boss, co-worker, family member, or friend. In my home country, in Turkey which has strong Eastern roots; there is still the tradition of using “We” instead of ‘I’ in an effort to be humble and avoid egocentric ownership of success. In contrast, Americans rarely take context into account when asked for self descriptions. Moreover, Americans are more likely to overestimate their personal attributes (Nisbett 2004). On the other hand, it is the goal of harmony and fulfilling one’s role in social life to achieve collective success that prevails in Eastern culture.

Another notion of Eastern culture that has a substantial effect on its cultural conceptions of true intelligence and progress is self -criticism which is regarded as part of learning. Self-criticism is taught to Japanese children to help them learn how to solve problems and improve relationships with others. Again, in Turkey, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and some other Islamic scholars affect people’s conceptualizations of progress and success, such as, “Happy are those whose own faults preoccupy them too much to think of the faults of others” and “The strongest among you is the one who controls his anger.”

Differences in culture start early in life and continue throughout life. Western parents encourage their children to be independent. Generally they do this by focusing attention on objects. In Eastern cultures, parents focus attention on social relationships and feelings. When children grow up, the differences can be seen in experiments, for example, that Easterners’ have a superior ability to be aware of the emotions of groups of others (Peterson 2004). One theory that accounts for this difference is communication styles. In the West, it is the communicator who is responsible for making the information clear to the listener. In the East, it is the responsibility of the hearers to understand what they are told. The implication of these two contrasting styles can leave Americans feeling that Easterners are difficult to “read” because of their subtle and indirect communication styles. Conversely, Easterners may feel Americans are so direct that they may even be thought to be rude (Nisbett 2004).

Not surprisingly, the East and West have very different styles of dealing with conflict. As in ancient China, debate is still uncommon in the East. Because argument and debate pose a threat to group harmony, what Westerners consider controversial topics would not be brought up in conversation in the East (Becker 1986). Moreover, while debate is part of the rhetoric of science in the West, a skill Westerners are taught throughout their education, it is new to many Easterners that come to the West to pursue a scientific career.
Easterners and Westerners also differ in their perception of control. In Western culture, feeling in control promotes a feeling of well-being to a much greater extent than it does for Easterners (Nisbett 2004). On the other hand, Westerners have more difficulty tolerating ambiguous situations than Easterners. Westerners tend to believe that if things are going to change, it will be in the same direction and at the same level, whereas Easterners see the world as a complex dynamic system (Peterson 2004).

It is at this point that researchers (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, Norenzayan 2001) comment that Easterners appear to think more holistically, paying greater attention to relationship and context, relying more on experience-based knowledge than abstract logic and showing more tolerance for contradiction. Westerners are more analytic in their thinking, tending to separate objects from their context, to avoid contradictions and to rely more heavily on formal logic.

Conclusion

Taken all together, it is certain that people who grow up in different cultures do not just think about different things but they think differently. Thus, the connotations of the word intelligence do not only include a particular set of mental functions but also some value-based conceptions of appropriateness, such as competence, helpfulness, and so on. So, for example, when someone tells a parent that their child is very intelligent, they may be talking about child’s education, or their good relations with others, and sometimes their being a good listener, or lots of other meanings which all depend on the context of the culture in which people live.

References

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• Chen, M. J. (1994). Chinese and Ausralian concepts of intelligence. Psychology and Developing Societies, 6, 101–117
• Choi, Nisbett, Norenzayan, Peng (2001). Culture of Thought. Psychological Review: 108, 291–310
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• Das, J.P. (1994). Eastern views of intelligence. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence (Vol.1, pp.387–391).New York: Macmillan
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The quantum description of the universe is very different than the classically observed one, or our perceptions in everyday life. This new way of looking at nature has many consequences, both philosophically and practically. The modern technological development of the second half of the last century may be a very good example of the consequences of the discovery of the quantum world. Now we have a bunch of gadgets from cellular phones to long-lasting batteries, from engineered drugs to space missions, from pocket size computers to nanotechnology, a wide range of end-products of the quantum world. Certainly, these will not be the only changes in our life; quantum sciences will eventually affect the way we look at life.

One of the most dramatic potential changes in thought may arise from the discovery of the quantum entanglement of particles. Quantum entanglement can be described as non-classical correlations of different parties. It is very different than the classical description and can be explained by using the following analogy. Imagine an author writes a book of one hundred pages which includes the most precious arts or explains very important facts about the universe depending on one’s point of view. To make it more interesting or more realistic, he distributes each page of the book to one of his servants and asks them to read and understand the rules written in the book. That is, each servant has access only to one page of the book. If we assume the information on the pages is classical, every servant has one hundredth of the total information written in the book and if we let them communicate with each other, they can in principle reconstruct the written information. However, the situation is very strange in the quantum world. If the information in the book is written using entanglement principle of the quantum world, then none of the servants has any definite idea about the partial information on his page. It is as if the pages are empty. All the information about the content of the book is written on correlations of the pages, not physically on each page. So, the servants can have no idea, if they only look at their pages.

Einstein vs. Bohr

To understand this strange feature of quantum entanglement we should review the historical development of the concept. One of the earliest objections came from Einstein, who was one of the developers of quantum theory. Although he explained the photoelectric effect by introducing the concept of quantization of light, he did not believe in some of its consequences. Mainly, he was not sure about the completeness of quantum theory because of its contradictions with common sense and the theory of relativity. The famous 1927 Solvey Con ference was a turning point for debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who was also one of the developers of quantum theory and the Copenhagen interpretations of the theory.

Einstein tried to show this incompleteness by proposing different Gedanken (thought) experiments. Each of these questions was answered rigorously by Bohr. However, Einstein was never convinced by Bohr about the completeness of the theory. The last one of these Gedanken experiments was one related to our concept, quantum entanglement. It is called the EPR paradox and takes its name from the authors of the famous paper “Can a quantum mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935.

Mainly, the paper was about faster-than-light communication between physically separated objects, two particles. If two particles are generated from a source affected by the existence of a conservation law, like the conservation of energy, or linear or angular momentum, the conserved property is carried by the particles independent of their separation. If the conserved quantity is observed by measuring one of the particles, the other particle arranges itself according to the result of this measurement independent of the distance between particles. According to Bohr, this arrangement happens instantaneously at the time of measurement, which conflicts with Einstein’s theory of special relativity that says nothing can travel faster than light. Apparently, the knowledge of the result of the first measurement is carried somehow to the second particle. Bohr’s reply is now called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He takes this property as a postulate of quantum mechanics by saying that the state of the particles includes all information about them. After this explanation Einstein never replied again.

If we look more closely at the proposed experiment, we can deduce that in reality information is not transferred faster than light because although the measurement result of the second particle is decided by the first measurement, this information is hidden for the second particle. The result of the second measurement makes sense only if the result of the first measurement reaches the second one. Otherwise, the second measurement can be described as a random outcome of possible results. Now it makes sense if we return to the book description. Here our book has only two pages. Each page is given to one servant. If they only look at their pages there is no information, which means that measurement results are random.

However, if the two servants work together and share their measurement results, then the initial information can be reconstructed.

Coins

Einstein’s point of view can be described in the following example. Imagine we have two coins with the usual heads and tails on different sides. Let us assume that there is a conservation law deduced from everyday experiments stating that if we flip these two coins we always have two opposite results; that is, if we get tails from the one that we measured, the other one is heads for sure and vice versa. In the real world, these coins can be identified as electrons, photons or atoms. Heads/tails corresponds to the spin components for electrons, polarization directions for photons or ground/excited states for atoms. Now, imagine these two coins are separated by a large distance.

Einstein says that as soon as separation occurs the result of flipping is decided but this result is hidden from us. One can measure or learn it by performing a measurement or looking at each coin. Moreover, looking at only one coin is enough to determine the measurement result of the other coin, since the results are correlated. Conjecturing that the side of the coin is determined at the time of measurement is against the causality principle of the theory of relativity which says that cause and effect cannot be simultaneous. However, I am of the opinion that reality is closer to what Bohr described. That is, the result of the measurement is decided at the measurement time not at the separation time. Before the measurement, each coin shows both heads and tails at the same time. The information, deduced at the point of measurement when one of the coins is measured, is transferred faster than light, in other words, at infinite speed.

The nature of each coin is also very strange before the measurement because it includes both sides at the same time with equal probabilities, but a classical coin has only one side at one time, either heads or tails. Here the classical coin means the flipped or measured coin. This property of the quantum world is called parallelism. As in the famous case of Schrödinger’s cat, sometimes two extreme situations can happen at the same time. Schrödinger’s cat is a very special cat which is dead and alive at the same time, like a quantum coin. However, when one measures such a cat, that is, observes the cat, its nature collapses to one of the known situations, either a dead cat or a live cat. This measuring process happens systematically due to interactions with its surroundings and is called decoherence.

Although the quantum world is very strange and different than the classical world, it encapsulates more reality than we experience in our everyday life. In the near future, we can expect that ways of looking at the world will be different than the present mechanical, deterministic, and materialistic view because of the unexpected outcomes of the quantum world. If you know how to look, you can already feel this change.