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    Re: Celestial arts and crafts
    From: Hewitt Schlereth
    Date: 2013 Mar 27, 14:40 -0700

    Frank, I would never try to convince a fellow alum. Not cricket, old boy. I 
    will, though, stand with Friedrich and Ralph Waldo re, What is Art?
    
    Nietzsche: The proper task of life. 
    Emerson: A jealous mistress. 
    
    These sure fit my sense of celestial.  An honorable pursuit, but demanding and possessive.  :-)
    
    Peace,
    
    Hewitt
    
    
    Sent from my iPad
    
    On Mar 27, 2013, at 12:51 PM, "Frank Reed"  wrote:
    
    > Hewitt, you wrote:
    > "Right on, Jeremy. Art rhymes with heart: Art reaches your heart; your heart responds."
    > 
    > Hmmm. Art does that, yes. An artist produces some product and that product 
    "resonates" somewhere in your brain in a way that is visceral and difficult 
    to articulate. Sure. That's fine. But when was the last time you got that 
    feeling from a latitude and a longitude?? The product of celestial navigation 
    is a position (and an error ellipse!). My "heart" has yet to respond to a 
    pair of sexagesimal numbers. :)
    > 
    > I think part of what you're trying to describe is that "zen" feeling. You 
    feel at one with the natural world... you take your observations with no 
    active concentration, but you "just know" when they feel right. And the 
    unconscious nature of the skill feels good, and this is SIMILAR to the ease 
    that an artist has while working on art. An artist produces art, but a 
    skilled and experienced competent navigator has an artistic "feeling" about 
    the work.
    > 
    > It used to be trendy to talk about "right brain" versus "left brain" 
    activities: right brain was supposed to be artistic and intuitive while left 
    brain was said to be logical and analytical. And certain tasks were said to 
    "become right brain" activities when a certain level of ease and skill was 
    achieved. That language has mostly been jettisoned by modern psychology since 
    it over-states the case for brain lateralization, but there are still 
    distinctions between tasks that are accomplished without active which draw 
    instead on long-term experience. Driving a car is probably the best example. 
    When was the last time you had to "think" about staying in the lanes on a 
    highway? You just DO. Maybe some of you have read Kahneman's "Thinking Fast 
    and Slow" which is a fascinating meditation on modern research in cognition 
    and its practical consequences (a "mass market" work, but I can recommend it 
    strongly --here's the Wikipedia "Cliff Notes": 
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow). Students of celestial 
    navigation, just learning it, have to think through every step. It's 
    analytical thought, and it takes concentration. Experienced celestial 
    navigators can do it in their sleep, and they have an "intuitive sense" that 
    raises a flag when there's something amiss. But is this really any different 
    from an experienced driver of an automobile?? If I slow down a bit just 
    before an accident occurs up the road because I could "sense" something was 
    about to happen, does that mean I am clairvoyant? Or does that mean that 
    there is an "art" to driving? Or does it just mean that experience generates 
    automated, skilled behavior which the conscious mind does not actively 
    monitor?
    > 
    > I'll conclude with this: I still can't see any sense in which celestial 
    navigation itself qualifies as an art in any direct, non-metaphoric sense, 
    but I'm interested in hearing more, and you may yet convince me --stranger 
    things have happened.
    > 
    > -FER
    > PS: regarding "stranger things", tonight's new Nova on PBS (9pm EDT) is 
    apparently about the Chelyabinsk fireball, in case anyone's interested. I'm 
    not expecting anything brilliant, but it may be worth tuning in ("tuning 
    in"... now there's an expression that won't make sense anymore in the very 
    near future... right up there with "rolling down the window" in a car!).
    > 
    > 
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    > 
    

       
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