http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/index.html These posts are ongoing thoughts about philosophy. They do not follow a predetermined sequence, so use the Blogger NavBar above to search the site for other posts on a topic that interest you. Comments are welcome, if you exist. As this blog evolves, I may contradict previous statements. Contradictions are part of life, but not logic. I'll go with life. 2005-04-11T01:54:08Z en-CA http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2005/04/logics-hegemony.html The languages of mathematics and logic have served many useful purposes for mankind. Bias towards them over new languages which describe the world differently may prevent us discovering and inventing new ways of dealing with the world which could also be useful. John Dutton 2005-04-11T01:53:00Z http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2005/01/difference-between-form-and-pattern.html It is tempting to imagine that form and pattern are two different things, because pattern suggests the involvement of an intelligence, either in the design of the pattern, or in the interpretation of a pattern which has evolved independently of intelligence. But the two are precisely the same thing. Pattern does not presuppose an organizing intelligence, and to think that it does is to put the cart before the horse (or in our day and age, to press the monitor screen, hoping that the mouse will move). We who are endowed with intelligence may discern pattern that may or may not have been arranged according to an intelligent design (such as writing), but those patterns existed before our interpretation of them, and constitute an entity in the universe (in other words, a form, or structure), irrespective of our involvement. <br /> <br />We cannot discover patterns before they are discovered, but undiscovered patterns surely exist. These patterns (and therefore structures) are necessarily infinite in number, as they consist of the matter in the universe (ink on a page, or a galaxy) arranged in a particular way, and the possible arrangements that exist are infinite. <br /> <br />Therefore the universe is infinite because of the patterns/forms/structures that exist within it, rather than because of a banal, anthropomorphic interpretation of its dimension based on human-related size limitations and boundaries. John Dutton 2005-02-01T04:06:22Z
We cannot discover patterns before they are discovered, but undiscovered patterns surely exist. These patterns (and therefore structures) are necessarily infinite in number, as they consist of the matter in the universe (ink on a page, or a galaxy) arranged in a particular way, and the possible arrangements that exist are infinite.

Therefore the universe is infinite because of the patterns/forms/structures that exist within it, rather than because of a banal, anthropomorphic interpretation of its dimension based on human-related size limitations and boundaries.]]> http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2005/01/problem-with-scientific-imagery.html The problem with illustrating difficult scientific theories with seductive images is that they are seductive images. Einstein's proposition that gravity be understood as the warping of space itself by using the image of a bowling ball and a marble on a trampoline makes his theory fantastically easy to comprehend. But its very seductiveness means that other theories which may lack such seductive imagery to illustrate them are ignored. <br /> John Dutton 2005-01-29T15:42:00Z ]]> http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2005/01/information-as-force.html Here’s an idea: Information is a force. Science has an explanation for planets attracting each other or particles repelling each other, but no explanation for a person stopping at a Don’t Walk sign, then moving when the sign changes to Walk. A physical body (a human being) moves, stops, then moves again, purely because of the information in the sign. <br /> <br />Information therefore sometimes makes changes in the world because of the state of a receiver of the information. If someone yells “duck!” in Chinese and the person next to me is Chinese and ducks, but I stay standing because I don’t understand Chinese, the information ‘contained’ in the word is also ‘contained’ in the brain of the Chinese person next to me, in the sense that the information is ‘understood’ and provokes a change in the universe. <br /> <br />It’s easy to be misled by thinking of light as information. It’s a kind of information (or a carrier of information?) which humans are particularly sensitive to. But an unseen person yelling “duck!” does nothing but emit sound waves. Sound waves change the shape of the air as they move, so part of the information is a change in the structure of the universe (or the creation of a structure) which interacts with a structure in the human brain and provokes another change in the universe (the movement of a human being). <br /> <br />So is information a force? John Dutton 2005-01-15T21:51:20Z
Information therefore sometimes makes changes in the world because of the state of a receiver of the information. If someone yells “duck!” in Chinese and the person next to me is Chinese and ducks, but I stay standing because I don’t understand Chinese, the information ‘contained’ in the word is also ‘contained’ in the brain of the Chinese person next to me, in the sense that the information is ‘understood’ and provokes a change in the universe.

It’s easy to be misled by thinking of light as information. It’s a kind of information (or a carrier of information?) which humans are particularly sensitive to. But an unseen person yelling “duck!” does nothing but emit sound waves. Sound waves change the shape of the air as they move, so part of the information is a change in the structure of the universe (or the creation of a structure) which interacts with a structure in the human brain and provokes another change in the universe (the movement of a human being).

So is information a force?]]> http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2004/11/no-logic.html I will explicitly avoid using logic or mathematical formulas in this exploration. Those languages are useful, and are used by many people with a great deal of expertise. The goal of this exploration is to take a new path and discover new ways of interpreting the world which may be equally or more useful than those already established. John Dutton 2004-11-19T15:17:30Z http://www.samsara.ca/NotTheory/2004/11/whats-out-there.html If you are reading this, then something in the Universe exists, but how we describe that thing (or those things, or the entire Universe, if it is just one thing) changes and will always change because of the flux of information. More on that flux later. <br /> <br />As to the sceptics' claim that we can never know anything with certainty about the external world, we can therefore know with certainty that something exists. Beyond that are descriptions which are more or less useful, or more or less pleasing. Descartes would have been on a more useful track if he had said, "I think, therefore the Universe is." John Dutton 2004-11-18T18:19:46Z
As to the sceptics' claim that we can never know anything with certainty about the external world, we can therefore know with certainty that something exists. Beyond that are descriptions which are more or less useful, or more or less pleasing. Descartes would have been on a more useful track if he had said, "I think, therefore the Universe is."]]>