Kyle,

The most effective model I find for understanding reality is the convection cycle, as exemplified in Complexity Theory. Bottom up process is the energy that expands outward until it cools and coagulates into the top down order and structure which provides the frame which that expanding energy motivates and keeps from completely falling inward. Physics projects these two directions to...

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Kyle,

The most effective model I find for understanding reality is the convection cycle, as exemplified in Complexity Theory. Bottom up process is the energy that expands outward until it cools and coagulates into the top down order and structure which provides the frame which that expanding energy motivates and keeps from completely falling inward. Physics projects these two directions to infinity. That the energy filling the universe expands from the absolute to the infinite and that gravity collapses the structure defining the universe from the infinite to the absolute, but I'm not going to argue the extremes, just examine how they interact in the middle. The middle is the present, between the order of yesterday and the energy that will decide tomorrow.

For one thing, we exist in a Platonic culture which assumes ideals are both source and goal, whether it is monotheistic religion assuming a deity from which we have fallen and seek to return, or science seeking the Theory of Everything that explains all and answers all. This results in an inherent conceptual schizophrenia, because source is basis, while goals are aspirational apex. It's similar to assuming the infinite and the absolute are one and the same. We, the west, need to start thinking in terms of the dualities. Any monolithic frame you can imagine conjures up its opposite. There isn't even a happy medium, as that's just prelude to stagnation. Reductionist modeling is a form of order lacking vitality, dependent on the strength of its content, but shorn of context. Nodes sans network. Meaning is static reductionism, but reality is dynamic and wholistic.

Think how well this relationship defines everything from political and economic cycles, as they rise on raw energy, then cool and consume the structure which defined them. Just follow the news. Is this the end, or will another model rise to replace what we assumed was the law of the land?

Time itself is this relation between order and energy. We think of it as cause and effect, proceeding from past to future, but as you point out, only the moment exists. Time is like temperature, a measure of motion. As this motion creates frames of reference, one event is replaced by the next, so actually time really is these events going from future potential to past circumstance. The energy goes past to future. The order goes future to past. As our physical brains move into the future, our minds are the record of events receding into the past. It's not the sun moving east to west, but the earth rotating west to east.

As for free will, contrary to monotheistic tradition, good and bad are not a top down existential duel between the forces of light and darkness, but the basic binary code of biological calculation. Single celled organisms distinguish between beneficial and detrimental. Our bodies, our selves, our context are making near infinite numbers of these calculations every minute. What rises to the surface is the balance which decides what is good and bad. We don't arrive at that point and then decide. The decision is in the distinction. If we chose bad, we don't last very long and there is no will to express. This concept of "free will" is an artifact of the perspective of those fortunate enough to ride economic and political updrafts which allow them more choices than they can take advantage of. The alternative vision is of Nietzsche's theory of the "will to power." That's when the options are less then those wishing to take them, so those who chose correctly as to what is beneficial, vs. detrimental, are the ones which survive. Up until now, humanity has survived by whatever direction is most convincing to the most people, thereby providing the energy of numbers. Currently we are at an impasse, where our numbers are starting to exceed the carrying capacity of our planet. We can crash and burn, or we can transition to the next biological level, from being top predator in a collapsing ecosystem, to being central nervous system to the planetary organism. You are a good bit younger than I, so you will have the potential to see how it turns out. It should be an interesting life.

Between black and white are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.

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Kyle,

Pagels has always been one of my favorite authors, though it's been decades since I read him. I'm not a physicist, just someone for whom curiosity has been a primary emotion.

There is a fundamental Catch 22 that makes reality a tough knot to untie. The better we get at understanding the enormity of the situation, the more overwhelming it seems. This manifests itself in many...

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Kyle,

Pagels has always been one of my favorite authors, though it's been decades since I read him. I'm not a physicist, just someone for whom curiosity has been a primary emotion.

There is a fundamental Catch 22 that makes reality a tough knot to untie. The better we get at understanding the enormity of the situation, the more overwhelming it seems. This manifests itself in many ways. Even those who climb to the pinnacle of power find themselves trapped by it. For one thing, the higher up the ladder you are, the more dependent on the ladder you are. Also those who do climb the highest ladders are often those most adept at climbing each step, rather than those who can envision the larger situation and are at a loss when they do get to the top. As our current economic and political leadership so aptly exemplifies. Specialists when you need generalists, but no generalist could make it that far. The "Peter Principle" writ large. Also, definition is limitation and limitation is definition. To transcend this material reality, we need to shed the very knowledge of it that makes it real. That's something of the situation of the spiritual absolute, the source of our being, as the essence from which we rise, as opposed to the deistic assumption of an all-knowing ideal. We are limited by our very knowledge, as we use it to escape the limits of our ignorance. Consciousness is the raw energy of the moment, going into the future. Knowledge is that comets tail of information streaming away into the past.

The principles of this are not just a consequence of human fallibility, but are elemental to the nature of reality itself. In many ways, reality is an illusion. Just think of what you know from physics. It's mostly empty space, with an odd assortment of counteracting forces that do not seem to have an underlaying physical substance. Of course particle physics is determined to find one, but as far as they push the envelope, there seems to just be another layer of activity holding it up. Currently it's strings, with extra dimensions curled up inside. Could they just be describing vortexes, with the geometry of their inner surfaces curled around inside?. Instead of looking for answers at the extremes, how might this relate to our own scale. Apply the relationship I drew between energy and order to nodes and networks. This focus on particles is like defining the network in terms of the nodes, yet in our everyday experience, we have come to realize the nodes are effect and the network is cause. The problem with this attempt to create a static model, reduced to the nodes, is because, as I pointed out originally, reality is an illusion, manifested by competing forces, so if you freeze the frame, you don't have a bunch of nodes stopped in place, but just an non-fluctuating vacuum. So it seems physics has given us the concepts to see beyond the physical, even as it is stuck in the effort to find it.

Fortunately I'm not trying to make a living at this because those who do, don't care for this line of reasoning and I wouldn't be able to climb very far up the ladder. Which isn't to say there isn't a great deal to learn from crashing these particles together and seeing what comes up, but I do think the larger pattern might be as basic as the convection cycle. My first clue was learning that the expansion of the universe is effectively balanced, or nearly so, by the force of gravity; Omega=1. Gravity and the expansion co-exist, so if they cancel each other out, it's a complimentary cycle, not a sequential one. Think of the model of gravity as the ball on the sheet of rubber. Where there are not gravitational objects, would the sheet be flat, or would it be pushed the other way in reaction to those areas where there are gravitational wells? Yes, the space is expanding, but it's also collapsing into these wells at the same rate. It's like running up a down escalator. The floors are not actually moving apart because you have to cover more space, since that space is folding into the floors(and being pushed back out as radiation). So light that crosses space is stretched, but it's a front of a wave that is also falling into all the innumerable gravity wells along the way, so it is both stretching and collapsing. (Of course we are only measuring what collapses into our telescopes and that has climbed a long way.) The light is being continually stretched and the further it travels, the more this effect is compounded. The redshift light is further redshifted so that eventually the source seems to be receding at the speed of light and this creates a horizon line over which visible light cannot go, only black body radiation. Thus other galaxies are redshifted directly away from us, proportional to their distance. Big Bang Theory tries to explain why other galaxies are redshifted such that they appear to be all moving away from us and not have our position as the center of the universe by saying that it is space itself which is expanding. The rising loaf of bread analogy. The problem with this argument is that if space is expanding, than our only real measure of space, the speed of light, should increase proportionally. Example; If two sources are x lightyears apart and the universe were to expand to twice its previous size, should they be 2x lightyears apart, or should they still be x lightyears apart? If they are 2x, that's not expanding space, that's an increasing distance of stable space. If they still appear x lightyears apart, as they should if space itself is expanding, than the whole argument is meaningless in the first place, as it wouldn't explain redshift. So yes, our measure of space expands for the light which crosses these enormous distances, but it is effectively an optical effect on that light, just as the bending of light around a gravitational object is an optical effect that causes the source to appear to move from our perspective, not because it does move. I realize I'm going way out on a limb here, if you haven't followed the history of the Big Bang theory and all the questions raised and the logical patchwork required to save it, from Inflation Theory to Dark Energy. Not to mention all the minor fudges required to fit the age of its processes into 13.7 billion years. I must say though, that it is a masterwork of math, but than so were epicycles.

Say the universe is explainable as a convection cycle. Galaxies would be the gravitational vortexes into which matter falls and energy radiates away from. That which falls into the black holes is ejected as electron jets out the poles. On the other side of the cycle is the cosmic background radiation that has traveled over that previously mentioned horizon line and cooled to the point it is only stable to the "dew point" phase transition of 2.7k. Above that and it effectively condenses out as particles. How does radiation condense? Consider that it effectively travels as a wave, yet when we try to measure it, it strikes our sensors as particles/photons. Just as moisture in the air condenses out as drops of water.

Now put it into the relationship of order and energy, as I defined them in terms of the two directions of time; The energy is constantly going onto the future, as the information defining the units of time fall away into the past. Everything is ultimately only the energy, just as time only exists as the present, but as this energy is constantly radiating out as waves and collapsing back down as particles, it creates this dichotomy of the pure energy and the information it creates and which defines it. These are the two directions meeting in the middle. Just as the energy is constantly expanding and gravity is constantly collapsing, it is a simultaneous process.

I'll leave it at that for the moment, as most people don't get that far before assuming I'm another fool(which may be true, but isn't proof I'm wrong). If I wanted to win this contest, I would have been wise not to go this far, but the fact is that my observation that time as a consequence of motion, rather than the basis for it, means that time goes future to past, grew out of trying to make sense of cosmology, so it is hard for me not to get quickly drawn into this larger conversation.

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Dear Klinton and other postings on your essay,

In fact, i find long comments on your essay as well as of some others. The common thing i note is that each individual is trying to sell his essay or postings. Ours is a competition at the level of high degree of understanding about both science and consciousness. If i may add it involves the level of Spirituality (not religion) we possess by...

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Dear Klinton and other postings on your essay,

In fact, i find long comments on your essay as well as of some others. The common thing i note is that each individual is trying to sell his essay or postings. Ours is a competition at the level of high degree of understanding about both science and consciousness. If i may add it involves the level of Spirituality (not religion) we possess by way of understanding of Humanity. In one of my posting on another essay, i indicated that two World Conferences were held in New Delhi, under the sponsorship of the dept. of Oncology of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the last being in Feb., 2006. Unfortunately, it remained confined to the medical scientists from the world over, to discuss the ' Expanding paradigms: Science, Consciousness and Spirituality ' The dominant theme was the miraculous treatment of incurable diseases using off the beat treatment via meditation, yoga and other psychological approaches. Unfortunately, i happen to be the rare basic scientist who attended that gathering and presented an earlier version of my attached post titled ' Science Interface with Spirituality' , emphasizing how one may become professionally more competent too, adopting the techniques of Meditation & Yoga.

May i now give some comments on your essay too, which are more general than specific only to your essay:-

1.Consciousness has been examined way back about 4000 yrs by the original propounder of YOGA by the name of Patanjali. Out of several verses may i indicate two that appear most relevant to our essay discussion here. The first says ' The cognizer, the process of cognition and the object of knowledge sought must merge completely if one is seeking the TRUTH. The other is ' There are mental distractions like, I-ness or ego, pleasure/pain, fear,etc. that come in the way of the desired thought process that may lead to the TRUTH. Both these can be achieved if the mind is so controlled as to be at perfect peace with one's existance. The continious flow of thoughts need to be interpersed with stages of 'thoughtlessness'.

2.In order to have an expansion in Paradigms governing science today, one needs to open our philosophical horizon. If it remains confined to western philosophers, ignoring the rich heritege provided by asian saints/philosophers, one can't claim any expansion in Paradigm!

3.Wisdom is not tranferred by mere words. It is the deeds of great men of the times that provide examples to follow in one's life and that too after thorough introspection and self-criticism. That is why mere words of prose in our essays is not likely to bring any effective change in the living life of the people at large.

4. Your main point " here and now " is the guiding philosophy of a spiritual movement in India as well as abroad now called ' The Art of Living '. It emphasis that life can only be best lived in the present moment 100%. Plus, one needs to have a constant smile ( not laughs ) irrespective of the situations/circumstances one is faced with. The basic couse of these techniques involves meditation cum Yoga practices, besides participative games/dancing among the participants. Based my personal experience following such practices, i vouch improvements both in personal and professional capabilities. This comes only through attainment of higher levels of consciousness personally.

4. The wisdom of our entire world is in our possession. Unfortunately, the western world apparently shows poor reference to the concepts and precepts developed in the Asian continent. I still say that only the practice of such tenets in actual living can only present visible upliftment!

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Dear Kyle,

thank you for a beautiful essay.

I liked especially the manner you explained "subjective" and "objective". I have accepted that theoreticians never agree and also realized that there is nothing bad in this. Therefore I wanted to make some ontology related comments in this spirit. I know that ontology is the ultimate mine field but I hope we can still remain...

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Dear Kyle,

thank you for a beautiful essay.

I liked especially the manner you explained "subjective" and "objective". I have accepted that theoreticians never agree and also realized that there is nothing bad in this. Therefore I wanted to make some ontology related comments in this spirit. I know that ontology is the ultimate mine field but I hope we can still remain friends!

You adopt the ontology that only subjective reality exists; experience and reality are same; there is no objective reality. You are skeptic about the existence of Platonic realm. You also say that the essence of time is that it is subjective.

The basic objection against the idea that only subjective reality exists or any kind of monism is that it forces to give up either laws of physics or the notion of free will. The successes of physics rely on very specific assumptions about space-time symmetries implying conservation laws and it is difficult to do physics without this geometry based conceptual framework which seems to be lost if one accepts only subjective existence. On the other hand, at least to me it is obvious that free will is something very real so that the objective reality of physics does not seem to be enough. Both subjective and objective existence are needed and the question is how they relate.

My own view - inspired by the well-known problems of quantum measurement theory - is that both subjective and objective realities exists. Objective realities exist even in two variants: quantum states and classical states identifiable as space-time geometries and realizing quantum classical correspondence. This means ontological trinity rather than monism. Subjective existence in turn in the quantum jump between quantum states re-creating an new version of objective reality, between two objective realities. Subjective does not exist in any kind of geometric space. Consciousness theorist can say a lot about its structure and contents.

In tri-partite ontology objective reality is replaced with the space of all possible objective realities allowed by the laws of quantum physics rather than given up totally. Since subjective realities are at different ontological levels, also subjective time and geometric time are different notions, and can only correlate in the sense that the contents of conscious experience are about definite region of space-time and this region seems to shift towards geometric future: a view about what really happens is discussed in my own essay.

Accepting this view, one gets rid of theory-reality dualism since there is no need to postulate reality behind the mathematical description of physical states. Objective realities are identical with their mathematical representations. Subjective existence results as a sequence of quantum jumps between these objective realities. The pain in toe when you kick a stone results from a quantum jump between initial and final quantum states.

An objection against this picture comes from conservation laws. Even if one allows quantum jumps, conservation laws imply in standard ontology that only states with same energy and other conserved quantum numbers can be experienced. This looks highly un-democratic and leads to the unpleasant question about the criterion used to decide about total quantum numbers of the Universe. In quantum physics framework it is however possible to replace positive energy ontology with what I call zero energy ontology. In this ontology which physical states are represented as pairs of positive and negative energy states having opposite conserved quantum numbers. Conservation laws therefore allow quantum jump to lead to any state of this kind so that any state allowed by laws of physics can be in principle generated in the sequence of quantum jumps giving rise to subjective experience. In ordinary positive energy ontology these zero energy states correspond to "events" with positive energy part identified as initial state and negative energy part as final state of the event. Quantum jumps make these events conscious.

After all these disagreements it is amusing to find that these zero energy states -events- resemble in many respects your "here-and-now"'s.

Thank you for a nice essay,

Matti Pitkänen

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I do agree with you, Clinton Miller, that the question of Time is an unsolved question that is blocking modern science.

This question drives obviously to the scientific method and the physics’ tools/language in which the subjectivity introduced by Time plays a great part.

In other words, as Zeno of Elea and Aristotle pointed it, Time is the less objective ‘thing’ in the...

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I do agree with you, Clinton Miller, that the question of Time is an unsolved question that is blocking modern science.

This question drives obviously to the scientific method and the physics’ tools/language in which the subjectivity introduced by Time plays a great part.

In other words, as Zeno of Elea and Aristotle pointed it, Time is the less objective ‘thing’ in the Science’s field. The many ways to catch the Time through heart’s pulse, sun-dial, temperature-scale, light-scale, speed-scale, regular flow of a drop, symmetry with the past, music, pendulum, etc., is betraying the subtlety of the Time ‘phenomenon’.

But let me tell you that taking Einstein as an example is very surprising! Because Einstein is one of the most subjective scientists. ‘Multiplying entities beyond necessity’ is in fact exactly what Einstein is doing. In his special Relativity Theory for instance, one train motion phenomenon is multiplied in two speed rates. On this basis, exactly against Occam’s advise, in the ‘General Relativity’ we have many ‘arrows’ mixing time and space, that is to say an objective matter with a subtle phenomenon. Here one have an example of the big trouble that a retrospective subjective idea of time is bringing.

Your mistake here in my opinion comes from the fact that you think the ‘here and now’ as a ‘present time’, a little bit like the German philosopher Heidegger does in his lessons about antique Greek Science (‘sein-dasein’), although the ‘here and now’ is ‘past time’: coincidence is always ‘a posteriori’. You do insist on ‘present time’ but you are still in past.

The idea of ‘block time’ is of course as subjective as Einstein’s theory does. Instead of arrows you have cubes but made with time too. The strength of ‘block idea’ related to space and matter, is here only in our mind.

On this basis -Einstein or Quanta physics- you can multiply dimensions as many times as you will as Superstring theoricians do.

In my own statement I point the difference between two scientific languages or tools: Geometry and Algebra, and I explain why Algebra triumphated during the XVIIth in France. Geometry speaks about the internal structure of Matter although algebraic language is trying to catch outside ‘phenomenons’.

For example Helmholtz or Riemann are misunderstanding Euclide when they think he is not precise enough: measurement or localization is not Euclide’s goal.

And here is the risk of algebraic tool: although it let think that it is more precise and objective than Geometry, Algebra is the most approximate and subjective scientific tool.

When scientists are splitting the particle in their model in matter and wave, what do they do? They give to matter the value of a subjective ‘a posteriori’ algebraic idea of matter’s motion. Future? Here and now? Dynamics? No: Past and statics!

There is one difficulty more, coming from your sagacious description of the (actual) laws of Physics as ‘something akin to a notion of ‘God’. This makes everybody going against these laws a ‘Blasphemer’. I personally do not believe in the ‘free Science’ idea. This forum is an exception: scientific debate is usually as closed as a Monastery.

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Dear Kyle, your note on 'consciousness' is well presented. However, you have kept its scope limited to the three stages of wakefulness, dream and dep sleep only. There is a comprehensive aspect of it beyond the human beings (few thousands yrs. of existence) that links to the creation of the universe itself. It is clear that nothing physical has led to the creation of the physical universe! Cosmic...

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Dear Kyle, your note on 'consciousness' is well presented. However, you have kept its scope limited to the three stages of wakefulness, dream and dep sleep only. There is a comprehensive aspect of it beyond the human beings (few thousands yrs. of existence) that links to the creation of the universe itself. It is clear that nothing physical has led to the creation of the physical universe! Cosmic consciousness is the most appropriate candidate as it is timeless,birthless and indestructable! Let me present a few points below to elucidate the preamble given above:-

1.There are plenty of mysteries documented alround the world relating to the prodigeous behaviour of young children ( beyond the DNA linkages ). These stand in contrast to your statement 'human is born without an understanding of the world around and only the interactions with othersd....'.

2. Some years back, i happen to see on the Internet a quote from Prof. Eccles, a Nobel awardee neurologist from University of Oxford, U.K.. He observed neuron activity in the Supplementary Motor Area (SMA) of the brain when none was expected. He postulated there appears to be external interactions that are stimulating the neurons in SMA. He expressed the belief that such interactions are getting recorded in a non-physical covering around the SMAS. The latter does not die with the death of the body and thus such interactions record is carried permanenetly after death of an individual.

As per the eastern traditions, with belief in re-birth of the soul in another body, there is a term called 'Samskaras'. That carries in nutshell the cosequencies of actions in the past birth into the present life.

3. You are correct when you assert about the harmful effects of 'conditioning' of a child through the modern education system. " We are not what we are made of!". It is true in our education system too. We all need to broaden the outlook to all existing knowledge in a holistic manner.

4. Asc indicated in earlier postings too, it is unfortunate that the people in the west confine to the western philosophy. There are hosts of personalities in the east who developed rich concepts for good living through their inward life research on human experiences, self as well as others. Any one can look up ancient literature on Upnishads, Puranas, Gita and Patanjali Yogashstra. Max Mueller of Germany was one author of modern days who has written extensive commentaries on such ancient literature of India. It is all about secular living with no connection to any practiced religion of the day.

In my own essay, the term Spirituality is secular in context and relates better with Humanity than religion.There is a misnomer in the west about Yoga/meditation, as propounded by Patanjali, as a religious text!

5. You are right to conclude that 'consciousness' is a conceptualization of exisitence and that we have still to go far and continue to 'wonder' about the mysteries of life as also of the Universe we live in!

6. May i request you to see my post of Nov., 13 on my own essay site!

Hope this post will also interest other authors in this essay competition, in order that we broaden our outlook beyond our upbringing and acquired education in the respective locations.

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