A village of Walden huts

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se

In a recent round-table session, the concept of ‘ideas’ was discussed and the question of whether ideas could in fact be stolen, and if so – is that a bad thing – was debated.

Two related thoughts were put forth. The first was from Henry D. Thoreau’s book Walden (1854).

“Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.” (p. 343)

The other was Matt Ridley’s, The Rational Optimist and ”The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge”:

“Innovation is about the combining and re-combining of ideas. That virtually every technology that we can think of is a combination of other technologies. …That is the fuel of innovation and that’s why innovation happens where people can meet and exchange ideas.” [1]

Thoreau’s Walden bravely postulated that we should not be afraid of being open to whole continents of new thoughts. More than a century later, we find that current information technologies make possible the creation of entire villages of Walden huts. I am here not quite using the concept of Thoreau’s cabin as it was meant by Thoreau himself, but rather in metaphor of a network of connecting ideas. In such a case of an evolution of perspective and technologies over time, one could conclude that the more open the environment for the sharing of information and ideas, the greater the mutual benefit for the people.

Continue reading ”A village of Walden huts” →

The buggy ski: an Emerson connect

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se

”There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.” [1]

I find it rare that the outerscape connects with my own innerscape of what, how and where to. This multimodal buggy ski that made me smile is for me, an Emerson moment. A connect.

But perhaps this connect (generic) today is getting much more concrete than Plato himself could have ever conceived, as shown in Michael A. Persinger’s research on cognitive neuroscience:

Michael A. Persinger on Human Brains, Shared Geomagnetic Field, Quantitative Solutions & Implications, Future Adaptations:

”Most of the biological time the human species is continuously exposed to the more or less “steady-state” or static component of the earth’s surface magnetic field. This simultaneous immersion of about 6 to 7 billion human brains, that are effectively very similar semiconducting microstructures within this magnetic field, may be sufficient to produce a secondary field that may have biological implications for survival and adaptation. This secondary field could display emergent properties with qualitatively different characteristics. In previous approaches [8] metaphoric references to the secondary field generated by exposing large numbers of conductors (such as functionally adjacent copper wires) to an applied magnetic field Continue reading ”The buggy ski: an Emerson connect” →

Carl G. Jung on reductionism, and its implication on homo oeconomicus in the era of big data analytics

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se

Carl Gustav Jung, on reductionism in science, with in my view, implications for the current dominant paradigm of theories of human cognitive development, and culture. Transcript from a 1990 documentary of Jung [1] based on his works [2, 3].

”Mythology is pronouncing of a series of images that formulate the life of archetypes. So the statements of every religion, of many poets and so on, are statements about the inner mythological process, which is a necessity because man is not complete if he is not conscious of that aspect of things. So you see, a man is not complete if he lives in a world of statistical truths, he must live in a world of his biological truth, that is his biological truth that is not merely statistics. Yet our natural science makes everything into an average, reduces everything into an average, and of course, all the individual qualities are wiped out. That of course is most unbecoming, it is unhygienic, it deprives people of their specific values where they are individuals. It deprives them of the most important experiences of their life where they experience their own value, the creative background of their personality and we think we are able to be born today with no history. That is a disease. That’s absolutely abnormal. Because man is not born everyday. He is once born in a specific historical setting, with its specific historical qualities and therefore he is only complete when he has a relation to these things. It is as if you were born without eyes and ears when you are growing up without connection to the past. From the standpoint of natural science, you need no connection to the past, you can wipe it out. And that is a mutilation of the human being.” [1: 45:43-49:25] Continue reading ”Carl G. Jung on reductionism, and its implication on homo oeconomicus in the era of big data analytics” →

Time, through and within

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se

Leonids Over Monument Valley. NASA’s astronomy picture of the day. Photo by Sean M. Sabatini

Over the past years, I’ve been increasingly interested in the concept of Time, due to a singular observation that if nothing goes faster than the speed of light, then what happens in the non-void between the musical notes / frequencies from a grammarphone as the needle touches the record, to when you actually hear the music? Time would have passed in seeming linearity, and in that non-void, space would be created. The two are co-created, interdependent and interwoven, thus the concept of spacetime. And if you could play the record backwards and listen to it being played backwards, why was this spacetime still moving forwards?

A group discussion a few days ago ensued about the concept of Time. Ideas were shared on whether one felt that Time was linear or circular in nature, whether individuals shared the same time if they were sharing the same space, or if time was felt differently by different people. The ideas sharing led me to do some small further research on the topic [1-5], pulling up journal articles gathered from various disciplines. Continue reading ”Time, through and within” →

”Poetry of Science”: discussion between R. Dawkins and N. deGrasse Tyson

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se
The Poetry of Science: Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Internet resource at http://youtu.be/9RExQFZzHXQ.

hathe Poetry of Science: Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Internet resource at http://youtu.be/9RExQFZzHXQ.

 

”I will never require you to believe anything” – Tyson

”But Britain is not Europe as we are constantly reminded. That’s right, here we have the English breakfast and the Continental breakfast. That’s very different breakfasts that you can order here.” – Tyson
Continue reading ””Poetry of Science”: discussion between R. Dawkins and N. deGrasse Tyson” →

The End of Space and Time? by Robbert Dijkgraaf

Posted on by admin
Robbert Dijkgraaf's lecture, "The End of Space and Time?" at Gresham College, Tuesday, 20 March 2012 - 3:00pm Barnard’s Inn Hall. Internet resource at http://bit.ly/1sH1Dig

Robbert Dijkgraaf’s lecture, ”The End of Space and Time?” at Gresham College, Tuesday, 20 March 2012 – 3:00pm
Barnard’s Inn Hall. Internet resource at http://bit.ly/1sH1Dig

Robbert Dijkgraaf’s lecture given at Gresham College in 2012 that focuses on string theory, quantum gravity, and the interface between mathematics and particle physics, bridges ideas from the various disciplines of science and arts, could be said to be have played a pivotal role in influencing the manner in which I saw the Individual in relation to space and time. Dijkgraaf takes on an evolutionary perspective to space and time, that are ”near to their end”.

From the transcript of the lecture:
”If you go back in more recent history, for instance, Richard Feynman, the famous particle physicist, he has said that if you really do not know mathematics – and do not be worried, there will not be many equations today – but if you do not really know mathematics, you cannot get across the real feeling of the beauty of nature.”

”Not only did we have this unification of space and time but the next ingredient was that space, the stage, so to say, is not rigid, it is flexible, it can curve, it can shape, and it does so under the influence of energy and mass, and that is the phenomena that we call gravitation. So, anything that carries mass or energy will curve the space and time around and thereby space and time became no longer the stage, but an active player in the game. Space and time are something which has physical properties and a future in physical laws, and in fact, it is the influence of this curvature that describes the motion of particles under the influence of gravity.”
”I think the evolving universe, the Big Bang, is part of our culture, and in fact, these images and the discoveries that are made are getting more and more exact and precise. We are living in the age of precision cosmology,…”

Continue reading ”The End of Space and Time? by Robbert Dijkgraaf” →

There is [increasingly] no spoon

Posted on by cherylmariecordeiro.se

Keanu Reeves in the science fiction-action movie The Matrix (1999).
The small boy is played by Uri Geller. Or not.

Admittedly, I like broad sweeps and this is going to be one of the broader that I take. But please bear with me. We’ll eventually be back to the bar of single origin Ecuadorian dark chocolate. Promise.

First we will need to go back a little bit in time to a scene in the 1999 movie, The Matrix, where a little boy flexes a spoon, bending it at will. He then looks up and says, ”There is no spoon”.

Now, that is a point of view I will try to demonstrate that is increasingly worth being considered. Continue reading ”There is [increasingly] no spoon” →