SOLITU OM

SOLITU Part OM: Aristotle's OM

What are the uses for the Unification Construction?

Are we still learning from Aristotle? A friend loaned me the following book:

Aristotle's Children, by Richard E. Rubenstein (2003, Harcourt, Inc.) I read every page.

The extensive quotes of the book below are intended as fair use in order to offer praise for Rubinstein's work and to argue that Aristotle's description of the universe was probably scientifically accurate, as well as to recommend that Rubinstein's discussion of the relationship between science and religion is thought we all need to dwell upon. If you like to learn why we are where we are, get this book.

The Unification Construction, not really a construction but the revelation of a mathematical fact and a reasonable basis for the theory of Evolutionary Proportion, about which the following is known or suggested:

The Uses for the Unification Construction

1) Not useful for generating income. There is no award for solving the problem of "squaring the circle." The conformist anthropomorphic mathematicians and their benefactors have been so rigidly certain that the circle could not be squared no one has provided a monetary reward to the person who solves this problem. The construction of pi exactly as a straight line is now revealed as a scientific fact. I cannot copyright or obtain a trademark for a mathematical fact. Once I have revealed it to the world, as I have here, it belongs to everyone and to no one. I do not receive any monetary award or compensation for saving the world. However, it is useful for demonstrating that mathematicians are human (which has been questioned) and they are therefore at risk of authoritarian behavior the same as priests, feminists, politicians and babysitters.

2) It will explain the specific structure of the universe.

3) It will explain the patterns in the periodic table of the elements.

4) It will explain the distribution of stars and galaxies.

5) It will explain the behavior of light, magnetism and gravity.

6) It will explain the processes of human group behaviors.

7) It will affirm that mathematics is a cultural artifact, no matter how widely a mathematical language is used, and that the only truly universal mathematics is proportion, which we call "geo-metry" [Earth measurement] because in ancient times it was associated with measuring the size and shape of the Earth (Stonehenge).

8) It will provide enormous, essential and logical support for the biomimicry movement, which is actually the rise of competent science, being the replacement of dangerous and destructive science with safe science. Biomimicry is the practice that will enable humans to make the transformation from technological animal to intelligent being. The necessary trait or definition of an intelligent being is that intelligent beings practice science without producing any unintended consequences. Intelligent beings practice technology with complete understanding of all of the effects of every single cause.

9) It will provide the human species with a level of understanding that will enable humans to be good stewards of the people and property within their reach. The fulfillment of this human purpose will favor the continuation of humanity, which would otherwise perish in its own fires.

Aristotle's OM

Here are some of things said by Aristotle, and by author Rubenstein:

Chapter Four (Aristotle Among the Heretics): p. 164: [Aristotle's statement in "natural philosophy" which we know today as physical science] "Everything in the natural universe [real physical universe] is composed of matter and form [shape, proportion] --- primary, inchoate [shapeless] material given an intelligible [detectable, measureable] shape and purpose."

Rubenstein's citation of Aristotle without my editorial commentary: "Everything in the natural universe is composed of matter and form --- primary, inchoate material given an intelligible shape and purpose."

Chapter Eight (God Does Not Have to Move These Circles Any More) p. 291-292:

Quote: One theme of the cultural propaganda that bombards us unremittingly is the message that we live in the age of science -- a time when the methods of inquiry, modes of argument, and standards of proof used by "hard" scientists have become virtually universal, and all objective knowledge (as opposed to merely subjective belief) rests on an appeal to reason. The origin myth of modern science tells us that this era was born out of the scientists' struggle against dogmatic, obscurantist religion, and that its result was the replacement of faith by reason, at least in the sphere of public discourse. As one commentator puts it, "Science replaced religion as preeminent intellectual authority, as definer, judge, and guardian of the cultural world view."

[by John Manimas Medeiros: This is the same as my summation that Science is now our religion, and Science is the "exempt institution," meaning that science and scientists are the privileged authority: they cannot be questioned by the general public in the arena of public discourse, but can only be questioned "privately" in the private or even secret arena of scientific dispute.]

Quote continued: The subsequent story, commonly told, is one of the steady aggrandizement of reason and marginalization of faith. As rationalist methods and concepts came to provide the basis for social science, law, politics, and even ethics, religious faith, increasingly cut off from a scientific understanding of nature and society, became a private affair – a satisfier of personal emotional needs rather than a source of knowledge.

[JMM comment: This is the arrogant and closed atheist-scientist definition of religion, as above: a private affair – a satisfier of personal emotional needs rather than a source of knowledge. (Doctor Zhivago, where even poetry is labeled as "personal.") ]

[quote of footnote 43]

The domains of religion and metaphysics became gradually compartmentalized, regarded as personal, subjective, speculative, and fundamentally distinct from public objective knowledge of the empirical world. Faith and reason were now definitively severed. ( Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), p. 286.)

[Similarly, by John Manimas Medeiros: The war or battle between science and religion is contrived, argued invariably on an initial premise that discredits the opposition before examining the supposedly opposing systems of thought. The truth is that both are motivated by the same initial drive: to understand the truth about what is the real universe we live in: Who are we? What are we? Both are based on a faith, the belief that efforts by our brains to understand reality are worthwhile. Accurate and precise human understanding of reality is possible. Otherwise there is no good reason to try. The methods may be different, but the motivation, purpose and goals are the same.]

Rubinstein quote continued p. 295: As the historian John Hedley Brooke points out, many conflicts said to be between science and religion are really clashes between opposed scientific theories or religious views. (footnote 48, citation of John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 1991.)

My CONCLUSION and theory:

CLEARLY this is the viewpoint that formed in my mind more or less independently: Proportion is the primary force of the universe that gives shape to particles that would otherwise be like an infinite beach of homogeneous sand. Proportion gives form and shape to matter by means of the fundamental natural force of "evolutionary proportion."

The sizes and shapes that we observe and call "arithmetic" and "mathematics" is our perception of evolutionary proportion. Therefore, this is what mathematics is: our perception of proportion, similar to the way that color, shape and light detected by our eyes is our vision, our detection of a small span of the much larger electromagnetic spectrum; and sound, words, language, music, is our detection of vibrations traveling through matter. The vibrations of strings, or a drum head, is the natural occurrence, and the "music" that we hear, or the rhythm, is what we detect. The detection and the events detected are not the same event. All knowledge is comprised of three events, 1) the event that occurs externally, 2) the internal detection of that external event, 3) the record or memory of the external event.

Our mathematics is a cultural artifact, not the proportions themselves that occur naturally, but our detection of those proportions, motivating us to measure and count, the primary technology that is used with all other technologies. AGAIN, THIS IS ABOUT THE DEFINITION AND MEANING OF MATHEMATICS: NATURE DOES NOT HAVE NUMBERS BUT ONLY PROPORTIONS. WE PERCEIVE PROPORTIONS AND GIVE THEM NAMES AND THOSE SYMBOLIC NAMES FOR PROPORTIONS ARE NUMBERS. THE NUMBERS ARE WORDS, SYMBOLS, BUT PROPORTION IS WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL IN AND TO THE REAL, PHYSICAL UNIVERSE.