Hypothesis

[degringolade]

 

 

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“Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.”

Lu-tze From Terry Pratchett’s “Thief of Time”. 

One of the most annoying things about people in general is that once somebody finds a way that works for them, they tend to think that is the only way to do things.  I think that most “rituals” are just something that worked once and then in an effort to come up with some drinking money, they either taught a class or wrote a book and the ritual found its way into the mainstream.

When folks want to do something, they don’t want to waste time and they want results now.  What a lot of rituals do is provide you with how person X mentioned in the above paragraph managed to find their way through one particular maze.  It doesn’t mean that it is the “right” way.  I spent time in the Army long ago referring to field manuals and spent even more time in science trying to get the person who got stuck writing protocols to be accurate enough to get the job done but flexible enough that smart people get the idea.  I suppose that those experiences gave me a pretty jaundiced view about following someone else’s instructions.

So, I am spending time this month and most of next working out my process for the “mundane tarot” that I have been nattering on about lately.  I hope that this doesn’t bore my few readers too much, but I need to work stuff out and come up with a   hypothesis in my brain as to why tarot works and then work out how to test the hypothesis.  I am not even certain that a theory can be developed for this kind of thing.  Right now it is looking like hypotheses from horizon to horizon.

Testing a hypothesis takes time and discipline.  The most important thing in my mind is to set out how you are going to run the experiment:  At an absolute minimum, this requires that you write down the experimental protocol in detail before beginning the experiment, and then follow your experimental protocol to the letter. Then after the experiment has run, you analyze the results and you publish the results good or bad.

Over and over and over again I will remind everyone that this statement is the basis of all experimental science.

"Qui hypotheses sumunt pro primis speculationum suarum principiis… ingenium possunt forsan formare commentum, at commentum tamen erit."

Those who assume (fetch from) hypotheses as first principles of (the foundation on which they build) their speculations…may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be.

—ROGER COTES,

PREFACE TO SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S

Principia Mathematica,

SECOND EDITION, 1713

Comments

looking forward to the results from your lab-book

[emily07]

"Nyarlathotep leaned forward in the chair. "You´ve also been trained in the traditions of human scholarship, though, and that´s something our side has rarely had the chance to work with." The Weird of Hali: Innsmouth John Micheal Greer

Or as Kulgan inquired of the Priest: "How did the first magicians learn to use magic?".v (Raymond E. Feist, Midkemia Saga Apprentice)

...and maybe you could ask Tsathoggua or whomever to guide you in your enterprise }:)

Best wishes