Seamlessness

All spaces are perfectly homogeneous, and fall together in a perfectly seamless identity. For this reason Kant calls space a pure intuition. We have, then, in the one space a concept which shows no traces of the piecemeal process by which it has been achieved. The seamlessness of the intuition is due to the absolutely homogeneous nature of the content. There may be a thousand spaces of a thousand different worlds, including the worlds of madness and dreams ; but to conception all these spaces are homogeneous and melt into one.

Nothing stands alone. No event is isolated. The web of being is in a universal seamlessness, so that nothing ever “just happens,” whether the length of a meadow mouse’s tail or the curve in the eye of a cottontail rabbit. The nests of waterfowl and game birds, mostly on the ground, are subject to a great deal of pillaging. In being fitted to survival, these birds have been bred for fecundity. The sea birds that bring up their families on lonely and remote oceanside crags are scarcely attacked by enemies at all. They can afford small families.

Integrating mathematics and science may be the “low hanging fruit” for content integration. There is a long history of efforts to link these two disciplines (Berlin & Hyonyong, 2005); the two disciplines are typically viewed as logically connected (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990; McBride & Silverman, 1991; Pang & Good, 2000;). Furthermore, some studies have shown that integrating mathematics and science has a positive impact on student attitudes and interest in school (Bragow, Gragow & Smith, 1995; McComas, 1993) motivation to learn (Guthrie, Wigfield & VonSecker, 2000), and achievement (Hurley, 2001). In their literature review of mathematics and science integration, Czerniak, Weber, Sandmann and Ahern (1999) cite numerous anecdotal reports providing support for integration but perhaps more troubling they also found an absence of any consistent operational definition for integration. These findings echo findings from earlier studies (Berlin & White, 1992; Davison, Miller, & Metheny, 1995; Lederman & Niess, 1997) regarding the need for defining mathematics and science integration. Collectively, these researchers report on the variety of continua and models of mathematics and science integration based on what is being integrated (e.g., content, processes), structures for integration (e.g., themes, projects, techniques) and degrees of integration (e.g., separate content of disciplines versus seamlessness, dominance of one discipline over the other versus equivalence). More recently Hurley (2001) g this strategy but, as previously with Czerniak et al. (1999), also found that multiple forms of integration were being implemented.

“Fantasy Black Channel” is produced by the highly regarded and open-eared D.J. Erol Alkan, who has stitched these myriad influences into something approximating seamlessness.