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Cone Cosmogony
The first image is from https://www.facebook.com/headexchange. The second has been modified to include the Multisense Realism model.
Specifically, “Me” has been removed from the center of the mandala and turned into part of the z axis. The center of the wheel is now Form-Function, and Now, indicating that consciousness is at its most pointillistic and fragmented. This would be the sharpest, most systematizing-autistic quality of consciousness, quantitative and reductionistic.*
The diameter of the circles corresponds to space or distance (really wavelength ratio/scale), so that the wheel represents a flat cross section of eternity. Time is the diagonal axis which is can be thought of as the z axis ‘deferred’. If our experience (feeling, thought, etc) extends from eternity to now as a qualitative spectrum (as symbolized by the chakra graphic), then ‘time’ is the interference pattern between eternal experience and fully public, discrete events.
The top of the cone is labeled eternity, although it is eternity in the sense of the eternal moment rather than a linear history of time. Eternity can also be called the Absolute, or God, Tao, Consciousness, Aesthetic Foundation, and many other names. Identifying with the Absolute while still in our body is the opposte end of the consciousness spectrum – the most colorful, florid, artistic-empathic-psychotic range of awareness.
* See previous posts on Imprinted Brain Theory and the Autistic-Psychotic spectrum.
Introducing the Aumwelt
https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/david_eagleman_can_we_create_new_senses_for_humans.html
This is worth the 20 minutes IMO, as Eagleman lays out the contemporary view of sense. Where he leaves off is exactly where I want to pick up, and then to run in the opposite direction.
He begins by talking about the limitations of each species and how, for example, a tick lives in a world of temperature and butyric acid…a bat lives in a reality constructed out of air compression waves. This ‘slice of their ecosystem that they can pick up on’ is know as the umwelt.
Umwelt
The German word Umwelt means “environment” or “surroundings”. Lacan contrasts the term with Innenwelt– the inner world–to emphasize the interaction between the imaginary interior space that the “I” occupies and the physical world in which the living human subject is situated. The connection between Innenwelt and Umwelt is, for Lacan, always dialectical; in the mirror stage, the “I” only comes into being through an association with an image that is outside of and other than the infant.
So far so good. He then gets into the exciting directions that his research is going in, technologies to extend our sensory capabilities beyond the human umwelt, etc.
That’s great, and I have been looking forward to technologies like that all of my life. To be able to not only see in the infra-red range, but to be able to model information from any source – an Excel spreadsheet even, in a tangible, tactile way, is amazing.
What I suggest, however, is that the entire model of the umwelt being a slice of an ecosystem (the ecosystem being ‘real world’ or ‘welt’), while empirically sound *within a given umwelt* is actually reversible. The further we get from our own umwelt (which is only ever our umwelt’s view of other umwelts) the more it curls back in on itself.
It’s more like this:
The idea of a concrete reality which is completely outside of all experience is an unfalsifiable mirage generated by the umwelt as a boundary condition to the umwelt. What is beyond our experience is not the anti-experience of math and physics – not Platonic ‘information’ forms floating in a void, but simply more and more inclusive experience. Not a ‘welt’ but an Aumwelt:
In this view, the umwelt appears as a hazy cataract which masks the totality. The totality of all sense experience and capacity (which I see as ultimately the same thing) is what I am calling the Aumwelt. The haze is something like {the difference between the Innenwelt and (the difference between the Innenwelt and the Aumwelt)}. Each umwelt is not assembled autistically, but filtered or carved out of totality of sense (’artistically’ or aesthetically). In this way, the aesthetic foundation (aumwelt) is divided into smaller dreams (innenwelt) with the remainder of that division serving as both diaphanous partition and reflective lens to the totality. The umwelt is like a semiconductor, half-silvered mirror or semi-permeable membrane; alternating between inner and outer, outer and absolute, and absolute and inner. This is what consciousness is about – not merely adapting to a body’s survival needs more effectively.
Why complicate things? Because if sensation were truly nothing other than “electrochemical signals coursing around in your brain”, then sensory substitution would not be necessary. Regardless of what frequencies and patterns occurred, they would all be formatted as those patterns – not as some fancy ‘feeling’ or ‘color’. Something like colorized film shows that computation is sufficient for deriving color information without seeing color. There is no computational reason to have to invent color simply to signal information about a wavelength of retinal activity or its isomorphism to exterior conditions. Occam’s razor does not allow us to take the leap from information to sensation. We can, however, use information to enhance and extend sensation.
The Autistic-Psychotic Spectrum of Metaphysical Ontology
My recent interest in the autism theories of Simon Baron-Cohen, Crespi and Badcock has given me a new way of describing what I call the Multisense Continuum. My interest in the autism work is not so much in the literal interpretation of these theories, but in the themes that the theories tie into. Whether or not autism is caused by high fetal testosterone or selection pressure for ‘maternal resources’ is not my interest personally, and my instinct is that these are ultimately regressive approaches that can be too easily politicized.
What I am interested in, however, is the continuum itself. The concept of autism, not as it really is; a complex set of possible traits related to social development, language, interests, etc, but as a stereotype. The themes of autism and the way those themes can be juxtaposed against the themes of psychosis diametrically are, in my view, the keys to understanding consciousness, and by extension, all of nature. This may sound like an idea which is both psychotic and autistic…and that would make perfect sense.
What I am saying is that the entire universe and the fabric of every part of the universe are fundamentally rooted in the same thematic spectrum as these theories. Physics is the autistic spectrum of the universe, and subjectivity is its psychotic spectrum.
Here are some other ways to look at it:
Unnatural > Natural < Supernatural
In this simple version, the left side would be the autistic side, called ‘unnatural’ to reflect the atomized, mechanical aesthetic of the cosmos. Repetition and isolation are highlighted. Each part a discrete object connected to other objects through highly systemized, literal links.
The right side (and I always put the subjective side on the right or “East” side as it is the “orienting” side) would be the psychotic side, called ‘supernatural’ to reflect the irrational, mystical, and divine connotations of delusional and psychedelic states. I think that people who have experienced bipolar shifts from mania to depression might agree that they correspond to a transition from personal identification with the divine to a divine disillusionment or abandonment. Psychedelic trips also famously follow this supernatural ‘Heaven and Hell’ amplification of what would ordinarily be the simple highs and lows of mood. Moods swing up and down, but they also swing left and right, from saturated, floridly supernatural hallucinations to flat, utilitarian execution on the left.
This is not to say that all supernatural experiences are ‘hallucinations’ or that all unnatural influences are devoid of empathy, only that this is what the universe is doing with itself…oscillating and tessellating through this spectrum, expanding it in ever more elaborate ways.
A semiotic way of expressing it might be:
Semaphoric > Morphic || Phoric < Metaphoric
On the left*, I am using a neologism “semaphoric” to make the connection with deflating the broad, poetic sensibility of loose metaphorical association to the precisely defined, mathematical sensibility of codes and logic. Semaphores are flags, like digits or cards** which are used for making compressing information and making it unambiguous. Semaphoric sensibility is bottom up, building complex communication from binary or quantized alphabets.
The center (Natural) section is bifurcated here into the Morphic and Phoric, referring to form and feeling respectively. Form could be geometric objects in space or functional steps in time while feeling would be the appreciation of and participation in sensory experience which may or may not be attached to logical objects/functions. The double pipe (“||”) emphasizes a fold in the continuum, since the inflection point at which the morphological counter-aesthetic of bodies in spacetime and the native, ‘phoric’ aesthetic of experiences-qualia within itself is one of diametric opposition. The flavor of apple pie is not only nothing like the structure of organic chemistry, it is the opposite ontological expression
On the right, ‘metaphoric’ refers to the sensibility which is anchored in the firmament of collective experience. Just as the semaphoric bumps up against a minimum limit of binary logic, the metaphoric branches out into a kind of unification of infinity…a maximum holism. Here, the logic of space and quantity breaks down entirely, as all of history is fused into pool of potential inspiration and meaning. Fantasy is intrinsic to all experience, including the fantasy of escaping fantasy entirely.
Autism > Systemizing || Empathizing < Psychosis
So yeah, this is the human personal version of the Multisense continuum in my view. The extremes of autism would map to my category of OMMM (Only Material Matters Matter) and ACME (Anything Can Mean Everything) would map to the Bipolar/Schizophrenia category. There are endless other ways of expressing this, and I did not even get into how the spectrum ‘wraps around’ so that left and right ends can be seen as the center, but that works also (instead of a diametric “||” there would be an evanescent …∞… linkage for the ‘Ouroboran’ wrap around).
My hunch is that this spectrum can be formalized for scientific purposes, and that the systemizing and empathizing functions can be understood in ontological terms. The pound sign # and the asterisk * can even be a clue, or perhaps # > 🙂 < *
* left is also Western-Occidental, counter to default orientation.
**Descartes, interestingly, was so named because of ‘cartes’, or charts that he used to explain his theories, theories which ushered in the Enlightenment era of Cartesian coordinates, through which space and time were digitally quantified.
Zooming in on Reductionism and Extremely Gendered Brains
One of the greatest obstacles to understanding the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory gap between function and qualia is that we are psychologically conditioned to overlook the destructive compression of reductionism.
Only a person who is familiar with the shape of the State of Texas can fully understand the connect the dots image shown above. I have included an intermediate image between ‘potential Texas’ and the Functional View to show how even a shift in perspective can make identification impossible. In the end, no identification at all is necessary fro a machine to logically connect one dot to the next in an n+1 sequence. No matter how many dots are connected, it is just the same mechanical action. No geometry or memory is required, just a machine that logically associate one point of data with the next.
When we build computations out of that, we can step back and look at all of the dots and say “yes, the computer is drawing Texas, therefore it might know what Texas is.” or “surely the more complex the arrangement of dots, the more likely it is that a computer could develop geometry and visual experiences of shape”, but there is no logical support for that. Each process of the machine can continue on as it has, completing one mindless task after another, including mindless meta-tasks of associating many groups of data points with many other.
When we reduce the reds, blues, and yellows of light to ‘simply’ electromagnetic wavelengths, we are suggesting that some agent is converting a set of colorless data points into a a color. This is the explanatory gap. A surprisingly high percentage of the population has no trouble with outright denying that there is a gap at all, and will insist that color simply “is” the brain’s reaction to processing data about light. They do not see that processing of data need only be an invisible, functional interpretation of logical points, compressible to any kind of labeling scheme we like.
A brain could easily use biochemical, epigenetic, or quantum computation to label its vast oceans of data at high speed without having to invent flavors, colors, or feelings. Colors are not even the best example because visual qualia maps relatively isomorphically to optical measurements. The same is not true for flavors and emotions, which bear almost no resemblance to physics. If we allowed the brain to produce a single dimension of sense, there is no plausible reason to have to produce a second, any more than there would be a reason for a car’s dashboard to make a musical playlist to accompany itself. If for some reason a computer needed to see its own data, and it could somehow magically conjure that into existence out of its ‘complexity’, seeing would be more than enough to fulfill all data compression needs forever.
An interesting explanation for the inability of so many people to recognize the gap between function and qualia may be hinted at in Simon Baron-Cohen’s Empathizing–Systemizing (E-S) theory of brain types, and Crespi and Badcock’s paper Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain. I have already caught shit for proposing this, as it may sound like I am saying that autism is bad, or that people who favor functionalism are autistic, but that is actually the almost the opposite of what I am saying. What I think the truth is, or might be, is that everyone carries these diametrical potentials (which map to my ACME-OMMM dichotomy, btw) to some extent, and they reflect the continuum of human consciousness, philosophy of mind, and nature itself. This article had this to say about it:
In their forthcoming article in the premier journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Crespi and Badcock present a very convincing case for paranoid schizophrenia as an extreme female brain. Now the whole picture appears to be complete. When your brain is “too male,” too systemizing, too mechanistic, you become autistic. When your brain is “too female,” too empathizing, too mentalistic, you become paranoid schizophrenic. If the extreme male brain of an autistic is “mindblind,” then you might suggest that the extreme female brain of a paranoid schizophrenia is “logicblind.”
Again, to be clear, I am not advocating a clinical reductionism in psychology. I’m not advocating the labeling of autism this or male-female that. This is not about neuroscience or biology for me*, it is about metaphysics and ontology. The difference between representation and presentation, and how they are flipped again and again within nature, and how they are both lenses which define each other.
Part II of this post here.
*I don’t blame people for having a negative reaction to this kind of science, as far as using terms like ‘extreme male brain’ in itself sounds like the product of ‘extreme male’ thinking. It seems crass and inaccurate to go down that road of categorizing people and pathologizing psychological differences as disorders, but I will take what I can get. I think that this research is on to something, regardless of how it may sound.
Why do people believe in the mind body problem?
“Why do people believe in the mind body problem?
Here are a few reasons I can think of:
- Our imagination seems immaterial.
There is no imaginary stone, for example that is too heavy for us to lift. We can imagine ice cubes melting the sun or a new state of matter that is liquid gravity. Dreams are surreal, and provide evidence that fully realistic worlds can be rendered without there being the expected physics presented. If dreams were not realistic, it would be easier to swallow materialism. As it is, it is very tough to justify how it would be that brains would be able to instantly conjure up fantasy worlds without having access to the same creative resources that physics itself has. - Mental representation is not physical.
Our thoughts do not appear to break down into chemical compounds which can be transferred from brain to brain in an eyedropper. Instead, they can be communicated through representational signs across many different material substrates. Right now my thoughts are becoming part of your thoughts by means of electronic devices, but it could instead be communicated by voice, gesture, pen and paper, etc. Physical substances and forces cannot be transmitted as signs. We cannot send a text to someone dying of thirst which they can drink. - We cannot access the brain through introspection.
The greatest minds in history have never, through meditation alone discovered the details of neurology, biochemistry, etc. Common sense might suggest that since, for example, we can touch our body with our body, and see our eyes with our eyes, that we should be able to think of our brain with our brain, but that is not the case. It also goes the other way, where we can correlate data that we find in brain imaging to *known* ‘neural correlates’ like feelings or tasting flavors, but there is nothing in the brain images themselves which would or could ever suggest any such thing as a flavor or feeling. - There is no logical connection between physical phenomena and subjective experience.
Physics involves measurable forms which can be described using geometry and whose functions can be described through logical, arithmetic steps. Physics is intended to be done without any subjective experience (other than a zero dimensional ‘observer’). Subjectivity is the opposite kind of phenomena on every count from physics. It involves immeasurable qualities of aesthetic appreciation and participation which do not owe their significance to complex universal processes. Instead, subjectivity is comprised of a personalized richness of presentation which eliminates the need for complexity. There is no logical way that a certain wavelength of light could become ‘blue’, and no mathematical transformation which would make it more logical, yet blue is a quality which we cannot deny exists in the universe. - Life is weirder than it seems like it should be.
The fact that we have never come across any culture that does not have a concept of spirits and the afterlife does not have to mean that there are spirits and an afterlife, but it is certainly an odd thing to have as an anthropological universal if there were nothing funny going on between mind and body. Physics and mathematics in the 20th century only adds to the weirdness, since, after all, if there were nothing but bodies colliding into each other, then we would have no need for concepts like uncertainty, and if logic were nothing but objective facts, then we would have no need for the idea of incompleteness. Also there are so many fishy things that people report all of the time…Near Death Experiences, Out of Body Experiences, psychedelic revelations, paranormal capabilities, synchronicity, etc. If you think that these can be easily swept aside by insisting that they are just anomalies and fraud then you have not looked at the research fairly. - It is the default/naive truth of human experience.
The sense of being ‘in’ our body, looking out of our eyes is something that we take for granted, but has no basis in physics. Your screen doesn’t have to feel like it is sitting in front of a computer to work, so the fact that there is any sense of being ‘inside’ of ‘our’ body is already a hint at our relation to space and time. Our body is more like a window or a filter than it is a robot. We can say that the Earth is not flat, but if that were literally and completely true, it would be hard to explain why carpenters use a level. Indeed, the roundness of the Earth is not especially useful most of the time for those of us who actually live on the surface of it and experience it as flat. Any description of the universe which fails to mention that planets seem flat when you walk on them and only seem round from a distance is not complete. - Because they have considered the issue deeply.
While the last few centuries have seen the rise of scientific worldviews which describe our experience from the outside in, some people have noticed that there is a problem with this. Since subjective experience is private to begin with, there is no reason to expect that a worldview which is bound exclusively to public inspection would not be grossly misleading. In fact, the failure of behaviorism in psychology and artificial intelligence in computer science to demonstrate satisfying results should have steered us away from these kinds of approaches already. Fortunately some of the leading scientists and philosophers in the field of consciousness, like Tononi, Koch, and Chalmers have been pointing in a new direction, one which involves consciousness rather than matter as a fundamental property. There is a long tradition within philosophy, particularly in Eastern thought which holds that awareness is the fundamental reality and that matter, bodies, and brains are borrowed from a universal pool of ideas and experiences. The universe may be made of stories rather than things, and things are just part of the story. - Because they have natural insight into the issue
A recent study suggest to me that not everyone has an equal chance at understanding the mind/body problem. For people whose minds are very logical, they may identify exclusively with the process of their own intellect rather than the qualities of experience from which the intellect arises. I wrote a post about this: Asperger’s, Autism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness For others, the fact of subjectivity is quite plain and ordinary. We move our hand by moving it directly out of our own intention. Whatever biochemical description accompanies that movement is not enough to even define why it is occurring in the first place. - Because simulation theories and emergence are misguided.
Most theories which collapse subjectivity into physics rely on the kind of GUI model. We look at the computer screen and see pictures and words, and it is natural to think that this relationship would be part of a physical mechanism. A brain would simply produce computations that look like something or taste a certain way because looks and tastes are a way of labeling information and organizing it. What this view fails to recognize is that labeling information would only mean that it would be processed differently, not that those differences would suddenly become a flavor or a sound. Emergence is a way of chasing our tail and fooling ourselves that we have explained consciousness, but in reality, emergence itself cannot be explained without awareness. The parts of an airplane can be individually thrown in the air, so that even though to our understanding the property of a plane flying by itself seems new, it is not at all surprising to the universe. Consciousness is not like that, since there is no configuration of physical objects that would result in a subjective experience, even as an extension of some physical force or field to become self-sustaining or consolidated, etc. The raw ontology of privacy isn’t there to begin with in our model of physics or information.
Is the brain the receiver of mind and consciousness, or their generator?
The receiver model of consciousness need not be taken so literally as to presume that mind is exactly like an electromagnetic broadcast. Arguing for a receiver-like role for the brain does not require that we have a good theory of what is being received and how, only that there are other possibilities for the origin of consciousness besides being somehow generated within the tissue of the brain itself.
In a way, philosophy and science can be understood as the academic extensions of mind and body, respectively. Because this concept directly addresses some of the deepest mysteries in both philosophy and science, we should begin, in my view, from a position of Cartesian skepticism…assume nothing except what we cannot doubt, and proceed from there.
What do we really know about the brain? I think that we should all be able to agree that the brain is something which we see and touch with our body, and with technological extensions of our body. Why make a big deal out of that? Because although we can imagine many things in our mind that are true, the details of our own brain is not one of them. Everyone can see a brain with their eyes, but nobody can correctly imagine precise details of their own neurochemical functioning. By the same token, no brain imaging technology can show things like flavors, emotions, and colors being generated in the brain.
If we take our body’s word for what consciousness is, all that we can see is that the brain is the organ which can cause changes to behavior. If we image our own brain, we can learn that it is the organ through which we cause changes in our body. It is through the activity of the brain that the mind can cause changes in the world. It should be noted that this world is the world that we ordinarily perceive to be outside of our mind, however even the advance of science has not prevented significant portions of the population from continuing to report various sorts of out of body experiences and experiences in which the world is not separated from the self.
In light of these conditions of uncertainty about mind and body, it may be premature to pronounce that 1) it is the body alone which produces mind and 2) the body is produced by something which is not like consciousness. If we dig down into the latter, I think that we find the most important possibility. When we think about the vast undertaking that is entailed in the division of a single zygote into a living human body, complete with central nervous system, brain, immune system, etc, the complexity is arguably far greater than what has been technologically achieved in human history thus far. Within the body, for example, there are countless critical processes which are maintained under dynamically changing conditions. It begs the question – if this fantastic orchestration of physiology can take place without minds or some kind of awareness, then why would the humble hominid develop this elaborate, metaphysical quality of ‘conscious’ experience just to keep up with the daily demands of food foraging and mate selection? What is it that would be so special about a human life that it would be the sole being which is capable of experiencing the universe?
Surely we don’t mean to say that no other animal experiences the universe, and as time goes on, we are finding fewer and fewer ways that human beings are different from other species in an unqualified way. It seems that at best, Homo sapiens recapitulates the features of a lot of different species, and has developed some of those feature to an elaborate degree. If what we see of other creatures is so limited by our own perception, so too might our scientific instruments amplify our limitations as well as our understanding. The more that we study our body, the less we remember that the body is only the exterior of our mind. The more we study other bodies in the world, the more that we define them by their behaviors. Cells and especially molecules and atoms are seen increasingly as mechanistic puppets, behaving according to principles which are also mechanical. What we have failed to see is the role that perceptual relativity plays in how our world is portrayed. We have learned to disregard our own direct view of the universe, trusting instead the view of the universe which is given to us when we look through microscopes and telescopes. The problem with that is that we define the significance of our own subjectivity from a perspective which has been filtered by our subjectivity to negate itself. When we construct this relatively objective worldview, subjectivity is zeroed out by necessity. Our enlightenment has literally blinded us to the ontologically ‘nocturnal’ phenomena in the universe.
In Steve Harris‘ answer, he says ‘You can’t damage a mere receiver to a normal intelligent mind in a way that mimics all common symptoms of dementia.’
A very good point. I agree that the brain is not like a receiver in the sense of being passive. To the contrary, the brain is more like a transceiver, and in my view, it is made of cellular transceivers, and molecular transceivers. The internet is not contained in my computer, but if my local computer is damaged, I might not be able to get into certain websites. That, in turn, might affect my ability to effectively use other online services, and that in turn might affect my desire to continue using the internet at all (and then its lights out).
I propose that actually what we see as molecules, cells, and bodies are more like obstructions or standing waves within a primordial context of perception and participation that is very different from our own. Matter is not a separate substance, but rather a phenomenal presence which is encountered from a particular sensory perspective. Just as we can see different reflections with polarized filters, or a rainbow appears from one vantage point but not another, matter, cells, brains, and bodies are a way of looking at the collective history of our history as an organism from an ‘edge-on’ view, as it were. All that we are and all that we are not are distorted as through a fisheye lens before our eyes and behind them.
Philosophy and science, like mind and brain offer us two perspectives, each of which is unique in some sense and which together make a deeper kind of sense. Both philosophy and science formalize methods of inquiry into nature, but whereas science emerged as a kind of ‘performance enhancing’ philosophy specializing in nature, philosophy itself extends into metaphysics, ethics, politics, mathematics, etc. Following science back to philosophy is like following the brain back to the mind, and the mind itself as the accumulation of discipline and learning on an even more primordial animism of emotion and sensation.
I no longer see any reason to be afraid of a model of the universe in which brains and not minds physically exist, or in which science and not philosophy is allowed to contribute to the progress of human civilization. In light especially of the revelations of people like Einstein, Godel, and Heisenberg, we no longer need to think of the fabric of the universe as body-like. From pioneers like Jung and Leary and Ken Wilber, we no longer need to see the nature of consciousness as only mind-like. The inner universe and the outer universe seem to overlap, to share, and to diverge wildly, however ultimately, to me, it is brain-like structures which seem more plausible to ‘materialize’ within a sensory context than the other way around. There is no likelihood, as far as I can imagine, of unconscious matter to build bodies and brains, but then for brains to suddenly develop a need for something that is not physics to explain itself to itself.
Science, Serendipity, and Synchronicity
It seems to me that at the heart of science is the scientific method, and that the essence of the scientific method is the elimination of chance. Experimental control is designed expressly to isolate the single line of inquiry from all extraneous factors. If science has a ‘soul’, it would be in the delight of illuminating the darkness of superstition and irrationality – to replace fear with knowledge.
The scientist is firm in the knowledge that while ‘everything happens for a reason’, it is almost never for the reason that we might assume. In fact, ‘everything happens for a reason’ is a kind of fault line between science and spirituality. West of that line, there is only one reason that things happen – because natural forces have conspired unintentionally to make them happen. East of that line, there is a different reason that things happen: Because it is the will of God or Spirit. West of the line, the view of the East is superstition and wishful thinking. The Western scientist is repelled by the Eastern mind, seeing grave danger, rightfully, in naive denial of physical fact. The Eastern-facing mind is likewise disenchanted with Western certainties. The belief that all things can be reduced to mechanical function seems cynical and out of touch with the reality of human experience.
Given that science is so focused on eliminating magical thinking, it seems more than ironic that serendipity plays such a prominent role in the history of science. Even if the events are apocryphal, the mythology of science is a heroes journey that often pivots on some fortuitous coincidence which constellates a new discovery. It is not a miraculous gift bestowed upon the hero from grace, but a kind of winking reward from nature, revealing its wonders at last after much hard earned work.
“Many of the things discovered by accident are important in our everyday lives:Teflon, Velcro, nylon, x-rays, penicillin, safety glass, sugar substitutes, and polyethylene and other plastics. And we owe a debt to accident for some of our deepest scientific knowledge, including Newton’s theory of gravitation, the Big Bang theory of Creation, and the discovery of DNA. Even the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the ruins of Pompeii came to light through chance. ” – source
“Discovery needs luck, invention, intellect – none can do without, the other.” -Johann Wolfgang Goethe
At a deeper level, the message that serendipity communicates is the virtue of curiosity. The hard work of science is the justification for the reward of discovery, but the treasure map which leads to that work is the gift of curiosity. The hero’s journey begins there, and through an alchemical process of purification and futile struggle, the hero is made deserving. The scientific hero’s struggle is even more noble than the mythic hero, since they must eschew supernatural luck and make their own good fortune through commitment to precision, methodical thoroughness, and accuracy. It seems strange then, after all of that, we still find that the role of intuition and surprise are so…curiously…prominent in our storytelling of science. Watching shows like Tyson’s recent Cosmos (and Sagan’s as well), it is really all about serendipity. Most every episode features stories of scientific heroes struggling against fate, only to be fatefully assisted in the end.
For being such a forbidden concept in the scientific method, it appears that fate is still alive and well in the folk psychology of science itself. More than in many other fields, the culture of science seems to have a greater tolerance for whimsical language and Murphy’s Law type skepticism. There is a kind of suppressed romanticism that comes out as eccentricity and non-conformity…symptoms of all that is suppressed by the scientific method, where quirky outliers are discarded.
The twentieth century marked explosive shifts in science. Multiple discoveries in everything from physics, to biology, to psychology, combined in a synchronistic way which exposed synchronicity itself. Special Relativity and quantum mechanics dissolved classical materialism, just as art, music, and politics were radicalized. Now, in the twenty first century, there appears to be a backlash. Physics and information science have resurrected a realism which is structured and non-relativistic. The stunning revelations of Heisenberg’s uncertainty and Godel’s incompleteness are being interpreted now as supporting a worldview forever outside of human understanding, rather than a reality which is deeper and richer than measurement itself. Possibly the next sea change is beginning to swell, and we will see some of the old, new ideas come back to displace the new, old ideas. What will the future of science have to say about this chapter of its development? Will science get over its love hate relationship with its own hunches, luck, and curiosity?
Esoteric Number Sets
I made this sound really opaque, but all it consists of is reorganizing the sets of numbers so that it begins with the simplest number (1) and progresses through variations on the theme of one-ness. These variations would be ratios, i.e. fractions, only I’m conceiving of them as more like the feeling of a specific fraction rather than a definitely named number. The feeling of ‘half’ would precede the concept of 1/2, so that the number 2 would be derived from feeling of “one half and the other”. Ok, it’s becoming opaque again, but what I’m going for here is flipping our view of number sets around so that the continuum of numbers is not taken as a space that is filled up with Platonic object generation, but one of a sense-making awareness subtracting and ratios of itself within itself. In this way, multiplication is really a division of (1), and division is a multiplication of those divisions.
The above diagram is borrowed from Math is Fun.
Natural Numbers
Integers
Rational Numbers
Real Numbers
Imaginary Numbers
Complex Numbers
If we begin from a primordial pansensitivity model, the entire sense of enumeration would be included as an element. That element is shown below as the number 1.
I see the ability to hold multiple numbers against each other in conceptual space as rationality. Rational numbering (Q) is more of a verb, situated between the transcendental sense of unity and the enumerated sense of static multiplicity, represented by the Natural numbers (N).
This effectively turns the number set relations inside out, so that all numbers are seen to diverge from an intuitive simplicity, and progress into nested complexity and abstraction. Negative numbers extend the natural numbers to Integers (Z) through a numberline concept in which 0 is treated as a kind of mirror. Imaginary numbers, Complex, and Reals take advantage of the original rationality (Q) and its nesting, reflecting, elaborations. In this diagram, the number 0 is a Natural number apart from all others, indicating its status as the representation of the complete absence of (1) within (1).
Multisense Realism 
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