Vitalism - 2

2000-09-12

I regret bringing up some of the subjects in part 1. And I don't intend to defend my positions there. This doesn't mean I am backing off, however the priorities are such that it seems unwise to begin debating such a group of loosely connected subjects and in addition making assaults against nuclear theory etc. However I will try to clarify some of the suggestions made, since otherwise I fear it would sound as if I was predicting a return to medieval prescientific ideas. Like phlogiston and animal magnetism etc. This was not my intension. The discussion of the fact(?) that it hasn't yet been possible to synthesize living (selfreproducing) organisms starting from the bare atomic constituents, wasn't to be understood as any wish or prediction that this was going to remain unproved. It was just a reminder. Further, whether or not, it should turn out to be possible, this wouldn't necessarily mean that life began in that way. It doesn't prove it ever had a beginning.
I will now try to explain some of the ideas regarding synchronisation of everything living.
Basically it wasn't just the living. It was about certain groupings of phenomena based on a hypothetical multidimensional time, for which it was assumed that phenomena such as phase locking could play a role. Phase locking exists without any need for more than a single time dimension. However if you generalise it, what would be expected? Time is different from space otherwise no need for a separate term. Further, periodic processes would seem a possibility in connection with time. Now if you can phaselock periodic phenomena where time is a single variable, then what would happen if we generalise it? I don't know. I am only guessing. Intuitively I am suggesting that such phaselocking phenomena would generalise to seemingly stable extended structures just like the matter we are familiar with. Only there would be additional degrees of freedom along with an increasing number of time dimensions. Or, which is a different idea, the space we know derives from the context of light (electromagnetism) and this particular 3-1 ness imposes itself in such a fundamental manner that it subordinates any other dimensionality. In any case, I suggest that some degrees of freedom are not shown in terms of extended shapes but in some other way. One might name those ways category 1 category 2 etc. But if such ideas would be correct, these categories might just as well show up in ways comprehensible for a prescientific human, since the extended shapes are. Therefore I was asking myself, why not try to find an interpretation for such groupings of phenomena as mineral plant animal forms etc. Or part of them. In part 1, I said science can't be expected to evolve along a monotoneous sequence of successes. It would be like an economy without ups and downs totally foreign to experience. Why would science be fundamentally different? However as I have stated above I wasn't suggesting any return to prescientific ideas, only speculating, that they might come back in some unexpected context. Consider plants and animals. One may pick various hybrid forms escaping that classification, but lets forget such border line cases for simplicity. A plant is tied to the ground (I have heard of Orchids...) while animals are free to move. The animal would seem to be the more advanced concept. Signalling a higher complexity. I am guessing that this complexity would exist in the form of higher-dimensional generalisations of phase locking, and that the locking would exist among different independent time dimensions.
It is not suggested that this is a theory in this form. Maybe it is marginally better than a non-scientific phantasy. The intention is not wholly scientific and therefore to consider this a kind of natural romanticism wouldn't hurt my scientific feelings. About mysticism I don't know. There is at least a partial ambition to push towards quantitative, hence falsifiable (=real) theory.
Its funny, the way the mind works sometimes. In 1987 I was having those ideas about animals and plants as a kind of represention of the mind. That animals would be related to symbols and plants would be related to representative examples. I was almost frightened with the explosion of ideas that kept coming over me. I dont think I was subjected to any external influence of the kind I have later experienced, but it was really overwhelming. It was as if nature was in a hurry to communicate something to me before I hung up. (Meaning switching back to more conventional types of scientific ideas for which I didn't have this kind of very strong experience.)

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