Ideas about what may be the science of thoughts

I wrote the composition  below in 2015. At the time a retired physicist colleague helped me to use more appropriate physics terminology in order to assist me to render my effort to being more meaningful and accurate. I apologise to my readers that the article is so physics science laden.

Quote:

“…We all know that we act in accordance with our thoughts, and since our muscles are controlled by electrical impulses traveling along nerve fibers, we can surmise that thoughts must either consist of electrical impulses, or alternatively have a capacity to trigger such impulses. In terms of my conceptual science argument, I suggest that it is the latter that is the case. If thoughts consist of quantum fields, these fields can cause quantum forces that could influence electrons in nerve fibers to move.

I suggest that it is the merging of individual thought fields with the wider (all of the universal environment) cosmic electron field that is the common link between our own thought construction processes which in turn is processed by the mind, brain and dual consciousness processes [I believe that we have an implicit (metaphysical) and explicit (measurably materialistic) consciousness. I believe that a thought (or thoughts) creates a ripple/s in this electron field which in turn means that a thought/s become a permanent part of the continuum of this infinite field i.e. a permanent memory of every thought ever created in our lives…”

Note 20/12/19.

Since writing this document I am now of the opinion that this permanency of our whole of life thought construction processes extends into the ‘arena’ of the wider cosmos too and then become part of what the eastern tradition of religious-philosophy refers to as the akashic records. This is consistent with Bohm’s physics theory.

Is the separation point between life and death so definitive as the medical profession tells us that it is?

This important medical study seems to be suggesting that this is not the case.

Quote:

“… The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is the first launched by the Human Consciousness Project, a multidisciplinary collaboration of international scientists and physicians who have joined forces to study the relationship between mind and brain during clinical death, and is led by Dr. Sam Parnia, a world-renowned expert on the study of the human mind and consciousness during clinical death, together with Dr Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University of Southampton. The team will be working in collaboration with more than 25 major medical centers throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Although the study of death has traditionally been considered a subject for theology or philosophy, recent advances in medicine have finally enabled a scientific approach to understanding the ultimate mystery facing humankind. “Contrary to popular perception,” Dr. Parnia explains, “death is not a specific moment. It is actually a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.”

See the full article here

Was the Great War was world’s first sci-fi war?

Quote:

“… Charley’s War was a comic strip set in World War One that ran for many years in Battle, a British comic published in the 1970s until the late 80s.

Written by Pat Mills and illustrated by the late Joe Colquhoun, it follows young Londoner Charley Bourne’s fight to survive in the trenches of the Western Front.

After starting his career with Dundee-based publisher DC Thomson, Mills co-created Battle with fellow comic book writer John Wagner and also launched British science-fiction/fantasy comic 2000AD.

Here Mills gives an insight into writing Charley’s War and why he believes how mechanised warfare – machine guns, zeppelins and planes – made WW1 the world’s first science-fiction war…”

Now refer to source for complete story.

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Investigation of a Complex Space-Time Metric to Describe Psychic Phenomena

This 2001 presentation relates to the author’s hypothesis in relationship to the speed of thought. The author’s seem to agree with my concept physics line of thinking that the speed of thought is without time and you can make it any speed you choose. You will also note that they suggest that our personal awareness is linked to non-local hyperspace dimensional space time which is also close to my position in this area. I see that the article has come under considerable criticism from within the science community over the years.

Extract from the abstract

” For the past 25years, the authors of this paper—together with researchers in laboratories around the world have carried out experiments in remote viewing. The evidence for this mode of perception, or direct knowing of distant events and objects, has convinced us of the validity of these claims. It has been widely observed that the accuracy and reliability of this sensory awareness do not diminish with either electromagnetic shielding, or with increases in temporal-or spatial separation between the percipient and the target to be described. Modern physics describes such a time and space independent connection between percipient and target as non-local. In this paper we present a geometrical model of space-time, which has already been extensively studied in the technical literature of mathematics and physics…”

Extract from the conclusion

Quote:

” …It appears then that there is a human perceptual modality in which distant space-time events can be accessed. The remote perception phenomena may imply, in a certain sense, that space and time are not primary physical con-struts. In the words of Albert Einstein, 1941, ” time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.” In a similar vain, in 1923A. S. Eddington said, ” time is a mental construct of our private consciousness… physicists construct the concept of a world wide time from a string of subjective instances” (qtd. in Batten, 1995).The fundamental nature of non locality is expressed in the universe throughout physics, as well as psi phenomena, and in the universality of consciousness.

We have developed and presented a theoretical model, the complex Minkowski space, which expresses the non-local aspect of our observed-reality. Not only does this model describe the data for psi, but it is also reason-ably consistent with the main body of modern physics, as we describe in previous sections. As the data for psi become stronger and more coherent, we have the opportunity to construct physical models which can increasingly well describe these observations. The psi data base*, and the fundamental properties of non-locality in physics, lead us inexorably to the conclusion that the speed of thought is transcendent of any finite velocity. Because precognition occurs with the event experienced prior to its apparent cause, the speed of thought appears to be instantaneous, or any other velocity one chooses. The speed of thought is therefore undefined in meters per second. Since consciousness can access the complex eight space as though it is contiguous, space-time distances are non-existent for mind-to-mind, or mind-to-target awareness—separation of consciousness is an illusion.

The compelling data for precognition make it appear that the future is unalterably determined. This fatalist point of view maintains that our awareness moves inexorably along the time line at a rate of one second per second. But, this seeming limitation of our free will is only a four-space perception. We believe that the higher dimensional space described here gives additional degrees of freedom, which are available to our awareness, allowing us to have greater access to possible futures. We recognise that every ontology is perishable and that one day it may be found that complex Minkowski space is not the best model for psi. However, we are confident that two factors will remain: namely that these phenomena are not a result of an energetic transmission, but rather they are an interaction of our awareness with a non local hyper-dimensional space-time in which we live”.

(I italicised and emboldened)

*supposed parapsychological or psychic faculties or phenomena

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The Master List of Logical Fallacies

You may find this item is interesting and entertaining before you retire from the day. It contains humour as well

I quote  the author:

“Fallacies are fake or deceptive arguments, “junk cognition,” that is, arguments that seem irrefutable but prove nothing. Fallacies often seem superficially sound and they far too often retain immense persuasive power even after being clearly exposed as false. Like epidemics, fallacies sometimes “burn through” entire populations, often with the most tragic results, before their power is diminished or lost. Fallacies are not always deliberate, but a good scholar’s purpose is always to identify and unmask fallacies in arguments…”

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What is a four dimensional space like?

The author of this presentation describes his project as….

Quote:

“My present purpose is to show you that there is nothing at all mysterious in the four dimensions of a spacetime. To do this, I will drop the time part completely. I will just consider a four dimensional space; that is, a space just like our three dimensional space, but with one extra dimension. What would it be like?…”

This author seems to know what he is talking about. In my opinion his effort is is thorough. If you are interested in this area of science I think that you will enjoy following the writer’s line of thinking.

The link is here

How the Witch became maligned

By Raven Grimassi

Quote:

“The oldest references to witches in Western literature appear around 700 BC. The ancient Greek writings of Hesiod and Homer contain the first descriptive accounts of witches and witchcraft. In such tales we find the characters known as Circe and Medea, both sharing a connection to the goddess Hecate. The earliest word used by the Greeks to indicate a witch was pharmakis. Historian Georg Luck, in his essay Imagining Greek and Roman Magic, states that pharmakis “became one of the standard words for ‘wise-woman/witch’, used as a substantive.” He goes on to mention during this same period the word also expressed an association with “drugs and incantations.” Later the word pharmakis would translate as venefica in Latin, which is addressed later in this article.

The ancient Greek writer Hesiod makes the earliest mention of the goddess Hecate. Hesiod tells the tale of how Hecate aided the Olympic gods in their battle against the Titans. Because of this, Hecate enjoyed an elevated status among the Olympic gods even though she was never formally a member. In his work, The Theogony, Hesiod speaks of Hecate as a goddess of fertility and abundance, associating her with farmers and agriculture. With the passage of time, Hecate and her witches would be viewed as a dark goddess of the Underworld and would become a dreaded presence. As we shall see, it was the agenda of Roman emperors and law-makers to purposely malign witches and convince people they were dangerous company. However, the essential character of the witch developed much earlier than this and we must look further into the past.

The witch-figure most likely evolved from the primitive shaman or sorcerer/sorceress character common to tribal communities. Such individuals possessed knowledge of the medicinal properties or effects of various plants, and were believed to be in touch with the Otherworld in a special way. As noted earlier the ancient Greek word for witch is “pharmakis,” and from this we derive the modern English word “pharmacist.” Because of their knowledge and position within the community the witch-figure was also most likely the keeper and transmitter of myth and lore.

In Latin the word for witch was originally saga, which indicates a fortune-teller. This was later changed to venefica, which indicates one who prepares love potions. The earliest laws against witchcraft dealt with the use of herbal potions employed in love spells. The root word for venefica is the same as that for the word venereal, derived from the Latin vene, indicating Venus. The word venefica was later used to indicate one who possessed knowledge of poisonous plants, and over the course of time this became its specific meaning. Eventually almost all Latin words for poison were based upon vene as a rootword for poison, particularly when referring to witches and witchcraft. No doubt the witch-figure commanded respect but was also viewed with a healthy fear of his or her power and knowledge.

One of the most powerful figures in ancient times to be associated with witchcraft was Circe. Circe appears in the tale of Ulysses who lands on Circe’s island during his travel back to Greece. According to the story, Circe turns Ulysses’ men into swine and he is enchanted by one of her herbal love potions. He stays on the island for a year, and is then freed by the intervention of the god Hermes who gives Ulysses an herbal antidote. An alternative interpretation of this scenario is that this tale was meant to excuse the gluttony and drunkenness of Ulysses’ men and to pardon his acts of adultery with Circe while living on the island. In the tale of Medea, she kills her husband and their children after her husband leaves her for another woman. Is this the act of a witch, or is it more the act of a lover scorned? Such things happen even in modern society all too frequently and have nothing to do with the religion of the people involved. The popular term given by defense attorneys for such crimes of violence is “temporary insanity.”

With the rise of civilization and the establishment of governments, the witch became maligned as an evil and destructive character. Laws against witchcraft and magic appear long before the rise of Christianity in many ancient cultures such as Rome. Independent, free-thinking, and self-empowered people have always been viewed as a threat by governments. The rulers of Rome feared assassination by poison (as did later the Kings of Europe) and thus anyone with an advanced knowledge of herbalism was a potential enemy. Additionally Witchcraft was a secret society, which also contributed to suspicion concerning its practices.

The ancient Roman poet Horace was among the earliest to portray witches as ugly old hags in contrast to the earlier image of the witch as a beautiful seductress reflected in the writings of Hesiod and Homer. The Romans valued youth to excess, and the association of old age with witches was designed to rob them of power and vitality in the public mind. Horace writes in his Epodes that witches worship Proserpina and Diana. Both deities were viewed in a negative light by the followers of the Roman State religion who favored the so-called “high gods.” Diana and Proserpina were the deities of rural pagans and magicians, both classes that were looked down upon by the sophisticated city dwellers.

Ovid wrote that a belief in witches (striges) was a superstitious peasant belief having nothing to do with State religion. Therefore the witch was a popular figure to ridicule and malign. Horace also makes the connection of the moon with the practice of Witchcraft. Ancient Greek/Roman literature depicts the Witch involved in human and animal sacrifice, practices that were common in the vast majority of ancient cultures including archaic Aegean/Mediterranean and Celtic cultures.

However, as religions evolved over the centuries, the Witch was never portrayed as having moved beyond such practices. It is interesting to note that the ancient Greeks classified witches among those who practiced “illicit religions.” The reason for this is that in Greek culture, and to a degree in Roman culture, a “recognized” sect had to have a temple. Magicians, diviners, witches, and other subculture figures were comprised typically of the poor segment of the population and therefore had no funds to build and maintain temples. This is one of the chief reasons why witches were not portrayed in ancient times as people of a religious nature but rather as magic users. This view persisted despite ancient writings that told stories of the witch Medea who prayed to Hecate, and the witch Canidia who prayed to Hecate, Diana, and Proserpina.

To discourage people from having personal dealings with witches, the witch was associated with many perversions and evil deeds. Roman officials fostered the image of the witch as a grave robber, a very horrid thing in Roman culture because Roman religion honored the dead as well as the ancestral spirit. All of these factors created an unwelcome environment for witches, keeping them out of the public eye. The fact that witches were forced into social isolation made Roman officials feel less threatened since it became increasingly difficult for their enemies to locate witches and obtain herbal potions. The witch was now fully established as an undesirable in society. Depicting her as old and ugly took away the physical vitality of the witch figure and made his or her appear less dynamic. In ancient Roman culture youth was celebrated and old age was dreaded. Like the Greeks before them, the Romans held to the philosophy that “good” was beautiful and “evil” was ugly. Thus the witch was purposely depicted as an old ugly hag.

With the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of Rome circa 325 AD, the Witch was already viewed as a doer of evil deeds and the Church quickly assigned her to the company of demons and devils. The power of Rome was replaced by the Roman Catholic Church, which sent monks and bishops into various regions of Europe to establish churches. Augustine, the most influential Christian theologian, taught that pagan religion and magic were invented by the Devil. He was the first person to associate witches with the devil. Thus the attitudes of earlier Rome towards witches, now assimilated and redesigned by the Roman Catholic Church, were carried to northern Europe and the British Isles. Within a few centuries the stereotype of the witch as an evil servant of Satan was established throughout Europe.

In the King James version of the Bible, the verse Exodus 22:18 reads “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” However, in the original language of the text, the word kashaph meant a poisoner, or more specifically one who assassinates by using poison, and not literally a “witch” as indicated in the King James text. Whether the mistranslation was intentional or simply misguided, the King James translation provided support to those who took the lives of many people charged with practicing witchcraft. Another biblical verse used to support the death sentence for those convicted of witchcraft was Leviticus 20:27. Although this verse does not contain the word witch (mistranslated or otherwise) it and other related biblical verses were used by the Church and secular courts to indicate witches and witchcraft as inclusive in the meaning of the text.

The linking of witches and witchcraft to Satan first appears around 400 AD due largely to the undertakings of St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine taught that anything pagan was evil and must therefore come from the works of the devil. The Church, convinced that anything contrary to the beliefs of Christianity must indeed be evil, declared everything associated with pre-Christian religion as evil. Therefore, witches were then assigned by the Church as servants of the Judaic-Christian Satan figure, even though the witches did not subscribe to the concept of the devil.

The devil, or Satan, is a Judaic concept, a personification of evil that was almost unique in ancient times. Christianity, its foundation being rooted in Judaic religion, inherited the concept of the devil or Satan from Jewish religion. Witchcraft was already long established centuries before the world knew of this Judaic-Christian concept. The Church, eager to discredit paganism, grafted the devil onto pre-Christian religion. It even went so far as to use art to portray Satan (who is never physically described in the Bible) with horns, hooves, and pointed ears just like the pagan horned god of antiquity.

Extreme physical and psychological torture was used to extract “confessions” from those accused of practicing witchcraft. The torture continued until the person admitted to the charges against them or until they died from the trauma. Questions regarding devil worship were put to the accused that had no basis in any past historical practice or in practices actually documented by any research during the period of the trials. The Church, together with the Inquisition, created the concept of devil worship by witches along with the details of its beliefs and practices. People were then forced people to confess to membership in the witches’ sect by means of horrible pain and suffering.

Despite the insistence of the Church that witches worshipped Satan, references to the worship of the goddess Diana by witches persist through the Renaissance era in Witchcraft trials, and are noted as late as the end of the 19th century by such folklorists as Charles Leland. Even as early as 900 AD the Church addressed the worship of Diana by the “society of Diana” in the Canon Episcopi. This document stated that the followers of Diana were deceived by Satan regarding her worship and that everything they professed to experience was mental delusion.

The 18th century saw the beginning of the decline of witchcraft persecutions. It came both in the modification of laws and in the attitudes of judicial authorities who grew inclined not to take the charges of witchcraft seriously. France was among the first to modify its laws dealing with witchcraft, taking place in 1682. The next to follow suit was Prussia in 1714. Great Britain modified its witchcraft laws in 1736 followed by Russia in 1770, Poland in 1776, and Sweden in 1779.

In essence the judicial system began to view the practice of witchcraft as a pretense to possessing power, an act of fraud. People who performed divination, magic, or any types of enchantments risked a year in prison. England repealed this act in 1951. Following the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951, the writings of Gerald Gardner introduced the world to the religion known as Wicca. Gardner portrayed witches as a secret society driven underground by Christianity and surviving as a subculture for many centuries. Gardner’s witches were healers and magicians who worshipped a god and goddess figure. They were neither the beautiful evil witches of Greco-Roman times, nor the ugly evil witches of the Middle Ages. Today the witch has rightfully taken his or her place in modern society as a religious and spiritual individual.

The beautiful witch is back!”

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What is the Fifth Dimension in ‘Interstellar’?

How to Understand the Film’s Complicated Physics

Quote:

“Contemplating the fifth dimension

Before you consider the dimensions, you must consider the basic unit of all things in this or any known universe: a point. The concept of a singular finite point. Keep hold on that idea. Now, here we go.

Dimension No. 1: A line. Any line. A line that stretches from one point to another, without any width to speak of. As an abstract concept, we can grasp this easily, but such an entity is not really existent in the way we perceive the world, as everything in our practical lens has tangible length and width (no matter how small).

Dimension No. 2: A plane — that comes to be when you add width to the line. As such, a plane can exist as a flat surface viewed straight on: a floor, ceiling, tabletop, television or movie screen and the images thereon (although worldly context often grants us the ability to “see” these latter images with an additional layer). Although a plane is even easier to imagine than an impossibly thin line, it still can’t quite exist in the reality we know, as everything on Earth, even sheets of paper, has some degree of depth.

Dimension No. 3: Space. This one’s ours. Just as a line becomes a plane when you tack onto it from the side, a plane becomes an object in our special world when you “inflate” it from another angle. We see everything with length, width, and depth — but that’s it (and yes, there are other gradients that can be applied to physical entities… that begins with the Fourth Dimension, and gets increasingly complicated).

Dimension No. 4: Time, essentially. Picture yourself at this very moment. Now, imagine yourself five minutes ago — or five days, or five years, or (if you want to really blow your own mind) five centuries. To grasp a world observed from the Fourth Dimension (as ours is from the Third), picture each of these variations of yourself as physically connected along the line of time. Though it’s tougher to picture, the jump from D3 to D4 exists in the same fashion that the previous jumps (D1 to D2 and D2 to D3) do.
Think of it as such: If you view the abstract concept of a line from another angle, you’ll see a plane — a revelation that the unfeasibly thin collection of points you once saw was only one facet of the physical object you had been observing: a measure of its length.

Do this again when you shift from looking at a plane to looking at a standard object or person. The plane was a motionless vantage point of said thing, a representation of one side of it (that containing its first two dimensions) without perspective of its depth. Turning physically to look beyond this single face brings you to Dimension 3.
Perform that same song and dance once more and you’re in Dimension 4, no longer looking at an object from the single face of its three special dimensions. Just as you saw a line, retroactively, as one face of a plane, and a plane as one face of an object, any object as we know it is really just one face of a timeline. If you were to stand outside of time and shift rapidly across a given line, you’d see all the conceivable iterations of that object — its past, present, and future incarnations, like a flipbook. Imagine those singular frames strung together endlessly (meaning, for us in both directions. Picturing an object as such gives you a view from the Fourth Dimension. Trippy, I know.

Dimension No. 5: The dimension in which we find McConaughey come the bookcase sequence. If you can fathom it, step outside of the Fourth Dimension, separating further from the viewpoint of endless physical manifestations. See, those endless physical manifestations are themselves only one face of an entity — that which might be described as possibility.

Picture a timeline as an expression of one set of possibilities spawning from any singular moment — a graspable example: start with your moment of birth, and track your life as a collection of moments (faces on that never-ending “you” as observed from the Fourth Dimension) all strewn together. Now, turn once more. Imagine this line as itself one face on an object made up of lines of the like — all of the possible lines of moments/faces that might spring from that initial point. Every conceivable thing that could happen after Point A (your birth) gets its own line, and each of these+ lines is a face on the Fifth Dimension’s view of “you.”

That, in effect, is what McConaughey sees from his daughter’s bookcase… though his focus on a singular timeline as opposed to all possibilities, and his manipulation thereof, call into question transition into the Sixth and Seventh Dimensions, which are tough eggs to crack (more so, even, than Eight, Nine, and Ten). But luckily, Nolan doesn’t dive too deep beyond a brief hiccup in theoretical consistency here and there. So we can rest our studies here and not worry about anything beyond No. 5… until the sequel, that is.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/47537-what-is-the-fifth-dimension-in-interstellar-how-to-understand-the-films-complicated-physics.”

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