It appears that I never finished this post! I mean we're talking about three years later I come back to pretty much rewright this entire thing, and outside of a picture of the Capital building, the post is blanck!
I appear to have meant to talk about the U.S. Capital building and non-Euclidean geometry. What could I possibly have been thinking back then? I know where I was going back then. The U.S government with it's Constitution is generally held as an example of axiomatic reasoning. Historians(mostly rationalists mathematicians like Morris Kline in his "Mathematics and Western Culture") have noted various intellectuals of the period that had an influence on the founding fathers of the U.S.A. John Locke is probably the most famous one. Thomas Jefferson read Volney's "Ruins of Empires." Volney wrote about religions destroying empires in this book. He also has a chapter in it about the sungod origins of Jesus Christ. He appears to be the first with this insight; he got the idea from comparison of astrology and the Gospels and various old-testament passages. So, America was founded on the idea of mathematical axioms(the constitution and the supreme court that upholds the constitution).
The only problem for the founding fathers, which no-one notes, is that around the same time the founding fathers were trying to make a more rational nation across the pond, mathematics was going through a bit of a revolution. They were finding they could change up the axioms and come up with alternative but logically consistent geometries(they quickly moved to doing the same with algebra, and then in the early 1900s, logic itself!).
One could explore the philosophical implications of this till the wells run dry. Me? I'm going to talk about something else.
Jacob Bronowski likes to point out the similarities between mathematics and the arts. Mostly, he just points out poetry and mathematics; that poetry and mathematics are both analogies. Poetry is metaphors and similies, and mathematics is abstraction, and abstraction is analogy. He knows that mythology is poetry, but he doesn't really get into it. I went ahead and checked it out; the summary is my Gospel of Truth, first post of this blog. But, the arts and mathematics has their differences as well.
Art tends to be whatever they want. Mathematics tends to require 'truth' defined by a deductive process. Science requires at least experimental/observation confirmation. That's fine for the most part. Art is nice for decorations. It's generally harmless. But, there seems to be a form of art, of mythology that says, I am the truth . . . and refusal to reason about that truth or whether it is true or not. James Frazer in his "The Golden Bough" shows logical and historical evidence to suggest that religion can be defined as politicized mythology. Mythology for the purpose of appeasing and controlling the masses(E.T. Bell, in his "Magic of Numers" notes that Democracy can be defined as 'mob rule.'); see the last quote of my Gospel of Truth from Emperor Constantine's right hand man, Eusebius.
Now, I'm finding an analogy between gangs, cults, and religions. Religions are just bigger cults. Cults are just gangs with a mythology they make up to make themselves divine.
As I've mentiond in my disproof of the existence of god, Gödel's theorem proves that a finite set of consistent axioms cannot prove an infinity of truths. If the set of axioms is inconsistent though, then they can prove anything. Mathematics chooses the finite set of consistent axioms. The supernatural believers choose the finite inconsistent set of axioms to prove everything . . . without explaining anything. They also say, we have faith that 'god did it' to everything. If it's bad to them, they just say, "God works in mysterious ways." They will go to violence to maintain the power they have because they are part of this religious order. In studying 'gangs' we have window on numerous 'religions' coming and going and fanatic followers who will not listen to reason, or solve problems by reason. They solve their problems by violence. This is an edit after making the initial post. What follows is some characteristics I found after watching the first ten or so 'ganglands.'
Religion is about instilling fear to control; Santa Clause won't bring you presents unless your a good kid. Jesus Christ won't save you unless you believe in him(which oh by the way says pay your taxes to the Roman empire).
Gangsters settle questions by fear and violence. Human beings who haven't forgotten the childhood curiosity they were born with, reason. The difference between humans and the other animals is reason.
Gangs always have symbols to indicate who's part of the club. Usually, there's some kind of violent initiation. Around 9:00 minutes of season 1: episode 13( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrgXBs0iv7Y ) of the gangland account of the M.S.-13 gang shows MS-13's violent initiation 'ritual'. Gangland has like six or seven seasons/years of gang documentaries as well. Is religion violent rituals? Maybe not today. But, people go to these religions for protections against the fearmongering in the outside world. It's generally, socially regarded that you shouldn't kill someone in a church. As I indicate in my 'Gospel of Truth/part 2', the various Christian factions of the time of the fall of the Roman empire were at each others throats, killing each other. In fact, the history of the first half the dark ages reads like one faction, whether Antioch or Alexandrian, were fighting for the rights to the religion. One could say that this gangster violence has only lessoned in recent history because of the influence of the founding father's 'great experiment.'
People end up in their gangs, and fear leaving it because they won't be part of the crown anymore. They'll be socially chastised by their former gang members.
Maintaining of reputation. Japanese before, during and after World War 2 often expressed their fear of maintaining their reputation and 'honor'. 'Honor' is a gangster notion. You'll hear it over and over again. Political factions are often defending their 'honor.'
Kings/queens, and Chain of commands are central features of all gangs.
When a given person is trying to survive, it's better to join up with someone. Joining these gangs also serve the purpose of protection from other gangs. They form their chains of command. In the end, they don't solve their problems by reason, but by violent means. This happens over and over again; I'm talking about tribes forming nations from hundreds of thousands of years ago to the beginning of agriculture all the way up to industrialism and America. Eventually someone says, o.k. lets just have a compromise and make democracy. We'll vote. This all sounds good, but the fact is that democracy is proof of fear mongering and refusal to listen/reason.
Let me give an example of vagueness gaming. "The rice is really good". My father seems to have this tendency to try to get you to do something like eat his food. This is certainly a harmless example. But, the way he does it proves vagueness gaming. He tells you the rice is good even though the main part of the meal is chili, he's trying to get you to eat the food from the day before. Damn, I can't seem to find my other examples of these evasive vague talk. I could have sworn I wrote down a few more examples. Basically, these other examples show that people talk like the example above to avoid having to reveal some disturbing fact, or to deal with a disturbing situation. Maybe for instance, some ugly person will say or ask how good she looks, the person might be kind and say something like, "oh, lets see what the neighbors think." I find these types of talk almost everyday. In fact, I've had to live far more stickier situations. I've had black's who didn't even know me accuse me of rascism and attacked me. When I point this out to the police, I'm met with silence, and then they throw me in the psych ward as soon as they can; at which point they don't argue the facts, they just use this evasive language of "are you trying to hurt them." And then, they diagnosed me as schizophrenic.
So, I've pointed out how democracy is actually proof of fear groups/gangs. I've given examples of fear in people's language and manipulative language. I bet people who choose to escape reality to religions to wipe away their sins for free will not stop because of pointing these things out!
I would think that most people(mathematicians included and maybe especially!) would raise an eyebrow or two at my thought of the day here. What does the capital building and non-euclidean geometries have to do with one another? Most people would probably be asking what are non-euclidean geometries?
ReplyDeleteNon-Euclidean geometries are generaly about switching up the axiomatics of Euclid's geometry. There's projective geometries which have been used to classify non-euclidean geometries(this was done by Felix Klien in the late 1800s; it was one of the major programs of the 1800s). And then, there's Riemannian geometries which are differential geometries(Gauss and I suppose some due to Leonard Euler studies how to derive the overall geometry by considering the local curvatures of the local space; Bernard Reimann generalized this with topological considerations).
So what do these non-Euclidean geometries have to do with American and the capital building? Axiomatics. It's actually not true that America was the first nation to lay down the law(axiomatics); but, America's axiomatics has been the most successfull in Human history. But, those axiomatics(the U.S. Constitution) were obsolete the day they were printed. The so called founding fathers knew this; that's why we have the ability to 'amend the law'. This is where I'm connecting the two - the U.S. constitution and axiomatics and non-Euclidean geometries.
ReplyDeleteThe day the U.S. was born, the founding fathers ideas were made obsolete from mathematicians such as Sachiai to Frederick Gauss to a Bolyai(actually both the father and son came up with non-Euclidean geometries), and even in Russia with a Lobochavski. They all switched the axiomatics(primarily the fifth postulate about paralleles). They all came up with non-standard but consistent geometries. Each others geometries were different; some were negative curvature, others positive. But, the bottom line is that they took the bottom out of percieved reality. But, over in America during the same time and over the last two hundred years, people have gone about their daily lives as if the universe and the social order of America are set in stone.
While the majority of Humanity since the first non-Euclidean geometries were made has gone about their lives as if the Euclidian geometry is the actual physical universe, and the laws of the land are the holy truth of ethics and the way everyone should live.
ReplyDeleteBut, the mathematicians went about the last two hundred plus years as if rebel bikers; they'd axiomatize algebra and analyses and come up with non-standard everything. In the 1930s, they did the same to logic(that's not all they did with logic as well!).
It wasn't just the switching of axiomatic any branch of mathematics that has defined the mathematics of the last two hundred years, but mathematicians learned to solve some of those problems by looking at the axiomatics. In much the same way Einstein looked at the Galilean axioms and then derived Newtonian laws, mathematicians looked at the axiomatics and derived/classified much of the algebra created, whether classically or through this axiomatic manipulation(some mathematicians consider it 'postulate piddling.')
Number was the fundamental mathematics for tens of thousands of Human history - not after the 1800s. Set theory became the fundamental mathematics(some mathematicians consider category theory the new fundamental mathematics past set theory; me, i consider category theory theory a generalization due to lattice theory . . . and universal elements . . . ;). There's analogies between set theory and logic; some mathematians tried to derive all of mathematics from logic; the result was three thousand page volumes of Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica"; mathematicians don't read this!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is where and when i would try to even give a hint of the mathematics done since the 1800s. Let me just say that mathematicians consider the last two hundred years to be the greatest age of mathematics ever. The seventeen hundreds dwarfed all the mathematics created over tens of thousands of years. The last two hundred years has created an abundance that is indescribable. All histories of mathematics essentially stops around 1940. After that, you should just go to the American matheamtical monthly bulletin, notices, and the journals themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe major point is that despite what most people want to think, axiomatizing ethics is not an absolute. Just right there, I don't like the nanotechnologists dream of confining all of humanity here on earth. But, the shear abundance of knowledge is also an issue.
ReplyDeleteNobody in a lifetime can take it all in. Unless, we go transhuman! This gets into my point about how humans(and multi-cellular life) cut themselves off from the infinit reality that is the universe. And, that our science and technological dependence defines our intelligence and is about reestablishing those connections; becoming technological completes those loops that multi-cellular life broke. Nanotechnology can complete this process. And, it's only by becoming transhuman that we can take in all this mathematical knowledge.
But, well, people today are as usual a confused lot(the biblical lot! there's is a thing about lot and how people use the word phrase 'people have their lot'!).
ReplyDeleteI think the nanotechnologists/singulatarians are a confused lot. They think you can turn all the information that defines you and put them into a nano-crystal. By doing this you/they will achieve immortality. I don't agree with this. I think that our stable non-equilibrium reality defines our intelligence; it's what allows us to overcome our finiteness/axiomatics defined at least in certain amounts of time before we go through a bifercation point which creates new structures which defines a new axiomatics.
I believe we need to use nanotechnology to help monitor and keep our dynamical selves going.