The Quantum Mystics Posted by John F. McGowan, Ph.D. in Applied Math, History, Math Education on October 3rd, 2010 | 6 responses The 2004 movie/documentary What the Bleep Do We Know? has a simple answer to life’s problems: Quantum Mechanics! What the Bleep Do We Know? Like most popular science, the movie makes very limited use of mathematics: rendering the movie title in mathematical symbols on the DVD case and web site and a brief sequence of computer generated flying equations that are never explained. What is Quantum Mechanics Actually? The textbook theory of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is actually quite simple. The basic quantum mechanics formulated by Niels Bohr, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, and their colleagues over the objections of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, and Prince Louis deBroglie asserts that sub-atomic particles (and presumably macroscopic objects like tables and chairs) are characterized by a quantum state or quantum wave function usually represented by the Greek letter . .
Social constructionism Social constructionism, or the social construction of reality, is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world. It assumes that understanding, significance, and meaning are developed not separately within the individual, but in coordination with other human beings. The elements most important to the theory are (a) the assumption that human beings rationalize their experience by creating a model of the social world and how it functions and, (b) that language is the most essential system through which humans construct reality.[1] Definition[edit] Social constructs are the by-products of countless human choices, rather than laws resulting from human judgment. Ian Hacking noted in The Social Construction of What? Origins[edit] Social constructionist analysis[edit] "Social construction" may mean many things to many people. (1) X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. John R.
Intentionality Intentionality is a philosophical concept defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as "the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs".[1] The term refers to the ability of the mind to form representations and has nothing to do with intention. The term dates from medieval Scholastic philosophy, but was resurrected by Franz Brentano and adopted by Edmund Husserl. The earliest theory of intentionality is associated with St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God and his tenets distinguishing between objects that exist in the understanding and objects that exist in reality.[2] Intentionality should not be confused with intensionality, a related concept from logic and semantics. Modern overview[edit] The concept of intentionality was reintroduced in 19th-century contemporary philosophy by the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano in his work Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). See also[edit]
World view Origins[edit] Linguistics[edit] The founder of the idea that language and worldview are inextricable is the Prussian philologist, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Edward Sapir also gives an account of the relationship between thinking and speaking in English. The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Lee Whorf describes how the syntactic-semantic structure of a language becomes an underlying structure for the world view or Weltanschauung of a people through the organization of the causal perception of the world and the linguistic categorization of entities. The hypothesis was well received in the late 1940s, but declined in prominence after a decade. Weltanschauung and cognitive philosophy[edit] One of the most important concepts in cognitive philosophy and cognitive sciences is the German concept of Weltanschauung. The term 'Weltanschauung' is often wrongly attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt the founder of German ethnolinguistics (see Trabant). Folk-epics[edit] Development[edit]
Chinese room The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle to challenge the claim that it is possible for a digital computer running a program to have a "mind" and "consciousness" in the same sense that people do, simply by virtue of running the right program. According to Searle, when referring to a hypothetical computer program which can be told a story then answer questions about it: Partisans of strong AI claim that in this question and answer sequence the machine is not only simulating a human ability but also (1) that the machine can literally be said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions, and (2) that what the machine and its program do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it. To contest this view, Searle writes in his first description of the argument: "Suppose that I'm locked in a room and ... that I know no Chinese, either written or spoken". Chinese room thought experiment[edit] More general context[edit]
Fundamental Fysiks Group David Kaiser argues, in How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (2011), that the group's meetings and papers helped to nurture the ideas in quantum physics that came to form the basis of quantum information science.[2] Two reviewers wrote that Kaiser may have exaggerated the group's influence on the future of physics research, though one of them, Silvan Schweber, wrote that some of the group's contributions are easy to identify, such as Clauser's experimental evidence for non-locality attracting a share of the Wolf Prize in 2010, and the publication of Capra's The Tao of Physics (1975) and Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) attracting the interest of a wider audience.[3] Kaiser writes that the group were "very smart and very playful," discussing quantum mysticism and becoming local celebrities in the Bay Area's counterculture. Research[edit] Bell's theorem and no-cloning theorem[edit] Remote viewing[edit] See also[edit] Notes[edit] Books
Mind–body problem Different approaches toward resolving the mind–body problem. The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. Each of these categories contain numerous variants. The two main forms of dualism are substance dualism, which holds that the mind is formed of a distinct type of substance not governed by the laws of physics, and property dualism, which holds that mental properties involving conscious experience are fundamental properties, alongside the fundamental properties identified by a completed physics. The three main forms of monism are physicalism, which holds that the mind consists of matter organized in a particular way; idealism, which holds that only thought truly exists and matter is merely an illusion; and neutral monism, which holds that both mind and matter are aspects of a distinct essence that is itself identical to neither of them. Philosophers David L. Plato[edit] A.
911:Energy - Wikicompany “All that is, is Light.” - Walter Russell “The Light of God’s equilibrium is my guide. I know its balance, unextended, undivided. “When man shall know My language of Light then shall he know My Voice. (…) When man knoweth Light then he will know no limitations, but man must know the Light for himself and none there can be who can make words of it, for Light knoweth Light and there need be no words.” - the universal One (via Walter Russell) “To know God man must know what Light is (…) and God's processes in the building of bodies which manifest His Presence and His purposes. “The cardinal error of science lies in shutting the Creator out of His Creation. “For ages man has thought of matter as being substance. “The purport of these writings is to illumine the road leading to eternal life by knowledge of the journey through illusion and back again to reality, taken by man in his repeated adventures in time, space and motion. law of balance “God is Love — unexpressed. fulcrum of motion
science express » Exhibition Topics 001 ON THE WAY TO THE BIG BANGWhy are the laws of nature the way they are? Why did the world not disperse as light during the Big Bang, instead of forming stable matter? How did the Universe expand to its current size? In the search for answers, physicists are examining the elementary components of the material world and their interactions, the four fundamental forces: the strong interaction that binds quarks and atoms; the weak interaction important in radioactive decay; electromagnetic interaction and gravitation. To this end, particle physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists of the Max Planck Society are cooperating across the boundaries of their disciplines and internationally: with biologists at the molecular level, IT specialists in the field of quantum information, and with mathematicians on string theory. 002 NANO COSMOS How can we systematically influence materials? 003 BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE What is life? Like many organisms, a human being develops from a single cell.
Neuroscience News | picower In the 1983 movie “A Man with Two Brains,” Steve Martin kept his second brain in a jar. In reality, he had two brains inside his own skull—as we all do, one on the left and one on the right hemisphere. When it comes to seeing the world around us, each of our two brains works independently and each has its own bottleneck for working memory. Normally, it takes years or decades after a brand new discovery about the brain for any practical implications to emerge. Monkeys, amazingly, have the same working memory capacity as humans, so Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and Timothy Buschman, a post doctoral researcher in his lab, investigated the neural basis of this capacity limitation in two monkeys performing the same test used to explore working memory in humans. In other words, monkeys, and by extension humans, do not have a capacity of four objects, but of two plus two.
Autopoiesis 3D representation of a living cell during the process of mitosis, example of an autopoietic system. The original definition can be found in Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living (1st edition 1973, 2nd 1980): Page 78: - An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network. [1] Page 89:- [...] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. Meaning[edit] Criticism[edit] See also[edit] Notes and references[edit] Further reading[edit] External links[edit]
System dynamics Dynamic stock and flow diagram of model New product adoption (model from article by John Sterman 2001) System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system.[1] What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use of feedback loops and stocks and flows. These elements help describe how even seemingly simple systems display baffling nonlinearity. Overview[edit] System dynamics (SD) is a methodology and mathematical modeling technique for framing, understanding, and discussing complex issues and problems. Convenient GUI system dynamics software developed into user friendly versions by the 1990s and have been applied to diverse systems. System dynamics is an aspect of systems theory as a method for understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems. History[edit] Topics in systems dynamics[edit]
Complex system This article largely discusses complex systems as a subject of mathematics and the attempts to emulate physical complex systems with emergent properties. For other scientific and professional disciplines addressing complexity in their fields see the complex systems article and references. A complex system is a damped, driven system (for example, a harmonic oscillator) whose total energy exceeds the threshold for it to perform according to classical mechanics but does not reach the threshold for the system to exhibit properties according to chaos theory. History[edit] Although it is arguable that humans have been studying complex systems for thousands of years, the modern scientific study of complex systems is relatively young in comparison to conventional fields of science with simple system assumptions, such as physics and chemistry. Types of complex systems[edit] Chaotic systems[edit] For a dynamical system to be classified as chaotic, it must have the following properties:[2]
Systems thinking Impression of systems thinking about society[1] A system is composed of interrelated parts or components (structures) that cooperate in processes (behavior). Natural systems include biological entities, ocean currents, the climate, the solar system and ecosystems. Designed systems include airplanes, software systems, technologies and machines of all kinds, government agencies and business systems. Systems Thinking has at least some roots in the General System Theory that was advanced by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1940s and furthered by Ross Ashby in the 1950s. Systems thinking has been applied to problem solving, by viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to specific parts, outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences. Systems science thinking attempts to illustrate how small catalytic events that are separated by distance and time can be the cause of significant changes in complex systems.