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laodan

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laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA

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THE WAY THINGS ARE: The meaning of life is to be found in thinking about what is reality and the beauty of reality is to be found in our DNA's memorization of all forms that have been successfully retained along the four billion years of evolution of the principle of life on Gaia our earth. In the end what I mean to say is that beauty is something objective and what we call ugliness is then simply our unconscientious feel of something evolution did not retain.
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  • ScienceNOW -- Sign In

    Rated Mar 16 2009 • 1 review • science, reality, worldviews • sciencemag.org

    Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality
    in ScienceNOW Daily News by David Lindley


    What is reality? French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, 87, has spent a lifetime grappling with this question. Over the years, he has developed the idea that the reality revealed by science offers only a "veiled" view of an underlying reality that science cannot access, and that the scientific view must take its place alongside the reality revealed by art, spirituality, and other forms of human inquiry. In recognition of these efforts, d'Espagnat has won this year's Templeton Prize, a u00a31 million ($1.4 million) award sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research at the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion.

    Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality

    To have a clear understanding of reality supposes we have a clear picture of the whole in which we are such tiny particles.

    But the whole escapes us.

    We are looking at it from the inside. From the point of view of that tiny particle that we are inside of it. As far as scientific instrumentation allows us to see it fails to give us a description of the whole. It is as if the borders of the whole were always set further and out of reach. Scientists keep alive the hope that one day they will be able to attain the limits of the whole. Entering such a kind of debate has no merit, for, the optimistic scientific argument is based on faith. Faith that one day...

    There is another way to look at this conundrum. It is based on the acceptance of our limitations and the recognition that a particle has no way to leave its environment. Once this idea is accepted we understand that we 'll never get to see the whole or observe it from the outside. Being unable to observe the whole from a distance humanity is bound to be stuck in belief for ever. Whatever the belief, be it scientific or spiritual, it will never get us to see or understand the whole of our reality, but it gives us a vision that when shared with others gives us peace of mind ....




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  • Gallery - Frizions: Making art from ice and polarised...

    Rated Jan 29 2009 • 2 reviews • science, art • newscientist.com

    Frizions: Making art from ice and polarised light
    in The new Scientists, via mohir on Twine

    How does a "Frizion" evolve? Thin layers of water are frozen, manipulated, and viewed through polarized light. Light has wave-like properties, one of which is vibration. Ordinary white light vibrates in many directions, but a polarizing filter blocks all light except that which is vibrating in a single direction. A polarizing filter is placed on a light table to polarize the light passing through. A petri dish with a thin layer of water in the process of freezing is placed over the filter. As the polarized light passes through the forming ice crystals, it is bent in two slightly different directions and forms two different rays of light. The color palette in the images is created by rotating a second polarizing filter placed over the ice to intercept and resolve these emerging light rays.

    The eye and brain combine the mixture of physical colors to produce a striking color impression. I began to control the way the ice grows, into forms I desired, always with color as my guide. Simple forms, detailed and complex forms, and forms that simply happened, as though I imagined them, established my medium. Ice growth became the landscape, and thickness and the polarizer sheet morphed into my color palette.

    Frizions: Making art from ice and polarised light
    Painting with light with a canvas of ice







    Stunning colors and interestingly the graphics speak to us...




    524 views
    Gallery - Frizions: Making art from ice and polarised light - Image 1 - New Scientist

  • Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative...

    Rated Jan 27 2009 • 4 reviews • science, art, worldviews, change • physorg.com

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations
    via physorg, by Gerry Everding in Medicine & Health / Psychology

    A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to "get lost" in a good book suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations



    "... the conclusion that when we read a story and really understand it, we create a mental simulation of the events described by the story" that conclusion relates to the understanding of reality that is already present in our brain as a result of our brain having processed during our whole life the information supplied by our sensors: knowledge through the eyes, feelings and mood through the ears, smells through the nose, touch through our fingers tips, etc...

    This return of signs from the brain to our sensors is, it seems to me, causing us to understand reality at a superior level than the "first degree" our sensors habitually communicate to our minds. This basic fact is what unleashed the flurry of trials and mostly errors that the "avant-garde" in visual arts struggled with from the turn of the 20th century till today.

    My personal thesis (see my books and articles in Crucial Talk) is that this return of information from our brain to our sensors is unleashing new degrees of understanding about reality that leads us straight to the emergence of a new paradigm of reality that will be the substrate upon which a new worldview will emerge that shall be shared by all in the future area of post-modernity. And I believe that visual arts will play a central role in diffusing such a worldview for all to share.




    20 views
    Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations, brain scans suggest

  • Technology Review: Our Past Within Us

    Rated Jan 08 2009 • 2 reviews • history, humanity, change, science • technologyreview.com

    Our Past Within Us
    in Technology Review by Mark Williams

    ... if archaic Homo sapiens emerged as long as 200,000 years ago, why did our species need so many millennia before its transition, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, from the hunter-"gatherer nomadism that characterized all previous hominids to permanent, year-round settlement", which then allowed the elaboration of humankind's cultural efforts?

    Archaeogenetics Emerges. ... a grand synthesis of three approaches: scientific archaeology, which collects hard data through radiocarbon dating and similar technologies; linguistic study aimed at constructing clear histories of the world's languages; and molecular genetic analysis.

    ... we tend to be species-centric about the concept of humanity, the reality is that all organisms are temporary receptacles into which DNA pours itself, and inter-species boundaries are more fluid and tenuous than we've thought. In a sense, the idea of Homo sapiens as a distinct species is one more racial myth.

    Our Past Within Us. The new field known as archeogenetics is illuminating prehistory.
    Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind a book by Colin Renfrew. Modern Library, 2008

    The idea that "organisms are temporary receptacles into which DNA pours itself" is kind of consecrating this larger idea of "evolutionary direction forward." This concept does not imply "progress". "Not only did Cro-Magnons have larger brains than we do, for example, but the difference was big. "In the last 10,000 years, our brains have shrunk about 200 cubic centimeters," Hawks explains. "If we shrunk another 200, we'd be the equivalent of Homo erectus. One possibility is this represents greater efficiency--our brains using less energy, needing less developmental time, and signaling faster. Alternatively, of course, we're getting dumber." "




    174 views
    Technology Review: Our Past Within Us

  • The Energy Challenge - No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in...

    Rated Dec 27 2008 • 1 review • environment, science, energy, economy • nytimes.com

    No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'
    in the NYT by ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

    The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants' bodies.

    And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

    ... The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

    ... The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

    No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses"
    Passive House Institute



    Is there an impact on the technological approach of countries that have green parties in power for prolonged periods of time? This article covers an anecdote that seems to indicate just that.
    Germany had a green party in power for some years and because of the popularity of its ideas all other parties have been integrating the same ideas in their own platforms. This also explains how innovation and entrepreneurialism thrived along the same lines.
    Result: Germany today is the uncontested world leader in:
    - passive building technologies
    - solar and wind technologies
    - the manufacturing and application of those technologies in real life.

    What more needs to be said?
    Imagine the application of such passive technologies generalized in a country as the US. The result would be a drastic reduction of its national energy consumption, a drastic reduction of its energy imports that eventually would result in its balance of payment entering positive territory, If the country had mastered the technology before others it would also have an export opportunity that would result in pushing its balance of payment further into positive territory. And lastly a reduction on the scale that passive technologies could allow would also drastically reduce the emission of CO2 and other gases responsible for the present man induced climate change.

    We can only observe that such a scenario did not originate in the US but in the countries composing the Germanic area of the EU. So it seems to me that some conclusions...




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    The Energy Challenge - No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in Innovative ‘Passive Houses’ - Series - NYTimes.com

  • Engineering Life: The Dog that Didnt Bark in the Night :...

    Rated Jun 09 2008 • 1 review • science • scienceblogs.com

    Breaking Boundaries
    via The Loom / Carl Zimmer, in the Scienceblogs book club by Carl Zimmer

    Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures, to exploit their cellular machinery for human gain. The creatures began to produce human proteins, so many of them that they become sick, in some cases even dying. The scientists harvest the proteins, and then, breaching the sacred barrier between species yet again, people injected the unnatural molecules into their own bodies.

    This may sound like a futuristic nightmare, the kind that we will only experience if we neglect our moral compass and let science go berserk. But it is actually happening right now. Today millions of people with diabetes will inject themselves with insulin that was produced by E. coli.

    The fact that no one is disturbed by this state of affairs says a lot.

    Engineering Life: The Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night


    [Picture: "The Young Family," by Patrician Piccini (2002-3). Wikipedia via "The Loom"]

    The side-effects of Late-Modernity do not stop to surprise and one can't but wonder what is going to result out of all those side-effects. Since long I have the feeling that this bodes ill for the future of humanity. But who am I to downplay what some characterize as an immense potential for humanity?

    I don't observe Late-Modernity from the vintage point of the moralist but with the critical eye of the pragmatist. A pragmatist does not judge. He simply observes what is working and what is not. He tries to figure out the possible outcomes in the future of human endeavors in the present. And as a pragmatist observing the side-effects of modernity I often get overwhelmed with nausea.

    So what is it that I observe? The side-effects of modernity are displacing the narrow band where the interactions, between what the Chinese call "the ten thousand things", are balancing themselves out. But the placement of this narrow band, as we know it, was the fertile ground out of which human life emerged and developed to the present day. If this narrow band, where "the ten thousand things", are balancing themselves out, shifts away from what we know then what we know about human life simply disappears.

    This is deadly for humanity... but it changes nothing to the balance of the "whole in which we are such tiny particles". Whatever happens the whole remains permanently balanced.




    263 views
    Engineering Life: The Dog that Didnt Bark in the Night : The ScienceBlogs Book Club

  • Low-tech Magazine: Is ecotech the new asbestos?

    Rated May 21 2008 • 5 reviews • science, sustainability, modernity • lowtechmagazine.com

    Is ecotech the new asbestos?
    in Low Tech Magazine by Kris De Decker

    It's hard to keep track of the soon-to-be-implemented technological solutions that will solve our energy and environmental woes by means of nanotechnology - the science of manipulating individual atoms. ... Unfortunately, more and more research indicates that nanomaterials might become a severe health problem and an environmental nightmare.

    Is ecotech the new asbestos? in Low Tech Magazine
    Carbon nanotubes that look like asbestos, behave like asbestos in EurekAlert


    Image/Low Tech Magazine

    Observing the reality that modernity has unleashed upon humanity one can't but be stunned at the systemic impasse it has landed us in. What is even more stunning is to observe the religious like belief that has overtaken the rationality based community whose members are carried away by the absolute belief that science and technology are destined to solve all the problems unleashed by modernity forgetting that rationality and science and technology, as its functional instruments, have been driving modernity since its inception and are thus largely responsible for the numerous side-effects of modernity that we are confronted with today.

    With much fanfare, the last few years, nanotechnology has been erected on the pedestal of the ecological, of the sustainable, and its applications have been presented as the solution to the energy crunch, climate change, the food crisis and so on. And one sees the same mechanism at work with other new scientific approaches as genetics for example. The potential of new sciences and technologies are always presented as worldchanging, never is there a thought for non-intended consequences. The implementation of the technology eventually is followed later by such consequences as has been the case along the last century with CO2 and all kinds of poisons that have crept into our food chain and the materials used in the manufacturing of our toys, tools and instruments.

    The apologists of science and technology would want us to believe that these are founded in the absolute truth opened to us by rationality. But believing that rationality is the absolute in terms of access to the truth is a kind of fundamentalist belief in par with any religious fundamentalism. This kind of belief in rationality is simply making abstraction of history. How did rationality emerge? After merchants had been obeying the logic of capital for a few centuries that logic extended its influence among the academics. The understanding and application of the logic of capital was indeed conferring richness and power to the merchants. It was thus only logical that its influence would gradually be felt in the other fields helping thus displace religious belief as the ultimate access to the truth. This historic detour lets us understand that rationality is no more than the leading belief about truth that is gradually adopted by all societies entering modernity.

    In late-modernity we start to understand that the truth about reality is something unattainable to humanity. We are indeed such extremely tiny particles in the whole that encompasses us that the whole remains out of our field of vision and out of our field of understanding. Once we accept our limitation we start to understand that we are interconnected with all the other particles in the whole. We start to understand that we are in a bind with all particles around us. We start to understand that the harmony between ourselves and with all the particles around us is the condition of our reproduction as a species. That's when we start to understand that we have to reduce drastically the footprint of our species for humanity to survive in postmodernity.




    786 views
    Low-tech Magazine: Is ecotech the new asbestos?

  • Shedding Light on Life | Harvard Magazine May-June 2008

    Rated Apr 19 2008 • 2 reviews • science, art, visualization, worldviews • harvardmagazine.com

    Shedding Light on Life
    in Harvard Magazine by Courtney Humphries

    "The human brain is vision-focused," says professor of molecular and cellular biology Jeff Lichtman. "If we see things, then we think we know what they mean." To be able finally to see events that were known only in theory is incredibly satisfying for scientists. Even more important, this revolution also opens up the possibility of learning things about life that could never be studied before.

    \u201cWhat we hope to do at the end of the day,\u201d he says, \u201cis to understand biology as it unfolds in vivo rather than in snapshots.\u201d

    The resurgence in imaging excites biologists for two reasons: it allows them to see individuals, and it allows them to count the masses. Being able to watch and track a single molecule, cell, or process offers a much more complete picture of how life works.

    Tom Kirchhausen predicts that in the next few years, scientists will use imaging to better understand complex processes such as cell division and the paths that viruses take to cause infection.

    Shedding Light on Life


    via Harvard Magazine, Courtesy of Jeff Lichtman Laboratory
    Color-coded neural circuits in the brains of mice allow Jeff Lichtman to trace the fate of individual nerve cells over time and across distances.


    via Harvard Magazine, Courtesy of Gene-Wei Li and Peter Sims, Harvard University
    Sunney Xie combines a transmission image of bacteria (blue) with a fluorescence image of molecules (yellow) binding to sites on the bacteria\u2019s DNA in order to create a complete picture of the interaction.

    This article is a useful follow-up on my post about Could Science and Art Become One and the Same? . The subject of my comment is thus visualization versus art.

    In recent years science has made a dramatic usage of visual imaging techniques to understand what is going on at the micro and macro levels.
    But the fact is that digital imaging are photos taken from various kinds of microscopes or telescopes that are then often reprocessed by pairing 2 or more of those initial cliches in order to try to catch the meaning of what is going on in those images.

    Those images are often stunning and offer a depth of meaning and beauty that puts to shame most modern art works. But for scientists it is only a question of making sense in what they observe. Visual imaging is no more than a tool. But what about the images they obtain? Are those art works?

    Those digital images are not art works in the traditional sense of the concept of art: the production of visual signs about the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day. Those images are tools for scientists to discover sense and they are only fragments of the ensemble of images and ideas that forms their worldview.

    Art should not be confused with scientific imaging. The mission of the artist is to illustrate the worldview of the men of knowledge of our days. And the men of knowledge in late modernity and early post-modernity are not the scientists. Those men of knowledge are the rare individuals who are succeeding to integrate scientific knowledge within the more globally encompassing realm of philosophy and history. Some are scientists, some are philosophers or historians and some are artists.

    The late-modern and early post-modern artist has thus to accumulate the widest possible knowledge-base in order to be able to pinpoint the rare true men of knowledge in his time. And his mission is then to render visual signs about their worldview for all to share.




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    Shedding Light on Life | Harvard Magazine May-June 2008

  • Reality Sandwich | Could Science and Art Become One...

    Rated Apr 15 2008 • 2 reviews • science, art, reality, worldviews • realitysandwich.com

    Could Science and Art Become One and the Same?
    in Reality Sandwich by Greg Wendt

    Reality encompasses that which is beyond science as we know it, or at least beyond that which the current scientific mindset can explain.

    Is it possible that art can be used in a scientific way to create a more accurate expression of reality and a greater understanding of human experience?

    Capra points out that Da Vinci's genius came from his ability to use art as a way to be scientific, hence throwing the whole distinction between science and art into question.

    Could Science and Art Become One and the Same?
    To answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for the arts. by Jonah Lehrer in Seed
    The Science of Leonardo new book of by Fritjof Capra
    Artsense by myself


    Acrylic n#39 of my "artsense collection".

    In summary Jonah Lehrer posits that "If we want to get an answer to our deepest questions - the questions of who we are and what everything is - we will need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes the other".

    Unfortunately this is a position that is founded on a confused understanding of what is knowledge and what is art.

    1. Knowledge:
    Humans, since times immemorial, tried to understand reality in the sense of "the whole in which we are such tiny particles". We distinguish 3 ages in the history of human understanding of reality or of human knowledge and those 3 ages are driven by the sharing of a common "worldview" that is a vulgarization of the understanding attained by the men of knowledge of the day:
    - the animist age: all parcels of the whole are inter-related: the shaman is the man of knowledge.
    - the religious or philosophic age: god or wisdom: the priest or the wise man are the men of knowledge.
    - the modern age: the logic of capital and its ideology of rationality: the capital holder and the scientist are the men of knowledge.

    2. Art:
    Since time immemorial visual arts served at giving visual signs of the understanding of reality by the men of knowledge of the day. This societal functionality of art was lost upon all sometime around 1900 when thinker-artists experimented in devising something else than the first degree image that projects on the retina. But those experimentations concluded in the absurd when everything the artist was positing as being art was deemed to be art.
    The societal functionality of art was lost because rationality and science don't offer a global model of understanding of reality. Rationality and science are following a path of questioning that pushes till later the discovery of the answer. This model does not supply the artist with a knowledge of everything to illustrate and the artist is most often in no position to devise his own knowledge base, for, he never was given the tools for such an exercise.

    I agree with Jonah Lehrer that science left on its own will never come to the end of its mission to understand reality. But I disagree that art has to produce knowledge. This should be left to the philosophers and researchers of humanity's early cultures and most importantly animism. As Fritjof Capra mentioned in his "The tao of physics" the most advanced physics, chemistry, and other sciences often rediscover the fundamental truths expressed in animism and the later philosophies built over it. My take is that a new worldview for artists to illustrate will emerge out of the contact between science and animism.




    195 views
    Reality Sandwich | Could Science and Art Become One and the Same?

  • Case Closed for Free Will? -- Youngsteadt 2008 (414): 3...

    Rated Apr 14 2008 • 1 review • science, worldviews • sciencemag.org

    Case Closed for Free Will?
    in ScienceNOW Daily News by Elsa Youngsteadt

    Our brain may make up our minds before we do.

    Coffee or tea with lunch? Which pants to wear to work? Which movie to watch? Your mind might be made up before you know it. Researchers have found patterns of brain activity that predict people's decisions up to 10 seconds before they're aware they've made a choice.

    "We weren't expecting this kind of lead time, " Haynes says. Even though the predictions weren't perfect, "there's not very much space for operation of free will," Haynes says. "The outcome of a decision is shaped very strongly by brain activity much earlier than the point in time when you feel to be making a decision."

    Case Closed for Free Will?
    Libet's short delay

    The conclusions of this research paper imply that our personal decisions are not really determined by our consciousness. Wow!

    But let's not err, Our personal decision-making process is not determined by pre-determination either. It's more as if the working of our brains was producing decisions that we then consciously accept. But this would thus mean that free-will is a myth and that our personalities are resulting from the "computing process" of our neurones instead of what we long thought being ourselves or our freely thinking personalities.

    Practically that would mean that our present state of mind would be the computing result of all our lives' inputs since being born, or perhaps earlier since we were conceived and even earlier since our DNA could possibly be part of the total input.

    But then what about the idea of personal responsibility? If our decisions are the computing result of all of the inputs, one should think that, we should not be held responsible for our decisions and actions. But this squares with any societal form and norm. Societies are indeed the ones that fix the rules and personal responsibility is then no more than self imposed respect of those rules. This brings us back to the content of my earlier comments on You Can Blame the Bugs. Morality and personal responsibility are then the result, for each individual alike, of his sharing with all the others of the common societal worldview.




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    Case Closed for Free Will? -- Youngsteadt 2008 (414): 3 -- ScienceNOW