Cherokee Paul: Hidden

Why do some things float freely while others get stuck?

How do some things remain grounded while others flitter into cycles of birth and death?

How can change and nothingness co-exist?

Mysteries still abound, and so too do metaphors for mysteries.  The possibilities are endless!

A good metaphor for the cosmos.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.”   Does complexity both come from and lead to simplicity?   Isn’t it a relative scale like light to heavy?

A catalytic chemical reaction is a fine example of what he means, I think.  The before and after states are simple equilibria.   Complexity arises from a third molecule that has the capacity to temporarily couple and transform one simple state into another.  Complexity is the relationship of the three. It does not eliminate the essential roles of the two simpler states.

When we look at questions about complex systems we should similarly expect to find relative simplicities on either side of a complex intermediary.   Consider the question, How and why do living things reproduce?

• Simplicity 1 :  molecules that are chemically compatible tend toward intimacy
• Complexity arises:  the double helix of DNA
• Simplicity 2 :  replication creates self-sustaining patterns

Before the double helix was understood, a veil hung over our understanding of the depth of the fundamental relationship between structure and reproduction.  The double helix itself was a mystery but so too were the pervasiveness of simplicity 2 and the importance of simplicity 1.  Watson and Crick and associates got at the complexity by first understanding the simplicities better than anyone else.

Science doesn’t deal well with deep mysteries.  Concepts are developed that allow for the discussion of observations and measurements despite no known causative agent or mechanism.  These concepts are, by definition, inferior.  In the case of reproduction, the pre-mechanistic scientific concept was “heritability.”  Scientists accepted that it was just a matter of time before a mechanism was discovered.  They kept doing their best thinking but left room for more.   The double helix came into focus and the veil lifted.

In theoretical physics, the most fundamental complex system is characterized by the question, How and why does something that behaves in predictable, stable ways exist? The answer, by default, has been terribly muddled.   All we have to deal with are concepts!   No one, despite what convoluted discussions and calculations imply, has seen an atom.   The onslaught of non-real concepts has made us forget that there is no reason to reject a real causative mechanism for material complexity, one that results in “simple” explanations of other emergent phenomena.   Quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and special relativity create so many conceptual cross-currents that any simplicity 1 and simplicity 2 are hopelessly lost like a boat in a storm.

Consider this possibility -

• Simplicity 1:  Nothingness can be somethingness
• Complexity arises: Cosmological coherence with capacity for both redundancy and novelty
• Simplicity 2: Autocatalytic, scaling phenomena lead to predictability and stability from atomic scale up

What the hell is cosmological coherence?  I have an idea, but until people acknowledge that existing concepts are worth sacrificing, it will fall on deaf ears.  I do have hope that helping define the simplicities might set the search on the right track.  (Thus the preoccupation with nothingness.)

A cosmological mechanism as organized as DNA – but without the organic requirements – is almost certainly at play.   If only we can lift the conceptual veils.

While I trod my riparian route today my inner musings took a strange turn.  I was thinking about the universe and magic.  (The strange turn came later.)  It seems to me that we all arrive ready for a magic show.   From my earliest memories, I can remember welcoming the feeling of being amazed.  We want to not believe our eyes.

Then reason enters the picture, and the intellect starts to reflexively conclude “this must be a trick” when magic happens.  Considering that stage, street, and other forms of illusional magic are timeless arts drawing audiences of all ages even since the Age of Reason there must be an explanation.  It seems our innate capacity for awe literally overwhelms the rational function of our minds when the tricks are good enough, seemless enough, slight enough.  The same goes for optical illusions.  Like magic they create an inescapable and sometimes troubling experience that says at its most fundamental any understanding of experience is bound to be circular.  We realize we are easily deceived – benignly, beautifully, perplexingly so.

“The universe is quite the trickster,” I continued playfully.  Its magic is meta-magic though.  Instead of speaking to the personal it speaks to the whole.  If the cosmos practiced slight-of-hand (and I’m here to suggest that it does) how would we know given that personal experience is our primary guide?  Would that make God a magician?  I’m pretty sure none of the traditional religions would be interested in reconciling such a seemingly trivial view.   Still I got excited at how a slight-of-hand metaphor is the perfect way to explain my unique view on how dark energy comes into play in the universe.

“But wait!”  I couldn’t believe where my path had taken me. Quantum theory already re-introduced the trickster god.  The 20th century science pantheon of mathematically-indocrinated theorealities would not be complete without a god who ruled quantum indeterminacy, Heisenburg’s uncertainty theory, and the Copenhagen interpretation.   The forest transformed from inviting sanctuary to foreboding trap.

My own repose was doubly vexed.   I know the pitfalls of quantum theory, but in wanting to present the cosmos’s slight-of-hand there was quantum theory’s legacy pointing the way.   I realized the source of the irony several hours later.  The trickster and the magician are related and even blend together under dualistic thinking.  But Ancients understood the difference.  I had ignored it – briefly.  The distinction is that the trickster works from the insecurity created by illusion; the magician builds on the awe.

Quantum theory has primed us to see the universe as more than it seems.   I will give it that.  But I hope we are still capable of seeing that the cosmos is more than the work of a trickster.  More than mere now you see it now you don’t imperceptible tricks suggested by quantum mechanics, the cosmos streams from imperceptible slight-of-hand where a broken string becomes whole again and one ball becomes dozens.  Where coins disappear from a hand only to reappear behind an ear.  Where no laws of nature are violated, only made irrelevant by the possibilities beyond perception.

Let me be specific.  What makes the boats in the painting above?  The blend of bridge and clouds.  Unbelievable, yes.  But real, yes, at least in the perception created by the artist.

What makes matter?  The blend of dark energy and radiation.  Unbelievable, yes.  But real, it is possible.  A coherent cosmos is one where nothing is more magical than what is real.

I found a Tree of Knowledge of sorts and have been visiting it daily.

For the last few months I have been spending most of my time in nature.  On a journey several weeks ago I came across one particular tree.  The tree was big and old and, at first glance, looked dead through and through.  Its bark-less form protruded from the ground like a thick rope all frayed at the top.  Upon closer inspection I found that the rope effect came from it being made of four trunks grown together.

Leafless branches, pointy and black with age, flanked its trunk like an armory.   One branch of significant size had broken off and fallen to the ground.  Otherwise the ominous tree stood, content in its frightening display.

I made my way through the fallen portion to investigate the far side of the tree.  From there I could see how it had remained standing.  One of the four trunks that made up its magnificent meta-trunk was still alive!  Bark covered it, and a set of pale roots each the size of a person’s forearm extended into the ground behind.  When I stared up through the forest understory I could just see the branches that held its leaves.

Trees, intimate in their connection to the earth, make timeless metaphors for knowledge.   Knowledge arises from what is hidden (the roots) and branches out in search of energy (the leaves).   In the right habitat, one will grow and even seed further knowledge.  Trees are common to religious stories and other wisdom traditions.  The serpent slithered from a tree in the Garden of Eden.  Siddhartha sat beneath a Bodhi tree where he was visited by his inner demons.  The tenets of mystical Judaism are constructed as a tree.  The tree in the movie Avatar represents our modern fascination with the knowledge of communities and connectedness.

I offer the gnarly tree as a Tree of Nothingness.  Not Sartre style nothingness.  Cosmological nothingness, by which I mean everything other than something that can be directly sensed.

Since the discovery of dark energy, Newton’s contribution to understanding nothingness… dead.  Relativity’s contribution… dead.  Quantum theory’s contribution… dead.  Three dead branches.  Dark energy, a mystery even among physicists, is a challenge to re-conceive nothingness.  It is the live part of the Tree of Nothingness that continues to grow, in spite of the weight of dead ideas around it.

But there is another metaphor, this time historical, that injects itself conveniently into the geometry of the Tree of Nothingness.  Dolpopa, writing in the 14th century, refers to his divergence from the existing Buddhist doctrine as his “fourth council.” (Only three such councils had, or have ever since, been widely recognized.)  In short his doctrine distinguishes emptiness as being not a singular state but a metaphysically rich one.   Buddhists have long focused on the notion of empty-of-self as the ultimate state due to it being the source of Buddha-nature, but Dolpopa noticed that plenty of nothingness exists outside of Buddha-nature itself, and he called it empty-of-other.   He too had discovered dark energy.

I burned what I could from the branch that had fallen from the Tree of Nothingness.  The fire was the hottest fire I think I have ever felt.

Wow, what an ordeal.  Moving my weblog turned out to be a technical education I don’t soon hope to repeat.

I am excited about the new look.   Though I liked the newspaper style of the previous, this will be more readable and will match what I do on the fixed site a bit better.

Now to get organized on new content on the fixed site and new updates and musings on the weblog, both forthcoming.

Over the last few weeks I have been participating in an active NPR-based blogging forum known as 13.7 Cosmos and Culture.   Very fun.  Have not been sure where it would lead but enjoy having scientists to “talk” to.

Scientists willing to talk to me are in short supply.   Dr. Dinsch is the exception of course, but he’s a research physician, which doesn’t count (jk… Roger’s the best!).

The posts on 13.7 – and it seems most of the comments too – are made by forward-thinking scientists.  I have added comments here and there, but basically kept a low profile.  At this point its readers, like most scientists, are unlikely to see my saga as anything but melodrama.

One post I have been following is Marcelo Gleiser’s  “To Unify Or Not Unify: That Is (Not) The Question” (June 24, 2010).   A comment posted Sunday really hit home.  Steve O observed that “even if you can prove an inability to measure our way to a complete understanding, maybe some clever chap will make a lucky guess!”

That is exactly the way I see myself in relation to redefining physical theory.  Cleverness, the most respected trait in Tibetan culture by the way, is one I have heard myself described as more than once.   Chonyi said as much the first time I met him to discuss apprenticing in his restaurant.

And how lucky am I to have had access to perhaps the most distinct tools in all of history for making a lucky guess  – 350-year-old carvings from an obscure group of Buddhist gnostics.  Plus translated-into-English scripts from cosmologically-minded doctrine that preceded that by another 250 years (The Buddha from Dolpo, text and translations by Cyrus Stearns 1999).  That plus having a brother who was immersed in physics and yet compelled to question its central tenants.

I have not presented my “lucky guess” formally here yet — I hope I have demonstrated some small bit of cleverness.  Continued  concentrated effort is needed to work out what appears to be the final piece of the puzzle:  gravity.  I have all of the edge pieces of the puzzle in place, have even filled in most of the picture, and what remains is a hole where gravity should be.  Actually I know gravity manifests as part of the VEHICLE continuum, I just have not settled on what its complement (opposite end of the continuum) is and why.

Clever Lass with a Lucky Guess continued »