It is not Aristotle’s fault. It is your fault.

So, you think Aristotle was stupid?  Sorry, no, you are stupid.

What modern science fails to recognize about Ancient Greek science is the limitations of observation without any extending technology put on Greek theory.

Modern scientists don’t acknowledge that every refutation of Aristotlean theory was due to the introduction of technology over 1000s of years that extended our powers of observation to macrosensory and microsensory ranges.

Aristotle’s theories were the best anyone could have come up with using the tools, unassisted human sensation, they had.

Aristotle in trying to describe the motion of thrown objects was a good description of the motion of rocket propelled objects.

The Greek elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire are actually describing the states of Solid, Liquid, Gas and Plasma and rules they do obey.

Aristotle’s and Ptolemy’s model of the heavens was simply an attempt to make a mechanical clock to represent the observed movement of the heavens.  Their unassisted sensory experience made their conclusions and their model unavoidable until tools for macroscopic observation of the sun, planets and stars were possible.

Spontaneous generation recognizes that moisture and decay create a favorable environment for the growth of organisms.  What had not been observed was the existence of microscopic eggs, spermatazoa and sexual reproduction.

So Aristotle and Ptolemy used the best metaphors they had.  That has not changed.  The best model we have right now is a computer.  In about 1500 years they will say we were complete idiots.

 

Ethics: The Food of Reason and The Shit of Religion

I am currently reading Ethics by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.  Reading it has lead me to one conclusion: Judaic, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Zen and Hindu religious texts are so bogged down in metaphorical interpretation they defeat the purpose for which they are created.

Aristotle’s writing is clear, unambiguous and the terminology is well defined.  He clearly states that mature adults benefit more from the study of ethics than those in their adolescence or post adolescence simply because life experience is necessary to provide the foundation for its appreciation.

Aristotle is lucid.  I read his work in a few hours.  I did not need to read any of the commentary provided by the translators or editors.  In fact, I found the commentary a useless distraction.  If a translation requires commentary, the translation has not acheived it’s goal, the translators have been dogmatic.

Aristotle’s greatest achievement is declaring that no one is chosen by anyone.  Existence chooses us and from that point we choose to be who and what we are.

We choose our rights and responsibilities in our social and environmental context.  And in that choice lies goodness and happiness.

“Do to others as you would have others do to you” is not a call for love or hate, but a call for moderation in all things.

Moderation is not a call for mediocrity, but excellence and perfection.  To achieve the state where nothing need be added and nothing need be taken away.

This is one thing: Reciprocitism.

The origin of the word “recipe”.

A balance between self-acceptance and self-rejection.  Induction and Deduction.

I highly recommend reading Ethics over any religious text.  The food of Reason prevails over the shit of Religion.

Religion: The Promise and the Petition

The following passage is from the Old Testament.  It is referred to as “God’s Promise to Abram”.  I call this “The Promise”.

Leave your country,
your people
and your father’s household
and go to the land I will show you
I will make you into a great nation
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and
You will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And whoever curses you I will curse;
And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

This second passage is from the New Testament.  It is referred to as “The Lord’s Prayer”.  I call this “The Petition”.

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.

I found them interesting.  The promise and the petition have eight parts.

The promise makes the man hallowed and the temple on earth.

The petition makes a god hallowed and the temple in heaven.

The promise gives a kingdom to a people.

The petition offers a kingdom to a god.

The promise offers a nation under a man.

The petition offers a nation under a god.

The promise offers greatness to a man’s name.

The petition offers greatness to a god’s name.

The promise offers to bless a man.

The petition offers to bless a god.

The promise offers to make the man a blessing.

The petition asks to make the god a blessing.

The promise offers to bless friends and curse enemies of the man.

The petition asks forgiveness of the god and offers forgiveness of the enemies of man.

The promise offers to make the man a blessing to all.

The petition asks to make the god a blessing to all.

It is obvious that the Old Testament and the New Testament are two wholly different, yet complementary religions.

The creation of a hallowed nation and the nation’s hallowing of its god.

In the next post I will look at these two eight fold paths from a different perspective.

Jared Diamond: Societal Collapse

more about “Jared Diamond: System Collapse“, posted with vodpod

If you listen carefully to what Jared Diamond is saying in the TED video above, he is describing not a five part, but a six part power curve into a systemic singularity. This has been one of the core themes of discussion of this blog.  We all seem to be too close to our problems to see the commonality.  The interrogatives come into play here:

1. Goals
2. People
3. Functions
4. Forms
5. Times
6. Distances

Times and Distances being the basis on which the higher orders are built.

When we look at the recent economic “crisis” we see 300 trillion in currency circulating and roughly 1 trillion to 2 trillion shifting suddenly and unexpectedly.  We witnessed a systemic collapse, a singularity, a tipping point, a power curve, an exponential change, a phase transition or whatever label you want to call it.  These have been happening everywhere since Time and Distance began in different contexts and orders both in human and non-human systems.

What Jared Diamond and other alarmists are implying is that human society is now a system approaching its final singularity in this century on this planet.  We are implying that today we are experiencing a less than one percent crisis on a power curve into a singularity.  How many more iterations will the global system withstand?  Will humanity make the step into space successfully before we experience a global dark age?  How will the six or more factors in the power curve play out?

The truth to me appears to be that power curves whether they play out or not result in either a systemic climax or anti-climax followed by a systemic collapse.  Would it not be better if we experienced a systemic climax that led to us expanding into the solar system?

Systemic collapse seems to be the fashion of this generation.  Every generation looks with fascination at its own youth, maturition, reproduction and acceleration into mortality.  Some die early, some die late, but all die.  It is an irrevocable law of nature.  It is not about self-interest.  It is about what self-interest is defined as.

Related Posts:

Beyond the Singularity

Servitas and Libertas

Drucker Enterprise Framework

Actor: Database Modelers automate weakness and agony.

Proactor: Database Designers automate power and pleasure.

Reactor: DBAs automatically complain.

You may be wondering about the title of this post.  I’ve decided to reject John Zachman, a non-businessman completely, and name my discovery to honor someone I respect much more highly, an archetypical businessman, Peter Drucker.

The first thing to do is abandon the term “hierarchy”.  You are working with networks.  You are also dealing with seven networks, not one.  This means you are dealing with not seven by seven (49) but seven to the power of seven (over 800,000) nodes in the business space. This is called a seven dimensional hypercube.  The main difference between the associative model and the relational model is that the associative (node-link) business area grows into the space while the relational (relation-inferred relationship) business area has to be completely defined.  When you are talking about almost one million cells in the schema alone the traditional relational model with all of its NULL values for unused space in tables becomes quite cumbersome.  The SQL is resource intensive in both models.

Another thing to abandon is your language.  Lay English is often imprecise and inconsistent.  I am creating a taxonomy as part of this work to provide a seven dimensional vocabulary.  Every one of the terms was thoroughly examined for its definition.

Finally, abandon preconceptions.  Look at the data and let it guide you.

There are key levels of abstraction:  The schema which are entities and entity associations and instance and instance association.  I highly recommend going to Simon William’s site lazysoft.com and reading some of his short white papers on the architecture.

Associations and Entities

A chart of associations is below:

Let’s look at these associations in the context of physics and business:

It is based on an associative (node and link) architecture not a relational (table and relationships) architecture.

Seven Nodes, Six Dimensions

After considerable struggle with the data it became clear to me that I was not dealing with a table in the normal sense.  I could not reconcile a data cube with the seven dimensions I had discovered.  Then it occurred to me that I was not dealing with a cube at all.  I was dealing with a simpler solid, the octahedron.  The octahedron has six dimensions (spokes) and seven vertexes.

This gives us a Hauy Construction (this figure is an eight degree):

Using my new taxonomy gives us the following views:

Front:

Side:

Top:

The age of the cube is over.  Welcome to the age of the Octahedral Hauy Construction.

Formula

In this context we can deduct the following equation:

In the Business Interpretation E can represent Everything (Monopoly) and M can represent Market.

Generic Table

First, we create the generic table:

Generic Schema

We are now ready to create the schema:

We can also look at the role of long tails (exponential curves) and tipping points (singularities, pluralarities).  Singularities occur when the taxonomy reaches it’s cost/benefit optimum and plurality when the data utilizes the entire business space.  Benefit declines from that point.

What I am saying here is systems are not tabula rasas.  Systems have a hardwired architecture and schematic that obeys simple physical laws that are in many ways understood as well as softwired structure that is unique to the system.  We don’t have to create a unique architecture and unique schema for each system.  Now they need only to be refined and applied across the spectrum of human endeavor.  We need only learn how to classify the data.

Systema: MixThirtySix – New Greek, New Icons, New Colors

After pulling out a Latin and Greek dictionary during a phone call to my professional writer sister, I came to realize that John Zachman served us a horrible brutalization of Greek for terminology. Had he only looked at the Greek language with some insight he would have saved me considerable difficulty in correlating definition with application.

Johnny ‘s been messin’ wid our ‘eads, man.

Correcting that usage will be on my to do list.

Here, I am abstracting the framework by incorporating the correct Greek, abstracting the focuses by using polygon icons and abstracting the perspectives by using de Bono’s thinking color code:

There you have it, a completely new take on the Mix Thirty-six.

Hey, Aristotle, Six Unities! Hey, Plato, Six Polygons! Hey, de Bono, Six Hats!

Yes, after a day’s head banging, I switched when and where.

In the next post, I will be definining each of these icons. Now we can talk about System Logics, System Organics, System Mechanics, System Physics, System Cosmics and System Chronics with a sense that our terminology will migrate across disciplines easily if our audience has any understanding of Greek roots.

The Fifth Horseman: Comedy

In the world of atheists it has been said that there are Four Horsemen, namely Science (Richard Dawkins), Progress (Dan Dennett), Reason (Sam Harris) and Equality (Christopher Hitchens). Now, let me tell you about the Fifth Horseman: Comedy.

posted with vodpod

Pat Condell is a respected and disrespectful atheist comedian who rants the way every secularist should. He has no respect for any religion Western or Eastern. He believes that religion should be legislated out of public life and restricted to personal life.  In addition, he has an exceptional distaste for religions that threaten violence when they are told they are religions of violence but that’s another video which you can view by clicking on the open book icon below the video embed. Warning: Pat’s videos continue ad infinitum. You can stop them by clicking on the video and stopping with the controls.

Visit PatCondell.net

Atheism: More Vision, Less Derision

I am currently reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and I am finding it a very fatiguing book to read. The reason for this is Richard cannot seem to make an eloquent rejection of religious superstition without ranting about the stupidity of everyone and everything involved. It’s cover to cover contempt. I would rather be inspired by an atheist vision than witnessing intellectual derision. If it is wrong, prove it is wrong without adding insult to injury.

The problem is atheists, myself included, are hard pressed to come up with an atheist vision. However, Milan Kundera, a seasoned victim of communist oppression, came out with what I believe to be the best vision I can think of. That is the rejection of supernatural consciousness and the rationale of Descartes and the acceptance of the value of all natural consciousness. The real joy of life for every living thing is to be conscious of life at whatever level that may be. And every living thing fights with everything it has to preserve its consciousness.

The frauds of religion are two:

1. to claim that there is a supernatural consciousness in the universe. For that there is no evidence.
2. to claim that our consciousness somehow exists before or after life. For that there is no evidence.

Love your consciousness, love other’s consciousness as your own.

The Brain: Spirituality and Reason

This TED.com video by neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor reveals from a personal experience that Spirituality and Reason are not a contrast of Religion and Science, but a contrast of the Right and Left brain.

This immediately got me to thinking about the implications regarding artificial intelligence hardware and software.

Satire: Good and Yahoo

I have completed my reading of the fourth part of Gulliver’s Travels, “Journey to the Houyhnhnms”, and with it completed Jonathan Swift’s book. In this part Gulliver encounters a species of horses calling themselves “Houyhnhnms”, who are guided in their lives by reason and virtue, as well as a species of humans called “Yahoos”, who are guided by illogic and vice. As Gulliver comes to acquaint himself with these two species he realizes that he himself is a Yahoo, as are all humans, and finds himself not wanting to leave the company of the Houyhnhnms. However, reason dictates that he return to the Yahoos of England and the Houyhnhnms exhort him to do so.

This part is not only a satire of humanity, it is a satire of nature. No one in Jonathan’s time or our own with any knowledge of nature, of which humanity is part, would for a moment declare nature a slave to reason and virtue or free of illogic and vice.

Stepping back for the broader view, Jonathan’s book is interesting in that it criticizes all aspects of society, however he never directly criticizes religion. He instead talks of reason and virtue; of friendship and benevolence; never of god and god’s will; never of faith and obedience. In fact, the only reference to European religion is architecture and the inquisition. And perhaps that is all that needs mention.

Of course reading the work that coins the word Yahoo and directly associates it with the word “evil” makes for an interesting contemporary interpretation of our search engine landscape. If we used the term Yahoo in the same way as used by Jonathan Swift, “Don’t be Yahoo”, would be grammatically correct.

related post: Cogitators, Academics, Necromancers and Immortals