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read more ================================================================================ "J'en suis venu, hélas, à considérer ces paroles par lesquelles on franchit si lestement l'espace d'une pensée, à des planches légères jetées sur l'abîme, qui souffrent le passage mais point la station. L'homme en vif mouvement les emprunte et se sauve mais qu'il insiste le moins du monde, ce peu de temps les romp et tout s'en va dans les profondeurs ; qui se hâte à compris ; il ne faut point s'appesantir : on trouverait bientôt que les plus clairs discours sont tissus de termes obscurs. " - Paul Valéry - "Monsieur Teste" Rough translation--the farther we leap into space with words and the greater the distance we span, the less we arrive anywhere. the more vigorously we spelunk the abyss, the more the shining of our searchlight's lens casts a scratchwork of obscurities. hb when one goes way, way out there chasing traceries of ....ummm, truths? the realm gets so shadowy that one begins to wonder if one's sanity is cracking, so a little Sullivanian conceptual validation helps. hb
The International Paleopsychology Project mission statement describes the IPP as "a scientific team dedicated to mapping out the evolution of sociality, perception, mentation, emotion, and collective intelligence from the first 10(?32) second of the Big Bang to the present." I recommend that the reference to the Big Bang be deleted because the Big Bang theory has become an orthodoxy that stifles scientific research. In _Cosmology and the Big Bang_ David Pratt wrote: "The big bang hypothesis is not just unproven but unprovable, and it is therefore important for all the alternatives to be considered with an open mind." -------hb: I agree with Pratt. Using the Reed Konsler approach to the epistemology of science, with which I heartily concur, all scientific notions are tentative hypotheses, placed before us for our pleasure, our growth of comprehension, and to invite our challenges, our skepticism and our ultimate improvement of their structures or replacement with something better. But since the Big Bang is what we've got for the moment, and since I've used it as an anchor in my own paleopsychological reconstruction, I suggest we keep the Big Bang until something clearly superior comes along. Remember, evolution (don't let any creationists hear I've said this), collective intelligence, and nearly every other noun in our mission statement also embodies provisional hypotheses. Howard (By
David Pratt. Last updated 13 April 1998. Original articles published
in Sunrise, Jun/Jul & Aug/Sep 1993.) John??an
excellent job of tossing me a multi?part essay question on which I could
spend a month. Do units and dualities such as that in Does the group
refute before the individual and have the smaller truth domain or is
it the reverse?>> count? Actually, no. I see this as a bit of
epistemological confusion. Something along the lines of "to a man
whose only tool is a hammer, all solutions to problems are a matter
of nails." The idea of units of selection is useful, one way of
getting at the edifice of truth. So is method of breaking things down
to either/or propositions??dichotomies. Individual selection and the
selfish gene are invaluable crowbars. Group selection and what Michael
de Landa calls "meshworks" are highly useful glues. All are
valuable tools. By using them together, we get more than by using one
and discarding all the others. But the edifice is larger than our senses,
our intelligence, and the 40,000 year accumulation of intelligences
embedded in the 20th century conceptual tool kit are capable of perceiving
in totality. Every tool in the box comes in handy. Every point of view
you've cited below is such a tool. None of them are, in the end, contradictory.
To quote physicist Edward Witten again, "We have different pictures
and it's not that one is correct and the other isn't correct; one of
them is more useful for answering one set of questions, the other is
more useful in other sets of questions. And the power of theory comes
largely from understanding that these different points of view which
sound like they're about different universes actually work together
in describing one model. So, those theories turn out to all be one,
so it's a big conceptual upheaval to understand that there's only one
theory, which is uncanny in nature." >Genes are selected BEFORE they CAN "survive" >across the generations not because they HAVE >"survived" (replicated IBD) across the generations. >> The problem at the heart of this debate seems to me to lie in the short?hand of agency. I know we all use it, and I know we all claim that its just a short hand, but it seems to me that a lot of the time it takes on a larger role and actually dominates the way we think, even though we know at some other level that it's nonsense. To take an example, JE writes>> >Is it possible for genes to affect bodies and use >bodies for their maximal replication OR is it >possible for bodies to affect genes for the >bodies maximal replication? But at the risk of berating the obvious no one is "using" ?? there is no agency here. Which is more or less the same as pointing out that there's no selection in "natural selection". The idea that nature selects is a metaphor ?>> I think both Oliver and John are right. Genes are selected before and after. Those genetic configurations tested but not proven to fit their circumstances do not survive to reproduce. Those genetic configurations which reproduce are sorted by their changing circumstances over and over again. The ones which survive the longest are those which are most capable of overcoming the godelian paradoxes in the continuous alteration of their environment, which is also solving corollary style problems and thus undergoing continuous transmogrification. Each evolving entity??including such evolving non?organic forms as suns (think of the storms, pulsations, shudders and other amazing dynamics revealed recently by solar?exploring satellites)??is a node in an ungraspably complex meshwork. That meshwork is a constantly shifting sorter determining that which will survive and that which will not. Each of the sorted is part of the sorter. Pulling
one element out of the meshwork at a time and examining it using the
epistemological tool we call agency or causation is a highly useful
enterprise. But it is the total web which counts. Meaning that the number
of elements which could be considered, for convenience and insight,
as THE causative agent is endless. Howard
"Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists." (Ezra Pound, in Literary Essays (1954) Subj: Sunday Sermon Date: 98?06?21 13:39:31 EDT From: ngreenbe To: HBloom Howard: The Sermon you asked for ?? a few pages down after the Order of Service script. it is Sunday ?? this is a recent rehash for the West Side (of Knoxville) Unitarians of something I presented a few years earlier to the Downtown Unitarians ?? sometimes these "exercises" evoke more from me than I wanted to tell ??or know?? but at the end of the day ??maybe by owning up to the mystery?? I always felt richer, more confident ?? I especially like a few of the lines this project exposed me to: for example, Byron's " . . . The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own / with beings brighter than we have been, and give A breath to forms / which can outlive all flesh." The experience I open the sermon with was real ?? I almost killed myself believing I could float. ========================================================== WEST SIDE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 1998 PRELUDE and CALL TO WORSHIP *CHALICE LIGHTING AND SONG Let people living in all lands Declare that fear and hate are done. Rise above differences and stand In love and understanding, one. *OPENING HYMN #29 . . . . . "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" (Beethoven) CHILDREN'S MOMENT Wayne Haushalter . . . . ?shared dreams? SINGING OUT THE CHILDREN Go now in Peace, Go now in Joy May the Spirit of Love surround you Everywhere, everywhere, you may go. WELCOME and ANNOUNCEMENTS CANDLE?SHARING . . . . of joys and concerns *HYMN #17 . Every Night and Every Morn (Blake) .. Ralph Vaughan Williams COMMENTS . . . . adapted from "The Dream" (Lord Byron) OFFERTORY . . . . ?Celtic Music? SPOKEN MEDITATION SILENT MEDITATION DREAM SHARING . . . . . from the congregation (Terry Lindemer, Kathy Greenberg, Mike Powell, Carolyn Blasing, Beverly Roberts, and others) SERMON . . . . . The War Between Truth and Reality: Dreams: what they really mean . . . . . Neil Greenberg CLOSING HYMN #398 . . . . ?To See the World (Blake) . . . . Edvard Grieg BENEDICTION (adapted from an old Hebrew prayer) From the cowardice that shrinks from dreams From the laziness that is content with half?dreams From the arrogance that thinks it need not dream Oh GOD OF DREAMS, Deliver us! ***************************************************** COMMENTS: DREAMS ??like other experiences?? are more or less "real" Sometimes they seem more real than reality What a terrific mystery! ??and for me ??for many of us I think, MYSTERY is the richest wellspring of spiritual meaning. And Here is Lord Byron's observation about dreams: Our life is two?fold: Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, they take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being; They become a portion of ourselves ??as of our time, and look like heralds of eternity; They pass like spirits of the past, ??they speak like Sibyls of the future: they have power?The tyranny of pleasure and pain; They make us what we were not ?? what they will, And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanish'd shadows ?? Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? ?? What are they? Creations of the mind? The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than we have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. OFFERTORY .......... "Celtic Music? provided by Mary SPOKEN MEDITATION During the silent meditation moments in church, I often experience an altered ?dreamy ?? state of consciousness: one by one otherwise unheard sounds about me are heard and take on new meaning ??kids playing outside, traffic, our own breathing. As I grow calm, the doors of perception open ever more widely and all these things around me are let in. Suddenly I notice details I'd never otherwise attend to ?? Doors open, then more widely, and the boundary between inside and outside becomes harder to define. The sounds and other events our senses detect are already bustling around ??you would expect them to clash with these new ideas ??and they do?? sometimes one or the other prevails, sometimes they work together, sometimes they fuse and lead to wholly new idea. Quite often something extraordinary happens! our many senses impressions are somehow accommodated and brought to a unique harmony. And then, by having opened the doors to our inner being so widely, we find that something within us can as easily rush out! With patience we find there is an ebb and flow of experiences into and out of ourselves much like more?or?less gentle waves on a beach, like our resting breath ? And the meditator's ambition of selfless empathy with the environment may be attained:??first the harmony??and then the silence of oneness.In the wordless flickering of a flame we recall the power of silence: silence the words, even silence the thoughts they engender and. . .the mystery often emerges, unbidden. . . our thoughts, our words are like pebbles tossed in a pond When their ripples stop, a true reflection in the perfect calm: When all ceases We see all. (Neil Greenberg, 12/87) ************************** SILENT MEDITATION concludes with . . . . . ?Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream? (Ed McCurdy) sung by Joan Baez (CD) When the absence of worldly stimuli reveals the harmonies within ? or when worldly stimuli are synchronized with the harmonies of mind ? we may enter a unique state ? and we may experience unique insights ? that often seem more real than everyday reality Many of us have had such experiences: DREAM SHARING by Terry Lindemer, Kathy Greenberg, Mike Powell, Beverly Roberts, Carolyn Blasing, and others of the congregation ******************************************************************* SERMON Homework done, a crisp autumn afternoon of play before me, ?? I recall leaving my family's third floor apartment to meet my friends. ?? I paused on the second floor landing. ?? I leaned forward over the long flight of marble stairs warm with anticipation of my gentle flight to the bottom. ?? I would lean further and further until my feet left the ground ?? and, with a sweetness I could taste, float like a feather to the landing below. I had done this often before, but that day something stopped me. I never flew again. In a millisecond, in my seven?year old mind, I returned to reality.Thirty years later I recalled that moment of truth when reading what Chuang?Tzu wrote, I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. I was not bitterly disillusioned. My experience was almost as wonderful and fascinating as the dream itself ??perhaps more so in that I suddenly knew of my power to live an alternate life, at least at times: We are such stuff As dreams are made on . . . In Shakespeare's Tempest, Prospero glimpsed the ultimate reality just beyond his joy and exclaimed that we are made of dreams (The Tempest, Act IV, sc 1, 148) But I am a biologist and in my heart know that we are not merely the stuff of dreams, dreams are us:Dreams are such stuff As we are made of . . . They are artifacts of our being: born and nurtured in the corners of our minds ?? they are responses as all thoughts are responses, ?? and organized in a manner appropriate to the stimuli that elicited them. Thirty years later I was an NIH neurobiologist, not a kid ? and I knew a little about mental images In the end dreams are mental images ? and the formation of mental images seems well localized: On a sunny, beautifully vivid summer day, 7 year old Julie was running after her brothers through the tall grass of a country meadow. She saw a shadow and turned toward it. Her dad's hired man was holding an open gunny?sack and Julie leaned over to look in it. She saw something writhing at the bottom and the man said "How would you like to get into the bag with the snakes?" Julie screamed and began to run home crying to tell her mother. Before she got home, her physician, Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute, lifted the electrode from the surface of her temporal lobe. She was undergoing surgery to relieve her epileptic seizures. (Such surgery is done while the is patient is awake, guiding the surgeon to the site of trauma by relating the experiences when different parts of the brain were touched. ) Julie was now 14, and in the years following her experience in the field, she developed epilepsy, and whenever the slightest recollection of that day came to mind, a seizure would be triggered. [Other evidence: 1. The cortex is essential to reality testing (Taylor 1979:21): with parietal lobe injury dreaming may cease, a midfrontal fracture could lead to an inability to "visualize", a surgical cingulectomy can lead to vivid dreaming while awake, and temporal lobe lesions (as well as drugs such as Librium) has been known to cause vivid dreaming. 2. Beside such trauma, many common situations compromise our ability to test the reality of experience; these include exhaustion, confusion, decreased sensory input (such as Lindbergh's over the Atlantic), an intense desire for something, a strong suggestion, an association (such as a melody or smell associated with a loved one), or changes in brain chemistry (fasting, abnormal diet, hallucinogens). ] Some NEW experiences are ambiguous and often we see what we're led to expect by PRIOR experiences ?our own or those of others. It is a natural outgrowth of our disposition to extract order from confusion to interpret new experience in the light of old. So science can tell us something about abnormal states and extremes?? but not much about the contribution of reality to truth or about the boundary between dream?consciousness and "awake." Perhaps there is no "boundary." At any given instant, no preceding instant can be identified as real or imaginary. There is not litmus test for the validity of a memory except CONTEXT. We are conscious of our memories of dreams as we are conscious of the memories of any experience, and their truth is no more or less than that we assign to them. OUR sense of reality, then, is a perilous journey?? ?? a tightwire walk along the thin, ever?shifting boundary between orderly truth and the disorder of the world. The instant of my discovery ??when my 7?year old mind crossed the threshold between truth and reality?? was, in its way epiphanous, providing then as now a hint of a possible, transcendent beyond. ?Transcendent beyonds? are like doorways in the distance ??illuminated in a millisecond as though by a flash of lightning or a the pop of a flashbulb. Not enough light to tell me where to go, but sufficient to impart direction. A beacon. And when I arrive will it be as described in Wiesel's Night? Where the young Elie was being led by his mentor to the transcendence that occurs when "questions and answers became one." A fusion of opposites? A strange harmony? Or, perhaps it will be as C.P. Snow (C.P. Snow in The Search) related: "as though I had looked for a truth outside myself, and finding it had become for a moment a part of the truth I sought..." (I think that's why I'm a scientist.) You look beyond naked facts ?? see their accommodations to the harmony within . . . What moments those insights are !! And then they are over and we are left with the memory. And after all, all we really know is the current moment ?after it's gone we are left with our memory. To paraphrase O'Shaughnessy (O'Shaughnessy, Arthur William Edgar (1844?1881) from his Ode: "We are the Music Makers".), each instant of our life is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth. All we are, all we THINK we are ? is our memories of countless moments, not the moments themselves. We can be highly selective to be sure ?? many of us can choose which of the countless past instants of which we are constructed. At the end of the day, we may have a vivid sense of reality ? but is our ?reality? the same as that of others? ?will you and your spouse or parent or child or companions remember the same conversation? Is your memory sufficiently related to the ?real? world to guide important decisions, actions? ? Could they be flawed memories? Daydreams? My senses are limited and even that which I can perceive is transformed by the organs of sense and mind ?? by habit and by expectations. And then even within me, different levels of consciousness are usually ignorant of each other. Since I have only fragmentary knowledge of the world, barely "know" even myself, and there is no perfect empathy, the best I can aspire to is to maneuver through the cascading hierarchy of abstractions as I strive to perfect my model of reality by successive approximations. And each approximation is something of a work of art ??But recalling Picasso, "Art is a lie I use to tell the truth." Can even a lie be a piece of the truth? We approach the truth by questioning ??and then only in a wholly free environment, but the only truly free environment (Freud tells us) is the fantasy or dreamworld??that one place where the reality principle ??the rule of experience constraining the possibilities of the world?? does not rule! This is why, the surrealists tell us, only art can liberate us! Harmony It seems that truth is less a thing than a relationship between things (coherence); but then the things related must be real (correspondence) What a muddle! but at least part of it is satisfying: at least some element of truth resides in relationships. And my metaphor for that is harmony. Is this why I associate truth with harmony?Is musical harmony our common metaphor for the pleasing sense of wholeness or oneness with one's environment? (is this why one perfect note experienced during a hymn (particularly if I am part of it!) is worth whatever it takes to get to church some mornings? [ [(Peter Shaffer identified some spiritual moments in music in his essay "Paying Homage to Mozart," (The New York Times Magazine, 2 September, 1984. pp. 22?38) such as the setting of the words "Tutti contenti" at the end of "The Marriage of Figaro;" or the harmonization of the Priest's response "Starkt mit Geduld sie in Gefahr" in "The Magic Flute;" or the bar in "Cosi Fan Tutte" at the reprise of the tenor's tune "Un'aura Amorosa," wherein a single note in the accompaniment descends a semitone, from F sharp to F natural. )] Dostoevski spoke of an "eternal harmony" that haunted his occasionally ecstatic experiences of epilepsy : There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly ... Dreams and Reality Dreaming has become our common metaphor for the unreal or imaginary But you probably won't be surprised that some say that life is less real than a dream Muhammad, for example, said, "People sleep, and when they die they wake." All life is a dream, And dreams themselves?? O mockery? Are nothing but a dream???Calderon Chuang?Tse (the man who dreamt he was a butterfly) also said "...only when they awake do they know it was a dream.By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then they find out that this life is really a great dream." "Just as dreams are unreal in comparison with the things seen in waking life, even so the things seen in waking life in this world are unreal in comparison with the thought?world, which alone is truly real."(Hermes) In the 1920;s, the French poet, Andre Breton, began a movement in art that was based on the liberation of the imagination and the observation that many imagined phenomena are more real than those in the world. ? they are more than real ? they are sur?real ! The world beyond our experience is often viewed as more real than the world of our experience ? ask Plato, he exiled artists from the perfect state because they were so expert at deceiving our senses ? in fact our senses are so easily deceived, that they could not be trusted to tell us anything of importance. ?? Less intellectually, The Roman, Sallust, said about the myths he was documenting: ?These things never happened, but are always ? And our more recent, the great Greek author, Kazantzakis (author of Zorba the Greek among many other fine works), when asked "Is there anything truer than truth?? replied, ?Yes, Legend." Breton's insight (after understanding Freud) was that ONLY ART can LIBERATE us: "Imagination alone tells me what can be, ? he said. Boundless possibilities: sounds like God's work ? and this is why dreams are often like prayer ? they are highly selective ? and seek to go beyond mundane realities. A couple of us might remember Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign: He frequently quoted George Bernard Shaw as the principal theme of his campaign emerged: "You see things; and you say `Why?` But I dream things that never were; and say `Why not?`" (spoken by the Serpent in Eden in ?Back to Methuselah.?) Remember our Surrealist friends: only art can tell us about the possibilities of the world, alternative futures we would not have otherwise imagined. ART has this immense power because it is uniquely free of the need to conform to reality ??we are LIBERATED from the blinders of tradition, the boundaries and limits that we have learned ??often quite painfully?? We have, since childhood, learned a few "tests" to see if we are dreaming or not. But no one gets 100% on every test every time. *** How often have you had a dream "that was so real?" or a "real" experience "that was so dreamlike?" Remember the boundaries remember how easily they are traversed Dreams are born in the imagination ? but reigned in by the logic of our experiences Every night we are taken beyond the boundaries of mundane necessity and shown by the sur?reality of our imaginations that the logic of experience does not reign supreme everyday reality and surreality ?? The products of chance and necessity are yoked together as are our hearts and minds ? each is empty or impotent alone They
way dreams work ?and we all dream ? is the template always before us
for the creativity we need to cope with the inevitable changes of our
lives. >>born in the imagination but reigned in by experience
Freud once asked his friend, ?Itzig, where are you going?? ?Don't ask
me,? was the answer, ?ask my horse !? [[Howard: the Freud quote was
the cornerstone of a lecture on the neurobehavioral biology of Centaurs
(an early "Beast in the Brain" presentation) given to commemorate
the installation at the University Library of a full?scale museum display
on the Centaur of Volos ?? a complete reconstruction of a Centaur skeleton]]
Where will your dreams take YOU ************************* Cheers, Neil
http://www.bio.utk.edu/ecology/faculty/greenberg.html
In a message dated 98-08-13 06:52:50 EDT, Eshel Ben Jacob writes: Subj: Re: the body as a musical instrument Date: 98-08-13 06:52:50 EDT From: (Eshel Ben-Jacob) To: HBloom Hi, Sorry for the long time of silence. I was reading the book Nano by Ed Ridgs. Didnt like it. I am reading now the book by Gel Mann the quarc and the Jaguar. So far I think he misses the point. No wounder as he is a redictionistic in his viwes of Nature. As I told you, my paper about entropy is almost accepted. EXCELLENT. Some constructive comments by the referee. But as I am working on it I become convinced that for the description of nature to be concistent information and more importent the rate of increase/decrease of information has to be coupled with the deformation of space-time. WATCH OUT THAT THIS DOESN'T TAKE YOU STRAIGHT BACK INTO THE TRAP THAT SNAGGED THE VARIOUS FOLKS WHO WROTE ARTICLES FOR: Bruce H. Weber, David J. Depew, and James D. Smith, eds., Entropy, Information, and Evolution: New Perspectives on Physical and Biological Evolution], A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988. THESE GUYS WERE RIGID ENTROPISTS, SO I STRONGLY SUSPECT YOU'LL ACTUALLY SHOW THEM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS. I still not sure how to rap it up. Moreover, looking for complexity ( which is as yet never been defined) it has to do with this interplay . REED KONSLER AND I GOT INTO A CUL DE SAC ON THIS SINCE HIS DEFINITION OF COMPLEXITY WAS THAT OF A SYSTEM WHOSE ABILITY WAS TO USE ENERGY. MINE PRESENTS A CONTINUUM FROM THE TOHOO V VOHOO OF THE INSTANT WHEN GUTH'S VACUUM RIPPLE (ITSELF A FORM OF COMPLEXITY) ENGENDERS THE AS-YET-UNDIFFERENTIATED BIG BANG TO THAT INSTANT, SHOULD IT EVER ARRIVE, AND I DON'T THINK IT WILL, WHEN ALL GOES FROM ENERGY TO MATTER IN A GRAND FREEZE. IN OTHER WORDS, REED, I BELIEVE, REGARDS COMPLEXITY AS OPERATING LIKE AN INCREASINGLY MARVELOUS MACHINE. I REGARD IT AS EXFOLIATING FORM. THE TRICK HERE IS THAT FUNCTION IS FORM AND FORM IS FUNCTION, SO REED AND I MAY JUST BE LOOKING AT DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE SAME ELEPHANT. THERE'S ANOTHER WAY TO SLICE INTO THIS. TAKE MY COROLLARY GENERATOR THEORY. START WITH THE INITIAL AXIOMS IMPLICIT IN THE PHASE TRANSITION FROM GUTH'S VACUUM TO BIG BANG--THE VERY INSTANT OF ITS OCCURRENCE, WHEN IT IS AN UNDEFINED NOTHING WITH AN-AS-YET-TO-BE-DEFINED-EVERYTHING IMPLICIT IN IT. LET IT UNFOLD ITS COROLLARIES. THIS SPILLAGE OF COROLLARIES FROM THE CORNUCOPIA OF AXIOMS IS THE BIRTHING OF COMPLEXITY. COMPLEXITY=COROLLARY GENERATION. NOW ASSUME THE SYSTEM UNFOLDS THE POSSIBILITIES INHERENT IN ITS INITIAL ALGORITHMS (WHICH ARE ITS AXIOMS) UNTIL IT REACHES THE POINT OF GODELIAN PARADOX. HERE IT HITS A CHOICE POINT. ONE CHOICE IS THECREATION OF SOMETHING HIGHER, SOMETHING WHOSE NEWNESS ESCAPES THE LIMITATIONS OF THE OLD SYSTEM AND GIVES BIRTH TO TRANSCENDENT AXIOMS BORN FROM THE ASHES OF THE OLD SYSTEM. IN OTHER WORDS, THE UNIVERSE IS A CREATIVE WEB JUST LIKE YOUR BACTERIAL COLONIES. IN FACT, THE BACTERIAL COLONIES SHOW THE PROPERTIES THEY DO BECAUSE THE *ARE* A MANIFESTATION OF THE PROCESS OF COOPERATIVE EVOLUTION WHICH UNDERLIES ALL PHENOMENON, AND HENCE ANY INDIVIDUAL PROCESSES VIEWED BY THE SCIENCES--WHETHER THOSE SCIENCES BE PARTICLE PHYSICS, MATHEMATICS, GEOLOGY, BIOCHEMISTRY, MICROBIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, NEUROBIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, OR POLITICAL SCIENCE. IT ALSO UNDERLIES THE VISIONS OF POETS, PROPHETS, AND RELIGIOUS MYSTICS. THIS VIEW PROVIDES A FRAMEWORK FOR THE GRAND SYNTHESIS BETWEEN PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY, BETWEEN COSMOLOGY, ASTROPHYSICS, AND EVOLUTION. IT'S THE THEORY I'VE BEEN WORKING TOWARD FROM ONE POINT OF VIEW FOR THE LAST FORTY YEARS, AND WHICH I FEEL YOU'VE BEEN APPROACHING FROM ANOTHER TACK, ONE OF ENORMOUS SIGNIFICANCE. ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THIS SCHAMOOODLE IS THE ONE I COOKED UP WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD--A TOROIDAL VIEW OF A UNIVERSE'S EVOLUTION. THIS MAY BE *EXTREMELY* NAIVE. REMEMBER, I WAS JUST A KID. BUT THE UNIVERSE IS BORN OUT OF A MINI-MICRO-POINT, A SINGULARITY. IT EXPANDS AS IF FOLLOWING A PARABOLIC TRAJECTORY. THIS IS THE UNIVERSE OF *POSITIVE* MATTER. AT THE MOMENT OF ITS INCEPTION, ANOTHER UNIVERSE TAKES OFF, THIS IN THE DIMENSION OF *ANTI-MATTER.* OUR POSITIVE MATTER UNIVERSE MOVES OVER THE COURSE OF ITS LONG, RELATIVELY FLAT PARABOLA, UNFOLDING UNTIL IT GETS LOCKED UP AT THE TOP OF ITS ARC AND BEGINS TO DESCEND FROM REED'S ENERGY EATING SYSTEMS TOWARD A STATE WHERE THE BALANCE BETWEEN FUNCTION AND FORM, BETWEEN MOTION AND MATTER, SHIFTS TOWARD THE MATTER SIDE. IT IS STILL UNFOLDING THE COROLLARIES IMPLICIT IN THE FOUR BASIC FORCES. HOWEVER THE SUBSTANCES AND PROCESSES WHICH RESULT NOW INCREASINGLY PRODUCE COMPACTED MATTER, BLACK HOLES. IN A BLACK HOLE THE PARABOLA OF THE POSITIVE UNIVERSE MOVES TOWARD THE HYPERBOLA OF THE NEGATIVE UNIVERSE. WHEN THE TWO MEET, WE HAVE ANNIHILATION OF FORM AND RELEASE OF ENERGY. THIS WAS ALL HYPOTHETICAL WHEN I FIRST PROPOSED IT, BUT NOW SUCH ENERGY FOUNTAINS HAVE BEEN SEEN AND CHRONICLED. THE LARGE-SCALE REUNIONS OF MATTER AND ANTI-MATTER BRING US BACK TO BACK TO PURE FUNCTION WITHOUT FORM, A SET OF SIMPLE AXIOMS OR ALGORITHIMS FROM WHICH NEW MATTER AND COMPLEXITY CAN UNFOLD. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY SEED A NEW UNIVERSE--A NEW BEGINNING OF THE COROLLARY GENERATION PROCESS.BUT HAVE THE NEW AXIOMS IN ANY WAY BEEN ALTERED BY "PAST EXPERIENCE," AS THEY ARE WHEN A STAR COLLAPSES AND FROM ITS DEBRIS A HIGHER-0RDER STAR, CHOCK FULL OF NEW ELEMENTS, COALESCES? IN OTHER WORDS, FROM THE COLLAPSE OF A UNIVERSE AND ITS COUNTER UNIVERSE INTO EACH OTHER, DO WE GET A NEW VARIETY OF ENERGY GEYSER, A NEW LEVEL OF BIG BANG, CAPABLE OF LEAPING OVER THE BOUNDARIES OF WHATEVER GODELIAN PARADOXES MAY HAVE LIMITED THE HEIGHT OF THE PREVIOUS UNIVERSE'S PARABOLIC ASCENT?, Look at Gel mann book. The ways he trys to define complexity are so dissapointing ( in my mind) I wonder your reaction. MAXIMUM UNFOLDING OF COROLLARIES IMPLICIT IN A SET OF AXIOMS=COMPLEXITY. THIS INCLUDES ALL THE WONDERS OF PHASE SHIFTS AND EMERGENT PROPERTIES WHICH APPEAR AS IF BY MAGIC ALONG THE WAY. In the meantime I keep searching for name. the next list : The Self and the Universe The paradox of self awarness and creativity. The Smart univers The tree of life and knowledge ACTUALLY, WE HAVE A MORE BASIC PROBLEM. RICHARD WANTS THIS BOOK TO FOCUS ON BACTERIAL CREATIVITY AND ITS POSSIBLE USE AS AN ANSWER TO OUR UPCOMING PROBLEMS WITH ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT MICROORGANISMS. I THINK YOU'VE GOT THE NEXT EINSTEINIAN REVOLUTION IN YOUR PALM AND THAT THE BOOK PROVIDES WHAT I'VE MENTIONED ABOVE--THE UNION OF PHYSICS, BIOLOGY, COSMOLOGY, AND EVOLUTION. WHICH DIRECTION DO *YOU* WANT TO GO WITH THIS? WOULD YOU PREFER TO BE PRACTICAL AND NARROWLY FOCUSED WITH THE BIG PICTURE AS A TAIL TRAILING THE DOG? OR WOULD YOU RATHER CONCENTRATE ON THE BIG PICTURE WITH ANY PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT? IN CASE I HAVEN'T PRESENTED RICHARD'S VIEW FAIRLY (I AM *VERY* BIASED), I'LL COPY HIM ON THIS SO HE CAN PUT HIS DESIRES MORE ADEQUATELY. MY POSITION IS THAT LIFE IS ONLY SO LONG, AND IF YOU'VE GOT THE BIG ONE READY TO GO, PUT THE NEXT FEW YEARS INTO GETTING THE THEORY THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY ON PAPER, THEN WORRY ABOUT PRACTICAL FALLOUT AND IMMEDIATE SALABILITY SOME OTHER TIME. A
GROUNDBREAKING BOOK, IF WRITTEN WITH A DAWKINSESQUE ACCESSIBILITY, WILL
SELL FOR DECADES AND MORE, WILL DO THE RIGHT THING FOR HUMANITY, FOR
POSTERITY, AND WILL FUNDAMENTALLY ALTER OUR COMPREHENSION OF THE WORLD
IN WHICH WE LIVE. DOING THE RIGHT THING PAYS---ALWAYS, PROVIDED YOU
DO IT IN THE RIGHT WAY. I'VE FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE NO MATTER HOW TOUGH
IT MAY BE TO GET AN IDEA PAST THIS MINUTE'S EDITORS, WHO SEE NO FURTHER
THAN THEIR CASH FLOW A YEAR OR TWO DOWN THE ROAD. AGAIN, RICHARD WILL
GIVE HIS POINT OF VIEW FOR YOUR CONTEMPLATION.HE IS THE ONE WHO ACTUALLY
HAS TO GO HEAD TO HEAD WITH THESE EDITORS AND PROVOKE THEM INTO A BUYING
SPASM. Actualy in hebrew the word DAAT is used which is not knowledge
but more awarrness based on knowledge and recognition. In short there
is no comparable word in English so I though prhepse to use The tree
of life and daat. The emergence of daat Cooperating webs of self Or
using IdishThe Chochme of the universe Michal and myself are going to
arrive to NY on the way to Tel Aviv on Sep 18 at night and will depart
on the next day at night. OI, WHAT A SCHEDULE. HOW, IN SUCH A SHORT
AMOUNT OF TIME, WILL I MANAGE TO GET A VISIT FROM YOU? AS FOR TITLES,
I AM FIDDLING MENTALLY WITH SOMETHING LIKE DAAT: THE SELF-AWARE UNIVERSE
A Grand Unified Theory of Physics and Evolution or CREATIVE WEBS: FROM
THE BIG BANG TO SMART BACTERIA A Grand Unified Theory of Physics, Evolution,
and "Self" Warmly--Howard ALL COMMUNICATION IN THIS UNIVERSE BREAKS DOWN INTO TWO BASIC FORMS--ATTRACTION AND REPULSION. THIS APPLIES TO SUBATOMIC PARTICLES, TO GRAVITATIONAL BLOBS, TO FUSION GENERATION IN THE HEART OF STARS, TO BACTERIA 3.5 BILLION YEARS AGO, TO CRAYFISH, CHIMPS, MICHA, YOU, AND ME. IT IS ONE REASON THAT ENTROPY IS A USEFUL TOOL ONLY IN HIGHLY LIMITED CASES WITHIN THIS ACTUAL UNIVERSE. AS YOU'VE POINTED OUT, AT THE VERY LEAST, ALL ENTITIES AT THE VERY LEAST ARE AFFECTED BY THE FORCE OF GRAVITY. GRAVITY IS AN INFORMATIONAL ATTRACTOR. TWO UP QUARKS GENERATE INFORMATIONAL REPULSION SIGNALS. TWO UP QUARKS AND A DOWN QUARK GENERATE INFORMATIONAL ATTRACTION SIGNALS. YES, EVEN QUARKS HAVE BEHAVIOR--THE SINA QUA NON OF PSYCHOLOGY. BEHAVING ON THEIR ATTRACTIVE INFORMATIONAL SIGNALS, TWO UP QUARKS AND ONE DOWN QUARK JOIN IN A HADRON. TWO DOWN QUARKS AND ONE UP QUARK JOIN IN ANOTHER VARIETY OF HADRON. IF A LEPTON PASSES NEAR THE FORM OF HADRON KNOWN AS A PROTON, THE TWO SEND OUT SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION AND, SHOULD THEY BE WITHIN ADEQUATE CONVERSATIONAL DISTANCE, THEY ACT ON THEIR INFORMATION EXCHANGE. THEY JOIN INTO AN ATOM. THE LEPTON IS WHAT WE GENERALLY CALL AN ELECTRON. SHOULD SEVERAL ATOMS CONGREGATE, THOSE MISSING AN ELECTRON FROM THEIR OUTER SHELL WILL SEND OUT SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION TO OTHERS HAVING A CORRESPONDING EXTRA ELECTRON IN THEIRS. ACTING ON SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION, THE ATOMS WILL JOIN IN A MOLECULE. OTHER ATOMS WILL EXCHANGE SIGNALS OF REPULSION AND FLEE EACH OTHERS COMPANY. ALL ARE RECEIVING INFORMATION AND BEHAVING ACCORDING TO ITS IMPERATIVES. AND SO ON UP THE EVOLUTIONARY CHAIN. WHETHER THAT CHAIN BE OF NON-LIVING MATERIAL OR OF THE LIVING. LORD, DO THESE INFORMATIONAL SIGNALS OF REPULSION AND ATTRACTION BECOME INTERESTING ONCE LIFE BEGINS. FIRST OFF, WITHOUT THEM THERE WOULD BE NO LIFE. WITHOUT HIGHLY COMPLEX SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION, WE WOULD HAVE NO DNA OR RNA. WITHOUT EQUALLY COMPLEX SIGNALS OF REPULSION, INSTEAD OF THE INTRICATE STRUCTURES WHICH MAKE RNA AND DNA THE MAGIC MOLECULES THEY ARE, WE WOULD HAVE AMORPHOUS CLUMPS. SYMPHONIES OF ATTRACTIVE AND REPULSIVE SIGNALS ARE WHAT TURN RNA AND DNA INTO ASSEMBLERS OF OTHER MOLECULES, AND EVEN DIRECTORS OF EXTENDED TEMPORAL SEQUENCING. WITHOUT SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION AND REPULSION, A BACTERIAL COLONY WOULD NOT BE A CREATIVE WEB. WITHOUT SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION AND REPULSION, COLONIES OF BEES, ANTS, BANDS BABOONS, AND HUMAN SOCIETIES WOULD NOT BE CREATIVE WEBS (COLLECTIVE BRAINS, TO USE BLOOMIAN VOCABULARY) EITHER. WITHOUT SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION AND REPULSION, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE MICHA, I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU, RICHARD WOULD NOT BE PART OF THIS BREW, AND YOU AND I WOULD NOT BE CHOOSING WORDS AND IDEAS CAREFULLY, GRABBING ON TO THOSE WHICH FIT WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO COMPREHEND AND REJECTING THOSE WHICH DON'T. YOU AND I ARE VERY MUCH LIKE THE DNA OR RNA MOLECULE, PICKING THROUGH THE SOUP OF WHAT'S AVAILABLE TO US, PUSHING AWAY IRRELEVANCIES AND THOSE IDEAS WHICH OFFEND US (FOR EXAMPLE, DEGENERATIVE ENTROPY), GRABBING THOSE WHICH PULL US, LIKE A CHIMP'S RIPE FRUIT, BY OFFERING TO SATISFY OUR HUNGER, PROFERRING KEYS WHICH WILL UNLOCK OUR OBSESSIVE MYSTERIES. WE CANNOT RESIST OUR GRAB FOR FRUITS OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO ADD A PIECE TO A JIGSAW PUZZLE OLDER THAN ADAM HIMSELF, TO PLACE WHAT SEEM INEVITABLE TILES IN AN EVER-INCOMPLETE MOSAIC OF AWARENESS. WE COMMUNICATE INFORMATION OF ALL KINDS AND, STRANGELY, INFORMATION COMMUNICATES TO YOU AND ME, SOME OF IT PULLING US, SOME OF IT PUSHING US AWAY. THIS, ACCORDING TO BLOOMIAN COROLARRY GENERATOR THEORY, FITS THE PUZZLE TOO. JUST AS THE FIRST QUARKS SORTED INFORMATION IN A MANNER WHICH EXPLORED THE CORRELATES OF THE ALGORITHMS BUILT INTO THEM, WE TOO ARE CORELLARY EXPLORERS, EXFOLIATING NEW LEMMAS OF THE BY-NOW-EXTREMELY-COMPLEXIFIED-UNFOLDED-AND REFOLDED UPON ITSELF CORELLARY SCHEME. AT EVERY STAGE FROM QUARK ON UP EACH ENTITY HAS BUILT INTO ITS ESSENCE AWARENESS--THE ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH ATTRACTIVE FROM REPULSIVE SIGNALS AND ACT ON THE INFORMATION ITS VERY ESSENCE DECODES. WHY DO I CALL THE FIELD WE ARE BUILDING PALEOPSYCHOLOGY? BECAUSE AWARENESS AND BEHAVIOR--PSYCHE, NEUMA, WHAT HAVE YOU--ARE BUILT INTO THE INANIMATE AND AUTOMATIC STRUCTURE OF EVEN THE SIMPLEST SUB-SUB-SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLE. THE FILL EACH FORCE WITH POWER. EVERY PIECE FITS SOME OTHERS, CAN BE DECODED BY THEM, AND HENCE IS INFORMATIONAL. IN _GLOBAL BRAIN_ THE BLOOM TELEPOLIS SERIES (AND JOHN WILEY BOOK) IT SAYS SOCIALITY BEGAN WITH THE FIRST INSTANTIATION OF THE BIG BANG, AND THAT ATTRACTIVE AND REPULSIVE FORCES REIGN AT EVERY LEVEL OF THIS UNIVERSE. VAL GEIST WROTE IN HIS 1978 _LIFE SCIENCES_ THAT ALL MAMMALIAN SIGNALS ARE EITHER SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION OR REPULSION. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO POINTED OUT THAT NO PHYSICAL ELEMENT IS IMMUNE TO AT LEAST ONE COMMUNICATIVE FORCE, THE ATTRACTION SIGNAL OF GRAVITY. HENCE THERE ARE NO CLOSED SYSTEMS AND THERE IS NO ENTROPY.IN OTHER WORDS, ENTROPY IS A HIGHLY USEFUL OVER-SIMPLIFICATION. AND WITHOUT USEFUL OVER-SIMPLIFICATIONS WE WOULD HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC TOOLS. CALCULUS IS AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION AS WELL, SINCE IT BREAKS DOWN THE INFINITE POINTS OF A CURVE INTO FINITE BITS. HOWEVER IT WORKS, THANK WHATEVER POWERS THAT MAY CHOSE TO BE OR NOT TO BE. ANOTHER POINT--THERE ARE ACTUALLY THREE FORMS OF COMMUNICATIVE FORCE--SIGNALS OF ATTRACTION, SIGNALS OF REPULSION, AND NON-SIGNALS WHICH LEAD TO INDIFFERENCE--TO UTTER LACK OF BEHAVIOR. SO PERHAPS THIS IS NOT A BINARY, BUT A TRINARY UNIVERSE. ITS INITIAL AXIOMS, ITS FOUNDING ALGORITHMS, MAY BE TRINITARIAN NOT BINITARIAN. INDIFFERENCE AND UTTER NON-COMMUNICATION IS A HIGHLY IMPORTANT KIND OF INFORMATION IN ANIMAL BEHAVIOR. THE LIMBIC SYSTEM SORTS DATA USING ATTRACTIVE, REPULSIVE, AND IRRELEVANT CUES. AND WE VERTERBRATES, BE WE LIZARDS, CHIMPS, OR HUMANS, ARE PERCEPTUAL AND BEHAVIORAL PUPPETS OF OUR LIMBIC DECODERS. BACTERIA ARE ALSO AFFECTED BY THIS TRINITARIAN PRINCIPLE. HOWEVER OVERCOMING A GODELIAN HURDLE USUALLY MEANS FINDING A METHOD FOR GLEANING DATA FROM THAT WHICH FORMALLY WAS INTERPRETED AS IRRELEVANCY. THIS IS THE EXFOLIATION, THE DERIVATION, OF YET ANOTHER COROLLARY UNFOLDED FROM THE GROWING MESHWORKS OF RAMIFICATIONS INHERENT IN THE INITIAL AXIOMS. IMAGINE IT AS THE UNFOLDING OF A FRACTAL SYSTEM BY A COMPUTER WHICH IS ITSELF IMPLICIT IN THE INITIAL AXIOMS. TO BORROW SOMETHING FROM, I THINK, TIM PERPER, THE SYSTEM NEEDS AN ALGORITHM ACTING AS AN EXTRACTOR TO OPERATE. LET'S SAY THE INITIAL AXIOMS INVOLVED PERHAPS SUCH SIMPLE ALGORITHMS AS ATTRACTION, REPULSION, AND IRRELEVANCY, PLUS A DECODER A BEHAVIOR-GENERATOR WHICH TURNED THE QUARTET INTO A SELF CONTAINED AND SELF- INVENTING COMPUTER--THE FIRST CREATIVE WEB. TO GET ULTRA SPECULATIVE, PERHAPS ALL WE BEGAN WITH WAS ATTRACTION, REPULSION, AND THE BEHAVIORS THEY IMPLIED. ATTRACTION AND REPULSION INSINUATE BOTH MATTER AND BEHAVIOR. IN FACT, ALL MATTER IS BEHAVIOR, ALL FORM IS FUNCTION. BUT I AM NATTERING THESE ARE JUST FOR INSTANCES. BUBBLE GUM TO TEACH THE INTELLECTUAL JAWS HOW THEY MIGHT CHEW. Another point is fighting the creativity of men you destroy communication ( the tower of babel) YES, ALL THIS IS IN _THE GLOBAL BRAIN_ AND _THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE_. (HOPE I DON'T SOUND CRANKY, BUT IT'S SIX AM AND I AM ACTUALLY IN NEED OF SLEEP, FOOD, AND STAKING OUT MY TINY TERRITORIES OF SCIENTIFIC PRIORITY--GHASTLY OF ME, ISN'T IT, BUT A WEARYSOME DISCIPLINARY NECESSITY.) just the way we have to fight bacteria. YES, THIS IS HOW THE COLLECTIVE BRAIN I'VE BEEN PROPOSING WORKS. WE HAVE DIVERSITY GENERATORS OPERATING ON REPULSIVE FORCES. WE HAVE CONFORMITY ENFORCERS ACTING ON ATTRACTIVE FORCES. THE TWO ARE IN CONSTANT COUNTERPOISE, A BATTLE THAT BONDS THE TWO IN AN ETERNAL ACT OF SYNTHESIS. THE REFEREES ARE SORTERS. I'VE DIVIDED SORTERS INTO TWO KINDS BECAUSE I'M WORKING WITH ORGANISMS. ORGANISMS HAVE INTERNAL SORTERS AND SORTERS EXTERNAL TO THEMSELVES. THE INTERNALS ARE LOOPS LIKE THOSE OF APOPTOSIS, PROGRAMMED CELL DEATH. THE EXTERNALS ARE BASED ON: * ATTRACTIVE AND REPULSIVE SIGNALS WITHIN THE SOCIAL ENTITY OF WHICH THE ORGANISM IS A PART, *ON THE BATTLE OF WEDDED OPPOSITES HOLDING EACH SOCIETY IN A HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM OF SOCIETIES, *AND ON THE LARGER ENVIRONMENT WHICH GIVES ITS YESES, NO'S, AND "I-DON'T-CARES" TO THE PRODUCTS OF THESE INTERGROUP TOURNAMENTS. THE ENVIRONMENT, IN TURN, IS SUBJECT TO BEING SORTED BY THE SHIFTING SETTING IN WHICH IT EXISTS. AND THAT IN TURN IS SORTED BY YET LARGER INTERWEAVES. NOTHING ESCAPES THE POWERS OF ATTRACTION, REPULSION, AND SELECTION. NOTHING ESCAPES THE MARITAL BATTLES OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION. AS LONG AS THERE ARE EVOLVING AND EVER-PICKIER REFEREES, DESTRUCTION WILL BE A BYPRODUCT OF CREATION, AND CREATION WILL A BYPRODUCT OF DESTRUCTION. THIS IS COVERED IN THE BEGINNING AND FINAL CHAPTERS OF _THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE_. HOWEVER WHAT BINDS PHYSICS TO BIOLOGY AND COSOMOLOGY TO ORGANIC EVOLUTION IS THE FACT THAT NOTHING ESCAPES INFORMATION.
NO SYSTEM IS AN ISLAND. ATTRACTION, REPULSION, AND SELECTION (OR SORTING)
ARE AT WORK IN THE BIG BANG, THE FORMATION OF STARS, THE COAGULATION
OF PLANETS, THE CONJUGATION OF ATOMS IN THE NUCLEIC CHAINS OF LIFE,
THE BATTLES OF VIRI, BACTERIA, EUKARYOTIC PROTOZOANS, METAZOANS, PLANTS,
ANIMALS, AND HUMANS. ATTRACTION, REPULSION, AND SORTERS OPERATE AS VIGOROUSLY
IN THE POLITICS OF BILL CLINTON VERSUS A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS AND ISRAELIS
VERSUS PALESTINIANS AS THEY DID IN THE FIRST FLICKERINGS OF FOUR FORCES
AND THE RESULTING DANCES OF PROTONS, NEUTRONS, AND ELECTRONS TWELVE
TO 17 BILLION YEARS AGO. PUT THE BEN JACOB WARP TOGETHER WITH THE BLOOM
WOOF AND I BELIEVE WE HAVE A FABRIC WHICH CAN BIND ALL THE SCIENCES
AND UNITE A THEORETICALLY FRAGMENTED UNIVERSE. WHICH IS WHY I FEEL WE
HAVE ON OUR LOOM A CRUDE WEAVE OF THE 21ST CENTURY'S PARADIGMATIC TAPESTRY.
THIS IS, YOU KNOW, WHAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR 40 YEARS. AND I SUSPECT
IT HAS BEEN DRIVING YOU ON WELL. TIME TO PARAPHRASE ANDREW MARVEL FOR
THE SECOND TIME TONIGHT-- Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness
up into one ball,And tear our revelations with rough strife Thorough
the iron gates of life. PLUS, IN HONOR OF THE FRACTAL WAY IN WHICH THE
MINUSCULE BEGINNING CONTAINS THE MASSIVE MIDDLE AND ALL OF ITS COMPLEXITIES,
A BIT OF ALTERED BLAKE: Let's see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven
in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of our hand And Eternity
in an hour. PARTICULARY APPROPRIATE WHEN ONE REALIZES THAT YOUR STUDY
OF BACTERIA BEGAN WITH AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FRACTAL UNFOLDING OF
THEIR COLONIES WITH THE MATHEMATICS OF SUCH INANIMATE MATERIALS AS SANDy
SILICATES. AND LOOK WHERE IT HAS TAKEn YOU AND ME AND HOPEFULLY SEVERAL
GENERATIONS YET TO COME Lehit, Howard the noun-based things are handled by the visual brain. hence the distinction, as Kant thought, is probably brain-based, not reality-based. it works and allows us to do great things in the real world, from tossing baseballs precisely into a catcher's mit to intecepting subatomic particles in the magnetic mit of an accelerator or even growing an orange and snapping it from the soil, water, and sun of the valley of Jezrael to a restaurant table in Paris. but like entropy and calculus, a division of all that is into nouns and verbs, things and actions, is a compromise between the way our brains and senses are built and and whatever the heck is outside of our heads. Compromises, approximations filled with holes, make great tools. Problem is that one eventually reaches the limits of their usefulness and tries to reach beyond them. Which means one needs to build new tools. In this case, conceptual tools. Verbs and nouns, things and actions, are very likely exaptations. in other words, they are concepts built for a cortical brain on the basis of an older brain and its simple ways of handling things without consciousness--ways which 3.5 billion years of sandpapering by whatever *is* out there have made pretty efficient on the face of this particular planet. problem is that when we try to look into the infinitessimal cleft from which this universe emerged we are no longer looking into this world. We are way beyond its parameters. we have gone to a place where waves on the ripples of a pond and nice round stones--waves and particles--are no longer adequate metaphors. nor are the mathematical systems based on such metaphors. yakkk. here i vastly prefer visual metaphor to the disguised and priestly incomprehensibilty known as math. but math is a blind man's cane for feeling out dimensions whose landscapes we can't know in any other manner, or so says _The Lucifer Principle_. and perhaps that is what we are reduced too. however before i give in to mathematical nihilism, let's try this for a set of axioms with which the universe could have begun. start with two things, the opposites i always resort to: a conformity enforcer and a diversity generator: an "i wanna hold you tight" and a "no, no, no, i wanna go off on my own." from these two i believe we can make a universe. first the noun/verb problem. conformity enforcers group things by category and gather them into groups, making a semblance of things. they do this through action--the action of attraction. had the universe begun with just a conformity enforcer, the universe would not have been. it would never have diversified, separated, kicked itself loose from Guth's vacuum. hence we can infer that guth's vacuum is held together by its own form of conformity enforcers and contains its own diversity generators. without the conformity enforcers it would not exist. without the irritation of diversity generators it would never belch out a singularity. i have wandered from nouns and verbs, things and actions. no, i haven't. agglomeration and categorization lead to THINGS. Skoyles' neurological evidence indicates that this is true from a perceptual point of view. Medline contains a great deal more data supporting "thingness" as the product of a limited cerebral morphology. Thingness is agglomeration, and aggomeration is a process. it involves *sorting* through disparate whatevers and *drawing* them together--two actions. ahhh, i've been looking for a way in which the conformity enforcer could generate its opposite, and i think i've found it. without diversity, there can be no conformity enforcer. enforcing conformity implies that there is a diversity to be tamed. the diversity pre-exists the conformity enforcer. however since we inferred the existence of the diversity generator from that of the conformity enforcer, the conformity enforcer pre-exists the diversity generator. both are corollaries of the same...what? again, i am trying to chisel this universe down to its starting principles. poor descartes locked himself in a room and drove himself to the brink of insanity in an attempt to do the same thing. he came up with "i think therefore i am." in a sense, this disquisition incorporates the same conclusion. what we think about exists because of the way we think about it. yikes. the way we think about it depends on the thinking device we use--our brain. and the brain has been shaped by the universe it attempts to think about. lord, Kekule's snakes are chasing their darned tails. this verbal ring-around-the-rosy also proves reed konsler's rule of epistemology. when trying to think your way outside of the system within which you are enclosed you are forced to use tools you've knocked together from the flotsam of that system. sort of like trying to saw your way out of a wooden prison with a wooden sawblade. so how in heck do you ever get beyond the boundaries of a system which contains you and keeps looping you back where you started. travelling outward you reach your starting point, which, as i understand it, is pretty much the way einstein says this universe is shaped. how do bacteria manage their way out this trap? apparently they are a good deal brighter than i am. we need an othogonal jump here, a pole vault over the godelian barbed wire at the edge of the epistemic cosmos. bottom line: the universe can be inferred completely from a conformity enforcer. the conformity enforcer is a verb which manufactures nouns. it also coughs out diversity, its opposite, else it would cease to be. the conformity enforcer sorts diverse elements and hauls them together by class affiliation of some sort or by complementarity (a missing something in an implied gestalt which can only be filled by coalition with another gestalt whose imcompleteness provides what the first gestalt lacks. the emptiness of each fills that of the other. two negatives make a positive. add need to need and you get fulfillment. the minus of an electron proves positively satisfying to a proton).Meanwhile diversity tugs things apart. the ingenuity of the conformity enforcer competes to get an upper hand over diversity and compact everything neatly, to tuck it all away in cubbyholes for the night and cease its restless motion. the diversity enforcer maintains the universe's expanse by outwitting the conformity enforcer. the only way to do this is to generate new forms of eccentricty. meanwhile the products of this clash vie for relative permanence. to prove themselves they must dodged perpetually new means of dissolution crafted by the diversity generator. they also have to dodge being crunched into snowballs of similar objects by the crushers of conformity enforcer. to dodge conformity they will have to draw on diversity's powers. to dodge dissolution, they will have to use the conformity enforcer's strengths. they will have to sidestep the two basic and conflicting forces of the universe by containing both of them. a very different picture than energy whorling into loops to evade the destructive power of entropy. or is it? its one difference may be this. no matter what starting point you begin with--diversity, conformity, a generator, an enforcer, a sorter, a spitter, mass, velocity, even entropy-- all are social concepts. all imply a multiplicity of things operating in relationship to each other. all imply objects of some sort interacting along defined lines. all imply shifting entities interlocked via information. hmmm,
you could derive everything i've said just as easily from the word information,
which implies objects in choreographed interaction. Yup, "information"
implies action and object plus sociality. or you could derive this entire
line of reasoning from entropy--disorder in processes and systems. process
implies things, actions, and interactions, the whole kit and kaboodle
of a social universe. how can there be closed systems in a universe
whose every word implies relationship. relationshi is sociality, nicht
var? or is the problem that we are dealing with words, all of which
evolved from sociality. is this why sophisticated elements of sociality--
recognition, behavior, action, and thingness--are equally implicit in
a solitary big, a solitary bang, a solitary quark, a solitary force,
or a solitary energy? for none of these are solitary. energy is the
capacity to do work. how can one get any more social than that? (by
the way, a good deal of this monolog was inspired by the set of emotional
mirrors staring into each others faces and producing infinite reflections
and counter reflections which appeared in Martha Sherwood's three consecutive
postings explaining how no one pays attention to her but we ignore her
by picking at her arguments so thoroughly that all we ever touch on
are her irrelevant peripheries. as i miscomprehend it, there is an emotional
translation to that set of messages. martha wants us to come and find
her but no matter how hard we look she will hide and dodge us because
she is afraid of us despite her desire for companionship. moreover,
in describing how folks bite her hand when she feeds them she has described
her own behavior--another kekule's circle of snakes. it rings bells
in me emotionally and makes me suspect that i behave the same way in
some manner i can't see 'cause, as reed says, i'm stuck inside of me.
is it just me and martha who suffer from this madness? when looked at
epistemologically, the entire universe seems its victim. however, martha,
watching your mood swing manifested in intellectual clothing, all i
can say is that the darkness will pass. what's more, the conceptual
refuse it throws off has already proven of value, even if only by inspiring
some extremely wry observations from your commentators, and there are
reasons to smile. perhaps because your needs and fears all emanate from
sociality, just as do quarks and energies. what could be warmer than
sociality?) Howard That distiction was at the heart of his lectures. It is not suprising, in this blacklight, that Rand's hero was an architect. Her ideology is an expression of the Cool, the rational, the crystalized. The architect is the archetype of synchronic perspective, with a vision as solid as the builder's stone >Verbs and nouns, things and actions, are very likely >exaptations. in other words, they are concepts built for a >cortical brain on the basis of an older brain and its >simple ways of handling things without consciousness--ways >which 3.5 billion years of sandpapering by whatever *is* out >there have made pretty efficient on the face of this >particular planet. problem is that when we try to look into >the infinitessimal cleft from which this universe emerged we >are no longer looking into this world. We are way beyond >its parameters. we have gone to a place where waves on the >ripples of a pond and nice round stones--waves and >particles--are no longer adequate metaphors. nor are the >mathematical systems based on such metaphors. Hofstader calls this a "strange loop" in GEB. The brain seems designed to create a consistent view of the universe. It builds outwards from simple rules based on obvious, even preconscious perceptions, like a baby learning to asscociate the flash of light reflecting off metal surfaces with a rattle of sound...tn infer that there is an OBJECT...a thing which those perceptions indicate. And from those presumed objects and their infered relationships, as you've said, precipitate a cascade of billions, an explosion of form, until at the limits we are grasping at the edges of the universe. But, Hofstader points out, it is an "ever rising cannon". To that baby, the flash of light and the audible jingle ARE THE DUALITY That is wave/particle theory to Mind at that stage of development and the association between them is as difficult. We are always reaching beyond our grasp, mindblind, into that other space. Our hand grasps the object, and the patterns lock together into the key. And when the revelation is past, we are born again. And from that synthesis, our hand grasps into a new dimension. >yakkk. here i vastly prefer visual metaphor to the disguised >and priestly incomprehensibilty known as math. but math is >a blind man's cane for feeling out dimensions whose >landscapes we can't know in any other manner, or so says >_The Lucifer Principle_. and perhaps that is what we are >reduced too. Give it time. The blind have been trained to see patterns tatooed on their skin by flickering pressure. The elecronic reality will plunge you again into intimate connection with the universe, and the salty differential equations will be the taste of your own tears. >start with two things, the opposites i always resort to: a >conformity enforcer and a diversity generator: an "i wanna >hold you tight" and a "no, no, no, i wanna go off on my >own." from these two i believe we can make a universe. For DeLanda, it is a heterogenous Distribution and a Sorting Mechanism. Richard Brodie calls them discrimination and association memes. >i have wandered from nouns and verbs, things and actions. >no, i haven't. agglomeration and categorization lead to >THINGS. I say that there are forces in tension. These forces create a field in which some locations are privelidged, the locuses are the THINGS, like a LaGrange point of balance, a center of gravity, or Dennett's narrative center of gravity...hence "I think therefore I am" is a prime defintion. The minds mechanism recognizes at least it's own center. The universe's mechanism recognizes it's own center, and from this the derivations begin. >Skoyles' neurological evidence indicates that this >is true from a perceptual point of view. Medline contains a >great deal more data supporting "thingness" as the product >of a limited cerebral morphology. Thingness is an attribution. Trace the ley lines of sight, sound and touch. Where they cross in the brain's internal geometry is the key, a bundle of neurons transfixed in by that sensory triangulation. The sigifier for a signified, itself a transient instant of conjuction. >Thingness is agglomeration, and aggomeration is a process. >it involves *sorting* through disparate whatevers and >*drawing* them together--two actions. Or one, it's a field. Is the ball rolling towards you or from me? Some of the best poetry is written confined by the rules of the sonnet. In restrictions there are freedom. It all depends upon your perspective. But from outside, it's physics. There is no center, except a center of convenience, a geometric center or a center of gravity. The forces are in tension, but it is only INSIDE the bubble that you can define one as collective and the other as dispersive. Diversity is from a point and conformity is to a point, but it is the point which is the focus of abstract attention. As Collins says, great philosophers do not answer questions, they define problem space. They put their finger on the point where the lines cross. Perhaps they even tug the lines a little, as Foucault might argue, and tweak our perceptions enough to bring an image into focus. And then suddenly some of us find ourselves rushing towards the center, and some away. Suddenly, there is a Cartesian flash and we are coordianated around the point. >this verbal ring-around-the-rosy also proves reed konsler's >rule of epistemology. when trying to think your way outside >of the system within which you are enclosed you are forced >to use tools you've knocked together from the flotsam of >that system. The tools you've knocked together ARE the system within which you are enclosed. It's called a "realtive energy maximum". And how organisms might evolve out of them was the focus of Kaufmann's experiments in _Origins of Order_. The conclusion was that species which were optimized in a relative energy maximum were SOL unless they Could find some way to make a good bet in gambling across evolution space. But, to make this leap, the system has to recognize itself in order to coordinate it's elements...it has to explicitly identify the point around which it is hovering. Lacan called this a shift from the neurotic to the psychotic. Wonderful words, huh? The neurotic defines all things with respect to the "name-of-the-father" a center, conscious knowledge of which is suppressed, but which serves as the anchor point for the defintion of all other words and relationships. That center is the neurotic focus, the point which the diversity generators all try to get away from and the conformity enforcers are all drawing towards. The shift, perhaps a progressive degeneration? Is the shift to psychosis, where the "name-of-the-father" is revealed and placed among the elements. A psychotic has no object of focus, no center towards and from which the other elements are vectored. All elements are equal and correlated. The system can drift randomly. But random drift is dangerous, Kaufmann warns. A highly optimized system often has no where to go but down for a long way in any direction. What might give a psychotic system some chance to drift in a positive direction, what might help to target a leap of faith? Sexual reproduction. Somehow, one system must find another optimized system and then manufacture an isomorphism. You say pot-aye-to and I say pot-ahh-to but we both mean this same thing...that is the lovers dance. Every time we insist "lets call the whole thing off", we are in fact drawn closer together And from this springs an explosion of hybrids, desperately triangulating perfection. With luck, one falls in the fertile valley between to two "relative energy maximum". Statisitically, it works. So I'm told, anyway. >sort of like trying to saw your way out of a >wooden prison with a wooden sawblade. fight fire with fire. >so how in heck do you >ever get beyond the boundaries of a system which contains >you and keeps looping you back where you started. >travelling outward you reach your starting point, which, as >i understand it, is pretty much the way einstein says this >universe is shaped. "You" don't. "You" are where you are. We each desperately value everything about ourselves. But we each know we must contain some flawed elements, mistaken conclusions. The universe complexifies, but "you" die every time you open your mind to the next possibility and, as they say, are "born again" in the new creation. It's too bad we wake up each time unaware of the death of yesterday's soul. But, that's reletivity for you...if "you" were immortal, even for more than a few milliseconds, "you" would stay in that little loop forever. Getting out of the box MEANS intentionally forgetting you were ever in it. Hofstader calls that "unasking the question". Richard Brodie recommends only making a distinction if you have a good reason to, and to un-make distinctions which aren't getting you where you want to go. >how do bacteria manage their way out this trap? apparently >they are a good deal brighter than i am. we need an >othogonal jump here, a pole vault over the godelian barbed >wire at the edge of the epistemic cosmos. They just forget about it becuase they're so madly in love. >a very different picture than energy whorling into loops to >evade the destructive power of entropy. or is it? ENTROPY isn't DESTRUCTIVE it's DISPERSIVE. It spreads things out, it's diversity generating and freedom loving. Chemists speak about entropy in term of "degrees of freedom". >its one difference may be this. no matter what starting >point you begin with--diversity, conformity, a generator, an >enforcer, a sorter, a spitter, mass, velocity, even entropy- >- all are social concepts. all imply a multiplicity of >things operating in relationship to each other. all imply >objects of some sort interacting along defined lines. all >imply shifting entities interlocked via information. > >hmmm, you could derive everything i've said just as easily >from the word information, which implies objects in >choreographed interaction. Yup, "information" implies >action and object plus sociality. As Douglas Adams points out, you can infer the universe from a piece of spice cake, if you like. Of course, only the President of the Universe could stand experiencing the perspective without becoming suicidal...and then only in a perfect virtual simulation. >(by the way, a good deal of this monolog was inspired by the >set of emotional mirrors staring into each others faces and >producing infinite reflections and counter reflections which >appeared in Martha Sherwood's three consecutive postings >explaining how no one pays attention to her but we ignore >her by picking at her arguments so thoroughly that all we >ever touch on are her irrelevant peripheries. This post only made sense to me after I read and wrote some personal exchanges with Martha as well. She's quite a catalyst, no? >as i miscomprehend it, there is an emotional translation to that >set of messages. martha wants us to come and find her but no >matter how hard we look she will hide and dodge us because >she is afraid of us despite her desire for companionship. >moreover, in describing how folks bite her hand when she >feeds them she has described her own behavior--another >kekule's circle of snakes. it rings bells in me emotionally >and makes me suspect that i behave the same way in some >manner i can't see 'cause, as reed says, i'm stuck inside of >me. is it just me and martha who suffer from this madness? Reed too, and everyone. Do you remember when we were beginning this list and discussing how we should get the messages distributed. My recommendation was then, and is now, that you should send the message to yourself. That is where the messages are going eventually anyway. As Latour says, the anthropologist makes the journey into a foriegn land and returns...and it is the returning, as much as the leaving, which results in new knowledge. Of course, the most retarded response signifies the most distant reflection. So perhaps we ought to cast our message bottles as far afield as we can, thus defining our own circumference. Reed In a message dated 98-08-21 21:05:29 EDT, you write: <<
Subj: Generalised principles of cognition? - private Howard, Just a quick, private note:
In relation to your post "eshel--your book, complexity and information",
you
As such, what do you think of biosemiotics? TELL ME MORE. WHAT IS BIOSEMIOTICS?
One of my fundamental axioms is
My humble opinion is that biosemiotics holds out the greatest promise
for
Your comments regarding diversity generators and conformity enforcers
tie in
And, just a quick comment about the big bang theory. What is the nature
of BY
THE WAY, IPP MEMBER JOHN SKOYLES POINTS OUT IN HIS UPCOMING NEW PARADIGM
SERIES BOOK _MINDWARE_ THAT DODGSON ALSO HAD MIGRAINES AND EPILEPSY,
GREAT AIDS TO THE ABNORMAL STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH SEEM SO NECESSARY
TO TREAD IN THESE SNARKY TERRITORIES. NEVER CAN TELL WHEN THE BOROGOVES
MAY OUTGABE. International
Paleopsychology Project for
two chapters from It is not suprising, in this blacklight, that Rand's hero was an architect. Her ideology is an expression of the Cool, the rational, the crystalized. The architect is the archetype of synchronic perspective, with a vision as solid as the builder's stone >Verbs and nouns, things and actions, are very likely >exaptations. in other words, they are concepts built for a >cortical brain on the basis of an older brain and its >simple ways of handling things without consciousness--ways >which 3.5 billion years of sandpapering by whatever *is* out >there have made pretty efficient on the face of this >particular planet. problem is that when we try to look into >the infinitessimal cleft from which this universe emerged we >are no longer looking into this world. We are way beyond >its parameters. we have gone to a place where waves on the >ripples of a pond and nice round stones--waves and >particles--are no longer adequate metaphors. nor are the >mathematical systems based on such metaphors. Hofstader calls this a "strange loop" in GEB. The brain seems designed to create a consistent view of the universe. It builds outwards from simple rules based on obvious, even preconscious perceptions, like a baby learning to asscociate the flash of light reflecting off metal surfaces with a rattle of sound...tn infer that there is an OBJECT...a thing which those perceptions indicate. And from those presumed objects and their infered relationships, as you've said, precipitate a cascade of billions, an explosion of form, until at the limits we are grasping at the edges of the universe. But, Hofstader points out, it is an "ever rising cannon". To that baby, the flash of light and the audible jingle ARE THE DUALITY That is wave/particle theory to Mind at that stage of development and the association between them is as difficult. We are always reaching beyond our grasp, mindblind, into that other space. Our hand grasps the object, and the patterns lock together into the key. And when the revelation is past, we are born again. And from that synthesis, our hand grasps into a new dimension. >yakkk. here i vastly prefer visual metaphor to the disguised >and priestly incomprehensibilty known as math. but math is >a blind man's cane for feeling out dimensions whose >landscapes we can't know in any other manner, or so says >_The Lucifer Principle_. and perhaps that is what we are >reduced too. Give it time. The blind have been trained to see patterns tatooed on their skin by flickering pressure. The elecronic reality will plunge you again into intimate connection with the universe, and the salty differential equations will be the taste of your own tears. >start with two things, the opposites i always resort to: a >conformity enforcer and a diversity generator: an "i wanna >hold you tight" and a "no, no, no, i wanna go off on my >own." from these two i believe we can make a universe. For DeLanda, it is a heterogenous Distribution and a Sorting Mechanism. Richard Brodie calls them discrimination and association memes. >i have wandered from nouns and verbs, things and actions. >no, i haven't. agglomeration and categorization lead to >THINGS. I say that there are forces in tension. These forces create a field in which some locations are privelidged, the locuses are the THINGS, like a LaGrange point of balance, a center of gravity, or Dennett's narrative center of gravity...hence "I think therefore I am" is a prime defintion. The minds mechanism recognizes at least it's own center. The universe's mechanism recognizes it's own center, and from this the derivations begin. >Skoyles' neurological evidence indicates that this >is true from a perceptual point of view. Medline contains a >great deal more data supporting "thingness" as the product >of a limited cerebral morphology. Thingness is an attribution. Trace the ley lines of sight, sound and touch. Where they cross in the brain's internal geometry is the key, a bundle of neurons transfixed in by that sensory triangulation. The sigifier for a signified, itself a transient instant of conjuction. >Thingness is agglomeration, and aggomeration is a process. >it involves *sorting* through disparate whatevers and >*drawing* them together--two actions. Or one, it's a field. Is the ball rolling towards you or from me? Some of the best poetry is written confined by the rules of the sonnet. In restrictions there are freedom. It all depends upon your perspective. But from outside, it's physics. There is no center, except a center of convenience, a geometric center or a center of gravity. The forces are in tension, but it is only INSIDE the bubble that you can define one as collective and the other as dispersive. Diversity is from a point and conformity is to a point, but it is the point which is the focus of abstract attention. As Collins says, great philosophers do not answer questions, they define problem space. They put their finger on the point where the lines cross. Perhaps they even tug the lines a little, as Foucault might argue, and tweak our perceptions enough to bring an image into focus. And then suddenly some of us find ourselves rushing towards the center, and some away. Suddenly, there is a Cartesian flash and we are coordianated around the point. >this verbal ring-around-the-rosy also proves reed konsler's >rule of epistemology. when trying to think your way outside >of the system within which you are enclosed you are forced >to use tools you've knocked together from the flotsam of >that system. The tools you've knocked together ARE the system within which you are enclosed. It's called a "realtive energy maximum". And how organisms might evolve out of them was the focus of Kaufmann's experiments in _Origins of Order_. The conclusion was that species which were optimized in a relative energy maximum were SOL unless they Could find some way to make a good bet in gambling across evolution space. But, to make this leap, the system has to recognize itself in order to coordinate it's elements...it has to explicitly identify the point around which it is hovering. Lacan called this a shift from the neurotic to the psychotic. Wonderful words, huh? The neurotic defines all things with respect to the "name-of-the-father" a center, conscious knowledge of which is suppressed, but which serves as the anchor point for the defintion of all other words and relationships. That center is the neurotic focus, the point which the diversity generators all try to get away from and the conformity enforcers are all drawing towards. The shift, perhaps a progressive degeneration? Is the shift to psychosis, where the "name-of-the-father" is revealed and placed among the elements. A psychotic has no object of focus, no center towards and from which the other elements are vectored. All elements are equal and correlated. The system can drift randomly. But random drift is dangerous, Kaufmann warns. A highly optimized system often has no where to go but down for a long way in any direction. What might give a psychotic system some chance to drift in a positive direction, what might help to target a leap of faith? Sexual reproduction. Somehow, one system must find another optimized system and then manufacture an isomorphism. You say pot-aye-to and I say pot-ahh-to but we both mean this same thing...that is the lovers dance. Every time we insist "lets call the whole thing off", we are in fact drawn closer together And from this springs an explosion of hybrids, desperately triangulating perfection. With luck, one falls in the fertile valley between to two "relative energy maximum". Statisitically, it works. So I'm told, anyway. >sort of like trying to saw your way out of a >wooden prison with a wooden sawblade. fight fire with fire. >so how in heck do you >ever get beyond the boundaries of a system which contains >you and keeps looping you back where you started. >travelling outward you reach your starting point, which, as >i understand it, is pretty much the way einstein says this >universe is shaped. "You" don't. "You" are where you are. We each desperately value everything about ourselves. But we each know we must contain some flawed elements, mistaken conclusions. The universe complexifies, but "you" die every time you open your mind to the next possibility and, as they say, are "born again" in the new creation. It's too bad we wake up each time unaware of the death of yesterday's soul. But, that's reletivity for you...if "you" were immortal, even for more than a few milliseconds, "you" would stay in that little loop forever. Getting out of the box MEANS intentionally forgetting you were ever in it. Hofstader calls that "unasking the question". Richard Brodie recommends only making a distinction if you have a good reason to, and to un-make distinctions which aren't getting you where you want to go. >how do bacteria manage their way out this trap? apparently >they are a good deal brighter than i am. we need an >othogonal jump here, a pole vault over the godelian barbed >wire at the edge of the epistemic cosmos. They just forget about it becuase they're so madly in love. >a very different picture than energy whorling into loops to >evade the destructive power of entropy. or is it? ENTROPY isn't DESTRUCTIVE it's DISPERSIVE. It spreads things out, it's diversity generating and freedom loving. Chemists speak about entropy in term of "degrees of freedom". >its one difference may be this. no matter what starting >point you begin with--diversity, conformity, a generator, an >enforcer, a sorter, a spitter, mass, velocity, even entropy- >- all are social concepts. all imply a multiplicity of >things operating in relationship to each other. all imply >objects of some sort interacting along defined lines. all >imply shifting entities interlocked via information. > >hmmm, you could derive everything i've said just as easily >from the word information, which implies objects in >choreographed interaction. Yup, "information" implies >action and object plus sociality. As Douglas Adams points out, you can infer the universe from a piece of spice cake, if you like. Of course, only the President of the Universe could stand experiencing the perspective without becoming suicidal...and then only in a perfect virtual simulation. >(by the way, a good deal of this monolog was inspired by the >set of emotional mirrors staring into each others faces and >producing infinite reflections and counter reflections which >appeared in Martha Sherwood's three consecutive postings >explaining how no one pays attention to her but we ignore >her by picking at her arguments so thoroughly that all we >ever touch on are her irrelevant peripheries. This post only made sense to me after I read and wrote some personal exchanges with Martha as well. She's quite a catalyst, no? >as i miscomprehend it, there is an emotional translation to that >set of messages. martha wants us to come and find her but no >matter how hard we look she will hide and dodge us because >she is afraid of us despite her desire for companionship. >moreover, in describing how folks bite her hand when she >feeds them she has described her own behavior--another >kekule's circle of snakes. it rings bells in me emotionally >and makes me suspect that i behave the same way in some >manner i can't see 'cause, as reed says, i'm stuck inside of >me. is it just me and martha who suffer from this madness? Reed too, and everyone. Do you remember when we were beginning this list and discussing how we should get the messages distributed. My recommendation was then, and is now, that you should send the message to yourself. That is where the messages are going eventually anyway. As Latour says, the anthropologist makes the journey into a foriegn land and returns...and it is the returning, as much as the leaving, which results in new knowledge. Of course, the most retarded response signifies the most distant reflection. So perhaps we ought to cast our message bottles as far afield as we can, thus defining our own circumference. Reed ------------------------------ Eshel Ben Jacob has just visited my home in Brooklyn and has said the following: The mathematics with which we sort out reality is based on sets. It is based on the proposition that entities or actions can be gathered into groupings, and those groupings can them be regarded as closed collections, entities of their own, stand-alones like Plato's self-standing absolutes, his pre-existent archetypes. In this sense, the treatment of a set in math is similar to the treatment of a closed system in thermodynamics. (Here I have begun to take liberties and digress from Eshel's words. Back to his insight.) But how could a set be a closed entity? How could it be a self-standing thing? It exists only as a collectivity slapped together by our perception. It is a grouping created by our impression of pattern. Without that our perceptual act, a set has no reality. Yet the math of sets says a set is independent of the arbitrary pattern-forming act upon which its very existence depends. Math, says Eshel, is inadequate to deal with reality because it is built on a tortuous distortion of its own nature, of its own ontology, its very manner of existence. Eshel, said I, you have just sketched out the basis for a new math. A new math is not what we need, he said, that would be too limited. We need a new *logic* with which to engage our world. I'm still pumping for the new math, and let me give you a sense of that which unfolds from Eshel's shrewd unpeeling of illusion from math's current certainties. We are lucky. In the 50 years since George Gamow gave us the Big Bang and in his spare time showed how to inter-relate set theory, Boolean algebra, binary math, and the tools my generation (and I) have used so intriguingly, a new math has arisen to free us from prison of linearity. It is non-linear math, and with it we have striven over the last 20 years or so great distances--into artificial life, complex adaptive systems, the dynamic growth patterns of fractals, and other delights of insight and control. Eshel's math, against which he objects, would be one of relationship, a math of sociality. My new book makes the point that sociality is at the heart of this universe's birth, and cannot be divorced from the dance steps with which it boogied from inception toward modernity. Eshel has said the same in different words. The new math would be based on a fundamental concept: Everything comes in groups. Nothing stands alone. Even new elements of any kind--force of attraction, raw energies, subatomic particles--exist in crowds. They *are* social interactions. They are not just things unto themselves. There is no such thing. They are interaction bounded by an envelope of form, communication made possible by the coalescence of communicative nodes. Without a sender and receiver, there is no information. And nothing exists without information. (For much more on this, see Depew and Weber David J. Depew and James D. Smith, eds., Entropy, Information and Evolution: New Perspectives on Physical and Biological Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988; Manfred Eigen. "What will endure of 20th Century biology?" In What is Life? The Next Fifty Years--Speculations on the future of biology. Edited by Michael P. Murphy and Luke A.J. O'Neill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 10-11.) Information, in turn, is reducible to communication, or is it the other way around? Even figure exists only be relationship (there's that key word again) to two things: ground, and to the receiver able to shift between reaction on the basis of either emergent form or the formful backdrop from which it emerges. A newness burst from the vacuum blip of a singularity still maintain its self by virtue of duet with the nothingness from which it's come. However nothing we know of is ever birthed alone. And, says Eshel, logic dictates that everything must have its opposite implicit in it. Without a balance of opposites, the universe would fly off down a line of chaos of a kind Eshel did not describe. I, however, was intrigued by this chaos. A line of chaos with a prescribed path, no matter how horrifying to a physicist, sounds like a determined form of motion, a something we can deal with logically, at least to me. Back to the new math. All entity is interaction. The next step: a math of sociality. I wonder who might be up to such an enterprise? P.S. Such a math would allow us to deal far more easily with the coagulation of planets, the stock market, the mass moods of humans, the social sciences, the current attempt at a right wing religious Republican/clerical hegemony, the coming catastrophe from which China emerges as a new form of superstate and we are just another Turkey, a once-great-state-now-emptied of attractive power, in the 21st century. It would also give additional tools for handling the effort to undo this fate before it can descend, an effort many of us are, in our own small ways, beginning to make. For this turn toward action urged by a symphony of quotations over the last week, must be pursued relentlessly for a decade or two or more. If we pound away daily with the fury of Prometheus at his anvil, the dissolution of America can yet be forced from imminence into non-entity. Will, the dopaminergic pathways of the striatum, the action-pattern-forming powers of the basal ganglia, all can be used to effect the course of history. P.P.S. As we talked, what lay at my knee was the latest Scientific American (October, 1998: 82-87). On its cover: "The Artistry of Microorganisms," an article about form and its dynamic elaboration in azoic and biological systems. The authors? Condensed-matter physicists Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine.
This is Edward Witten, a professor of physics at The Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ, who has been called by the Scientific American, 'Probably the smartest man in the world.' Witten made the following comments while being interviewed for STEPHEN HAWKING'S UNIVERSE "On the Dark Side" episode which aired on PBS 11/03/97: "String
Theory, as developed by the mid-eighties, was characterized by the fact
that there were five theories we knew about. And that raised a rather
curious question, that was always a little bit embarrassing. If one
of those theories describes our universe, then who lives in the other
four universes? We've come to understand that those five theories we've
been studying are all parts of a bigger picture. In the last couple
of years the picture has really changed to something which is called
Duality. Duality, is a relationship between two different theories which
isn't obvious. If it's obvious you don't dignify it by the name duality.
So, we have different pictures and it's not that one is correct and
the other isn't correct; one of them is more useful for answering one
set of questions, the other is more useful in other sets of questions.
And the power of theory comes largely from understanding that these
different points of view which sound I agree strongly with your position that vocalization, music, and language have multiple adaptive purposes. Nearly everything one can think of may have evolved to fit the niche opened by one use, but was rapidly coopted for numerous other purposes. For example, when you jiggle your foot to the beat of a tune, you simultaneously: !) release nervous energy, whatever that is; 2) give your circulatory system a necessary boost by adding the work of your muscular system to that accomplished by underpowered veins and arteries (the circulatory system of blue and red lines pictured in textooks is not capable of moving the blood you need without fairly constant help from the large and small muscles of the body); 3) synch yourself to the mood and rhythm of the music thus 4) enfolding yourself in the larger body of a multi?person superorganism and 5) adjusting your motor, perceptual, and symbolic systems to the current fashion of a large subculture within your society; 6) and to top it all off, you give others body language cues that indicate your state of mind, the subculture with which you identify, and quite a few other aspects of your personality. By
the same token, every explanation of a phenomenon is useful. It takes
many simultaneous explanations to comprehend just about anything in
this universe. Multi?purpose objects or processes call for multiple
questions and answers. In fact the more perspectives the merrier, as
long as their validity pans out. Howard In
a message dated 10/9/00 12:40:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dberreby
writes: << Seems to me the Gaia argument isn't about facts but
about methodology. When we contemplate the earth as a single system,
should we use a set of tools developed to elucidate the operation of
natural selection on species? Or tools that describe the life of a single
organism? hb: would that the debate were that reasonable. David Sloan
Wilson's summary of 35 years of logic-chopping about the Gaia effect
indicates it isn't. Here were Wilson's words: "I still remember
the day that I first encountered James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which
portrays life on earth as a single organism. The organismic conception
of nature was not new but it had been examined by evolutionary biologists
in the 1960's and rejected so thoroughly that the current wisdom was
repeated like a mantra in textbooks and journal articles: Individual
organisms evolve by a process of between-individual selection. For a
larger unit such as a society or ecosystem to evolve into an organism,
there must be a process of between-society or between-ecosystem selection,
which is theoretically possible but so unlikely that it can be ignored."
(David Sloan Wilson Nonzero & Nonsense: Group Selection, Nonzerosumness,
and the Human Gaia Hypothesis By David Sloan Wilson Skeptic V.8 #1)
db: To answer you have to test the analogy -- how is Gaia like a species?
How is it like a single cell? (That's how I interpret the argument about
whether natural selection applies.) And then you have to ask: What do
we gain by using this conceptual framework? hb: How do we educate influential
passels of scientific dogmatists to view things in this rational and
potentially highly productive manner? What can it predict? What does
it make coherent that was incoherent before we saw through these lenses?
>> hb: more wonderful ways of looking at the potential interactive
value of competing scientific viewpoints. Howard
In a message dated 99?02?24 10:25:45 EST, J.Goldberg writes: <<
On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Ian Pitchford wrote: Ian??my lord, here you are a person with whom I enjoy dialoging immensely, but this quote is, ummm, a bit on the absurd side. It says "nor does the author (Einstein) exist at all." Socal and Bricmont are trying to make the point that Einstein is using the example of a human in a frame of reference as a literary device to portray a "physical situation" in which no human exists. I'm sure they are right??he is. Yet both he and Richard Feynman were the first to admit that they managed to get their ideas of these non?human realities by placing themselves imaginarily within them??with full body, mind, and soul. Which still leaves us with a bit of an epistemological enigma. Here we are able to make successful predictions about inanimate situations by imagining our very animate, conscious, and emotional selves flying through them. Why? How does this dance between subjectivity and "objectivity" work when the objective is only seen through the lens of the subjective? And what in the world do we do about the strange behavior of the speed of light, whose absoluteness exists only relative to random frames of reference, many of them very much out of synch with each other, yet existing within the coordinates of a common tapestry of space/time? Howard</PRE></HTML>
In a message dated 99?04?26 12:13:41 EDT, btillier writes: Once an individual taps into these higher feelings, their perception of life really changes and they discover an inner sense of how they ought to behave. >> Bill??How do we distinguish higher from lower feelings? I do it very simply by using a moral code which I suspect came to me as an imprint from my father and the manner in which my genes and experience led me to interpret the man. (See David Cohen's _Stranger In the Nest_ [Wiley] for more on the genetic aspect.) He, in turn, probably picked it up from his father and so on back through lord knows how many dozens or hundreds of generations. However those who were caught up in Germany's National Socialism felt they were enraptured by the highest of all powers, the infinite spirit of the universe which Hegel, for reasons unknown to me, identified with the state. (Actually Hegel idealized the merger of men into nation because his Germany was chopped like chicken liver into statelettes. The grass is always greener and a unified nation was on the other side of Hegel's fence. Since national unity seemed unattainable in 1827, when Hegel delivered his lectures on the _Philosophy of History_, it looked like paradise to the man.) Then there's a quote from _Global Brain_ which I've probably tossed in front of this forum before: The German youth of 1914 were lost in anomie. World War I was anesthetic and salvation??redemption from a hell of private pain. Ernst Troeltsch testified to the healing power of conflict when he made the following wildly popular speech: "The first victory we won, even before the victories on the battlefield, was the victory over ourselves.... A higher life seemed to reveal itself to us. Each of us...lived for the whole and the whole lived in all of us. Our own ego with its personal interests was dissolved in the great historic being of the nation. The fatherland calls! The parties disappear... Thus a moral elevation of the people preceded the war, the whole nation was gripped by the truth and reality of a suprapersonal, spiritual power." I'm afraid that the "higher life" which exalted Troeltsch would seem like a godawful animal impulse to you and me. This is not an argument for cultural relativism or any of its post?structuralist manifestations. It is an argument for taking a moral stand and reexamining it frequently. In my opinion, the basis of one's standard should be to do unto others as you would have them do unto you??which includes not hurting anyone unless it is in very clear and necessary self?defense or in the defense of downtrodden others. However that is merely my stand and that of John Stewart Mill. Many cultures consider it ludicrous, or, worse yet, pusillanimous. Howard
hb: [re Camus] wasn't the auto accident that killed him a suicide? Anyway, suicide is related more to depression than to philosophy. Now that's a weird statement. Here's why. Depression comes from both neuroendocrinoligal problems and from a loss of a sense of meaning and of belonging in life. In some people the depression is a reaction to a real series of losses. In others, it's a lifelong condition caused by faulty internal chemistry. Which means that neuroendocrinology and philosophy are vitally intertwined. After all, both take place in an arch brewery of neurochemicals, the mind.
I like the idea of constant striving for the next peak, hb: brilliant insight, David. Actually one of the tricks to life is constantly perceiving the same old thing in new ways and constantly extracting new meanings from the mundane. Actually that's what both my science and my photography are about.
<<
Is there a Presumably the more mysteries we chase, the more we'll learn. Since mysteries confuse us, the statement could be reformulated, via Aristotelian syllogism mixed with a bit of Boolean borscht. If mysteries confuse us and the pursuit of mysteries enlightens us, then the pursuit of confusion should enlighten us. Ummmmmmm, now that I think of it, chasing down fresh confusions very often leads to new perspectives, and new perspectives provide new ways of knowing. The wise man knows the value of his muddles. Or something like that. Howard
_______________________________ What
worries me is this. Postmodernists have taught a generation to believe
that almost every utterance is a falsehood used by massive powers to
mislead. Yet even television advertising, so full of efforts to persuade
and change our minds, is often filled with wonders of visual artistry.
We can choose to loathe a 30-second bit of magic because Mitsubishi
or Buick brought it to us. Or we can forget the sponsor and appreciate
the marvel of the cinematography. Wonder or the lack of it is up to
you and me. We are lied to when we're told there is no wonder, and that
all we see around us is conspiracy.
I also do not "believe" in quantum physics, despite studying its concepts since I was sixteen. It is another epistemological phantasm??our best description of realities which as yet we do not understand. Its mathematics work better than those of the systems which preceded it, partially because they take into account our blindnesses. Quantum physics factors in our crippled vision by introducing "uncertainties" and "probabilities." Schrodinger's cat does not ever really exist in two simultanous states. That is simply our best momentary approximation to a reality which we can't yet see. All the trendies, like my dear friend Elisabet Sahtouris and Roger Penrose, who feel that our epistemological limitations, formalized in the equations of quantum physics, reflect the world that is, not our current perplexity in seeing it more clearly, are making the same mistake a baby does when it covers its eyes and assumes the world has ceased to be. I guess I'm an old Einsteinian. God does not play twosies with Schrodinger's cat. We simply lack a way in which to turn the opaqueness of the box in which the cat has either lived or died to a transparency. Generally
technologies come along which eventually remove such forms of visual
obstruction. Then theories go through rapid change to account for what
to us was previously a mystery. But please let's not read our own befuddlement
into the structure of the universe. Savalanut em ha margarina v l'evnot
Yisroel, we used to say. It's just a matter of time before new technologies
clear up our epistemological conundrum. Then we can bat our head against
the next obstacle which our fresh insights allow us to perceive but
darkly (to use a phrase from Shaul of Tarsus??that brilliant but misguided
Jew, St. Paul). HB to Eshel Ben Jacob 6/12/97
In a message dated 8/11/02 2:58:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dennisreinhardt writes:
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