Closing Thoughts on Haworthia is a sequel to Thoughts on Haworthia (1999) which was a product of a great awakening for me and also confusion, as there was so much to say. It simply grew like Topsy to say virtually nothing other than try and explain that we would not understand anything until we came to the realization that this is a conscious creation. It is NOT the mechanistic wonderland that the intellectual “science” we worship would have us believe. Maharaj Seth Shiv Dayal Singh wrote a series of poems on the subject of mysticism and warned that we “… woo the subject of knowledge” at our peril. Guru Nanak was a 14th century mystic that also warned that all we needed to know was the letter “A”. Another dying mystic is reported to have said…”I do not know anything, I will never know anything”. While not remotely near that level of insight, I clearly see (… now that is a taxonomic term that actually means “it is not very clear to me at all”.) that all knowledge is very fuzzy around the edges. It was this thought that got me out of bed to finally to examine it in writing. The reason I write, or wrote at all, has also been a subject of my research and like everything else is fuzzy around the edges. Essentially I write to explore my mind and its convolutions. Largely this does not help because it is hampered by personal idiosyncrasy and by serious intellectual limitations. Anyway I got out of bed and went to the internet and found a post presenting a video entitled… “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” This is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, explained by a mystic Maharaj Lama Rasaji. Of course there are mystics and there are mystics. Presently science would have us dismiss them all regardless, as weirdoes. So indeed I enter this maze of ideas swirling mist of thoughts trying to find where to start or even where to stop. All helped along by Jeffrey Kaplan explaining (Bertrand) Russell’s paradox. Here is another YouTube site beautifully discussing the same topic … Up and Atom at least narrated if not compiled by Jade Joyce Tan-Holmes.
The very beginning?
Among the many avenues of thought I have been exploring recently is the problem of scientific names where their origins, meaning and manipulations cause havoc exactly where you would think they were meant to bring order. Another avenue of thought was the massive conflict between a need to know and a need to keep things secret. This is the question of the location of plants sought after for either the saintly needs of science or the satanic needs of commerce – or conversely satanic needs of science versus the human needs of commerce, depending on a prejudiced point of view. Nobody seems to pay any attention to the appeal of plants to the inner true nature of man and his relation to nature. But we come to that later. So let us start with that first avenue of thought, the problem of identification and flux of scientific names.
Among my many thoughts is the idea that plant taxonomy is actually some sort of delusional activity that is getting us nowhere. I thought science was an activity directed at understanding human existence and the world around us, operating under the four Mertonian Norms expounded by an Australian soil scientist John Robert Philip in Enigma 5. Cabbages and Kings.
Briefly…
1. Universal truth.
2. Communality and no secrets.
3. No personal gain.
4. Organised scepticism.
Does modern science operate according to these principals? I would say “hardly”. We pursue knowledge for knowledge sake alone and for what benefit we can derive from it. My experience is that plant taxonomy has almost totally lost itself in trying to satisfy both the intellectuals that do the work and the people at the work-face who need names. It has lost itself on the very basic definition and understanding what those basic life forms might be that we so pedantically and righteously name or meddle with i.e. species. It does not even seem to occur to taxonomists to truly question the purpose of their activity and what impact it may have on anyone who may need names and stability for the system in which they are so rigorously or self righteously placed. Science has lost itself on its principle (see “cognitive dissonance”).
Here is where I wrestle with a wish to explain my life experience and why I write what I do. It is also why I mentioned the conflict between the “science” of taxonomy and the practical use of the product i.e. a classification system from Kingdom down to varieties, cultivars and forms however we define those terms and the fuzziness they become enveloped in.
Intrinsically everyone knows what the word “species” means. It is a set of similar things but what we do not know is how much dissimilarity is in any one set. It is imagined that DNA is the basic element of genetics and thus similarity but it is an obvious truth that DNA does not control form e.g. the DNA in your toe is the same as in a hair of your body as in the iris of your eye. There is something else at work at a deeper level.
We all know what species are. They are the myriad of different life forms. Kinds of things like elephants, lions, tigers, antelopes, palm trees, barnacles, fungi etc. But there is a problem because some of those names are sets of similar things but we do not know how similar nor recognise when dissimilarity is similarity. Not that I am an expert or even knowledgeable about number or set theory. I do not think anyone has to be. A species is also a set of particular things at the outset of biological science, defined (or tacitly accepted?) as… “a group or groups of individuals that are or are potentially, interbreeding”. Botany has blithely followed this definition that may be true of higher animals, but certainly not of plants. Plants can hybridise across generic differences. I do not know about higher taxonomic categories. What we do when we try to classify plants as Haworthia is a work in a process that will solve the problem of what the species are. We supposedly analyse all the various aspects of the plant that constitute their individual characters and create a process by which we can describe and identify them – an algorithm. It is thus interesting to consider that YouTube video that discusses the most perplexing problem in computer science. This is because in many genera, species are easy or alternatively very difficult to segregate or define. The YouTube discusses this as the problem as those that can be solved with the capacity of computer power and the time needed to run the algorithm to get to a solution and those that that no algorithm can be developed to arrive at a solution. So let me write again – the algorithm is the collection of data or information about the plants and their characters that you might use in the process of description and identification. Now I am not sure if I have this right, or even explained it adequately, but the computer scientists seem to be stuck on the issue of similarity of the problem that an algorithm can be found that works and gives a solution and that one can easily confirm is a correct one.
But does it matter? I did ask a highly intellectual friend to comment on the video and he was quite dismissive. Saying…” these subjects are much better known and more carefully thought out than is being told to you in that video”. Regarding intellectualism now, let me quote a 14th century mystic viz Kabir… “No intellectual is ever certain or can be”. What I conclude in “thoughts” was that taxonomy would never arrived at the truth until is admitted that this is a conscious creation. What this means is that no algorithm will ever provide a solution to any of those large unsolvable problem until it also incorporates information/data from the metaphysical realm. The physical realm is an illusion and a dream. It seems real to us but it is not. Things will always be fuzzy around the edges.
Coming back to taxonomy and species, we can see now that some plant groups seem easily solvable and some not. But a curious problem arises that I struggled with at a time when amateur taxonomists (i.e. bus drivers, musicians, traffic policemen, engineers, mathematicians, insurance brokers, battery salesmen, accountants and the like within my ken, were outpacing and outperforming professional taxonomic botanists. This was the question of whether taxonomy was science or art. I argued strenuously that it was science. I was mostly wrong. It should be science. It is also not art. It is a form of guesswork. So it should be science. Let us see. The methodology of science is said to be systematic observation, measurement, experiment, and the formulation, testing and modification of hypotheses. If one scientist does the sampling and analysis, repetition and agreement from others is necessary to reach acceptance. In taxonomy this is in fact extremely rare however generous one is to herbarium wizards that use classification keys and descriptions to identify specimens. If you had to send two scientists to independently go into the field, sample and analyse the members of a genus to establish its member species, the chances of agreement at the outcome of their analyses are close to zero. Perhaps it is necessary to say this is not true of all genera, but it is most certainly true of Haworthia. Apart from the idiosyncratic nature of individual people the plants themselves show such considerable individual variation that should our two scientists have by chance sampled even the same populations, the conclusions would be different. The variables are too many and too great to submit to the processes (algorithms) the two would have used. Neither can we include what are surely the most important ones of the metaphysical component. My contention is here, as greater minds also argue, that the nature of species is not determined by physical elements and morphological or other material characters. Species are determined by non-material i.e. metaphysical realities like the elements of fire earth air water and ether as recognised in mystic terminology.
Dr John Davidson is a scientist and also a student of mysticism whose intellect is reflected in some amazing publications. He made the statement that the meaning (definition) of species in science was not the same as that in metaphysics. I find that unacceptable as it is like saying that the reality of a number like 4, is in physics different to that in the mystic dimension. In other words it is necessary for the definitions to be the same.
But I have also used the term “genus” very loosely as though it is as basic an object as a species. It needs a philosopher to have the intellectual concepts and language to debate this and there is no shortage of them so you will have to forgive me as a virtual layman for examining thoughts like this outside of the rarefied atmosphere of academia. A genus is as badly defined as the word species. It is not a basic element of creation. The mystic literature is full of references to the Wheel of 84, (Chaurasi). It refers to a specific number of life forms (species) in creation i.e. 84 lakhs of kinds, where a lakh is 100,000. It is an essential requirement of any understanding to recognise that this might be true as indicative of the metaphysical element of creation and a need to recognise that. As Sheldrake argues, as others do, that consciousness must have come first and then creation. It is not that consciousness is a derivative of an evolutionary process from primitive organic materials.
Modern science is driven by the conviction of evolution and change driven by fitness levels. So the concept is held that the species are likened to the apices of a branched tree. The sequentially thinning branches represent different taxonomic categories. The genus is the term applied to the last branch that projects the individual twigs that the term species is used. It actually has no truth. It is not real. It is a construct of intellectual abstraction. In the last few decades DNA analyses has swamped the system and a species definition (if articulated at all) is that the level of agreement of the sequence of DNA bases connecting the chromatid strands is greater than some barely defined level of statistical probability. My simple minded observation is that sampling and repetitive observation and/or experimentation are grossly inadequate and usually based on a pre-existing classification. Not only that, but in complex groups like the Asphodelaceae (includes Haworthia) suggests that the species cannot be identified in the final product of a two dimensional phylogram (classification tree). In some groups it gets so bad that, as has happened in Asphodelaceae, there is no agreement at even generic levels. Thus while in South Africa one classification is accepted for the Alooideae, in Europe it is not.
I have pointed out before that personally at least, I cannot remotely see how a two dimensional phylogram and statistical analytical procedure can be used to arrive at a decision on the product of a process of change in time and space. Here I agree that change does occur and my observation that is can be a lot faster than generally believed. The change is not of that of one species to another. It is a change of the basic life from to another form while still being the same species. Species do not change as basic elements. They only change appearance. Some may disappear and new ones may arise from what existed, but it is not the progressive change that Darwinism proposes.
Here I do sit back and smile. I once argued publicly that the Cape floral Kingdom was grossly misrepresented and that in fact we had a winter rainfall biome predicated by geology, rainfall, soil and gross landform. A very smart intellectual dismissed this as something that needs to be debated in the academic arena (and not by unrecognised unqualified observers? – me).
There are two conclusions one comes to from the above considerations. One is that classification is not remotely “science”. It is the fanciful end product by the decision of one individual rarely in conjunction with a collaborator. Second that the data required to reach a decision on what constitutes a genus is mired in conflict. We can consider that the genus category is not real and is a product of an inadequately objective process, and then that the species level decision is confounded by a lack of definition and by the limitations of sampling and the impossibility of tracking change (similarity) with time by a limited lone observer?
These observations are borne out by all my experience not only of my own observations, but to learn and observe how different the data sets are that other similarly inspired observers acquire. I only hold a stronger hand because I have the benefit of having seen the records of many more observers as they exist in herbaria. There is also the downside that there is very little possibility of examining or questioning any conclusions other observers might experience or make. So classification cannot be said to be scientific and nor is it art.
It has taken me since 1969 to the present to gather data. In that time I have observed change while also speculating about the degree of sampling and how complete my data set is. Not only has the situation changed with time, but sampling by others from roughly the same territory has produced additional data that is inaccessible and cannot be used to truly test the hypothesis of my end product.
Cognitive dissonance.
As with “genus” and “species”, it is quite useful to refer to a dictionary for definition. This means that you cannot be sure of getting a good and useful answer. But I did this anyway with the words “cognitive dissonance”, and this is what I get…”Cognitive dissonance is a mental conflict that occurs when your beliefs do not line up with your actions. It is an uncomfortable state of mind when someone has contradictory values, attitudes, or perspectives about the same thing.” Is this an adequate definition? I think not, quite apart from its construction. The definition suggests a conscious decision when in fact my observation is that it operates far back in the subconscious as a denial of any information that conflicts with what is comfortable and necessary to believe and justify one’s own self-indulgence. It is thus not an uncomfortable state but the very antithesis. It all becomes a critical element when we start examining society and the nature of values in people as individuals or as groups of widely varying size and ethnicity. Critical to the subject is the question of “can it be moulded and influenced?”.
The answer to that is absolutely profound and I doubt if I can do justice to it. Just as I thought science arose as an intellectual discipline to identify truth from what we learned by what we were taught and imposed on us or the truth we could learn from personal experience and observation. I was wrong. Science has been used to deny the very spirituality that was awakening to question the role of religion and individuals posing as intermediaries for God Himself. Dare I even say this in the way various religions pit one faction against another? Is there motive and reason for the present poor state of the world? But that is all at another level other than the more pedestrian need for stable and meaningful plant names.
The essence here is that there exists a non-cognitive dissonance that is far more destructive of human values and quality of society. Perhaps it is impossible to deal with and why mystics warn us to break away from “friends” who we may attach to or who may attach to us (knowingly or unknowingly) because of a need of some kind. This becomes a serious problem because being fully human may mean not doing anything that will disturb the comfort levels of another. Let sleeping dogs lie or let dormant souls rest in peace?
Bruce Bayer, Kleinplasie, Wellington
18 February, 2023