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Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
81–90 of 103 posts
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#82The article evokes some doubts - particularly statement "JPL... first government-sponsored rocket lab in history". According to article, that happened in "late 1930-s", but already in 1933 in USSR rocket groups GIRD and GDL were combined into a research institute. A highly recommended "Ignition!" ( http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf ) - a history of liquid propellant research by John Clark brief…
And the VFR funded by the Reichswehr in the early 30's
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#83Has nobody here read "Gravity's Rainbow"? Love and rockets, indeed.
Reading GR gave me a chance to be ultra geeky one evening in one of my fluids classes by correctly identifying a lump of crumpled metal as an A4 fuel pump.
I went to college in Bedford which is next door to an RAE R&D station where they brought back captured Nazi tech – and half the course worked at twinwoods.
Though I never got to go round the black museum at Cranfield where they had loads of v2 bits - I did see the sad TSR2 they had there though
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just looked briefly at Thelema. This appears to be yet another cult around a perfect, mystic founding document, like the Bible or Quran. Regardless of what that document contains, how can you justify originating your epistemology from a text in this way? This seems no different that any other religious ridiculousness.
The justification, at least for me, is in the approach that Thelema as a whole takes towards religious experience, and in the experience I've had with the Book of the Law. The perspective of this particular Thelemite is that the Book of the Law is the product of one man's religious experience, and that book has been very useful in the personal and spiritual development of myself and others. I don't think the value of…
As far as I'm concerned, any good is full undermined by a mission statement like "Each is expected to aspire fervently to the Great Work; to dare, with courage undaunted, to perfect that Work;"
It is doctrinaire philosophy, and regardless of any benefits it may bestow on you, on the whole it is just as dangerous to thought, reason, and humanity itself as any other system which undermines rationally based systems of deriving belief.
Sorry, I asked for justification and hoped for better. Christianity and Islam also help lots of people, but on the whole they are designed to erode reason and instill faith, and in doing so are net destroyers of human culture and progress.
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't say! :) Try googling for "the wizard book." See first result. Marvel at the book's cover, http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html P.S. for a kinda-scientific treatment of "what if magic was real [and obeyed internally consistent laws]?", see ongoing scifi story http://qntm.org/ra
The TV Tropes folks have categorized this idea as "Magic A is Magic A": http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicAIsMagicA The description of Magic Engineering in Ra is worked out pretty entertainingly, with people setting up university departments, research programs, companies, etc., to apply magic to things like manufacturing and transportation. Spoiler alert for Ra (no really, go read the story instead of t…
..english letter frequency table based remapping did not help me here (and that was the extent of my effort).. I'm beginning to think that this might have been one of those autoironic fourth wall story-narrative-mocking jokes! Did you just pull a Derrida on me?
(Thanks for the tvtropes article; it links to another one (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinovskyPhysics) which mentions "Schild's ladder"; which makes their arguments ex vi termini pretty great!)
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
By removing vibrant people and bizarre stories from scientific history you are doing science a disservice by deterring the smartest, creative people, many of whole are quirky, from the sterile, close-minded politicized world of science. The less white-washing the better. We need to know our heros were crazy just like us.
as a sidenote, the article's mentioning of sex orgies in Pasadena house of the rocket science founder brought by association the history of Christian religion - how the group of 14 open-minded in absolutely all respects hippies who got no taboo unbroken got white-washed into 13 saints and 1 god of an extremely conservative/close-minded religion. The process is pretty universal, and modern science is like a religion i…
> modern science is like a religion in many respects
I'd disagree with that, in that science when practiced purely is inherently self doubting and does not claim to know anything. However as practiced, it can sometimes take on the doctrinaire culture of religion.
As far as the 14 open-minded hippies, do you have some evidence that the disciples engaged in drug-fueled orgies? I'd be curious to read about that.
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prior discussions of the Parsons story are not confined to Scientology history. It was covered (in 2 or 3 pages IIRC) in Mike Davis's 1990 book "City of Quartz". This book was widely reviewed and widely discussed, and was re-issued a couple of years ago. That's where I first read the Parsons story, and I've seen it a few times since then.
"Prior discussions of the Parsons story are not confined to Scientology history." True. I'm just pointing it out because it's a big vector by which a lot of mainstream audiences are likely to have discovered Parsons and his extracurricular activities. Especially in recent years, with "Going Clear" coming out and hitting the charts. My point was mostly that this stuff is not fresh scandal, hot off the presses.
Sorry if I did not convey that I was not correcting, just supplementing what you said. I already upvoted your comment FWIW.
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This seems incredibly one sided. By removing him, you've already brought politics into science. You're wrong, this isn't about politics in science, it's about "the right" politics or "the approved" politics in science. Ideally people shouldn't be bringing any politics into science. But as sad as it is, sometimes you have to deal with politics to get your research sponsored, funded, and widely accepted. That's reali…
At what point does it become a self fulfilling prophecy? If we continue to cater to people who insist on demanding that research and funding go to the prettiest scientist or the on that has the best power point who is to blame when things like this happen? I think it's better to not be an enabler. Sure, it may be harder and more complicated, but to me it's the right thing to do. We're letting ignorance win when we ha…
I agree to some level, especially regarding politics and personality, but go back and look at the article we're commenting on. Does that sound like a person who should be the public face of any project?
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#89I wonder why Wired magazine has been wading into "deep politics" more and more recently. I mean the German and Occult underpinnings of NASA is a significant can of worms for a publication with a mainstream readership to be opening.
In fairness, Parsons's occult history isn't particularly new, shocking, or politically dangerous ground in 2014. It's not mainstream knowledge, by any means. And I'm sure a lot of folks are reading about it in Wired for the first time. But Parsons's backstory has been covered pretty extensively -- most recently as a significant side chapter (or two) in "Going Clear," the NYT-bestselling book about L Ron Hubbard and S…
I also highly recommend the semi-fictional experimental film by Craig Baldwin, Mock up on Mu. It's half-composed of stock footage from old sci-fi films, and dubbed live action portrayals, and explores a near future where Parsons and Hubbard have to confront each other after both having faked their deaths. Fun and terribly under appreciated stuff.
Re: Jack Parsons: Occultist involved in early rocketry
#90There are a fair number of tech people I've encountered (mainly in the device driver and security subcommunities) who are part of OTO, Temple of Set, or other "left hand path" type occult groups or practices; a lot more who are just "pagan". Not too far off from any mainstream religions in concentration, which is way different from the general population.
Interesting- I only know a handful of hardware people, and that includes a pagan microchip designer. Is there a reason for those beliefs being more prevalent in those communities?
Not sure why, but along those same lines, engineers are more likely to be suicide bombers.