These are two of the coolest little animations I have seen in a long time.
I am posting them here as they fit in more with my Theory of Everything theme than with any of my other half dozen blogging themes.
And for those of you who missed the post in Odds ‘n Ends, this is also a good science short.
Entropy: Everything Ungroups
page 48-49 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
[Entropy, a definition: the tendency of all systems to break down and evenly distribute the energy between the system and the system’s surroundings. The reason a cup of coffee cools is attributed to entropy evening out the heat energy between the cup of coffee and the surrounding air; the reason an ice cube melts is attributed to entropy evening out the heat energy between the ice cube and the surrounding liquid.]
Entropy = group becomes dysfunctional for large enough numbers to leave and eventually be followed by others—singly and in groups—until original group has dissipated?
Change
page 44-45 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
The process of feeding and caring for a body can be equated with that of feeding and caring for a society. Give a body everything it needs to stay healthy and eventually it will still fail and die. Sometimes it will fail and die young, even though it was given all it should have needed to stay healthy.
Wealth and prosperity bubble through an empire, rising out of the masses to concentrate in a few at the top who become more extravagant in their abuse of power and form extreme situations for those at the bottom. Something then happens to change the strength of the state, either internal or external war, possibly, or just a drifting in of outsiders and a drifting out of insiders, until the empire collapses.
I see the same pattern in fashion. The codpieces (hairstyles; skirt lengths….) get more and more extravagant until they reach some critical point and the fashion collapses. I discover curry and eat so much of it that I can no longer bear the smell. What’s going on? Why do animals get larger? Is nature a size queen? Do some of the fantastic designs of nature exist for the same reason that individuals take fashions to the extreme…like boys’ pants getting larger?
A Closer Look by Someone Else
page 37 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
The pattern changes when someone else in a different location on the persepective horizon is holding the camera.
The Gravity Crusades
page 30-31 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
Are we in a place in history comparable to the times of Copernicus and Galileo? In their respective times and places, the Earth with humans ruling it was at the center of Everything and larger than Everything Else. We are now used to the idea that we are ruling a small planet in a large galaxy in a universe of galaxies. However, we still think our configuration is the center of intelligent life. Out of all the multitude of groupings of matter that we know exist between the subatomic and the cosmic, between the small and the large, our size is the only presumed place where intelligent life could evolve?
If there are these infinite groupings—the gravity groupings—then there has been time for intelligent groupings to evolve on infinite levels along the perspective horizon between the infinities of sub-sub-sub-atomic and the infinities of universes.
Are we ready for a new paradigm in science where humanity’s role is not elevated above the rest of the universe (infinite universes?), but is smack in the middle of its infinite infinities, just like Everything Else?
Cosmic Nipple in the Corner of My Bedroom
This is the original Cosmic Nipple…the one that I painted on the ceiling in the corner of my bedroom. The interesting part about this is that it was painted before I started writing my theories…though I was already thinking of them, so maybe it isn’t so odd. It seems to represent the multi dimensional grid that warps this way and that, depending on one’s position on the perspective horizon.
I have also created many checker boards that are warped and abstracted from the original grid in much this same way. It could be argued that the game of checkers is an abstracted version of war or conquest. The terrain of a real war is much more complex and has been abstracted to a board game. I am now taking that simplified abstraction and creating something more abstract and more complex. A wave of reality turning into a wave of abstraction turning into a wave of reality turning into a wave of abstraction.
Purchase Nickel and Dime Checkerboard book.
Cosmic Nipple in the Corner of My Bedroom
page 28-29 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
To make the pattern complete, a new sentience must be created with every grouping, even a group of two…again, think gravity. If it doesn’t start adding a new sentience at two, what critical weight—and exactly what would we be weighing—would need to be reached to create that new sentience? We’d be back to emergence.
We have all experienced the different dynamics between hanging out (grouping) with one friend and then adding another friend to the mix. Is each grouping a different entity?
I picture the gravity groupings much like Einstein’s gravity fields: a multi-dimensional grid that warps where there are objects that are within the scope of my perspectives, but which would appear to warp differently to other entities coming from other perspectives. An entity grouping the size of a quark would not easily notice the warp our sun makes in the grid; an entity the size of the galaxy would not easily notice the warp I make in the grid. We are embedded much too deeply in our universe to notice the warp other universes make in the grid.
If there is no final building block of matter, the warp in the grid IS the sun, the human, the quark…. The warp itself would be the entity, which would be the intersection of other groups of entities. This grid is another way of picturing the perspective horizon.
Molecular Highways
page 26-27 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
The smaller we look, the more mechanical the process is bound to appear because the details are washed out. A highway from a certain distance in space disappears, as we zoom closer it looks like a line, then it begins to take on width and direction, then height, then personality and diversity.
A family is close from the first generation to second to third, but from the fourth generation, the distance expands quickly. After 100 generations all detail of the early generations is smudged into a pattern—part of the mass migration of Angles or Saxons or Celtic peoples or Huns or Goths or, as we zoom further out in space-time, mammals or air breathers or carbon-based units.
We speak of family dynamics and corporate personalities—maybe they really are independent entities, but much too coarse grained from our perspective to be readily identified as such—the forest and the trees!
Are nuclear forces akin to family ties, hometown pride, patriotism, religious fervor, i.e. are they the gravity/grouping thing on a subatomic perspective? Do our methods of studying subatomic particles by smashing them together in particle accelerators cause some type of political upheaval that creates tremendous energy?
Time Passing
page 20-21 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I am offering for discussion the theory that the vast colonies of microbes, bacteria and other entities of which we are made, combined for the same reasons that humans combine: they made decisions; they are still making decisions; our cities are making decisions; galaxies are making decisions; the atoms that combined to form molecules and the molecules that combined to form DNA were and ARE all making decisions.
No clockwork universe in my world!
Adam and Eve
page 18-19 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I have been dissatisfied with the current explanations of how humans emerged from non-sentient primates. The religious evolutionists propose that God blew the spirit into man. The scientific emergence theories seem to have the same breath happening, it’s just paced differently—it takes place over a much longer period of time.
But what did that first glimmer of sentience look like? What was it made up of? What is it made up of today?
If Everything is sentient and always was sentient, then there is no need for this breath of spirit or emergence of sentience. The spirit was always here. The sentience was always there. Everything is spirit/sentience.
Part of the Pattern
page 16-17 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
As a thought experiment, let’s reverse current philosophy that the Human Species has the only known sentient beings. Let’s not make humans part of the rule by removing our sentience (as in the philosophies that bring out our “animal heredity”), but rather by granting sentience to Everything Else.
If the one-celled creatures of which I am made were sentient (and still are) and bonded together in much the same way that humans form families and cities and states and countries, to form organs and circulatory systems and other sentient entities, then there is no need for anything new to emerge. Human culture would be evolution up close and personal. Culture wouldn’t Group out there all by itself as a human phenomenon. Just as one geographical area may become the energy producing area, or classical music center, or grain producing or wool producing area or city, so organs may have developed, specializing in digestion or respiration or hearing or sight.
We claim to be the only creature to have built structures as elaborate as our skyscrapers or our devices that allow us to conquer the skies and the sea. Consider that the one-celled creatures of which we are made, created us, creatures millions of times larger than they are (as a city is thousands or millions of times the size of an individual); creatures with eyes (Hubble telescopes?) that are able to bring back images and report these images to the rest of the colony; creatures with ears (satellites?) that are able to bring back sounds and report them to the rest of the colony, etc.
I feel very strongly that I have free will (at least now and then); do the members of the colonies that make up my inner cosmoses feel the same way?
Evolution
page 14-15 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I first ambled down this mental trail while thinking about Evolution. Evolution at the level of multi-celled creatures seems very obvious. A zebra looks too much like a horse; we look too much like other primates; dinosaurs look too much like reptiles, etc. for me to doubt it.
However on the microscopic level, that moment when life was created from the primordial stew of non-living molecules…how did that happen? One minute there were non-living molecules floating around, the next minute they grouped into one-celled living creatures? How?
How did these one-celled creatures turn into multi-celled, sentient me? What is the mechanism? At one time there were only one-celled creatures, which bonded together to form multi-celled creatures, which began to act as one creature, which eventually emerged a consciousness. How does that work? What law of nature made that consciousness happen? The Weak Nuclear Force? The Strong Nuclear Force? Gravity? Electromagnetism? The Laws of Thermodynamics?
Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Just like in a murder mystery, maybe we need to look for motive. Maybe WHY they grouped is more relevant to Everything than HOW they grouped.
The Perspective Horizon
page 12-13 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I call these infinite perspectives the perspective horizon. We all sit in a different position on this perspective horizon and are only able to see those entities that are within our own specific range. This perspective horizon extends infinitely in all directions.What is the fundamental, underlying principle of a tapestry? Are the micro-fibers more important than the overall pattern of the tapestry? Are both absolutely fundamentally equal from their individual places on the perspective horizon? The pattern can be used on different mediums; the medium of the tapestry can be used for different patterns. Can we imagine an entity for which the medium is critical but the pattern is invisible…a blind person? Can we imagine the opposite?
Even if we allow the vibrating strings of String Theory [Note: According to String Theory, protons and neutrons are made of quarks under which sit vibrating strings of varying, possibly infinite, frequencies in ten dimensions (nine spatial plus time), maybe creating a waveparticle duality between the quark and the string. Electrons, photons and other subatomic particles would also be strings. The grouping of these wave loops would lie at the bottom of Everything according to this theory.] to be the smallest unit of sentience, rather than just as small as we can currently theorize, that unit doesn’t necessarily describe the whole any better than any other point on the perspective horizon, as the perspective horizon remains infinite. All points (of view?) on it are exactly in the middle as each point would be surrounded by infinities.
Does every person, place, thing, political point of view, religion, or other ideology, work choice, reading choice, past time choice, fashion choice, relationship choice carry its own validity from its own particular unique place on the perspective horizon? Maybe no place on this perspective horizon is any more special than any other place on this perspective horizon. Maybe nothing is more fundamental than anything else. Could the study of food or dance or ants or cells all show us patterns that help us understand the totality of our universe every bit as well as the study of fundamental particles or of the cosmos?
Totalities
page 6-7 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I have a difficult time contemplating a unified theory of the universe that does not take into consideration evolution, revolution, religion, war, love, hate, marketing trends, television, paperbacks, email and why don’t pigs have wings! Is our species studying the nuts and bolts of Everything and discovering marvelous uses for all these nuts and bolts without really having a good definition of the Totality of Everything.
I began my thought experiments by trying to make statements that apply to Everything.
Note: Jim Charlton, Southside of Chicago via Darlington, WI, who teaches social theory to graduate students in Chicago, introduced me to totalities. In a nutshell: picture all the parts of a car strewn over a field. No matter how much any individual part is studied, unless there is a bigger theory about what a car looks like and its purpose, it would be well nigh impossible to figure out what it was or put it together. It is necessary to study the concept of a car in total to understand it; the parts are only useful as descriptors of the total after the bigger picture is in place, though there might be an infinite variety of uses for the individual parts.
When Worlds Merge
page 4-5 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything
I have merged my art and the art of my partner, William Solis, with my Theories of Everything.
Shrink and grow with my analogies. Classical notions of time and space must be revised in order to grasp relativity. Classical ideas of small and large must be revised to evaluate the theories I am proposing.
These ideas are not the final answer to Anything, but rather a catalyst to view Everything from different perspectives.
why is everything different from everything else? does infinity diversity rule?
