thought for the day

This is some latest results from ALMA a hugh like hundreds of micrometer wavelength interferometer in South America which should get exciting scientifically.


"Philosophy is harder than mathematics." - Plato

Calculus courses usually start with, more or less, Fermat's tangeant method and the algebraic equivalent.  They then work out various general derivative formulas.  The Integral is introduced as a sum first and then they point out there's these anti-derivatives. It's a mystery and everyone just says Newton was a genius for noticing and making the connection between the derivative and the integral in the "Fundamental theory of the Calculus." But, John Stillwell, in his "Mathematics and It's History" does some history detective work to show how Isaac Newton knew about this connection.

The Arabs brought the indian idea of zero and place value numerology to recast much Greek mathematics in a simpler form.  This new expression of mathematics was more generalizable as well to higher dimensions; but, that is getting beyond even them. Did the Hindu/Arab numerals really make Greek mathematics obsolete?  Not really, not until Descartes coordinate geometry.  But, as it turns out Descartes had a precursor as well. 

Oresme around 1300 introduced coordinates and noticed  that distance is the area of velocity.  That mere observation is as far as he could take it and then the European 'Black plague' happened.  How this bit of information survived and got into Galileo's hands nobody knows(as far as I know!).

The idea of speed as the slope of distance appears to be due to Torricelli(remember him as the guy who solved the water in the mines in James Burke's 'Connections: episode 3'?  And, he got the bit about distance as the area of velocity from Galileo.  How this bit got to Isaac Newton, I havn't heard(apparently neither has John Stillwell).  But it did.

In fact, Isaac Newton got his news from an Isaac Barrow.  His claim to fame is that he knew of this and passed it on to Isaac.  So that from Italy all the up to England pretty quickly. And so we see how people are finding and combining ideas from previous people.  This is no flash in the pan insights.  Isaac Newton got his idea for actually computing derivatives from Fermat of course.

I bring this up cause it shows how ideas are spread and combined in weird ways(even if we still can't quite see how ideas are preserved despite plagues and distance . . . including cross culture idea transfers), and to point out something about those initial observations later to be combined and then generalized by Fermat's tangent method.  The observations of distance is the area of velocity and velocity is the slope of distance are like Jacob Bronowski's 'inferred units' which I explain in my "Origins of Mathematical knowledge"(third post of this blog). I'll just review the point about sentences; how in a sentence, certain noun words make sense with certain verbs.  Here we have certain concepts generated by others and put in sentence form.  What we have further is the combining of the two.  By seeking to define this creative combination, mathematicians opened up a river of knowledge - differential equations, calculus of variations, complex analyses, and real analyses, integral equations.  It all comes out filling in the gap between the creative combining of the two observations.

----------------------science/technology extra

A year or so ago, there was a report that Europe made making memrister a.i. happen as a national priority.  Here, we see just one recent news about making memrister chips, Memrister chips within weeks .  This is a jump in computing ability that's pretty big; it should be interesting just in the next year to see what affect it has on all of humanity really.

thought for the day/Venice

Image Credit & Copyright: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

There's been many Lagoon nebula pictures through the years; this is just the latest one. Since Venice is built in a Lagoon, I thought I'd go ahead and post this latest pretty good amateur photo.


". . . as the work of man, science is subject to his arbitrariness and to all the imperfections of his mental powers. There would essentially be no more science for a man gifted with an unbounded understanding- a man for whom the final conclusions, which we attain through a long chain of inferences, would be immediately evident truths." - Richard Dedekind

I've argued the dark ages were brought about by an anti-Greek knowledge, and pointed out some of the history of how that Greek knowledge was brought about into Europe again - through the Arab Spanish Andalucía around 1060A.D. One light of the dark ages was Venice.

Well, I don't think the Venice we see today was built pre- a 1000A.D.  But, the founding and growth of Venice was influenced by the Barbarian destruction of Rome and Italy.

This is the first major building of Venice, the Torcello church on the Torcello island.

The Venicians would go on to build in the lagoon lots more great architecture(in the form of Christian churches).  Saint Marks Cathedral is probably the greatest.

Apparently, the Venicians were told that Saint Marks bones were in the city of Alexandria.  They went to Alexandria and brought those bones back to Venice and Saint Marks cathedral. Now, what were Saint Mark's bones doing in Alexandria of all places?  Could the Gospel of mark have been written in Library of Alexandria?

The Venicians profited one from salt trade and two the crusades. It was after the crusades that Venice started becoming what we see today. They brought back these Roman horses.  I guess these were original Caesar horses.

Venice was plundered by Napolean Bonaparte for his war to rule the world.  The horses were taken to France, but then later returned.

Venice was where Marco Polo came from.  Marco Polo went to tour as far East as he could.  He was to gather as much information about what's East of everything the Venicians know about.

Venice was also home to some of the events surrounding the life of Galileo.  Some say one of his big mistakes was leaving Venice and hanging out on the mainland where Rome could get their hands on him.

Venice was a world power up to the Portugal/Spain, and then French and English plundering of the Americas around late 1490. Before then, Venice coins were the market standard.  Venice coins have been found as far as China.

Venice was also the worlds first representative democracy with a system of checks and balances.  They are the worlds oldest Nation.

After the discovery of the Americas, Venice became more of a pleasure capital.  They were known as the brothel of Europe where princes got their education.  They're pretty much still that way. They now have a university dedicated to figuring out how to keep the sea from swallowing up Venice.

-------------------------------------science/technology extra

Mostly just dna-nanotech again!  Researchers's have combined dna-nanotech with temperature sensitive smart materials to control chemical reactions. Using Temperature-Sensitive Smart Polymers to Regulate DNA-Mediated Nanoassembly

We're practically in a nanomanufacturing era now.  Although a dna-nanotech era, it can do much.

Some science news, potentially anyways, is gravity meters detecting gravity waves is imminant .  This is the second announcement of the same breakthrough in a month; they're obviously excited about it.

Another exciting astronomy news is the Russian Spectr R interplanetary radio interferometer.  They say it will go into full science mode in late august(whatever that means, it must mean 'soon'! It will still be in reduced duty cycle until October.  Well, it's a big project.  It's coming(vastly greater radio astronomy).

-19oct2013 edit

A technology the Venice people had that I've learned of recently is mirror making. They apparently started making the best mirrors around 1200 A.D.  They put the manufacturing of mirrors on an isolated island and kept it a secret.  This was just one of the sources of revenue that made Venice what it was then and now.

quote/thought for the day

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.

Here's an image of an irregular dwarf galaxy(all irregular galaxies are dwarfs) 16 million light years out.  The Andromeda galaxy is two million light years out.  As with all Hubble space telescope images of galaxies, the surrounding inter galactic space with galaxies spiraling off to infinity is more fun than the individual galaxy highlighted(at least most of the time and in this picture). 


"you become a mathematician so that people should study you, not that you should study Leibniz!" - Paul Erdos

Paul Erdos is referring to some mathematians he found who were studying the metaphysics of Leibniz and not mathematics. I myself am finding that mathematicians today want to study metaphysics and connect it with mathematics Plato/Pythagoras style.  They do so as a social grace; some think that by studying the "Tao of Physic" they can gain some creative insight. I like to say "the dark side of the force is not to be under-estimated." and/or, "the dark side of the force is strong with this one."

A mathematician defines and sweeps away vagueness; it doesn't use it to hide behind like the god believers do.

- Getting on to some other "thought for the day."

I was rereading E.T. Bell's "Magic of Numbers", and in it he pointed out some connections that James Burke didn't find.  E.T. Bell pointed out that musical sounds could have come about by means of the plucking of the strings of the bows that ancients would have used to shoot arrows with. 

Really, we don't know how Pythagoras experimented to see the numbers of musical notes.  But, the fact that the plucking of the bows created a tonal sound is interesting.

I don't see how else Pythagoras could have been inspired to experiment with different length "cords." So, I'm going to have to say this is a highly probable connection.

What's of more importance is that people were plucking their bow strings for thousands of years before Pythagoras, but none ever thought to experiment or apply mathematics to it; to see the connections and a systematic understanding of those sounds.  It was only when someone from the right perspective, a mathematical one, that the connection and inspiration is made.

It's a bit like a strobe light that can't see the airplane's propeller(I used to experiment with this when young in my garage; i'd turn out the lights, spin the propellers of the toy airplance hanging in the garage and turn on the strobelight; you'd get some weird propeller affects depending on whether the the strobelight was going faster or slower than the airplane propellers rotation rate) until you adjust the strobelight to the right frequency of the airplane's propeller.  People have their perspectives(their strobelights), and if it's not on the right frequency, they just don't get or see things starring right in front of them.  One of the mathematicians tricks is to always take the general viewpoint.

I'm amazed at the god believers who don't see the messianic strain in the Jesus Christ tale.  Christians for one have been reading that bible through and through for two thousand years(give or take a few hundred years), and they never notice all the Roman and Herodian bias in the New Testament.  They think it's about . . . love!  I'm amazed at the scientists and mathematians who understand the difference between pseudoscience(god religions) and true mathematical science.  Maybe they do, but for socially bound up reasons, they choose to ignore it.

Humanity is the science and technologically dependent species; it is what defines us from the other life on Earth; this is obvious and easy to see for anyone who has stopped themselves to think about things, yet, it doesn't appear that most people on Earth today have hit on this idea.  We're going into the nanotechnology era; dna-nanomanufacturing is one pathway; recently, Dna-nanotechnology has been given the ability to control chemical reactions, thermodynamic smart material dna-nanomanufacturing .  We're going into the nano era right now, and humanity is not psychologicaly ready.

Consider James Frazer's "The Golden Bough."  As a species that should want the truth, we should welcome this study of magic and religion. Yes, it states the truth that religion is made up.  But, it also shows how mythology was a kind of science of its day; or that was the hope.  Religion developed as each religion proved to be empty.  We should find this fascinating to know of this evolution of thought.  But, James Frazer is considered bad for pointing out that their religions were false and that is why the religions evolved form one stage to another. People have this 'conditioned' strobe light perspectives, a kind of religious zeal, that people's beliefs should not be questioned.  This is the path to the dark side of the force, to Nazyisms.

quote for the day

Image Credit: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ) & DSS;
Assembly and Processing: Robert Gendler


"If the past is the roadmap to the future, then the yet unwritten acts promise forays, by intrepid mathematicians of today and tomorrow, into new worlds presently populated with seemingly unattainable mathematical truths." - Ken Ono

- Dna-nanomanufacturing news,

Four stranded dna compined with two stranded dna Dna was discovered to be two stranded.  There's been alternative artificial dna made before using different amino acids.  Now, we've got four stranded dna! In fact, in an article I did not keep track of, four stranded dna has been found naturaly I think in human cells much less other lifeform's cells. So, this is pretty big science news and nanomanufacturing news. Dna-nanotech news-wise, this combining of four stranded with two stranded dna allows for stiffer stronger dna-nanomanufacturing.  It can of course combine with the more flexible dna-nanotechnologies already developed.  I'd say this is significant for dna-nanomanufacturing's ability to do usefull work and bootstrap to an even more robust nanomanufacturing base.

It's almost been a year since a great group of dna-nanomanufacturing developments allowed for faster creation of arbitrary dna-nanostructures, then bringing down the cost numerous times. I've seen plenty of indications that researchers are just too busy experimenting to write up a scientific paper per dna-nanostructure. Quiet before the storm is the modo here!

- There's other exciting scientific news. Inflationary generalization of the Big Bang theory has been confirmed again. It was confirmed in the late 1980s with the Cobe satellite.  The recent Wmap has made things interesting, showing a north and south pole to our cosmos.  But, that type of stuff can only make theories previously proven correct even more interesting(like the way Newton's theory was generalized by Einstein's theories of Relativity). The article explaining more confirmation for Inflationary theory . Another article related to neutrinos . And related to Neutrinoes, is the CERN/Lhc people who discovered the some Higgs particles think they've finally found some hints of dark matter, hints of supersymmetric particles found in LHC data. I doubt I've given every exciting new particle physics/cosmololgy news!

- A.I. news has also been pretty exciting.  Previously, I had found(not sure if I posted about this) European researchers trying to make A.I. happen by means of memristers. This appears to be a different group. Chips that mimic the brain .

 - I've seen some stuff about gigantic virus's that could put the Biology theories on their heads.  This is pretty exciting from that standpoint in my opinion. Giant virus's make the line between life and non-life even more fuzzy?

- Space exploration should be getting exciting.  SpaceX is about to start making space happen; a launch per month by next year!

astro picture for the day/ thought for the day - James Burke connections and social conditioning

The above picture is of the Earth and the Moon off in the distance.  The picture is taken from a Gemini program spacecraft.  The U.S. space program started from the Mercury program, to the Gemini, to the Apollo. I can't find any farely good pictures of the Earth from orbit from the Mercury program.  I'm pretty sure the Yuri Gagarin flight didn't take very good quality views.  So, I found quite a lot of good pictures of Earth from orbit during the Gemini program days.

Why do I put a Gemini picture up?  Because of James Burke's connections idea. I of course make a bit of connections between James Burke's connections and Jacob Bronowski's ideas, in my "Origins of Mathematical Knowledge." I point out certain peculiar connections that are similar to Jacob Bronowski's ideas, and argue that maybe some if not a lot of James Burke's other connections are weak or not really a connection at all. Surelly the long bow did not lead to the invention of the cannon? But, maybe there were various connections like social connections between the Knight, the Knights influence on the economy and technology(Jacob Bronowski like connections) and the longbow.  It's not that the one can logically deduced the long bow from Knights on horseback, but different almost purely human connections. These types of connections are similar to an interesting social connection of the space program(both Soviet and American).

Basically, the space program led to the environmental movement.  When people saw how finite the Earth's resources were from space, they became more concerned than ever before for the environment.  People had their concerns before.  But the views of the Earth form orbit created another wave of environmentalism - almost a religion.  What to say about that?

Well, there's all kinds of influences like this.  Like maybe some people grow up with technological accidents, and so are influenced to hate science and technology.  Others profit from it, and so embrace science and technology. This could be generalized to social conditioning.  People grow up told to like certain things, and hate others.  They don't ask questions and shed their social conditioning.  They hate/like no matter what.

thought for the day/ philosopher bloopers

ESA/NASA Hubble space telescope

After the discovery of Uranus, philosopher Hegel said he had logically proved that there can be no more planets.  At the time, Ceres was discovered, and people took that as a disproof of Hegel's logic.  Soon after Hegel's life, astronomers discovered Neptune by means of mathematics first.

Around the time that mathematical astronomers were predicting yet another planet beyond Uranus(due to odd motions of the gaseous giants), an Auguste Comte predicted that we'll never know the chemical constitution of the stars.  At almost the same time Joseph Fraunhofer, Bunson, and Kirchhoff found that the spectrum of light codes up the electron orbitals(they didn't know it like that), and essentially gives information of the chemicals, and physics of the stars(and atoms).

I suppose it would help to actually see what their logic was, but these two examples are a little bit contrary to my pointing out Jacob Bronowski/James Burke's connections.  Another theory that got disproved is the aether theory.  Some would argue that quantum mechanics and even Relativity theory brings the aether back in a new form. Of course, there's plenty of examples of logic and theory predicting things.  There's the famous Ole Rømer finding of the finite speed of light, anti-matter, neutrinos.  All this really brings up is that when dealing with the real world, empirical data needs to be gathered to determine the truth of logic and how far the theory applies.

--------------------------------------------------nano news extra,

I had figured that after all the breakthroughs of almost a year ago now, in the ability to make arbitrary dna-nanostructures at far greater speeds than before, that dna-nanotechnologists were probably going to be almost too busy to report each and every new nano-structure on a daily basis.  As reported here, and it's noted that this is some that has been made available for free(hence, there's probably some people doing things that they just are keeping to themselves for now), the researchers have indeed been too busy to report everything. foresight latest on dna-nanomanufacturing .  I actually havn't viewed the more technical report, as my computer doesn't have the software to open it; it's not exactly my computer.

thought for the day/ Disruptive technology disproven; or at least generalised beyond Eric Drexler's wildest dreams

I've seen many documentaries about the beginnings space program that led to the Apollo space program, but this was 1) a new one, 2) I liked it.  I'm not sure why I like this one over all others; so, I guess we'll see if others like watching it!

I wrote this recently; considering no reply from all the 'disruptive technology' lovers, I'd say I've won the argument; so, I'm posting it here,

The reason why Malthusian doomsday scenarios have always failed is because more knowledge allows us to overcome the limitations/efficiencies of our previous knowledge(Malthuses overpopulation theories also led to Darwin's "Natural Selection"; so it led to something real).
But, along comes Eric Drexler with his "disruptive technology", and everyone jumps on the idea for one personal reason or another no doubt. Ope, maybe the Malthusian nightmare scenario will happen due to Eric Drexler's fight against future shock or something like that. I think Eric Drexler's original motivation was what happens when an economy spins out of control due to super advanced products hitting the market. I had argued that we need an Isaac Asimov "Foundation" so that knowledge/skills isn't lost due to whatever social chaos might come from some sudden technological advance. To say the least, the vagaries of everyones wish/fear of "disruptive technology' has kept everyone from taking my idea seriously.

------------------------------------------science extra for the day

I don't want to get into all the famous volcanic eruptions, like Mount St Helens, Pinatobo, and the list goes on. But, a recent breakthrough in how volcanoes work has been published(linked below).

A hugh volcano, almost Mount Vesuvius like, has been erupting on and off and threatening Mexico city for a long time.  Recently, our technological age has gotten some great video of its smaller bursts.

Popocatepetl erupted again a few weeks after the electrifying blast above. 

major understanding of how volcanoes work