peter

Energy, Work, Force, Mass and Matter

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Sep 182010

http://circlon-theory.com/HTML/EmcFallacies.html

What is energy? What is mass? How are they related? Does energy have mass? Is mass really ever converted to energy?

Actually, mass is a form of energy, called inertia.

What do we mean by “form” of energy? How many “forms” of energy are there?

—

There is this idea that inertial-mass-energy (matter) is created from empty space, or the vacuum energy. Like with gravity and a ball on a hill, the vacuum energy is the potential energy, which is converted to the kinetic energy of mass-energy (matter).

So matter is energy that has been created from the vacuum.

In fact, according to the theory of inflation, this vacuum energy is what may have caused the big bang.

This means that the ultimate mystery of the universe lies in this vacuum energy (space itself).

Theorists are using quantum mechanics to extrapolate the idea of a particle called an inflaton, which decays into matter through a process called reheating.

—

When we think of gravity we think of massive objects exerting a force on each other, which is natural because this is what Newton taught us. But when we truly begin to digest Einstein’s advanced course on gravity we see that massive objects do not pull on each other at all; rather, we come to see that massive objects pull on space itself, deforming it, and that this deformation (or “warping”) of space in turn causes the acceleration of the matter that rests in it.

Thus the mystery becomes the nature of space itself, what it is, how it works. All of physics awaits for this answer and is incomplete without it.

—

I am having a hard time visualizing the distinction between energy and motion. I think kinetic energy IS motion and heat is a transfer of kinetic energy from one object to another.

But pure motion is an abstraction, like pure energy? There is only motion of some THING? Likewise, energy is not separate from some thing. Rather, energy IS a thing? There are only things? Forces are just things touching? This seems strange only because we can’t see the things that are touching? But at the very bottom of this touching, it is always the same thing touching the same other thing… electrons and photons. Their eternal dance adds up to everything there is?

Like space-time, energy-mass is the true concept (the idea of “space” as something separate and distinct from “time” is incorrect, as is the idea of energy as something separate and distinct from matter). The separation of these is a fallacy. Just as you cannot have pure motion, separate from some thing that is in motion, you cannot have time without space, or energy without mass.

That’s just facts of the universe.

So we have this energy-mass. This is what we have when we have some physical thing, like 1) a rock, or 2) a radio wave. In both cases, we have some physical thing in motion. With the rock, the atoms are in motion like planets around the sun while the rock itself seems to stand still like the solar system. But the solar system is not still, it is moving through the galaxy. And the galaxy is moving, etc.

Likewise, the rock is on the earth, which is moving… The radio wave, on the other hand, does not seem still like the rock does (even thought the rock is not really still). So what is the difference? The rock and the radio wave are both physical things and both of them are in motion, but for the rock the motion (of the electrons) is inside, caught in a loop around the nucleus of the atoms. In the radio wave, the electrons are not caught in a loop. And that is the difference. Loopy vs non-loopy motion. Matter vs energy. Rock vs light.

OK, so everything is moving. And this motion is where mass comes from, and as we pointed out above, there is no motion without mass. The faster something moves, the more massive it becomes. When it “stops moving” it’s atoms are still moving, so it still has mass.

We see this when a ball bounces on the ground, finally coming to rest. But we know from the laws of thermodynamics that motion is never lost in the universe, so where did the motion go? The ball transfered a little bit of its motion into the atoms of the floor each time they touched. And this is all physics is, really. Things touch. And when they do, motion is transferred. This is what happens when you touch your desk, look at the wall, hear a song on the radio, taste and smell. These experiences are each the result of physical touch (electrons exchanging photons) which results in the transfer of motion from one piece of matter to another.

The transfer of motion happens through a phenomena that we call heat. When the ball touches the floor, it transfers motion to the atoms of the floor and therefore heat is created.

Force

For something to move faster, something else must move slower because the only way to make something move is through the physical touch of some other, faster moving thing pushing it. This pushing is what we call a force and this pushing creates a change in speed. This change in speed is what we call acceleration, which can only be achieved through what we call work. So we have two things. One thing is moving. The other thing is moving faster. The two things touch, creating a force. The faster thing slows down. The slower thing speeds up. The speed is called energy, the change in speed is called acceleration, (the transfer of speed from one thing to another is also described as heat – is heat and acceleration the same thing?) and as a result we say that work has occurred. The contact of the two things is called force.

Yes, you see force is not some invisible magic that goes back and forth between physical objects. Let us be clear about this: there is nothing in the universe that is not a physical object! All “forces” are nothing more than physical objects smashing into one another. For example, think of two magnets. When you push them together you can feel them repel. At first glance it seems you have two physical objects that are exerting some force over some distance between them. But we have learned that this is not what is in fact happening. The truth is that what we see as the “edge” of the magnet is not really the edge of the magnet. The physical, material parts of the magnet (its electrons) extend out into space beyond what we can see. So what seems like a force repelling the magnets, is nothing more than the magnets physically rubbing up against each other in exactly the same way that we rub up against the desk when we push our finger into it. The difference is simply in the density of the material. But when we push our finger into the desk, what we feel is nothing else but the electrons of the desk pushing back against the electrons of our finger, which is exactly what is happening when we push two magnets together. If you were to zoom in on this interaction of your finger pushing down on the desk, you would find something that looks like a sesame seed (the proton) with a grain of sand (electron) orbiting two miles around it. What you feel when you push your finger into the desk is what happens when two sesame seeds come within “4 miles” of each other. It is very difficult to get those seeds to get any closer. In fact, it takes one of the most powerful events in the universe to make those sesame seeds get any closer. And this is why it is not very easy to push your finger through the desk, despite the fact that 99.9 % of your finger, as well as the desk, is empty space.

The magic of magnets is simply that we can push one physical thing into the other. And this is simply because the arrangement of the electrons in a magnet are not 2 miles from their proton, but something more like 2 hundred thousand. The magic of magnets is that the electrons (grains of sand in our analogy) have extended their orbit much farther from their sesame seed than what we find in non-magnetic material.

—

This is the craziness of physics. Everything is everything. One thing is just a derivative of another thing. Energy, mass, gravity, all intertwined, not separate, but one.

You hear that heat is a form of energy, but this is wrong. Heat is a process by which energy is transferred. Heat, and the kinetic energy of molecules refer to the same thing when heat is used as a form of energy. Instead, it is more accurate to visualize the kinetic energy of molecules as their wiggle speed. Wiggle speed can go up or down. When wiggle speed goes up, we say heat increased. It got hotter. The temperature went up. What caused this? Something else that was wiggling had to come into physical contact with our original molecules and make them wiggle faster. This event we just described as “make them wiggle faster” is what we refer to when we say that we heated, or added energy to.

Thus what we call heat flow is really the average result of trillions of atoms and molecules transferring their kinetic energy, through the work process, to other atoms and molecules.

Forms of energy: light, heat, chemical, motion

There are many forms of energy, but they all fall into one of two classes: potential, and kinetic

Potential energy: chemical, mechanical, nuclear, gravitational, electrical

Kinetic energy: radiant, thermal, motion, sound

Kinetic energy is motion and potential energy is “stored” but what this seems to mean is that kinetic energy is motion released and potential energy is motion trapped. But the motion is constant. It is not created or destroyed. The atoms of still objects have a lot of motion.

First thing to realize when thinking of energy and mass is that, like time and space, these are not separate things that relate to one another or act on one another. They are the same thing. Two sides of a coin, so to speak.

Related to all of this is: motion. Would any of these exist without motion?

To say that matter can be converted to energy is just to say that the rotational kinetic energy of something that is spinning around in an atom can become the linear kinetic energy of something shooting away from an atom.

Rest mass

Rest mass is the quantitative value of a body of matter’s resistance to change in motion

Kinetic mass

Kinetic mass is the quantitative value of a body of matter’s increased resistance to change in motion that occurs when it is accelerated in any direction relative to its natural position of rest.

Can it be this simple? If you think of energy as motion (probably not the most accurate analogy – or is it?), then realize that the atom has a darn lot of motion in it, then it makes sense that this motion could be redirected. The redirection of all this inward, circulating motion to outward, straight-line motion is the so-called “conversion of matter to energy” described by E=MC2.

Photons don’t accelerate. They are always moving at the speed of light, whether trapped in the pieces of the atom, or redirected away from the atom.

So we have all this motion and we are redirecting it. From all this motion comes friction and heat. Heat is the transfer of motion from one thing to another.

Kinetic mass is directly proportional to the energy associated with the body’s motion relative to its position of rest according to the formula (E=MC²). Kinetic mass and kinetic energy are complimentary components of a body of matter’s motion that do not exist separately. They are the opposite sides of a coin rather than two different coins.

Photonic mass

A photon with an energy of one has a rest mass of one. When a photon is absorbed by an atom, half of its energy stays with the photon as spin and the other half is transferred to the atom’s structure. Its kinetic energy (_KE=MC²/2=1/2) remains with the photon as it becomes imbedded within matter. Its rotational kinetic energy (_RE=IW²/2) leaves the photon and is transferred to the atomic structure of the absorbing matter. This energy can either remain within a single atom to be used in the emission of a photon at a later time, or in some substances it can be passed from atom to atom in a coherent wave.

When the wave reaches the surface, its energy can be used in the emission of a photon. A photon remains intact with its rest mass after it is absorbed by an atom. When it absorbs the necessary energy from the internal motions of the atom it is emitted. The spin shock waves from photons temporarily increase the kinetic mass of the atoms that they move through.

When a photon goes from rest to the speed of light, it does not accelerate. The stationary photon from which it originated was spinning with several types of circular motion at the speed of light. When the photon’s circular structure within the particle breaks, the motion of the photon’s mass changes from all circular motion to one half circular motion and one half linear motion but its velocity C remains unchanged.

Does Gravity Exist

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Sep 182010

The holographic principle, deriving Newton’s laws, and gravity as entropy

On The Fundamentals

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Sep 182010

What is a fundamental? Something that is not derived. Something that cannot be explained in terms of something else. For example, our understanding holds the following to be fundamentals: mass, length, time, energy, force, charge…

We have trouble really understanding these, because understanding is done through analogy and definitions. Normal definitions are based upon deeper concepts, and when we finally arrive at the deepest concepts of all, we cannot “take them apart” into their fundamental pieces. What is charge? What is mass? What is time? This is like asking “what is ‘WHAT’?” or “what is ‘IS’?” Very hard to answer.

1) What is a force?

According to the Standard Model… In the conceptual model of fundamental interactions, matter consists of fermions, which carry properties called charges and spin ±¹⁄₂ (intrinsic angular momentum ±ħ/2, where ħ is the reduced Planck constant). They attract or repel each other by exchanging bosons.

The interaction of any pair of fermions in perturbation theory can then be modeled thus:

Two fermions go in → interaction by boson exchange → Two changed fermions go out.

The exchange of bosons always carries energy and momentum between the fermions, thereby changing their speed and direction. The exchange may also transport a charge between the fermions, changing the charges of the fermions in the process (e.g. turn them from one type of fermion to another). Since bosons carry one unit of angular momentum, the fermion’s spin direction will flip from +¹⁄₂ to −¹⁄₂ (or vice versa) during such an exchange (in units of the reduced Planck’s constant).

Because an interaction results in fermions attracting and repelling each other, an older term for “interaction” is force.

The modern (perturbative) quantum mechanical view of the fundamental forces other than gravity is that particles of matter (fermions) do not directly interact with each other, but rather carry a charge, and exchange virtual particles (gauge bosons), which are the interaction carriers or force mediators. For example, photons mediate the interaction of electric charges, and gluons mediate the interaction of color charges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermion

—
2) What is a field?

In modern physics, the most often studied fields are those that model the four fundamental forces

A field may be thought of as extending throughout the whole of space. In practice, the strength of every known field has been found to diminish to the point of being undetectable.

Defining the field as “numbers in space” shouldn’t detract from the idea that it has physical reality. “It occupies space. It contains energy. Its presence eliminates a true vacuum.”^[2] The vacuum is free of matter, but not free of field. The field creates a “condition in space””^[3]

If an electrical charge is moved, the effects on another charge do not appear instantaneously. The first charge feels a reaction force, picking up momentum, but the second charge feels nothing until the influence, traveling at the speed of light, reaches it and gives it the momentum. Where is the momentum before the second charge moves? By the law of conservation of momentum it must be somewhere. Physicists have found it of “great utility for the analysis of forces”^[3] to think of it as being in the field.

“The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real… a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have”^[3].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_%28physics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

—–

Thoughts and questions on fields and forces and matter and particles…

What is the difference between a particle and its field? Where does one end and the other begin?

In one of the paragraphs above, an electrical charge is described as if it is a physical thing, rather than some property of a thing. Is this true? What does it mean to speak of interactions between charges, as opposed to speaking of interactions between particles (which may “carry” a charge)?

—-

3) What is a charge?

Electric charge is a physical property of matter which causes it to experience a force when near other electrically charged matter.

Let’s restate that, with our standard model version of force:

Electric charge is a physical property of a fermion which causes it to exchange bosons when near other fermions.

The electric charge is a fundamental conserved property of some subatomic particles, which determines their electromagnetic interaction. Electrically charged matter is influenced by, and produces, electromagnetic fields. The interaction between a moving charge and an electromagnetic field is the source of the electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental forces (See also: magnetic field).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(physics)

Follow up questions: When we say electric charge, are we saying the same thing as “electron?” Are these terms equivalent? No. Because protons also have charge, as do positrons and other particles. But we can say that an electron IS a certain type of electric charge. Likewise, we can say that a positron is another certain type of electric charge. A proton, however, is more than just an electric charge? Charge and Electricity are the same thing, but the word electricity is commonly used to mean electromagnetic energy, which is something different. Charge is not electromagnetic radiation, but when a charge moves, it creates electromagnetic radiation.

Charge is also not energy. Charge is to energy what air is to sound waves. Charge is what energy moves? Charge is the pole (+) and (-) of matter

Charge is…

…the stuff that flows during an electric current.

…the stuff that appears on a balloon when you rub it on your hair.

…the stuff that comes in two kinds: positive and negative.

…the Plus and Minus electric poles (as opposed to North and South magnetic poles.)

…the stuff that causes electrical forces.

…charge is the “glue” that connects all of the flux-lines of electrostatic fields to protons and electrons.

…charge is the positive and negative stuff that forms atoms.

…charge is the stuff that is carried by electrons, protons, positrons, and other particles.

…charge is the medium that energy flows through (like sound flows through air.)

…charge is the stuff that, when it wiggles fast, creates light.

…charge is the stuff that, when it wiggles slower, creates radio waves.

…charge is the stuff that, when it wiggles very slowly, creates energy in electric circuits.

…charge is the stuff that, when it flows or spins, creates magnetism.

…charge is the stuff that reflects light and makes objects visible.

…charge is the stuff that makes metals look metallic or “silvery.”

…charge is the stuff that causes electrical attraction and holds everyday objects together.

…charge is the stuff inside of wires that is movable, almost fluid.

…charge is the stuff inside of nonconductors that is immobile and “frozen” in place.

…charge is the stuff that is measured in units called Coulombs.

…charge is the stuff that scientists once called “quantity of electricity” and “particles of electricity.”

http://amasci.com/elect/charge1.html

4) What is electricity?

http://amasci.com/miscon/whatis.html

Mother Teresa’s Prayer

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Sep 182010

Here is an account of what Mother Teresa supposedly said when questioned about how she prayed.

The interviewer asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?”

Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t talk, I simply listen.”

Believing he understood what she had just said, the interviewer next asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you when you pray?”

Mother Teresa replied, “He also doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”

There was a long silence, with the interviewer seeming a bit confused and not knowing what to ask next.

Finally Mother Teresa breaks the silence by saying, “If you can’t understand the meaning of what I’ve just said, I’m sorry but there’s no way I can explain it any better.”

–

“The fruit of SILENCE is Prayer
The fruit of PRAYER is Faith
The fruit of FAITH is Love
The fruit of LOVE is Service
The fruit of SERVICE is Peace”
— Mother Teresa’s Business Card

Arrogance Is Never Religious

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Sep 082010

I was thinking about our conversation today and it occurred to me that the “I am right and you are wrong” attitude is not an indictment of religion, but of arrogance.

I find it frustrating that public discussions of religion are rarely centered around what religion is actually about, what religion actually teaches, such as love, humility, compassion, forgiveness, redemption, and charity. Talk about “religious truths” are never about these, but rather, the metaphysical aspects of the unknowable.

Here is a very well-known, truly Catholic (universal) prayer that captures the essence of what I have been taught by my religion…

—
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following Your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please You.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
—

This is the “religion” that I have been taught in the Catholic Church: humility, hope, and faith. Arrogance, on the other hand, is never a religious virtue, and where it appears, “religion” has been tossed aside in favor of ego, just as it was in the Garden. When someone says, “I am right and you are wrong” I would argue that they are no longer dealing in religion, but rather their own ego.

As always, I enjoy these discussions.

Shalom,
.
.
“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.” — Einstein

The Useless Tree

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Aug 112010

A carpenter and his apprentice were walking together through a large forest. And when they came across a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful tree, the carpenter asked his apprentice: “Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old and beautiful?” The apprentice looked at his master said: “No, why?”

“Well,” the carpenter said, “because it is useless. If it had been useful it would have been cut long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax.”

— Chuang Tzu

A life without a quiet center easily becomes delusional. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, we become possessive, defensive, and dependent on false identities. In the solitude of prayer we slowly unmask the illusion of our dependencies and possessiveness, and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can control or conquer but what is given to us from above to channel to others. In solitary prayer we become aware that our identity does not depend on what we have accomplished or possess, that our productivity does not define us, and that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.

— Henri Nouwen

Bernard Lonergan

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Aug 112010

To know what is truly so and appreciate what is truly good.

The Generalized Empirical Method

1) Be attentive
2) Be intelligent
3) Be reasonable
4) Be responsible

Knowing

It is not through true judgment that we reach knowledge of existence, it is through knowledge of existence that we know true judgment

Ontological causes —————-> Soul — Potencies — Acts — Objects <———————-Cognitional Reasons

Knowledge… is not an accomplished fact… but only a goal, the end, the objective of a natural desire.

According to Aquinas, the object of the natural desire of our intellects includes the ens per essentiam. When we learn of God’s existence, spontaneously we ask what God is; but to ask what something is, releases a process that does not come to rest until knowledge of essence is attained.

The natural desire to know is the natural desire to know being.

Understanding God

“There are two ways of seeing God. One is perfect vision, in which the essence of God is seen. The other is imperfect; though in this vision we do not see what God is, we do see what he is not. And, in this life, the better we understand God to transcend whatever is grasped by intellect, the more perfectly also do we know him”

1) the subject of theology is not a set of propositions or a set of truths but a reality

2) theology itself is an understanding, for science is a process towards a terminal understanding

3) this understanding is not of God himself, for then the science would not be subalternated but subalternating

4) an understanding of the revelation cannot be adequate, for revelation is about God and God himself is not understood.

Conversion

There is an intellectual conversion by which a person has personally met the challenges of a cognitional theory, an epistemology, a metaphysics, and a methodology.

There is a moral conversion by which a person is committed to values above mere satisfactions.

And there is an affective conversion by which a person relies on the love of neighbor, community, and God to heal bias and prioritize values.

Conversion as Lonergan understands it is three-fold. Although he never uses the explicit phrase in Insight, in fact the entire book is an exercise in intellectual conversion. It is about coming to the realization that one’s knowing is commonly a mixture of two different kinds of knowing, and about the process of learning to distinguish between the two and to discern their proper roles. To this Method in Theology adds moral and religious conversion. Moral conversion is the shift from self-satisfaction to value as the criterion of one’s decision-making and action. Finally, Lonergan conceives of religious conversion as a being-in-love in an unrestricted fashion. It is the gift of God’s grace flooding our hearts.

Love

Love liberates the subject to see values: Some values result not from logical analyses of pros and cons but rather from being in love. Love impels friends of the neurotic and egoist to draw them out of their self-concern, freeing their intelligence to consider the value of more objective solutions. Love of humanity frees loyalists to regard other groups with the same intelligence, reason and responsibility as they do their own. Love of humanity frees the celebrated person of common sense to appreciate the more comprehensive viewpoints of critical history, science, philosophy and theology. Love of a transcendent, unreservedly loving God frees a person from blinding hatred, greed and power mongering, liberating him or her to a divinely shared commitment to what is unreservedly intelligible, reasonable, responsible and loving.
Love brings hope: There is a power in the human drama by which we cling to some values no matter how often our efforts are frustrated. Our hopes may be dashed, but we still hope. This hope is a desire rendered confident by love. Those who are committed to self-transcendence trust their love to strengthen their resolve, not only to act against the radical unintelligibility of basic sin, but also to yield their personal advantage for the sake of the common good. Such love-based hope works directly against biased positive self-images as well as negative images of fate that give despair the last word. To feel confident about the order we hope for, we do not look to theories or logic. We rely on the symbols that link our imagination and affectivity. These inner symbols are secured through the external media of aesthetics, ritual, and liturgy.
Love opposes revenge: There is an impulse in us to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. While any adolescent can see that this strategy cannot be the foundation of a civil society, it is difficult to withhold vengeance on those who harm us. It is the nature of love, however, to resist hurting others and to transcend vengeance. It is because of such transcendent love that we move beyond revenge to forgiveness and beyond forgiveness to collaboration.

On Understanding God

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Aug 062010

Thanks! I enjoy these discussions. On the first point of St Thomas’ proof, CS Lewis says it this way: “That there is anything at all is proof of the original thing.” I like that.

The idea of the unmoved mover is from Aristotle, correct? Much, or at least a good portion of what St Thomas is saying (ideas of causation and the prime mover, etc) is taken from Aristotle rather directly, I believe.

I recall reading various proofs, including St Thomas. I did not read this very thoroughly but if I understand correctly, it is a proof based on Aristotle’s concept of causality which places causes in the future. I remember that this reading, at the time I read it, led me to a lot of reading on causality. Aristotle seems to speak of causes the way we speak of purposes – purpose and function can exist before the thing itself because these exist in the design of the thing itself. Causes, on the other hand only move in one direction, from past to future. The idea that there is an end to which all things move, and that this end is the cause of all movement quickly leads to precisely the kind of discussions that I was trying to avoid. It is in this line of thinking – trapped in philosophical knots – that I have spent way, way too much time. And for me, it did not ultimately lead to a better understanding of God. Reading the philosophy of language, yes. Reading of the attempts to formalize logic to remove the ambiguities of language, yes. Reading of the discoveries of the limitations of mathematical systems to avoid paradox, yes. Reading of the philosophy of mind, yes. Reading of the paradoxes of consciousness, yes. I pursued all of these avenues, following the other thinkers down all these trails in the attempt to find a solution to the knots. And I forgot all about God during this time.

Therefore, this is precisely the kind of discussion I was trying to avoid, and trying to rescue my brothers from. It gets further and further away from anything that resembles knowing God. Everything I just said in the previous paragraph about causation and Aristotle may be completely wrong, but I feel that to spend time on it is to spend time apart from knowing God.

Therefore, my efforts in my comments is to stress the simple fact that it is the heart, not the mind that ultimately bears witness to God’s love. I am not rejecting reason by any means, I am simply trying to make the point that reason alone is not enough to “know” God. We can spend a lot of time discussing causation to make sure we unknot all the mixed concepts, distinguishing between a cause and a purpose, etc. But at the end of the exercise we will not be closer to knowing God, simply because the mind alone can no more understand God than a child can “understand” parenthood. The nature of teenagers is they think they know everything because their philosophy of the meaning of “knowing” is limited to the domain of their mind. They do not yet know that there is knowledge that can only come from direct experience. Love, for example, cannot be known if it is not experienced. If you have never experienced love, thinking about love will not fill the gap left by that lack of experience. Because the self transcends mind and can have experiences, there is knowledge and understanding that transcends mind. This is why you can never program a robot to know or understand love.

Experience, in other words, transcends pure reason. This is an important point, for it is not the mind that has experiences, it is the self. We are not our minds. We are more than our thoughts and to the extent that we remain locked in our minds, we remain alienated from who we really, truly are. The oracle at Delphi says, “Know thyself.” To do this requires that we know more than just our minds. It is in this “more than just our minds” which I am trying to point to. It is in this movement, from mind to heart, where God is revealed to us.

The Naturalist, by thinking there is nothing outside of Reason’s grasp, thinks that the only tool needed to know God is reason alone. I am saying that reason alone is not enough and never will be. I am not rejecting reason, however. We use reason to explain what is revealed to us, but without this revelation, there is nothing to explain. In other words, to understand God, you have to get beyond mere thinking. God is revealed to us through experience, not logic puzzles. When we say we understand God, I think we mean we recognize this revelation. But this is, and always will be, a mystery, not a puzzle.

When we say that it is the heart, not the mind, that bears witness to God, we are saying that God is not a mere logic puzzle for pure reason to solve. When I speak of proofs, this is what I am speaking of. Instead of drawing the discussion further and further into causation and epistemology, I am trying to pull the discussion from the mind into the heart. You don’t have to reject the mind to get to God, but you do have to move past the mind and find the true self that rests in God, in the heart, the center and ground of your being.

As long as we remain stuck in our mind, ignoring our heart, we will remain hopelessly lost in our search for an understanding of God.

The Theory of Almost Everything

Books, Physics Comments Off

Aug 052010

Perhaps one of my favorite opening paragraphs to a book…

There is a theory in physics that explains, at the deepest level, nearly all of the phenomena that rule our daily lives. It summarizes everything we know about the fundamental structure of matter and energy. It provides a detailed picture of the basic building blocks from which everything is made. It describes the reactions that power the sun and the interactions that cause fluorescent lights to glow. It explains the behavior of light, radio waves, and X rays. It has implications for our understanding of the very first moments of the universe’s existence, and for how matter itself came into being. It surpasses in precision, in universality, in its range of applicability from the very small to the astronomically large, every scientific theory that has ever existed. This theory bears the unassuming name “The Standard Model of Elementary Particles,” or the “Standard Model, for short. I call it “The Theory of Almost Everything.” It is the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement to date.

The Grand Inquisitor

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Jul 052010

To the students in your class who think no one would choose against salvation, you could refer them to Nietzche, or to Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov…

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The story is told by Ivan to Alyosha, who are brothers (The Brothers Karamazov) of The Grand Inquisitor, during the Inquisition. It is a story that Ivan has written and is relating to his brother where Christ comes back, and the GI recognizes Him, and throws him in jail.

We learn that the GI is a Jesuit – a high up leader of the Roman Catholic Church – who supposedly loves humanity, who has suffered in solitude, following the Way of Christ. But he has come to the conclusion that man is too weak for the freedom that Christ gave him when he denied the 3 temptations of Satan. The GI is furious at Christ for not taking the offer, because, as he argues, it would have united all of humanity in a worldwide, harmonious kingdom on earth, accomplishing and satisfying everything that mankind strives, suffers, and longs for.

“In accepting the kingdom of the world and Caesar’s purple, one
would found a universal kingdom and secure to mankind eternal peace.”

The GI argues that Christ has denied mankind this great kingdom and given them instead a freedom which they do not want, and do not accept. Thus, the GI reveals the true mission of the Roman Catholic Church (according to Ivan, who is telling the story) which is to finish the job for which Christ came, correcting his error in denying Satan.

But it is only then that men will see the beginning of a kingdom of
peace and happiness. Thou art proud of Thine own elect, but Thou
has none other but these elect, and we–we will give rest to all.…

The GI argues (in a rant to Christ, who is imprisoned) that most of mankind cannot or will not use their free will to choose the Way of Christ (the only path to true freedom), but rather, the vast majority of mankind will use their free will to choose the desires of the flesh, thus turning their back on freedom and choosing sin and worldly destruction and death. Supposedly, the GI has not lost faith in the Way that Christ has shown, but he does not believe man can rise to the challenge and because he has not (supposedly) lost his love of mankind, he has decided to deny Christ and to deceive mankind, giving them what they “really” want so that they may go joyfully and peacefully to the worldly death and destruction they will inevitably choose, all the while believing that they are destined for everlasting peace in heaven. According to Ivan, mankind is doomed, even under Christ’s plan, since they are too weak to follow His Way. Thus Ivan (the GI’s) argument is that since mankind is largely doomed the job of the Roman Catholic Church is to make them believe otherwise so that they may have at least some temporary joy and peace, albeit illusory. To Christ, the GI says:

Thinkest Thou we shall be right or still lying?
They will convince themselves of our rightness, for they will see
what a depth of degrading slavery and strife that liberty of
Thine has led them into. Liberty, Freedom of Thought and
Conscience, and Science will lead them into such impassable
chasms, place them face to face before such wonders and insoluble
mysteries, that some of them–more rebellious and ferocious than
the rest–will destroy themselves; others–rebellious but weak
–will destroy each other; while the remainder, weak, helpless
and miserable, will crawl back to our feet and cry: “‘Yes; right
were ye, oh Fathers of Jesus; ye alone are in possession of His
mystery, and we return to you, praying that ye save us from
ourselves!”

[…]

Who separated the flock and scattered it over ways
unknown if it be not Thee? But we will gather the sheep once more
and subject them to our will for ever. We will prove to them
their own weakness and make them humble again, whilst with Thee
they have learnt but pride, for Thou hast made more of them than
they ever were worth.

We will give them that quiet, humble
happiness, which alone benefits such weak, foolish creatures as
they are, and having once had proved to them their weakness, they
will become timid and obedient, and gather around us as chickens
around their hen. They will wonder at and feel a superstitious
admiration for us, and feel proud to be led by men so powerful
and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a thousand
millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will
nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will
weaken, their eyes become as easily accessible to tears as those
of children and women; but we will teach them an easy transition
from grief and tears to laughter, childish joy and mirthful song.
Yes; we will make them work like slaves, but during their
recreation hours they shall have an innocent child-like life,
full of play and merry laughter. We will even permit them sin,
for, weak and helpless, they will feel the more love for us for
permitting them to indulge in it.

We will tell them that every
kind of sin will be remitted to them, so long as it is done with
our permission; that we take all these sins upon ourselves, for
we so love the world, that we are even willing to sacrifice our
souls for its satisfaction. And, appearing before them in the
light of their scapegoats and redeemers, we shall be adored the
more for it. They will have no secrets from us. It will rest with
us to permit them to live with their wives and concubines, or to
forbid them, to have children or remain childless, either way
depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and they will
submit most joyfully to us the most agonizing secrets of their
souls–all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will
authorize and remit them all in Thy name, and they will believe
us and accept our mediation with rapture, as it will deliver them
from their greatest anxiety and torture–that of having to
decide freely for themselves.

And all will be happy, all except
the one or two hundred thousands of their rulers. For it is but
we, we the keepers of the great Mystery who will be miserable.

There will be thousands of millions of happy infants, and one
hundred thousand martyrs who have taken upon themselves the curse
of knowledge of good and evil. Peaceable will be their end, and
peacefully will they die, in Thy name, to find behind the portals
of the grave–but death. But we will keep the secret inviolate,
and deceive them for their own good with the mirage of life
eternal in Thy kingdom. For, were there really anything like life
beyond the grave, surely it would never fall to the lot of such
as they!

[…]

Know then that I fear Thee
not. Know that I too have lived in the dreary wilderness, where I
fed upon locusts and roots, that I too have blessed freedom with
which thou hast blessed men, and that I too have once prepared to
join the ranks of Thy elect, the proud and the mighty. But I
awoke from my delusion and refused since then to serve insanity.
I returned to join the legion of those who corrected Thy
mistakes. I left the proud and returned to the really humble, and
for their own happiness. What I now tell thee will come to pass,
and our kingdom shall be built, I tell Thee not later than
to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock which at one simple
motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake, on
which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in
our work. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any
of the others our inquisitorial fires–it is Thee! To-morrow I
will burn Thee. Dixi’.”

Alyosha is horrified by his brother’s story…

“A precious piece of information, notwithstanding your ‘not
that.’ I ask you, why should the Inquisitors and the Jesuits of
your imagination live but for the attainment of ‘mean material
pleasures?’ Why should there not be found among them one single
genuine martyr suffering under a great and holy idea and loving
humanity with all his heart? Now let us suppose that among all
these Jesuits thirsting and hungering but after ‘mean material
pleasures’ there may be one, just one like my old Inquisitor, who
had himself fed upon roots in the wilderness, suffered the
tortures of damnation while trying to conquer flesh, in order to
become free and perfect, but who had never ceased to love
humanity, and who one day prophetically beheld the truth; who saw
as plain as he could see that the bulk of humanity could never be
happy under the old system, that it was not for them that the
great Idealist had come and died and dreamt of His Universal
Harmony. Having realized that truth, he returned into the world
and joined–intelligent and practical people. Is this so
impossible?”

“Joined whom? What intelligent and practical people?” exclaimed
Alyosha quite excited. “Why should they be more intelligent than
other men, and what secrets and mysteries can they have? They
have neither. Atheism and infidelity is all the secret they have.
Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, and that is all the
Mystery there is in it!”

“It may be so. You have guessed rightly there. And it is so, and
that is his whole secret; but is this not the acutest sufferings
for such a man as he, who killed all his young life in asceticism
in the desert, and yet could not cure himself of his love towards
his fellowmen? Toward the end of his life he becomes convinced
that it is only by following the advice of the great and terrible
spirit that the fate of these millions of weak rebels, these
‘half-finished samples of humanity created in mockery’ can be
made tolerable. And once convinced of it, he sees as clearly
that to achieve that object, one must follow blindly the guidance
of the wise spirit, the fearful spirit of death and destruction,
hence accept a system of lies and deception and lead humanity
consciously this time toward death and destruction, and moreover,
be deceiving them all the while in order to prevent them from
realizing where they are being led, and so force the miserable
blind men to feel happy, at least while here on earth. And note
this: a wholesale deception in the name of Him, in whose ideal
the old man had so passionately, so fervently, believed during
nearly his whole life! Is this no suffering? And were such a
solitary exception found amidst, and at the head of, that army
‘that thirsts for power but for the sake of the mean pleasures of
life,’ think you one such man would not suffice to bring on a
tragedy? Moreover, one single man like my Inquisitor as a
principal leader, would prove sufficient to discover the real
guiding idea of the Romish system with all its armies of Jesuits,
the greatest and chiefest conviction that the solitary type
described in my poem has at no time ever disappeared from among
the chief leaders of that movement. Who knows but that terrible
old man, loving humanity so stubbornly and in such an original
way, exists even in our days in the shape of a whole host of such
solitary exceptions, whose existence is not due to mere chance,
but to a well-defined association born of mutual consent, to a
secret league, organized several centuries back, in order to
guard the Mystery from the indiscreet eyes of the miserable and
weak people, and only in view of their own happiness? And so it
is; it cannot be otherwise. I suspect that even Masons have some
such Mystery underlying the basis of their organization, and that
it is just the reason why the Roman Catholic clergy hate them so,
dreading to find in them rivals, competition, the dismemberment
of the unity of the idea, for the realization of which one flock
and one Shepherd are needed. However, in defending my idea, I
look like an author whose production is unable to stand
criticism. Enough of this.”

“You are, perhaps, a Mason yourself!” exclaimed Alyosha. “You do
not believe in God,” he added, with a note of profound sadness in
his voice. But suddenly remarking that his brother was looking at
him with mockery, “How do you mean then to bring your poem to a
close?” he unexpectedly enquired, casting his eyes downward, “or
does it break off here?”

“My intention is to end it with the following scene: Having
disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear
his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He
has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him
all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the
face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him.
The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better
words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He
rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends
towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-
year-old lips. That is all the answer. The Grand Inquisitor
shudders. There is a convulsive twitch at the corner of his
mouth. He goes to the door, opens it, and addressing Him, ‘Go,’
he says, ‘go, and return no more… do not come again… never,
never!’ and–lets Him out into the dark night. The prisoner
vanishes.”

“And the old man?”

“The kiss burns his heart, but the old man remains firm in his
own ideas and unbelief.”

“And you, together with him? You too!” despairingly exclaimed
Alyosha, while Ivan burst into a still louder fit of laughter.

—

If the students in your class do not recognize the “Humanism” of Christopher Hitchens in this story put forth by Ivan – which is the supposed love of man that deems them unworthy for the Freedom Christ offers; this love that would deny them the harsh, brutal lie of Religion – then they need to think again, because this is alive and well today, more than at any other time perhaps. There is a strong movement that actively denies Christ, calls the Church a lie, and worships Man and Earth over Heaven.

The idea that everyone will be saved is imcompatible with what Christ teaches and Christopher Hitchens, Ivan, Doestevsky and a vast swath of modern thinking in the world today, all of which openly and categorically and emphatically deny Christ and His teaching.

Who are they kidding but themselves?

There are Ivans all around us. They run companies, gangs, governments and much of the world…

Compassion and Charity

Spirituality Comments Off

Jul 052010

The highest goal of Buddhism is compassion. The highest goal of Christianity is charity. Both of these are forms of love. But of these, charity is greater.

‘Who can be sure of having ever experienced a true charitable impulse? Who can doubt ever having felt compassion? One must begin with what is easiest, and unfortunately our talent for sadness is much greater than our talent for joy. And so we all need courage. And compassion, for others and for ourselves.

‘Or to put it another way: Christ’s message, which is love, is the more exhilarating, but Buddha’s lesson, which is compassion, is more realistic.

‘Therefore, “love and do what you wish” – or be compassionate and do what you must.’

Paradoxical Logic and the Meaning of Meaning

Philosophy Comments Off

Jul 052010

In referencing paradoxical logic (as opposed to Aristotelian) I think I said, Parmenides, but I meant Heraclitus…

‘In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one might call paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in Heraclitus’ philosophy, and then again under the name of dialectics in the thought of Hegel and Marx. The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearly described in general terms by Lao-Tse: “Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.” And by Chuang-tzu: “That which is one is one. That which is not-one, is also one.”‘

Under Aristotelian logic, Chuang-tzu’s statement cannot make sense, and yet we run into such paradoxes all the time, partly due to the ambiguity of language. The Zen/Heraclitus approach to logic is to undermine it with paradox, which in my mind at least, reveals a limitation of language, which is by nature a dualistic description of experience.Mathematicians tried to get around the ambiguity and contradiction of language by creating a perfect system of formal logic but Kurt Godel proved mathematically that this is impossible. Statements such as “this sentence is false” are examples of the inescapable paradox that eventually results from any system “complex enough” to engage in self-referential statements. If the sentence is true, it is false; only if it is false can it be true.Notice that all of this hinges on what we mean when we speak of “truth.” But I think we can escape such paradox by admitting that a set cannot contain itself. This is how Godel’s proof works in math: the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, for example. The set of all books does not contain itself, but the set of all non-book does contain itself. Without going further down this rabbit hole, this is where we get lost… by accepting the idea that a set can contain itself. It is not clear how to avoid this, except to say it is not allowed. But for some reason the geniuses behind these ideas do not say this. They allow a set to contain itself, and as a result, paradox.

“Call the set of all sets that are not members of themselves “R.” If R is a member of itself, then by definition it must not be a member of itself. Similarly, if R is not a member of itself, then by definition it must be a member of itself.”

What can this possibly mean, other than we are very capable of creating “impossible definitions?”

Similarly, we can talk of the sign in the barber shop that says, “I shave anyone who does not shave himself” and ask, does the barber shave himself? If he does, then he doesn’t and if he doesn’t then he does.

In other words, “this sentence is false.”

The only possible meaning that we can derive from such statements is that A is not A.

These kinds of paradoxes reveal how easy it is to ask impossible questions and make impossible definitions. These examples inevitably call into question the meaning of meaning. What does it mean to mean something?

Can God create a rock so big that even God can’t move it? If yes, then God is not all-powerful. If no, then God is not all-powerful.

This question does not reveal a problem with God, but the concept of an “all-powerful” being. If we mean to say that “all-powerful” means being able to do what cannot, by definition, be done, then we essentially say, “this sentence is false,” or, what is impossible is possible, or that the barber, who only shaves those who do not shave themselves, shaves himself.

In all of these paradoxes, we are essentially made to assume that A is not-A.

The question, in other words, makes no sense – unless we redefine what it means to “make sense.”

This is the meaning of meaning.

Therefore, we must admit that what is impossible is impossible, even for God. This does not contradict omnipotence, unless we define omnipotence as the ability to do the impossible, at which point we have flushed logic and sense down the toilet completely. This is the “Alice in Wonderland” world where we can accept as true the statement, “this sentence is false.” Once this is accepted, nothing is true, nothing is false.

It is important to note that we arrive at this disagreeable point by first saying that we allow what is not allowed (the impossible is possible).

We could just as well ask if God can create a spherical triangle, or if God knows the answer to the question, how many fingers does a blue have?

It is easy to ask God questions that He cannot answer. This does not put a limitation on God. Rather, it shows our ignorance of what meaning means.

The Miracle of Thinking by Richard Feynman

Physics Comments Off

Jul 012010

“You ask me if an ordinary person, by studying hard, can get to imagine these things like I image them? Of course! I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There’s no miracle, people. It just happens, they got interested in this thing and they learned all this stuff. They’re just people. There’s no talent, or miracle special ability to understand quantum mechanics or to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study so if you take an ordinary person who is willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and mathematics and time… and then he become a scientist.

Eckhart

Philosophy, Spirituality Comments Off

Jun 282010

“The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me” – Meister Eckhart

“The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life; your memories, your attachments. They burn ’em all away. But they’re not punishing you, he said. They’re freeing your soul. … If you’re frightened of dying and holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.” – from Jacob’s Ladder (quoting Eckhart?)

…Meister Eckhart would not even admit that God was good….Eckhart’s position was that anything that was good can become better, and whatever may become better may become best. God cannot be referred to as “good”, “better”, or best because He is above all things. If a man says that God is wise, the man is lying because anything that is wise can become wiser. Anything that a man might say about God is incorrect, even calling Him by the name of God. God is “superessential nothingness” and “transcendent Being”…”beyond all words and beyond all understanding. The best a man can do is remain silent, because anytime he prates on about God, he is committing the sin of lying. The true master knows that if he had a God he could understand, He would never hold Him to be God.’

Economics and Human Dignity

Just Sayin' Comments Off

Jun 222010

In response to http://www.zenit.org/article-29616?l=english

It is very important that the tendency of western capitalism to make commodities – of labor AND of consumers – be balanced by this sense of human dignity.

One of the long standing criticisms of capitalist societies has always been that capitalism needs “men who cooperate in large numbers to consume more and more and whose tastes can be standardized, easily influenced and anticipated.” To the extent that we are more influenced by marketing executives than we are by the Truth of who we are, this prediction shall come to pass. The celebrity worship we see creeping and creeping and creeping, deeper and deeper into our society, is evidence that even the self can be turned into a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, no different than any other object.

The outcome for such a man who has been turned into a commodity is that he experiences his life force as in investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions – in my business the bosses and professional career makers and advisors all talk about the idea that you are a brand. Careerism in the entertainment industry is reduced to the pure objectification of the self as an absolute commodity. This is the ultimate goal of every news anchor and commentator on TV, whether they be on the evening news or American Idol.

The alienation that this inevitably leads to causes such a man to seek relief in constant amusement, which serves as a temporary distraction from his alienation from himself. This man becomes like the man described in Brave New World: “well fed, well clad, yet without self.” Happiness is thought to be found in “having fun,” which is also turned into a commodity to be marketed, and bought and sold on the free market. Such a person is truly lost to themselves, with no capacity to love – except perhaps in the false, sentimental, emotional kind of “love” promoted in romance novels and Hollywood stories. And he is unable to love simply because he has become completely lost to himself. Such a man spins around and around in the influencers’ whirlwind, unable to find secure footing because he is not grounded in Truth.

Inasmuch as I consider myself a capitalist for economic and moral reasons (it has unprecedented power to eradicate poverty in the world), I also see that it is NOT a system of morals, and therefore it must be complimented with the knowledge and practice of Love, which is both the awareness of Truth and acknowledgment of who Man is. As you pointed out in your homily, to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am,” we must have first answered the question, “who do we say we are?” This question must be answered correctly if man is to retain any dignity whatsoever in this world.

Agnosonosia, Scrabble and the Unknown Unknown

Just Sayin' Comments Off

Jun 222010

God is the Machine (Digital Physics, Quantum Computation)

Physics Comments Off

Jun 112010

God is the Machine

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/holytech_pr.html

—

Seth Lloyd

This paper proposes a method of unifying quantum mechanics and gravity based on quantum computation. In this theory, fundamental processes are described in terms of pairwise interactions between quantum degrees of freedom. The geometry of space-time is a construct, derived from the underlying quantum information processing. The computation gives rise to a superposition of four-dimensional spacetimes, each of which obeys the Einstein-Regge equations. The theory makes explicit predictions for the back-reaction of the metric to computational `matter,’ black-hole evaporation, holography, and quantum cosmology.

—

Stephen Wolfram

A New Kind of Science

A History of the Quest for Computable Knowledge

The Timeline

You are a magnet

Physics Comments Off

May 302010

http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/

In fact, it is possible to magnetically levitate every material and every living creature on the earth due to the always present molecular magnetism. The molecular magnetism is very weak (millions times weaker than ferromagnetism) and usually remains unnoticed in everyday life, thereby producing the wrong impression that materials around us are mainly nonmagnetic. But they are all magnetic.

Seeing is believing:

A little frog (alive !) and a water ball levitate inside a Ø32mm vertical bore of a Bitter solenoid in a magnetic field of about 16 Tesla at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory.

Video of the levitating frog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-xw_fmB2KA

High Field Magnetic Laboratory Home Page:

http://www.ru.nl/hfml/

Why does the frog fly?

(this explanation is written in response to numerous inquiries from children who have not studied physics yet … or even do not want to study it at all)

As you might well know, all matter in the universe consists of small particles called atoms and each atom contains electrons that circle around a nucleus. This is how the world is made.
If one places an atom (or a large piece of a matter containing billions and billions of atoms) in a magnetic field, electrons doing their circles inside do not like this very much. They alter their motion in such a way as to oppose this external influence.
Incidentally, this is the most general principle of Nature: whenever one tries to change something settled and quiet, the reaction is always negative (you can easily check out that this principle also applies to the interaction between you and your parents). So, according to this principle, the disturbed electrons create their own magnetic field and as a result the atoms behave as little magnetic needles pointing in the direction opposite to the applied field*.

As you probably saw many times when playing with magnets, magnets push each other away if you try to bring together their like poles, for example, two north or two south poles. Similarly, the north pole of the external field will try to push away the “north poles” of magnetized atoms.
Our magnet creates a very large magnetic field (about 100 to 1000 times larger than school or household magnets).
In this field, all the atoms inside the frog act as very small magnets creating a field of about 2 Gauss (although very small, such a field can still be detected by a compass). One may say that the frog is now built up of these tiny magnets all of which are repelled by the large magnet. The force, which is directed upwards, appears to be strong enough to compensate the force of gravity (directed downwards) that also acts on every single atom of the frog. So, the frog’s atoms do not feel any force at all and the frog floats as if it were in a spacecraft.

Intuition Failure

About God

Spirituality Comments Off

Apr 142010

This is from one of the current top ten non fiction bestsellers. I found the title interesting as I have close friends who struggle with food issues, and with finding meaning in their lives. The very first chapter is called “About God.” The experience that is described is the typical religious mystical one, despite the author’s non-belief in God or religious mystical experiences:

And somehow, by deciding that I was no longer going to collude with the belief in my own degradation, something I never would have called me showed up: the presence of loveliness, the awareness of kindness, and the unmistakable knowledge that I belonged here.

I had no name for this kindness. I didn’t believe in God or mystical experiences, but there was no denying that I was having the direct experience of a nameless something that was bigger than my mind, my childhood, my stories of what was wrong and right.

The only way I can explain this now is that my suffering reached a critical mass of desperation: either I was going to kill myself or a completely different way of living was going to be revealed. And while I realize that in many cases human suffering does not lead to revelation, in my case it did.

… it was the pain of my relationship with food that opened the door.

— From Women Food and God

The Sacredness of Breathing

Spirituality Comments Off

Mar 312010

Breathing is the holiest of acts.

First, remove distractions. Close your eyes and direct your attention to breathing. This act interrupts any thoughts in the mind. As thoughts come back to the mind and you notice that your attention has moved away from this center, which is breathing, simply return your attention to breathing.

As this cycle repeats, try to make the thinking less and the breathing more, until, in the breathing, you experience not yourself breathing, but Him.

This is the secret sacredness of breathing. This exercise strengthens your focus and self control, and you will be calmer and stronger for it tomorrow. But more importantly, it brings you closer to your true self, which rests with God at the center of Being, for you cannot find your True Self without also finding God, for he is intimior intimio meo: “closer to me than I am to myself.”

The first step on the path to the True Self begins with a breath. This act is both an exercise and a prayer and it can be performed in small doses at any time during the day. Thus each moment can be sanctified with this holy act.

—

The Primacy of Being

I am not my actions
nor am I that which acts.
Neither am I my thinking
or that which thinks.
I am no-thing.
But that I am, means I am what-is.
This simple awareness of what-is
is the source of my constant joy, my awe and wonder.

—

I am not my thinking nor am I my actions, but these are very close to me for they follow from my being. Thus I am revealed in my actions and my thinking as these proceed from my being. When I meet Christ, it is my being who meets Him, not my thinking or my acting.

In much the same way is God revealed through the small things, yet He is never completely known.

Similarly, this is why it is not thinking, not understanding, nor doing or acting that has primacy; rather, it is the being from which these flow.

Christ invites us into His perfection. First and foremost, this means one must be a Christian, not just do Christian acts and think Christian thoughts.

This is the primacy of being.

“What is the value of great theological erudition
or great pastoral adeptness or intense but fleeting mystical experiences
or social activism when there is not a well-formed heart to guide a well-formed life?”
– Henri Nouwen

—

“You sanctify what you are grateful for”

My constant prayer is gratitude, for we sanctify what we are grateful for. In this act we can make holy for ourselves each moment of the day. This is what it means to smell the roses.

—

Bear Me Away – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow
of my substance and bear me away within yourself

—

Merton’s Prayer

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following Your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please You.
And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

—

Ignatius

Read.

Meditate.

Pray.

Act.

—

Perfect Joy

Philosophy Comments Off

Mar 282010

Is there to be found on earth a perfect happiness, a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how do you go about finding it? What should you try to do? What should you seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which your activity comes to rest? What should you accept? What should you love? What should you hate?

What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to.

What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death.

What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labor, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to. If people find they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair. They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy.

The rich make life intolerable, driving themselves in order to get more and more money which they cannot really use. In so doing, they are alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as if they were slaves to others.

The ambitious run day and night in pursuit of honors, constantly in anguish about the success of their plans, dreading the miscalculation that may wreck everything. Thus they are alienated from themselves, exhausting their real life in service of the shadow created by their insatiable hope.

The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow.

The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach. His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.

… I cannot tell if what the world considers “happiness” is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the verge of obtaining happiness.

For my part, I cannot accept their standards, whether of happiness or unhappiness. I ask myself if after all their happiness has any meaning whatever.

My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course.

… If you ask “what ought to be done” and “what ought not to be done” on earth to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things.

Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the “right” and the “wrong” at once become apparent all by themselves.

Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing (wu wei), you will have both happiness and well-being.

–Thomas Merton

Energy

Physics Comments Off

Mar 122010

Drop a ball on the floor and watch what happens.

The ball bounces a few times and eventually comes to rest.

But we know that there is a law called the conservation of energy, which means that the motion of the ball falling cannot be lost, it can only be transferred.

So after the ball has fallen, bounced around and come to rest, where is all that motion that all these physicists tell us has been conserved and not lost?

I mean, it looks to me like we had motion and now we have stillness. So does this violate the laws of physics which states that energy is never lost or gained?

But if we look closer we see that the motion is still there – in the atoms of the floor. How do we know that on each bounce, the ball transferred some of its motion to the atoms of the floor? Because we can measure the fact that the floor got hotter, and we know that heat is a mechanism by which motion is transferred from one object to another. and that temperature, as the average amount of heat in a body, tells us how fast or slow – on average – the atoms of that body are moving.

So, the motion of the falling ball was transferred (in part) to the floor on each bounce. Every time an atom touches another atom, motion (energy) is transferred. Motion goes from the faster to the slower atom. The faster atom slows down and the slower atom speeds up.

This is the law we spoke of before. The slowing down and the speeding up balances. Always.

Motion (energy) is never lost or gained.

This is the the most fundamental law of physics. It is the source of all the other subsequent mysteries.

Moreover, we see that the most fundamental tenent of physics, from which every law in the material universe is derived is simply this: that one thing touches another and this touching transfers motion from A to B.

The universe was born, containing a finite amount of energy (motion); the history of time is the story of the journey of that motion (energy) from object to object through physical touch. This description applies to every phenomena in the universe of the last 4.5 billion years.

What this means is that magnets do not exert a force over each other, they are physically touching each other, like the way the sun physically touches us. In other words, there is no such thing as force. There is only motion, and touching. Light is not “reflected” off of objects like a tennis ball off a wall. Rather, photons are absorbed into an electron and a different photon is released from the electron.

In other words, the photon’s motion is transferred to the electron. The electron moves (momentarily) to a higher vibration frequency (the quantum leap) but cannot escape the pull of the nucleus. The electron then releases the extra motion it received from the photon, emitting a new photon, and falls back to its equilibrium.

This new photon is not the same as the photon that went in. It is “colored” according to the vibrations of the electron. Our eyes feel the touch of this photon vibration frequency, converting its motion back into electrons in the retina, which our brains experience as color.

So when we see the color of an object it is because the object has reached out (radiated) and touched us physically. All of our senses are senses of physical touch, each sense responding to a certain frequency of motion. This wave harmonics is the method by which all information is communicated in the universe. We process waves, the motion of the universe, bit by bit, like a computer. We do this through touch, which is the phenomena of one wave (vibration) harmonizing with another wave (vibration). When we touch a desk, what we feel is the same thing the magnets feel – electrons resisting each other. The mechanism of this “resisting” is all just the vibration and wave harmonics of particles and atoms bumping into each other.

Intuition Failure

Math Comments Off

Feb 252010

A Simple Proof

x = 0.999…
10x = 9.99…
10x-x = 9.99… – 0.999…
9x = 9
x = 1

0.999… = 1

I Think, Therefore I am Confused

If you are like me, you look at this equation and scoff. Common sense and years of math intuition tell you that what is on the left is not the same as what is on the right. If you are like me, you are wrong. But if you are like me, you will look it up on wikipedia or at wolfram.com, or at Better Explained, or perhaps even watch vihart’s video explanation and you will see that there are rigorous proofs… but you will yet still have doubts, unsatisfied.

You are not alone. This is one of those bedeviling problems that has worn many a thinker – from Pythagoras forward – bald with head scratching.

Welcome to wonderland.

You see, it is not our fault. When you and I look at that equation, we imagine two distinct, finite numbers. This is what the form of these numbers want us to do. But this formulation is a visual shortcut to a deep, counter-intuitive concept that, if followed, will take you all the way down the rabbit hole; all the way back to Pythagoras and thousands of years of mathematical struggle and strife.

It turns out that mathematicians are not really that much different from you and I. They do not like all that rigor any more than you and I do. Well, maybe some of them do! But the truth is that the rigor came later, after years and years of intuition failure. And this is the interesting thing: the rigor is only there because we got stuck really bad.

But strangely, it turns out that Logic has the creative power to build Grand Tapestries that Imagination could never fathom – not even it it’s wildest dreams!

Imagining Number

The first thing that trips us up when we see the repeating decimal is we think of a discreet number that we can extend to the precision of our will. We imagine that we can subtract this number from 1 and measure the gap between them. But when we do imagine this, we must be imagining a discreet, finite number, which is to say we are NOT imagining 0.999… but some number infinitely smaller!

Ah, the joys of being a finite being trying to conceive and measure the infinite!

The problem, you see, is that this infinite decimal cannot be contained by the mental image we have of what a number is. It leaks out of the box. The mere utterance of the existence of such a number could incite murder in Pythagoras’ day!

We were taught to think of multiplication as repeated addition but one day that model, or image, or idea, stopped working for us. You may not even remember this. If you are like me, your intuition of number was already set and to this day you think of multiplication as repeated addition. But this is because when you and I think of number we do not think of sqrt(2).

From Better Explained:

In school, first we are told numbers are “counts” of something, then we learn to add, or “combine our counts.” Next, we learn that multiplication is just repeated addition and this interpretation works well for round numbers like 2 and 10 but concepts like -1 and sqrt(2) don’t work. Why? Our “model” or “analogy” or “picture” was incomplete. Numbers aren’t just a count; a better viewpoint is a position on a line. Now we see arithmetic as ways of transforming the location of this position to a new location. Addition is now seen as sliding and multiplication as scaling.

The moral of the story is that this is what happens when we reach the brink, or limit, of an idea. Our thoughts are created in images and sometimes those images just don’t work in certain situations and we have to find new images.

This is what is happening with the infinite series. The image we have in our head of what a number is breaks down. It no longer works. We have to throw intuition away and trust the rigors of logic. It was only because our intuition, and our images, failed us in places like this that we had to back up to the beginning and start to lay down the mathematical rigor and build up ever so carefully from the bottom up, making sure along the way that we were leaving absolutely no wiggle room in our logic and in our proofs. This took thousands of years and it is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Some problems literally stopped us in our tracks for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I admit, I have gone back and forth on this and many other similar issues, trying to fight what the mathematicians have proven. I myself do not know how to picture a “number” that can never be pinned down, one that is the sum of a process that never ends! I just can’t do it! Every time I try to imagine this “number” I am really imagining that the process has stopped. But it hasn’t and down the rabbit hole I go again!

But everything I am telling you has been proved in the most rigorous way. The only escape is to postulate a new kind of number and that leads to worse problems. But it has in fact been done. I don’t think the results are very pretty, though.

The Infinite Series

The equality at the top of this page is a shortcut way of writing “9(1/10) + 9(1/100) + 9(1/1000) … = 1”

This is called an “infinite series.” All such infinite series represent exactly one real number (in this case, 1) or run off to infinity. There are (possibly infinitely) many “infinite series” that represent (or converge to) any given real number. Which is to say, given any real number, there are many (possibly infinitely many) infinite series that correspond to it.

In other words, all real numbers can be “represented” as a repeating decimal. There is no debate about this. Incidentally, don’t you think this is a curious thing to say, that a number can be represented as another number!

(Re)Imagining Number

The problem begins when we ask the question, “what is the sum of this series,” which is to say: “add this to this to this to this and never stop, and when you are done, tell me what the sum is!” The contradiction should jump out at you at this point. The problem is that no one has been able to posit an escape from this contradiction.

The notation 0.999… is just a representation that we came up with so we could express the idea of “9(1/10) + 9(1/100) + 9(1/1000) … forever” more succinctly. The problem is that when we see 0.999… we think of a static number and imagine we can add digits to it to make it more and more precise at will. But in reality, the repeating decimal is just what we write down when we write down the “end product” of something that has no end.

The end product of something that has no end.

This is a contradiction. It does not make sense. But we created a map for it anyway, so that we could do arithmetic with it. As it turns out, we can do arithmetic with things that do not make sense in themselves. Nonsense squared = q; and q times q times q equals q3, which is nonsense cubed. As long as we forget the meaning of nonsense, we have no problem calculating nonsense cubed. My goal here is to point out the nonsense that we have glossed over in these last thousand years….

The source of the confusion in this case is that we want pictures, so we make a picture of 0.999… and then when we try to use that picture, it fails us because it leads us to believe that the equation, “0.999… = 1” is false. But this is because our intuition about what 0.999… means is wrong.

I agree with you: we intuitively imagine that there must always be a gap between 0.999… and 1, but that is because we can only imagine the process that is behind the symbol in finite terms. We think, “no matter how long you allow the process to run, it never reaches that for which it approaches.”

Seems rock solid, but it is in the phrase, “no matter how long” that we stumble, for in this phrase we are really postulating a finite length or duration – a “how long” of the process – at which point we stop the process and say “at this certain POINT in the series” there is a gap between our sum and 1.

In effect, we are saying, “there is a gap here. And here. And here. And here.” And so we conclude there is always a gap, QED. Watertight! Right?

No!

What we mean when we make that argument is that there is a gap at each finite point, each time we stop the process and measure. But this is sort of like the problem you have in quantum physics where the measurement collapses the strange, mysterious thing into the expected phenomenon. In so doing, we destroy the strange mysterious thing itself!

The crux of the problem is that you can never stop to take a measurement to see if there is a gap. Any time that you imagine a gap, you are stopping the addition machine and imagining a finite point. There is no getting around this because there is in fact no gap between 0.999… and 1 even though there is a gap at each and every finite point that is built into what 0.999… means!

Think of the problem in reverse, and ask, if there is a number between 0.999… and 1, what could it possibly be? To imagine such a number is to imagine that 0.999… is finite, that the process of adding up all those fractions has ended. But it never does, and so there is never even a point to point to and measure the gap!

Another way of stating this is to say that 0.999… is infinitely close to 1, which is de facto to say that no other number can exist in the “in between” because the “in between” is infinitely small, which is another way of saying the size of the gap is zero.

Yet another way to crash into this paradox is to ask the simple question, after the number X. what is the next real number? Once you think about it you will realize that there is no such thing as the next real number because there is an infinite number of numbers between any two real numbers. Therefore, the concept of a “next” real number fails. Such a concept is undefined. No matter how hard you try to make it so, there simply is no such thing as a “next” real number. This is so counter-intuitive to our concept of the number line as one point followed by another that we really have to pause and consider if we really understand the number line at all. I suggest that for most of us, the answer to this question is a resounding no.

We are finite and we are trying to measure the infinite! This is why our imaginations necessarily fail us. But we cannot help but to think in this way.

This is why math was grounded in the rigors of logic, because we kept running into these problems of intuition failure.

The History of Number

One of my favorite books is called “Number.” It has been around a while, written by Tobias Dantzig. Einstein said it was the “beyond doubt the most interesting book on the evolution of mathematics which has ever fallen into my hands.” It is one of the books that I would take to a desert Island were I to be stranded there for life. This problem we are discussing is literally thousands of years old. Pythagoras was the first to slam head-on into it. It took us thousands of years to “settle the case” rigorously and it is only because we were able to do so that any engineering beyond that of the ancients is possible, for the mathematics of these infinities is what makes all modern electrical engineering possible.

The history of science and the history of mathematics is one of the greatest stories there is and it is one of our greatest treasures. It should be taught as part of the liberal arts. I can’t really do it justice, but I enjoy reading those who can. If your interest is peaked, start here.

—

Credits: Everything written here was inspired and taken from here and here. Check out Kalid’s site. It is great!

What You Don’t Know that You Don’t Know

Mystery and Awe, Philosophy Comments Off

Jan 162010

from Andre Irback’s website

In Japan, many years ago, it was the tradition among Buddhist monks to travel from monastery to monastery, seeking the teaching of the masters. As was the custom, the master would serve his guest tea and they would talk.

One young monk was a particularly outstanding student. In fact, he was so exceptional, he had made a bit of a career out of showing up lesser masters with his skill and tremendous intelligence.

One day, he called at a very famous monastery attached to one of the most sacred temples in all Japan. The master there was old and most wise. The young man begged an audience with the master, in hopes of being accepted as his pupil, to live and study with the great man.

The young man – whose reputation had preceded him – was ushered into the master’s chambers immediately. This was most unusual, and the young monk was greatly flattered.

The master entered and they bowed to each other. They sat across a low table on the tatami mat floor and talked.

The young man told the master of his journeys, of the teaching he had heard, of the monks he had ‘bested’ in his search for Truth. It was a most impressive tale. The master listened intently and acknowledged the young monk many times for his wit and intelligence.

A teapot and cups were brought in, and the master began pouring tea for them both. The young man addressed the Master: ‘I wish to remain here and study with you, for I sense that here, unlike with the others, there is much you have to offer me . . .’

And all of a sudden, the young monk cried out in pain and alarm, jumping up from his place on the floor, shaking his robes and dancing about. The scalding hot tea had spilled all over his lap!

The master sat calmly and continued pouring tea – which was overflowing the student’s small cup and spilling out over the table onto the straw-matted floor where the young man had been sitting.

‘‘What are you doing!?!’ the young monk demanded. ‘I have been burned! Stop pouring! The cup is overflowing!’

Go away from me, young man,’ the master said. ‘I have nothing to teach you. Your cup is too full . . . overflowing with all that you know and all that you think you don’t know. Come back to me when your cup is empty and you are ready to receive what I have to give.

–

We sat in silence for a long time.

As I recall, it was the first time in a long time that there were no thoughts at all rattling around in my head.

I had stopped talking to myself.

Finally, he spoke up. “You want very much to be a success in your business, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You know some things about how to do this business – true?”

“Yes.”

“And you know, too, that there are many things that you do not know about how to do this business – true?”

“Yes,” I replied.

He sat up a bit, away from the back of the couch, and faced me directly as he spoke this next thought, carefully measuring out his words.

“There is nothing which you now know, and nothing about what you think you don’t know, that will help you create the success you desire.”

He paused for a moment, and continued.

“The key to your success lies only in what you don’t know that you don’t know. Do you understand?”

“No,” I told him truthfully. “I have no idea what you’re saying. How can I know what I don’t even know that I don’t know?”

“You can’t,” he said. “That’s the secret.”

The Eye with which I see God

God, Quotes Comments Off

Oct 052009

“The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me”

Meister Eckhart

Collapsing the Wave Function – Quantum Mysteries Solved

Mystery and Awe, Physics Comments Off

Jun 152009

The one thing you have to always remember is that every interaction in the universe is the result of physical touch. All of our senses are touch. One physical thing touching another. There is no force outside of this. There is only one object touching another object.

Even our sight is nothing more than our experience of the physical objects of the world emitting photons (which are physical particles) which then physically touch and are absorbed by the electrons in our retinas. Even sight is touch.

1) Collapsing the Wave Function

So, when we say that the act of observation collapses the wave function, this is really all we are saying. What we mean when we say “observation” – is that when one physical object (a photon, for example) touches another physical object (another photon, for example), the objects necessarily fall into their corresponding eigenstates. In other words, when two objects touch one another, they react.

It is no mystery that when I look at a photon I should affect its behavior once we admit that what I did when I “looked” at it was to smash into it with another photon. It is as if to look at a bus I had to ram into it with a truck and then claimed that the act of observation had an affect on the bus as if this were not obvious.

Even if we accept the wave function to be a real thing (as opposed to what it is – a mathematical description of an abstract thing representing the potentialities of a process), then the paradox of observation – the “measurement problem” – is simply a description of the behavior of matter “condensing” out of the energy field as a result of some interaction with some other matter.

Yes, quantum mechanics reveals that the world that we see is only a small part of the world that is, but the measurement problem is nothing more mysterious than the fact that when we “see” the world, what we really mean is that it literally “touches” us.

We often think of light “bouncing” off of objects and then landing on our retina like a baseball coming off a bat, but on closer inspection, the photon is first absorbed into the atom of the object (thus being transformed into matter). The object processes this, consumes some free energy from that photon, and expels a different photon – one with a different frequency, different energy. This new photon – a piece of physical matter broken off from the object – is what strikes our retina, the atoms of which then processes the event (physicists speak now of “computing” such events), then consumes the free energy, and transfers it (the photon? the data?) to the back of our brain at which point the experience of “sight” is created.

In other words, the light was transformed into matter and exchanged for new light, which was emitted and absorbed. The emission and absorption of light (aka photons) between electrons of atoms is the sum of all physics in the universe. Nothing else than this happens, ever.

Therefore, when we “see” the world, we are experiencing the world spitting out pieces of matter, which physically touch us. “Seeing” is touching, as is all of our senses, as is every interaction in the universe.

2) The Twin Slit

The fact that we only ever detect the photon going through one slit when we know from the interference pattern that it must go through both, can only mean that we did NOT detect the whole photon! Yes, we affected the outcome of the experiment by observing the photon because the only way we can observe the photon is, by necessity, to affect it. This idea of the innocent bystander is false on its face.

This does not make this less interesting, but the direction it points us in is an acknowledgement that we do NOT really have a complete theory of the photon. The twin slit experiment says nothing else to us more clearly than this.

This idea that the photon takes all paths at once is merely a mathematical methodology of deriving a solution – it is NOT a physical description of what is happening.

Clearly, the photon is interfering with itself, which means there is some “invisible” part of the photon that we are not detecting. It is this “invisible” part that is causing the unexpected results.

3) Entanglement

The entangled photons are in reality one thing that throws twin shadows on the fabric of space-time. We are not witnessing two separate particles dancing in unison, we are seeing one particle from two different perspectives in space-time.

Again, this is perhaps even more amazing than the idea of spooky action at a distance; however, it does not violate the laws of physics – I am quicker to add dimensions to the universe than to violate her laws.

And if the two photons are in fact two, then they must be “connected” in some non-spatial dimension, suggesting that all points in the universe are possibly intersected in a higher dimension.

4) Zero Point Energy and The Universe is Expanding Problem (aka the Alvy Singer Syndrome)

Perhaps virtual photons are in fact popping in and out of existence because they are indeed caught in a closed spacetime curvature. Were such a closed circuit to exist, then a feedback loop could have the effect on space such that space itself would get sucked in one side only to come pouring out the other side, repeatedly, without end.

Imagine a very tiny such circuit – a wormhole if you will – where space is sucked in on one side and comes spewing out the other. Then imagine that each new “molecule of space” has the same loop built into its core such that an exponential, infinite expansion of space creation ensues. This would explain why space is expanding faster and faster and why at every point we find the constant zero point energy and virtual particle fluctuations that we do.

5) What is Time

Anything outside of the light cone is neither in the past, present or future relative to anything inside the light cone. To speak of time is necessarily to speak of the boundary of a particular light cone. We therefore must conclude that most of the universe exists “outside of time” as far as we are concerned. To speak of “when” something occurred – if it occurred outside of our light cone – is to babble nonsensically without any possible meaning.

The observation about tachyons, therefore, is that they exist “outside of time,” or put another way, they are able to move in and out of time, or perhaps out of one time and into another and back. This can be thought of as a sort of Lorentz transformation (or Poincare transformation?) where the tachyon is rotating, or accelerating through a second time dimension. Stephen Hawking speaks of “imaginary time” … not sure if this would correspond? But if you recall what an imaginary number is, it is a number of higher dimension, one that does not live on the number line, but on the number plane. The analogy to the time “line” is obvious, I hope.

Update 6/28/11: I saw on the Science Channel (I think it was Steven Weinberg) the idea that a second dimension of time could solve the nonlocal problem in quantum mechanics. Instead of a particle being “spread out” occupying no address in space until the wave function is collapsed, it rather does have an address but not necessarily in our time.

The Ocean

Philosophy, Spirituality Comments Off

Mar 202009

“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish. “You are older than I, so can you tell me where to find this thing they call the ocean?”

“The ocean,” said the elder fish, “is the thing you are in now.”

“Oh this? But this is just water. What I am seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

Stop searching, little fish. There isn’t anything to look for. All you have to do is look.

— Source unknown. I found this in a Jesuit book describing the method of Jesuit, Catholic prayer.

(This parable was also the inspiration of David Foster Wallace’s powerful 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, now made into a book, “This is Water.”)

—

“My soul, have you found what you are looking for? You were looking for God, and you have discovered that He is the supreme being, and that you could not possibly imagine anything more erfect. You have discovered that this supreme being is life itself, light, wisdom, goodness, eternal blessedness and blessed eternity.”

— St Anselm of Canterbury

Random Letters to the Blogosphere

Just Sayin' Comments Off

Feb 222009

I found your email in a blog post on theory of mind and then read your article. First, kudos on your work. I look forward to reading your website. I was compelled to respond to what you wrote, especially since you invited response.

I agree that Atheism is not science. This is, in fact, by definition. I prefer the word “Naturalist” (which C.S. Lewis used) to describe the position that there is no mystery in or behind the universe – modern thinkers may prefer Materialist, or Empiricist. All of these terms describe a worldview which makes certain assumptions based largely on faith.

I find it instructive to take a moment and reflect on the fact that science is materialist by definition in that its object of study is the material. Material-ISM, or Natural-ISM, on the other hand, is the further assertion which says the material (what science studies) is ALL there is. Science does not make such claims per se. Science merely defines its project to be the descriptive project of taking measurements of the material world (Nature). Thus atheism – a doctrine regarding the ontological nature of the supernatural – is by definition, a project whose domain is outside the domain of science.

Atheism, therefore, is a religion – or at least a metaphysics. Science, however, is neither of these. People are surprised to learn that Atheism and Science have nothing to do with each other. This is because people make the mistake of thinking that one can take a position toward the supernatural without engaging in a theory of the supernatural. Atheism takes such a position, Science does not.

I like to say that Agnostics are like Socrates, as they admit what they do not know. Conversely, Atheists are like David Hume, adopting a more radical position, positively asserting that knowledge is impossible (I know for sure that nothing can be known for sure). I like to point out to skeptics, that since they are asking me not to believe what they say, I don’t. By simply taking them at their word, their position is destroyed.

On the other hand, Theology (the study of the nature of God) admits right off the bat that the nature of God remains largely (or at least in part, depending on who you ask) a mystery – not a puzzle, but a mystery. Thus the Religious Faithful are more like Agnostics and Socrates; Fundamentalists, more like Hume. This is an interesting relationship to point out, as most people think Fundamentalist and Religious are more like each other than they are to Agnostic and Atheist, but this is not the case when presented in terms of the epistemological categories above. It is the Fundamentalists and the Atheists which subscribe to the “we know for sure” position. Thus the most heated arguments between “science” and “religion” is most often between “Fundamentalist” and “Atheist.”

For example, regarding science and religion, the Pope is not a science denier, but embraces all truth and teaches that when truth and anything opposing truth collide, truth must always win out, even in the case that scientific truth collides with church teaching. If this “truth” is indeed legitimate, then church teaching must change, and it has. This is the unequivocal position of Catholic teaching. Most people are surprised to hear that the Catholic church does not reject the theory of evolution or the big bang because they think “Catholic” and “Fundamentalist” is the same thing when in fact Catholics and Scientists often stand together in opposing the Fundamentalists. Again, it is the Fundamentalists and the Atheists who are diametrically opposed. This is an important distinction to make when discussing “science and religion.” (I am Catholic so I use Catholics as an example, but I am sure most other faiths would categorize similarly vis-a-vis the opposition to the Fundamentalists on the fringes of any particular faith – as all fundamentalisms make the same basic folly).

At any rate, this is not what I wanted to discuss. What I wanted to ask you is more interesting than these obvious and elementary observations… I wanted to ask you if your understanding is truly that non-locality is really inconsistent with Relativity? My understanding of the idea of quantum non-locality is not so much that something is “communicated,” or that something “travels” instantaneously from point A to point B. Not at all. In fact, it was my understanding that, despite the evidence in support of Bell’s Theorem, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any sort of faster than light communication (or transmission of information) is possible at all, even using all the (now proven) techniques that allow for non-local interactions across vast distances of space and time.

The concept of “instantaneousness” implies separate events, of course. But I thought the term “non-local” itself was pointing to the idea that the “event” in question is not located “here” vs “there” but that there must be a “here-there” connection (higher dimension?) that makes these separate-seeming places and things (point A, point B) actually not-separate (non-local). I don’t know if this implies a hidden dimension whereby particles that seem to be separated in space are really not? Or whether holographic universe theories may suggest that what appears to us as two separate particles are merely two separate “views” of a single particle? I don’t know, but I was definitely under the impression that the idea of something (information, force, etc) traveling “instantaneously” from point A to point B was NOT a (common? popular? valid?) interpretation of non-local physics.

Or is it?

Lastly, regarding your interest in ethics and morals, I wonder if you have read Alasdair MacIntyre – specifically his book, “After Virtue”? Or perhaps Bernard Lonergan who, as far as I can tell, is trying to make decipherable something along the lines of what Kant may have had in mind with his transcendental deduction. Lonergan describes a Hegelian process by which we can come to understand (and agree and verify) what is indeed “truly so” and also what is “truly good.” It is a theory that describes the process of consciousness that transcends from experiential knowing to intellectual understanding, on to true judgement and finally to responsible decision. All of this follows a dialectical, transcendent process, much like Kant and Hegel described. This requires what Lonergan calls the Transcendental Method, which he describes as 4 stages of consciousness: the empirical, the intellectual, the rational, and the responsible. I have only found a few people familiar with his work, the main thrust of which is found in his book, “Insight,” which focuses on the first of three conversions, which he describes as three ways we orient our consciousness to the world. The first conversion is an intellectual conversion, the second a moral conversion, and the third, a religious conversion.

Anyway, I bring it up as something you may find interesting.

I look forward to reading more of your website. Speaking of which, I just noticed that you have a section on the Brothers Karamazov. I have long been an admirer of

Dostoevsky and have The Grand Inquisitor chapter of the Brothers Karamazov nearly memorized. I find it to be an extraordinarily powerful meditation on the nature of freedom. I see that you use the Marquis de Sade in your discussion. Isn’t it quite extraordinary to read The Grand Inquisitor while considering and studying the French Revolution!

But I would not have focused on Sade as pure evil (I say this having not yet read your exposition), but rather, my tendency here is to focus on the highly intelligent, morally upright, scientifically-oriented, philosophically-advanced men of elite, intellectual society whose only concern was the common good – or does this in fact describe Sade (I am unfamiliar with his particular history)? What I am getting at is to point at something like what Hannah Arendt observed about the banality of evil in her observations about Eichman, and her conclusion about how truly commonplace evil really is, and how common it is under the right circumstances that such evil prospers. After all, isn’t this what the Milgram Experiment showed – that most people have a surprising capacity for evil? Well, yes, of course it is. The banality and commonplace nature of a mother’s capacity for evil is something so shocking that is all that much more difficult to look at, but what else can we conclude from the facts of history, and from the Milgram Experiment itself?

At any rate, the important thing regarding the French Revolution (I believe) is that the Terror resulted from the minds of enlightened, reasonable, rational men in the midst of a most civil nation where great philosophers and scientists seemed to be the very light of the world, resting upon a shining city on a hill. This is the principle irony, the principle lesson that must be learned. Because these men were going to lead the world progressively forward along a human (as opposed to divine) providence. They were fighing for the common good, after all. These men who came to save us, their mission, after all, was to save the world.

This event remains perhaps one of the most important historical events and lessons of our time – but not because it shows us what pure, monstrous evil looks like merely, but how closely the monstrous man and the righteous man can be. And how tragic the results can be when the desire to do good (think of the Grand Inquisitor and his love of humanity) subverts the Divine Project of human freedom in order to do so.

Why in France did things go so badly for their Revolution, while in America we had such a different outcome? It seems to me that the story of the Grand Inquisitor is pointing at an answer.

Well, I have said more than enough. Again, kudos on your work. Consider me a fan.

If I Had My Life to Live Over Again

Einstein, Quotes Comments Off

Oct 052008

“If I had my life to live over again, I’d be a plumber.”

Albert Einstein

The Faster You Go

Einstein, Quotes Comments Off

Oct 052008

“The faster you go, the shorter you are.”

Albert Einstein

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