The Fringe

Scientists – real scientists – rightfully eschew the fringe phenomena that afflicts some of humanity: UFOs, alien abduction, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, parapsychology, ghosts, et cetera.

It’s not that the phenomena isn’t worthy of a look-see by bona fide professionals (as physicist Michio Kaku suggests); it’s that the phenomena has been corrupted by the madness, the insanity as it were, of those who’ve adopted some phenomenon or other to flesh out their morbidly dull lives.

Any scrutiny of a fringe topic, say UFOs, for example, will show that the strangeness of the thing(s) is offset by the even stranger reaction to it by a diverse group of sociopaths, expert-wannabes, narcissists, and just plain crazy people.

(Hoaxers are also a ubiquitous bane.)

Admittedly there are some serious, somewhat credentialed persons seeking answers to the phenomenon that interests them, but they dilute that seriousness by popping up in various milieux where the crazies reside.

These serious quasi-investigators can’t help but appear in and at venues where every wacko has admittance and is granted a kind of respected credibility, no matter how ridiculous their position may be.

Why would a serious scientist invest time and besmirch his or her career by associating with those who have little (if any) training or expertise about the subject matter at hand?

Jacques Vallee, a scientist with expertise in computer matters mostly, has withdrawn from the UFO debate, to study, privately, the phenomenon within what he calls The Invisible College.



But even that hasn’t tarnished his reputation as a serious scientist. The phenomenon Vallee studies subliminally is rife with baggage that doesn’t allow it to be taken seriously by anyone, other than him.

The sasquatch (bigfoot) appearances are also avoided by primate specialists. The sightings (and alleged evidence: footprints, hair, and feces) are without substance.

Even the (in)famous Patterson film has become too controversial, with accusations of fraud or hoaxing, for any primatologist to weigh in on.




And Loch Ness, which already has a plethora of admitted hoax sightings and photos, can’t be researched by marine biologists, unless they desire a short-circuited career.



But a raft of true mental defectives can best be found in the vast, and it is vast, UFO community.

A perusal of UFO books, web-sites, blogs, and other flying saucer venues (such as the Roswell “museum” in Roswell, New Mexico) will convince anyone with a smidgen of psychological acumen that the phenomenon has been encrusted by a patina of psychopathology.

Scientists with any academic respectability are wise to avoid getting down and dirty with the UFO crowd. By sinking to the mire of “ufology” – the made-up term to imbue UFOs with a false credibility – a scientist would ruin (not could ruin but would ruin) their professional lives inexorably and definitively, as was the case with Dr. James McDonald and Harvard professor John Mack (both deceased) who were castigated unmercifully by their peers.

This doesn’t mean that UFOs, Bigfoot, and Nessie are without curious elements.

It just means that they, as phenomena worthy of study, have been tainted by the maniacs who’ve glommed on to them for various reasons, which are suspect, nefarious, or psychotically induced.

So science is wise to stay away. Why would anyone with personal integrity get involved with the fringe? It just doesn’t make sense….

The [Real?] Meaning of Life

No, the question isn’t a profound one, by a long shot.

It’s a simple existential query that each person should address, but most do not.

For instance, is life meant to be enjoyed haphazardly, in the sense that one should merely indulge their senses hedonistically, as golfers, outdoor grillers, party-goers, cruise-ship mavens, and other pleasure seekers do?



Or is life meant to be contemplative, in the Socratic sense, where moderation in all things physical is seconded by intense rumination on the purpose of being?



Lecomte du Nouy, in his book Human Destiny, posits an evolutionary tendency for mankind, which has the purpose of reaching an Omega point.



We’re not sure what happens when and if the Omega point is reached, but the idea is enticing in an amorphous Thomistic way.

Aquinas thought we – mankind – were supposed to join the Godhead, as John of the New Testament gospel indicated also.

Joining, or rejoining some say, the Godhead is what life is all about many theologians tell us. But we don’t find comfort, philosophically, in the vagueness of the outcome. What happens after we join (or rejoin) the Godhead?

Do we just partake of the Buddhistic or Hindu concept Nirvana? That doesn’t strike us as satisfactory in some ways, but it intrigues if one sees passive bliss as a better “existence” than the one we now struggle with.



Is life meant to be enjoyed, emotionally, sexually, physically, sensuously, in the here and now, every moment, of every day? Most persons live life exactly that way.

But what is the purpose of that, since such activity always is deterred or halted by the aging process that men and women are cursed with?

And what happens to the transcendental elements of the sensual life, such as hearing a Beethoven symphony or viewing a Michelangelo sculpture or tasting a very fine Chablis, when one passes on?



Do the memories of those delights linger, and are they able to be recalled in an afterlife?

Or do the pleasures cease when the body ceases to exist in this worldly milieu?

Do we cease altogether, even though Einstein told us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed – it just is?



Scientists cogitate on the origins of the Universe, life, various species of flora and fauna, and lots of other things that are certainly transitory in that they will stop existing, for those who die or in and of themselves.

The aim of evolution is to perfect the organism that is struggling to be the fittest.



But to what ultimate end? After an organism (man?) reaches perfection, what happens? What’s the point?

But let’s look at the final destination of evolutionary constructs: death.

Is it possible that the pinnacle of humanity – evidenced by Plato, Aristotle, K’ung Fu-tse (Confucius), Chaucer, Dante, Copernicus, Maimonides, Leonardo, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Newton, Chopin, Darwin, Einstein, et alia – is thwarted by death?



That is, how does evolution, especially the kind that du Nouy and Teilhard advances, account for the stoppage of mental or spiritual progression when, in fact, the fittest of the mental giants die, and their thought processes with them?

Freud presented the idea that there is a death wish (Thanatos) inherent to the psyche of man.



Does mankind really want to revert to an inert state, Sartre’s “nothingness”?

Certainly not. Men (and women) want to live forever, usually. Or, at least, as long as Methuselah.



Personal evolution benefits civilization’s evolution. And if there were a purpose to being, that would be the sine qua non.

However, death obstructs evolution altogether, so the purpose of life, its meaning, is not evolution, not physical evolution anyway.

And a spiritual evolution, per du Nouy, is iffy, since it has to complete in a hereafter, and that milieu is not quite a reality, not even in the Platonic sense.

So what is the meaning of life? No one knows. Not even us.

Yet, it (the meaning of life) is grist for discussion, so we’ll continue to do so, here and elsewhere….

The Neo-Alchemists

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung made alchemy an essential part of his psycho-philosophical ruminations, even though alchemical experimentation, through the ages, produced nothing of consequence. However, the evolutionary thrust it provided chemistry must be given its due.



What has happened is that scientists, especially physicists, since the early 1900s, have assumed the mantle, the guise, of alchemy, with their formulae and arcane theories and experimentations.

Of course, physicists’ mentor, Sir Isaac Newton, was an alchemist, and his alchemical studies were mirrored in his mathematical and scientific treatises.



So a precedent, although unspoken and not acknowledged, establishes an imprimatur for today’s scientists, particularly physicists.

The physicist’s Holy Grail, The Theory of Everything, may be likened to the alchemists’ Philosopher Stone.



(The Elixir of Life, the ejaculatory spew, of alchemy is not relevant to this discussion.)

Quantum theorists are alchemists par excellence.

Titus Burckhardt, in his book Alchemy [Element Books, Longmead, 1986, Page 59] refers to René Guénon’s tome, The Reign of Quantity [Luzac, London, 1953] wherein the author states that there is no spatial extension which does not have a qualitative – as well as a quantitative – aspect.

Alchemy deals with eidos and hyle (forma and material) says Burckhardt [Page 61] which is exactly what quantum physicists contend with: light as wave and/or particle, and quanta itself.



Cosmologists struggle with visible matter and dark (invisible) matter.

The Hermetic androgyne (king and queen forming one physical body – see Plato’s Symposium also) is not unlike the constructs of the macro-Universe or the quantum-Universe, the world above and the world below.



Science has not moved very far from the alchemical studies of ancient Egypt or Babylon.

And the alchemy of the 1700s infused Einstein, producing E=mc² where the alchemical idea of transmutation (lead into gold) actually ended up turning uranium into fissionable material, the atom bomb.



And isn’t M-Theory (the extrapolated string theory) really a search for the material prima?



One can praise the physicists of today but they are little different from the alchemists of yesterday, and we’ll explore the connection further, upcoming….

Einstein's Error

It’s not Einstein’s cosmological constant blunder or fruitless pursuit of a theory of everything that is Einstein’s error.

It’s his relativity “proof” that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; the idea that mass becomes infinite when one approaches the speed of light and thus makes travel over 186,000 miles per second (299,792,458 meters per second) impossible.

Of course Einstein allowed for perturbations in his theory but the light constant became an idée fixe that is in error.

Quantum particles can travel faster than light, as can “information,” but what about matter that is overt?

Depending upon one’s location in the Universe, one will find light traveling at varying speeds, and very likely faster than 186,000 miles per second.

Moreover, Einstein’s concept of warped space – the curvature imposed upon it by gravitational force – allows the possibility that a space traveler can go from Point A to Point B, following the curve of space faster than a space traveler going from Point A to Point B along a linear path, with time being equal in both instances (since time is not altered by the curvature or straight-line travel (in a vacuum).



Here are some papers (in PDF format) outlining various theses or speculations about faster than light parameters:

http://rrrgroup.homestead.com/faster1.pdf

http://rrrgroup.homestead.com/faster2.pdf

http://rrrgroup.homestead.com/faster3.pdf

As you can see, Einstein’s concept has to be re-configured, just as Newton’s theories needed to be reconfigured by Einstein’s ruminations.

This is the way it is in physics (and science generally): the “facts” of an era will be changed, inexorably, by new discoveries that show up every time new tools (not new thoughts!) become available – such as the Hubble telescope or the WMAP and Planck satellites.

Einstein’s formulae helped create the atom bomb, but limited conjecture about space travel to the farthest galaxies; Einstein’s proscription about the light limit squelched any practical considerations about exploring the Universe, and even tamped down travel within our Solar System.

While we admire – even adulate – Einstein, he was, like the greats before him, in error, about the limit on faster than the speed of light travel.

(Also see Joao Magueijo’s book, Faster Than the Speed of Light, Arrow Publishing, 2004.)

The Macro-Quantum/Moby Dick Factor

While quantum mechanics and the theories that pertain insist that, at the micro-level of reality, observations (measurements) of events alter those events, and the outcomes are uncertain (Wigner, Wheeler, and Heisenberg), the same holds true for the macro-world.

That is, if one observes (measures by experiment) something, anything in the overt world, everyday life or the Universe even, that something is altered by the observation (the measurement, the experiment).

Therefore, when cosmologists attack, by theory and/or observation, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, black holes, novae, and anything else in the Universe, the thing observed or theorized about is altered, in some way, by the theorizing or observation.



Thus, we contend, that if the Universe is, in its totality, the Ineffable God – the ultimate Singularity (despite the many disparate elements) – is observed/measured, it, the Universe or God, will be affected by that distinct conscious effort directed towards it.

This is why we’ve always maintained that Herman Melville’s monumental masterpiece Moby Dick is the greatest work of literature as it discloses the exact nature (essence) of God, the Universe in our reckoning.



Moby Dick is oblivious to mankind, cloistered, usually, in the depths of the immense voids of the seas.

However, when Moby Dick is sought out, as he is in the [theological] tome, by Ahab and his whalers, that seeking (observation, measurement) causes Moby Dick’s nature to come full force into the “upper world” where the Evil essence of the Great White Whale is made manifest. (See our previous post about Dark Matter/Energy and its Id-like construct.)

Melville isn’t alone in discerning the Evil nature of God (the Universe), but he is the only writer who makes the Evil palpable, and with a poetic metaphor that clarifies for some what we as human beings are dealing with existentially.

But what does this have to do with cosmology, or the pursuit of quantum and macro-realities?

Our continuing point is that scientists (physicists, cosmologists, astronomers, et al.) alter reality when they measure (observe) it, or even think about it, by using mathematics or other conscious hypotheses.

Measuring and mapping the background microwave radiation of the Universe, using the WMAP and Planck satellites, alters that radiation, so that its absolute essence is disturbed, at least to the mappers.



Just as space-time is relative, reality is relative, and quantum experimentation verifies that relativity.

So how can one know what the true essence of the Universe (or God) is?

At this point, no one can. The Universe is “ineffable” – incomprehensible for all practical purposes, as we keep noting.

Then what is the point, of scientific inquiry particularly? It satiates curiosity, but doesn’t produce much more.

Yet, in the absence of other serious mental gymnastics, scientific methodology isn’t so bad, but its lack of integration with non-scientific disciplines, such as mythology, theology, and aspects of mysticism makes it a poor step-sister to the pursuit of truth, the real reality, hinted at by Plato, and engaged in by such dignitaries as Meister Eckhart, Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, and even William James, among others.



As promised, that’s where we’ll be going next….

The Ineffability [GOD]

Let’s assume that the Ineffability (God) is the Universe (pantheism) or is the integral force, maybe the controlling force, within the Universe (panentheism).

This shouldn’t aggrieve physicists, especially those of an atheistic bent, nor should it irritate those who believe in God generally. It might, however, disturb those who have faith in a personal God, and His offspring, Jesus/Christ.

But all that aside, we conjecture that the Ineffability is real, tangible, the Totality of existence, and evidenced as the Universe.

Whether or not the Ineffability is conscious, in the way we understand consciousness, that is another matter (which we shall address again upcoming).

But what is the exact nature of the Ineffability, the essence, which transcends existence?

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are intrinsic elements in the nature of the
Ineffability.



And it’s those elements we’ll deal with here for now, delineating the other aspects, the less dynamic aspects of the Ineffability later on.

Probing Dark Energy using Bayesian “evidence” (as some physicists suggest) or applying a new cosmological constant doesn’t tell anyone what the true nature of Dark Energy is.



The analogy might be a palm-reader providing “insights” to one’s fate and psyche when a psychoanalyst is really required.

Bouncing theories and mathematical equations off the reality of Dark Matter and/or Dark Energy does nothing but establish a veneer that is superficial in the extreme.



Yes, the façade of both Dark Matter and Dark Energy are addressed by cosmological meanderings but the actual nature of each mysterious structure – and they are structures, even though they appear amorphous to observation – is not discerned by mathematical wizardry.

Let’s use psychoanalytic constructs to make our point…



The Universe – the Ineffability – is made up of 4% visible matter and energy, Michio Kaku tells us, 23% Dark Matter, and 73% Dark Energy.



In psychoanalytic parlance the visible matter/energy would be the superego (4%), Dark Matter the ego (23%), and the Id (73%), which coincides with our “hypothesis” that God, the Ineffability, is pirmarily primitive, or Evil – using Evil in the theological sense as the absence of Good.

This would explain the crushing plights that afflict mankind: childhood disease and death, terminal illnesses for the mature, old age, and ultimately death, among others.

(Wars, genocide, murders and the like are not natural occurrences so one can’t blame God or nature for them.)

Now if Dark Energy is likened to the Id, one can approach its nature much as a psychoanalyst would conduct a session with a neurotic individual.

(Psychoanalysis can’t address psychosis, practitioners say, so if God – the Ineffability – is psychotic as Dawkins intuits, the metaphorical psychoanalytic quest would be futile; but let us proceed as if psychosis is not the underlying nature of the Universe, or God.)



The Id is uncontrollable said Freud, and Jung concurred pretty much. But both thought that it could be ameliorated, by various techniques, all of which wouldn’t work with the Universe obviously but do provide a template for understanding the inherent nature of the Universe.

Dark Energy, the Universe’s Id, can barely be avoided, but it can be, to some extent, by ignoring it, as Melville suggests in Moby Dick when the White Whale (Evil God) is innocuous until hunted down by Ahab.



Can the nature of the Universe’s Id be understood completely? We think so, if one applies the analogy we provide here: the Id is primitive, Evil, but for all practical purposes benign as far as humankind is concerned.

If Kaku’s (among others) hypothetical proposition that perhaps cultures trillion of years old, from other Universes – he posits many Universes existing in parallel with this one – mastered the way to intrude on our Universe (to escape the ultimate death of their Universe), then their must be an Ineffability (God) that is their Universe, or is an integral part of it, the controlling part.

(Mormon theolgy claims that each Latter Day Saint, if virtuous – or not – will become a God for some part of the Universe; not just symbolically but in total, tangible reality.)



So we’re dealing with the Ineffability (God) of this Universe to which we are tethered. And our Ineffability (God) has a major component that is Dark (or Evil), as the Gnostics believed, and as historical evidence seem to indicate also.



God is impotent perhaps in that He or It cannot thwart physical disasters that have plagued mankind since the beginning of creation.

Or God is malevolent and purposefully wrathful.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy either represent a malevolent force or a benign but perhaps ultimately dangerous force.

Searching for clues to the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy lies not in science but mythology, religious revelations, and historical occurrences which are not attributable to man (such as natural disasters).



However, science has made obvious the Dark Nature of the Universe (our Ineffability or God).

Thus, it now becomes necessary to address that Dark Nature, if possible, in such a way as to alter it or to find ways to avoid it, and its potentially disastrous denouement.

To do that we’ll have to go into the mystical realm. (Science and its incantations, mathematical gyrations, are mystical in their own way, just not useful for humankind, except in the abstract, which isn’t beneficial to physical life, on Earth, now.)



And that’s where we’ll go next….to the mystical realms, with help from some physicists who do not find mysticism anathema to science. Michio Kaku is one….

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Dark (Evil) Side of God

If Universe is God (pantheism), and if God contains, as Jung suggests, an evil or malevolent nature, then Dark Matter, Dark Energy, even Black Holes, are attributes of that malevolent aspect of God.

Michio Kaku approaches this in his book Parallel Worlds [Doubleday, NY, 2005] but Kaku doesn’t succumb to theological conjecture, merely outlining what some theologians and God-devotees believe.

However, the “fact” that physicists haven’t a clue as to what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are, as Kaku admits, indicates that the God-Enigma isn’t any stranger than the Dark Matter/Dark Energy enigmas, and each enigma is grist for evaluation, with the Dark enigmas getting attention from cosmologists and scientists only because they have tools and mechanisms (such as mathematics) to address the Dark enigmas but no tools or mechanisms to address the God-Enigma.

No reasonable person would tackle a seemingly insurmountable problem, such as that which posits an unfathomable supreme being who is hidden from view and ratiocination.

Whereas the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy seems open to scrutiny, even though how that scrutiny is to be employed remains a mystery also.

Here are several papers [PDFs] about Dark Matter and Dark Energy, showing the perplexity (for physicists) of the mysterious entities – Click to read:

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Critical Questions

Dark Energy: Mystery of the Millennium

Insights into Dark Energy: Interplay Between Theory and Observation

Towards a Natural Theory of Dark Energy…

Dark Energy and the Preposterous Universe

The Fate of (phantom) Dark Energy Universe with String Curvature Corrections

A Phantom Menace?

Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday

How do we connect Dark Matter and Dark Energy with the “hidden” and Evil side of the Godhead?

We’ll go into that, next……

The Wisdom of Arthur Koestler

The esteemed polymath Arthur Koestler wrote this [in the late 60s]….

The citadel of science…rests on a number of impressive pillars, but some of them are beginning to show cracks and turn out to be hollow, or reveal themselves as monumental superstitions. The most important among them I have called “the four pillars of unwisdom.” They represent the doctrines:

(a) that biological evolution is the result of nothing but random mutations preserved by natural selection;

(b) that mental evolution is the result of nothing but random tries preserved by reinforcements;

(c) that all organisms, including man, are nothing but passive automata, controlled by the environment, whose sole purpose in life is the reduction of tensions by adaptive responses;

(d) that the only scientific method worth that name is quantitative measurement; and, consequently, that complex phenomenon must be reduced to simple elements accessible to such treatment, without undue worry whether the specific characteristics of a complex phenomenon, for instance man, may be lost in the process.

The common element in these four fallacies is the philosophy of Reductionism…which holds that all human activities can be reduced to (explained by) the elementary responses” displayed by lower animals (such as the psychologist’s laboratory rat) and that these responses in turn can be reduced to elementary physico-chemical laws.*

* Pages 200-201 in The Encyclopedia of Delusions (Nothing but….?), Edited by Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith [A Wallaby Book, Simon and Schuster, NY, 1979]

What does this tell us about anything?

Heini Halberstam, in the Chapter “Some Unsolved Problems of Higher Arithmetic” [Pages 191-203 in The Encyclopedia of Ignorance, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1977], writes this:

“Turning to numbers that are the sums of two squares, these are only a littlem ore common than the primes…, and very little indeed is known about their finer distribution. For example, it is almost trivial to see that there is always such a number between n and n + n¼, yet literally nothing better is known…” [Page 201]

And this [ibid]:

“We know that, in a certain precise sense, most numbers are transcendental, yet the problem of deciding whether a given number is transcendental is profoundly difficult.” [Page 201]

Roger Penrose, in the same book, Chapter “Is Nature Complex?” [Page 160] writes:

“Though Nature [sic] is undoubtedly subtle, she is surely not malicious. This, at least, we have on the authority of Einstein…

That Nature can be usefully described, at least to a considerable degree according to the laws of number, has been in evidence for many centuries. But what is not so familiar to those without a mathematical background is that are several different kinds of number, many of which are nevertheless subject to the same arithmetical laws.”

Arithmetic (mathematics), in all its permutations, represents a reality that is as abstract and intangible as the theology of Jesuits. But it has “proofs” which theology does not.

Pi is infinite, and can be (almost) proven to be so. God is infinite, but there is no proof, so far, that can establish that “fact of faith.”



Mathematicians, and their lackeys (which we mean descriptively not pejoratively), including physicists, resort to the “provable” abstractions of arithmetic to resolve issues of physical reality that belie the meta-reality, even though it appears – and we use the word “appears” advisedly – that physicists, cosmologists, and their ilk, are dealing with the meta-reality. (They are not.)

Psychiatry would call the mathematician’s province that place where they (mathematicians) go to escape from the world. It’s not just an escape from the practical reality of life – the vicissitudes of daily living; it’s an escape into a contrived reality that pretends to cope with profound issues affecting mankind.

But what are mankind’s ills that physical laws address? Hunger? Poverty? War? Disease? What?

When theologians tackle the idea of God and/or morality, they are net with opprobrium by scientists, generally.

But when science addresses issues that are not biological, geologic or in ways that are not beneficial to the plight of humankind, such as quantum physics, string theory, and all the other subsets of physics, no one (or rarely anyone) reproaches them, and they win Nobel and other prizes.

We don’t deny that the study of the transcendental ether is important -- some saying that it may even lead to the discovery of God.

But it seems strange that so many scientists, who don’t believe in God or a hereafter, would spend so much time and effort on the curiosities of the Universe which, for them, has bearing on their eventual physical mouldering….unless….unless they, deep down, want to prove that there is a God, or a life after this one, or something more than what we perceive as the human, sensory reality. (But that for another time.)

When one studies the laws of harmony and musical theory itself, the end result may end up being a Beethoven symphony or a Beatle tune.



When one studies art – color, perspective, form, et cetera – one may produce a painting, as that by Monet, Titian, or Hockney.



And if one studies literary manuals, one might even create a work of fiction (or non-fiction) like that of Shakespeare, Gogol ,or Updike.



Those endeavors please the senses, and bring pleasure to an existence which is sometimes fraught with horrors of subtle or unimaginable kinds.

But what about mathematics, sometimes elegant in their construction? What sensory pleasures to they provide?

Yes, they stimulate the mind, so we give them that. And such stimulation can be quite as wonderful as that which one gets by looking at a Van Gogh painting, hearing a Verdi opera, or reading a Eco novel.



But is mathematical stimulation as glorious as sensory stimulation? For some it is, but for the rest of us, it isn’t.

Thus, we see the pursuit of mathematics and physics, not so much as a useful mental endeavor but, rather, as an escape into and from the delectabilities of things mundane, but oh so very delicious mundanities.

And so we’ll address here, some of those delights that assuage the humdrummery of everyday life, and even the stilt of mathematics that afflicts us, and almost everyone else we know….so that we might pursue the ultimate question: Not what does reality consist of but why are we here?