Monday 3 November 2008

THE DREAMERS OF THE DREAM...



The tendency of modern physics is, of course, to resolve the whole material
universe into electromagnetic waves. When the eardrum vibrates, an equivalent
sound is generated in the fluid within the ear. This tells the brain about the
pitch, volume and duration or frequency of the electromagnetic “sound”.
Likewise, when an odour molecule docks with a receptor, the signal travels to
the olfactory bulb, which is the brain’s clearing house for smells. Essentially,
too, the entire range of electromagnetic radiation - from gamma rays, x-rays,
ultra-violet, visible light, infra-red, microwaves, radiowaves etc.- is beyond
the retina’s threshold for perceptible vision, while colours, across the visible
spectrum in both directions are merely different electromagnetic frequencies.
When light falls on the retina, chemical changes occur that stimulate certain
electric activities by which the human brain interprets to itself the content of
its sensory experience. Not hues, tones, shades, tints, blushes or dyes, but
sensations in the brain!

So are we dreaming a dream?

Well, if the cosmology of relativity is correct, then the only standard
by which reality can now be judged is an essentially prescriptive or even
solipsistic one. The perspective is decidedly anthropocentric. Einstein’s
greatest merit, of course, was his emphasis on relativity as a metabolic
principle. Before him the universe had been conceived of as inherently
mechanical. Now it became a dynamic, intelligent organism, in every essential
alive.

With Newton classical physics was at its greatest - and at its most
naive!

Einstein, by implication, was probing the universe as a function of its
relation to the human mind. Man fundamentally causes things to exist. He gives
them the essential attributes they possess. Upon this simple principle he
evolved a number of set equations which declared that the universe adapts to us
rather than being irrespective of ourselves. As I have written elsewhere, his
universe impresses not by its statement of fact but rather by a strong
susceptibility to the inherent characteristics of its own empirical psychology.
We are, as nearly as we can tell, inextricably entangled in what we see -
affected by no other causes than ourselves.

Of course, in order to understand the initial conditions of the
universe, we have to turn to quantum mechanics. The effect produced by the Big
Bang, the actual micro-second of creation 13,7 billion years ago, was primarily
one of the passage of time - i.e. of the relation of thought to extension. Very
few people trouble to remember that there can be no such thing as extension
without duration. Time and space are one. Both conceptions of the universe are
complete in themselves, apparently, but we cannot conceive of one without
recourse to the other. Space involves distance! Measurement involves time. Or,
indeed, energy - and definition (or mass, which we perceive as weight). Mass and
energy are, in fact, two aspects of the same phenomenon: E = mc2.

At what we call zero-time - mind became matter!

Neither by the grace of God nor by intelligent design, but by a sort of
irreducible necessity, the universe is produced like a rabbit out of a hat! Like
it or not, our cosmic inheritance, its very title deeds, lie in the thought, a
template which has to be accepted as a virtual concept rather than an
established material system. And not least because circumstances make of
irreducible necessity a conceptual law of creation - with Gravity being the
medium between thought and action.

The universe is a logical concept. It follows its own train of
thoughts.

If God’s aim was to produce something which relied upon irreducible
necessity rather than specific form he couldn’t have done better than with the
Big Bang. And He certainly gave prove of it. The creation of the original cause
is more properly to be regarded as an act of conception, rather than an event in
the ordinary meaning of the term. Something that can be metaphysical or
material, depending on nothing that the human mind can grasp. For it is through
our very own eyes that the Universe is, for the first time, able to conceive of
itself. Indeed, if there is one idea that one takes away from contemplating the
universe, it is that of pure intelligence. Or that of the cosmos, far from being
fixed by Newtonian edict, unfolding like some enormous brain.

But could God be unaware of his own divinity? By substituting Man for
God - or Thought for Being - it no longer seems quite so preposterous to imagine
that it is in this enormous, retrospective subjectivity that the unrivalled
conceptual power of the human mind, weak though it may be in other respects, is
ultimately vested.






Dreamy

11 comments:

Bob said...

My dear Selena, are you a seeker for the truth or a story-teller?

Selena Dreamy said...

...probably both :)

Anonymous said...

Selena through the looking glass...I like it.

Anonymous said...

I am still working through the perception bit... I think I shall re-read The Sensory Order and see what me old mate Hayek has to say...

Selena Dreamy said...

Gentlemen, on a rather more complicated matter - this thing keeps coming up on my screen: ADOBE FLASH PLAYER!

It's asking me to be installed. (Apparently my life is going to be much better after that!). What’s an Adobe Flash Player? And what does it do?

Please advise....

D.

Bob said...

The Adobe Flash player is the software that makes it possible for you to see certain moving images on websites. Most of the time these are commercials. You already have it, or you wouldn't be able to see these websites. Now it wants you to install the latest version. It's not important to do that.

Bob said...

I'm not sure if I should argue with you, while I suspect you're just trying to tell a beautiful story, but here it goes once more:

It is a very far stretch to propose that the big bang is a proces in which mind causes matter, just because during the event time elapsed, time being an a attribute of the mind. It is an idea at the most.

BTW, as people did not exist at the time, whose mind was causing it? Ah yes, God. And here I am thinking that man invented God.

Exactly why again is it that time itself started at the big bang?

What happened before the big bang, that's what I want to know.

It's when people want to understand things that they know they can't, that the trouble begins.

Selena Dreamy said...

It is a very far stretch to propose that the big bang is a proces in which mind causes matter, just because during the event time elapsed, time being an a attribute of the mind. It is an idea at the most.

Yes, it is an idea! “Space involves distance! Measurement involves time.” - i.e. phenomenology is the result of an inevitable three-dimensional conceptual function of knowledge. It is nonsense to assume that the thought can be separated from the deed. (in fact, it’s quite daft!!).

BTW, as people did not exist at the time, whose mind was causing it? Ah yes, God. And here I am thinking that man invented God.

This has been extensively illustrated with the analogy of The ECLIPSE (see previous post)! The Past is an intrinsic part of the Present through what I have referred to - somewhat disingenuously - as “Backward Causation”.

Exactly why again is it that time itself started at the big bang?

For the mechanics of that, see above. A self-perpetuating process, fuelled by nothing but conceptual necessity. As for the why and wherefore, well, time does not subsist in itself. Where there is NOTHING, there is no time. Time is the function of measurement (i. e. knowledge).

What happened before the big bang, that's what I want to know.

Me too!! (Nothing, glorious nothing! See my post MAXIMUM AND MINIMUM on the state of supreme perfection - the Plenum)

It's when people want to understand things that they know they can't, that the trouble begins.

Yep - that’s how phenomenology begins and functions...

The Adobe Flash player is the software that makes it possible for you to see certain moving images on websites.

Bloody software! Why can’t things be easy and straightforward - like theoretical physics and cosmology?!

D.

Selena Dreamy said...

Needless to say, there is nothing here that has not been discussed much more extensively, capably, persuasively and comprehensively in idealist philosophy and contemporary physics.

I am just tossing ideas about. Rehearsing various recognizable data in order to clinch a resolve which I have long been forming. The application of physics to the notions of synchronicity (and the “supernatural”) - no proof of which is possible. Clearly, you will not be surprised to know that I am heavily indebted to both - my only reservation being that logic and science must at all times prevail.

This is just foreplay, fellow thinkers - if you go past this point you better have a damn good reason!

D.

Bob said...

A whole week without a new post. Should we worry?

I get it. Your computer crashed whilst installing new software, right?

Selena Dreamy said...

Bloody hell - that's what I call spot on...!