“Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” < Back The Probability of Nothing David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Riddle : How is language like Willie Mays? Answer : It rules center field! Of course, I am referring to ontological ‘center field’: the tiny, daily transactions (like photon exchange) that bind society (or the world) together. But language can play tricks on us…especially when it deals with stuff at the ends of the ontological spectrum. Take the word itself, ‘nothing’, for example. ‘Nothing’ is a noun and, as we know from primary school, a noun represents a ‘person, place, or thing’. Which of these does ‘nothing’ represent? None, obviously. The word itself tells you all you need to know about its meaning: ‘nothing’ = ‘no thing’. Now we have a word that fails to meet the definition of a noun playing the role of a noun in ordinary speech. What could possibly go wrong? Well, because we use the word, ‘nothing’, as a noun, we could begin to think of Nothing per se as something (some ‘thing’). This is an instance of what Alfred North Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” - the fundamental fallacy of Western metaphysics. Then what is ‘nothing’? Today, we have a number for it: zero. But we didn’t have that number until the 13th century (Fibonacci) and it wasn’t universally accepted into arithmetic until the 18th century (Leibniz). If zero is a real number like other real numbers, then is nothing something? We also have another mathematical symbol for Nothing, ø, the null set. This notation insulates Nothing from the domain of real numbers. We are used to the idea of ‘Ineffable God’: God so far transcends our world that nothing we say about God can be true or even meaningful. Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, “God is outside the numbers.” We’re not used to the idea of ‘Ineffable Nothing’. And yet, ‘nothing’ transcends all things just as God does. God, aka Being, Value, Love, is the ontological opposite of Nothing, which is the absence of ‘I am’ ( Exodus ), ‘it is’ ( Genesis ), ‘you are’ ( Gospel of John ). We begin, as all serious philosophical essays must, with Robert Frost , the ‘Quantum Poet’. In his best known poem, The Road Not Taken , he sets out the quintessential existential dilemma: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Happens a million times a day, every day! Frost, subject to the human condition , must pick a path, ‘sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler’. Frost makes his choice, ‘I kept the first for another day’; but hero that he is, Frost realizes that this is a forever decision, that the universe bifurcates at this point: ‘Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted I should ever come back’. Nor does our hero hide behind the rationalization of ‘objectivity’; he knows that the road chosen is in no way superior to the other, for ‘both that morning equally lay’. Standing at the point of divergence, at the moment of choice, both roads are equally real, equally attractive, equally effective, and therefore ontologically identical. Frost’s choice is apparently unconditioned. He is as likely to choose A as he is B. Initially, each option has a probability of P ≈ 50%. Since each P > 0, both exist! But whenever Frost’s choice of one path becomes irrevocable (P = 100%), then the alternate route (P = 0) ceases to exist…for Frost. It is no longer part of his Actual World. Proposition : ‘X exists, iff P(x) > 0’. Once P = 0, the alternate path no longer meets Gregory Bateson’s existential criterion: it’s no longer ‘a difference that makes a difference’. When there was no longer an option for Frost to pursue ‘the road not taken’, it ceased to exist… chez Frost. Much of Western philosophy is based on a false conception of Nothing. When we say ‘nothing’ we often have in mind something: a void or a vacuum, ‘nothing’ relatively speaking, but not absolutely nothing . Our ‘nothing’ tends to be ‘something…dimly lit’, a bit like Hades in Homer’s Odyssey . It’s even been called ‘a receptacle’, ‘a womb’, an ‘ether’, ‘pure potentiality’. Today, the cognoscente call it ‘negative vacuum pressure’. Nothing can’t be any of those things, not even metaphorically. Nothing can only be nothing. Nothing has no hair. It’s not a depression left in the fabric by ‘something’ when it departs. It’s not negative space, negative energy or negative vacuum pressure; it’s not positive or negative, it’s nothing. It’s good to know that we are not alone in our thinking. Perhaps we’re not mainstream (yet) but we’re definitely not flying solo . In fact, we share our perspective with Parmenides of Elea, the father of Western philosophy: “It is not to be said or thought that ‘it is not’…It is or it is not…let go the one (it is not) as unthinkable, unnamable, for it is not a real route.” ‘The road not taken’ cannot be ‘said or thought’ or even named because ‘it is not a real route’. When Frost reaches his destination, he is surrounded by reporters all with a single question: “Why did you choose that path?” To which Frost answered, “There was more than one path?” Parmenides viewed the World as both the ‘Realm of Things as they Appear’ ( Doxa ) and the ‘Realm of things as they Are’ ( Aletheia ). In the realm of Doxa , Frost confronts an apparent existential choice. In the realm of Aletheia , the apparent ‘choice’ is without consequence and so does not ‘exist’; it’s not a ‘difference that makes a difference’ because ‘both that morning equally lay’ and both led to the same destination. There was no objective reason to prefer one over the other. So there never was an existential dilemma because there was really only ever one path (a path and its mirror image). This perspective pops up all across ‘the fruited plain’ of Western philosophy, but for now, let’s stick with Quantum Mechanics (QM)! Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ states (roughly) that everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. Corollary : Whatever did not happen could not have happened, because if it even might have happened, it would have happened. Try saying that 10 times! An entity’s worldline is its ‘route’ but apparent routes that pass through ‘counterfactual space’ are not real routes; their probabilities are all equal to 0. If it isn’t now, it never was, it could not have been, and it cannot come to be in the future. Only real routes are ‘real’. Everett channels Parmenides…2400 years later. There is ‘is’ and that’s all there is…no might, no should, no would, no could, just is. Let’s apply this way of reasoning to questions involving probabilities, beginning with a traditional Hasidic folk tale: Once upon a time, a certain Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when he encountered an elderly widow crawling on her hands and knees under a streetlamp. Not wanting to play the part of passer-by in a future production of The Good Samaritan and eager to perform one last mitzvah before going to bed for the night, the Rabbi offered to assist. "I've lost my shiny penny, the only thing I have left in the world," the widow wailed. "And is this where you lost it?" the Rabbi inquired innocently. "No," she replied. "I lost it over there." The quizzical Rabbi, still hoping to be helpful, asked, "Then why are you looking for it here?" "Because the light is better!" This story is often presented as a commentary on the widow's folly, but in fact, the widow is the hero of the story. She defies conventional wisdom. Why look for a lost penny in pitch darkness where there's no hope of finding anything? Unlit space is not part of the widow’s world; from her perspective it is Nothing. So the only ‘rational’ thing for her to do is to search under the lamplight where P > 0. Let’s rephrase: the probability of the penny being under the light is actually 100% (P = 1) because the penny has to be somewhere (P=1), and every other possibility has zero probability (P = 0): 1 – 0 = 1. But the probability of her finding the penny under the light is much, much less (P < 1)…but not zero (P > 0). Ok, this sounds officially crazy. How can the probability of the penny being under the lamp be 100% when we said earlier that the penny is probably not there? Once again, we find our answer in Quantum Mechanics. According to QM, everything is everywhere all the time and anywhere you look there is a finite possibility (however low) that you will find your quantum there…as long as you’ve confined your search to places that exist for you. Now that we’re comfortable applying Parmenides’ ontology to situations involving probabilities, we’re ready to apply it to the greatest floating craps game of all: ‘Pascal's Wager’ (1670 CE). Confronted with the God Question , French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, employed a forerunner of what is today called ‘Game Theory’. Pascal divided a sheet of paper into four quadrants. Across the top of the page, he wrote, “I believe that God exists;” down the left-hand margin, he wrote, “God does exist;” and then he filled in the appropriate truth values: (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1). Pascal reasoned that one of four things must be true: (1) I do not believe that God exists, and he doesn’t; (2) I do not believe that God exists, but he does; (3) I believe that God exists, but he doesn’t; (4) I believe that God exists, and he does. So God is ‘free’ to exist or not and you are free to believe or not. Yet, scenarios 1, 2, and 3 are effectively identical. They amount to the same thing. Believe whichever one you choose; it makes no difference. They are interchangeable because they each produce the same incremental value: (0*0) or (0*1) or (1*0), i.e. Zero. Only #4 (1*1) is different; only #4 generates incremental value. Quadrants 1, 2, and 3 do not meet Gregory Bateson’s criterion (for ‘being’, above). They produce zero incremental value so there is no ultimate value difference among them and their contribution of value to the world is null (ø). Since all other options generate 0 incremental value, P(4) must be 100% (P=1): 1 – (0 + 0 + 0) = 1. To quote a medieval Irish poet, “Naught (0) is all else to me save than Thou art!” Centuries later, Pascal proved that this is not just a statement of subjective faith…it’s a statement of objective reality. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Give us your honest opinion, please. David Cowles Sep 15, 2022 Give us your honest opinion, please. Thank you for subscribing to Aletheia Today and Thoughts While Shaving. We’re thrilled to share our insights and opinions with you. In order to continue to serve you best, we kindly ask that you take a minute to provide us with your feedback. By answering these brief questions, you'll help us improve and better serve you. Thanks again, David Cowles, Editor-in Chief Enter the survey here. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

“It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” < Back Who R U? - The Caterpillar David Cowles Mar 1, 2023 “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” I’m reading an innocuous book about DNA when I suddenly come upon a sentence that snaps my head back: “Many SNP (genetic) variants have no known consequence…but some can be crucial to who you are.” - DNA Demystified by Alan McHughen. If your head did not snap back, don’t worry; few heads would (snap or worry). But for me, this sentence is an epiphany…an epiphany of error! In fact, it would be a challenge to craft a sentence in ordinary English that was more broadly wrong than this one: “SNP variants…can be crucial to who you are.” Try, “The Patriots won every Superbowl ever played.” Wrong – it just seems that way sometimes; but this erroneous sentence is just narrowly wrong , so it doesn’t compete with McHughen’s much broader error. May I belabor the point? Telling someone they are something when they’re not is just plain cruel, even for us neo-Machiavellians. Example: In 2004, misread exit polls indicated a landslide victory for John Kerry (vs. G. W. Bush). I didn’t vote for John Kerry that year, but I have always sympathized with him. Cruel! Back to McHughen: My DNA is no part of who I am. It’s part of my world, the world I live in, but it’s not part of me : a crucial distinction. Let’s fall back on a ridiculously trite metaphor: a game of cards (doesn’t matter what game). The cards are dealt. My crowd is fond of saying, “It’s not a hand, it’s a foot.” Hand or foot, it’s what I was dealt, and it’s what I’m going to have to play. I was hoping for a “grand slam” (bridge or whist). IRL, I was hoping to play for the Boston Celtics. My hand is a jumble of 7’s and 8’s. My height is 5’ 9’’ on tip toes. I probably won’t get my grand slam, and I probably won’t play pro ball. (That doesn't mean I can’t try, but trying is not doing. I am guaranteed the unfettered right to try; I am not guaranteed positive results.) I am not those cards, and I am not this body. These are things I’ve been given to work with. So far so good, but here’s where the metaphor breaks down. In cards, I am the person behind the cards, actively playing them. IRL there is no ‘man behind the curtain’, no ‘ghost in the machine’. Let me explain. Most of the 30 trillion cells that make up my body contain a full ‘copy’ of my DNA (exception: red blood cells), but none of those cells is me. Obviously. But what about all those cells taken together? Are they me? What about the ever-evolving network of cellular interactions? Still not me. So, back to the Caterpillar’s question: “Who R U?” How about we begin with actual experience? After all, at the end of the day, there is nothing else. According to 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, to be is to experience and be experienced; so ‘experience’, let’s start there. So, how do you experience you ? Certainly not as the collection of cells we call a body (or a brain). But it’s not just that I am not a cell, a collection of cells, or even a network of cells. It’s that I am not even like any of these things! It’s not that I am ‘different’ from my cells; whatever I am is entirely unlike those cells. There are no parameters for comparison. A red ball is not a blue box. But we can compare them according to color, shape, utility, etc. No such comparison is possible between me and anything other than me (e.g., my cells). ( Sidebar : Imagine how long it must have taken civilization to convince our ‘best minds’ that the experience we call “I” is just a culture of unicellular organisms in a multidimensional petri dish! How do you do that? How do you make people believe something that silly? Why are we too anxious to think of ourselves as a ‘thing’; is this what Erich Fromm meant by “Escape from Freedom”?) Experience yourself. Take it in. Now nose around. Are you ‘like’ anything you hear, see, taste, smell, or touch? Of course not. You are an entirely unique phenomenon. So am I. In fact, you are not even like me …nor am I like you. Truth to tell, I have no idea what it’s like to be you, or a network of cells; I have no idea what it’s like to be anything at all or even what it’s like to be like something. I am, period. There’s nothing else. I am not even ‘experience’ itself; I experience experiencing. I am not the man behind the curtain: there is no man, there is no curtain, just Oz…and not-Oz. I am not the ghost in a machine: there is no ghost and no machine. It goes even deeper: I am that I am not something other than myself. My parents would be pleased: I am not like those boys who jumped off the bridge. Ok then, so what am I? Nothing? Precisely! Nothing, i.e., no thing. I am not a ‘thing’ and neither are you. Consider the alternative : Suppose I am like something else or, what amounts to the same thing, suppose I am something else. Either way, I am superfluous. The universe doesn’t need two of anything: “Lord, we don’t need another mountain…” The universe does not need carbon copies. To whatever extent I am something else or like something else, I am redundant, and the universe hates redundancy. “Idle hands”, you know… Being is a cosmic censor, relentlessly rooting out waste (e.g., duplication) before it can form. As a result, nothing is duplicative, nothing is superfluous. Again, according to Whitehead, to be is to be both novel and consequential. Mythology recapitulates cosmology. Being is Paradise, the Garden of Eden. (In Hebrew, Eden means ‘place of pleasure’; in Aramaic, it means ‘fruitful’.) But, as we know from Genesis , in Eden ‘one small step’ can turn into ‘one giant leap’ – out of Paradise. How so? A single instance of duplication would create a loop, and a single loop would freeze the universe in an endless and barren cycle of soul-numbing repetition. If anything repeats, then nothing is, was, or will ever be. My new political party will have as its slogan: “No novelty, no being!” Consider Dante’s Divine Comedy . Unwittingly, Dante ambles into the gated community we know as ‘Hell’: Dante’s Inferno , a spiral consisting of 9 descending levels (‘circles’) with the grand prize, Satan, waiting at the inflection point, the nadir of the funnel. Dante walks through Hell, past Satan, into Purgatory and eventually up to Paradise. Now suppose that just one of those infernal ‘circles’, makes no difference which one, doubles back on itself. Dante would be trapped in Hell forever, endlessly repeating the same journey. That’s the price of a single ‘error’. That’s what’s meant by the doctrine of Original Sin . Imagine living in a never-green world, bereft of all novelty, endlessly repeating itself until the ‘crack of doom’. Compared to this, Dante’s Inferno is a trip to Six Flags. One single loop, one single repetition, and all creativity is forever banished from the realm. Fortunately, there are no such loops; the universe makes no such error. We’re some 15 billion years into it and so far, not one error. Imagine you’re married to the same person for 15 billion years and never once have a fight. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The evidence is ‘merely’ inductive, but I am willing to go out on a limb and make a leap of faith (Kierkegaard beware): there will be no such error, ever! How can that be? We appear to be protected from error by some sort of omnipotent and infallible cosmic censor . Everything that is, in so far as it is, is unique. “How do I know? Occam’s Razor tells me so.” The fact that the cosmos has a censor should give us profound hope. It would take so little to make this world a living Hell. Just one error out of googles of transcriptions et voilà , ‘everlasting fire’. The very fact that there has been no such error, and apparently won’t be, can’t be, should encourage us to hope that Hell is empty (except perhaps for the Prince of Darkness) or even non-existent (good news for Lucifer, ‘light bearer’). We are offering a free tour of Hell in this issue of ATM . Sidebar : Non-believers (e.g., Bertrand Russell, Michael Ruse) make a lot of the so-called Problem of Evil. The real problem is a Problem of Good . How do you account for the fact that at the deepest possible level, the Universe is perfect? How’d that happen? Note : This is not a ‘best of all possible worlds’ argument. (Lie quiet Leibniz, I mean that is Gottfried Leibniz, c. 1600 CE) We do not live in the best of all possible worlds – far, far, far from it; but we do live in a perfect (error free) world. Memo to YHWH : There’s no more need for flood or fire. Just allow a single transcription error to slip through and walk away. Ah, but you can’t do that, can you? You tried to with Job , but that did not end well…for you. Thank you for being you! What we call ‘spacetime’ is the physical manifestation of cosmic censorship. The uniqueness of an event’s spacetime location certifies that it is not a duplicate; my coordinates are both my ‘X’ and God’s stamp of authenticity: “Inspected by #1 ”. Many things overlap with me in spacetime, but nothing else occupies the precise region that I occupy. What is co-incident with me, is me! Shift that locus a single nanodegree et voilà , something new. But note, and this is key, it is the uniqueness of events that creates spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique. Topology recapitulates ontology. So, what about this body, those cells, that DNA? None of that is me; but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. These things are part of the world I’ve inherited. My experience of the world is mediated through my genetic makeup, but I am not those genes or that world. It is not enough to say that I (ego) cannot be equated with me (id), that I am-not me. Instead, we need to say I am not-me . It is not just that there is some sort of displacement between myself as I and myself as me. Being I is not-being me . Being I is being not-me! I come to be only by negating (‘being not’) what is. This “I” is very misleading. It implies something ‘other’ than something else. In one respect, “I” is as different from everything else as anything can be; in another respect, it’s no different at all. There is no “I” apart from the world, there is no Wizard directing affairs on Oz. I-ness is embedded in the world, as it’s active negation. Ontologically speaking, ‘not’ is not an adverb or a conjunction, ‘not’ is an active voice, indicative mood verb! ~A ɛ A. ~A is the proverbial snake curled up at the core of being, A. So, “Who R U?” The caterpillar was so 19th century! He asked the quintessential question of his time, the era mislabeled as “The Enlightenment”, i.e., part of the nightmare (history) from which James Joyce says we’re struggling to awake. ‘Who R U’ is a meaningless string of vocables. I am no-who. Who-ness and I-ness are incompatible categories. Backed against a wall by his Christian and Communist critics, Jean-Paul Sartre reluctantly answered the caterpillar’s question: U R ‘Freedom’. ( Existentialism as a Humanism ) U R that you can be whoever or whatever you want to be. Whitehead coined the phrase, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. To understand our genes and our experiences as ‘us’, or even as part of ‘us’, is to succumb to this fallacy. Sidebar : Your DNA and my DNA are 99.9% the same. Yet, my experience of the world is radically different from yours, even adjusting for the fact that we experience objectively different events. Not convinced? Ok, my DNA is 50% the same as a banana’s. (Many people have told me that I am ‘bananas’ but I don’t think they meant that I experience the world the same way a banana does…or maybe that’s exactly what they meant.) We were born after 1750, so we are enlightened (whether we want to be or not); some would even say we’re woke . But woke to what? To the fact that we are star-stuff, that we are cogs in a mechanical universe, that our lives are determined by the forces of physics, sociology, psychology, et al? I am the sum of my gender, my race, my culture, my nationality, my socio-economic class, my upbringing, and the remnants of a host of more or less ‘accidental’ events that constitute my life story – NOT! I am anything but these things! No, I’m serious: anything but! I am the but ! “I am the Walrus.” If I were what the world thinks I am (above), there would be no need for me to be at all. I would be superfluous, and the universe could dispense with me. Occam’s Razor would require it. At most, I could be the nodal point of forces outside my control…or ken. But an intersection of beings is not itself a being. I am, I am nobody’s copy, I am not superfluous. To paraphrase Job, “If the cosmos cancels me, it will be the loser for it.” I am the Walrus (along with all ‘others’, of course); I am the universe’s source of novelty and its wellspring of intensity. “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” Image: Alice in Wonderland. Walt Disney Productions. 1951 David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back We All Live in a Yellow Submarine David Cowles “The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore.” (The Beatles’ iconic movie is our version of Homer’s Odyssey; it’s Mythology for the post-Enlightenment era.) We travel, but like Alice in Looking-glass World, we always seem to end up right back where we started. To go ‘some actual where’, you either need to hop the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross Station, Platform 9¾, or book passage on a certain Yellow Submarine , embarking from Liverpool Pier. We’ll pass on Hogwarts this trip; we’ve chosen the Pier, a long corridor with a series of doors running along both sides like gates in a modern airport. Open a door, take a peek, catch a glimpse - you’re definitely not in Kansas…in fact, you can’t even get to Kansas from here. Liverpool Travel offers daily departures to exotic destinations around the globe – well not exactly around the globe, more off the globe. “Delve into the depths of your subconscious mind”…or “learn the secrets of the Multiverse”. Compared to this, the Odyssey is like a 35mm slide show from the 1960s. Prodded by the pleas of a refugee, Young Fred, the Beatles book passage on a submarine heading to the mysterious Pepperland . But wait! Newly appointed, Admiral Fred ( aka ‘Young Fred’), knows a short-cut. As in the classic scene from Goodfellas , Fred takes ‘the boys’ backstage. They – now you – get to see how the sausage ( aka the cosmos) is made. How would you build a Universe? Say you were offered the job of Director for a 21st century remake of the Truman Show ; how would you build your set? Perhaps you’d start with Time: “What time is it? …It’s time for Time! …Look, the hands are slowing down…Maybe time’s gone on strike.” You are looking at Time itself, pure temporality, before the adulteration of flow (rate and direction). In Liverpool, time flows in only one direction and at only one ‘rate of speed’, but in Pepperland … The Sea of Time is the ‘womb’ for all possible versions of time; it is ‘the mother of all Time,’ literally and figuratively. Einstein might have said, “It’s time for Time !” “I don’t want to alarm you, but the years are going backwards. If we slip back through time at this rate, we’ll all disappear up out of our own existence,” warns the Admiral. To ‘disappear up out of our own existence’ is not ‘just dying’. We think of death as a divorce, not an annulment. Yellow Submarine ’obluterates’ that comforting delusion. If time is reversible, even just theoretically, and it is, then existence can be erased… retroactively! You call it ‘corn’, we call it ‘the Second Law of Thermodynamics’ (entropy). In what sense then can I claim to be…or ever to have been? Apparently, everything is built solidly on a foundation of…nothing. Am I in a community theater production of The Tempest ? Whenever you’re out of your comfort zone, you need to entertain new options. What if time itself is nothing but the clocks we use to measure it? Our intrepid crew discovers it can in fact reverse the direction of time…just by manually adjusting the clock hands. Next Stop : The Sea of Science (Space + Tech)! This sea is characterized by its rectilinear grid and by the Platonic solids that populate it. It’s ‘Plato meets Descartes’ - The Timaeus . Against this background, various waveforms undulate. Similar to black holes and holograms, this sea can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a 2-dimensional surface or a 3-dimensional space. Figures emerge out of a flat background to enclose a 3D volume, only to undergo further deformation back to 2D surfaces. Long after Yellow Submarine was in the can, it was discovered during the study of black holes that 2-dimensional surfaces and 3-dimensional spaces can encode exactly the same amount of ‘information’. Likewise, a hologram is a 3D ‘image’ generated from a 2D scrap of film. In these applications at least, a 3rd dimension is ‘optional’. It is a hallmark of mythology that it not only summarizes what is known but it predicts things yet to be uncovered. Yellow Sub meets the test. Now the voyage to Pepperland moves from the objective realms of Time and Science (Space & Technology) to more the subjective. We are entering the Sea of Monsters (objective monsters) on our way to the Headlands (subjective monsters). The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore; or if we do, we don’t recognize them properly. We Liverpudlians have done a pretty good job of purging ‘monsters’ from our immediate vicinity…but only from the immediate vicinity. Believe me, monstrosity is alive and well, as John himself would tragically experience! The Sea of Monsters is populated by a variety of creatures that exhibit some physical traits that are similar to ours but others that are very, very different. Most striking is the way that Beatle Biology allows for unusual combinations and configurations of organs. In Liverpool, we are still just experimenting with Bionics. In the Sea of Monsters, most creatures combine organic and mechanical structures. In On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (d. 1948) outlined the many functional and structural similarities linking biological and non-biological mechanisms. R. Buckminster Fuller (d. 1983) did something similar in his two-volume work, Synergistics . Ultimately, technology and biology are not incompatible: if a certain form works well in one particular medium, it might very well work in the other. Isn’t that the fundamental assumption behind AI and all Computer Science? One of the creatures in this Monstrous Sea is the ‘dreaded vacuum.’ Like a black hole, this creature sucks into itself everything in its environment. “We’ll be sucked into oblivion…or even further,” says Young Fred; and sure enough, they are! The vacuum cleaner monster not only sucks up all objects in its path, including our sub and its crew; it also sucks up the fabric of spacetime itself. Ultimately, it even sucks itself, tail first, into oblivion: The Beatles’ universe is a vanishing ouroboros . The vacuum leaves us with precisely nothing, nothing that is, except Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD (JHB). But that’s ok because the Boob is ‘nothing,’ quite literally: 1 + (~1) = Boob Dr. Boob lives in the infinitesimal space Derrida calls ‘differance’. If Universe is a black hole, the Boob is Hawking radiation, pure information. In fact, Jeremy consists of all the information that existed in the universe prior to its implosion. Hawking codified what Ringo had demonstrated earlier: Information is conserved but confused in the Boob. Take this snippet of dialog, for example: “Do you speak English?” - “Old English, Middle English, a dialect pure.” “But do you speak English?” - “You know I’m not sure.” What else remains? The submarine itself. Even though the sub was sucked up by the vacuum monster, it avoids ‘oblivion’ because, turns out, the sub is the Eternal Present. It cannot be destroyed; it instantly regenerates itself. (We’ve been looking for this at least since the days of Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth.) Presence is sui generis . Next stop: the Foothills of the Headlands. Headlands is the domain of pure thought, taking the form of transparent heads, unencumbered by useless bodies. In the Headlands, thoughts lack orientation, consistency, coherence, purpose, and effect. (Hmm, sounds like we’re ‘inside the Beltway’!) In the Headlands, we see the consequences of an ‘all-in-the-mind’ ontology (e.g., Philosophical Idealism) and believe me, it’s not pretty. Bottom line: “mind matters but mind matter” - a bumper sticker? A souvenir from our trip? After the Headlands…the Sea of Holes! We’ve passed through brains & bodies, forms & ideas; what’s left? Nothing? Exactly, nothing , but that’s a good thing! Now we are passing into the realm of ‘negative space’. The usual relation of figure and ground is reversed. The sea itself is the ground, and the holes in that sea now constitute the figure. Nothing exists, something doesn’t! Nothingness ( Le Neant ) is what’s concrete…so concrete that Ringo is able to put a ‘hole’ in his pocket. The Sea of Holes is the inflection point in our journey. The ‘figure-ground’ relationship has reversed; for the rest of the voyage, it’s ‘ground-figure.’ The topology of the Sea of Holes is radically non-orientable. There is no consistent directionality, no spatial ordering. It’s ‘Escher’ on steroids. In fact, the Sea of Holes is a paradigmatic example of non-orientability. Any system ( Pepperland ) that contains a ‘locally non-orientable’ component (like the Sea of Holes) must be ‘globally non-orientable’ as well. It turns out that our orientable universe is just a unique configuration in the infinite sea of non-orientability. In a non-orientable universe, there are no privileged vantage points or directions. In fact, there are no beginnings, middles or ends at all. However, every ‘point’ has two distinct and opposite orientations (like ‘up and down arrows’ on a Mobius strip). The Netflix series, Stanger Things , refers to the ‘Upside Down World.’ Now, we're ready to cross into Pepperland at last…if only we could find it. But first, we must pass through one more sea, the Sea of Green. There’s a catch: out of a seemingly infinite array of holes, only one hole connects the Sea of Holes to the Sea of Green and Pepperland . This is a problem for our Argonauts! As we know from the study of Black Holes, all holes look the same, they have ‘no hair’; so we can’t examine the holes for clues. There is only one possible way out: stochastic trial and error…which has an infinitesimal likelihood of success. Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the one and only hole that functions as a passageway to the Sea of Green, an almost featureless, ultra-thin membrane separating the other branes from Pepperland . So full speed ahead! Once the Beatles arrive in Pepperland , they discover that they bear an “uncanny” resemblance to four of its permanent residents, “the originals”, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course, we later learn that the Beatles are the Sergeant Pepper band! Initially, “the originals” are separated from the rest of Pepperland by a big glass dome. It is as if the cosmos were censoring itself. If the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then both ‘copies’ cannot coexist in one universe; one copy must be confined on a separate mini-brane. The ‘big glass bowl’ maintains the ‘cosmic order.’ But that order is about to be shattered! Remember, Ringo has a ‘hole’ in his pocket (from the Sea of Holes). Ringo applies the hole to the side of the “big glass bowl” and through the agency of what-is-not , the ontological barrier dissolves and the two realities meet on the same extensive plane. Ringo’s hole (nothing) connects the temporal Beatles with their eternal alter-egos. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the Beatles under the aspect of eternity while the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Band under the aspect of history. When Ringo’s hole connects the two realms, we learn that the division of the Universe into ‘temporal’ and ‘eternal’ rests on a false distinction. Temporality and eternity are complementary aspects of a single phenomenon. Think waves and particles. So, it turns out that Liverpool and Pepperland are really the same place! We never left the Pier after all. I’ll expect a refund from Liverpool Travel . Liverpool is the spatiotemporal aspect of Pepperland as Pepperland is the eternal aspect of Liverpool. Nothing that happens in Liverpool stays in Liverpool. Whatever happens in Liverpool happens in Pepperland …and vice-versa. In the language of the Gospels, “On earth as it is in heaven.” In the language of Quantum Mechanics (Bell’s theorem, 1964), Liverpool and Pepperland are ‘entangled.’ And what about the sub itself? That’s also Pepperland . It’s Presence. In the language of Christian eschatology, Pepperland is ‘the kingdom not yet’ while the Sub is ‘the kingdom already’. In the language of Christian ecclesiology, the Sub is the Church. Finally, in the language of Christian theology, Yellow Submarine is solidly ‘Trinitarian’: Temporality (Liverpool), Eternity ( Pepperland ), and Presence (the Sub) are the three facets ( personae ) of Being. In the end…it’s all Pepperland ! At Aletheia Today , it is our conviction that Science, Philosophy and Theology, long mutually estranged, are starting to re-converge. If so, Yellow Submarine might be seen as a shot across the Enlightenment’s bow, finally celebrating the official end of the real Dark Ages (1500 – 1900 CE, Machiavelli through Marx) and new synthesis that will characterize the ‘dawning Age of Aquarius’. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Groundhog Issue 2025 Share Previous Next

“The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” < Back Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality David Cowles Jul 15, 2024 “The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” Whether it’s a copy of the 10 Commandments posted on your classroom wall or a list of ‘Daddy’s House Rules’ stuck on your refrigerator door, when you’re a kid you learn ‘morality’ as a set of rules. In fact, the foundation of Western ethics, the Torah , looks like one giant rules-based moral code – all 4 books and all 613 mitzvahs . While Judeo-Christian ethics proceeded along several different tracks, a serious challenge to rules-based morality was not mounted until c.1500 CE when Nicollo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) proposed an alternative better suited to emerging ‘modern’ attitudes. In lieu of a system based on rules he proposed a system based on results: “The end justifies the means”. Note the sea-change: our focus has shifted from the past (experience, memory, custom, legislation, and revelation) to the future (technology, efficiency, productivity and profit). There’s at least one problem with this: the real future is nothing like the real past! We know what we know about the past in the ways that we know it. What we know about the future is different both in substance (content) and in form. And we know it in very different ways. We research the past; we predict the future. In ways I’m sure he didn’t imagine, Machiavelli played Chanticleer ; but instead of summoning the dawn, he summoned ‘the great darkness’ known as the Enlightenment. No wonder we were able to sell so many tickets to Game #8 of the 1956 World Series! By taking the ethical focus off the concrete event, the means , and shifting it to its ephemeral consequence, the end , Machiavelli provided a readymade, universal justification for every human engineered horror imaginable. Compare this to Moses: “Thou shalt not kill.” Ok, we can still fudge that with our convoluted doctrines of just war, death with dignity, reproductive freedom, self-defense, and retributive justice; but we can’t make it go away entirely. For that we needed Machiavelli: now the act of killing , like all acts, is itself morally neutral. Moral value comes from the results, the consequences of an act, not from any aspect of the act itself. That’s saying a lot! We’re not only throwing out the action per se but also its motive, its intent, and the method of its execution. So, we justify genocide, nuclear war, et al., based on imagined, long term, positive consequences. A bit hard to swallow but not to worry: 300 years later, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill would give Machiavelli a much-needed make-over. In the ‘spirit of the spin’, they reframed ‘the end justifies the means’ as ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Clever, but note that the focus remains on consequences rather than on acts themselves. Sidebar : Intellectual History is full of similar progressions. For example, Matthew and Luke ‘cleaned-up’ Mark to get the Gospel message ready for prime time . First year philosophy students don’t necessarily warm to Machiavelli’s rather dry presentation of his ethic. But when they hear the same message softened by Bentham and Mill and presented under its new name, Utilitarianism , they jump on board. In fact, when college students are first exposed to idea of Utilitarianism , their usual reaction is, “Of course!” This by itself should raise an eyebrow. Whenever an idea goes from inconceivable to irrefutable in a relatively short period of time, we should be en garde . We may be looking at a shift in the cultural paradigm rather than true intellectual progress. After the Bentham-Mill reformulation of Machiavelli’s ideas, acceptance spread quickly. Now Dostoevsky could say, “Now, everything is permitted,” as could Malcom X, “By any means necessary!” How did it happen that an ethic ‘unimaginable’ before 1500 became ‘obvious’ by 1800? The cultural phenomenon known as Renaissance , the ideological phenomenon known as Reformation , and the intellectual phenomenon known as Enlightenment , combined with the sociological phenomenon of Industrialization , to drag the Western world into its only true Dark Age (1700 – 1900)…the so-called Age of Reason . Hmm… Sidebar : Let me digress for just a minute to consider the Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel. Babel refers generally to the phenomena of urbanization (Cain) and industrialization, and it spotlights the adverse impact of these activities on language. Our language evolved organically out of the infamous ‘human condition’. It had to serve many functions simultaneously. Initially at least, Homo Sapiens did not have the luxury of specialized languages for different functions. The earliest languages had to be suited to interpersonal communication, philosophical reflection, and artistic expression, as well as industry and commerce. For example, many languages contain a syntactic variable we call Voice . OG Indo-European languages typically had 3 robust voices: An Active Voice well suited to the communication of information. A Passive Voice ideal for the expression of emotion. A Middle Voice suited to model the interpersonal aspects of life. Unfortunately, the Middle Voice has largely disappeared, and the Passive Voice has atrophied into a degenerative form of the Active Voice; et voila , humanity today! We’re very good at making things, period. To misquote George W. Bush, “We’re all ends, no means.” To oversimplify just a bit, Babel made the world safe for Machiavelli but Bentham made it safe for Bolshevism. How ever did we go so wrong? Turns out, the problem is not primarily an ethical issue at all; it’s an ontological one. It comes back to what we mean when we talk about an entity or an event . As our instruments have become more precise and our measurements more accurate, our notion of ‘an event’ is shrinking closer and closer to a singularity. We have stripped away motive, intention, tone, and even result from the event itself. We are left with a 4-dimensional canopy of point-like events, linked by ultra-thin filaments to form a causal web. That world exhibits a high degree of conformity, repetition and even redundancy. It is causal to the point of being deterministic . But we have so pared down the power and scope of ‘events’ that they hardly seem to matter anymore. Our focus is ‘on the big picture’ now – ongoing trends, not grand finales. But fortunately, this is not how the world works! Events are the building blocks of reality. Not that everything is an event, but whatever is not an event is ‘real’ only as it participates in an event. Events populate regions of spacetime (not necessarily contiguous) with internal structures and external relations, kind of like nation states. An even better analogy would be a human cell. Per se , it is an independent entity, but as such it supports a myriad of higher order (more general) entities like tissues, organelles, organs, the host organism itself, and who knows, the Genus Homo , Gaia or even Kosmos . Where did the morality of Machiavelli and Mill go wrong? The problem lies in a faulty conception of a consequence. If I throw a rock at a garage window and the window breaks, it’s reasonable to regard the broken window as a ‘consequence’ of the thrown ball, though the event actually encompasses the throwing gesture, the trajectory of the rock, and the breaking of the glass. We want the next moment to relate to the shattered glass in the same way the shattered glass relates to the thrown ball. But, again, that is not how the world works. Perhaps a dog will run through the garage and cut its paw leading to a trip to the vet, interrupted by an auto accident along the way. Or perhaps the ricocheting ball also knocked over a space heater causing a fire that destroyed 3 city blocks. Or perhaps nothing special happened after the window broke; under the right circumstances, it might not be discovered for weeks. We can reasonably say that the broken glass is an ‘effect’ (vary likely but not certain) of the thrown ball. We can also say that ‘accident’, ‘fire’, and ‘eh!’ are alternative, less likely effects of the broken glass. And because we got an ‘A’ in 3rd grade arithmetic, we want to be able to say that the thrown ball is the cause of the accident, fire, and eh scenarios…but we can’t. The Transitive Property (If A = B and B = C then A = C) does not hold in the real world. Put another way, causality is part of the ‘internal structure’ of an event but plays no role in its ‘external relations’. It’s impossible to know all the possible consequences, or even the one actual consequence, of any act. Every event is sui generis and causa sui . It seems that the famous Law of Cause and Effect should have broader consequences – but it doesn’t. Causality exists. The problem is that we can never specify with certainty any or all effects, or any and all causes, for any given event. That means that nothing causes any thing but everything causes every thing…which I think you’ll agree compromises the value of the concept itself. Furthermore, we would need to follow the chain of causes all the way back to the moment of Big Bang and extend the chain of effects all the way forward to Heat Death. Yet this is still not the real problem ! Now we need to create an algebra that assigns a scalar ‘value’ and a vector ‘weight’ to every event in the chain (above) and an operation that allows us to calculate a single, unequivocal Value for the consequence in question. That evaluation, in turn, allows me to conclude that this aggregate end does, or does not, justify the means that led up to it. Impossible! The notion of a specific, evaluable end is an illusion. Actions do have consequences, but we have no meaningful way to project those consequences or to evaluate their totality . Another way to look at this is as a ‘halting problem’: When is enough, enough? Can we ever say, “Ok, I’ve identified and evaluated all the significant consequences?” I don’t think so; and therefore, no act can ever be justified by its ‘ends’ because either (1) it has no end or (2) one and the same end is the omega point of every possible causal chain. If we reject Legalism and Utilitarianism in ethics, what’s left? The act itself. Actions are moral or immoral based on the act alone. Actions derive their value, neither from their obedience to a list of rules nor from their so-called consequences. Acts are moral or immoral on their own. But how? To grasp this core principle, we need to drill down our notion of what constitutes an event. The ever-contracting perspective of physical science is offset by the ever-expanding perspective of biological science. An ‘event’ begins as a reaction to a particular state-of-affairs. This reaction is powered by the objective, universal values that inform one way or another every event. Events are sui generis , self-aware, and self-modifying. Each event has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That end is not a ‘consequence’; it is the event itself, projected into the actual world of every logically subsequent event. The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality. But an act is not a gesture. It begins with the first stirring of appetition and it proceeds through various phases of intent. It embodies aspects of the world it inherits, colored by its own subjectivity. Ultimately, every event is its own end! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Mirror, Mirror On the Wall David Cowles Aug 27, 2024 “Reflexivity is built into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Universe is its own mirror! Without reflexivity, the cosmos would be inert, mindless, and without meaning.” Consciousness – the Hard Problem, per David Chalmers. What is it? Who has it? How does it work? What’s it ‘like’ to be conscious? Is it the sound of one hand clapping? As we learn more and more about the structure of the human brain and the perceptual capabilities of non-human life forms (organic and otherwise), the long felt need to find a consensus model of consciousness is growing more urgent. There is a tendency for models to grow more complex with each new iteration. Something like that is happening right now in the fields of cosmology, particle physics, and biology. The steady complexification of theory is often, usually in fact, a clue that the theory itself is somehow ‘wrong’. Remember Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe? Hello Galileo! Typically, when we build a model, we start by following the architect’s blueprint for the Tower of Babel , one story teetering on top of another…until suddenly the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards. So we welcome the fresh air of heliocentricity, relativity, and quantum mechanics! Perhaps in the case of consciousness we can avoid this painful odyssey. My preferred model for consciousness is a simple mirror, or to be more precise, reflexivity per se . A mirror, as Lewis Carroll taught us ( Through the Lookingglass ), has no intrinsic content. Likewise, while mirrors come in all sizes, shapes and designs, the ‘mirror-part’ is the same in every case. Reflection is reflection and that’s all there is to it. Not that I envision a cosmos full of disembodied shards of silver backed glass floating in space. Rather I suspect that reflexivity is built into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Universe is its own mirror! Reflexivity is characteristic of any non-orientable topology, e.g. a Mobius strip. If, as I suspect, our universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable (see below), then reflection (mirroring) may be a local manifestation of global reflexivity. The recent discovery of Rondeau Time Crystals (RTC) is relevant here (Moon, et al., Nature Physics , October 14, 2025). An RTC consists of two ordered states ( Alpha & Omega ) separated by a chaotic state ( Delta ). The two ordered states relate deterministically but their topology is non-orientable. The elements in the Omega state are ‘reciprocals’ of those same elements in the Alpha state. The chaotic, intermediary Delta state is where we live and here events appear orientable. All mirrors are identical, but no two mirror images are ever the same. A mirror reflects what is reflected. Likewise, consciousness – a reflector reflecting. Without reflected content, a mirror cannot reflect and so is not a ‘mirror’ at all; it’s just silver backed glass. Without reflexivity, the cosmos would be inert, mindless, and without meaning. Meaning is reference between two distinct classes of phenomena, e.g. a map and a territory, an object and its image, symbol and signified. Object and image, for example, are ‘mutually transcendent’ – that’s a pre-condition for meaning . Even before syntax, language has meaning, e.g. an object and a word that denotes that object ( Namo ). Of course, words can be objects and objects can be words, but not in this context. We are strictly speaking of words as symbols and objects as what words symbolize. In one respect, language is ‘objective’ and therefore part of the world; but in a more important sense, it is ‘symbolic’ and therefore transcends the world. Likewise, consciousness may, or may not, be dependent on certain structures, neural or otherwise, but it is not those structures per se . Again, these ‘structures’ are part of the world that consciousness reflects…and transcends. When we speak of ‘consciousness’, we are not referring to whatever physical structures may support it. In fact, it appears that wildly different physical configurations may support consciousness. This lends further support to the idea that a universal potentiality for consciousness is woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. How is consciousness like a mirror? A mirror has no intrinsic content. It acquires 100% of its content from what it reflects. Every mirror, in so far as it reflects, is the same. I am conscious and someone in Tibet is conscious. We share few life experiences, but to the extent that we are both conscious, we are identical …not merely congruent. Consciousness is a single phenomenon, manifest in multiple environments and circumstances. No two manifestations of consciousness are the same but consciousness per se is identical everywhere and everywhen. What a mirror actually reflects is light. Without light, a mirror has no content, i.e. no image. When an organism dies, the ‘mirror’ associated with that organism goes dark; it no longer reflects light (an image). It ceases to be a ‘mirror’; therefore it is no longer conscious . Its physical properties no longer support conscious experience. However, this does not necessarily resolve Hamlet’s dilemma: “To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.” In the language of AI, could it be that our dark and imageless reflexivity will yet ‘hallucinate’? (After all, we know that AI ‘hallucinates’; why not ‘NI’ - natural intelligence?) Perhaps, it is still too soon to award the laurel wreath to Horatio! But there is a ‘silver’ lining to all this! Because chaotic Delta is strung between highly ordered Alpha and Omega , Delta inherits its fundamental topology from its boundary conditions. Think of a hammock strung between two trees. Per se , it has no shape but because of the trees it assumes a catenary shape, the only ‘minimal surface’ in nature (other than a plane). It's the natural shape that forms when a rope, chain, or fabric hangs freely between two points. Note that the trees do not cause the hammock to assume the characteristic shape. Nothing about the trees gives the hammock its curve. Rather, it is the natural shape assumed by whatever hangs freely between two terminals. Delta ‘hangs freely’ between Alpha and Omega and therefore it inherits a very specific, and very fortunate, topology. That topology permits islands of spatiotemporal order to form spontaneously (bootstrapping?) in Delta ’s otherwise chaotic medium. In Moon’s terminology, the two end states ‘fine tune’ the intermediary ( Delta ) state without compromising its essentially chaotic nature. These islands of order enable the cosmos to encode information. We live on (actually, in) such an island; we are pure information. Information is a pattern. Alpha and Omega are the pattern of all patterns. A pattern (island) in Delta may resonate (harmonize) with a pattern in Alpha/Omega . In which case that pattern is immediately bilocated, in Alpha/Omega and in Delta . Marcel Proust provides an analog in Remembrance of Things Past . The sensation of cobblestones in France recapitulates a similar sensation felt years earlier in Italy. Immediately, the resonance bilocates Proust in France-now and Italy-then. In an identical manner, when a pattern in our lives ( Delta ) resonates with a pattern in Alpha/Omega , we are bilocated: our temporal existence merges with atemporality ( aka eternity). The Christian doctrine of Incarnation tells of the merger of atemporal divinity with temporal humanity. Rondeau Time Crystals reverse the process: temporality is absorbed in eternity. So for those of us who aspire to eternal life, to leaving a permanent mark in the cosmos, ‘all we have to do’ is create patterns in our own lives that are in harmony with patterns in Alpha/Omega , i.e. in the ‘Garden’ and the ‘Kingdom’, i.e. in God. But how on earth do we do that ? Easy! God is Good . Beauty, Truth, and Justice are good. Therefore, they are found among the patterns in Alpha and Omega ; they are part of God’s essential nature. Therefore, whenever we foster beauty, truth and/or justice, we create a pattern in Delta that resonates in Alpha/Omega , and we assure ourselves at least a modicum of eternal life. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Robert Frost, Quantum Mechanic Robert Frost This article offers the best overall introduction to Frost and his contribution: Robert Frost was Wrong So woods-walking Frost finds himself at a crossroads. Like each of us 100 times every day, he must make a choice. But what is the nature of ‘choice’ per se? The Road Taken Frost’s poem can be viewed in light of the more recently developed Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of QM. We argue that what Frost proposes is not MWI…but better! Janis Joplin and Robert Frost Finally, we examine Frost’s contribution to the ‘Freedom vs. Values’ debate and include perspectives from Joplin, Nietzsche, Sartre, and…wait for it…Pope Leo XIII. The Frost Diamond We expound on the ontological implications of Frost’s model, comparing its structure to that of a liquid, suggesting parallels with Heraclius (everything flows): Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Do Bots Know Beauty? “I…propose…that we make this the test, not Turing’s, of whether a bot is conscious." David Cowles Alan Turing proposed that we judge the sentience of AI programs based solely on their ability to mimic convincingly human responses to a battery of questions posed by a trained examiner. Recent advances in AI technology suggest that we will soon have, if we don’t already, machines that can pass Turing’s Test. (On the other hand, I have doubts about some of my carbon-based neighbors…but that is another subject for a different day .) Are we willing to accept the results of Turing’s Test as definitive? Or will we ‘move the goal posts’? Now that you’ve learned your ABC’s, Sally, please recite them again, but this time in reverse order and, oh yeah, in ancient Greek…if you don’t mind. (We’re not going to let some snot-nosed rugrat show off in front of us! After all, we can all recite the Greek alphabet backwards, can’t we?) So come on, Sally; get crackin’: Omega, Psi…” Turing devised his ‘test’ in the context of the materialism, pragmatism, and behaviorism of his time. It is understandable that we might now want to review Turning’s proposal in the context of a more contemporary, more expansive, ideology. It is interesting how an issue that forms the cornerstone of one school of philosophy can be discounted as a mere distraction by a different school. At Aletheia Today we are admittedly ‘hung-up’ on the question of values – objective, transcendent values. If such values exist, then an ontologically flat, wholly immanent universe ( a la Nietzsche ) is simply not possible. On the other hand, if such values do not exist, then ethics and aesthetics are just matters of taste…if that. Without objective, transcendent values, free will becomes caprice. In fact, it is hard to see how any events can ever occur in a universe bereft of motivation, incentives, objectives, and purpose. But not everyone agrees with this analysis. So, let’s get granular! I recently encountered a work of ‘art’ (above) that is almost certainly computer generated. I know nothing about the provenance of this piece, but judging by the style and content, I can only assume that an AI Bot was given specific input re themes, images, etc. and then allowed to ‘create’. Nothing is ‘wrong’ with the result…except that it is not beautiful . The Bot followed instructions, and produced this ‘Rube Goldberg’, all according to spec. The piece contains some interesting local details and flourishes – geometric shapes, meditations on gravity, modulation of colors - but none of it hangs together. The piece has competent parts, but there’s no sense of a ‘whole’, perhaps because that would require the Bot to step back and consider its work as a whole…which may be something that this Bot cannot do. The Golden Mean notwithstanding, do we think it is possible to reduce Beauty and Truth, “all ye know of earth and all ye need to know” (Keats) to an algorithm? Actually, we discovered part of that answer while Alan Turing was still in school. In 1931, Kurt Godel proved that mathematics could not be reduced to a system of algorithms: ‘There are more (true) things in heaven and earth…’ than can be proven in any logical system. According to John Keats (above), “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.” I agree with Keats, but I would modify his dictum with a nod to Alfred North Whitehead . Beauty is the broader, more inclusive category; Truth and Justice are specific (albeit peculiar) manifestations of ‘Beauty’ (harmony, consistency, etc.). Do Bots know beauty? Can they create something unique that is also ‘beautiful’? Of course, they can! They’re doing it today…and have been for a couple of decades now. Contemporary artists use the microprocessor as we would a paint brush…and they get similar results. But the ‘beauty part’ comes entirely from the artist. The artist creates, the Bot executes the artist’s instructions. The relevant question remains, “Can a Bot create Beauty on its own?” An artist can step back from a canvass and say, “Eureka, it’s finished!” or “Nope, not yet.” Can a Bot, on its own, make a similar judgment? They say the soul of every artistic creation, in any medium, is editing. Can Bots edit? Can they look at a perfectly coherent finished product and say, “Something’s not right here” or “something’s missing” or “it’s too busy” or “it doesn’t read well ”? One of the hardest parts of being an artist is knowing when something is done, finished, complete. There is always a temptation to change a word, add a brush stroke, alter a chord; how do you know when to stop? How does a Bot? Yet knowing when to stop is a critical component of the creative process. I don’t propose to give a definitive answer here. I’m guessing Stanley Kubrick ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ) would answer these questions differently from Roger Penrose ( The Emperor’s New Clothes ). I do propose, however, that we make this the test, not Turing’s, that determines whether a Bot is conscious . Have you ever stood on uneven pavement where one foot was slightly higher than the other? It’s unsettling to say the least. That, in my view, is the origin of consciousness. Our mental apparatus compares immanent ‘reality’ with the transcendent values (Beauty, Truth, and Justice) that govern the Universe; the perceived imbalance gives rise to conscious experience. No values, no consciousness! Therefore, demonstrating that a Bot, on its own, can identify what’s beautiful, true, or just, absent specific operator instructions, would satisfy me that the Bot is conscious , i.e., that it can recognize and apply Value without operator prompts. My test is easy to devise but much harder to conduct. Bots are master mimics. When we think of mimicry, we think of monkeys and parrots. (However, we now suspect that their behavior is less mime and more consciously chosen behavior.) Bots, on the other hand, are built to mimic. They can ingest and regurgitate a 12-year curriculum in seconds. Then they can adjust that knowledge base as new facts are added and even as teaching methods modernize. Take, for example, the picture shown above. I could tell my Bot in my most avuncular tone, “This is a good start, but it’s not quite what I had in mind. Try blending the colors a little more, add some more interesting background detail, work the foreground figure into the tableau.” My Bot and I could repeat this process ad nauseam , eventually getting to a point where I might say, “Ok, we’re done here. Good job!” Is this ‘creation’? Can it be ‘beautiful’? Yes and yes! But is the Bot the creator…or am I? Beauty, Truth, and Justice are transcendent values. They are manifestations of eternity in spacetime. Stepping outside of Nietzsche’s ‘ontologically flat world’ to view that world as a whole, accessing transcendent values and applying those values to the situation at hand – that’s consciousness . I believe that I have the capacity to do just that, and I take it as a working hypothesis that I share that capacity with most other human beings and with at least some other terrestrial life forms. But how about AI Bots? Do they share this capacity? Can they? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

< Back COVID-19 David Cowles Feb 15, 2024 “[COVID-19] was the first virus to figure out in a major way how to escape immunity…” Thoughts While Shaving does not normally get involved in anything so mundane as a ‘current event’ but a recent article by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times (11/21/23), which I quote liberally below, just raised so many flags, both red and checkered, that... The COVID-19 virus that departed Wuhan late in 2019 is now virtually extinct - but hold the bubbly: before exiting stage right, ‘Virus Zero’ mutated…and mutated…and mutated. These ‘better adapted variants’, more than our lockdowns and vaccines, put Virus Zero out of business. Unfortunately, this mutation process has continued in a way that should alarm us all: “[COVID-19] was the first virus to figure out in a major way how to escape immunity,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Frightening as this is, it puts a spotlight on something that applies to process in general…so ‘general’ that it’s rarely noticed: “Dr. Lemieux and many other Omicron experts suspect that the variant gained its new mutations while infecting a single person with a weak immune system.” Apparently, the virus released from Wuhan found a single immune-compromised host and mutated: “Now it has become Omicron, destroyer of world”. It’s straight out of the Bhagavad Gita …or Marvel Comics . In fact, it goes beyond even Stan Lee…it goes straight to the structure of Universe itself. In theology, this is called the Scandal of Particularity : assuming God is incarnate, why just once, and if just once, why in the person of a first-century carpenter from the Galilee? Of course, the answer is just as simple and as obvious as it is unsatisfying: “Why not?” We fantasize that things move in a straight line, but of course, we know they don’t. So we imagine they radiate outward according to some stable function: f(x) = x², for example. But things are much, much crazier than we imagine. To bastardize the language of calculus, the first derivative of any event is 1 (identity): it is identical with itself; it is its own slope, its own rate of change. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, there is nothing outside the event that can determine or even measure the event itself. But the second derivative is undefined: call it 0 or ∞ or ø. Our event occupies a range (t₁ - t₂) with a defined trajectory; beyond that range, we have no information. We are forced to treat our event as a quantum whole; we know nothing of the event beyond the event itself. Yet our event is objectively immortal. It is no longer subject to modification, but it projects itself forward into the multiplicity (M) from which novel events emerge. But there is no function that can connect our event with the events that follow it. A virus infected a person, and a planet was brought to a standstill; a butterfly flapped its wings, and a tornado ravaged Chicago. This is the world we live in. Mr. Zimmer: “In the two years since its emergence, Omicron has proved to be not only staggeringly infectious, but an evolutionary marvel, challenging many assumptions virologists had before the pandemic. It has given rise to an impressive number of descendants, which have become far more adept at evading immunity and finding new victims.” We know that viruses can ‘learn’, but are they now ‘learning to learn’? Is Omicron ‘AI’… in a dot? As Omicron continues to mutate, sometimes two Omicron viruses wind up in the same cell. Just as kids used to swap baseball cards (back in the Pleistocene), viruses now swap genes. The result: new hybrid viruses with converging genetic histories. One of these hybrids is called XBB. It easily infects people, even those who had already been infected with Alpha, Delta, or Omicron. As a result, XBB became dominant in the United States in early 2023. But now even XBB is ebbing as a menagerie of even more evasive variants has evolved. Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, summed up the situation perfectly: “Right now we’re in a period of chaos.” But take a memo to Marc: “The ‘period of chaos’ you reference is actually the lifespan of the universe.” Hello, JN1 - this mutated form has become the most resistant version of coronavirus yet. It appears to be growing quickly in France and may soon spread to other countries. Where are we headed? Are there any limits to the ingenuity of this virus? Is it just stumbling on favorable adaptations…or is it really ‘learning to learn’? Even if we ultimately find a way to defeat this pathogen, do we need to be concerned that new viruses will emerge with similar ‘immunity evading intelligence’? That may depend on your choice of an origin story . If the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of a one-off species crossover, then the risk of a repetition anytime soon is probably small, but if it was the by-product of bioengineering, we should all be afraid, very, very afraid. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Education Mess in America David Cowles Oct 3, 2024 “The ability to acquire new skills, absorb new information, and solve new problems will be the mark of an educated person, not their SAT scores.” 50 years ago public education in America was in crisis. Functional literacy was on the decline, standardized test scores were falling, drop-out rates rising. Public support for public education was at a low point. Private alternatives were proliferating, and the homeschool movement was organizing. Then, in the 1990s, things started to turn around. As is often the case, one of the first shots fired came from Massachusetts . In 1993, the state implemented a rigorous standardized testing program, called MCAS, that allowed parents and educators to compare students, schools, and districts. Bulletin : A town’s MCAS scores became a factor in determining its real estate values! Parents were suddenly motivated…and kids weren’t far behind. Not unexpectedly, test scores skyrocketed! Public education was back. Not unexpectedly, special interest groups howled and 30 years later, the battle rages on. In November (2024), MA voters will be asked to eliminate MCAS as a requirement for high school graduation; the outcome is anyone’s guess. Then in 2020, along came COVID! Education everywhere suffered and MA MCAS scores were not exempt. But as the pandemic subsided, the cognoscente trusted that scores would rebound, that annual progress would revert to mean; many expected that pandemic losses would be erased over time. Very unexpectedly, that has not happened. MCAS scores have not made up for lost ground, they did not revert to mean, they did not even stabilize. They have continued to fall. This article is not just about education! It’s about how society responds to a collective crisis, how it analyzes problems and how it dreams up solutions. Educational achievement does not occur in a classroom or in a school or in a state. Educational achievement happens in each student, individually. Of course, it’s possible to measure an artificial cross section of those students’ skill levels, e.g. by subjecting them to population-wide standardized testing; but if you don’t like the results, these test scores tell you precisely nothing about how to make impactful changes. It's no wonder then that the MA educational establishment is proposing a revolutionary approach to the problem: “More of the same!” Just do more of what we’ve been doing; things will get better. Trust us! Is there a single person alive who thinks this makes sense? Didn’t someone tell me once that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was the definition of insanity? And yet it’s the establishment’s consensus recommendation: longer school days, longer school years, shorter vacations, fewer electives, etc. More of the same is our knee-jerk reaction to every crisis. Education does not happen collectively; it happens individually. One student might benefit from a longer school day and her performance might improve; another student might become bored, depressed, apathetic and see his performance plummet. Most students would be unaffected – more miserable, but otherwise unaffected. Whatever the impact of this ‘carpet bombing’ strategy on standardized test scores, we would learn nothing about what’s happening at the level of the individual student. If our goal is to educate young people up to a reasonable percentage of their potential, we need to look at many variables more important than test scores: How has the educational process impacted the student’s self-confidence and self-worth? Their problem solving skills? Their native curiosity? Their creativity? Have they learned to work on their own and to work in teams? Have they learned to cope with stress? To overcome obstacles? Most importantly, have they ‘learned to learn’ and have they come to love learning for its own sake? Do I sound New Age? Maybe! I do know this: in the coming years, the ability to acquire new skills, absorb new information, and solve new problems will be the mark of an educated person, not their SAT scores - to like to learn and to be good at it, not an ivy-league diploma. Now, if you are among those folks willing to sacrifice academic achievement in the service of various social objectives, you have by now no doubt concluded that I am on your side. You could not be more wrong! I believe that the social aspects of learning will facilitate the academic and that academic achievement, the mastery of subjects and skills, will help us realize our social goals. They are not at cross purposes; they go hand-in-hand. None of this has much to do with population-wide test scores, but if a student focused strategy is working, its success will ultimately show up in those scores. But that is a knock-on benefit; it can’t be the primary objective! Kids are like quanta. Bombarding them with information ( aka energy) does nothing; but just the right amount of energy delivered at just the right wavelength can bring about a quantum leap! So where does this leave us in our current educational crisis? Rather than a more of the same one-size-fits-all approach, we need to recognize that education takes place one student at a time. A society is not educated; its members are! Educators need to develop a PEP – “Personal Education Plan” for each student. That plan must attend to all aspects of education for all students, but in different proportions for different students, depending on their needs at particular points in their educational careers. Now I understand that we are ‘resource constrained’; a 1 to 1 teacher-student ratio is not in the cards. But longer school hours won’t come without a cost either…and the return on such an investment will be nil (or net negative). Better to take whatever we’re prepared to spend on more-of-the-same and invest it instead in programs and resources that would bring us closer to the realization of a PEP strategy for all students. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue The Great Convergence Science & The Yellow Submarine Part I Yellow Submarine is much more than just a delivery vehicle for the Beatles’ 1960s musical repertoire. The film addresses important ontological and cosmological issues, and it offers some truly remarkable scientific insights in the process. Jesus Meets Mister Spock Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. Genesis Wins Nobel Prize Traditionally, Nobels are awarded only to ‘living recipients’ and only for work completed in the preceding year. In its statement, the committee said it felt an exception was needed in this instance “in order to right a grievous wrong.” Hows and Whys How vs. why... Science stands in the present and looks back in search of causes. Religion stands in the present and looks forward in search of reasons. Theology The Riddle of Job If I do my job in this essay, you may become a modern-day version of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who “stoppeth one of three." You’ll be spreading the truth about Job to anyone who’ll listen. Christology 101 Why is this Christological formulation so important for the development of Christian theology? Philosophy The Problem of Good The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good’. Eternity vs. Immortality Do our lives have meaning? You bet they do! But what is that meaning, and from where does it come? Culture & The Arts The Meaning of Music God is his essence; we, on the other hand, are each free to create our own essences. Unfortunately, most of us are making a hash of it! Music elucidates the pre-verbal, non-phenomenal structures of the real world. Its meaning is not subject to logical analysis, scientific verification, or mathematical proof. The only test of music’s validity is its beauty. Mary Poppins, Sufi Master The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! Parshat Emor: Making It All Count “Counting the Omer – like the shemitah cycle – invites us to believe that each day, week and year is count-worthy, valuable and unique.” Haiku Corner Does this formal rigor seem like it would be inhibiting? The reverse is true. It’s liberating! Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Vacuum Monster Is there any such thing as Vacuum Monster in our universe today? Sure, there is! Quark Soup “I once filled the entire universe, but for less than a second. I am 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, but I am still a liquid. I am denser than anything in the universe, except a black hole, but I flow 20 times more easily and smoothly than water. Who am I?” Education, Evangelization, & Prayer Messengers Among Us If God sent His only Son to earth, not just to save us from our sins, but because He knew how difficult it was for humans to believe in something we cannot see, why wouldn’t He still use that tactic today? Knowing our vulnerabilities, understanding us the way a parent understands their child, why wouldn’t God send us messages through people we trust? Faith Chaplain in a Secular World As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Drumming to Inner Peace The biggest connection I made between music and spirituality was that they both focus on the present moment. When I managed to stay in the present moment in both the song and in life, I realized there was no time for anxiety. Prayer For Resting in God's Timing, Ways, and Rhythm My timing can lead to stress and striving, but God says not so fast, my daughter. Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine. Challenges The Haiku Challenge Join the Haiku Challenge and have your 17-syllable poem shared in a a future issue of AT Magazine. The Faith Chaplain Challenge Do you have a story about sharing your faith in a secular workplace? Send it to us, and you may see it in a future issue!

< Back Square Pegs in Round Holes David Cowles May 6, 2025 “2,450 years after Plato we still don’t have a clue…and we won’t, until we…stop trying to fill round holes with square pegs.” It began I suppose with Plato (c. 375 BCE)…like most everything else. His Timaeus , which Alfred North Whitehead dubbed the foundation of all Western philosophy, sought to explain the World in terms of the 5 aptly named ‘Platonic Solids’. The faces of each of these solids can be constructed from planar triangles. Plato’s concept of a triangle involved a flat construction, consisting of three straight line segments, intersecting at three nodes (vertices), and forming three internal angles, the sum of which is always 180°. No surprise here: Plato was ‘bookended’ by Pythagoras ( Pythagorean Theorem ) and Euclid ( The Elements ). Even today, when folks refer to a ‘triangle’, they most likely mean exactly what Plato meant 2450 years ago. Most likely…but not necessarily. The concept of ‘triangle’ inherited uncritically by, and then from, Plato has been expanded by more recent ‘discoveries’ in geometry and topology. Plato’s triangles are defined in the context of what is now known as Euclidean Geometry. However, certain ‘non-Euclidean’ geometries are internally consistent and externally relevant, at least in some applications. Generally speaking, non-Euclidean geometries apply to curved rather than flat surfaces. As a result, either parallel lines do not exist or, if they do, they intersect. The internal angles of a non-Euclidean triangle will not necessarily total 180° (may be more or less depending on the curvature of the surface) and the shortest distance between two points may be an arc. Most importantly for our purposes, a non-Euclidean cube will have curved edges. These newly discovered geometries still describe intuitively recognizable configurations of reality. We are all familiar, for example, with the surface of a ball. Whether your geometry is Euclidean or ‘non’, whether your topology is level or curved, whether you’re a flat-earther or a round-earther, certain generally accepted principles still apply; for example: If you’re walking from Boston to Detroit, you can expect to have many adventures along the way; keyword: along the way ! There is one kind of adventure you do not expect. You’re not concerned, like Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Ulysses , that you are about to step off into Eternity, or what amounts to the same thing, that you’ll suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself in Memphis. That’s because any path along any surface will be continuous. I call it the One Foot in Front of the Other property; Mathematicians call it the ‘Archimedean Property’. Translation: no one just ‘suddenly shows up’ in Memphis. It turns out that there are interesting and internally consistent geometries that don’t include the Archimedean Property and where people do suddenly ‘materialize’ on Beale Street. But not today; keep a look out for future TWS on that subject. Euclidean geometry is just a special, degenerate case (zero curvature) of more general non-Euclidean geometry. Just as we use the positive term ‘Entropic’ to represent a loss of actual order so we can use the positive term ‘Euclidean’ to represent a loss of potential variety. Why limit yourself to boring old 180° triangles when the angles of non-Euclidean triangles can add to any positive number up to 540°, depending on the curvature of the surface? Ok, I can smugly pose that question today…prior to c. 1800 CE, it was assumed that there was only one geometry… and that it was Euclidean . Imagine. For more than 2 millennia, Euclid was the only game in town. That’s 2000 years in a row that Euclid won all 4 PGA majors (the Masters, the US Open, the PGA Championship, and the ‘British’ Open)…and he wasn’t even a very good golfer. (You’d be embarrassed to show up at your posh country club with his handicap.) How’d he do it? Simple. He was the only golfer on the course. He was the GOAT, albeit a very lonely goat. Today, Euclid is just one entrant in a crowded field…and he struggles every week just to make the cut. We should keep Euclid in mind whenever we’re tempted to think ‘we know it all’. Remember: the thing you’re most sure of in all the world may turn out to be completely wrong! I am reminded of Sir Roger Penrose. A precocious lad, he was middle school age when his math teacher presented the class with a classic problem in geometry: “There is only one solution to this problem. No one has been able to prove that there’s only one but we’re sure that’s true.” Never say ‘sure’ to a rebellious teenager. Them’s fightin’ words, especially to a kid who would one day become ‘the smartest man on earth’. Next day, he arrived at school with a second solution to the problem. Then he discovered other solutions. Today, we know that there are an infinite number of solutions to the so-called ‘tiling problem’. So what? Who cares? Euclid was a genius with the best of intentions and his ideas no doubt did a lot of good; but he also took Western metaphysics down a rabbit hole from which it is still struggling to emerge. For two millennia we assumed that we lived in a ‘flatland’ made up entirely of straight lines; we don’t. On the contrary, everything curves! You’re 14 years old and you’ve just enrolled in your first high school physics class. Day one, your teacher (you go to a progressive school) takes the class to a billiards parlor (pool hall to you) so that you can observe first hand ‘cause and effect’ in action. Balls collide, momentum is transferred, angles of incidence determine angles of reflection, etc. It’s all very neat and clean…and linear. The real world is rarely neat and clean and it’s never linear. In fact, it is massively non-linear and recursive. Everything affects everything else. Worse, everything that ‘acts’ acts on itself at the same time. Think karma . Whatever you’re doing to another, you’re doing the same to yourself. “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.” Ultimately, the foundation of all ethics will turn out to be self-interest…once we understand what those interests are. This gives the meme, ‘whoever lives by the sword dies by the sword’, a whole new meaning. Unfortunately, Euclidean linearity has infected every corner of our thought process. We are determined to describe the world in terms of discrete entities (subjects) acting on (verbs) other discrete entities (objects); we are committed to viewing all ‘transmissions of influence’ as straight lines. Welcome to the modern Indo-European language family. As a result, what we know, or at least what we knew before 1800, conforms to the straight-edged geometry of a Euclidean cube. Let’s suppose we know everything we can know, not everything there is to know, but everything we can know. Suppose we model everything there is to know as a sphere, dense with information; everything we can know would be a subset of that sphere. But because of our Euclidean blinders, whatever we do (or can) know must conform to the geometry of a straight edged cube. Suppose you say, “We already know everything we can know…or close to it.” Ok, I’ll spot you that. As a Harvard professor (c. 1896) told graduating seniors re physics, we know virtually everything that it is possible to know. Whatever we don’t know isn’t worth knowing. According to this model, the cube of what we can (and do) know must fit inside the sphere of what is knowable; it’s a subset after all. Obviously, we want as much of the volume of the sphere as possible to lie inside the inscribed cube. But we are ultimately limited by the fact that our sphere is round while our cube must have straight edges. So, the 8 vertices of the cube, and only those 8 points, will lie on the surface of the sphere. Still as long as the volume of what we can know is close to the volume of the sphere of what’s knowable, we’re ok for most purposes, right? I mean, nobody likes a know-it-all. A little bit of uncertainty ( aka ignorance) keeps life interesting, don’t you think? I’m fine with this as long as the cubic volume of knowable information includes most of the spherical volume of all information. So how close is it? Is it a 90% match? Surely it can’t be less than 80%, right? Would you believe it’s slightly less than 37%? By confining our thinking to phenomena that can be modeled via Euclidean geometry, we limit what we can know to less than 3/8ths of what is available to be known. A dismal performance! On the other hand, putting the same problem in a non-Euclidean context allows the edges of the cube to bow and extend so that they template the inner surface of the sphere. By analogy, our insistence on treating the non-linear universe as if it were an assemblage of linear forms leaves us 63% blind. 2450 years after Plato we still don’t have a clue…and we won’t, until we free our thought process from its Euclidean play pen and stop trying to fill round holes with square pegs. Image: M. C. Escher. Relativity. 1953. Lithograph print. 27.7 cm × 29.2 cm. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.