Rainbows and Knowing

I'm just back from an interesting day trip to an outdoor exhibit of some artwork dealing with winter light. I was fortunate to have the site to myself and got to poke around and enjoy (and fix one kinetic piece with prisms that had been damaged). The art was all thought-provoking and some pieces were very well executed. But the signs that had been put up to "explain" them were irritating and detracted from the artistic value. I wish artists and curators would stop doing nonsense like this.

Some say that Donald Trump is a poor man's idea of what a rich man is like, or a stupid man's idea of what a smart man is like. Similarly, the pseudo-scientific bullshit (PSB) on the signs for these art displays looks like a technologically illiterate person's idea of what science and engineering is like. I'm guessing the artists want to try to claim some of the legitimacy of tech without bothering to do the hard work of actually knowing what they are talking about. Examples:

Random lines and angles leading nowhere

Ooh, torque me up

A pasted screenshot from Excel (you can even see the cursor in it), in which the oscillation period is blindly claimed to be precise down to 5 nanoseconds. Really, Scooter? I think maybe you've neglected bearing friction and wind resistance at that level. Alas, we never look more foolish than when we are trying to look clever. And pretension tends to trip over its own feet when it meets science. You can't fake science like this. And it wasn't even needed here! The actual artwork is perfectly capable of speaking on its own without these PSB trappings.

Caught in mid-swing

But criticizing ignorant technophile artists is too easy. One should try to practice what you preach and attend to the successes too. So here's an example of art that has done some small amount of real engineering, and could claim some equally small amount of tech legitimacy. The distant gear is being actively turned by an electric motor. This is stepped down by the long gear train. The final gear (closest) is embedded in a block of concrete. At the resulting gear ratio, the concrete block should flip over once every 13 billion years (the approximate age of the universe). Beautiful. I love this piece. It's not pretending and pretension. It's knowing your shit.

Art Ganson's wonderful art

 Here's another one. The iron pipe was buried for years, then excavated and placed on supports deep in a forest. If you whack it with a nearby branch it rings out a deep and clear note into the forest. That's because the supports are carefully placed at the nodal points of the first fundamental mode of open-tube resonance. The sign for this art piece could well have a diagram of the pipe resonance and talk about Helmholtz resonance. Maybe even the formula for the relevant Bessel function (that would look way cooler than a paste-up from Excel). But it tastefully refrains from such things. No PSB needed.

Voice of the Earth

And it's the same thing for Zen practice. You can't simply adopt the trappings and jargon and expect that it is going to bring you enlightenment. It isn't simply a matter of putting in your hours on the zafu. Even leaving home and shaving the "ignorance grass" is just pretension on its own. You have to actually do the work of examining how the mind works and how suffering arises. No amount of PSB is substitute for the real thing. You don't get to claim the legitimacy without doing the careful investigation. You have to actually look at the world, and see what is actually happening. A teacher can help, if you are willing to learn. But you have to do the learning yourself. That starts with keeping your eyes open to see the world as it actually is.

Many people seem to be going through the world with their eyes closed, operating on autopilot. They see only what they expect to see, and not what is actually there (which may be quite different this time). As a simple demonstration, I sometimes ask people about rainbows. We've all seen lots of rainbows before, right? Probably hundreds and hundreds of times. Well, it appears we've all looked, but not many have seen. Here are some the simple diagnostic questions for you to test yourself (with gratitude to Walter Lewin for sharing them with the world):

• What colour is on the outside edge of the bow, the red or the violet? Is it always that way, or does it depend on circumstances?
• Is there any difference in the sky above or below the bow itself?
• How big is the bow? Do they come in different sizes? If so, what makes them bigger or smaller?
• Where do they appear in the sky? Everywhere? When do they appear? Any time of day?
• How many rainbows are in the sky at the same time? Is it always that number?

Since we've all looked at so many rainbows, it ought to be trivial to get the correct answers to these questions, right? Do you want the answers? Okay, if you need to check: red is always on the outside, the sky under the bow is bright white, bows are all the same size of fourty-two degrees wide, they appear opposite the sun and so never appear in the southern sky (for those of us living north of the equator anyway) and when the sun is low to the horizon (as in afternoon rains), and there are always two rainbows sharing the same centre point - the secondary one is a little further out (about the width of your fist held at arm's length) - it is fainter (and the red is now on the inside), but if you know to look for it you will see it. If you struggled at all with these simple tests, maybe that is an indicator that your eyes are not fully open and you've been relying too much on autopilot. Who knows what jewels of the world you've already missed. First step to awakening is to open your eyes.

For keeners only, there is also a third bow, but it is located behind you when you are looking at the main rainbow. And if you turn around to see it, the sun is usually blinding you too much to make it out. But it's there. I have only seen it once.

The rare tertiary bow (Kyrgyzstan)

There is so much Zen teaching in rainbows. You and I are walking on the beach together. The sun shines on the crashing waves, creating rainbows. I point one out to you - "look over there!" But you say that's not where the rainbow is, it's over there (pointing to a slightly different place). Which one of us is right? Are they the same rainbow or different? Am I the only one who can see my rainbow? The special one? After the wave passes, where does my rainbow go? Did the rainbow really exist in the world?

A lot of pointless questions. If you want to understand the teaching of the rainbow, then open your eyes to it