Week 8, Reductionsism

I find it kind of difficult to fully blame the reductionists about their strange way of looking at the world. In their time, everyone saw the universe and the world a certain way and that was considered true and beautiful. Although for us it seems like a ridiculous almost unthinkable way of looking at the universe, for them it was what they saw through their cultural lenses. We are also to blame for that now, too. Maybe three hundred years from now (if humans are still around), people will look back at our present scientists and the culture and society that believed them and laugh.  

Week 8, Energy Efficient Culture

The idea of energy efficiency is based on the first law of thermodynamics: the total energy content of the universe shall remain constant; never being created or destroyed; but only transformed from one form to another. Efficiency, then, refers to how much of the actual energy employed into making or doing something leads to the final result as compared to how much of the energy is wasted and/or lost in the process of making or doing that something. I'm not sure how efficient the manufacturing of all the stuff we consume is, but is seems like the way society has come to be in itself is not efficient at all. For example, people are forced to worked from 9-5 in a lot of places. However, they are not being efficient for most of their time on the job. They are literally wasting time. It would seem to be more efficient to let people work the amount of time they really need to finish something and then let them rest. 

Week 8, Newton's Law

I think of Newton's Laws as ways of describing what we now consider pretty straight-forward truths. Even though not all parts of his laws are obvious, they are pretty easy to understand and explain to someone who has never heard them before because we see most of Newton's Laws in action everyday. For me, the most interesting part of this week's class was to see how much physics and philosophy have changed through out time, both being affected and affecting the society and culture around them. 

Week 7, Consciousness

The short section on chaos and consciousness in the packet made me think about how much our consciousness is connected with the consciousness of other humans, other beings, and all the other forms of consciousness out there. Maybe consciousness is in autopoiesis, constantly re-emerging and re-creating itself throughout the universe. If "every point in the space-time grid is consciousness", then consciousness seems to be one of the basic things in the universe, existing in tandem with everything else. Thus, it would seem possible to expand consciousness if we where able to connect with all the consciousness around us. 

Week 7, Fractals

Fractals seem to be a very nice way to understand complex systems. Patterns within the larger system create and affect the pattern of the larger system itself. Small changes to the smaller patterns would then have huge impacts upon the complex whole. This concept connects back to feedback loops and autopoiesis for me because they all seem to want to explain how complex systems are so complex. I think they are complex beyond our understanding, but these interesting ideas really do make me appreciate the complexity of the world and universe we live in. 

Week 7, Ordered Chaos

The term ordered chaos is fascinating for me because it points very much to the human experience: on one end, we understand that there must be a wholeness somewhere so much bigger than us that we can't understand it; at the other end, we are so consumed by our existence we think we can figure these mysteries out. If we look at the patterns of the universe and the planet from the more whole-istic point of view, we seem to intuitively know that, in it's own way, the universe is carrying on, doing its thing without much particular attention to us and our need to understand. It carries its own order with it. From a human-istic point of view, the random patterns are pure chaos because they make no sense in out relatively small and limited minds. 

Week 6, Energy and Qi

I think energy and Qi are different words for the same thing. They might seem different, but I feel that that is a cause of a language and cultural barrier. I feel like everything is energy or Qi in different states, some more solid and some more subtle. Even physicists seem to agree with that! They say that matter is one of the possible aspects of energy. It seems like the knowledge and vision of modern day physics has not yet trickled down into society at large, but eventually it will and maybe people will begin to be more open to discuss energy as part of who they are.  

Week 6, Resonance in my World

Resonance happens all the time (at least I feel like it does). Whenever I feel particularity drawn to something, someplace, or someone it is because I am picking up on its resonance and it resonates with my resonance. Like I mentioned before in my Bad Vibes post, that feeling of "bad vibes" is a lack of resonance or some conflicting resonance. I also feel like resonance happens when you look at someone and know what they are thinking because both persons are picking up on the same wave. 

Will I shatter to pieces if some opera singer hits the note that I am resonating on? Maybe, but that's a pretty cool way to go out. 

Week 6, Bad Vibes?

Are all vibrations good? Hmmm...that's a good question. We have all had the experience of being somewhere or meeting someone that have us bad or weird vibes. Often times, I take those feelings pretty seriously and try and figure out why I am receiving them and see if there is something I should do (like leave or stop interacting with someone). After this week's lecture, I think that those feelings are not necessarily due to someone's or something's bad vibes, but more a reflection of a lack of resonance or a conflicting resonance. What might be bad to me makes someone else feel great, so I guess nothing had inherently bad vibes but they arise in context and interaction.  

Week 5, Links

The first link was really cool. It made me think if waves and their motion can be considered part sacred geometry...

Week 5. Sacred Geometry and Phyisics

There does seem to be a connection between sacred geometry and physics. If sacred geometry is real and the same patterns repeat themselves through out the universe and our natural world, maybe physics could help us understand why things keep arranging themselves in such patterns. In fact, sacred geometry is a form of symmetry. Maybe physicists would explain sacred geometry as another symmetry. 

Week 5, CP violation

CP violation is an exception to the rule of time in physics. The neutral kaon decays into different particles when time is going backwards rather than forwards. It does puzzle me once I start thinking about it. If particles inside of the atoms that make us up can do that, how does that affect us on the macrocosmic level? Can these particles travel back in time within us and within other objects? Cp violation points to how our notion to time is relatively limited because we can only experience it in certain ways. 

Week 5, My (a)symmetrical world

Symmetry seems to be one of those terms that we have made up in order to find some form of stability in our world, and I have never looked at my life through the lens of symmetry. Often times I do find patterns and symmetries in my life, especially when I am more in touch with the natural world. But I also find a lot of randomness and asymmetries. In terms of my life, I feel that there are parts that I can't explain and find reason to (maybe the asymmetries?) and other parts I totally understand (maybe the symmetries?)