Consciousness as a Pure State

Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
Soren Kierkegaard

If consciousness is able to abstract, then consciousness is able to survive a heat death by going back to the beginning of the universe with those abstractions? Consciousness, is able to survive a heat death by mathematically abstracting, then ones consciousness can indeed reach a Pure State.

Since entropy gives information about the evolution of an isolated system with time, it is said to give us the direction of "time's arrow" . If snapshots of a system at two different times shows one state which is more disordered, then it could be implied that this state came later in time. For an isolated system, the natural course of events takes the system to a more disordered (higher entropy) state. -http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html

	The concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics suggests that systems naturally progress from order to disorder. If so, how do biological systems develop and maintain such a high degree of order? Is this a violation of the second law of thermodynamics? -http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/bioentropy.html#c1 See:  Chicken or the Egg Dilemma

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Found a video for reference and posted for examination.Interesting comment at this moment?




So, what does Sir Roger Penrose say about consciousness?

So I may talk about a gap, but what is Stuart saying. So as a Platonist, we do not just see mathematics, but we see other things.

In a logical process, objective reductionism(ORCH) takes you to a certain point. Your aware of this point, and you can go back and look at the theory so as to suggest what consciousness is actually doing in that state. Penrose is actually telling us about the differences, regarding use of consciousness versus the computational view.

So with regard to this phenomenological association between two people, as Stuart and Sir Roger, they are melding "the abstract" to the biology. I asked if one could see a contradiction and I think if you look at what Stuart is saying here how does this fit with ideas about entropy?

So both of them were attack by philosophers, and by many others about their ideas.

2015 World Science Festival

See:  2015 World Science Festival

Dr. Amanda Peet on String Theory

Published on May 8, 2015

Dr. Amanda Peet (University of Toronto) delivers a public lecture on how string theory can provide the "Legos" of the universe to understand phenomena like black holes. The talk was held at Perimeter Institute on May 6, 2015. See: Perimeter Public Lecture: String Theory Legos for Black Holes

Pure States

The direct realist view [11] is incredible because it suggests that we can have experience of objects out in the world directly, beyond the sensory surface, as if bypassing the chain of sensory processing. The pattern of electrochemical activity that corresponds to our conscious experience can take a form that reflects the properties of external objects, but our consciousness is necessarily confined to the experience of those internal effigies of external objects, rather than of external objects themselves. Unless the principle of direct perception can be demonstrated in a simple artificial sensory system, this explanation remains as mysterious as the property of consciousness it is supposed to explain.[1] But the indirect realist view is also incredible, for it suggests that the world that we perceive is merely a pattern of energy in the physical brain inside our head. This could only mean that the head we have come to know as our own is not our true physical head, but merely a miniature copy of it inside a copy of the world contained within our true physical skull. outside.The external world and its phenomenal replica cannot be spatially superimposed, for one is inside your physical head, and the other is The existential vertigo occasioned by this concept of perception is so disorienting that only a handful of researchers have seriously entertained this notion or pursued its implications to its logical conclusion. (Kant 1781/1991, Koffka 1935, Köhler 1971 p. 125, Russell 1927 pp 137–143, Smythies 1989, 1994, current, Harrison 1989, Hoffman 1998, Lehar current, Hameroff current)"[1]
Direct and indirect realism

What is the value of an awareness of "a construct" that we would assign as a background a formulation of the perceived by the perceiver? An archetype, created? A top down recognition in the square of opposition's use of the transcendent which could reveal an understanding of the essence of universals in face of "statistical prediction" in today's world? Symmetry.

A digital manifestation perhaps then that is clearly marked as to a recognition of a type of realism, or is it just noise(coherence as a contradiction). I might say that the realism here suggests to me a underlying recognition of the ability to perceive, to recognize facets of it own creation as to suggest, that it is quite capable of its ability to perceive beyond the confines of the construct given as a reality.

 The connection between superfluidity and symmetry breaking has had a glorious history. It has left us a rich legacy of fertile ideas, that seems far from exhaustion. PG 60 Superfluidity and Symmetry Breaking

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Yes there were thoughts about the nature of the gap and you had asked to me to define this. I had trouble doing so even though the nature of the reduction was a gap with which information to me was accessible.

"Penrose Physics, Microtubules & Consciousness

psyche-d / March 15, 1995 According to the arguments for OR put forth in Penrose (1994), superposed states each have their own space-time geometries (see Shadows of the Mind, p. 338). When the degree of coherent mass-energy difference leads to sufficient separation of space-time geometry, the system must choose and decay (reduce, collapse) to a single universe state [avoiding the need for multiple universes as discussed by, for example, Everett (1957) and Wheeler (1957)]. In this way, a transient superposition of slightly differing space-time geometries persists until an abrupt quantum to classical reduction occurs. If as various philosophers claim (cf. Chalmers, 1994; 1996) the nature of conscious experience is somehow embedded in the nature of reality, self-selections in fundamental space-time geometry may address the "hard problem" of consciousness.

Unlike the random, "subjective reduction" (SR, or R) of standard quantum theory caused by observation or environmental entanglement, the OR we propose in microtubules is a self-collapse and it results in particular patterns of microtubule-tubulin conformational ("eigen-") states that regulate neuronal activities including synaptic functions. Possibilities and probabilities for post-reduction tubulin states are influenced by factors including attachments of microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) acting as "nodes" which tune and "orchestrate" the quantum oscillations. We thus term the particular self-tuning OR process in microtubules "orchestrated objective reduction" ("Orch OR"), and calculate an estimate for the number of tubulins (and neurons) whose coherence for relevant time periods (e.g. 500 milliseconds) will elicit Orch OR. Stuart Hameroff"

The Platonist reality to me was a recognition of a informational reality where all information exists as energy, and that such integration with the physical body was a connection through the synapse as a reductionist ability to form through wave length function.

The point I wanted to make was that it is was as if there are two heads, that if it could be seen, one head moves through a whole wave length function potential as if walking through an ocean of wavelength like reality called information and such reduction of that information had to have a link between the material world in the brain/mind. I am trying to gather my thoughts here. Be clearer.

My thought of a glass of water was analogous here to what can exist in between a space , and have solid matter added to the glass without raising the water, somehow had me envision the gap in the water, as revealing the potential of that matter as filling a space that was not immediately obvious, but exists.

Matter then is not a solid.....but a potential realization of a condensation of that wave function. I am not altogether clear here.....so I am working on this.

 I think it is right to point out universal permeate of that energy as information. Think of the pattern of the quasi-crystal as consolidating wavelength like pattern. A pure state. How much closer are we then to recognize a wavelike pattern(chaldni) as an emergent product pattern of the idea?

I am having some difficulties here in solidifying a position here as to it being completely sound, so I am open to having philosophical interaction to help make this so.

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 Knowing Penrose's attribute toward a Platonist ideal, the Goldberg idea may have come from how he saw what could be happening within the cosmic background as demonstration cyclical to the universe as always being born in certain locations(CCC). While now showing this theory to be false as defined as circles and located in WMAP, one gets a sense of his thinking of a Platonist.

The answer lies in the fact that the high entropy of the microwave background refers only to the matter content of the universe and not to the gravitation field, as would be encoded in its space-time geometry in accordance with Einstein’s general relativity. What we find, in the early universe, is an extraordinary uniformity, and this can be interpreted as the gravitational degrees of freedom that are potentially available to the universe being not excited at all. As time progresses, the entropy rises as the initially uniform distribution of matter begins to clump, as the gravitational degrees of freedom begin to be taken up. BEFORE THE BIG BANG: ;AN OUTRAGEOUS NEW PERSPECTIVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PARTICLE PHYSICS

Sir Roger Penrose was really fond of Escher .How might on see a relationship to Goldberg?

Penrose's Influence on Escher

During the later half of the 1950’s, Maurits Cornelius Escher received a letter from Lionel and Roger Penrose. This letter consisted of a report by the father and son team that focused on impossible figures. By this time, Escher had begun exploring impossible worlds. He had recently produced the lithograph Belvedere based on the “rib-cube,” an impossible cuboid named by Escher (Teuber 161). However, the letter by the Penroses, which would later appear in the British Journal of Psychology, enlightened Escher to two new impossible objects; the Penrose triangle and the Penrose stairs. With these figures, Escher went on to create further impossible worlds that break the laws of three-dimensional space, mystify one’s mind, and give a window to the artist heart.

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How does one recognize "pure states?" There is a lot of science that is attached to this, and if one has not done their homework they might never understand exactly what this means. To relate self in this picture would somehow seem contradictory, but, as an idea regarding symmetry, one has to be able to speak about this possibility as well too.

While seemingly lost in history as to thinking its all Greek and not worth the time, there is more now to this realization having given some perspective about the Platonist that is current.

Well in today's world we might know what that might mean, not given time to further inspect what is being said. So we might call it this "other thing," a metaphysics. As a Platonist, I see the third realm as informational energy, so getting to that "as a pure state[a Form of the Good]," would in my view reveal something quite intrinsic about how we use that information. How we get to that information.

My question for you, recognizing that we are quite capable of getting to that informational energy, how do you resolve the quote given by Sir Roger Penrose given the Second law of thermodynamics with regards to entropy? You see the contradiction?



 See: Order and Chaos, by Escher (lithograph, 1950)

 You see Sir Roger Penrose had to be able say that such mini big bangs happen all the time.......and they do. Do you know where such pure states are given when considering this idea? Its happening in nature all around us right now. So if you assume this, how do we recognize it? While I hint here at (more then)one demonstration of a pure state, there is another.

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See Also:

• Book Review: “String Theory and the Scientific Method” by Richard Dawid
• Far-reaching features of physical theories are not sociological questions

Are you a Platonist?

Kant, however, is correct in that we inevitably try and conceive of transcendent, which means unconditioned, objects. This generates "dialectical illusion" in the Antinomies of reason. Kant thought that some Antinomies could be resolved as "postulates of practical reason" (God, freedom, and immortality); but the arguments for the postulates are not very strong (except for freedom), and discarding them helps guard against the temptation of critics to interpret Kant in terms of a kind of Cartesian "transcendental realism" (i.e. real objects are "out there," but it is not clear how or that we know them). If phenomenal objects, as individuals, are real, then the abstract structure (fallibly) conceived by us within them is also real. Empirical realism for phenomenal objects means that an initial Kantian Conceputalism turn into a Realism for universals. See:
Meaning and the Problem of Universals, A Kant-Friesian Approach

It s always interesting for me to see what constitutes a Platonist in the world today. So I had to look at this question.  There always seems to be help when you need it most, so information in the truest sense,  is never lacking, but readily available as if taken from some construct we create of the transcendent.

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Platonism, rendered as a proper noun, is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In narrower usage, platonism, rendered as a common noun (with a lower case 'p', subject to sentence case), refers to the philosophy that affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to "exist" in a "third realm" distinct both from the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism (with a lower case "n").[1] Lower case "platonists" need not accept any of the doctrines of Plato.[1]

In a narrower sense, the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism. The central concept of Platonism, a distinction essential to the Theory of Forms, is the distinction between the reality which is perceptible but unintelligible, and the reality which is imperceptible but intelligible. The forms are typically described in dialogues such as the Phaedo, Symposium and Republic as transcendent, perfect archetypes, of which objects in the everyday world are imperfect copies. In the Republic the highest form is identified as the Form of the Good, the source of all other forms, which could be known by reason. In the Sophist, a later work, the forms being, sameness and difference are listed among the primordial "Great Kinds". In the 3rd century BC, Arcesilaus adopted skepticism, which became a central tenet of the school until 90 BC when Antiochus added Stoic elements, rejected skepticism, and began a period known as Middle Platonism. In the 3rd century AD, Plotinus added mystical elements, establishing Neoplatonism, in which the summit of existence was the One or the Good, the source of all things; in virtue and meditation the soul had the power to elevate itself to attain union with the One. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought, and many Platonic notions were adopted by the Christian church which understood Plato's forms as God's thoughts, while Neoplatonism became a major influence on Christian mysticism, in the West through St Augustine, Doctor of the Catholic Church whose Christian writings were heavily influenced by Plotinus' Enneads,[2] and in turn were foundations for the whole of Western Christian thought"  Platonism

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Now beauty, as we said, shone bright among those visions, and in this world below we apprehend it through the clearest of our senses, clear and resplendent. For sight is the keenest of the physical senses, though wisdom is not seen by it -- how passionate would be our desire for it, if such a clear image of wisdom were granted as would come through sight -- and the same is true of the other beloved objects; but beauty alone has this privilege, to be most clearly seen and most lovely of them all. [Phaedrus, 250D, after R. Hackford, Plato's Phaedrus, Library of the Liberal Arts, 1952, p. 93, and the Loeb Classical Library, Euthryphro Apology Crito Phaedo Phaedrus, Harvard University Press, 1914-1966, p.485, boldface added]

For example, thought cannot be attributed to the One because thought implies distinction between a thinker and an object of thought (again dyad). Even the self-contemplating intelligence (the noesis of the nous) must contain duality. "Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." [III.8.10] Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action (ergon) to the One [V.6.6]. Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer Dynamis or potentiality without which nothing could exist. [III.8.10] As Plotinus explains in both places and elsewhere [e.g. V.6.3], it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God. At [V.6.4], Plotinus compared the One to "light", the Divine Nous (first will towards Good) to the "Sun", and lastly the Soul to the "Moon" whose light is merely a "derivative conglomeration of light from the 'Sun'". The first light could exist without any celestial body. Plotinus -

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"...underwriting the form languages of ever more domains of mathematics is a set of deep patterns which not only offer access to a kind of ideality that Plato claimed to see the universe as created with in the Timaeus; more than this, the realm of Platonic forms is itself subsumed in this new set of design elements-- and their most general instances are not the regular solids, but crystallographic reflection groups. You know, those things the non-professionals call . . . kaleidoscopes! * (In the next exciting episode, we'll see how Derrida claims mathematics is the key to freeing us from 'logocentrism'-- then ask him why, then, he jettisoned the deepest structures of mathematical patterning just to make his name...)

* H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes (New York: Dover, 1973) is the great classic text by a great creative force in this beautiful area of geometry (A polytope is an n-dimensional analog of a polygon or polyhedron. Chapter V of this book is entitled 'The Kaleidoscope'....)"

So what is Coxeter saying in relation to Derrida? I think this is more the central issue. On the one hand images speak to what perception is capable of, beyond normal eyesight and without concepts,  reiterated in the nature of the discussion about animals. This is what animals lack, given they do not have this conceptual ability, just that they are able to deduct, was what I was looking for as that discussion emerged and evolved.

If there is a Platonic Ideal Form then there must be an ideal representation of such a form. According to logocentrism, this ideal representation is the logos.

Think of what the Good means again here that it cannot decay into anything else when it is recognized, and that any other wording degrades. If you can draw from experience then in a way one is able to understand this. I had mention an archetype as a medium toward which one could meet the good, and in that find that the archetype itself, contain in the good, allows this insight to be shared. The whole scene is the transmission of the idea, can become the ideal in life. This is an immediate realization of the form of the good. It needs no further clarification......at the deepest levels you recognize it. You know, and you know it as a truth.

Understanding the foundations of Mathematics is important.

So I relay an instance where one is able to access the good.......also in having mentioned that abstraction can lead to the good. This distinction may have been settle in regard to the way in which Coxeter sees and Derrida sees, in regards to the word, or how Coxeter sees geometrically.

This is a crucial point in my view that such work could see the pattern in the form of the good. This is as to say, and has been said, that such freedom in realization is to know that the fifth postulate changed the course of geometrical understandings. This set the future for how such geometries would become significant in pushing not only Einstein forward, but all that had followed him, by what Grossman learned of Riemann. What Riemann learned from Gauss.

See: Prof. Dan Shechtman 2011 Nobel Prize Chemistry Interview with ATS

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See Also:

• The Form of the Good
• Before a Equation is Beautiful.....
• What Does It Mean For An Equation To Be Beautiful Or Elegant?

Black Holes & Wormholes interstellar movie explained *understand

SEE: Black Holes & Wormholes interstellar movie explained *understand

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The Form of the Good

SOCRATES:  Tell me then, by Zeus, what is that excellent [págkalon, "all beautiful"] aim [érgon, "work, deed"] that the gods achieve, using us as their servants?
 
Plato, Euthyphro, 13e, translated by G.M.A. Grube [Hackett Publishing, 1981, p.19; Greek text, Plato -- Euthryphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard, 1914-1956, pp.50-52]

In the Republic, Plato sets aside a direct definition of the "good itself" (autò t'agathón). Socrates says that instead we will get something in the nature of the "offspring" (ékgonos) or "interest" (tókos) on the good [Republic, 506 E]. For this "offspring," Plato offers an analogy:  The Good is to the intelligible world, the world of Being and the Forms, as the sun is to the visible world. As light makes vision possible in the material world, and so also opinion about such objects, the Form of the Good "gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and power of knowing to the knower..." [Loeb Classical Library, Plato VI Republic II, translated by Paul Shorey, Harvard University Press, 1935-1970, pp.94-95]. Furthermore, the objects of knowledge derive from the Form of the Good not only the power of being known, but their "very existence and essence" (tò eînaí te kaì hè ousía) [509B], although the Good itself "transcends essence" in "dignity and power" [ibid. pp.106-107]. The word here translated "essence" is ousía, which in Aristotelian terminology is the essence (essentia) of things, i.e. what they are. If Plato has something similar in mind, then the objects of knowledge derive from the good both their existence and their character. See: A Lecture on the Good,  by
Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

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This below was a earlier attempt to define the idea of the Good and Form in context of the painting called Betrayal of Images" by Rene Magritte. 1929 painting on which is written "This is not a Pipe"

                    Probabilties
                 (The Fifth Dimension)
                         |
                         |
                  Idea of the pipe
                        / \
                       /   \
                      /     \
                 Picture of the pipe
                    /         \
                   /           \
                  /             \
               The real pipe and form  
                                         

The fifth dimension was a attempt by myself to explaining the dimensional shift from the four dimension(space-time) to the fifth. Four leads into three was an ancient idea(Quadrivium ad Trivium) that came to mind that we may seek to explain as humanities attempt at perfecting. But at the same time such a descendent from the heaven into the mind of humanity, as the idea. A effective expression of the idea into form.

So such truths were important to me as to how we discover them. I am saying that this is a capable feature in all of us, and it was an attempt to explain how this is done. Deductive Logic while a representation of Aristotle, Aristotle pointed the way toward Plato. Aristotle pointed the way to Plato's explanation of the Good as it may have meant to Plato and what Aristotle may of disagreed with.

Plato's use of Socrates in the dialogues was specific to Plato's explaining what he meant by heaven. This is not a theological revelation for Christianity in my view as to the principles of Plato, as to what heaven meant. But something quite capable as to what heaven may mean as we grasp the understanding of the Good and inspection as to the Theory of Forms.

Indirectly, Aristotle then introduce the idea then of the universal and the particulars?

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Distances” Determine Geometry
Describe an object with a table of distances between points.
Describe spacetime with a table of intervals between events
It is not my purpose in this discussion to represent the general theory of relativity as a system that is as simple and as logical as possible, and with the minimum number of axioms; but my main object here is to develop this theory in such a way that the reader will feel that the path we have entered upon is psychologically the natural one, and that the underlying assumptions will seem to have the highest possible degree of security.
—Albert Einstein

http://www.eftaylor.com/pub/chapter2.pdf

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"Symmetry breaking illustrated": – high energy levels (left) the ball settles in the center, and the result is symmetrical. At lower energy levels (right), the overall "rules" remain symmetrical, but the "Mexican hat" potential comes into effect: "local" symmetry inevitably becomes broken since eventually the ball must roll one way (at random) and not another.

If one recognizes such a state as to imply that Heaven exists in such perfection and beauty, then what causes the asymmetry to be broken? Moving into a dualistic notion of operation, would signify a symmetry breaking?

The term “symmetry” derives from the Greek words sun (meaning ‘with’ or ‘together’) and metron (‘measure’), yielding summetria, and originally indicated a relation of commensurability (such is the meaning codified in Euclid's Elements for example). It quickly acquired a further, more general, meaning: that of a proportion relation, grounded on (integer) numbers, and with the function of harmonizing the different elements into a unitary whole. From the outset, then, symmetry was closely related to harmony, beauty, and unity, and this was to prove decisive for its role in theories of nature. In Plato's Timaeus, for example, the regular polyhedra are afforded a central place in the doctrine of natural elements for the proportions they contain and the beauty of their forms: fire has the form of the regular tetrahedron, earth the form of the cube, air the form of the regular octahedron, water the form of the regular icosahedron, while the regular dodecahedron is used for the form of the entire universe. The history of science provides another paradigmatic example of the use of these figures as basic ingredients in physical description: Kepler's 1596 Mysterium Cosmographicum presents a planetary architecture grounded on the five regular solids.Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking -The Concept of Symmetry

Symmetry Breaking, means to measure.

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One may need to recognize some aspect of consciousness and its capabilities, and thus, the parameters by which one thinks of how their consciousness operates, can become the limitations that that one applies to all(deluded). This then becomes "an application" to self.

An analogy to this situation might be what is thought to happen to the forces of nature in modern physics, where a single, original, unified force is separated into several forces by "spontaneous symmetry breaking." The form of consciousness as, according to Brentano and Husserl, the intentional relationship of subject and object, itself represents an asymmetry, breaking the symmetry of an existence where there is no distinction between subject and object. Existence as such is thus broken by the form of consciousness, and it becomes the forms of value, good and evil, right and wrong, the beautiful and the ugly, etc., as these vary independently over and against the simple factual existence of objects in the phenomenal world, or even against each other in the phenomenon of moral dilemmas (i.e. doing right results in evils, while doing wrong results in goods). A Lecture on the Good -http://www.friesian.com/good.htm

Bold added for emphasis by me.

The connection between superfluidity and symmetry breaking has had a glorious history. It has left us a rich legacy of fertile ideas, that seems far from exhaustion. PG 60 Superfluidity and Symmetry Breaking

You have to know what your doing when you apply those constraints to yourself. So maybe, there is this bigger picture.

Pierre Curie (1894): “Asymmetry is what creates a phenomenon.”

Before an Equation is Beautiful.....

 So we go after the essence of things in a logical way?

A question then that comes to mind is that if equations can become beautiful what were equations before? If taken in context of Aristotle, Objective deduction of information from induction, reveals the self evident principle?

The link to the following video will reveal this as a question about beauty, and without directing you to the answer, I want to see if you are quite capable of retrieving that answer.

Einstein was married to logic. But Einstein realized something, that helped him see "the before," as a necessary component in order to talk about "the nature of the equation?"

I am contending that when we think of Aristotle as we see science progress in the times, while further consider refinement in the Boolean perspective. But in essence,  one needs to be able to see in the Platonist way before one can move to the understanding of what beauty actually means.

....what was the equation?


Are you currently working towards a unified field theory?

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So the beauty of the moment had to be clarified in certain terms, so as to be seen and understand that it could be seen.

Now beauty, as we said, shone bright among those visions, and in this world below we apprehend it through the clearest of our senses, clear and resplendent. For sight is the keenest of the physical senses, though wisdom is not seen by it -- how passionate would be our desire for it, if such a clear image of wisdom were granted as would come through sight -- and the same is true of the other beloved objects; but beauty alone has this privilege, to be most clearly seen and most lovely of them all. [Phaedrus, 250D, after R. Hackford, Plato's Phaedrus, Library of the Liberal Arts, 1952, p. 93, and the Loeb Classical Library, Euthryphro Apology Crito Phaedo Phaedrus, Harvard University Press, 1914-1966, p.485, boldface added]

Bold added for emphasis by me.


See Also:

• What Does It Mean For An Equation To Be Beautiful Or Elegant?

Very-long-baseline interferometry

Observatories Across Spectrum

It is important to understand the basis of examination in terms of measure, requires us in this case to be able to see in a certain spectrum.

Heisenberg originally formulated his ideas in terms of a relationship between the precision of a measurement and the disturbance it must create. Although this latter relationship is not rigorously proven, it is commonly believed (and taught) as an aspect of the broader uncertainty principle. Here, we experimentally observe a violation of Heisenberg’s “measurement-disturbance relationship”, using weak measurements to characterize a quantum system before and after it interacts with a measurement apparatus. http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.100404