Mechanisms and Organisms

[The_Metatron]

A question for The_Metatron. What are your thoughts on Metatron's cube?

None. I know nothing about it.

Looking for another diversion, Charlie?

No diversion. Just trying to fathom how deep you look into some of the terms you use. From your reply it's obvious that your research is pretty shallow.

Research into what? You brought the fucking thing up, presumably to make some point.

Some people might understand Metatron's cube as just an image of a fairly complex geometrical figure. Others have meditated on this figure or parts thereof and have come to a deeper understanding of its symbolism. Within it, and from it can be derived a two-dimensional image of Plato's five solids, the Star of David, the vesica piscis, the pentagram, the golden mean, the Fibonacci series and much else besides. All worth meditating on in their own right. Meditating on this is a way of letting these forms fill ones consciousness while trying to not allow any predetermined thoughts about them to enter ones mind.

Metatron's cube can be treated as a static geometrical figure or through thinking about the process of its construction it can be considered in its organic form as giving birth to a great deal to contemplate.

I understand that the last thing you would want to delve into is sacred geometry and you chose that username because Metatron was supposedly a very powerful being. But it has given me the opportunity to bring up the subject of Metatron's cube and sacred geometry which is a fascinating topic which can either be gone into in more depth, or dismissed outright as just more 'woo'. I have my suspicions of which way the discussion will go from here. But at least it opened the way for me to air some of my thoughts. And I can live with the usual derogatory remarks because they say more about the willingness to engage in actual productive discussion on the part of those who make them, than on any substantial arguments they can offer.

Metatron, Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, are all representations of the same being understood from the perspective of different cultures.

Sacred geometry. My ass is more sacred. Which is, not at all.

Who gives a fuck about the various iterations of a myth? It is, after all, a myth. You know, not reality. Made up shit. A lie.

Sacred is reserved for retards who don’t know the difference.

Why did I choose my username? You. For people just like you who think the name has meaning. Lo and behold, here you are. With a simple word, I made you divert into that ridiculous diatribe about “sacred” geometry. Suckered you right in. Deep, too.

[CharlieM]

Here are a few sites with plenty of content mainly by people who oppose the reductionistic, mechanistic view view of nature and the cosmos. Plenty of so called 'woo' to be argued against for anyone who wishes to do so.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences

Exploring the hypothesis that Mind is more than neural function An open Challenge to the Scientific position that Mind = Brain...
Over 50 years ago, Dr. Edgar Mitchell became the sixth person to walk on the moon. As a member of the Apollo 14 mission, his purpose was to conduct in-depth research on the lunar surface. As his mission came to an end, however, an entirely new purpose emerged—one that would define his life for decades to come and contribute to the awakening of the planet.

The Nature Institute

Nature around us is whole and interconnected. Though we are part of nature, we do not yet fathom her depths, and our actions do not embody her wisdom. A fundamental shift in our way of viewing the world is necessary if we would contribute to nature's unity rather than dissolution. At The Nature Institute, we develop new qualitative and holistic approaches to seeing and understanding nature and technology. Through research, publications, and educational programs we work to create a new paradigm that embraces nature's wisdom in shaping a sustainable and healthy future..

The Monroe Institute

Founded in 1971 by Robert A. Monroe, the Monroe Institute is widely recognized as a leading center for exploring and experiencing expanded states of consciousness..

Aether Force

Aether Force represents an open network of researchers, engineers, inventors, scientists and brave souls yearning for truth in the borderland realms of investigation deemed forbidden and impossible by the standard model. Founded within the guiding principles of the Borderland Science & Research Foundation, Aether Force makes it imperative to expand awareness and engagement of what we refer to as the living sciences. Integrating qualitative and quantitative methods has the potential to form a more comprehensive scientific perspective, one that could lead to technologies that are beneficial and life-affirming as well as reform our relationship with existence. With respect to the scientific methods, we are aiming towards re-implementing sanity, common sense into the investigation of reality with also a realization of its possibility to extend into the sphere of imaginative thinking itself.

While I can't say that I endorse all of the views within those pages, I am certainly in general sympathy with the spirit in which they were initiated.

[CharlieM]

A question for The_Metatron. What are your thoughts on Metatron's cube?

None. I know nothing about it.

Looking for another diversion, Charlie?

No diversion. Just trying to fathom how deep you look into some of the terms you use. From your reply it's obvious that your research is pretty shallow.

Research into what? You brought the fucking thing up, presumably to make some point.

Some people might understand Metatron's cube as just an image of a fairly complex geometrical figure. Others have meditated on this figure or parts thereof and have come to a deeper understanding of its symbolism. Within it, and from it can be derived a two-dimensional image of Plato's five solids, the Star of David, the vesica piscis, the pentagram, the golden mean, the Fibonacci series and much else besides. All worth meditating on in their own right. Meditating on this is a way of letting these forms fill ones consciousness while trying to not allow any predetermined thoughts about them to enter ones mind.

Metatron's cube can be treated as a static geometrical figure or through thinking about the process of its construction it can be considered in its organic form as giving birth to a great deal to contemplate.

I understand that the last thing you would want to delve into is sacred geometry and you chose that username because Metatron was supposedly a very powerful being. But it has given me the opportunity to bring up the subject of Metatron's cube and sacred geometry which is a fascinating topic which can either be gone into in more depth, or dismissed outright as just more 'woo'. I have my suspicions of which way the discussion will go from here. But at least it opened the way for me to air some of my thoughts. And I can live with the usual derogatory remarks because they say more about the willingness to engage in actual productive discussion on the part of those who make them, than on any substantial arguments they can offer.

Metatron, Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, are all representations of the same being understood from the perspective of different cultures.

Sacred geometry. My ass is more sacred. Which is, not at all.

Who gives a fuck about the various iterations of a myth? It is, after all, a myth. You know, not reality. Made up shit. A lie.

Sacred is reserved for retards who don’t know the difference.

Why did I choose my username? You. For people just like you who think the name has meaning. Lo and behold, here you are. With a simple word, I made you divert into that ridiculous diatribe about “sacred” geometry. Suckered you right in. Deep, too.

From your point of view, I've been suckered in.

From my point of view you have given me food for the soul. As I need life-sustaining food, drink and oxygen for my physical body, so taking into my thinking concepts contained in such subjects as ancient myths and sacred geometry is as beneficial to my mental self as food is to my physical self.

Keep up the good work.

[CharlieM]

If you think about something...

Wouldn't it be great if we could just work out how the world functions just by sitting on our asses and thinking deep thoughts. Bending that spoon would be a snap. That's for the plastic spoons.

I think that would get a bit tedious without the interspersion of practical work. I spent my entire working life maintaining machines; taking them apart, putting them together, diagnosing faults and testing them. I'd like to know what you do for a living if you don't mind telling us.

I've seen first hand how technical designs have progressed from the prominent use of mechanical springs, levers, pneumatics and hydraulics progressing to greater use of electrical, electronic and radio signaling/control. The practical work was a lot more challenging in the old days but a lot less thought provoking..

Talking about thought provoking, Monty Pythons, "The Meaning of LIfe", is just beginning on the TV as I write this.

[CharlieM]

In this video: DNA Mutation and Evolution Are Not As Random As We Thought. Anton Petrov claims that our own biology is way more complex than anyone thought. I would go along with that with a slight rephrasing to say that our biology is way more complex than we have been led to believe.

And the fairly new field of holobiomics adds a great deal to this complexity. As physical individuals we should not be thought of as machines, nor even single organisms with cells containing a few thousand genes. We are holobionts able to live our lives through well-balanced symbiosis. And within this unit the number of genes reaches into the millions.

I am not this colony of beings, but this colony which consists of dynamic organismic processes of continuous cellular living and dying, allows me to exist as an individual human being. My individual self as an ego is the consistent factor in this ever changing physical holobiont which is like a flowing river of substance giving me life.

[The_Metatron]

Deepity generator, activate!

[CharlieM]

Deepity generator, activate!

The latest reporting from the shallows.

[campermon]

My individual self as an ego is the consistent factor in this ever changing physical holobiont which is like a flowing river of substance giving me life.

Bollocks.

It’s a fiction that has survival advantage.

[CharlieM]

My individual self as an ego is the consistent factor in this ever changing physical holobiont which is like a flowing river of substance giving me life.

Bollocks.

It’s a fiction that has survival advantage.

Feel free to consider yourself to be a fiction.

If it wasn't for bollocks our species would have come to an abrupt end long ago.

[Rumraket]

(Gish gallop, now with an irrelevant video)

More mere assertion.

[The_Metatron]

(Gish gallop, now with an irrelevant video)

More mere assertion.

We’ve been getting a lot of that lately. On the other hand, there’s always some damn fool post to amuse us.

Change anyone’s mind yet, Charlie? On anything?

[CharlieM]

(Gish gallop, now with an irrelevant video)

More mere assertion.

We’ve been getting a lot of that lately. On the other hand, there’s always some damn fool post to amuse us.

Change anyone’s mind yet, Charlie? On anything?

I'm sure you're familiar with Planck's principle

In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.

Standby for another thread with the inevitable 'damn fool posts for the amusement of anyone who cares to get involved.

[The_Metatron]

(Gish gallop, now with an irrelevant video)

More mere assertion.

We’ve been getting a lot of that lately. On the other hand, there’s always some damn fool post to amuse us.

Change anyone’s mind yet, Charlie? On anything?

I'm sure you're familiar with Planck's principle

In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.

Standby for another thread with the inevitable 'damn fool posts for the amusement of anyone who cares to get involved.

Do you even know the difference between the subject and object in a sentence?

Have you (the subject) changed anyone else’s (the object) mind about anything? I didn’t ask you if you had changed your own mind, as your friend Planck discussed.

[CharlieM]

Do you even know the difference between the subject and object in a sentence?

Have you (the subject) changed anyone else’s (the object) mind about anything? I didn’t ask you if you had changed your own mind, as your friend Planck discussed.

Why ask me? I leave it up to others to make up their own minds. If you really want an answer you will have to ask the objects.

[CharlieM]

While we're discussing subject and object, here are some of my thoughts.

I experience two worlds, the inner world of images and thinking and the outer world of the senses.

The inner world is connected with the outer world. The outer world of naive realism is seen as a realm of separate objects. Ancient Indian thinkers and Plato suggest this is the illusion. If not an illusion then at a minimum it does not reveal the full reality. The separation is not derived from reality, it is a consequence of human consciousness and perspective. And it is human consciousness that contains the means to overcome the illusion and reconstruct the reality behind this illusion. My senses present the world to me in a form resembling a jigsaw puzzle prior to completion. The inner act of thinking is the means by which I can reassemble the picture. The connections made by thinking, what Goethe termed exact sensorial imagination, brings reality into my consciousness. Clarity of the connectedness of reality slowly emerges from the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' spoken of by William James.

This may sound like I am advocating a form of subject/object dualism. I am not. The two worlds are in reality two poles of a unity. Objectivity comes in the combining the two sources of knowledge. There is objective reality in concepts and ideas. There are concepts and ideas which are not produced by the subject but are objectively real regardless of which minds grasp them. They remain a single unity no matter how many minds hold them.

For instance in the past I have had many arguments and discussions about the fact that there is only one true concept 'triangle' in which anyone can share.

[Cito di Pense]

Clarity of the connectedness of reality slowly emerges from the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' spoken of by William James.

You deliver anything but clarity. You woof about clarity a lot., bu you seem to know mainly about woofity. Bend a spoon.

For instance in the past I have had many arguments and discussions about the fact that there is only one true concept 'triangle' in which anyone can share.

Discussions guided by idiots never go far. Lead on, Macduff.

[CharlieM]

Owen Barfield wrote:

“When we speak… about consciousness, about the point at which consciousness arose and so forth, we are speaking not merely about human nature, as we call it, but also about nature itself. When we study consciousness historically, contrasting perhaps what men perceive and think now with what they perceived and thought at the same period in the past, when we study long-term changes in consciousness, we are studying changes in the world itself, and not simply changes in the human brain. We are not studying some so-called “inner” world, divided off, by a skin or a skull, from a so-called “outer” world; we are trying to study the world itself from its inner aspect.”

He claimed that consciousness is not some attribute tagged on to the world at some point along the path of evolution, it is the world in its inner aspect.

Barfield studied the metamorphosis of human consciousness and how it has changed and continues to change over human history. Goethe studied the metamorphosis of nature and how it has changed and continues to change over life's history.

An online copy of Goethe's, 'Metamorphosis of Plants' can be found here.

Gordon L. Miller does a wonderful job in introducing the work and providing the accompanying photos.

On Miller's edition:

What is new and distinctive about Gordon Miller's edition of The metamorphosis, which recycles Douglas Miller's translation with brief summaries of recent discussions of Goethe's place in scientific thinking, is the illustrations – specifically the photographs – illustrating Goethe's botanical ideas. These photographs, whose production, according to Miller's Preface, involved some difficulty, considerable travel and (it sounds) quite a lot of fun, are not only delightful, but also instructive. They make The metamorphosis more accessible to the common reader (hopefully a paperback version is planned). Miller documents Goethe's valorisation of illustrations, including the literary lion's presumably hyperbolic assertion that “[we] ought to talk less and draw more. I, personally, should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches”. Miller's edition contributes to the realisation not only of Goethe's wish that his scientific work could reach an audience beyond the domain of botanists, zoologists and physicists, but also, more specifically, of his dream that a sequel to The metamorphosis would “do nothing less than to present to the physical eye, step by step, a detailed, graphic, orderly version of what I had previously presented to the inner eye conceptually and in words alone, and to demonstrate to the exterior senses that the seed of this concept … might develop into a botanical tree of knowledge.”

That a wordsmith such as Goethe should advise us to talk less and draw more says something about his method of study with his attention to detail.

[The_Metatron]

Yes. No one ever could match such level of detail. Ever.

Why aren’t you listening to your new hero and talk less?

[CharlieM]

Yes. No one ever could match such level of detail. Ever.

Why aren’t you listening to your new hero and talk less?

To listen more and to talk less, that is sound advice.

[BWE]

Mechanisms are reducible, organisms are not.

I suppose you know this for a fact, or else you're just expressing a sentiment. Maybe this is merely your attempt to say how mechanisms and organisms are defined in terms of each other. Welcome to the Department of Tautology Department.

Mind you, it's perfectly OK to express yourself, here. In any event, you haven't begun to say what is entailed by "reducible". It's just a word in some vocabulary of wibble. If all you can manage are six words at a time, you can still impress me by making sure you've given six-word definitions elsewhere.

Here's what you do: You don't need a conclusion, but you want something to wibble about. Wibble, then, about what "reducible" entails, and then tell us how you know. That's philosophy (semantics) for you; just quote how somebody else defined "reducible", so we now have to argue with somebody other than you.

Reducible means able to be broken down into discrete causes and effects. Mechanisms are by definition reducible. Organisms (and all complex adaptive systems) are provably not. All effects are caused by all causes and in some cases effects are caused by all causes including expectation of future causes. You cannot distill an adaptive organism to causes and effects and fully explain it. You can identify gross functionality and subsystems and even define some of the interactions between subsystems using causal frameworks, medicine does this, but you can't build one from a causal schematic and predict the outcome.

This is actually uncontroversial so maybe just go to Wikipedia or do a little bit of reading on ecology or economics or condensed matter physics or sociology or complexity theory if you just want to go straight to the theory part if you want to argue with someone else in lieu of me. I recommend CS Holling, resilience and stability of ecological systems as a first toe in the water. From there, probably Rittel and Weber's Dilemmas in a general theory of planning before moving on past the early 1970s