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-Alvin Toffler
-Aldous Huxley
-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
-Nietzsche
-Hume
-Kant
-Hegel
-Aristotle
-Plato [I am the master of all partiklz.]
-Kierkegaard
-Bertrand Russell "whether we know it or not, most of
us are already
engaged in either resisting--or creating--the new civilization." -Voltaire
-John Dewey
-Schopenhauer
-Descartes
-The Frank
Lloyd Wright
Building
Conservancy
-Carlos Fuentes
-Ernst Cassirer
-Paul Davies
-Will Durant
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From Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters
Every quantum mechanical experiment has an observed
system. Every observed system has an associated wave
function. The wave function of a particular observed
system
(like a photon) is the coherent superposition of all the
possible results of an interaction between the observed
system
and a measuring system (like a photographic plate). The
development in time of this coherent superposition of
possibilities is described by Schrodinger's wave equation.
Using this equation, we can calculate the form of this
thing-in-itself, this coherent superposition of
possibilities
which we call a wave function, for any given time. Having
done that, we then can calculate the probability of each
possibility contained in the wave function at that
particular
time. This gives us a probability function, which is not
the
same as a wave function, but is calculated from a wave
function. In a nutshell, that is the mathematics of
quantum
physics.
In other words, in the mathematical formulations of
quantum theory nothing is either "this" or
"that" with nothing
in between. Graduate students in physics routinely learn
the
mathematical technique of superimposing every
"this" on every
"that" in such a way that the result is neither
the original
"this" nor the original "that," but an
entirely new thing
called a coherent superposition of the two.
According to Finkelstein, one of the major conceptual
difficulties of quantum mechanics is the false idea that
these
wave functions (coherent superpositions) are real things
which
develop, collapse, etc. On the other hand, the idea that
coherent superpositions are pure abstractions which
represent
nothing that we encounter in our daily lives also is
incorrect. They reflect the nature of experience.
How do coherent superpositions reflect experience? Pure
experience is never restricted to merely two
possibilities.
Our conceptualization of a given situation may create the
illusion that each dilemma has only two horns, but this
illusion is caused by assuming that experience is bound by
the
same rules as symbols. In the world of symbols, everything
is
either this or that. In the world of experience there are
more alternatives available.
From James Gleick's Chaos
Pattern born amid formlessness: that is biology's basic
beauty and its basic mystery. Life sucks order from a sea
of
disorder. Erwin Schrodinger, the quantum pioneer and one
of
several physicists who made a nonspecialist's foray into
biological speculation, put it this way forty years ago: A
living organism has the "astonishing gift of
concentrating a
'stream of order' on itself and thus escaping the decay
into
atomic chaos." To Schrodinger, as a physicist, it was
plain
that the structure of living matter differed from the kind
of
matter his colleagues studied. The building block of
life--it
was not yet called DNA--was an aperiodic crystal. "In
physics
we have dealt hitherto only with periodic crystals. To a
humble physicist's mind, these are very interesting and
complicated objects; they constitute one of the most
fascinating and complex material structures by which
inanimate
nature puzzles his wits. Yet, compared with the aperiodic
crystal, they are rather plain and dull. " The
difference was
like the difference between wallpaper and tapestry,
between
the regular repetition of a pattern and the rich, coherent
variation of anartist's creation. Physicists had learned
only to understand wallpaper. It was no wonder they had
managed to contribute so little to biology.
Schrodinger's view was unusual. That life was both
orderly and complex was a truism; to see aperiodicity as
the
source of its special qualities verged on mystical. In
Schrodinger's day, neither mathematics nor physics
provided
any genuine support for the idea. There were no tools for
analyzing irregularity as a building block of life. Now
those
tools exist.
Quantum Mechanics is based upon the idea of
minimal knowledge of future phenomena but it
leads to the possibility that our reality is
what we choose to make it.
...there is no such thing as objectivity. We
cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture.
We are a part of nature, and when we study
nature there is no way around the fact that
nature is studying itself.
[Referring to the probability wave]
According to Heisenberg: "It meant a
tendency for something. It was a
quantitative version of the old concept of
'potentia' in Aristotelian philosophy. It
introduced something standing in the middle
between the idea of an event and the actual
event, a strange kind of physical reality
just in the middle between possibility and
reality."
The Dancing
...the observed system, traveling undisturbed Wu Li
Masters
between the region of preparation and the by Gary Zukav
region of measurement, develops according to
the Schrodinger wave equation. During all
this time, all of the allowed things that
could happen to it unfold as a developing
wave function. However, as soon as it
interacts with a measuring device (the
observing system), one of those possibilities
actualizes and the rest cease to exist. The
quantum leap is from a multifaceted
potentiality to a single actuality.
...the development of the Schrodinger wave
equation generates an endlessly proliferating
number of different branches of reality!
This theory is called, appropriately, the
Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics.
If the new physics has led us anywhere, it is
back to ourselves, which, of course, is the
only place that we could go.
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"But I like the We live at a fantastic moment
inconveniences." of human history. Hidden
"We don't," said the behind all the fashionable
controller. "We prefer to do gloom today are several
things comfortably." tremendously positive and
"But I don't want comfort. I humanizing changes on
the
want God, I want poetry, I planet. The spread of the
want real danger, I want Third Wave economy has
freedom, I want goodness. I galvanized all of the Asia
want sin." Pacific region, introducing
"In fact," said Mustapha trade and strategic
tensions,
Mond, "you're claiming the but at the same time
opening
right to be unhappy." the possibility of rapidly
"All right then," said the raising a billion
human
savage defiantly, "I'm beings out of the pit of
claiming the right to be poverty. Massive increases in
unhappy." global population occurred
"Not to mention the right to between 1968 and 1990,
but
grow old and ugly and despite doomsday forecasts,
impotent; the right to have per capita food supplies in
syphilis and cancer; the the world have actually
right to have too little to increased faster, according
eat; the right to be lousy; to the World Food
the right to live in constant Organization, and the number
apprehension of what may of chronically undernourished
happen omorrow; the right to people has fallen by 16
catch typhoid; the right to percent.
be tortured by unspeakable Using Third Wave technologies
pains of every kind." There that are less energy
was a long silence. intensive and less polluting
"I claim them all," said the we can now begin to
clean up
Savage at last. the ecological havoc wrought
Mustapha Mond shrugged his by Second Wave industrial
shoulders. "You're welcome," methods in the age
of mass
he said. production. Work, until now
from Brave New World by brutalizing and
Aldous Huxley mind-destroying for most of
------------------------------ those lucky enough to hold
a
To ask the larger questions job, can be transformed into
is to risk getting things something fulfilling and
wrong. Not to ask them is to mind-enhancing. The digital
constrain the life of revolution that is helping to
understanding. fuel the Third Wave has
George Steiner within it the potential for
------------------------------ educating billions.
Sometime after the twenties a from War and Anti-War by
secret loneliness, so Alvin Toffler
penetrating and so "...the right question is
encompassing that we are only usually more important than
beginning to realize the the right answer to the wrong
extent of it, decended upon question."
the land. This....had become from The Third Wave by Alvin
a far worse prison of the Toffler
spirit than the old Victorian
"virtue" ever was. That did we come here to
laugh or
streetcar ride with Lila so cry?
long ago....There was no way are we dying or being born?
he could ever get to Terra Nostra by Carlos
Lila....because all this Fuentes
intellect intervened. They
had lost some of their Only one man understands me,
realness....which had and even he does not.
inadvertently shut them out Hegel
from direct experience of World history only shows us
life itself--and from each how the World Spirit comes
other. gradually to the
from Lila by Robert M. Pirsig consciousness of truth and
....mystics....share a common the willing of it. This
belief that the fundamental consciousness and will dawns
nature of reality is outside in the Spirit; Spirit finds
language; that language its main points, and in the
splits things up into parts end it arrives at full
while the true nature of consciousness.
reality is undivided. from Hegel's Lectures on
Freedom, Individual, and the
That self-knowledge is the State
highest aim of philosophical
inquiry appears to be The fundamental mistake is
generally acknowledged. In simply that, instead of
all the conflicts between the understanding consciousness
different philosophical as a tool and particular
schools this objective aspect of the total life, we
remained invariable....Yet it posit it as the standard and
must be admitted that by the condition of life that is
following this way alone we of supreme value: it is the
can never arrive at a erroneous perspective of a
comprehensive view of human parte ad totum--which is why
nature. Introspection reveals all philosophers are
to us only that small sector instinctively trying to
of human life which is imagine a total
accessible to our individual consciousness...
experience. It can never Nietzsche
cover the whole field of ------------------------------
human phenomena. Man is something that must be
Ernst Cassirer, from the overcome; and therefore you
Essay on Man shall love your virtues, for
you will perish of them. Thus
Imagine a wayfarer. He has spoke Zarathustra.
been brought to a standstill Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke
at the foot of a mountain, Zarathustra
tremendous, impassable. It is
------------------------------
this mountain-- no, it is not The huge value of ten to the
his destiny to cross it, but nineteenth proton masses is
he has set his heart upon the known as the 'Plank
crossing; for his wishes, his scale'....At the Plank
longings, his desires, his energy, all four forces of
very soul, which has an nature would be completely
easier mode of conveyance, merged into a single
are already on the other superforce, and all ten
side; it only remains for him dimensions of space would
to follow. Imagine him coming exist on equal
footing....the
to be seventy years old; but full dimensionality of space
the mountain still stands would be exposed in all its
there, unchanged, impassable. splendour.
Let him become twice seventy from Superforce by Paul
years; but the mountain stand Davies
there unalterably blocking ....the universe is really a
his way, unchanged, sea of neutrinos, punctuated
impassable. Under all this he only rarely by impurities
undergoes changes, perhaps; such as atoms. It is even
he dies away from his possible that neutrinos
longings, his wishes, his collectively outweigh the
desires; he now scarcely stars, and therefore dominate
recognizes himself. And so a the gravity of the cosmos.
new generation finds him, ....morals is not really the
altered, sitting at the foot doctrine of how to make
of the mountain, which still ourselves happy but of how we
stands there, unchanged, are to be worthy of
impassable. Suppose it to happiness.
have happened a thousand Kant, from the Critique of
years ago: the altered Practical Reason
wayfarer is long since dead,
and only a legend keeps his Perhaps each kind of teacher
memory alive; it is the only can be of aid to the other:
thing that remains--aye, and the cautious scholar to check
also the mountain, unchanged, our enthusiasm with
accuracy,
impassable. And now think of and the enthusiast to pour
Him who is eternally warmth and blood into the
unchangable, for whom a fruits of scholarship.
thousand years are as but one Between us we might build up
day--ah, even this is too in America an audience fit to
much to say, they are for Him listen to geniuses, and
as an instant, as if they did therefore ready to produce
not even exist--consider them. We are all imperfect
then, if you have in the most teachers, but we may be
distant manner a will to walk forgiven if we have advanced
a different path than that the matter a little, and have
which He wills for you: how done our best. We announce
terrifying! the prologue, and retire;
Kierkegaard, from the after us better players will
Unchangeableness of God come.
Subjectivity is inwardness. from The Story of Philosophy
Inwardness is spirit. To have by Will Durant
faith is not an indifferent
relation to something that is
true, but an infinitely
decisive relation to
something. The accent falls
upon the relation.
Kierkegaard
There is, I own, some
difficulty how we can ever
return from the cause to the
effect and, reasoning from
our ideas of the former,
infer any alteration on the
latter or any addition to it.
Hume, from An Inquiry
Concerning Human
Understanding
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