"Science vs Mysticism"

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Subject: [NECSI] Science vs. Mysticism  Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999
From:  Susan C Aaron


>
> Paul Prueitt wrote:
>
> > > Don Mikulecky wrote:
> > >
> > >> Anne,
> > >> I would suggest that we remember Rashevsky's comment:
> > >> All living systems obey the laws of physics, yet the laws
> > >> of physics do not predict life.
>
> To which Jamie replied:
>
> > > Rashevsky was mistaken. If he had really understood
> > > the behavioral principles of physics he could
> > > never have drawn such a conclusion.
> > >
> > > > > > (who does not concur with the anthropic 'principle' either)
>
> [Prueitt]
> > I first point out, perhaps since Don will likely approach your statement
> > differently, that the "laws of physics", as understood in the academia as
> > the core of physics as taught in the university, does not either explain or
> > describe many essential questions about life. The questions include the
> > origins of what appears to be free will, memory and anticipation.
> >
> > It is also possible to challenge the notion that the laws of physics, as
> > known today, really addresses all essential question of physical ontology or
> > ontologies.
> >
> > So I understand you to mean that the Laws of Physics, were we only to
> > understand them perfectly and completely, does in fact (will in fact)
> > predict life.
> >
> > Is this what you mean?
> >

> Yes, that's exactly correct Paul. The laws of physics "accomplish something" with
> all the transferences of energy, information and impetus. The universe is not a
> thing-architecture but a process-architecture and relationship-architecture.
> There is rhyme-reason-consistency to all the goings on ... even the seemingly
> 'chaotic'. In other words, there is a constant simultaneity ... entities are
> enacted from the 'architecture' that behave in certain specifiable ways in
> concordance with other entities that responsive in compatible ways also, but,
> without the benefit of total preparative/predicable information.
>
> This is more than a Godelian acknowledgment, this is absolutely crucial - because
> it dictates the kinds of behaviors that allow and/or encourage the
> sustenance/maintenance of existence. What I'm driving at is that the
> formational/processional structure of the universe carries with it from the very
> very outset ... meaning and import(ance).
>
> Conventional physics - even the exploratory and theoretical venues of it - are
> currently mired in the paradigm of 'mechanism' ... as if actions and causalities
> are local and of no operational importance beyond the dynamic of reactively
> carrying out happenstantially imposed changes of momentum. That is too narrow a
> vision of reality/existence. Eminently because all physics research unwittingly
> is already engaged in discerning not just mechanistic performances but 'meaning'
> also ... the Reason things bother behaving as they do ... imposing and accepting
> adaptive/reactive adjustments ... not just 'why' they do things (read that to
> mean the word - "how"). Can't avoid it. That's why we can even feel comfortable
> engaging in conversations that bridge "Science and Mysticism".
>
> When you get down to basics, there's no avoiding that the 'basics' are suffused
> with meaningful purposeful actions .. even if in the most absolutely limited
> senses of those words.
>
> What could look like my making attempts at overlaying complex biological
> behavioral meanings and importances on physical phenomenon incapable of carrying
> such qualities .. and therefore patently absurd .. is rather an attempt to show
> that our complex biological (even .. conceptual) behavioral meanings and
> importances and actions are outgrowths of primitive primordial
> relations/meanings/behaviors that stem right from the first physics-only
> existential phenomena.
>
> I came to such conclusions by analysis of set theory and of information conveyance
> in general .. some of which truths reside in the beadgame of 'language' ... very
> open and very clearly there if we just take the time to comprehend the evolution
> of 'conceiving'. (In counterpoint to the ways you and your colleagues have
> been exploring 'the game' - aiming toward more competent application for future
> use and gains.) My goal has always been - look back first, apply THAT to
> understanding the contexts of the present, and after that, project and guide and
> design ... not 'exactly what the future WILL be', but 'the KIND OF FUTURE there
> could be' based on appreciating the fundamental purposeful activities found in a
> universe at 10^ -41 second of existence.
>
> n and General Systems thinkers (in general, :-} ) .. being a prominent but not
> exclusive group of human thinkers .. are on the verge of 'getting it'. One way
> they characterize it is as breaking ranks from Formalism - embracing the Natural.
> I usually refer to it as 'seeing the whole-picture', recognizing behaviors and
> relations that transcend boundaries, and recognizing all actions as information
> transductions where plurally and deeply embedded 'meaning' is conveyed and enacted
> also.
>
> Life is a natural outgrowth of the art and processional-relational-architecture of
> primordial physics... a timeplace where meaning and involvement exist as one.
> You see, the math isn't just 'math'. E=mc^2 isn't just an event of transference,
> or an expression 'something in one form equals something in another form.
>
> E=mc^2 is an formalism without a context ... the missing context that we run to
> avoid thinking about. All science has, for the most part, run from it even from
> the beginning of this last century. What the hell am I talking about, you may
> ask? :-) I'm talking about the whole of the universe. Explode that mass,
> vaporize it .. 'energize' it ... turn it into E N E R G Y.
>
> Now what?!?!? Now EVERYTHING. Everything that is important at all. That
> energy has to go somewhere, do something, be absorbed by something, or be
> Fourierly swum through. The rest of the universe has to encounter that energy and
> be formatively capable of surviving and enduring and prevailing through and past
> those kinds of encounters. Contribute to it, enact with it, deal with it ... and
> know it.
>
> That Einsteinianly important equation could have been anything, any and all sorts
> of parametrized groupings. The fun stuff, the important stuff isn't the
> transformation or the equality of those states of existence, the terrific stuff is
> what happens among all the matter and all the energy in the totally environmental
> timespace AFTER such a change. That's the meat and heart of the universe that
> we're really going in search for. That's the next higher plateau that I want to
> stand upon and have all of humanity stand upon.
>
> Talk about your quantum-leaps! Man, oh man, we are going to see that we aren't
> just fancy ape-creatures scurrying to become the best commercing animals the planet
> has ever seen. (What an outrageous waste of life THAT would be!) No, we're going
> much higher and much farther. We are setting the stage for such incredible
> progeny who will accomplish beautiful magnificent and wondrous things. The Laws
> of Physics are Rules of how Existence EXISTS and BEHAVES ... always all the time
> all the place. It's not just a look-see at some particular events ... and oh, by
> the way, isn't that interesting (yawn). Or, wow, isn't it fun to be in control of
> a situation and manipulate it for some temporary (nee, personal, egoistic) gain.
>
> People, we are on the verge of comprehending 'why' we even bother to be
> 'manipulators', not just glean some trivial insight as to how to be better
> manipulators. Quarks and quantum foam and supersymmetric strings aren't
> inanimacies, they're PRE-animacies, having qualities and performance capabilities
> and reactive/adaptive skills.
>
> I am a Philosopher of the coming Evolution, and thank God, thank Life, I hope I'm
> never ashamed to be so far ahead of the curve. With all due respect, ladies,
> gentlemen - thanks for reading my typically unusual and long-penned postings
> here. n may be a significant thinker - having existed within the milieu of
> cautious over focussed scientists who thought that perfection meant absolute
> knowledge and total systemic closure/control. But I see him as only one of
> several people merely turning on the light switch for our scientific majority
> which lives mired in narrow-thought.
>
> I see the Universe as through the eyes of Loren Eiseley, or Benjamin Whorf, or any
> artist/poet/lover/human who has looked at the face of a child and known the
> mystery and value of life in a smile, a laugh .. the value of the whole universe
> .. out and beyond .. inner and deeper ... co-mingled with all the equations and
> writings of symbolic importance and sentient comprehension. If you can't look at
> charge-coupled diagrams on one hand and the hours of a child being a pre-adult on
> the other and know how these things are similar and bound together and intricately
> woven as one with creation, then all the words and all the analyses and all the
> debating will never get you one instance closer to 'getting it'.
>
> And to me, getting it, getting that which I speak of - through my mind, through my
> finger tips, through the wires of technology, to you - is THE most important thing
> about being here alive in the first place. Everything else, is simply playing out
> the times and places and games of 'getting' what's to really be 'got'.
>
> So tell me, just who was the richest merchant Rome ever saw? Beats the hell out
> of me, I don't know! (Though I do render him heartfelt thanks, because without
> him Roman power and art and science wouldn't have been there as foundation for us
> today) :-}. But in the stream of things, its the BIG IMAGES than humanity
> evolves upon. We all ought to grab for that golden transcendent ring. Eternity
> is long, and that's the only thing that will keep us warm. :-}
>
> Take care, my friends. Enjoy good, safe and productive lives. Yaneer, you are an
> exemplary human being. Thanks for creating NECSI.
>
> Best to you all,
>
>
>

> This list is sponsored by www.NECSI.EDU


[Susan Aaron]
I am not a physicist but I am attempting to apply notions of complexity and nonlinearity to cultural notions including those of measure. I took from the earlier discussion of measurement the notion of
referents - that measures are in effect a referent, a notation of an action but the act of doing is also an action, and its retention and use of it, shapes other actions even as it exists as an artifact in a complex of actions and referents that are our social behaviors.

Hence I arrive at one of the later statements:

I wanted to reply to statement:

"What could look like my making attempts at overlaying complex biological behavioral meanings and importances on physical phenomenon incapable of carrying such qualities .. and therefore patently absurd .. is rather an attempt to show that our complex biological (even .. conceptual) behavioral meanings and importances and actions are outgrowths of primitive primordial relations/meanings/behaviors that stem right from the first physics-only existential phenomena."

I would not go back primordially, but would ask that now, these behavioral actions, and modelings, do exist with a potential physics base, which implies that these actions and models are all linked on
some energetic base.

What is interesting to me is that these behavioral actions, our linear, or nonlinear viewing biases are based in human behavioral, and perceptual limitations. However, once we have added technology we are delimited in some manner from these perceptions, and even our behavioral and material groundings.

It allows us to realize the limits we have, and to note that measurement is now shifting from referents to connections and coordinates of actions, delimiting human intelligence in its dependence on symbols, and also produces interesting additions of the noncomputational element of creativity. At this point we are still tied to measures, or referents, numbers, but the acknowledgment that they are
tied to our behavioral limitations, and that we are growing less tied to some of these limits, our digital limits, our geographic limits, even our symbolic ones, and the input allowable to our creativity because of technology, and the linking of actions in a complex monitored in physics terms is radically changing our conceptual base, and the notion of what concepts as mappings can be.- Concepts are then indeed actual locations for connections rather than referents, maintained at least by technology or acknowledged by physics, or otherwise, as links in an action based notion rather than objects limited by human reference.

I refer to these notions in a short submission to the NECSI Interjournal listed under my name Susan Aaron.

Susan Aaron

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