In the beginning there was paradox: there was nothing and there was everything. In the end there was paradox: there was nothing and there was everything. In other words, the beginning is identical to the end, and in this identity there is nothing and everything.
This is how things got started, and this is why there is something instead of nothing. Our particular universe is a manifestation of some unfathomable number of possible universes. Each possible universe also exists, although we may be forever forbidden access to anything other than our own universe.
Time is a function of any specific universe; this is to say, without a universe there can be no time as time is what is formed when there are relations amongst parts. Space is also a function of relations amongst parts. Ergo, no relations means no spacetime.
Thus, we cannot get back to the singularity of the big bang because this is the initial point before time and space came into existence. Spacetime was created when the singularity became fragmented: its fragments formed the relations that both require and create spacetime.
Every universe begins the same; i.e., every universe starts from the same singularity. This is because the singularity transcends any specific spacetime matrix; thus, while any given universe blossoms forth from the singularity creating its own specific manifestations and its own unique spacetime structure, the singularity remains intact as the central force driving all possible manifestations. It is, in a sense, the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle.
The singularity is the ultimate paradox: it exists, and yet does not exist as existence is a function of some spacetime; it is nothing as something can only exist inside a spacetime matrix, yet it is everything as any instance of things is manifest only because of its fragmentation.
In the beginning there was I am & I am not.
Showing posts with label singularity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label singularity. Show all posts
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Notes
New category of entries called "Notes," intended to capture rough sketches of scattered thoughts for possible later reference. Difference from (Re)Search posts will be the obvious lack of links to outside sources: simply pouring out some contents from my mind.
So I find myself circling around relationships in terms of the number one and the number eleven. 1 & 11. One is, obviously, the thing of itself, and eleven being two thing in themselves standing together in a relationship. Could be a human to a tree, or a fish to the sea, or a collection of bikes to a set of roads. Basically anything collected as 1 unit in relation to another collection becomes 11.
* 11 as the tarot card Justice.
* 1 as the tarot card The Magician.
Thinking within the tarot, I also bring in 2, which is what 1 + 1 come together to form, and get reference to The High Priestess.
Here I arrive at a model of duality: two things together become one thing, this one thing defined by the set of relationships between the two things—the ‘&’ in One and Other. Note that One as singularity, Other as singularity, with reference to the idea that a singularity is empty, yields that the whole of the manifestation is in the ‘&’, and that One all by itself is equal to nothing, or 1 = 0.
So we can bring in The Fool to this little tarot oriented structure, an interpretation of duality.
At the singularity that is formed at the meeting point of the empty polarities, there is a ‘balanced’ or ‘just’ relation: it is when the singularities are non-empty—already being influenced by the tugs of Other polarities—that the ‘just’ relationship between One and Other can become ‘unjust’ or ‘unbalanced’.
* Just & Unjust form a duality, as do Balanced & Unbalanced.
In the Rider-Waite deck of the tarot:
* The High Priestess holds The Law half concealed: 1 / 2; 1 whole, 2 parts; 1 in relation to 2; 2 = 1 + 1; 1 / 1 + 1; 1 and 1 and 1.
* There are the 2 pillars, One white and the Other black.
* A fourfold relationship between the pillars, the Priestess, and the Law.
* Connection between Law and Justice.
Note that ‘numerology’, as displayed throughout this post, seems as a three-fold mental tool, kind of like acrobatics, sleight of hand, and a filing system for the mind. The meaningful relations it creates are both illusory and real (much like any other meaning created by any other means), and, like all interpretation, are ultimately in the ‘I’ of the beholder.
* I as singularity is empty, I as Jungian Self is empty.
* I = 1 = 0.
* I = Interpretation.
* Interpretation dependent upon One and Other.
* O & O = I.
I need to reformulate some of my expressions. It seems better to express Martin’s “M = D + P” as M <=> D & P, and the same would hold for my “E = I + O.” This would make more sense out of Energy = Input + Output, mentioned in a previous post, which I now realize doesn’t quite hold with the notion of the Law of Conservation of Energy, as written about in said post—will have to amend that.
* I & O can also be thought about in terms of One & Other.
* Other is not-self (not One); i.e., O & ~O is equivalent to One & Other.
* O & ~O <=> M, where M = E.
For potential readers:
* <=> is parsed as 'if and only if'.
* ~ is parsed as 'not'.
So I find myself circling around relationships in terms of the number one and the number eleven. 1 & 11. One is, obviously, the thing of itself, and eleven being two thing in themselves standing together in a relationship. Could be a human to a tree, or a fish to the sea, or a collection of bikes to a set of roads. Basically anything collected as 1 unit in relation to another collection becomes 11.
* 11 as the tarot card Justice.
* 1 as the tarot card The Magician.
Thinking within the tarot, I also bring in 2, which is what 1 + 1 come together to form, and get reference to The High Priestess.
Here I arrive at a model of duality: two things together become one thing, this one thing defined by the set of relationships between the two things—the ‘&’ in One and Other. Note that One as singularity, Other as singularity, with reference to the idea that a singularity is empty, yields that the whole of the manifestation is in the ‘&’, and that One all by itself is equal to nothing, or 1 = 0.
So we can bring in The Fool to this little tarot oriented structure, an interpretation of duality.
At the singularity that is formed at the meeting point of the empty polarities, there is a ‘balanced’ or ‘just’ relation: it is when the singularities are non-empty—already being influenced by the tugs of Other polarities—that the ‘just’ relationship between One and Other can become ‘unjust’ or ‘unbalanced’.
* Just & Unjust form a duality, as do Balanced & Unbalanced.
In the Rider-Waite deck of the tarot:
* The High Priestess holds The Law half concealed: 1 / 2; 1 whole, 2 parts; 1 in relation to 2; 2 = 1 + 1; 1 / 1 + 1; 1 and 1 and 1.
* There are the 2 pillars, One white and the Other black.
* A fourfold relationship between the pillars, the Priestess, and the Law.
* Connection between Law and Justice.
Note that ‘numerology’, as displayed throughout this post, seems as a three-fold mental tool, kind of like acrobatics, sleight of hand, and a filing system for the mind. The meaningful relations it creates are both illusory and real (much like any other meaning created by any other means), and, like all interpretation, are ultimately in the ‘I’ of the beholder.
* I as singularity is empty, I as Jungian Self is empty.
* I = 1 = 0.
* I = Interpretation.
* Interpretation dependent upon One and Other.
* O & O = I.
I need to reformulate some of my expressions. It seems better to express Martin’s “M = D + P” as M <=> D & P, and the same would hold for my “E = I + O.” This would make more sense out of Energy = Input + Output, mentioned in a previous post, which I now realize doesn’t quite hold with the notion of the Law of Conservation of Energy, as written about in said post—will have to amend that.
* I & O can also be thought about in terms of One & Other.
* Other is not-self (not One); i.e., O & ~O is equivalent to One & Other.
* O & ~O <=> M, where M = E.
For potential readers:
* <=> is parsed as 'if and only if'.
* ~ is parsed as 'not'.
Friday, August 22, 2008
A Fragment on Singularity
Here’s a funny thing, I have tried several times to write for this blog, and got bogged down in getting it perfect—like I had to say everything all at once, and in a way that was entirely correct. What ends up happening is I either save, or more often, delete the entry, and don’t really return to it—although I may return to the ideas several times while not writing about them.
This is contrary and counter-productive to an aspect of what I am trying to accomplish here, which is, namely, to start writing philosophy again, to pick up the ideas I was working on in times past.
Now, part of this hesitation to post incomplete or partially formed positions and thoughts is because one day I want to make this blog more public, and I want it to be functionally fabulous in relating the ideas it sets out to explore. So I’ve set myself up with a paradox: write freely about these ideas as if no one else is reading, but restrict the writing to only polished and perfected pieces that will be suitable for public consumption.
Heh, figures I’d create a strange loop for myself over this endeavour: after all, the strange loop is what this is all about!
Lol, in reading over the wikipedia article I find myself laughing at how I could attempt to explain the “…hierarchy of levels…[where e]ach level is linked to at least one other by some type of relationship, [so that the] strange loop hierarchy…is "tangled" …[such]…that there is no well defined highest or lowest level [resulting in a structure where t]he levels are organized such that moving through them eventually returns one to one's starting point” which makes me choose this term to describe my ambitions, but then I’d have to start and finish a blog that was identical to this one: yet another strange loop.
Anyway, I’d like to get on with an aspect of what I spend time thinking about, the singularity.
So let’s take a moment to consider one thing all on its own—let’s call it A. Further, if we think about what we mean by “one thing all on its own,” then we find that what we mean—literally—is a singular thing: a thing with no parts, no properties, but a unit in and of itself.
“A unit of what?” we might ask.
Well, we cannot answer this question because we are considering A as existing in relation to nothing else, and this means there is no possible observation of A because A is the only thing that exists.
“But aren’t we observing it now, as we consider it?” we might ask.
No we are not. What we are observing in our mind’s eye is, perhaps, a picture of some object that looks like the capital letter A surrounded by empty space. In other words, we are observing a representation of the circumstance described, but we are not observing A itself, because as we have said, we are attempting—and failing, apparently—to examine a thing as it exists as a singularity.
Kant also thought along these lines, I mentioned this before—this time I did look it up though—noumena is what he called a singular thing in itself. As Kant also reasoned, a noumena is “specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way.” 1.
So the singularity, the noumena, remains unknown to us because it relates to nothing else. If we were to come to know it, then we would have to become it, but if we become it we lose ourselves which would necessarily include all our thoughts, ideas, modes of interpretation—since the noumena is not that—and all we are left with is being without any relations; being without anything at all.
Put differently, if A exists, then it exists as nothing, and the only way to understand “exists as nothing” is with the notion of ‘nonexistence.’ In other words A exists if and only if A does not exist.
1. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pg. 400.
This is contrary and counter-productive to an aspect of what I am trying to accomplish here, which is, namely, to start writing philosophy again, to pick up the ideas I was working on in times past.
Now, part of this hesitation to post incomplete or partially formed positions and thoughts is because one day I want to make this blog more public, and I want it to be functionally fabulous in relating the ideas it sets out to explore. So I’ve set myself up with a paradox: write freely about these ideas as if no one else is reading, but restrict the writing to only polished and perfected pieces that will be suitable for public consumption.
Heh, figures I’d create a strange loop for myself over this endeavour: after all, the strange loop is what this is all about!
Lol, in reading over the wikipedia article I find myself laughing at how I could attempt to explain the “…hierarchy of levels…[where e]ach level is linked to at least one other by some type of relationship, [so that the] strange loop hierarchy…is "tangled" …[such]…that there is no well defined highest or lowest level [resulting in a structure where t]he levels are organized such that moving through them eventually returns one to one's starting point” which makes me choose this term to describe my ambitions, but then I’d have to start and finish a blog that was identical to this one: yet another strange loop.
Anyway, I’d like to get on with an aspect of what I spend time thinking about, the singularity.
So let’s take a moment to consider one thing all on its own—let’s call it A. Further, if we think about what we mean by “one thing all on its own,” then we find that what we mean—literally—is a singular thing: a thing with no parts, no properties, but a unit in and of itself.
“A unit of what?” we might ask.
Well, we cannot answer this question because we are considering A as existing in relation to nothing else, and this means there is no possible observation of A because A is the only thing that exists.
“But aren’t we observing it now, as we consider it?” we might ask.
No we are not. What we are observing in our mind’s eye is, perhaps, a picture of some object that looks like the capital letter A surrounded by empty space. In other words, we are observing a representation of the circumstance described, but we are not observing A itself, because as we have said, we are attempting—and failing, apparently—to examine a thing as it exists as a singularity.
Kant also thought along these lines, I mentioned this before—this time I did look it up though—noumena is what he called a singular thing in itself. As Kant also reasoned, a noumena is “specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way.” 1.
So the singularity, the noumena, remains unknown to us because it relates to nothing else. If we were to come to know it, then we would have to become it, but if we become it we lose ourselves which would necessarily include all our thoughts, ideas, modes of interpretation—since the noumena is not that—and all we are left with is being without any relations; being without anything at all.
Put differently, if A exists, then it exists as nothing, and the only way to understand “exists as nothing” is with the notion of ‘nonexistence.’ In other words A exists if and only if A does not exist.
1. Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pg. 400.
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