Metaphysics

From Peace Elements

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Since the culmination of the post-Industrial Revolution, we have all been exposed to the mysteries which lie beyond science. In just the past century alone, we have mastered gravity, the speed of sound, and the speed of light. Interwoven within these concepts lie the remaining foundations of what we have the ability to comprehend. Considering the unfathomable expanse of this universe, and the dire changes made by the alteration of any equation regarded within the formulas for existance, it is certainly clear that our small, mortal lives here on earth are but a miniscule part of the larger equation. As more pragmatic concerns have replaced the search for true meaning within this existance, cause and effect have allowed for rampant violence and unprovoked war. Perhaps by exploring the simplistic causes behind the effects, we will be led to a peaceful place where violence and war are unimaginable. But we must open our minds to reach beyond what seems real to the naked eye, as these elemental forces are definitely beyond the constricts of the five senses. Newton finally figured out the force of gravity - the apple drops, and wa-la - it falls to the earth. How many billions of years did it take to notice that? Einstein discovered the equation for the speed of light - mind-boggling in it's essence. He and Oppenheimer split the atom - and NOW what? Perhaps open-minded exploration and discussion of what lies beyond science will channel mankind into a peacable common ground. I certainly hope so. You are about to enter - - - - - - - the Twilight Zone...

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[edit] TIME

"Be free from the future; be free of the past; be free in the present; cross to the yonder shore. With a mind wholly free you will not fall into birth and death."
- —Dhammapada, Verse 348

"Time is an observed phenomenon, by means of which human beings sense and record changes in the environment and in the universe. A literal definition is elusive. Time has been called an illusion, a dimension, a smooth-flowing continuum, and an expression of separation among events that occur in the same physical location.
Time is a practical convenience in modern life. Numerous standards have been set up, allowing people to coordinate events and, in general, keep their lives running smoothly. The earth has been divided into so-called time zones that reflect the fact that high noon occurs at different times at different places on the planet. All of these time zones are referenced to the time at the longitude of Greenwich, England. A universal standard, coinciding almost exactly with the time at Greenwich, is known as
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). There are various other time standards.
The fundamental unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) is the second (symbolized s or sec). One second elapses during the occurrence of exactly 9,192,631,770 (9.192631770 x 109) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom. Other common units of time include the hour, the mean solar day, and the synodic year (sun-based earth year).
...Isaac Newton believed that time is continuous, and that it flows at an unchanging rate everywhere in the universe. This was accepted by most scientists until the Michelson-Morley experiment around the end of the 19th century, from which it was discovered that the speed of light is the same regardless of the direction of
propagation, and regardless of the motion of the source. Albert Einstein considered this result an axiom, from which he derived the special and general theories of relativity. According to relativistic physics, the rate at which time passes depends on the relative motion between observers, and also on the strength of a gravitational or acceleration field."
• adapted from: http://www.Whatis.com

[edit] Time and Dimensional Development Program

"Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.

Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research."

Marie Curie

The Tmxxine software console will be developed using a future interactive wiki

Prototype Consoles have been created in NetLogo which outputs java. A communication prototype (used for regular net meetings), CurlChat has been created in the AI Lisp based Curl Language. XBasic is being used for another prototype expected for release in 2008CE

Currently:

Initial projections will be particle based. Individual particle streams and eventually complex patterns will be projected into the future and then into increasingly divergent realities

Populate a reality matrix to generate a vacuum

effect. Moving the present into a new alignment

Replicate the biological computers capacity

to generate time independent resonance fields from precise energy alignments.

Develop areas of precise time and location

clearance for reception and transmission

Observational change

What time is it- where?
http://www.worldtimeserver.com

[edit] SPACE

"The word space has many meanings, including:

Physics

The definition of space in physics is contentious. Various concepts used to try to define space have included:

the structure defined by the set of "spatial relationships" between objects
a manifold defined by a coordinate system where an object can be located
the entity that stops all objects in the universe from touching one another
the condition within the conceptual field of Existence that provides the 'ground' for any manifested form and as such it enables the movement and all physical dynamics

In classical physics, space is a three-dimensional Euclidean space where any position can be described using three coordinate system|coordinates. General relativity|Relativistic physics examines spacetime rather than space; spacetime is modeled as a four-dimensional manifold.

Philosophy

An issue of philosophy |philosophical debate is whether space is an ontology | ontological entity itself, or simply a concept |conceptual framework we need to think (and talk) about the world. Another way to frame this is to ask, "Can space itself be measured, or is space part of the measurement system?" The same debate applies also to time, and an important formulation in both areas was given by Immanuel Kant.
Immanuel Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, described space as an a priori notion that allows us (together with other a priori notions such as time) to comprehend sense experience. With Kant, neither space nor time are conceived as substances, but rather both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantity|quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantify how far apart events occur.
Similar philosophical questions concerning space include: Is space absolute or purely relational? Does space have one correct geometry, or is the geometry of space just a convention? Historical positions in these debates have been taken by Isaac Newton (space is absolute), Gottfried Leibniz (space is relational), and Henri Poincaré (spatial geometry is a convention). Two important thought-experiments connected with these questions are: Newton's bucket argument and Poincaré's sphere-world...
• adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space

[edit] LIGHT

"Light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength that is visible to the eye, or in a more general sense, any electromagnetic radiation in the range from infrared to ultraviolet. The three basic dimensions of light (and of all electromagnetic radiation) are brilliance (or amplitude), color (or frequency), and polarization (or angle of vibration). Due to wave-particle duality, light simultaneously exhibits properties of both waves and particles...

Electromagnetic theory

In 1845 Faraday discovered that the angle of polarisation of a beam of light as it passed through a polarising material could be altered by a magnetic field. This was the first evidence that light was related to electromagnetism. Faraday proposed in 1847 that light was a high-frequency electromagnetic vibration, which could propagate even in the absence of a medium such as the aether.
Faraday's work inspired James Clerk Maxwell to study electromagnetic radiation and light. Maxwell discovered that self-propagating electromagnetic waves would travel through space at a constant speed, which happened to be equal to the previously measured speed of light. From this, Maxwell concluded that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation. He first stated this in 1862 in On Physical Lines of Force. In 1873 he published Electricity and Magnetism, which contained a full mathematical description of the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields, still known as Maxwell's equations. The technology of radio transmission was, and still is, based on this theory. The constant speed of light predicted by Maxwell's equations contradicted the mechanical laws of motion that had been unchallenged since the time of Galileo, which stated that all speeds were relative to the speed of the observer. A solution to this contradiction would later be found by Albert Einstein.

Particle theory revisited

The wave theory was accepted until the late 19th century, when Albert Einstein described the photoelectric effect, by which light striking a surface caused electrons to change their momentum, which indicated a particle-like nature of light. This clearly contradicted the wave theory, and for years physicists tried to rectify this contradiction without success.

Quantum theory

This theory, described by Max Planck in 1900, described light as a particle that could exist in discrete amounts of energy only. These packets were called quanta, and the particle of light was given the name photon, to correspond with other particles being described around this time, such as the electron and proton. As it originally stood, this theory did not explain the simultaneous wave-like nature of light, though Planck would later work on theories that did. The Nobel Committee awarded Planck the Physics Prize in 1918 for his part in the founding of quantum theory.

Wave-particle duality

This is the modern theory that explains the nature of light, and in fact of all particles. It was described by Albert Einstein in the early 1900s, based on his work on the photoelectric effect, as well as Planck's results. Einstein determined that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency. More generally, the theory states that everything has both a particle nature, and a wave nature, and various experiments can be done to bring out one or the other. The particle nature is more easily discerned if an object has a large mass, so it took until an experiment by Louis de Broglie in 1924 to realise that electrons also exhibited wave-particle duality. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work with the wave-particle duality on photons, and de Broglie followed in 1929 for his extension to other particles."
• adapted from: http://www.free-definition.com/Light.html

[edit] SOUND:

Compression Waves

Sound is defined as a mechanical compression and rarefaction or a longitudinal displacement wave that propagates through a medium (solid, liquid or gas). The speed of this propagation depends on the type, temperature and pressure of the medium. Under normal conditions, however, because air is nearly a perfect gas, it does not depend on the air pressure. In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F) the speed of sound is approximately 343 m/s. A real-world estimate is nearly 1 meter per 3 milliseconds.
Sounds can often be thought of as having two components: frequency and amplitude. The frequency is the rate of change within the wave and is measured in hertz (Hz). The amplitude is the magnitude of sound pressure change within the wave. While the pressure can be measured in pascals, the amplitude is more often referred to as sound pressure level and measured in decibels, or dBSPL, sometimes written as dBspl or dB(SPL). When the measurement is adjusted based on how the human ear perceives loudness based on frequency, it is called dBA or A-weighting. See decibels for a more thorough discussion.
Sounds that are sine waves with fixed frequency and amplitude are perceived as pure tones. While sound waves are usually visualised as sine waves, sound waves can have arbitrary shapes and frequency content, limited only by the apparatus that generates them and the medium through which they travel. In fact, most sound waves consist of multiple overtones or harmonics and any sound can be thought of as being composed of sine waves (see additive synthesis). Waveforms commonly used to approximate harmonic sounds in nature include sawtooth waves, square waves and triangle waves. While a sound may still be referred to as being of a single frequency (for example, a piano striking the A above middle C is said to be playing a note at 440 Hz), the sound perceived by a listener will be colored by all of the sound wave's frequency components and their relative amplitudes (see timbre.) For convenience in this article, however, it is best to think of sound waves as sine waves.
The frequency range of sound audible to humans is approximately between 20 and 20,000 Hz. This range varies by individual and generally shrinks with age. It is also an uneven curve - sounds near 3,500 Hz are often perceived as louder than a sound with the same amplitude at a much lower or higher frequency. Above and below this range are ultrasound and infrasound, respectively. The amplitude range of sound for humans has a lower limit of 0 dBSPL, called the threshold of hearing. While there is technically no upper limit, sounds begin to do damage to ears at 85 dBSPL and sounds above approximately 130dBSPL (called the threshold of pain) cause pain. Again, this range varies by individual and changes with age.
The perception of sound is the sense of hearing. In humans and many animals this is accomplished by the ears, but loud sounds and low frequency sounds can be perceived by other parts of the body through the sense of touch. Sounds are used in several ways, most notably for communication through speech or, for example, music. Sound perception can also be used for acquiring information about the surrounding environment in properties such as spatial characterics and presence of other animals or objects. For example, bats use one sort of echolocation, ships and submarines use sonar, and humans can determine spatial information by the way in which they perceive sounds.
The study of sound is called acoustics and is performed by acousticians. A notable subset is psychoacoustics, which combines acoustics and psychology to study how people react to sounds.
• adapted from http://www.free-definition.com/Sound.html

[edit] MIND

The mind is a subject about which very much theorizing, experimenting, and expostulating has occurred in philosophy, psychology, and religion... Some people think it is synonymous with the brain. For some theorists the mind is the software of a brain, and the mind-body problem can be understood as analogous to this software-hardware connection. Others, such as the philosopher John Searle, say that the mind or consciousness is not a analogous to a program, but instead, is a property of a biological system, much as wetness is a property of water.

Substance or bundle?

There is a popular problem in philosophy about what the mind is, which can be presented as follows. It is commonplace to wonder what the mind, or soul (if you will), is. One can identify individual thoughts, individual feelings, in one's mind. But what is this mind that has these thoughts and feelings? One can imagine all sorts of mental goings-on, but what is it to imagine the mind itself? It seems the only way we have of understanding, by introspection, what our minds are is by considering various particular thoughts, feelings, decisions, and other events in our minds (i.e., mental events).
So, someone might boldly maintain that we really do not have a mind, or a soul, per se--at least, we do not have any mind or soul that is distinct from our thoughts, perceptions, and other mental events. All there are is a series of thoughts and feelings that are associated with our bodies. There are no minds that are something over and above these thoughts and feelings. This would be the view of someone who held a bundle theory about the mind. The Scottish philosopher David Hume held a theory of mind like this. Buddhism holds a very similar view.
The view of common sense, it seems, is opposed to a bundle theory of the mind. We seem to have a mind, or soul, which is distinct from our thoughts and feelings--and that mind is just exactly what we call our selves. Hume seems to want to deny that there is such a thing as the self. To some people this seems absurd. To them, a substance theory of mind will seem more attractive. On this view, one holds that there is something--one may not know what, but something--which has the thoughts and feelings, and the thoughts and feelings are in our minds, in about the same way that properties inhere in a substance.
Philosophers have not infrequently bandied the phrase "mental substance," and indeed, it has been made central to the ontologies of several philosophers, including most notably Gottfried Leibniz; according to Leibniz, the monad, a "simple soul," is that in terms of which everything else in the universe was to be explained. The notion of mental substance is also basic to the dualism of René Descartes. David Hume was very famous for advocating a bundle theory of mind.

Psychological experiments on mind-body relations

In a study by Benjamin Libet, patients were asked to flex the index finger of their right hand suddenly at various times of their own choosing while the electrical signals in their brain were being recorded on an EEG. It was found that there was a gradual build-up of recorded electric potential for a second or a second and a half before the finger was actually flexed, indicating that the unconscious mind had made the decision before the conscious mind decided to act. Or, the actual initiation of volition may have begun earlier in some other part of the brain.
In another experiment on patients undergoing brain surgery, it took about half a second to register a stimulus applied to the skin, despite the fact that the brain would have received the signal of the stimulus in about a hundredth of a second and the pre-programmed reflex response takes only about the tenth of a second.
However, it should be noted that mind and brain are two quite different concepts -- the first implies an "inside out" look, the second an "outside in" look. We have little more than unprovable assumptions on how exactly the two are related.
adapted from http://www.free-definition.com/Mind.htmlBR>

PSYCHIC SPARKLE: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/mindread/psychicSparkle.swf

images courtesy of: http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/photos.htm