What is the Universe?greenspun.com : LUSENET : MetaConversations : One Thread |
http://www.bfi.org/Will not have the answer but has a nice dymaxion projection of island earth, just as the sumarians said, its an island surrounded by ocean. Hmmmmmm...
But the question was "what is the Universe?" {Could have been "how worthless is the internet?" the essay we want is Omnidirectional Halo, you can find where the manuscript and notes are archived---5 cubic feet of stuff, only I wanted an online text copy.} Anyhow.....
" Universe is the comprehensive integral-aggregate system embracing all the separate integral-aggregate systems of all men's consciously apprehended and communicated experiences. The total of experiences is integrally synergetic. Universe is the comprehensive a priori synergetic integral. Universe continually operates in comprehensive, co-ordinate patternings which are transcendental to the sensorially miniscule apprehension and mental comprehension and prediction capabilities of mankind, consciously and inherently preoccupied as he is only with special local and nonsimultaneous pattern considerations.
The age-long fallacial propensity which has frustrated adult man's adequate conceptioning of universe is that of spontaneously assuming that universe must consist of a simultaneously unit conceptuality---ergo, of simultaneous geometry or shape, i.e. a simultaneous structure. What is the shape of the universe? What are its boundaries? these are unitary, simultaneous static questions. They have no logical answer for universe though finite is a nonsimultaneous structure. Children know this better than their parents through innate conceptioning as yet unspoiled by erroneous logic. They remember the juggler putting a simultaneous array in the sky with nonsimultaneous tosses. The childhood representational pictures depict their dynamically arrayed concepts of the "whole world" inventory, of mentally juggled arrays of nonsimultaneously occurring experiences agglomerated without any intended geometrical interrelationships. In all lands the children's spontaneous pictures contain "the" house, trees, birds, dogs, flowers, grass, clouds, stars, the sun and the moon. The parents say, "Darling, a nice picture, but we don't have both the moon and the sun at the same time". The parents are wrong---both the sun and the moon coexist at all times whether temporarily covisible or not. The parents' rationale has been damaged so that it can only consider and associate those items which ae simultaneously grouped in unitarily static array. Yet in equal illogic the parents keep on attempting to see the universe of nonsimultaneity in unitary, static and simultaneous geometrical array as a "thing"---a very big "thing"---the biggest "thing".
It is in evidence that universe, as the co-ordinated integral of all-experience is finite yet nonsimultaneously recollectable---ergo unitarily unpatternable---ergo conceptually unthinkable---ergo undefinable. This is to say undifinable does not mean infinite or un-finite. It means that---definability---de-finite is a sub-set of finite---ergo, pattern definition is a subdivision of finite-yet-unitarily-undefinable univrse.
Inconceivablity does not mean infinite anymore than does invisible. Finite is unique to universe because it means complete but not terminal. The locally definable entity is not complete, for it does not exist by itself. All experiments show that local entities are inherently both entropic and antientropic, i.e., all local systems are always intimately linked with the rest of universe by measurable import and export pattern transactions. Definable entities are uniquely functioning components of universe. Universe is the minimum as well as the maximum closed system of omni-interacting, precessionally transforming, complementary transactions of synergetic regeneration. Local perpetual motion systems are impossible, since the universe is the the minimum regenerative set of perpetually intercomplimentary transformative functioning."
Hmmmmm.....sometimes I think this makes sense and I understand it, sometimes it sounds like double-speak.
Sometimes I think Bucky was brilliant, sometimes I think he was a world class con-man. What do you think?
-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000
Here is another batch of Bucky, same topic---> > 3.2 What is Fuller's definition of "Universe"?
[From Synergetics, p 81.]
"Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences.
"'Aggregate' means sum-totally but nonunitarily conceptual as of any one moment. 'Consciousness' means an awareness of the otherness. 'Apprehension' means information furnished by those wave frequencies tunable within man's limited sensorial spectrum. 'Communicated' means informing self or others. 'Nonsimultaneous' means not occuring at the same time. 'Overlapping' is used because every event has a duration, and their initiatings and teminatings are most often of different duration. Neither the set of all 'experiences' nor the set of all the words used to describe them are instantly reviewable nor are they of the same length. Experences are either involuntary (subjective) or voluntary (objective), and all experiences, both physical and metaphysical, are finite because each begins and ends."
-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000
David,The quotes you provide from B.F. seem very human-centric. Is the universe only what it appears to be from the human perceptive standpoint or is it what-it-is even though we cannot see it or think it? I have mentioned before the SETI project for which I process some of the radio intercept on my home PC. It would be nice to think that we might find something but I am always reminded of the simile of the Incan runner who thinks he is part of the most advanced messaging system possible but is completely unaware of radio waves that permeate the atmosphere around him. We look for radio messages from the stars because that is as advanced as we know but really advanced civilizations may use something entirely different that we don't know to look for. Maybe we are the chimpanzees of the universe, semi-intelligent and semi-aware but unable to comprehend the real structure and meaning. Worse yet, maybe we are the flat worms of the universe or, God forbid, the bacteria. It wasn't that long ago that the universe was thought to be like the inside of a turtle shell, that the gods rode the sun-chariot across the sky, that the earth was flat. Whatever we perceive the universe to be today will be similarly outdated in two or three thousand years. The universe is what it is. It is not limited by the perceptions of Mr. Fuller or of you and me. It is not only greater than we imagine, it is greater than we can imagine.
Thom H. today's quotes: The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine. [J. B. S. Haldane] - - - Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering. [Arthur C. Clarke] - - - To a frog with its simple eye, the world is a dim array of greys and blacks. Are we like frogs in our limited sensorium, apprehending just part of the universe we inhabit? Are we as a species now awakening to the reality of multidimensional worlds in which matter undergoes subtle reorganizations in some sort of hyperspace? [Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body] - - - And oh so many more where those came from: http://www.therapure.com/quipsnquotes/beliefs.htm
-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000
Dave - I get the same mixed-sense upon reading a lot of his stuff, but I wonder if it is the function of reading a description that makes sense, but implies no "therefore....". As in, "So what can I do with this?"The words parse okay, and don't offer anything to disagree with (in terms of saying something is false), it's just that they don't imply taking action in any particular way, nor are they necessarily enabling even if you know what action you might like to take.
Something like astronomy being pondered by economists.
Thom - I like you quotes, however I'm intrigued by your proposition of something being "human-centric". Could a human being ever compose and write something that wasn't so?
Regards,
-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000
Hello Dave, Tom, Ken and Thom,I agree with Thom about B.F.What complexities! May be the Universe is a simple Ah - Ha! of ectatic Creation ! A Great Monade! From the One to the multiple. According to B.F. the lecture that I attended to in 1976 His thought about the Universe was that it started with One point, One consciousness, then duplicate the Point until he reached a line from A to B and then to C., which made the triangle and continued to create more triangles,more forms square, pentagone etc...all relatif to the One Point. I believe my self in the One Consciousness expressing it Self through Love which would be the only reason plausible to me to reunite with all Beings and the One who encompasses all. The Plural into the One. The Great Monade is a term that Theilhard de Chardin writes about in < the Heart of the matter>. I had a NDE when I was twenty five years old and experienced Consciouness that was instantanious Knowledge about my entire life. I was brought into Light and could see my own eyes into the light. I experienced the energy of my bad and good actions, which was resumed into Energy, it was mind blowing Ecstasy! Abundance of Power of Love, the big O. What do you think about all of this Experience of NDE. My heart stopped for four minutes. Can you think about ressucitated matter? Hummmm.
Jeannine T.
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000
First a few updates...Published Thursday, April 27, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News
A Flat-Out Discovery
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/ universe27.htm
[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]
Is the universe curved? `No way,' experts now say. By Usha Lee McFarling Los Angeles Times It's a question that plagued Albert Einstein, and every astrophysicist in his wake: What is the shape of our universe? Is it curved like the top of a ball? Does it open upward like a potato chip? Or is it perfectly flat?
The question is so big, and so mind-boggling, that until recently, it could be attacked only by theorists. But Wednesday, astronomers released the first detailed images of the infant universe -- images providing conclusive evidence that the universe is very nearly flat.
The finding, already being celebrated by cosmologists around the world, provides the first direct evidence for many provocative and sometimes unpopular notions about how the universe formed. The images may one day provide a clear recipe for the still unknown contents of the cosmos and help predict its eventual fate and whether it will violently collapse on itself.
``Five years ago, even last year, people were talking about a very curved universe. Our data says no way,'' said John Ruhl, a physicist at the University of California-Santa Barbara who was part of the 36- member international team that made the finding.
``This will be reckoned as the turning point when the history books are written,'' said Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. Turner was not involved in the experiment but had been among those arguing for the notion of a flat universe.
Beyond what they may say about the birth and possible death of our universe, the images have stunned physicists simply because they provide the first close-up view at what the universe was like when it was only 300,000 years old and 1,000 times smaller and hotter than it is today.
The observation also provides critical support for a theory called inflation, which postulates that the entire universe arose from an area smaller than an atom during a violent explosion that occurred a fraction of a second after the big bang. The theory predicts that such an incredible expansion would stretch out space until it was flat.
When cosmologists say ``flat universe'' they mean flat in three dimensions, which is``difficult to imagine,'' said Paolo deBernardis, an astrophysicist at the University of Rome and co-director of the project.
The images were captured using a balloon-borne telescope that endured a 10 1/2-day, 5,000-mile flight high over Antarctica, where constant sunshine and stable high-altitude winds can keep balloons aloft for the long periods necessary to collect data. To make its precise measurements, the telescope needed to float above the Earth's distorting atmosphere.
Primordial light
During its flight, the telescope detected nearly imperceptible differences in the faint, cold glow of microwave background radiation that pervades the sky. Like a cosmic fossil trove, this primordial light is made up of relic particles of light, or photons, from shortly after the big bang some 10 billion to 15 billion years ago.
``We're looking at the oldest photons in the universe, and they're really starting to talk,'' Ruhl said.
The background radiation was discovered in 1964. Although it was expected to reveal hints about the early universe, it took decades to develop technology that could examine it.
In 1992, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite detected small variations in the radiation across the sky, huge ripples in the fabric of space time. The variations were dubbed the ``Face of God'' because they were the first evidence of structure from an early universe that started out as a kind of hot cosmic bisque of particles and radiation.
As exciting as the finding was, the images produced by COBE were blurry and indistinct. Obtaining more details about these wrinkles has been something of a scientific Holy Grail.
``It's been like an `Indiana Jones' movie,'' Turner said. ``Everybody's trying to get to the treasure.''
`Boomerang' credited
The new images, from the telescope dubbed Boomerang (for Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics) are 40 times sharper than those obtained by COBE.
``Boomerang has for the first time brought these very faint structures into sharp focus,'' said Andrew Lange, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology and leader of the U.S. portion of the international team.
The team was initially plagued by mishaps but the crucial flight in the harsh Antarctic environment was ``picture-perfect,'' Ruhl said.
``It's quite an achievement,'' said Wayne Hu, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who wrote an editorial accompanying the new research paper, which appears in today's issue of the journal Nature. ``With this data, we've entered an era of precision cosmology.''
Once astronomers knew there were wrinkles in the fabric of the universe, the critical question was how large they were.
The new report shows they generally cover 1 degree of space in the sky, which is about twice the size of a full moon seen from Earth, and the exact size predicted by models of a flat universe. A curved universe would have meant the light traveling through space was also curved and the wrinkles would have been distorted in size.
``It's undeniably the pattern of a flat universe,'' Turner said.
The pictures reveal hundreds of complex structures in the universe that are the seeds in which clusters of galaxies formed, Ruhl said. It's thought that all structures we see today were formed by gravitational attraction in areas of slightly different density and temperature in the early universe.
Mysterious absence
Many cosmologists are puzzled by a mystery in the new data. While they see one mathematical pattern that was predicted, they do not clearly see a second pattern that was also predicted.
``To me, that's the most intriguing thing. What's going on there?'' Hu said.
Future satellite missions to examine the cosmic background radiation are also expected to help answer many questions -- including those about the ultimate fate of the universe. Will it continue expanding forever at a stately pace? Will it simply stop one day? Or will it violently collapse in on itself in an event dubbed ``the big crunch''?
``The fate of the universe is going to take a long time to answer,'' Turner said. ``Luckily, we have at least 200 billion years to chew on that one.''
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000
Nature article...http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/ DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v404/n6781/abs/404955a0_fs.htm
[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]
A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation
P. DE BERNARDIS, P. A. R. ADE, J. J. BOCK, J. R. BOND, J. BORRILL, A. BOSCALERI, K. COBLE, B. P. CRILL, G. DE GASPERIS, P. C. FARESE, P. G. FERREIRA, K. GANGA, M. GIACOMETTI, E. HIVON, V. V. HRISTOV, A. IACOANGELI, A. H. JAFFE, A. E. LANGE, L. MARTINIS, S. MASI, P. V. MASON, P. D. MAUSKOPF, A. MELCHIORRI, L. MIGLIO, T. MONTROY, C. B. NETTERFIELD, E. PASCALE, F. PIACENTINI, D. POGOSYAN, S. PRUNET, S. RAO, G. ROMEO, J. E. RUHL, F. SCARAMUZZI, D. SFORNA & N. VITTORIO
The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73 K cosmic microwave background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the microwave background in the form of small anisotropies in its temperature. These anisotropies contain information about basic cosmological parameters, particularly the total energy density and curvature of the Universe. Here we report the first images of resolved structure in the microwave background anisotropies over a significant part of the sky. Maps at four frequencies clearly distinguish the microwave background from foreground emission. We compute the angular power spectrum of the microwave background, and find a peak at Legendre multipole lpeak = (197 6), with an amplitude T200 = (69 8) 5K. This is consistent with that expected for cold dark matter models in a flat (euclidean) Universe, as favoured by standard inflationary models. ...
Full-text HTML:
http://www.nature.com/cgi- taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v404/n6781/full/404955a0_fs.html
Or you can download a PDF file.
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000
When I think of our attempts to understand the nature of the Universe, from a human perspective (as Thom mentions), I'm reminded of my elemantary school science class days.Ever remember looking at a smear of blood cells under a microscope? Very flat, but all kinds of contained worlds were visible from a simple dimensional perspective. It was the body fluid that provided the medium for interaction between all the cellular mini-universes.
Somehow I imagine, what we see of the Universe is rather like that smear. Rather than try to rip apart the form, think I'll just focus on the "art" of it all. Shared with David, but I'll reposte here. Was reading some Chinese poetry last night and thought of this thread...
NIGHT ON THE GREAT RIVER
We anchor the boat alongside a hazy island.
As the sun sets I am overwhelmed with nostalgia.
The plain stretches away without limit.
The sky is just above the tree tops.
The river flows quietly by.
The moon comes down amongst men.
-- MENG HAO JAN
Like the zen simplicity of their word pictures.
Diane
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000
I share this because of some of the thoughts given What is the Universe.THE DANCE OF TIME Time in the Sacred must not be rushed. When in the dance time is not measured in the drops of sand. Drops of sand time is time that is simple motion. This is the time of the stars, the sun, the falling rock, the moving river. It is the time of the five senses. The thunder follows the distant lightening. These, of course, are Sacred too.
The time of remembering is not measured in flowing sand; this is a different order of time. We step out of the time of the falling rock to a time within our head. We are removed from the flowing river to our memory of the flowing river. This is a stopping of time. It is a footprint in the baked mud of the river. We can look at this footprint in our minds eye all the while the river has flooded again. It is the amulet of our grandmother. No, not the amulet but the memories bound to amulet all the while our grandmother has reentered this earth. These, of course, are Sacred too.
The time of revelry in the Sacred is timeless and beyond even remembering. The spaces of the dance fill the spaces of our knowing. The smallest movement, the lightest sensation is a lifetimes journey. The time of the Sacred is its own cadence. We have experienced the time of sadness that lasts forever between the drops of oil. The time of the dance is a flash of lightening between the drops. It is a time of joy, faster than a humming birds flit. When you are in the flow the rhythms, cadence and change will make themselves known. It is the great Play.
The Incredible Delicateness of it All is the time of no time. It is beyond time. It is beyond sadness and joy and yet of both and more. Here eternity and the blink of an eye are one. Here past, present and future speak in one voice.
The Incredible Delicateness of it All is the space of no space. Here all the stars and the smallest grain of sand are one. Nothing can be experienced; everything can be experienced; each thing can be experienced. How we struggle for words to share.
-- Anonymous, May 25, 2000