Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don't go to the ocean with a teaspoon. Jim Rohn

By far the best piece I have encountered on the use and importance of symbols are two particular chapters in the book Amazing and Wonderful Mind Machines You Can Build, by G. Harry Stine. He was a mind explorer along the lines of his fellow science fiction writer John W. Campbell in the middle of the twentieth century. In addition to being a physicist in the government and at various government contractors, he wrote books on safety for rocketry when launching rockets was a big hobby for kids during the Sputnik era. At first he wrote this book under a pseudonym, just as he did most of his science fiction.

One chapter in Stine's book describes how to build a Hieronymus machine. It is full of specs, diagrams, and engineering language. I wasn't interested in building a machine, so I simply skimmed that part of the book. A Hieronymous machine is one of the mind machines referred to in the title of the book, and is actually a rather complex radionics (remote influencing) device. A radionics device generally has a well for the "witness", which could be something like a favorite belonging of a person (the "target"), a lock of hair, or a photograph. In another well is the "trend". Often radionics practitioners would dowse for "rates" to "broadcast" the intention. I have never worked with a radionics device nor seen one being used. They are sometimes available on Ebay--both the "classic" radionics machines and newly made ones. Not only have I seen radionics machines for sale, but I have also seen "black box" radionics devices being offered. These are simply radionics devices without all the circuitry, and work simply through symbolism.

The chapters of the book that really intrigue me are the two following the one with the engineering specs--the first is "Symbolic Machines," and the second is "The Symbolic Heironymous Machine." After spending the long chapter entirely in engineering lingo, describing exactly what circuits are involved in the Heironymous Machine, Stine goes on in the following two chapters to state that symbols work just as well as the machine he had so carefully described. Specifically, he states that drawing the circuitry on a piece of cardboard could work just as well as building the machine! At one point, though, he decided that the piece of cardboard (symbolic machine) was not working well. When he examined his "machine" (piece of cardboard on which he had drawn the specs of the machine) he realized that the ink had worn off, particularly where he had drawn in the vacuum tubes. Once he re-inked the vacuum tubes, by drawing them again on top of the old worn out lines, the symbolic machine once again worked! He also learned that the symbolic battery could go dead. He reported, "My wife Barbara could get no response from it (the symbolic machine). But about 80% of my scientific and engineering colleagues did at White Sands Proving Ground and at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts."

After working and experimenting with the symbolic machine, he concludes:

It is patently apparent that we are dealing with a totally new and formerly unsuspected aspect of the Universe. I do not know what it is, and I cannot describe it to you.

He goes on to make what he calls WAGs (Wildly Assumed Guesses) and suspects that it works on a purely symbolic basis.

In conclusion:

I submit that Dr. T. Galen Heironymous has indeed discovered and put to use a totally new-to-us principle of the real Universe that can and will, in time, be thoroughly tested, defined and proven as a theory, and eventually, as a new Universal law. Furthermore, I submit that practically none of the initial work will be carried out by professional scientists as a professional inquiry because I know very few professional scientists--even those with very open minds-- who could easily afford to undertake such investigations for fear of peer pressures. It will be done by amateurs such as you and I because there are no professionals in this new "protoscience" yet.

Further conclusion: I don't know what this new Universal thing is, and I don't think anyone else knows either. But it's certainly going to be challenging, fun, and exciting to find out what's involved!

And later on in the Postscript, he offers this advice:

Here's the way to treat an "expert." Listen to them to get the benefit of their expertise. They'll tell you what can be done, and it undoubtedly can. When they tell you it can't be done, try to do it anyway. When they begin to pontificate on subjects outside their field of expertise, they pack no more clout than you or me. I don't claim to be an expert on anything. I'm still learning. I'm an amateur and proud of it. If there were more amateur scientists, perhaps science would advance more rapidly.

I agree. There are many gems of wisdom in this book, and it does have some ideas for fun projects. I am not sure that I would buy it now at the prices currently being asked for it. I happened to get some of the last few new copies of this book and gave them to friends. I had to call my friends all back and tell them not to sell their copies for 25 cents at a garage sale. The work with "symbolic machines" has continued unabated by non-scientists to this day, just as he predicted. And yes, it is fun.