The concept of the Single Photon Philosopical Telescope is appropriate for a participative demonstration. Since the active principals are knowledge communicated and personal belief, an effective demonstration only requires one person telling the idea clearly and loudly to several intrigued participants. You are welcome to conduct such a demonstration. It will be considered to be an official SPPT Institute demonstration and you will be able to call yourself a SPPT Institute Lecturer if your demonstration includes the essential elements and you send a report to denjwebb@aol.com here at the institute.
The essential elements of an official Institute demonstration are:
Find a bagpiper. They are out there and looking for an opportunity to play. For example, piper David Rutledge (right, to left of author) walked up the first time the demonstration was given at the Texas Star Party. Get a drum, drums are good with bagpipes; drums are good by themselves.
At the appointed time and place, bid the piper to play a lively tune to draw attention to the event. Beat the drum in a generally musical way, that supports the piping.
Here is a polished version of Founder's script:
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the demonstration of the Community Array, Dermal Aperture, Broad-Band Receiver Single Photon Philosphical Telescope. We are going to assemble and use a very special telescope, one made from the unified expanse of your exposed flesh. Gentlemen, please remove shirts, ladies expose midriffs and arms; please no offensive nudity.
But first, let's talk about what this all means. When we look at galaxies through telescopes, we cannot prove that those faint smudges we see are systems of billions of stars with unestimable numbers of planets millions of light years away. Yet, in spite of this we study them and most of us trust the scientific evidence and believe based on what we can know. Through our belief, we can see a galaxy and know what it is.
If we accept belief as an element of our personal astronomical observation, we can then dispense with optical telescopes which carefully focus light into faint images on our retina and instead embrace a conceptual (philosophical) telescope which merely is touched by the light. It is still a personal astronomical observation because it involves our own flesh in direct contact with the light from remote objects of astronomical desire.
If we accept contact with photons on our flesh as an alternate method of observation, we can include a wider range of wavelength, and use all of our exposed flesh as a receiving structure, a person like me can be 2000 times more sensitive than a 10-inch telescope. In this case, my body is probably hit by a photon from an intelligently-inhabited planet every 21 hours. Therefore my body has become a Single Photon Philosophical Telescope. Since this is still a long time, let us get a lot of people together for a shorter time to share in the receiving of this special single photon.
Now since we are merely standing around, we need to organize ourselves into a coherent structure (the Community Array Dermal Aperture Broad-Band Reciever) for receiving this believed photon. Everybody point your selves generally over there (gestering in the direction of M31)
How do we human flesh things coordinate motion in a synchronized way? (pause) That's right, we dance to music and chant. Dancing and chanting can be embarassing or religiously inappropriate, so I have selected a chant which will offend no one, the "Na Na, Hey Hey" song, a non-sectarian musical hit from the 1960's popular at American sporting events. So, Mr. Piper give us a drone.
Thank you all for singing and dancing along. It has been 10 minutes so I estimate that we have achieved contact with a photon which bounced off an intelligently inhabited planet in the faraway galaxy M31. My assistant will provide each of you with a certificate of participation and a copy of of the monograph and calculations. Thank you for your bemused participation.
(The piper initiates a drone and I start beating the drum at about 220 beats per minute, slightly slower than 4 beats per second, the shamanic auditory driving tempo. I sing the Na Na, Hey Hey song in the piper's key to the beaten tempo and dance around clumsily, encouraging others to do the same. Miraculously, they always participate. This continues until all have overcome their embarrassment and played along with the silliness)
The concept: Amateur astronomers work very hard to catch a few very special photons from very remote luminous objects. We build big telescopes and apply CCD cameras to overcome the inefficiency of our eyes and the obstacles of distance and atmosphere. Since much of what we do is founded on belief, we can dispense with telescopes and use our bare skin to receive a special photon (really, no joke). Through very scientific calculations we can determine that if a person exposes most of their skin towards M31, the great galaxy in Andromeda, that within three seconds, he will probably be touched by a photon which bounced off a planet orbiting one of M31's stars. In 20 hours, that person will probably be struck by a photon from one of M31's inhabited planets; if 100 people stand for 12 minutes, one of them will be struck by that special photon. We will demonstrate this observing project.
The Rules: Show up for a few minutes at the appointed time with open minds and as much bare skin as small town Texas standards allow. Participants will receive a handsome certificate of participation. Participants waive all claims of liability, physical, karmic or philosophical. Void where prohibited. Technical paper available on request.
This is a project of the
Single Photon Philosophical Telescope Institute
for the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence