PHILOSOPHY: Logic
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PHILOSOPHY: Logic |
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Logic is an attempt to categorize and formalize the elements and processes of reasoned argument. Humans have quite enough difficulty communicating with one another (let alone other sentient creatures). Naturally, even this is colored by our perceptions and states of consciousness. A devout theist might base the philosophy of his logic on the concept of God, a devout materialist on no deities, and an alien on something we can't even comprehend. The best we can do is establish "conscious thought" as being the norm, and work things out from there, even though there will be some (say, in a mental hospital) who may have perfectly valid philosophies based on uncommon states of consciousness, completely alien frames of reference. The study of consciousness and perception has a long way to go.
Since our level of conscious thought and communication is a high-level series of patterns based on simpler patterns within us, it has the feature of being inefficient from a processing point-of-view, but relatively deterministic: Postulate X. See X. Wallow in X. Talk about X forever. Eventually, we intuit X and make it a part of ourselves. A secondary aspect of this is the process of simplifying each step of an argument so that even a rock can intuit the result and agree with it. Obviously, we don't really live by this simplistic form of logic. There is this continual torrent of perceptual impressions which are aggregated by our right-brains and categorized by our left-brains. There is some evidence we have a secondary brain altogether, based around our solar plexus (though it connects to memory structures throughout our bodies), which may actually be where we're doing a lot of our data processing. In any event, we wanted to know what we know, how we know it, communicate it, and save it in a more cut-and-dried manner than the way our ancestors did. The rules of logic may be universal, but only if you accept the rules. Perhaps we will be fortunate and discover that some of these systems are universal enough for us to communicate with aliens. If your entire civilization doesn't need formalized logic, then human thought processes will remain unreachable for the forseeable future.
The ancient Greeks certainly studied logic a great deal. Aristotle's work Organon was the first organized treatise on logic we know of. Still, natural language ambiguities existed in all logic until the formalism of symbolic logic came into being in the 19th century with the works of DeMorgan and Boole. Mathematicians realized that their subject was broadened to encompass any formal symbolism with precisely defined rules of manipulation. In the 1930s, Goedel was one logician who pointed out that any formal system is inherently limited. Many have discussed this concept in one form or another. To make any progress, you must use intuition and non-logical processes. Once you think you have something, then you can apply formalizations to it and nail it down. A computer as we know them at the turn of the millenia is a good example. It's processes are entirely based on formalism, and we know it will never make any progress toward greater wisdom but only process new data the same old ways.
Limited as we creatures are, we really have to struggle to nail-down stuff in the logical arena. Even so, loose ends seem to appear from time-to-time. Particularly paradoxes, which arise because we are not formal creatures, so we can say any silly thing we want. The goal here is to recognize the paradox for what it is in a logical framework, then work around it as appropriate.
A century ago, Bertrand Russell noted an major inconsistency with set theory, which can be said to underlie all of mathematics. Essentially:
Let N denote the set of all sets which are not members of themselves. Let X be any set; then if X is a member of N, X is not a member of itself. Since X is any set, taking X to be N results in the contradiction that N is a member of N and not a member of N.
David B. Lowe makes an easy-to-understand series of logical arguments in his article Erasing Russel's Paradox which I like. From a different tack, I have two arguments to make on this subject.
First, I might point out the logical inconsistency with the above statement at "Let X be any set..." It is not just any set, but a member of N and not a member of itself. The next sentence: "Since X is any set, taking X to be N..." Oops. If X can be any set, then it can include those which contradict the narrower definition in the phrase which follows: "...if X is a member of N, X is not a member of itself." So, naturally, when we take "X to be N", we are already walking down the primrose path of it being any set. Looking at it another way:
Second, All structures in the universe can be described as patterns upon simpler structures. As living entities, we are pattern recognizers and creators. While I agree with Lowe in principle, I question the necessity of creating logical primary and secondary objects. I assert that, by definition, a set cannot be a member of itself without creating an immediate logical paradox, and those which appear to be members of themselves do only that (being entities in a real universe conceived of by confused and imperfect beings) and one may create another series of sets and members which satisfy this definition.
I'll describe some basic definitions here, attempting to break down axioms into simpler forms:
If one tries to establish a criteria that a set may be a member of itself, you fall into a recursive trap. Trying to find real-world examples is always dicey because of our complex nature. The problem with logical paradoxes is it seems to take a paradox to define them to begine with. Just because we can get tangled in our own logic, doesn't mean we have to abide by it. Depending on how one defines their terms, a paradox may be resolved at any number of levels (for example, as I do early-on in analyzing the statement of Russell's Paradox above). I would submit, furthermore, that while we can create a list of rules which contain a paradox, that the cosmos itself does not support a true fundamental paradox, merely constructs which superficially resemble them (such as our list) or structures which render the concept not directly applicable (such as potential states in quantum mechanics). Still, the fact that their appearance does indeed crop up is reason enough to learn how to deal with them.
It is by no means clear, now that we have undercut paradoxes, that we ought to ignore them. For any given logical system, they actually serve the useful purpose of showing us the logic behind the statement of problems which cannot be handled by the given logical system, while stating the problem entirely in the language of the logical system--it helps us see the limitations of the method.
"Calculus" simply means calculating. So, propositional calculus is the formalism of propositions and their manipulation in a logical, symbolic framework. Anyone familiar with electronics will recognize the basics, as circuits were long ago designed to manipulate data according to these rules resulting in the digital computer. Whether one uses words or electricity, a translation is made into the elemental symbolism required, followed by the application of the pertinent rules to manipulate those symbols.
The first logical operator we introduce is the negation of a proposition. The proposition X becomes ~X (NOT X), written with a tilde before the symbol. (Take care when translating everyday language into opposites and be very precise. The proposition "everyone" becomes "not everyone", which you can easily see does not equate precisely to "no one".) This sort of logical manipulation can be abstracted in the form of a truth table.
| p | ~p |
|---|---|
| T | F |
| F | T |
The way to read this is the proposition and their various combinations are listed as column headers. The various "states" which can exist concerning whether one or more propositions are true or false occur in rows. There are the independent input propositions which may have any state, so are listed in some logical order, and then the resulting compound statements which are based on the individual propositions. In the negation truth table, our input proposition is p, and our output conclusions are ~p. Given propositions in this schema can only be true or false, we must have two subsequent lines in our truth table to display all possible states of our input. Here, we have p which can be either true or false. Our output proposition is simply ~p, so we figure out what ~p is for each line of input propositions. If p is true, then ~p must be false. If p is false, then ~p must be true.
Any statement which we want to negate is first translated into symbols. For example, "all griffins are green" becomes the symbol p. If it is true, the negation "it is not true that all griffins are green" becomes false, and vice-versa.
The second logical operator we introduce is the conjunction, or logical AND, between two propositions, usually written with the carat symbol "^". Once our propositions are translated into elemental symbols, the truth table is:
| p | q | p^q |
|---|---|---|
| F | F | F |
| F | T | F |
| T | F | F |
| T | T | T |
The third logical operator we introduce is the disjunction, or logical OR, between two propositions, written with an inverted carat which I will show as an upper- or lower-case "V". The truth table is:
| p | q | pVq |
|---|---|---|
| F | F | F |
| F | T | T |
| T | F | T |
| T | T | T |
Truth tables can be made with any number of columns. There may be several initial propositions, the possible combinations which grow as a power of two (four initial propositions produce sixteen possible states.) You may need several different combinations of your inputs. If the desired result is complex, build it with intermediate columns. All truth tables can be built upon the above three tables (AND, OR, NOT). For example:
| p | q | r | ~q | ~r | qVr | ~(qVr) | ~q^~r | ~(qVr)^p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | F | F | T | T | F | T | T | F |
| F | F | T | T | F | T | F | F | F |
| F | T | F | F | T | T | F | F | F |
| F | T | T | F | F | T | F | F | F |
| T | F | F | T | T | F | T | T | T |
| T | F | T | T | F | T | F | F | F |
| T | T | F | F | T | T | F | F | F |
| T | T | T | F | F | T | F | F | F |
As statements become too complex for every state to be explicitly shown, we can create a more abstract way of manipulating symbol based on global rules. Boolean Algebra is one such..
In a subset of the above truth table, a powerful rule called DeMorgan's Theorem is proved. Note that the seventh and eighth columns are identical. The headers for each column are in Boolean nomenclature. We can then write, algebraically:
~(qVr) = ~(q) ^ ~(r)
Common truth tables and theorems are listed in my electronics reference in the digital section
A tautology is a compound statement which is true in every case. A contradiction is a compound statement which is false in every case.
A fourth operator we call the conditional is written with an arrow which I render as "=>". This is the statement: "If p, then q" (If hypothesis, then conclusion.) The truth table for this is shown by the first three columns of the following table. Note the equivalence to OR/NOT logic in the fourth column. The fifth column is the converse of p=>q. The sixth column is a special case called the biconditional in which both the original statement and its converse are both true (equivalent to XOR in electronics--NOT(EXCLUSIVE-OR) ):
| p | q | p=>q | ~pVq | q=>p | p<=>q |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | F | T | T | T | T |
| F | T | T | T | F | F |
| T | F | F | F | T | F |
| T | T | T | T | T | T |
From here I need to add some considered discussion building up to simple proofs, segue to predicate calculus, and develop the concept of proofs some more. I should mention for perspective, however, Godel's incompleteness theorem. In the beginning of the preface to his translation of the 1931 Godel paper, B. Meltzer, states succinctly:
"Kurt Gödel's astonishing discovery and proof, published in 1931, that even in elementary parts of arithmetic there exist propositions which cannot be proved or disproved within the system, is one of the most important contributions to logic since Aristotle. Any formal logical system which disposes of sufficient means to compass the addition and multiplication of positive integers and zero is subject to this limitation, so that one must consider this kind of incompleteness an inherent characteristic of formal mathematics as a whole, which was before this customarily considered the unequivocal intellectual discipline par excellence."
There are several more summaries nicely collected here.
Once again we find ourselves up against the "Limitation of Method" and logic, demonstrating yet again the necessity of intuition and creativity--the magical method--to point the way toward increasing our knowledge, while formalism follows to establish what limited self-consistency can be achieved that way. Logic itself, being an inherently limited (though certainly useful) formalism or method, can in principle at least point to the set of problems which are not logical and thus cannot be dealt with through logic alone.
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The world of software has suffered growing pains, particularly of late as we consider how it might fit into the general world of engineering. Steve McConnell, in his latest book Professional Software Development, makes a compelling case for what is clearly his desire to see these two worlds blend. Some of his views have their detractors, however. The Association for Computing Machinery, for example, feels the field is too immature for a stabilized body of knowledge which could be certified for, while others find technology changing too quickly. There seems little doubt, though, that every project can benefit from an appropriate level of planning, no matter how immature the field of knowledge.
Software, unlike other engineering fields where it is usually well under 50%, is almost 100% labor costs. The goals, however are similar: saving money, making a profit, satisfying the customer, building a quality product, etc. One interesting features (to my mind) is the fact that virtually all companies cannot scale projects up in size without a performance hit (NASA being the sole exception), unlike most engineering which saves money in mass production. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that mass production doesn't apply to code. Except for code reuse (which has proven far less a help than it promised), each line of code has to be designed and written by a real person in real time. If NASA is any indicator, though, it is possible to at least scale linearly, if you're project factoring and communication is good enough.
I cut my teeth on an old Z80 development kit. It was machine programmed, but the use of assembly language was encouraged, even though you had to hand-write the assembly program, hand-translate it to the machine code, then enter it into volatile ram hexadecimal-by-hexadecimal character. It was quite adequate as a teaching aid. Then I bought my first microcomputer, an Amiga 1000, and was horrified to discover half-a-dozen levels of software built into the machine's operating system that I had no clue about--the first indication I had that something was going horribly awry. Now, the explanation for this sort of thing is pretty logical, fundamentally involving data abstraction and code reuse. The problem, though, was I couldn't program it as easily and I didn't know what was going on. This trend has worsened to the point of both the developer and the user wasting most of their time solving new and arbitrary puzzles: task X is not feasible because implementing it would require access to software layers A, B, C, etc., none of which is documented particularly well (if at all) and many of which happen to use different languages and protocols. Additionally, there will always be the market forces of greed which pressures product developers to not give the buyer too much of the wealth created by a technological breakthrough--ironically slowing technology, thence wealth-creation.
In the early days before microcomputers, it was cost-effective to code elegantly, but the speed and the latest and most whiz-bang options as market issues have since driven software to bloat, both as a side-effect of rapid development and as an obscuring tactic to help hide companies' proprietary secrets. The result is a machine with multiple processors, capable of billions of instructions per second, that (1) takes minutes to simply turn on, (2) does things you don't want it to to private information in secret, (3) is unstable, (4) is too often incapable of handling real-time activities which could be dealt with in an appliance which runs 1000 times slower, (5) forces developer and user to waste most of their time solving puzzles. After seventeen years of playing with computers, I'm disgusted. The problem is getting worse. To break this cycle, one must take a look in the early stage of product design at machine architectures and approaches to programming languages.
The first machines were programmed in machine code, the native language of the computer being worked on. As soon as it was feasible, assembly language took over this task because it offered a basic layer of abstraction to enhance the human's ability to read and understand the code. Today, assemblers and compilers have gotten pretty efficient, especially in older languages like assembler and C, but the question remains: what is it doing? As we climb the complexity tree and continue bolting blocks of code together, this is proving inelegant, if superficially time-effective during development.
In its fundamental form, a computer automates the processing of logical sequences. While the simpler machine is deterministic based on how clear our thinking is, any complex system (up to the human brain and beyond) which does not contain all the answers, which is not deterministic, runs up against the limitation of any method or logical system, and knowledge must be groped for using any intuition available. There is some promise that even our own machines will eventually be capable of this; it is after all just a more complex process, one which involves searching for new ways to solve a problem, creating abstractions for things, and testing those new methods. Determinism may yield fast processing, but new knowledge just isn't deterministic, and most of what can be accomplished in computer hardware and software has scarcely been touched.
Analog computing is given short-shrift, but due to its blazingly-fast nature and ability to solve certain kinds of problems which digital deals with awkwardly (that and the fact that we live in an analog world), it shouldn't be forgotten. Analog / digital combinations can be quite useful, as well. In the land of digital, binary has proven to be far and away the easiest and most stable to implement. The fundamental logic of propositional calculus allows us to create structures of arbitrary complexity. A computer can be made entirely from the two functions AND and NOT (or OR and NOT). Thence, we construct our storage bins and logical operators: registers, stacks, memory arrays, adders, multipliers, etc. Thus, we find ourselves with some kind of fixed hardware whose complexity must be balanced with that of the software which runs on it. A simple Turing machine has as a program a linear tape of whatever length is required to contain the software. The hardware processes only the machine instructions move left, move right, read, and write. The hardware is simple, but that means all our software is maximized, so where is the trade-off? We might move more into it, but the complexity quickly becomes limiting. Our current crop of processors contain many millions of transistors and are expensive. The other end of the spectrum are the minimum-instruction-set computers which can have as few as several thousand transistors and still be quite useful.
Perhaps the best-known name in this area is Charles Moore, whose Forth programming techniques and minimum-instruction-set-computing (MISC) tries to achieve the smallest total size among the combination of hardware and software. He theorizes that both modern hardware as well as software could be reduced by two to three orders-of-magnitude. While Forth has become a language (one he feels codified all the wrong things), it is first and foremost a technique based on the concept of mapping a specific problem's solution to specific hardware based on careful factoring of a given problem in its own context. To this end, Forth is definitions: deriving a set of relatively simple definitions for each important step in each layer of a problem based on other definitions and so on down to a core set of primitive instructions specific to that hardware. Also, that there is always a set of definitions which best define a problem. An operating system (even files) as we know it today is an unnecessary waste in Moore's world; with Forth, the OS is essentially being created anew with each program. In spite of this nihilistic approach, development time is actually reduced because the developer is encouraged to factor the problem well and does not have to wrestle with an open-ended series of new and arbitrary methods whose limits are unclear.
Programming, like knowledge, cannot be entirely constrained by known methods as there will always be problems that cannot be solved (or solved awkwardly) by them. Both the problem and its strength is its flexibility. Yet, we constantly are seeking ways to simplify. Programming, just like mainstream science, is being awkwardly constrained. Good programming advice will always include an admonition to investigate which programming environment is best-suited to your task.
An elegantly-written program is a block of logic in a (likely) very non-familiar-language. We may choose familiar words, the use of which has been shown to distinctly improve understandability in the programming field, but the details are pure logic in action. Much has been made of how a human might better read such a morass with the goal of understanding enough to maintain the code, and perhaps even serve to help teach. We cannot yet write the logic of a program up on a human level due to the complexity of human thought. Layout has a huge impact on readability. Conventional code is text set forth in lines. Once reasonable rules are followed concerning whitespace which eases both readability and maintainability, there remains the issue of commenting the code, which arguably weighs equally with whitespace in importance. The ideal here is to provide a bridge between our human way of thinking and the machine's.
Comments should be provided a the beginning of a program or routine to place it in context for those who just arrived. It is the location most likely to appear first or where your eye will first be drawn to to aid in understanding. You will look for a block of comments, first fastening your attention on highlighted or larger text to help get an immediate fix on your location, followed by a quick scan to see if you can quickly pick out the general way the logic is structured. Progressive details should then be provided giving both direction and minutiae as appropriate. Something like this:
/Big Honkin' Program! /Intelligently arranged in some manner with these blocks: /Block W is the main routine /Block X is the factoring routine /Block Y is the weird subroutine hierarchy ------------- /Block W /Description of what this block is for (some code) /comment about what these couple of lines are for
As a general rule, I keep my comments somewhere in the range of a couple times less than the code to slightly more than the code. This takes considered practice but it is not difficult. Just keep considering that is is important. I recently built a database with XBASIC. I chose it because it was free, stable, and could perform very fast (single machine-cycle) string manipulations. I needed to process a large number of data files that were in text format from several different sources. I chose to customize a parsing routine for each source and process them character-by-character. Here's a few code line-groups from random place deep in the program. This one was a subroutine. Note the version-like numbering which allows me to build a kind of table of contents with a hierarchy for routines which would be hard to locate. X-BASIC is set up to view function, but not subroutines, as separate blocks of code, but subs in X-BASIC have much less overhead than functions. So, I labeled each subroutine in the "declaration" part of the code with a number which gave me a hook to locate it in the program--a kind of Dewey decimal system. (I use EditPad Pro to work on the source code. It's also nice for its ability to highlight various file formats, which I simulate here.) Also, note full-line comments are preferred as they are easier to maintain:
'***--------------------------------------------------------------------
SUB SortLineAssim '106.1
'Place new line (from eod file) in sorted pos and assimilate duplicate info.
'Rest of db file should already be sorted.
'Create sort string from eod$ line:
'CP field = C/P/comma(blank),
'S field = 4digits as-is or blank=0000,
'Date field = YYYYMMDD
This next code schnibble is in a very confusing area where I'm parsing other people's weird file formats into my own database format. I had half-a-dozen formats, but because all but one had finite data, my best strategy was to write the code routines for each format, but not worry about the entire package. Once the static data was converted, I could throw these flexible routines out to keep my source code considerably cleaner. Note how I'm providing a context comment appropriate to the position in the hierarchy as well as allowing the reader to walk through the logic at a more abstract level--the level of the human thought that created the logic flow of the program. I've given-in to comments on the same line because they don't need left-edge alignment (aided by the color--I would hesitate to do so without the contrast), so more code can be seen on a given screen:
nomoredates: '(for moving two cases down to here for further processing)
SELECT CASE TRUE 'All the pain in six cases: first four are exit cases, last two are loop cases. Exit cases need: pdshift, pdinsert, eodnew$.
CASE bsi <= 10 'full binary search exit case, because pdinsert needs assignment before loop exit; pe- & pd-dates will be unequal by now.
IF pedate& > pddate& THEN 'find beginning of line AFTER db date
DO 'pd around db date; count up
INC pd
Once you're deep in a routine, the comments might be lighter, just enough to remind you what's going on right there, just enough abstraction that you don't get distracted from the logical flow by nuts-and-bolts details. But never assume it's understood. Always put in some commentary because a few months from now you won't remember those details, and you will thank yourself for putting them in. I was able to drop into this code after ignoring it for a year and immediately start intelligently working on things because of how I had commented the code. I've always had problems with pseudocode because I never understood a programming environment cold, but was always learning. Friends in the field for decades relate the same story. So, I massage the comments as though telling a detailed story of the logic flow of the program, placing the factoids in the same hierarchical structure as the code itself so it is displayed as local comments, yet has the bigger picture located where you can find it readily.
Whether you're a newbie or experienced, I highly recommend Code Complete by Steve McConnell. This will give you an excellent grounding in the nuts and bolts of the coding process, as well as introduce you to the basic concepts of the other aspects of software engineering. As an experienced electronics technician, I liken it to The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill--an instruction manual on good craftsmanship, without delving too deeply into the more complex intricacies of engineering.
The concept of literate code (conveived by Knuth), places the importance on the comments, and that the code organization is subject to it with the logic of the comments determining the program structure. This is another facet as important as Moore's Forth and simplicity. This won't be fully realized until our computers can efficiently understand human-language logic flow. The difficulty beyond this is that of the programmer who does not comment well enough and who does not properly factor their code. That there is a healthy balance which could be struck between hardware, software, comments, cost, and simplicity is an intriguing thought.
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"We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves." --Galileo Galilei.
To successfully navigate the cutting-edge of science, we must allow that it is ultimately under the umbrella of philosophy in the fuzzy-edged category of logical study. To "advance" thought (scientific or otherwise) is to agree on models which usefully reflect our interactions with the world. To the extent we can both observe and communicate our observations and agree that they agree, we can come to a consensual world view in that area. Technology is that part of scientific study which deals in instrumentalities to extend our understanding, but must ultimately include the whole of philosophy of which it is an inextricable part. The greatest scientists were well aware of this philosophical connection, and strove to maintain a mindset to achieve scientific goals. It has long been recognized that all systems of thought, including science and religion, contain logical inconsistencies, at least in part due the limitation of finite logical systems themselves.
In dealing with logic, John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, had a very keen intellect which often dealt with the fuzzy edge between science and fiction. Among his many editorials is a 1957 piece called "Limitation of Method" in which he spells-out the logical limitation in the scientific method, which, simply put, goes something like this:
Any method which creates a class "A" inherently creates its inverse "Not-A". Since science obviously cannot add anything new by itself, he describes the three approaches to problem-solving: the scientific method, the magical method, and the chaotic method. The first is too rigid, the last works but is totally unstructured. Most scientific insight uses the magical method--vaguely structured but unlimited. Curiously, I was taught the magical method in school in the guise of the scientific method:
Recently, someone pointed-out that step one wasn't part of the scientific method (then again, neither are postulates). The fact is, science can only progress by applying "the Scientific Method" (i.e.: structure) to part of the problem, since it is inherently limited. Bill Beaty describes this very well on his excellent website. The fact is, the "Scientific Method", as such, is a myth. Scientists use many methods, developing entirely new ones as needed with the rigors of logic, but guided by intuition.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard Feynman
Though structured methods are vital, they represent only a part of the creative process we must employ to increase knowledge.
"Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology." --Ian Hacking
Science is doing enough to damage itself. During the cold fusion fiasco, fully half the scientific laboratories which investigated the phenomenon found supporting evidence, the rest did not. The media helped this protracted scientific effort get going, and had it dead and buried inside of five weeks. The mainstream scientific community helps by pounding the dirt down. There is increasing evidence that there is something happening here which promises a revolution in the understanding of the atom. We are seeing not just helium, but a range of elements that should not be there. Also, many common reactions are proving to have faint side effects we simply didn't look for before. This is completely untrodden ground, the character of which sorely tests the skills of any thinker. We do not yet know.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." --Max Planck
What would serve us, then, ideally? Our techniques are fine. Most of our difficulties lay in our own fantasies and misconceptions.
"Considering the results from Mahoney's field trial that showed Protestant ministers were two to three times more likely to use scientific methodology than Ph.D. scientists, it seems reasonable to consider that they have two to three times more right to be called scientists then the so-called Ph.D. scientists." --Brian G. Wallace, The Farce of Physics
"Reality is the theory that decides what we can observe." --Albert Einstein
I only suggest a more robust acceptance of intuition, free from the primitive animal fear of appearing different, would better serve our inquiries.
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." --Albert Einstein
The multiplicity and fragmentation of knowledge, along the the enthronement of clear processes and hard fact, has distracted us from the very mysterious nature of our existence.
"If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain... In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar." --Richard Feynman
Bill Beatty's very excellent amasci.com site will bend your brain, as he answers the ignorant question: "Why did you involve yourself in all this disgusting 'fringe' stuff? you should be ashamed!"; do not let the simple format deceive you into thinking there is little food for thought there. The fact is, we have no idea what's going on, why we're here, or what the underlying nature of the universe is.
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." --Richard Feynman
We exist from moment-to-moment on the thin ice of familiar surroundings and rote patterns. Our actual control is laughingly limited, and our awareness absurdly infinitesimal, in spite of our fantasies. Scientific knowledge does not bequeath us answers for all the types of answers that we seek in this life, as science itself sits upon that thin ice.
"There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance." --Albert Einstein
Our best road to finding is to seek with fewer artificial limitations. We are, essentially, pattern processors, and the cosmos excites our curiosity. Yet, as with so much else, when others are involved, politics comes into play. This is difficult to overstate when lots of money and power are riding on your discovery (say) which would cause the movers and shakers of industry to lose billions of dollars. It is a grim reality for such a noble endeavor.
If you still retain an unhealthy degree of overconfidence in your knowledge, consider what you know about something really simple, like pure water, then compare your knowledge with what you find here.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" --Albert Einstein
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Techniques for construction with atomic precision will highlight the future of technology as we begin to leverage the curious world of atomic-level interactions. Carbon nanotubes are carbon-atom sheets which are bent around and connected to form even, tubes of arbitrary length that are only a few atoms in diameter. They exibit ballistic conductance, where after a certain threshold (probably the electron finding the entrance to the tube, I should think) they conduct electrons with no measurable electrical resistance -- superconductivity -- even at room temperatures. Nanotubes current densities have been measured at over ten billion amperes per square centimeters (~1mA through a single tube.) The lengths that can be manufactured are now up to 8 inches. This should have quite an impact on every electrical device from electronics microcircuitry to heavy power cabling.
Quantum entanglement, otherwise known as 'spooky action at a distance' (as coined by Einstein), has taken another step forward. Photon-pairs' polarization has been successfully "transported" instantaneously through a fibre-optic cable under real-world conditions, as discussed in this BBC news article. Scientists hope to send quantum information via satellite next.
There are some recent articles detailing a 64-bit memory device that's ten times denser than its silicon counterparts.
A nuclear accelerator event created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York looks a lot lik they've created short-lived black holes. Absolutely incredible! Interestingly, they say that at these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force at work, which probably is one reason they are not dangerous and don't last.
Nano-needle operates on cell, from an atomic force microscope.
Popularly known as cold fusion, this subject was the poster child for bad science during the media frenzy of several years ago. Since then, at reputable labs all over the world have quietly continued to do what they're best at, and with better measurement the evidence is mounting that nuclear events do occur even in such things as the setting of Portland cement which gives off neutrons, and elemental transmutation in living cells. If the events are common, perhaps such claims as this pyrotechnic reaction, have some validity. Here's a site which collects related papers and information. Who knows? Maybe the old alchemists really were on to something.
The speed of gravity has been verified as being the same as the speed of light, again verifying Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The light from a distant quasar which passed near Jupiter was used in the measurement.
The idea is simple enough: Bring two equal metal plates really close together and they can hold a static electrical charge. But if the two plates are unequal, there are numerous claims of a unidirectional force on the whole capacitor. Some are even going so far as to build "lifters" based on the idea -- it's become something of a hobby, like building Tesla coils. One of the people playing with this is Tim Ventura. There's lot's more and some nice theory at Naudin's site. If you think we're both hallucinating, try this link and download the seventh PDF down called "Electro-Kinetic Thrust Technology". NASA (questionably, IMHO) has a couple of patents which can both be conveniently linked to from Naudin's site. An August 2003 article from Wired talks about this and a NASA test the journalist witnessed. Apparently, no force was seen in a vacuum. Interestingly, since they used the "ion wind" explanation, and directional ions require a directional electric field, they must have been using DC. They're either deluding themselves, or covering something up, since a mere two-hour survey of the Internet and a little technical savvy suggests the following conditions apply:
It would be interesting to see if a unit would perform which is encased in insulating Styrofoam. It's light, and ought to prevent arcing as well as eliminate the need to test it in a vacuum to reduce arcing. Also, drive the unit with an AC source of known frequency and amplitude (adjustable, ideally.) The unit need not lift, but ought to be mounted in some way that would allow the measurement of any forces. For example, a nice analytical balance with a beam across the pan with threads running down to the unit under test well below. Lifters are exciting, but they are at best a proof-of-concept design along singular lines. We need some metrology. Since it apparently involves moving high-voltage charge back and forth, the logical approach would be to build a Tesla coil and set it to resonate as a tank circuit with an asymmetrical capacitor. This ought to be the most efficient way of getting the drive power needed.
I am minded of the fact many of the most interesting electrical phenomena we apply are heavily dependent on phase relationships or at least resonance. See the section below titled "Tesla Resonance".
Checking Naudin's site in March 2005, I see he is beginning to break things down to their atomic concepts a bit more. The link shows a clever double-ended lifter force experiment which appears to show that the force toward the thinner plate (wire) is stronger than the force toward the thicker plate. I rather enjoyed the clever solution to vacuum testing by using incandescent lamp tubes, although he appears to only prove the electrostatic attraction at this time.
A new record for short-duration measurement at 10^-16 seconds.
If you think your E-M wave and particle knowledge is up to the task, try bending your brain around this energy-sucking resonant circuit concept. I had always wondered how Tesla could have sent wireless energy around the world, and this is it. If you are within a quarter-wavelength of the source, nearfield circuit phenomena apply. By increasing only the E- or B-field of your receiving antenna (but in the proper phase relationship with) a transmitting antenna's signal, you increase the receiving antenna's effective area and greatly increase the amount of energy you can receive. It is the same principle that allows a 1-angstrom atom to absorb (and radiate) a photon with a wavelength of 6000-angstroms; a small antenna behaves as a large one. A number of people are trying it out, like this 21-foot AM transmitting antenna. They mention the negative solution of Maxwell's fourth equation coming into it somewhere. It's sort of like antenna theory turned inside-out.
Some of the most amazing things are to be found here.
Apparently, dual ultraviolet lasers can support enough high-voltage electrical current to work as a stun gun to immobilize someone at a distance.
A long-delayed test of Einstein's prediction of the warpage of space and time by the presence of massive objects with Gravity Probe B.
While common small LEDs are well into the 10cd range, a company called Lamina Ceramics has made bright panels which could serve as theatre lighting:
The 13,300 lumen, 860 watt RGB LED engine also breaks a world record with its 677 lumens per square inch of vibrant, saturated colors. (The previous best-to-date array provided 100 lumens per square inch.) Featuring independently controlled channels for red, green, blue or additive color mixing to produce white, it provides 4,600 lumens of red (at 210 watts), 7,600 lumens of green (at 320 watts) and 1,100 lumens of blue light (at 330 watts). Additionally, this "record setter" can simulate dawn through noonday to dusk white light with variable color temperatures ranging from 3,000 - 6,500ºK., with corresponding lumen output ranging from 6,500 - 9000.
Naomi Halas' work with nanoshells and lasers appears to have had absolutely stunning preliminary results.
Promising new studies suggest strongly that a computer chip can be used to replace the hippocampus, the part of the brain which takes short-term memories and re-processes them into long-term memory data streams.
An experiment which utilized an artificial cell vesicle and some synthetic and real-but-stripped-down components created from those components a known green fluorescent protein which normally occurs in jellyfish.
Flashes of infrared LED light can play a role in healing wounds (more than 40% faster), building muscle, turning back the worst effects of diabetes and repairing blinded eyes.
Dr. Randall L. Mills has been doing intriguing and controversial work which began with hydrinos and which is developing into a full-blown Unified Field Theory called Classical Quantum Mechanics (CQM).
The Global Consciousness Project, or EGG Project is doing statistical analysis of random number generators attempting to find a correlation to major events on Earth so as to find early evidence of something like a global human consciousness. This is a good read as an example of the problem one encounters when seeking truly unknown knowledge.
Here are some of my favorites:
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