Entries by Doug Grunther

Essay #4: Where is Evolution Pointing its Finger?

March 1, 2021 in /by

  In the mission statement for this website I write:  “Here in the 21st century, with exponentially expanding computer intelligence and worldwide digital connection as the driving forces, evolution is accelerating at a speed never before experienced in human history…  We have left the world of logical, linear, one step at a time, sequential thought,                     We have entered the age of the quantum leap.”   Two scenes from one of the greatest films to portray a quantum leap in consciousness set the stage for today’s essay.  2001: A Space Odyssey was purposely designed to provoke, disorient and challenge.  In this essay let’s look  at the film as  powerful metaphor for the required  shift in emphasis from the left hemisphere of the viewer’s brain to the right hemisphere. As previously discussed, our brains are divided into a left and right hemisphere.  They are separated by a bundle of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum through which the two hemispheres can communicate with each other.  The key to understanding their relationship, as masterfully explicated in Iain McGilchrist’s book, The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, […]

Essay #3: What’s the Story?

February 20, 2021 in /by

WHAT’S THE STORY? Based on my research, the three most effective ways the human brain learns are:         Trial & Error                                      Games (PLAY)                                          Stories Of these three, other mammals share with us the first two. Trial & Error? The first time we as infants curiously touch a hot stove is probably the last time. Scientists studying songbirds noted the young birds learned more from trial & error than by just observation. The advantages animals have over us is they are free to learn from trial and error whereas our school system metes out bad grades for mistakes, pressuring students to avoid them. “By seeking and blundering we learn.”             ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   One of the most cheerful, witty and smart encouragements for students to learn from blunders came in a letter written by the great novelist/satirist Kurt Vonnegut.  In 2006, a teacher at Xavier High School in Manhattan, a Ms. Lockwood, […]

Essay #2: Synaptic Jumps / Quantum Leaps?

February 12, 2021 in /by

     “Our Time is a time for crossing barriers,       for looking ahead,          for probing around.”   This is one of many deep insights you’ll find on this web site going forward from the man called the Prophet of the Electronic Age, Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan’s call for “crossing barriers,” on one important level, can be seen as a reference to the opening up the mind by literally crossing from the left-hemisphere of our brain through the anatomical barrier of fibers called the corpus callosum, to the right hemisphere. While the left hemisphere of our brains, which dominates our educational, social and cultural systems, is wired to break things down into understandable parts and then analyze them to reach a clear conclusion, the right hemisphere is wired for “looking ahead and probing around,” actions more likely to generate imaginative leaps, exhilarating new insights, and new patterns of perception. McLuhan, who was both revered as the go to media theorist and guru of the electronic age during much of the 1960’s and harshly criticized for uttering cryptic and puzzling phrases, was asked by a TV interviewer why he was so difficult to understand.  McLuhan answered, […]