Monday, March 5, 2012

Blacksmithing Process in Quantum Age

Blacksmithing Processes in the Quantum Age


The Quantum Age has its own understanding of blacksmithing, and its different than that of the Greek Age.  Quantum Age is grounded in the interpretation of the Copenhagen Experiment, of what is.  The handcraft and the machine craft processes of blacksmithing in the Quantum Age are a transformation of praxis.

Here we will explore Heideggerian question: what is the essence of technology? In the ancient age of Greek blacksmithing that Homer describes in his poems, was something different than Middle Ages and Quantum Age blacksmithing processes. The loss of old ways of experiencing blacksmith processes has something to do with the a correspondingly different way of interpreting and understanding the context of those processes.

No master blacksmith would assume blacksmithing in the Quantum Age is more advanced than blacksmithing in the Pre-Socratic Age.  Damascus steel sword-making in the Middle Ages was not less advanced than it is in the Quantum Age.  The essence of modern blacksmithing processes is not to be understood in some progress narrative! The essence of what we call blacksmithing processes today is within some quantum understanding of what is.

Heidegger (1977 QCT, p. 118), in the essay 'The Age of the World Picture' says technology process "requires an open sphere in which it moves."  What is it about the Quantum Age that provides an open sphere in which blacksmithing processes move?   Blacksmithing processes are projected within the quantum realm of what is.

For example, the carbon bonding of metals in forge welding processes, in the Quantum Age, sketch out in advance the manner in which carbon particles transform their alignment. Forge welding consists of heating two pieces of metal in the fire to just the right temperature, moving the pieces to the anvil, then striking a gentle blow of the hammer, to bond them together, before the metal on the anvil cools.  If the metal touching the anvil cools before the one above it, the difference in temperatures of the two pieces will result in a failure of the forge weld. There are other factors, such as impurities from the coal that get on the surfaces being bonded, temperatures not hot enough, or too hot, that destroy the metal itself, taking too long to move the metal from fire to anvil, not striking the blow properly, etc. Despite all these obstacles, the ancient blacksmith learned the forge welding process, where as the blacksmith in the modern age can just use an arc, mig, or tig welder.

Forge welding processes in the ancient Greek Age, in the time of Democritus (atomism), Heraclitus (flux), and Perimedes (what is just is) --- had an open sphere different than the Quantum Age. There was a different understanding of how forge welding worked as a process. Blacksmithing processes in the Greek Age are constituted in the open sphere of Nature's elements: fire, earth, water, air, and ether. The elements defined a "material corporeality" that was "always-already-knowns" (ibid, p. 119). The material corporeality has an essence with the Greek's disputed, between atomism, flux, and what is that is. 


In the Quantum Age, blacksmith processes have left Democritus' atomism, and Perimedes' what is, for the Heraclitus understanding of flux.  The process of forge welding depends upon the motion of particles and collapsing the wave motion.

The antenarrative (storytelling the future) was projected in the sphere of various elements in the Greek Age and in the sphere of particles, waves, and associated Observer Effect, Double Slit Experiment, etc. (For references and definitions of see Quantum Storytelling http://peaceaware.com/quantum/index.htm).