Book Review: A Tear at the Edge of Creation

This book kept me at the edge of my seat. Like an exciting ballgame, "A Tear at the Edge of Creation" kept me in suspense. Who's gonna win? The Unifiers? Or the Breakers? Like an expert commentator, Marcelo Gleiser explained both sides well. However, he has chosen one team to cheer for.

Once, he was a unifier himself. But after a long intellectua-scientific journey, Marcelo Gleiser now argues that the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), or the Final Truth is a construction of the human mind, a monotheistic myth that has inspired brilliant minds like Thales, Kepler, Einstein and so many others, with little support in physical reality.

First he would tell of the wonderful elegant patterns in nature, but then suddenly point out an anti-pattern in the next instant. He would explain the Symmetry of our universe in masterful language and then destroy it with Asymmetries on the next page.

The "Unifiers" are reductionists. They search for a law of nature that is simple and true. The author argues that the notion of a Theory of Everything (TOE) is a cultural one. It is the scientific counterpart of the monotheistic religions. He says, "Why insist on relating Oneness with beauty? Isn't it time to celebrate a different kind of beauty, one inspired by the imperfections of Nature?" This thought somewhat resonated with an old thought I posted a few years ago.

So he proposes on focusing on the imperfections of nature, rather than the search for ultimate harmonies or perfection. He points out the rare circumstances in the universe that led to our existence. That makes us special. It creates a new purpose for humankind. He shouts, "Humans! Wake up and save life with all that you have! Life is rare. Treasure it, worship it, make it last, spread it across the Universe."

This book is great because I've learned so many things from it, and found patterns I never saw before. It gave me insights that give a deeper understanding about some underlying mystery of our universe. Some of them are as follows.

The universe is polarized: There are more right-handed people than left-handed ones (like me and Marcelo). There are more matter versus anti-matter. On a molecular level, Life is left-handed (chirality). Without these imperfections, or imbalance, we would not be here at all. Phase Transition: the universe underwent a phase transition similar to water turning from liquid to ice when the temperature is lowered.

Only one tiny detail bugs me about Marcelo's idea right now. He roots for the absence of Magnetic Monopoles that break Symmetry. But it was finally detected in 2009. So, i guess it's a score for the Unifiers.

What I can say now after reading this book is that, previously I seek for patterns through eyes that are tainted with the Unifier's lens. Now I intend to see things in a more balanced way. Seeing the quips of nature as well, alongside the inherent order and symmetry.

Fireworks, SuperNovae and Legacy

On the 4th of July, I chanced upon a documentary about fireworks. What caught my attention was the modern technique in crafting specific patterns and shapes of fireworks in the sky (Katamono). Controlled patterns of shapes such as a heart or star can be lit up in the sky by arranging how the explosive pellets are arranged within the shell and its core.
In essence, the shape of an explosion tells much about the explosive. I call it The Fireworks Principle. If we apply this principle to Astronomy, by examining the shape of a supernova we can probably know much about the qualities of the star that produced it. For example, the polar regions of the star that spawned Eta Carinae can be discerned from the two points where the bulk of stellar mass is ejected.
The Fireworks Principle is the same in terms of life: As we live, we are fashioning the core within that will someday explode as a "lifework" - the patterns will become apparent in due time. Our character and our legacy will persist even as this body, the temporary shell gives up the spark of life.
Each human life is a supernova in the making. The legacy we leave behind - the shapes of our lifesparks will tell much about the very core of our soul.


Links:
How Fireworks are made
Eta Carinae

The Center of the Whorl

There has always been something mysterious at the center of whorls such as storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and whirlpools. Even more mysterious is that spirals and swirls occur at multiple levels in our universe: Our very own Milky Way galaxy is a spiral whorl; and at the top of your head there is probably an epicenter where your hair pans out in spiral formation.
It is believed that at the center of the Milky Way there is a black hole. You'll be ripped to shreds on your way to the center. Yet, at the core there is probably complete peace and tranquility. I say this because I remember the movie "The Perfect Storm" whereupon the central eye of the storm briefly passed through the stranded fishermen. It was a moment of complete stillness, and the fishermen saw the sun shine through a clear blue sky as their boat momentarily lay within the storm's center.
I never knew that at the eye of a storm there is peace and tranquility until I watched that scene.
Yet as soon as the eye of the storm moved onwards, their boat was left behind to be engulfed by the trailing half of the storm. Chaos resumed with lashing winds and hundred-foot waves..killing all the fishermen.
If the pattern of the whorl is emergent at multiple levels in the universe then it must surely mean something at the level of human life. I can see several meanings from the whorl's archetype:
1) If you are experiencing a life of total ease, with no challenges, no goals, no action, and no struggle whatsoever for an extended time, then you are in big trouble. You are right smack at the center of a storm and it will break you to pieces when it passes you by. A life with no activity, and a life with nothing to keep you busy is a recipe for death.
2) Attack the problem right at the center. It's much effective to dive right in at the root of the problem rather going at the sides and dodging the storm.
3) The Spiral probably means that there's always a center on all things. Surely, your life must be revolving around someone or something (I hope not a 'black hole'). Thus, In life, finding out who, where or what the true center is, and then focusing upon it could probably give you the peace and tranquility that you desire...as you live and die.

Intervalography: Capturing Time and Space All At Once

An Evening of Poetry by agrinberg. One of the most famous images that launched intervalography.

In my quest for patterns, no other modern way of photography captures my attention than Intervalography. I believe its a new form of photography that adds another dimension to time-lapse techniques. I learned that intervalography involves cutting strips from exactly the same area of a sequence of images taken within an interval of time, and then pasting these strips together to form a new image. The resulting pattern is like a "summarized" fragment of space and time. It is both enigmatic and beautiful.
Being a junkie for automation, it never failed to bring up photoshop actions in my mind. And being a coder, it instantaneously brought up pseudocode loops in my head. My curiousity led me to processing, an open source software geared for artists and designers. I'll soon be posting some of my own intervalographies soon. Its the day when pattern-hunter becomes pattern-creator.

The Search for Meaning Beyond Patterns

I just realized that almost immediately after recognizing a pattern, I tend to find meaning in that new discovery. I often ask "why is it so?" like how I asked "Why is the universe fractal?"
Part and parcel of the Archetyper Blog and website is to detect, describe and then document these patterns, seek the truth behind it, and now, in an epiphany of realization - to find meaning in them.
This is the reason why I have changed the byline of Archetyper into "Seeking Meaning Beyond Patterns". For what good is it if we find out something and yet totally miss out on the meaning behind it? Lets look, for example, at the discovery that the universe is expanding. So what if the universe is expanding? It seems incomplete just knowing it as such. There has to be something more than such a mere fact, specially for the sentient beings who just found out about it! Now different people will find different meanings in such a finding. For example, some will say we are bound for a very lonely universe later on (so we must party now while we have the chance), or some will remark that the future and the universe is wide open for anyone to leave a mark. This blog will encourage such cogitations, aside from inspiring others to hunt for patterns.
Because the search for patterns is already an awesome adventure. Yet the search for meaning beyond patterns makes it all the more fun!

Mathematica Training Online by O'Reilly

Opening the eyes of young minds to be receptive to nature's patterns is a challenging task. In the realm of Mathematics and Science, where it can sometimes get boring when one can't initially perceive inner beauty, it is even harder to cultivate interest. In our age of technology and connectivity, it is great that the O'Reilly Publishing company recently announced a wonderful endeavor:
Their school of technology will soon be providing a browser-based version of Wolfram's Mathematica, a powerful technical computing and education software which will be used to teach math and science topics online.
Honing skills to detect patterns in nature is best done with actual hands-on and brains-on tinkering. Via ajax-based web technologies, O'Reilly will deliver the power of Mathematica to let students to do real interactive work in math and science, giving a genuine educational experience for students around the world.

Source: http://www.oreilly.com/emails/press/ost-newcert.html

Everyone is an Archetyper!

The article on nature news is interesting but it was the "theories" entered by readers in the 'comments' section that caught my attention, and made me smile, because some of them were quite funny.
It was noticed that a number - 10^122 kept popping up in conjunction with several constants of nature, and the numerical plays to explain 10^122 was quite creative and infotaining. It even included 42!
I just realized that so many people out there are pattern-hunters! The innate zest to make sense of the world is definitely embedded inside humanity's psyche. The search for Meaning is everybody's concern. Everyone is an Archetyper!

Source: Nature News

Eureka: It Fits The Pattern!

Eureka! I just can't help but get intrigued by the news title of this discovery in exoplanetology: 2 Planets Seem to Fit Our Pattern. The discovery of these two planets that are similar to Saturn and Jupiter would seem to imply that they belong to Solar System similar to ours. Other interesting similarities are listed below:

—The ratio between the masses of the two worlds is about 3:1, similar to the Jupiter/Saturn ratio.

—The smaller planet is about twice as far from its star as the larger one, just as Saturn is roughly twice as far away from the sun as Jupiter.

—The two worlds orbit their star in 5 and 14 years, similar to the 2:5 orbit ratio of Jupiter and Saturn.

Another article mentions that the newly-found Solar System could be a "true analog".
As a pattern-hunter, news like these are music to my ears, specially that this discovery comes after I recently blogged that the Laws of the Universe are inherently life-friendly.

It only gets us closer and closer to an impending verification of this idea that if the configuration of our Solar System is not unique, then a rocky Earth-like exoplanet must be in the habitable zone of a similar Solar System. And once this particular habitable exoplanet is detected soon, we all know what's next - There Could Be Life!

We are at the fringes of a very exciting point in history, a turning point in human thought perhaps as great as the Copernican revolution when humanity realized that the earth is not the center of the world. This time however, it will even be a bigger realization: Humanity is not the center of the Universe.

When the actual discovery of life in other parts of the universe finally comes, humanity will be shaken to the core. The best is yet to come.

The Simplelarity Principle

Here is an Article from Scientific American so full of beautiful concepts to tackle for the Archetyper. I will first list down the phrases from that article which ring a bell, and then tell you what I think:

• core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation


• what Tufte teaches about analytical design: Good displays of data help to reveal knowledge relevant to understanding mechanism, process and dynamics, cause and effect. We see the unthinkable and think the unseeable


• Clear and precise seeing becomes as one with clear and precise thinking.
  - the Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van


• Simple design, intense content

What stands out for me is our tendency to simplify complexity in order to understand. Using Diagrams, Web Interfaces, Lists, Theories (Grand Unified Theory or TOE, String Theory), Math and Symbolisms, Metaphors, Analogies and Parables - it is proven time and time again that the most effective method to understand our universe is simplification. Why is this so?

Why is it that we dont "complexify" things in order to make them more understandable? To me, this is a pattern worth noticing, so relevant to our era that I must give it a name: The Simplelarity Principle.

The word - Simplelarity (simple-larity) stems from my observation that the tendency of Intelligence towards "Simplification" runs counter to the Singularity. In Vinge's and Kurzweil's terms, the Singularity is defined as the point where machines surpasses human intelligence and everything becomes unpredictable (think post-event horizon). Well, unpredictability means chaos and complexity. On the other hand, Simplelarity simply means that when machines, and/or humans become super-smart, everything about the universe would have been simplified via Mental Models or Tools to make everything understandable and predictable. Higher Intelligences must be able to simplify things better, not make a mess, right?

Brains and Minds use tools and mental models to simplify and make sense of the world. If we all become more intelligent and better at simplifying things, just as the Feynman-Tufte Principle example shows, then the world will 'become' a much simpler and better place, more understandable and easier to manage.
Hence we would never cross the 'Event Horizon', rather, we will just stay on the 'Prevent Horizon'. Simplelarity is Bliss.

Am I A Strange Loop?

I ran to my local library to borrow "I Am A Strange Loop" by one of my favorite thinkers, Douglas Hofstadter. Its been a while since I read his last book "Godel, Escher, Bach" many years ago, and this new book will be a great feast. I've gone through the first hundred pages and this looks to be a very relevant book to be featured on archetyper.com by way of Hofstadter's constant reference to metaphors, analogies, symbols and patterns, revolving around the central idea that consciousness is a self-referential system, a Strange Loop.

The Song, Self, Soul and Spirit

I remember a transposer software that automatically generates the chords in a different key for a song. Transposing is useful as it helps us sing a song at a more comfortable pitch if the song is either too high or too low for the range of our voice.
Why is it that even if one raises or lowers the key, one can still recognize the song? Regardless of which octave it is on, the distinct character of the song is retained. This property brings one thing to my mind - each one of us is a song.
We all have our unique character, personality and identity. Its what we call the self in philosophical terms or the soul in spiritual jargon. Is it possible to preserve or extend the "self" even when the material substrate from whence the mental life arises is destroyed? It cannot be denied that the brain supports much of our consciousness. Marked changes to the brain from injuries, drugs, strokes, senelity, surgery or illnesses such as Alzheimer's literally changes the mind. How can one's sentient life and consciousness can be regenerated, extended or even resurrected if it depends on a fragile piece of crumpled meat? Let us explore a premise : There is some sort of a "metadata" repository of an individual's moment by moment slice of consciousness through time. Our very existence leaves behind trails of information regarding our "self". A history. Consider this scenario : If all of my very self, my soul, and everything that makes me who I am - past, present and future - were laid out flat and static as one long page of musical piece frozen in time (think of Julian Barbour's Time). Now if a Superbeing that transcends all dimensions were to change bits of the past chords of my life and rearrange notes here and there, then my soul's "DNA" loses the unique essence of who I am - it would be the utter destruction to my soul. Every single bit of past experiences has molded the "me" in it's entirety. The choices I made in the past shaped my identity. Had I chosen different decisions, I might have been a different "me" - another song with a different tune.
Throughout life, an individual's soul is being written out on this current octave- the physical world. Each day is like a musical bar, and every minute we are leaving 'notes' as the universe records the 'musical piece' of our soul. Whether we like it or not, our very existence leaves behind trails of information regarding our "self" as time goes by. Could it be really true that each one of us will eventually give an account of one's life? For if there's a record, then it can definitely be played back by the superintellect who owns such a "database" (Heb. 4:13, Ecc 12:14).
Time goes by, i.e, it "moves forward" because there might be another octave that everything is destined to move into - a higher key, a higher dimension (such concepts of higher dimensions already have a mathematical description used in the field of String Theory that they call the Calabi-Yau Space). In that higher plane, it may be possible to completely regain our personality, memories, consciousness, and mental life. Somewhat like 'porting' or transposing the 'self' into a higher platform. Could resurrection really be possible? Only if Someone 'ports' our soul, a Cosmic Musician who must transpose everything for us to ever get a shot at a future life.
Is there something beyond for us? Or is there nothing at all? Something or Nothing, Eternal or Ephemeral. Its our choice what to believe now, but whichever is our choice, that is our faith.
But if one is still challenged by the question of life beyond death or the even existence of a personal self to begin with, then perhaps the Song metaphor will give an insight. Each individual is a song.
It is amazing how a glimpse of some understanding about the human soul can be gleaned from the field of music. As Ludwig von Beethoven said, "Music is a higher revelation than philosophy." Indeed, music has been providing insights throughout the ages over mysteries of nature. We hear phrases such as "harmonies of nature", "music of the spheres", and "Cosmic Symphony". Its no wonder why String Theory, which probes the very fabric of the universe is hinging upon the metaphors provided by music. Our universe simply screams of such archetype patterns for us not to notice.

Computation: A Tool to Decipher Nature's Patterns

If you've ever wondered about the shape of seashells and how the patterns on their outer shell came to be, then its worth to revisit "A New Kind of Science" (NKS) from Stephen Wolfram. Using the sheer power of computation to model the inner details behind nature's shape-making processes, Wolfram has provided a breakthrough insight to learn how shapes and patterns arise in nature. NKS, together with its software Mathematica gives a toyful learning environment to play with the inner workings of nature. With Cellular Automata, we discover that nature follows some pretty simple basic rules to come up with interesting patterns, such as those of the seashell.
Complex as our world may seem, it runs on basic discreet laws that can be deciphered. This idea is in unison with the focus of Archetyper.com - to recognize patterns, basic laws and simple rules within different emergent levels of the natural world. This task ignites the sense of wonder and awe that comes with living in a universe as mysterious as ours, and provides a continuous stream of insight to understand our world better.

The Sleep of Death and the Life of a New Day

Good Morning, in my previous post, I have introduced the question of the afterlife that all sentient beings ask of whether one's "self" or consciousness will be able to extend indefinitely after death. And I have outlined the conundrum of not being able to know what the real answer is. I note that knowing and believing is different from each other. Many believe in the afterlife, but no person truly knows the answer to the question.
As an Archetyper - one who looks into fundamental patterns and principles to understand confounding issues,
I will attempt to provide only some insights (not answers) regarding the afterlife.
The key, to begin our investigation, is sleep. Sleep is our mini-death experience. Although the brain continues to churn in deep sleep, many hours are lost from our stream of consciousness. Often on a good dreamless sleep, the last thing we remember was the night's lullaby as we wake up to the new day. Being able to sleep and then waking, is an experience worth celebrating, especially if and every time we wake up. For it is a mini-taste of rebirth or resurrection, a new day of life. Indeed throughout the ages, man have noticed that sleep is the closest thing to death in terms of subjective experience and its symbolism or abstraction. No wonder Shakespeare have written "To Die: To Sleep" and the famous rub, "For in that sleep of death.." The Bible also considers sleep as an analog of death. In Daniel 12:2 "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake.."
I wish I could say, "Congratulations! You are immortal!" based on these, but I am not here to declare, but rather to share the patterns I see, and stir the intellect.
With sleep as the starting point, the trail leading to an archetype concept is easy to follow. We sleep because we are biurnal creatures that evolved the circadian rhythm due to the light and dark experience. And this is because of the night and day cycle caused by the earth's spin around the sun. And our sun, the earth, and us are borne of star-stuff, made from remnants of a previous star that died as a supernova.
Note the patterns on different levels that are also chained together: Light and Dark. Night and Day. Sleep and Awakening. Life and Death. Death and Rebirth.
The patterns reveal that it is possible for Consciousness to be re-created, rebooted or re-instantiated. A person may live again, but whether the Personality can be kept fully intact on the next instance of Conscious life is a deeper mystery.
The important thing is that we are here and now, ready to face a new day. Congratulations, you are alive. Have a great day!

The Pattern in Longevity and how to break free

It has been recently announced that plants' lifespan follow the same rules as the animal kingdom - that bigger animals live longer, and smaller ones die quicker - in a predictable proportion between size and longevity. Think fruit flies and whales, duckweed and Sequoia. I know that this fact have been known long since long ago, and its no news at all but its a good time to reflect why this is so. Humans only have about a hundred years to savor life on this planet. Our natural lifespan follow the same ratio described above.
Is there a way to live forever? Proponents of longevity struggle to break the barrier, and I do believe that in the future, the lifespan of humanity will be extended a hundredfold. But still mortality will remain forever. As stated by the second law of thermodynamics, our bodies continue to decay into entropy.
The only way I see to transcend mortality is to live life to the fullest by living according to your purpose, here and now.

Prime Numbers and Quantum Physics

Here's a great story that illustrates why it is good to look into patterns from other fields of study and apply it to another field to gain novel new insights. The pattern discovered from one discipline can then be used to solve problems in another field that may have been unsolvable (or would have taken decades to solve) from within that field alone. In this case, the connection is between Prime Numbers and Physics. This is what I call Archetyping.
The gist is that when prime numbers were plotted as points in some sort of graph (zeta landscape) using Riemann's equation, a pattern emerged that the zeros seemed to be "running in a straight line through the landscape". Hence, Riemann He proposed that all the zeros, infinitely many of them, would be sitting on this critical line — a conjecture that has become known as the Riemann Hypothesis. The connection to Quantum Physics is that "if you compare a strip of zeros from Riemann's critical line to the experimentally recorded energy levels in the nucleus of a large atom like erbium, the 68th atom in the periodic table of elements, the two are uncannily similar". And so, "If one could understand the mathematics describing the structure of the atomic nucleus in quantum physics, maybe the same math could solve the Riemann Hypothesis".
And so, insights from Quantum Physics resulted in great new many discoveries in Mathematics. A formula to predict all the numbers in the sequence, as well as solutions to other math-specific puzzles were gleaned from Quantum Physics largely inspired by the connection and the pattern.
I believe that a great many new things can solved in other fields using this "extra-disciplinary cooperation". Great questions in Science, Spirituality, Theology and Philosophy can be given a new light, specially in questions about the meaning of life and maybe even the afterlife, if we all learned a bit more to correlate and cooperate.

Galaxies Pointing Where?

A multitude of galaxies have been found to be pointing in the same direction. The scientific paper and a blog commentary about it says that about 200,000 galaxies are aligned in the same direction. Kudos to Mr Longo for finding this pattern of galactic proportions.
But wait(!), considering the fact that the estimated total number of galaxies in our known universe is around 500 Billion, does 200,000 matter that much? Is this a galactic pattern worth pondering? Someone asked what is it that these polarized galaxies are pointing at. (I imagined iron-fillings being aligned and stiffened into spikes by a magnet).
Then I kinda thought in the other direction - what caused them to point the other way?
The imagery that comes to my mind is the mysterious Tunguska explosion in Siberia. All the trees fell down aligned as if finely-combed radiating outwards from the center of the explosion.
Could the galactic alignment be the result of a great "Cosmic Tunguska explosion"? Or is there some kind of colossal "magnetic" field aligning the galaxies like iron-fillings?

Pattern-Seeking Sets Me Free

I just noticed and realized something that is overwhelming : seeking patterns actually sets me free from the biases of world-view camps. I could completely appreciate an awesome metaphor from a Creationist article, and yet also be completely mesmerized by wonderful insights from an Atheist’s publication. I can be enlightened by Scripture, but also nod in approval of an Agnostic essay.
An open mind, with a burning desire to discover the truth is the key to be free from being captive to a single narrow idea. Indeed, if the mere exercise of finding patterns of truth provides immunity from biases, then Truth itself will set you free.