A LECTURE SERIES

From each and every one of these mythical beginnings there evolve schema and scenarios and a story which, when facts are discovered or observed, modify the scenario. Eventually all or most of the facts known to learned society match the evolved and evolving descriptions of the real world and its origins. At that point in human understanding the validity, the plausibility, the rationality of the myth is irrelevant. In our description of the origin and evolution of the oceanic world, we were therefore at liberty to begin with our own arbitrary and now irrelevant myth, provided that we clothe the myth with fact before the skeleton crumbles with decay and turns to dust; "under dust to lie sans wine, sans singer and sans end".

In our previous study of the evolution of seabase society a coherent description of 'the sea and society' appears circa 3000 B. C. This marks the beginnings of the many oral histories of the many tribes of humanity. In the generation phase of this process many of the great historians were people who outlived their peers and were thus able to describe. as living witnesses,or as anthropological informants, events that could not be contradicted by lives in being. When writing appeared and until the invention of the printing press, transcription belonged to various priesthoods with a vested interest in the marriage of fact and fiction and before the days of transcription, history belonged to the oral historians.

Human memory is based on the characteristics of the human brain. Thus each culture devised some form of prose or poetry to provide a matrix which, matching the string memory of the human brain, could minimize errors in the oral transcriptions. Thus a cultural patina was placed on the facts of history and a frame of dogma which varied from tribe to tribe and from geographic location to geographic location.

We now know or believe that cognition in the human brain is based on the retention of schema in the primitive portion of the human brain. These schema have been genetically encoded or have resulted from repeated reinforcement from the environment. We also know or believe that these schema are strung together to form scenarios based on empirical experiences sensed by the frontallobes. As a consequence humans and marine mammals are capable of single trial learning. It appears that new scenarios are formed metaphorically by an elaboration or adaption from existing patterns of understanding. Thus oral history forms the informational base for transmission of tribal knowledge and dogma from one generation to the next.
 In this process the human brain (with the possible exception of autistic brains) records information with a string memory that is about seven bytes. Here is the basis for poetry in which each seven byte sequence has a trigger for its next string. (Rhyme and/or meter). In the American Culture the most classic example of this transmission of culture through nursery rhyme is

Beyond the nursery rhyme is the transmission of religion and history. Fundamental folk structures are the haiku, the tanka, the sijo, etc. The haiku is five seven five and forms the basis for Hebrew literature as well as Japanese.

Homer has sung to us songs in
hexameter forceful, dactyl.
The bard of Avon touched our inner soul;
iambs dulcet, pentametric, tactile.
Ogden Nash
wrote for cash.

This analysis of the human brain provides some understanding in the manner in which each human element of society reacts to her/his genetic code, his environment and his/her tribe. But Society as a whole does not think or behave as the human elements of society think and behave.

Before the laying of the first transoceanic cable, the transmission of oral or transcribed accounts of current events from island to island or continent to continent required the physical transfer of the human informant or the written document by ship. This process delayed the transmission of current events by periods of time ranging from weeks to months and even years. The content of the information was biased by the messenger or by the limited information (purely verbal or symbolic) which could be transmitted by document. As a consequence, society as an organism, was limited in its ability to respond to, or understand the significance of current events in the same way that invertebrate organisms respond to the range of environmental signals that they experience which portends survival or extinction.
The world society of humans is an organic system composed of humans as components who possesses a very complex brain and cerebral cortex. If a healthy human is struck in the toe, there is an instant awareness of the damage that has occurred and the remedies that must be taken to insure survivaland long term recovery. If, however, the human has had a prior accident which has rendered them paraplegic and incapable of sensation below the waist, then a damaged toe could easily be overlooked at the time of the occurrence of the injury. At some future time the toe might be come infected, fester with anaerobic decay and develop gas gangrene. Symptoms will soon appear in the parts of the body which still have sensory response. The effects can easily be interpreted as indigestion or virus or some malady of the upper body. Treatment based on such a conclusion could be fatal and the historical record of cause of death flawed to the detriment of the medical profession. How else can one explain such unexplainable practices of the eighteenth century such as 'bleeding' to mitigate the damage of traumatic injury.

All too many historians have recorded history on the presumption that society as an organism has a brain and a cerebral cortex which operates with the effectiveness and sophistication of the individual. The last chapter of Tolstoy's War and Peace provides the insight that has revolutionized the historian profession and set the stage for the new history. In that historic summary of the Napoleonic conflict between France and Russia, Tolstoy demonstrates that the strategy and tactics which were conceived by Napoleon were fatally flawed, were never carried out, and were never communicated. Despite this fact every soldier, every officer, every general, every politician and every statesman believed that this single individual was the driving and determinative force of man's fate and European destiny. This thought permeated the literature, the art and the music of the time. Who could not resonate to Beethoven's Eroica symphony or Schumann's Two Grenadiers or the strains of The Marseillaise in Tschaikovsky's 1812 overture. The dominant theme of human communication verbal and non-verbal ascribed a non-existent power and influence to an individual of such impotence that he spent the greater part of his life, justifying his masculinity, with uniform, ceremony an amorous relations with a woman named Josephine.
But we now live in a new world where history is made in a new key. Among the first historians to employ the new framework was Braudel in his remarkable study of the Mediterranean in the 16th and 17th century. Professor Greg Dening sums it up at the conclusion of his history of the "Mutiny on the Bounty"

"history is something we make rather than something we learn...of course as a teacher I am not innocent. I want to persuade my students that any history they make will be fiction - not fantasy, fiction something to be sculpted to its expressive purpose. I want them to be ethnographic - to describe with the carefulness and realism of a poem what they observe of the past in the signs that the past has left. It is my hope that they make themselves culturally literate in giving ear to the questions women and men around them are asking about themselves and that they find in their history making the capacity to represent human agency in the way in which it happens, mysteriously combining the total particular and the universal."

But this approach to history is reminiscent of the work of Herodotus. This remarkable historian had little access to reference material other than the oral histories of the society in which he lived. Subsequent historians have demonstrated that Herodotus was very inaccurate, but whenever he lacked the data which provided some verisimilutude to the facts of history he created the story in terms of what should have happened for future generations to understand the meaning of what had happened. We shall shamelessly adopt the Herodotus approach in this text covering our inexactitutde with the cloak of probability and if necessary with the science of Beyes Subjective Probability analysis. For we live in an age made more remarkable by the instantaneous transmission of 'strikes to the toe' of society as communicated by CNN and other global television media. Most recently the establishment of an information highway through the organic growth of internet has provided instant multimedia access around the globe for any individual anywhere who has access the fobre optic network that resides on the seabed of the worlds ocean seas. On December 11 1994, the famed Louvre museum in Paris made digital recordings of its most famous paintings available to anyone with the capability of electronic visitation. The growth of the world wide web has been exponential and includes this volume, together with illustrations in color.

This year these lectures will once again be placed on the web and illustrated with paintings, literature and (in the near future) music obtained by instant access to the museums and libraries of the world at virtually no cost. The world society is fast growing a cerebral cortex and with it a dramatic revolutionary evolutionary change in the way that society relates to itself and to its environment. Students and readers who are following these lectures are urged to obtain access to the World Wide Web at least once a week where they can study, and browse to their hearts content the relevant libraries of the world in the context of the framework of "The Sea and Society"

What is this framework? Let us first identify that time in history when the cerebral cortex of the world began to form. Was it not with the completion of the first transatlantic cable? Or was the simultaneous occurrence of a number of dramatic changes in the organization and structure of the institutions of applied learning and understanding. Or was it in dramatic changes in the structure of International Law. Or were they all interrelated. Certainly the period of history from 1850 to 1900 encompassed the most profound changes in culture and the arts, science and industry and government. The world of 1900 was scarcely recognizable from the perspective of the world of 1812.

Herein lies the opportunity for the establishment of a myth which will permit us to discuss the evolution of the new vertebrate world without entanglement with the history of its invertebrate predecessor. A form of creationism seems most appropriate. Let us mythicize.

In the beginning (circa 1850) God recreated the heavens, the earth, humans and human society. More specifically he created knowledge and the spread of knowledge. There is a tacit understanding on the part of society that this myth has validity. Physics students throughout the world wear Tee shirts emblazoned with the motto "and God said "let there be (Maxwell's equation) and there was (Maxwell's equation). Indeed electromagnetics and electrodynamics was a part of the physical world prior to '1850' but the world perceived it not. Not perceiving, the phenomenon was not utilized and it might as well have been nonexistent. In this sense we can list God's new creations or his new revelations (God speaking through nature) and explore their implications. In that context let us create our myth.

And God said 'let there be electrodynamics' and there was electrodynamics. And God through his theoretical prophet Clerk Maxwell and his practical prophet Faraday discovered the interaction between electricity and magnetism such that an electric current could be generated by the passage of a conducting wire through a magnetic field and thereby create electrical motors and of greater significance electrical generators which would send stream of electrons for thousands of miles along insulated cables of copper wire. Not long thereafter a prophet named Cyrus Field who was aware of the relationship between the ocean and society produced a TransAtlantic cable which provided instantaneous communication between Britain and the United States. Thus the embryo of an international cerebral cortex was introduced into the world. And God said 'let there be 'thermodynamics' and there was thermodynamics. And God through his theoretical prophet Carnot revealed that temperature was the measure of the chaotic energy of heat and that ordered energy could be extracted from hot chaos if it were cooled with cold chaos. Not long thereafter the steam engine was developed which when coupled with the electrical generator provided the world with all sorts and varieties of ordered energy for utilization by humans. And God trusted humanity, as he always trusted humanity to utilize this ordered energy for good or for evil. And some there were who utilized this energy for world commerce and trade but others turned this knowledge to the development of the mightiest engines of war called battleships.

So it was that there was a prophet before his time named D'Arsonval who recognized (1870) that the world was a great natural energy machine in which the ocean was the reservoir of a gigantic supply of hot and cold chaos. He prophesied that some day the world would find a sources of environmentally sustainable ordered energy through the mixing of these two masses of the ocean. This mixing process was originally given the name Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion but is now called Deep Ocean Water Recovery (DOWER)

. And God said let there be evolution and there was evolution. And God, speaking through nature, sent his prophet Darwin on a voyage of a ship called the Beagle and on that voyage he revealed to his prophet the identities and diversities of the animal species and their adaptations to the different world environments. Soon thereafter it was recognized that humanity had evolved from the sea and still possessed all the necessary biophysical equipment required to readapt to the sea as marine mammals.

And God said let the universe be composed of digitizable particles and there were particles. And God through his theoretical prophets identified the atom as a fundamental building block of nature and the quantum of light, soon to be known as the photon as the indivisible element of the Universe identifiable in the limit as electromagnetic radiation and as the "music of the spheres". And with this understanding came chemistry and oxidation reduction and a prophet named Bessemer who brought the world the manufacture of iron and steel for rail and railroads and for ships and battleships.

And God said let there be germs and there were germs. And God through his microbe hunting prophets like Pasteur identified disease and disease organisms such that plagues were replaced by epidemics and there was instituted a new profession of medicine and surgery (chemists and anesthetics). And other prophets identified the ocean as a great antiseptic fluid separating islands and continents from germs generated in other parts of the world. Sadly many had been transmitted by humans traversing the world's oceans on sailing ships and even today by commercial aircraft. Happily the concept of quarantine still utilizes the sterility of the ocean to prevent the transfer of old and new organisms.

And God said let there be three p's - Philosophy, Psychology, and anthroPology. And God through his prophets of the Vienna circle produced the tablets of logical positivism as the embryo from which postmodernism,has evolved. And through his prophets Cezanne and Monet created impressionism and through Seurat, digitalized, pixelated art. A disproportionate, in terms of human activity, body of this art was devoted to depictions of the sea. And through his poets God created new forms of poetry and literature- blank verse of Whitman and streams of consciousness of James Joyce. Oceanic themes (Odyssey, Peril and Reward) dominated this new literature. Chief among the poetic prophets was Walt Whitman. Whitman, like the writer of this text was a child of the port of New York and the Long Island seashore. Their winters, a century apart, were spent at the pier watching the tugs on the East river hauling scows of produce, materials of construction and waste, or voyaging between the islands of Staten, Manhattan and Long on the ubiquitous ferries. Their summers were spent on the Atlantic shores of the Rockaways out to Montauk Point where as children they plunged without fear into the gentle surf or dug for clams, searched for the delicious soft shelled crab, or sailed tiny dinghy's into the teeth of approaching storms secure that they would be driven back once more to the friendly lee of the Island. Out of these experiences there was inculcated a relationship to the sea, an identification as a child of the sea. This is well expressed by Whitman in his egocentric anthem "Song of Myself"

In 1855 he wrote: You sea! I resign myself to you also-I guess what you mean. I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of the sight of land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you. Sea of stretch'd ground-swells, Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd but always ready graves, Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases. Walt Whitman 1855

Like the author, Whitman was both swimmer and sailor and felt the strong bond between the Sea and Society. One of his most beloved poems was his eulogy for Lincoln 'Captain my Captain" Here he analogizes the United States as the Ship of State which has returned from a successful voyage but where 'on the deck my(his) Captain lies, fallen cold and dead'. He was a forerunner of Rudyard Kipling who chronicles the sea from the perspective of the establishment of the British empire. As the child of a colonial he was exposed to British imperialism in India and in Asia. Empirical experience made him both prophet (far called our Navies melt away - on dune and headland sinks the fire) and iconoclast. Observing the machinations of his Calvinist peers he could identify the myth which is advanced in these pages and which appears as headline for this chapter in McAndrew's Hymn. McAndrew who has inaugurated the steamship and on his last voyages he speaks to the Lord;

In these few lines Kipling incorporates the 1850 revelation of a new creation and proclaims through the mouth of the mythical prophet McAndrew, the first gospel of Manifest Destiny. The debate continues to this day as to whether this gospel is the result of agnostic "social Darwinism" or another chapter of predestiny ordained by God. This text, without attempting to resolve this dichotomy will carryus from 1850 to the present day and then project to the "end of time" In that projection we shall determine the end time bu utilizing the legal "Rule Against Perpituities" This doctrine makes legally irrelvant all contracts that were concluded prior to the completion of specified lives in being when the contract was negotiated plus twenty one years. In this course we shall estimate the life expectancy of the oldest survivor of this course and adding twenty one years we shall specify that date as "the end of time".