[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by AntonioLao

Now that you mentioned it, my question is why do we have exactly five fingers not 4 or 6? Or what can we do better with lesser or more fingers?

exactly. These are questions I would say are STRUCTURAL mathematics - what aspect of this arrangment of four fingers and one opposable thumb suited the mechanics of evolution. Exactly.

There are those who seem to think we have five fingers because God counts in tens... and that is to my mind disgraceful. I include numberologists in this crazy way of thinking - who add up your date or birth and so on. THere is a lady living near me who wrote a book ("channelled by angels") to say DNA was mutating to a 13 strand structure and we must recalculate all numberology stuff by a new matrix of 13 colours to include the pastel shades of angels. Lovely lady, I liked her a lot, but she was grumpy when I pointed out her calculations needed to use modulo 13, and by sticking with ten as her basis for calculating what letter of the alphabet mapped onto which of thirteen numbers, using symbols 0 to 9 - she eliminated certain fairy colours unfairly. As I say lovely lady, she is out helping orphans who lost their parents in the tsunami, nothing wrong, just lack of logic.

So I seek a better explanation of the structural mathematics of the hand than becuase god or fairies want us to count in tens and could not just send us an email about that.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by Mike 5

My idea is to think through a third theory or relativity using rotational co-ordinate geometry - where things are positioned as they APPEAR to an observer at any point, with reference to rotation, the decision of where our axis of rotation is, and the practical assumption to all incarnated beings actually in physical form to observe anything must be on a rotating gravity bound planet anyway...

Very interestijng. But you really need tough pure math. First, you need to explain what is the resolutional position of an object if we take two different references. Would you describe it as the middle point of distance between the each of the reference's position of the object, or my a matrix representing the transformation done from one to the other and somehow inventing a notation to denote the object as the two matrix? This is only the start of a fascinating mathematical adventure, in a fight for a third pyramid of relativity to complete the triangle.

[baudrunner]

We at least need our thumbs to turn the pages of a book. Here's a good one: "Atomic and Molecular Structure: The Development of Our Concepts". The preface opens with:

This book is based on a course given to liberal arts students and other non-science majors at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It emphasizes how scientists think, rather than what their current theories are.

Neither your nice old numerologist lady or the author of the paper titled Synergetics Principles, it wouldn't surprise me if he were Buckminster Fuller, he had a reputation as a true eccentric, but neither were in actual fact scientific thinkers.

from Synergetics Principles:

Scientific entry into the present realm of nuclear competence was accomplished with the awkward irrational tools of the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) measurement and the Cartesian XYZ 90-degree coordinate system. But the awkwardness had to be corrected by Planck's constant to produce reliable, usable information.

I must say there is revealing nationalistic pride that wills to step on the early foundations of those from the mainland of Europe that we still accredit nonetheless with greatness for their contributions. In fact, there is nothing awkward about systems of measurement, imperial or metric. Even Planck's constant changes with the context wherein it is applied, but it has its own basis for being as does all science right or wrong, I suppose.

[AntonioLao]

Originally Posted by GUILLE

In fact, paleontologists say recently that our hands were the basic factor for us to become intelligent beings, the said it was the ultimate cause of it.

Were these paleontologists basing their assertions on the theory of optimization for achieving a min-max problem of objective functions? How about physical size and physical weight? Are these also related to intelligence? Is an elephant smarter than a mouse or the other way around? In the case of human against other biological nature, of course, evolution will tell the tale!

[Guille]

Originally Posted by AntonioLao

Were these paleontologists basing their assertions on the theory of optimization for achieving a min-max problem of objective functions? How about physical size and physical weight? Are these also related to intelligence? Is an elephant smarter than a mouse or the other way around? In the case of human against other biological nature, of course, evolution will tell the tale!

No they were not Eulers or Guasses, they were just Darwins.

All these are far too many questions for me. The thing is there are too many factors dealing with the intelligence of animals as to say 'bigger animals are more intelligent' or any phrase based on few factors. In the case of elephants, they have the best memory of all kindoms, better than us, much more, and yet they still are not able to be consciouss. The harder of all things is to define exactly what we meen by consciouss, basically the cortex of the brain gives us everything we consider 'intelligent': science, art, language, logic...

[baudrunner]

In the case of elephants, they have the best memory of all kindoms, better than us, much more, and yet they still are not able to be consciouss.

I know I am bound to the new rules of posting etiquette, but it occurs to me that we should have additional rules concerning the keeping of this sort of drivel out of the posts.

What evidence is there of elephants having the best memory of all kindoms, including us?

What evidence do we have of elephants not being conscious? To me, the only unconscious elephant is a sleeping, punched-out cold or dead elephant.

[Guille]

Look, if you are the kind of person that doesn't believe in scientific facts please leave I don't know what you are doing here.

Originally Posted by baudrunner

I know I am bound to the new rules of posting etiquette, but it occurs to me that we should have additional rules concerning the keeping of this sort of drivel out of the posts.

I talke dto robert about this, and if the thread starter is ok with the derivation of posts, it can continue. And in fact my discussion with antonio about fingers and intelligence is connected to mike's mathematics whcih is supposed to be applied to biology also.

Originally Posted by baudrunner

What evidence is there of elephants having the best memory of all kindoms, including us?

Many experiments. Just look for them in the internet, te websites of research institutes are quite good. Some are of the kind of showing the face of a human that the elephant had seen 1,000 years ago and remembers, the see this in behaviour.

Originally Posted by baudrunner

What evidence do we have of elephants not being conscious? To me, the only unconscious elephant is a sleeping, punched-out cold or dead elephant.

Not only our dreams are subconsciousness. Our thoughts that happen not in direct mental observations are, like for example when you are looking at a list of numbers trying to search for patterns. But also all the feelins are part of sbuconsciousness. And by consciouss I already explained that I meant the ability to have a posteriori evidence of progression. An elephant has to think about how to go up stairs every single time. We don't.

[Mike 5]

Baudrunner, Guille, please be nice to each other. You BOTH have so much to contribute here. I am sad to see a fight here, please...

The absence of self reflecting consciousness of elephants - that is not directly about the topic here - structural mathematics, it is about the neo-cortex which I have heard is uniquely human, and certain amazing abilities of elephants are not yet explained.

What is even odder is how Siafu or driver ants have almost NO brain, no eyes, and yet in a colony of 20 million, they manage so many funtions of a single organism - nutrition and excretion and moving 20 million ants EVERY 23 days - and although that is fascinating, it is not Structural Mathematics unless we relate it BACK to the topic originally posted.

With Siafu ants, the structure of the colony does involve mathematics - there are four basic types and sizes of ants, the colony splits into two above so many million, the aspects of getting something from outside to inside (nutrition) and from inside to outside (excretion) are clearly structural processes.

Biology does resolve structural mathematics - I don't need to repeat how once when carving a roast duck, the difference and similarity to carving a chicken made me realise how x,y,z geometry could never design the body of a duck or any animal, yet alone the reproduction of eggs, flight, swimming etc.

Ideas about memory and consciousness and self-referential consciousness are, in my view, perhaps later resolvable from a working structural mathematics, but I have not resolved all the details yet for such advanced tools, I merely think it logically possible eventually.

Thank you both for your contributions which I think were meant sincerely.

[hanzoganz]

Originally Posted by Mike 5

STRUCTURAL MATHEMATICS...

This phrase is on my mind recently. I have not trained formally in mathematics, however my mother was a weird and powerful mathematics teacher, I knew about fibonacci and the golden section almost before I could read...

Is there an existing branch of mathematics with this name - Structural Mathematics?

Structures fascinate me, and by structures I tend to mean that I think with my fingers, so structures are connected linked things and models that for me I think about primarily using the tactile and sensual abilities of skin muscle and skeleton, secondly the acoustic, and only finally the visual.

Of course geometry is about structures and I believe historically it was seen once as a deeper truth than many things we now trust as true. But geometry assumes flat planes, dimensionless points, linear equidistance, and my thinking finds these ideas just blinkered and flat.

My website and default online identity and pen name is Digital Witchdoctor, which does not sound mathematical, but for me digits - fingers, are the essence of how I think, and what makes my thinking tangible and occasionally clearly explained. (And generally mystifying - I found through NLP that most people can make visual images and memories in their minds at will, and I cannot! So my bullshit detector finds normal ideas "flat", others find my ideas won't fit onto the paper or surface they think upon?)

This is an important question for me. I still consider mathematics as a safe refuge from doubt and uncertainty, and the essence is that in mathematics, truth is clear, it is not decided by priests, it is simply and obviously true equally to all who care to think.

But I am never interested in numbers, really. Most "mathematicians" apply their logic to what I see as utterly false number lines because I cannot touch zero nor infinity, and the need to think in x,y,z co-ordinates is inefficient and clumsy. I have no reason to think on flat planes using x y z co-ordinates, as visual people may prefer. I need thoughts I can manipulate digitally - that is with my fingers, and I test the resilience ad elasticity and structural and sculptural forms of thoughts, I seek the umbilical connections and hidden inflexibilities.

In that I consider myself some form of mathematician. The best phrase I can find is Structural Mathematics.

Comments?

Math as structures. Actually, that`s what math is. Correct relations between structures. Not numbers or equations.

Geometry as 3-dimensional surfaces is an old high school theory. Nowadays, we think of manifolds, surfaces of many dimensions that don´t have to be lines or planes, but different kinds of shapes, must of them impossible tu visualize, yet. Just as Da Vinci taught humankind to start seeing 3 dimensions in a plane, we are starting to thing in terms of the real geometry, the geometry of nature.

René Thom, one of the greatest mathematicians of last century has a book called Stabilité sctructurelle et morphogénèse where he discusses certain mathematical structures of nature, using algebraic geometry, the branch of math that uses the multidimensional manifolds or Riemann surfaces.

As for certainty, yes, math gives a bit of that, but not that much. It requires certain creativity to work on the problems, on the structures of the solutions. I believe that, somehow, math is an art of structures.

regards,

or