The Golden Rule: Heart as Feather, is a Heart in Measure

Der Barmherzige Samariter(The Merciful Samaritan) 1632-1633Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 15 July 1606, Leiden – 4 October 1669, Amsterdam) was a Dutch painter, engraver and draftsman.

The Good Samaritan

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead with no clothes. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, and he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he too passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and looked after him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

Ethic of reciprocity

Der gute Samariter (nach Delacroix)1890 Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

The ethic of reciprocity, also known as the Golden Rule, is an ethical code that states one has a right to just treatment, and a responsibility to ensure justice for others. Reciprocity is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights, though it has its critics.[1] A key element of the golden rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people, not just members of his or her in-group, with consideration.

The golden rule has its roots in a wide range of world cultures, and is a standard which different cultures use to resolve conflicts[2]; it was present in the philosophies of ancient India, Greece, and China. Principal philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways, but its most common English phrasing is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Biblical book of Luke: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The "Do unto others" wording first appeared in English in a Catholic Catechism around 1567, but certainly in the reprint of 1583.[3]

Follow Up to the Economic Manhattan Project

Dr.Conway,  I thought this might be helpful for you to see the whole works. Not often is perspective in science used to arise above what has been normally happening with the economy to see it in a new light. Imagine using the term "Economic Manhattan Project," for us to consider how seriously this undertaking is presented?

 

Photo by Steve Hsu->

The first photo is the morning panel discussion. From left to right, Eric Weinstein, Nouriel Roubini, Richard Freeman and Nassim Taleb.

The Economic Crisis and its Implications for The Science of Economics.

May 1 - 4, 2009
Perimeter Institute

Concerns over the current financial situation are giving rise to a need to evaluate the very mathematics that underpins economics as a predictive and descriptive science. A growing desire to examine economics through the lens of diverse scientific methodologies - including physics and complex systems - is making way to a meeting of leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists in an effort to evaluate current theories of markets and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. Perimeter Institute was suggested to be the gathering point and conference organizers plan to foster a very careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community.

The conference will begin on May 1, 2009, with a day of talks by leading experts to an invited audience on the status of economic and financial theory in light of the current situation. Three days of private, focused discussions and workshops will ensue, aimed at addressing complex questions and defining future research agendas for the world that can help address and resolve them.

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Perimeter posted some recommended reading as follows:

• Liquidity and Leverage
  September 2007
  Tobias Adrian and Hyun Song Shin


• An Historical Perspective On The Crisis Of 2007-2008
  Cambridge 2008
  Michael D. Bordo


• Origins and Responses to the Crisis
  Berkeley 2008
  Barry Eichengreen


• Information, Liquidity, And The (Ongoing) Panic Of 2007
  Cambridge 2009
  Gary B. Gorton


• Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?
  September 2005
  Raghuram G. Rajan


• The Financial And The Policy Responses; An Empirical Analysis Of What Went Wrong
  Cambridge 2009
  John B. Taylor

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This is a follow up to the conference that has already taken place.

PIRSA:C09006 - The Economic Crisis and It's Implications for The Science of Economics

The Perimeter Institute conference on economics is being organized in an effort to better evaluate the state of economics as a predictive and descriptive science in light of the current market crisis. We believe that this requires careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community. To do this we aim to bring leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists to evaluate current theories of markets, and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. The conference will begin on May 1, 2009, with a day of invited talks by leading experts to a public audience of around 200 on the status of economic and financial theory in light of the crisis. We will then continue for three days of focused discussion and workshops with an invited group of around 30, aimed at defining research agendas that address that question and beginning work on them. See: Welcome to the Economic Manhattan Project

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Let's keep the issue of economy alive here and the struggle between facets of our society that might develop perspective about a counter culture that exists. This was a inherent struggle diagnosed in Robert Pirsig and John Nash to show, that the ability of any society can become fraught with the struggle to be, always assertively saying who are are by name.

So to continue from the factual explorations science had undertaken, too the story of Angel and Daemons is to realize the struggle society can manifest with itself in an open dialogue with respect to position. It is about being aware first, then knowing that an emotive struggle is to be realized as the ever emotive charge seals memory to its place.

One cannot imagine the full scope with which might respond to criticism about a particular position and point of view. The lesson about Fear is an important one. This distinction needed to be seen in relation to what was being said and could have been mistakenly seen as so.

Yet, it should be noted that while not speaking directly to the fear or that it could it have been thought enduring too, by comment, it was never my intention. That such an action taken by scientist is an example in my books where science is working outside the box to help us see if they can add or change conceptual frameworks that are stuck in the current economic reality.

Learning about Pirsig's use in literary style about rhetoric and oration was a lesson in itself about what and who is speaking. It was about not being stagnant in view of, but taking on the challenge to bring new hope to a current treadmill that mice are running, or "busy bees" are working.

There is a distinction that I had come across in terms of Pessimism and Optimism. It seemingly shows the negative on the one hand, requires one to take stock of, while on the other half of the partnership, is to see that optimism is eventually reached.

One should know that if they take the proper steps in accounting, they can indeed see a brighter future. This in no way should be seen as "fear mongering," but of a responsibility to self and others to check the current situation and to act accordingly.

Of course, you might have seen some of my own pithy attempts at addition? These are listed under the label of Economics. They take to heart that seeing above the dilemma, is to see applicability that would not normally have been entertained.


Emotive Struggle

Is not something we can underscore without realizing the impact such emotions may have on a society as a whole. To see that the ideology of the struggle to become better persons, is to unshackle ourselves from those things which hold and bind us to our current, and existing state of mind. That such brief moments of the real you are the respite with which we seek to advance who we are, is to remind ourselves of the person by name we had become.

Are we then not in appearance locked in the battle to become "another person" amongst the struggles of dualism that perpetuate our continuing to run that wheel of life? It would seem then such "a Daemon" that would appear to exist as a counter culture to advancement, would keep us and forever keep us locked in that dualism. You see?

Seeing the images of emotively charge packets are but the process with which to forever remain in that cyclical universe. Is to realize that going "outside the box" is to shock the system and slap it into recognition of moving away from it's "normal attributive" position. If one were to imagine this cloud gathering itself around anyone, then it would have to appear that it always appeared at one spot continually, while the idea is to shift this perspective and shake it from what it has always known.

The Rhetorician

This raises all sorts of questions, the most basic of which are: “What counts as `looking’ vs. `not looking’?” and “Do we really need a separate law of physics to describe the evolution of systems that are being looked at?” Sean Carroll

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES

Robert M. Pirsig

Afterword

This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.

When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Over the last couple of days my mind seems focused on time lines. It seems I am adjusting perspective, while knowing full well that while the day can be assessed, and so a life. One is facing the past as Pirsig did in writing his book. Imagine him actually looking to his past as it recedes to where the words become "a place" and behind, a sun shines. We see where such an adjustment of thinking here helps one to see what Pirsig was doing.

Plato:

So in that case it was not normal experience that suffered, but what came out of the sickness that allowed an "ultimate realization" that you or I do not have to contend with, but sick men who struggle to search and found something, that normal people would not. So this is why the time line is important to be realized.

It can indeed seem quite confusing but it is an interesting idea here, much as one could be unsettle here with the Chicken before the egg scenario. This took me back to some of the things Sean Carroll wrote. This is not about biology or creationism, but about how perspective has been orientated in a historical sense to how we see it today. For Pirsig and Nash, they had to recount their past in order for us to understand their struggle.

Sean Carroll has a interesting set of four entires about the backwardness of the arrow of time and how it would appear. This is an interesting exercise for me on how perception about the current direction of the universe could have represented "the Egg before the chicken" scenarios.

Incompatible Arrows, I: Martin Amis
Incompatible Arrows, II: Kurt Vonnegut
Incompatible Arrows, III: Lewis Carroll
Incompatible Arrows, IV: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chicken or Egg

Illustration from Tacuina sanitatis, Fourteenth century

Reverse chronology — narrating a story, or parts of one, backwards in time — is a venerable technique in literature, going back at least as far as Virgil’s Aeneid. Much more interesting is a story with incompatible arrows of time: some characters live “backwards” while others experience life normally.

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PHAEDRUS. - Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD]Edition used:

The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, translated into English with Analyses and Introductions by B. Jowett, M.A. in Five Volumes. 3rd edition revised and corrected (Oxford University Press, 1892).


Phaedr.I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself?

Soc.When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all?

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves?

Phaedr.Precisely.

Soc.Then in some things we agree, but not in others?

Phaedr.That is true.

Soc.In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power?

Phaedr.Clearly, in the uncertain class.

Soc.Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err?

Phaedr.He who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle.

Soc.Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred.

Phaedr.Certainly.

Soc.Love belongs to the debatable class.

Now to which class does love belong—to the debatable or to the undisputed class?

Phaedr.To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good?

Soc.Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well remember.

Phaedr.Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.

Soc.Lysias should have begun, as I did, by defining love.

Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover’s speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:

Phaedr.If you please; but you will not find what you want.

Soc.Read, that I may have his exact words.
Phaedr.‘You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.’
Soc.He begins at the end.

Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus?

Phaedr.Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end.

Soc.No order or arrangement of parts in his discourse.

Then as to the other topics—are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition?

Phaedr.You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition.

Soc.At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Phaedr.Every discourse should be a living creature, having a body, head, and feet.

Certainly.

Soc.Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

Phaedr.What is there remarkable in the epitaph?

Soc.It is as follows:—

 * ‘I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas;
    * So long as water flows and tall trees grow,
    * So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding,
    * I shall declare to passers–by that Midas sleeps below.’

The discourse of Lysias had no more arrangement than the silliest of epitaphs.

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference.
Phaedr.You are making fun of that oration of ours.

Soc.Well, I will say no more about your friend’s speech lest I should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric.
Phaedr.In what way?

Soc.The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non–lover ought to be accepted.

Phaedr.And right manfully.

Soc.You should rather say ‘madly;’ and madness was the argument of them, for, as I said, ‘love is a madness.’
Phaedr.Yes.

Soc.And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

Phaedr.True.

Soc.Four subdivisions of madness—prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic.

The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true through partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain.

Phaedr.I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you.

Soc.Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise.

Phaedr.What do you mean?

Soc.The myth was a creation of fancy, yet true principles were involved in it: (1) unity of particulars in a single note; (2) natural division into species.

I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one.

Phaedr.What are they?

Soc.First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

Phaedr.What is the other principle, Socrates?

Soc.The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name—after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or lefthanded love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits.The dialectician is concerned with the one and many.

Phaedr.Most true.

Soc.I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see ‘a One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’ And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias’ disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them.


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The idea here is that the argument can be held in objective analysis as a defining relation to perspective about what is real, in the here and now. So any describing from it's source to something more defined topologically in movement from the vacuum, is a move to a finer substrate of the reality? What shape in the valley? Which one?

While scientifically engaged, "what if" internally you face the past as a lesson in history, and look upon the world, as our sun? Change it up, and the world is our past, while internally a sun shines behind us. This asks that the internal world is configured according to this dimensional perspective. Subjective yes, but allegorical to what any state of mind garners as it rests to it's ideological state?

Heaven

In the modern age of science and space flight the idea that Heaven is a physical place in the observable universe has largely been abandoned.[citation needed] Religious views, however, still hold Heaven as having a dual status as a concept of mind or heart, but also possibly still physically existing in some way on another "plane of existence", dimension, or perhaps at a future time.[citation needed] According to science there are unobservable areas of the universe (everywhere beyond earth's Particle horizon), although by their very nature it is not possible to observe them.

In this examination of "position" we are always facing our past. If we are to examine our scientific position, is this then real in how we analyze all of the experiments that are currently being undertaken?

You see, looking to an event in the cosmos, this orientation of looking back is to place "a measure" between the earth we stand on, and the event. The event is receding as we are gazing. While some of this observation is picked out in Pirsig's afterword, the subsequent revelation given by Socrate to Phaedrus raises some perspective in my mind about what I had always believed.

As I look at the world, it is receding, yet, internally connected as if in a Ambigram of continuous rotation. It has to be symmetrical, in that asymmetry is to move into the world, while internally, it has always been where symmetry resides?

Why move into an objective status of scientific belief that what can exist in relation to the values that science call its dimensional, is the realization that such an existence is as if matched internally according to the degrees of freedom that we match according to the nature I had assigned Colour of Gravity.


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See:

Incompatible Arrows

Our Consciousness can "Contain the Future?"

Memories Arise Out of a Equilibrium

Understanding our Angels and Daemons

So, every "story line" is about a Journey? IN Angel and Demons, we follow the story of Professor Robert Langdon.

The Vatican summons Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN to help them solve the Illuminati's threat, save the four preferiti, and find the hidden bomb. Langdon listens to the Illuminati message and deduces that the four cardinals will die at the four altars of the Path of Illumination. See: Angels and Demons

So in relation, I pointed out that Dan's Brown's book which I read, and the  film I have yet to see has it's differences, while we see the transfer from one medium to the next.   Same storyline. Pirsig's touch with the recognition of the Chautauquas, "the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer."

Anyway, I presented the Dialogues of Plato and the Plays of William Shakespeare as forums in which characters real or imagined, help to move forward the reader under "ideological progressions," as if,  dealing with this inductive/ deductive realization of information and probable outcomes once given the scenarios which are displayed for the mind to entertain.

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned Robert Pirsig and it is here as well I mention, "The Beautiful Mind." Both situations here are recognition of the Demons both indivudals(John Forbes Nash) under go,  as their story written is told in a life lesson and in John Nashes case, a film. Must we recognize that genius courts closely the aberrations of a sane and inquisitive mind, who looses touch with reality. Not so different then, when one who holds to this "other agenda of the Illuminati" in the Angel here Demons story here?

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Pirsig spent time in and out of mental hospitals from 1961 – 1963. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was treated with shock therapy. Pirsig had made a progressive recovery and had discontinued psychotherapy in 1964. He later began working as a freelance writer. See: Robert Pirsig

So who was Robert Pirsig's Demon(Daemon)?

The words daemon, dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimôn),^[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans See:Daemon (mythology)

If one has the chance to read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , one should most certainly do so. I had seen this book lying around over the years and never really gave it much notice until a gentlemen spoke to me about the issue of "Quality and the Good."

Being a reader of Plato and seeing this influence in science today, I was after something quite substantial as I look to see how ideas could enter the mind, and that in general, not to conceive of it as an portend of evil( that Daemon), but as an acquisition of the inquiring mind of the student to reveal "a higher wisdom" resides in each of us.

This was part of setting the stage if you might, to recognizing this "dual nature,"  as an inductive/deductive relation we use in our relationship with the world. So in this sense,  a scientific position and responsibility of becoming an open person to receive information,  as you delve ever deeper into the nature of things. I am not saying this is the way it is, just that it is a "point of view" I was able to gather, once one does their  own homework. Pays attention to the politics. What is "self evident?"

So indeed Noise presents a "climatic realization of assumption after assumption." In the real world,  we are only armed with what we are expose too? Is this not the way it seems? Why such medium exposure might be thought of,  as to the "way the world is according too," which point of view. You have to be given the power back for discernment of what it means to you and ever the role of a scientific mind as to inquiry, for being responsible.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

It is important to know then that Robert Pirsig's Angel or Daemon, was Phaedrus( depends on how you look at it in terms of what was given to Pirsig). As real or imagined the story line in the Journey across America with his son, was the realization of the lost years in an identity that went on a excursion, and never came home until the breakdown. John Nash had his own characters in the film, discovered later on, were the imaginings of a mind,  lost in the battle of what is real with paranoid schizophrenia. For John Nash it was always then later on in dealing with reality the struggle of who John Nash was while facing these imaginary people.

So while I say "real or imagined" one understands fully here that while we had identified the use of characters under the notion of "creative writing of Plato or of Bacon's Shakespeare,"  it was apparent that in the cases that I have sighted of Robert Pirsig and John Nash, that while sick mentally,  genius and brilliance were courted.

While I would point to John Nashes mathematical astuteness while sick, I am more wanting to point out the "Quality and the Good" of Pirsig as I continue. This is an understanding of that finer attribute of theoretical thinking that we ventured too. To see if reality by experimentation thusly engendered, then qualifies. How indeed did progression be marked if it did not allow one to see anew, with a new perspective and experiments are validated. In sociological thinking of our everyday,  how did our assumptions prove we were thinking theoretically, while assessing the politico defalcates of position and inherent of a party? What is the basis of this discernment then we can discriminate the truth of applied rights of constitutions written for democracies were written for freedoms and rights?

More on Angels and Demons

In a sentence, the observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning," said Brian Greene of Columbia University in New York City. "WMAP data support the notion that galaxies are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky." "To me, this is one of the marvels of the modern scientific age

I think there is indeed a change taking place in the way we look at things and scientifically this shift holds perspective about WMAP in ways that one is not accustomed? Part of my thinking is the dynamical realization of of the space we live in, and how the depth of it is slowly being realized. That's just my opinion though.

The Origin of the Universe as Revealed Through the Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background submitted by Scott Dodelson Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:27:37 GMT

Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin? and What physical laws govern the Universe at the highest energies? The clearest window onto these questions is the pattern of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is uniquely sensitive to primordial gravity waves. A detection of the special pattern produced by gravity waves would be not only an unprecedented discovery, but also a direct probe of physics at the earliest observable instants of our Universe. Experiments which map CMB polarization over the coming decade will lead us on our first steps toward answering these age-old questions.

With the discovery of sound waves in the CMB, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology in which we can begin to talk with certainty about the origin of structure and the content of matter and energy in the universe.Polarization

I wanted to continue with the Angel and Demons part with regard to the Fresco at the Vatican by Raphael. It is more about what is revealed, just as this counter culture revealed a course set out by the idea of the Illuminati using Bernini. It is more about our interaction with the world and how we can escape this dualistic pace we operate from, to become more intuitive about our dealings with the world and how discovering this part of truth within our own selves will allow us to discriminate what is coming at us. A basis if you might. Thanks for the article.

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The Room of the Segnatura
contains Raphael's most famous frescoes. Besides being the first work executed by the great artist in the Vatican they mark the beginning of the high Renaissance. The room takes its name from the highest court of the Holy See, the "Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae", which was presided over by the pontiff and used to meet in this room around the middle of the 16th century. Originally the room was used by Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513) as a library and private office. The iconographic programme of the frescoes, which were painted between 1508 and 1511, is related to this function.

 

The Raphael Rooms (also called the Raphael Stanze) in the Palace of the Vatican are papal apartments with frescoes painted by Italian artist Raphael.

The Rooms were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. He commissioned the relatively young artist Raffaello Sanzio and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to repaint the existing interiors of the rooms entirely. It was possibly Julius' intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor (and rival) Pope Alexander VI as the Raphael Rooms are directly above Alexander's Borgia Apartment.

The Rooms are on the third floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard. Running from East to West, the rooms are called:

 

 

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.

Here is Google Translated page from Spanish to English

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Raphael's Fresco of the School of Athens immortalized the idea of the Aristotelean Arch. Thus this was an image much as shown in Bernini's use that we can define something about the way in which we can perceive the world and gather perspective accordingly. We need to be well equipped these days to discern the differences of what is coming at us.

I am retracing my steps in terms of the idea of this counter culture in the movie called the Illuminati, was a not so strange idea when we spoke of the idea of Plato writing his own dialogues and speaking as if a number of people, as was Shakespeare, and his real identity as that of Sir Francis Bacon, which I have elucidated in the post. So confined by their own perspectives, that they thought to speak as wide a possible and as free as possible without the constraints of? You see? Speculation of course.

In reference to Bacon...

yet a method established to serve as being the ruler of truth. He suggested this as being what he contended to be his scientific method, which he called the inductive method which where the gathering of observational evidence of the world to be then deduced as to decide.

So most certainly describing the constraints as defined in your wording to think outside the box. So this brings us back too, the Aristotelian arche.

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.

Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down-Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

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"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 Physics and Society

Hi Jas,

If we continue to give reasons for reasons, from Z to Y, to X, to W, to V, to U, this is called the Regress of Reasons. Aristotle's second point was just that the regress of reasons cannot be an infinite regress. If there is no end to our reasons for reasons, then nothing would ever be proven. We would just get tired of giving reasons, with nothing established any more securely than when we started. If there is to be no infinite regress, Aristotle realized, there must be propositions that do not need, for whatever reason, to be proven.

European aristocrats transferred their lighted candles from Christian altars to Masonic lodges. The flame of occult alchemists, which had promised to turn dross into gold, reappeared at the center of new "circles" seeking to recreate a golden age: Bavarian Illuminists conspiring against the Jesuits, French Philadelphians against Napoleon, Italian charcoal burners against the Hapsburgs.

This to me set up an ultimate logic to perspective that had to rise above an inductive/deductive approach to reveal that thinking could establish a "principle in science" that would not have taken much to realize discovering the profound implication it could have with our everyday world.   To find it imbued with such simplicity, one would wonder why it never occurred to someone else before. This is a foundation issue then that goes on in science. As with, Symmetry?

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

But there is something that science does not like,  that we might not have known had we not realized that a scientist like Newton had his own inclusion in the process,  to have us think there was something much more to this process of the gold making. To mean something much more. Then,  the principal of wo/men who had wisdom, then sought after gold,  were not to profit monetarily by?

The Republic: "You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this will they rule who are truly rich not in silver and gold but in virtue and wisdom which are the true blessings of life."

So indeed,  you speak to this Christian historical occupation of the transference to the Masonic principals, I would like to think,  that if wo/men could provide us with the inherent simplicity of an "equatorial design" to prepare us for traditional thinking in the world. I would not like to think they were absent of the understanding of this "metaphorical relation to the human being perfecting themself emotively" to produce that wisdom or silver. This is to awaken "an ideal here" about the progression of the chemistry in the human being "to thinking correctly" about the way we would want to engage life. Not some religion as it would have appeared in the struggle between the Illuminati and the Catholic Church, as was portrayed in Angels and Demons.

Wonder storyline and research to support, but far from the thinking I think predominates those who strive to get to the basis of simplicity to also think about what transpires in our social activities of babble,  while caught in a this dualistic nature of perspective arising from  the background of the privilege or not so privileged.

The Errors & Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton

by Sheldon Lee Glashow

ABSTRACT: Isaac Newton was my childhood hero. Along with Albert Einstein, he one of the greatest scientists ever, but Newton was no saint. He used his position to defame his competitors and rarely credited his colleagues.His arguments were sometimes false and contrived, his data were often fudged, and he exaggerated the accuracy of his calculations. Furthermore, his many religious works (mostly unpublished) were nonsensical or mystical, revealing him to be a creationist at heart. My talk offers a sampling of Newton’s many transgressions, social, scientific and religious

So while there is scientific validation,  as to what shall progress,  I do not like to think that the Masonic lodges were the ones to hold this principal of the work to provide for this perfecting of the human being? This was confined to individual who developed their labs to experiment and provide for, the stunning simplicity of truth, about discovering of experiment in distilliation  and what it provides for. Psychologically, this is easily given in societal interactions and by awareness on our upbringing.

Jas:Since principium -- from princeps, which is from primus and capio, "to take" -- already means "first" (primus), "first principles" is a redundant expression. This has happened because "principle" has come to mean a rule, perhaps a very basic rule, but not necessarily a first principle in the logical sense. Such a drift of meaning already had occurred in Mediaeval Latin, so that we get principia expanded into principia prima

This a matter of principal in Condense Matter Theorist point of view with regard to Robert Laughlin. Theoretical physics, in string theory would like to think that it understands Laughlins point of view , and with it spacetime to emerges as well from that foundational perspective. Others, renounce this symmetrical point of view as a "foundation basis" as well?

Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University who, together with Horst L. Störmer and Daniel C. Tsui, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

Laughlin was born in Visalia, California. He earned a B.A. in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1972, and his Ph.D. in physics in 1979 at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In the period of 2004-2006 he served as the president of KAIST in Daejeon, South Korea.

Laughlin shares similar views to George Chapline on the existence of black holes. See: Robert B. Laughlin

First Three minutes of Steve Weinberg or the First three seconds and we see where perspective was drawn as one delves deeper into reductionism as to the idea of the Universe when it first came into being.

The Emergent Age, by Robert Laughlin

The natural world is regulated both by fundamental laws and by powerful principles of organization that flow out of them which are also transcendent, in that they would continue to hold even if the fundamentals were changed slightly. This is, of course, an ancient idea, but one that has now been experimentally demonstrated by the stupendously accurate reproducibility of certain measurements - in extreme cases parts in a trillion. This accuracy, which cannot be deduced from underlying microscopics, proves that matter acting collectively can generate physical law spontaneously.

Physicists have always argued about which kind of law is more important - fundamental or emergent - but they should stop. The evidence is mounting that ALL physical law is emergent, notably and especially behavior associated with the quantum mechanics of the vacuum. This observation has profound implications for those of us concerned about the future of science. We live not at the end of discovery but at the end of Reductionism, a time in which the false ideology of the human mastery of all things through microscopics is being swept away by events and reason. This is not to say that microscopic law is wrong or has no purpose, but only that it is rendered irrelevant in many circumstances by its children and its children's children, the higher organizational laws of the world.

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Archê in Greek philosophy had originally been used to mean the elements

Aristotles' definition appeared after Plato. Plato, meant somethng different?

Jas:Searle affirms that "where consciousness is concerned, the appearance is the reality". His view that the epistemic and ontological senses of objective/subjective are cleanly separable is crucial to his self-proclaimed biological naturalism.

It is getting very technical for a lay person like myself, does not mean I didn't study. So you are presenting "an idea in perception"  in relation to impute/output?:) Applying a structure of Networking?:)

Rafael has Plato pointing up and Aristotle gesturing down to indicate the difference in their metaphysics. For Plato, true existence is in the World of Forms, in relation to which this world (of Becoming) is a kind of shadow or image of the higher reality. Aristotle, on the other hand, regards individual objects in this world as "primary substance" and dismisses the existence of Plato's Forms (except for God, who is pure form, pure actuality, without matter). See:Plato and Aristotle,Up and Down

On a subtle level this can have philosophical origins, while working toward a larger audience. It resides in our own personal interactions that I would like to think by, "finding a basis of relationship" would advance the understanding for each individual toward a recognition of the "truth monitoring" that we have become "sleeping somberly with,"  would focus on the issue of being desensitized by  that "information overload?" 

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Thanks:acknowledging all that is within myself- a most difficult task, but grounding.

This sounds like a quote to me.:) Most obvious,  of course.

It does say a lot. Because we are in a sense are like Plato and Aristotle in the center of this picture. Yet, while one can contend that Plato's view is airy and in belief so, "with finger pointing up,"  that such ideas can be transmitted to what had been scientifically challenged, information gathered, and experimental processes delivered( Aristotle hand showing all that is"), is like "taking a fork in the road," while still acknowledging that ideas can be transcendent.

To be grounded, is a philosophical challenge? Intuitive leap how airy indeed?

So how is it that such a challenge could not have been contained too, "acknowledging all that is within myself," while intuitively making the leap and say you were still responsible and had made a judgement,  moved on to consider that simplicity by dissection, revealed something new....."a most difficult task, but grounding?"

So this becomes a interaction with the world in a sense, that the interior and exterior world, become intertwined with your participation. This is a dynamical relation then that the views of Plato and Aristotle draw us toward that "center of the picture." Raphael reveals something about them as if Raphael would like to portray?

So in this sense Angel and Demons use by the author while thinking to incorporate Bernini in this hidden language, so it is by artistic intent, that information is presented in the Fresco to consider the context of historical participation in the School of Athens.

For Plato then it was the ideal city-state of Kallipolis, and for Bacon, an idealized city/state?

The Philosopher KingPlato defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation – wisdom-lover. He then distinguishes between one who loves true knowledge as opposed to simple sights or education by saying that a philosopher is the only man who has access to Forms – the archetypal entities that exist behind all representations of the form (such as Beauty itself as opposed to any one particular instance of beauty). It is next and in support of the idea that philosophers are the best rulers that Plato fashions the ship of state metaphor, one of his most often cited ideas (along with his allegory of the cave). "[A] true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship" (The Republic, 6.488d). Plato claims that the sailors (i.e., the people of the city-state over whom the philosopher is the potential ruler) ignore the philosopher's "idle stargazing" because they have never encountered a true philosopher before.

Stargazers by Paul Rossetti Bjarnson, Pg 102, Chapter XV

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The ancient emphasis on deduction has its representative in Aristotle's Organum, and the new emphasis on induction and research has its representative in Francis Bacon's treatise Novum Organum.

Noise:I find myself at odds with this point and I was wondering if you guys are aware of any contrary opinions to this...it is an infinite regress and all proven knowledge is based on assumptions/reasons that have yet to be reasoned (all proof is based on unproven assumptions).

I think the term might be included as "Self-Evident." This does not mean you discard the critical analysis for which science ask you to be responsible. You gather information. You look at the theoretics. You look at experiments. This paves the way for new processes to be considered.

We hold (they say) these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal. In what are they created equal? Is it in size, understanding, figure, moral or civil accomplishments, or situation of life?Benjamin Franklin-The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 46, pp. 403–404)

Benjamin Franklin thought to question Thomas Jefferson penned version, because of it's applicability to all people. Driven then,  by the necessity of deduction it was well aparent that such a wording of drafting a constitution would then fall under such scrutiny. Driven too, what is self evident? Constitutions in general set out the conduct becoming and rights.

Alain Connes-Where a dictionary proceeds in a circular manner, defining a word by reference to another, the basic concepts of mathematics are infinitely closer to an indecomposable element", a kind of elementary particle" of thought with a minimal amount of ambiguity in their definition.

Not only in scientific process do we see where this works, but to the basis of a social and democratic understanding about the rights under the drafting of any consitution. This is a fundamental recognition of what we have to face in our own analysis of the way the world is operating around us. The work that goes into dealing with the "inherent insights" we take from information we gather in media, television, and the internet. Now, what has it done to this "discerning principle" that resides in each of us. Desensitized, we let society go on with itself. We let politics, go it's way and "sleeping people" never know. They just vote, a party.

William Thurston of Cornell, the author of a deeper conjecture that includes Poincaré’s and that is now apparently proved, said, “Math is really about the human mind, about how people can think effectively, and why curiosity is quite a good guide,” explaining that curiosity is tied in some way with intuition.

“You don’t see what you’re seeing until you see it,” Dr. Thurston said, “but when you do see it, it lets you see many other things.Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery

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More Thoughts on Angel and Demons

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough. Man’s way is different. He takes from those who do not have enough to give to those who already have too much. (verse 77. Tr. Gia Fu Feng)

 

I tend to disagree that dualism is a false construct. No doubt a struggle to identify this process even within our own situation that we are locked on this wheel of life and one wonders how can one rise above it? Sure and most certainly, philosophical thoughts about life.

Sir Francis Bacon-Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne (Cooke) Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his dedication may have brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments. His most celebrated works include The New Atlantis.

Whether it's true or not some politicians become unhappy with the current state of things and dream of a better state. Dream about an ideal society. So they may adopt this new persona to drive home all those things that are not acceptable and write artistically about the new vison in poetic merit. A shakespearean perhaps? So it as a double life.

Bacon's Utopia: The New Atlantis

In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in The New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Solomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science.

Bacon's dream here is very familiar to most researchers as one looks to Plato's dialogues. Like Shakespeare, the dialogues were scenes set by Plato himself, and in such a state,  the Atlantis "was a vision" he himself had. Some might dispute my charcterization of Plato, but I am sure that Bacon realized the way he might work, dealing with his unhappiness and charges against him,  while then following the logic of what I am saying about Plato.

Tommaso Campanella- See also:The City of the Sun

In Angel and Demons,  while it is The Roman catholic church, there is this other culture that rides along side of it,  that was to become the bankers of the world placed in positions of trust, to lead society along it's agenda.  Instead of,  the one lead by the Roman Catholic church. So this leads one to think "about presentation and the technologies we currently have" and what happened in the "frescoes of the Vatican in Rome" that we might garner from it,  a medium of expression. These then were  to  become thoughts about the measure of artistic impressionism. Let's say by Raphael? My pick.

This was used in the film while thinking about Raphael first, it was the sculpture and works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini that tantalized langdons work to point the way for this counter culture to reveal its destiny in face of that same Roman Catholic tradition.

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)-----Rhetoricalthough not a rhetorician, contributed to the field in his writings. One of the concerns of the age was to find a suitable style for the discussion of scientific topics, which needed above all a clear exposition of facts and arguments, rather than the ornate style favored at the time. Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning criticized those who are preoccupied with style rather than "the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment." On matters of style, he proposed that the style conform to the subject matter and to the audience, that simple words be employed whenever possible, and that the style should be agreeable.

So why would Bacon, if he knew to present the thoughts of the day by scientific measure, thought himself to expose, only the other side of this thinking with artistic merit? Of course I am making the connection between William Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon. This could all be for naught while one digests the thinking here, about the way one lives, and the world that could exist, if only....?

Word play is a literary technique in which the nature of the words used themselves become part of the subject of the work. Puns, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names are common examples of word play.

All writers engage in word play to some extent, but certain writers are particularly adept or committed to word play. Shakespeare was a noted punster. James Joyce, whose Ulysses, and even more so, his Finnegans Wake, are filled with brilliant writing and brilliant word play is another noted word-player. For example, Joyce's phrase "they were yung and easily freudened" clearly conveys the meaning "young and easily frightened", but it also makes puns on the names of two famous psychoanalysts, Jung and Freud.

The Cross Over Point and Time Travel

One of the issues that is evoked by any faster-than-light transport is time paradoxes: causality violations and implications of time travel. As if the faster than light issue wasn’t tough enough, it is possible to construct elaborate scenarios where faster-than-light travel results in time travel. Time travel is considered far more impossible than light travel.

I mean sure how is it one can measure time in energy particulate views when it appears all smeared out? It is the collision process itself and what I see in nature as Cascading particles as microscopic blackholes created and then quickly dissipated as decay in those particle showers.

Seeing muon detections that tunnel, and find their way across the globe is something that is interesting, as we can now use them in measure, as to what passes through to what is fabricated there in the LHC, becomes an interesting new tool of climate change or even gravitational inclination in relativistic approaches.

Length contractions is a key word here in microscopic measure.

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Juan Martín Maldacena and Joseph Polchinski

Dr. Maldacena and Dr. Polchinski each gave brief lectures related to their work. Both included broad overviews of string theory basics, with Dr. Polchinski noting the importance of "thought experiments" to help physicists make advances in the field. He said that physicists are excited about future experiments using particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where some of these "thought experiments" could be validated.

Dr. Maldacena, who was born in Buenos Aires, also spoke about ICTP's important influence on physics in Argentina, noting that many of his professors had spent time at the Centre. Dr. Maldacena himself has participated in ICTP training programmes and was a director of the Spring School on String Theory for four years.

The Dirac Medal is given in honour of P.A.M. Dirac, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a staunch friend of ICTP, to scientists who have made significant contributions to physics. Recipients are announced annually on Dirac's birthday, 8 August. The Medallists also receive a prize of US $5,000.Noted physicists awarded Dirac Medal

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Juan Martín Maldacena, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Joseph Polchinski, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara
and
Cumrun Vafa, Harvard University

Professors Maldacena, Polchinski and Vafa are being honored for their fundamental contributions to superstring theory. Their studies range from early work on orbifold compactifications, physics and mathematics of mirror symmetry, D-branes and black hole physics, as well as gauge theory-gravity correspondence. Their contributions in uncovering the strong-weak dualities between seemingly different string theories have enabled us to learn about regimes of quantum field theory which are not accessible to perturbative analysis. These profound achievements have helped us to address outstanding questions like confinement of quarks and QCD mass spectrum from a new perspective and have found applications in practical calculations in the fluid dynamics of quark gluon plasma.

The dualities have also led string theorists to conjecture that the five different superstring theories in ten space-time dimensions are manifestations of one underlying theory, yet undiscovered, which has been named the M-theory.See:Dirac Medalists 2008

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Another deep quantum mystery for which physicists have no answer has to do with "tunneling" -- the bizarre ability of particles to sometimes penetrate impenetrable barriers. This effect is not only well demonstrated; it is the basis of tunnel diodes and similar devices vital to modern electronic systems.

Tunneling is based on the fact that quantum theory is statistical in nature and deals with probabilities rather than specific predictions; there is no way to know in advance when a single radioactive atom will decay, for example.

The probabilistic nature of quantum events means that if a stream of particles encounters an obstacle, most of the particles will be stopped in their tracks but a few, conveyed by probability alone, will magically appear on the other side of the barrier. The process is called "tunneling," although the word in itself explains nothing.

Chiao's group at Berkeley, Dr. Aephraim M. Steinberg at the University of Toronto and others are investigating the strange properties of tunneling, which was one of the subjects explored last month by scientists attending the Nobel Symposium on quantum physics in Sweden.

"We find," Chiao said, "that a barrier placed in the path of a tunnelling particle does not slow it down. In fact, we detect particles on the other side of the barrier that have made the trip in less time than it would take the particle to traverse an equal distance without a barrier -- in other words, the tunnelling speed apparently greatly exceeds the speed of light. Moreover, if you increase the thickness of the barrier the tunnelling speed increases, as high as you please.

"This is another great mystery of quantum mechanics."Signal Travels Farther and Faster Than Light By MALCOLM W. BROWNE

You and I know it as a time machine. Physicists, on the other hand, call it a "closed timelike curve." Below, feast on the concepts and conjectures, the dialects and definitions that physicists rely on when musing about the possibility of time travel. If this list only whets your appetite for more, we recommend you have a gander at the book from which we excerpted this glossary: Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, by Kip S. Thorne (Norton, 1994).

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See Also:

Tunnelling in Faster then Light

Status of "Warp Drive"

Result of Effective Changes in the Cosmos

TimeSpeak