besides which, the headline/subject line had me literally laughing out loud, before i'd even read the article . . .
j
nb: this is not sterling. it's from a little known but very funny site, futurefeedforward.
/---/ Begin forwarded message:
From: "futurefeedforward" <fff at futurefeedforward.com>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 06:19:35 PM US/Central
Subject: Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'
September 18, 2014
Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'
VIENNAÛWriting in this month's issue of the journal
Science, a team of researchers at the Vienna University of
Technology report a breakthrough discovery in the field of
noumenal physics. Working in a state-of-the-art lab
equipped with a specialized chamber capable of
compressing objects to 1/1,000,000th of their normal size
through the use of high-energy, self-contained 'gravity
pits,' the team managed to uncover, and then split, a never
before isolated entity known as a 'ding-an-sich' or a
'thing-in-itself.'
"The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated,"
notes Uli Werner-Werner, Executive Editor of the Journal
of Noumenal Physics. "It goes to the heart of one of the basic
hypotheses of noumenal physics, namely that objects
consist of something in addition to their constituent,
perceptible parts; a sort of 'thingness' that makes an
object what it is."
Tracing its roots to the work of Prussian-born philosopher
Immanuel Kant, noumenal physics rejects traditional
interest in the fundamental building-blocks of matter in
favor of a theory of 'things' and 'superthings.' "We're
through with splitting quarks and knitting fuzzy fields,"
explains Werner-Werner. "That's an Achilles and the hare
approach that can only take us so far. What we're doing is
taking a step back and asking bigger questions."
Postulating the existence of a ding-an-sich behind every
ordinary object and just out of the reach of human
understanding grounded in "sense perception and its
extension through the techniques and technologies of
traditional experimental science," the Austrian team,
lead by Professor Hanni Chiang, sought to confirm the
existence of such 'things,' but faced a seemingly
insoluble quandary: how do you confirm the existence of
something that is, by definition, imperceptible, even
through the use of perfect instruments with infinite
sensitivity and resolution.
"It's not a trivial problem," explains Professor Chiang.
"Our first approach was to compress objects beyond the
threshold of perceptibility, to just take this chair and
make it so teeny tiny that all of its perceptible properties
would be stripped away, just leaving the Ding, but we hit a
wall with that. We burned through our budget, a good budget,
something like [$2.3 billion U.S.], and we were still
likely millions of orders of magnitude from our goal."
Last June, however, with the addition of Professor Eric
Lougha of the University of California at Berkeley, the
team's research took a new direction. "Eric helped us turn
the problem on its head," recalls Chiang. "Rather than
making the object imperceptible, we realized we could just
make ourselves insensate. [Eric] introduced us to a
special derivative of a small, Central American,
high-altitude cactus, and, within days, every member of
the team had seen the ding-an-sich."
During subsequent tests, the team successfully split the
ding-an-sich of a laboratory stool, creating two complete
but distinct 'things' underpinning the stool. "It just
looks like an ordinary stool," explains Chiang. "But there
are actually two Dings there. Essentially, it's two stools
with all of the properties of one stool. It may sound very
through-the-looking-glass, but there you have it."
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