Friday, December 21, 2012

astro picture for the day/ plus Golden Bough generalisation of magic and natural magic(mathematical science)


image credit T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF

There's actually bigger downloads of this image; one would have taken me forty minutes to get the whole image;  i didn't bother.

other larger downloadables of this cygnus loop supernova image

------------------------------thought for the day extra

Seems that I posted about the differences between magic and natural magic(mathematics/science) awhile ago. 7/16/12

I've finally gotten around to reading "The Golden Bough".  Actually, I don't think I'll bother finishing it; seems the main themes have already repeated conclusions repeated; and, the rest of the book appears to be review of various sungods(Osirus, Adonis, Dionysius . . . can anybody tell the similarity linguistically to Jesus?).  Although for James Frazer, author of the book, these are more vegetation and farming cycle gods; but, the fact is that the cycle of farming goes with the cycle of the seasons - something astronomical and connected with the sun.  So, his research does indirectly confirm the B.C. timeframe predating of the Jesus Christ mythology.  Many people have noted that Jesus's turning water into wine must be a plagerism of the Dionysius myth, actually.  But, Mr Frazer's book gets a lot more into what I've been trying to point out about the relation of mathematical science and mythology(which modern comparitive mythology researchers don't seem to want to listen to).

What I've been trying to say is that mythology is poetry; poetry is analogy, and analogy is a major property of mathematics and mathematical science.  And, I've tried to trace the evolution of knowledge from ignorance to mathematics; and so, this book has been great for me!

James Frazer shows that before there was religion, there was a world of magic and people called sorcerers who tried to get nature to do their wishes by means of this magic.  Frazer defines religion is a way convenient for the history he found.  For instance, he shows that the Australian aboriginies are into magic and the never evolved to this higher idea of religion(basically, religion is institutionalised magic and magic coupled to ethics and one should say the Priest/King who says they rule by divine right).  In this way, the Aborigines of Australia had preserved the true primitive state before all this religion developed.  What the christian world would call the pagan African religions are actually people who have evolved a higher state of religion; and of course, the christians will tell you they have a higher state of religion than the pagans; but, see my blog!  Getting back to the whole magic thing . . . ;

In my post about magic versus mathematics as white magic, I showed some examples of how religions and magic tries to get nature to do what we want by going backwards.  Frazer gives a whole book showing many more examples. In fact, his original research went into twelve volumes.  All his references are in the twelve volumes; so, I won't try to reference and I didn't jot any of them down; i'll just reference his book.  So, I and Frazer and even Jacob Bronowski(and others like Ernst Casserir) have established the connections and differences between mathematics and previous efforts to understand the universe(mythology), and even some of its backwards nature.  Frazer gets into how magic and religion goes wrong as well.

Mr Frazer pushes the age of similar religions to Jesus Christ much further than even the sungod researchers of today; in that way, he's been ahead of them(although, sungod researchers reference and know about his work; they often don't like the idea of comparison and differences between mathematics and mythology as I've already noted) for awhile now!  And, he does so by a most remarkable commonality between all these different cultures religions; they all have these Priest/Kings who are beheaded and otherwise killed annually; generally yearly(nobody could right or research this book of his today; most cultures have moved on from these pagan practices).  Basically, people mythologized the heavens, the heavens symbolize the farming cycles, and since people's lives depend on the food, if something goes wrong with the harvest at the end of a years cylce, the Priest/King gets beheaded(or killed in some manner), and they bring in a new Priest/King and hopefully, he's a better magician than the last one! 

Here I should note say Romans 13(of the Christian New Testament) says, rulers rule by divine right, and pay your taxes; wonder who wrote this?  There's many mentions of "pay unto caesar what is his" in both the gospels and Pauline epistles as well.  Also, the Pauline Epistle called Titus also has kings get to rule by divine right.  I'm tempted to argue here that the Roman rulers made christianity so they can rule by divine right and not be struck down on a yearly cycle if the crops fail in a given year!  Jesus Christ is a friendly messiah; he dies for your sins; he makes the sacrifice for your bullshit; before, a sacrifice was made in flesh and blood, and no roman ruler wanted that!

James Frazer shows much more of the various customs and where they come from; things like jewelry comes from trying to catch the soul from escaping the body.  Where christmas trees and even christmas comes from.  But, he also gets into taboos and superstitions of all cultures.

Part of what I've tried to show, argue against is the refusal of the supernatural religious to deny a new scientific theory(that's been proven correct experimentally) because it conflicts with their holy sacred not to be touched beliefs. One major such ancient denial of ancient peoples was iron. Basically, they had a taboo against iron. Point is anything new and novel excites suspicion and distrust; the fact of taboos against iron is proof that taboos are made to stop innovation and new ideas.  Mankind is the technologically and scientific dependent species; science is the peacefull adventure; how can mankind understand this when they play such taboo games?

I should have defined taboos earlier.  James Frazer shows there's positive magic and negative magic; positive magic are charms; negative magic leads to taboos. There's two kinds of magic - immitative(analogy) and contact. And, as already indicated, the negative magic leads to taboos.   Taboos and superstitions lead to my point about people playing vagueness games; they're always using evasive language to stop further thought or to trick; some of my favorites are "believe and you will believe", and "god works in mysterious ways."  I like to rewatch a nanotech show not generally available that has for instance Marvin Minky saying, when we finally get nanomanufacturing going, perhaps, we'll build a little car(and he rolls a lego car back and forth); i mean, he's so affraid to say, well, maybe we'll build an a.i. or a space rocket to launch a space station; he's so affraid of som many people pointing out some taboos and fears, that he says, "maybe we'll just build a little car." I find that most people talk in these ways; they're constantly throwing out words to test what your beliefs are; they can't just state facts and logic and not fear reprisal from me or someone else.  Can you imagine scientists and mathematians writing papers where they don't lay down what they did, but say, "did we accomplish our goal?"  Or even "what was the solution to the experiment or calculation we just did?"  Mathematics and science is about testing ideas without buying the solution or holding someone up at gunpoint to get the right answer.  Or even the mere verbal threat of what does this or that result mean socio-politicaly.

Yet, I'm finding that mathematicians and scientists are forced to mix religion(which never says, "question me") and mathematical science - whether they want to or not. It's increasingling that they grow up wanting to.  But, I'm also finding that others do so almost as if a parlay.   Parlay of "Pirates of the Carribean" is a recent finding of vagueness gaming and mixing up religion/science(as christianity did; see for instance this wiki of Origin where it's stated that Origin wanted to make chrisitanity a higher philosophy than hellenism . . . Greek/Plato mathematical philosophy . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen ) .  Basically, all the 'everyone's religion is correct at the same time" is just a big parlay game because argueing with the religious gets nowhere or violent; so everyone says everyone is correct, and there is to be no fact finding or logical anaylses of anybody's theories; how does mankind progress with this parlay philosophy?

I wanted to get the first parlay by the Elizabeth Swan character in "Pirates of the Carribean" but, I guess this will work just fine!


I was remembered something about Pirates of the Carribean having this parlay concept; i was just like this Jack Sparrow character trying to get the word off the tip of my tongue!

-----------------------------------science/technology extra for the day

here's a good sign that the recent ability to engineer proteins by means of artifical evolution is powerfull enough to make arbitrary nanomechanical parts.

I believe i've already linked to an article reporting the recent advances in artifically evolving/engineering proteins; i think that article even mentions a researcher saying he's going full speed ahead on using this ability to making protein nanomanufacturing; the article above is a good sign that he and others can accompish this pretty soon; if not this year, then probably before the next year is out(meaning two years).

-------------------------------note edit extra,


I grew up listening to this album from time to time; little did I know that someday I'd learn where this "John Barleycorn must die" weird album and song idea came from.  I found it in James Frazier's "Golden Bough"! 


1 comment:

  1. "I feel that the word disruptive has been used in more than one sense; and, nobody ever bothers thinking about the refusal to question ones beliefs and the refusal to think of new ideas(science and technology) because it would disrupt their beliefs(supposedly); this disruptive influence to a more rational future is never what is meant by disruptive; my efforts to point this out to various people is always met by silence(a form of vagueness gaming; see above link for at least some discussion of the vagueness gaming those who don't want to think rationally do; the rest of the blog discusses more of the evolution from ignorance and irrationality).
    I should note also that when somebody accomplishes something great, someone else always tries to go in the opposite direction; if it's something rational, they try to chear on and redraw the philosophical lines towards irrational; this is also something my blog traces."

    I wrote the above when commenting elsewhere; this is something I meant to say when linking to church father Origen wiki.

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