Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 01:30:28 +0100
Message-ID: <IdZBRoAkkuP5EwEn@lutefisk.demon.co.uk>
This is the source of Hubbard's "bank" analogy, from "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health":
"If we had a big computing machine of the most modern design, it would have a "memory bank" of punched cards or some such thing and it would have to have a selector and feeder device to thrust out the data the machine wants. The brain has one of these - it could not operate without it. This is the bank monitor - the file clerk."The financial analogy is spot on, I think, though not quite in the way you mean. Remember that Hubbard wrote the original Dianetics back in 1950. He refers in it to "computing machines" and "computers". A computer back in those days was a human being who worked a computing machine - a mechanical calculator, far slower than any electronic equivalents today. Hubbard mentions electronic computers only twice in the entire book (not surprising, as they were in their infancy then). The use of mechanical calculators enabled Hubbard to create another long-lived Scientology analogy - "the held-down seven", a reference to incorrect keying in of data on a mechanical computing device:
"The mind has its own equilibrium and ability and it is aided no more by engrams than an adding machine is aided by a held-down seven. * * (Or a five as in the recent case at Harvard where a spot of solder held down five in an electronic computer, much to the dismay of the gentlemen who depended upon it for answers.)"As Scott McLemee says (correctly) in his article, "clearing" a data error in a mechanical computer involved resetting its rotors to a start value - the default presumably being zero. Hence the Scientology analogy of clearing (resetting) an engram (a data error). The original meaning of Hubbard's analogy has been greatly eroded by the march of time and progress. It shows how archaic some of Scientology's central concepts already are, less than 50 years after they were first set out. Since Scientology can't go back and revise or re-interpret Hubbard's work, it'll get increasingly anachronistic as the years go by; they've denied themselves the flexibility which has allowed religions such as Christianity and Judaism to reinvent themselves regularly and so survive for thousands of years. -- | Chris Owen - chriso@OISPAMNOlutefisk.demon.co.uk | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | THE TRUTH ABOUT L. RON HUBBARD AND THE UNITED STATES NAVY | | http://www.ronthewarhero.org |
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