Sunday, February 11, 2007

Neutrino Mixing Explained in 60 seconds

I added this post to demonstrate the connection to what is behind the investigation to "neutrino mixing" that needs further clarification. So I put this blog post together below.

It "allows the sources" to consider the question of how we see the existing universe. How perspective has been focused toward the reductionist understanding while we ponder the very nature of the universe.



For example, when neutrinos interact with matter they produce specific kinds of other particles. Catch the neutrino at one moment, and it will interact to produce an electron. A moment later, it might interact to produce a different particle. "Neutrino mixing" describes the original mixture of waves that produces this oscillation effect.


By my very nature, I have adopted the views of the Pythagoreans in that, what I see of the universe has it's counter part as some feature within our determinations "as the background" to the "nature of all matter." It's effect, from understanding the very basis of "particle creation" has this factor to be included in our determinations of that particle in question.

So, what views shall we assign to the Higg's Boson Field? The view of the cosmos at large? We needed to see that such events can and do happen within the universe. To see them at a level that had not been considered in terms of the microstate blackhole creation that is created from such particle collisions? One needed to identify where "these points" could exist not only in the collider, but in the cosmos at large. How else could you explain the division you have assigned the make up of the cosmos?



Usually all physicists see are the remnants of a new particle decaying into other types of particles. From that, they infer the existence of the new species and can determine some of its characteristics.


So we move from the limitations of the standard model?

This is a fixture of what has been accomplished, yet, how could we see things as so different to include gravity as a feature and new force carrier? If we are to consider the energy of all these matters, then how else could you have included gravity?



To slow them down, theorists proposed a mysterious, universe-filling, not-yet-seen "liquid" called the Higgs field. Also, physicists now understand that 96 percent of the universe is not made of matter as we know it, and thus it does not fit into the Standard Model. How to extend the Standard Model to account for these mysteries is an open question to be answered by current and future experiments.


While it is some what mysterious, the applications as ancient as they may seem, they are not apart from our constitutions as we have applied our understanding of the universe it seems:)

Friday, February 09, 2007

Crucible

True creativity often starts where language ends.
Arthur Koestler


How many of you had thought the body you inhibit as a "vessel or a crucible?" I related in the previous post to ""Democritus had Passion and Heat?" to the idea of "Passion and Creativity" as as things that relate to the heat?

Now you ask what the heck is this to mean?

Well I spoke briefly on the woodcuts in "Hermetic Ties: Art to Esoteric Form" to demonstrate what the alchemist like to do as they used an "artistic form" of their day. To hide these "analogies" about just such a thing as I am describing in relation to the body and the crucible as being very similar.


The original of Splendor Solis which contained seven chapters appeared in Augsburg. In miniatures the works of Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein and Lucas Cranach were used. The author of the manuscript was considered to be a legendary Salomon Trismosin, allegedly the teacher of Paracelsus. The work itself consists of a sequence of 22 elaborate images, set in ornamental borders and niches. The symbolic process shows the classical alchemical death and rebirth of the king, and incorporates a series of seven flasks, each associated with one of the planets. Within the flasks a process is shown involving the transformation of bird and animal symbols into the Queen and King, the white and the red tincture. Although the style of the Splendor Solis illuminations suggest an earlier date, they are quite clearly of the 16th century


I gave a picture of a woodcut, as example of this, and what it means. As well, the relationship to the "Emerald tablet for consideration" in this thought about creativity and passion. About "distilling the very essence" we are made up of, as we think about things. As we give "colour and meaning to emotive happenings" that you are not aware, yet exist, in a "colouring of a sort outside you" you never knew about?

Do I fare better in my emotional disposition? I have to say I am quite human, in my struggle to identify those things that I develop in my relations, and wish for better then the Zen Master, whose anger quickly dissipates. :)

See again the relationship I used in regards to Democritus. While it is indeed old these comparisons I make of the history as science evolved, did you think that they would have been discarded? Even in this day and age, the art form of pursuing the excellence in the human being without applying this alchemist attitude to life is not without the perspective I share with Jung. Also in those who are trying to understand the EQ (Emotional quotient) now adopted in the understanding of the human being?



I belong to no group or faction, but deal with this from a perspective of research and understanding in relation to studying "the self." The "psychological aspect of this work" not only from an historical perspective, but from a understanding of today's psychology as well.

Am I credentialed? Am I a scientist? Of course not. So from that standpoint the ownest is to "weight the ideas" that I put forth, and for you to find whether your recognize "the truth" in what I say. It is not my intent to spread disinformation(token authority) and propagate illusions in the dealing with reality.

My work is to further expose our "subtle actions" from ways which have not been dealt with before? Including the way in which "new concepts are developed" in relation to science. IN this respect, I may be called "the seer" but do so with great respect of what Smolin set out to distinguish, understanding fully, the responsibility of the work of science to work from testability and experimental procedures.

The Synesthesist

For someone who sees as a Synesthesist, even though I do not see like them, I am able to "make the comparison," built from "modelling perspectives" that I developed while compiling and doing my own research.

Even the Synesthesist will have to ask themself whether what I portray is significant in there own research and understanding, as they are continuing to apply and understanding the "sensual imputes" that have been "cross wired." I may work from a "conceptual basis?"

I am trying to bring "this point of view of my own" from the metaphysical realm, and give it meaning in relation to our lives today. Hence I could be labeled the "broken flower pot," while giving a "vast view of the interrelationships" that I have been working.

A crucible is a cup-shaped piece of laboratory equipment used to contain chemical compounds when heating them to very high temperatures. The receptacle is usually made of porcelain or an inert metal.
Use in Ash Content Determination

Ash is the completely unburnable inorganic salts in a sample. A crucible can be similarly used to determine the percentage of ash contained in an otherwise burnable sample of material such as coal, wood, or oil. A crucible and its lid are pre-weighed at constant mass as described above. The sample is added to the completely dry crucible and lid and together they are weighed to determine the mass of the sample by difference. The crucible, lid, and sample are then fired to constant mass to completely burn up the sample, leaving behind only the completely unburnable ash. After cooling in dryness, the crucible, lid, and remaining ash are weighed to find the mass of the ash from the sample by difference. The fraction of ash (by mass) in the sample is determined by the dividing the mass of the ash by the mass of the sample before burning, which is done by subtracting the weight of the crucible and lid from the figure of the container, lid, and sample.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Democritus had Passion and Heat?

It seems "humour" is pervading the internet today, so I thought I would add my take.


Democritus Laughing, by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628, in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
According to legend, Democritus was supposed to be mad because he laughed at everything, and so he was sent to Hippocrates to be cured. Hippocrates pointed out that he was not mad, but, instead, had a happy disposition. That is why Democritus is sometimes called the laughing philosopher


If one had never understood the entanglement process" might one have ever understood what could happen when you mix three circles/sphere of knowledge which overlap to become the "Venn logic of approach?"



Are men suppose to be "Illogical" and "Impassionate?" Maybe "that heat" can refer to the subjective analysis of all the things we might talk about in terms of "creativity?" Yet too, all the things that could involve the human being whilst it engages in the emotive memory induced entrapment of the world inside, which may disallow "clarity of the situation?"

The Art of Doodling

A graph induced analysis of the "boring lecture?" Whose point is the "climatic schedule of the hour," could have ripples following "all the power of that one moment?" While "witnessing this event" the deeper aspect of the student is engaged with things "rising from the unconscious."

Unbeknownst to them, having withdrawn into the dream world, they brought back with them, subjective desires of their soul? Impatience, and "being to the point" while all thing allowed them to journey a long distance from the classroom?

So having drawn this "three circles" or "introducing the "graph of boredom," the idea here is to explain what is "preoccupying the mind" when it should really be paying attention?:)

Democritus, known in antiquity as the ‘laughing philosopher’ because of his emphasis on the value of ‘cheerfulness,’ was one of the two founders of ancient atomist theory. He elaborated a system originated by his teacher Leucippus into a materialist account of the natural world. The atomists held that there are smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else is composed, and that these move about in an infinite void space. Of the ancient materialist accounts of the natural world which did not rely on some kind of teleology or purpose to account for the apparent order and regularity found in the world, atomism was the most influential. Even its chief critic, Aristotle, praised Democritus for arguing from sound considerations appropriate to natural philosophy.
In common with other early ancient theories of living things, Democritus seems to have used the term psychê to refer to that distinctive feature of living things that accounts for their ability to perform their life-functions. According to Aristotle, Democritus regarded the soul as composed of one kind of atom, in particular fire atoms. This seems to have been because of the association of life with heat, and because spherical fire atoms are readily mobile, and the soul is regarded as causing motion. Democritus seems to have considered thought to be caused by physical movements of atoms also. This is sometimes taken as evidence that Democritus denied the survival of a personal soul after death, although the reports are not univocal on this.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Angels and Demons on a Pinhead

"Observations always involve theory."Edwin Hubble
Curvature Parameters

Of course I had to point to the cosmological understanding that took us to this "geometrical understanding of things that are large." But this is to be short, while I crunch the thoughts of the process to the pinhead. You can follow the "picture links" and learn more on your own time.


Calabi-Yau manifold (3D projection made with Mathematica)-
In either case, gravity acting in the hidden dimensions affects other non-gravitational forces such as electromagnetism. In fact, Kaluza and Klein's early work demonstrated that general relativity with five large dimensions and one small dimension actually predicts the existence of electromagnetism. However, because of the nature of Calabi-Yau manifolds, no new forces appear from the small dimensions, but their shape has a profound effect on how the forces between the strings appear in our four dimensional universe. In principle, therefore, it is possible to deduce the nature of those extra dimensions by requiring consistency with the standard model, but this is not yet a practical possibility. It is also possible to extract information regarding the hidden dimensions by precision tests of gravity, but so far these have only put upper limitations on the size of such hidden dimensions.


How many would have thought that such a micro-perspective could have been ever be taken down to "this level" and found an analogy that is suitable? You needed something more here to consider, yet, I will call it "angel and demons" for those who like the mystery.


Image: courtesy Andrew J. Hanson, Indiana University-A computer-generated rendering of a possible six-dimensional geometry similar to those studied by UW-Madison physicist Gary Shiu.

I will try and spell out what is happening at such a microperspective level. You might wonder, how did such ideas become what is, "the good and evil of the world" is really a part of the dynamics that we see geometrically enhanced, as we delve ever deeper into this mystery of reductionism and such. On how, we may look at cosmology that "is different" with this perspective.

Energy "is" Gravitationally Related

At some point, those considering "all this energy" and the way reduction is assigned to the energy at all levels, what shall any calorimetric pick up as such collision processes seek to define "every contact" as we want to "map the pinhead" accordingly?

Lubos Motl saids that he sees the relation to such dynamical situations as "fruitful research" toward the understanding of the cosmological descriptions implied from such micro states. To have it listed according to a "geometrical perspective" we might be able to assign each universe? Okay! He did not say that exactly, so check into his blog entry for an update.

I'd like to thank Quasar9 for reporting on this as well.

Orbitals



My thoughts have been there toward reductionism's more cosmological counterpart for some time now. So I enjoy, that the views that I have had about the microperspective have indeed been sanctioned at some science level according to the scientist in the know. Yes, I can prove my thoughts here for you, so you know what I mean.


The star Eta Carina is ejecting a pair of huge lobes that form a "propeller" shape. Jet-like structures are emanating from the center (or "waist"), where the star (quite small on this scale) is located.


Now it is indeed a "greater depth of perception" that asks us to delve into the microperspective of string world. How is it the cosmological world can have such similarities, while the story of the Calabi Yau, makes itself a headlight news current in the research of string theory?

The First Few Microseconds, by Michael Riordan and Willaim A. Zajc
During those early moments, matter was an ultrahot, superdense brew of particles called quarks and gluons rushing hither and thither and crashing willy-nilly into one another. A sprinkling of electrons, photons and other light elementary particles seasoned the soup. This mixture had a temperature in the trillions of degrees, more than 100,000 times hotter than the sun's core.


See:
  • Angels and Demons
  • Doppelgänger Favors Oscillate
  • Music of the Spheres
  • A Clear Presence-Friday
  • Tuesday, February 06, 2007

    Revolutions of the Archetype


    The concept of Tao is based upon the understanding that the only constant in the universe is change (see I Ching, the "Book of Changes") and that we must understand and be in harmony with this change. The change is a constant flow from non-being into being, potential into actual, yin into yang, female into male. The symbol of the Tao, called the Taijitu, is the yin yang confluently flowing into itself in a circle.


    How many times, not only in your waking life, did you think you had attained a certain peace, that would over take you when it seemed all was right? That you realized in your dream time, that the male/female depending on your gender, would have "image signs" within the dynamics of that unconsciousness, to maintain this balance?

    The Dance of Colors


    Courtesy Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Library


    As if "the octave" has a place within expression. That such harmony allowed more vibration "to enter" then at any other time? Resonating with nature? So, if the arrow of time is expressed one way, which way was "the energy" ever the strongest? Which way have the matters encased?

    Something "to strong" one way, having something in "reaction" to "soften it," or "change it" from what it could be projected? There is the "artful way" of such consideration's as one studies the I CHING, and this interplay of "probable outcomes?"

    Encased within the "uncertainty of action in unconsciousness" might we have dismissed it as some wishful thinking, that such order rests within all of us, even as we dream and walk a path from the future to the world's past?

    Who would have thought such characteristics to the structure of the family, arranged as Mothers, Fathers, sons and daughters "in the lines and there arrangements?" Only 64 possible moves? If the lines were changing, then even more so? Which ones?

    The Energy Manifests

    Archetypes
    The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung also called them dominants, imagos, mythological or primordial images, and a few other names, but archetypes seems to have won out over these. An archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way.

    The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an "organizing principle" on the things we see or do. It works the way that instincts work in Freud's theory: At first, the baby just wants something to eat, without knowing what it wants. It has a rather indefinite yearning which, nevertheless, can be satisfied by some things and not by others. Later, with experience, the child begins to yearn for something more specific when it is hungry -- a bottle, a cookie, a broiled lobster, a slice of New York style pizza.

    The archetype is like a black hole in space: You only know its there by how it draws matter and light to itself.


    Some may say I offer a "tainted verison" of what is happening with the science, by relating it to the "psychological domains?" Yet, I find it necessary to understand what is driving this quest for "banging" the Big Toe Theory of Everything and it's relations? How something can be "liminocentrically" occupying the mind in it's quest for understanding wholeness?

    If it is thus then, whether you think it right as a prerequisite or not, I would have to say, that it would have to include our "psychological states" as well. Why, some lean toward identifying this aspect within the very "nature of the self" as part of the science? Not only in the cosmology at large, but in the micro perspective of what is enhanced through the constituent building blocks of matter as we exchange what this energy would look like at it's core, at a distant. We delve ever deeper into the nature, then why not into our selves as we look at this compaction of the individual process?

    Not to exploit the ego into self gratification as it think it's the centre of the universe?:) But to help it understand "the laws of nature" are hidden amongst our words, dreams, and possibly have geometrical inclinations of there own, on a level that has not been understood before.

    ON "Visualization and changing perspective," the domains that we reside in, make it difficult to see this "wider perspective" about our involvement within the dynamics of discovery?

    Lest you understand the "emotive forces" the world has, which can colour our views, how would you know, that the world works on the physical level, has it's counterpart, in the world inside, is revealed on the outside?

    So while this energy relation has been brought to view, the dynamics of "this circle" had to have a relation in the reductionist world of science, least we not understand the effect of the energy as we assign each particle it's place as an "oscillatory one?"

    See:
  • Carl Jung's Symbolical Nature
  • Monday, February 05, 2007

    Symmetry in Psychological Action


    Our basic premise is that minuscule apparent violations of Lorentz and CPT invariance might be observable in nature. The idea is that the violations would arise as suppressed effects from a more fundamental theory.

    We have shown in our publications that arbitrary Lorentz and CPT violations are quantitatively described by a theory called the Standard-Model Extension, which is a modification of the usual Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein's theory of gravity, General Relativity.


    Symbols are important to convey what we can appreciate in "natures examples." While this image above is about clocks, it is also about "the past and the future." Which clock represents which to you?

    I have been having amazing troubles with this until having looked at some of Marcia's Smilack's photography. I am not sure all my definitions are correct to hers but I have somehow seen a lot of my confusion disappear.

    While reductionism was holding my mind to the compressible feature and condensible feature to the building blocks of nature, there was a much larger picture going on in discovering the "uncertainty of that micro perspective of the world" we force our minds to venture too.

    For the first time, physicists appreciate the power of symmetry in their equations. When a physicist talks about “beauty and elegance” in physics, what he or she often really means is that symmetry allows one to unify a large number of diverse phenomena and concepts into a remarkably compact form. The more beautiful an equation is, the more symmetry it possesses, and the more phenomena it can explain in the shortest amount of space” Pg 761


    It is not to nice when one does not include the "source of the writing involved" so I will have to go and look for where I took that quote from(I believe it is the Fabric of the Universe by Brian Greene, but I can't seem to locate the book for checking).

    The idea here is to open this post entry with what was inherent in our actions "psychologically" could have had some basis in what we recognize of our relationship with nature. The relationship with the world around us. When are we most receptive to nature?

    "
    Golden Rectangle
    I took the picture at a time of day when the tide was at exactly the right place to create this image: when the surface of the water reflected the underside of the bridge and they combined, together they produced what I named the Golden Rectangle as a nod to Pythagoras (my hero). The sensation I experienced at the time was of balancing consciousness and feeling.


    By "bridging," a "whole picture materializes in reflection" in which we can "cross with" newly formed ideas. Had to have some basis in which the picture taken, may have a had a "greater meaning." How could it ever had made sense if you had not recognized what "the water to mean," and what the reflections cause us to recognize, as we learn to discover this wholeness within self?

    "Striving" to bring "this perfection" to it's rightful place amongst the inquirers? What the resulting relation of student who takes the picture, will find as they delve into the world of what the unconscious "may represent" as it reflected from the reality onto the open water. The "past reflected" to what can manifest "toward" reality.

    The future is then part of the "unconscious recognition" of what can be eventually be reflected, has some basis, before, "the past" can ever be solidified into reality?



    It is important for you to see the source of this image of the circle within circles to understand that when you "mouse over the picture" you see how the "two pictures are used" to further my points about this interaction.

    One has to follow the picture above to finally get to the source of this picture. It has been used to explain the process of distinguishing of explaining "the inner/outer" at any one time, while these processes could have transfixed us to one of it's particular domain.

    So by completing "this circle," I had too, in some way, include the idea of "symmetry of psychological action," as I had come to instill this act of "the student/teacher within each of us." Had to gain independence by growing confidence in engaging the world. That is was necessary, to not be thwarted by the restrictions of, "being less then desired," or a "broken flower pot" on this road to discovery.

    Finally, we also hope that this series furthers the discussion regarding the nature and function of 'the mandala'. In the spiritual traditions from which Jung borrowed the term, it is not the SYMMETRY of mandalas that is all-important, as Jung later led us to believe. It is their capacity to reveal the asymmetry that resides at the very heart of symmetry. By offering a new view about how consciousness itself is structured - in a fundamentally paradoxical fashion - and how these structurings are reflected in principles according to which the mandala is organized, we are able in this series to show how personality itself may be thought of as having an essentially 'liminocentric' design.



    Symmetry Breaking



    It was never my intent to confuse people by bring this "psychological action" to the forefront in relation to "science's measure of the statement," but to help people become aware of this relationship we have with reality. That you can "gain confidence within the self" to explore beyond the limitations of what science saids in terms of acceptable proofs and attempts at falsification." By setting the goals, in your explorations to discover "more about the world we live in" then just laying our heads to rest on "a medium" to take over. What does it mean to you?


    The two clocks depicted in the official logo for the CPT '04 meeting are related by the parity transformation (P). The inversion of black and white represents charge conservation (C), while time reversal (T) is represented by the movement of the hands of the clock in opposite directions.

    Friday, February 02, 2007

    Change that Had Consequences

    In the post, Hermetic Ties, I showed how historically information was engraved, crafted, into the woodcuts, for knowledge based on alchemist interests. I further explained the process as I have come to know of it in terms of developing this "inquisitive search into the mystery's of what life" is about how the questioning mind of any person can become the "way of the teacher" as well, enclosed within that same person.

    The teacher/student relation then is inherent in each of us, that we understand how one can push the other in our inquirers. Comparable to "this Arch of understanding" I spoke about.

    Geometrically, I laid this over top of the circle, mandalic in interpretation, that it served to raise the wonder in mind of what is driving this relation of the student with the world around them. "As the teacher" finding consequence to every inquisitive act, in answer.

    Such results then become the new and alternate plan to what is used to describe this new found relation. Ways in which the driving force of "wanting to learn" become an inherent "topological feature" of what begins descriptively, now has this inner/outer consequent to "expanding the frontiers of our knowledge base," inherently expanding the "fluttering of this egg of colour" that surrounds each of us.

    Debate if you will the words associated to "fluttering of this egg" and ask your self about what science has accomplished in mapping neurological sequences with the patterns of thought in relation to the condensible brain? What it might reveal of the "condensible features." Might such action also reveal in the "outer cover?"

    "In 1680, Isaac Newton worked on the abstract problem of gravity and he changed the world. In 1820, Michael Faraday discovered a connection between the exotic phenomena of electricity and magnetism and his discoveries electrified the world. Einstein's 1905 conceptual obsession with space and time led to nuclear energy and the operation of accelerators for knowledge, for cancer therapy and for machines that provide luminescent x-ray photographs of viruses and toxins. In 1897, the "useless" electron was discovered. In 1977, Fermilab discovered the bottom quark and in 1995 the top quark was found. The lessons of history are clear. The more exotic, the more abstract the knowledge, the more profound will be its consequences." Leon Lederman, from an address to the Franklin Institute, 1995


    So before this "act of change existed," the position of the student/teacher had already formed a consensus. I was looking to find this place amongst the order of such changes. It became the study I have placed myself "in" as I look to understand what scientists are saying from the "accepted position" they assume. As they work to develop "insight" and "model changes" to what we already know. To push "beyond" these boundaries of thought. The "standard model" perhaps.

    That I may give credence to what is hidden by Raphael in "his painting" is to gather a lot of perspective of the history of the times. To have them all resting on the "stairs and ladder of progression" to perfecting this relation "of the inquirer."

    The painting serves in this "mandalic sense" to represent the action of Plato and Aristotle as key figures in this relationship of "above and below." Inner and outer. Why their centralized location in the picture

    I have been short on time, so the articles that I have read are snippets of the "larger picture" while I can get back to more research.

    But the essence "is" that along with "this change with discoveries," scientists have this way about handling things. This has been reiterated by Clifford and others in science. So I just wanted to highlight this. AS part of this fundamental status of moving to ward these consequences and statement of change.

    The science press and scientists themselves do science a disservice when they seek to dramatize a discovery by emphasizing that it discredits a previous theory. Such coverage typically does not discuss whether the earlier theory was tentative or whether the new result modifies a well-established but incomplete theory. This dramatization feeds the popular image that all scientific knowledge is tentative. Much is tentative, but much is well understood and unlikely to be discredited. We scientists need to convey more about the status of our knowledge than can be learned from the muddy "most scientists believe" statement. We need our listeners to know what is tentative and what is not so that they understand better the ragged but cumulative progression of science and can use current knowledge effectively, with an understanding of its inherent uncertainties, in personal and political decision making.


    So again by giving credence to what scientists have requested by those who are of the science themself, serve as role models for what is accepted, as we investigate and report.

    To visit perspective scientists in the know, are not the way in which to say, "hey listen I have found this to be so and so," and have some "revolutionary change." To let them alone, and continue to push the boundaries of the trade by investigating the work that they do, and learn accordingly. To read what they have written, and join in by asking what you are not sure about. Of course depending on the scientist's openness to sharing of themself, realizing "the greater message" can be conveyed to the many.

    How did they get to their perspective positions that they know more then what you know and we had not assimilated the required knowledge? What is every statement saying, about what you know of the science "against" what they have learnt and we may lack the comprehensive understanding of what laws we see applied in every case.

    Under this whole post exist the thoughts then about Thomas Kuhn and the paradigm as it would have shown itself as "change that had consequence." Only now do you see this relation here while speaking about change and consequence, did you not know that it followed some rules according to some kind of model and research?

    Thomas Kuhn

    See here for more information on the person, and model perspective. The paragraph is taken to show the connection to the research work already done in the past, on my part. The label as well will reveal earlier thinking as I integrate what I understood of the philosophy, and "other perspectives" as well.

    The explanation of scientific development in terms of paradigms was not only novel but radical too, insofar as it gives a naturalistic explanation of belief-change. Naturalism was not in the early 1960s the familiar part of philosophical landscape that it has subsequently become. Kuhn's explanation contrasted with explanations in terms of rules of method (or confirmation, falsification etc.) that most philosophers of science took to be constitutive of rationality. Furthermore, the relevant disciplines (psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence) were either insufficiently progressed to support Kuhn's contentions concerning paradigms, or were antithetical to them (in the case of classical AI). Now that naturalism has become an accepted component of philosophy, there has recently been interest in reassessing Kuhn's work in the light of developments in the relevant sciences, many of which provide corroboration for Kuhn's claim that science is driven by relations of perceived similarity and analogy to existing problems and their solutions (Nickles 2003b, Nersessian 2003). It may yet be that a characteristically Kuhnian thesis will play a prominent part in our understanding of science.

    Tuesday, January 30, 2007

    Hermetic Ties: Art to Esoteric Form

    The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.Sir Isaac Newton-Translation of the Emerald Tablet
    See: Newton on Chymistry

    Again I open this blog post with the understanding that what an artist like Raphael may try to do? May include, much of the philosophy of the times, and have these things descriptively enclosing processes indicative of what they had known, but also of what these things could hide within the self.


    In center, while Plato - with the philosophy of the ideas and theoretical models, he indicates the sky, Aristotle - considered the father of Science, with the philosophy of the forms and the observation of the nature indicates the Earth. Many historians of the Art in the face correspondence of Plato with Leonardo, Heraclitus with Miguel Angel, and Euclides with Twine agree.

    If we watched of distant spot, of century XX aC emphasizes Hermes Trismegisto, - tri three, megisto megas, three times great; perhaps the perception of infinite older than we have and takes by Mercurio name - for Greek and the Toth - for the Egyptians. Considered Father of the Wisdom and Sciences in Greece, in the cult to Osiris it presided over the ceremonies as priest and he was Masterful in Egypt like legislator, philosopher and alchemist during the reign of Ninus in the 2270 aC.

    Etimológicamente speaking, of Hermes, the gr. hermenéuiein, “hermetic” - closed, “hermenéutica” - tie art to the reading of old sacred texts talks about so much to the dark as to which it is included/understood in esoteric form. Part of saberes that it accumulated transmitted through the Hermetic Books that only to the chosen ones between the chosen ones could be revealed. As much Pitágoras and Plato as Aristotle and Euclides were initiated in the knowledge of the Hermetic School.


    In Man looking into Space, I wanted to show how casual our science has used these images and not realized the context to which the greater meaning had laid hidden, all the while it is used to "describe cosmology" and the science thereof.

    A banner has been been written across these times to which scientists hold to all that is true. In this, the reasons to dismiss any implications of history assigned along side, is asking "what validation" can be given to anything that is spoken from our times now.

    I went on in that post, "man looking into space," to explain something about the woodcuts. The art form produced, grabbed my thinking in relation to the "alchemical art forms" and grabs my thinking in regards to the "School of Athens picture."


    The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.


    I just wanted to say that the essence of this blog post is about "the arches," and I am moving toward that description, and what is happening when we take a picture of them. Look at the "design inherent" and "dynamics" as held to gravity in it's construction. Look at what it can signify in it's "internal expression" about our contact with the world around us. The bridging that it can signify.

    I would apologize for leaving this post undone, while views pass by the essence of this post. I am indeed busy with life. So I wanted to clarify this push toward the internal dynamics, while speaking to the psychology of this work.

    A scientist may side step this look, while quoting the hermetical values of what may be said by the previous first lady Hillary Clinton. In itself, an empty page, only leaves room for what had to be expressed if it was not gotten the first time? Her attempts at humour, are the attempts to break the "rigidity of the personality?"

    The Psychology



    Myths and metaphors, like dreams, are powerful tools that draw the listener, dreamer, or reader to a character, symbol, or situation, as if in recognition of something deeply known. Myth's bypass the mind's efforts to divorce information. They make an impression, are remembered, and nudge us to find out what they mean, accounting for the avid interest that Ring audiences have in the meaning of the story.1


    Who has been so colourful in your journeys across the internet to include a wonderful language that takes you into this world of discovery of self? You had to know something about the "psychology of people" in order to give a story by nature, it's mythic description, and "most artful" to draw attention to what lies underneath.

    The Alchemists attempted to perfect the One Thing of Hermes, what they called the First Matter, by using specific physical, psychological, and spiritual techniques that they describe in chemical terms and demonstrated in laboratory experiements. However, while the alchemists spoke in terms of chemcials, furaces , flasks, and beakers, they were really talking about the changes taking place within their own bodies, minds, and souls.2


    Thus I have given two examples that I had promised sometime back to illustrate some of the "compelling work" that while ancient indeed, is not without it's efforts in todays world. It is the attempt to cross all boundaries, race, gender, and help one to recognize the diversity of the soul with out it's jacket. Shall we call your soul male or female, black or white?

    So I am bypassing this, and that has been my message, while the efforts to climb out of the constraints that we have come to recognize within the boundaries of self. Are the realization of the diversity of "all souls" and their time in expression.

    Shall we find the excuse to hold ourselves to the thoughts, that while overcoming, the constraints which still exist "within" had to be continually challenged? We have to break the "chains that bind us."

    The Arches


    Golden Rectangle
    I took the picture at a time of day when the tide was at exactly the right place to create this image: when the surface of the water reflected the underside of the bridge and they combined, together they produced what I named the Golden Rectangle as a nod to Pythagoras (my hero). The sensation I experienced at the time was of balancing consciousness and feeling.


    It probably seems that it is taking time to get to the essence of this post. IN order to get to the "psychological effect" that I am getting too it important to think of the images of these arches. It is about "each of us" and how we relate to the world. How, the "teacher and student" can exist within the same person.

    I point to the Heaven's in the case of the "school of Athens, while Aristotle points to what is on Earth?" Shall we leave no doubt of the "physical things" while we understand that there are more ephemeral qualities to these matter states? That we move continuously between them?



    The Inner/Outer World

    The drawn of our focus is the external world, but, if we were to connect the internal world with that "external view" how shall we do that. How shall we describe the whole being in this exercise?

    Part of this "exchange with reality," is that we can know by continually moving this information "through us" and creating "the space around us," we add to the total view "beyond what was apparent" with just the brain's condensible qualities in neurological display?

    By 'dilating' and 'expanding' the scope of our attention we not only discover that 'form is emptiness' (the donut has a hole), but also that 'emptiness is form' (objects precipitate out of the larger 'space') - to use Buddhist terminology. The emptiness that we arrive at by narrowing our focus on the innermost is identical to the emptiness that we arrive at by expanding our focus to the outermost. The 'infinitely large' is identical to the 'infinitesimally small'.The Structure of Consciousness John Fudjack - September, 1999


    While I quote above, the second part of the quote adds directly to the understanding. Not only are we "crossing the wires here," we are identifying "a aspect of consciousness" that is continuous.

    In this metaphor, when we are seeing the donut as solid object in space, this is like ordinary everyday consciousness. When we see the donut and the hole at its center, this is like a stage of realization in which 'form' is recognized as 'empty'. When we zoom in extremely closely and inspect the 'emptiness' at the center, or zoom out an extreme distance away from the object and the donut seems to disappear and we have only empty space - this is like certain 'objectless' states of awareness that can occur in meditation. But the final goal is not to achieve the undifferentiated state itself; it is to come to the special perspective that allows us to continue to see all three aspects at once - the donut, the whole in the middle, and the space surrounding it - this is like the 'enlightened' state, in this analogy. 10 The innermost and outermost psychological 'space' (which is here a metaphor for 'concentrated attention' and 'diffused attention') are recognized as indeed the same, continuous.


    So given "this relationship" on what we can build within self, then what use all this knowledge if we cannot grow with it? What of Plato's and Aristotle, as figures within the "centre of" Raphael's painting. Their perspective, "as positions in relation too," the "questioning stance" about this "unity of the circle" in our exchange with reality?



    So how would you exemplify "this exchange" with reality while "below the surface" all these "probable outcomes" are the manifestation of that which is real? You extend yourself "out there" while you also extend yourself inside? The "infinite regress," is to find oneself, with all that is "past" in front of you, can allow you to stand on what of, "the future" will pass through?

    First Principle saids that you acknowledge your place in the scheme of things as you "stretch" the thinking of the mind? Increase the "neurological frontier" in those neurological connections? Increase, the fluttering of the egg's feature, of that condensible brain/body.

    Our attempt to justify our beliefs logically by giving reasons results in the "regress of reasons." Since any reason can be further challenged, the regress of reasons threatens to be an infinite regress. However, since this is impossible, there must be reasons for which there do not need to be further reasons: reasons which do not need to be proven. By definition, these are "first principles." The "Problem of First Principles" arises when we ask Why such reasons would not need to be proven. Aristotle's answer was that first principles do not need to be proven because they are self-evident, i.e. they are known to be true simply by understanding them.

    But, Aristotle thinks that knowledge begins with experience. We get to first principles through induction. But there is no certainty to the generalizations of induction. The "Problem of Induction" is the question How we know when we have examined enough individual cases to make an inductive generalization. Usually we can't know. Thus, to get from the uncertainty of inductive generalizations to the certainty of self-evident first principles, there must be an intuitive "leap," through what Aristotle calls "Mind." This ties the system together. A deductive system from first principles (like Euclidean geometry) is then what Aristotle calls "knowledge" ("epistemê" in Greek or "scientia" in Latin).


    From here it would not be to unlikely that such dealings with the "reality of the world" would ask that we experiment and from such experiment, we learn the truth of the reality. While what the past is "in front" of us, to what goes beyond to it's future would be like asking the very nature of expression to manifest as this universe and laws of thermodynamics that the arrow of time only moves one way.

    "The future" arises from within then? We'll move forward by what choices we make? About our conclusions, about reality?


    1 Ring of Power, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. Page 3

    2The Emerald Tablet, Dennis William Hauck, Chapter 10, Page 151

    Monday, January 29, 2007

    Whose who, in the School of Athens

    I was over visiting Clifford's blog called Asymptotia this morning and notice a blog entry called, Heretics of Alexandria. Of course, what first came to mind is the "Library of Alexandria."



    Clifford writes and paraphrases:
    This full length drama, set in Alexandria Egypt, 415 A.D. features the infamous Philosopher Hypatia, who has come into possession of a document that threatens the very basis of the new religion called Christianity; a document that some would do anything to destroy. Hypatia and a powerful Christian Bishop wage a fierce struggle for the soul of a young priest and for a document which tells a very different version of the life — and death — of Jesus. A true story.
    The writing was excellent as was the cast, and Bastian should be extremely proud of himself. (It is a mistake to call it “a true story”, though. It is a story based around historical events, which should absolutely not be confused with being a “true story”. Writers of synopses should not encouarge people to mix up the two.


    So I started to do some research on the link offered by Clifford. All of a sudden I could see the many connections bringing "Hypatia of Alexandria" into the fold.


    Hypatia of Alexandria (Greek: Υπατία; c. 370–415) was an ancient philosopher, who taught in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and astrology. She lived in Alexandria, in Hellenistic Egypt.
    Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was also her teacher and the last fellow of the Musaeum of Alexandria. Hypatia did not teach in the Musaeum, but received her pupils in her own home. Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400. There she lectured on mathematics and philosophy, and counted many prominent Christians among her pupils. No images of her exist, but nineteenth century writers and artists envisioned her as an Athene-like beauty.


    Many of you who visit here know how much the "School of Athens" picture means to me?

    That there was only one woman here named "Hypatia of Alexandria" of course sent me off to have a look. AS well, "more of the meaning" with regards to the Library of Alexandria.


    9.Francesco Maria I della Rovere or Hypatia of Alexandria and Parmenides


    The frescoe of the "School of Athens" has been a haunting reminder of the many things that Raphael "enclosed in meaning."


    School of Athens by Raphael


    That I could then give numbers and names to person's within the picture was equally exciting. I started to dissect parts of this picture quite a while back, opening of course with the "very centre of that painting." The labels supplied on this post entry should give links to farther posts about this.


    1: Zeno of Citium or Zeno of Elea? – 2: Epicurus – 3: Frederik II of Mantua? – 4: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius or Anaximander or Empedocles? – 5: Averroes – 6: Pythagoras – 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great? – 8: Antisthenes or Xenophon? – 9: Hypatia or the young Francesco Maria della Rovere? – 10: Aeschines or Xenophon? – 11: Parmenides? – 12: Socrates – 13: Heraclitus (painted as Michelangelo) – 14: Plato holding the Timaeus (painted as Leonardo da Vinci) – 15: Aristotle holding the Ethics – 16: Diogenes of Sinope – 17: Plotinus? – 18: Euclid or Archimedes with students (painted as Bramante)? – 19: Strabo or Zoroaster? – 20: Ptolemy – R: Raphael as Apelles – 21: Il Sodoma as Protogenes


    I now realize that with one comment entry gone( maybe both) that I really was not so out of tune. What was Plato's influence on Hypatia of Alexandria?

    Letters written to Hypatia by her pupil Synesius give an idea of her intellectual milieu. She was of the Platonic school, although her adherence to the writings of Plotinus, the 3rd century follower of Plato and principal of the neo-Platonic school, is merely assumed.


    See also:
  • No Royal Road to Geometry?

  • Euclid belonged to the persuasion of Plato and was at home in this philosophy; and this is why he thought the goal of the Elements as a whole to be the construction of the so-called Platonic figures. (Proclus, ed. Friedlein, p. 68, tr. Morrow)

    Sunday, January 28, 2007

    Man Looking into Outer Space

    "We all are of the citizens of the Sky" Camille Flammarion


    In 1858, by the set of its relations, it will allow Camille Flammarion, the 16 years age, to enter as raises astronomer at the Observatory of Paris under the orders of Urbain the Glassmaker, at the office of calculations.


    I was over at Cosmic Variance for a visit, and commented on the "woodcut" which is title by the name of the post above given by Camile Flammarion? Below a caption is produced with a



    While Daniel ask spyder what the source of this was, I am quietly doing my own research, because I have used this image myself. What did it mean?



    This picture is a copy of a "16 century woodcut" copied by Camille Flammarion in 1888.


    The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."
    The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163) [38]. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.
    See here for larger version "with caption" that has been translated above.

    Now the interesting thing about woodcuts and what was found in my research, had to do with how "alchemical texts" can embody the "psychological process" that lent itself to the display the evolution in humanities thoughts.


    Splendor Solis ("The Splendour of the Sun") is a well-known colorful alchemical manuscript. The earliest version, written in Middle German, is dated 1532-1535 and is housed at the Prussian State Museum in Berlin. It is illuminated on vellum, with decorative borders like a book of hours, beautifully painted and heightened with gold. The later copies in London, Kassel, Paris and Nuremberg are equally fine. In all twenty copies exist worldwide.


    I will give an examples that have been retained by me, for understanding that allow me to speak on this. While I referred to the "enlightenment" and gave this answer above, I used it in context of how we see the cosmos now, given the understanding of the physics we are engaged in science.

    While relativity was applied to the cosmos at large, now, quantumly defining the nature of this cosmos, is part of this achievement that I refer too in terms of enlightenment.

    What are Woodcuts

    In Europe, Woodcut is the oldest technique used for old master prints, developing about 1400, by using on paper existing techniques for printing on cloth. The explosion of sales of cheap woodcuts in the middle of the century led to a fall in standards, and many popular prints were very crude. The development of hatching followed on rather later than in engraving. Michael Wolgemut was significant in making German woodcut more sophisticated from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich was the first to use cross-hatching (far harder to do than in engraving or etching). Both of these produced mainly book-illustrations, as did various Italian artists who were also raising standards there at the same period. At the end of the century Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to a level that has never been surpassed, and greatly increased the status of the single-leaf (ie an image sold separately) woodcut.

    As woodcut can be easily printed together with movable type, because both are relief-printed, it was the main medium for book illustrations until the late-sixteenth century. The first woodcut book illustration dates to about 1461, only a few years after the beginning of printing with movable type, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg. Woodcut was used less often for individual ("single-leaf") fine-art prints from about 1550 until the late nineteenth-century, when interest revived. It continued to be important for popular prints until the nineteenth century in most of Europe, and later in some places


    I refer to the psychological basis of what these woodcuts can mean from an early historical perspective. By studing methods used I came to learn of what this could mean "not from producing gold from lead" but of what this could mean in terms of applying ourselves and conducting our selves, as a commitment to being better human beings.

    This new compound of thought is difficult to understand and apply in our everyday affairs. The Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung went perhaps further than any other researcher to extract the psychological wisdom embedded in alchemy and make it available to the modern world. Through his work we learn how alchemy can be used as a powerful means of psychological transformation, personal empowerment and spiritual adventure. Individuation is the real gold sought by true alchemists. Yet, for all his genius, Jung's writings are complex and oftentimes as difficult to read as the alchemical literature. A thorough knowledge of analytic psychology, theology, symbolism and mythology is required to appreciate the depth of Jung's insights. Adding to this challenge is the rapid rate that science and technology have advanced since Jung's death. We live in a New World. Especially with the findings of quantum physics -many of which validate old philosophical truths- the time is ripe for a fresh interpretation of alchemy and how we can apply its powerful recipes to the challenges of contemporary life.