Reflecting on the Truth

Towards Day 3 of Evolving Systems course

I. Coursekeeping
reporting in from the wedding:

great example of "re-writing stories" to reflect a changing world (from the program: "our wedding incorporates both Quaker and Hindu traditons...We believe that these religions are constantly changing and respond to the world around them...With this belief in mind, we created a ceremony that attempts to create an expression of our combined beliefs.")

naming one another along w/ ...some
memorable detail/mneumonic...?

verify schedule of writing conferences, to begin tomorrow

reminder of first 3-pp. paper,
due electronically by 6 p.m. tomorrow:
where did everything come from?
how is everything related??
what will be the "center" of your creation story?
(what will be created?? where does it begin???)
what strategy will you choose for telling your story
(what tone??), and what values will that strategy suggest?
SoundsLikeBanana: the tone of the piece sets the stage to how it is read, and also how it is received or understood
what sort of "map for living" does your tale draw for us?

on Thursday, enter section I of the course:
"Stories of the Universe"
"More or less similar creation stories are found in the folklore of peoples all over the world. The filled a gap in man's desire to answer the profound questions about this world that we humans have asked ever since there has been human culture. We still treasure these stories as part of our cultural heritage, but we turn to science when we want to learn the real truth about the history of the world" (Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001).

Explore

• Michael S. Turner, "Origin of the Universe." Scientific American 301, 3 (September 2009): 36-44.
• The scale of humanness
• Deep time line (click on instructions, explore,
  get a sense of change in time of the earth and life on it)

II. For today, continue comparing King's creation stories to those we found: review your on-line forum postings
you all got on!! yeah!!!!
what's the experience been like for you?
aimee: the Internet is not my favorite medium for communication
nina44: its hard to type your thoughts

p. 26: Do the stories reflect the world as it truly is,
or did we simply start off with the wrong story?

something happened...

do we agree on what?

do we need to?

what's the point of storytelling?

What makes a story "true"?

(King's example: are good and evil "really" distinct/opposing,
or is there another way to imagine their relation?)