What does it mean to be alive?

If I see something, and I see it growing, I know it's alive. I see a baby grow from an infant to toddler to teenager and adult. I know it is alive. I see plants shoot up through the dirt, grow leaves and flowers, and I know it's alive.  I see a rock, and all it does is stay the same or slowly erodes. It's not alive.

But some things are far more mysterious. What about viruses? Are they alive?

What is life?

Now take a look at this very interesting video about some things that sit on the boundary between living and non-living.

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Oregons is home of worlds biggest and oldest living thing

The largest living organism ever found has been discovered in an ancient American forest.

The Armillaria ostoyae, popularly known as the honey mushroom, started from a single spore too small to see without a microscope. It has been spreading its black shoestring filaments, called rhizomorphs, through the forest for an estimated 2,400 years, killing trees as it grows. It now covers 2,200 acres (880 hectares) of the Malheur National Forest, in eastern Oregon.

The outline of the giant fungus stretches 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometres) across, and it extends an average of three feet (one metre) into the ground. It covers an area as big as 1,665 football fields...

Read more at

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/oregons-monster-mushroom-is-worlds-biggest-living-thing-710278.html

Thought Experiment: The Christian Trinity. Lesson 10T

One concept which has persisted for more than 2000 years is that the deity, God if you will, is one person with three manifestations: God the father, God the son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit. The Christian religions tell us that the Trinity is a mystery that cannot be explained in human terms.

We agree that human language and human ideas were limited enough 2000 years ago or more, such that there were not human words to describe how something could be a Trinity as described. However, let us revisit some of our earlier examples and see if it is indeed possible to explain this phenomenon, if it is true, in terms of 21st century ideas and knowledge. Perhaps, for those who believe, it no longer has to be a matter of faith rather than logic.

First, we make the assumption that space has N dimensions where N is more than the traditional four, height, width, length, and time. Let us say, in fact, that there are at least seven, and possibly many more, as we are told by Stephen Hawking, physicist.

Second, let us for a moment hypothesize that spirit, mind (as opposed to brain), or soul exist independently from the body, but manifest themselves through the physical body. Let us say that the sole is the seat of self. At the time of death, the physical body no longer is inhabited or animated by the sole. However, the soul, as defined, may survive the body, and indeed, may be nearly immortal.

Third, let us say that the soul communicates with its physical manifestation, the body, through some energetic means. The side effect of these means of communication may in fact be the EEGs we witnessed during a medical examination, or the auras some people can see, and which can be photographed using a tool called Kirilan photography, which can photographed the auras of living things.

Fourth, let us assume for a moment, that some people, whether they could explain it or not, were cognizant of this dual nature of the human. Some people may, in fact, be able to exercise some form of control over the energetic part of there being -- that which we previously called the soul. There have, perhaps, been people who have had some sort of control over their energetic being all throughout history.

Fifth, for the sake of argument, and for this thought experiment to be successful, let us assume that there are not many souls, but rather one mega-souls, one super being if you will, and adverse can only inject a small portion of itself, a spark of life simply large enough to animate a being capable of learning, and, passing that knowledge on to the mega-souls.

Sixth, this implies that there is a hierarchy of life had which we are not at the top, but in the middle! Just as our big toe cell is unaware of the toe, or even the body to which it is attached, may be mere humans are like the big toe cell!

Now let us go back to Jesus Christ. He was clearly a man. In our model of reality above, he clearly had a dual existence of body and soul. Through means not yet familiar to us, perhaps he understood that the mega-soul, that being which provides the spark of life to other beings, was in fact determined by Him, God the father. If Jesus knew that he contain a spark of God the father, He then would have clearly realized that He was God the son. That leaves us with God the Holy Spirit. Envisioned as tongues of fire by the Christians. Perhaps rather than fire, this was a large spark! Maybe it was a particularly bright aura around the head. In any event, it would have been a manifestation of the mega-souls (God the father) who exists in N dimensional space, and projected, or perhaps still projects occasionally, into four dimensional space time.

It is interesting to note that in the Bible to Jesus Christ never claims that he is God! He claims his father is God the father. He performs feats, that at that day and time were considered to be miracles. He even praised. In fact, he even tells Pontius Pilate, "It is you, not I, who claim that I am God." or words to that effect, after dozens of translations and hundreds of tellings.

Now we have explained this mystery in terms of the simplest explanation, which is a single mega-souls. This mega-soul is at least a component of that which we call God. The above explanations is simple, and has a certain logical symmetry, which is appealing. However, to appease those who don't think that we as beings can be energized by a single thing which we call a mega-soul, lettuce and assume that the being we call God does have a non-corporeal, energetic soul. It is quite possible that that life force inhabited a person, Jesus Christ. Just as it is possible that such a soul could have animated bodies before and after.

The second explanations lacks a certain symmetry that we see in the first explanation. It is much easier to believe that there is a universal energy, a universal life force, then maybe one force, or one soul, which projects itself into living beings and grows therein. As knowledge grows, the being who wrote!

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ1nweotz-8MZGNiNHB6YzhfNTZmYnRwZ2s5bQ&hl=en

A physics lesson: Absolute Nothingness And ...: Lesson 20

Preamble


Why teach a basic introduction to physics in a philosophy course?

People have a natural tendency to make order out of disorder, to organize things in the midst of chaos. People seem to instinctually fight the natural law of entropy, the universes pensioned from moving from organized to disorganized. The universe will eventually cause a cup and saucer to fall on the floor, and fly apart in a thousand pieces. However, nothing in nature will naturally cause those thousand pieces to automatically reform into a coffee cup! Except humans!

What is the present day process of recycling? We recycle paper, aluminum, plastics and more. When we recycle something, we take it from its natural elements to a manufactured product, the opposite of entropy. We use the product -- read the newspaper, drink the drink from the bottle, use the shampoo in the plastic container -- and then discard the leftover remnants of the product. Those remnants are then picked up, sorted, and sent off to factories where they are remanufactured into pristine new products.

The creation of things originally, seems to be against the law of entropy.

The notion of recycling materials after use of the created product is most certainly counter to entropy.

A contrary perspective


George Carlin was a famous philosopher/comedian in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. George once had a comedy skit about a living earth. He postulated that the earth wanted plastic, so the earth, through its evolutionary processes, created man, which created plastic. Eventually, the earth had enough plastic to suit its needs, so it decided that it no longer needed people.

However, humans didn’t just die off after the invention of plastic! So the Earth said, “How can I get rid of these people that I no longer need?”

The Earth decided that one way for sure to eradicate these pesky people was to invent the disease that is universally fatal to people and passed along in the process of reproduction, which people seem to love to do. The perfect solution.

Introduction

What happens when we reached the edge of the universe? Does it just go on forever? How long is forever, and how big must something be to be infinitely wide or long or high? This is a question that even physicists argue about to this day. Do we live in the finite bounded universe? That is, a spherical universe in which we can reach the edge, but if we reached the edge, we just doubled back on ourselves like rolling around the inside of the ball. Do we live in a finite unbounded universe? As soon as we approach the edge, does the universe stretched, like a balloon being filled with air? Do we live in an infinite universe? Does the universe have no end, no wage in any direction? What’s on the other side of the edge of the universe? Is there another universe? Are there an infinite number of other universes? Was our universe created when the black hole of another universe reach some limit and exploded?

Hypothesis.

Let us take a look at the first moments of the universe. According to scientist today, everything we know started as a compact mass of plasma, in this sense, plasma means a degenerate form of matter/energy which is both incredibly small, physically, and incredibly dense. That small, dense cluster of plasma viably exploded, creating heat, light, and the progenitors of all that we see in the universe today.

As this hot, gaseous plasma expanded, it began the process of cooling. Over billions of years it began to condense around pieces of itself, ultimately forming gas clouds, galaxies, solar systems, etc. The elements we know today began to form in that first, colossal explosion. The subatomic particles such as neutrons, protons and electrons probably formed first. Hydrogen, the first element in the periodic table having only one electron and one proton was probably the first elements that form. Compressed into great gaseous clouds, it ignited the massive stars. In their churning heat and gravity, the stars would have been the initial creators, the ovens, the makers, of most other physical matter.

In the hearts of stars, hydrogen fusing into helium, crushed together by the enormous gravitation and energy of these massive firestorms in the sky. Hydrogen and helium smashed together to form heavier elements. All the matter we know today -- rocks, plants, animals, were born in the hearts of stars. Without these massive engines of creation, nothing else would exist. We, and everything we see, everything we know, are the stuff of stars.

And, the stuff of stars, as the physicists tell us, all started from that first explosion, that first expansion of them massively dense, almost infinitely small pinpoint of plasma at the beginning of the universe.

Big questions.

What no one has ever told us, what no one knows, and what few we speculate regarding, is the source of that pinpoint of plasma that started it all. There are several possibilities:

1. The hot, dense plasma was at the center of a black hole in a parallel universe. Black holes in this universe might create enough pressure and gravity to create even more universes. Of course, this begs the question, how did the first universe start.

2. Our universe is formed over and over again. The universe, instead of expanding forever, collapses back on itself. Gravitation is strong enough that the hot dense plasma, the size of a pinpoint, explodes again, going to the cycle of expansion, gravitational attraction, compression, explosion, over and over. Of course, this does not answer the question of where the initial pinpoint of super dense matter came from.

3. The universe was created by the spontaneous generation of matter, much as walking speculate below, at the event arising a black hole. Presumably, all the was needed was the space for the additional plasma to form.

Breaking the law.

According to physicist Stephen Hawking, energy and matter are created, out of appearance nothingness at the event horizon of a black hole. One can think of the event horizon as a boundary around the black hole. Up to the boundary, you can exert enough energy to escape. Cross that boundary and nothing, not even light, which travels at roughly 186,000 mi./s, can get away. Gravity is so strong that it is inescapable by anything in the known universe.

By spontaneously generating matter or energy at the event horizon, the universe apparently violates one of Einstein's most famous equations, E=mc2. This tells us that energy can be converted to matter, matter can be converted to energy, but matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Apparently, there is at least one place where that law does not holes true, and that is the boundary of the event horizon of a black hole.


Continued...

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ1nweotz-8MZGNiNHB6YzhfMjZmNHhrcTZncw&hl=en

What Is Life? Lesson 30

Introduction

As far as we know, as far as we are taught, there are three forms of stuff in the world: animals, vegetables, and minerals. Using this broad categorization rocks and soil are certainly mineral. In the broader categorization as one of the three types of things, all of the elements on the periodic table, and all compounds made from them would be considered mineral. Thus, even the bodies of animals and vegetables are composed of is minerals, albeit with something extra. On a macro level, we think it is relatively easy to distinguish among them. However, when we look more closely, it becomes difficult. A sponge is an animal, so is coral. However, sponges, coral, and even sea anemonies sit in one place, a mobile, and catch and eat food that passes by. And what about the Venus fly trap? It has chlorophyll, it turns toward the sun, and it converts minerals it receives through its roots into energy for its growth. That’s all very plantlike. However, the Venus fly trap also catches and eats insects! The fine distinctions between plant and animal can be very deceptive. In fact, one could say that the distinction was purely artificial. As far as we know, everything is composed of some form of mineral, by the above definition.

Modern taxonomy.

A taxonomy is a method of organizing objects or ideas. For example if we have a bag of cubes and balls, we could organize the stuff in the bag by putting the bags content on the table and segregating it into two groups by shape, a taxonomy of shapes. We could also have a bag of cubes and balls in several different materials such as Styrofoam, leather, wood and plastic. Both the cubes and the balls could come in all of those materials. We can organize them by material of manufacture, a materials taxonomy. It is much the same with living in nonliving things. Scientists over the years have attempted to categorize living in nonliving things.

Historically, we learned in school that there were plants animals and minerals, a taxonomy with three categories. Scientists today have decided that the original three categories were insufficient. The new categories are:

• Minerals -- nonliving things which compose all matter, including living matter. One distinguishing feature between living things and minerals is that all living things that we know of are made up of a structure containing minerals. Living things are characterized by cellular structures. Minerals do not form cellular structures. Also, one mineral does not take into fuel in the form of light and organic compounds in order to produce exact replicas of itself.

• Viruses and prions -- things that reproduce by taking over or forcing the other living things to construct copies of themselves, often at the distructions of the original host. These objects are literally bundles of DNA with few structures. Since they do not conduct any of their own metabolic processes, scientists are reluctant to classify them as living things. However, unlike a chemical process, they do reproduce through other organisms and use the energy and other byproducts of the host organism's metabolic processes.

• Prokaryots -- primitive, living things that do not have a cell nucleus, and exist as simple, one celled creatures, or as an organization of several cells that are not differentiated. This is a very primitive form of life, possibly from which modern life sprang. Their physiology necessarily limits their size.

• Eukaryots -- living things that have a cell nucleus and may exist as single celled or multicelled organisms.

o Protists -- simple organisms that may have only one celled, or may exist as multicellular creatures that have no cellular differentiation.

o Fungi -- a class of living things such as mushrooms which does not photosynthesize. Like plants, fungi cell have a cell wall, however, the cell wall is composed of chitin, a substance used by animals to produce shells, rather than cellulose, which is unique to plants. According to modern taxonomists, structurally, fungi are closer to animals than plants!

o Plans -- multi-celled organisms with both the cellular membrane and a cell wall.

o Animals -- multicellular organisms without a cell wall.

As we have previously observed, it can be very difficult to tell a floral still filled animals such as a sponge from a carnivorous plant such as the Venus fly trap.

Again, we reiterate, originally, things could be divided between living in nonliving. Then they were divided into living plants versus animals, and nonliving. Now, as we can see, living things consist of more than plants and animals, realizing that some previously known entities such as viruses, prions, protests and fungi are clearly members of neither class.

How to tell living from nonliving.

This may seem like a silly question, however it is not so simple. One might say living things grow and nonliving things do not grow. But don't crystals grow? Can I not grow as salt crystals in water? Do we natural world is in other minerals as the crystals used in lasers? Do not stalagtites and stalagmites grow in caves, getting larger as the centuries pass? So growth, as in going from smaller to larger, is obviously not the determining factor.

We could say that all living things are composed of cells. However, what would that do to viruses and prions? They use the functions of living cells to reproduce copies of themselves. Of course, we have the question, are viruses and prions a stage between living in nonliving.

It would appear that all living things make use of the cellular structure. All in nonliving things, in the sense that they would never living, do not. So it could be said that all living things contained in, or make use of, a cellular structure, we produce things that have the same lifecycle, and multiply.

Living things.

How do we tell if something is a plant or an animal? We could say all plants have chlorophyll and conduct photosynthesis. But there's a problem. Sponges are animals. Some sponges have chlorophyll, or structures known as chloroplasts, in their makeup. If we classify sponges as animals, that means that all things containing chlorophyll cannot be plants. I could say plants are immobile, and draw nutrients through their roots and usually also perform photosynthesize. But what about the Western Tumbleweed? It just blows around with the wind! It's not fixed anywhere.

The most reliable definition is one that tells us that both plants and animals have a cell membrane, that which holds in their fluids and other structures that make up the cell. However, only plans have a cell wall, made of cellulose, outside of the cell membrane, and only fungi have a cell wall made of chitin, which allows them to have a rigid form without a skeleton.

So we can have plants that eat meat and animals that use sunlight to create energy. But we can always tell a plant from an animal by its cellular structure.

Continued ...

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ1nweotz-8MZGNiNHB6YzhfMjdjZDV6d2JkYw&hl=en

What Is Life?Lesson 31

...Continued


So why does life exist?

The earth is teeming with life. Every millimeter of its surface, even under and in the oceans, and atmosphere is saturated with life. It would be statistically unlikely that of all the planets and their moons surrounding the sun, all the sons in our galaxy, and all the galaxies in the universe, as we know it, only earth contains life!

The notion that we are alone in the universe is not statistically probable. So why does life exist? There are several possibilities:

1. Cosmic accident theory. Life on earth is a cosmic accident; something that a confluence of events, unique to our planet, caused to happen. Life exists nowhere else in the universe.
2. Occasional happenstance theory. Like number 1, above, life is accidental, however it has occurred accidentally in some small number of worlds in the universe. Here we must recognize that small, in terms of the universe, is large in human terms. If 100, or 1000, or 10,000 planets harbor life, that would be very small indeed, in terms of the universe, however large as humans measure. However, if life is accidental, and the number of bodies harboring life is small, we may be the only life that exists in our galaxy. That would be unfortunate indeed, because it could take as many years as there has been life on earth to contact life in another galaxy. We may not be alone, but we may be isolated.
3. Common process theory. Life is common and ordinary in situations where the environment is suitable. It may be that celestial habitats capable of evolving life may be the minority of celestial bodies. But, out of the billions of stars that make up a galaxy, and billions of galaxies that we know of, even if life exists on only 1%, that's a lot by human standards! The odds of bumping into life in this galaxy rise dramatically.
4. The inverted theory. Our understanding is inverted, backwards. Intelligence, minds, predated this universe as we know it. Our universe is in fact existent solely for the purpose of creating a physical, corporeal existence for the mind. In essence, minds existed first and the physical universe came later. In essence, the universe as we know it was created by minds which preceded it. It really doesn't matter, in terms of this theory, whether there is one mind which manifests itself in many bodies and many units of consciousness, or whether each mind is unique.
5. The emergent mind theory. This theory states that mind is a byproduct, also known as an emergent property, of bodies. With this theory, body existed first, brains second and mind cotempers were brave, or third. In this theory, we have to separate the concept of mind and memory. Much is a computer stores memory on a flash drive or a disk, and coded in ones and zeros, and the storage medium can be transported from computer to computer, memory is an artifact resulting from thinking thoughts in the brain. As animals, humans included, may have a rudimentary capability to reach peace thoughts. There is some evidence that, if this is true, humans radiate thoughts at a particular frequency, like a radio station, and may have the ability, under the right circumstances, to retrieve other, typically previous thoughts, on that same frequency.
6. The dualistic theory. Mind and matter, mind and body, existed independently prior to the creation of the universe, or matter, as we know it. Mind, whether singuler with lots of tentacled, or whether independent, may have adapted to the presence of matter. It is even possible that mind uses matter much as humans and chimps use tools. In this sense, the tool, the body, may have come into existence long after the dawn of the mind.
7. The multiverse theory. This theory states that our universe popped into existence with the Big Bang, which at its beginning, was a tiny, hot, dense spot of plasma/energy that exploded, expanding into the known universe. The multiverse theory states that the Big Bang actually happened millions or billions of times. Our universe is but one of these. In each of these universes, the physical laws and mathematical constants may vary. A universe in which we live happens to have the right configuration of natural laws acend mathematical constants to permit life, therefore it evolved here on Earth, and perhaps other planets, where as other universes did not. Perhaps still other universes develop the modes of life or intelligence totally foreign to hours.

Analysis of the six theories.
Here, we take for a moment, a leap of faith. Occam's Razer told us that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Life emerging on earth as an accident, given that so many things in the universe follow predictable laws, even laws we don't yet understand, the sudden appearance of life as an accident on earth is highly unlikely. Not impossible, just improbable. This, of course, makes option number two even more unlikely. If it's unlikely that life was a mistake and one planet, the probability that the same mistake was made on many planets is very remote.

Option three which states that, in the right environment, life is likely to appear, and that in the billions and billions of stars, the relatively ordinary sun means that, undoubtedly, life is rather common in the universe. Even in our own solar system, life may exist on other worlds. Jupiter, various moons, and other unexplored territories are possible candidates for life. We also must remember that life here on earth is carbon-based. That may or may not be true on other worlds. Silicon is another element with properties very close to those of carbon.

Options four through six take a different approach to looking at mind versus body. Advanced cellular structures, what we call eukariotic cells, for example, which make up our human body are actually believe to be cells that, millions of years ago, captured other organelles, found them useful, and made them permanent residence or parts of the cell structure. This same process could have happened between mind and body. The two developed independently, possibly even indifferent conventional space. The line found that substance we call matter, and began experimenting with it, injecting pieces of itself into the physical existence.

Take a look at life on earth. It began as very simple one celled creatures, e-mail is the multicellular creatures in the seas, crawled out of the sea is to explore the land, and once for some very specific cycles. So these experiments were unsuccessful, and died off -- became extinct. Some of them were successful as life, but insufficient for the needs of the mind. They stayed. We experimented with very small lifeforms, very large lifeforms like a dinosaur, and ended up with humans, somewhere in the middle. Humanity is the mind's results in experimentation with the vessels capable of being illuminated by the spark of mind.

If you read six, the dualistic theory, is very similar. However, it assumes the mind and matter URL found two separate paths. Presumably, even mind is older, or capable of evolution much more quickly. Matter was observed by mind, and basically put use. Mind you discovered that it can accomplish more and experience more by using matter is a tool. That is, our bodies are essentially tools of that thing we call mine, which is still in the process of experimenting with matter.

Finally, we have the emergent property concept. Matter formed into cells, cells and life, and life became increasingly more complex. The mind is something that emerges from life, as a result of life. Much like if we throw a bunch of parts that ultimately formidable bicycle, into a box, without proper assembly, they just remain a bunch of parts in a box. The mind is a centrally the bicycle in a box. When life becomes complex enough, the body organizes the parts of the box into a bicycle -- into a mind.

There's only one problem with this. If we look at physics, there is a concept called entropy. Entropy says that everything moves from order and structure to disorder. I start with a tree, the tree dies, the tree decays into its component parts. Two people beget a third, the two original people essentially returned to dust, and over time, the third does also. Entropy exists. The concept of putting a bunch of parts in a box, and magically assembling those parts into a bicycle is contrary to the law of entropy. Mind is an emergent property of the body is contrary to the laws of entropy.

So what happened?

Entropy is the natural tendency for things to go from a state of organization to a state of disorganization over time. Entropy is a law of physics, and a law of nature. According to the law of entropy, everything decays. Rocks become sand. Living things die. Organic things decompose. Things that are hot become cold. Things that are bright become dim and eventually, dark. According to the laws of entropy, the universe is moving from that enormous expenditure of energy called the Big Bang to, if nothing else intervenes, a state of coal darkness. This may happen over many billions and billions of years, but, physics, the physics of our four dimensions, tells us, it will happen.

Now, if the law of entropy, which governs matter, also governs the behavior of non-material things, then there are two possibilities.

First, there is the possibility that life, as we know it, is actually a more disorganized state then the explosion which occurred at the Big Bang. That is possible, but does not, following contemporary human logic, seem likely.

Second, entropy is a condition of matter. Entropy is a law governing things from rocks, to our bodies, to planet Earth itself. However, while the world of subatomic particles, atoms, and more complex matter may be subject to the laws of entropy, there may be other laws that work. The N dimensions that exists (where N is greater than four) may follow totally different laws.

Since matter spontaneously generating a more complex form of life is counter to the law of entropy, it is logical, then, to assume that some force, some energy, was expended for the purpose of organizing matter. Given the laws of entropy, that force had to be outside the frame of reference, outside the frame of existence of matter. Otherwise, we would violate a basic law of physics, the physics that we understand as the physics of matter and energy.

End state.
This logic inevitably leads us to the conclusion that what we know is mind, in its broader definition meaning both the ability to think, and the ability to animate otherwise inanimate matter must be a force not subject to the laws of entropy, or, at least not subject to the laws of physical entropy as it exists in the material world. Mind, soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it, must exist separate from physical matter that exists in our four dimensions.

This raises another interesting question! If time, as we measure it, always progressing in a forward direction, as we perceive it, how it is time a fact other dimensions? Are they eternal? Do they exist independently of time? Can something that exists in those other dimensions moved back and forth through time, since nothing in our known physics tells us that the arrow of time must always point from now to future with existing consciousness being stuck in the present.

Note. So far, through these lessons, we have agreed that there are four dimensions: height, width, length, and time. We have also stated, that according to physicists, there must be some more dimensions beyond those that we can perceive. We have been describing, counting, these dimensions as "N, where N is greater than or equal to three." In the rest of this document, we shall refer to the four dimensions we can perceive, and we shall refer to the rest of the dimensions as the Q dimensions.

Existing in Four Dimensions. Lesson 60

Introduction

We are told that we live in a four dimensional universe. Length, width, height the three dimensions that exist in space. That which exists in those three dimensions also passes through the dimension we call time.

Time, the fourth dimension, by our perception, always marches forward. The arrow of time, as the physicists call it, always points to the future. However, as explained by noted physicist Stephen Hawking, there is nothing in physics which tells us that the arrow of time always points to the future. It may be our senses, our built-in, hardwired psyche which can only perceive the forward movement of time. In reality, in science, there is nothing to prevent time from flowing like a stream, with twists and turns and eddies which disrupt its forward flow.

But even more astonishingly, he tells us that the laws of physics, as we understand them, tell us that there must be more than four dimensions! Hawking states that for the equations of physics to work, there must be at least seven dimensions, and nothing excludes the possibility that there are many more.

These new dimensions (or at least new to us mere mortals) are not perceptible with sight, sound, taste, touch or smell – the classical human senses. These extra dimensions would require a sixth, and possibly seventh or eighth, sense to perceive.

This presents up an interesting conundrum. If the dimensions themselves cannot be perceived with our existing senses, perhaps the mechanism for perceiving them cannot easily be perceived either. the dimensions exist, perhaps there is a portion of ourselves that also exists in some or all of those dimensions. And, perhaps there is some sort of interface between our mind, brain, and the extra dimensional existence.

We may postulate that there are indeed, senses which connect to our mind and exist in those other dimensions. Perhaps they are underdeveloped, immature. Perhaps, we have allowed them to atrophy. Perhaps they are stronger in some people than others. However, it does not preclude the possibility that we do have a sense, and in existence, in those other three or more dimensions.

The newborn.

Let us, for a few moments, consider the human infant from conception to birth.

We start out with two cells, one from the father and one from the mother. The male cell literally penetrates the female cell and the two combined forming what is called a zygote. This zygote develops for a while as a bunch of undifferentiated cells. This collection of undifferentiated cells is called a blastocyst.

The blastocyst then starts to begin its transformation into a little human, the embryo. In this embryonic stage, the being is dependent upon the mother for life itself.

After about eight weeks, the embryo is recognizable as human, and becomes a fetus, where it develops from about the end of two months through the ninth month. Then the fetus is born is a human baby.

The development of the brain

What is amazing about this is that the newborn baby has almost as many neurons, or brain cells, as it will ever have. The vast majority of the brain cells are functioning at birth, with only a small percentage being created throughout the next eight years or so.

The newborn brain is a sponge soaking up information at a tremendous rate. But, let us compare the human versus the fish, or the frog, less-developed life forms. The human is helpless at birth. The fish and the frog hatch and are on their own, with no need for the parent, in most cases. They are capable, at that very early age, of getting food, recognizing danger, knowing night from day, and much more. All of this is accomplished with a comparatively tiny brain. They are pre-programmed to behave in a certain manner. They run on what we call instinct. Knowledge they are capable of learning, beyond instinctive behavior, is minimal at best.

Humans do have some instincts. They do have some automatic, or reflexive behaviors with which their preprogrammed, and which are present at birth. Some stay with us our entire lives. However, surprisingly, some of these instinctive behaviors seem to disappear if not developed.

A disappearing skill.

Many adults are afraid of the water, and cannot swim. Did you know that the human infant has no such fear?

If you take a newborn infant, just home from the hospital, filled a bathtub about halfway, and put the baby in facedown, it will instinctively hold his breath underwater, float to the surface, float on its back, and begin to breathe. It has no fear. It does not drowned. It is an instinctive behavior, regardless of the parents learned feelings towards water. Some small infants, just a couple of days of learning to be in the water, will even flip back the other way, facedown, and then flip back over just for fun! So this mental programming exists at merely hours old.

It is interesting, that if one waits too long after birth to develop this natural tendency to survive and flourish in an aquatic environment, the instinct virtually disappears. The toddler who has never been exposed to submersion and water will become afraid. The child who was exposed from birth, will not.

This points out nearly 1 of potentially many abilities, capabilities, and natural tendencies with which people are born. Many of these natural tendencies, like swimming, atrophy if not developed early in life. It is much easier, much less work, to develop an early instinct in a baby than to retrain the child on an instinctine skill that was lost shortly after birth through non-use.

Relearning lost instinctive skills.

Fortunately, as we have seen with swimming, just because an instinctive skill has been lost, or repressed, does not mean that the skill is gone forever. Some people may naturally recover these lost skills over time. Some people may, through training and coaching, reignite their ability to use those skills.

One frequently seen variation is the development of an instinctive skill when one of the normal, humans faculties has been lost. Brain damage, loss of sight or hearing, partial paralysis, and a variety of other physical limitations may bring about the presentation of one of these capabilities. This would seem to imply, while dormant, these capabilities, nonetheless, still exists within us.

Continued ...

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Existing in Four Dimensions.Lesson 61

... Continued

Skills, talents, and dimensions.

The human infant is born with a natural tendency, and instinctive behavior, to swim. He or she is also born with a natural instinct to role play, to imitate him play the behaviors he or she sees her in older children and adults around him. We have, in the last 10 years or so, seen a dramatic increase in what we can teach children, and what they can let. This is due more to the fact that the attitude of the children's teachers have changed, not that there has been any evolution in the human brain. One side effect of this learning, however, may be that by teaching children more, earlier, we diminish the instinctive behaviors that would normally develop during that time.

In the years before preschool, daycare, kindergarten, etc. human children may have in fact, use that time to develop skills which today's society has caused to atrophy. In our haste to develop brighter, smarter children, have we stunted some formerly instinctive behaviors that used to develop in that time? Does taking time to fill the brain with knowledge of our choosing diminish the ability of the brain, distracted if you will, from developing skills that we don't recognize that we need any more?

Extra sensory perception: ESP

There are a variety of talents which those interested, in what is commonly called, the paranormal or extra sensory perception (ESP), claime to possess, or have observed. There are potentially thousands of skills and claims. Undoubtedly, summer parlor tricks. Others, often use mysterious (to the uninitiated) technology, and as we all know, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But out of the hundreds, and maybe thousands, of skills claimed -- those which we are to be concerned with; those which have some science behind them, amount to no more than a handful. There are six, in particular, that we shall discuss:


1. Claraudience / Clairvoyance. These abilities are the ability to hear, see, and/or no something that is happening in a distant place, with no temporal tools or technologies for gathering the information.

2. Telepathy. The ability to know what someone else is thinking, without any physical clues.

3. "Out of body experience" (OBE). The ability to use what appears to be the senses, site, hearing, touch, taste, smell, in a location which is remote from the physical body, without electronic or mechanical assistance.

4. "Past Life Regression" (PLR). The ability, usually but not always under hypnosis, to experience memories accumulated by another, now deceased, person.

In addition to these four relatively well-documented capabilities, there are also the following which may be less well scientifically explored, but merit consideration:


1. Déjà vu. There are many forms of déjà vu, including the commonly felt "I'd been here before" or "I've done this before" feeling that people occasionally get or experience. Closely related to this is the experience many military personnel feel in a combat situation -- the feeling or knowing from which direction the threat is coming, and how far away it is.

2. Precognition. Knowing or experiencing an event before it happens. It manifests itself similarly to Claraudience and Clairvoyance, however, those para-sciences are at the same time he has, or shortly after the event, whereas precognition happens before the event occurs.

We shall examine each of these capabilities in the following mini lessons.

Continued...

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21st Century scientific mysteries. Lesson 100

A mystery is any result which our current level of knowledge cannot explain -- the cause of the result is unknown, but performing certain actions can scientifically determine that certain proscribed results will occur.

Thus far we have established that there are atoms made up of subatomic particles, elements which consist of a single type of atoms, and compounds (molecules) such as water that exist because we "glued together" certain types of atoms by sharing their electrons. These molecules combine in certain ways to form, simply described, animals, vegetables and minerals as well as things that are perhaps less than alive such as viruses and prions. This leaves several unanswered questions.

First, what is life? Is it an emergent property of a certain combination of elements or matter? Or, is life something separate from matter which can manifest itself in our four dimensional space by using matter, which is inherently inert? In other words, is my personality, my thought process, my mind, separate and distinct from my body? Is my body merely a biological mechanism that my mind is capable of inhabiting?

Second, we know that there is something which we have classified as quasi-life, incapable of supporting itself without another living being his presence. We know there was life which exists, consumes matter and energy and produces matter and energy. What we don't know is whether there is a form of life beyond what we have described, of which the highest form we can envision, is human life.

Let us conduct some thought experiments, as Albert Einstein called them. Let us expand our thought process to consider some older alternatives.

Thought experiment number 1. Body and mind unified. In this first experiment, we envision a living entity, let's say a person. That person is a living organism. It has a brain. All thought, all emotions, all feeling, occurs within the brain through its neural connections. Unless a thought is written on paper, told to another person, recorded on video, or saved for posterity by some other extra biological means, the thought exists only in the brain. An unrecorded thoughts ceases to exist when the engine, the person, ceases to be alive. The notion of passing knowledge from one person to another, across time and space, where the timeframe is longer than a human life span, is implausible. For example, if someone in ancient Egypt had a thought, it would be impossible, unless that thought were recorded somewhere, to transmit the install to another, modern day person, or to handle that modern day person perceive that thought that was in the mind of the ancient Egyptian. When the Egyptian dies, his thoughts, his knowledge, dies with him. In this model, unless an idea is transmitted to another person through the senses of sight, sound, taste, touch or smell, either directly (from person to person) or indirectly (a diary, let's say) the knowledge is lost.

Some things in this model of existence are clearly impossible. For example, speaking in tongues by a person never exposed to the language/tongue is clearly impossible. To sit in New York, and, in the mind, perceive a scene or action in, let's say for argument's sake, London, is clearly impossible. Those who think they experience such things are either delusional or misguided.

Thought experiment number 2. Body and mind separate. This situation presents us with some interesting opportunities and explanations of things which may have, and I stress the word may because we are unable to test them at this time, occur in the real world.

Test case A. There is anecdotal evidence that people have been known to speak in foreign languages to which, according to anyone's knowledge or recollection, they have never been exposed. The speaker, in such situations, may or may not understand the message. This is most typically associated with a religious experience, where it is called speaking in tongues. However, in rare circumstances, this phenomenon has been observed in secular settings. In many cases, this has been attributed to a reincarnations experience. The scientific explanation is still a mystery.


Test case B. A person, sitting in a laboratory in Houston, accurately describes a number of cards dealt by an astronaut in space, whizzing around the globe. The number of correct "guesses" by the person locked up in Houston far exceeds the number of correct guesses that would be due to statistical probability. Other people are asked at the same time, to randomly select the same number of cards in the same period of time and end up with a far lower number of correct answers, well within the range of statistical probability.

These two anecdotes are merely a couple of stories culled from countless stories of events that cannot, by today's technological standards, be explained. However, as scientist and science-fiction writer, Arthur C. Clark once wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Are these stories examples of sufficiently advanced technology or sufficiently advanced biological and physical processes which we cannot currently explain, such that they appear to be magical? We, as a Western society, are highly reluctant to accept things that defy logical and rational explanation, within our defined boundaries of logical and rational.

Test case C. Many insurance companies, which operate within stringent mathematical, actuarial data, now routinely pay for hypnosis and acupuncture to solve a variety of behavioral problems, most notably, smoking cessation, for which it has been observed to be quite successful. There is more scientific study of the processes related to hypnosis than the processes related to acupuncture. But there is no doubt that when Anton Mesmer first began hypnotizing people, and the biological and neurological processes were not at all understood, hypnosis, as recently as the early to mid 20th century, appeared to be magical. Today, more of the processes of hypnosis are better, if not completely, understood. It is an accepted scientific fact in the medical, and other scientific communities, that hypnosis for smoking cessation and a variety of other mental and physical conditions is an accepted therapy.

Acupuncture is today, where hypnosis was in the prior century. Acupuncturists believe that the insertion of needles at certain points on the human body, with or without electrical stimulation, redirects the body's internal energy fields, resulting in a change in mental and/or physical processes. Current allopathic (M.D.) and osteopathic (D. O.) Medicine currently have no explanation whatsoever for why acupuncture works. There are no observable biological processes that emits energies that can be routinely measured in any meaningful way. What makes acupuncture work? Are there energies and processes which we as humans have not learned to observe? Is it really our own belief in the process that causes us to heal or influence ourselves?


Immortality 90

Think about it. Certain living things seem to be immortal. It also seems as though the simple learn the life for, the longer it can live. Think about the amoeba or the euglena (another one celled creature). They multiply through cell division -- mitosis. A cell reaches a certain point in size or age, and then splits into two cells. Those two cells reach a certain point in age or time, and split into two more cells each. This process continues indefinitely. When you see an amoeba under a microscope in a drop of pond water, that amoeba is the product of countless cell divisions over the course of millennia. When you see a sponge on the seafloor, it is the product of budding, a sexual reproduction. It is an extension of some animal which has lived for centuries, even millennia. It is as though the human could cut off an arm and growing a new person from that arm, while at the same time we growing the arm on the original person! Is the second person who grew from a cut off arm a new to person, or an extension of the same person?

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The difference between science, theology and philosophy. Lesson 110

We digress, momentarily, from our inquiries to recognize some definitional differences.

In science, one formulate a hypothesis and then evaluates the data to refine, modify or disapprove that hypothesis based on observable mathematical or scientific data. Science seeks to document provable facts.

Theology is the study of one or more organized religions. A theology represents the belief systems of one religion. One of the basic tenants of most, if not all theologies is that at some point, humanity reaches a point where we must believe on faith. We must believe because God, or the gods, command us to believe without understanding. Theology/religion is often at odds with scientific inquiry and loath to modify its belief system based on science.

There is a difference between pure theology and religion. Theology is a study of the nature of God, and usually his (or, if multiple, there) interaction with humanity. Religion is a temporal/man made construct. A religion as a person or Council at its head followed by serious casts of preachers/teachers. A religion is evidenced by an organization of people who believed in a theology. Theology can be thought of as one fairly narrow branch of philosophy.

Philosophy is the inquiry into the thought processes and ideas. One can think of it as the search for truth on many levels. Philosophy is the study of that which occurs largely in ideas and processes of the human mind.

Our objective is to delve into science and philosophy, and maybe theology, but to avoid purely religious systems because they rely upon accepting something on faith.

a physics lesson:Absolute Nothingness And ... Lesson 21

a physics lesson:Absolute Nothingness And The Edge Of The Universe.
... continued


Why do we study this?

Have we not all, at one time or another, felt that we were part of something bigger? It may only be and occasional, fleeting, feeling. Or, it may be a more intense believe. We feel driven to accomplish, but without understanding our sense of purpose. It may seem like you have a goal, but you don't know what it is.

Over the timeframe of evolution, we humans have survived countless numbers of species, including human like species, which were apparently intelligent, such as Neanderthal man, which scientists now tell us was alive at the same time that we were -- we, Homo sapiens.

Why have men and women such as us survived?

An equally important question is, why have other species failed? And, why, in their failure, did some become extinct, such as the dinosaurs, and yet others survived to this day, such as crocodiles, turtles, alligators, and countless other land and sea species? We are constantly hearing of scientists who find a species, long thought to be extinct, still living in some remote part of the world.

A pattern emerges when you look at the history. A pattern that started with a hot dense plasma, evolved into the elements, into pre-life matter, into various types of one celled creatures, and then into more complex creatures, ultimately culminating in mankind.

Along the way, species such as the dinosaur, small brained and large bodied carnivores and herbivores that could have become competitive, and possibly even wiped out mankind, became extinct.

It's almost as though life on earth were an experiment. Not the biggest, not the fastest, not the strongest, but the most intelligent survived. Those things that were a threat to our continued existence became extinct. Those things that caused us to flourish survived.

Note. To flourish to grow. Some animals, vegetables and minerals are harmful to our life. However, they all fit somewhere in the food chain. Also, without some adversity, some risk, stagnation ensues.

Is this intentional, or a grand accident?

Everywhere you look around you, you see the hand of intent. You see complexity growing despite the law of entropy. It becomes clear that we have a purpose. The question is, are we currently fulfilling that purpose or still evolving to fulfill a purpose in the future.

Is, in fact, our first task, our first test, to understand that purpose? Of all known living things, man alone on earth is capable of that mission.

Some will say that we mere humans cannot possibly understand. Some will say that it is a mystery and shall remain so, that we are incapable of understanding. Some will search for the answer, and piece the data together bit by bit until they do understand! We have a mission, as yet unrevealed, but we also have a duty to discover the nature of that mission. Humanity was made with an inquiring mind -- for a reason.

We must all crawl before we walk, and walk before we run. While revealing some insights, the objective of these early lessons is to build a base of knowledge in various disciplines, including science and philosophy, so that we all have an equal footing, and equal foundation

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Matter And Energy. Lesson 10

As we begin our investigations, the first thing we must discover is, what is everything made of? This first lesson focuses on the basic building blocks of the universe. Those basic building blocks are matter, solid stuff, and energy such as heat, light, microwaves, x-rays, etc. So this is where we begin our knowledge journey.

The equation of Albert Einstein

We have seen his photo countless times. The while hair, the bushy mustache, the ever present tobacco pipe, are all familiar to us. So is his famous equation E = mc2. That is probably the most famous mathematical equation in all of history. We see it inscribed on T-shirts, written into textbooks, and taught in physics classrooms the world over. Although many have seen it, how many people know what it really means?

E = mc2 can be stated in English as " Energy is equal to mass times the velocity of light squared," but even that is hard for mere mortals to understand.

What does that mean? It means, fundamentally, that all matter can be converted to energy. We do this when we turned gasoline into automobile motion, for example. We put the gas in the automobile engines, light it on fire, and created explosion which drives of piston, in the engine, down which rotates a crankshaft which turns the wheels which moves the car forward. Fundamentally, this is the conversion of matter (gasoline) to energy (motion).



Unfortunately, we are pretty bad at converting matter to energy. We get heat, light, smoke, and all sort of byproducts from our relatively inefficient conversion. We didn't waste products, exhaust. If we were a little bit smarter, we could convert the gasoline to pure energy, with nothing left over. Theoretically, we could completely convert the gasoline to energy, forward motion, with no loss through friction, tailpipe exhaust, etc. if we mere humans could be that efficient, and automobile could probably travel hundred miles on a teaspoon of gasoline. That is many orders of magnitude more efficient than we are today!



When we burn things, we convert a fraction of the matter to energy. Nuclear fission, the first A-bombs or an example of this, took a handful of radioactive material and turned it into any quibble and explosion of many thousands of tons of TNT (measured in kilotons). When we got smarter, instead of splitting the atom as we did in nuclear fission, we used a different process. We did not split the atom, but rather compacted them together, and that process is called nuclear fusion, whose reaction, from the same level of fuel, was measured in megatons, millions of tons not kilotons, thousands of times.



We even learned to control, to harness, the fission reaction, and it currently powers such devices as electric power plants, submarines and aircraft carriers. However the machinery to do so is very large and cumbersome, but that's okay, because the reaction produces so much energy. It is also important to note that in all the reactors that we use today, the fission reaction produces heat energy which is used to convert water to steam, the rapid expansion of which actually powers the submariners ship. We still don't directly use fission, but rather a secondary byproduct.



What we have not figured out how to do is harness the power of nuclear fusion, which would produce thousands of times the energy of nuclear fission. Perhaps some day we will.



But something we have no idea how to do, is directly convert a piece of matter -- a rock, water, gasoline, anything -- from its current form (matter) into pure energy. This feat, described by Einstein's equation, is spectacular. I'm not sure that we even have the materials to convert such a release of energy to a mechanical form.



Converting energy to matter.



This has only been accomplished in the domains of science-fiction, scientific experiments and mathematical equations. It is theoretically possible, but not practical at today's level of science. but, as Tony Robbins, noted motivational speaker, one said, "anything we believe, we can achieve."



Water, ice and steam.



What this really tells us is that what we perceive as matter -- the rocks, water, birds, people, our clothes, etc. -- and what we consider energy -- turning a car's wheels, flexing our muscles, etc. -- are fundamentally the same thing. For example, I could have liquid water. I can drink it. At colder temperatures, I can convert that what would water to ice. If I keep it up, I turn it into steam, I guess. So one thing, water, can have three forms -- solid, liquid, and gas. There is a fourth thing that water could be, if we know how. Water could turn into pure energy. And the amount of energy in a glass of water would be astronomical.



What are matter and energy?



Matter is made up of things we call atoms. At one time, it was thought that the atom was the smallest unit of matter. We have since learned that atoms are composed of other particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons. And, even those, the physicists tell us, can be broken down into ever smaller components, and ultimately into things called quarks, which at present are purely theoretical.



Energy is composed of the things that we call photons. Photons, as far as we know, are the smallest unit of energy that can exist. The photons travel at the speed of light, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second (abbreviated mi./s).



If you were to completely smashed an atom, the atom would transform into nothing but pure photons. All of the parts of the atom would be completely annihilated, with only photons streaming away from the explosion at 186,000 mi./s. No smoke, no fire, just pure energy. As a civilization, we are not quite capable of this yet.



Note 1. Recent scientific experimentation has identified clear or translucent substances that appear to slow photons down. So it is possible that the universal speed limit might very. However, we are not sure what is really happening, and I would like to stress that point. It is possible that these substances merely bounce photons around until they come out the other side, much as a laser does.



Note 2. it may seem rather strange, but brilliant Physicist and Lucasian Professor of Physics at Cambridge University, Stephen Hawking, has ascertained that a pair of photons springs into existence out of nothingness at the event horizon of a black hole caused by the collapse of a giant star. Will wonders never cease?





Key points.



1. All the universe, as far as we can tell, is composed of two things: matter and energy.



2. Matter can be converted to energy and energy to matter, but, either the matter or energy always exist. Neither can be created from nothing, and neither can be destroyed, turned into nothingness.



3. All matter is composed of atoms which are made up of the electrons and protons, plus some other objects, and they themselves can be broken down further.



4. All energy is composed of photons. Photons vibrating at different speeds give us different types of energy such as light, heat, x-rays, microwaves, gamma rays, etc. There appears to be no bigger or smaller unit of energy than the photons.



5. We have figured out how to convert matter to energy, although less than efficiently. We have not yet learned how to create matter from energy. That, alas, is still a mystery.

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Growth and entropy.Lesson 130

There seem to be to force his work in the universe. The first force is entropy. As far as we know, or can observe, everything in the universe eventually succumbs to entropy. Without some intervention, everything will become cold, lifeless, dark and still. However, living things seem to disobey the law of entropy. If we look at the evolution from one celled being to human, there certainly appears to be a force that is counter to entropy. Sure, individuals seem to die away, but a species seems to grow and multiply as long as there are resources for it to do so. Also as we have seen, living things eat. Plants need sunlight and nutrients from the soil. Or before his eat plants. Carnivores eat other animals. Omnivores eat other plants and animals. Life seems to be counter entropic.


We have already established, for example, that the large dinosaurs were far from the largest living things. We have also established that the giant redwood trees of California are far from the oldest living things. What we have discovered is that there are fungi in at least three places on the West Coast of the United States that are massive. These fungi cover literally hundreds or thousands of square miles! They are not only the largest living things, but also perhaps, the oldest. While pieces, or areas of the fungi may die off, the organism itself remains connected and continues to grow. They are truly amazing things.







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