Larry,

Please elaborate.  I want to try sending my congressional delegation a message in a higher dimension since they seem completely insensitive to the first four!

BTW, the Chinese chefs may be onto something.  That Calabi-Yau manifold looks a lot like a fortune cookie, except maybe with multiple fortunes.

Tip,

If I only knew the answer!

Is it possible your aura and the aura of your congressional delegation mixes to create a bad vibe?  Is it possible the larger contributors to your congressional delegation have more powerful subtle energies than you?

More powerful subtle energies?  Hmmm, let’s see. I’m visualizing green!

I always value theory, even the far out, as the incubator of knowledge and progress.

It was either Yogi Berra or Einstein who said, “In theory, theory and practice are identical; in practice, they are not.

James,

Thanks for your comment and Yogi-ism; it was getting a little lonely here on this post.  I?ve gotten a couple of personal emails suggesting I keep my day job and stick to writing about Chuckanut Ridge.

Professor Yau?s book was actually co-authored by MIT research fellow, Steve Nadis.  Steve and I have exchanged a series of interesting emails regarding my ?theory?.  As Steve wrote, ?That is certainly unlike any other discussion of our book I?ve seen so far.?

There?s actually some method to my madness. If physicists can figure this ?energy? issue out, perhaps we?ll be able to solve our energy-from-fossil-fuels crisis.  As I wrote back to Steve Nadis:

?Thinking holistically, the Calabi-Yau manifold and the 6 hidden (subtle-energy) dimensions must exist for a reason.  My interest is in finding out why we have these 6 hidden dimensions.  What’s their purpose?  How do they work?  How can they benefit humanity?

As I mentioned in my first email to Prof. Yau, I am fascinated by Tom Bearden’s work on energy from the vacuum (EFTV).  I believe Bearden and others may be able to solve our energy-from-fossil-fuels crisis.  Everyone knows the vacuum is an energetically-charged plenum.  Where is that energy located?  Can we take advantage of the plenum’s energy?  Was the universe created with that in mind?

I have no doubt that the extra dimensions are subtle energies that correspond to distinct energy frequencies of living organisms.  These extra dimensions would explain esp, deja vu, and a whole host of paranormal / metaphysical experiences.  Why wouldn’t the universe’s energy ‘grid’ be compatible with our own energy ‘grid’?  How else would we communicate with the non-physical?

Of course, it’s frustrating because I have no way of finding out.  I am not a scientist.  But these are questions that scientists could potentially answer, if they felt they were worth pursuing, especially in terms of solving our energy crisis.?

Again, James, thanks for commenting.  I hope others will feel free to join in.  Has this dialogue fostered any other creative thinking?

Larry,
Is it possible that these additional dimensions are inhabited by beings who are not yet known to us?  Is it possible that extra-terrestrials? are actually terrestrial beings?  I think these discussions are best held over a good bottle of wine rather than morning coffee!

My dear, dear friend; I worry about you and your mad musings.

The quest for knowledge is an endless road winding into oblivion.

In the words of an even more profound Chinese, “The way that can can be known is not the real way.”  Lao Tzu

Cheers!

Rick, sounds good.  When & where?  Red or white?

Greg, much thanks for your concern; I suspect it?s well placed.  Hope all?s well is Darian.

I definitely vote for the wine over coffee for metaphysical discussions.  I prefer red!

James J., I heard it this way: “The difference between theory and practice is far greater in practice than in theory.”  Don’t have a source, though.

When matter and energy are re-contextualized as information, many problems of theology and metaphysics are easily resolved.  For instance, postulating an external, omniscient agent to account for neg-entropic trends within a universe of decay becomes unnecessary.  Information is the stuff of communication and if communication is ubiquitous within the universe, then the universe must be intelligent, to some degree.  I think we can all agree that doesn’t mean it has to be very smart.  But if it has any intelligence, it must be alive. If it is alive, we don’t need to explain death, etc.

As Whitehead said, the fact that the universe appears to be unwinding is evidence there there was an epoch in which it was wound, or that there is a vast counter-agency through which it remains winding and unwinding.  Beginning without end, so to speak.

Of course, that’s probably all bunk.  Yet more reason for the red wine!

Tip,

I sure hope this doesn?t get lost in a thread that might be dead by now.  But, here goes anyway.

Whence and whither? That is the question.  You claim not to be a scientist, Tip, but you would have to live in my shoes to understand what it is to ?not? be a scientist; and I?ve very much enjoyed your thread to the extent I can understand it. 

I feel much more comfortable with the metaphysical aspect of it - though not in the modern use of ?metaphysics? that often reduces it to woo-woo conjecture into wishes, imaginings, and non-defineable, non-measureable, and non-reproduceable spiritualities.

I specifically appreciated your paragraph making an omniscient agent unnecessary.  Many years ago now, I was confused and conflicted by the myriad truths posited by experts of every possible theological, philosophical, and scientific bent.  Out of frustration, I literally threw out everything I believed, decided to start from scratch, and let it take me wherever it took me.

Tying it in with your statement, I thought the first question I had to answer was the ever popular ?does god exist.?  Traipsing through the likes of Anselm,Aquinas, Berkeley, and Kant was unsatisfactory; along with all the atheists, agnostics, deists, etc. from the past and from today.

Trying to keep this short, it occurred to me that if I were able to define to my satisfaction everything that could possibly exist, I might be able to reach within that collection and find some sort of god, or find no god, or who knows?  My shorthand for everything that could possibly exist I called ?omnia?, Latin for all things.  It took a long time to define it: omnia is the self-existing and self-sustaining, temporally and spatially finite, natural, physical, positive, measurable, mutable, empirically knowable, and theoretically constructable sum total of all that exists. 

I chose natural as specifically exclusive of the supernatural, physical as exclusive of spiritual, positive as exclusive of negative or non-existence.  I included the ?-ables? specifically to note that though not having been accomplished yet in practice, there is always the potential for omnia to ultimately be measured, mutated, and known (unlikely, but possible).

The other thing I had to do which has always been like fingernails on a blackboard to me, is to choose to posit a one time primordial suspension of cause and effect in order to get things going from nothing.  Either that or posit that everything always existed, a concept I equally can?t get my mind around.

By the way, I never did find a god in the traditional sense of a caring agent who concerns itself with humanity.  But, the idea of throwing out the baby with the bath water and re-examining anything from scratch has enabled me to repeatedly build, re-examine, and modify the code of ethics by which I operate.  It is often humbling.

Mea culpa.  I just realized I was co-mingling Larry’s and Tip’s comments in my response this morning - I meant it for everyone. Sort it out as you see fit and chalk one up to my legendary absent mindedness.

Jim

Larry,

I think some things are beyond our capabilities as imperfect humans to understand. We get glimpses and revelations which we perceive “as through a glass darkly”. Who can say whether the most brilliant physicist has a better idea of reality than an Australian aborigine in dream-time?

Thanks for expanding the subject matter on the NW board!

David,

As always, thanks for adding your thoughts to the mix.  As you know, I have a strong interest in resolving our energy-from-fossil-fuels crisis.  Perhaps solar, wind and geothermal will make a significant dent, but my gut tells me that our energetic universe has a more elegant solution in store.

In the late 1800?s, James Clerk Maxwell formulated classical electromagnetic (EM) theory.  Maxwell?s equations allowed for EM systems in dis-equilbrium with their environment, including systems that extract energy from the active vacuum (plenum).  Maxwell?s equations were symmetrically regauged by Lorenz more than a hundred years ago, and all such systems were arbitrarily discarded.

Perhaps the answer to our energy-from-fossil-fuels crisis lies in Lorenz?s circular file, and maybe string theorists will rediscover a number of potential energy sources that have long been forgotten.

While I agree that ?some things are beyond our capabilities as imperfect humans to understand,? I also recognize that a complete understanding is not always necessary to derive tremendous benefits.  Consider Newtonian physics (?classical mechanics?), for example.  Newton?s imperfect understanding was ?close enough? to the truth to enhance our standard of living beyond measure.

Pursuing potential solutions in our elegant universe just waiting for discovery is certainly a worthy goal.

The problem with everything-all-at-once, Johans’ omnia, is a dilemma: How can all be change if all is one?  All one is all-inclusive of any other.  So how can change occur?

It’s all about possibility. A possibility must exist before any discovery can be made. It has been said that the the natives of the West Indies watched the Spaniards’ ships arrive ashore, wondering at the strange formation of clouds, not entertaining the notion that such ships were even possible.

Possibilities cannot be deduced or induced.  Those logical functions are strictly for identifying actual occasions or inferring general rules.  So whence do possibilities derive?

From thinking outside “the box”, employing reason toward ends that have no reason to be true.  As Godel, in a veritable fit of possibilities, pointed out to Whitehead and Russel, any set of propositions includes the possibility of a proposition inconsistent with the set.  So educing possibilities involves reason, but not necessarily logic as we understand it.

Believing in the possibility of the unbelievable seems to be the key.

Thanks, Larry for thinking outside the box for us.