zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — visual thinking, graphical presentation, the magical number seven plus or minus two, human intelligence ]
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Look:

Got it? That’s part of a double-page spread from the University of Maryland’s START Program report for 2011:

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism—better known as START – is a university-based research center committed to the scientific study of the causes and human consequences of terrorism in the United States and around the world.

Looking through the rest of the report, I’m tempted to say a snazzier, jazzier magazine I’ve seldom seen!

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I maintain that’s far nicer to look at, but no more comprehensible than, this gorgeous and justly infamous power point slide:

Got that one, too? That was a slide used to help GEN McChrystal understand that war he was fighting.

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Watson and Crick introduced their 1953 paper in Nature, A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, with these words:

We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.

No less witty is the opening of George A. Miller‘s only somewhat less celebrated paper three years later in The Psychological Review, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information:

My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution.

The gist of Miller’s piece (and by gist I explicitly mean the always misleading broad strokes version) is that we can usually manage to hold five to nine chunks of thought in mind at any given time, but that if we want to understand more than that, we need to “chunk” our thoughts in such a way that we think of “seven plus or minus two” items (Miller’s “magical number”) but can peer into any one of them and see it divided into lesser portions which we can also comprehend, in what I’ll call a tree > trunk > limb > branch > twig > leaf arrangement — always remembering that a tree may be part of a forest, and that sometimes ee just can’t see the forest for the trees…

Miller explains chunking succinctly thus:

It seems probable that even memorization can be studied in these terms. The process of memorizing may be simply the formation of chunks, or groups of items that go together, until there are few enough chunks so that we can recall all the items.

Neat, hunh? And he concludes, with another pleasant touch of wit:

And finally, what about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For the present I propose to withhold judgment. Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.

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Of course there are high-node graphics programs like Starlight Analytics (from Future Point Systems via Battelle and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) which allow you to sample one of a cluster of very similar nodes, or to see where the outliers are and zero in on them…

or to focus in on only those nodes connected to one particular name or place on a map:

But can you find a file you’re looking for any faster by locating it somewhere in this graphic…

than by using your usual search methods?

So okay, high level analytics like Starlight may be useful for analysts who have the costly software and time to pinpoint and track and zoom and annotate and comprehend, become alarmed or calmed, and respond appropriately.

But people reading that glossy report from the START program? People trying to brief GEN McChrystal from a powerpoint slide?

Seven. Seven plus or minus is your number.

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Once more, with feeling.

The moral of this tale is that graphical presentations of ideas to explain complexities should generally feature seven plus or minus two nodes, maximum, for eye and mind to consider at any one time, with perhaps an additional three or four that the eye can glide across to, forming a second chunk — thus delivering a maximum of 13 nodes without zooming in.

for the direct communication of major drivers in a complex situation — seven nodes plus or minus two is your optimal number.

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Ah — but see, I forgot to show you the rest of that first image:

You can handle grasping the import of an image two parts, surely, can’t you?

Okay then — if you can, perhaps you can help me out…

[ by Charles Cameron — the serious-minded can safely ignore this post, which is of mainly aesthetic interest, surely a matter of no importance in its own right ]
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Two graphics caught my eye today, one after another in my RSS feed.

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The upper image comes from DARPA, and is not really explained in any detail by the otherwise interesting Wired piece that it illustrated — but is easy and intriguing to the eye anyway, and somehow has to do with a return to analog computing:

Through its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the DoD is funding a new program called UPSIDE, short for Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation. Basically, the program will investigate a brand-new way of doing computing without the digital processors that have come to define computing as we know it.

Well, new this time around the block, anyway.

The second (lower image), totally unrelated to the first but almost its twin to my mind’s eye, shows a “literary moonscape” by the artist Guy Laramée, created by sculpting it out of an old book, h/t The Paris Review, Saatchi Gallery and 3quarksdaily.

In my view, Laramée has an impressive understanding of books and how they serve as portals into other worlds:

[ by Charles Cameron — compare and contrast as a means of contextualizing, suggesting a tool that might be of use to the IC in any number of circumstances ]
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In this particular case, Pussy Riot is the topic, comparison with is the method, and some form of graphic the appropriate medium around which to build a presentation.

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Both these statements have been made recently by Catholic priests, and they portray opposite positions on the matter. Again, it is my sense that the graphical representation of these remarks calls forth in the reader both similarities and differences, as Cath Styles nicely put it:

A general principle can be distilled from this. Perhaps: In the very moment we identify a similarity between two objects, we recognise their difference. In other words, the process of drawing two things together creates an equal opposite force that draws attention to their natural distance. So the act of seeking resemblance – consistency, or patterns – simultaneously renders visible the inconsistencies, the structures and textures of our social world. And the greater the conceptual distance between the two likened objects, the more interesting the likening – and the greater the understanding to be found.

From my point of view, the direct juxtaposition in a DoubleQuote or equivalent format does the job nicely when two fairly simple quotes are considered together.

Things can get more complex than that when a variety of discourses come together, but the same general principles can still be applied, and a graphical representation sought.

Bearing Cath’s point in mind, then, I’d like to examine some of the ways in which people have contextualized the Pussy Riot event in the Cathedral with counterfactual instances (ie by contrasting it with instances that in some ways parallel the factual instance, but in “what if” style alternate universes.

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Here, then, are the documents I’ll be drawing on. First, from Khanya, a blog I’ve praised in an earlier post:

An Amnesty International petition site (Take Action Now – Amnesty International USA) urges people to send an email with the following text to the Russian prosecuting authorities:

I respectfully urge you to drop the charges of hooliganism and immediately and unconditionally release Maria Alekhina, Ekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Furthermore, I call on you to immediately and impartially investigate threats received by the family members and lawyers of the three women and, if necessary, ensure their protection. Whether or not the women were involved in the performance in the cathedral, freedom of expression is a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and no one should be jailed for the peaceful exercise of this right. Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.

Now imagine, for a moment, that the boot was on the other foot.

Imagine that it was a Western European country, and that the act of “hooliganism” concerned was daubing swastikas on a synagogue. If that were the case, would Amnesty International be urging its members and the general public to send messages saying:

Whether or not the women were involved in writing the graffiti on the synagogue, freedom of expression is a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and no one should be jailed for the peaceful exercise of this right. Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.

I think that in Western Europe such a petition would be widely regarded as “hate speech”, and “anti-Semitic”, as would the graffiti. So why does Amnesty International think that it is OK to encourage people to send such things to Russia?

And then, of course, one can put the boot back on the first foot again. If these same three young women had daubed graffiti on a synagogue in Moscow, would they have been prosecuted for the same offence and in the same way as they have been in this case?

So there are differences between Russian culture and Western culture, and differences within Russian and Western culture.

That’s a pretty impressive example of the counterfactual genre — and doubly so, it seems to me, because of the final reversal, the twist in its tail.

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Next, here’s another quote from the same Fr. Hogan we quoted above. In this case, the mosque is used as the primary contrast to the cathedral, but the synagogue also makes an appearance — and Fr. Hogan throws at least one other interesting contrast into the mix — comparing Putin and western leaders:

Protest is fine, the day will come, I’m sure, and not too far away either I think, when we Christians may be protesting against our governments and engaging in civil disobedience, but protest must always respect others and the faith of others. As some have asked, would these ladies do the same in a mosque? They would not for two reasons – it would not be politically incorrect and they might end up being stoned to death before they had a chance to get out of the building. Is it legitimate to mock faith and descecrate places held sacred by people in order to protest against a political regime?

Some will say these ladies did so because the Orthodox Church is too close to the Russian government. Okay, well Judaism is considered by many to be too close to Zionism and the State of Israel – well, where are the lewd feminists dancing in the synagogues mocking Abraham and Moses? They are not there because they know it is inappropriate and wrong – just as it is inappropriate and wrong to desecrate a place of Christian worship.

What interests me here is that he uses multiple counterfactual contrasts, which perhaps makes his paragraphs a little less elegant than Khanya’s — but interesting in the complexity it adds to his analysis.

I’ll return to that remark about “we Christians may be protesting against our government” later.

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My last text — and I’ve quoted it here on ZP before — is Josh Shahryar‘s tweet:

I wonder if #PussyRiot would get so much attention if they were a band of men called #DickMob.

That comes at the Pussy Riot issue from a completely different angle, and is very elegantly done.

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Our next task is to see what oppositions we can find in these three statements.

• Kanya uses Amnesty’s concerns regarding freedom of expression vs appropriateness of expression by comparing the cathedral incident with women “in a Western European country” daubing swastikas on a synagogue, thus also proposing a comparison between eastern and western European mores.
• Then, in a reversal, Kanya uses the same cathedral incident vs daubing graffiti on a synagogue specifically in Moscow this time, to explore the degree to which Moscow might be more tolerant of anti-Semitism than of anti-Orthodoxy, both in terms of public opinion and via political and legal systems.
• Fr Hogan’s question poses a contrast between the cathedral (and Orthodoxy and Putin) and a hypothetical mosque (and Islam and, say, a militant faction in Pakistan).
• His second comparison is between two church-and-state collaborations, Orthodoxy with the Russian state and Judaism with the Zionist, and again the question he raises is whether similar behavior in a parallel situation would be tolerable.
• Then there’s his intriguing third comparison, which I said I’d return to, in which he suggests that the “not too far” future may hold the need for civil disobedience and anti-government protests by Christians – in the west presumably. Fr Hogan hails from Ireland, which has had its own share of Church troubles and no longer wields the power it once did over Irish people and politics. Present day Russia, then, contrasted with a hypothetical future Ireland.
• But the malaise is more widespread, and to add a comparison of my own into the pot, Fr Hogan’s remark reminds me of something Cardinal George of Chicago said not so long ago, looking at the looming battle between an increasingly secular state and his own moral stances on such issues as abortion and same sex marriage:
  

  I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

But that’s oblique to our narrative here…

• Finally, there’s Josh Shahryar’s contrast between a factual girl band named Pussy Riot and a counterfactual boy band called DickMob.

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What sort of a graphic would allow us to rotate all these polarities in our minds?

One answer is a Sembl-type game board — see design below — but with concepts rather thyan objects in the “positions” on the board:

But I’m also after other possibilities here. What would our fine artists, engineers, architects, dancers, cartographers, logicians, musicians, data visualizers and computer scientists suggest?

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It would of course be nice if we could wrap this whole business of counterfactuals with a nice British cuppa tea, eh? Perhaps we can…

From a comment in the Guardian:

With the best will in the world I can’t see that if a bunch of noisy youngsters stood up in Westminster Abbey and screamed obscenities about the Queen to the accompaniment of electric guitars turned up to eleven, that the rest of the world would throw up its hands in horror if they were first stopped and then charged with an offence.

What’s that? We endured the Blitz, for goodness sake!

[ by Charles Cameron — Pat Robertson, the Taliban, Bamiyan, Buddha statues, a Zen tale, Petraeus and Pastor Jones ]
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credits: (a) wikipedia under cc license, (b) dharmashop
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Here, by way of context, is a story posted on the Treeleaf Zendo site, and widely discussed in the Catholic blogosphere:

On a cold winter night, a big snow storm hit the city and the temple where Dan Xia served as a Monk got snowed in. Cut off from outside traffic, the coal delivery man could not get to the Zen Monastery. Soon it ran out of heating fuel after a few days and everybody was shivering in the cold. The monks could not even cook their meals.

Dan Xia began to remove the wooden Buddha Statues from the display and put them into the fireplace.

“What are you doing?” the monks were shocked to see that the holy Buddha Statues were being burnt inside the fire place. “You are burning our holy religious artifacts! You are insulting the Buddha!”

“Are these statues alive and do they have any Buddha nature?” asked Master Dan Xia.

“Of course not,” replied the monks. “They are made of wood. They cannot have Buddha Nature.”

“OK. Then they are just pieces of firewood and therefore can be used as heating fuel,” said Master Dan Xia. “Can you pass me another piece of firewood please? I need some warmth.”

The next day, the snow storm had gone and Dan Xia went into town and brought back some replacement Buddha Statues. After putting them on the displays, he began to kneel down and burn incense sticks to them.

“Are you worshiping firewood?” ask the monks who are confused for what he was doing.

“No. I am treating these statues as holy artifacts and am honouring the Buddha.” replied Dan Xia.

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In light of that, compare and contrast this recent video of Pat Robertson:

with this video (I don’t think you need to see all of it, just a taste perhaps?) titled The Beheading of the Buddha, posted on YouTube and “presented” by Al-Muhaajiroun:

and both of those with this third video, of Pastor Jones, discussing both his own burning of the Qur’an and GEN Petraeus‘ powerful and intelligent response…

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I think we should discuss these matters in an open and respectful way, and hope that this post will provide an appropriately respectful and open-minded framing for such a discussion.

As to my own view – I see a consideration that whatever opens us up to compassion and clarity is an icon and a grace, and another consideration that whatever closes us off from clarity and compassion is an idol or a poison…

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For those of a scholarly bent, here’s a downloadable fatwa on the Taliban’s destruction of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan — from which the screen-grab below is taken:

[ by Charles Cameron — of [almost] no military or intelligence interest, this is a post for computer scientists, historians, scientists, artists, contemplatives and other creatives ]
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I’ve been on a bit of a binge about medieval and renaissance diagrams recently, putting together an anthology of early “semantic networks” for the Sembl game site – but also thinking about the alternate track of art history which would focus on diagrams rather than paintings (I’m thinking of two dimensions here, hence no mention of sculpture) – an alternate history which may have something to teach our richly diagrammatic and data-visual times.

My interest in all this tracks back at least to my early encounter with an essay by the computer scientist Margaret Masterman in Theoria to Theory (1967).

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Yesterday brought me a post from Jason Wells, a scientist and bright all-rounder I follow on Google+, in which he posted an image of the cosmos from the Ptolemaic (pre-Copernical) point of view, which I’ve put at the head of this post.

Jason commented on this diagram:

As pretty as this is, this is not how your universe works.

That is all.

The diagram Jason posted purports to be mathematically and astronomically based: it is, if you like, a quantitative diagram. I don’t happen to think it’s pretty, although the two creatures (angels, goddesses?) up towards the top of the circle may be, and the serpent eating its tail around it is nicely done -– I think it has a rather austere beauty to be honest, but I’m likely to concede to Jason that it isn’t “true” in the sense of being an accurate representation of the (abstract) laws of celestial motion.

But then I also think there’s more to truth than accuracy, useful though that may be – there’s also a qualitative element to truth, and perhaps “beauty” is (among other things) a name for it.

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Yesterday also brought me a news bulletin that ties into that same interest in medieval and renaissance diagrams. From the Vatican Information Service (via Chant Cafe) , we learn that Hildegarde of Bingen (1098 – 1179) is now a saint of the Catholic Church with universal cultus:

Vatican City, 10 May 2012 (VIS) – The Holy Father today received in audience Cardinal Angelo Amato S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. During the audience he extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard of Bingen (1089-1179) to the universal Church, inscribing her in the catalogue of saints.

Consider, then, in contrast to Jason’s mechanistic Ptolemaic diagram, this diagram which today’s fresh-minted saint produced in the late 1140s or early 1150s to illustrate her visionary intuitions of the universe in the first of three books, Scivias:

and these two, from Liber divinorum operum:

and:

These, I take it, are purely qualitative images in contrast to the Ptolemaic diagram — making no propositional claims as to physical or mathematical accuracy, but portraying Hildegarde’s sense of cosmic order. And just as we would not argue whether it is Van Gogh or El Greco who is “right” about the skies in their respective paintings, so I don’t think Hildegarde is worried about which of her diagrams is “right” in its portrayal of the world she lived and prayed in – each one illustrates some aspect of her vision of the world, and one does not necessarily contradict another.

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Here are two descriptions of Hildegarde’s world, which may give us some insight into the diagrams above. For the top one:

For Hildegard of Bingen, twelfth century German Benedictine abbess, the universe is like an egg in the womb of God. Her view of the universe, conditioned as it is by her times and her education, represents her visionary understanding of God’s motherhood of this sphere that we call the universe. Hers is a view that is organic and holistic, coloured neither by Greek philosophy nor Enlightenment rationalism, refreshing and strikingly “true” in its perceptions around the source of created life.

Jean Evans, RSM, Viriditas and Veritas: The Ecological Prophets Hildegard of Bingen and Miriam Therese MacGillis, OP

And for the third:

God created the world out of the four elements, to glorify His name. He strengthened the world with the wind. He connected the world to the stars. And he filled the world with all kinds of creatures. He then put human beings throughout the world, giving them great power as stewards of all Creation. Human beings cannot live without the rest of nature, they must care for all natural things.

von Bingen, Physica, 755, quoted in Stephanie Roth, The Cosmic Vision of Hildegard of Bingen,” The Ecologist 30, no. 1 (2000).

It’s probably worth mentioning that three of the “four elements” of the ancients are still known to us, though we call them “states” rather than “elements” at this point — the solid, liquid and gaseous states correspond with what the ancients called “earth”, “water” and “air”, respectively — and it has even been suggested that their “fire” corresponds to the fourth state we now term “plasmas” — not my line of business, however, so who knows?

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Hildegarde picked up the word “viriditas” from Gregory the Great and made it peculiarly her own. It means greeness, literally, and freshness by extension — but for Hildegarde’s integral view of all that is, it also carries a theological dimension, Christ being the greening of the world for her:

For Hildegard, viriditas was an attribute of the Divine nature, a reflection of God’s goodness and beauty. It stood for vitality, fertility, fruitfulness and growth; in fact all the things that we now associate with the “greenness” of nature. For us today “greenness” is a sign that the Earth is healthy and flourishing. Similarly, for Hildegard, viriditas was synonymous with physical and spiritual health, with the continuing vivifying force of the Holy Spirit.
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Dr Carmel Bendon Davis, Hildegard of Bingen: Eco-warrior and Superwoman

This greening or freshening is not, for Hildegarde, just a matter of earth and water, of river and forest, it is also infused with fire and air:

I am likewise the fiery life of the substance of divinity. I flame over the beauty of the fields and sparkle in the waters, and I burn in sun, moon, and stars. And with an airy wind that sustains all things with invisible life, I raise them up vitally. For air lives in greenness and flowers, waters flow as if alive, the sun, too, lives in his light, and when the moon comes to her decline she is kindled by his light, as it were to live again… Thus I, the fiery force, am hidden in [the winds], and they take fire from me, just as breath continually moves a man, and as a windy flame exists in fire. All of these live in their essence and are not found in death, because I am life.

Nor is it “merely” natural, it can also be found in the soul:

Understanding in the soul is like the Veriditas of the branches and the leaves of the tree

It is, in fact, neither exclusively natural nor supernatural, but non-dual.

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Dylan Thomas, being a Welshman and a poet, thus has an insight that bears a family resemblance to Hildegarde’s, but phrases it in a way that leaves the “force” neither personified nor otherwise… and thus with no necessary doctrinal implication:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Due to the idiocy of copyright, you’ll have to go elsewhere to read the whole, fine poem.

For Hildegarde, this “force” is also Christ — for he himself is the “the fiery life of the substance of divinity” — and his coming to earth a greening and freshening of a world until then barren of the love he brought.

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Hildegarde was the abbess in charge of a small flotilla of nuns — but also a mystic, a visionary, philosopher, poet, painter and songstress…

Her song of creation, O Viriditas, bears comparison in spirit with St Francis‘ Canticle of the Sun. She writes to her “green” Christ and his “green” planet:

O greenness of God’s finger
with which God built a vineyard
that shines in heaven
as an established pillar:
You are glorious in God’s preparation.
And o height of the mountain
that will never be dispersed
in the judgment of God,
you nevertheless stand from afar as an exile,
but it is not in the power
of the armed man
to seize you.
You are glorious in God’s preparation.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit.
You are glorious in God’s preparation.

And she sets her words to the music of the times:

Indeed, her music is sung even today…

How’s that for a twelfth century statement of what we’d these days call “ecology”?

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But all this risks getting far too ethereal, I have wandered far along my own epicycles from Jason Wells’ point, and methinks I should bring us back down to earth.

Dennis The Constitutional Peasant, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, meets King Arthur and complains, “What I object to is you automatically treatin’ me like an inferior.” It’s understandable — but so, perhaps, is king Arthur’s response: “Well, I am king.”

Two worldviews clash here — and in the ensuing debate, Arthurian myth meets contemporary politics:

Dennis’ Mother: Well how’d you become king, then?
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake,… [Angel chorus begins singing in background] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [Angel chorus ends] That is why I am your king!
Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Arthur: Shut up!
Dennis: I mean, if I went ’round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!

Or if some bint told me the universe was a cosmic egg in the womb of God, for that matter — even if Benedict XVI did just add her to the calendar of saints.

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Here you go, courtesy of YouTube:

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Frankly I appreciate both modes of thinking — the mythic and the scientific — and believe we’re in the sort of territory here that Nils Bohr was thinking of when he said:

The opposite of a true statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.

For more on the story of diagrammatic and pictorial imagery in western civilization, see Ioan Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (University of Chicago, 1987). And for more diagrams from the renaissance, there’s nothing I know of better than SK Heninger, The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance Diagrams Of The Universe (Huntington Library, 1977).