Week 9 Assignments

My E-Prime Day

Standard English

“While I was sitting in front of my desk today writing my last physics assignment I suddenly realized that I have been working and studying in San Fransisco for over three and a half years.” 

E-Prime

“While I was sitting in front of my desk today writing my last physics assignment I suddenly realized that it appears that I have been working and studying in San Fransisco for over three and a half years.”

Then when I started to think about what the difference is between this E-Prime sentence and the standard English I just wrote I decided to have some fun and make as many primes as possible out of the E-Prime sentence.

E-Prime Prime Prime and more Prime : )

“It appears that while the physical person that I believe to be myself seems to be sitting in front of what this physical person believed to be his desk at a day that appears to be today who seems to be writing what appears to be his last physics assignment he seems to suddenly realize that it appears that he seems to have been doing what appears to be work and study in a city that seems to be San Fransisco for what appears to be three and a half years.”

And by taking the original standard English to this level of primes highlights the fact that, It is very difficult if not impossible to only speak about what we actually know of the world and our experience of it.  They are much more uncertain than what we are accustomed to. 

  

Synthesizing Physics-”As above, so below”

Physics is not only the study of the objective physical world but also the study of the subject that is able to experience it.  Western physics has until recently focused exclusively on the former but has slowly coming to the realization that objects cannot exist independently from the experiencing subject.

Week 8 Assignments

Newton’s Three Laws and me

I feel that there is a beauty and simplicity in Newton’s three laws.  It is also fascinating  to realize that these three simple laws are very much responsible for the modern industrial revolution and technological advancements in virtually all areas of our lives.  I look forward to the day we come up with such simple and beautiful laws for the whole universe and life itself. 

Our “Energy Efficient” Culture

To be efficient is to efficient towards a certain goal.  I feel like our culture today is very efficient at achieving various goals that it sets its mind to.  However whether these goals are inherently valuable or not is much less examined.  What I believe is the case is that often many of these goals can contradict each other on many levels.   For instance short terms goals may contradict long term goals. Goals of different levels such as individual, family, company, province, nation, world, environment and etc. might also contradict either other.  And when this happens the efficiency of achieving one goal  can make the achievement of a contradictory and perhaps even more important goal at a different level that much more difficult.  One of the most clear examples is the super efficiency that we achieve in exploiting natural resources and mass producing various products makes protecting our environment that much harder.  What this means is that even though we might be energy efficient at achieving individual goals we might be very energy inefficient overall.

Descartes has a lot to answer for!

Descartes is indeed an advocate of reductionism and a mechanistic model of the universe.  However to blame Descartes on our adoption of his theories is perhaps unfair.  A more useful approach might be to ask what factors bring our cultures and ourselves into adopting reductionism and a mechanistic model of the universe.  What are the reasons that the teachings of other schools of thoughts have not been accepted by us and brought into the mainstream.  Eventually we might realize that Descartes may only be a spokes person for the mistaken assumptions and illusions that we long hold dear.       

Week 7 Assignments

“Ordered Chaos”-does this sound familiar?

Fractals as patterns of complex systems

The term “ordered chaos” succinctly spells out the essence of chaos theory as well as fractal patterns.  A definition of chaos theory is “the qualitative study of unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems.”  Before chaos theory we all equate deterministic behavior with predictability.  However what chaos theory shows is that this is not the case.  A system can be deterministic and at the same time unpredictable because its behavior is aperiodic and unstable.  And fractal patterns demonstrates to us visually and hence in real life how simple the mathematical equations for a deterministic system can be before its behavior is no longer predicable even with the use of the most advanced computers.

Consciousness out of Chaos?

I think consciousness can be defined in two ways.  The first is the subject that is able to experience the world, both the outer physical world as well as the inner mental and emotional world.  The second is a collection of the various inner emotions and thoughts of a physical person. And for the vast majority of people through these various inner emotions and thoughts emerges an illusion of an unified individual ego or an “I”.  

As the subject that is able to experience the world consciousness is qualitatively different from the experienced world.  It has no shape, weight, size, texture, location and so on that we normally associate an physical object with.  It also has none of the qualities of our emotions and thoughts.  To the extent that chaos is part of our objective world, either outer or inner, it is not part of our consciousness which is the subject that is able to experience this chaos.  In short consciousness and chaos are two necessary and yet different parts of our experience and no part can arise from the other.

Only as an illusion of an unified individual ego or an “I” we can say that consciousness comes out of chaos.  It is only through experiencing the world in its various aspects, both outer and inner, that we can experience the ego or an I.  In this sense “I” is nothing but the collection of experience and nothing more.  The fact that we feel that there is an “I” as an individual object above and beyond the collection of experience is a very fundamental illusion that Buddhism tries to dispel.  In short the “consciousness” that comes out of chaos is only an illusion of an “I” or individual ego which does not exist.

Physics Final Paper

Scientific discovery of a mysterious truth

A brief discussion of western and eastern world-views 

This paper briefly compares western and eastern world-views focusing on two related aspects of interconnectiveness and indescribability.  It first outlines both world-views and then relates them to modern scientific discoveries and finally suggests that the two world-views complement each other. 

A western world-view can be stated simply as follows:  Our universe is made up of independently existing objects spread out in space and time.  An eastern world-view is quite the opposite and can be stated as follows: Our universe is an inseparable whole as everything in it is inextricably connected with each other.  Further more, because of its all-inclusiveness and interconnectedness the universe cannot be adequately described through concepts as concepts are, by nature, exclusive (ex: to be A is not to be -A).  

To an average person the eastern world-view is difficult to accept initially.  It makes grand mysterious statements about our universe and everything within and yet seems to defy both logic and common sense.  The western world-view, on the other hand, is both clear and simple and seems almost self-evident.  Furthermore, this simplicity and clarity facilitate a path to modern science as they allow scientists to study one element at a time, thoroughly and in detail, without worrying about its possible connections with the rest of the universe.

However, as modern science progresses some of its latest discoveries have shifted our understanding of the universe ever closer to the eastern world-view.  For instance special theory of relativity suggests that space and time are not two separate entities but are two inseparable parts of space-time.  General theory of relativity goes even further by tying in this space-time with gravity and all physical objects.  In addition, E=MC^2 and wave-particle duality makes it clear that energy and matter as well as wave and particle are not two different things but two different aspects of the same thing.  

Furthermore, studies on synchronicity show us that there is an intimate connection between our inner mental space and the outer physical space.  Which also means that free will, which governs our inner space, and causation, which governs the outer physical space, are also intimately connected.  Finally, the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics states that even as observers we cannot be completely detached from the objects that we are observing.  And because of this quantum uncertainty we also begin to realize that conceptual paradoxes such as being hot and cold or even being alive and dead at the same time are actually part of reality.   

Putting all the evidence together the eastern world-view, as mythical and illogical as it initially seems, is ultimately correct as the universe is indeed an interconnected and inseparable whole and hence ultimately indescribable.  And yet it requires the western  world-view with all its clear, detailed and undeniable scientific discoveries to confirm this mysterious truth. 

Week 6 Assignments

Are all vibrations “good”?

As our reading material for this week shows vibration is not always good.  It can cause bridges, buildings and freeways to collapse.  It can also cause damage to our body as the problem with the Honda CR-V demonstrates.  Some vibrations might even be good for one part of our body but not good for the rest of the body.  This is because various parts of our body vibrate at different frequencies.

Resonance in my world

One Taiwanese researcher, Wei-Kung Wang, is studying the relationship between our circulatory system and resonance.  His research shows that the main power behind our blood circulation is not from the heart as a mechanical pump.  Instead the heart only serves as an instrument that sets a specific vibration for the rest of the organs.  And the rest of the organs will vibrate at various frequencies that harmonize with this base frequency.  And these different frequencies are the real basis of the twelve meridians described in traditional Chinese medicine.  Based on this theory, Wei-Kung Wang even developed a pulse reading machine that can diagnose various illnesses.  For people who are interested to know more I will pass his book around tomorrow during class.

Connections I can make between energy and Qi

I think the connection between energy and qi is vibration.   As discussed in class energy expresses itself in vibration.  Similarly according to Wei-Kung Wang, the “Qi” that is moving the blood in our body is not mechanical but a form of vibration.  And this vibration with its multiple harmonics is also the basis for all of our meridians.  If it is true it seems to suggest that qi just like energy is also a form of vibration.  

Week Five Assignements

My (a)symmetrical world

As the article points out the idea of symmetry is very closely related to the idea of conservation.  Furthermore symmetries and conservations exist in a variety of forms.  As to symmetries, mirror image is only the most common type.  There are also higher degree, rotational and mathematical symmetries.  As to conservation there are conservation of momentum, energy, rotation and charge among others.  

I believe the world we live in contains both symmetry and asymmetry and yet is neither symmetrical nor asymmetrical.  Similarly the laws of conservations both apply and don’t apply to the world.  These concepts are created to explain the world and yet the nature of concept in general is that it is exclusive.  To be A is also to not be -A.  Otherwise we do not know what A means (logical laws of identity and non-contradiction).  However reality is not exclusive but inclusive which is beyond conceptual expression and hence non-conceptual.  This is perhaps the reason why in his attempt to describe ultimate reality, Laozi said: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”   

Just what does this “CP violation” really mean?

CPT Invariance is a fundamental assumption in physics which states all processes involving particles remain invariant if the particles are changed into antiparticles.  However in testing Kaon, physicists found that its decay rate changes when they change its charge (C) and parity (P).  This means that in order for CPT invariance to hold true then the reversion of time (T) must also affect Kaon’s decay rate.

Are there connections between Sacred Geometry and Physics?

I believe Sacred Geometry and Physics are intimately connected.  I-Ching, Mandala, Golden Ratio and Fractals are all illustrations and demonstrations of the inner order and logic of the seemingly chaotic movements of some objects, events or phenomenon of our physical universe which are also the subject of physics.   

Week 4 Assignments

How has e=mc2 affected you?

The formula shows in mathematical precision that matter and energy are ultimately two inextricably related if not identical phenomenon.  This means that the usual qualities that we use to distinguish matter from energy such as having physical dimensions, weight, existing independently in space and time and so on are not absolute and ultimately changeable.  

How would you compare the four “forces”?

I think of the four forces gravity seems to be the most mysterious and acts least like a force per se.  It seems that the other three forces, namely electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force can be converted amongst each other but not gravity.  Gravity also cannot be altered like the other three forces.  Its a function between mass and distance and there is nothing we can do to change it as long as we keep the two variables constant.  Please see Nothing But Motion Chapter 5 Gravitation by Dewey B. Larson for more clarification on this point.

What is the function of gravity?

The basic function of gravity is to attract any object.  According to the general theory of relativity gravity is due to the curvature of space-time.  Currently physicists are trying to make more sense of gravity through uniting quantum mechanics with the general theory of relativity.  Their ultimate goal is to come up with a theory of everything that combines gravity with the other three forces.  Dewey Larson has come up with one of such theories as early as 1950s.  His idea is that the whole universe is really not static but moving and spreading out at the speed of light.  Gravity is really objects, due to their inward motion, that spread out slower than the speed of light.  So relative to everything else these objects seem to attract each other but in reality they are just not moving as fast.  Please see works by Dewey B. Larson for more information on this point.  They can be downloaded from the internet for free : )