Posts Tagged ‘philosophy’

Multiple Realities from a visual and philosophical theory of everything


21 May

 

image by san francisco artist and author sarah curtiss representing multiple=

page 74-75 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

Have we other realities in our link (gravity grouping) with every other bit of matter and in every possible combination of groupings of matter in our universe and possibly others?

Do we perceive only that which is within our own peculiar granularity or in a certain neighborhood of the perspective horizon? Do we change depending upon with whom we are currently grouping?

Everything is part of infinite other entities. Nothing is without inner entities. And we are part of it all…no getting out, just moving from perspective to perspective. Not only knowing each other in previous groupings, but actually being the same entity at different times and in different combinations…including now: Grouping into families, friendship circles, spiritual groups, work groups, cities, countries, the Earth, the Milky Way.

These are multiple realities that I can wrap my arms around. Laws decreed by humans appear to be physical laws to the cosmos. Laws decreed by the subatomic become physical laws to humans. Maybe the reason electrons are found only in particular shells at specific distances around the nucleus of an atom is the same reason that no one lives in the middle of a freeway. Even street people live on the sidewalk, not the street.

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Common Threads from a visual and philosophical theory of everything


16 Apr
abstract image of fantasy fruit representing the connections we have to everything else

Common Threads

page 72-73 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

So if there are all of these billions of decisions being made, why would there be any species at all? Why wouldn’t every single creature be vastly different from every other single creature?

Every creature is vastly different from every other single creature, depending on the distance or granularity of your perspective. I am different from all other humans, yet there are those who will lump me in with all other middle-aged American white women as one entity for any of a variety of reasons, including personal prejudice, marketing demographics and political exploitation.

Why are beehives similar? Why is each Portuguese Man of War similar? Why are human families similar? cities? countries? solar systems? galaxies? Possibly we are back to that thought that there is this desire to follow others and group coupled with the desire to create something new and be followed; independence and freedom of thought pushing against the desire for acceptance; the wish for adventure and discovery grappling with the wish for Everything to stay secure and familiar. Grouping and ungrouping; gravity and entropy.

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The Play of Light


01 Mar

Abstract representation of light playing

The Play of Light

page 66-67 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

There is a famous experiment that involves shooting photons through a hole in a screen and measuring the pattern the photons make on a second screen designed for this purpose. They make a circular pattern as would be expected from a particle. Then a second hole is cut in the first screen so that the photons have two ways of passing through this screen to make their pattern on the second screen. They make a bar pattern which is the trademark pattern of two waves interfering with each other.

I rather like current explanations that light has a dual nature of particle and wave, however, has anyone ever tried this same experiment using human beings instead of photons? There could be a queue-up area with one open door to another room. The people could go through this door one at a time, walk across a room, put their hand print somewhere on the far wall, then go stand wherever they wish. Both the hand prints and end location of the person could be tracked. Then repeat the experiment with two doors open.

It would be interesting to know if different patterns appeared depending on whether the group was composed of people from the same school; from the same family; from the same town; the same age; the same background…. Any one of these factors could be the critical one that compares to wavelength.

Are the photons making decisions? Are they following a pattern based on their life style? Do they know what choice the photons before them made? Are they all one entity and in synchrony with each other because of this? Does the scientist’s measuring of the experiment create a grouping between the scientist and the photons? Does a watched pot boil at a different rate than an unwatched pot due to the added weight of the watcher in the group?

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City Music


22 Feb

Abstract representation of the totality of a city in Everything IS, a philosophical and visual theory of everything, original painting by William Solis

City Music, original gold, silver copper leaf painting by William Solis

page 64-65 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

Current theory states that matter and energy come in packets that cannot be further subdivided. This is the basis of Quantum Mechanics as these packets are called quanta. A photon is a quantum of electromagnetic (light) energy. The quanta are often likened to eggs, which are purchased in whole numbers: a dozen eggs, not a half-gallon of eggs.

However, there is still something inside that egg. I, too am a quantum, as I cannot be divided and be useful as my original purpose as a living human being. Most of our day-to-day world cannot be divided and remain what it is—half of a car; half of a refrigerator; half of a dog. Every one of these items comes in discrete quanta but that does not mean that they don’t contain infinite other entities that have nothing to do with their purpose as a whole.

There is a cycle of getting up and doing something (going to work, eating, playing), then stopping doing something (going to sleep) and repeating the pattern that all animals perform. The length of the cycle varies, but the pattern remains.

How would an entity the size of the solar system or larger view these cycles that are repeating all over the planet? Would it make a wave movement? Would we also pass particle tests? Movement for half the day; no movement for half the day—or whatever the length of the cycle (wave?) for each individual animal. Like the cycling of an electromagnetic wave from moving magnetic field to moving electric current to magnetic field to current…the mere state of being awake spawns sleep, which spawns awake which spawns sleep.

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Change


27 Oct
abstract representation of change from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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?

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Babel


22 Oct

abstract representation of the diversity in mankind from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

Babel by William Solis

page 42-43 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

original painting by William Solis is for sale: 24×36, gold frame, oil and gold leaf

It has been said that humans are the only creatures that question the structure of the universe, have a morality, and produce art, music and literature. It has been said that we are the only creature that is aware of our impending death. How do we know these things? Has anyone questioned a giant redwood to see if they are aware they will one day die? With a 2-4,000 year life-span, they are probably just becoming, in one generation, aware of the massive invasion of the planet by the human species.

Do we know that ants don’t string scent molecules together to form great works of art from another ant’s perspective? Do we know that they don’t produce fantastic music on some wave too low or high or weak for our ears or technology? We certainly know that ants hunt, farm, and make war. Morality must be a species-related characteristic, as what could be more evil to an ant than me with a can of RAID in my hand?

Do we know that the sun is NOT singing a choral song in light waves with the rest of the galaxy? Do we know that bacteria don’t disappear into our noses or mouths and pop out the other end purposefully or stay and colonize, as we would if we were able to disappear into a wormhole and pop out in another universe?

Do we know that viruses are not involved in inter-galactic trade and that we are not storage bins for their currency of bacteria along their vast trade routes? It seems as likely that we would have inner body experiences as out of body experiences.

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Cosmic Nipple in the Corner of My Bedroom


17 Sep
abstract blue painting representing a breast in the corner of a cosmic bedroom from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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.

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Molecular Highways


02 Sep
abstract image representing microscopic molecular highways and highways from space, from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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?

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The Anthropomorphication of Science


15 Aug
The Anthropomorphication of Science, an abstract representation from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

The Anthropomorphication of Science

page 22-23 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

Anthropomorphize: to attribute human form or personality to something that is not human.

I would like to remove the “naughty science” ban against anthropomorphizing that has constrained human science from Newton to the present. Humans seem especially unable to anthropomorphize that which is either too small (a photon, a molecule, a virus) or too large (a star, a galaxy, a cluster of galaxies). Why? This simple change in our thinking would put us into a pattern that repeats endlessly…grouping, disassembling and regrouping.

These thoughts allow religion, philosophy and art to be compatible with science. Are we the cultural, artistic, political, technical…achievements of our inner cosmos? Are we creating other entities through the groupings involved in our own cultural, artistic, political, technical… achievements?

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Time Passing


02 Aug
abstract image with clock in the middle on a tombstone passing through dimensions, representing time passing from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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!

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Adam and Eve


30 Jul
Abstract image with two apples on giant billboards representing Adam and Eve from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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.

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Evolution


24 May
Abstract representation of evolution with big apple in center from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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.

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The Perspective Horizon


11 May

Abstract image of The Perspective Horizon, from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

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?

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Theory of Universal Totalities, aka Queen TUT


24 Apr
Queen TUT, theory of universal totalities image of nude woman torso stretching, from Everything IS, a visual and intellectual theory of everything

Queen TUT, aka Theory of Universal Totalities

page 8-9 from Everything IS, a visual and philosophical theory of everything

  • Everything groups and Everything ungroups;

  • Everything is or was made up of groups of other things.

These two statements represent a totality of Everything from quarks [the subatomic particles that group to create protons and neutrons, which in turn group with electrons to form atoms, which group into molecules, which group into cells, which group into organs, which group into systems, which group into individuals, which group into family, state, religion, species, ecosystem, planet, solar system, local star group, galaxy, cluster of galaxies] to super clusters of galaxies and possibly groups of universes.

Everything whose existence has been confirmed by science, groups with other things and is, in turn, made up of groups of other things.

Are we on the wrong track in looking for a unified theory of our universe by searching for the smallest building block of matter? Is the key to Everything the Group, rather than the ultimate building block?

Maybe there is no smallest unit of matter or energy and there is no largest grouping of groupings, or cluster of universes, only the limits of our technology or imagination to see smaller and larger. If there is a smallest unit of matter and energy, it is smaller than an atom, smaller even than a proton and probably smaller than a quark, so the key to Everything still appears to be in the grouping of these tiny particles.

If there is no final building block of matter or energy then the key to Everything must be in the group. Which segues to my next theory.

Note: Current theories consider electrons and photons and a host of other subatomic particles to be elementary particles, unable to be further “ungrouped,” however, current theories also hypothesize that in the first split seconds of the universe, these particles did not exist and are the end result of theoretical particles grouping due to changes in the initial state (possibly of temperature and pressure) of the universe. Current technology does not allow us to actually see quarks or electrons or photons, though, so it is possible that they are made up of smaller particles (or the vibrating loops of string theory), which could be made up of still smaller particles (or smaller loops) and so on.

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Unified Theories of Everything


23 Apr
Abstract image representing Totalities from Everything IS, a visual theory of everything

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.

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Preface for Everything IS, a visual theory of everything


22 Apr
When Worlds Merge, an Abstract digital collage of the view out my front window representing worlds merging into a theory of everything

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.

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Everything IS, a Book of Questions and a Theory of Everything by Sarah Curtiss

why is everything different from everything else? does infinity diversity rule?