Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[beckett]

Between Science and Spirituality

By JOHN HORGAN

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?

There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness is an intrinsic part of reality. Similarly, quantum nonlocality, which Einstein disparaged as "spooky action at a distance," clinches mystics' perception of the interrelatedness, or unity, of all things. I see a different point of convergence between science and mysticism: Each in its own way reveals the miraculousness of our existence.

The more science learns about the origin and history of the cosmos and of life on earth and of Homo sapiens, the more it reveals how staggeringly improbable we are. First there is the fact of existence itself. The big-bang theory represents a profound insight into the history and structure of the cosmos, but it cannot tell us why creation occurred in the first place. Particle physics suggests that empty space is seething with virtual particles, which spring into existence for an instant before vanishing. In the same way, some physicists speculate, the entire universe might have begun as a kind of virtual particle. Honest physicists will admit that they have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. After all, what produced the quantum forces that supposedly made creation possible? "No one is certain what happened before the Big Bang, or even if the question has any meaning," Steven Weinberg, the physicist and Nobel laureate, wrote recently.

Next questions: Why does the universe look this way rather than some other way? Why does it adhere to these laws of nature rather than to some other laws? Altering any of the universe's fundamental parameters would have radically altered reality. For example, if the cosmos had been slightly more dense at its inception, it would have quickly collapsed into a black hole.

A smidgen less dense, and it would have flown apart so fast that there would have been no chance for stars, galaxies, and planets to form. Cosmologists sometimes call this the fine-tuning problem, or, more colorfully, the Goldilocks dilemma: How did the density of the universe turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?

The odds that matter would have precisely its observed density, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has calculated, are as great as the odds of guessing precisely how many atoms there are in the sun. Some physicists are so troubled by the arbitrariness of the cosmos that they espouse a quasi-theological concept known as the anthropic principle. According to this notion, the universe must have the structure we observe, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is cosmology's version of creationism.

The next improbability is life. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once declared that life "is a mystery no longer," because Darwin solved it with his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet life is as mysterious as ever, in spite of all the insights provided by evolutionary theory and more-recent biological paradigms, such as genetics and molecular biology. Neither Darwinism nor any other scientific theory tells us why life appeared on earth in the first place, or whether it was probable or a once-in-eternity fluke.

Many scientists have argued that life must be a ubiquitous phenomenon that pervades the universe, but they can offer precious little empirical evidence to support that assertion. After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; a 1996 report of fossilized microbes in a meteorite from Mars turned out to be erroneous. Researchers still cannot make matter animate in the laboratory, even with all the tools of biotechnology. In fact, the more scientists ponder life's origin, the harder it is to imagine how it occurred. Francis Crick once stated that "the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going." In his book Life Itself, Crick offered the speculation that the seeds of life might have been planted on earth by an alien civilization.

Once life on earth started evolving, many scientists have contended, it was only a matter of time before natural selection produced a species as intelligent as Homo sapiens. But for more than 80 percent of life's 3.5-billion-year history, the earth's biota consisted entirely of single-celled organisms, like bacteria and algae. So not even the simplest multicellular organisms were inevitable. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has estimated that if the great experiment of life were rerun a million times over, chances are that it would never again give rise to mammals, let alone mammals intelligent enough to invent negative theology and television. Similar reasoning led the eminent evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr to conclude that the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which scans the heavens for radio signals from other civilizations -- is futile.

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has pointed out, we are bad at judging probabilities, hence prone to make too much of chance events; that is why we believe in ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and other miracles. I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

Scientists may go much further in plumbing nature's secrets. They may decipher the neural code, the secret language of the brain. They may arrive at a plausible explanation of how life emerged on earth, and they may discover life elsewhere in the cosmos. They may find and verify a unified theory of physics, which will provide a more precise picture of the origin and history of the universe. Although there are good reasons for doubting the likelihood of such scientific advances, they cannot be ruled out. What can be ruled out is that science will answer the ultimate question: How did something come from nothing? Neither superstring theory nor any other of science's so-called theories of everything can resolve that mystery, any more than our supernatural theologies can.

Although we can never solve the riddle of existence, we can never stop trying. We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite. Skepticism alone --- and the cold, hard facts of science --- cannot serve as the basis for spirituality. Blackmore, a practicing Zen Buddhist, helped me reach that conclusion. She described Zen as a kind of rubbish-removal system that cleanses the mind of extraneous beliefs and emotions so that we can see reality as it truly is.

I found Blackmore's garbage metaphor appealing at first, because it provided a handy criterion for judging theories and theologies. The worst ones, I decided, distract us from the reality right in front of us by postulating parallel dimensions and universes, heavens and hells, gods and ghosts and demiurges and extraterrestrials. Too much garbage! Viewed this way, skepticism appears to be the ideal spiritual perspective. Skepticism clears away cumbersome beliefs on an intellectual level, just as meditation (ideally) clears away beliefs, emotions, and thoughts on a more experiential level. Skepticism can help us achieve mystical deautomatization, or so I wanted to believe.

My handling of real rather than metaphorical garbage gradually gave me a more complicated view of the matter. In my kitchen, we put garbage in bags that come in boxes of 20. After I yank the last bag from a box, the box itself becomes trash, which I put into the bag. Sometime after I interviewed Blackmore, every time I pulled the last bag from the box and stuffed the box in the bag, I intuited a paradox lurking within this ritual.

I went through more garbage bags than I care to mention before I solved the riddle: Every garbage-removal system generates garbage. Zen apparently works as an efficient garbage-removal system for Susan Blackmore. But as minimalistic as it is, Zen clutters more than it clarifies my mind. Once I started down this line of thinking, it was hard to stop. I began looking askance at skepticism, too. Maybe skepticism, instead of cleansing our vision, just substitutes one type of trash for another. Instead of belief in reincarnation, angels, ESP, extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and the Oedipus complex, the skeptic crams his mind with disbelief in reincarnation, angels, and so on.

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should "throw away" after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?

At a scholarly meeting on mysticism I attended in Chicago, one speaker warned that if we can't talk about mysticism, we can't whistle about it, either. In other words, all our modes of expression, including art, fall short of mystical truth. But unlike more-literal modes of expression, art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions. That does not mean mystical insights cannot be expressed within other modes of knowledge, like science, philosophy, theology -- and, of course, journalism. But we should view even the most fact-laden mystical texts ironically when they turn to ultimate questions. Some mystical writers, notably the psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna, supply their own irony, but we readers can supply it even if the author intended none. We can read the Upanishads, Genesis, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the neurotheological suppositions of Andrew Newberg just as we read Blake or Borges or Emily Dickinson.

Viewed ironically, even the most fantastical ghost stories, including the old stories of religion, can serve a purpose. Whether they postulate superintelligent clouds of gas, insectoid aliens in hyperspace, a demiurge with multiple-personality disorder, or a loving God who for inscrutable reasons makes us suffer, well-told ghost stories can remind us of the unfathomable mystery at the heart of things. Our creation myths and eschatologies, our imaginings of ultimate beginnings and ends, can also help us discover our deepest fears and desires. But even the most sophisticated theologies and theories should never be mistaken for ultimate truth. What Voltaire said centuries ago still holds, and will always hold: "It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God defined the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

ther than art, is there any method particularly suited to evoking mystical awe without the side effects that so often attend it? In Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, first published in 1979, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar suggested that the chief benefit of psychedelics is "enriching the wonder of normality" -- that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. That is the spiritual value cited most often by advocates of psychedelics. But those compounds can have the opposite effect. This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the miraculousness of everyday reality and consciousness, psychedelics can blind us.

All mystical technologies that induce powerful altered states pose this risk. One mystical expert who has reached this conclusion is Jean Houston. A pioneer of the human-potential movement, she works as a kind of spiritual psychotherapist, usually for large groups rather than individuals. She seeks to rejuvenate her clients' psyches through dance, song, chanting, guided imagery, and role-playing, often with a mythological dimension. She and her husband, the anthropologist Robert Masters, proclaimed in 1966 that investigations of LSD and similar drugs could help human consciousness expand "beyond its present limitations and on towards capacities not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of."

Houston subsequently became quite critical of the via psychedelica. "l am by nature not pro-drug," she told me. Timothy Leary was one of the most charming people she had ever met -- and one of the most irresponsible. Too many people lured onto the psychedelic path by this Pied Piper suffered breakdowns and ended up in mental hospitals, Houston said. "If I were to take the American pragmatic tradition and say, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' then I'd have to say I haven't seen too much evidence" that psychedelics promote a healthy spirituality. "Some might say it is a shortcut to reality. But the fact is, it doesn't seem to sustain that reality."

Houston's disillusionment with psychedelics led her to seek safer means of self-transcendence. In the early 1970s, she and Masters devised what they called the altered states of consciousness induction device, or ASCID. It consisted of a suspension harness in which blindfolded subjects could spin around in three dimensions. The contraption worked so well that Houston and Masters discontinued its use. "People would get addicted to it and even refuse to explore their inner states without first taking a ride," Houston recalled. The experience reinforced her suspicion that any spiritual practice or path -- particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose. According to Zen legend, when a visitor asked the 15th-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of "the highest wisdom," Ikkyu wrote one word: "Attention." Irritated, the visitor asked, "Is that all?" This time, Ikkyu wrote two words: "Attention. Attention." Fortunately, life itself is so wildly weird and improbable that sooner or later it is bound to get our attention. And if life doesn't grab our attention, death will. Whenever death intrudes upon our lives, we feel the chill of the deep space in which we are suspended.

Spiritual seekers have employed mementos mori, like a human skull, to keep themselves mindful of death. An extreme version of this technique, used in certain Buddhist sects, involves sitting next to or on top of a rotting corpse. It seems that this practice may merely desensitize you to death rather than sensitize you to life. Moreover, dwelling on death, the abyss, nothingness, may convince you that it is the only abiding reality, and that all finite, time-bound phenomena, including our mortal selves, are ephemeral and hence, in some sense, unreal. To be enlightened, Ken Wilber once wrote, is "to snap out of the movie of life." This is perhaps the greatest danger posed by mysticism -- that you will be left with a permanent case of derealization and depersonalization.

If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. You will feel what Albert Hofmann -- the chemist who, in 1943, discovered the psychotropic properties of LSD -- felt after emerging from the psilocybin trip in which he had found himself all alone in a ghost town inside the earth. When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here."

This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.

John Horgan writes about science. This article is adapted from his book Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, to be published in January by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 2003 by John Horgan.

[betty boop]

...when we recognize how an epistemology chosen in a state of withdrawal obliviates the primary relations, then we begin to see what Voegelin calls a "second reality." It is secondary because it is derivative. And when that first relation is ignored, and the second abstracted system is taken as primary through an "imaginative oblivion" then we can no longer call it a science or philosophy marked by integrity.

Lapidary, cornelis! Thanks.

[js1138]

9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

This, of course, is the very heart of our disagreements. I'm on the side of newness.

[js1138]

We had a cold snap last night here in north Florida. I had intended to do a minor repair to our heat pump. Normally the heat pump is adequate winter and summer, but it isn't very good at heating when the outside temperature drops below 40°. So there are auxillary heating coils in the air handler. I thought it would be a simple task to replace the burned out coil, since I had opened the system before, and had the parts.

But last night when I opened the air handler, I was confronted with something completely different from my memory, far more difficult.

I think false memories are fairly common. Of course, I see them in other people far more often than in myself.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

It is the obligation of anyone hypothesizing a previously unknown phenomenon, to invent the equipment needed to study it.

To the contrary, here's what Physicist said at post 826 on another thread:

I reject the premise that science requires either facts or evidence.

For example, it is possible to calculate the fundamental magnetic charge of a magnetic monopole. In reality, no magnetic monopoles have ever been found; indeed, they may not even exist. Nevertheless, the value of the magnetic monopole charge is a scientific statement. It is testable in principle, even though in practice it has not been (and may not be).

Another example would be the Higgs particle and the technirho. If the Higgs does not exist, then the technirho must exist; if the Higgs does exist, there won't be a technirho particle. Searches are being conducted for both particles; rest assured that all of the physicists involved in both searches are "doing science", no matter how it turns out.

Evolution is a scientific theory whether there's evidence for it or not. The same may be said of Lamarckism. As luck would have it, there is overwhelming evidence for the former, and overwhelming evidence against the latter.

I would add this from Riemannian Geometry:

A conjecture is a suggestion of a possible theorem which has not yet been proven. In 1969, Milnor stated a conjecture about spaces with positive Ricci curvature. He conjectured that such a space can only have finitely many holes. I am working on trying to find a proof for this conjecture and so are many other Riemannian Geometers. So far there are some partial results. It was proven for 3 dimensional spaces by Professors Schoen and Yau. In fact they showed that 3 dimensional spaces with positive Ricci curvature have no holes at all. On the other hand, Professor Wei has constructed higher dimensional spaces with positive Ricci curvature and many holes, just not infinitely many holes. She doesn't actually build a model with her hands; she describes the spaces explicitly with formulas similar to the way one can describe a globe with an atlas full of maps. The distances between the grid lines are described with formulas and then she does a lot of calculus to compute the Ricci curvature and make sure it is positive. Professors Anderson, Abresch and Gromoll also have theorems which are related to this conjecture but don't quite prove the conjecture itself. I also have proven one theorem which is related to the conjecture. Our theorems can be used as building blocks to find a proof for the whole conjecture but there are still some very important pieces missing. It is almost as if we have put together the outer edge of the puzzle and now we have to fill in the middle. In this example, the conjecture was made first. Indeed, at every step it is a thought process without a means to test it in a physical sense.

[Phaedrus]

Let me repeat this: The Design Is Self-Evident.

Clarifying ... that there is encompassing, deep design is evident. It is not evident that we have discerned it or that we can fully discern it.

[Alamo-Girl]

I'm so glad you wrote the addendum to your previous post at 399!.

It is a wonderful post! Thank you!!! Here are my favorite points:

Language plus honesty will get you there, I suppose is the lesson, but honesty seems to be in short supply among the designated university intellectuals these days, at least insofar as their pronouncements reach the public. I also suppose their "out" is that one must know truth before one can express it, assuming that is the intent, and knowing truth is extremely difficult. But I think that their intent is suspect. I think that there is too much insecurity among the professoriate. I think they hide from reality and that this insecurity leads them toward materialism, bias, sophistry and a denial of God...

If nothing else, the physicists have shown us that math works better as a tool to penetrate reality. It is a language with built-in integrity, and productive...

Well, if nothing else, we have established that materialist science doesn't have the answer and it is in headlong, fervent denial about it. And Yes, "The method is supposed to be our tool, not our master."

More observational irony: A few centuries ago, it was understood that science was the pursuit of understanding of God's design. That pursuit has been stunningly successful. Yet language has been tasked with turning this truth on its head, to deny the existence of God. But that's all it is, sophistry. Design is self-evident and it takes many volumes of treacly language to move us away, intellectually, from this truth. Let me repeat this: The Design Is Self-Evident.

[js1138]

I reject the premise that science requires either facts or evidence.

Interesting statement, especially since Physicist proceeds to cite examples of phenomena that are the subject of ongoing investigation. It was, in fact, particle physics I was thinking of when I said that scientists must invent the appartus needed to investigate phenomena. And Darwin, of course, spent decades accumulating evidence before publishing his theory.

The phenomenon of consciousness is rather unique because (so far) there cannot be confirmation of observed facts. I would argue that this problem is temporary and is being whittled away at from two directions: one is the continuing progress in studying the brain; the second is continuing progress in emulating the brain. We are in the infancy of these sciences.

Consider the process of fusion for a moment. I have remarked that this process has been observed for as long as there have been eyes to see, because the sun is plainly visible. Imagine Newton trying to understand the process that keeps the sun hot. He would not have the tools to fully understand the problem or formulate a physical theory for it. Not only did he not have special relativity to explain the energy source, he also lacked thermodynamics to quantify the problem.

This is what I have in mind when I say we should not postulate dragons to fill the voids in our knowledge. Science progresses at its own pace, with the tools available at the moment. One should not place arbitrary limits on the definition of space, time and matter, because these concepts change and expand with learning.

[cornelis]

we should not postulate dragons to fill the voids in our knowledge

or pretend to void from our knowledge what is there. The first is short-lived and faddish, even entertaining. The second creates terror.

[betty boop]

A few centuries ago, it was understood that science was the pursuit of understanding of God's design. That pursuit has been stunningly successful. Yet language has been tasked with turning this truth on its head, to deny the existence of God. But that's all it is, sophistry. Design is self-evident and it takes many volumes of treacly language to move us away, intellectually, from this truth. Let me repeat this: The Design Is Self-Evident.

It's amazing, Phaedrus, but to me, the design is so self-evident you have to be blind not to see it. But I guess "willful blindness" may be the point here.

It used to be simply taken for granted in the Christian West that God created the world, that creation was an intelligent design (i.e., orderly or "lawful") that was intelligible to men because God had made man in his image -- i.e., with reason and free will. It was a kind of simple commonplace consensus that nobody felt any need to argue with. You didn't even have to be particularly "religious" to hold this view. We see this assumption everywhere -- in the founding documents of our nation, in Isaac Newton, Einstein, oh the list goes on and on, and you can find additional examples easily enough.

Arguably, this very assumption provided the basis for scientific inquiry: Intelligible universe susceptible to being understood by man because (1) the universe is lawful and orderly and (2) human intelligence was "designed" to be up to the job of unlocking its secrets. These are Western ideas, and they have midwifed the stunning successes of science in the West. Notice that there was no science ever produced out of the complex of Eastern metaphysics. Science in the East is largely a Western cultural import.

But now what do we have? Today, it seems many scientists want to turn this "classical" understanding inside-out. They seem to define the challenge for science in their respective disciplines as "accounting for the universe by any means you can, just so long as it doesn't involve God." Thus they begin with a conclusion that is the refutation of the very principles that made science possible, with all of its stunning and wonderful achievements.

To me, this is just plain nutz. As in certifiable.

Thanks so much for writing, Phaedrus!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post!

One should not place arbitrary limits on the definition of space, time and matter, because these concepts change and expand with learning.

IMHO, space/time is the least understood of all physical laws. Even scientists seldom consider space/time when making their observations. And in common vernacular, how many times does anyone ever properly finish the sentence “the universe is x billion years old” with the correct phrase “from our space/time coordinate?”

Our vision and our minds are geared to a 3 dimensional understanding of events – even though we know, factually, that the 4th dimension exists. We look at our computer monitor as a immobile solid at its location when in reality it is motion over space/time. Here is what the fourth dimension actually looks like, but how few can comprehend it!

Moreover, how few truly understand that space and time are mutually determinable? If you know space, you can find time; if you know time, you can find space. Lorentz Transformation

And it doesn’t stop with 4 dimensions, nor should we presume there could be no dynamics in the higher dimensions! Higher Dimensions and Super Strings. From the first link:

Welcome to the homepage of the 5D Space-Time-Matter consortium. We are a group of physicists and astronomers working on a 5-dimensional version of general relativity. Our work differs from Kaluza-Klein theory (the basis of superstrings) in that we do not assume compactification of the extra dimension. This means that new terms (those involving the 5th coordinate) enter into physics, even at low energies. In 4D spacetime these can be interpreted as matter and energy. We move them to the right-hand side of the 4D field equations and take them to describe an induced energy-momentum tensor. In fact, we have shown that no 5D energy-momentum tensor is required. 4D matter of all kinds can arise as a manifestation of a higher-dimensional vacuum. This is one way to realize Einstein's dream of transmuting the "base wood" of matter into the "pure marble" of geometry -- that is, of unifying the gravitational field, not just with other fields, but with its source as well.

Surely it is not obvious only to me that our 3 dimensional worldview is but the result of choice of coordinates --- that it would look entirely different with a different choice of coordinates!

We who wish to explore the possibility that consciousness does not exist in our (arbitrarily selected) three dimensional worldview, are not the ones throwing up walls to science. To the contrary, it is the materialist who doesn’t want to go there. Fortunately for our side, not all scientists are metaphysically materialist.

[betty boop]

At the micro level, we have indeterminacy, at the macro, hard reality. One becomes the other. How?

p.s.: I really loved this statement, Phaedrus.

[Cvengr]

False memories, perhaps, until one bumps into documentation that one had forgotten about corraborating the assumed mistaken memory.

There comes a point where one must also weigh which option is more ignorant,....to assume one's belief is based upon a false perception or false memory in order to live by a more 'consistent' belief in another system,...or perhaps the inconsistent perception is merely an eyeopener that one's beliefs might not be based upon more Scriptural truth.

[beckett]

"accounting for the universe by any means you can, just so long as it doesn't involve God."

I remember reading something by Daniel Dennett, (I'm not sure which book, either Darwin's Dangerous Idea, or Consciousness Explained). His term for God was "skyhook," a perjorative in itself. He wrote (paraphrasing) "We must be sure that there is no room for a skyhook in our theory."

[Alamo-Girl]

Phaedrus and betty boop: since y’all are reading Penrose, when you finish Shadows of the Mind, you might want to take a look at this article, Quantum computation in brain microtubules; decoherence and biological feasibility (pdf). It directly addresses Tegmark’s objections to Penrose’s theory.

Js1138: I found a short statement at this link which does a great job of “summing up” a point I was trying to make at post 413. I apologize for my emotional wording in that post, potential disregard of dimensional considerations is a sore spot with me and I shouldn’t let it be so.

Frank H. Meyer, Physics Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin
Motion and Space-time are Essentially Related and Quantized

The best evidence that motion is a reciprocal relation between space and time is the everyday way physicists the world over use speed to measure motion. Speed of any motion is given by a multiplicatively inverse relation between space and time and/or between time and space. The physical world is entirely composed of one component, motion, existing in three dimensions, indiscrete units and in two reciprocal forms, space and time.

I suspect the good professor may be over-reaching somewhat in that (as far as I know) due to current limitations, space/time is not yet quantized on length scales of the order of a Planck length. (Quantum gravity predicts space/time should be discrete at Planck length.) I'm buckled up though, and ready for the results of the next round of tests!

[Alamo-Girl]

Sigh, post 413 above should be post 410! Need coffee...

[betty boop]

...potential disregard of dimensional considerations is a sore spot with me and I shouldn’t let it be so.

No, don't think of it that way. A-G -- you're just raising a red flag that we need to heed. Thank you.

I have a lot of catching up to do here. I just received two volumes of Penrose yesterday, but have started neither. Which do you recommend I read first: Emperor or Shadows?

[betty boop]

"We must be sure that there is no room for a skyhook in our theory."

And thus we begin with a conclusion. Why bother to go through the exercise, if that is the case? What purpose would it serve?

Thanks for the telling statement, beckett.

[betty boop]

I'm not really belligerent. I just type that way.

LOL! :^) ;^) :^p

I think you're one fine correspondent, js1138. If it comes down to methods, I say: Don't you change a thing.

[OPS4]

Faith in the Living Word Of God reveals more answers than any science when it comes to Metaphysics. I for one have found that the writings covering the parables of Jesus Christ has given me more answers than any other wrirtings
I have found.

From driving out evil souls to healing powers which included overcoming death itself. I find that
Jesus had shown us the way for excellence in human kind,
through Gods Holy Spirit. The Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments make for Spirtual excellence.

Faith in the living word has proven to be the greatest guide
for this brief life and entry to Gods Eternal Kingdom!

Ops4 God Bless America!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your post and especially the encouragement!

I would recommend Emporer first. Thanks for asking!