A theodicy that coheres with science

Given the rash of recent ballyhoo in the media regarding the so called Anthropic Principle versus atheism, I wish to propound a simple observation. To wit: the issue of the proof of a Creator is indissolubly part and parcel of the advancement of science, period. G.W.F. Leibniz' opus being the case in point. Newton, on the other hand is a mere cat's paw for the sorcerers of the black nobility.

The question is whether in this almost infinitesimally minute segment of space and time we refer to as human history, it has been sufficiently demonstrated that no matter how much we discover the inner workings and inter relationships of the physical, biophysical, noetical domains, there will forever continue to be more to discover. This is the only coherent and valid sense that one can claim any intuition of infinite extension. Everything else as far as a putative cosmology is concerned, including such masturbatory whoppers as the "stringy landscape", is pure phantasmagoria.

The Democratic Mainstream of Conciousness

These days the inner dialog of the congressional Democratic party principals must go something like this: "In the interests of comity, (because the polls show that the people don't like it when we go negative)and not to appear as an "extremist" I must strip, bend over, grin and bear it when Mister Bush and company come a calling." O Tempores, O Mores...

In Defense of Time

It seems that the aforementioned professor Krauss has gotten into the Kickapoo joy juice again. It seems we have now somehow transcendentally just kicked the universe into a hyperdrive paroxysm of heap big heat death entropy by playing peak-a-boo with it. But don't worry, I think if we can just hitch a ride on the time reversal theory of unrelativity we can undo our fate, mayhaps.
Joking aside, the extraordinary discovery of DNA coiling like a sort of mainspring in cyanobacteria compels me to speculate on a real quality of connection between our conception of time and the earth's diurnal rotation. I believe there must be a coherence between a biological wave form like the pacemaker or autowave and this coiling and uncoiling activity of gyrase and topoisomerase enzymes. In human terms, this quality of time is like a sort of carrier wave. Gauss' higher arithmetic supplies the framework for Riemann's multi-dimensional manifold conception. Which is to say, that we can model a multitude of interconnected cycles exhibiting dimensional qualities. (But this in no way gives us the latitude to believe that we can reify these dimensions as truly physical a la string theory.)
But there is something beyond this biological clock conception of time which is distinctively human. Riemann also supplied the means to model a wave function that supersedes the speed at which the medium can carry it. And it is here that the wave form moves from a positive curvature simply radiating outward through the Mach cone series to a negative curvature.
Now carry this image over into the multi-dimensional manifold of human societal relations. Our economy at any one phase should be able to sustain the population. We have a nexus of resources and technologies that make this possible. But due to the relative limits of resources in any historical epoch, there is a necessity to develop new resources that redefine the technological manifold in much the same way that the formation of a shock wave changes the curvature of space for sound. So for humanity there is a kind of built in necessity for scientific progress. Kraft Ehricke referred to the extra terrestrial imperative. If we view time on the grand scale of mankind's mission to colonize other planets and solar systems, then the constraints upon society become our relative imperfect understanding of physics at any point in our history. This truly is the analogy to a kind of projective mapping out to infinite time via a technology vectored purpose for humanity. It is analogous to Einstein's conception of a world line.

Question for Heisenberg

And if upon gazing into the intricate potentiality of the universal conative composition, all that you see reflected back is a void, shall you therefore impose as a would be universal principle that which you call mere chance? What have you brought back but the soul sick pessimism with which you began your investigation? If you wish to see only chaos rather than self similar pre-established harmony you have made that choice for yourself, but wouldn't it be tyrannical indeed to attempt to shackle Dame Science with this cognitive malady of yours?

The Principal of Connectedness

How stunningly art connects the student of humanity across the millennia! If we adhere to a cognizable compositional principle in poetry, song, or the plastic arts, our very act reconnects us in an filial mode to the past and future. And what is the basis of this reconnection if not the meaning of what Plato demonstrated in the Meno dialog, among other places, as the mnemonic power of mind? Is this not the bounded condition of a connected compact Riemannian manifold, while being finite as well as potentially infinite?

The Paradox of Consciousness, Quantum Mechanics, and Metamathematics

All things being equal, it is apparently demonstrated that through the act of observing the "objectively" dual nature of wave versus particle somehow collapses a probabilistic "superposed" state. Any attempt to supply a rigorous description of consciousness compatible with the mathematical language of physics is facilely derided as "mysticism." And for the most part, I would agree with that characterization. While Kurt Goedel’s devastating demonstration of the utter folly of regarding symbolic logic as capable of representing even arithmetic completely, let alone all other aspects of reality was extremely useful, I’m afraid his attempt at a sort of symbolic theodicy via logic is a failure hoisted by his own petard. Because Cantor’s series of transfinite numbers is only completed in the absolutely infinite or what Cusanos described as the non other (non aliud), it would seem that arguing for an approach which would condition consciousness within the bounds of the transfinites must be disallowed as a metaphysical encroachment on “pure physics.” However, the growing importance of characterizing self ordering phenomena as central to many facets of present day scientific investigation under the rubric of “fractal” dimensionalities opens the door to the broader issue of self reflexive modalities.
Permit me, dear reader, to introduce an item here to illustrate this principal more concretely from the standpoint of a seemingly simple stratum of biota. The macrophage is from all reasonable experimental perspectives capable of continuously evolving in order to “outflank” the potential defenses of its host. This in an extreme sort of way evinces a “power” inherent in a conatus or striving of all orders of recognizable biological existence. But what of the ordering principle (or transfinite ordinal power) of the conscious mind that is capable of recognizing the seemingly preternatural ability of this species of living organism to evolve? What power shall we assign to that very same consciousness that can perform such an order of operation of reflective re cognition of this very same biotic power? Is it not immediately self evident that it were absurd not to advance the acceptance that the order of such a noetic consciousness is in a very well defined sense on another non arbitrary higher level of transfinite? And further, does this not permit us to view the concept of power from the standpoint of conative substance as not merely a sterile set theoretical category, but rather as the integument which inexorably leads us to affirm a principle of living orderings which proceeds to an encompassing power of conscious and creatively powerful thought or noesis?

The Subprime Housing Bubble

The reason that so few can conceive the presence of various bubbles going back to the tulip and the John Law bubbles is that monetarism is a pathological belief system. Monetary values are not reality as Mark Twain humorously limned in one of his writings (I forget which one at the moment.) What is real about the economy is whether or not it can adequately sustain a population in the here and now AND in the future. The recent visible collapses of our nation’s infrastructure are the product of the ideological delusions wrought by monetarism’s salacious grasp upon the body politic (pardon the mixed metaphor.) I write this knowing full well of course that most readers will have very little idea whereof I speak due to the execrable state of our education system in this regard.

When mathematical reasoning has been found, it checks political faction and increases concord, for there is no unfair advantage in its presence, and equality reigns. With mathematical reasoning we smooth out differences in our dealings with each other. Through it the poor take from the powerful, and the rich give to the needy, both trusting in it to obtain an equal share... Archytas

An indulgence from Bush

When the crusades were in full tilt, a papal indulgence would be issued to the valiant Christian soldiers marching off to vanquish the Saracens. Bush's recent commutation of Libby's sentence is a sorry farcical instant replay of the same.

The physical and metaphysical application of residues

When Cantor attempted to approach the question of the cardinality of the continuum, there was a fundamental flaw in the very positing of the problem to be solved. Leibniz warned of this when he designated the continuum as a labyrinth. The line of attack was in essence the same blunder that is the faulty axiomatic basis for information theory. That is, a Manichean yes/no, on/off, zero/one reductionism which is radically incommensurate with the actual energetic living and thinking processes which characterize the composition of reality. What Gauss was tackling in his Disquisitions, is an elaboration of the principal that Leibniz adduced that monads never truly are without existence, no matter how much they may be apparently diminished in physical scope. Which is to say, that the posited mechanical principal of entropic heat death is in fact subsumed by a higher reality which is anomalous and contradictory and will always show up as residual in any attempted linear or modular representation. That is indeed why Riemann's study of non Euclidean curvature and Gauss' higher arithmetic are indissolubly connected, and that Cantor's principle of transfinite density functionals is a continuation in the same direction.

Any misguided attempt to create a sort of topological "covering" from a fixed order to an ever potentially evolving substantial universal process is foredoomed to failure and quite frankly madness. As Cusa elaborated for his own time, the microcosm of the human mind or what Leibniz referred to as the thinking monad necessarily recapitulates the entirety of the development of the macrocosmic inert, biophysical, and noetic strata of the universe, no matter how imperfectly and cannot fail to do otherwise except through an obdurate negligent choice. Thus bringing in the element of free will, which can never be accounted for in a system that attempts to reduce or restrict choice to the radically absurd assumption of a simple on/off stochasticism. When the mathematical artifact is taken as the reality then indeed we are confronted with some quite literally insane hypotheses, such as reversing time and hyper-dimensional "m" or string theory.

True or false?

The Supreme Court disintegrates the schools for Jesus.

A curious method whereby to disprove the big bang

Now not to be overmuch ribald, but only a male ego could have idealized this kind of monstrousmoonshine bigness to begin with. Just as Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether were wont to prove in times gone by, the world as we surmise was begat with not a whimper but a bang. Aha! -- you say-- but where's the proof? But that brings us to yeast and fermentation does it not? I mean the proof in the pudding, of course. Silly boys. I'm talking inflation here -- and not that wag of a Socrates' baker's fart, either. Hold on, let's get to the premise, shall we. Now in the merest fraction of infinite time we shall not even know anymore that we came from this universe. What the? Ya, ya... this is so. In a trillion years give or take, (and what's a trillion among friends?) we will have lost the ability to know from whence we came. Balderdash, you say. Tut, tut, I say. Introducing straight from a simulation in Monte Carlo, or some such place, Drs. Kraus and Scherrer, I'm not making this up. (This study was supported in part by the US Dept. of Energy (or is it entropy?)) It seems that our cosmic event horizon will develop a robust case of astigmatism so we won't even know the rest of the now visible universe was even here in a trillion years, or so. Alack and alas. Woe is us. But wait... I have it. Let us redirect our hard earned cash from such mountebanks and create a new project for SETI. Let's give um some pizazz, shall we? Okay, so here goes. All we need now is a little note from about a trillion years ago, not a dissertation or treatise, mind you. Just a tidbit, scrawled on a post it note, if you will, of just what the universe looked like before we lost sight of it. (By we, I mean us sentient intelligent beings, of course... before we got bent out of shape.) Now how's that for a mission?

Implications of the Biophysical Meaning of Clock Genes Role in Repotentiation

The method of composition which is the most true heretofore in human history was exhibited in the seminal work of Ludwig von Beethoven-- in particular, his string quartet, the Grosse Fugue. Why? Because this work successfully demonstrates a victory of the very principal of classical composition over apparent arbitrariness. Once you actually take the time to either truly listen to that piece anew or for the first time the principal I am emphasizing becomes self evident.

To wit, given a function which exhibits a rather profound level of seemingly chaotic randomness, it must always be possible to tame this critter by at least one less degree of arbitrariness. (For those in my audience who attempt to keep up with today's astonishing welter of meta mathematics known as category theory, one might say that the very last statement is an ironic categorization, if you will, of Bernhardt Riemann's dealing with arbitrary functions equivalent to Beethoven's principal.) Now look at the Ninth Symphony in this light also. The fourth movement evinces a musical method of capturing and recapitulating the essence of the preceding three movements and bringing them thus to their inevitable crisis or denouement. Finally, the Promethean crescendo is produced which resolves this at a higher functional level.

Now, this last point is critical to the subject of this essay and will be brought into focus anon. The question of why there is a sort of built in cyclical necessity to mental development, both in the broad spectrum of human history and in one's own mental microcosmic recapitulation of that history, is intimately tied up in the issue of why we need to dream. I was frankly astonished yesterday, when I came across this posting in Nature: "Rhythmic growth explained by coincidence between internal and external cues." Heretofore, it appears that the study of circadian oscillators (here I must interpolate my prior insistence on the importance of so-called biophysical pacemakers or autowaves in energetics) proceeded without taking into consideration the variable of the "external cue" of the diurnal dark to light cycle's effect on helix-loop-helix clock gene in regulating plant growth patterns. Even though, it appears, that previous experiments were carried on in the artificial light of the laboratory, there was a metaphorical darkness thereby akin to Goya's excellent cartoon -- The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. But shift one's viewpoint to an eagle's eye overview of the entirety of the functional process here and it becomes clear what the functional energetics of the interplay of internal and external cues are.

Now bring to mind the foregoing image from Nicholas of Cusa and Leibniz of the interplay between the micro- and macrocosm of thinking monads. Is it any wonder therefore that dreams themselves of great players on the human stage of history were given such a preternatural or outre distinction? That which on the surface of things might appear to be an arbitrary or chaotic juxtaposition of mental images in dreams, in fact has as its genetic principle a repotentiation of the societal interplay of human growth and development.

Giving Pause

A simple walk through the neighborhood

Brings to mind the birth of stars mirrored

In blooms of tulip tree blossoms that shoot out

Like delicacies of prose found in memories of posies.

A surface on the lake just when the ice is melting

Shows dendrites like those astrocytes on the manifold

Of mind. A slice of our senses like the shadows

On the wall. We see now in the glass as a laser

Gives out the critical phase, so the tongue marshals

Our slight ken. Ever diminished in light of the receding

Spacetime locus. But growing with the zenith of reason

To a higher non linear curve. Why are we not astounded

When at every resolution there is a striving for perfection?

It is not the heavy ladened mechanics of those dire prophesies

Of perpetual frozen matter insensate like Dante’s Satan’s lair.

No not those chaotic screech owl like random walks,

But a nobler resolution as true as the gift of the lightning rod

Through freedom to convoke communion in purpose.

We see an axis in the cosmos like sugar and protein

And impossible configurations to shift toward the light

Synthetic of the mindseye. If there be not here a motive

To surcease of sorrow, then there will never be one.

What madness hath overtaken us like children of Gorgon

Only to be forever reliving our Atreus like poisoned

Genetic dance? Yet the motion of helix can be a disease

Or a blessing. We are built like Damocles through and through.

Which way will you choose, oh futurity? There is but one path

On the labyrinth of causation. Eureka, aye and anon.

The bird flies as our heart lifts we exhale our soul’s sail.

Recapitulation of an Ordering Principle

The recent analysis of alignment in chirality of spiral galaxies along the so called "axis of evil" points to an ordering principle of development which subsists across the inert/biophysical/cognitive domains in an interconnected way at all levels of resolution. As I introduced the concept earlier, there is an analogy of "choice" in some primitive sense in the simplest biota. The resolution of the paradox of the numerical continuum can only be had with the understanding that it (the continuum) is a resultant of human thought. Therefore its scope is conformal with a world line of discontinuous progress in the arts and sciences. Take all of human history and determine whether there is the equivalent of an axis of asymmetric organization across cultures. Wilhelm von Humboldt's study of linguistic variability as it influences the capability of human creativity is precisely an endeavor in this direction.

A true notion of a multi dimensional manifold of a strictly functional sort here begins to come into focus. (This in thorough contradistinction from the idea in string theory of hidden physical dimensions.) Firstly, the functional form of significance is premised upon a notion of useful work being performed. The development of heavy elements in the interior of stars systems including their shockwave creation in supernova is "work" being done on a spectacular cosmic scale. It is not unconnected with the fact that progress in human society is forged from a development of tools as knowledge of metals is fostered. Likewise, the use of metal ions to process the complex folding of proteins in the biophysical realm.

Just as the notion of choice is expanded, by reflection on its equivalence across realms, so is the notion of work. This is the truth of a theory of geometrical "connections" among a multi dimensional framework. It is only in this sense that the associated mathematics is non trivial. Bearing this point in mind, the issue of apparent randomness of action, for instance Brownian motion, quantum fluctuations, etc., must be redefined. The generation of a cyclical wave function of any kind gives the lie to characterizing the universal ontology as "chaotic." For one must put forward the question of why any such wave function should exist in the first place. Ignoring this issue, can only be accomplished by mental gymnastics of denying that the form of question has any validity. And yet, even by the very act of denial, there exists an asserted non chaotic universal substance. Whatever the future direction of biophysics determines regarding the scenario of the emergence of the "RNA world," the distinct principle of higher ordering emergence can not be neglected. This quality of emergence is not somehow magically, spontaneously generated out of chaos as it were.

It is on the basis of an ecumenical dialog in this direction of seeing the betterment of human society as the goal of governance, that the current descent into primitive forms of surrogate warfare can be averted.

Artificially intelligent?

What is the “density” of a quantum of “information?” Say that for example, I communicate to you a method for investigating anomalies in the domains of the inert, biophysical, and human consciousness or the mutual interaction among each of them. Now this method is a dialectic. That is, it is not a fixed set of nostrums or formulas that resolve a particular problem, but rather a methodology that subsumes whatever level of knowledge that might prevail at any future historical epoch. Take Socrates as the paradigm of this. Now it is nigh unto irrefutable that the dialogues of especially Plato which centered about the historical person of Socrates when taken up afresh by successive civilizations efficiently caused transformations in society. Thereby Socrates’ ideas acted efficiently to transform the practice of humanity centuries after his life ended. If you read Moses Mendelssohn’s Phaedon, essentially you see this principal revealed. In that what this dialogue does is that it uses the death of Socrates to convey a set of principles that subsumes a particular historical incident. There is nothing untruthful in having Socrates set forth ideas which are modeled upon the writings of Nicholas of Cusa and Gottfried Leibniz because that series represents a sort of self similar continuum of enquiry which is taken up afresh by successive generations, and thereby continuously enriched (or so one might hope.) Contrast this as an evolutionary principle with the threadbare and reductionist weltanschauung of Darwin and his ilk. The notion that somehow an accumulation of percussive interactions will somehow magically add up to such a nested series of subsuming transfinite ordinals is clinically quite insane. Yet, this is the prevailing methodology (if one chooses to characterize it by a name that it doesn’t deserve) of so called information theory today. This is basis for stochastic theory emanating from the standard of radically reductionist Empiricism This is what underlies the assumptions of the probability matrix of procedures inherited from Bayes, et al. The irrational a-causality quantum mechanics that Einstein scoffed at as God throwing dice. This is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in essence.

Given this prevailing idiosyncratic failure of choice of scientific method, how is it that any progress is made despite all of these crudities as it were? Well that goes to the point there is a sort of “auto pilot” that follows from the unfolding in investigating physical and biophysical reality itself. By sticking to the course of investigating a certain class of anomalies in science a Promethean quality of agapic (or brotherly) love of humanity wins out, ironically so. Imagine the irony when that author of the US constitution, erstwhile having the nom de plume of Silas Dogood, gave the world free of patent the lightning rod. So during the course of investigating the constituents of the immune system, for example, perforce one is ineluctably driven via a vector-like design inherent in this realm that smacks of a higher ordered principle. One does the good in spite of oneself (to paraphrase Shelley.) The question is when will humanity remove those self-imposed blinders of misguided ideology?

The problem with the concept of time as dimensionality

If you review Riemann's famous Hypotheses which underlie geometry habilitation paper, it strikes you that via the concept of an n dimensional manifold there exists a specific manner in which n dimensions carry over or evolve into n+1 dimensions. In spatial dimensions, we can continuously move without affecting or disturbing the quality of the dimension per se. This is what Riemann signified as a continuous manifold. For the purposes of functional space, it is convenient to treat of other characteristics of physical reality such as pressure or temperature as added such dimensions which are likewise continuous. (However, it is the case that this may not quite be true absolutely, e.g. there is an absolute zero for temperature, which is why at or near that region the "normal" laws of physics are seemingly violated.)

Now consider whether this is true of time. How do we move in time? We do so mentally in two directions. Therefore, it appears to the naive first impression to be of a similar quality of dimension as a spatial dimension. In fact, we mark time as a cyclical function through the use of space. However, can we actually, not merely in the imagination or virtually, move backward in time? Is it in any way truly reversible in the sense that the three spatial dimensions are? Obviously and self evidently not. Why then do we blandly accept the concept of physical space-time? Further, why do we wish to indulge in the idea of n dimensionality as anything other than as a useful fiction that serves us to create a sort of functional “space.” Which fiction, however, it must be cautioned, must not be confused with the three “real” physical dimensions. On this score, none other than Riemann himself weighed in. In his philosophical remnants, he discusses time. Its cyclical nature is relative to the system or life form at issue. For example, the scale of time for a tree is far different that that say of a butterfly. However, we do see that biologically there is a unifying metric that is indeed quite physical, i.e. a circadian rhythm determined by the rotation of the earth. Does anyone in his or her right mind suppose that this rotation or cycle may actually be reversed? On the other hand, it is extremely useful and a uniquely human power that we may reverse and move ahead in time in our imagination. Without that power, our judgment in changing our course of action would be impossible. (Sort of like George Bush and company vis-à-vis the war in Iraq.)

The question is then, does the mathematics of relativity permit us to think of time (or the speed of light) as a dimension in the same sense as the real physical continuum? How is the mind immanent in these dimensions? What is the limit of the transmission of ideas over physical space and time? Faster than the speed of light? Can an idea be truly transmitted effectually ?