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RE: Black Hole eats sun
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
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The navigator doesn't worry about the third dimension when locating points on the surface of the ocean. He just thinks about latitude and longitude.
Tell that to the navigators in the movie "Core". 
I am old enough to have learned celestial navigation as an amateur mariner. Celestial navigation didn't come into general use until it was reduced to a procedure for drawing lines on a paper chart. In my experience, and that of my friends with far more voyaging under their keels than I, the mariner does indeed identify the surface of the ocean very closely with his paper chart. This holds true even now, when "navigating" for most amateur mariners means reading latitude and longitude off their GPS and marking it on the chart.
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Well, as far as curved space, we can tell it's curved by another way other than only gravity effects. Light bending (gravitational lensing) shows space curving 3D optically, again no "need" for a 4th dimension and higher math. But the point of the Sagan analogy was not so much for general relativity purposes (curved space do to mass, though he does mention it) so much as for the LARGE scale structure of the universe and the implications of the Big Bang theory and other cosmological concepts....because as it stands the balloon analogy by itself sucks. It's like showing a flat map of the earth with longitude and latitude as you describe to a young child and say "there is the earth in 2D, GET IT KID????". The child is better off with a GLOBE to get the true picture of what navigating the earth will REALLY be like.
To get an idea of the shape of the earth, and the idea of great circle distances, the globe is indeed the best tool. But navigation in practice is still done with paper charts, or even more abstractly with computer based systems.
RNJ
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Date Jan. 15 2013 3:19:08
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
How do we make a sphere without going into the third dimension?
But it could give the mistaken impression that an additional dimension is required to generate a curved space.
RNJ
Hi Richard, my name is David.
I know the following might seem glib but I think it is relevant to your argument.
The 'we' in question above is 'we humans' right ? We experience the world in three dismesions already, it is very difficult for me to imagine that any adult mind does not have ready and unavoidable recourse to three dimension.
It would be more accurate to say, "We mathematicians." Humans indeed perceive things in 3-D, though not all in the same way. On the island of Bali, and in present day Hawaii, instead of north/south and east/west people use "toward the mountains" ("kaja" in Bali, "mauka" in Hawaii, "toward the ocean" ("kelod" in Bali, "makai" in Hawaii), and "left/right when facing the mountains". So when driving north from Honolulu to the North Shore on Oahu, at some point your direction changes from mauka to makai. People use these words in Hawaii when speaking English.
But as far as we mathematicians go, we are (or should be) very careful about the ingredients we use to build up a concept. I was just pointing out that mathematically you don't need three dimensions to build up a curved 2-dimensional space.
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I think that geometry itself IS the analogy that we use to model three dimensional space. Certainly our nerve synapses propagate in three dimesion so I see no reason to assume that our brain has any need to use the tricks that our geometry uses to represent space in 2D. In much the same way we are not really limited by the digital nature of our arithmetic as we can store amounts both as integers and irrational estimates/impressions since our brain is analog.
I suspect that our analogies (such as our mathematics arithmetic geometry etc etc ) ARE limited by our brain architecture.
Using geometry we can cumbersomely calculate snapshot answers to problems which we have been solving in real time since before the emergence of our species. Problems like 'how large is that object in the distance' ?, 'at what speed should I move my hand to intercept that moving ball' .
We can steer out two dimensional tools to model and imitate the ways in which we solve these things intuitively. We can do this because we have visceral understanding of a readily perceived three dimensional space.
The insights which we wish to develop about other dimensions are likely to be much more difficult to envisage since we cannot steer in four or more dimensions with the confidence that we can in two and three.
And we were always in three.
Just a though, clumsily developed.
D.
You raise issues that interest me greatly. My mathematics teachers emphasized that mathematics was a creative endeavor, and worked hard at teaching their students to be creative. But to a person with a strong interest in physics the question arises, "Why is mathematics so effective in physics?"
I think your ideas point toward an answer. How much of mathematics is grounded in reality, and how much of it is the work of human creativity? Thirty years ago, experiments with cats showed that presenting a line segment anywhere in the visual field caused certain neurons in the visual cortex to fire. Changing the orientation of the line segment caused different neurons to fire. One could conclude that the mammalian brain is hard wired to recognize line segments and their orientation. Thus one may suppose that these mathematical concepts have a basis in the structure of the brain. It's not a very big step to hypothesize that many other mathematical concepts are rooted in brain architecture, which has been adapted by evolution to deal efficiently with its surroundings.
But is the 4-dimensional space of General Relativity, or the infinite-dimensional Hilbert Space of quantum mechanics based on brain architecture? It would greatly surprise me if this were true. For most people it takes weeks or months of study and drill to get familiar with these abstract spaces.
Still, when solving problems in these abstract spaces, which can involve months or years of struggle, there is an intense feeling of discovery when the solution is seen. Sometimes this feeling of discovery occurs even before the logical proof of the solution has been worked out. You just know you have it, and the details will follow.
Where does this sense of discovery come from, when dealing with things that are clearly the work of human creativity?
The immense mathematical superstructure required by physics has been put together by creative minds over centuries of work. The idea of a mathematical limit was developed geometrically by Eudoxus in the 4th century B.C., but not stated with logical precision for numbers until Cauchy in the 19th century A.D.
The parts of mathematics that are useful in physics have often been developed in response to physical problems, but not always. The theory of groups is a great aid to the sudy of particle physics, yet its development began largely as a pure intellectual exercise. The great revolution of quantum mechanics was mightily assisted by mathematics developed decades earlier in the study of mechanical vibrations.
Why do we have these marvelous coincidences?
I find these ideas and questions fascinating. I doubt that I will ever come to a final conclusion.
RNJ
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Date Jan. 15 2013 4:13:48
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
It would be more accurate to say, "We mathematicians." Humans indeed perceive things in 3-D, though not all in the same way. On the island of Bali, and in present day Hawaii, instead of north/south and east/west people use "toward the mountains" ("kaja" in Bali, "mauka" in Hawaii, "toward the ocean" ("kelod" in Bali, "makai" in Hawaii), and "left/right when facing the mountains". So when driving north from Honolulu to the North Shore on Oahu, at some point your direction changes from mauka to makai. People use these words in Hawaii when speaking English.
And apparently some tribes have been found in the amazon who had no concept of left and right. Certainly our brain is a computer the substance of which is altered by the software running on it. I realised yesterday that there could be an argument made that the 'consciousness'(our human verion of windows) may abstract brain architecture to 2D. Like a subway map. I am gratified that you did not make this point as it would be awfuly difficult to disprove and maybe impossible to prove.
The coordinate systems we choose may effect the brains architecture in some minimal ways I doubt that the effect the nature of the human involved as long as that individual was part of a reasonable large group.
I think that it is as reasonable to assume that modelling to lower dimensions is fruitful then modelling to higher could also be. However the lack of low hanging fruit in string theory may be as a result of a failure of human imagination. We play chess, use tables and write. 2D is easy for us. The activities which we are conscious of participating in in 4D would be the store of readily assimilated metaphors that would aid us in designing a mathematics which gives us a semblance tactility and intuition in solving pandimensional problems and moving on to prediction.
The eureka moments that you are talking about are, I suspect, the result of such a metaphor being found in the subconscious brain of a focused mathematician. Found yet not yet consciously explained. Perhaps if a mathematical grammer is found which makes this metaphor clear ( in the way that drawing an architectural plan or a graph on cartesian axis does ) then some more low handing fruit may be found in string theory.
Mathematics only has the reality with which we imbue it. We are pathalogical pattern finders (genetecists suggest that this predeliction was developed to predict the behavor of our peers as we compete for resources). There is nothing surprising about finding or capitilising on what we see emerge in mathematics. No more so than as a child I remember randomly drawing a few lines on a page and then trying to use them as the impetus to 'find' an image.
In the book Geudel Escher Bach there is a fascination case of deriving common mathematical operators from seemingly unconnected rules. Why was this possible,because WE looked for them !!!! HARD and because there is nothing behind maths other than humanity, it is our plaything.
I also find coincidence fascinating. But I fight hard against descent into spiritualism or numerology. I try and keep it clean ( and of course I fail but I do try).
Sometimes I FEEL maths around me (I have a peculiar mechanical synesthesia) and it is good but I know its really just me. Me and the thousands of generations of previous humanity on whose shoulders we all have the privelage of standing
D.
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Date Jan. 15 2013 10:47:26
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to hamia)
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quote:
quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
In the book Geudel Escher Bach there is a fascination case of deriving common mathematical operators from seemingly unconnected rules. Why was this possible,because WE looked for them !!!! HARD and because there is nothing behind maths other than humanity, it is our plaything.
Not necessarily true. There could be aliens somewhere out in space with the same or similar mathematics.
If there were aliens in some distant world in the universe who had developed sufficiently to question the fabric of the Cosmos and were at a high enough intellectual level to run experiments and do the math, they would have to have an understanding of the same mathematics and physical laws of General and Special Relativity, as well as Quantum Mechanics, as we Earthlings if they were to understand it. It could not be otherwise, because they and their world, as a part of the same space-time framework of the universe as we and ours, would be subject to the same laws of physics, including Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, as we are.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 15 2013 13:42:18
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
Thirty years ago, experiments with cats showed that presenting a line segment anywhere in the visual field caused certain neurons in the visual cortex to fire. Changing the orientation of the line segment caused different neurons to fire. One could conclude that the mammalian brain is hard wired to recognize line segments and their orientation.
Considering myself, I wonder whether this could apply to mammals as such. ( Release me in an unfamiliar city without permission to ask around and I´ll be lost. Let alone if pulled into a pub, filled with a pinch or two, turned around and kicked back out into the street.)
Cats seem a selected example with their special ability of orienting on landmarks ( nearing abilities of specialized birds).
My internal GPS on the contrary seems to have been written with Win95 code.
quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
Sometimes I FEEL maths around me (I have a peculiar mechanical synesthesia) and it is good but I know its really just me. Me and the thousands of generations of previous humanity on whose shoulders we all have the privelage of standing
D.
Maybe even including evolution.
Math prodigies appear to not intellectually calculate ( and how could they) but intuitively process. Looks as if there existed ways of literally mathematical thinking. ... Which again ... as comes to mind while talking ... makes you remotely wonder whether thinking could be just based on 0 and 1, like computing.
Imagine, all just diggits, even organically based mental processings. ( Yes, I know ... Didn´t mean to call anyone mental!  )
0 and 1 in the end as origin of the big bang.
Finally, an answer for clinching superstitious and their mantra question of what´s been preceding the bang!
There were a zero and a one colliding, folks.
-
Forgive me the spoiling with my superficial understanding of cosmic matters. ( Seriously.)
Ruphus
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Date Jan. 15 2013 15:13:55
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
If there were aliens in some distant world in the universe who had developed sufficiently to question the fabric of the Cosmos and were at a high enough intellectual level to run experiments and do the math, they would have to have an understanding of the same mathematics and physical laws of General and Special Relativity, as well as Quantum Mechanics, as we Earthlings if they were to understand it. It could not be otherwise, because they and their world, as a part of the same space-time framework of the universe as we and ours, would be subject to the same laws of physics, including Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, as we are.
Cheers,
Bill
Ummm....I beg to differ. Even among humans there are radically different approaches to certain mathematical concepts. For example, Leibniz embraced the use of infinitesimals--qantities less in magnitude than any real number, but still not zero. Newton flirted with them, but abandoned them for fluxions, the limits of varying quantities. Cardinal Newman bitterly opposed Newton, accusing him of promoting atheism. After Newton was dead, no longr able to defend himself, Newman ridiculed infinitesimals as "the ghosts of departed quantities". Newman purported to demonstrate contradictions using infinitesimals. Newton never fell into this error. But mathematicians were stung by Newman's criticism and abandoned infinitesimals. Cauchy is credited with the first logicaly precise definition of limits for numbers, published in the 19th century. Absent infinitesimals, the limit concept has been the foundation of mathematical analysis.
But, lo and behold, in the 1960s comes Abraham Robinson, who demonstrated that there is a logically consistent mathematics employing the real numbers and infinitiesimals. In Robinson's work you can add up infinitely many infinitesimals and get a finite number, just as Leibniz did. But nobody uses Robinson's stuff, since so much work was already based on the other approach. Who knows where Robinson's infinitesimals may have led, if as much work had been devoted to them by aliens?
In another branching, the Dutch mathematician Brouwer, in the early 20th century, founded a school called Intuitionism. Brouwer objected to such things as proving the solution to a differential equation exists, without giving a procedure for calculationg it. Unfortunately this approach eliminates large swaths of otherwise accepted mathematics. What if the aliens were Intuitionists, and found ways to work around the difficulties this introduces?
Another ambiguity arises from the proof, again in the 1960s, that the Axiom of Choice is independent of the Zermelo-Frankel axioms of logic. This gets a little technical, but just as you can have Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, you can have logic with or without the Axiom of Choice. Adopting the Axiom of choice leads to some bizarre results. See the Banach-Tarski Paradox. Before the independence of the Axiom of Choice was known, its appeal was so strong that such a great mathematician as R. L. Moore referred to it as "that fact". Much of Moore's work in the foundations of topology depended upon the axiom of choice. Which road would the aliens take?
A fundamental unsolved problem of Earthling physics is that quantum mechanics and gravitation are incompatible in an essential way. You can use General Relativity to investigate gravitational effects, and you can use quantum mechanics to investigate subatomic and other phenomena, ignoring gravity, but you can't combine the two in a mathematically compatible way. Some new fundamental insight is required.
String theory can unite gravity and particle physics--- in theory. But its predictions are untestable within the limits on the energy available to our most powerful tool, the Large Hadron Collider. The best hope is that at full power the LHC may give evidence of the massive partners of the particles of the Standard Model predicted by supersymmetry. If it does not, string theory remains unconstrained and unverifed by experiment. What if the aliens go straight to the unified theory of gravitation and subatomic particles, and it turns out not to look very much like either quantum mechanics or General Relativity?
Moore's method of teaching mathematics was devoid of lectures and the reading of reference works. It consists of a brilliantly constructed sequence of problems that students were expected to work out on their own. Amyone who has employed this method in their own teaching will have been impressed by the originality of their students. Valid proofs of well-known theorems differ wildly among students who are thrown upon their own resources.
Mathematics is a creative art. The path that humanity has followed in trying to understand nature is not the only one we could have taken, nor is it one that an alien civilization is required to follow.
RNJ
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Date Jan. 16 2013 6:03:53
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Mathematics is a creative art. The path that humanity has followed in trying to understand nature is not the only one we could have taken, nor is it one that an alien civilization is required to follow.
But it is the path that has led us to a pretty good, fundamental understanding of nature. Someone may yet come up with the Unified Field Theory, that elusive "Theory of Everything" that Einstein, and others, have sought. But if someone does, I suspect it will be within the framework of mathematics and physics as we currently understand them. Or, perhaps, an extension of the framework of mathematics and physics as we currently understand them. I may be wrong, but I don't think it will come about via an overturning of our understanding of the mathematical and physical framework that, to date, works very well in explaining the universe of space-time.
That there may be other approaches, some of which you elegantly described, is undeniable. Nevertheless, none of them has led us to the level of understanding that we have achieved to date. I suspect that is for a reason, the reason being that it is our approach that has provided the key to understanding the Cosmos, from Relativity to the Quantum World. I grant the possibility that an alien civilization MIGHT reach an understanding via a very different approach, but I don't think it likely. Thus, I think you overstate the case when you claim categorically that our path "is not one that an alien civilization is required to follow," in order to reach an understanding of the Universe.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 16 2013 11:26:41
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marrow3
Posts: 166
Joined: Mar. 1 2009
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to XXX)
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At the heart of the scientific method lies the principle that someone does an experiment, records the result and someone else repeats it. All scientific laws are based on finite data sets. How does this play out ?
the body of scientific knowledge is probably the strongest argument that the physical world has an existence independent of the person or people observing it. That is, it follows a set of processes or laws, the most fundamental of which we know about are General relativity and Quantum mechanics. These are very well established theories where and when we've had the means to test them. Applying them beyond these finite data sets, applying where, as yet, we cannot interrogate by experiment, they become speculative ideas, no matter how well established elsewhere.
However, if the true gods were the gods of Olympus, and they decided to play a trick on us, to believe there existed laws describing how the world worked and deluded us into believing we could improve our quality of life by manipulating the world through scientific knowledge, then they could probably switch off all the laws of science tomorrow - If they so wished. Such ideas as these are unfalsifiable in science and there is nothing we can do about it through experiment.
We study and build up our knowledge of the world through experiment, because it appears to have coherence, and to a remarkable degree. But there is a kind of distant boundary to all of that knowledge that may become unfounded, albeit a very small chance.
How was Newton's gravity overturned by General Relativity ? The aspect that was over turned was the belief that it had universal application. As others have said much of its usefulness has not changed where it does work. And because the scientific method is based on finite datasets giving it the status of universal application would have been dubious - or perhaps due to ambiguity in the way people expressed themselves. Same thing applying either general relativity or quantum mechanics to the center of black holes - both become speculative ideas because we have no relevant datasets for those extreme conditions. And should they be superseded by a unified theory, then they will be like narrow windows on a greater truth as Newton's gravity was to general relativity. Probably IMO.
There still lies a huge gulf between the energies particle accelerators can reach now and those thought necessary to access the extra dimensions predicted by some string theories. There is a sort of analogy to the huge gulf that lies between present brain scanning equipment to study people whilst still alive and that necessary to get down to neuron by neuron detail. So a lot of elements of what might be known will remain out of reach for some time.
The impact of quantum mechanics on physical chemistry, at least where I have come into contact with it seems to be immense. In some area quantum computations have become routine. From drug discovery to transistors at the core of computing technology its use extends well beyond an esoteric backdrop. For example I was looking at one paper on solar cells. The type of solar cell that uses a dye to capture a photon form sunlight and give provide an electron to a circuit - some of the electrons don't go where you want. So in the paper they looked at the molecular structure of the dye and through the combination of semi empirical judgements and quantum mechanical modelling came up with an improvement. They then proceeded to synthisize this new dye (a new compound) and check that it had been successfully prepared. (Need quantum mechanics to do that check and techniques such as NMR, X ray crystallography and so on). They then added the modified dye to the solar cell and confirmed that it had improved the solar cell's efficiency (in simulated sunlight) from something like 11 to 12 % - good for 'dye-sensitised' solar cells. I'm in awe because of the way really fundamental science has been used in an almost routine manner to solve a practical problem. I don't think this is unusual in chemistry.
The point to draw out from the waffle above is that the it's hard to see how the predictive usefulness of quantum mechanics will be lost if it is ever 'overturned', because experience is that it works. Academic and inudustrial labs around the world are in effect constantly adding to the datasets upon which quantum mechanics is based. Just a shame none of those labs have black holes to work with at the same time
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Date Jan. 16 2013 14:55:39
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
If there were aliens in some distant world in the universe who had developed sufficiently to question the fabric of the Cosmos and were at a high enough intellectual level to run experiments and do the math....
Cheers,
Bill
That's where we part ways: "the math". Human mathematics in 1975 was very different from human mathematics in 1875. The mathematical tools taught to physics grad students 20 years ago were very different friom the tools taught when I was a grad student 50 years ago. The newer tools were much better. A different set of tools from those of 1975 are being taught today, better tools yet. Mathematics is not a static discipline. It progresses more rapidly today than at any previous time. Of course the newer math doesn't invalidate the older math. It's just broader in its scope and more powerful. Fifty years ago algebraic topology, calculus on manfolds and K-theory were the province of a mathematical elite, at the cutting edge of the creation of new mathematics. Now they are the required vocabulary of theoretical physicists. The mathematics of an alien civilization could be radically different from ours just by being more advanced by 50 years.
The physical laws expressed in alien mathematics would have to make the same experimental predictions as ours do, within the range of validity of our physics. But they could be expressed in a different mathematics, and aliens could have laws with a greater span of validity, for example, laws that apply both to particle physics and to gravity.
I think the general public vastly underestimates both the creation of new mathematics, and the potential novelty of alien civilizations.
RNJ
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Date Jan. 16 2013 16:31:40
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
I think the general public vastly underestimates both the creation of new mathematics, and the potential novelty of alien civilizations.
Erich von Daniken would no doubt agree with you. Von Daniken, you may recall, wrote a book entitled "Chariots of the Gods," in which, inter alia, he claims that the Nazca Lines in Peru were created by ancient extraterrestials as both depictions of themselves and as markers to land their spacecraft. Not sure if von Daniken thinks these ancient aliens had developed a higher form of mathematics, but there you have it.
What many who subscribe to his theories conveniently forget is von Daniken was a Swiss hotel manager who was convicted and sentenced to prison for embezzlement, fraud and forgery. But he has some avid followers. I personally rate von Daniken in the same category of public fraudster (as opposed to criminal fraudster, which he also is) as Carlos Castaneda, who wrote several books on his initiation into shamanism by the supposed shaman Don Juan, who could never be located. The books sold millions.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jan. 16 2013 18:40:14
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marrow3
Posts: 166
Joined: Mar. 1 2009
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to estebanana)
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Hmm I find this very difficult because we don't even understand what consciousness is. And if we had any idea, I would imagine any mapping of consciousness would have to be as big as the terrain of whatever consciousness is. Meaning the map itself would have to be another form of consciousness. If consciousness encompasses the conscious and the unconscious, and what sentience is, which are all very much real, I doubt whether these can be mapped or explained. But that's just me. Brain nerve mechanics seem like a possible thing to map, but the whole of consciousness, not.
I agree, I think. I meant the word in a vague sense, understanding the brain as a unified whole from the bottom up, with all the functions that it performs in some kind of structure. Could speculate, but who knows. Some definitions of consciousness could be unfalsifiable, haven't really thought about it.
I think broad patterns of consciousness or isolated or single parts of consciousness could and will be seen in brain research through watching brain activity with various modes of tracking how the brain operates.
To be crude, I think it's possible to understand the brain as a piece of meat vis a vis it's operating system of nerves. But ever since De Carte, ( and earlier) we've been wondering what part of consciousness the brain plays. We don't even know if all of consciousness encompassed in the awareness of the brain. It could be the wrong organ to be looking into if consciousness resides in an organ to begin with. The brain could be like an amplifier or receiver to broadcast consciousness to us, the records or radio waves, to make a metaphor, of consciousness could be coming from some other part of our being. The brain simply or unsimply transmits the information to us.
The ones I think who have done a lot of work in mapping consciousness are Buddhist monks. They went about by trail and error over along period of time, but they seem to have some knowledge on how it works. They differentiate between "the meat body" a Buddhist term, and the non corporeal body. So right from the beginning they set up a larger system for researching the subject by recognizing there maybe more then one body to look at. Not that I'm pushing Buddhism, but just mentioning there has been a lot of recent scientific interest in the findings of Buddhist monks about the nature of how the brain works.
Meditation has been shown to alter brain chemistry for new example and there is research going on about how this works. Or at least what is going on physically in the brain. It has also been scientifically noted that monks have high degree of skill or developed aptitude at interpreting rapid micro facial gestures. So science is starting to look at surface, the face and how a meditator or a non-meditator perceives something about a person based on facial changes so rapid they happen dozens per second.
My money is on these types of dual traditional model scientific methods and monks as consciousness researchers inquiries if any thing is to be charted out about consciousness. But I think it is so vast and layered it is not really ultimately chartable, if we even know what it is or where it comes from.
Some people talk about subatomic particles and how we keep seeing or speculating on smaller and smaller particles that get so small they eventually slip through what we know to be real. Maybe there is some connection between consciousness and the physical particles becoming so small they transform into a all pervasive stream and we tuning into this stream. Sort of like "the force" in Star Wars. Ha ha, I think George Lucas based the force on Jung's concept of the collective unconscious and synchronicity.
Maybe there is something there, but I'm willing to let it be and find out later. We all will make shift in consciousness eventually maybe we find out then how it works and just laugh our asses off at all the wires and MRI machines hooked up to a guys brain.
Hi Estebanana,
sorry I did not answer this at the time, just realised it was on the same thread. After reading this at the time I got lost down some path of what the difference is between the kind of knowledge it takes say to work at being a scientist against the body of scientific knowledge that comes more narrowly from the scientific method. And then whether the vocational knowledge that goes into being a scientist is like that say of being a musician, or maybe a luthier or even a Buddhist monk practicing meditation. But I did not reach any conclusion. I'm sure it has been thought about and discussed many times and by comparison my attempts half-baked
So if consciousness is in the heart what happens during a heart transplant, same goes for any other part of the body ? I've heard it said that the number of neurons in the gut amount to something like a second brain. Maybe there's a little bit of consciousness in each organ. If people have a shared consciousness that involves some kind of subatomic particle exchange, if it was electromagentic then if someone was in a metallic box would they fall dead on the spot ? I don't know, many things are possible for all I know. Maybe somethings more plausible than others.
cheers,
Richard
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jan. 16 2013 18:47:15
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Black Hole eats sun (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
quote:
I think the general public vastly underestimates both the creation of new mathematics, and the potential novelty of alien civilizations.
Erich von Daniken would no doubt agree with you. Von Daniken, you may recall, wrote a book entitled "Chariots of the Gods," in which, inter alia, he claims that the Nazca Lines in Peru were created by ancient extraterrestials as both depictions of themselves and as markers to land their spacecraft. Not sure if von Daniken thinks these ancient aliens had developed a higher form of mathematics, but there you have it.
What many who subscribe to his theories conveniently forget is von Daniken was a Swiss hotel manager who was convicted and sentenced to prison for embezzlement, fraud and forgery. But he has some avid followers. I personally rate von Daniken in the same category of public fraudster (as opposed to criminal fraudster, which he also is) as Carlos Castaneda, who wrote several books on his initiation into shamanism by the supposed shaman Don Juan, who could never be located. The books sold millions.
Cheers,
Bill
Could you develop this some more ? I don't see how it relates to Richards ideas as I understand them. I suspect that he wont either so just a little more would be helpful.
D.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jan. 16 2013 19:46:35
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