Techniques of measurement

Some possible questions:

• Which of the two seems to generate a greater feeling of life in me?
• Which of the two makes me more aware of my own life?
• Which of the two induces a greater harmony in me, in my body and in my mind?
• Which of the two makes me feel a greater wholesomeness in myself?
• Considering my self as a whole that embraces all my dimensions and many internal opposites, I then ask which of the two is more like my best self, or which of the two seems more like a picture of my eternal self?
• Which of the two makes me feel devotion, or inspires devotion in me?
• Which of the two makes me more aware of God, or makes me feel closer to God?
• When I try to observe the expanding and contracting of my humanity, which of the two causes a greater expansion of my humanity?
• Which of the two has more feeling in it or, more accurately, which of the two makes me experience a deeper feeling of unity in myself?

All these tests have in common the fact that they ask observers to be very truthful indeed about the extent to which they are experiencing greater or lesser wholeness in themselves, while they are in the presence of the systems being measured or compared. The observer is thus asked to report an interior experience while in the presence of the things being compared.

One nicely unassuming and straightforward version, still essentially of the same test, was described by Michael N. Corbett in A Better Place to Live: “I became keenly aware of a pleasant feeling and, at that time, realized that architecture should be judged by how people feel when they are using the space for what it is designed for…”

#book/The Nature of Order/1 The Phenomenon of Life/9 Beyond Descartes: A new form of scientific observation#