Posted on 05/04/2005 10:48:30 AM PDT by betty boop
Evidently he prefers pictures over words, lyrics over essays and seems to have a preference for "pop tarts", music, etc.
At least that's the impression I get from your posting history, theFIRMbss!
"Life" is the opposite of "die."
Of the two types of autocatakinetic systems, only one can survive the withdrawal of the "heat source" (energy input), persistently over fairly long time frames.
But I digress.
"Die" pertains to the material aspect of the living being of any description. Given that Life does not appear to be a material thing (at least science has not isolated or measured it yet), it may not be taken for granted that it is expunged with the passing of the physical body.
This is the message propagated to mankind by means of the Scriptures, that is the Holy Bible of Judeo-Christian testimony. Its basis is revelation and reason -- both divine at their source.
JMHO FWIW. Good night, woofie.
Well thanks for cluing me in here, Alamo-Girl. Indeed, that is a most interesting profile. I hope the dude will find a way to outgrow it in due course, for his own sake....
Dam, with a screen name like Betty Boop cant ya just say boop boop a doop or something a bit simpler than this?
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Wolfram's "new" science probably will modify all these discussions. Until pop culture makes these new concepts common (like what happened with chaos and systems built around complexity) these "conversations" just re-hash concepts everybody pretty much currently believes. But if you enjoy these topics, I bet you'd like to read Wolfram's book. |
....according to which the transformation of disorder to order was said to be infinitely improbable....
Thus opening the field for the infinite improbability drive and the Heart Of Gold.
This piece also allows for cultural evolution as in Christian evolution or the changes in Christianity over the years. We are now wittnessing a bout of Islamic evolution, the outcome of which is in doubt. As Darwin said, unsuccesgul selection fails to endure.
Not only do i own this book, but I have actually read it. I consider it an astounding, astonishing, and magnificent work -- and of enormous educational value to me personally. The main narrative is enormously innovative and provocative. And you can just get lost for days in the end notes.... :^)
Thanks so much for writing, theFIRMbss!
The notion that "space"
is a "network" and "matter"
versus "non-matter"
simply constitutes
characteristics of the
interconnections
between network nodes
to my mind renders concepts
like "entropy" and
"thermodynamics"
as if not obsolete then
at least old fashioned.
The words are only
a method of describing
our thinking about
reality, as
are equations built around
differentials. But
Wolfram's new approach
of algorithmic thinking
promises to do
as much as old ways,
but also provide new paths
for new descriptions.
(That is why -- sorry --
I responded to the talk
built around old words
with the bunny pic.
I generally think that
everyone's been through
the old discussions
so many times, the rabbit
at least makes folks smile.
I hope this content
makes up for my two attempts
to get a few laughs.)
Stephen Jay Gould used to make a very obvious point that there is no sense of direction to evolution. If evolution were directed we would have long ago evolved out of diseases that regularly kill us. Evolution is the result of populations of species reacting to stresses. If being short is an advantage we become short (or rather the survivors tend to be short), if being tall is an advantage the survivors tend to be tall. If height is neutral, we see both tall and short people among the survivors.
It more than does, theFIRMbss. Wolfram has written a truly "unsettling" work -- unsettling, that is, to the presently well-established, thus conventional modes of thought. My huge takeaway from this brilliant book is that there is a certain preeminence to considerations of "form," as mathematically describable, in the understanding of universal nature. He makes "patterning effects" vivid, and relates them to the operations of very simple instructions which seem to have universal application.
In short, I think he has written a world-class book. Whether or not one agrees with every conclusion he draws, it is a marvelous and rewarding experience to simply read him. He is excavating new and valuable ground here....
I take it you like his approach/appreciate his work, too, theFIRMbss. So we share something in common here.
Thanks so much for writing!
Great point, muir_redwoods. The Darwinist conception of evolution scrupulously avoids both the problem of "beginning" and the problem of "end" (that is, of purpose). It jumps into the water "midstream," as it were, asking no questions about the source of the flowing river, nor of its eventual destination. Thus the true derivation of any reliable "sense of direction" is rendered impossible, effectively on principle.
Which is why I continue to suppose that Darwinist evolutionary theory -- classical or "neo" -- is a flattened, reduced view of reality that willingly loses or sacrifices all details of actual reality that do not fit into the scheme of its (flattened, reduced) presuppositions. Most of the details of real life get leached out of consideration altogether in such a "regime" of thought.... Or so it seems to me. FWIW.
And yet it seems clear the observable pattern of universal, physical evolution already gives the lie to this line of reasoning, or of method.... For the Universe seems to have had a beginning; and a beginning implies an end (or goal). This is simple, basic Logic 101.
Thank you so very much for your very fine post, muir_redwoods!
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Here's another book more nuts and bolts than Wolfram's about how "mind space" is quite separate from "outer" reality, and how we "create" our understanding based on processed perceptions. It's built around sight, but the last chapters generalize to thinking overall. Just like Wolfram's book, this guy writes amazingly clear on stuff that's pretty dense. I re-read this book once a year or so, always finding stuff I missed. |
For me, it is particularly curious that our vision and mind are limited to four seemingly arbitrary dimensions (3 space and 1 time) - when our math and physics suggest there are more of both.
The mechanisms
our brain uses to make "sight"
seem to be the same
consciousness uses
to create our sense of touch
(and possibly sound
and aroma, too)
(as well as obscure senses
like balance and deep
body sensations).
All these different sense modes can
be thought of -- kinda --
as "dimensions," and
the fact that our brain handles
such diverse data
in similar ways,
kinda supports that strange view.
Could be our senses --
all our senses -- are
God's way (or nature's way) of
letting consciousness
deal with multiple
dimensions through a "filter"
of one consciousness . . .
Fascinating conjecture, theFIRMbss! I'm pinging betty boop for her thoughts also.
I'm not as keen on a correlation of sense to dimension as the notion that the combination of the senses filtered through consciousness enables (or alternatively, blocks) - a person's awareness of multiple dimensions. Food for meditation this afternoon... Thanks!
Lurkers: Oops, my bad. The first paragraph above was a quote from theFIRMbss and should have been indented and italicized. Sorry about that...
deal with multiple
dimensions through a "filter"
of one consciousness . . .
With Alamo-Girl, I too find your conjecture fascinating, intriguing, theFIRMbss. Consciousness indeed seems to have the character of a "filter." On one level, it mediates incoming data from the "outside" environment, as presented by the various reports of our human "sensorium": sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. At another level, it correlates and integrates such data towards ends that are meaningful to -- and actionable by -- the human person.
But where does the unconscious fit into a model like this? It seems to me the conscious mind unaided has very limited prospects of becoming specifically aware of the dimensions in and by which it is constituted. We rarely think at all about 3+1D reality (3 space, 1 time) as such. And yet if universal fields are operational in our Universe, we must recognize that what we're dealing with is something utterly timeless within the categories of our 4D block; for effectively fields are universals -- pertaining to all regions of space and time simultaneously, possibly including imaginary or conceptual space. As such they may provide the unifying context in which the universal evolutionary process unfolds.
My hypothesis is that the unconscious mind "knows" about this universal context. And the corollary would be that human knowledge mainly consists of a process of "dredging up the contents" of the unconscious mind (fundamentally rooted to the ground of reality via soul and mind), and then finding the language to express such insights to others. This would be an example of "successful communication."
Students of Plato will find the great master is present in the foregoing analysis. Plato called this faculty of direct knowing "awareness," which he seems to describe as a latent quality that may or may not express in an actual human existence. Christians might recognize the Eternal Presence of the Logos with us from the beginning, until the end: the Alpha and the Omega. In both cases, it seems to me a volitional issue has been raised.
Since this line of reasoning seems to direct us to the realm of human will and desire, sensory perception would seem to have a limited contribution to make in this scenario.
Anyhoot, i may be rambling far away from your intention, TheFIRMbss. If so, please do feel free to drop a butterfly net on me, or otherwise reel me in....
Thanks so much for writing!
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