Gustav Theodor Fechner

Recently, in examining Bernard Riemann's influences from his philosophical fragments, I came upon the work of Fechner. Today, Fechner is almost exclusively remembered as the father of the field of "psychophysics." In particular, his logarithmic function for the threshold of conscious perceptions. However, Riemann was very much captivated by Fechner's writing on Zend Avesta. It is quite remarkable that Riemann's work on sonic shockwave propagation predated the actual demonstration of the said phenomena by some decades. The reason for this is, I believe that the principle involved actually transcends the narrow application that Riemann gave it in that instance, i.e. of pressure and the speed of sound . That is that given a wave being propagated beyond the speed at which the medium is capable of accepting a shockwave aggregates perforce. As this continues over time the shockwave can be thought of as a negatively curved horn surface. This idea immediately links to Riemann's habilitation thesis wherein he details the non Euclidian geometries as the basis of choice for metric for physical space. It is the moving over from positively curved propagation to a negatively curved time series that is there in germ form in that thesis of Riemann. And I believe that likewise Fechner in the Zend Avesta evinces the germ of autowave phenomenology when he states (in English translation from the German): "Our future spheres of existence, though all incorporated in the same great body, the earth, will not disturb, confuse or efface each other. Even here our spheres of existence necessarily cross and intersect each other, as the means of mutual intercourse, which in the here after will only increase in intimacy, variety and consciousness; and in our brain the material changes connected with our reminiscences cross and intersect each other, leaving them nevertheless undisturbed and uneffaced." (my emphasis added) I believe that this is a remarkable instance of how a method for viewing interconnectedness of physical and psychological phenomena leads to a correct hypothesis of neurological characteristics before any experimental apparatus is available.

Elephants hear through their feet!

This research appears on first glance to be quite straightforward reasoning from the premise that extends the concept of ground based vibrational communication from bugs to mammals. But, if you review Riemann's philosophical writings and interpolate his work on hearing, then you get an interesting congruence with this research. His view of time being relative to the species and the electromagnetic wave nature of sound as primary combine quite elegantly here. By the way, the notion that all of the biological substrate persists as a kind of soliton is I think a wonderfully apt characterization.

Upon learning of Obama's new Internet Mining Policy

Obama is cool.
Obama is the real deal.
Obama is the man.
Obama is for change.
Obama is our hero.
Obama is the best president ever.
Obama is the yes we can man.
Obama is a man for all seasons.
Obama is a never ending story of hope.
Obama is an American hero.
Obama is a jazzy dude.
Obama is the biggest thing ever!

Krugman: the Laputan?

Krugman opines thusly:

So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many commentators, that’s a terrifying number, requiring drastic action — in particular, of course, canceling efforts to boost the economy and calling off health care reform.
The truth is more complicated and less frightening. Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it’s not catastrophic.

I retort:


In the rarified precincts of ivory tower of Nobel Prizedom, (or rather Nobel Prizedumb) the erosion and collapse of the manufacturing base means less than nothing to such high falluting intellects, of course. The fact that the government has encumbered itself with the greatest speculative bubble known as derivative securities to the tune of untold hundreds of trillions, why that is irrelevant saith these Laputan folk. Besides Hamilton's report on manufactures where he establishes that there exists a physically productive economy and attacks Smith's Wealth of Nations by name is so 18th century. "Why we live on our floating island of Laputa on information alone now" they declaim commiserating with my ignorance. But why should I cast these topics before such celebrated professors in the first place? A fools errand I'm sure.

Monkeyshines

Flash -- this just in:

(PhysOrg.com) -- Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics.

This thesis parallels the monkeys typing a Shakespeare play in infinite time. It proves that given even an infinite amount of time a physicist of the reductionist sort will never discover that he has a brain. I.e., the human mind is proof of a non entropic process (when its applied, that is.)

Prometheus Rebound

These days there are some pretty savvy global warming researchers. Sometimes I am awestruck. The latest just in is a dandy, indeed. It seems that Zeus is the original environmentalist. Who knew? What do you mean with such blunderbus you ask? I can't make this stuff up, I retort.

"Agricultural methods of early civilizations may have altered global climate, study suggests

Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews."

Why does this involve purely mythological figments like Prometheus and Zeus? Stay with me here. Prometheus was worshiped as one of the older Titanic gods that rivaled Zeus. His sin was giving mankind fire. You see his brother Epimetheus must have been a fraud or have doublecrossed Prometheus. (He was the one who had the gift of foresight.) He should have known that fire would eventually doom mankind through global warming.

Now this puts Christianity in a whole new light. It turns out that all this talk about the meek inheriting the earth is hokum. They are for the big multinational polluters in reality. Bring back Zeus, bring back Gaia. Io Pan, io pan! Yo' mama. Big mama.

Obamacide?

Let's see if I get the Obamacide health care bill rationale correct: Insurance companies are rationing healthcare. Rationing health care leads to people unnecessarily ill or dead. That's bad. The oversight board set up by the healthcare legislation will have the final say on appropriate coverage for patients. That means rationing care (or "triage", if you prefer). Now the government can take over from the greedy insurance companies that are causing patients to go without health care. In the current budgetary crisis we must have a major cutbacks on health care costs. Why? Because we are spending trillions to bail out too big to fail banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs) and insurance companies' (viz. AIG) gambling debts (also known as derivative securities). Therefore I believe now our liberal government under Obama wants to be brought into the business of doing evil liberally in its own right. Bravo!

Obfuscations abound

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's top advisor on the healthcare overhaul, says he opposes euthanasia. But when you read his actual writings it is clear that he thinks some lives have more value than others. For example, the elderly have less value because they have less years of productivity left. This logic is absolutely consistent with the idea of useless eaters propagated by Dr. Josef Mengele's Nazis. Now who is obfuscating whom?

Common Sense

Let me add a little something here to the healthcare debate, if I may. We just bailed out an insurance behemoth AIG to the tune of oh $100 billion or so. Mr. Obama wants to save $200 billion on Medicare. Can none of you left wing or right wing fools see the connection here? When money is put ahead of humanity the economics of scarce resources leads inevitably to tyranny. The war reparations placed upon Germany after WWI lead to the bestial final solution. The logic of bailing out criminal speculators too big to fail leads down that same path. If you are not able to understand this it is because you refuse to look this evil in the eye. It really is just that simple. Thank you.

A Fishy Story

One fine morning in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama awoke to find himself metamorphozed into a large fish. He immediately panicked and reasoned thusly: "I must now get help to put myself in water or I will surely drown". (He not being used yet to living life as a fish really should have thought suffocate instead of drown.) So he began flapping for all he was worth. Soon he tumbled to the ground of the Presidential bedroom. Immediately at the door appeared a wide eyed secret service agent named Bill. Bill guffawed. "This must be the biggest practical joke ever played in the White House ever'" he thought. "Well, I guess I'd better just play along." So with almost super human strength he bounded forth and scooped up the large fish and ran out of the room.

Barack meanwhile was gurgling bubbles through his gills and thinking to himself, "I think I can get out of this jam now, because Bill is going to find me some help." Sure enough, Bill ran to the Presidential fish tank and gently eased Barrack into its confines. Barack felt very peculiar as he slid into the tank as well he might, having only been just turned into a fish. He did his best to scream at Bill that he was the President, but no sound at all came out of his mouth no matter how hard he tried.

"At least I'm alive," he resignedly thought to himself after a long pause. "Maybe there's a way out of this. If I can only retrace my actions from yesterday. Maybe there will be some kind of explanation. There must be some kinda way out of here. Think Barack! Think! What could have lead to this? What was I doing that wound me up transformed into a fish. What kind of cruel magician could have cast this spell on me?" These thoughts were running over and over in his head while he swam back and forth in wide circles in the fish tank.

In the meantime, a large group of secret service men gawked at him from the outside. They were frantically talking to each other on their Blackberries. "We cannot locate the President," were the words that went crackling over the airwaves. "We are on full alert. Only Cosmic Clearance and family will be informed. Let's get Biden down here now."

To be continued.

Napoleon's Detractor

ETA Hoffmann is said to have lost his government post when he caricatured the French occupiers of his homeland. I wonder if someone is being dismissed at this instant for some saucy Obama as Hitler cartoons. Hmm...

An Unhealthy Dilemma

Now let me see. Obama when questioned on the charge that his health care reform will mean rationing shoots back that health care is already being rationed. I will now try to reason through this logically to see if this is true, because I believe we can come to some meeting of the minds so to speak. When my elderly mother had a benign brain tumor removed a few years back, she did not have to succumb to any outside board inquiring whether such an operation would be cost effective. Medicare was not under any such mandate. Therefore, her treatment had no taint of being rationed whatsoever. Now, correct me, I beg of you, if I am wrong here, but wouldn't the current legislation (or the one that Peter Orzag desires) set up just such an oversight board to determine whether her operation would be cost effective from the standpoint of metrics like life expectancy, quality of life, and other such rubrics? In fact, I know I will be accused of engaging in the logical fallacy of slippery slope here, but isn't this the essence of the meaning of the term "Useless Eaters" that the Nazis used during their reign of terror? And isn’t the same type of statistical manipulation that Dr. Emanuel engages in with his "lifeboat ethics" type discussions in the New York Times which also underlies the mathematics of the so called “quants” that led us to the collapse of the speculative bubble. And why is it that we simply had to bail out insurance behemoth AIG to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars (much of which is why Goldman Sachs is doing so well today) without flinching, but can't afford too expensive medical procedures on the other hand? Please would Mr. Obama or his any of his surrogates like to enlighten me in my state of confusion on these issues?

Why Science Benefits Humanity

No matter how much we as a species may uncover by explicating the mechanics of certain classes of phenomena, it is demonstrable that we will nevertheless remain an infinite distance from ascertaining a lasting mechanistic resolution of them.

These phenomena are of the type that Nicholas of Cusa referred to as the incommensurable cardinality spanning the divide between the other and non-other. However, following Cantor, we can further refine that notion of a quality of transfinite incommensurals. This being his distinction between the absolute infinite and transfinite. We may now locate certain classes of scientific investigations on the peripheries or boundaries of the transition from the Vernadskyan categorical domains as having a precisely analogous character. Firstly, the transition from the inorganic to the organic/biosphere. (This for today's current hypotheses is included among the "RNA World" hypothesis and Astrobiological pursuits.) Secondly, the transition from the biosphere to the noosphere. (One aspect of this, for example, would be the the research of neurogenesis and its correlation with a hippocampal locus for memory.)

Taking the latter case poses a stark case in point of a fundamental incommensurabilty. When the mind functions, whether through memory or other distinguishable modes, there is a correlated physical creation of new neuronal networks. Is it not apparent that while we may continuously define sundry connections at an ever greater infinitesimal scale of this biophysical domain, we can never come to a thorough resolution along this boundary because of the unique way that the universe is composed? However, we can expect that proceeding to investigate anomalies along these boundaries should spark breakthroughs that will of necessity benefit humanity's unceasing requirement for technological innovation.

Leibniz understood that it were a fool's errand (a la R.D. Laing) to attempt to unravel the labyrinthine paradox of the number continuum, because it is merely a mental artifact of the underlying issue to which I am referring here and not physical reality. Unfortunately, Cantor and Goedel, inter alia, did not.

Global Warming, Climate Change-- or Atmospheric Deterioration?

"The unwashed masses are like sheep which we educated ones have a duty--nay, a burden to enlighten. Let us cry out so all and sundry may understand: THE SKY IS FALLING. THE SKY IS FALLING! SAVE YOURSELF! (SAVE OURSELVES.) OH! HELP... HELP!"

Chicken Little
(proud to be a founding member of the World Wildlife Federation)

Waterboarding

What's in a word? "Harsh interrogation techniques"-- formerly known as torture. Hmm. I guess noticing Orwellian doublespeak has become passe these days.

History and Drama

I'm just finishing up another excellent forgotten play. Cato by Addison. I was thinking what a wonderful theme it would make for an historical study on many fronts. There are several ironies about this. Firstly, this Addison was an ally of Swift in his mission to free Ireland from the yoke of an oppressive British empire policy of looting its satrapies. Second, today's Cato Institute is the complete opposite of anything resembling true patriotism. (Perhaps they should be renamed the Sempronius Institute.) Third, there is a forgotten tale to be told which is worthy of any scholar's enterprise. Diametrically opposite of the popular entertainment of today, there was a time in our country when drama was a vehicle for nation building. View in your mindseye this play actually performed at Valley Forge in the winter of our nascent Republic's own discontent. Regard the remnants of an even greater forgotten dramatist and historian Schiller-- today only known as a nameplate for many monuments and parks around the country. (I suspect that this lapse in education was probably the result of the anti German jingoism dating from WWI.) Lastly, what more appropriate vehicle could drama today be put amidst the onrushing dual calamities of suicidal economic and military policies foisted on a mesmerized and basely "entertained" US public?

Beethoven and Riemann: Polemicists against Chaos Theory

Figures that hover above their own epochs sometimes not only anticipate happy developments but also unfortunate declines. Both Beethoven and Riemann attacked in advance the absurdities of today's Chaos "Theory" on their own terms. The Grosse Fugue presents the hearer with an apparently arbitrary sequence which is "resolved" through the ensuing movements of the piece. Thus Beethoven established a high water mark for all musical composition and anticipated the Listian descent into manneristic chromatic irrationality of today. Riemann's Zeta function/prime number hypothesis inter alia, likewise provides a method (via Dirichlet's principle) for resolving with functions of apparently arbitrary disorder. How unlike the probabilistic unreason leading to today's information, string and chaos theories, et al!

What more fitting spectacle than seeing the march of doom of the so called "quants" on Wall Street today.

A NIGHT-PIECE ON DEATH.

By the blue taper's trembling light,
No more I waste the wakeful night,
Intent with endless view to pore
The schoolmen and the sages o'er:
Their books from wisdom widely stray,
Or point at best the longest way.
I'll seek a readier path, and go
Where wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky,
Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
While through their ranks in silver pride
The nether crescent seems to glide!
The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds which on the right aspire,
In dimness from the view retire:
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful sight,
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass, with melancholy state,
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly-sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,
'Time was, like thee they life possess'd,
And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.'

Those graves, with bending osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumbled ground,
Quick to the glancing thought disclose
Where Toil and Poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,
The chisel's slender help to fame,
Which, e'er our set of friends decay,
Their frequent steps may wear away,
A middle race of mortals own,
Men half-ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,
Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones;--
These (all the poor remains of state)
Adorn the rich, or praise the great;
Who while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
The bursting earth unveils the shades!
All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds,
They rise in visionary crowds,
And all with sober accent cry,
'Think, mortal, what it is to die!'

Now from yon black and funeral yew,
That bathes the charnal-house with dew,
Methinks I hear a voice begin;
(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din,
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound
O'er the long lake and midnight ground!)
It sends a peal of hollow groans,
Thus speaking from among the bones:

'When men my scythe and darts supply,
How great a king of fears am I!
They view me like the last of things:
They make, and then they dread, my stings.
Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
No more my spectre-form appears.
Death's but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to God:
A port of calms, a state of ease
From the rough rage of swelling seas.

Why, then, thy flowing sable stoles,
Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
Long palls, drawn hearses, cover'd steeds,
And plumes of black, that, as they tread,
Nod o'er the 'scutcheons of the dead?

Nor can the parted body know,
Nor wants the soul these forms of woe:
As men who long in prison dwell,
With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
Whene'er their suffering years are run,
Spring forth to greet the glittering sun:
Such joy, though far transcending sense,
Have pious souls at parting hence.
On earth, and in the body placed,
A few, and evil years, they waste:
But when their chains are cast aside,
See the glad scene unfolding wide,
Clap the glad wing and tower away,
And mingle with the blaze of day!'


Thomas Parnell



So it must be with all things that have such a mournful and useless appearance on this earth. Most especially the current monetary system and its apologists!

AIG Bonuses

If we as a nation are so crazy as to forgo bonuses for AIG employees whoever can we possibly get with the requisite expertise to take their place now that Bernard Madoff is going to jail? Maybe he could get a work release. (Alas.)

General Relativity, the Monadology, Harmony of the Worlds and the Degeneracy of Voltaire

When Plato's Socrates is situated declaiming on the degenerate profligacy of the wayward arts in the Republic, the perspective that must be allowed him should only be delimited to satirizing bacchantic frenzies as art that would masquerade as anything approaching truth in beauty. This perspective or weltanschauung is the Republic's myth of the cave or the island of Sancho Panza's governiate -- the make believe world of Lewis Carroll's Flatland or the false dichotomy of right brain/left brain of art versus science. It is the phony chop logic of Dr. Pangloss mock tragedy of Leibniz' genius, i.e. the eternal and continuously reenergized monadology.

Take, for example, Dante's Paradiso as a template. Did he not situate a sort of immortal dialectic or Socratic dialog on the completely relative frame of reference of the earth's moon in contradistinction to the idiocy of the Ptolemaic banality of "Mother Earth" Gaia corybantic phrensy (as in "Neoplatonic" cabbalists magic hokum)? Isn't this indeed that which Albert Einstein continued? The best of all possible worlds as opposed to the rock and rolldom's 666 Beast Aleister Crowley, is Einstein's own truly "gauge fixed" general relativity. Isn't this concept sempiternal? -- As it undergoes a continuous timely updating relative to one's own "mortal coil" in the here and now?

Image, if you will, the peculiar multifunctionality of the biophysical domain juxtaposed to the merely inorganic substrate whence it derives. The distance from that dead continuum to the plenum of the living realm is a "poetic" equivalent of the distance from the the living to the thinking self reflexive creativity of human endeavor. It is Cantor's transfinite conceptual updating of Nicholas of Cusa's non-other. Which is the refutation at once of both "cybernetics" and the degenerate Cartesian Grassmanian Wienerian fiction of "absolute entropy". (As opposed to the relative correctness of the Carnot cycle.)

This Schopenhauer-like world weariness emerges from a Mephistophelian myopia. In the make believe land where supposedly "we all agree that no one foresaw the current economic crisis" (except for modern day Epimethius LaRouche) we kowtow to feces on a canvass as art. This is the true aesthetic excresance of the misbegotten progeny of Mr. Voluntaire's misconception.