2012 and the "Watkins Objection"
to Terence McKenna's "Timewave Theory"by Matthew Watkins As December 21st, 2012 approaches, more and more people seem to want to know about this. So I shall attempt to explain.
The first thing I want to make clear is that the term "Watkins Objection" was something Terence McKenna came up with, not me (that would have been unforgivably arrogant). He responded to my critique of his "Timewave Theory" by posting a webpage which described it with that label. I think his choice of the term reflected his desire to frame his theory within the language of "serious" academia: "Watkins Objection" sounds like something which belongs in the same category as the "Riemann Hypothesis", "Poincaré Conjecture", "Wigner's Surmise" or "Tate's Thesis" (these, unlike my "Objection", all being serious fixtures in higher mathematics).
In 1996, when I was in my mid-20s, December 2012 seemed like some distant future, but here we are (I'm writing this in August 2010) with not much more than two years to go. Back then, I wrote up an account of our meeting and discussion, explaining my "Objection" in great detail. This was written while events were still fresh in my mind and was put up on the Web for the historical record, but I doubt that many people have actually read it. With its various elements of Mayan calendrics, fractals and the I Ching, not to mention its origins in a psilocybin experience, some people will instinctively dismiss McKenna's Timewave Theory as nonsense — they don't feel the need to read a serious refutation of it. Other people just want to believe it — it has become an item of faith — so they're not going to read something which will only serve to undermine that faith. In any case, the arguments look quite technical to anyone who's not involved in the mathematical sciences ... even though there's not really any serious mathematics involved (it just looks like that because of the convoluted way in which TM set out his theory).
So, here's a condensed account for people who can't be bothered with all the technical details.
The remainder of this article is available on the CD-ROM.
Articles on the CD-ROM