Leibniz against Hobbes and Nominalism

Very worthwhile reading here. Some quotes from Leibniz follow:

"Hobbes seems to me to be a super nominalist, for not content like the nominalists, to reduce universals to names, he says that the truth of things itself consists in names and what is more, that it
depends on the human will, because truth allegedly depends on the definitions on terms, and definitions depend on the human will. This is the opinion of a man recognized as among the most profound of our century, and as I said, nothing can be more nominalistic than it. Yet it cannot stand. In arithmetic, and in other disciplines as well, truths remain the same even if notations are changed, and it does not matter whether a decimal or a duodecimal number system is used."

" One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him."

For Leibniz truth was the doing of the good not some mere nominalist definition of terms. The British East Indies Company needed to navigate in order to loot and plunder. Therefore, for them, the naming of the positions of the points on the globe were highly relevant to get to their next victim. For Leibniz, knowledge of how to perform beneficial work as he demonstrated in his law of force: akin to today's mission to achieve the next higher plateau of energy density throughput of nuclear fusion. For Leibniz, in his day, it was the unleashing of a steam engine for the purpose of transportation in collaboration with Denis Papin. This is the alternative to the rank absurdity and quite frankly evil use of nominalism by the super nominalist Hobbesians of today: the geopolitical looting and reducing the population potential of the planet by enforcing backwardness and hindering progress with their anti scientific quackery. 

Economics: Magic or Science

There is a widely held and prevalent belief that money, whether it be paper or electronic, in itself has value. This magical belief is proven to the holder of such due to the empirical proof that a quantum of money can be exchanged for "x." Where x may any good or service available to be sold on the "marketplace." We hear many voices today during the current pandemic promoting a universal guaranteed income. Whether a true believer in money as value be conservative or liberal only changes the complexion of whose interests are considered paramount. The rugged self made individual heroically navigating the free market or the downtrodden and exploited "people."

The flip side of the coin to these worldviews, however can be just as wrong. The belief not in money per se, but in some source of static physical commodities. The populist will often maintain that gold is real money because it is a physical good. Again one can substitute any physical good, whether relatively perishable or not, in this particular equation.

What is missing here is that in this algebraic mentality that there is economic "stuff" as a given. Instead of locating the process of physical production itself as the primary "stuff" of an economy. Now this correct and scientific standpoint is found throughout history in either explicit terms or in practice. The outstanding modern references appear most distinctly in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey and Lyndon LaRouche.

The axiomatic presumptions of all but a very few in this regard are indeed akin to the blind leading the blind. And the current course of Wall Street bailouts of untold trillions, or rather, quadrillions in putative monetary values if not reversed will soon prove that such presumptions have been grossly in error all along...

The Revolution of Biophysical Energy Throughput

Several years ago in this space I had occasion to highlight the role of the marvelous machinery of the ATPase protein as the basis for both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism. The revolutionary succession in the history of the biosphere to ever more efficient capture and utilization of energy is a quality of negative entropy.

This centers upon higher life forms' symbiotic adoption of the mitochondrion as the source for this function. Consider what sort of power inheres in the subsumption of this relatively more simple organelle to perform work for whole new classes of living entities. It is very much analogous to a breakthrough invention that humanity makes when it undergoes a revolution in the type of energy throughput characterizing its production. (Such as for instance the passage from burning wood to burning coal.)

The larger question here is how the motive force that carries on such problem solving exists in the ongoing development of universal lawfulness. This is in stark contrast to the childish assumption that the universe is "running down" like some enormous wind up clock. Thus it was in Raphael's brilliant cartoon of Aristotle and Plato. And as it was in Leibniz refutation of the outlook of rank empiricism of Newton and company.

Wall Street and the City of London Are Worse Diseases than the Novel Coronavirus

The transition away from the successful World War II United States industrial mobilization to the post industrial/information/radical environmentalist age junk heap through the looting by the financial oligarchy centered in  Wall Street and the City of London is now approaching its necessary end.

Either we shut down this control and reinstate American system economics (of which China is now, ironically, the closest prime example) here and on a global scale or humanity will not survive.

The choice is that stark.

Quazar Tsunamis: the Ubiquity of Shockwave Phenomena

The lawful self similarity of phase space energetics at the level of macrocosm and microcosm has been recently confirmed yet again with the discovery of quazar tsunamis. This finding, in fact, confirms a sort of relativity underlying the physically causal nature of the Riemannian principal of shockwave propagation. It adheres at the limits of the all interconnected inorganic, organic and human thought processes as Vernadsky hypothesized.

If there be any sense in a quest for a so called unified field theory, this principle is the only one that produces intelligible universal bounding conditions. For it is certain that as humanity moves forward to embark upon conquest of "outer space" and all that will emerge as spin-off results, the apparent fixed physical laws will forever be redefined as unique states of matter are produced. For such is the nature of the Continuous Creation and the true meaning of the dictum of Leibniz that indeed we inhabit the best of all possible worlds.

On the Current Crisis in Astrophysics

The discrepancies of the measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe or lambda calls out for new physics. In the 17th century the difficulty in modeling the planetary orbits was overcome by Kepler with a revolutionary geometric approach that it is entirely deceptive in its simplicity. The measurements were quite accurate due to the development of telescopes, however none except Kepler moved from the idea of circular to elliptical motion. Thus this one unique individual Johannes Kepler has made space travel possible.

Not that there wasn't groundwork in the developments that made this leap possible. In Kepler's Mysterium Cosmigraphicum he insists polemically that the correct method for formulating hypotheses is anti-algebraic or equivalently through radically constructive geometric means. This point is central to anything which has fueled further advancements in the laws of physics up until today.

For that which Albert Einstein accomplished with relativity could not have occurred without the likewise radically constructive restatement of the foundations of geometry by Bernhard Riemann. And precisely what was accomplished via Einstein's leap was a comprehensive framework governing how measurement itself is determined by its relation to the invariant physical speed of light with regard to universal motion. Hence, the need for a dimension of time that could account for this constant.

The quest for resolving the paradox contained in the conflicting measurements of the expansion rate of the finite yet boundless geometry of the universe will have to be likewise grounded in an updated continuation of this core method. Today the issue seems to question the invariance of types of electromagnetic propagation across vast stretches of space. So what physical principle might underlie this paradox? Is there something in the very character of composition of the geometry that can account for this disparity? It would seem that accounting for such fluctuations needs to be resolved on a yet higher domain for comprehending a more inclusive subsuming physical principle than is currently hypothesized. One interesting thought that comes to mind is the issue of the topology of the entirety of the universe taken as a whole. For instance, Kurt Gödel proposed that the universe itself rotates. Could this account for  a preferred directionality of anisotropy and difference in rates of propagation of the microwave background versus the measurement of the red shift through gravitational lensing?

Re: Russiagate Investigation Now Endangers Obama

The Russia/Ukraine and NATO question cannot be overlooked as motivation for this den of thieves. Recall that a pack of Harvard reformers opened up Russia for massive looting when they swooped in during the Yeltsin era to buy up shares of Russian assets that were distributed wholesale to the population. The US ex-patriot swindler Bill Browder (now British subject) whom John McCain championed with the phony Magnitsky Act that Obama signed into law was part of this apparatus. This carpet-bagging swindle continued in Ukraine with billions being carried out by Democratic operative's families like Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, et al. 

The overlying issue is the debt bomb that was created by the derivative securities of these same Harvard "quants." Since 2008 the Bernanke helicopter bailouts has created an even larger bubble that will inevitably blow. When that happens either the out of control speculative financiers that created this mess will lose their power through bankruptcy via return to Glass-Steagall and the US will arrange for new trade agreements with the BRICS nations or these loonies will provoke WWIII.

This is why they fear more than anything about an out of control Trump. For what he might do in a financial geopolitical crisis.

The True Motivation for the Impeachment of President Trump

The simple truth is that Trump is being impeached for attempting to withdraw the United States from what George Washington called foreign entanglements. The so called elite foreign policy establishment views America as the enforcer of a system of global governance. This system is ruled over by transnational control of financiers' interests. This is the speculative global gambling casino of uncollected and insanely hyper leveraged bubble of exotic debt instruments

The United States was founded in opposition to the very same interests, in many cases the very same royal families sitting atop this financial empire. This is why George Washington acting upon the advice of the architect of true American economic miracle Alexander Hamilton issued that admonition against "globalism" in his farewell address.

The reckoning is coming sooner rather than later.

Rembrandt and Beethoven: Art as the Mediated Essence of Creative Mentation

This Rembrandt self portrait is quite wonderfully ironic in its self reflexive mastering of inner and outward effect of light in painting. Very similar to Beethoven's late quartets in going beyond its medium. Breaking the previous artistic boundaries in a lawful non arbitrary manner is the essence of the Promethean nature that elevates humanity.

The Process of Becoming and Scientific Hypothesis

Recently a wonderful example of development of hypothesis for biophysics was published. Since this advancement in our understanding of the dynamics of the genome overturns previous assumptions about the looping of DNA, it neatly fits the principle of hypothesis generation. The previous false notion that the genome was static is indicative of a broader psychology prevalent in science overall.

My role in these pages is to elucidate that type of higher hypothesis governing how scientific inquiry itself necessarily evolves. It is upon that platform that we may search out and garner revolutionary advances for the advancement of civilization. Properly situating (cf. Leibniz on analysis situs) the mechanisms of biophysics as a substantive process of organic biospheric development.

The psychology of analyzing what are referred to as "systems" as fixed lifeless remnants is inherent to the creation of  the manifold crises confronting humanity across fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to astronomy. We see this in the ironic crisis of astrophysics quite starkly that the more we advance in creating instruments of searching the universe more profoundly across the electromagnetic spectrum, the less we seem to know! The very idea promulgated by generations of mathematicians that the mere labeling of points in the "probability space" of matrix manipulations somehow is equivalent to knowledge, illustrates this problem in the extreme.

In contrast to this sort of static worldview, as Heraclitus many centuries ago elucidated -- reality is not thing-like. It is a process of becoming ever more perfect, or better yet less imperfect. Now, for the lower realms of reality that process whether it be inorganic or biophysical is not willful. It evolves according to its own universal dynamics. The human mind however is of a qualitatively higher ordering principle. It need not physically evolve into a more biologically "fit" organism. For the human mind taken as the entirety of the development of civilization, is by its very nature composed of unfolding revolutionary change when we are performing in coherence with the aforementioned Hericlitian principle.

Sunday song

Here to compose on this October morn
The age of adulthood's starry throne
Doth beckon whilom with grace
Yet prods us on like the wilderness
Calls on thee my love to partake
The balm in my arms a minute
To midnight...
It is not too late.

The Manner in Which Mental Constraints or Axioms Color Scientific Research

This morning I read an article about the universal dark flow by a London based "science writer." Of course, this is nothing new at all. In fact, as I have been remarking for lo these many years here, evidence of a vectored evolution of the universe is manifold. Moreover, it breaks down as an ordered transfinite series along the lines that Vladimir Vernadsky limned. The lithosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere. All of these interacting with each other in a potentially negentropic fashion governed by the lawful overarching character of the human species creative mentation. That in its essence taken as a completed true infinity of simultaneity.

Which brings us to the issue of the multiverse. Our brave author referenced above sees this dark flow as evidence of... a multiverse. Contrary to claims by some that string theory or "grand unification theories" are mathematically beautiful, they instead are quite ugly. Who in their right mind would call the so called landscape of string theory claiming that there are 10⁵⁰⁰ possible universes anything other than hellishly deranged?

And yet these men of genius are paid quite well for this "quantlike" gobbledygook and even get million dollar prizes for spewing such mental detritus. For my money, they are no more sane than for instance the demented ramblings of the notorious Mohamed El Naschie.

The problem is one of ideological blinders. If your critically unexamined worldview is conformal with a pantheon pagan paradigm of bestial distinctly unhuman relations of a Hobbesean war of each against all then your conclusions about science will be predetermined along that trajectory. Take for example the late Steven Hawkings crazy drivel about the danger of contacting alien civilizations which would presumbably be gunning to destroy humanity. Etc, etc, ad infinitum...  A truly bad infinity.

Trump's Looming Economic Dilemma

While it is the case that Trump understands you do need steel, infrastructure and energy to build hotels and gambling casinos, what he doesn't get about the economy will destroy us in the end. The problem is that without replacing the astronomical level of global bad debt with national banking agreements its collapse is inevitable. 

The economy is not a zero sum game wherein each must scramble for a slice of a fixed pie. New technologies redefine resources. If Trump understood that he would not only be pursuing expanding the space program, he would announce a massive Manhattan style research program to achieve nuclear fusion as well as a multi trillion dollar infrastructure national investment. But that cannot be done without an orderly end to the speculative bubble known as derivative securities that the Federal Reserve has been dutifully propping up like some latter day parody of Sisyphus.

A return to Glass-Steagall is the first step. Ending the trade war scenario with joint agreements among the main global powers for real economic development as opposed to geopolitics is the second step.

The Next Revolution: Nuclear Fusion and Space Colonization

Let us imagine time as concomitant with human history and gauged relative to its technological power. This is in essence economic time. If one measures society's ability to sustain its expanded reproduction at successively higher rates of energy flux density as a Riemannian manifold, time is characterized as a dimension in that n (+1) dimensional matrix.

From that standpoint then we can clearly view the various historical epochs of relative population densities as either in an upward or downward trajectory signifying relative prosperity and growth or poverty and collapse.

The current conjuncture of history mandates that in order to survive we must develop a whole new degree of freedom. As the title of this article states that entails taming nuclear fusion both as a source of energy and as fuel for a space faring society. Then we will truly have "time enough and pace" to  "make time run." Only then will humanity emerge from its mental captivity to the insane and ugly worldview of the oligarchical human zoo.

Stardust to Stardust

Spiraling filaments of gas provide the stuff for stars to form and populate galaxies. Some of these stars at their the end create shockwaves that provide heavy elements upon which life subsists. In dying, a higher manifold of freedom emerges that existed merely in potential before. A planetary cycle of species undergoing interaction with the landscape of this elemental fuel and starlight proceeds to greater efficiency in capture and utilization of energy at higher flows and densities. Again in dying these whole species create the unique precondition for a yet higher manifold of freedom that humanity alone achieves. The living and non-living elements now may be further realized as servants of a new mission. The truly human mind celebrates the wonderful coherence in unlimited potential that it alone joyfully strives to perfect anew with each passing generation.

"part of a supernova blast wave in the constellation Cygnus, ~2,400 light-years away"
IMAGE: ESA/HUBBLE & NASA, W. BLAIR ACKN

BY ADAM ROSENBERG16 HOURS AGO

Truth Is Beauty -- Writ Large Heavenwards

Before 1877 when Édouard Stephan discovered them, no human had witnessed even dimly these five galaxies, four of which had begun intermingling some billion years ago. Now they dance spectacularly before our eyes thanks to the Hubble telescope. My own grandparents were born at about that time of their discovery. 

It is remarkable that such truly heretofore almost unfathomable power has been demonstrated and measured by the interplay of such vast galactic forces. And what power in that mere flicker of time has the progress of the human mind evinced? And yet we still find ourselves enmired in the dismal swamp of self imposed limits. 

The old enemies of Prometheus are now cloaked in new garb. Their chains are unquestioned and false axioms that make mental slaves of us. They hate that higher sort of light of creativity to solve problems and inspire enduring beauty. They worship false gods. 

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Nested Transfinites

The reference that Riemann made to Gauss' contribution to his concept of the foundations of non Euclidean geometry in Riemann's habilitation thesis is key to unraveling the metaphysical value that "pure"mathematics holds for scientific methodology. Take Beethoven's depiction of the stages of development of a storm and its aftermath in his sixth symphony.

Start from the standpoint of embedded cycles and astrobiology. As the solar system traverses our milky way galaxy there is a recurring long cycle of asteroid bombardment during the so called late heavy bombardment that is hypothesized as being key to bringing water to the earth. This would be some 3.8 billion years ago.

All life on earth has embedded within it an harmonic mechanism based upon the 24 hour rotational circadian cycle. The suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain as well as clock genes have been shown to be based upon this cycle. What is the inter-relationship of these two vastly disparate cycles?  They both involve a functional relationship of two distinct domains: the living and inert. Or as it relates to this planet the lithosphere and the biosphere. Now bring the third domain that Vernadsky identified into view: the noosphere. Cantor's theory of transfinites is a furthering of Nicholas of Cusa's principle of embedded subsuming powers of all creation governed by the Non-other. The Promethean ethos of Beethoven's symphonic compositions precisely evinces this very same principle:

Is Quantum Mechanics Based Upon a Magical Belief System?

These days nominalists label pretty much everything based upon impressionistic feelings even though they may claim otherwise. As the banner above conjures you the reader of this blog: examine the deep seated axioms and assumptions. What are the reigning axioms of the current scientific establishment?

One would have to be purblind not to immediately answer to that question -- statistics. The idea that in the realm of the infinitesimal our observational senses are forever enmired in irreconcilable uncertainty. So what to do? Quantum mechanics! A wave function based upon an imaginary Cartesian infinite array or matrix of probability. How certain are we that this should be the case? Well as the statisticians like to say a very high sigma. Since after all it works.

However, when we try to extend this fine edifice from the infinitesimal quantum to the astrophysical we find ourselves in a crisis of inconvenient, well, "darkness." Could this have anything to with the methodological and radical assumptions underlying the latest flavor of irrationalism masquerading as sanity? Hmm.

Maybe when the foundation of a belief structure is unsound that much is inevitable. Perhaps we can be certain of it.

The Lawful Composition of the Universe

Day in and day out we hear it being professed that entropic randomness is the underlying physical reality of all that exists. And indeed, if one were to marshal evidence to the contrary to a peer reviewed scientific publication it would be rejected. A variation of this theme is so called chaos theory whereby there is an "emergent" order somehow spontaneously generated out of the prevailing chaos.

I have fought continuously in these pages to maintain the opposite and to point to the psychology of the ruling conventional worldview. Whether or not anyone adhering to such an axiomatic schema for adjudging reality is aware of it, their worldview or Weltanshauung is equivalent to the arbitrary rule of the pagan pantheon. The gods are immortal and yet arbitrarily irrational in their ungovernable earthly passions. They demand human sacrifice in the worse case scenarios. A society cannot but crumble eventually that is held in thrall to such ghastly "principles." Entropy!

In fact, thank goodness, the reality is quite the opposite. As the great genius and founding father of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, wrote -- the reason for scientific inquiry and government is to Do the Good for the benefit of future generations. That is the essence of "the American dream." This worldview mandates that science have a long term mission orientation. In current terms, this means developing the means for alleviating poverty and disease, providing necessary infrastructure, fresh water and energy systems. The areas of investigation that cohere with this orientation are many. At their pinnacle however is the unifying mission for the human colonization of space. This is not optional; it is necessity.

Yesterday I came across a rather profound observation in my daily perusal of scientific literature:

"Recently, the pressure distribution in the proton was extracted for the first time from deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) by Burkert, Elhouadrhiri and Girod [1] (henceforth referred to as BEG) over a limited kinematic range. The result is remarkable; it indicates that the internal pressure in a proton is approximately 1035 Pa, exceeding the estimated pressure in the interior of a neutron star."

This neatly illustrates the lawful ordering principle to which I refer. As Nicholas of Cusa and Leibniz developed in their dialogues, the Macrocosm and Microcosm are intimately and lawfully connected by the ongoing harmonious composition of this best of all possible worlds.





MIT physicists have calculated the pressure distribution inside a proton for the first time. They found the proton’s high-pressure core pushes out, while the surrounding region pushes inward.

Courtesy of the researchers

Vernadsky Riemann Dimensionality: an Illustration

The recent finding by Johns Hopkins researchers that rhomboid enzymes travel beyond the cellular "speed limit" is illustrative of the unique manner in which biophysics is of a higher qualitative "dimension." That principle is of profound importance for the epistemology of science. For in dealing with space per se, we must distinguish from pure imaginary mathematical space and the functional living qualities of biophysical and noetic space and the interactions among these "realms."

As background, I recently posed the question of why humanity was at a kind of intellectual bottleneck or stultification on the issue of the planetary motions for centuries. One might be tempted to locate the answer in the necessary technological prerequisites not having been developed for accurate measurements of heavenly motions. However, this would be akin to missing the forest for the trees. Because the degrees of freedom required for society to break the bounds of prior constraining limits cannot be attributed to mere epiphenomena of a revolutionary change in its perspective underlying axioms.

The issue is that the historical mythological blinders imposed by the oligarchy were finally shattered enough to provide a freer rein to the creative potential of humanity. The classical Greek philosophers were certainly asking the right questions about hypothesizing the nature of planetary motions, inter alia, and most importantly the nature of the ruling ideological limitations of their society. What about the organization of their society allowed for a Socrates or Plato to so severely challenge the control of oligarchy?

Plato's dialog regarding the universality of human reason, The Meno, set the stage for what Augustine exemplified as the new dispensation. If a mere slave boy can recreate the most profound geometrical proofs independently of anything other than an internal dialog, the cult of the Pantheon of the gods must crumble and give way. The Promethean intellectual fire that the school of Athens lit would not be doused over the centuries, but reignite time and again in a ever yet more qualitatively powerful incarnation.