Pretending to be a Scientist who has created a Science
The Importance of Miracles in Science
2 types of Miracles: Altering Natural Law & Natural Order
The ‘Science’ of Information Digestion
My life’s work encompasses a multiplicity of theories on a wide range of data. For convenience and ease of reference, we have chosen to call the whole shebang – my Science.
Have been creating my ‘Science’ for a half-century – pretty much my entire adult life – off and on in a series of creative obsessions about 8 years apart – until the last decade, when production has been relatively continuous.
Each Possession1 resulted in a book-like manuscript2. Each volume in this comprehensive opus, while qualitatively different, surrounds a single very complex topic – the application of a mathematical system (DSD) to a unique data-base (Attention-related phenomena). This most recent volume attempts to introduce new ideas as well as consolidate old material. For instance, we are currently incorporating insights from my very first work DSM 1994 into my latest 2021 ID Model.
Why do I refer to my endeavor as a ‘Science’?
We realize that this usage is inappropriate and even offensive to some. Why? It takes the scientific community to validate a new discipline as a ‘science’.
Yet I’m pretending anyway. My entire endeavor comes for my imagination – image making. So I am going to pretend that I am scientist/mathematician and that this is my Science. It’s always fun to play make-believe. It's all make-believe anyway.
Although I am ‘pretend’ scientist with a ‘pretend’ science, I do have reasons for my Imaginary Realm. Rather than ‘science’, why not employ the term ‘studies’ instead?
Some University departments are named ‘studies’, while others are named ‘science’. For instance, there are global studies, environmental studies and religious studies. In contrast, there are the physical sciences, i.e. physics and chemistry, and even environmental science.
What is the difference between these disciplines, for instance environmental science and environmental studies? The departments that are deemed ‘studies’ are based in verbal pattern recognition, while in the departments that are deemed ‘science’, a mathematical system is tied to the pattern recognition. The logical rigor of mathematics lends permanence and credence to the conclusions.
In my lifetime investigation, my database is tied to a mathematical system – DSD. This is why I have called my life’s work a ‘science’ rather than a ‘study’.
Academia has broken their disciplines into ‘studies’ and ‘science’. This is a somewhat artificial designation. Intellectual rigor is demanded to at least some degree in any academic discipline, whether study or science. Logic is employed to understand empirical evidence. The process might entail determining relationships between a system’s components. Hypotheses are formed and tested both experientially and logically. After examining and critiquing the logical arguments, the evidence, and the hypotheses, the academic community forms a consensus.
This methodology, this form of investigation (logic applied to evidence to form theories) was developed by the scholastic tradition in the European Middle Ages. However, it had an interesting twist that moderns find repulsive and I find attractive. Why repulsive and why attractive?
Medieval scholars divided causes into primary and secondary causes. They believed that all phenomena were the result of one of these two causes. The primary cause was God, while the secondary causes were natural. Natural philosophers of the time (precursors to what we now call scientists) believed in the possibility of miracles. From time to time, God might violate the natural order. However, they considered this a cop-out reason, only to be used as a last resort.
They frequently began with Genesis, the first book of the Bible, as the starting point for their discussion of what they called natural philosophy (proto-science). This pursuit was the methodical and logical study of the natural world. They treated the Bible as a metaphor for understanding, not literal truth.
This metaphorical understanding began with St. Augustine, an incredibly important early figure in the history of the Church (5th century CE). With neo-Platonic leanings, he wrote that Christians should employ reason to study the Bible. However, this Scriptural understanding should not violate current understanding of the natural world, else the Christian would look like a fool. He wasn’t advocating altering religious beliefs. However, he didn’t want the Faithful to blindly accept Biblical statements regarding the natural world.
For instance, Augustine rejected Genesis’ six-day creation story. Because the sun was not created until the third day, this version didn’t make logical sense to him. He believed instead that Creation occurred in an instant, ironically something akin to Science’s Big Bang. Many theologians followed Augustine’s lead in the centuries and even millennium to come, through to the Middle Ages.
The methodology – the process for scientists of modern 21st century and natural philosophers the Middle Ages is functionally equivalent. They both employ logic to analyze empirical data, form hypotheses, and draw conclusions. Despite the similarity of the method, moderns reject the primary cause (God). While the Middle Age philosophers accept the possibility of divine miracles, they only rely upon this type of explanation as a last resort.
Rather than just rejecting the primary cause, moderns are actually repulsed by anyone accepts this possibility. Anyone who admitted that they believed in the possibility of miracles might even be rejected for an academic position. If an academic even suggested the possibility that there is a primary cause for anything, they might be shunned by their colleagues – excluded from speaking at conferences.
The investigation process of the two time periods regarding the natural world is equivalent. Yet Moderns are repulsed by notion of miracles, while Ancients accept the possibility.
What’s the significance of these differing attitudes? Are we just a quibbling over nothing? An interesting footnote, but nothing else? I wish.
Rather, denying the possibility of miracles creates a serious blind spot. The desperate attempt to force all phenomena into the all-so-logical Material Paradigm distorts the investigative process. Why?
Scientism’s belief that there is a material explanation for all phenomena, excludes the primary cause from consideration. The primary cause can simply be understood as the Mystery – the notion that there are certain things that are forever beyond human understanding. Excluding the Mystery excludes the possibility that Life has a component that sets it apart from Matter. This rigid position denies the possibility that living systems have an interactive relationship with Information – an Information Digestion system – something that exclusively material systems don’t have.
This same type of attitude led many early natural philosophers (scientists) to challenge Newton’s theory of gravity. Influential thinkers, including Leibnitz, challenged the idea of matter attracting matter over a distance, as too occult - not logical - harking back to the primary cause of the Middle Ages. There must be a more reasonable explanation. If Newton had been bound by the ‘modern’ conventional thinking of the time, gravity would never have been discovered because action at a distance is too miraculous.
Why is our Information Digestion System impossibly miraculous?
It contradicts the basic material syllogism. Namely:
1) Life consists solely of Matter.
2) Matter behaves deterministically.
3) Therefore, living behavior is also deterministic.
According to this sound deductive chain, the automatic behavior of molecules and subatomics determines living behavior. Choice is not a factor in this equation. Rather living systems behave as if they have an interactive relationship with information. Life consists solely of Matter and yet makes choices. This is a miracle.
Why? It is logically impossible for Life to both behave mechanistically and interact with information. These are mutually exclusive propositions. How is it possible for living systems to consist solely of mechanistic matter and to make choices between alternatives? It is impossible. No need to fight it. Only a miracle can resolve this logical conundrum.
Actually miracles such as these are sprinkled throughout math and its extension – the material sciences. For instance, the scientific community has employed imaginary numbers and infinitesimals to integrate, excuse the pun, features of the material reality into modern technology. Mathe-magic is the name we have given to this almost magical connection between impossible mathematical concepts and material behavior.
Because of the utility of these miraculous concepts to exploiting the potentials of our material world, scientists and engineers have accepted these impossibilities without question (except perhaps in the beginning). Despite the paradoxical nature of these mathematical constructs, they confidently and rightly believe that impossible imaginaries and infinitesimals provide crucial descriptive power in the real world of mater.
Simultaneously, they resist the same impossible jump from deterministic Matter to Life’s intimate interactive relationship with the information contained in data streams. However this leap of Faith, as it were, to the consideration of an info digestion system opens the door to an Aladdin’s cave of living treasures. The ID model along with its engine, the Attention synergy, provides a cogent rationale for time, learning, meaning, memory, value et al. Material explanations don’t allow for any of these factors that are crucial to the ongoing survival of living systems.
The Materialist Paradigm, which is held by so many of the educated here early in the 21st century, has some serious liabilities. For one, this ‘everything is matter’ theory has not been able to address a huge database associated with living systems. Previous articles in the Realm of Attention book have articulated the inherent reason for this fatal flaw.
This is not the only problem with this belief system. As seen, this mindset also blocks investigation into other valid explanatory modes, those based in logic and evidence (mine in particular).
In contrast, the European Middle Age developed another way of looking at the natural world that is functionally identical to the modern scientific approach and yet escapes this flaw of rigidity. This Middle Age mindset does not challenge or change our current investigative process one iota. As it is not chained to a rigid materialist perspective, this attitude opens the mind to other possibilities.
I address this topic because this ancient position is also my paradigm. Although it would be convenient if everything fit into the neat little, mechanistic material box, it doesn’t. Too many phenomena remain forever outside.
Why? The Mystery. No one knows. Rather than demand an explanation – find a ‘period’, we must just leave the ‘question mark’. Accept the mystery – the possibility of a primary cause – but to only use it as a last resort – as in: How did Life and existence come into being?
The astute reader might have noticed that we conveniently lumped two types of miracles into one. The first type of miracle alters the natural order, e.g. creating something from nothing, while the second type of miracle is the natural order, e.g. Life herself.
Medieval scholars believed that God3, as the primary cause, could perform miracles by interrupting the natural order. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead; Jehovah-god stops the sun in the sky. The Creation of the universe from nothing and the subsequent Creation of Life from Matter would also be considered in this category. This Divine Force might even help out from to time with Providential acts, perhaps random occurrences.
However, we have been asking you to accept another kind of miracle – the impossibility of our paradoxical existence. Although consisting solely of inert, inanimate Matter, Cellular Life somehow miraculously has the ability to intentionally interact with Info to make choices that facilitates the survival of an integrated unit – an organism consisting of a revolving door of hundreds of billions of molecules (makes New York’s La Guardia airport look like a kindergarten playground in comparison). The express purpose of these inanimate microscopic particles is the persistent cohesion of an imagined reality, an abstract entity that is purely a product of the Imagination – Attention’s image overlay process. This imagined (overlay upon overlay of countless events) unitary Being is the strange attractor that motivates and organizes the inanimate behavior of countless nameless molecules. Their devotion to the One Cell or the Cell Collection is overwhelming.
That’s why I believe in miracles. From Nothing to Something to Life – which is a regulated organization of inanimate particles that join together an indescribably complex dance to create a unified Being that makes intentional choices in order to persist. Whoa! The complexity of the connectivity is beyond imagining. Rather than wasting time attempting to justify a material explanation for everything, let us study what is rather than what should be. Rather than dragged down by logical consistency, let us embrace the Mystery.
Besides – a logically consistent Universe? How boring! No surprises – no miracles – rather oppressively predictable. No thanks. I’d rather exist in a magical world - full of unexpected twists and turns – with an occasional miracle thrown in here and there – perhaps some divine assistance, guidance, insight, whatever.
Is this belief system based in reason? No. Rather, it is regularly confirmed by everyday experience. The ‘magical Cosmos’ model fit the facts of my life experience far better than the tedious ‘matter is everything’ model.
How inspiring – motivational - to believe that my Person is on a mystical quest to fulfill some unknown Destiny - decreed by the gods. How discouraging to believe that we live in an impersonal Universe that merely consists of the random collisions of objects of all sizes.
Scientists have embraced the impossible yet predictable behavior of subatomics that move forward and backward in time – that move in and out of existence – that can be in two places at the same time. And yet they reject our intentional relationship with information as illogical and then write condescending books that label my meaning infused existance as unbelievably naïve and even superstitious.
Time to look in a mirror to examine personal experience. Then clean out the scientific closet of materialist dogma. Only then will the educated be ready for a fresh perspective.
Why ‘science’ rather than ‘study’? My imagined discipline is based upon correspondences between a comprehensive mathematical system and an empirical database.
What is the primary focus of this make-believe ‘science’? The interaction between living systems and information. Rather than continuous, the info is contained in discrete bundles that are experienced as data streams.
Science: Info Digestion
Math: Data Stream Dynamics
Database: Attention related phenomena, both behavioral and biological
Model: Refined and developed over decades; still a work in progress
Prime tenet: Living systems digest Data Streams via an Attention synergy. The Synergy includes Feelings, Attention, Intention and Mind, as decision maker. Attention employs an image overlay process to engage with data streams. The Living Algorithm is the mathematical realization of this process.
Data Streams consist of an ordered series of discrete events, a.k.a. images. Rather than space, time or matter, Data Streams are bound by content. The time between events can fluctuate radically and the event is not an object that exists in a particular spot in the space-time continuum. Rather, an event is an intricate organization of inanimate matter that is experienced by Attention.
Events (the data) are translucent images that are stacked on top of each other. The most recent event/image is overlaid holographic style upon past events to form an ongoing composite image. The composite image reveals the DS identity.
The composite image is akin to Mind’s model of reality. Mind employs the composite images, not the raw data, to inform choices between alternatives.
Image = Event
Composite Image = Model
My ‘science’ has three primary arenas of focus. Attention joins these three arenas under one umbrella.
1) EcoTime: Habit formation and regulation
2) Creative Pulse: Experience generation with an emphasis upon the creative session: what it is and how to maximize inspiration/cognitive abilities
3) Info Digestion System: How living systems digest data streams; how evolution materialized these processes in two biological systems.
A) One biological system (Posner’s Attention Model) evolved to take advantage of our computational system. By regulating D, the Decay Factor, living systems are able to adjust focus to both save mental energy and gain more info. Evolution provided another tool to our kit.
B) The other system (Dement’s Opponent Process Model) evolved to maximize our cognitive skills by forcing us to sleep. Sleep tares our cognitive system of residual info that is invested with mental energy (infotons). Downtime provides our ID system with time to digest the leftovers from awake time when we are Conscious.
Embracing the possibility of miracles opens our mind to novel approaches and even solutions to old problems. Conversely, denying this possibility closes our mind to the necessity of logically inconsistent answers to the Mysteries of our paradoxical Polyverse. Let us ground this abstraction in the Creation story associated with our ID model.
The first Miracle was the creation of something from nothing – from the chaotic potential of the Subatomics to the actualized reality of Matter. The second miracle was the creation of animate Cells from inanimate Molecules – from mechanistic Matter to intentional Life.
Many miraculous events took place in the creation of the Cell – boggles the mind. At the instant of Creation, everything had to come into place simultaneously. Why? Every part and process of a Cell is absolutely necessary for survival. Nature abhors the extraneous as a waste of energy.
Materially, organelles, cell membrane, nucleus with DNA and connective tissue all had to connect up in a grand gestalt. It is no small feat to persuade independent molecules to devote themselves to the survival of the organism – to which they have no allegiance.
All these material components are part of myriad complex systems, i.e. digestion and respiratory. One particular feature distinguishes Life from Matter, her ability to interact with Information. Matter only reacts. For this interaction, living systems have an information digestion system.
Nature designed this ID system to organize the conglomeration of diverse molecules so that they cooperate selflessly to sustain the integrity of the unit – the survival of the organism, especially the first Cell.
Further the first Cell must have been born with the ability to divide (mitosis) to create a new cell. Without this talent, there is no replication, hence no continuation of the gene pool. All of these very complex systems with all their components had to be there at the instant of Creation – no lag time. These systems are essential for the survival and propagation of this first cell, which is the common ancestor to each of the billions of cells that we are composed of.
But I’m getting sidetracked, as usual.
Traditional scientific accounts leave out the ID system. However, it is equally essential for survival. The Attention synergy is the engine of the ID system. Attention digests the info contained in data streams via an Image Overlay process. The LA is the mathematical realization of this process. .
Before Matter was Potentiality (the Subatomic Realm). The Potentiality had everything contained in it, but in infinitesimal form – no dimensions, hence no reality. However when the Potentiality actualized into Molecules and such, some of these infinitesimal potentials became something – another miracle.
The Potential condensed to become Real. Similarly, Matter organized to become Life. Like the Subatomics, inanimate Matter has everything that Life has but in infinitesimal form - no dimension – no reality – for instance, Life’s ID system.
Matter like Life employs an Image Overlay Process to interact with Info. However, the IOP has yet to actualize. It has not yet been turned on. Matter does not know how to use this tool that is an essential component of Life’s intentional behavior.
How does one turn on Attention’s IOP? By adjusting the Decay Factor. One of the LA’s features is D, the Decay Factor. The Decay Factor determines the amount of translucency between images – like on the interactive weather map, we can set the opacity at 100% and nothing shows through – at 0 % and everything shows through, or in between.
Matter’s Decay Factor is fixed at 1, which means 100% opacity. The Past Images are completely blocked from getting through. Only the Current Image shines through. This is why Matter has no past or future – No time.
But then Nature, whoever, made a slight adjustment. Somehow s(he)/they (Here’s the miracle) allowed the Decay Factor to become greater than one (>1). Rather than the complete opacity of Matter, the previous images shine through. This translucency into past images enables Life to experience time – a little of what went before. The present image decays in clarity into a decaying past – hence the name of D, the Decay Factor.
This simple adjustment of the Decay Factor in Attention’s IOP to increase from 1 to greater than 1 allowed Life to experience time and all that goes with it. For instance, this increase created Time’s vertical dimension. Time’s second dimension, which is exclusive to living systems, is the foundation of experience, context, meaning. In fact, all the wonders of our transitory existence, e.g. art, music, sports, literature, religion, science and politics, all derive from this simple adjustment and would be impossible without it.
So part of the 2nd miracle was shifting the dial on the Decay Factor to anything greater than 1. Eventually, evolution took advantage to this same Decay Factor. For instance according to the widely accepted Posner’s Attention Model, we have the ability to focus close or focus far. What is the source of this talent? Our ability to intentionally adjust our Decay Factor. The intentional shifting of D, the Decay Factor, violates the logic of the Material paradigm in every way possible. Hence we must believe in miracles to accept this explanation, which applies to so many phenomena. Ah well. Open your mind and allow the Truth to seep in.
1 I can’t claim ownership as my Person is just a conduit for a higher source. This is why I resist employing the first person pronoun when possible.
2 As mentioned or maybe not, Ma Musa throws me the ball and then it is my job to pass it on. She provides the Inspiration; I communicate her Message. Sometimes she helps, sometimes not. To be honest, it’s like trying to communicate to a native speaker when you only have a rudimentary command of their language. Accordingly, the product, while possessing integrity and merit (a unique insight into the underlying nature of reality) is sketchy at best – very little editing or reorganization. Probably beyond my capacity. Sorry about that.
3 This particular mindset does not necessarily imply the Biblical God (certainly not in my case). This line of reasoning does imply an active god – a force that regularly intervenes in human affairs to perhaps guide us into a particular course of action or warn us against another course. Not a clockmaker God or a Prime Mover.