Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
MANIPULATION TOPS THOUGHT
MANIPULATION TOPS THOUGHT
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
BY REV. DR. LARRY DELANO COLEMAN
Mind over matter may not be true.
This insight occurred to me in the wake of reading of John Harrison’s invention of the chronometer. A marine chronometer enables ships to calculate their location at sea, longitude, under all kinds of conditions.
Harrison was a skilled laborer, working with his hands, as a carpenter, watch-maker, and musician.
John Harrison’s contemporary English countryman, Sir Isaac Newton, whose MATHEMATICA PRINCIPIA marked him as one of the foremost intellectuals of that era or of any era, had vocally doubted that such a “chronometer,” such longitude-at-sea-finding-device could be made, given its extraordinary difficulty.
“His difficulty was in producing a clock that was not affected by variations in temperature, pressure or humidity, remained accurate over long time intervals, resisted corrosion in salt air, and was able to function on board a constantly-moving ship. Many scientists, including Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens, doubted that such a clock could ever be built and favoured other methods for reckoning longitude, such as the method of lunar distances. Huygens ran trials using both a pendulum and a spiral balance springclock as methods of determining longitude, with both types producing inconsistent results. Newton observed that "a good watch may serve to keep a reckoning at sea for some days and to know the time of a celestial observation; and for this end a good Jewel may suffice till a better sort of watch can be found out. But when longitude at sea is lost, it cannot be found again by any watch".” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Overview_of_the_problem_of_determining_longitude
Notwithstanding the doubts of the men of thought, the man of hands made the marine chronometer. It revolutionized marine travel and certainly helped England master the seas.
More to the point, however, it shows the old saw, that “mind over matter” is sometimes a myth!
Thus manipulation—handling, working with—matter is greater than mere thoughts about matter.
Otherwise stated, “Mr. Say ain’t nothing.Mr. Do is the man,” said Junebug Jabbo Jones!