Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.
Infinity drove him mad
A Magic Age (20)
Although information is the foundation for a higher level civilization, we are not entering an "information age". Rolf Jensen, director of the Institute of Future Studies in Copenhagen, contends that the information age is already past its high noon point, and that sunset will come sooner than many people imagine. He foresees that, as affluence spreads with increasing abundance, the stories behind products will become more important than the products or services themselves.
It is important to recognise that the information age that Jensen is talking about is the conventional Information Technology industry and its impacts on industrial capitalism. Douglas Robertson is writing of information at a more fundamental level, and his predictions underpin the ability of a Level 4 Civilization to emerge and function in the early 21st century.
The incoming civilization will run on a combination of information and imagination, but the present IT industry will vanish, or, more correctly, it will converge or blend with nanotechnology, biotechnology and other technologies that have yet to emerge. This conclusion is not so surprising when you consider that futurists and technology forecasters believe that 90% of the new technologies that will power us forward in this century have not yet been invented. All the magic is still ahead of us. In this context the enduring quote from the scientist, and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, is very relevant.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Science Drives Technology - Technology Drives Freedom (21)
Science is driving radical discoveries, discoveries are driving technology, and technology is raising the level of information to a point where a Level 4 Civilization becomes practical. Technology is also making information and knowledge widely available, and this has significant implications for human society. Just as "civilization is information", it is the case that "knowledge is power".
The first Renaissance freed knowledge from guarded libraries and made it available via the medium of printed books. However, because books are physical objects, they and the ideas they contain can be controlled. Big Brother in all his guises, totalitarian, democratic, communist, imperial, etc, could and still does ban, burn, and otherwise restrict, the spread of "dangerous" knowledge and ideas. This control is exercised in all forms of published and broadcast media, and it is also exercised by shaping curricula and content in state education systems.
Power can remain centralised while knowledge can be restricted, shaped and censored. The technology of the first Renaissance did not free the spread of information and knowledge to the point where it could not be governed and controlled in this manner. The technology of the 2nd Renaissance, even at this early stage, does free information and make knowledge ungovernable. Freenet is a clear example of this ungovernability of information and ideas, hence it is a likely target for Big Brothers everywhere. Unhappily for the tireless censor-folk, new science and 21st century technologies are making it impossible for the censoring and shaping of information and knowledge to succeed for much longer.
Science Is Based On Ideas (22)
The late Carl Sagan, who spent a great deal of his time presenting and popularising science, was fond of observing that, "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology". Sagan was speaking in, and about, the 20th century, but his comment is even more relevant to the 2nd Renaissance.
People are conditioned to the specialisation and compartmentalisation that became the hallmark of the industrial revolution and industrial age institutions. Consequently, they adopt a passive role in consuming scientific discoveries and thinking, most people accept what they are fed by institutionalised science and mainstream media channels. The general population waits to be told what has been discovered or developed. Worse still, they wait to be told what it might mean to their lives.
When it comes to common sense and intelligence, most folk believe that they have as much as the next person, and they are happy to discuss and debate political and social issues with anyone. But, if it is perceived that an area of knowledge is technical, be it marketing, law or science, people will often defer to "experts" and be reluctant to discuss and explore the latest knowledge in that field. Yet, despite its undoubted complexity, science is based on theories that are simply ideas.
Everybody has about the same chance of understanding ideas. A non-scientist might not be sufficiently skilled or knowledgeable to design and carry out experiments to test a particular theory, but they can grasp the broad concepts and ideas that form the basis of that theory. Just as the first Renaissance was a time of wide and increasingly liberal discussion, the 2nd Renaissance depends on similar attitudes. This is particularly so in the West, because people there must initiate the process of transforming civilization, and raising living standards everywhere.
The Deep Ideas of Science Are Changing (23)
Because we are living in a time of accelerating discoveries in science, it is not surprising that a lot of the old ideas and theories are facing major revisions, and in many cases abandonment. A theory is only a way of imagining what causes something to be the way it seems to be. Once the observed facts no longer support the original hypothesis, a new theory is required.
At one time, the idea that the earth was flat seemed valid. When people observed the land around them it did indeed appear to be flat. Anyone who put forward the idea that the earth was round was likely to be ridiculed. Science advances by reason of imaginative postulations and subsequent efforts to verify or disprove these ideas.
However, institutionalised science is often an impediment to the acceptance of new theories. Once a lot of effort has been invested in a theory, and a great many reputations have been built on it, there can be determined resistance to a new idea that overturns the old.
The Big Bang is an example. Although it is a comparatively recent hypothesis, the notion that the universe sprang from a single point of immensely dense matter, is widely presented as fact, when it is simply a theory. When somebody develops a more verifiable explanation of the nature of the universe, as has now happened, there is a reluctance on the part of institutionalised science to accept, or even consider, the new findings.
The late Sir Fred Hoyle, who first coined the term "Big Bang" never accepted the theory as an explanation of the origin of the universe. As it turns out, Hoyle was right. He, along with those earlier thinkers who rejected the notion of a flat earth, has been vindicated by an ever-accelerating advancement and freeing of knowledge.
Revision Is Everywhere (24)
Not just the core ideas of physics and cosmology are being questioned, every branch of science is undergoing a process of re-examination. These processes are fuelled by the spread of information that results from the digital revolution. The revision and expansion of knowledge is leveraged by the power of modern computers to help researchers model theories and answer imaginative questions.
Revision and expansion of knowledge is also occurring in many other fields besides science. History, particularly the nature of ancient civilizations and their levels of knowledge and technology, is another area in which old notions are being questioned and overturned. Lisa Jardine, of the University of London, is the author of Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance. In her detailed examination of the period, Professor Jardine not only discusses the shaping of a new cultural identity in Europe, which is the focus of most texts on the Renaissance, but also details the way that new commodities and printed books created new levels of wealth, literacy and commerce. Hers is an entirely new interpretation of the Renaissance and what it meant to civilization.
A lot of textbooks and educational courses will need to be changed or discarded during this decade. By 2010, humanity's understanding of who we are, where we've been and where we're going, will be markedly different to our present knowledge. By then we will be ready to revive pre-industrial social structures such as tribalism. In the West, such revivals will occur in a completely new context, where the lifelong security of tribal membership is complemented by great individual freedom and capacity to do good in the world.
The first Renaissance saw a revival of patronage in the arts, after the Dark Ages in Europe. There was also a marked increase in prosperity and living standards. It was new prosperity, and a greater willingness to reform and improve society as a whole, that led to a new generosity and liberalism in the later stages of the Renaissance.
The growing abundance that results from the 2nd Renaissance will, similarly, foster a new ethos that directs surpluses to needy people, rather than destroying output that cannot be sold. This will represent a major revision of the capitalist mentality of letting market forces allocate goods and services.
Zero Pricing and REALLY Free Markets (25)
Taker thinking is so pervasive in our present civilization that hardly anyone is conscious of it. This causes difficulty in accepting the notion that anything that is manufactured could be distributed freely or that anyone would be prepared to provide their services at no cost.
However, almost anything that is truly abundant is already free, it is only the traditional scarcity of economic resources, and the prevalence of payment for service, that causes prices and markets to operate. Air is free, a walk along a beach is free, sunsets are free, moonlight is free, if you can use a line or net fish are free. All these things are free because they are abundant.
Because the store of human interest and kindness is huge, a significant proportion of the work performed in our present society is voluntary and unpaid. One of the better characteristics of the United States is the level of philanthrophy that exists there. Having struggled to build their fortunes in highly competitive markets, many successful American entrepreneurs then give much of their wealth away. They endow universities and research projects that would otherwise, in a market driven economy, not attract such funding.
In many ways the actions of an entrepreneurial class in providing funds for science and research are a far more efficient mechanism than a reliance on government agencies to fulfil this role. When entrepreneurs give their money and volunteers give their time to not-for-profit undertakings we see a glimpse of what can happen in a situation of abundant resources and manufactured goods. Individuals, not governments, donate their personal time and interest to helping others, or the environment, or the animals, in whatever way they choose.
When scarcity is not a constraint, human interest and kindness drive the distribution of products and services.
Limits To Growth Arguments (26)
Both Douglas Robertson and Daniel Quinn struggle with the concept of abundance and population growth. They seem sure that, if human populations explode as a result of abundance and the prolongation of lifespans, there will be a point at which a limit will be reached. The phenomenon is common, it is observable in everything from insect plagues to algal blooms. Eventually a point is reached at which the growing population exceeds the capacity of the environment to sustain it, and the exponential growth curve comes, literally, to a dead stop.
Robertson puts the argument thus. "The existence of a finite limiting resource places a fundamental mathematical limit on growth." It is human to expect and anticipate limits and boundaries of some sort. We have great difficulty visualising more than three dimensions, and also in imagining infinity. We always assume that there are limits, but in reality they might not be there.
Science is on the threshold of gaining mastery over matter, of being capable of transforming any element or molecule into any other. Once this mastery is achieved, the question will be one of whether there are finite limits to the number of atoms and the amount of energy required to convert them.
In a practical sense, various scientists and technologists answer the question of whether there will be limits to the levels of human population that are sustainable, with another question: - "What makes you think we are going to stay on Earth?"
Comprehending Zero and Infinity (27)
The notions of zero and infinity, are difficult concepts to visualise, even for gifted mathematicians. It is hard to comprehend nothingness and endlessness.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.
Yet, the question of whether there is an end to the universe, or whether it extends infinitely, without limits, is a vital one. Mathematicians have understood, from very early times, that numbers extend infinitely, but what about physical matter?
Countable Matter and Numbers (28)
Despite a widespread belief that numbers are entirely a human invention, it turns out that the natural numbers, and their reciprocals, are inherent in matter and space. This is not a new idea, the knowledge is contained in early religious texts and reflected in the words of Leopold Kronecker, "God made the integers and all the rest is the work of man."
Finally, in the closing stages of the 20th century, a German chemist and independent researcher of the underlying order in nature and the universe, succeeded in proving the threefold characteristic of infinity. The results of forty years of inquiry and contemplation of what he came to term the Prime Number Cross, enabled Dr Peter Plichta to show that infinity is a plan, or framework, built from "space, time and the set of all successive numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 ...., which never ends."
In an example of the inherently countable nature of matter, Plichta uses an illustration from his schooldays. If one square tile is laid down there is one object, in order to create a larger square three more tiles must be used, a still larger square requires an additional five tiles, and an even larger one needs seven more tiles. The point of the illustration is twofold, firstly it demonstrates that number is a property of grouped objects. You can use whatever labels you like, one, two, or goo, zoo, to label the steps of quantity, but the steps exist physically. The labels are human inventions but the steps of quantity are not. Secondly, arranging tiles in this way demonstrates Newton's reciprocal square law. This is done, as Plichta says, in a manner that makes the most important law of physics "comprehensible to ten-year olds." The explanation goes, 1=12, 1+3=4=22, 1+3+5=9=32, 1+3+5+7=16=42, and so on, to infinity.
God's Secret Formula (29)
Least the reader of this freesite think that it is dedicated to championing religion over scientific rationalism, this is the time to point out that Dr Plichta, in his book God's Secret Formula - Deciphering The Riddle Of The Universe And The Prime Number Code, provides a new and profound insight that forces the modification of both creationist and evolutionist positions. The creationists are probably wrong in asserting a literal interpretation of the biblical account of the beginning of our world, but they are right about the existence of God. The evolutionists are certainly wrong in claiming that chance and coincidence govern the universe, but they are probably right about the existence of evolutionary processes.
Professor Rupert Lay is the head of the Jesuit Order in Germany and he reviewed both of Peter Plichta's books. God's Secret Formula is the popular science version of Plichta's findings, and The Prime Number Cross is a scientific volume that is only available in the German language. Professor Lay has doctorates in physics, theology and philosophy, and has also studied psychology and economics to degree level. His comments on the two books included the following statement.
"The content is mathematically flawless. For the first time in the history of humanity, the scientific studies of Dr Plichta provide a foundation for our physical world view. Everything that preceded Plichta - from Newton to Einstein - was only theory."
But, Professor Lay's comments notwithstanding, readers should not rush out to buy God's Secret Formula in the expectation that it will fully enlighten them in a single reading. Reviews of the book on the Internet are mixed. It seems that many people find the story of the forty years of research and discovery that is mingled with the actual findings about the prime numbers, far too rambling and somewhat conceited. The other way to look at Plichta's account is to recognise that he is providing the full story to ensure that the reader comes to realise how hard it was to achieve the understanding that he eventually reached.
As the story is written, nobody can be under the misapprehension that it was an easy path to discovery, or that Plichta could have whipped up the idea one afternoon in the local beer garden. This was difficult groundbreaking thought, many famous scientists and mathematicians had found the clues before Plichta did, but they had failed to recognise their real meaning.
As for conceit, it is clear from his account of his path to the full discovery of the nature of the Prime Number Cross, that Plichta believes that he has certain gifts, and that he was destined to discover what he has discovered. He does not claim to be a genius, just someone with a deep inquisitiveness that was combined with an ability to grasp difficult concepts. Given Dr Plichta's eventual accomplishments, this is difficult to deny. When the history of the 21st century is written Peter Plichta will rank as one of the great scientific minds of the 2nd Renaissance. But for the moment, he is being ignored.
Institutionalised Science Always Drags Its Feet (30)
Imagine that you are an eminent scientist and that your field in the Flat Earth Law. You have, in good faith and with genuine belief, developed and extended the theory of a flat earth. You have conducted many experiments and verified, at the maximum distances that a theodolite can be used, that the observed data fit the hypothesis of flatness. You have gained academic tenure at a prestigious university and risen to become a professor, on the basis of your research and publications regarding the Flat Earth Law. You enjoy generous funding for your work and you travel widely to lecture on it.
Then someone publishes the facts on the spherical nature of the earth, and consigns the Flat Earth Law to the scrap heap of scientific ideas. Will you applaud the new findings? If not, will you challenge them? How indeed can you deny the new evidence when it is so verifiable? No, you had better just ignore it, and go on for as long as you can, propounding and teaching the false Flat Earth Law.
When Albert Einstein emigrated to the US in 1933 he found that hardly anybody was interested in his theories of relativity. It was only after the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, that Einstein's work gained popular attention there. In pre-war Germany his theories were totally censored.
The Prime Number Cross Revises Many Fields of Knowledge (31)
Plichta writes that, "The solution to the quest for the origins of the material world is characterised by simplicity, clarity and an irresistible elegance." It sounds improbable at first encounter, but Plichta's work shows that our physical world is the result of the distribution of prime numbers. To many people, this is far too mystical a finding.
Plichta is a talented chemist, with a number of key discoveries and patents to his credit, and he notes that in chemistry there is a similar reluctance to be associated with anything metaphysical or other-worldly. He observes that, "Nothing is ever heard of the history of chemistry at our universities. On the contrary, chemists are collectively ashamed of their history which is peopled by magicians, charlatans and mystics."
Although Plichta does not draw direct comparisons between his findings and the knowledge of the ancients, parallels are likely to exist. Already, there is a link being made to a mathematical code of the Quran, and it would seem that the mathematics of the ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, and possibly other civilizations, might be examined for connections. If connections are found, much of our knowledge of ancient history will need to be revised.
Needless to say, vast areas of the exact sciences must now be rewritten. While the empirical findings in fields such as quantum mechanics and cosmology will stand, the theoretical explanations will be swept away. All the texts and curricula will contain erroneous theories that must now be corrected.
There are enormous implications for education systems. Developed countries will have a greater problem than less developed areas, because their educational institutions are more deeply mired in the old, and now superseded, knowledge. Similarly, the research institutions of the West have more academics with heavy intellectual investments in theories that are destroyed by Plichta's findings. What were previously the most advanced scientific centres will take longer to reform themselves than those that have made less progress down what have now been shown to be false theoretical paths.
Public Education Is In Crisis (32)
Even in the closing stages of our Level 3 Civilization, the old factors of production are giving way to new factors. Wealth and living standards used to depend on the efficient use of land, labour, and capital. Knowledge, imagination, and talent are now more significant to economic success. Once we move to a Level 4 Civilization these factors will be even more vital. Sadly, most governments in the West have made a colossal mess of public education systems.
A frank critique of the US system, albeit from the mid 70s, is recorded in Thinking For A Living, by Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker. The situation described in this book still applies in Australia and other developed countries that geared their schools and technical colleges to deliver a factory fodder education, and then neglected to change and reform them as the soft, knowledge centred, sectors of their economies became more important than the old industries. Thus, we see Ministers of Education trumpeting their funding of industrial skills based learning and apprenticeship schemes, at the same time that informed scientists and technologists are contemplating nanofacture and the elimination of all procedural human work from factories.
The public education systems were and are wrongly targeted. They taught the wrong knowledge, even before the impacts of new science. Now, Plichta's discoveries necessitate extensive revisions of texts and curricula, and major retraining of teachers and academics. There is no likelihood of the necessary reforms of public education being completed in time to meet the education needs of the children now being born, let alone those who are already in the various systems.
Access to new education that is based on the new knowledge required to work and contribute in the 21st century is set to become the major issue for parents everywhere. Those who can afford to will be forced to seek solutions outside the various state education systems.
There will be a huge opportunity for emerging city states to provide educational facilities that are suited to the magic age, and thus attract well-off families to live and contribute within their precincts. There are already growing home-schooling movements in many Western nations, and this trend is sure to continue. Although national and state governments are likely to curtail or totally ban education of this sort - because it removes young minds from the sphere of government influence - the eventual outcome of the struggle between state education systems and home-schooling collectives is in no doubt. The old schooling institutions will soon become irrelevant and unpatronised.
Knowledge Weeds and Strange New Seeds (33)
Throughout the entire lifetimes of everyone who is presently alive on this planet, education systems have been planting knowledge in our societies. It is now being discovered that in many cases the plantings were based on incorrect theories and assumptions. Instead of productive fields of soundly based understanding, the knowledge gardens of the present-day are overrun with weeds.
One factor that is delaying the eradication of the old knowledge weeds is the counterintuitive nature of the new science that is driving us forward, to a higher level of civilization. Much of the new knowledge is decidedly strange. Plichta's work illustrates this difficulty quite clearly. Most people can cope well enough with the broad findings that he draws from the Prime Number Cross. Such as, "...Einstein's equation not only connects the three most important physical dimensions which we perceive with our senses (matter, energy and quantity) but also the reverse of these dimensions (space, time and numerical sequence)." There are equations and logic that non-mathematicians can follow, to show these relationships, as well as mathematical proofs for scientists and mathematicians who require them.
However, the implications of the broad findings are more difficult for people to accept, despite the fact that they are so soundly based. For example, Plichta notes that while physicists presently accept that matter is composed of bundles of energy, his reasoning was very different.
He firstly concluded that magnetic energy could not remain static. Electro magnetic energy has no option but to expand at the speed of light. He also reasoned that, "If matter did not exist, not one single atom, there would also be no space. But if only the two of them can exist at the same time, then one would have to be the other, only reversed. When there is no movement, there is also no time. Energy can therefore be nothing else than the reverse of time. The only way to connect space and time is to bring them down to their reciprocal dimensions, matter and energy. In order that no nonsense emerges in this procedure, there must be a plan, and this must be the only one that exists - the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... as ordered by the Prime Number Cross."
These explanations are not presently taught in our schools and universities. Before they are taught, people will have to grapple with the new insights and come to terms with their strangeness.
Puzzling Facts (34)
Albert Einstein once said that, "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." His theories of relativity are undoubtedly difficult for ordinary people to grasp. How can one readily convince one's grandmother that, as the speed of any spacecraft increases, its length reduces and time slows down relative to the time of an observer on the Earth? Despite the fact that both these predictions have been experimentally verified, it is still hard to explain such notions to Granny.
So it is with some of Plichta's findings, the strangeness of the ideas prevents then being easily comprehended. For example, Plichta discovered what he terms a "3-to-the-power-of-4-law" of which the product is the natural number 81, as in 3x3x3x3=34=81. He also found that, "The material that occurs in space and was certainly not generated magically there only fits there if it is constructed according to those regular laws in which the space is arranged, just as a key only fits into a special lock."
Plichta shows that not only are the 81 naturally occurring elements reciprocally linked to each other via their atomic numbers, but that the reciprocal of 81 gives rise to the endless sequence of natural numbers that describe countable matter, 1/81=0.0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)....to infinity.
The initial problem for Granny, and many of the rest of us, is that when the result of dividing 1 by 81 is calculated, the answer is 1/81=0.01234567901234567901... The numbers 012345679 recur endlessly and the number 8 is always missing. How does one reconcile the fact that the result of 1/81 turns out to be different from that which Plichta can show to be true? Non-mathematicians, like one's granny, will be unlikely to find much enlightenment in the proof of the correctness of the presentation. Although the Cauchy-product formulation that Plichta uses in the proof clearly shows how the sequence 0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)... arises, Granny will still tend to believe the long-division rules that she was taught at school, and which any electronic calculator or computer can confirm.
Nature's Numbers And Human Conventions (35)
The explanation of the above dilemma is that Granny is applying human conventions that dictate how decimal arithmetic is performed. No numbers greater than 9 exist in the decimal system, so there are rules about how to handle calculations with larger values. As Plichta describes the situation, "The number (10) in the familiar decimal form increases the 9 to 10, and this in turn increases the prior 8 by 1 to 9. In the recurring fraction 0.012345679.. the number 8 is missing. ...The missing 8 is an illusion which had until then blocked my way to the novel notion that the reciprocal value of the order of all numbers 00123456789.. is the number 81."
Whether by accident or design the human originators of the conventions of the decimal system created a situation that effectively masked an important clue to the natural laws governing the formation and structure of matter in space.
Dr Plichta's work shows that it is not a coincidence that there are precisely 81 naturally occurring elements, notwithstanding the fact that students in our schools and universities are taught that there are 83 natural, non-radioactive, elements. Because of the structure of the Prime Number Cross there can be 81, and only 81, stable elements. Two of the 83 elements that are termed "natural" are in fact unstable and quickly break down into other elements. The two unstable elements are Technetium with an atomic number of 43, and Promethium with an atomic number of 61.
As Plichta observes, the unstable nature of elements 43 and 61 is glossed over by institutionalised science, and in the glossing over one of the keys to understanding matter and the universe has been obscured from most of humanity. There were by convention 83 natural elements, and while this teaching persisted the door to ultimate knowledge remained closed.
Related:
2nd Renaissance
This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105519.php
Fight Iemma - Debnam
All they can say is 'lock em up'
It seems we are in the thick of it again - the stupid, heartless "Law & Order" auction.
Premier Morris Iemma and Opposition leader Peter Debnam are trying to outdo each other with idiotic "tough on crime" policies.
http://sydney.indymedia.org/archive/features/current#10384
http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64701&group=webcast
Although information is the foundation for a higher level civilization, we are not entering an "information age". Rolf Jensen, director of the Institute of Future Studies in Copenhagen, contends that the information age is already past its high noon point, and that sunset will come sooner than many people imagine. He foresees that, as affluence spreads with increasing abundance, the stories behind products will become more important than the products or services themselves.
It is important to recognise that the information age that Jensen is talking about is the conventional Information Technology industry and its impacts on industrial capitalism. Douglas Robertson is writing of information at a more fundamental level, and his predictions underpin the ability of a Level 4 Civilization to emerge and function in the early 21st century.
The incoming civilization will run on a combination of information and imagination, but the present IT industry will vanish, or, more correctly, it will converge or blend with nanotechnology, biotechnology and other technologies that have yet to emerge. This conclusion is not so surprising when you consider that futurists and technology forecasters believe that 90% of the new technologies that will power us forward in this century have not yet been invented. All the magic is still ahead of us. In this context the enduring quote from the scientist, and science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, is very relevant.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Science Drives Technology - Technology Drives Freedom (21)
Science is driving radical discoveries, discoveries are driving technology, and technology is raising the level of information to a point where a Level 4 Civilization becomes practical. Technology is also making information and knowledge widely available, and this has significant implications for human society. Just as "civilization is information", it is the case that "knowledge is power".
The first Renaissance freed knowledge from guarded libraries and made it available via the medium of printed books. However, because books are physical objects, they and the ideas they contain can be controlled. Big Brother in all his guises, totalitarian, democratic, communist, imperial, etc, could and still does ban, burn, and otherwise restrict, the spread of "dangerous" knowledge and ideas. This control is exercised in all forms of published and broadcast media, and it is also exercised by shaping curricula and content in state education systems.
Power can remain centralised while knowledge can be restricted, shaped and censored. The technology of the first Renaissance did not free the spread of information and knowledge to the point where it could not be governed and controlled in this manner. The technology of the 2nd Renaissance, even at this early stage, does free information and make knowledge ungovernable. Freenet is a clear example of this ungovernability of information and ideas, hence it is a likely target for Big Brothers everywhere. Unhappily for the tireless censor-folk, new science and 21st century technologies are making it impossible for the censoring and shaping of information and knowledge to succeed for much longer.
Science Is Based On Ideas (22)
The late Carl Sagan, who spent a great deal of his time presenting and popularising science, was fond of observing that, "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology". Sagan was speaking in, and about, the 20th century, but his comment is even more relevant to the 2nd Renaissance.
People are conditioned to the specialisation and compartmentalisation that became the hallmark of the industrial revolution and industrial age institutions. Consequently, they adopt a passive role in consuming scientific discoveries and thinking, most people accept what they are fed by institutionalised science and mainstream media channels. The general population waits to be told what has been discovered or developed. Worse still, they wait to be told what it might mean to their lives.
When it comes to common sense and intelligence, most folk believe that they have as much as the next person, and they are happy to discuss and debate political and social issues with anyone. But, if it is perceived that an area of knowledge is technical, be it marketing, law or science, people will often defer to "experts" and be reluctant to discuss and explore the latest knowledge in that field. Yet, despite its undoubted complexity, science is based on theories that are simply ideas.
Everybody has about the same chance of understanding ideas. A non-scientist might not be sufficiently skilled or knowledgeable to design and carry out experiments to test a particular theory, but they can grasp the broad concepts and ideas that form the basis of that theory. Just as the first Renaissance was a time of wide and increasingly liberal discussion, the 2nd Renaissance depends on similar attitudes. This is particularly so in the West, because people there must initiate the process of transforming civilization, and raising living standards everywhere.
The Deep Ideas of Science Are Changing (23)
Because we are living in a time of accelerating discoveries in science, it is not surprising that a lot of the old ideas and theories are facing major revisions, and in many cases abandonment. A theory is only a way of imagining what causes something to be the way it seems to be. Once the observed facts no longer support the original hypothesis, a new theory is required.
At one time, the idea that the earth was flat seemed valid. When people observed the land around them it did indeed appear to be flat. Anyone who put forward the idea that the earth was round was likely to be ridiculed. Science advances by reason of imaginative postulations and subsequent efforts to verify or disprove these ideas.
However, institutionalised science is often an impediment to the acceptance of new theories. Once a lot of effort has been invested in a theory, and a great many reputations have been built on it, there can be determined resistance to a new idea that overturns the old.
The Big Bang is an example. Although it is a comparatively recent hypothesis, the notion that the universe sprang from a single point of immensely dense matter, is widely presented as fact, when it is simply a theory. When somebody develops a more verifiable explanation of the nature of the universe, as has now happened, there is a reluctance on the part of institutionalised science to accept, or even consider, the new findings.
The late Sir Fred Hoyle, who first coined the term "Big Bang" never accepted the theory as an explanation of the origin of the universe. As it turns out, Hoyle was right. He, along with those earlier thinkers who rejected the notion of a flat earth, has been vindicated by an ever-accelerating advancement and freeing of knowledge.
Revision Is Everywhere (24)
Not just the core ideas of physics and cosmology are being questioned, every branch of science is undergoing a process of re-examination. These processes are fuelled by the spread of information that results from the digital revolution. The revision and expansion of knowledge is leveraged by the power of modern computers to help researchers model theories and answer imaginative questions.
Revision and expansion of knowledge is also occurring in many other fields besides science. History, particularly the nature of ancient civilizations and their levels of knowledge and technology, is another area in which old notions are being questioned and overturned. Lisa Jardine, of the University of London, is the author of Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance. In her detailed examination of the period, Professor Jardine not only discusses the shaping of a new cultural identity in Europe, which is the focus of most texts on the Renaissance, but also details the way that new commodities and printed books created new levels of wealth, literacy and commerce. Hers is an entirely new interpretation of the Renaissance and what it meant to civilization.
A lot of textbooks and educational courses will need to be changed or discarded during this decade. By 2010, humanity's understanding of who we are, where we've been and where we're going, will be markedly different to our present knowledge. By then we will be ready to revive pre-industrial social structures such as tribalism. In the West, such revivals will occur in a completely new context, where the lifelong security of tribal membership is complemented by great individual freedom and capacity to do good in the world.
The first Renaissance saw a revival of patronage in the arts, after the Dark Ages in Europe. There was also a marked increase in prosperity and living standards. It was new prosperity, and a greater willingness to reform and improve society as a whole, that led to a new generosity and liberalism in the later stages of the Renaissance.
The growing abundance that results from the 2nd Renaissance will, similarly, foster a new ethos that directs surpluses to needy people, rather than destroying output that cannot be sold. This will represent a major revision of the capitalist mentality of letting market forces allocate goods and services.
Zero Pricing and REALLY Free Markets (25)
Taker thinking is so pervasive in our present civilization that hardly anyone is conscious of it. This causes difficulty in accepting the notion that anything that is manufactured could be distributed freely or that anyone would be prepared to provide their services at no cost.
However, almost anything that is truly abundant is already free, it is only the traditional scarcity of economic resources, and the prevalence of payment for service, that causes prices and markets to operate. Air is free, a walk along a beach is free, sunsets are free, moonlight is free, if you can use a line or net fish are free. All these things are free because they are abundant.
Because the store of human interest and kindness is huge, a significant proportion of the work performed in our present society is voluntary and unpaid. One of the better characteristics of the United States is the level of philanthrophy that exists there. Having struggled to build their fortunes in highly competitive markets, many successful American entrepreneurs then give much of their wealth away. They endow universities and research projects that would otherwise, in a market driven economy, not attract such funding.
In many ways the actions of an entrepreneurial class in providing funds for science and research are a far more efficient mechanism than a reliance on government agencies to fulfil this role. When entrepreneurs give their money and volunteers give their time to not-for-profit undertakings we see a glimpse of what can happen in a situation of abundant resources and manufactured goods. Individuals, not governments, donate their personal time and interest to helping others, or the environment, or the animals, in whatever way they choose.
When scarcity is not a constraint, human interest and kindness drive the distribution of products and services.
Limits To Growth Arguments (26)
Both Douglas Robertson and Daniel Quinn struggle with the concept of abundance and population growth. They seem sure that, if human populations explode as a result of abundance and the prolongation of lifespans, there will be a point at which a limit will be reached. The phenomenon is common, it is observable in everything from insect plagues to algal blooms. Eventually a point is reached at which the growing population exceeds the capacity of the environment to sustain it, and the exponential growth curve comes, literally, to a dead stop.
Robertson puts the argument thus. "The existence of a finite limiting resource places a fundamental mathematical limit on growth." It is human to expect and anticipate limits and boundaries of some sort. We have great difficulty visualising more than three dimensions, and also in imagining infinity. We always assume that there are limits, but in reality they might not be there.
Science is on the threshold of gaining mastery over matter, of being capable of transforming any element or molecule into any other. Once this mastery is achieved, the question will be one of whether there are finite limits to the number of atoms and the amount of energy required to convert them.
In a practical sense, various scientists and technologists answer the question of whether there will be limits to the levels of human population that are sustainable, with another question: - "What makes you think we are going to stay on Earth?"
Comprehending Zero and Infinity (27)
The notions of zero and infinity, are difficult concepts to visualise, even for gifted mathematicians. It is hard to comprehend nothingness and endlessness.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.
Yet, the question of whether there is an end to the universe, or whether it extends infinitely, without limits, is a vital one. Mathematicians have understood, from very early times, that numbers extend infinitely, but what about physical matter?
Countable Matter and Numbers (28)
Despite a widespread belief that numbers are entirely a human invention, it turns out that the natural numbers, and their reciprocals, are inherent in matter and space. This is not a new idea, the knowledge is contained in early religious texts and reflected in the words of Leopold Kronecker, "God made the integers and all the rest is the work of man."
Finally, in the closing stages of the 20th century, a German chemist and independent researcher of the underlying order in nature and the universe, succeeded in proving the threefold characteristic of infinity. The results of forty years of inquiry and contemplation of what he came to term the Prime Number Cross, enabled Dr Peter Plichta to show that infinity is a plan, or framework, built from "space, time and the set of all successive numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 ...., which never ends."
In an example of the inherently countable nature of matter, Plichta uses an illustration from his schooldays. If one square tile is laid down there is one object, in order to create a larger square three more tiles must be used, a still larger square requires an additional five tiles, and an even larger one needs seven more tiles. The point of the illustration is twofold, firstly it demonstrates that number is a property of grouped objects. You can use whatever labels you like, one, two, or goo, zoo, to label the steps of quantity, but the steps exist physically. The labels are human inventions but the steps of quantity are not. Secondly, arranging tiles in this way demonstrates Newton's reciprocal square law. This is done, as Plichta says, in a manner that makes the most important law of physics "comprehensible to ten-year olds." The explanation goes, 1=12, 1+3=4=22, 1+3+5=9=32, 1+3+5+7=16=42, and so on, to infinity.
God's Secret Formula (29)
Least the reader of this freesite think that it is dedicated to championing religion over scientific rationalism, this is the time to point out that Dr Plichta, in his book God's Secret Formula - Deciphering The Riddle Of The Universe And The Prime Number Code, provides a new and profound insight that forces the modification of both creationist and evolutionist positions. The creationists are probably wrong in asserting a literal interpretation of the biblical account of the beginning of our world, but they are right about the existence of God. The evolutionists are certainly wrong in claiming that chance and coincidence govern the universe, but they are probably right about the existence of evolutionary processes.
Professor Rupert Lay is the head of the Jesuit Order in Germany and he reviewed both of Peter Plichta's books. God's Secret Formula is the popular science version of Plichta's findings, and The Prime Number Cross is a scientific volume that is only available in the German language. Professor Lay has doctorates in physics, theology and philosophy, and has also studied psychology and economics to degree level. His comments on the two books included the following statement.
"The content is mathematically flawless. For the first time in the history of humanity, the scientific studies of Dr Plichta provide a foundation for our physical world view. Everything that preceded Plichta - from Newton to Einstein - was only theory."
But, Professor Lay's comments notwithstanding, readers should not rush out to buy God's Secret Formula in the expectation that it will fully enlighten them in a single reading. Reviews of the book on the Internet are mixed. It seems that many people find the story of the forty years of research and discovery that is mingled with the actual findings about the prime numbers, far too rambling and somewhat conceited. The other way to look at Plichta's account is to recognise that he is providing the full story to ensure that the reader comes to realise how hard it was to achieve the understanding that he eventually reached.
As the story is written, nobody can be under the misapprehension that it was an easy path to discovery, or that Plichta could have whipped up the idea one afternoon in the local beer garden. This was difficult groundbreaking thought, many famous scientists and mathematicians had found the clues before Plichta did, but they had failed to recognise their real meaning.
As for conceit, it is clear from his account of his path to the full discovery of the nature of the Prime Number Cross, that Plichta believes that he has certain gifts, and that he was destined to discover what he has discovered. He does not claim to be a genius, just someone with a deep inquisitiveness that was combined with an ability to grasp difficult concepts. Given Dr Plichta's eventual accomplishments, this is difficult to deny. When the history of the 21st century is written Peter Plichta will rank as one of the great scientific minds of the 2nd Renaissance. But for the moment, he is being ignored.
Institutionalised Science Always Drags Its Feet (30)
Imagine that you are an eminent scientist and that your field in the Flat Earth Law. You have, in good faith and with genuine belief, developed and extended the theory of a flat earth. You have conducted many experiments and verified, at the maximum distances that a theodolite can be used, that the observed data fit the hypothesis of flatness. You have gained academic tenure at a prestigious university and risen to become a professor, on the basis of your research and publications regarding the Flat Earth Law. You enjoy generous funding for your work and you travel widely to lecture on it.
Then someone publishes the facts on the spherical nature of the earth, and consigns the Flat Earth Law to the scrap heap of scientific ideas. Will you applaud the new findings? If not, will you challenge them? How indeed can you deny the new evidence when it is so verifiable? No, you had better just ignore it, and go on for as long as you can, propounding and teaching the false Flat Earth Law.
When Albert Einstein emigrated to the US in 1933 he found that hardly anybody was interested in his theories of relativity. It was only after the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, that Einstein's work gained popular attention there. In pre-war Germany his theories were totally censored.
The Prime Number Cross Revises Many Fields of Knowledge (31)
Plichta writes that, "The solution to the quest for the origins of the material world is characterised by simplicity, clarity and an irresistible elegance." It sounds improbable at first encounter, but Plichta's work shows that our physical world is the result of the distribution of prime numbers. To many people, this is far too mystical a finding.
Plichta is a talented chemist, with a number of key discoveries and patents to his credit, and he notes that in chemistry there is a similar reluctance to be associated with anything metaphysical or other-worldly. He observes that, "Nothing is ever heard of the history of chemistry at our universities. On the contrary, chemists are collectively ashamed of their history which is peopled by magicians, charlatans and mystics."
Although Plichta does not draw direct comparisons between his findings and the knowledge of the ancients, parallels are likely to exist. Already, there is a link being made to a mathematical code of the Quran, and it would seem that the mathematics of the ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, and possibly other civilizations, might be examined for connections. If connections are found, much of our knowledge of ancient history will need to be revised.
Needless to say, vast areas of the exact sciences must now be rewritten. While the empirical findings in fields such as quantum mechanics and cosmology will stand, the theoretical explanations will be swept away. All the texts and curricula will contain erroneous theories that must now be corrected.
There are enormous implications for education systems. Developed countries will have a greater problem than less developed areas, because their educational institutions are more deeply mired in the old, and now superseded, knowledge. Similarly, the research institutions of the West have more academics with heavy intellectual investments in theories that are destroyed by Plichta's findings. What were previously the most advanced scientific centres will take longer to reform themselves than those that have made less progress down what have now been shown to be false theoretical paths.
Public Education Is In Crisis (32)
Even in the closing stages of our Level 3 Civilization, the old factors of production are giving way to new factors. Wealth and living standards used to depend on the efficient use of land, labour, and capital. Knowledge, imagination, and talent are now more significant to economic success. Once we move to a Level 4 Civilization these factors will be even more vital. Sadly, most governments in the West have made a colossal mess of public education systems.
A frank critique of the US system, albeit from the mid 70s, is recorded in Thinking For A Living, by Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker. The situation described in this book still applies in Australia and other developed countries that geared their schools and technical colleges to deliver a factory fodder education, and then neglected to change and reform them as the soft, knowledge centred, sectors of their economies became more important than the old industries. Thus, we see Ministers of Education trumpeting their funding of industrial skills based learning and apprenticeship schemes, at the same time that informed scientists and technologists are contemplating nanofacture and the elimination of all procedural human work from factories.
The public education systems were and are wrongly targeted. They taught the wrong knowledge, even before the impacts of new science. Now, Plichta's discoveries necessitate extensive revisions of texts and curricula, and major retraining of teachers and academics. There is no likelihood of the necessary reforms of public education being completed in time to meet the education needs of the children now being born, let alone those who are already in the various systems.
Access to new education that is based on the new knowledge required to work and contribute in the 21st century is set to become the major issue for parents everywhere. Those who can afford to will be forced to seek solutions outside the various state education systems.
There will be a huge opportunity for emerging city states to provide educational facilities that are suited to the magic age, and thus attract well-off families to live and contribute within their precincts. There are already growing home-schooling movements in many Western nations, and this trend is sure to continue. Although national and state governments are likely to curtail or totally ban education of this sort - because it removes young minds from the sphere of government influence - the eventual outcome of the struggle between state education systems and home-schooling collectives is in no doubt. The old schooling institutions will soon become irrelevant and unpatronised.
Knowledge Weeds and Strange New Seeds (33)
Throughout the entire lifetimes of everyone who is presently alive on this planet, education systems have been planting knowledge in our societies. It is now being discovered that in many cases the plantings were based on incorrect theories and assumptions. Instead of productive fields of soundly based understanding, the knowledge gardens of the present-day are overrun with weeds.
One factor that is delaying the eradication of the old knowledge weeds is the counterintuitive nature of the new science that is driving us forward, to a higher level of civilization. Much of the new knowledge is decidedly strange. Plichta's work illustrates this difficulty quite clearly. Most people can cope well enough with the broad findings that he draws from the Prime Number Cross. Such as, "...Einstein's equation not only connects the three most important physical dimensions which we perceive with our senses (matter, energy and quantity) but also the reverse of these dimensions (space, time and numerical sequence)." There are equations and logic that non-mathematicians can follow, to show these relationships, as well as mathematical proofs for scientists and mathematicians who require them.
However, the implications of the broad findings are more difficult for people to accept, despite the fact that they are so soundly based. For example, Plichta notes that while physicists presently accept that matter is composed of bundles of energy, his reasoning was very different.
He firstly concluded that magnetic energy could not remain static. Electro magnetic energy has no option but to expand at the speed of light. He also reasoned that, "If matter did not exist, not one single atom, there would also be no space. But if only the two of them can exist at the same time, then one would have to be the other, only reversed. When there is no movement, there is also no time. Energy can therefore be nothing else than the reverse of time. The only way to connect space and time is to bring them down to their reciprocal dimensions, matter and energy. In order that no nonsense emerges in this procedure, there must be a plan, and this must be the only one that exists - the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... as ordered by the Prime Number Cross."
These explanations are not presently taught in our schools and universities. Before they are taught, people will have to grapple with the new insights and come to terms with their strangeness.
Puzzling Facts (34)
Albert Einstein once said that, "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." His theories of relativity are undoubtedly difficult for ordinary people to grasp. How can one readily convince one's grandmother that, as the speed of any spacecraft increases, its length reduces and time slows down relative to the time of an observer on the Earth? Despite the fact that both these predictions have been experimentally verified, it is still hard to explain such notions to Granny.
So it is with some of Plichta's findings, the strangeness of the ideas prevents then being easily comprehended. For example, Plichta discovered what he terms a "3-to-the-power-of-4-law" of which the product is the natural number 81, as in 3x3x3x3=34=81. He also found that, "The material that occurs in space and was certainly not generated magically there only fits there if it is constructed according to those regular laws in which the space is arranged, just as a key only fits into a special lock."
Plichta shows that not only are the 81 naturally occurring elements reciprocally linked to each other via their atomic numbers, but that the reciprocal of 81 gives rise to the endless sequence of natural numbers that describe countable matter, 1/81=0.0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)....to infinity.
The initial problem for Granny, and many of the rest of us, is that when the result of dividing 1 by 81 is calculated, the answer is 1/81=0.01234567901234567901... The numbers 012345679 recur endlessly and the number 8 is always missing. How does one reconcile the fact that the result of 1/81 turns out to be different from that which Plichta can show to be true? Non-mathematicians, like one's granny, will be unlikely to find much enlightenment in the proof of the correctness of the presentation. Although the Cauchy-product formulation that Plichta uses in the proof clearly shows how the sequence 0123456789(10)(11)(12)(13)... arises, Granny will still tend to believe the long-division rules that she was taught at school, and which any electronic calculator or computer can confirm.
Nature's Numbers And Human Conventions (35)
The explanation of the above dilemma is that Granny is applying human conventions that dictate how decimal arithmetic is performed. No numbers greater than 9 exist in the decimal system, so there are rules about how to handle calculations with larger values. As Plichta describes the situation, "The number (10) in the familiar decimal form increases the 9 to 10, and this in turn increases the prior 8 by 1 to 9. In the recurring fraction 0.012345679.. the number 8 is missing. ...The missing 8 is an illusion which had until then blocked my way to the novel notion that the reciprocal value of the order of all numbers 00123456789.. is the number 81."
Whether by accident or design the human originators of the conventions of the decimal system created a situation that effectively masked an important clue to the natural laws governing the formation and structure of matter in space.
Dr Plichta's work shows that it is not a coincidence that there are precisely 81 naturally occurring elements, notwithstanding the fact that students in our schools and universities are taught that there are 83 natural, non-radioactive, elements. Because of the structure of the Prime Number Cross there can be 81, and only 81, stable elements. Two of the 83 elements that are termed "natural" are in fact unstable and quickly break down into other elements. The two unstable elements are Technetium with an atomic number of 43, and Promethium with an atomic number of 61.
As Plichta observes, the unstable nature of elements 43 and 61 is glossed over by institutionalised science, and in the glossing over one of the keys to understanding matter and the universe has been obscured from most of humanity. There were by convention 83 natural elements, and while this teaching persisted the door to ultimate knowledge remained closed.
Related:
2nd Renaissance
This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105519.php Fight Iemma - Debnam
All they can say is 'lock em up'
It seems we are in the thick of it again - the stupid, heartless "Law & Order" auction.
Premier Morris Iemma and Opposition leader Peter Debnam are trying to outdo each other with idiotic "tough on crime" policies.
http://sydney.indymedia.org/archive/features/current#10384 http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64701&group=webcast
Homepage:
