Click Here to read the last UP!!
\\)))))/
_____,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,__
fraser
but let the dead bury the dead.
UP!
Get UP!
Stand Up For Your Rights!
(and everybody’s too of course! :)
u can’t understand the world without
innerstanding yourself
UP!
240
// 4 01 07
LA- LA- LA- LAP-TOPPLING DA
SYSTEM!
u cant innerstand yourself without
understanding the world
Get UP!
Don’t Give Up The Fight!
(only we don’t mean violence, ok?
:)
(\o/ (\o/)(\o/)
(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)
2007.
earth
happy new
year!
and i
think it will be
for the whole
human race, including those pathetic denatured super-rich whose era is
passing but whose mental health will vastly
improve
:)
it looks to me
like the first 6 years of what should have been the
new
3rd
millennium
have had to be devoted to seeing off the
2
nd
millennium dinosaurs who just didn’t ‘get it’.
but, now their last stand has failed, hugely, before the eyes of the
whole planet, we can begin to turn our attention to our
new
future.
we, or i anyway, have spent the last decades fighting against the
direction the dinos were offering (ordering) and have been offering
for the past 4 thousand years.
but now we must and can begin to work out what exactly we, on ‘this
side’, actually agree about.
so, as we enter the first year of our
new
young society of the
future, the
first
UP!
offers 2
inspirational/informational pieces,
THE
MOST IMPORTANT, INSPIRING AND FASCINATING NEWS I HAVE LEARNED IN
2006.
the first,
Crete, the
Goddess
-Worshipping Key to our
Lost Evolution,
peers
into our ancient
Past
and explains how the
Goddess
was stolen from the
people by war
lords and
male ego
monsters,
cold, ruthless and calculating as
reptiles
(the ones who are
only now losing their grip).
in the
second, Intelligent Life Is The
Architect Of The Universe!,
scientists peer with opening eyes into the not-so-distant
Future
as their latest
‘discoveries’ force them towards recognising the
Goddess
as the
Unifying
Theme beyond
the
Singularity
.
“The more I examine the universe and
study the detail of its architecture, the more evidence I find that in
some sense it knew we were coming.”
UP!
my wish 4 us all in 2007
is a mannafestation of earth as heaven;
the levels of ecstasy bliss & vitality
that we experience as our daily reality
increase ever onwards exponentially
2 heights never b4 reached by humanity.
we r not waiting any more
the revolution is live 4 sure.
xxx*magic*luvin*xxx
kate, brighton.
UP!
p.11
Biocosm
-
Intelligent Life Is The Architect Of The Universe!
Scientists catch up with hippy mystics!
p.14 A Box That
See Into the
Future
?
FEEDBACK we
shoulda seen it coming :)
UP!
to our
Lost
Evolution
“We find this firm confirmation from our past
that our hopes for peaceful human co-existence
are not, as we are so often told,
“utopian
dreams.”
But the greatest
obstacle to an accurate reconstruction is
not that we are lacking so many pieces; it is that
the prevailing warrior-male
paradigm makes it so hard to accurately
interpret the pieces we have and to project the real pattern into which
they fit.
For example, when Sir Flinders Petrie first reported on the excavations
of the tomb of Meryet-Nit in Egypt, he automatically assumed Meryet-Nit
was a king. Later research, however, established that Meryet-Nit was a
woman and, judging from the richness of her tomb, a queen. The
same mistake was made about the gigantic tomb discovered at Nagadeh by
Professor de Morgan. He, too, assumed it was the burial place of a
king, Hor-Aha of the First Dynasty. But later research showed that
this was the sepulchre of Hor-Aha’s mother.
Such examples of our current cultural bias has led to mistakes that are
only exceptional in that they were later
corrected.
Indeed, when art historian Merlin Stone
travelled all over the world, looking at excavation after excavation,
archive after archive, and object after object, re-examining primary
sources and then checking how they’d been interpreted, she found that, by
and large, when there was evidence of an earlier time
when women and men lived as
equals, it was simply
ignored
.
As we examine the remarkable and utterly
surprising ancient civilisation discovered
on Crete
at the turn of the 20th century, we will see how this bias has
hopelessly
distorted our view of
our cultural evolution.
“From the
start,” writes Platon, who for many
years was Superintendent of Antiquities in Crete,
“amazing discoveries were
made.” As work progressed,
“vast multi-storied palaces, villas,
farmsteads, districts of populous and well-organised cities, harbour
installations, networks of roads crossing the island from end to end,
organised places of worship and planned burial grounds were brought to
light.”
Four scripts
(Hieroglyphic, Proto-Linear, Linear
A, and Linear
B) were discovered which actually brought
Cretan civilisation, by archaeological definition, into the historic or
literate
period. And perhaps most strikingly, as
excavations progressed and more and more frescoes, sculptures, vases,
carvings, and other works of art were unearthed, there came the
realisation that here were the remains of an artistic tradition unique in
the annals of civilisation.
The story of Cretan civilisation begins around
6000 B.C.E,
when a small colony of immigrants, probably from Anatolia, first arrived
on the island’s shores. It was they who brought the
Goddess with
them, as well as an agrarian technology that classifies these first
settlers as
Neolithic
. For the next 4000 years there
was slow and steady technological
progress, in
crafts
like pottery making, weaving, metallurgy, engraving and architecture, as
well as increasing
trade
and the gradual evolution of the lively and joyful
Art so
characteristic of Crete. Then, around
2000 B.C.E.,
Crete entered what archaeologists call the Middle Minoan or Old Palace
period.
This was already well into the Bronze
Age, a time when in the rest of the then
civilised world the
Goddess
was steadily being displaced by warlike male gods. Though she was
still revered - as Hathor and Isis in Egypt, as Astarte or Ishtar in
Babylon, or as the sun Goddess of Arinna in
Anatolia - it was now only as
a secondary
deity, described as the consort or
mother of more powerful male gods. The human species was
being moved into a world where male
dominance and
wars of conquest and counter-conquest
were everywhere becoming the norm.
Right up till today, see?!
However, and here’s the critical point, on
Crete where the
Goddess was
still supreme, there are no signs
of war. Here the economy
prospered and the arts continued to flourish. And
even when in the 15th century
B.C.E. the island finally came under Achaean
dominion, the
Goddess and the
way of thinking and living she symbolised still appear to have held
fast. And evolution continued, uninterrupted by the fall into
brutality that was going on everywhere else.
The new
Indo-European
overlords of the island seem to have adopted much of the Minoan culture
and religion. In the pictures on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus of
the fifteenth century B.C.E., already more stiff and stylised but still
unmistakably Cretan, it is still the
Goddess who
bears the dead man to his new life. And it is still the priestesses
of the Goddess,
not the priests in long women’s robes, who play the central role in the
rituals depicted on its plastered limestone frescoes, leading the
procession and extending their hands to touch the altar.
Thus, at the great palace of Knossos it is a woman - the Goddess, her
high priestess, or perhaps, as cultural historian Jacquetta Hawkes
believes, the Cretan
queen - who stands at the centre while two
approaching processions of men bear tribute to her. And
everywhere one finds female figures, many with their arms raised
in blessing, some holding serpents or double axes as symbols of the
Goddess.
In Crete,
for the last time in recorded
history, a spirit of harmony between
women and men as joyful and equal participants in life appears to
pervade. It is this spirit that seems to shine through Crete’s
artistic tradition, a tradition that, again in Platon’s words, is unique
in its “delight in beauty, grace, and
movement” and in
its
“enjoyment of life and closeness to
nature.”
Some scholars have described Minoan life
as “perfectly expressive of the idea of
homo ludens” - of “humans” expressing
their higher human impulses through joyful and at the same time
mythically meaningful ritual and artistic play.
Others have tried to sum up Cretan culture with words and phrases like
“sensitivity,” “grace of life,”
and
“love of beauty and
nature.” The great majority of
scholars, and certainly those who have done any extensive fieldwork on
the island, seem quite unable to contain their
admiration
, and even
astonishment
, in describing their finds.
For here we have a rich, technologically and culturally advanced
civilisation in which “all the artistic
media - in fact, life in its totality as well as death - were deeply
entrenched in an all-pervasive, ubiquitous
religion.” (Archaeologists Buchholtz and
Karageorghis.) In marked
contrast to other high civilisations of the
time, this religion - centring on the
worship of the
Goddess -
seems to have both reflected and reinforced a social order in which, to
quote Nicolas Platon, “the fear of
death was almost obliterated by the ubiquitous joy of living.”
Archaeologists and art historians from
all over the world have used phrases like
“the enchantment of a fairy
world” and
“the most complete acceptance of the
grace of life the world has ever
known.” And it is not only Cretan
art - the magnificent frescoes of multicoloured partridges,
whimsical griffins, and elegant women, the exquisite golden miniatures,
fine jewellery, and gracefully moulded statuettes - but also Cretan
society that has struck scholars as unique.
For example, one remarkable feature of Cretan society, sharply
distinguishing it from other ancient high civilisations, is that there
seems to have been here a rather
equitable sharing of wealth.
“The standard of living - even of
peasants - seems to have been high,”
reports Platon.
“None of the homes found so far have
suggested very poor living conditions.”
This is not to say that Crete was richer than, or even as rich as,
Egypt or
Babylon.
But in view of the economic and social gulf between those on top and
bottom that characterised other
“high”
civilisations, it is important to note that the way Crete used and
distributed its wealth was apparently markedly different.
The Island’s economy was basically agrarian from the start. As time
passed, stock breeding, industry, and particularly trade - through a
large mercantile fleet that sailed, and apparently commanded, the entire
Mediterranean -
assumed increasing importance, greatly contributing to the economic
prosperity of the country. And although the basis of social
organisation was at the beginning the matrilineal clan, somewhere around
2000 B.C.E. Cretan society became more centralised. During later
stages there is evidence of centralised governmental administration at
several Cretan palaces.
But here centralisation did not
bring with it autocratic rule. Nor did it entail restricting
the use of advanced technology for the benefit of a powerful few
or the kind of exploitation and brutalisation of the masses that
is so striking in other civilisations of the
time. For though there was in Crete an
affluent ruling class, there is no indication (other than in later
Greek myths) that it was backed up by massive armed might.
“The development of writing led to the
establishment of the first
bureaucracy
” writes Platon,
who then comments on how governmental revenues from the island’s
increasing wealth were judiciously used to improve living conditions,
which were, even by Western standards, extraordinarily
“modern.” “All the urban centres
had perfect drainage systems, sanitary installations, and domestic
conveniences.” He adds that
“there is no doubt that extensive public
works - paid for out of the royal coffers - were undertaken in Minoan
Crete. Although only a very few remains have so far been cleared,
these have been revealing: viaducts, paved
roads, look-out posts, roadside shelters, water pipes, fountains,
reservoirs, etc. There is evidence of
large-scale irrigation works with canals to carry and distribute the
water.”
Despite recurring earthquakes, which
completely destroyed the old palaces and twice interrupted the
development of the new palace centres, Cretan palace architecture is also
unique in civilisation. These
palaces are a superb blend of life-enhancing and eye-pleasing features,
rather than the monuments to authority and power characteristic of
Egypt and other ancient warlike and male-dominant societies.
There were in Cretan palaces vast
courtyards, majestic facades, and hundreds of rooms laid out in the
organised
“labyrinths”
that became a catchword for Crete in later Greek
legend. In these labyrinthine buildings were many apartments laid
out over several stories, at different heights, arranged asymmetrically
round a central courtyard. There were special rooms for religious
worship. The courtiers had their own quarters in the palace or
occupied attractive houses nearby. There were also quarters for the
domestic staff of the palace. Long lines of store-rooms with
connecting corridors were used for the orderly safekeeping of food
reserves and treasures. And vast halls with rows of elegant columns
were used for audiences, receptions, banquets, and council
meetings.’
>> this was an extremely evolutionary
society WITHOUT the male/military/exploitive dominance that the other
so-called ‘civilisations’ claim to have CAUSED evolution.
Gardens were an essential feature of all
Minoan architecture. So were the design of buildings for privacy,
good natural light, and domestic convenience and, perhaps above all, the
attention to detail and beauty.
“Both local and imported materials were
used,” writes Platon,
“all worked with meticulous care: gypsum
and tufa pilasters and tiles, perfectly bonded composed facades, walls,
light-wells and courtyards. Partitions were decorated with plaster,
with murals in many cases, and with marble facings... Not only the
walls but often the ceilings and floors were decorated with paintings,
even in villas and country houses and simple town dwellings... The
subjects were drawn mainly from marine and land plants, religious
ceremonies, and the gay life of the court and the people. The
worship of nature pervaded everything.”
>> there were NO depictions of
arms or battles.
Knossos, which may have had a hundred
thousand inhabitants, was connected to the
south coast ports by a fine paved highway,
the first of its kind in
Europe. Its streets, like those of
other palace centres, were paved and drained, fronted with neat 2- or
3-floor houses, flat-roofed, sometimes with a penthouse for use on hot
summer nights.
>> sounds better than Rome today after
2000 years of male supremacy.
Hawkes describes the inner towns surrounding
the palaces as “well designed for
civilised living,” and Platon
characterises the “private life” of the period as having
“attained a high degree of refinement and
comfort.” As Platon sums it up:
“The houses were adapted to all practical
needs of life, and an attractive environment was created around them. The
Minoans were very close to nature, and their architecture was designed to
let them enjoy it as freely as possible.”
Cretan clothing was also typically
designed for both aesthetic effect and practicality, allowing freedom of
movement. Physical exercise and sports involved both men and women
and were enjoyed as entertainment. As for food, a wide range of
crops were cultivated, which along with
stock breeding, fishing,
beekeeping, and
wine pressing
made available a healthy and varied diet.
Entertainment and religion were often intertwined, making Cretan leisure
activities both pleasurable and meaningful.
“Music, singing, and dancing added to the
pleasures of life,” writes Platon.
“There were frequent public ceremonies,
mostly religious, accompanied by processions, banquets, and acrobatic
displays performed in theatres built for the purpose or in wooden
arenas.”
Another scholar, Reynold Higgins, sums
up this aspect of Cretan life as follows:
“Religion for the Cretans was a
happy affair, and was celebrated in
palace-shrines, or else in open-air sanctuaries on the tops of mountains
and in sacred caves... Their religion was closely bound up with
their recreation. First in importance were the bull-sports, where
which young men and women working in teams would take it in turn
to grasp the horn of a charging bull and somersault over its back.”
>> we wouldn’t even let them play
football till a few years ago.
The equal partnership between women and men
that seems to have characterised Minoan society is perhaps nowhere so
vividly illustrated as in these sacred bull-games, where young women and
men performed together and entrusted their lives to each other.
These rituals, “which combined
excitement, skill, and religious
fervour”, also appear to have been
characteristic of the Minoan spirit in another important respect; they
were designed not only for individual
pleasure or salvation but to invoke the divine power to bring
well-being to the entire society.
Once again, it is important to stress that
Crete was not an ideal society or utopia but a
real human
society, complete with problems and
imperfections. It was a society that developed thousands of years
ago, when there was still nothing like science as we know it, when the
processes of nature were still generally explained - and dealt with -
through animistic beliefs and propitiatory rites. Moreover, it was
a society functioning and continuing to evolve
amidst an increasingly warlike
world.
We know, for example, that the Cretans had weapons - some, like their
beautifully adorned daggers, of great technical excellence. Most
probably as warfare and piracy increased in the Mediterranean they also
fought sea battles, both to preserve their vast maritime commerce and to
protect their shores. But, in contrast to other high civilisations
of the time, Cretan art does not idealise warfare. Even the
Goddess’s famous double axe symbolised the bounteous fruitfulness of the
earth. Shaped like the hoe axes used to clear land for the planting
of crops, it was also a stylisation of the butterfly, one of the
Goddess’s symbols of transformation and rebirth.
Neither are there any indications that Crete’s material resources were -
as they are in our modern world, and daily more overwhelmingly so -
heavily invested in technologies of destruction. On the contrary,
the evidence is that Cretan wealth was primarily invested in living
harmoniously and aesthetically. As Platon writes:
“The whole of life was pervaded by an
ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and
harmony.
“This led to a love of peace, a
horror of tyranny, and a respect for the
law. Even among the ruling
classes personal ambition seems to have been unknown;
nowhere do we find the name of an
author attached to a work of art nor a record of the deeds of a
ruler.”
>> this reduced (or elevated) me
to tears when i read it.
In our time, when
“a love of peace, a horror of tyranny,
and a respect for the law” may be
required for our survival, the differences between the spirit of Crete
and that of its neighbours are of more
than academic interest. In the
Cretan towns without military
fortifications, in the
“unprotected”
villas on the edge of the sea, and in the lack of
any sign that the various city-states within the island fought one
another or embarked on aggressive wars (in sharp contrast to the walled
cities and chronic warfare that were elsewhere already the norm),
we find this firm confirmation
from our past that our hopes for peaceful human coexistence are not, as
we are so often told, “utopian
dreams.”
And in the mythical images of Crete - the Goddess as Mother of the
universe, and humans, animals, plants, water, and sky as her
manifestations here on earth - we find the recognition of our oneness
with nature, a theme that is rapidly also re-emerging today as
a prerequisite for ecological
survival.
A remarkable feature of Cretan culture
is that there are here no statues
or reliefs of those who sat on the thrones of Knossos or of any of the
palaces. Besides the fresco of the
Goddess - or perhaps a queenly priestess - at the centre of a
gift-bearing procession, there seem to be no royal portrayals of any kind
until the latest phase. And even then, the sole possible exception,
the painted relief sometimes identified as the young prince, shows a
long-haired youth, unarmed, naked to the waist, crowned with peacock
plumes and walking among flowers and butterflies.
Equally striking, and revealing, is the absence in Minoan art of any
grandiose scenes of battle or of hunting, a total absence of the
manifestations of the all-powerful male ruler that are so widespread at
this time and at this stage of cultural development as to be almost
universal
This too is the conclusion of the cultural anthropologist Ruby
Rohrlich-Leavift. Writing of Crete from a feminist perspective, she
points out that it is modern archaeologists who have dubbed the young man
just described as the “young
prince” or the
“priest-king”
when, in fact, no single representation of a king
or a dominant male god has yet been found. She also observes that
the absence of idealisations of male violence and destructive power in
Cretan art goes hand in hand with the fact that this was a society where
“peace endured for 1,500 years
both at home and abroad in an age of incessant warfare. “
These still largely ignored data about
pre-patriarchal civilisation provide us with some fascinating clues on
the origins of much that we value in Western civilisation.
Especially fascinating is how our modern belief that government should be
representative of the interests of the people seems to have been
foreshadowed in Minoan Crete long before
the so-called birth of democracy in classical Greek
times. Moreover, the emerging
modern conceptualisation of power
as responsibility rather than domination
likewise seems to be a re-emergence of earlier views.
For what the evidence indicates is that in Crete
power was primarily equated with
the responsibility of motherhood rather
than with the exaction of obedience to a male-dominant elite through
force or the fear of force. This is the definition of power
characteristic of the partnership
model of society, in which women and
traits associated with women are not systematically devalued. And
this is the definition of power that still prevailed in Crete as its
social and technological evolution became more complex, profoundly
affecting its cultural evolution.
The assertion that the city-state, or what some modern scholars call
“statism,”
structurally requires warfare, hierarchism, and
the subjugation of women is thus
not borne
out. In the city-states of Crete
legendary for their wealth, superb arts and crafts, and flourishing
trade, it is notable that new technologies, and with them a larger and
more complex scale of social organisation including increasing
specialisation, did not bring about any
deterioration in the status of women.
On the contrary, in Minoan Crete role
redistributions accompanying technological change appear to have
strengthened rather than weakened the status of
women. Because here there was no fundamental, social and
ideological change, the new roles required by technological advances did
not bring about the kind of historical discontinuity we see
elsewhere. In the societies of southern Mesopotamia we find rigid
social stratification and constant warfare by about 3500 B.C.E., along
with the declining status of women. In Minoan Crete, although
urbanisation and social stratification existed, warfare was absent and
the status of women did not decline.
In Minoan Crete the entire relationship between the sexes - not only
definitions and valuations of gender roles but also attitudes toward
sensuality and sex - was obviously very different from ours. For
example, the bare-breasted style of dress for women and the skimpy
clothes emphasizing the genitals for men demonstrate a frank appreciation
of sexual differences and the
pleasure made possible by these
differences. From what we now know
through modern humanistic psychology, this
“pleasure
bond” would have strengthened a sense of
mutuality between women and men as individuals.
The Cretans’ more natural attitudes toward sex would also have had other
consequences equally difficult to perceive under the prevailing paradigm,
wherein religious dogma often views sex as more sinful than
violence. As Hawkes writes, “The
Cretans seem to have reduced and diverted their aggressiveness through a
free and well-balanced sexual
life.” Along with their enthusiasm
for sports and dancing and their creativity and love of life, these
liberated attitudes toward sex seem to have contributed to the generally
peaceful and harmonious spirit predominant in Cretan life.
In going through most of the literature on Crete, one is chronically
reminded of Charles Darwin’s curious footnote to The Descent of
Man. When writing a section on racial differences for this
scientific classic, Darwin recalled that when he was in Egypt he had
thought that the features of a statue of the pharaoh Amunoph UI were
remarkably negroid. But having said this, even in a mere footnote,
he immediately qualified what he had seen with his own eyes - and which
has since been firmly established - that there were in Egypt
black
pharaohs. Though by his own account
his observations were further verified by two people who were with him at
the time, he felt compelled to cite two well-known authorities on the
subject, J. C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, who in their book Types of
Mankind had described the features of pharaohs as
“superbly
European” and maintained that the statue
in question was definitely not of “Negro
intermixture.”
We have already remarked similar
incidents of this kind relating to the evidence for women pharaohs, for
example, Meryet-Nit and Nit-Hotep. But while in Egyptology one
finds this kind of authoritative blindness here and there, in most of the
scholarly literature about Crete it is all-pervasive, at every turn
deflecting, rendering invisible or at best trivialising the exceptionally
clear message of Cretan art. Long after Darwin, when more statues
and much more clear visual evidence of the historical existence of black
rulers was discovered, the experts (overwhelmingly white males, of
course) still asserted there definitely could be no
“Negro
intermixture.” In the same way,
the striking evidence of the essential difference that sets Crete apart
from other societies is still regularly either denied or glossed over by
most scholars.
The central role played by women in Cretan society is so striking that
from the very first discovery of Minoan culture scholars have been unable
to ignore it completely. Like Darwin, however, they have felt
compelled to fit what they saw with their own eyes into the prevailing
ideology. For example, when Sir Arthur Evans began excavating on
the island in the early 1900s he recognised that the Cretans worshiped a
female deity. He also saw that Cretan art portrayed what he called
“scenes of feminine
confidence.” But in commenting on
these scenes, Evans felt compelled to immediately equate them with
nothing more than what he termed the feminine
“tittle-tattle”
of “society
scandals.”
So again and again we see how under the
prevailing paradigm our real past - and the original thrust of our
cultural evolution - can only be seen as through a glass darkly.
But once we are face to face with the full import of what this past
foreshadowed - what we, at our level of technological and social
development, could have been and still can be - we confront a haunting
question. What brought about
the radical change in cultural direction, the shift that plunged us from
a social order upheld by the
Chalice
to one dominated by the
Blade
? When and how did this happen?
And what does this cataclysmic change tell us about our past - and our
future?
UP!
I became an atheist when i reached my teens in the late
1950s. Though I’ve known for the last 3 decades that there’s an
Intelligent Creator behind this world I think I made the right decision
at that time, based on the facts available. Why?
Because nothing in the news at that time pointed towards anything
remotely resembling a white bearded Creator who watched over his
creations. Nothing - except maybe a Dad, of course, but I wasn’t
looking there.
So I consider I made a sensible decision at that time, and so did
everyone else, if they did.
BUT the situation today is entirely different, and I do not
believe, if I was a teenager now, I would become an atheist. More
likely I would have grown up steeped in atheism. Indeed I would
have studied in a school which was more or less prohibited from teaching
any world model other than the purely materialistic. For, during my
lifetime, atheism has established itself as more or less the smart
established religion of the day which people rarely bother to
question indeed it’s become the conformist position.
If I looked at the news, however, and the latest discoveries coming in
every day (largely through the internet), the sensible conclusion would
be that we live in a world created by a Higher Intelligence.
[SEE ARTICLE BELOW]
For consider: are not humans daily taking control of the
creation business themselves, from genetically modified foods and
animals, test tube births, cloning, virtual reality and so on? But
is it not particularly clear that humanity is on the edge of creating
worlds and peopling them with inhabitants which can be observed (and
experimented with)? Already computer programs exist within which
‘entities’ have been evolving for generations. You may argue about
time but the idea of Science creating worlds wherein actual people will
live and evolve, without awareness of our Creator Observation, seems
inevitable.
(Where would the space be to allow people like us to experience a
whole universe around them? It will probably be through a program
in their brains which projects a virtual model of reality. And who
would deny that the universe we experience ‘out there’ is not
exactly the same thing?! Certainly the cosmological edge of Science
is reaching these situations.)
Today, therefore, if I looked at the world and the information coming
in, I think the most obvious assumption would be that, if our species can
create and observe Life, then WE ARE PROBABLY IN
THE SAME POSITION! I mean, this would be the sensible
conclusion. And anyone with a different view would have the task of
persuading a reasonable person otherwise.
Since today’s scientists rarely attempt this, of course, I have come to
perceive them as equivalent to the army of well appointed, comfortable
priests who felt under no obligation (moral, and certainly not legal!) to
question or justify their fundamental philosophical positions. Or
even as rebels who hide their personal conclusions for fear of anathema
and excommunication from their ‘church’ with loss of funding,
social prestige, and all the rest of it.
But here’s the STORY. Today’s
cosmologists have been observing the world we live in for centuries now,
with increasingly powerful lenses. And, despite the fact that the
‘scientific’ method is so restricted as to be incapable of PROVING
anything about the Cosmos that’s deeper than the speed of a falling
apple, you will EVENTUALLY begin to
bang up against its hard edges, its
fundamental foundations.
For the world is NOT relative that’s just the outdated einsteinism
that’s finally captured the public imagination, much to its
detriment. No, for scientists are now hitting up against the sides
of the bowl of the extremely carefully modelled world in which we are
confined. AND, far from seeing this and reconsidering their view in
the light of these amazing discoveries, THEY ARE STRUGGLING IN EVER MORE
DESPERATE WAYS TO KEEP AN INTELLIGENT CREATOR OUT OF THE
PICTURE.
Whether you’re an atheist or not, of course, this must be regarded as
GOOD NEWS! To freely discover (not being TOLD by corrupted Old Tyme
religions which had to go!) that we live in an Intelligent Universe is
much saner & healthier for our society than the current mass
‘education’ in an Accidental World without Purpose. Look at the
alienation which surrounds us today, the blatant materialism, the greed,
the cult of celebrity, the scorn for the most disenfranchised fellow
souls among us.
Yes, if the new information [BELOW] is
pointing to a world that is possibly NOT Accidental, then it is surely
healthier (for everyone) to assume that it is
Intelligent.
‘60s mystics welcome the
arrival of the latest scientific theory of evolution and of a new breed
of scientists who are bumping up against the hard foundations of the
World, and are now facing the Question we mystics have been exploring
these past 50 years. The
Biocosm
theory, their latest attempt, comes
closest, though it’s designed to keep Goddess out of the picture.
“The more I examine the universe and
study the detail
of its architecture, the more evidence I find
that it in some sense knew we were coming.”
>> i have long suspected that the
Supreme Intelligence sketched in our universe,
but, as we its inhabitants search deeper into the foundations,
She is forced to fill in greater and greater detail.
Molecules not the smallest bits? Well, here’s atoms.
They’ve seen past atoms, chuck in some quarks. Still coming?
Then give ‘em dark matter, that should slow ‘em down for a
while.
IMPORTANT
ADVICE: WHEN READING THIS ARTICLE,
DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED BY YOUR LIFELONG
CULTURAL CONDITIONING THAT THIS KINDA STUFF IS BEYOND YOU.
THE OPPOSITE IS THE CASE. YOU ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO
UNDERSTAND HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS THAN SOME SCIENTIST IN A WHITE APRON
LOOKING INTO A COMPUTER SCREEEN. HONEST.
DON’T LET THEIR LANGUAGE INTIMIDATE YOU :)
>> and hippies exploring Reality in
the ‘60s KNEW it was the Greatest of them all, and turned their research
towards Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies which had been exploring
the area for thousands of years.
The question is more profound, more
fundamental, less tractable than the mystery of life’s origin, or the
inscrutable manner in which consciousness emerges from the interaction
and interconnection of neurons in the human skull, or even the future
course of biological and cultural evolution on planet Earth.
The Question is this:
By what Accident or Design does the
Universe turn out to be so life-friendly?
Life-friendly?!
I hear you ask incredulously. The
universe is life-friendly? Like hell it is!
Due to our official diet of Un-intelligence & Meaninglessness, we
have been taught since childhood that the universe is a hostile
place. Violent black holes, planets and moons searing with
unbearable heat or deep-frozen at temperatures that make Antarctica look
tropical, and the vastness of interstellar space dooming us to perpetual
physical isolation from our nearest starry neighbours - this is the
depressing picture of the cosmos that dominates the popular
imagination.
But it’s
profoundly
wrong at a
fundamental level. As astonished
scientists are now beginning to realise, the truly amazing thing about
our universe is how strangely and improbably
anthropic
(life-friendly) it is. Indeed a
multitude of factors are actually fine-tuned with
fantastic exactitude to a degree that
renders the cosmos almost
spookily
bio-friendly.
As Cambridge evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris puts it in his
new book Life’s Solution, “On a
cosmic scale, it is now widely appreciated that even trivial differences
in the starting conditions of the Cosmos would lead to an
unrecognisable and uninhabitable universe.”
1.
The Rate Of Cosmic
Expansion.
I
f the Big Bang had detonated with slightly
greater force,
the cosmos would be essentially empty by now. Had the primordial
explosion propelled the initial payload of cosmic raw materials outward
with slightly
less
force, the universe would long ago have re-collapsed in a Big
Crunch
. In neither case would human beings or other life forms have had
time to evolve.
As Stephen Hawking asks,
“Why is the universe so close to the
dividing line between collapsing again and expanding indefinitely?
In order to be as close as we are now, the rate of expansion early on had
to be chosen fantastically accurately.”
2.
Stellar
nucleosynthesis,
the process by which simple elements like
hydrogen and helium are transmuted into heavier elements in the hearts of
giant supernovae - to yield copious quantities of
carbon, the
chemical epicentre of life as we know it.
As British astronomer Fred Hoyle pointed out, in order for carbon to
exist in the abundant quantities that we observe throughout the cosmos,
the mechanism of stellar
nucleosynthesis must be exquisitely
fine-tuned in a very special way.
3. Physical dimensionality of
our universe. Why are there just 3 extended dimensions of space
rather one or two or even the ten spatial dimensions contemplated by
M-theory? As has been known for more than a century, in any other
dimensional set-up, stable planetary
orbits would be impossible and life would not have time to get started
before planets skittered off into deep space or plunged into their
suns.
For centuries, it seemed that the
dimensionality of the universe - 3 dimensions of space plus one dimension
of time - was a matter of axiomatic truth. Rather like the
propositions of geometry. In fact, precisely like the
propositions of geometry. That was before the birth of
superstring
theory, and its successor,
M-theory which
insist on the fact that there are, in fact, ten dimensions of
space and one dimension of time. The mystery is why only three of
the spatial dimensions got inflated into cosmic proportions by the Big
Bang while the remaining seven stayed inconceivably minuscule. If
anything else had happened - if only 2 spatial dimensions had been
inflated or if 4 had been inflated - then the universe would not have
been set up to allow the emergence of life and mind as we know
them.
>> u could just call it Intelligent, of course, but scientists are now busily scurrying around to explain why a Higher Intelligence who planned the whole thing for a purpose is not the ‘simplest and most obvious explanation’ requiring the least assumptions.
“There are deep connections between stars and atoms, between the cosmos and the microworld.... Our emergence and survival depend on very special ‘tuning’ of the cosmos.” British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees.
For all the above coincidences (and more!) are built into the fundamental fabric of our reality. WE COULD NOT BE HERE IF THEY WERE NOT IN PLACE!
“It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe.” Princeton physicist John Wheeler.
Scientists have been uneasily aware of this set of puzzles for decades and have given it name - the anthropic cosmological principle - but there’s a new urgency to the quest for a plausible explanation because of two very recent discoveries. One of these is at nature’s largest scale and the second at its tiniest.
Dark Energy. The discovery of dark energy, which resulted from the observations of supernovae at extreme distances, showed, contrary to all expectations, that the expansion of the universe was speeding up, not slowing down. No one knows what is causing this phenomenon.
But for our purposes, what is particularly puzzling is why the strength of dark energy - which the new Wilkinson microwave probe has revealed to be the predominant constituent of our cosmos - is so vanishingly small, yet not quite zero. If it were even a tad stronger, you see, the universe would have been emptied long ago, scrubbed clean of stars and galaxies well before life and intelligence could evolve.
The second discovery occurred in the realm of M-theory , whose previous incarnation was known as superstring theory. M-theory posits that subatomic particles like quarks, electrons and neutrinos are really just different modes of vibration of tiny one-dimensional strings of energy. But what is truly strange about M-theory is that it allows a vast landscape of possible vibration modes of superstrings, only a tiny fraction of which correspond to anything like the sub-atomic particle world we observe and that is described by what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics.
Just how big is this landscape of possible alternative models of particle physics allowed by M-theory? According to Stanford physicist and superstring pioneer Leonard Susskind, the mathematical landscape is horrifyingly gigantic, permitting 10500 power different and distinct environments, none of which appears to be mathematically favoured, let alone foreordained by the theory. And in virtually none of those other mathematically permissible environments would matter and energy have possessed the qualities that are necessary for stars, galaxies and carbon-based living creatures to have emerged from the primordial chaos.
This is, as Susskind says, an intellectual cataclysm of the first magnitude because it seems to deprive our most promising new theory of fundamental physics - M-theory - of the power to uniquely predict the emergence of anything remotely resembling our universe. As Susskind puts it, the picture of the universe that is emerging from the deep mathematical recesses of M-theory is not an “elegant universe” at all! It’s a Rube Goldberg device, cobbled together by some unknown process in a supremely improbable manner that just happens to render the whole ensemble miraculously fit for life.
In the words of University of California theoretical physicist Steve Giddings, “No longer can we follow the dream of discovering the unique equations that predict everything we see, and writing them on a single page.” Or a tee-shirt! “Predicting the constants of nature becomes a messy environmental problem, with the complications of biology.”
This really is, as Brian Greene says, the deepest problem in all of science. It really is, as Paul Davies says, the biggest of the Big Questions:
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The first approach is to continue searching patiently for a unique final theory - something you really could write on your tee-shirt like E = mc2 - which might yet, against the odds, emerge from M-theory or one of its competitors aspiring to the status of a so-called “Theory of Everything.” This is the fond hope of virtually every professional theoretical physicist, including those who have been driven to desperation by the horrendously messy and complex landscape of M-theory -allowed universes which distresses Susskind and other superstring theorists. Perhaps the laws and constants of nature will, in the end, turn out to be uniquely specified by mathematics and thus subject to no conceivable variation. Perhaps the ultimate equations will someday slide out of the mind of a new colossus of physics as slickly and beautifully as E = mc2 emerged from Einstein’s brain. Perhaps, but that appears to be an increasingly unlikely prospect.
A second approach, born of desperation, is to overlay a refinement of Big Bang inflation theory called eternal chaotic inflation with an explanatory approach that has been traditionally reviled by most scientists which is known as the weak anthropic principle. The weak anthropic principle merely states in tautological fashion that since human observers inhabit this particular universe, it must perforce be life-friendly or it would not contain any observers resembling ourselves. Eternal chaotic inflation, invented by Russian-born physicist Andrei Linde, asserts that instead of just one Big Bang there are, always have been, and always will be, zillions of Big Bangs going off in inaccessible regions all the time. These Big Bangs create zillions of new universes constantly and the whole ensemble constitutes a multiverse.
>> this was perfectly obvious to most psychedelicists in the 60s when everyone else swore allegiance to one Big Bang.
Now here’s what happens when these two ideas - eternal chaotic inflation and the weak anthropic principle - are joined together. In each Big Bang, the laws, constants and the physical dimensionality of nature come out differently. In some, dark energy is stronger. In some, dark energy is weaker. In some, gravity is stronger. In some, gravity is weaker. This happens, according to M-theory-based cosmology, because the 10-dimensional physical shapes in which superstrings vibrate evolve randomly and chaotically at the moment of each new Big Bang. The laws and constants of nature are constantly reshuffled by this process, like a cosmic deck of cards.
And here’s the crucial part. Once in a blue moon, this random process of eternal chaotic inflation will yield a winning hand, as judged from the perspective of whether a particular new universe is life-friendly . That outcome will be pure chance - one lucky roll of the dice in an unimaginably vast cosmic crap shoot with 10500 unfavourable outcomes for every winning turn.
Our universe was a big winner, of course, in the cosmic lottery. Our cosmos was dealt a royal flush. Here is how the eminent Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg explained this scenario in a New York Review of Books essay a couple of years ago: “The expanding cloud of billions of galaxies that we call the big bang may be just one fragment of a much larger universe in which big bangs go off all the time, each one with different values for the fundamental constants. It is no more a mystery that our particular branch of the multiverse exhibits life-friendly characteristics than that life evolved on the hospitable Earth rather than some horrid place, like Mercury or Pluto.”
To most scientists, offering the tautological explanation that since human observers inhabit this particular universe, it must necessarily be life-friendly or else it would not contain any observers resembling ourselves is anathema. It just sounds like giving up.
The Biocosm
The metaphor furnished by the familiar process of artificial selection was Darwin’s crucial stepping stone. Indeed, the practice of artificial selection through plant and animal breeding was the primary intellectual model that guided Darwin in his quest to solve the mystery of the origin of species and to demonstrate in principle the plausibility of his theory that variation and natural selection were the prime movers responsible for the phenomenon of speciation.
So, too, today a few venturesome cosmologists have begun to use the same poetic tool utilised by Darwin - the art of metaphorical thinking - to develop novel intellectual models that might offer a logical explanation for what appears to be an unfathomable mystery: the apparent fine-tuning of the cosmos.
The cosmological metaphor chosen by these iconoclastic theorists is Life itself. What if Life were not a cosmic accident but the essential reality at the very heart of the elegant machinery of the universe? What if Darwin’s principle of natural selection were merely a tiny fractal embodiment of a universal life-giving principle that drives the evolution of stars, galaxies, and the cosmos itself?
This, as you may have guessed, is the headline summarising the third approach to answering the biggest of the Big Questions: why is the universe life-friendly? It is the approach outlined at length in my new book BIOCOSM .
Before I get into this third approach in more detail, I want to say something upfront about scientific speculation. The approach I am about to outline for you is intentionally and forthrightly speculative. Following the example of Darwin, I have attempted to crudely frame a radically new explanatory paradigm well before all of the required building materials and construction tools are at hand.
>> what we ‘nonscientist’ scientists are doing all the time in fact.
Darwin had not the slightest clue, for instance, that DNA is the molecular device used by all life-forms on Earth to accomplish the feat of what he called “inheritance.” Indeed, as cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller noted in Finding Darwin’s God, “Charles Darwin worked in almost total ignorance of the fields we now call genetics, cell biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry.” Nonetheless, Darwin managed to put forward a plausible theoretical framework that succeeded magnificently despite the fact that it was utterly dependent on hypothesised but completely unknown mechanisms of genetic transmission.
As Darwin’s example shows, plausible and deliberate speculation plays an essential role in the advancement of science.
>> it is the leading edge and always will be. Art, interestingly enough, always presages technological change.
Another important lesson drawn from Darwin’s experience is important to note at the outset. Answering the question of why the most eminent geologists and naturalists had, until shortly before publication of The Origin of Species, disbelieved in the mutability of species, Darwin responded that this false conclusion was “almost inevitable as long as the history of the world was thought to be of short duration.” It was geologist Charles Lyell’s speculations on the immense age of Earth that provided the essential conceptual framework for Darwin’s new theory. Lyell’s vastly expanded stretch of geological time provided an ample temporal arena in which the forces of natural selection could sculpt and reshape the species of Earth and achieve nearly limitless variation.
The central point is that collateral advances in sciences seemingly far removed from cosmology can help dissipate the intellectual limitations imposed by common sense and naïve human intuition. And, in an uncanny reprise of the Lyell/Darwin intellectual synergy, it is a realisation of the vastness of time and history that gives rise to the crucial insight. Only, in this instance, the vastness of which I speak is the vastness of future time and future history.
In particular, sharp attention must be paid to the key conclusion of Princeton physicist John Wheeler: most of the time available for life and intelligence to achieve their ultimate capabilities lie in the distant cosmic future, not in the cosmic past.
As cosmologist Frank Tipler bluntly stated, “Almost all of space and time lies in the future. By focusing attention only on the past and present, science has ignored almost all of reality. Since the domain of scientific study is the whole of reality, it is about time science decided to study the future evolution of the universe.”
>> see megatripolis@forever of course.
That is exactly what I have attempted to do in BIOCOSM in order to explore, in a tentative way, a possible third pathway to an answer to the biggest of the Big Questions. I call that third pathway the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis.
Originally presented in peer-reviewed scientific papers published in Complexity, Acta Astronautica, and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, my Selfish Biocosm hypothesis suggests that in attempting to explain the linkage between life, intelligence and the anthropic qualities of the cosmos, most mainstream scientists have, in essence, been peering through the wrong end of the telescope. The hypothesis asserts that life and intelligence are, in fact, the primary cosmological phenomena and that everything else - the constants of nature, the dimensionality of the universe, the origin of carbon and other elements in the hearts of giant supernovas, the pathway traced by biological evolution - is secondary and derivative. In the words of Martin Rees, my approach is based on the proposition that “what we call the fundamental constants - the numbers that matter to physicists - may be secondary consequences of the final theory, rather than direct manifestations of its deepest and most fundamental level.”
This was a thrilling conjecture because for the first time it posited a cosmic evolutionary process endowed with what economists call a utility function (i.e., a value that was maximised by the hypothesised evolutionary process, which in the case of Smolin’s conjecture was black hole maximisation).
>> don’t scientists make u laff? if God created us he must have had a USE for us :) or did u think She just did it for a laff?!
However, Smolin’s approach was seriously flawed. As the computer genius John von Neumann demonstrated in a famous 1948 Caltech lecture entitled “On the General and Logical Theory of Automata,” any self-reproducing object (mouse, bacterium, human or baby universe) must, as a matter of inexorable logic, possess four essential elements:
1. A blueprint , providing the plan for construction of offspring;
2. A factory , to carry out the construction;
3. A controller , to ensure that the factory follows the plan; and
4. A duplicating machine, to transmit a copy of the blueprint to the offspring.
In the case of Smolin’s hypothesis, one could logically equate the collection of physical laws and constants that prevail in our universe with the blueprint and the universe at large with a kind of enormous von Neumann factory . But what could possibly serve as a von Neumann controller or a von Neumann duplicating machine?
My goal was to rescue Smolin’s basic innovation - a cosmic evolutionary model that incorporated a discernible utility function - by proposing scientifically plausible candidates for the two missing von Neumann elements.
The hypothesis I developed was based on a set of conjectures put forward by Martin Rees, John Wheeler, Freeman Dyson, John Barrow, Frank Tipler, and Ray Kurzweil. Their futuristic visions suggested collectively that the ongoing process of biological and technological evolution was sufficiently robust, powerful, and open-ended that, in the very distant future, a cosmologically extended biosphere could conceivably exert a global influence on the physical state of the entire cosmos. Think of this idea as the Gaia principle extended universe-wide.
A synthesis of these insights lead me directly to the central claim of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis: that the ongoing process of biological and technological emergence, governed by still largely unknown laws of complexity, could function as a von Neumann controller and that a cosmologically extended biosphere could serve as a von Neumann duplicating machine in a conjectured process of cosmological replication.
I went on to speculate that the means by which the hypothesised cosmological replication process could occur was through the fabrication of baby universes by highly evolved intelligent life forms. These hypothesised baby universes would themselves be endowed with a cosmic code - an ensemble of physical laws and constants - that would be life-friendly so as to enable life and ever more competent intelligence to emerge and eventually to repeat the cosmic reproduction cycle. Under this scenario, the physical laws and constants serve a cosmic function precisely analogous to that of DNA in earthly creatures: they furnish a recipe for the birth and evolution of intelligent life and a blueprint, which provides the plan for construction of offspring.
Now, at this point you are probably saying to yourself, “Wow, with a theory that crazy and radical, this Gardner fellow must have been shunned by the scientific establishment.” And indeed some mainstream scientists have commented that the ideas advanced in my book BIOCOSM are impermissibly speculative or impossible to verify. A few have hurled what scientists view as the ultimate epithet - that my theory constitutes metaphysics instead of genuine science.
>> and all the rest of it isn’t?!
As I continue to explore this hypothesis in the future, what will be of utmost interest to me and my sympathisers is whether it can generate what scientists call falsifiable implications. Falsifiabiliy or testability of claims, remember, is the hallmark of genuine science, distinguishing it from metaphysics and faith-based belief systems.
>> but for that u gotta explore INSIDE, that’s what u guys keep missing.
I believe that the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis does qualify as a genuine scientific conjecture on this ground. A key implication of the hypothesis is that the process of progression of the cosmos through critical thresholds in its life cycle, while perhaps not strictly inevitable, is relatively robust. One such critical threshold is the emergence of human-level and higher intelligence, which is essential to the scaling up of biological and technological processes to the stage at which those processes could conceivably exert an influence on the global state of the cosmos.
The conventional wisdom among evolutionary theorists, typified by the thinking of the late Stephen Jay Gould, is that the abstract probability of the emergence of anything like human intelligence through the natural process of biological evolution was vanishingly small. According to this viewpoint, the emergence of human-level intelligence was a staggeringly improbable contingent event. A few distinguished contrarians take an opposing position, arguing on the basis of the pervasive phenomenon of convergent evolution and other evidence that the appearance of human-level intelligence was highly probable, if not virtually inevitable. The latter position is consistent with the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis while the Gould position is not.
I suggest that the issue of the robustness of the emergence of human-level and higher intelligence is potentially subject to experimental resolution by means of at least three realistic tests: SETI research, artificial life evolution, and the emergence of transhuman computer intelligence. The discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, the discovery of an ability on the part of artificial life forms that exist and evolve in software environments to acquire autonomy and intelligence, and the emergence of a capacity on the part of advanced self-programming computers to attain and then exceed human levels of intelligence are all falsifiable implications of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis because they are consistent with the notion that the emergence of ever more competent intelligence is a robust natural phenomenon. These tests don’t, of course, conclusively answer the question of whether the hypothesis correctly describes ultimate reality. But such a level of certainty is not demanded of any scientific hypothesis in order to qualify it as genuine science.
Let me conclude by asking whether the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis promotes or demotes the cosmic role of humanity. Have I introduced a new anthropocentrism into the science of cosmology? If so, then you should be suspicious on this basis alone of my new approach because, as Sigmund Freud pointed out long ago, new scientific paradigms must meet two distinct criteria to be taken seriously: they must reformulate our vision of physical reality in a novel and plausible way and, equally important, they must advance the Copernican project of demoting human beings from the centrepiece of the universe to the results of natural processes.
At first blush, the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis may appear to be hopelessly anthropocentric. Freeman Dyson once famously proclaimed that the seemingly miraculous coincidences exhibited by the physical laws and constants of inanimate nature - factors that render the universe so strangely life-friendly - indicated to him that “the more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense knew we were coming.”
This strong anthropic perspective may seem uplifting and inspiring at first blush but a careful assessment of the new vision of a bio-friendly universe revealed by the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis yields a far more sobering conclusion.
To regard the pageant of life’s origin and evolution on Earth as a minor subroutine in an inconceivably vast ontogenetic process through which the universe prepares itself for replication is scarcely to place humankind at the epicentre of creation. Far from offering an anthropocentric view of the cosmos, the new perspective relegates humanity and its probable progeny species (biological or mechanical) to the functional equivalents of mitochondria - formerly free-living bacteria whose special talents were harnessed in the distant past when they were ingested and then pressed into service as organelles inside eukaryotic cells.
The essence of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis is that the universe we inhabit is in the process of becoming pervaded with increasingly intelligent life - but not necessarily human or even human-successor life. Under the theory, the emergence of life and increasingly competent intelligence are not meaningless accidents in a hostile, largely lifeless cosmos but at the very heart of the vast machinery of creation, cosmological evolution, and cosmic replication. However, the theory does not require or even suggest that the life and intelligence that emerge be human or human-successor in nature.
The hypothesis simply asserts that the peculiarly life-friendly laws and constants that prevail in our universe serve a function precisely equivalent to that of DNA in living creatures on Earth, providing a recipe for development and a blueprint for the construction of offspring.
Finally, the hypothesis implies that the capacity for the universe to generate life and to evolve ever more capable intelligence is encoded as a hidden subtext to the basic laws and constants of nature, stitched like the finest embroidery into the very fabric of our universe. A corollary - and a key falsifiable implication of the Selfish Biocosm theory - is that we are likely not alone in the universe but are probably part of a vast, yet undiscovered transterrestrial community of lives and intelligences spread across
billions of galaxies and countless parsecs. Under the theory, we share a possible common fate with that hypothesised community - to help shape the future of the universe and transform it from a collection of lifeless atoms into a vast, transcendent mind.
The inescapable implication of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis is that the immense saga of biological evolution on Earth is one tiny chapter in an ageless tale of the struggle of the creative force of life against the disintegrative acid of entropy, of emergent order against encroaching chaos, and ultimately of the heroic power of mind against the brute intransigence of lifeless matter.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23656
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Yet again, the science you constantly deride suddenly becomes ok as soon as it 'appears' to support some airy-fairy non-science stuff you dig up from the outer reaches of the internet.
>> naturally. when science begins to nibble around the VAST AREAS where it never managed to reach before (and hence dismissed as nonexistent) i shall give praise. i reckon in, oh, another 200 years its understanding of the world will reach ruffly where u and i are now.
Where is the proof of any of this? Which sites did it comes from? Who are these people? Have you done the most basic of research and found out if any of them even exist, let alone work in the institutes quoted? I could spend a week debunking if I could be arsed, but it is surely your responsibility to do the minimum of checking as any journalist
>> am NOT a journihilist! and it’s your life not mine.
worthy of the term would do before publishing a 'story'. This below is just one small bit I want to answer.
>> the address is clearly given in the usual place. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
and anyway it's not the first time i've heard about this.
u sound shaken peter? if not entirely stirred :(
Deja Vu has been identified as a phenomenon caused by the fact that the two sides of our brain work differently, one being slightly slower, and therefore one side receives the input and then the other side and the consciousness 'perceives' it as already having happened/this is familiar. It's well established
>> yer naive trust in 'science' is touching :)
that's about 20 years old. and nobody has 'established' it since. for example, where else did u ever hear about the 2 hemispheres going at different speeds? wouldn't it be cropping up in other important contexts if this was really true?
and only those ignorant of science think there's still a mystery to it. No intellectual rigour Fraser, you must doubt before you can arrive at any conclusions that stand up to scrutiny.
>> i did, for decades. and then i reached some clear conclusions and put aside my childish toys.
I just don't believe these little black boxes all going wild just before events [ignoring the fact that they can't tell what the event will be or how long, thus are totally useless for any practical purposes
>> again u mistake technology for science. Science is about knowing the world not about going faster and destroying the planet cos they missed a few connections. surely this must have begun to dawn these past few years on even u :)
even if they do exist and do react as you've outlined, something I'm extremely doubtful of. There are plenty of maverick scientists who go off on fantasies and court publicity with hairbrained ideas.
>> the article clearly explains the opposite, that they're afraid to publish because closed minded persons like yourself will jump all over them. check the website.
And especially if there's a whacking big grant and a nice salary for playing about with stuff for a few years even if the results at the end of it are 'inconclusive'. ;-)
>> NOW you're describing accurately the vast majority of so-called 'scientists' who have more interest in money than truth, i mean Truth, NOT a better can opener.
There you go again, putting your faith in science and scientists, whereas I, the sceptic, examine everything everyone claims with an open mind, including scientists.
>> that's Real Science, pete! but it's NOT what u do am afraid. u long ago closed your mind to the 99% of Reality that Science can't reach (and hence assumes doesn't exist)
Yuletide greetings, wassailing anyone?
>> don't be dirty. and anyway am still hobbling along on my slipped disk and unable to go anywhere these past 2 months now. worrying.
Pete, SW England.
up!
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