Thanasis,

this post is a chit-chat attempt upon your several posts, especially the 6-20 to Tom and your ramblings about Gestalt and QM.

You speak my mind.

I agree fully with your

>"what would you make of this: 

    Self -consciousness                      ...(.{..[..]..}.)...  "<

except that I have no idea about 'self' and 'consciousness'.

The diagram points to Stan's hierarchy (two ways) which I did not agree with earlier - but now I tend to find it a reasonable view in 'my' totality reformulation (something similar to how you use 'Gestalt'. (I write it capitalized, because it is a German noun for me). I started out from a similar idea then rejected it as a limited model only - now you do expand it and the only objection of 'having a form' is shaken up.

>"...formalization of real events..."<

what 'real'? we have a (personalized) perception of a PERCEIVED (ie. partial and adjusted) "reality-notion" - a solipsistic worldview (as I got it from Colin Hales)  and our (mind-)adjustment puts it into some formalizability. I have no description of the 'mind' either.

>"...what are the events that take place when we make formulations and from the abstract we form something concrete?..."<

I call it (after Robert Rosen) reductionist modeling. Usually the process is spread out into eras of our epistemic enrichment and consequently based on (including) earlier(?) primitive observation (tools) and their explanations (past levels of figmentation) and at the best it is (partially) 'contemporized' by newer ideas).

A Gestalt is a topically or functionally identified domain - a model. Usually it encompasses wider limits of its peripheral connections, while many models are closely cut limitations from the totality. The observations are fixed within their topical models and explained within as well. This is how our (reductionist) science works. 

Your frustration about QM came from your wider view - neglected in the reduced physicalism of Q-science.

 

Our thinking is strictly reductionistic: we cannot encompass what we do not know and our mental capacity even restricts the total wealth of knowledge we so far absorbed into a used/usable part. Once we stress this domain we become vague. It is not 'scientific  revolution' it is our limited tool we use in our mentality (the material(?) brain).

 

Your lines in the 6-20 post are commendable, the logical questions about the 'physical world'. I spent 1/2 c in building 'molecules' before I developed my doubts for atoms and 'their' connections as figment of a 'human thinking way' that evolved over several millennia

- you may call it the scientific revolution when we now first question its applicability in understanding - what? - our existence? the world? Stan's 'nature'? the totality - as I say it (meaninglessly). R. Rosen called 'it' HIS complexity, impredicative and limitless as it be. And, of course - Turing NON-emulable. I follow David Bohm with awe, when he selected the 'explicate' order - ie. knowable and known - from the still not learned/discovered 'implicate' order (the word 'order' he identified by our knowledge about it as to be able to detect 'order' in something). The words come from Nicolaus de Cusa - predecessor for Copernicus. Nic also applied a 'complicate' term what Bohm did not use. In my view 'complicate' is quantizing, to apply mathematical logic (numbers = human invention in Bohm's view) forced to nature while it may be partial, more primitive than the ways really going on.

 

We need new concepts, I would not say: new meaning for the words we use, rather: new words to use for the new meanings. The old vocabulary with its baggage of obsolete meanings is too tempting and attractive to 'cut it out'. Many authors in the 'new ways' fall back into questionable (reductionist) formulations unknowingly.

I try to keep my 'innocence' - rather choose not to succeed as I wish by having cut out my natural science past (50 years polymer science)  and read read read the NEW books before having re-started to speculate. I am not the 'pioneer': I am a critique. A stubborn one.

 

Thanks for your thoughts

 

John Mikes

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Thanasis Argiriou

To: complex-science@necsi.org

Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2008 10:12 PM

Subject: Re: Free Will or Unconscious Destiny?

John,

A picture only as  a question with no insight only thought, what would you make of this.

 

 Self -consciousness                      ...(.{..[..]..}.)...

 

It is as the previous Gestalt way, but this time I offer no hierachies, it is that many different things coexist in a self and appear at different "times?" but the Self is all of them. Those who understand one another have "points" that are the same in the whole self scheme in a discourse, those who do not have none and just apply their self to the scheme and there is no dialogue. 

 

In the bigger scale, the self with the unknowable? or general external.

 

Is the understanding only just a scheme in the mind of person and we have gaps of schemes, changing constantly, and new schemes formed others replaced, others remain, small or big patces of meanings. Might it be that the whole picture is that of the moving image, which in our eyes is the cinema but for a person who can discern nothing but pictures moving very fast, for the mind to see continuity?

 

 

In this list I guess some of us agree that the self is of many beliefs, or to put it better in many states-conditions, and the think that we have in common and when we agree is that science is a belief, even though we disagree with ourselves at other times cause the science belief scheme coexists with the scientific theories belief.

Which means that till the scientific theories are replaced by a different scheme of integrating them only as belief they will always exist side by side with the other conditions. 

So the Self if we put it this way is split into many different parts and areas, and it appears at different conditions (I say conditions not to seperate the external with the internal, as I guess that they are one).

 

John sorry for the introspection self-speech  I read everything you wrote, and I thought that I understood them, and I agreed, but I have to work in many different ways to find out what is going on, and to be able to produce validity to myself, and forget the old ways of thought.

 

No insight now just patches of black space, useless effort to write.

 

Filika=in friendship,

Minden jot?

Thanasis

 

2008/6/8 <complex-science@necsi.org>:

Thanasis,

you have a way with words - with many many words indeed. I have to confess that my eyes got glazed in scrolling down the post with a daze and I need more reading to follow your formulations.

I did not follow the logic of your indentational format, it seems like discussing with yourself: I did not recognize MY words in your text.

I am glad we both accept some sort of solipsist setup, I found your "reality" *verbatim* YOUR reality (while I tend to accept such in toto

as the unknowable - with only partially accessed input - interpreted by our own mindset (experience, thinking modes, memes, mental (brain?)connectivity patterns) and call that portion a  'perceived reality. My 'acception' is a primitive deficiency stemming from the impairment of my thinking caused by (reductionist, conventional scientific naive education mostly in natural sciences and religion) at the young, formative age.

'Self' and 'I' are concepts puzzling me over the past years ever since I generalized a process (all the way) which I called Consciousness. It faded into incompleteness so I may require to rethink it. For the innocent byreader I requote it with an apology: Consciousness: the acknowledgement of and response to information (the latter meaning a difference (in the differee) accepted by the respondent).

That: all the way alongside the totality of the existence.

I like your reference to 'mirror' in 'self' - a reflective way, I am afraid a more involved 'image' is necessary - which we may not (yet) have.

 

So I postpone a detailed reply for now, maybe I will chop it off into partial reflections - as my mental endurance would dictate.

(Is Filika a Greek greeting? in which case):

minden jot

John M

----- Original Message -----

From: Thanasis Argiriou

To: complex-science@necsi.org

Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 12:07 AM

Subject: Re: Free Will or Unconscious Destiny?

Hi John,

 

I agree with most of what you say, though the settings of "(genetic connectivity, experience-based background, memes, emotional-mood states, plus lots of even undiscovered factors)" is a disfigurement of reality by specific kind of knowledge.

The problem of  would you extend it beyond "what we believe"? is for me impossible to solve, as the world is what we believe is, though it changes constantly and we try to fit the changes of our beliefs into greater beliefs? do not know, but I guess that this state of my mind can go only up to this statement, which is also a belief that describes a belief, and the mirror expands in infinity.

I do not know if one can break through this mirror, but I think it might not be a mirror of fantasy but a fundamental reality, and the way we perceive reality might be the way we are, and like Einstein did searching the hidden variables that could change the entanglement into something more comprehensible in the then thesis of his physics, so do we search that, but I guess there are none. Even if I state a formation between beliefs and changes, so do I create a belief that expands only a belief system, and as many beliefs I use to change a belief so do the beliefs change always in the plus v=v+1 theory, and whatever formations of mathematics I use to express that v=v+1 theory, the formation could be the v=V+1 where V equals v through a transition.

I have not read how Goedel proved his theorem, but the result was if I am correct that either an axion was non decisive, leading to infinite calculations, or it lead to the formulation of the base that was used to form the axiom in a loophole. 

I guess that it is was a description of fundumentality, I can not break from this scope, I have no knowledge to break away from this description.

Expanding this state, I express that the only thing I do when I describe something is describe my condition  and state of mind, and the only true descriptions could be that reach this state, of self describing self.

So in the case of science and phenomena, it may be that when we expand the scientific approach we also expand the universe of ourselves, and approach what universe? is there something external that is concrete and unchanging as the laws of science describe it? so for us to uncover it? and the laws do not express concrete universes of interaction?.

Unfortunately I do not know how much one can stand of such descriptions before his mind shatters into pieces and the world alike, and it is too dangerous to hold such views, and be in this state for the western modern man.

 

If you change the description of self that describes self, then one will find many different things and think that they are all external, but I guess they  are not they are expansions of the way we perceive.

Of course this is like solipsism, but I can not get any better picture, the further away I go from the self to the many selves that perceive, to a universe that is a perception of many or to a universe that changes according to laws of the mind, the more I find myself speaking of speculation that can not be verified fundamentally.

 

So when I described the Jungian either I know of I thing or I believe is this bifurcation, it might be that there is different kind of knowledge of entanglement and of measurement. Entanglement might run with the state of things as they are non-changing, measurement as they become when we involve ourselves, changing things...

 

That in very vague theory of no scientific proofs, I do not know if something can be built from this, a new way of thinking, and relating phenomena, and what use it may be, I am almost always in the measurement kind of knowledge as Stan and many others of us are, and it is not of much help.

 

As you said different views can not intermingle or form a dialogue, and when I wrote, do not form answers only the questions and then again other questions in the writing process in order for us to unwind each others mind it became the opposite, and we had a dialogue, but a closed dialogue since there was no question behind the meaning of what we describe. But there is more to what you said and that there are different kind of not only language but of descriptions, so when I go into Aristotelian logic of structures bases and analysis , I think that I can not discuss while using the self descriptive open methods, it is a barred territory. (as I can not hear from my two ears, or be conscious of two things my right and my left hand, when I am centered at the one the other fades " exploring more this sentiments, do these conditions remind you of something like quantum? of the wave particle descriptions? or the uncertainty principle?)

 

To understand one has go internal and change things or understand things in his mind and understand that this is what he is doing, and nothing else, and not that he is viewing the world but that he is viewing more and more of himself in a more and more unstable conditioning of the mind, where all thoughts and meanings exist side by side in a superimposition of conditions, for if he does not do that all expressions would become foreign as will the universe he inhabits...

Again the Jungian, "he who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakes"

 

The following is from a discussion with a friend who deals in chaos and psychology, two mails, most of the descriptions are vague and in the measurement department but it has certain things relative to what I am saying though I had only relative clarity of what I was writing and reverted form conscious to a description of reality to a description of the involvement of the schemes themselves losing whatever kind of hold I had on the conscious function. It starts with philosophical hermeneutics as an effort to approach theories...

 

 

The problem with hermeneutics I guess that it forgets the mind of the one who tries to decipher the text.

Exactly the contrary; it points out the interaction between the interpretive mind and the text. It does point out that that can lead to better or worse understanding of the text; one requires caution for evaluating the interaction.

I do not know if one having the method, could understand what one writes unless he is able to resemble the condition of the one who writes it, if he can not, then he will have the hermeneutics understanding and not his own.

Mainly to recognize the variety of possible meanings; in some cases one tries to reconstruct the intent of the author, but in others, as in viewing art, the meaning one takes home is understood in this context.

The social and historical background do not know if they would help, it is an attractor and will try to model a similar but not  self condition. Of course as you say you can only make models of reality in dynamics and not reality itself, but there could be a deeper venture into that.
What I have told you and the expressions and formulation was about conditions of humans, and I think that it can open into a much broader scale involving the world.
Possible statement, each kind of knowledge lies in certain condition of individual being, and that some conditions are identical, common knowledge and some are not?, rare or new  knowledge? I do not know...
Have to delve deep into this, which means that be out of the attractors, into a condition or rare knowledge to understand more things as Gestalts than as anythings else..

Yes, but there can be several attractors, and one has to consider each.

To move on the introspection part that you mention is diminutive of the whole process which is not logical look of the mind in analysis, but is being the mind, the past and the present. Introspection is the infinite mirror part, one uses the mind to examine the mind, but unfortunately the mind exists only when the mind is being, meaning that it unites with its thoughts....

Yes, the mind is capable of regress (or recursion) in viewing itself, but usually limited to a few levels. When I was meditating, I was aware of my mind contemplating the meditation process, and another meta level of observation past that.

 I follow. In general I agree with your analyses of the mental process, but differ in that I think hermeneutics shares your view, and is not commited to finding the one and only true interpretation of the text. At least for philosophical hermeneutics, which is Heraclitian in that respect, and to which I subscribe pretty much.
 
Yes, the Gestalt view is syntonic with the hermeneutic view, and I also take systems theory as syntonic with that view, as even when considering closed systems (finite set of equations) it is always in context within the mind of the scientific observer (scientific hermeneutics is nonetheless more neoPlatonic, seeking fixed ideals, but in its process is also involved in the hermeneutic circle.

Wrote today that understanding comes more in the "detached unstable condition of the mind", had some moments of clarity were things seem to fit in places, that is why I wrote of instability, I was for a while.
It is not the psychiatric instability, but the instability similar to what is called superimposition of conditions in quantum before measurement, but I guess that each measurement leaves the condition in an unstable way, In the condition of innovation and understanding.

Stability, instability are the key to resolving some of the paradoxes between the Heraclitian and Platonic views, between the philosophical and scientific-historical-legal-and religious forms of hermeneutics.

This could be something of a  communion with a more fundamental reality, not that there is one reality, but this is the only depiction I could give you know, as for the reality or realities I do not know.
The instability of mind you can approach also by using formulations that come from chaos, the juncture points, do not know where it could lead..

Is there only one reality? Same issues apply.

I noticed that when in the unstable condition there is an enrichment of the world, like you are on to something unique, do not know why, different from poetry as this instability approaches the reality of our world, wonder what creation means?

Exactly. This is a very important point, and a very clear one in dynamics, where the bifurcation point is at the point of maximum instability. This is where you make decisions, and where the issues need to be most clear.

As for the conditions of understanding, there was in Greece a rich tradition or folklore, from which came songs and social behavior, now it is lost, but it was similar to animism in many parts. Mountains, forests, rivers , and animals, were seen not as alive depicted by out modern society, but as having a spirit or to say it differently essence, and the question is did they, such a condition of mans mind would depict that, the essence another would see nothing, the question now set is which one is true the former or the latter?

Charles Hampton Turner, in his book Maps of the Mind, points out that the ancient Greeks would be amused or dismayed by the modern tendency to draw a single legitimate interpretation of myth and drama. Another good illustration of hermeneutics at work.

Or are they both true, and the conditions exist identical to the perception of the world, meaning that it can not be split? and the world changes according to the condition of the perception we are?
So it may be that each condition creates a field that is identical to the field that it perceives, and from the confluence? of each individual condition then the world is built?
If it so which are the individuals that create the field and I am not speaking only of human origin?

I am not sure I follow all of this. No map is the territory. Korzybski. Also, notice Margritte's picture of a pipe with the caption, 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe"

Anyway this reaches almost hard core fantasy, but the conditions I think do exist, the connections hard to establish...

But worth the effort.

But if they are established, will not they be a condition, and thus become an endless mirror that depict itself and thus a logical paradox...
As I said logical paradoxes could be the foundation of our human reality...

Agreed.

 

 

I will try to discern better the hermeneutics, and try to see how close is the view I describe to that. Unfortunately the views we describe are not something stable, but it changes according to the condition of the time we are in, so I also find trouble trying to understand what I am writing when I am not in the condition of writing what I wrote.

That is why I told you something about a "Poisson" distribution of conditions of rarity and ordinality.

Unfortunately the rare conditions are pretty unstable, and one reverts to ordinality of every day life., when not in the proper environment that could help the conditions maintain their stability, and it may be that the ordinarily of other conditions act like a field trying to revert the unstable ones (which try to maintain stability in higher orbits, which is a kind of different structuring), to the ordinary field. 

So if one applies to our reality maybe it is this struggle between structures that one phases all the time 

Now to open up a bit the discussion, what I have came up is that the structuring of societies is better seen away from the societal landscape of words, suited in the physical landscape.

So the view goes that human realities (meaning realities of societal, religious, scientific, technical order) are built according to the conditions of the inhabitants that occupy these realities. 

Proposing that a human reality is a structuring of individuals that interact without knowing their interactions creating the shape of societal reality, contrary to the generalized picture of political-societal generalizations used in sociology that are only a product of these conditions, and misrepresents the whole pattern. 

I guess that this structuring of individuals can not create any scheme possible but only specific schemes in the reality that it forms.

When I had sent you the picture of Gestalt, I told you that only some interactions can be created in each Gestalt, and that to allow new interactions the Whole Gestalt should change, in a transition shift from which the new Gestalt would rise, allowing the new interactions, that also counts for reality. The Gestalts work in an hierchical order, meaning that there are {..[..(...)..]..} numbers of Gestalts, and that in one Gestalt there are many smaller Gestalts-patterns that interact or not. So changes in the smaller Gestalts could leave the larger Gestalt stable, but a change in the larger Gestalt, could change each of the smaller Gestalt that it consists of. Apply Gestalt in every condition of life and you might get a better description, from atoms, to societies, to stars, to galaxies and you can get a better description. Do not forget that in a gestalt the observer already exists with the observant, and that the scheme that he creates is a Gestalt of his mind, what this means have  no absolutely idea now 

There is more to that but I unfortunately I find trouble maintaining the views when I write in the computer, maybe I am tired of writing and I want something different in the discussion matter cause though the views come vividly when I am in certain conditions  I find trouble to create them in the machine, and they go far of reaching fiction, and I am kind of tired cause to reach such views I am in a very unstable way.
For example something I wrote yesterday in paper..

If I change the way I think I would create a mythological aspect of the  
world, so Ra the sun god is on the celestial globe, and the worlds would inhabit again the former world and the descriptions also. The Gestalt that I mentioned,  conscious, chaos, complexity, are a measurement, and a condition of perception, meaning that it is a conditioning, that nullifies the myth-magical approach, where Gods and the magical are part of life. To move on the sun as a star, the spaceship, the planet and the stars, are a worldview, man as animal-biology, the same, but also foreign to the magical-mythical world, where there exists a dispersion of spectacles and meanings and nothing is concrete under a logical interpretation, cause any logical interpretation would create a different world based on our current logic. 
What I an trying to recreate here is that Ra might not be the sun, but something like a force super ceding ,  that one could only glorify and respect, instituting himself inside his kingdom of power. And the question is? is this Ra our sun? the logical would be yes but I wonder. 
An hypothesis goes that the magical-mythical world of old, of changes and influences between gods animals and men, might have a different descent and existence from the modern, and that every modern interpretation can not be created because it destroys its coherence with the old world and its forces, saying that as one day the worship of any kind of deity made man participator and recipient of the worlds events so did our worship of logic create the clergy of logic creating the wonders of science and the explanations of the world, and man became recipient and creator of his logical world. So one can not explain the other as every struture is unique, a view that is as I said hard core fiction.. and is hard core fiction or hard core philosophy, cause it can not exist in any belief system other than the previous and there is no logical proof, of such a thing.      
But of the conditions of the mind what is fantasy, where do these structures come from, I do not know.
 
In one representation of QM there are many possible universes, each measurement creates one, but the world is a multiverse that is everything and if I try to enlarge the human societal realities statement, the view goes that realities (meaning realities of phenomena) are built according to the conditions of the inhabitants that occupy these realities, a theory very dangerous in the solipsism department..
 
Anyway, if there is time read pauli's and Jung's correspondence,  the acts of coincidence of Koestler, both Pauli Jung and Koestler had a wider approach, though koestler was ignorant of myth religion and I think did not like philosophy,  tried to find a way out from behaviorism, cause his whole view was that of behavior, the shadow aspect might be that.
Jung may have written much more about Koestleric wholes, since he had wide knowledge of the human psyche. 
 
One last what I am writing in the belief and measurement remember that, if Jung, Koestler, Pauli, Bohm, Gandhi, Huxley, and many many others poets, writers, scientists, philosophers, that were open in the wide variety of life are forgotten and are not active in the human mind, then we will be at a great loss, and the conditions of reality will worsen for the next generations. 

Much more I want to talk about that rise in the mind concerning all of this, just a ripple extending their thoughts, and these thoughts are parts of one another, but it has to go to deep currents to form some views about the meanings of all of these.

If I hold correctly the only thing a structure does is repeat itself, whether in mind or in body, but some try to create higher order structures, where each smaller structure retains its individuality, and others just assimilate everything to their ordering. We should be able to do the first...
 
 
 Sorry for the long mail, but I do not wirte pdf's to think that my analysis of what I am writing should be more believed because it is written in a standard scientific format, till I am able to think myself clear, and still I would like to write without the structure of scientific believe me methodology, to the wonder is what I am saying true, or question yourself about that.

 

Filika,

Thanasis

 

2008/5/31 <complex-science@necsi.org>:

Hi, Thanasis,

 

you raise a fundamental situation. I wrote several times about our mock-solipsism (transfered from Colin Hales) meaning that every one of us interprets the fragments of information received from 'reality' (what I am willing to accept as a possibility) according to individual mind-content (genetic connectivity, experience-based background, memes, emotional-mood states, plus lots of even undiscovered factors) as an image of the 'world' (incl. Stan's nature) as our personal(!) perceived reality - which is not identical to  anybody else's.

'Belief systems' included.

I was referring to our own personal(ized) mindset (content?): would you extend it beyond "what we believe"? The words are intermingled. I am not talking about 'things you know about and do not believe' - the denial of it is part of your belief.

 'Science' (conventional, as we know and apply the word) is part of it, both personal belief and one's belief system, even if e.g. many physicists use the same equations and refer to the same principles etc. (http://pages.prodigy.net/jamikes/SciRelMay00.html). It is a draft from 2000 wih similarities of science to (incl. theocratic) 'religions'. 

 

Your 'sum's are in the perceived reality, which is NOT closed:

whatever we learn (e.g. I just read your post) is part of the information from the 'reality (beyond MY already perceived one) - not only a physical etc. 'observation' is such, as some are inclined to put it. So I find discussions, exchanges fruitful additions to our 'worldview': we can ponder to include them or reject them.

If we 'include' them, it will become part of our 'belief' (mindset?), our (individual) perceived reality of the world.

A caveat: I use 'belief system' in a different context into which I do not want to go right now. Argumentation between diverse belief systems is futile, because each uses an adjusted vocabulary and is (sometimes emotionally) closed to the others (see my above URL).

I have to think about your Jung quote, 'knowledge' is not so clear to me. Also 'believe' is not fully covering 'perceived reality', although in 'perceived' the personal interpretation is included - necessary for the belief (if I use the word correctly?).

 

John M

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Thanasis Argiriou

To: complex-science@necsi.org

Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 8:12 PM

Subject: Re: Free Will or Unconscious Destiny?

Hi John,

 

I do not get the phrase set here. Is it open, or closed? If it is open then one can start discussing,and might get us to lots of different places, closed then nothing to discuss.

I had made a proposition, that in the area of knowing there are sums that are open leading to wider sums of different structure, and sums that are closed that lead not to wider sums but to a larger sums of the same structure. The sums that lead to wider sums lead to a greater understanding of the world, the ones that are closed to a lesser and lesser understanding. The wider sums depict different schemes as one turns from sum to another, and the picture of a one sum which was once considered a painting could become a part of another greater sum as now only a part of a different drawing.

Whereas the closed sums depict the same picture with more and more detail making it larger and more intriquate, but always the same.

So to put it into symbolic representation

a sum is this ()

larger sums (.(.(.(.(.(....).).).).).) 

wider sums    ...{.[(.).].}..... where the different symbols mean different wider sums 

 

So your question here I have answered, yes beliefs, but what kind of beliefs that set understanding free to a lesser and lesser belief system, or to a greater?

 Jung said of knowing and believing, the knowing is of a lesser and lesser belief, whereas you have knowledge of what kind of belief lies underneath your knowledge, and the more you are able to find or the less you find, the more knowable you become.

 

Hope you might be able to offer more on a wider sum scope...

 

2008/5/15 <complex-science@necsi.org>:

Thanasis,

 

what does NOT refer to beliefs (including science of course)?

 

John M

----- Original Message -----

From: Thanasis Argiriou

To: complex-science@necsi.org

Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 9:44 AM

Subject: Re: Free Will or Unconscious Destiny?

Hi Stan,

 

 Mythologies refer to beliefs.  Thus, if a biologist BELIEVES in natural selection rather than trying to test it, he has a mythology about the biological world.  Or, if a cosmologist believes in the Big Bang, he has a mythology about the construction of the world.  Such mythologies might serve to foster further scientific explorations, but they are not science in themselves - just ideas.

So does science of testing, testing is a belief, the only difference is that we share this belief, whereas you do not share a belief in mythologies, thus saying that I agree about science and its testing methods is valid, not because it is more real than mythologies but because I share your belief of scientific inquiry. I guess that in the end it is belief matching belief, belief in logic or science or religion beleif of lots of different things...

      It stands for the 'Heat death of the universe', which refers to a uniform distribution of gases and fundamental particles as the remnant of the universe.

Cosmology of this type as well as the second law of thermodynamics spreading to the universe and to society is a belief and not of scientific testing as was pointed out. In order to understand whether this belief has some logic in it or it is worst than mythologies (-and maybe mythologies more truth than science? I go for the science part though can not leave a question about the opposite-,) have to study a lot and talk to a few experts in the matter of evidence, to form an opinion, and say whether I know or not know if I am honest to myself and not dogmatic to any belief of not testing. 

 

  Social welfare is produced only by work, and since work of any kind is so poor in energy efficiency, any work done, for whatever reason, contributes more to universal equilibrium than it does to social welfare

 

Why still connecting society with a physics law, yes both refer to systems but of a different kind, in the end universal equillibirium will become worse than the God axiom, all actions will be because of this,  the second law of thermodynamics perpetuates in human will and the universe.

 

Every experiment ever done on isolated systems shows that they break down as far as possible to equal distribution of mattergy.  If we are to consult science at all, we need to pay attention to this major fact.  It does requires that we surmise that universe is thermodynamically isolated.

 

Do not know how this is proof of something cause I do not know of the nature of the experiments, maybe we can do a thermodynamic experiment with plants in an isolated system? 

I guess we can not conduct such an experiment or not?. And even if we did I do not know what kind of interpretation we could give, complex systems are really difficult in interpreting, one can choose a view and follow interpretation. 

More scientifically now, gravity is of a different kind, light also, nuclear forces also (though they try desperately to unite them), one must take this also into account in a system of thermodynamics

(but I guess he can not cause it would not be thermodynamics but gravitonuclearelectrodynamics second law and entropy would have changed its meaning) and also explain the event of further structuring of stars galaxies planets black holes, molecules of all kinds, and of life

To my knowledge thermodynamics, means of thermo and describes thermo, gravity is in the dense, nuke is in the high energies and the very small (might there be a think that is called cold fussion?),  and light remains in its perpetual conditions of transformation into energy and matter.

If a formation of a black hole produces more entropy in a system, then go ahead there is a nobel prize for anyone who proves it, of course one must explain what a black hole is or should not he, and how could a black hole link to entropy.

Might one be able to link light to entropy would be glad to hear it, but gravity?

 

I do not know if in cosmology they try to structure the evolution of the universe through the second law of thermo, but if they do it is no proof the second law of thermo is valid for the U but that they use it to explain thus stating it as valid.

So please no cosmological axioms just facts and how they are produced, the rest remains a hypothesis...

-I have noticed is that those in biology and chemistry have an inclination in the second law, why I do not know it might be that they duel much in thermo, just a statistical remark-.

 

There is a proverb that goes know thyself, it helps clear things up as to what we believe and why we tend to believe and it goes to all parts of our life, but that takes many many years.

 

Respectfully,

Thanasis

 

2008/4/26 <complex-science@necsi.org>:

Thanasis --

Some clarifications about the alleged phenomena in order to understand what is meant would be welcome.

 

to create a mythological

perspective based in scientific knowledge?

 

how is it that mythology relates to science, I do not know what mythology exactly is, but now of science as an effort to approach reality.So?

     Mythologies refer to beliefs.  Thus, if a biologist BELIEVES in natural selection rather than trying to test it, he has a mythology about the biological world.  Or, if a cosmologist believes in the Big Bang, he has a mythology about the construction of the world.  Such mythologies might serve to foster further scientific explorations, but they are not science in themselves - just ideas.

 The lower levels subsume the higher (inner) levels,
while the higher levels contextualize, interpret,
control, regulate, harness the lower levels
locally to their interests.

 

An interpretation of an hierarchy theory....

Thus if you use it as a base explain the next allegation, it would mean first that hierarchy theory is valid and second that this interpretation of the theory is true.

      I myself see hierarchies merely as tools for interpreting the world.  I belive in them only in respect to insisting that they have certain logical structure, nothing else.  Thus I will argue against some use of hierarchy because it fails to follow the logic.

 

This has a number of interesting consequences.  (1) we can never
transcend the lower levels that subsume us.  For
example, everything we do produces entropy in the
interests of Universal thermodynamic
equilibration.  At the social level this explains
warfare, and gigantic projects like the Three
Gorges Dam, as modes of helping the universe to
equilibrate.

Results of the hierarchy interpretation, I can not connect how they fit or what they have to do with this, so if one could provide a more lengthy comment as for me to understand how they are produced.

What does exactly transcend the lower levels mean?,

      Taking up a configuration that was not prefigured in the lower levels.

and what tho, when the U is nothing but dispersed gases and fundamentl particle.e universal thermodynamics equilibration- a term for me almost metaphysical- could stand for?

      It stands for the 'Heat death of the universe', which refers to a uniform distribution of gases and fundamental particles as the remnant of the universe.

The social warfare, as means of thermodynamics equillibration I find irrational, the universe to equilibrate? are we talking about the UNIVERSE.

       Social welfare is produced only by work, and since work of any kind is so poor in energy efficiency, any work done, for whatever reason, contributes more to universal equilibrium than it does to social welfare.

 

I do not even know if there is a thing called thermodynamic equilibration, careful about how a base is used in order to create the wanted outcome. Thermodynamics, is just a phase space of physics, it is not a universal law,

     Every experiment ever done on isolated systems shows that they break down as far as possible to equal distribution of mattergy.  If we are to consult science at all, we need to pay attention to this major fact.  It does requires that we surmise that universe is thermodynamically isolated.

it is not even the principle of matter equals energy, which though we say know is the highest of principles it may in the future change or may have already changed. Personally I do not know what matter is or energy for that matter, the definitions constantly change, but the effects of the mathematical descriptions and applications of these laws I definitely see in my tech world. Which would mean that matter equals energy in the thermonuclear missile, but might there also be other situations?

 

At the other end, it embodies the
Anthropic Principle, in that it shows that the
entire universe exits in order to produce you and
me.  That is, from my point of view, the

'purpose' of the universe has been to produce me.
Or, I am a final cause of the the Big Bang.

 

Big Bang, anthropic principle, how does the previous hierarchy models produce that, guess I have to leap some points in order to fetch the result. I believe neither in the big bang which is a more scientific view nor the antropic priniple which I do not know what it means, and I see it as a statement that humans exist because the universe is so and the contrary. So what? so do whales, but I do not think the whales would be so narrow minded to call it the whale principle, but again the whales are not into human philosophy, what a whale thinks only a whale knows.

      The anthropic principle emerges from the fact that if any natural or material law, or any of the physical-chemical constants, were even slightly different we could not be here. This allows, but not, I agree, necessitates the idea that the universe exists in order to produce those that can think this thought.  In Natural Philosophy we are bound only not to transcend any known scientific fact of law.  Beyond that, our imagination is free to go where it wills.

 

The final cause, reminds of cause and result, the arrow in time that defines past present and future, and that the past defines the present and future, a causal view, is it truly so?

      Final cause is one Aristotle's four causes - material / formal and efficient / final.  Modern science dropped out final cause because of the very selfish notion that only humans could have purpose.  It is easy to see logically that purpose pervades the universe.

What I know is that all humans think in this way to interpret and act, but in an entangled space, a particle that exists light years away could influence another simultaneously, as long as it is entangled, and that is reality and not fiction. But the entangled world mixes up time view.

What time is, has to do with the cause and result space, and the will-chance further on human allegations, but time is still ellusive, as it elluded all those who tried to capture it thinking about it.

Feynmans models of inverse time movement were a daze to linear time thinking, (though they were just models they gave mind a different spin)so what truly happens I do not know, but the linear - causal could be  just short of a model.

     I agree that QM may require eventually some modification of our views.

 

That is all for now, have to think in my linear way what to eat for supper, but I am open to any non-linear suggestions of how to view things non-linear and acausal.

The principle stands for every thing is connected but the problem for me is how I am connected to them, and what is this web that I do not know of how it expands to me, since I think that it is my properties that reveal it, but it has a much larger unification than what we the two legged linear, one attention, creators of opposites think of, and I guess that we have to return to a deep philosophy to understand what we see and view, what we make of the world, what we are talking about, a complex philosophy.

      I encourage such a viewpoint!

STAN

 

Respectfully,

Thanasis

 

 

2008/3/23, complex-science@necsi.org <complex-science@necsi.org>:

Reacting to Eli's statement, as a Natural
Philosopher, I am trying to create a mythological
perspective based in scientific knowledge.  Doing
this I have formulated a mythology that does
relate to, or extend from, what Eli describes.
Thus: using a subsumption hierarchy format, we
have { ? {physical dynamics {material
connectivities {biological forms {sociocultural
organizations {individual personality}}}}}}.  The
brackets mean what they mean in set theory.  The
lower levels subsume the higher (inner) levels,
while the higher levels contextualize, interpret,
control, regulate, harness the lower levels
locally to their interests.  This has a number of
interesting consequences.  (1) we can never
transcend the lower levels that subsume us.  For
example, everything we do produces entropy in the
interests of Universal thermodynamic

equilibration.  At the social level this explains
warfare, and gigantic projects like the Three
Gorges Dam, as modes of helping the universe to
equilibrate.  At the other end, it embodies the
Anthropic Principle, in that it shows that the
entire universe exits in order to produce you and
me.  That is, from my point of view, the
'purpose' of the universe has been to produce me.
Or, I am a final cause of the the Big Bang.

STAN


>Religion in one form or another has been an
>indispensable element of human society
>throughout human history and evolution.
>Marx's dictum that it was the opiate of the

>people derives from his own beliefs in a

>rational, mechanistic, and essentially
>deterministic universe that, in turn, derives
>from science's metaphysical assumptions. The
>belief in determinism derives directly from
>religious belief in an all knowing God.  Newton
>spent more time on metaphysics than science. You
>may read Orstad's papers on electrical
>resistance and discover that they are 1/3
>science and 2/3 Christianity. Marx's notions of
>a rational universe are firmly religious in
>origin.
>

>So, why do we have religion?  Religion
>identifies and clarifies the human role in the
>cosmos from the perspective of the human actor.
>Before monotheism, it was a magical universe
>that undermined rational purposeful activity.

>Think voodoo dolls.
>
>With monotheism, we had a rational universe
>invented by a rational deity under whom we were
>purposeful and fearful subjects in communities.

>The individual did not count for much. Jesus
>elevates the individual actor and Luther
>sanctifies human work as vocatio, i.e. the
>calling, Beruf, or profession. That is important
>because purposeful human action has meaning.
>Still we are subject to the Laws of   Nature,
>newspeak for the old God. That came when Kant
>convinced us that science could not prove the
>existence of God. So we simply relabeled the
>wine and called it Nature.
>
>I believe we are before another major change in
>religion . We are no longer subjects to the Laws
>of Nature in the same sense as before. We are
>agents who are creating our own ecology and
>environments.  We do not live in a natural
>environment but a man made environment.  So,
>some kind of religion of agency should emerge to
>make sense of our role as "creators."
>Hopefully, it will instill greater
>responsibility.
>
>Eli
>
>
>
>(MMBTUPR) wrote:

>>                from          Lewis L Smith
>>
>>I am an energy economist, not a mystic, a
>>theologian or a theology buff and have no hopes
>>of ever become any of the latter. However,
>>rather by accident, I have acquired some
>>knowledge of these subjects over the years  >>>
>>
>>[1]     The great American mystic, Thomas
>>Merton, shared my enthusiasm for bulldozers, so
>>I ended up reading his biography and some of
>>his writings.
>>[ For four years, I owned, occasionally
>>operated and regularly did the light
>>maintenance on an IH tracked, front-end loader
>>and the IH equivalent of a Caterpillar D-6
>>bulldozer. ]
>>
>>[2]     The only religious movement to have a
>>direct line to Secretary Rice, is the Christian
>>heresy which we may call "the rapture
>>movement". It seeks to provoke a "class of
>>civilizations" in the Middle East, in order
>>that its adherents may get into Heaven sooner
>>than otherwise. In this regard, it is morally
>>little different from the suicide bombers who
>>want to get at 70 virgins on the day of their
>>deaths, only a little more patient.
>>
>>[3]     Many Muslims who are deeply concerned
>>about theology -  including not only al Qaeda [
>>Sunni ] but also the mystical Sufi movement [
>>Sunni  ] and the Shi'ites [ who have saints ] -
>>live in close proximity to a lot of oil wells
>>and/or seek to gain power in oil-producing
>>countries.
>>
>>[4]     On TV, I have often listened to a
>>priest, F. Benedict Groeschel, with whom I
>>share some common experiences in the Bronx and
>>who was a friend of Mother Teresa. I have not
>>read her biography yet, but I do remember him
>>saying that her "dark night of the soul" lasted
>>45 years.

>>
>>These "dry periods" are a well known phenomenon
>>in mysticism, whether it is of the Buddhist,
>>Christian, Jewish, Shi'ite or Sunni variety.
>>Interested readers should dip into the writings
>>of St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Avila
>>on this subject. What makes Mother Teresa's dry
>>spell so unusual is that it lasted so long. But
>>she kept the faith and kept helping people. How
>>many of us would do the same ?
>>
>>Also her dry period was not entirely dry, as
>>you can see from some of her writings on the
>>Christian ceremony of the Eucharist.
>>
>>There are in fact quite a few other modern
>>saints. One of the most important is Padre Pío
>>of San Giovanni Rotondo, quite different from
>>Mother Teresa  but also an extraordinary person.
>>[ I was in the USAF in the 1950's and learned
>>from veterans how he had helped US pilots
>>stationed a Poggia during WW II. ]
>>
>>I don't expect to ever to be able to really
>>understand what these people experience, much
>>less experience it myself, but I am absolutely
>>convinced that it is very real and has a strong
>>objective component which the concept of "Void"
>>is not adequate to explain.
>>
>>Nevertheless, it is important for us "lay
>>people" to make the effort to understand
>>mystics, theologians and theology buffs as best
>>we can. They can have real impacts on human
>>society, including the oil  and gas wells !
>>For example, the most powerful leader in the
>>oil-rich area of southern Iraq is a Shi'ite
>>cleric, esteemed for his piety and learning.

>>His leadership will the single most important
>>factor in determining whether Iraq tries to
>>regain its unity, federates or breaks up.
>>
>>Cordially.  ###
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>**************
>>Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
>>(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp00300000002548)
>>

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>>
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>
>
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