Conference hydra::dejavu

    Would I be correct in interpreting this discusion to mean that your
    friend is suggesting that every part of the universe is simultaneouslt
    the center?
    
    Thanks
    
    Mark O'B

    Stephen Hawkings said that too.

Notes from a Friend:

We are in the period of transition from one age to another,
standing with one foot in each. As the two ages draw further 
apart we feel increasing strain, and will continue to do so 
until we place both feet firmly in the age we are entering. 
We can, of course, step the other way and try to live our 
lives in a dying age. By so doing, however, we accelerate 
the demise of the institutions and the culture that are 
affected by such maladaptive behavior.
By an age I mean a period of history in which people are 
held together by, among other things, use of a common method 
of inquiry and a view of the nature of the world that 
derives from its use. Therefore, to say we are experiencing 
a  change of age is to assert that both our methods of 
trying to understand the world and our actual understanding 
of it are undergoing fundamental and profound 
transformations.

We are leaving an age that can be called the Machine Age. In 
the Machine age the universe was believed to be a machine 
that was created by God to do His work. Man, as part of that 
machine, was expected to serve God's purposes, to do  His 
will. This belief was combined with another even more 
ancient in origin, man had been created in the image of God. 
This meant that man believed himself to be more like God 
than anything else on Earth. This believe is reflected in 
the way God was depicted in the art of the age: in the image 
of man. In a sense, men were taken to be "demigods"
From these two beliefs-that the universe was a machine 
created by God to do His work, and that He created man in 
His image-it obvisously followed that man ought to be 
creating machines to do his work.
 
According to the viewpoint of the Machine Age, in order to 
understand something it has to be taken apart conceptually 
or physically. Then how does one come to understand its 
parts? By taking the parts apart. Is there any end to such a 
process? The answer to this question is not obvious. It 
depends on whether one believes that the world as a whole is 
understandable in principle, if not in practice. In the age 
initiated by the Renaissance it was generally believed that 
complete understanding of the world was possible.In fact, by 
the mid-nineteenth century many leading scientists believed 
that such understanding was within their grasp. If one 
believes this, then the answer to the second question must 
be yes. Given the commitment to the analytical method, 
unless there are ultimate parts, elements, complete 
understanding of the universe would not be possible. If 
there are such indivisible parts and we come to understand 
them and their behavior, then complete understanding of the 
world is possible, at least in principle. Therefore, the 
belief in elements is a fundamental underpinning of the 
Machine-Age view of the world. 
The doctrine that asserts this belief is called 
REDUCTIONISM, all reality and our experience of it can be 
reduced to ultimate indivisible elements.
In every domain of inquiry men sought to gain understanding 
by looking for elements. In a sense, Machine-Age science was 
a crusade whose Holy Grail was the element.

Once the elements of a thing had been identified and where 
themselves understood it was necessary to assemble such 
understanding into an understanding of the whole. This 
required an explanation of the relationship between the 
parts, or how they interacted. It is not suprising that in 
an age in which it was widely believed that all things were 
reducible to elements it was also believed that one simple 
relationship, cause-effect, was sufficient to explain all 
interactions.
Is everything in the universe the effect of some cause? The 
answer to this question was dictated by the prevailing 
belief in the possibility of understanding the universe 
completely. For this to be possible, everything had to be 
taken as the effect of some cause, otherwise they could not 
be related or understood. This doctrine was called 
DETERMINISM. It precluded anything occuring by either change 
or choice.
Now, if everything in the universe is caused, then each 
cause is itself the effect of a previous cause. If we start 
tracing back through the chain of causes do we become to a 
beginning of the process? The answer to this question was 
also dictated by the belief in the complete 
understandability of the univerese. It was yes. Therefore, a 
first cause was postulated and taken to be God. This line of 
reasoning was called the "cosmological proof of the 
existence  of God." It is significant that this proof 
derived from the commitment to the cause-effect relationship 
and the belief in the complete understandability of the 
universe.
Because God was conceptualized as the first cause, He was 
taken to be the creator. 
The doctrine of determinism gave rise to yet another 
critical question to which philosophers of the Machine Age 
devoted much of their time. How can we explain free will, 
choice, and purpose in a deterministic universe? There was 
no generally accepted answer to this question, but this did 
not create a problem because there was widespread agreement 
on this much: the concept of free will or choice was not 
needed to explain any natural phenomenon, including the 
behavior of man.
Some held that free will was an illusion granted to us by a 
mercifull God who realized how dull life would be without 
it. Man was thought to be like a fly who, was riding on the 
trunk of an elephant, believes he is steering it. This 
belief makes the ride more interesting and the elephant does 
not mind.

To be continued.....

	Hmmmm,
	
	Very interesting.
	Wim, your English (grammar and spelling) has improved
	remarkably.
	
	First cause... creator  now, where have I heard *that* before?�
	
	;-)
	
	Jay
	(p.s. thanks Wim, please keep it coming)

    No age has a starting point; it emerges imperceptibly in bits 
    and pieces that eventually combine, first to produce an 
    awareness that something fundamental is happening, then to 
    provide a new world view.
    Doubts about a prevailing world view usually begin with the 
    appearances of dilemmas. A dilemma is a problem or question 
    that cannot be solved or answered within the prevailing world 
    view and therefore calls it into question. We have already 
    considered one such question: how can we account for free 
    will in a mechanistic universe? In physics, Heisenberg's 
    presented another such dillema. He showed that within the 
    prevailing paradigm in physics two critical properties of 
    point particles could not be determinated simultaneously; as 
    the accuracy of the determination of one increases, the 
    accuracy of the other decreases. This called into question 
    the belief that the world is completely understandable, even 
    in principle.
    Then there was the dilemma that arose as all the king's men 
    tried and failed to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Some 
    things, once disassembled, could not be reassembled. The 
    essential properties of other things could not be inferred 
    from either the properties of their parts or their 
    interactions, as for example, the personality or intelligence 
    of human being.
    It is for this reason that I refer to the emerging era as the 
    System Age.
    
    Before we can begin to understand the change in world view 
    that focus on systems is bringing about, we must understand 
    the concept of systems itself.
    A system is a set of two or more elements that satisfies the 
    following conditions.
    
    1. The behavior of each element has an effect on the behavior 
    of the whole. Consider, for example, that system which is, 
    perhaps, the most familiar to us: the human body. Each of its 
    parts -the heart, lungs, stomach, and so on -has an effect on 
    the performance of the whole.
    2. The behavior of the elements and their effects on the 
    whole are interdependent. This condition implies that the way 
    each element behaves and the way it affects the whole depends 
    on how at least one other element behaves. No element has an 
    independent effect on the system as a whole. In the human 
    body, for example, the way the heart behaves and the way it 
    affects the body as a whole depends on the behavior of the 
    brain, lungs, and other parts of the body. The same is true 
    for the brains and lungs.
    3. However subgroups of the elements are formed, each has an 
    effect on the behavior of the whole and none has an 
    independent effect on it. To put it another way, the elements 
    of a system are so connected that independent subgroups of 
    them cannot be formed.
    
    A system, therefore, is a whole that cannot be divided into 
    independent parts. From this, two of its most important 
    properties derive: every part of a system has properties 
    that it loses when separated from the system, and every 
    system has some properties -its essential ones- that none of 
    its parts do. An organ or part of the body, for example, if 
    removed from the body does not continue to operate as it did 
    before the removal. The eye detached from the body cannot 
    see. On the other hand, people can run, play piano, read, 
    write, and do many other things that none of their parts can 
    do by themselves. No part of a human being is human; only the 
    whole is.
    The essential properties of a system taken as a whole derive 
    from the interactions of its parts, not their actions taken 
    separately. Therefore when a system is taken apart it loses 
    its essential properties. Because of this -and this is a 
    critical point- a system is a whole that cannot be understood 
    by analysis.
    Realization of this fact is the primary source of the 
    intellectual revolution that is bringing about a change of 
    age. It has become clear that a method other than analysis is 
    required for understanding the behavior and poperties of 
    systems.
    
    In systems thinking, increaes in understanding are believed 
    to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, 
    not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding 
    proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to 
    the whole as kowledge does.
    If the behavior of a system is to be explained by refering to 
    its containing system (the suprasystem), how is the behavior 
    of the suprasystem to be explained? The answer is obvious: by 
    reference to a more inclusive system, ones that contains the 
    suprasystem. Then the fundamental question -Is there any end 
    to this process of expansion? Recall that when the 
    corresponding question arose in the Machine Age -Is there any 
    end to the process of reduction?- The answer was dictated by 
    the belief that, all least in principle, complete 
    understanding of the universe was possible. In the early part 
    of this century, however, this belief was shattered by such 
    dilemmas, as that formulated by Heisenberg. As a result, we 
    have come to believe that complete understanding of anything, 
    let alone everything, is an ideal that can be approached 
    continously but can never be attained. Therefore, there is no 
    need to assume the existence of an ultimate whole which is 
    understood would yield the ultimate answer.
    This means that we are free to believe or not in an 
    all-containg whole, even if it exists, it makes no practical 
    difference if we assume it to exist. Nevertheless, many 
    individuals find comfort in assuming existence of such a 
    unifying whole. Not surprisingly, they call it God. This God 
    however, is very different from the Machine-Age God who was 
    conceptualized as an individual who created the universe.
    God-as-the-whole cannot be individualized or personified, and 
    cannot be thought of as the creator. To do so would make no 
    more sense than to speak of man as creator of his organs. In 
    this holistic view of things man is taken as part of God just 
    as his heart is taken as a part of man.
    Many will recognize that this holistic concept of God is 
    precisely the one embraced by many Eastern religions which 
    conceptualize God as a system, not as an element.
    
    Confused? You will not be after next episode.
    
    
    

  By Jove ! (<- just for Cindy :-)  Go away for a week and this conference
  springs to life ...

  For those who are interested in an alternative presentation of the arguments
  in the previous few notes, please read Fritzof Capra's "Tao of Physics" and
  go on to "The Turning Point" - both form a very reasonable [IMHO], consistent
  and interesting discussion that parallels this note [and others] but without
  any of the ratholes invited by the introduction of channellers, ETs, or faiths
  of varying flavours.  This isn't intended to denigrate the previous notes but
  merely to allow some of the more sceptical readers an opportunity to get to
  the meat without eating the feathers as well ... [ feel free to translate this
  to a vegetarian simile depending on your taste ! ]

  FWIW, I find that when [increasingly] I think in a holistic sense [a.o.t. a
  reductionist one], the more I appreciate other people's contribution (whether
  or not I agree with them).  Maybe I'm tending to read slightly beyond the
  words written, maybe just being a little more tolerant :-)

  Frank

    Re: .6
    
    Nice entry.  I (think I) understand it.  But then, I tend to examine
    systems anyway.
    
    Re: .8
    
    I wouldn't be surprised (I lived there for 4.5 years).  I think James
    Joyce (Catcher in the rye, required for me in junior high) is on that
    list also.  But these same "Christians" banning these books may consider 
    a Roman Catholic person to be a satan worshipper (meeting ministers was
    fun; they'd see my cross necklace, and quickly move on to the next
    person).
    
    Marcos, closed minds are everywhere, but so are open ones.  There are
    more Satanic cults in the Bible Belt (part of the Southern US) than
    elsewhere also (probably as a reaction to the strictness of
    fundamentalism).  And, I met more folks involved in Wicca there than I 
    did in New Jersey growing up. (this is a blatant attempt to prevent
    Atlanta from being mislabeled - I wouldn't mind living in Georgia, USA
    again)
    
    Beth

    .6
    
    I can't wait to see the "next episode".  Hurry, ok? :-)
    
    mary

    
    Re. .9 (Beth)
    
    Unless I misread your note, you seem to believe that _The Catcher in
    the Rye_ was written by James Joyce. It was written by J.D. (?)
    Salinger.
    
    
    Marilyn

    
    Marilyn
    
    Thanks for the correction.  I misremembered the author.  As I recall,
    both Joyce and Salinger are "not approved" reading ;-)
    
    Beth

    Hi all,
    
    Remember I told you that I am very skeptic.
    
    Last night I received a letter from my Friend,
    in that letter he makes a statement that the
    Eye of Hurricane Andrew, will not hit New Orleans.
    
    He says that Andrew will bent more to the east and then
    enters the US in the area between Houston and Corpus
    Christi.
    
    Again, I am more skeptic than you.
    
    Regards, Wim.
    
    
    
    

RE: .15

>    di-mens-ions. divisions. boundaries. the root "di".... two?

    The root is actually "dis" though the s was lost a long time ago.
    "Dis" means "apart", and the original word meant something to the
    effect of English phrase "to measure out".  Aren't dictionaries
    wonderful.

					Topher

	.13
	
>    Eye of Hurricane Andrew, will not hit New Orleans.
    
>    He says that Andrew will bent more to the east and then
>    enters the US in the area between Houston and Corpus
>    Christi.

	Ooops.
	
	;-)

    
    But (maybe I've hear wrong), it DIDN'T hit New Orleans.  Score a 50%?
    
    Beth :-)

    
    
    > what is the center of a growing circle
    
       Wouldn't it be the same regardless of the expansion??
    
    
    David

    Re .21

    Yes. The definition of a circle is, a closed plane curve every point of
    which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve. 

    Jamie.

    >two dimensional circles are nonexistant in nature.
    
    Be that as it may, if they alter their size the centre does not move.

    Jamie.

    RE: .23
    
    How's that then?
    
    Laurie.

    >How's that then?
    
    Well his theory is nothing exists in only 2 dimensions, everything has
    a third dimension, albeit very thin, like a pencil line.

    However if you project a transparency of a circle onto a screen I don't
    see where the 3rd dimension comes into it.

    Jamie.

    You fail to convince me with your double talk. If by definition the
    centre is equidistant from all the points on the line which bounds the
    circle, it remains a constant as the circle grows. If it does not then
    the object in question is not a circle.

    Jamie.

    I see Jamie. However, it occurs to me that once a circle becomes
    three-dimensional, then it ceases to be a circle and becomes either a
    sphere, or a cylinder. A circle, by definition, cannot have more than
    two dimensions. It is after all, a plane figure, not a physical entity.
    
    Laurie.

    
    wal brought up points about what were the assumptions about this
    "growing circle"  e.g. is only the radius changing, or is some of
    factor changing at the same time (you could modify radius and center at
    the same time, leaving one edge point fixed in space, or nothing could
    be fixed in space, including perspective of the viewer, under which
    conditions even the shape of the object would appear to change).
    
    The original questions inadequately defined assumptions upon which to
    base an answer ;-)
    
    Beth
    (3D graphics software engineer, for a little while longer, at least :-)

    Two parallel lines are two straight lines which are a fixed distance
    apart throughout their length. Should they the distance between them
    alter in either direction then, by definition, they are not parallel,
    or for that matter even straight, lines.

    Viewing a circle from another angle alters only your perspective, the
    circle itself remains unaltered.

    Good try at confusion, but alas no banana.

    Jamie.

    RE: .32
    
    So there's no such thing as a circle in nature then?
    
    Parallel lines, by definition cannot EVER meet. If they do ever meet,
    they are not parallel.
    
    Laurie.

    Parallel lines meet at infinity.  There's a mathematical explanation
    for it in one of the books I haven't read since 1968 ......
    
    brian

    Whether parallel lines meet at infinity or not depends on whether
    you are using Riemannian geometry or not.  (Euclidean geometry is a
    Riemannian geometry.)
    
    Our location in the universe is equivalent to that of an ink spot
    on the surface of a balloon:  No matter how large the balloon gets,
    the spot is always in the middle -- if you look at it from the right
    angle.  I.e., it's interesting, but it doesn't tell us anything real
    about our position in the universe.
    
    						Ann B.

    A line is defined so that the shortest distance between any two points
    on that line is the segment of the line between them.

    Two lines are said to be parallel if they never meet, or, equivalently
    if they only meet "at infinity".

    Euclidean geometry assumes -- the famous fifth or parallel postulate --
    that for any line and any point not on that line, there is one and only
    one line through that point which is parallel to the original line.

    Non-Euclidean geometries are created when that assumption is changed.
    The two basic non-Euclidean geometries are spherical geometry and
    hyperbolic geometry.

    Spherical geometry is modeled by the lines (great circles) on the
    surface of a sphere.  It replaces the parallel postulate with the
    assumption that through any point not on a given line there are *no*
    lines parallel to the given line.

    Hyperbolic geometry is modeled by the surface of an infinite saddle
    shape.  This shape has the property that anywhere on the surface you
    might choose, the surface curves "upward" around it -- it is everywhere
    concave.  The shape of those curves are all hyperbolas.  Hyperbolic
    geometry replaces the parallel postulate with the assumption that
    through any point not on a given line there are an *infinite* number of
    lines which are parallel to the given line.

    In general, two lines which are parallel may not remain the same
    distance apart everywhere along their length.  In hyperbolic geometry,
    they may remain the same distance apart, my pull away from each other,
    or may asymtotically approach each other.

    Einstein didn't invent these geometries, but an implication of
    Einstein's general theory of relativity is that space is not
    necessarily Euclidean.  In a particular region it may be flat (be
    Euclidean), may be positively curved (look locally like spherical
    geometry), or may be negatively curved (look locally like hyperbolic
    geometry).  Overall the average may be any of one of those.  It is
    not known which of these three actually describe more accurately the
    overall shape of space-time.

    It is somewhat misleading to talk about light rays bending.  According
    to relativity, light rays *always* travel along a straight line.  It
    is space itself, as viewed from a remote location, which is bending.

    A picture of the big bang as an expanding balloon is misleading.  It is
    only meant to be a rough analogy to what relativity says is going on. 
    What is being talked about is not something expanding within a higher
    dimensional space.  The curvature of space is an internal property of
    space, which tells you how space connects with itself.  It is space
    itself which is expanding.  I know that this is very hard to understand
    but the theory says nothing about a center.  There is no balloon so
    there is no center for the balloon.  There is no center to space at
    all.  The point at which the big bang happened is everywhere: here,
    Alpha Centauri, and the furthest quasar lay equal claim.

					Topher

    >gravity can bend light, as in black holes.
    
    Either that or mass warps space.
    
    Jamie.

>    >gravity can bend light, as in black holes.
>    
>    Either that or mass warps space.
    
    My understanding is that General Relativity theory makes these two
    statements exactly the same thing ?

    Re .41

    In that case perhaps you could explain it in greater detail.

    Jamie.

    i think .41 means that since E=Mc^2, light energy can be
    considered mass, since light can be looked as made up of photons
    (light quanta) that has energy = h*frequency, so light has mass.
    any way, this all stuff is too heavy early in the morning ;-)

    /nasser

    re: .42,
    	Oops, I'm confused now, maybe I missed something.
    
    	I just meant that bending light in the vicinity of a massive object
    	and having electromagnetic radiation (be constrained to follow
    	warps in space-time curvature due to mass) seem like two different ways
    	of describing the same effect.  The only observer who wouldn't
    	see the light being apparently 'bent' would be the one that uses
    	the light being 'bent' to see with.  Obviously, their vision
    	would just follow the 'bend' around, and they not directly
    	see the effect due to mass.
    
    	In the "Hawking's Radiation," phenomena, I think some light is 
    	theoretically 'bent' in a complete circle around the black hole 
    	singularity, while some is actually drawn into the hole (thus
    	cannot escape, and giving the hole its 'black' characteristic).
    
    							todd

    I have always thought that Einstein's Theory of Relativity was a bit
    like an erection.
    
    The more you think about it the harder it gets.

    Jamie.

    Todd,
    
    "Hawking Radiation" is what (in theory) keeps black holes from being
    black.                                  ^^^^^
    
    A matter and anti-matter particle form (net enery required = zero).
    One is within the boundary at which escape velocity is 186,329� miles
    per second, but the other is outside it.  As this particle decays,
    it emits the photon which is Hawking radiation.
    
    Some light `orbits' the black hole at that critical radius as well.
    
    		*		*		*		*
    
    Light is one form of electromagnetic radiation.  All electromagnetic
    radiation obeys the light speed limit.  Thought is synapses firing
    within a brain -- and the rate of firing, and the rate of thought
    triggering thought is a lot less than light speed!
    
    		*		*		*		*
    
    The balloon analogy was used by Stephen Hawking to explain why "center"
    was a bad concept to use when trying to think about the Big Bang.
    
    						Ann B.

    It all sort of depends on what you mean by "gravity bending light" --
    but:

    According to general relativity -- far and away the most successful
    theory of gravity we have -- light *always* travels precisely in a
    straight line, i.e., along the path the minimizes how far it has to
    go to get wherever it is its going.

    However:

    Imagine that we shoot out two beams of light in the same direction
    through space as empty as we want it to be.  As long as space is empty
    as far as we could possibly measure, "flat" in the terminology of GR,
    things act in a Euclidean way: the beams will stay the same distance
    apart and they will continue in the same direction.

    But let one of them pass near to a concentration of energy (in GR it
    is energy, not specifically "mass" which creates gravity) and the
    geometry of the situation will be affected.  Both beams will continue
    to travel along a straight line, but they will end of traveling in
    different directions, and the distance between them will start
    changing.

    So, if being "bent" means changing direction as judged from some kind
    of global (i.e., flat space) perspective, then yes the beam is bent
    because space has curvature.  But if bent means "not traveling in a
    straight line" then the beam is not bent.

    If you travel along a straight line on the surface of a sphere (a
    straight line, i.e., the shortest distance between two points, on the
    surface of a sphere is a "great circle") then you will eventually
    return to your starting point.  This is the classic thought-experiment
    proof that the Earth is "round" (i.e., spherical): if you keep walking
    in a straight line you end up where you started (anyone see Dinosaurs
    last week?).

    You can get a similar effect, though the geometry is a bit different,
    when you have a sufficiently dense enough concentration of mass: a
    black hole.  Any straight line starting close enough to the mass leads
    back to itself.  Inside the "event horizon" of a black hole there is
    *no* straight line (or "curved line" made up of an infinite number of
    infinitely small segments of straight lines) which leads out.  All
    curve around inside the event horizon: some meet with themselves like
    the great circles (those actually "on" the event horizon do this, for
    example) while others sort of "spiral around" never meeting themselves
    but never getting out either.  There just is no way "out" from
    "within" (or another way of saying it is that outside the black hole
    is infinitely far away from the inside).

    But still, the light never curves as far as itself is concerned.  It
    only curves as seen by someone far away looking at what's going on as
    if Euclidean geometry applied.

    By the way, the fact that no straight line goes from "inside" a black
    hole to "outside" is not Hawking radiation.  In a sense, Hawking
    radiation represents a bit of a cheat on that by applying quantum
    mechanics to the situation.  Quantum mechanics allows particles/energy
    to "tunnel" from one place they are allowed to someplace else close by
    where they are allowed without following any kind of "path".  Energy
    can therefore "bleed" out of a black hole by doing this.  The time it
    would take for anything larger than an elementary particle to do this,
    is, however, so long that "astronomical" is a ludicrously excessive
    understatement.  So nothing "classical", i.e., a molecule, can get out
    of a black hole.

					Topher

    	(re: Ann, .47),
    
    	That's my understanding as well.  I guess I just wrote those replies
    	very badly.  That's what happens when I reply while I'm still
    	thinking, instead of waiting for the thoughts at less than light
    	speed to complete their journey.  :-)
    
    	Thanks to Topher for the additional information, also.
    
    							todd