Martin Striz (striz1@MARSHALL.EDU)
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 05:39:01 +0100
Magnus Berg wrote:
> To be able to extrapolate something we first have to make a model
> of what we already know, that would be the four levels.
> Furthermore, to use this model to extrapolate outside of it, it
> would help if it was continuous, which it isn't. So we must
> extrapolate outside of a discrete model. This, in turn, requires a
> very good understanding of the relations involved in the discrete
> model, and to underestimate things, we're not quite there yet.
> But I'd be very interested in your understanding, the question
> implies a quite good one!
Well, the answer (as theoretic as it is) has alluded me quite well.
I've tried using Quality evolution and our knowledge of history
simultaneously to shed some light on it.
Lets start a journey going backwards in time. A few thousands years ago
the first philosophers appear in Greece. Folks like Anaxagoras and
Erastosthenes and Democritus, later Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, but
especially the first one we have on record: Thales of Miletus, living
around 700 B.C. These folks were the first to use their heads to solve
problems and this was a whole new set a values, so we can say with some
certainty that the development of intellectual static Quality was around
this time.
As we continue backwards in time along our trans-temporal road, we'll
reach a time when people just started to band together. A time when
they were shifting from nomadic lifestyles to settlements, plantations,
and eventually cities. When governments became necessary for the first
time to establish order, and religions became prominent to answer their
questions about the world. This was perhaps ten to fifteen thousand
years ago (although people may have existed in clans for 100,000 years,
they certainly didn't have any 'social' values per se), and we can say
with some certainty that social static Quality evolved around this time.
Now we travel a long time against a landscape that changes and becames
more simple as we go along (actually backwards), but nothing new appears
or disappears for perhaps a few billion years. Eventually we reach a
point where life is just starting out. There isn't much of it, it's
very simple compared to today's standards, and it's quite inefficient.
The world really looks quite different: the oceans are like a thick
organic soup; methane, O2, CO2, H2, H2O, and trace elements fill the
atmosphere of a violent early earth, full of volcanic eruptions and
lightning. This is a very Dynamic time! This lightning breaks carbon
chains in the 'organic soup' up and allows them to reunite in longer
chains. Eventually a certain kind of carbohydrate, we would see it as
proto-RNA, comes along. It has the unique ability of gathering other
carbon chains and fixing them to look exactly as it looks. After
billions of these 'proto-reproductions' more complex ones come along,
and millions of years down the road we have unicellular life. This
whole period has introduced another set of values, from our perspective
it has introduced biological static Quality.
Traveling farther down the road, now for a longer period of time than
the all the time it has taken for the last three kinds of static Qualtiy
to evolve, we see nothing but one kind of static Quality. It all
follows the laws of inorganic values, and is exactly what Materialists
see the world as: it's all physical.
This is the hard part. What happens here? Along our journey we've been
eliminating each kind of static Quality in order of decreasing
complexity, so logic would tell us that all we have left to do is
eliminate the inorganic values. All this time we've been looking at
non-MOQ accounts at what has been occurring, so perhaps we can look at
some more theories. I've thought about this and have come to two
conclusions. 1) In MOQ terms, all the theories look the same so MOQ
terms don't shed any light on the beginnings, and 2) it seems Dynamic
Quality can't exist before static values!
1) In MOQ terms, at some point in time Dynamic Quality produced the
first values. As soon as they became present and continuous in time,
they became static. In scientific terms, everything was a singularity
(a dimensionless point, having no physical existence, only a position,
and containing within itself both all of matter and all of space) until
a moment (Dynamic Quality) in time when it exploded (the values were
produced). In religious terms, at some point in time a Creator God
(Dynamic Quality) created the universe (produced the first values). We
intuitively think Dynamic Quality existed before static values did, so
we are led to say it caused the first ones. But this statement is so
vague it sheds no light on what actually happened. A scientific or
religious theory looks the same depending on if we treat DQ as a god or
that mysterious force that triggered the Big Bang. I'm at a loss here.
2) Upon further reflection, I noticed that time is dependent on matter.
A singularity can exist for an infinite amount of time, but time is
meaningless without something to notice time by. If two objects move
past each other, you can notice that it happens over an interval of
time, but if you're staring at black space (and there wasn't any space
before the Bang, either!), you might as well be staring at a photograph
taken instantaneously. And since Dynamic Quality is the 'now,' this
moment in time, it seems that DQ is dependent on time. Whatever is in
the past and whatever we hope in the future is part of SQ, but only a
continually progressing 'nowness' gives any meaning to Dynamic Quality.
Where was Dynamic Quality and what was it doing before the Bang?? In
creationary terms, the question is practically the same. What was God,
our DQ, doing for all the 'time' before existence?? For all practical
purposes, there was no time, and consequently there was no 'now,' and
the concept of a singularity, or god, or DQ, is meaningless.
(This can also be compared to the 'train' of existence. The leading
edge is DQ, but start taking away the sections of the train, one by one,
until you take away the last section. Now there is no train left, so
there is no leading edge and no place for DQ.)
It's quite a conundrum. Your thoughts?
Martin
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