Language, Meaning and the TOE

[Wick]

The quote by T.S. Elliot puts me in mind that while life is a journey of discovery, it is also a journey of rediscovery, many times, as we suddenly come to fully appreciate the importance of a detail or a teaching which we earlier learned and then set aside, as our hungry mind coursed in search of more substantial fare.

The Eliot reference reminded me of the famous words of Sir Oliver Lodge, who said, "A fish cannot comprehend the existence of water. He is too deeply immersed in it."

Which reminded me of references early in this thread to space being like the ocean.

And then I thought, "Human beings cannot comprehend the existence of space. They are too deeply immersed in it."

Its time for us to finally recognize what we are mostly made of.

Wick

[labelwench]

The Eliot reference reminded me of the famous words of Sir Oliver Lodge, who said, "A fish cannot comprehend the existence of water. He is too deeply immersed in it."

Which reminded me of references early in this thread to space being like the ocean.

And then I thought, "Human beings cannot comprehend the existence of space. They are too deeply immersed in it."

Its time for us to finally recognize what we are mostly made of.

Wick

Humans have ever attempted to rise above the other species, and each other. The means by which we have done so, is the tool of language. Other species have elaborate systems of communication also, yet none so multi-faceted as that used by our kind.

Language has evolved, and words have multiplied, and now, though we would walk upon our sea of words, the knowing of some of the first things that our kind ever pondered upon, remains as elusive as ever.

For exactly the reason you state.

We are a part of that which we would study, and before we may know the universe better, it would behoove us to better know ourselves.

We are getting the cart before the horse........once again........

[Meem]

Humans have ever attempted to rise above the other species, and each other. The means by which we have done so, is the tool of language. Other species have elaborate systems of communication also, yet none so multi-faceted as that used by our kind.

While on the whole I like this, in the back of my mind lurks the complexity of dophin clicks, and the singing of whale songs heard by others, thousands of miles away. We humans, scream at each other face to face as if we were thousands of miles away (I suspect more often than not, this is true on some level) ... only to hear ourselves.

[labelwench]

While on the whole I like this, in the back of my mind lurks the complexity of dophin clicks, and the singing of whale songs heard by others, thousands of miles away. We humans, scream at each other face to face as if we were thousands of miles away (I suspect more often than not, this is true on some level) ... only to hear ourselves.

Animals, birds and insects have aspects to their communication that still amaze science, as in their ability to orient as to direction and communicate same, in the manner that hive insects tell each other where to find food and how to avoid danger. Some aspects of their communication may be more sophisticated than our own, and we have used technology to enhance the distance and the means by which we exchange information.

Our ability to preserve information is one of our most importantly evolved uses of language. Knowledge may 'skip a generation', yet it is there to be retrieved and 'relearned' when the need or the interest arises. Do other species do that, I wonder?

From my experience with horses, I observe that parenting skills are learned by observation, and that mares raised in a herd learn these skills from each other, while those raised in isolation as elite equine athletes are lacking in the experience of what to do with this frustrating little creature, which got here, how, exactly?

Language allows us to use both direct, and indirect means to transfer information. We also combine the mediums of voice or audio, with visual, (pictures, video, facial expression, body posture), tactile (touch or distance between communicating parties), scent (personal product or flowers, ambient scent added to a venue) and even gustatory experience, shared, implied or denied.

Language is far more than the words. Language is the context of life.

Then, what about silence, I have been asked?

There is no absolute silence in nature, in my understanding. Anechoic design is a creation of mankind.

Anechoic chamber, at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber

[Bogie]

I love to name things. Part of the joy of my pets over the years is that I have named most of them several times. The first name is the one that seems right for them by just looking at them and how they act when we first meet. Then after a time I morph the name to better reflect the animal’s true nature. Eventually I quit calling them by name completely and only use their name when referring to them in conversation. At first it might be, “Miss Pepper, get off the counter”, as I take a false swing at her tail . Later it is, Pepper, get down”, and now it is simply “Hey!”. She understands “Hey” to mean quit whatever behavior she is currently displaying and that I have corrected her about a hundred times.

In science we don’t usually have the honor of naming a characteristic of nature and I often find that the name given doesn’t suit me. I simply describe it in hundreds of words and or give it a new name that better fits my view. I even keep a glossary of some the terms that I have redefined or coined and when I use one of them it is conceivable that a reader could understand more specifically what I mean.

Alas, unlike the clarity of our one word communication with animals it is the fate of most of our efforts to describe an aspect of the universe (all the words we use and redefine and all the phrases that we coin) to still fail our intentions of being clear among each other .

[SteveA]

I simply describe it in hundreds of words and or give it a new name that better fits my view.

I tend to use that first method. In fact I'll write 3 sentences using multiple sets of synonymous terms/words/expressions/acronyms/phrases/analogies etc. to describe something that someone else used a single Greek letter to represent LMAO! (Yes, and I'd post 2 more redundant sentences to reinforce that, but I'll be late for work)

[Wick]

There is no absolute silence in nature, in my understanding. Anechoic design is a creation of mankind.

Actually, in the vast majority of nature, silence is the rule. In the vacuum of space there is absolute silence. The lack of air causes all sound to cease, because there is no medium through which the sound waves can travel. Only when matter is configured in a very specific way (as in an atmosphere) can the “word” be shared. The only waves that travel in space are those we attribute to light and gravity…what I prefer to call space waves. And while we can transmit sound via space wave, the wave must be tinkered with to carry the sound and must be processed on the receiving end before it becomes sound again.

But if sound requires a medium to propagate, why is it that light does not? The answer to that question took centuries to answer…and to a certain extent it is still not clearly answered. We simply believe that light requires no medium to propagate.

But our assumption from the outset has been that light is something separate and distinct from space itself. Perhaps that assumption is wrong-headed. If light is simply a kind of space wave (in the same way that gravity is) then we need not talk about how light is propagated, but rather how space is propagated, and perhaps we should ask ourselves the follow-on question: “Why does space yields the phenomenon we call light when propagated one way, and the phenomenon we call gravity when propagated in another. Or maybe the verb propagate is not the right word to use. Perhaps "to light" is a verb we should attribute to space.

I have spent long hours contemplating rivers, sitting on the banks and watching the play of the water as it makes its way down the river bed. The water takes the path of least resistance, which reminds me of what Feyman says in his little book called QED. Here are his words: “We can get away with the crude picture of the world that says that light only goes where the time is least (and it’s easy to prove that where the time is least, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, but I don’t have the time to show you).” Light, or space waves, it would seem take the path of least time, which is not unlike water's path of least resistance.

As I watch the river, I see areas where the waves caused by the current are large and frothy. In other areas of the river, the waves are small and even. Elsewhere, the waves are nearly smooth, flowing at a wavelength so long that I fall asleep trying to find it. Occasionally, usually in the vicinity of rapids, a large rock may protrude through the surface. In such places, a standing wave forms in the flow causing a dynamic trough to form around the rock. The standing wave does not move or flow. It stays put. Such a wave is a feature in the water caused by the rock. The rock forces the water to curve around it. And when the current is strong enough, the water pushes the rock along the river bed. After a strong rain storm in the mountains of Utah, I once watched the raging current of the Provo River move rocks weighing several tons hundreds of yards down the canyon. The water actually moves the rocks at all times…but usually at a pace so slow I fail to see it.

The rocks force the water to curve. The water forces the rocks to move. This sounds curiously like a description of gravity/general relativity I once read by Wheeler (paraphrased): Matter tells space how to bend. Space tells matter how to move.

To me this sounds curiously like the river and the rocks. The difference is that neither Einstein nor any of his contemporaries, nor most of the scientists living today think of space as a flow. That is why I’m not a scientist.

In fact, Einstein’s determinate space-time forbids space-time from flowing. The river of spacetime is frozen hard. The structure of gravity is fixed within the multifaceted surface of space-time in all its temporal configurations—from the distant past, to the distant future.

I say, thaw the river out. Discard the notion of an ontologically real past and future. Stick with the present configuration of space, and permit space to flow along four spatial axes—like a river...but more. The present is all there is. The river (space) just keeps flowing around matter—creating standing waves where matter imposes itself in the path of space (gravity) and creating ripples of light as it flows along the path of least time (four-space).

I have said these things before in the RLT thread, and apologize for harping on them again. But I strongly feel that we are walking down the wrong road with space-time and quantum mechanics. As long as we insist on constructing our theories around a space-centric universe (a universe in which space at large does not move, but only curves), I think we will be missing something critical about the nature of…well…nature.

Space moves. From the entrails of the atom (which are mostly space), to the massive cores of stars (which are mostly space), and everything in between (which is mostly space). We call these different motions of space different things—like electron clouds, and quark decay, and weak interactions, and strong interactions, and photons, and neutrinos, and gravitons, and…and…and. So many nouns to describe the many ways that space moves.

Nor do I deny the existence of matter. If there were no whisk, how would the batter be stirred? Matter and space work in tandem. They are the ying and the yang of the cosmos. Everything we observe in nature results from an action of space upon matter or matter upon space. Scrap the nouns and the passive voice!

Space Waves!! Camera!! Action!!

[labelwench]

I understand your remarks regarding sound and the reasons stated, Wick, yet this is also an interesting statement. Catch you later, all. Time for me to recharge my batteries for night shift.

Is there really sound in space?

Actually...yes!!

What is sound? It is a pressure wave. So long as you have some kind of gaseous medium, you will have the possibility of forming pressure waves in it by 'shocking' it in some way.

In space, the interplanetary medium is a very dilute gas at a density of about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter, and the speed of sound in this medium is about 300 kilometers/sec. Typical disturbances due to solar storms and 'magneto-sonic turbulence' at the earth's magnetopause have scales of hundreds of kilometers, so the acoustic wavelengths are enormous. Human ears would never hear them, but we can technologically detect these pressure changes and play them back for our ears to hear by electronically compressing them.

[Bogie]

I tend to use that first method. In fact I'll write 3 sentences using multiple sets of synonymous terms/words/expressions/acronyms/phrases/analogies etc. to describe something that someone else used a single Greek letter to represent LMAO! (Yes, and I'd post 2 more redundant sentences to reinforce that, but I'll be late for work)

Lol, thanks for helping me feel that my methodology is not too far out. I guess since science addresses many concepts that are not yet settled we have some leeway in what we accept, what we question, and what we individually want to propose; and I take full advantage of that leeway.

[labelwench]

Light, or space waves, it would seem take the path of least time, which is not unlike water's path of least resistance.

Originally posted by Wick

'The path of least time.'

I may not be using this phrase in the way in which you intended, Wick, yet it stood out in my re-reading of your post upon arising.

Time, as a measurement, for planning and co-ordinating movements between persons and events, is how we commonly interact with this, even yet, incompletely understood 'experiencing' for lack of a better word.

We have incredibly detailed and (to our way of thinking) accurate means by which we measure time, and it underpins our language and communication, giving us 'reference points' from which, and toward which, we plot our personal journey, examine the past and contemplate the future.

From my experiments of the last 10 1/2 months, during which I am on night shift for four nights, then transition without a rest period to days for the remaining three, has granted me some interesting personal experiencing of 'the path of least time'.

Whether this phenomenon is measurable or localized to my own perception remains a matter of conjecture, but it has given me much to contemplate, though I seldom discuss the matter with others.

Unless one has experienced same, one is bound to encounter some strange reactions, lol, and I have a veneer of credibility that is useful to maintain for the present.

In closing for the present, when one can set aside the clock-watching habits of our conditioned society, one will find that it is, indeed, always 'now', and that the experiencing of same becomes far richer, as I surmise you may have knowledge of from your contemplation of the river's journey.