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Version 1.5 March 2013 Previous
Version Additional
Source We can summarise our beliefs to as short as we like. Ultimately we might end up with a single word – perhaps something like “om” (or “aum”), from Hinduism, the world’s oldest major religion, the symbol of the beginning, duration, and end of the universe and everything in it. On the other hand we could expand the presentation to include thousands of useful statements, that take too long to absorb and don’t help much with the big picture. It’s a question of
balance: a judgement regarding how to be as brief as possible while still
including the most significant points. · At the highest level, up to about 10 statements seems reasonable to achieve that goal without being too much to take in at one time. Others have come to a similar number: o In Buddhism there is an Eight-fold Path. o In Judaism and Christianity there are the
Ten Commandments. o Some will be aware of Miller’s notion of the
magical number seven plus or minus two, supposedly being the number of ideas a
person can hold in their head at one time (see wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
). o We have arrived at 8 high level conclusions (with
heaps of phrases) simply because
that’s the way it turned out. These
cover the essential learnings of Philosophy, Science, History, Religion, Art,
Personal Practice and Politics and an overall Vision. o This is the “Diamond” level. (It reminds me of my “diamond” credit card, apparently
better than a platinum, gold, silver or bronze card – so the credit card company
tells me). · Each of these knowledge domains can be broken down into separate topics. At the next level, a few dozen high level supporting statements seems adequate. We’ve chosen 42
“second level” summary statements to justify the top 8. o
There is
nothing magical in having 42 sets of conclusions at this level, except for the
cosmic joke about “life, the universe and everything” (from Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy” see wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker’s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_Universe.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29. o This number could be compared to the 39
Articles of the Church of England, established in 1563 by the then Archbishop
of Canterbury, and incorporated into that church’s Common Book of Prayer, still
cited in debates within the church. An
earlier version had 42 articles. o
Restricting
the number to 42 imposes a rather arbitrary discipline on the process,
requiring decisions to be made on what really is important. o We’ve summarised these as 42 one liners. This is the “Platinum” level. o We can of course add an unlimited amount of
additional detail to each of these one liners.
They have been expanded into 4 lines each, and we have called these the
“Gold” level.
We don’t want to fuss too much about labelling and the levels. It’s just a way of working out what’s important at the highest level, clarifying what supports those high level conclusions, then working our way down to the real, evidence based level, that is the day to day substance of science and history.
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