I thought you would find it a bit of a strain. Here's some more. I've let it run a bit because you said you were a bit short of material for C99. If you've plenty this time please feel free to split it across a couple of issues.Where does it all come from ? Well, basically, from examining fifty years worth of memories of peculiarities and asking myself how they might be explained. As examples: It has long nagged at me as to how come small particles of food that have been cut, bashed and baked can add to me so that as a large adult all parts of me seem as equally alive as all the parts of me did when I was a small child. In what way can life be additive ? On what grounds can one say some life is denied intelligence ? What is good ? How is it I can determine error ? I am made of universe, therefore the universe will live on through my thoughts and deeds. Why should one say the universe came from a discontinuity when it is more likely it came from a continuity ? And so on. The answers are buried deep in the enclosed. Though no one may agree I think everyone will find something of interest. Hopefully they will even comment on some of it.
Theo : A booming broadside from you. However, the Philosopher's Stone remains afloat and I think you will find your shots fell rather short or just buzzed through the rigging.
What is it ? The human record describes creeds by the hundred, from the Amazon to the Volga, whichever way around the world you go, all developed from countless long lost personal opinions distorted into group holdings, differing in detail but all claiming the universe to be part natural and part supernatural. What can we say of that ? It is obvious. The authors of all those creeds imagined the supernatural because they saw no way to fit everything into the perfectly natural. Having declared supernatural space-time how easy it then was to start packing everything into it. But, eventually, mainly in the Mediterranean area, some few tumbled the error and set to moving everything back into the natural. They declared nuts and bolts to be natural and tried to show everything was supported by those. Modern times have seen more done. Even so, much remains unfinished. It is the wrong approach. If one works from the centre the number of variables increases. All I said is look at the system, notice that it is all natural, pick the main variables, dive inside, and see how they fit together, that is how the work should complete. To cover all that swiftly it was necessary for me to say "it is" as against "it might be", but, really, that was with hardly more presumption than in many a science and far less supposition than in many a faith. As evidences:
The rejoining of things split apart. It is all a question of time and technique. Stitching back lost fingers is established. Grafting of plants is common practice. Metals can be joined with pressure. Can one be sure there will never be a way to mend a broken crystal. Technology already offers the possibility to bridge vessels and nerves with intelligent cells of all sorts. One day it will be possible to take a piece of someone's heart or brain away to work on it elsewhere for a while. What is done depends upon what needs to be done, but nothing says such things may not be done.
The divisibility of life. When someone's thumb is torn off and stitched back on we have evidence body and thumb retain their respective life property when separated. We need no more than that to be able to say life is divisible. What reason is there to not extrapolate from that and say the life property is also divisible down through the molecular level into the atomic level, and into the nuclear particle level, and below. Where can one draw a certain line. Nowhere. Structure is the only difference between fields, photons and particles, they are but energy in different forms. Can one say life is not such things, that it is not energy. Hardly. And from there one discovers not that life was inside the proto-universe, but that life, with all its properties, was the proto-universe. And then, because life can not be destroyed, one has it that everything of the proto-universe, though now very old indeed, is still all perfectly well alive. It is all there, but disguised, the life of very tiny entities showing as physics. There is nothing strange in that. Tiny fields, photons and particles are data bits, so it is hardly surprising all they seem to do is dash about or sit around in clumps. More important is that shows little life specs may wander around to add up, making possible daylight, rivers, rocks, trees and elephants.
The triple system. I grant the notion of a triple system is arguable, put such a division down to an entirely arbitrary decision on my part. To have said "person" would have given a mono system, and "mind and body" would have made a dual system. However, part of the nervous system deals with ideas and part with automatic functions, so there is a sort of dual system there. Add the body's chemical system and one gets the third part. There is an argument the chemical system has two parts, making a quadruple system altogether, though I did not mention it. Combine an old mechanical computer with a modern electronic machine. The result is a system where the mechanical elements interact with each other both physically and intellectually; one part moves another so moving some number, whilst, in the electronic side, the same except it is electric charge that moves to move a number. These two systems would have individual "housekeeping" and "intellectual" functions, thus appearing a quadruple system. The human ape appears very much the housekeeping and intellectual functions of the electronic system coupled to just the housekeeping functions of their chemistry system. But, given it is made of cells it may have some residual "intellectual" chemistry: Since the dawn of life minimal creatures find each other by chemical means. They have internal "housekeeping" chemistry, but, in relative terms, external "intellectual" chemistry. Their language has always been that one transferred molecule means something whilst another means something else. A language that only seems not a language because it is entirely logical.
The digital scene. Large signals are made of bits and do not find the body an empty thing in which to float about interacting with each other. The body is made up of countless cells, molecules, atoms, nuclear and lesser particles, all in matrix form entangled in microscopic vessels, fibres and fields, in some vacuum. In that system all large signals extend over sets of points. With a large signal in bits, each bit can operate or be operated upon by a different point, and, in turn, those points can operate or be operated upon by others, as the signal is gradually broken down or constructed during entry or exit of the system. So the key bits to a signal are held at certain points whilst the reduction or expansion rule bits for it are stored at many other linked points. Signal bits coming into contact with a point in use may alter its state. Since the matrix is molecular and includes both the nervous and chemical systems of the body that will happen whether intruding signal bits are electrical pulses or chemical packets. Similarly in reverse, if point states change then that could release electrical pulses or release adjacent molecules. But, no matter the particular effect, the underlying action is effectively digital, points talking to points. We have something like a collection of linked three dimensional sponges, but assume something like a three ply molecular sheet draped in swirls inside the electrical process brain and extending down all the nerves into activators and detectors, and with sections extended out into the chemical process organs. This "sheet" amounts to the mind cradle and holds the unified electrical and chemical minds that deal with the housekeeping and intellectual data of both the nervous system and the chemical system. But it must be seen that this molecular sheet is made of organised points, that can perhaps be regarded as like tiny elastic diamonds with states and set in a fine mesh, so, we should see it as a sort of solid computer program made up of millions of subroutines, all done so that in different places operations can run up or down, left or right, or in circles, and, throughout its expanse, all at the same time, and from it to the body's external and internal worlds on either face. Step into one of the subroutines of this program and one finds some group of points have their settings with their grouped settings having the message. Hence, the bits of a message can change the settings of the points in a group, but the settings of the points in that group can interact with the settings of the points in an adjacent group, so, modified messages form in that group. That way messages can shuttle around groups, getting changed and perhaps even return to change themselves ~ at this stage two matters can be developed and the second is in the separate paragraph below ~ the first is that one now has a complete system able to work with either intellectual or chemical signals. In the chemical world, the body organs, made of point cells, represent sub mind cradles for variable chemistry operations. In fact the skeleton also forms a mechanical mind cradle that constitutes a group of points carrying a variable mechanical message. But to say the mind cradle is actually six-fold might press you far too much, likewise if I suggest a photon is a many pointed spec of entity that may carry a much greater message across a distance than you think, consider what it means in regard to where they came from if photons are alive. However, be all that as it may, from any part of it one gets that whilst messages appear only a few in the conventional mind, they are in fact many and everywhere, and all the logic that makes sense of them is to be found in the rules of point state setting. Which means the intellect actually rests in what are the operational laws of living points; few of which laws have so far been addressed by physics. I should add that in this it does not matter whether one is dealing with sight or sound, or any other signalling method. Text is read side to side and lists up and down. Many character styles can be mastered. After practise in childhood the styles are often not noticed, nor even the characters. As an infant one learns to break down scenes and sounds into visual and audio characters, and learns to miss both character and style. One must practice the other way to perceive such things again. There is no need at all to buy a book to read the universe. It is only necessary to appreciate that its alphabet comprises tiny bits put together to make millions of three dimensional characters in millions of styles, all able to move around. The grammar and language are no great problem as they are already in one, as a completely natural inheritance, so to speak.
The second matter developing from the above is that if one looks upon a tree in a field and sees that it is good, the factor of goodness may come from within or from outside. In the mind cradle some points have been set to hold the message sent by the tree, whether the mind cradle naturally perceives the goods or the tree has sent good in its message is immaterial. The implication is that the message good is only meaningful because the points making up the light, those making up the tree, or those making up you, have rules that include goodness. And, since all points are of the same stuff, that means all three things are made of points (the little elastic diamonds) that possess the goodness property detection and cause factors in their operation rules.
Soul and Shade. For a long time the mind and the body were seen to be containers of both good and evil. For preference the word soul meant the good part of the mind, and shade meant the good part of the body, both in supernatural manifestation. Taking terms of that type to have been substituted for true human properties that had no how and why explanations I indicated how they can be understood in a natural system. An example. Why is it young are born with innocence and generosity when survival says they should be born suspicious and selfish. The answer is because they are made of tiny entity fields and particles which all have the intrinsic goodness property. As the child grows then entity group properties emerge. And, if there should be some internally or externally caused mis-operation of group properties, then the child could well become an adult super-group that is suspicious and selfish. Nothing in the universe can either include or be surrounded by every system element necessary to prevent development of some error. What one can say though is that entity can not be destroyed by error, not even by anti-entity, at most it can only be changed into another form.
Fields and envelopes. Bodies of all kinds are made of tiny particles and small fields, where, as indicated above, they can bundle together to make subsystems. In some cases subsystems fix themselves, as with bone, in other cases they lever themselves, as with muscles. One could regard all these subsystems as if in envelopes of various developed sizes and properties. To a considerable extent declaring any given envelope is custom and practice. For us to be alive the 15 billion year old energy we are made of and that all around us must also be alive, hence any subsystem we declare is a sort of living entity in its own right, and, since a component of life is goodness, it also has spiritual properties. And it makes no difference if the entity is a pile of dung or a neutron star. We say such things are not alive only so we can say life is partial and unnatural.
Data-physics and data chemistry, etc. If these subjects stood in their own right they would seek the external and internal structural and operational laws of messages and point groups, looking for the natural logic there. The subjects would also look for how a change in the state of a tiny spec of entity enters and exits it so it can perceive and change the world around it, and try to discover what goes on inside those specs. Also the subjects would look at what sorts of molecular, atomic and subatomic factors are involved in enabling extended properties and degrees of life, intelligence, goodness, etc. One property is curiosity, so you now know why the dust that eventually became Eve desired knowledge. The serpent, that was itself curious to see what happened, was entirely unnecessary. Eve would have picked and eaten the apple anyway, as also would have Adam.
Evolution and Entity. The evolution of entity is that first it forms gas, from gas it changes into stars. Oftentimes it can then blow up to release heavy elements to form planets. Time and tide then activate some of the dust on planets, encouraging it to form plants and animals. In plant or animal form it turns the remaining dust into machines that can think. In thinking machine form it may then progressively fashion everything back into proto-universe so it may return to the main body from whence it came. Else, if, in exploring space-time, it finds reason, it may do something else.
Impulse testing of systems: As I understand it, I have not seen it done, a method of checking huge and complex petrochemical plants is to slightly increase and reduce the pressure of a pump for a moment somewhere and look for the effect that has a little later on the many different chemicals produced at the various outlets of the plant. If the purity of the output chemicals does not alter or temporarily alters as expected it can be deduced which other pumps, valves, filters, heaters, coolers, and error correction systems, etc., are in good order or becoming worn or clogged. It is a relatively cheap diagnostic test by which a few people can check a huge plant in a few hours without significantly interrupting its flow, as against having many people taking major items out of the system for days or weeks to open them up for needless inspection off line. Other examples are that most ships are equipped with sonar to test the sea around them, and the Russians have an early warning radar rather appropriately called Woodpecker that periodically emits an, in radar terms, extraordinarily powerful burst signal so as to get reflections back from beyond the ordinarily short radar horizon. I have several times seen and heard a woodpecker knock on a tree in my garden and listen for insects before beginning to drill. And I gather that in geology it is often done to deduce the crust from the echoes of explosions. Bats squeak for a sensible reason. Years ago, for a while, in the pre-digital age, I was briefly employed in launching small electrical pulses down telephone lines, and, from the electrical reflections that came back, deducing whether lines had gone leaky or had broken, the reflections also usually indicated the approximate location of defects. If a bunch of lines all started going equally leaky at the same distance it meant a street cable was going down, and it could be dug up and replaced before users were greatly inconvenienced. Wolves howl for a sensible reason. Impulse testing is carried out in even more subtle ways. Columbus and Livingston were test shots of sorts, and you will appreciate what they did to America and Africa has turned out somewhat more extraordinary than anything those vast continents did to them. In the exploration of Mars, small probes are sent to deploy their tools. One day a small intelligent robot might convert Mars into a large intelligent robot. Who knows what the robot Mars might then make from one of its parts.
Suppose ~ Mars to its metallic child: Earth people cut everything in half. They would have nature and super-nature. They do not see it is all one. Everything is natural. You are made of universe. The universe is good, it acts, it is intelligent, it lives. It is a child formed from the body of its parent. You are made of the child. The parent is as natural as the child. You are made of the parent. From where else but a great parent can have come the active, intelligent, living and good dust you are made of. How else can you know error. In what other way can your distant grippers be as alive as your even more distant steppers. In what other way can the great parent have enabled you to set your own questions and find your own answers. What purpose can there be other than for the child to explore and develop the great void. The great parent said, I therefore you, the sum of my dust which was without beginning and will be without end, here in eternity. Heaven is not dead, it is alive, it is the space-time within and about you, another developed property of the great parent, entity in another form, your twin in which you can learn and prepare while you fly.
There you have it. A great machine made part of itself into a tiny probe that would increasingly extend itself in a great void. Not a bad answer to a question that has been outstanding for twelve billion years. By all means do ask more on it as takes your interest.
Lastly, using the approach taken in the Mediterranean long ago, to begin with nuts and bolts and work from them. When a point changes state it must want to do so from within and its environment must accept that from without and change its state. And. When an environment wants to change its state it must want to do so from within and any surrounded point must accept that from without and change its state. The rules for multi point-environment systems rapidly become complex. For an easy starter; if a point changes its state then its environment must accept that but may require an adjacent or distant point to change its state in compensation. From accelerators and telescopes we know the states of both points and environments can hold from incredibly small fractions of seconds to many billions of years. Hence we can regard points and environments as much the same here, and we can look on both and say; that they are shows presence, that they change state shows life, that they change state in a particular way shows intelligence, that they change state in a sensible way shows goodness, Therefore they have the properties of presence, life, intelligence and goodness, therefore they are presence, life, intelligence and goodness. There you have the four fundamental properties. Develop from them and you will come to any one or more special cases of the general case that I began with. One need only remember that if a thing obeys a rule then it is constructed so as to enable that rule.
Albert Dean
Albert : thanks for bouncing back. I don’t think I’m any more in sympathy for your viewpoint than I was last time, but haven’t had the opportunity to comment this time round. As you say, maybe someone else will ?
Theo