sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with physics

So today the announcement was made that, to the degree of certainty particle physicists consider rigorous enough to claim "discovery," the Higgs Boson has been discovered. There is still more detail to iron out of course, but this is pretty momentous.

The Higgs field is what enables things to have mass. Without the Higgs field, which stretches throughout the cosmos, the universe would be simply a massless soup of particles, atoms, and molecules, never combining together to make even a speck of dust. The Higgs boson is a particle manifestation of the field that only has mass itself at very high energy levels, which is why it has been so elusive.

Today I am also reading the Apocryphon of John and the hair goes up on the back of my neck as I realize that the Invisible Spirit, the ineffable Parent of All described at the outset of this text sounds an awful lot like... well, the Higgs field. Check it out:

He is pure, immeasurable mind. He is an aeon-giving aeon. He is life-giving life. He is a blessedness-giving blessed one. He is knowledge-giving knowledge. He is goodness-giving goodness. He is mercy and redemption-giving mercy. He is grace-giving grace, not because he possesses it, but because he gives the immeasurable, incomprehensible light.

How am I to speak with you about him? His aeon is indestructible, at rest and existing in silence, reposing (and) being prior to everything. For he is the head of all the aeons, and it is he who gives them strength in his goodness. For we know not the ineffable things, and we do not understand what is immeasurable, except for him who came forth from him, namely (from) the Father. For it is he who told it to us alone. For it is he who looks at himself in his light which surrounds him, namely the spring of the water of life. And it is he who gives to all the aeons and in every way, (and) who gazes upon his image which he sees in the spring of the Spirit. It is he who puts his desire in his water-light which is in the spring of the pure light-water which surrounds him.

ETA. This has me wondering (and giggling over the very idea) if the Higgs field theory can accurately be thought of as a particle physics reflection of phallogocentrism. That's going pretty far afield I think though.

Current Music: Brendan Perry, "Utopia"

I do not agree with the theory of cosmic causal determinism.

I mean, yes, you can generally determine a cause for most observed phenomena, and you can with arbitrary accuracy predict the outcome of events you set in motion in a controlled environment.

But I do not agree that these experimental outcomes imply that someone with a large enough computer and a keen enough understanding of the state of the singularity before the big bang could predict that on April 17, 2010, at 10:36 AM EDT, I would sit here typing these words. IMO the theory of cosmic determinism is a fallacy of induction.

So, yes, I think we have free will, and it's a wild world.

From the Bad Astronomy blog, a video showing a simulation of two galaxies colliding and merging:

I know this might be overly anthropomorphic (or zoomorphic), but I feel like I'm watching something sexual.

The universe is expanding in three dimensions, right? So might it also be expanding in the fourth dimension as well?

And what would "expansion in the fourth dimension" mean? Is this what causes us to experience the passage of time? IOW, just as the universe continues to expand outward, does it also expand into the future, making the present moment the outermost boundary of the universe?

I honestly can't tell if this is a fraud:
Blogs4Brownback: Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine

Basically the argument goes like this: The Bible says the earth was created by God and is "fixed and unmoveable" (1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 104:5) while the sun goes around the earth (Isaiah 45:18, Ecclesiastes 1:5, Joshua 10, 12-13). The Copernican assertion of heliocentrism, based on "abstract, abstruse, and esoteric mathematics," was devised as part of a political agenda to undermine the political and intellectual domination of the Bible.

I fear this isn't a hoax, because this is the next logical step down the slope after insisting on 6-literal-day-creationism. Actually, i take that back; it does not come after creationism because it is frankly less far-fetched. It is (**sobs**) more reasonable.

Elsewhere i read today that reactionary Christians and social conservatives are lamenting that they are behind liberals (and, one might add, libertarians) in developing a presence on the internet. Seeing links in this essay to sites like "Conservapedia" shows what it looks like when they try to catch up to the rest of us.

They cannot compete. They cannot compete in the fair marketplace of ideas, and this was demonstrated the first time scientists concluded heliocentrism was the better theory. But they are not really interested in honest competition; this is entirely about politics and money. They have been rounding up money by the hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue and promote these ideas, and have been quite bullisome about it. So because of their heavy-handedness, we unfortunately don't really get to have, in this generation at least, an open scientific examination of whether there could be intelligent design at the center of the universe. Academic reputations are already being ruined for scientists who research this, and shortly, no scientist at an accredited research facility will touch ID with a ten-foot pole.

"A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."

This is the definition for "planet" being considered by the International Astronomical Union. By this definition, it seems we have 12, and potentially 53 or more, planets in the Solar System.

The new planets would be:

Charon, presently considered the moon of Pluto but elevated to planet status because Charon and Pluto both orbit a point in space external to both of them. Charon and Pluto are thus a double-planet system.
Ceres, the largest of the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. It was originally considered to be a planet when it was discovered in 1801 but was demoted when it was found to be among many small objects -- asteroids -- orbiting the sun in a coherent band.
Xena, the transneptunian object (TNO, now to be called "plutons") discovered in 2003. "Xena" is not the planet's "official" name, so it might be time for a letter-writing campaign (for those of us who really, really like that there's a planet named Xena).

Ironically, Mike Brown of Caltech, who discovered Xena and who would therefore go down in history as the discoverer of the 12th planet, opposes the proposed definition:

"It's flattering to be considered discoverer of the 12th planet," Brown said in a telephone interview. He applauded the committee's efforts but said the overall proposal is "a complete mess." By his count, the definition means there are already 53 known planets in our solar system with countless more to be discovered.

Brown and other another expert said the proposal, to be put forth Wednesday at the IAU General Assembly meeting in Prague, is not logical. For example, Brown said, it does not make sense to consider Ceres and Charon planets and not call our Moon (which is bigger than both) a planet.

Objects which are expected under this definition to qualify as planets include the plutons Sedna, Orcus and Quaoar, and the large asteroids Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. [source] (Huya also?)

Apparently, very complex molecules can teach one another how to fold. This appears to be the way mad cow disease/scrapie/Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease spreads within the brain:

"It's intriguing to find that [prion protein], which, when 'misfolded,' subjects people and animals to these ravaging diseases, is so abundant in our brains," notes Jeffrey Macklis, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. "Why is it kept in the system if it has the ability to wreak so much havoc? It must have an important function."

In proteins, form determines function. The strings of amino acids of which proteins are made can twist in one way and be beneficial to a body, but if they fold in another way they can be disastrous to the same body. When a small amount of PrP misfolds, it influences normal PrPs near it, causing them to assume the same shape, a wrecking ball that breaks the brain from the inside out.

from Mad cow protein found to have a sane side

This seems to lend vague support to the notion of morphogenetic fields, the proposition that the persistent patterns of nature are not 'guided by laws' but are rather habits that are learned by bits of matter locally and which propagate throughout the universe, increasing in likelihood of repetition the more prominent they become.

Edit. For those who did not catch the reference in the title of this post, "ice-nine" is a hypothetical substance in Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle: a form of ice that melts at 114º F, one particle of which would "teach" all of the water it connects with how to take on solid form. In Vonnegut's book, it was created by the US Marines with the intent of reducing the difficulty of operating in wetlands, such as they faced in Vietnam.

For a while now i've been toying around from time to time with the idea that mind is a field. Under this view, mind is given the respect it is due as a phenomenon in its own right, but without a metaphysical dualism of the sort with which mind/body theories typically wrestle.

Some implications of this are interesting. Fields have properties like resonance, and theoretically extend over the whole universe. Noön particles would be quantum-interlinked just like other particles. So our individual minds, thoughts, feelings, are not as isolatedly individual as we seem to experience them. While noöns may be concentrated inside living brains, they wouldn't be found only there.

If noöns exist, why haven't we seen them? I think they possess a rather unique place in nature, in that they serve as an explication factor which draws spacetime reality into being from the melange of the holomovement. Trying to observe one directly would be difficult for the same reason it is hard to pinpoint the exact nature of first-person experience. Noöns are, in my hypothesis, what acts on quantum fields to produce what we perceive as the "quantum wave collapse." In other words, what defines "reality" as distinct from the fullness of existence is the influence of a noönic field. So to look at a noön would be analogous to looking at a mirror; you don't see an image, but only a reflection of what is around. Seeing anything at all *is* the process of seeing a noön.

(It sounds like i am proposing a duality here between explicated and otherwise, but i do not imagine a universe where explicit matter is free from influence by that which remains enfolded. If you said this sounds like a hidden-variable-invoking Bohmian interpretation, you'd be right. Heck, noöns themselves are a hidden variable.)

There is a lot that might be explained by the supposition that each mind extends over all of spacetime. It might partly explain, for example, instant attraction or repulsion. Have you ever met someone and felt like you recognized them immediately? Perhaps there is a strong resonance between your noönic fields. If however you meet someone whose noönic field is dissonant with your own, you might be inclined to dislike them, and you'd likely be right: that person would think and act in ways very different from you.

Many different aspects of collective human behavior might be explained this way, from mob consciousness to the intuitive appeal of ideas like Jung's collective unconscious, or Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere as the endpoint of human evolution.

It also allows for the possibility of noönic solitons or persistences. I could write a whole entry on what that means, persistent noönic waves floating around free of brains to shape them, affecting thought, feeling, and perhaps even matter. Some memes might be noönic solitons -- as might memories or experiences some people attribute to "reincarnation." Perhaps instincts and patterns of human behavior i referred to recently as "human nature" are noönic solitons as well.

There are interesting implications regarding will and causation, too. Jeffrey Schwartz proposed a notion he called "mental force" to explain the observable change in brain structure which can result from focused meditation. That the brain is capable of self-reprogramming is fascinating and opens a wide range of potential for human improvement. But this result also gives us hard evidence that consciousness is something real. (Contrast the views of Daniel Dennett and other eliminative-materialists who claim that consciousness and self are pure memetic illusion, on the basis of the observation that there is no place within the brain where consciousness resides.)

I've come to think that being abusive, hateful, and intolerant is evidence of having a weak will in the face of external influence. A person who displays these traits is less of an individuated person; they are blown about and easily carried along by external currents. In my opinion, the work of individuation, of learning to focus one's will by way of discipline (meditation, contemplative prayer, martial arts, esoterica, and other kinds of discipline) is inseparable from the work of cultivating a better human society.

Current Music: Love and Rockets "Sad and Beautiful World"

This article (thanks to

zarq for the link) explains in some detail how we may have hyper-drive technology within the next ten years:

In [Burkhard] Heim's six-dimensional world, the forces of gravity and electromagnetism are coupled together. Even in our familiar four-dimensional world, we can see a link between the two forces through the behaviour of fundamental particles such as the electron. An electron has both mass and charge. When an electron falls under the pull of gravity its moving electric charge creates a magnetic field. And if you use an electromagnetic field to accelerate an electron you move the gravitational field associated with its mass. But in the four dimensions we know, you cannot change the strength of gravity simply by cranking up the electromagnetic field.

In Heim's view of space and time, this limitation disappears. He claimed it is possible to convert electromagnetic energy into gravitational and back again, and speculated that a rotating magnetic field could reduce the influence of gravity on a spacecraft enough for it to take off.

( Read more... )

In previous posts i have written about the idea that mind is a field, by which i mean "a non-material region of influence." That influence, as in any field, takes the form of force imposed on particles within that field.

Let's back up a step. Either there is something special moving waves and particles in our brains in correlation to thought and action, or there is nothing doing so. The latter idea is a corollary of reductive determinism. The problem with this is that it cannot account for the perception of what it is like to be you.

Daniel Dennett gave it a really good shot in his book Consciousness Explained, which "explains" consciousness as a constantly-revised sensory first-person narrative. His account is fascinating, but my feeling was that it ultimately falls short of its lofty goal.

Dennett's objection to the idea of the "cartesian theater" rests primarily in the failure of brain science to locate a single place in the brain through which all perceptions and thoughts are filtered. He admits that the idea of first-person perception is strongly compelling, but insists it is a memeplex, a complex and powerful fiction produced by the brain. He can't really answer why the brain would do this. Susan Blackmore, in The Meme Machine, attempts to address this problem in Dennett's formulation, suggesting that the "I" evolved as a mechanism to create a more meme-friendly environment within the brain.

If the "I" is an illusion, than so is the will, that is, the ability to carry out that which the "I" decides to do. Will is a separate problem from consciousness; and to say that consciousness is a memetic fiction doesn't address the question of why we have this compelling experience of being able to decide, "I want a cup of coffee," and then watching as your body goes through whatever movements are needed to bring about that cup of coffee. The best the reductionists can suggest is that we go back and revise our first-person narrative of half a second ago to convince ourselves that we thought, "I want a cup of coffee," only after our body is already going through the motions of getting that cup of coffee.

If we are robots parroting memetic programs, why would the ideas of consciousness and will have arisen at all -- they are not necessary -- and why do they feel so convincing? The answers given above are within the realm of possibility, but they also seem inelegant, convoluted, and ultimately unsatisfying explanations for what many of us experience as a fascinating and beautiful part of being alive.

Suppose that no "cartesian theater" exists within the brain because it is not needed -- that is, because the primary work of thought is not carried out by brain tissue. At first glance this might sound like suggesting that thought is supernatural... which it may be. But it is not necessary to leap from the lack of certain brain structures to the supernatural, when there are other natural ideas that haven't been explored yet -- such as my suggestion that mind is a field.

If mind is a field, then it is intensified by some kind of activity in the brain. Other fields (electric, magnetic, gravitational) are intensified by very simple properties of matter, so either mind is too and all things possess some measure of consciousness, or mind is intensified by something peculiar and complex -- perhaps complexity itself, or perhaps activity at the quantum level.

If mind is a field exerting influence on matter within the brain, then we would also have some explanation for scientific results suggesting that meditation and mindful focus can bring about deliberate or desired changes in brain structure.

But while the noönic field may be intensified by the brain, it is not necessarily confined to the brain -- which sounds "cranky," but would explain a lot. Carl Jung proposed the presence of a "collective unconscious" to explain certain persisting patterns in human thought and experience; and Teilhard de Chardin proposed the existence of a "noosphere" guiding human evolution.

This also ties into speculations i've made in the past about the techniques of esoterica as a way of honing the conscious mind and will in order to make a person more of an individual, more likely to move beyond an existence of memetic parroting. More on this and the idea of collective mind (and other implications) as i think them through...

Is it possible that the Prime Mover is also the Prime Moved Object?

In a comment this morning to yesterday's post on "intelligent falling" i voiced objection to the idea of God as "all cause and no effect," that is, a causal agent who is not in turn the recipient of any effect.

The concept of "causation," dichotomizing cause from effect, sets us up to demand there be a first cause.

However, suppose that instead of a dichotomy of cause and effect, there's just effect, stemming from potential plus present condition? In other words, instead of a universe made of billiard balls rolling around and smacking into one another, what we have is a universe where the events which occur in each location build on what existed previously, creating a chain of events each one building on what happened just before.

In this view essentially the entire universe is the "cause" of any single event. Interpreters have used the metaphor of sequential lights on a Broadway sign giving the appearance of a single object in motion. One light does not "cause" the next, but rather, they are all together an explication of a deeper, hidden order. This view is not nearly as farfetched as it sounds, given the nature of quantum entanglement, and the fact that gravity interconnects every object with every other. This brings us to the view of the universe as a "holomovement," an implicate wholeness, as described by David Bohm.

"Causation" seems a more intuitive way to see the world because we, as the descendents of predators, perceive things using cognitive shortcuts that evolved over generations. Our brain takes the perception of something and makes from it a "hard" distinction between "this" and "not-this." We draw a box around something and then darken the lines of that box, as if to pretend that it has a special essence that distinguishes it from not-it.

Our use of language reinforces the darkened lines of subject vs. object, as does our interaction with one another in society.

Consider the alternative of "levation", which means to "raise up" in our awareness a thing or pattern while at the same time refusing to darken the lines of the box around it.

With holomovement replacing causation, we have no longer a need for a Prime Mover, but we might need a Prime Observer or Prime Explicator.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.

"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"

from Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New "Intelligent Falling" Theory (The Onion, thanks to lady_babalon for the link)

Ongoing thoughts dealing with subjects related to yesterday's post.

Gravity plays an interesting role in the cosmos. It plays an important role in the development of complexity.

Just as from every vantage point the degree of enfolding increases with distance, so too we find that spacetime curves "up and away" from every gravity well. As mass draws near to mass, the amount of heat and other kinds of energy increases within the gravity well -- to the point where gravity, generally speaking, is balanced against heat. Too little gravity, and heat blows the mass apart; too little heat, and gravity draws the mass together. So what develops is a convection current, a balanced dynamic between heat and gravity. This dynamic creates the potential for complexity to increase -- IOW, this is the engine that drives localized anentropy in the cosmos.

This is true even in the case of black holes, which "evaporate" slowly over time by emitting Hawking radiation. Eventually, a black hole will evaporate to the point where its escape velocity comes under the speed of light, and then no longer is it a black hole. Assuming the universe faces the "heat death" scenario, black holes will be the last thing to succumb to entropy, but eventually they too will fall.

All elements with an atomic number greater than 2 were birthed in gravity wells, or in supernovae brought about when heat overcomes gravity in burned-out stars.

Gravity is the hardest of the types of energy to reconcile with the others, mathematically. It is the last asymmetry to be corrected before we apprehend the grand unity. That makes it, in my mind, a significant participant in the cosmic dance.

Is there a relationship between God, mind, and matter?

1. I have often speculated that the divine presence is made of potential -- the potential for events to exist, the potential for growth and individuality within each of us, the potential end-product of evolution on earth, and so on. Before an event can happen, there must first be the potential for it.

Potential is described in physics as a form of energy. This is to preserve the canonical law of energy conservation. When a rock rolls down a hill, for example, or when voltage is established after a circuit connects to ground, the parlance of physics describes the kinetic or electric energy that is used as converted potential energy. Otherwise, it would look as though energy were being created from nothing at all.

A more poetic way to put this would be to suggest that the divine presence creates by providing the potential for something to happen, after which perhaps something happens.

Matter, too, is a form of energy, as shown in the theory of relativity.

2. Looking at this from another angle: quanta are described as being simultaneously "particle" and "wave."

The "particle" aspect of a quantum is the quantum expressed as matter, with position and velocity and sometimes mass.

The "wave" aspect is a continuous probability distribution, giving the likelihood that the quantum's material aspect will occupy a certain position at a certain time.

In other words, the medium through which the quantum wave undulates is potential. If so, then reality can be seen as a kind of dance between hyle and God, where God exists as the potential for a piece of matter to be in a certain place at a certain time.

In the past I have asked how we can know when we are looking at "God" versus "matter." (Assuming, of course, that there is any meaningful kind of distinction to be made there. If the pantheists are right, then looking for a distinction between God and matter is a fool's errand.) Precisely how does God, if she exists, affect the cosmos? And precisely what is God's nature?

3. From this, I want to explore the idea that there is an explication factor at work in the universe that causes things to unfold out of implicate wholeness, that takes bits of the unbroken wholeness and causes or enables these bits to transitorily take local form. Suppose that without this explication factor, the universe would simply remain folded up; events would not take place, things would not exist, there would be no "here" or "there", no "then" and "now". The natural state of the cosmos without it would then be unbroken and completely interconnected wholeness. In the presence of the explication factor, however, distinction forms between points in space and time; no two masses are able to occupy the same point.

This is the role given to perception or observation by quantum physics. The act of observing or measuring a quanta or quantum event makes it unfold in a "definite" way. Some part of the quantum wave "blossoms" into an actual particle; the rest vanishes (once a particle is explicated in one spot, there is no chance of it existing anywhere else).

The explication factor makes possible all distinction and all unknowing. Even in the face of quantum interconnectedness, it is possible for "things" to act as if they are unconnected from one another. Explicated reality is local, bound by the limitations of relativity.

4. In concert with explication, there appears to be a factor at work in the universe that causes explicated forms to seek ever more efficient ways to be and to do. The new science of self-organization explores the way in which matter in the universe "knows" how to organize itself into complex forms, in an ongoing quest for greater efficiency.

So what we see in explicate forms of the universe a self-consistency within the limitations of relativity. As new solutions to the problems of efficiency are discovered, they are shared with other explicate forms nearby, rippling out at the speed of light; and so the universe is like a mass of soap bubbles jostling one another, dissolving and reconstituting as energy follows the path of least resistence.

5. Now the question of mind. Mind would appear to be a combination of the two factors just described; and therefore mind determines the way in which matter explicates or blossoms forth from the field of potential. Mind causes the quantum wave to collapse when we make experimental measurements. Mind decides which course of action a person will take out of the options open to her.

If so, mind would be more primal and more fundamental than what we experience as "thought." Thought in the human brain is a linguistic and semiotic stream incorporating memory, accumulated problem solving strategies, instinct, emotion, and so on. Human thought can be seen as one localized solution to the problem of efficiency in explication; even so, it is subject to its own foibles and limitations.

The problem of "free will" might have a solution here. Free will, if it exists, is a faculty that initiates a chain of causation while being itself, to some varying degree, uncaused. That varying degree may be affected by the faculty of thought; memes provide new avenues for action that wouldn't exist otherwise -- they are efficient, hence their success. Memes might also at times co-opt free will by being less efficient than they could be, while still being more efficient than their absence.

Free will could be seen as an initiator of explication -- and thus only a particular manifestation of the explication factor.

One of the things I've been pondering lately is the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that entropy will always tend to increase.

I've never thought before to examine the experimental basis on which this law is based. My question is this: if this law is based on observations that have all involved the examination of isolated systems -- gas or liquid in an airtight jar, etc. -- then how do we know for certain that it will always tend to increase in systems that are not isolated? I'm not doubting that it is a tendency for the entropy of a given system to increase, but what I'm curious about is the logical leap from laboratory work to the assertion of a law that applies globally everywhere in the universe. I'm not even sure I doubt that... but I just want to look a little closer.

Bohm's speculations about consciousness begin with an assertion that consciousness and thought are, like matter, drawn out of the implicate order.

The question that arises here, then, is that of whether or not... the actual 'substance' of consciousness can be understood in terms of the notion that the implicate order is also its primary and immediate actuality. If matter and consciousness could in this way be understood together, in terms of the same general notion of order, the way would be opened to comprehending their relationship on the basis of some common ground. Thus we could come to the germ of a new notion of unbroken wholeness, in which consciousness is no longer to be fundamentally separated from matter. (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, p. 250).

Bohm notes that mind deals in many ways with orders that could be described as implicate. For one thing, there is the work of Karl Pribram and others which demonstrates that memory is stored in a non-local way throughout the brain -- meaning that memory is enfolded, and therefore recalling a memory is not unlike shining a laser beam at one spot on a hologram.

Bohm also compares the experience of listening to music, to the unfolding of an implicate experience:

At a given moment, a certain note is being played but a number of the previous notes are still 'reverberating' in consciousness. Close attention will show that it is the simultaneous presence and activity of all these reverberations that is responsible for the direct and immediately felt sense of movement, flow and continuity. To hear a set of notes so far apart in time that there is no such reverberation will destroy altogether the sense of a whole, unbroken, living movement that gives meaning and force to what is heard. (p. 252)

Not stated outright, but logically following from this, is that the experience of all narrative content or the understanding of any text would require a similar sort of mindfulness about past words, images, etc. while contemplating present words, images, etc.

While reading Bohm's argument, I had the picture in my mind of a lens being moved through a viscous medium. As it progressed, implicate forms hidden within the background medium would unfold before it. These forms would linger for a moment as the lens passed over them, and would then slowly re-enfold into the background as the lens moved on. This, then, is the working of mind -- developing an explicate image from all of the matter and sensory data it encounters.

In terms of the implicate order, movement is a relationship of certain phases of what is to other phases of what is, that are in different stages of enfoldment. This notion implies that the essence of reality as a whole is the above relationship among the various phases in different stages of enfoldment (rather than, for example, a relationship between various particles and fields that are all explicate and manifest). (p. 258)

Bohm speaks of "stages of enfoldment" so it seems to follow, both from his math and from his understanding of the relationship between enfolding and unfolding, that from any particular point in the universe, the degree to which another item is enfolded is directly proportional to the distance between the vantage point and the second item. While a particle A sitting at point A would be unfolded for an observer at point A, particle A would appear enfolded for an observer at point B; and vice-versa.

Since Bohm has in mind a reconciliation of general relativity and quantum physics, this would make sense. Both theories imply that reality consists of an unbroken wholeness -- but they contradict one another when extended forms are contemplated. This is why, for example, quantum physics cannot handle gravity.

If so, then any movement of perspective through space and/or time would involve the process I described above, of the lens passing through and unfolding/enfolding as it goes.

As time passes, implicate forms are unfolded from the potential of the future, into the forms they possess in the present, and are then re-enfolded as the present moves into the past. The conscious experience of time requires us to perceive relationships between what is and what was but is no longer -- as well as an anticipation, based on previous experience, of what is likely to happen next.

Slightly less intuitive is the idea that translation in space would similarly involve unfolding-enfolding of this sort. When I stand at one end of a hallway, the middle of the hallway is ever-so-slightly more enfolded than the part of the hallway right around me; and the end of the hallway is even more enfolded than the middle.

Consciousness, however, does not see this unfolding-enfolding, because the essence of consciousness would appear to be explication of that which is implicate, and the perception of patterns therein. Our understanding of consciousness, it seems, can be greatly enhanced by the supposition of the implicate order.

Current Mood: happy

Bohm's theory about the nature of reality is difficult to properly summarize, because it requires a revolution in one's way of thinking about "things."

It is perhaps easiest to start with the analogy of two rotating glass cylinders, and viscous glycerin between them. This is taken from an introductory essay, David Bohm and the Implicate Order:

( the analogy of the cylinders and glycerin )

Bohm also compares the implicate state to the storage of information on a hologram. Taken from the same essay:

( the analogy of the hologram )

To get an idea of the way Bohm saw the relationship between the implicate or enfolded mode of existence, and the explicate or unfolded mode, he utilized again the analogy of the cylinders and glycerin:

( the analogy of the apparently-moving dye droplet )

As for the 'grey background' of "the vacuum of space," Bohm asserts that it is not a vacuum at all, but a vast, whole, enfolded, interconnected field of quantum potential -- akin to the plenum or pregnant potential-wholeness of ancient philosophy. (Compare to the pleroma of Gnostic cosmology.)

Just how pregnant is the plenum? Recall that a quantum particle can also be thought of as a wave-front which stretches out, however thinly, to the entire universe.

( the fullness of potential within the plenum )

To account for the paradox of non-connectedness first observed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, Bohm suggests (following Bohr) that quantum particles are truly indivisible, and that what appears to our senses as "two separate particles" remains an interconnected whole within the implicate order. Bohm offers another analogy:

( the analogy of the cameras pointed at the fish tank )

See also:
http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/bohm/bohm1.html
http://www.fdavidpeat.com/ideas/implicate.htm
http://www.justpacific.com/bits'n'pieces/bohm~implicateorder.html

Theological notes. I have commented in previous entries that the divine presence feels to me like potential. That seems to be compatible with the Implicate Order and Quantum Potential as described by Bohm.

I have also, following the example of Valentinus and Eckhart, described the divine as residing in a realm of perfect stillness, or comparable in essence to stillness. That does not seem to be incompatible with the Implicate Order, though demonstrating compatability would require some effort.

Some connection with the idea of the Tao seems to be implied as well.

F. David Peat noted that Rupert Sheldrake compared Bohm's conception of the Implicate Order to Platonism. Will have to follow that line of thought to see where it goes.

Current Mood: calm

via

novapsyche: 'God particle' may have been seen

A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak. Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland.

The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter. ... Physicists have observed 16 particles that make up all matter under the Standard Model of fundamental particles and interactions. But the sums do not quite add up for the Standard Model to be true if these particles are considered alone. If only 16 particles existed, they would have no mass - contradicting what we know to be true in nature.

Another particle has to give them this mass. Enter the Higgs boson, first proposed by University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs and colleagues in the late 1960s. Their theory was that all particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson. The Higgs' importance to the Standard Model has led some to dub it the "God particle".

If the Superconducting Supercollider hadn't been killed in 1994, it would be American scientists doing this stuff.

When I heard of the project's cancellation, I made a prediction then that the United States had consigned itself to scientific obscurity within 50 years.

Forty years and counting. We'll see if I'm right...

My mind keeps coming back to the "Big Wow" Hypothesis put forward by Paola Zizzi. It follows from the "orchestrated objective reduction" quantum consciousness hypothesis put forward by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Stated technically, the abstract of this idea is as follows:

...[D]uring inflation [the period just after the Big Bang when the spacetime continuum expanded rapidly], the universe can be described as a superposed state of quantum registers. The self-reduction of the superposed quantum state is consistent with the Penrose's Objective Reduction (OR) model. The quantum gravity threshold is reached at the end of inflation, and corresponds to a superposed state of 10^9 quantum registers. This is also the number of superposed tubulins-qubits in our brain, which undergo the Penrose-Hameroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction, (Orch OR), leading to a conscious event. Then, an analogy naturally arises between the very early quantum computing universe, and our mind.

Paraphrased, it is proposed that (a) proto-consciousness is a natural quality of existence, (b) conscious awareness arises from self-orchestrating quantum events in the brain, and (c) the universe, during the period of inflation shortly after the Big Bang, experienced a moment of conscious awareness that is analogous to the conscious awareness that we as human beings experience.

There is a certain "neatness" in this. If there is any truth to this at all, what are the theological, cosmological, and anthropological (using the term in its theological sense) implications?

Addendum. It is suggested that the law of entropy may not necessarily apply on microcosmic scales. Evidence of this sort would seem to bolster the idea that conscious awareness and perhaps even volition have their roots in quantum-level an-entropy. Stuart Hameroff has proposed a testable hypothesis he has called "quantum vitalism" that suggests that life is a special kind of quantum superconduction. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Schwartz and Harry Stapp have proposed the concept of "mental force" to explain a way volition (or free will) may be reconciled with materialism.

crossposting to

religiousdebate.

Possible explanation for the Bermuda Triangle disappearances?

Methane bubbles from the sea floor could, in theory, sink ships and may explain the odd disappearances of some vessels, Australian researchers reported on Tuesday.

The huge bubbles can erupt from undersea deposits of solid methane, known as gas hydrates. An odorless gas found in swamps and mines, methane becomes solid under the enormous pressures found on deep sea floors.

from Methane Bubbles Could Sink Ships, Scientists Find

Plus: the answer to the asteroid threat: Asteroid tugboats?

The asteroid tug test project is dubbed the B612 mission. That's the name of the asteroid in The Little Prince, the well-known young person's book by Antoine de St. Exupery. In fact, late last year, Schweickart, Lu, Hut and Chapman formed the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to developing and demonstrating the capability to deflect asteroids from Earth. ...

Given enough warning time, an asteroid tugboat could nestle up to the mini-world, then provide long stints of gentle pressure. The tug would nudge the asteroid ever so slightly, but enough to shift the space rock's orbit so an Earth collision is averted.

The B612 test mission to deflect an asteroid could use Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engines. The VASIMR propulsion unit employs radio waves to ionize a gas and accelerate the plasma to even higher exhaust velocities. Veteran shuttle astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, is exploring this novel, low-thrust propulsion technology.

from Mission Possible: Asteroid Tugboat Backed for Trial Run

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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with physics

a gnostic depiction of the higgs boson?

determinism, bah!

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first creationism, now geocentrism

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mad cow disease is like "ice nine" of the brain

implications of the noönic theory

Hmm, isn't this ground that Nikola Tesla covered?

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monistic cosmology

gravity: a theory in crisis

Gravity wells are happenin' places.

God, Mind, and Matter

Examining the Second Law a little closer

Bohm: Consciousness, Time, Relativity, and the Implicate Order

Bohm: The Implicate Order

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