exactphilosophy.net 2018 (1 Nov)

Archive copy (5 Nov 2018). Thread at Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.philosophy.taoism/c/gYcVefUS-wk Posts 011-014 by "undifferentiated" (Google Groups) "{:-])))" (From) were actually the first time in my life that someone dared / cared to comment in some detail on the core idea of my site (elements defined in terms of in/out, rest/move, etc.). Posts after 018 were not interesting any more in that sense to me, nor otherwise especially original to me. Still, an indirect "secret" reply to some slightly later posts: I still sometimes dream of finding a new model of physics where "virtual particles" and the "spooky actions at a distance" of entangled quantum states would be represented by a single, more fundamental concept. Maybe I still will someday, and then I would probably post the idea somewhere. And fundamentally, all concepts that have been given words are the same, in the sense that they can only be measured more or less indirectly, so, yes, there are differences between "virtual particles" and "real" ones, but not "fundamentally" in the sense just mentioned. Such reasoning is maybe also what the "exact" in "exactphilosophy" could stand for? ;) Then again, this here may have been my very last appearance in Usenet! If that be the case: Bye, bye, and thanks for all the fish... Alain Stalder )o+ Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.taoism Subject: exactphilosophy.net 2018 (1 Nov) POST 001 (by me) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 12:20:24 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <91aa7184-3a59-4aa8-9bab-808b81cc3bc3@googlegroups.com> exactphilosophy.net Snapshot of core content (without "artemis" articles) of 1 Nov 2018. Notable additions: * A somewhat formal definition of "movement outside" and generally the core content revisited ("way") * Jung's psychological types and "in/out" * Empedocles and the elements taken literally: Zeus as the root of fire, Hera of earth, Hades of air and Nestis of water * Artemis articles: - Paradoxes (5 articles) - How astrology might really work (also in German) - USA/CH, Sedna, Original ideas in ... © 2002-now Alain Stalder -- Welcome I present a way of looking at the world here. That way or idea is not something that can be proven. But some of the fruits it contains might be considered for tending to, grow and become part of existing systems of thought. Just click sequentially through all menu items on the left, like reading chapters in a book, and take your time, or go to 'artemis' for every- and nothing... I am a physicist (*1966 in Zürich, Switzerland) and am doing this as a hobby. Alain Stalder -- way After defining elements from immediate perception of the world, inspired by Kant and Schopenhauer, I relate these elements to physics, the ancient Greek elements, and to the 8 trigrams of the Chinese I Ching. -- space and time Imagine that you have just now started to look at the world. [image] One of the first things that you notice is space. There is you and an outside world that you can see, and you can see more than one thing. What separates you and what you can see, and what separates the different things that you see, is space in its most immediate definition. Then you also quickly notice that some things move and others do not. This is time, again in its most immediate definition, as motion or being at rest. [image] Things can rest or move outside and inside the mind. Thus there would a priori be 4 different kinds of things: What moves outside, what rests outside, what moves inside, and what rests inside. Let me call them elements and give them the following names: emo, ero, emi and eri. emo moves outside ero rests outside emi moves inside eri rests inside Using a camera, emo and ero might be defined as the difference between two images taken shortly after each other. Differing pixels would be emo, same pixels ero. For example, a ball that rolls down a slope would itself not be emo as a physical object, but emo would be the area the ball spawns between the two images (excluding the middle if the ball is uniformly colored). [image] leads Some literature quotes, ideas and different points of view. Always also see 'artemis' for eventually articles that may expose some topics in a more contemporarily amenable way. * Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason. 1787. In the early chapters, Kant discloses that some observable things cannot be isolated from the self, but instead appear to be themselves a priori necessary for thinking and observation. These a priori concepts include space and time in their immediate sense - the structure in which things appear in the mind and seem to exist outside of it. * "By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. Herein alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other determined or determinable. [...] Space is not a conception which has been derived from outward experiences. For, in order that certain sensations may relate to something without me (that is, to something which occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as without, of, and near to each other, but also in separate places, the representation of space must already exist as a foundation. [...] We never can imagine or make a representation to ourselves of the non-existence of space, though we may easily enough think that no objects are found in it." (translated by J. Meiklejohn) * "Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori. [...] With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena." * If I can imagine something, is it then really inside of me? Isn't there already a separation (space) between me and what I imagine? Such an extreme definition of self or inside would mean that the self cannot have any (consciously accessible) attributes, no memory etc., because any such attribute of the self would be something that can be considered by the self and would thus, by definition, not be part of the self... * This definition of self reminds of the Tao ("way") in Taoism. Lao Tzu starts the Tao Te Ching with "The Tao that can be Tao'ed (trodden/spoken), is not the real (unchanging) Tao". * The definition of emo as the difference between two images is from September 2018. Before that I would often consider, say, a ball itself (or at least its visible surface) as ero, as long as it would rest, and as emo, when it would be rolling. That overall view still shows a bit in the first drawing above. The concept of a "ball" is a priori much more complex than comparing two images, which becomes evident once you try to program computers to recognize (3-dimensional) items on 2-dimensional images. How a concept like a "ball" comes to be in the mind appears to require a lot of interaction with the environment (typically quite early as a child), and in the end it is philosophically not so clear whether a "ball" is rather a natural thing, something that objectively exists, or rather a useful cultural abstraction of reality, copied from others. See also e.g. Kant or Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The new definition of emo↔ero is more fundamental, even though it reminds of the shadows in Plato's Cave. Thus it might a priori be better suited for such a fundamental concept as elements are. But, without having explored where different definitions lead, settling on just one may be a bit early. * How would rest/move be defined for other senses than vision? How would eri and emi be measured inside? Would the only "objective" way be to measure brain activity outside? Would that be fundamental enough in this context? Could the self (observer)4 be measured? * Would a female observer also consider what is seen as not being part of herself or would she rather tend to identify with what she sees? (Is the own body part of the self? And lovers, family, friends, house, garden, etc.?) In other words, is the distinction between in and out hard or soft (gradual)? * What about sleep, dreaming, trance, drunkenness? Why only have a fully conscious observer? -- metamorphosis The next thing that one notices is that motion can start and stop, and that changes outside and inside seem not to be independent of each other. In other words, the elements change, maybe even metamorphose into each other. What causes or allows these changes? Whatever it is, it must be something fundamental, like the four elements. So let me simply call it the fifth element, e5. Free will seems to be a part of e5. It is possible to lift a spoon and then to throw it away, i.e. to get something outside that rests into motion (ero→emo). However, free will cannot be identical to e5, as some things are much harder to control (try lifting a tree) and things transform all the time without conscious influence. Freedom inside the mind seems larger than outside. It is much easier to lift a tree in the mind, than a real tree. But let me tackle things from a different angle: Outside on average more things rest than move, while inside the mind, things are almost always more flowing. For example, a tree is at rest in most situations, except for a little movement of leaves and maybe branches. But if you close your eyes and try to imagine a tree at rest, it will get very hard after a few seconds not to deviate to other thoughts and to keep the tree at rest. [image] In conclusion, on average outside activity is needed to get things moving, while inside activity is needed to keep things at rest. More abstractly, emo and eri are thus active, ero and emi are passive. Also, what is outside resists motion on average more than what is inside. So emo and ero are hard (out), emi and eri are soft (in). What moves usually does so in various directions. Hence what rests appears to bind, what moves appears to release. emo moves outside active hard release ero rests outside passive hard bind emi moves inside passive soft release eri rests inside active soft bind e5 transforms the above elements If you leisurely observe a scene outside, like at the beach, usually most things will be resting, but there will be some movement. If you then close your eyes, in my experience, what will be immediately visible after closing your eyes will be the few things that moved, but frozen in movement, hence apparently a transition emo→eri, a transition in which activity is preserved. [image] Accordingly, passivity outside would then yield passivity inside, ero→emi. Actively created change outside, which more often means to get something in motion than the other way round, usually needs active focus inside first. Hence transitions in↔out would go both ways, emo↔eri and ero↔emi. Motion outside can also come to be and stop without much activity inside, like when an apple falls from a tree. Similarly, such things can also happen inside without much activity outside. Hence there would apparently also be transitions emo↔ero and emi↔eri. All in all, apparently a circle ero↔emo↔eri↔emi↔ero, while other transitions would at least be less frequent. [image] The elements could a priori interface in six ways: emo-ero, emi-eri, emo-emi, ero-eri, emo-eri, emi-ero. Any interface between elements must be unobservable, because otherwise it would be something that is perceived inside or outside, i.e. it would be one of the four elements. The same argument can be made for e5, of course. Let me imagine an interface in-out as an infinitely thin membrane. And imagine, say, a blob of ero at the interface. If it remained passive, it could start to flow while permeating inside, becoming emi, or the other way round, and similarly for emo and eri. [image] Since interfaces between elements would be invisible, just like e5, they might a priori have an arbitrarily complex nature, so that the above picture is a priori maybe just one of the simplest ways of seeing them. leads * If free will or the observing self is a part of e5, what is the rest? Cause and effect, fate, destiny, the free will of others? Quantum mechanics has relativized the first assumption somewhat, or maybe not. * What property of the issue of free will or not leads to millions of variations when thinking about it? Could it possibly even be literally the effect of many "transformations" in the mind, even in circles, whatever that may mean precisely? * Freedom to lift a spoon does not automatically mean freedom of choice whether to want to lift the spoon or not. * The interface ero-emi could be seen as the arrangement of things outside related to a mood, a flow of feelings inside. * When I say that outside more things rest than move, I mean this in a very specific sense: Relative macroscopic motion at time scales that human beings can register. At long time scales, all things move; microscopically everything is in motion, as heat is nothing but random motion of atoms or molecules. When I turn my head, all objects move, but relative motion between them remains small. * The present approach to nature is consequently centered on the human perspective, on direct experience of nature. Modern science usually differs from that by trying to pick a point of view from which a problem is easy to describe. The oldest example for this is astronomy that has been greatly simplified by solar centered calculations instead of using many arbitrary epicycles in geocentric calculations. * Modern science is a very valuable companion for the present approach, especially for helping to exclude naive mistakes. * Can my observations about motion, activity and hardness outside and inside be formalized and thus proven? How would such a mathematical representation look like? What assumptions would it be based on? * In any closed system, entropy, roughly a measure of disorder, can at best remain constant, but usually it increases. With time, macroscopic directed motion and structures decay into microscopic random motion, which is, by definition, heat. Life manages to escape this fate by operating in open systems, by exporting disorder into the environment. That way, living beings can grow from microscopic seeds to complex structures and animals can repeatedly create directed motion. Since science considers the outside world to be mainly inanimate and the mind to be located in a piece of organic matter, the brain, it predicts that outside motion tends to disappear, while inside the conscious mind has a hard time focusing on something, because lots of mostly unconscious activity in the brain keeps stirring things up. Science is thus essentially compatible with the considerations presented so far, except for science's qualitative notion that creating motion inside the mind is active, requires energy, like outside. This might, however, simply be due to the viewpoint of science, which only considers facts in the outer, material world and might thus not be able to describe inner processes as experienced from the inside... * In meditation, calmness of the mind (eri) is often sought by actively focussing the mind on something, thus reducing emi. * In daily life, the outer world seems often bigger and stronger than the inner one. If you look at a bicycle and then close your eyes, you can quite quickly imagine the bicycle in your mind, but if you then imagine, say, that you add wings, and open your eyes again, you will usually not see a winged bicycle. Conversely, you can usually make everything outside disappear by just closing your eyes ("turn black", ero), or you can turn your head or walk away, so that the influence on what one sees outside is immediately very strong in that sense. Adding wings to a bicycle outside is still possible, but harder, because the outer world is harder. It requires several steps involving eri (planning, focussing), which then lead, via emo, and to a different arrangement of ero, a winged bicycle. -- greek philosophy Aristotle defines elements to be composed of properties that can be felt by touching. He uses two pairs of opposites, hot-cold and wet-dry, to define four elements, which he names fire, earth, water and air. And he identifies wet-dry with soft-hard, viscous-brittle and smooth-rough. Unlike later the Stoics, he does not consistently identify hot-cold with active-passive and light-heavy. If you do, you get: fire hot (active) dry (hard) emo earth cold (passive) dry (hard) ero water cold (passive) wet (soft) emi air hot (active) wet (soft) eri Aristotle defines a fifth element as immutable, moving only in circles and existing only in space, while the other four elements move linearly. And he also arranges the four elements essentially in a circle in which they transform into each other by flipping one of hot↔cold or wet↔dry at each transition. The shared theme of a circle links the transformation of elements to the fifth element. [image] This yields a one-to-one correspondence to my previous definition of the elements, including the same circle. leads * Aristotle. On Generation and Corruption. Around 350 BCE. * "Since, then, we are looking for 'originative sources' of perceptible body; and since 'perceptible' is equivalent to 'tangible', and 'tangible' is that of which the perception is touch; it is clear that not all the contrarieties constitute 'forms' and 'originative sources' of body, but only those which correspond to touch." (Book II, translated by H. Joachim) * "From moist and dry are derived (iii) the fine and coarse, viscous and brittle, hard and soft, and the remaining tangible differences. For (a) since the moist has no determinate shape, but is readily adaptable and follows the outline of that which is in contact with it, it is characteristic of it to be 'such as to fill up'. Now 'the fine' is 'such as to fill up'. For 'the fine' consists of subtle particles; but that which consists of small particles is 'such as to fill up', inasmuch as it is in contact whole with whole-and 'the fine' exhibits this character in a superlative degree. Hence it is evident that the fine derives from the moist, while the coarse derives from the dry. Again (b) 'the viscous' derives from the moist: for 'the viscous' (e.g. oil) is a 'moist' modified in a certain way. 'The brittle', on the other hand, derives from the dry: for 'brittle' is that which is completely dry-so completely, that its solidification has actually been due to failure of moisture. Further (c) 'the soft' derives from the moist. For 'soft' is that which yields to pressure by retiring into itself, though it does not yield by total displacement as the moist does-which explains why the moist is not 'soft', although 'the soft' derives from the moist. 'The hard', on the other hand, derives from the dry: for 'hard' is that which is solidified, and the solidified is dry." * "The elementary qualities are four [...]. Hence it is evident that the 'couplings' of the elementary qualities will be four: hot with dry and moist with hot, and again cold with dry and cold with moist. [...] Fire is hot and dry, whereas Air is hot and moist (Air being a sort of aqueous vapour); and Water is cold and moist, while Earth is cold and dry." * Aristotle arranges the elements in a cycle fire-air-water-earth: "Thus (i) the process of conversion will be quick between those which have interchangeable 'complementary factors', but slow between those which have none. The reason is that it is easier for a single thing to change than for many. Air, e.g. will result from Fire if a single quality changes: for Fire, as we saw, is hot and dry while Air is hot and moist, so that there will be Air if the dry be overcome by the moist. Again, Water will result from Air if the hot be overcome by the cold: for Air, as we saw, is hot and moist while Water is cold and moist, so that, if the hot changes, there will be Water. So too, in the same manner, Earth will result from Water and Fire from Earth, since the two 'elements' in both these couples have interchangeable 'complementary factors'. For Water is moist and cold while Earth is cold and dry-so that, if the moist be overcome, there will be Earth: and again, since Fire is dry and hot while Earth is cold and dry, Fire will result from Earth if the cold pass-away." It appears that Aristotle excludes other transitions, because why else would they be slower if not because they would have to take place in sequence as two transitions along the circle? * Some fragments of Heraclitus suggest the same circle, namely DK B76 "fire's death is air's birth, and air's death is water's birth" and B36 "psyche's death is water's birth, water's death is earth's birth, from earth comes water, from water comes psyche", if psyche (or soul) is identified with air. But knowledge of Heraclitus is based on fragmentary quotes from later authors like the ones above. Fragment B31 describes a transformation from fire to sea (water?) and says that sea is made of equal parts of earth and whirlwind (air?); fragment B90 suggests that he considered fire the primary substance. Similarly, there have been many views by different philosophers, some of which are mentioned further below. * In On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle considers light-heavy not to be an attribute of any specific elements: "(i) heavy and light are neither active nor susceptible. Things are not called 'heavy' and 'light' because they act upon, or suffer action from, other things. But the 'elements' must be reciprocally active and susceptible, since they 'combine' and are transformed into one another. On the other hand (ii) hot and cold, and dry and moist, are terms, of which the first pair implies power to act and the second pair susceptibility." But in On the Heavens, he considers air and fire as light and water and earth as heavy, in the order earth-water-air-fire, and postulates the existence of an immutable fifth element that dominates in the sky, is neither light nor heavy and moves in circles, while the first four elements move linearly: "[...] all locomotion, as we term it, is either straight or circular or a combination of these two, which are the only simple movements. [...] Now revolution about the centre is circular motion, while the upward and downward movements are in a straight line, 'upward' meaning motion away from the centre, and 'downward' motion towards it. [...] For if the natural motion is upward, it will be fire or air, and if downward, water or earth. [...] circular motion is necessarily primary. For the perfect is naturally prior to the imperfect, and the circle is a perfect thing. [...] These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. [...] there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. [...] things are heavy and light relatively to one another; air, for instance, is light relatively to water, and water light relatively to earth. The body, then, which moves in a circle cannot possibly possess either heaviness or lightness. For neither naturally nor unnaturally can it move either towards or away from the centre. [...] this body will be ungenerated and indestructible and exempt from increase and alteration [...] earth is enclosed by water, water by air, air by fire, and these similarly by the upper bodies" (Book I, translated by J. Stocks) * Most things in the sky beyond clouds are round or cyclic: sun and moon are round, planets, as well as stars during night and seasons, move periodically in predictable cycles. * The fifth element is also called ether or aether and quintessence. Many different views of the fifth element and closely related concepts have emerged over time. Plato used the word aether to describe the purest form of air in the Timaeus. But there is also a strong association of the sky with fire, because stars and planets appear to emit light and the sun provides heat, and also because fire was often considered the lightest of the four elements. The fifth element is generally considered "divine" because gods were often believed to live in heaven. And it is often also seen as special in other ways, like able to create life, or immortal like the soul or maybe pneuma, or able to create matter and to hold it together, or maybe identified by some alchemists with the philosopher's stone, which was believed to be able to transform matter, like lead to gold, etc.? * Do such associations (historically founded or not) fit well with the definition of e5 simply because they all keep going in circles around the same questions? * Aristotle appears to consistently link hot/cold to active and wet/dry to passive, see quote from On Generation and Corruption above, or the following quote from Meteorology: "All this makes it clear that bodies are formed by heat and cold and that these agents operate by thickening and solidifying. It is because these qualities fashion bodies that we find heat in all of them, and in some cold in so far as heat is absent. These qualities, then, are present as active, and the moist and the dry as passive, and consequently all four are found in mixed bodies." (Book IV, translated by E. Webster) * David Sedley writes in chapter 11 of The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2000) that the Stoic's identification of hot-cold with active-passive emerged from medical tradition, from pneuma, breath, which was seen as a mixture of fire and air, and mentions also that this identification was not so clearly the only view of the Stoics in their time. A bit later astrological views emerged that see fire and air as male, and water and earth as female. See Vettius Valens's Anthologia in the 2nd century CE and hints in earlier texts by Dorotheus of Sidon and Marcus Manilius. These views have essentially prevailed, including in medieval alchemy and up to contemporary astrology. * According to Diogenes Laërtius in the third century CE, the Stoics would have identified fire with hot, earth with dry, water with wet, and air with cold (and dry): "[...] the four elements are all equally an essence without any distinctive quality, namely, matter; but fire is the hot, water the moist, air the cold, and earth the dry - though this last quality is also common to the air. The fire is the highest, and that is called aether, in which first of all the sphere was generated in which the fixed stars are set, then that in which the planets revolve; after that the air, then the water; and the sediment as it were of all is the earth, which is placed in the centre of the rest." (7. LXIX, translated by C. Yonge) The papyrus Anonymus Londinensis from about the first century CE says essentially the same about Philistion (apparently Philistion of Locri, a contemporary of Plato): "Philiston thinks that we are composed of four 'forms', that is, of four elements - fire, air, water, earth. Each of these too has its own power; of fire the power is the hot, of air it is the cold, of water the moist, and of earth the dry." (XX 24, translated by W. Jones) According to David Hahm in The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (1977), this view might have already been quite common among physicians in classical times. Artistotle's texts about biology seem to implicitly reflect that view quite clearly, like that air is inhaled cold and exhaled hot (pneuma). Although there appear to be no contemporary sources that would directly prove such an identification, Hahm's detailed argumentation that the Stoics aimed for a unified view of the elements across all fields seems to make this plausible. In Stoic belief, the cosmos emerged from fire via air to water to earth, and back (see Hahm for details), essentially along Aristotle's circle of the elements. * In Academica (45 BCE), Cicero lets Antiochus of Ascalon say the following, influenced by Aristotle and the Stoics: "Accordingly air [...] and fire and water and earth are primary; while their derivatives are the species of living creatures and of the things that grow out of the earth. Therefore those things are termed [...] elements; and among them air and fire have motive and efficient force, and the remaining divisions [...] water and earth, receptive and 'passive' capacity. Aristotle deemed that there existed a certain fifth sort of element, in a class by itself and unlike the four that I have mentioned above, which was the source of the stars and of thinking minds." (Book I 26, translated by H. Rackham) * In contemporary astrology, fire is associated with imagination, air with (abstract) thinking and communication, water with feelings, and earth with pragmatic realism. * In ancient Greek philosophy there was also the idea of matter consisting of indivisible physical units (atoms). In Plato's Timaeus, a model is presented that combines both views by associating the five elements with the five Platonic solids: fire-tetrahedron, air-octahedron, water-icosahedron, earth-cube and the roundest one, the dodecahedron, for the whole world/universe (pan). In 4 dimensions there are 6 generalized Platonic solids, in 5 and more dimensions always only 3, namely generalizations of tetrahedron, cube and octahedron. * Empedocles is often credited for having first mentioned the four elements in the following fragment (DK31B6): [image] It speaks of "four roots" at the origin of all and then lists four gods with some attributes, in this order: Zeus (flashing/shining), Hera (live-giving/-bearing), Aidoneus (no attributes), Nestis (moisture, tears/dew). Interpretation and attribution to elements is controversial and has already been so in antiquity; start maybe at John Opsopaus (see links). If you take Empedocles literally, Zeus would maybe most immediately be the root of fire, because of his attributes and because he creates lightning, Hera the root of earth, because she bears (creates) a child, Nestis the root of water, because of dew and tears (rain?). This would leave Aidoneus as the root of air, which seems rather unexpected at first. Aidoneus is a variant of Aides (Hades) since at least Homer, and maybe most likely means "unseen" or "invisible". In Plato's Cratylus Socrates proposes "knowledge of all noble things" instead. In any case, air and knowledge are typically invisible, and death arguably kills everything except an immortal, invisible soul, which then dwells in the underworld, in Hades. Still, so far Hades-air seems not to be most obvious fit, but maybe still clear enough for a secretly initiated reader in antiquity? Note that Aidoneus is the only one listed without explicit attributes, so maybe his name itself is the attribute, and the list of contemporary deities served also to veil a secret "oath" to the four elements and related medical traditions? The Hippocratic Oath in its oldest preserved form also starts with four names: "I swear by Apollo the healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, [...]". The sun god Apollon would maybe be most strongly associated with fire, his son Asclepius as a wise doctor with air, his daughter Hygieia with water, as she is often shown with a snake that drinks from a bowl in her hands (and with hygiene, of course, which often involves liquids for disinfection), and Panacea, another of Asclepius' five daughters, with earth, as she used to heal with plants. Did doctors implicitly take an oath on the four elements, more so than on the explicitly named gods or saints? The order of elements in the oath would thus be Aristoteles' ordering from light to heavy, while Empedocles' order would remind maybe more of the myth of Dionysos, who was born first from fire (Zeus in form of lightning), then from earth (Zeus' thigh), then from water (chopped to pieces, cooked and put back together), then from air (struck with madness), finally to be reborn as arguably a "higher octave" of Zeus, as the fifth element, also symbolized by wearing a lion's pelt? The zodiac starts with fire (Aries), then follow earth, air, water, and then fire again, in the fifth sign, Leo. The myth of Dionysos reminds also of ancient Egyptian myths around Osiris, Isis, their dismembered son Horus, and Seth, or of ancient Egyptian creation myths, like the one of Heliopolis, where there appears to be a sequence water-fire-air/water-earth/heaven-..., which also resembles Hesiod's description of how the world came to be, and creation myths world-wide. In such myths, elements are usually automatically listed in a sequence, as later by Aristotle by lightness or in a circle. To ancient Greeks, the ancient Egyptians were apparently sort of like the ancient Greeks in modern perception, an admired ancient culture. It appears that the ancient Egyptians might have kept things more secret than the Greeks in their time, maybe only passing it on from master to pupil shaman? Finally, as a teaser, note that the pyramids have five corners, an earthly base of four, plus one on top. -- i ching All cultures seem to know some kinds of elements, but let me consider the 8 trigrams of the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching or Yijing. ☰ heaven, strong, creative, father ☷ earth, devoted/yielding, receptive, mother ☳ thunder, inciting movement, arousing, 1st son ☵ water, dangerous, abysmal, 2nd son ☶ mountain, resting, keeping still, 3rd son ☴ wind/wood, penetrating, gentle, 1st daughter ☲ fire, light-giving, clinging, 2nd daughter ☱ lake, joyful, joyous, 3rd daughter They seem to resemble Greek elements in pairs, namely heaven-wind (air), earth-mountain, fire-thunder and water-lake. Let me rearrange them into another table: ☰ heaven air rests male ☴ wind air moves female ☶ mountain earth rests male ☷ earth earth moves female ☲ fire fire rests female ☳ thunder fire moves male ☱ lake water rests female ☵ water water moves male Interestingly, the trigrams that correspond to the Greek elements, i.e. resting air and earth, moving fire and water, are exactly the male trigrams. Let me map each trigram to the result of a transition between two elements in Aristotle's circle of the elements, ending with the corresponding element and starting with a male element (fire or air) for the male trigrams (father and sons) and with a female element (water or earth) for the female trigrams (mother and daughters): [image] The trigrams seem to fit closely: Thunder as fire that has suddenly come down as lightning from the sky (air), in contrast to fire steadily clinging to the matter (earth) it burns; wind as air that gently evaporated from water, in contrast to gases from a fire risen to heaven; a lake as water sprung from sources (earth), in contrast to water fallen down as rain from the sky (air); a mountain as earth solidified from lava (fire), in contrast to softly yielding earth from sediments deposited by water. ☰ heaven air ← fire rests male ☴ wind air ← water moves female ☶ mountain earth ← fire rests male ☷ earth earth ← water moves female ☲ fire fire ← earth rests female ☳ thunder fire ← air moves male ☱ lake water ← earth rests female ☵ water water ← air moves male This arrangement is none of the two traditionally known ones, more similar to Earlier Heaven than Later Heaven: [image] More symmetries, some similar to Earlier Heaven: * Daughters and sons are arranged from father to first to second to third children, and finally to mother. * Opposite trigrams in the circle mirror each other if you mirror each trigram at the middle line (i.e. swap first and third line) and invert all lines (yin↔yang). * Trigrams that transform to or from outer elements have a broken (yin) line in the middle, which would fit with outer elements being harder and more brittle, breaking more easily. * Excluding the middle line, between adjacent trigrams in the circle exactly one line is inverted (yin↔yang). leads * The I Ching is a divination system. By tossing coins or drawing yarrow sticks, one determines hexagrams (two trigrams) that are given meanings in the text of the I Ching. More precisely, the oracle results in two hexagrams, describing the evolution of the current situation to a new situation. * This new arrangement of the 8 trigrams and 4 elements in a circle was inspired by a passage in the introduction of Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching or Book of Changes (translated from German to English by Cary F. Baynes): "The eight trigrams are symbols standing for changing transitional states; they are images that are constantly undergoing change. Attention centers not on things in their state of being - as is chiefly the case in the Occident - but upon their movements in change. The eight trigrams therefore are not representations of things as such but of their tendencies in movement." So the 8 Chinese trigrams would express essentially the same elements and changes in a circle as the 4+1 Greek elements, i.e. the fifth element would be contained in the trigrams. * Also in terms of bind/release, the trigrams seem to fit closely: Fire, heaven, lake and mountain hold their element in place; thunder, wind, water and earth let it go. * No common historical roots are known, nor any roots of the above arrangement of trigrams in Chinese history, so did both cultures mirror nature independently, even unknowingly? Interpreting earth-water-air as the states of matter solid-fluid-gas and fire as a chemical reaction or physical phenomenon that produces light and maybe heat, the elements could be considered what is most commonly encountered in nature. The elements represent also elementary needs: air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, sunlight and fire as energy. Conversely, the very nature of oracles is that things are connected, maybe also globally to some degree? * In the yarrow stalk method of consulting the I Ching, one starts with 50 yarrow stalks and initially puts one away. This seems to be a reference to the cycles of moon and sun, because 50+49 lunar months are only about 1.5 days short of 8 solar years, which is also why the Olympics in ancient Greece were held alternatively every 50 and 49 lunar months. Hence the moon advances about 3/8 of the circle every solar year, drawing an eight-pointed star over eight years, as well as appearing in eight different lunar phases. [image] Venus never separates more than about 1/8 of the circle from the sun and appears to stand still 5 times in 8 years, drawing a pentagram that shifts only slightly between cycles. The Mesopotamian goddess of love Ishtar was associated with Venus, usually depicted as an eight-pointed star and sometimes shown together with sun and moon. The yin-yang symbol ☯ reminds of moon phases. * The five Chinese Wu Xing, water, metal, fire, wood and earth, which are often called "elements" in the West, but literally mean "moving", stand most immediately for the five planets visible to the naked eye, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, while the "Four Symbols", black turtle, white tiger, vermillion bird and azure dragon stand for the four directions and for constellations in the sky (each for a group of 7 of the 28 mansions). Together with the I Ching maybe standing for sun and moon, this would complete the sky and what it was believed to reflect down on earth. * In the five Wu Xing, earth often has a somewhat central role, surrounded by things that emerge from it and go back to it: water from springs, fire from volcanoes, wood growing from earth and metal mined from it; four very useful ingredients for humans to shape their worlds, like using fire to smelt ore into metal tools, which can then be used to cut wood into houses, furniture, bows, plows, water wheels, etc. * In the Chinese zodiac, four star signs are assigned to earth, arranged in a cross, and in the four sectors in between, the two star signs there are assigned to water, metal, fire and wood, respectively. This reminds a lot of Aristotle's circle with trigrams above, so maybe the Wu Xing earth would correspond to the static Greek elements and the other four Wu Xing to the trigrams of the I Ching for the corresponding transformation? Can this be identified in the attributes of the star signs of the Chinese zodiac? * Is the association of trigrams with elements and their changes also closely mirrored in the hexagrams and their changes? * When consulting the I Ching as an oracle, the different lines are assigned the numbers 6 to 9: 6 old (changing) yin - - to --- -x- 7 new (unchanging) yang --- to --- --- 8 new (unchanging) yin - - to - - - - 9 old (changing) yang --- to - - -o- These numbers are also associated with the Wu Xing and derived from 5 (earth) plus 1 to 4 (water, fire, wood, metal), see the Yellow River Map, e.g. in Wilhelm/Baynes. As a different approach, let me number the elements in Aristotle's circle as 1-2-3-4, starting a priori with any element and going in either direction of the circle. Now, map transformations of elements to the sum of the three elements involved, 1+2+3 = 6, 2+3+4 = 9, 3+4+1 = 8 and 4+1+2 = 7, where the element in the middle is the one that is transformed. This gives also the numbers from 6 to 9 and note that new yin and yang are obtained for the sequences that cross from 4 to 1, i.e. into a new cycle. Let me number the elements 1-fire, 2-air, 3-water, 4-earth (starting with the lightest element according to Aristotle): 6 transformation of air 36 = 6 x 6 Stratagems 7 transformation of fire 49 = 7 x 7 Qixi (Ch'i?) 8 transformation of earth 64 = 8 x 8 I Ching 9 transformation of water 81 = 9 x 9 Tao Te Ching This fits astonishingly well with contemporary Western astrological views of the elements. The 36 Stratagems provide stratagems to use in politics and war, which fits well with air as conscious planning mind. The I Ching yields a priori images of changes in the outer, material world, the element earth, which are then interpreted in a more detached way. The Tao Te Ching, which comes in 81 sections, often has something that flows like water. Besides the 50/49 yarrow stalks, there is the Qixi Festival on the 7th day of the 7th month of the year when magpies mythologically build a bridge across the milky way to briefly reunite two lovers, and ch'i (qì) stands for life energy and breath (which reminds of pneuma), and is pronounced almost like the word for 7 (qī) in Chinese. In ancient China, fields in agriculture used to be divided into squares of 9 = 3 x 3 fields, with 8 fields (earth) owned by individual families around a central 9th field that belonged to all families and contained the well (water). [image] * The most ancient Chinese oracles used bones (typically shoulder bones of oxen) or turtle plastrons (the belly part of the turtle shell). Holes were drilled and heated with a heat source from the back of the plastron to produce cracks on the front, which were typically T-shaped. Although many oracle bones and plastrons have been found and the ancient writing can now be read to quite some degree, little seems to be known about how cracks were interpreted. There seems to be no direct evidence for an influence on the I Ching, so far. A plastron consists essentially of 6 pairs of scutes (shields), anal, femoral, abdominal, pectoral, humeral and gular, with a flexible hinge between the first and the last 3 pairs of scutes, which reminds of the structure of hexagrams. Applying heat to a plastron can cause it to crack, to become broken. Are yin and yang lines as broken (weak) resp. unbroken (strong) lines in the I Ching thus related to more ancient oracles involving heat? Heat dries up, makes brittle, so would a yang line correspond to no crack emerging, because it was wet to start with, hence be considered strong in the sense of resisting heat? On the northern hemisphere, stars appear to rotate around the north pole in the sky, the direction assigned to the turtle of the four symbols. Is the turtle with its shell maybe a model of the world, with the plastron standing for what is down on earth and the upper part of the shell for the sky? And similarly lower and upper trigrams of the I Ching? The hexagons on the upper part of the shell could be seen to form 6 unbroken/yang lines (heaven) and the pairs of plastron scutes 6 broken/yin lines (earth). [image] * In Greek mythology, as early as in Hesiod's Theogony, Cronos and Rhea had 3 sons and 3 daughters. Their parents were Ouranos and Gaia, which mean heaven (or mountain) and earth. Zeus, the third son, was close to his mother Rhea who tricked Cronos and hid Zeus from him, so that Zeus grew up on mount Ida and after his revolution reigned on mount Olympos. Just like the mountain trigram (3rd son) is close to the earth trigram (mother) in the circle? The mother might have been considered naturally closer to her youngest children because they emerged last from her. -- möbius Let me arrange the circle of elements and trigrams onto a Möbius Strip as follows (click below to zoom in): [image] Inner elements are placed on the inside of the strip, outer elements on the outside. That way, the strip reminds of the supposed permeable membrane between in and out, but with different elements touching: The symbols for the moving elements fire and water touch on opposite sides of the strip, coinciding perfectly, and the same is true for the resting elements earth and air. All lines of the trigrams on one side of the strip are mirrored by their inverted lines (yin ↔ yang) on the other side, so that yin and yang are different sides of the same on the strip. So, even though fire and water would touch, and maybe mirror each other between in and out, they could not transform directly into each other, only indirectly by going along the single surface of the strip via air or earth. [image] leads * In a harmonic oscillator, two kinds of energies are transformed into each other. For example, for a mass on a spring, the energy in the spring transforms into the kinetic energy of the moving mass and vice-versa. This gives the motion of the oscillator four special states, when either of the energies is extremal. And the motion between these states is periodic, thus overall reminding of the circle of elements. However, the natural pairing of extremal states of a harmonic oscillator is opposite states in the cycle, which naturally fits rest/move in the elemental circle, but makes it hard to relate two pairs of adjacent states to opposites like active/passive or in/out in a natural way. * Could a mathematical model of the elements as defined here grow into a scientific way of doing metaphysics, as in Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science? rest/move in/out passive/active bind/release wet/dry cold/hot soft/hard heavy/light malleable/brittle dark/light mixed/isolated female/male collective/individual moon/sun night/day un-/conscious Such a mathematical model, as useful as it could be, would be essentially air, something that rests inside the mind. * Aristotle considers four "causes" in Physics and Metaphysics, which remind of the four elements. Matter reminds of earth, form of air, primary source of fire and final goal of water. * Is the female fire trigram a form of inner fire, emo mapped to some form of eri, that is clinging to a dream, an idea, a wish despite all outer hardness? Is the female earth trigram a form of inner earth, ero mapped to some form of emi, something that can yield devotely to outer hardness? Is the female lake trigram a form of outer water, emi mapped to some form of ero, which brings calm to the outside world without hardness? Is the female wind trigram a form of outer air, eri mapped to some form of emo, free flowing mind and communication? * Is the Chinese approach thus more balanced? Conversely, is the Greek approach more likely to start new things, exactly because it is maybe initially more imbalanced? Are both needed for 'full' balance? Is there more? * In Psychologische Typen (1921), C.G. Jung combines extra- and introversion with implicitly the four elements, which he terms thinking (air), feeling (water), intuition (fire) and sensation (earth), into 8 psychological types, almost certainly already implicitly inspired by the I Ching. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961): "I first met Richard Wilhelm [...] in the early twenties. In 1923 we invited him to Zürich [...]. Even before meeting him I had been interested in Oriental philosophy, and around 1920 had begun experimenting with the I Ching." (Appendix IV, recorded and edited by A. Jaffé, translated by R. and C. Winston) Also in Psychologische Typen, Jung additionally categorizes thinking and feeling as "rational" or "judging", intuition and sensation as "irrational", but even writes: "But I am prepared to grant that we may equally well entertain a precisely opposite conception of such a psychology, and present it accordingly. I am also convinced that, had I myself chanced to possess a different individual psychology, I should have described the rational types in the reversed way, from the standpoint of the unconscious-as irrational, therefore." (A III 5, translated by H.G. Baynes) In that sense, what Jung calls "irrational" could also be considered "realistic", as judging the world rather based on measurement outside than on inner conceptions, just like in science, as opposed to e.g. medieval Christian views, where looking at Jupiter's moons through Galileo's telescope could apparently not have convinced people that not everything revolves around earth. In astrology, rationality is typically air, reality typically earth, but both air and water (which is usually considered rather irrational and related to the unconscious) have to do with judgment, which is maybe not so astonishing, considering that eri and emi would be inner elements. In my definition of the elements, the world consists a priori symmetrically of both in and out, except that the observing self is arguably observing rather from the inside out, and perceives and judges the world based on all four elements. So Jung would have been quite close in a way, which I might relate to the astrological placement of his moon in Taurus in the 3rd house. In any case, Jung's text is the first I know of to bring "in/out" near "elements", with extra-/introverted and judging from within or without. (I had taken a quick look at Jung's psychological types in 1998 or a bit later, but only discovered this when I took another look on 28 Oct 2018.) * Near the end of Apuleius' The Golden Ass (around 150 CE), Apuleius encounters the goddess Isis at full moon at the sea shortly after moonrise: "Her many-coloured robe was of finest linen; part was glistening white, part crocus-yellow, part glowing red and along the entire hem a woven bordure of flowers and fruit clung swaying in the breeze. But what caught and held my eye more than anything else was the deep black lustre of her mantle. [..] It was embroidered with glittering stars on the hem and everywhere else, and in the middle beamed a full and fiery moon." (Chapter 17, translated by Robert Graves) Astrologer Antiochus of Athens and physician Galenus of Pergamon attributed colors resp. body fluids (humors) to elements around the time Apuleius lived, based on older roots going back at least partially to Hippocrates: white to water (phlegm, phlegmatic), black to earth (black bile, melancholic), yellow to fire (yellow bile, choleric) and red to air (blood, sanguine), the colors of Isis' dress above, plus stars and moon for the round fifth element in the sky. * In alchemy, also since about at least the same time, the transition of materials toward what is now called the philosopher's stone was believed to be from black via white (moon) and yellow (sun) to red, i.e. earth-water-fire-air, which is roughly in order of lightness of the elements and their relatively layered appearance on earth. It is apparently also the order of elements in the four tasks that Venus gives Psyche in an inner story in The Golden Ass, as I explore elsewhere, see artemis. All of this has ancient Egyptian roots, with Osiris (and his brother Seth), Isis and their son Horus, as well as with ancient crafts of creating fake noble metals and gems. * One of the oldest ancient Indian Upanishads, the Chandogya Upanishad (ca. 1000 BCE), speaks of three elements, fire (red), water (white) and earth (black): "The red colour of [gross] fire is the colour of [the original] fire; the white colour of [gross] fire is the colour of [the original] water; the black colour of [gross] fire is the colour of [the original] earth. Thus vanishes from fire what is commonly called fire, the modification being only a name, arising from speech, while the three colours (forms) alone are true." (Part 6, Chapter 4, translated by Swami Nikhilananda) Why do these three colors red-white-black appear in so many cultures as primary colors? Robert Graves links them to the moon and I guess he is right, but why stereotypically the colors of the moon at night instead of green, brown, blue, etc. of nature at daylight when there is so much more color? Maybe because the colors that remain when light gets dimmer would be more fundamental? Moon, stars and sky at night? And also the colors of a fire, humanity's own light source at night, independent of a full moon: Colors that reflect light for the passive elements earth (black coal) and water (white ashes), colors that create light for the active elements air (red embers) and fire (yellow flames)? Did ancient cultures maybe often not distinguish red and yellow as separate colors? Only three elements first? * Plato talks about colors in the Timaeus, Aristotle in On Sense and the Sensible. Both start with black and white as basic colors, which is scientifically correct in the sense that by selectively taking frequencies out of the full spectrum of white, you get all colors, including black and white. There are three kinds of color sensors in the human eye, for red, green and blue, sorted from low to high frequency. None triggered (no light) is black, plus red gives red, plus also green gives yellow, plus also blue gives white, hence a sequence black-red-yellow-white or earth-air-fire-water. * Is the Lakota "Medicine Wheel" so old that it already came to America with immigrants walking across the Bering Sea at least 10'000 years ago? The Yangshao culture "Xishuipo M45 Tomb" in China, which dates back to the 4th millenium BCE, features the mosaic of a tiger opposite the mosaic of a dragon, as constellations in the sky, exactly the animals that are traditionally assigned to West and East in China. My impression is that the more you go back in time, the more likely "knowledge about elements" was something that only "shamans" had and only secretly passed on to their pupils. * In August 2015, I assigned Greek goddesses to pairs of elements and moon phases, and tentatively flipped Athena and Hera in May 2018: Artemis/Hecate to birth/death at new moon as fire around water, Hera (and Clotho) to growth as a young woman or girl at the first quarter as earth around air, Aphrodite (and Lachesis) to bloom as a mature woman at full moon as water around fire, and Athena (and Atropos) to withering as an old woman at the last quarter as air around earth. Artemis/Hecate would thus contain both first and fifth element, and elements would touch as on the Möbius Strip. * Zhuangzi's famous butterfly dream: "Once Chuang Tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly who felt at ease and happy and knew nothing of Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he woke up: Then he was again really and truly Chuang Tzu. Now I do not know whether Chuang Tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly or whether the butterfly dreamt that it was Chuang Tzu, even though there is certainly a difference between Chuang Tzu and the butterfly. This is how the change of things is." (translated by me from the Wilhelm translation to German) The same day I had first quoted the dream here, on the streets of Zürich, two butterflies on a truck, 21 Sep 2016 at 13:34. White, red, black, a little yellow, even a little circle and her. (In Apuleius' encounter with Isis, it is left open whether he was "just dreaming" or "it really happened".) [image] The image is by Elena Vizerskaya (Getty Images 108350631); I bought the rights to use it, too, just to be safe. * See Billy Culver's Energy Language website, which inspired me in summer 2016 to reconsider old attempts to arrange elements and trigrams on a Möbius Strip or an infinity symbol ∞ and whose style influenced the graphics above, but in my feeling his images carry more potential than that. * (The walking cat of the metamorphosis section came to me at Delphi in Greece on Tuesday, 4 September 2018 at about 13:09, ate some of my food, a dry pretzel and salmon jerky, then, after a few burps (still a kid) and playing a little, took a nap of about 20 minutes on my lap, then left roughly in the direction of the Athena Pronoia temple, where I had been a bit earlier. During these few minutes there were no doubts what to do and felt so good, like having a child to care for. Was the AC maybe even an oracle for the AC of π, with the moon maybe late at glowing quincunxes, or early spring?) [image] -- evolutions Some ways in which the idea presented earlier might evolve with time. -- mixed feelings The inner elements eri and emi are softer than the outer ones, which suggests that they would mix more easily. The idea is now that what appears outside as individual and separate beings is unconsciously connected inside... [image] ...and that these connections result in feelings that change for often not obvious reasons (emi), while naming inner concepts allows to impose some abstract calm (eri). Astrology links water (emi) to feelings, love, music, art, religion, the collective and/or individual unconscious, and more. Now, the idea of a collective unconscious goes back to Jung, while it may in the end still be so that such unconscious collective connections are created by more Freudian individual unconsciouses, via subliminal channels in normal day-to-day external interactions between beings. But let me explore things in the Jungian picture first, as a Gedankenexperiment, because it is initially easier, and because it mirrors the initial assumption more directly. How one feels at any moment would be a mixture of individual and collective influences. Not that what other people think would be directly accessible, just indirectly with regard to how one feels in a particular situation, or how one feels regarding individual possible next steps. Individuals that are emotionally and physically close would likely have the strongest influence on a person, but also large groups of people, like same village, country, religion, etc., could together have a strong influence. Influences from a collective unconscious could go well beyond the sum of what is in individual conscious minds. Since the collective unconscious would effectively be a very large brain, consisting of many more brain cells than any individual being, it might have a much more complex and sophisticated mind than any conscious individual and it could know all kinds of details about everybody. Such a view of a collective unconscious would resemble the concept of god or gods in many religions, and it would likely be fragmented into smaller units at several scales, like families, countries, religions, etc., each with its own collective feelings, plans, and so on. Jung noticed that in dreams and in cultural creations some archetypal patterns repeat. These archetypes might simply be part of the thoughts, experiences and knowledge of the collective unconscious. Precognition in dreams or art might simply be picking up collective intentions that are only later realized and can be felt and dreamed about already while the collective unconscious is only planning or considering them. How would the collective unconscious effectively direct the individuals it consists of? Telling each and every one what to do at each moment would likely not be possible, just like the conscious individual mind would not be able to tell each of its nerve cells when to fire. But maybe with a general concept like astrology, which creates a balanced and relatively complete set of individuals, each with its own approach to new problems? Faced with a particular problem, a Leo, for example, would feel more like solving it in a "Leo way", due to collective feedback, so that in any situation different approaches would be tried by different individuals and a good solution would usually emerge. Since astrology tries to reflect all possible approaches in a structured way, the search space for solutions would usually be quite complete. In other words, a culture with a system like astrology would have an evolutionary advantage in the sense of Darwin. Astrology would then not necessarily need to have anything to do with planets and stars in the sky, more so with relatively ancient beliefs about them. Assuming the collective unconscious would extend to matter considered inanimate, oracles like the I Ching or Tarot could really reveal some intentions of the collective unconscious, maybe paired with emotional feedback which parts of the response to focus on or how to interpret it. If so, also astrology might a priori still have natural causes, direct influences from planets and stars, collective feedback from the universe itself. However, there are some arguments that speak against astrology having dominantly natural causes from the sky. There are different astrologies in different cultures, each of which comes in different flavours and has different schools of thought. Besides many small examples for a detachment from actual constellations in the sky, the most prominent one is Pluto in Western astrology. Pluto was at its discovery in 1930 thought to be a planet that is about as big as planet Earth. Over the following decades it first emerged that Pluto is much smaller, consists mainly of ice and finally in the early 21st century that Pluto is rather part of a belt of objects in similar orbits and with similar sizes. In 20th century astrology, however, Pluto was attributed a major role, both in mundane events and personal fates. In my perception, part of that view did reflect reality, so that it seems most plausible to me that astrology is largely a cultural creation of mankind that works by collective feedback. Now let me come back to the initial question or to how something with the properties of a collective unconscious could come about in view of contemporary physics. The most immediate explanation would be that there are direct connection between brains, mediated by some kind of "waves". But this can largely be excluded today, except maybe at close range, in the sense that any explanation of that sort would require new physics. So let me focus on known physics and try to look for the most simple and obvious explanation. What I propose is that people simply mirror who and what they encounter in their lives inside their brains. People's brains would thus contain "copies" of everyone they know, most prominently and precisely of their loved ones. What exactly the neural networks would mirror would not be consciously available to individuals nor would it likely be easy to analyze scientifically even if the full structure was known. But it could in principle allow people to make fairly accurate predictions about what their loved ones would do and when. For example, one person could possibly think of the other one almost exactly the moment that other person would have picked up the phone to call. In terms of network terminology, this would be a store and forward network instead of one where information is propagated immediately. leads * Mirroring the outside world is such a central part of the human psyche that it would seem likely that nature would try to make use of any physical effect it could. * Experimentally distinguishing different effects that could explain such phenomena seems to be very difficult. * Candidates would include entangled quantum states, as in the EPR paradox, and self-similarity as in fractals. There would be neither senders nor receivers in these views; sharing would be fundamentally symmetric. Would maybe different people simply look at the same things inside? * See "Zeitzeugnisse" under artemis for my contributions of 2002 to some possibly new physics related to this, which make additional very specific predictions. * Big data and deep learning could be used to find and analyze such collective structures, including astrological ones. * Science is based on some implicit, but fundamentally unprovable assumptions, like that nature is more stupid than people and repeats stoically given the same questions. Since numbers only come to be after a measurement, it is difficult to compare a mathematical model of the situation before measurement with reality. So, the "Veil of Isis" may not be easy to lift, if at all, also related to e5, etc. -- star signs Star signs in the Western zodiac seem to reflect transitions between elements within Aristotle's circle. Fire signs seem to transform from earth via fire to air, while water is missing: [image] The archetypal image is simply a fire that transforms wood (earth) to smoke (air). Aries as a young fire has most earth, Leo most fire, Sagittarius most air. In psychological astrology a wound is a central theme for the two later fire signs Leo and Sagittarius, namely for the fisher king in Perceval and Chiron in mythology. In the model that wound is simply the human body (earth) that is wounded by the fire of life, as any human body must die one day. Only what is learned in life can be formulated in words (air) and can thus be passed on to later generations, thus becomes immortal in a way. So there is a transformation from mortal body to immortal mind, or from animal via man/king to god. Learning and getting compassion—the element water that is missing in the transformation of the fire signs—in the process is a vital goal for older fire signs. Air signs seem to transform from fire via air to water, while earth is missing: [image] The archetypal image is a cloud (air), which emits both lightning (fire) and rain (water). Gemini as young air has most fire, Libra most air, Aquarius most water. Paris, who is associated with Libra, chose Aphrodite's offering of love and marriage with Helena, the most beautiful woman in the world, hence love (water) and thus the possibility for the missing element earth in the form of children as fruits of love. Similarly, the opening of Pandora's Box, associated with Aquarius, symbolizes birth. Water signs seem to transform from earth via water to air, while fire is missing: [image] The archetypal image is a river with Cancer as a source and young river emerging from the mountains, maybe from a glacier (earth), merging with more and more rivers and becoming a stream as Scorpio (water) and finally flowing into the sea as Pisces from where most water eventually evaporates again (air), by the power of the sun (fire), the missing element and goal for the water signs. So, the transition is, like for the fire signs, from earth to air, but this time for a passive, female element. The river that flows down to the sea is more fated than fire, since it is passive, it cannot resist the movement. But the way up in the end towards light is important, like, for example, for the crab that bit Heracles into his ankle while he was fighting the Hydra in the swamps, and got its place in the sky as the constellation Cancer. Earth signs seem to transform from fire via earth to water, while the missing element is air: [image] The archetypal image is a tree with Taurus focussing on the directly visible, but short-lived beauties of the tree that grow with the power of the sun (fire), Capricorn restraining himself to the parts of the tree that persist across seasons and which keep it from falling down, namely trunk and roots, which feed it with water and the substances diluted in it, and Virgo in between, between beauty and fate. It is this fate or necessity, which creates minimal structures like the branches and roots of a tree, thus order, the abstract element air. This solves the riddle that even though Virgo is often depicted as being very concerned about order, many Virgos do not keep their lives and homes in strict order. It is Virgo for whom order is an issue, for Capricorn it is a given and for Taurus it is not that important, except a bit, as Taurus is transforming from fire to earth. Persephone, who is associated with Virgo, was collecting flowers as a maiden, looking at the sunny (fire) side of life, but already starting to look down to earth, starting to wonder about how things work, what makes the flowers grow, etc., when the earth opened up, Hades abducted her and she became his wife, the queen of the underworld. For all elements transitions start with a dry element and end with a wet one. This mirrors that often when one gets older, one realizes that things are not so clearly and reliably what they appeared to be when first encountered. element transition missing image fire earth→fire→air water fire air fire→air→water earth cloud water earth→water→air fire river earth fire→earth→water air tree Maybe some day it will be possible to synthesize most properties of the star signs formally from the transition between the elements defined by in/out and rest/move? Libra, for example, learns from observation of motion outside (fire) and inside (water). Since Libra's transition is towards water, the gift of "inner vision" is given to Teiresias by Zeus and outer vision is reduced by Hera, except for observing omens, which are arguably just outer reflections of collective inner intentions. leads * For more detailed expositions, see the longer article Elementary star signs under artemis or my book Elementary Star Signs (2018), which are both also available in German. The idea dates back to 2001 and was first published in 2002. * The four tasks of Psyche in Apuleius' The Golden Ass seem to mirror the same transitions very beautifully and precisely, in the order earth-water-fire-air, with goals air-fire-water-earth. * Are there similar elemental transitions in the Chinese zodiac? -- artemis The oddest thing of all, the thing that most strikes us when we embark on a story is the total void spreading out before us. The events have occurred and lie all around us in a continuous, formless mass without beginning or end. We can start anywhere... - Věra Linhartová avantgarde Welcome [pdf-en] Welcome to my garden... [pdf-fr] Bienvenue dans mon jardin... [pdf-de] Willkommen in meinem Garten... [pdf-de] What is exactphilosophy? I Ching [pdf-en] Elemental changes in the I Ching? [pdf-de] Elementare Wandlungen im I Ging? Astrology [pdf-en] Elementary star signs [pdf-de] Elementare Sternzeichen [pdf-en] Deep Learning and astrology [pdf-de] Deep Learning und Astrologie [pdf-en] How astrology might really work? [pdf-de] Wie Astrologie wirklich funktionieren könnte? [pdf-en] Birth charts of Switzerland and the USA [pdf-de] Geburtshoroskope der Schweiz und der USA [pdf-en] Sedna times? Paradoxes [pdf-en] Paradox of love [pdf-en] Paradox of measurement [pdf-en] Paradox of solar eclipses [pdf-en] Paradox of decoherence [pdf-en] Paradox of π? Dug-up Facts [pdf-en] Birth time of Caesar Rodney [pdf-de] Geburtszeit von Caesar Rodney [pdf-fr] Première mention de Lilith comme second foyer de l'orbite lunaire [pdf-en] First mention of Lilith as second focal point of the lunar orbit [pdf-de] Erste Erwähnung von Lilith als zweitem Brennpunkt der Mondbahn [pdf-de] Dada und Duchamps Fountain [pdf-en] Dada and Duchamp's Fountain [pdf-fr] Dada et la Fontaine de Duchamp [pdf-de] Original ideas in the book "Elementary Star Signs" [pdf-en] Eigene Ideen im Buch "Elementare Sternzeichen" Public Relations [pdf-en] Teslacard Postcard Action 2010 [pdf-de] Teslacard Postkarten-Aktion 2010 [pdf-en] Mountain Astrologer ads [pdf-de] Mountain Astrologer Anzeigen [pdf-en] Delphi for Palm OS [pdf-de] Delphi für Palm OS Zeitzeugnisse [pdf-en] Discoveries revisited [pdf-en] Web archives [pdf-en] First mentions Art [pdf-de] Die neugierige Statue -- References * Andreas Schöter. Bipolar Change. Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Volume 35, Issue 2, p. 297-317 (June 2008). Abstract I reconsider the natural characterization of change and non-change that arises from the algebraic approach: this sees change as yang in contrast to nonchange, which is yin. Following a persuasive example from Alain Stalder, rather than consider change solely in contrast to non-change, I develop a formal characterization of different forms of change considered relative to each other. This extension allows the internal structure of a change to be made explicit in a new way, bifurcating the change into yang parts and yin parts. I call this extended definition of change bipolar change. Links [Preprint] [Publication] -- Books This website in 2017 – all web pages plus the articles Elementary star signs and Elemental changes in the I Ching? in English and German, as well as some Zeitzeugnisse: exactphilosophy.net 2017 Alain Stalder Paperback, 168 pages, US Letter Color ISBN 978-3-906914-01-5 More info or buy: Lulu Amazon Barnes & Noble Google Books Artecat Alain Stalder This website in August 2016 – all web pages plus the article Elementary star signs in English and German: exactphilosophy.net 2016 Alain Stalder Paperback, 70 pages, A4 Black & white ISBN 978-3-033-05801-9 More info or buy: Lulu Amazon Barnes & Noble Google Books See artecat.ch for generally accessible books around ideas from this website in English and German, and more. -- Links * Yi Jing Algebra Mathematical approaches to the I Ching, by Andreas Schöter. * Greek Elements Detailed article by John Opsopaus; from ancient Greece to Jung. * Artecat Alain Stalder My tiny publishing company; books and more related to this website. * Four Elements Inspiring book by John O'Donohue; breath, tears, hearth and sphinx. * Energy Language Images speaking about elementary cycles and more, by Billy Culver. POST 002 (by "pi"/"pi") Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 17:21:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <1c5635bd-ccce-4dc5-a697-6354c995fb66@googlegroups.com> Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything. -- Gottfried Leibniz To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein Actually, modern math is the long sought after, perfect language for philosophy. Technically, math is a formal ontology. So much for exact philosophy. pi POST 003 (by "noname"/"noname") Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 21:34:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <80adf154-468b-42aa-91a6-73f6b9615611@googlegroups.com> On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 6:21:50 PM UTC-6, pi wrote: > Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything. -- Gottfried Leibniz LOL there is certainly that. > > To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein Gobbledygook. Witty has the idea that language has something to do with something but clearly he ain't got it all figured out. > > Actually, modern math is the long sought after, perfect language for philosophy. Disagree. > > Technically, math is a formal ontology. As a language it's quite limited. > > So much for exact philosophy. > > pi Yep, nothing exact about it, much. POST 004 (by me) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 21:44:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <71655001-8a5e-4063-8f56-37d74968f746@googlegroups.com> https://www.exactphilosophy.net/what-is-exactphilosophy.pdf (Note the reference also to pataphysics... ;) -- What is exactphilosophy ? A new word for the dictionary that I would define maybe like this: exactphilosophy n. A way of doing philosophy that aims at producing scientific hypotheses, while avoiding logical inconsistencies (or making them explicit) and correcting factual errors whenever detected. It avoids to make things too specific unless they are carefully settled, influenced by ancient Asian traditions, especially by the Tao in Chinese philosophy, and by pataphysics. It could be imagined as floating around reality like a magic carpet, while gently trying to settle down. Note that this is about exactphilosophy in one word and not capitalized. The adjective would be _exactphilosophical_, the adverb _exactphilosophically_, the verb _exactphilosophize_. Privately, I often abbreviate exactphilosophy as _xphi_ or even, more rarely, _xφ_. A little background and explanations The fox icon of this website is related to hexagram Wei Chi (64) of the I Ching, especially as translated and interpreted by Wilhelm/Baynes, which mirrors the above definition of exactphilosophy closely, see next page. You might also be tempted to claim that “The exactphilosophy that can be exactphilosophized is not the true/eternal/unchanging exactphilosophy.” The concepts of exactphilosophy were also influenced by and are related to Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science, and other of Kant’s works. Conversely, exactphilosophy is not related to The Society for Exact Philos- ophy (∗1970), although some of the rigorous methods developed there might become useful also in exactphilosophy some day, or maybe not. Note that exactphilosophy is intended to be a word in the dictionary, a name given to a novel concept that did previously not exist in this form; it is not a brand or organization, hence never in competition with anything of that kind. Feel free to add or associate more texts from Taoism, or not. For example, see chapter 66 of the Tao Te Ching or Zhuangzi’s “Zauberperle” in Wilhelm’s translation to German. In that sense, the “magic carpet” in the definition above might float above, below or within reality, and more... Philosophy itself is already a composed word, composed of philo and sophia, very roughly “love of wisdom”. I Ching – 64. Wei Chi / Before Completion (Wilhelm/Baynes) above LI THE CLINGING, FLAME below K’AN THE ABYSMAL, WATER This hexagram indicates a time when the transition from disorder to order is not yet completed. The change is indeed prepared for, since all the lines in the upper trigram are in relation to those in the lower. However, they are not yet in their places. While the preceding hexagram offers an analogy to autumn, which forms the transition from summer to winter, this hexagram presents a parallel to spring, which leads out of winter’s stagnation into the fruitful time of summer. With this hopeful outlook the Book of Changes come to its close. THE JUDGMENT BEFORE COMPLETION. Success. But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, Gets his tail in the water, There is nothing that would further. The conditions are difficult. The task is great and full of responsibility. It is nothing less than that of leading the world out of confusion back to order. But it is a task that promises success, because there is a goal that can unite the forces now tending in different directions. At first, however, one must move warily, like an old fox walking over ice. The caution of a fox walking over ice is proverbial in China. His ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice, as he carefully and circumspectly searches out the safest spots. A young fox who as yet has not acquired this caution goes ahead boldly, and it may happen that he falls in and gets his tail wet when he is almost across the water. Then of course his effort has been all in vain. Accordingly, in times “before completion,” deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success. THE IMAGE Fire over water: The image of the condition before transition. Thus the superior man is careful In the differentiation of things, So that each finds its place. When fire, which by nature flames upward, is above, and water, which flows downward, is below, their effects take opposite directions and remain unrelated. If we wish to achieve an effect, we must first investigate the nature of the forces in question and ascertain their proper place. If we can bring these forces to bear in the right place, they will have the desired effect and completion will be achieved. But in order to handle external forces properly, we must above all arrive at the correct standpoint ourselves, for only from this vantage can we work correctly. Tao Te Ching – Chapter 66 (Legge) That whereby the rivers and seas are able to receive the homage and tribute of all the valley streams, is their skill in being lower than they;–it is thus that they are the kings of them all. So it is that the sage, wishing to be above men, puts himself by his words below them, and wishing to be before them, places his person behind them. In this way though he has his place above them, men do not feel his weight, nor though he has his place before them, do they feel it an injury to them. Therefore all in the world delight to exalt him and do not weary of him. Because he does not strive, no one finds it possible to strive with him. Zhuangzi – Magic Pearl (Wilhelm/me) The lord of the Yellow Earth was strolling beyond the limits of the world. There he came upon a very high mountain and contemplated the circle of recurrence. There he lost his magic pearl. He sent knowledge to find it, and did not get it back. He sent sharp eye to find it, and did not get it back. He sent thinking to find it, and did not get it back. Then he sent out self-oblivion. Self-oblivion found it. The lord of the Yellow Earth said: “Strange, indeed, that exactly self-oblivion as able to find it!” The exactphilosophy.net logo Note that the fox in the logo of my website is not alone, but closely and harmo- niously accompanied by some sort of “p” comet or something, and vice versa: [logo] Thanks a million for that. I call this combination “foxyfox”, by the way. [photo] (Alfred Jarry, Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien) POST 005 (by me) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 22:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <52e4d220-23e5-4453-8548-dda972a24ed3@googlegroups.com> While I'm at it... Paradoxes - https://www.exactphilosophy.net/paradox-of-love.pdf - https://www.exactphilosophy.net/paradox-of-measurement.pdf - https://www.exactphilosophy.net/paradox-of-solar-eclipses.pdf - https://www.exactphilosophy.net/paradox-of-decoherence.pdf - https://www.exactphilosophy.net/paradox-of-pi.pdf (All written down this autumn, actually on a single day...) -- Paradox of love Is love a real connection between two lovers ? Any direct connection becomes physically impossible according to current science as soon as two lovers separate a few miles (and do not use technical devices to communicate). Is love thus just a mutual illusion that exists only separately in the two lovers, maybe even when they are physically together ? The answer is both, in a way, as follows. The human brain mirrors much of the outside world on the inside, in order to be able to communicate with the outside world and to predict how things will behave. This includes especially loved ones, which are mirrored much more intensively and in more detail than most other beings and things outside. Since this mirroring usually does not mean that everything is analytically understood, but is mainly just mirrored by “training the neural networks" in the brain, the mirror image of a loved one allows also to predict things about a loved one that neither person is consciously aware of, nor even that it would be stored in some analytically structured form in their two brains at all. In network technology, there is the term of a store-and-forward network, a network where there are no permanent connections, but data is stored at each node and exchanged whenever the connection becomes available again. In the case of the two lovers, they would, of course, talk to each other and exchange themselves with all of their senses as soon as they meet again after having been separated, say, during the day at work. But a store-and-forward network is still a network, as long as there is repeated exchange. Hence you could at least qualitatively explain why, say, the loved one called you on the phone just when you were thinking about him or her, etc. You would have simply mirrored each other so closely, that similar thoughts and feelings would have occurred to both of you at the same time. But it goes even further: Connecting two brains in such a way effectively creates a larger brain, potentially a larger being, the “relationship", with maybe its own thoughts, dreams, feelings, and so on. This is likely why relationships can never be fully understood by the two lovers, simply because they really “go over your head", as they involve two heads, and the dynamics between them is impossible to fully grasp for a single brain. All in all, some aspects of a relation can never be changed, you only have the possibility to stay in it or leave it, or maybe change the dynamics by adding new elements, like when you have children, which then also become part of a larger complex of brains, the family, in this case. In conclusion, love would be a real connection, but not be permanently synchronized, unless yet unconfirmed new physics would still allow it. -- Paradox of measurement Can measurement be scientifically investigated at all ? Let me explain. In physics, resp. in exact sciences, in general, measurements are made, and once they have been made, the results of these measurements are considered to be settled with certainty, i.e. at least in principle the measured data can be kept intact forever and practically everybody looking at the data will agree on what it is—not necessarily on what it means or implies, but on what it immediately is. Hence the terms “facts" and “reality". Of course, that this is always the case is fundamentally an assumption, but as long as no confirmed exceptions are found, that remains de facto a fact and reality. A bit more abstractly speaking, measurement turns the world into numbers, "gödelizes" it, or, if you prefer, transforms it into a sequence of bits. Scientific hypotheses usually also make use of concepts that cannot be measured directly, but in the end only hypotheses that reproduce the numbers of measured data become theories in physics, or in exact sciences, in general. Now, since before measurement, there are by definition no measured numbers, yet, the methods of exact science cannot be applied to how the process of measurement works, simply—repeating the first part of this sentence in other words—because there are by definition no numbers that can be measured during measurement, since during measurement is by definition before measurement. It would thus not be possible to analyze and model measurement with scientific methods, since those require by definition measurement first. This might, by the way, explain at bit why the measurement process in quantum mechanics is so hard to understand, and why there are still so many contenders. It hints maybe also at some secrets of nature that might maybe not be so easy to access. A key assumption in science is usually that nature is “more stupid" than the experimenters, that it would stoically repeat the same answers to the same questions. Jung suggested in his article about “synchronicity" that nature might answer differently when not forced to answer with “yes" or "no", as the case in many scientific experiments, but instead given more freedom, naming oracles like the Chinese I Ching as an alternative. Put differently, measurement appears to be a bit like the “Veil of Isis"—not so easy to lift. -- Paradox of solar eclipses During a total solar eclipse, the moon stands between earth and sun, completely shielding the sun from view on some spots on earth. In contrast, the gravitational forces of sun and moon on earth simply add up; there is no shielding by the moon. In quantum field theories, forces are mediated by virtual particles, more specifically by bosons (even spin). Virtual particles connecting sun and earth would thus not interact at all with the moon in between. How would a virtual particle mediating the force of gravitation between sun and earth “know" that it should “not stop" at the moon in between ? Let me explain this in more detail. First of all, there is today no quantum field theory of gravitation, but the general argument also works, for example, for electromagnetic forces, where there is a quantum field theory (quantum electrodynamics, QED) that works with fantastic precision. A Faraday cage is a closed box of a material that conducts electricity. If you apply an electric field outside, such that charged particles outside the cage will be attracted or repelled, there will be no force inside the cage. The cage would thus appear to shield what is inside from the outside world. But this is not what immediately happens. On the surface of the cage, positive and negative charges separate such that they generate an electric field that exactly compensates the one imposed from outside, so that all adds up to zero inside the cage. Speaking in terms of virtual particles, virtual photons in this case, there would still be virtual photons connecting the source of the electric field with any charge inside the cage, thus exerting an electric force on each such charge, but there would also always be virtual photons connecting the surface of the cage to the same charges inside, so that forces would cancel inside. What makes this paradox, is that virtual particles interact heavily with matter, but are also able to “travel" completely undisturbed through other matter. I wrote “travel" in double quotes because virtual particles can “travel" faster than the speed of light “behind the scenes", which means that which way they “travel" depends on the observer, more precisely, on the relative speed of the observer relative to the setup. This is simply a consequence of special relativity; see e.g. Richard Feynman’s article “The reason for antiparticles" (1987). Virtual particles remind of the “spooky" actions at a distance that can instantaneously (faster than the speed of light) correlate measurements in quantum mechanics, as first brought up by Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (1935). Or think of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where there is zero electric field, but a directly unobservable non-zero electric potential, and an observable effect. A quantum theory of gravitation would presumably feature spin 2 gravitons, implying no negative masses (“charges"), hence not even apparent shielding. -- Paradox of decoherence I combine several well-known Gedankenexperiments, namely the one by Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (EPR), plus Bell’s Inequalities, and Schr ̈odinger’s Cat, as well as Wigner’s Friend, into a new Gedankenexperiment, that I essentially first devised in January 2003 for a Usenet post to the sci.physics.research newsgroup. Archived here: https://www.classe.cornell.edu/spr/2003-01/msg0047545.html From: Alain Stalder <astalder@exactphilosophy.net> Newsgroups: sci.physics.research Subject: Re: Some questions on decoherence and QM. Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 22:30:49 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <astalder-A850F5.13133713012003@news.bluewin.ch> In article <3E1C9025.A2D5A6CB@uni-essen.de>, Urs Schreiber <Urs.Schreiber@uni-essen.de> wrote: > Frank Hellmann wrote: > > A measurement of the quantum system described by rho in generally still > > has a propability for both classically exclusive states though, so we > > still have a superposition of classically exclusive states. > > The last phrase must read: "a *mixture* of classical states". > > Using the density operator one is bound to talk about > statistics only. Decoherence cannot and does not explain "how" > a system chooses from the possible outcomes a specific one > when we measure it. Decoherence only explains how the "quantum > probability" becomes a "classical probability", very roughly > speaking, but it still only gives probabilities. It is worthwhile to explain what exactly "classical" means in this context. This is maybe most easily seen if Schroedinger’s Gedankenexperiment is combined with the experiment for testing Bell’s Inequality: Two entangled photons fly in opposite directions and then each pass through polarization filters. A photon detector after each filter either kills or does not kill a cat on each side, depending on whether the respective photon has passed through the polarization filter. Decoherence tells us that each cat quickly ends up in a state with a density matrix that is practically diagonal. Or, more loosely put, the cat is "either dead or alive, but not both". Can we conclude that whether the cat is dead or alive is already determined, that an experimentator who looks inside to discover either a dead or a living cat will only note what was already determined before ? No, because Bell’s Inequality excludes any local hidden variable theories in which for both cats it would already be determined whether the cats are dead or alive. In other words, "classical" means in this context only that you cannot do interference with Schroedinger’s cats, i.e. that they statistically behave like measured cats, but not that measurement has already occured through decoherence. Hence some of the "strangeness" of quantum mechanics remains, especially if you modify the above Gedankenexperiment to include what is typically called "Wigner’s Friend". Replace each cat by an experimentator who looks at the detector, and place two other experimentators outside the respective labs. Now, when does measurement occur ? When the inner experimentators look at the detectors, or when the outer experimentators open the doors to the respective labs and ask the guys inside about what they have measured ? At least decoherence tells us that we cannot distinguish experimentally between the two possibilities, because in both cases all experimentators behave statistically classical. In conclusion, decoherence is a big step towards understanding measurement in quantum mechanics, but does not go all the way, at least not yet. Alain Stalder The more recent article “Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself" by Frauchiger and Renner (2018) shows that at least in some cases quantum mechanics as a universal theory of how the world evolves can lead to logical inconsistencies regarding measured data from the point of view of different observers. In other words, if that proves to be true, decoherence could certainly not explain measurement in quantum mechanics in general. In a way, this would have already been clear from my Gedankenexperiment: Just singling out some quantum coherence that would decay independently on both sides, except the one that is bound to remain correlated, does not make sense. In my view, since science generally assumes that there is one “reality"— otherwise published theories and measured data would not be the same for all, i.e. the whole setup would be inconsistent—the only remaining solution might be that there really are connections at a “speed" faster than light behind the scenes, i.e. also that the future would have an influence on the past, albeit only within the limits of the strange things that quantum theory permits. But the previous sentence is, of course, not really news in this generality. In any case, I hope that my Gedankenexperiment might help future research in quantum theory a bit, if only as inspiration. -- Paradox of π ? I wrote down the four paradoxes about love, measurement, solar eclipses and decoherence earlier today, while almost all ideas go back way longer. I have purposely left many things open in those earlier articles, in the hope to maybe spur the imagination of readers a bit more, and also because I might rather be interested in different things than pursuing them in the future. My official take on this “fifth" paradox is that it is just wild speculation: Long-range “telepathic" connections with polarized spin 1 symmetry, passing unperturbed through any matter, mediated maybe by selective perception of virtual photons or the like ? Unofficially, “eppur si muove"? Such connections, especially between two lovers, would be felt most strongly if both persons would look into the direction of each other or into opposite directions, and gradually less strongly if not. Also, the feeling would be maximal if the symmetry planes of their heads would be aligned, e.g. if both were lying with their heads in the same direction or any opposite ones, and gradually weaker if not. The feeling would get weaker with more distance between the two, but apparently not decay quadratically with distance, and no matter in between, not even earth itself, would make a clear difference. The explanation might be that virtual photons, or maybe other spin 1 bosons, would mediate the felt connection, hence the symmetry of polarized light. Adliswil, 19 October 2018 π. POST 006 (by me) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2018 22:17:31 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <8cd7560b-f7b6-4dd7-b8bf-b9e38f092db8@googlegroups.com> And this longer article, aimed at a broader, contemporary public, but maybe also showing a bit what "exactphilosophy" can reveal if done for a while...? ;) https://www.exactphilosophy.net/how-astrology-might-really-work.pdf (Also available in German; emerged in early October this year.) -- How astrology might really work ? Nowadays scientists and astrologers live in almost completely separated worlds. I am a physicist and versed in both. From where I am standing, the following would seem to be the most plausible, as I will expose step-by-step afterwards: * All people, even those who consciously do not believe in astrology, would be noticeably influenced in their behavior by astrology. Nowadays, it should also be possible to experimentally confirm this. * The effect of astrology, at least the way it is used today, would immediately have practically nothing to do with the planets and stars in the sky. Astrology would rather be a collective effect, unconsciously created by practically all people on earth. * This would imminently be a "bitter pill” for many astrologers and scientists, since each party would in the end have to give up a basic assumption in order to return to a jointly accepted world view. Conversely, this would also be a chance, not least since today astrology is often practiced by women and science often by men. * On the path to the above view of astrology, I can also make other concepts more amenable to science again: Love, religion and deities, telepathy, world soul, collective unconscious, etc. In a certain way, the path is even more significant than the goal in this text. * In the end, fortunately a lot remains fundamentally open, also whether there might maybe still be direct correlations between "heaven and earth”, as basically presumed in astrology. I will first sketch how the human brain mirrors the world in its inside, resp. in the network of its neurons. Building on that, I will describe what happens when two people love each other, and then expand this to more people, and many different concepts which have emerged over millennia, until I get to astrology. Finally, I will briefly explore additional possibilities a bit more freely. Mirrors In the head of every human being there is a copy of the world, or at least of part of the world. It contains fellow humans, other living beings and many things, plus how they behave, also in interaction with oneself. Everyone can imagine, say, an acquaintance inside, even if that person in currently not in view, and often also how that person would behave in certain situations. This mirroring of the world to the inside, into the human brain, is what essentially allows people (and animals) to live, to deal with the world, without e.g. quickly falling down somewhere. [image] A key point regarding this mirroring is now that it is often essentially only mirroring, but not consciously understanding how that which is mirrored exactly ticks—let me explain this sentence more thoroughly in the following. In the brain, billions of nerve cells (neurons) are connected to each other. Today, such neural networks can be replicated also on computers, to a certain degree. For example, such a virtual neural network can be "fed” with millions of digital photos and drawings of the digits from 0 to 9. That way you can train the network, until becomes able to often correctly name the digit on an image it had never seen before. [image] Does that now mean that the network has understood what it is doing and how it is doing it ? Or that it would even be able to explain that ? This seems rather unlikely to be the case, it is probably rather as colloquially with riding a bicycle. You can learn it, but afterwards you do not really know what you do. A concrete example: Ride quickly on a bicycle and then—very carefully and gently (!)—pull a little bit on the left side on the handlebar, but really pull only horizontally. This is what one would naively think what one does when one wants to take a left turn. But this is not what happens experimentally, instead rather a force results that wants to tilt the bicycle to the right (!)—hence please take caution if you try! What you have to do instead to take a left turn, is to also press somewhat onto left side of the handlebar vertically from the top, which has physically to do with the fact that the rolling wheels are also a spinning top. But what is essential in this example, is that a trained neural network does not imply that the laws of the outer world are somehow analytically accessibly stored in the head. In the head there is thus rather an often just as incomprehensible copy of the world, not an analytical model of it. More psychologically speaking, unconscious content in the brain would often not be present in analytically resolved form. A trauma would have rather simply "burnt” itself into the structure of the brain than that the brain would have understood its structure. In this sense, it is probably often not correct to speak about bringing up unconscious content into consciousness. I would rather be so that hypotheses about the inner structure would lead to an inner reaction whenever they mirror the inner structure well. That would thus not be much different from how a scientist postulates hypotheses about the outer world and then compares them experimentally with it. I hope this was now not to complicated to understand. Brief, the brain often rather mirrors the world, creates a copy, than it really understands it. That way also structures get into the brain which the person cannot consciously understand. This could, by the way, even go so far that laws of nature of which no scientist is yet aware would be mirrored inside, too. But isn’t one person alone and abstractly "the world” rather boring ? Let’s look at two lovers instead, and what maybe goes on in their heads. Love Is love a real connection between two people ? Of course, it often appears to be so, for example, when the loved one calls you exactly when you think about him or her. Only, scientifically no connection is possible when, for example, the two lovers work at different places in the city during the day, and they do not use technical devices (e.g. cell phones) in order to communicate with each other. [image] It could of course be that today’s science is wrong in that respect, resp. that such connections really exist but could not be confirmed, yet. But I will totally exclude this for the moment, since how brains work alone can already explain a lot. But I will come back to such possibilities towards the end of this text. In any case, the two lovers of the example above will usually still feel clearly in love and connected when physically separated during the day. Is their love thus only purely an illusion, which only exists inside the respective head of each lover? Would love maybe even only be an individual illusion, in each of them separately, when they are physically together ? Well, when you love somebody, you usually like to fill your brain with any available impressions from that person. That way inside a mirror image of the person emerges, which probably even also encompasses a lot which oneself does not consciously understand, and also the loved person not necessarily consciously knows or understands, but which will be stored in the structures in the brain in a rather unconsciously mirrored way. That way one could thus, for example, possibly sometimes also instinctively predict in total isolation when the loved one will call. In network technology there is the notion of a "store and forward’ network, a network in which information cannot flow all the time, but only at certain times, and is stored locally in between, just like when the two lovers meet again in the evening after work and talk to each other, and so on. But it remains a network, as long as the two keep exchanging information again and again. But so far this does maybe not fully mirror what happens with lovers, yet—or also in families, and less intensively with friends and acquaintances. In principle, the two brains of the two lovers connect and form a single brain. Hence almost certainly also superordinate structures emerge, which overlap between the physical vessels in the two heads, thus forming a larger neural network than could exist in a single brain. Such a larger compound of nerve cells could in principle be able to develop independent wishes, dreams, thoughts, etc., hence a relationship could go beyond what the two lovers would be able to fully capture individually. This mirrors maybe already often how it is in a relation: often beautiful, but analytically often not fully seizable. In a way, you can only decide whether you want to stay in a relation or not, but not fundamentally change its nature. This has now, of course, been quite speculative in detail. The brains of the lovers would still be comparably more separated from each other that the nerve cells in the individual brains from each other. And yet, as a "store and forward” network, and by storing most shared information in parallel on both sides, the above possibility still seems, to a certain degree, most plausible to me. If two lovers were separated a long time from each other, many things could develop separately into different directions, but not necessarily, if the two really hang on to it. Hence it would be difficult in practice to distinguish experimentally whether the two are really permanently connected or not, since both possibilities would manifest almost identically. Collective beings [image] If you now extrapolate such connections created from mutual mirroring, like between two lovers, to more people, like family, acquaintances, village, city, region, country, even the whole earth, including also many animals, different "collective brains” would emerge at nested scales. What would hold these compounds of brains together would be, depending on how you look at it, the power of love or mutual mirroring of each other, just like two lovers. There would thus be a collective brain for each family, then, building on that, one per community, and so on, up to country and earth, while, of course, these entities would overlap in many and diverse ways in practice. The idea is now again that such collective brains would a priori be quite able to have independent thoughts and feelings, hence could feel joy, fear and anger, could have plans, dreams and a will, etc.—simply everything that also a single human being is able to think and feel. But it could also go beyond that, because more connected nerve cells with more stored information would potentially be, just like in a relation of two lovers, a "superbrain”, which would be able to have thoughts which a single human could never grasp, just like a single nerve cell in the human brain would hardly ever be able to really grasp the thoughts which it helps to process in the human brain. This is maybe best conveyed as follows. Ants often form trails, which connect sources of food with their nest. Only, the individual ant does not really know that there is a trail, it simply follows the chemical scents, and, if you observe it, often not in a straight line, as one might think, but instead with a lot of going left and right, and sometimes also with shortly turning back. In the small brain of the ant there appears thus to be no concept of a "trail”, but only that following the chemical scents is good and not following them is bad, resp. probably that the ant typically feels more happy when it follows the scents than not, hence that the scents makes the ant happy. [image] Of course it is questionable whether such a compound of brains could really be more intelligent than individual humans, since the connections between the brains could overall only be much less intensive than inside a brain between nerve cells. But in any case such a collective brain would have a different perspective, thus something similar to an "ant trail” would be more easily accessible to the collective brain than to an individual brain, if only because the "ant trail” is a collective concept. The analogy with the ants might also mirror how a collective superbrain might be able to "guide” individual people, namely with something equivalent to a "scent trail” for the ants. More about this fundamental idea later. In the immediate sense, the scent trail is created and refreshed by the ants themselves, i.e. the physical environment is definitely also in play with regard to collective beings. Already in a single human brain chemistry plays an important role, and information is also stored outside the body, in books, photos, films, or also in everyday objects, clothing and architecture, simply in everything that is created and changed by human beings. That way a single thing, or one replicated into many copies, can act on many people and help to form them. Thus collective brains would also be collective living beings with a "body”. Now to various cultural concepts that emerged over millenia and which strongly resemble ideas of a collective being. Religion The idea of or the belief in higher beings, which are often immortal and invisible, hence in goddesses and gods, probably exists in humanity already since primeval times. A collective being formed by all believers would probably also live much longer than individual people, as long as believers keep having faithful offspring. Quite similarly in human brains nerve cells are replaced with new ones during life, but personality is still roughly maintained during life. And such a collective being would also not be directly visible in the world, resp. it would reflect in almost anything, which would also often fit with deities. If previous argumentations were accurate, would there now really be gods, if in a certain way "only” created by the respective believers ? The answer would essentially have to be yes. Because, if you admit that individual persons exist, even if they "only” come to be from single, interconnected neutrons, then there would also have to be goddesses and gods, which would "only” come to be from individual, interconnected brains, resp. the neurons in them. Religions can be very helpful, can help believers to experience life as deeper, more beautiful, richer, more meaningful than it is to non-believers, not dissimilar to how lovers experience love; and religions can also be quite generally useful for society and living together. Conversely, of course, also many wars and crimes have come from religious backgrounds. Would deities maybe all in all rather be more like the ones in Greek mythology: Not always without fail, but also with human traits, plus maybe even some, which might even surreally surpass humans, in good and in bad ? Earth soul Greek philosopher Plato coined the concept of a world soul (lat. anima mundi, gr.psych ́e tou pant ́os), and there are similar concepts in different cultures. Behind that concept lies also the fundamental question of whether the cosmos is overall alive or not. According to today’s science there are animals and plants, plus some other lifeforms, but a rock would be inanimate, and also by far the largest part of the cosmos. It could, of course, still be so that more things would be alive than assumed today. As already mentioned, there are interactions between living beings and inanimate matter. Living beings consist apparently of exactly the same building materials (atoms, etc.) as inanimate matter. But all in all, such a world soul in the larger sense would require assumptions that would go beyond the ones made so far, so let me also come back to this toward the end of this text. A world soul in the sense of a compound of all living beings on this earth would, however, most likely exist under the assumptions made so far. I will simply call it "earth soul” in the following. For this earth soul, the self would be earth and the environment would be the "sky” resp. the cosmos around the earth, with sun, moon, planets and stars. Would this earth soul now simply admire what it sees outside of itself, and like to mirror itself in it, like in a lover, or like in a mother or father, as creator ? [image] In any case, in such a rather lonely situation, without any other inhabited planet in sight, would there not be a very big wish that what happens outside in heaven would also mirror on earth, if only to feel more connected, less lonely ? This reminds, of course, already strongly of the astrological mantra "as above so below”. But first to another concept, which is likely quite significant around astrology, to Jung’s "collective unconscious”. Collective unconscious Carl Gustav Jung went beyond Sigmund Freud by postulating that unconscious processes in the psyche could also be of a collective nature, probably based on the observation that certain "archetypical” themes keep surfacing very similarly again and again even to mutual strangers, in dreams as well as more seldomly in real-life experiences. Under the assumption of collective brains, the collective unconscious would simply be that part of collective thoughts and feelings, which is (at least most of the time) hidden from individual people, hence is not conscious to them, or even not directly stored in individual brains, but would only indirectly come to be in the collective compound, like the ant trail, which probably also does not exist in individual ants. All people, and also many animals, dream at night in their sleep. Could it now maybe even be so that dreams would reflect collective thoughts more than individual ones ? Or could it maybe even be that a collective brain would sort of lay out its plans like a "scent trail” for dreamers, such that the affected person, after waking up, would more likely occupy him- or herself with certain themes, or would do things, which would rather fit the plans of the collective brain? And similarly with particularly impressive real-life experiences ? In any case, such a collective unconscious, or also generally a collective brain, would often have the character of "fate” or "destiny”, roughly in the sense in which Liz Greene cites Jung in her book "The Astrology of Fate” with "Free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.”. In other words, if you behave according to the wishes of the collective brains at different scales, thus family, country, religion, beekeeper club, etc., this would be honored by the surroundings with a feeling of happiness in exchange. You would thus be fundamentally free as an individual to do whatever you want, but, as a social being, you would also respect your surroundings, and there especially not only what is conscious to individual people in your surroundings, but also respect unconscious collective wishes, which could very well be diametrically opposite to immediate conscious surroundings, for example, as the "black sheep” of a family or a village. The collective unconscious would thus also have a "fated”, guiding side, resp. collective beings would quite generally have a guiding influence on individuals and also on smaller collective beings. And, of course, collective thoughts which reflect in dreams could appear as precognition of the future or of remote events to individuals. All in all, it is difficult to distinguish between collective "brains”, "beings”, "souls” and "unconsciouses” without more precise assumptions. Astrology My ansatz how astrology would work is the following: Unconsciously all people "believe” in astrology, resp. are part of a collective brain that believes in astrology, resp. at least considers it useful and precious. Astrology, resp. its different forms in different cultures, would thus be a view that the earth soul, resp. its smaller collectives, would have of the world, and which they would let influence individuals. Immediately the strongest influence would thus come from the astrology of one’s own culture, from other astrologies rather less, while, of course, nowadays cultures often also mix. Many modern people will now probably ask: Why would such an archaic belief have persisted also in all the many people who consciously think so little of astrology and often know almost nothing about it in detail? What exactly would be useful or meaningful in that ? Maybe primarily this: Thanks to astrology it would be achieved that also in small groups of people there would be different characters, with different ways of approaching the tasks that live poses every day. Since then different approaches would be tried, on average presumably a solution would be found more quickly than if people would be considerably more similar to each other. Astrology would thus have an evolutionary advantage if the sense of Darwin; this is why it would also even have survived Enlightenment almost unperturbedly, as far as it concerns the collective, unconscious part. In addition, during the normal course of a year, for each month the assigned star sign and its attitude towards life would fit well with activities in a primarily traditional agricultural environment, which dominated e.g. in Europe during centuries. For example, towards the end of summer (Virgo) people would like to work carefully and precisely, and sort things, as in the past often useful for bringing in the harvest, and then, at the beginning of autumn (Libra), they would rather like to exchange parts of the harvest with others in trade, in order to obtain balanced stocks of goods for the winter. Until recently, this would thus have been an additional evolutionary advantage, at least compared to other collective views that would mirror nature less directly. Of course, this is only true on the northern hemisphere and with Western Astrology, not e.g. with sidereal Indian astrology. With fate it would be more or less like quoted from Jung above: People would be fundamentally free as individuals, but, as social beings, they would be driven by often unconscious collective thoughts and wishes, so that, wanting to feel happy and fulfilled, they would still most often find their way in life on the paths laid out by astrology, almost like the ants on their ant trail, with often as much back and forth, and sometimes even going the opposite way. But where would the stars be in that? Well, in this picture they would in the immediate sense actually have no influence, instead "only” collective views about them, which do not always mirror the sky accurately. From a collective perspective, the earth soul, or parts of it, would very well have its views about cosmos and reflecting it, but it could also be wrong at times. The prime example for this is planet Pluto, which had only been considered a planet during a certain time, from 1930 until 2006, when it has been, scientifically consistently, reclassified, to a so-called "dwarf planet”. Now, in the view of astrology, Pluto would have a strong influence on human fates, and also on many collective events, including world politics, and so on. In my view that was also actually the case in the 20th century, thus these forces were effectively acting on people, and probably still continue to do so now, to a somewhat reduced degree. Pluto was also the first planet discovered in the USA. Uranus and Neptune were still discovered in the old world, in Europe. Hence behind Pluto there is also a lot of the collective that the USA forms consciously and unconsciously, which, of course, also includes many people world-wide beyond the USA. Hence it is not astonishing that exactly scientists from the USA and other English speaking regions initially objected most to the idea that Pluto would now suddenly no longer be a planet. But I do not want to talk about politics here; instead I just wanted to illustrate that astrology really has an effect in daily life, at large and small scale, but also certainly deviates far enough from the reality in cosmos outside of the earth that an immediate symmetry can rather be excluded. Birds of pray can, by the way, see planet Uranus in the sky with the naked eye, and possibly also Neptune or the asteroid Ceres. Had the earth soul maybe already been conscious of these celestial bodies, only Pluto came as a surprise ? But even then, for Pluto there would still have been the freedom to steer, which name the new planet gets, and thus a meaning that could still fit with some events that happened before its discovery ? And would the three pyramids at Giza maybe, as suspected by Robert Bauval, intentionally mirror the three stars of the Belt of Orion (Osiris), only that this had not been conscious to the ancient Egyptians, but "only” unconsciously collectively to all Egyptians, and hence the sky is not perfectly mirrored ? [image] There are more examples, where astrology does not truly mirror the sky, like that the moon is typically drawn geocentrically on horoscope charts, hence where it would be seen from the center of earth, not from the respective point on the surface of earth. And, of course, the division of the zodiac into 12 segments of equal size, by now completely separated from constellations due to precession, is not something that mirrors directly in the sky, and a division into 12 segments seems also rather to reflect the somewhat more than 12 lunar months in a solar year, than that it would immediately have natural causes. In China there are quite different constellations, for example, a division into 28 "mansions” on the ecliptic, where the moon would be visiting a mansion each day of a lunar month. Astrologers within a cultural circle usually share many methods and views, but besides that often also very often use further, quite diverse methods. Think only of the many different house systems, or orbs for aspects. How could such diversity ever mirror people ? In order that a client goes to a particular astrologer, he or she would probably have to somehow feel mirrored, maybe less in the astrologer, but rather that the astrologer would resemble a desired solution ? A client might come from an environment where mainly the Koch house system would be used. Should an astrological counselor now rather keep using her or his favorite house system, or in this case rather use Koch houses ? Or both ? Koch houses would probably better fit the environment of the client, would thus rather mirror where the collective brains around his or her environment would want to move the client to. Conversely, the individual has likely still also a free will, in order to at least be able to switch surroundings, sort of like changing the "tribe” into a cultural environment with a different house system, where then maybe different collective brains could make a rather more desired life possible. Hence also here client and astrologer would have fundamentally much room to move, to "gladly do that which they must do”. Certain methods and views in astrology would be quite generally valid, other methods only in surroundings where they would have supporters. This would then often be quite similar to going to a general psychologist of a certain school of thought or to a priest of a certain religion. Also there a lot would often only help if it "fits” the client. Summary This has thus far been quite a conservative approach to these things, resp. it was conservative concerning the physical assumptions, thus for example without natural communication channels between brains at large distance, short, entirely from the viewpoint of the current state of natural sciences. This resulted roughly in the following picture, which seems to be qualitatively plausible, but, of course, so far quantitatively, and whether it is correct at all, remains formally unproven: There would be collectives of two and more brains with independent thoughts, wishes, dreams, feelings, etc., and these would influence the fates of people on earth. A direct influence of planets and stars would however not immediately exist; in particular, there are clear indications that the majority of causes of astrology would be purely located in views down on earth, but would often also be helpful in living together every day. Tiny outlook Even if the earth soul, as defined further above, could sometimes be completely wrong, like with Pluto as a planet, it could still have mirrored certain laws of the cosmos, even some which are not known or conscious to anybody, similar to how a person who can ride a bicycle has unconsciously mirrored physical laws into her or his brain. How it appears at the moment, the milky way is not buzzing with planets with intelligent life on them, which would emit radio signals, etc. Is thus the architecture of our own solar system so special that in it also part of the secret of life reflects ? Without a relatively large moon for such a relatively small planet as earth, the earth’s axis would not be stable and life would presumably never have emerged. Quantum mechanics knows entanglement of quantum states even across great distances, as, for example, in the well-known thought experiment of Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (short EPR). Especially in the "New Age” movement there are many approaches in which the whole world would be interconnected that way, without, however, getting fully specific. Or Jung, who at the beginning of the 1950s, at that time often in close contact with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, postulated the concept of an "acausal synchronicity”, was probably also substantially influenced by thoughts about such quantum effects. This is a wide field, where I could add quite few more things. Let it suffice here, that you could then also explain oracles more easily, hence events where randomness appears to take part, as with Tarot cards or with the coins or yarrow stalks of the Chinese I Ching. Because otherwise collective brains would "only” have a possibility to influence things by focussing the people involved in the oracle after the random outcome on certain aspects of the oracle text, but there would then be now way to influence the result of the oracle itself. There would be still another, very simple fundamental explanation for things which resemble each other in big and small sizes or at the same size at different places, namely that the same laws of nature could bring forth similar structures even without immediate connections. This concept is called self-similarity. For example in the "Mandelbrot set”, a mathematical figure that results from a simple equation, you can find the same structure not only in the large whole (left image), but also many times in very similar, smaller form, if you zoom in at the border (example to the right). [image] A practical idea regarding how to deal scientifically with collective phenomena: Instead of trying to want to understand them analytically, maybe just try and see if they can maybe be mirrored in artificial neural networks? Hence, for example, feed a neural network with data that emerged at known times at known places, so that you can also derive astrological information. If such a neural network would then become able to derive the creation time of undated data, or at least limit times significantly, that would be a proof of astrology. A key assumption in astrology, namely that the situation when something starts, like a human life, an organisation, a country, etc., would shape its fate, could apparently not be directly derived as a physical effect in any of the explanations proposed here. Could a key element maybe still be missing ? This article has essentially emerged in the first week of October 2018. POST 007 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 04:02:33 -0700 Message-ID: <tgbotd9kks4ma0km1cadtek8umt1iks4v9@4ax.com> noname wrote: > pi wrote: > >> To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein > >Gobbledygook. Witty has the idea that language has something to do with >something but clearly he ain't got it all figured out. At times it obvious to me how language distorts m'eye world view sewing two speak, with its subject/predicate-object sentence structure it sentences me in English to have nouns and verbs. With its pronouns and interrogatives it presumes mulch. - going unnoticed all too, of'ten-k enuf ... POST 008 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 04:05:04 -0700 Message-ID: <pmbotdhvq3f49s7tkidi4r6db20m7e1ui2@4ax.com> pi wrote: >Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything. -- Gottfried Leibniz > >To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein > >Actually, modern math is the long sought after, perfect language for philosophy. > >Technically, math is a formal ontology. > >So much for exact philosophy. I've not looked at the website yet, yet Zen occurs exactly now, to be precise and at the same time, to speak of it a mite bit knows better. - as if a mite bit could know a Ting, oar three POST 009 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 06:04:55 -0700 Message-ID: <66iotdtnh9h5ni83tc7t8mddglslei5cfe@4ax.com> Alain provided: >exactphilosophy.net I've bookmarked the site and skimmed it briefly. >Snapshot of core content (without "artemis" articles) of 1 Nov 2018. > >Notable additions: > >* A somewhat formal definition of "movement outside" > and generally the core content revisited ("way") >* Jung's psychological types and "in/out" >* Empedocles and the elements taken literally: Zeus as the root of > fire, Hera of earth, Hades of air and Nestis of water > >* Artemis articles: > - Paradoxes (5 articles) > - How astrology might really work (also in German) > - USA/CH, Sedna, Original ideas in ... > >© 2002-now Alain Stalder So far, there is too much information for me to process, me being a subsystem of the whole process-thing going on. >Welcome > >I present a way of looking at the world here. That way or idea is not >something that can be proven. As pi may have pointed out, how exact can it be then, may be a kind of a question one could ask the ore as it knots. >But some of the fruits it contains might >be considered for tending to, grow and become part of existing systems >of thought. Fruits, nuggets, systems of thought stream and run like rivers, or trains at times when on track or tracks of reasons being. >Just click sequentially through all menu items on the left, like reading >chapters in a book, and take your time, or go to 'artemis' for every- >and nothing... I can't click using this newsreader. At the website, clicking works. >I am a physicist (*1966 in Zürich, Switzerland) and am doing this as a >hobby. Newsgrouping, here, is a form of fun for me. A hobby horse of sorts of course to horse a round on a merry go going. >Alain Stalder > >-- > >way > >After defining elements from immediate perception of the world, inspired >by Kant and Schopenhauer, I relate these elements to physics, the >ancient Greek elements, and to the 8 trigrams of the Chinese I Ching. > >-- > >space and time > >Imagine that you have just now started to look at the world. Okay. >[image] I don't see an image, here, in this newsgroup. >One of the first things that you notice is space. Aye. The space on or in which all the words appear, and which is between all the lines, between the words, within and between the letters in the words. Like. Totally. > There is you and an >outside world that you can see, Meaning, to me, a body, out of which vision goes in to the world which is, not me. > and you can see more than one thing. To differentiate the world in to being, beyond the one, beyond the two and the three, to being wan-wu, the 10k-things can be how all things appear when taught to sew dew. I don't know, now, how a newborn sees the world. If a brand new baby sees, cognizes, without names, 10k-things. >What separates you and what you can see, and what separates the >different things that you see, is space in its most immediate >definition. Distances exist. Between so-called, things. To say, all distances are, in sum, one thing, Distance, could be said. That might make for a point. >Then you also quickly notice that some things move and others do not. >This is time, again in its most immediate definition, as motion or being >at rest. Ah. Time. Time to give this a rest. - for now ... POST 010 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 11:23:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <6527f477-056d-4f43-8953-c35610ed67d7@googlegroups.com> noname: Math is limited Right. Math is like an 8 bit computer, the Universe ain't even a computer and God alone knows what it is. pi POST 011 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:08:01 -0700 Message-ID: <erjptdt55j0231unhe85qiu185e635fedd@4ax.com> Alain had posted: >space and time > >Imagine that you have just now started to look at the world. >One of the first things that you notice is space. There is you and an >outside world that you can see, and you can see more than one thing. >What separates you and what you can see, and what separates the >different things that you see, is space in its most immediate >definition. A thought of how space is not necessarily three-dimensional happened to occur to me a bit ago. I'm so used to taking 3D for granted it goes without saying and to say space might be thought of as more, or less, of greater or fewer dimensions isn't usual. If four or more dimensions are required to explain, say, quantum tunneling, or non-locality, that might be another grid. >Then you also quickly notice that some things move and others do not. >This is time, again in its most immediate definition, as motion or being >at rest. Being in motion or at rest, relative to some other object or objects might be objected too. At rest, asleep in a car or a plane, moving at the same time a human body might be two times the number of times it could be if it were only either/or. >Things can rest or move outside and inside the mind. Something that moves outside my mind, beyond my awareness of it, or that is at rest, relative to some other, so-called, thing, might very well go unnoticed by me. Inside my mind, what moves, what moves me, what kind of a so-called, thing, moves or doesn't move, emerges as a quest- ion of sorts, charged for a spell. >Thus there would a >priori be 4 different kinds of things: What moves outside, what rests >outside, what moves inside, and what rests inside. Let me call them >elements and give them the following names: emo, ero, emi and eri. This is getting complicated. Chuang Tzu once spoke of how he was born at the same time as heaven and earth and all of life is one. That being so, he wrote, having said that, he went on to speak of how already there are two and three, aside from the one. Then he said to go beyond three requires an accountant, and better to stop. >emo moves outside >ero rests outside >emi moves inside >eri rests inside So, what moves, inside (my mind), thoughts, perhaps in words or flickers of images, sort of, are or is, emi. And on rare occasions, perhaps going unnoticed, without moving, inside, is eri. Eri might be the place to be, at a point, still. Kinda like at the center of a circle, for example. The hub is mentioned at times in Taoist jargon. Thirty spokes are spoken of. Moving out from there, to the circumference, at the edge, going right or left, an endlessness was found to be possible, going round. >Using a camera, emo and ero might be defined as the difference between >two images taken shortly after each other. Differing pixels would be >emo, same pixels ero. For example, a ball that rolls down a slope would >itself not be emo as a physical object, but emo would be the area the >ball spawns between the two images (excluding the middle if the ball is >uniformly colored). I can imagine the image at the website. >leads > >Some literature quotes, ideas and different points of view. Always also >see 'artemis' for eventually articles that may expose some topics in a >more contemporarily amenable way. I've not visited, 'artemis' yet. >* Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Pure Reason. 1787. > > In the early chapters, Kant discloses that some observable things > cannot be isolated from the self, but instead appear to be themselves > a priori necessary for thinking and observation. These a priori > concepts include space and time in their immediate sense - the > structure in which things appear in the mind and seem to exist outside > of it. Carving and chopping, to it there may be no end getting round. Uncarving, not felling the tree, allowing one to stand, simply put, pu is a word used at times in places, evoking spacetime and yet. >* "By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent > to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. Herein > alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other > determined or determinable. [...] Unless they can't be determined and happen to be undeterminable. Without a name, one may wonder, what, assuming a so-called thing is a what, is that, where the word, that, means, a phenomenon. Language might dictate objects exist and I object to that structure at times as it conditions a mind to think along lines of reason which are not always reasonable. >Space is not a conception which has > been derived from outward experiences. For, in order that certain > sensations may relate to something without me (that is, to something > which occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in > like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as without, > of, and near to each other, but also in separate places, the > representation of space must already exist as a foundation. Hmm. Maybe. Sounds a bit ontological. An axiom of sorts. Space, as a presumption, could be taken for granted. As a mathematical tool, a grid, a construction of sorts, used to explain, location, location, location, okay. Without language, a wonder occurs. Without words, a body may move or not, relative to some other speechless happenings which happen. > [...] We > never can imagine or make a representation to ourselves of the > non-existence of space, though we may easily enough think that no > objects are found in it." (translated by J. Meiklejohn) At this point, a singularity appears. It has zero dimensions. It is the non-existence of space. It's the non-existence of time also. It could be called, Wu, Nonbeing, Nothing, Emptiness at its peak, Wu Chi or Wuji. Beginning with this point, originally, of origin, so to speak, space and time, or spacetime, may be constructed. Given: all the mass or energy, or, massenergy, in order to match spacetime, gravity is invoked as wells. Yet at this point, all is well. There is only one well. It's the gravity well from which massenergy emerges taking spacetime along with it, inflating the one from which there appears to be three, so-called, things. >* "Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor > succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did > not exist as a foundation a priori. Time and space, as two different, reifications, occur. Once set in they cement their selves, as if they had selves, in to mind and most minds don't mind them if they dew. > [...] With regard to phenomena in > general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to > ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well > represent to ourselves time void of phenomena." I like to think I hear and see what's being said. As if there were an I, sewing two speak. >* If I can imagine something, is it then really inside of me? The image may be, presumably, inside a cranium. Whether one's skull is inside of what one calls one, one may or may not call that portion an inside of one. The unicorn in m'eye-mind, at present, exists. If the word, me, means, a head-space, and if the unicorn is inside there and then it vanishes a quest ionizer of sorts may wonder from where did it arise and to where did it go, as if there was a where, as the interrogatives tend to induce far flung n'oceans being. > Isn't > there already a separation (space) between me and what I imagine? If one cares to carve and chop, to slice and dice, then, a rhetorical quest ion may be found spinning its way in to being out of nonbeing. > Such > an extreme definition of self or inside would mean that the self > cannot have any (consciously accessible) attributes, no memory etc., > because any such attribute of the self would be something that can be > considered by the self and would thus, by definition, not be part of > the self... Tribbles arise when the chop-oh-matic is used. And then they multiply as they get divided. At times they grow where no tribble ever went. Spinning for a spell, then and there they are. >* This definition of self reminds of the Tao ("way") in Taoism. Lao Tzu > starts the Tao Te Ching with "The Tao that can be Tao'ed > (trodden/spoken), is not the real (unchanging) Tao". When Cook Ting carved oxen, his Tao was real, real enuf to impress the guy watching him and hearing what Ting was pointing to with his vorpal edge. Going from not carving to carving the bull tends to be endless fun and yet here is another point where it ends. - until it begins again ... POST 012 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:25:14 -0700 Message-ID: <glmptdlj4p15svclm4lqmk9jqelp0vkhc7@4ax.com> Alain continued in his 1650 line post with: >* The definition of emo as the difference between two images is from > September 2018. Before that I would often consider, say, a ball itself > (or at least its visible surface) as ero, as long as it would rest, > and as emo, when it would be rolling. That overall view still shows a > bit in the first drawing above. > > The concept of a "ball" is a priori much more complex than comparing > two images, which becomes evident once you try to program computers to > recognize (3-dimensional) items on 2-dimensional images. How a concept > like a "ball" comes to be in the mind appears to require a lot of > interaction with the environment (typically quite early as a child), > and in the end it is philosophically not so clear whether a "ball" is > rather a natural thing, something that objectively exists, or rather a > useful cultural abstraction of reality, copied from others. See also > e.g. Kant or Plato's Allegory of the Cave. TTC 1.2 might be viewed as speaking of names. Ming. Ming are ming. Names name. Yet whether there is a, chang ming, or a name is able to name one or more if there is or are, chang ming, could be a tribble of sorts. > The new definition of emo<-->ero is more fundamental, even though it > reminds of the shadows in Plato's Cave. Thus it might a priori be > better suited for such a fundamental concept as elements are. But, > without having explored where different definitions lead, settling on > just one may be a bit early. Chopping up a post, or a video, is fun for me. It's difficult for me to not do what I'm doing now. Natural things, like a round rock, able to be rolled, could be called a ball. The thing, a noun of sorts, is produced by language in the use of language. For a child to get a gestalt, be on the ball to that extent, to know a ball from a rock and to roll one may take a bit, maybe eight bits, maybe a gazillion bits, of doing. To extract a child from all else, all-else, can be a mother. TTC 1 goes on from 1.1 and 1.2 to name what may be named Being and Nonbeing. Being could be called the mother of 10k-things. If one desires, always wanting, one may observe outlines. Without desire, empty of such a mode, one may be in line, on the ball, with one and all, so to speak. - at this time ... and places me ... POST 013 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2018 04:30:34 -0700 Message-ID: <7r0rtdddjog67v2q76kf88r82ell7bolat@4ax.com> Alain wrote: >* How would rest/move be defined for other senses than vision? Wu and yu return again, in Taoist terminology. TTC 1 may suggest they're two sides of a singlular Tao. Without sound and with sound, for hearing. Calm, a lake sits, without moving, in silence. With moving, waves ripple and lap at the shore. Inside the head, between mine ears hearing thoughts streaming, evaporating, condensing, rolling along at times it's clear, without any are few and far between. Touching on feelings, to sense within, my heart, a pulse or be unaware of how body processes go and are, breathing, having a tummy full or empty, an ache or to be without any. Touching a ball, rolling one along, the sense of that rounds or a cube of a pair of dice, one may feel any number of sides, their clicking and clacking in a hand. Rocking a boat or a chair, many ways to sail through the air and feel it, then and there, outside or inside, both, and neither when not paying attention. To smell or taste, inside the mouth, having bad breath or a mint, smells and tastes might move or not move me to burp and recall having eaten barbecue, or nothing at all. > How would eri and emi be measured inside? Would the only "objective" > way be to measure brain activity outside? Would that be fundamental > enough in this context? If it's a Taoist context, I've forgotten what eri and emi mean. What a smell smells like or a taste tastes like, the word, like, as, compares, just as with feelings and hearings, ring sings in my ears. When wax builds up and differences appear to me, to be, objective, if another is able to hear and feel a bell ring, outside, how it feels and sounds to him or her, inside, might be beyond measure. A symphony might move me, just as classical rock, or folk music may. How the sounds sound, the chords progress, emotions wave. I'm not sure why an objective measure would be made. - unless there kneads be POST 014 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2018 04:52:08 -0700 Message-ID: <rp1rtdlmtuvnumtgj58nsrkbd5otubt1m5@4ax.com> Alain ended a space and time page with: > Could the self (observer) be measured? Semantics might enter a picture. If the self (observer) is defined as the witness, detached consciousness, it might be a point. Observation points vary. At the same time, a point has zero dimensions. Watching, being aware, of senses sensing, a point of awareness may shift a bit in a horse's mouth. When there are five horses, and only one mouth, two ears and eyes a nose knows to a point where the measure meant. The observer could be a nerve ending. When attention, awareness, consciousness is made at or paid to the big or little toe, there it is, at that point. Without electrical signals transmitted, awareness, be it an image in the visual or auditory or some other cortex, networked via chemical wave might function to no end. One self (observer) might note how an arm went to sleep and there are no feelings there, or on the tip of one's tongue, about to say something, when words escape, going nowhere. >* Would a female observer also consider what is seen as not being part > of herself or would she rather tend to identify with what she sees? If witness-consciousness, awareness, is identical in all organisms, if all there is, is consciousness, then it's the same self (observer) seeing, feeling, hearing, being all in all among the many. One point points. It points out and points in. A pointed point. Moving at light-speed, immediately it is, as the field flowers, without moving it arrives. Spacetime, space and time, instantly in no time, one arrives and here it is. Again and again. Pointing. > (Is the own body part of the self? And lovers, family, friends, house, > garden, etc.?) In other words, is the distinction between in and out > hard or soft (gradual)? Identifications might be sudden, and go without notice. A mother and child might be felt and known as not-two. Giving birth, an attachment may continue and never cease except when apron strings are cut, or a mother doesn't care. When the word, my, modifies a noun, a self (observer) may or might not notice how identity has shifted a bit in a mind and might or may not mind. >* What about sleep, dreaming, trance, drunkenness? Why only have a fully > conscious observer? Fully is a fun word. Over and over flowing a sub- conscious observer surfaces, time and time again, here and surpises me by what gets writ by fingers typing words on a screen. As if in a dream or trance mode, sober, such as now at three in the morning or four, in the afternoon, Chuang-tzu, the book's pass- ages move me as well as when drunk on words. Now, looking at the clock, outside in the room here, it's time to end this post and move without moving on to the next page, or do or not do another, noun. - a thing else, a verb, aye POST 015 (by me) Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2018 07:15:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3f88d7c6-5126-488e-a6b6-2d65f2fc3652@googlegroups.com> Thanks a lot for all the feedback, greatly appreciated.. :) Some things where I feel like commenting on right now, others maybe at some other time, or maybe not, just contemplate, maybe... But thanks again :) {:-]))) wrote: : I don't know, now, how a newborn sees the world. : If a brand new baby sees, cognizes, without names, 10k-things. I personally have a memory of a memory of the first image I saw at birth. The original memory would be from birth, the secondary from the age of 3 or 4, when I first started to have a conscious mind. By the age of 5 or so, I was not so sure about the original memory any more, but still remembered that I had that memory at 3 or 4. The memory was what must have been the ceiling in the room I was born, white with lights, I guess rather long lights. In that sense, if such a memory of a memory can be trusted, I guess already then there was an "I" that was perceiving/observing the world and very likely also with an inner imaginary world. Maybe? But yes, in contemporary scientific view, a lot kicks in specifically after birth, and as far as I know how exactly the brain develops is hard to separate from the environment, so... {:-]))) wrote: : >I present a way of looking at the world here. That way or idea is not : >something that can be proven. : : As pi may have pointed out, how exact can it be then, may be : a kind of a question one could ask the ore as it knots. I am not sure if the words are so important. Literally exactphilosophy would mean something along "exact love of wisdom" (three things). I like the Groucho Marx quote (probably said in a sketch): "Those are my principles; if you don't like them, well I have others." Is "exactphilosophy" more like yin-yang than just "philosophy", maybe, because "exact" contrasts "philosophy", balances the opposites, gets things "rolling" in cycles, maybe, without destroying much of the 1? {:-]))) wrote: : Newsgrouping, here, is a form of fun for me. A hobby horse : of sorts of course to horse a round on a merry go going. Here's another article from my website, about the origins of "Dada", and modern art with "readymades" / "objects trouvees" / etc. A dada in french is the same as a hobby, also going back to horses. For all that it appears, all of the "billion $ industry" in modern art goes back to a joke by Marcel Duchamp et. al. for April 1, 1917... And, quoting Hugo Ball about dada from the article: "The child's first sound expresses the primitiveness, the beginning at zero, in our art. We could not find a better word." https://www.exactphilosophy.net/dada-and-duchamps-fountain.pdf (Also available in French and German) -- Dada and Duchamp's Fountain [image] https://www.exactphilosophy.net/fontainebleue.jpg Duchamp's 'Fountain' has a very direct relation to Dada: A 'dada' in french is a horse in children's language, also rocking and hobby horse and hobby, and appears in 'à dada sur mon bidet', the french version of playing gee-gees, and 'bidet' is a little horse, as well as the sanitary fitment, which strongly resembles Duchamp's 'Fountain', not least because of the usual meaning of 'fountain'. Details (For many facts surrounding Duchamp's 'Fountain', see "Pilfered Pissoire? A Response to the Allegation that Duchamp Stole his Famous Fountain", Jesse Prinz, artbouillon, 20 Nov 2014.) The name 'Dada' for the art movement originated in 1916 in the Zü̈rich flat of Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in company of Richard Huelsenbeck (Huelsenbeck, transition, No. 2 (May 1927), pp. 134-135): I was standing behind Ball looking into the dictionary on his knees. Ball's finger pointed to the first letter of each word descending the page. Suddenly I cried halt. I was struck by a word I had never heard before, the word dada. 'Dada,' Ball read, and added: 'It is a children's word meaning hobby- horse'. At that moment I understood what advantages the word held for us. 'Let's take the word dada,' I said. 'It's just made for our purpose. The child's first sound expresses the primitiveness, the beginning at zero, in our art. We could not find a better word.' Independently of whether things took part exactly that way, the primary association of Dada seems to be with the french 'dada', which is children's language for horse, including rocking and hobby horse, and figuratively also means hobby. The nursery rhyme 'à dada sur mon bidet' corresponds to the english 'to play gee-gees', hence where a child "rides" on the thighs of an adult. The word 'bidet' stands originally and until today for a kind of little horse. Today's better known meaning as a sanitary fitment with some kind of "fountain" in it, originates from its original appearance that resembled a little horse, for example in 'La toilette intime ou la fleur effeuillée' by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845): [image] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoilly_La_Toilette_intime_ou_la_Rose_effeuillée.jpg Duchamp had submitted 'Fountain' with help from his friends towards 1 April 1917 for the New York art exhibition. For all that it appears as Dada in the sense not least of the french 'dada'. POST 016 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2018 07:49:40 -0700 Message-ID: <u5drtd1jdd4mmu3isgbnonuijuu9qqqg1e@4ax.com> Alain asked, perhaps rhetorically: >How would a virtual particle mediating the force of gravitation between >sun and earth “know" that it should “not stop" at the moon in between ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFovwCaOik As I understand the paradigm, virtual particles are not real other than being mathematical entities. Trying to make philosophy scientific, exact, to make metaphysics physics, might be doomed once it crosses a line drawn on the surface of a water table having no legs yet which stands still in a well being. - for a time being, eternally ... POST 017 (by me) Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2018 08:22:35 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <361e3fdc-a866-4dcd-920a-10405a7d9ac3@googlegroups.com> {:-]))) wrote: : As I understand the paradigm, virtual particles are not real : other than being mathematical entities. Has anybody ever seen a (non-virtual) electron or neutrino, and so on? All of these things are mental constructs that, combined with logic (math), are mapped to immediate experience. There is no fundamental difference between a virtual particle and a real particle, especially as virtual particles would mediate forces, and how would you measure anything without forces, anyways? But, let me rest things from my side now... POST 018 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2018 08:34:02 -0700 Message-ID: <82frtd9heiv4jmc7sksk6pk9cq4p2o7seo@4ax.com> Alain wrote: >Thanks a lot for all the feedback, greatly appreciated.. :) You're more than welcome. Lotsa food for thought at your site. >Some things where I feel like commenting on right now, others maybe >at some other time, or maybe not, just contemplate, maybe... > >But thanks again :) Another thought occurred a bit ago, not sure if I can recall it now. It had something to do with, oh yeah, dimensions. Are they real. It's compelling for me, having been conditioned to think of three, as if the three of space are real. This has returned again and again in terms of something like a vector space, as the bird flies, given a direction and magnitude, more spherical than cubic. And while four or more may, explain, how quanta, so-called, particles, points that ripple in a field, travel and may be entangled, to say the dimensions are real, aside from providing a scaffold, a gird, work to explain. The numbers called rational and irrational are real. The complex involve the imaginary and quaternions baffle me. Some say Nature speaks using mathematical language or languages, if she speaks in many if not with a forked tongue in varoius Ways. I'd tend to say nay, or neigh, going for a ride on m'eye dada rocking out. >{:-]))) wrote: >: I don't know, now, how a newborn sees the world. >: If a brand new baby sees, cognizes, without names, 10k-things. > >I personally have a memory of a memory of the first image I saw at >birth. The original memory would be from birth, the secondary from the >age of 3 or 4, when I first started to have a conscious mind. By the age >of 5 or so, I was not so sure about the original memory any more, but >still remembered that I had that memory at 3 or 4. The memory was what >must have been the ceiling in the room I was born, white with lights, I >guess rather long lights. > >In that sense, if such a memory of a memory can be trusted, I guess >already then there was an "I" that was perceiving/observing the world >and very likely also with an inner imaginary world. Maybe? Well, there was the perception, and the memory. Whether there was a self-consciousness, if you were aware of being aware might require another level of learning. If you knew you knew you were seeing lights, long lights, then your epistemology was already there, in place, but to know that you know that you knew could involve a stack of turtles going down a rabbit whole and one or two elephants on top of a heap. >But yes, in contemporary scientific view, a lot kicks in specifically >after birth, and as far as I know how exactly the brain develops is hard >to separate from the environment, so... Children are taught, da, and ma, means, a face. Daddy being a horse with a kid on his leg. Mamma being a being near and dear. Without knowing the names, nouns, of people, places and things, without knowing how to differentiate, actions, verbs, and then to conjugate them, to have singular, plural, senses of time and such knots. Knots, neural, physical, nets where waves of electrical and chemical reactions ripple in a field of consciousness might be all tied up, for a spell, and then vanish. >{:-]))) wrote: >: >I present a way of looking at the world here. That way or idea is not >: >something that can be proven. >: >: As pi may have pointed out, how exact can it be then, may be >: a kind of a question one could ask the ore as it knots. > >I am not sure if the words are so important. Literally exactphilosophy >would mean something along "exact love of wisdom" (three things). > >I like the Groucho Marx quote (probably said in a sketch): >"Those are my principles; if you don't like them, well I have others." I like Marx and his brothers, also Marx. Also could have been the name of the fifth any of the three or four were drinking from. Context is am emperor and semantics a stick in the mud. The stick measures how high above, and how deep it is might go beyond knowing unless one was the one who stuck it in the mud, once, at a time. >Is "exactphilosophy" more like yin-yang than just "philosophy", maybe, >because "exact" contrasts "philosophy", balances the opposites, gets >things "rolling" in cycles, maybe, without destroying much of the 1? > >{:-]))) wrote: >: Newsgrouping, here, is a form of fun for me. A hobby horse >: of sorts of course to horse a round on a merry go going. > >Here's another article from my website, about the origins of "Dada", >and modern art with "readymades" / "objects trouvees" / etc. A dada >in french is the same as a hobby, also going back to horses. > >For all that it appears, all of the "billion $ industry" in modern >art goes back to a joke by Marcel Duchamp et. al. for April 1, 1917... > >And, quoting Hugo Ball about dada from the article: >"The child's first sound expresses the primitiveness, the beginning at >zero, in our art. We could not find a better word." > >https://www.exactphilosophy.net/dada-and-duchamps-fountain.pdf >(Also available in French and German) Thanks for the links! - learning and forgetting, riding m'eye cycles h'ear and then again... POST 019 (by "linuxgal"/"linuxgal") Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2018 19:16:45 -0700 Message-ID: <prlkqe01gm@news2.newsguy.com> On 11/3/18 8:34 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > I like Marx and his brothers, also Marx. > Also could have been the name of the fifth > any of the three or four were drinking from. "I refuse to join any party that would have me as a member." -- Karl Marx -- https://twitter.com/LinuxGal POST 020 (by "linuxgal"/"linuxgal") Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2018 19:25:57 -0700 Message-ID: <prllbm11jj@news2.newsguy.com> On 11/3/18 7:49 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > As I understand the paradigm, virtual particles are not real > other than being mathematical entities. Virtual particles are real particles but they exist only very briefly as part of the quantum jitter on the subatomic scale. -- https://twitter.com/LinuxGal POST 021 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 04:16:43 -0800 Message-ID: <92ottd1jpi6vu2imort1ia2v34l42im3hu@4ax.com> Alain wrote: >{:-]))) wrote: >: As I understand the paradigm, virtual particles are not real >: other than being mathematical entities. > >Has anybody ever seen a (non-virtual) electron or neutrino, and so on? Good point. I've seen what are purported to be atoms. https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/atoms-close Photons might be seen by an eye, but, I've heard it takes a few, maybe half a dozen or so, for the nervous system to register them. When a single photon hits some kind of a plate, it might result in a dot a counter counts on during an experiment. I guess it's the same when electrons are said to make wave patterns. >All of these things are mental constructs that, combined with logic >(math), are mapped to immediate experience. In a cloud chamber, traces of interactions may appear to magnify what is thought. Thought thought to be involved. Involved in a magnificent project to project projectile-like little packets of energy, quanta, amounts of ripples in a field in the chamber. >There is no fundamental >difference between a virtual particle and a real particle, especially as >virtual particles would mediate forces, Fundamentally, if the virtual particles are contrivances unlike so-called real or actual photons, then there must be a difference, and possibly more than one difference. > and how would you measure >anything without forces, anyways? Geometry? If gravity-mass, or gravity-energy, warps space-time, and is said to be different in some fashion of thought from space-time, using Newton's paradigm, maybe it's a force while with Einstein's it's not a force but more of a curvature. >But, let me rest things from my side now... Without carving, yet still with names, gravity is mass which is space-time as there is only one phenomenon that waves, wells, and is that which is all-things. People lump and split it, spit it out at times, call it up at times, and it might take space, or a wall of some sort if it's a noodle being cooked to see if it sticks to some other thing. - ruminating food for thought forms POST 022 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 04:21:19 -0800 Message-ID: <6rottdtn96ckh3602b1uis4pik3pnqnk0l@4ax.com> linuxgal wrote: >On 11/3/18 8:34 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > >> I like Marx and his brothers, also Marx. >> Also could have been the name of the fifth >> any of the three or four were drinking from. > >"I refuse to join any party that would have me as a member." -- Karl Marx Once up on a time, at a party, there was an other place at the same time where goings on were going on. Also Marx, the famous fifth, which could have been gin during a card game, a shaggy dog suddenly walked in on the party which was going on on top of the water. How many ons were on one that day was a maze of zingers that kept on zinging for a time being. Meanwhile, an eternal being looked on. - as the present unfolded POST 023 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 04:27:32 -0800 Message-ID: <o5pttd5g5j0rd3kj7p0dus53fa0a9vn15v@4ax.com> linuxgal wrote: >On 11/3/18 7:49 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > >> As I understand the paradigm, virtual particles are not real >> other than being mathematical entities. > >Virtual particles are real particles but they exist only very briefly as >part of the quantum jitter on the subatomic scale. Thanks. You at times help me to gain a better standing under Wittgenstein's ladders moving from rung to wrung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle << The term is somewhat loose and vaguely defined, in that it refers to the view that the world is made up of "real particles": it is not; rather, "real particles" are better understood to be excitations of the underlying quantum fields. Virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations of interactions, but never as asymptotic states or indices to the scattering matrix. The accuracy and use of virtual particles in calculations is firmly established, but as they cannot be detected in experiments, deciding how to precisely describe them is a topic of debate. >> I like to ponder how a wave is able to collapse at a point where in and out of its own self it expands spherically frequently and its amplitudinal volume varies. Unless it's not a sphere of sorts but more of a plane ripple. - reminds me of wine as wells, in a bottomless bottle POST 024 (by "linuxgal"/"linuxgal") Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2018 06:19:48 -0800 Message-ID: <prmv650k35@news2.newsguy.com> On 11/4/18 4:21 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > Also Marx, the famous fifth, which could have been gin > during a card game, a shaggy dog suddenly walked in on > the party which was going on on top of the water. > > How many ons were on one that day was a maze > of zingers that kept on zinging for a time being. > > Meanwhile, an eternal being looked on. Is this another one of your shaggy god stories? -- https://twitter.com/LinuxGal POST 025 (by "linuxgal"/"linuxgal") Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2018 06:37:43 -0800 Message-ID: <prn07n2kei@news2.newsguy.com> On 11/2/18 4:08 PM, {:-]))) wrote: > A thought of how space is not necessarily three-dimensional > happened to occur to me a bit ago. One day you will stumble upon the holographic principle and it will blow your mind. -- https://twitter.com/LinuxGal POST 026 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 07:05:47 -0800 Message-ID: <9h2utdhuv6ri5btpb9p4r1i7pfkk8apkn7@4ax.com> linuxgal wrote: >On 11/4/18 4:21 AM, {:-]))) wrote: > >> Also Marx, the famous fifth, which could have been gin >> during a card game, a shaggy dog suddenly walked in on >> the party which was going on on top of the water. >> >> How many ons were on one that day was a maze >> of zingers that kept on zinging for a time being. >> >> Meanwhile, an eternal being looked on. > >Is this another one of your shaggy god stories? Of course of course said Mister Ed to who'd a thought thought it could be one of those and then again. You've given me a term, a jar gone that never was that was until the name named it for what it was, going where it was known by many an Enterprise and then tribbles kept on multiplying like wabbits. - heh, heh, heh, heh, heh ... shhhhh POST 027 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2018 07:10:34 -0800 Message-ID: <sm2utd5bff3j4oe7vt50vv7vbe77btaf8q@4ax.com> linuxgal wrote: >On 11/2/18 4:08 PM, {:-]))) wrote: > >> A thought of how space is not necessarily three-dimensional >> happened to occur to me a bit ago. > >One day you will stumble upon the holographic principle and it will blow >your mind. One day, going to pick up the Fiat from the shop, where it had been lifted up and it kept on going up and down on the lift where it was, I did stumble. I did. I did. And it was on the side walk where, maybe it was that I was jogging but, no matter, there I was, falling, falling down and, catching my, a, ahem, self, as it were, by the wrist watching the physical body falling, aye, there and then, emerging from the fall stood up and once more was on m'eye Way to pick up the Fiat that, yes, needed fixing again. Plus, the mechanic-owner's name was, yep, except it wasn't yep, it was Tony of all names. He was, and still is, Italian and trained by the factory so he knew basically pretty much all about the Fiats. Did I ever tell you about the Fiat? - oh what a mother of a car it was, kinda sorta POST 028 (by "noname"/"noname") Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2018 19:13:12 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <97208abc-c4e3-4d2a-a739-06534fa7ebb0@googlegroups.com> On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 5:02:20 AM UTC-6, undifferentiated wrote: > noname wrote: > > pi wrote: > > > >> To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein > > > >Gobbledygook. Witty has the idea that language has something to do with > >something but clearly he ain't got it all figured out. > > At times it obvious to me how language distorts m'eye world > view sewing two speak, with its subject/predicate-object sentence > structure it sentences me in English to have nouns and verbs. > > With its pronouns and interrogatives it presumes mulch. > > - going unnoticed all too, of'ten-k enuf ... English is not language, it's English. POST 029 (by "noname"/"noname") Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2018 19:15:26 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <5537b5e0-2f93-40d5-9564-bbb4ebd2a385@googlegroups.com> On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 12:23:22 PM UTC-6, pi wrote: > noname: Math is limited > > Right. Math is like an 8 bit computer, the Universe ain't even a computer and God alone knows what it is. > > pi I think god doesn't yet know what s/he is, since it's becoming, and we are all participating to not much good effect. POST 030 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2018 05:58:40 -0800 Message-ID: <e0j0udha56lhucvmal0u6a5254lts8t2g4@4ax.com> On Sun, 4 Nov 2018 19:13:12 -0800 (PST), noname wrote: >On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 5:02:20 AM UTC-6, undifferentiated wrote: >> noname wrote: >> > pi wrote: >> > >> >> To be exact, philosophy is just a byproduct of misunderstanding language. -- Ludwik Wittgenstein >> > >> >Gobbledygook. Witty has the idea that language has something to do with >> >something but clearly he ain't got it all figured out. >> >> At times it obvious to me how language distorts m'eye world >> view sewing two speak, with its subject/predicate-object sentence >> structure it sentences me in English to have nouns and verbs. >> >> With its pronouns and interrogatives it presumes mulch. >> >> - going unnoticed all too, of'ten-k enuf ... > >English is not language, it's English. English, as a word, could be an adjective. As in, the English language, as it modifies a noun. Language, as a thing, might be thought. Thought to be a thing. And yet. Some things go further and some farther. By the foot, pound, wings, streams and other things. Nouns, nouns, every where are nouns. - speaking volumes them, as if volumes were a verb POST 031 (by "undifferentiated"/"{:-])))") Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2018 06:02:41 -0800 Message-ID: <15j0udtgplgfa6sd8to7m1bbug7nbh06fq@4ax.com> On Sun, 4 Nov 2018 19:15:26 -0800 (PST), noname wrote: >On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 12:23:22 PM UTC-6, pi wrote: >> noname: Math is limited >> >> Right. Math is like an 8 bit computer, the Universe ain't even a computer and God alone knows what it is. >> >> pi > >I think god doesn't yet know what s/he is, since it's becoming, and we are all >participating to not much good effect. One time, on an ego-trip, the Tetra who was a Grammaton at the time said, four letters, t'hat shall be as it shall be and sewn it was. Got sewn on its head it did. And kinda stuck. - for the time beings ...