vol 2: Synopsis
part I: Motivations and possibilities
page 4: Language
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Language
Mind thrives on language, which comes in many forms. We think of language as any code that can be used to share information between independent entities. As we develop from babies, we absorb and respond to the human language around us. Textual representation of language enables us to share knowledge through space and time. The fundamental language of the universe appears to be quantum mechanics and all other languages are built up from this
One of the most amazing things about our world is that we can share very complicated ideas with strings of symbols like these. How is this possible? The answer lies in language and the abstract idea of coding.
What is happening when we communicate with language? Images in my mind are being converted into strings of sound. The strings of sound are moving your mind to form images similar to those in mind. And vice-versa. Through language we have correlated our minds. In the case of simple instructions like 'break one small brown hen's egg into a wine glass' the images are clear and unequivocally define certain actions.
In more difficult situations dialogue is necessary to get ideas across. A dialogue is a recursive process, each of us stimulating the other to a reply. It may be an unbounded ramble, or it may converge on the precise communication of one particular idea. I say 'mathematics is a language'. You say 'what do you mean by language?' I say ... .
Despite its difficulties, we know that language works well most of the time. Communication can fail, of course, but we remain confident that failures can be overcome if dialogue is infused with goodwill and patience.
Language is not unique to human beings, nor is it confined to sound. Here we accept Landauer's proposition that all information is encoded physically. Landauer The number of different ways physical phenomena can be arranged to represent information is practically infinite.
We know that every element of the universe communicates with every other, and that each channel of communication uses a particular language. The human species has, or has used, tens of thousands of different languages. We are becoming aware that animals and plants also have languages.
All these languages are rooted in the languages of physics. These languages (sometimes called forces) are used by elementary particles to communicate with one another. The sum of their communication is the life of the universe at every scale from the majestic whole to events so small that they are measured by the quantum of action. Physical languages are studied by quantum mechanics.
The language of physics supports the language of chemistry, which in turn is used to build the languages of life like genomic, the language of genes. Genomic encodes the detailed molecular structure of every creature. Like sentences in human language, genomes are divided into words called genes. Each gene has a certain basic meaning which is nuanced by the context in which the gene is expressed. The dialogue between creature and environment that shapes genomic sentences is evolution by natural selection.
I try to imagine this work as the genome of a very simple virus. A virus, unlike a cell, cannot read its own genes. Instead it must inject its genome into a cell so that the cell can read the genes and produce new viruses. The genes here are pages. The following pages are laid out in a narrative order, because that makes it easy to see if they are complete. Through hyperlinking, they may be read in any order and visited any number of times.
Hopefully, through this process, you may be able to build in your mind a version of the structure that exists in my mind. Like the instructions in a cookery book, this communication has a practical purpose. That purpose is to show, by looking at the world in a particular way, that it is possible to realize our dreams of heaven on earth.
These dreams are themselves fuelled by language. Through the Bible the Christian God has revealed himself once for all time to all mankind. It could be difficult to overestimate the influence that the Bible has had on human life. In particular, we have the notion that life on earth is not meant to be easy. It is a trial, designed to separate the sheep from the goats. The sheep are destined for an eternal life of bliss. The goats for an equally eternal life of pain.
Is this true? Maybe not. A new linguistic picture may drive a new dream: to manage our lives on earth so that they are heavenly. The Christian paradigm would say that this is not possible, because we are inherently evil. The physical paradigm says that as far as we can see, our universe is perfect and divine, and anything is possible, given the necessary knowledge and motivation.
First we dreamt about flight, then we flew. Later we wanted to travel to the moon, and we did. Do we want to live in peace and harmony with ourselves and our planet? If your answer is yes, it may help to read on.
Books
| Campbell, Jeremy, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life, Allen Lane 1982 Foreword: 'This book is an attempt to tell the story of information theory and how it evolved out of the ferment of scientific activity during the Second World War. ... The laws and theorems of this science stimulated exciting ideas in biology and language, probability theory, psychology, philosophy, art, coputers and the study of society.' Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Cambridge University Press 1992 Jacket: '... universally acclaimed as the most exciting and comprehensive book on language ever written. With over 600 maps, diagrams and photographs, the book is a unique source of information on the variety, structure, history and theory of language - for the student of language or literature and those interested in how we communicate.' Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| de Boysson-Bardies, Benedicte, How Language comes to Children, MIT Press 1999 'Inside the genetically determjned envelope of what is linguistically possible, the child has leeway to choose his or her personal avenue to the mother tongue. In the author's own words: "Children's styles or modes of accessing language show themselves to be incredibly different. How can this be explained on the basis of common mechanisms?" Two-hundred-odd pages of clear prose built on an enviable expertise make it very clear that this is not a rhetorical question' [From a review by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, Nature, 400:829-30, 26 August 1999] Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Donoghue, Denis , The Sovereign Ghost: Studies in Imagination , Faber and Faber 1978 Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hofstadter, Douglas R, Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Basic Books, HarperCollins Publishers Inc 1997 Amazon: 'In the fall of 1537, a child was confined to bed for some time. The French poet Clément Marot wrote her a get-well poem, 28 lines long, each line a scant three syllables. In the mid-1980s, the outrageously gifted Douglas R. Hofstadter- il miglior fabbro of Godel, Escher, Bach - first attempted to translate this "sweet, old, small elegant French poem into English." He was later to challenge friends, relations, and colleagues to do the same. The results were exceptional, and are now contained in Le Ton Beau De Marot, a sunny exploration of scholarly and linguistic play and love's infinity. Less sunny, however, is the tragedy that hangs over Hofstadter's book, the sudden death of his wife, Carol, from a brain tumor. (Her translation is among the book's finest.) Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake, Faber and Faber 1982 Webster: 'Experimental novel by James Joyce. Extracts of the work appeared as Work in Progress from 1928 to 1937, and it was published in its entirety as Finnegans Wake in 1939. The book is, in one sense, the story of a publican in Chapelizod (near Dublin), his wife, and their three children; but Mr. Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Mrs. Anna Livia Plurabelle, and Kevin, Jerry, and Isabel are every family of mankind. The motive idea of the novel, inspired by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, is that history is cyclic; to demonstrate this the book begins with the end of a sentence left unfinished on the last page. Languages merge: Anna Livia has "vlossyhair"--wlosy being Polish for "hair"; "a bad of wind" blows--bad being Persian for "wind." Characters from literature and history appear and merge and disappear. On another level, the protagonists are the city of Dublin and the River Liffey standing as representatives of the history of Ireland and, by extension, of all human history. As he had in his earlier work Ulysses, Joyce drew upon an encyclopedic range of literary works. His strange polyglot idiom of puns and portmanteau words is intended to convey not only the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious but also the interweaving of Irish language and mythology with the languages and mythologies of many other cultures. ' Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lodge, David, The Art of Fiction, Illustrated from Classic and Modern texts., Penguin Books 1992 Jacket: 'Brings to criticism the verve and humour of his own novels. DL has provided essential reading for students of literature, aspirant writers, and anyone who wishes to understand how literature works.' Amazon back | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pagels, Heinz R, The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature, Michael Joseph 1983 Jacket: 'Pagels provides an overview of quantum physics and traces the historical development of the science, which began with the ancient Greek concepts of the This file created 10/18/05 12:36 PM by Claris Home Page version 2.0
Human atomic compositionThe following table shows approximately how much (in grams and atoms) of each element is to be found in a 50 kg human. We calculate the number of atoms using Avagadro's number, the number of atoms in a gram atomic weight of an element: N = 6.025 x 10 E 23. The notation 10 E n means 'ten to the power of n'.
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| Thomas, Lewis, Et Cetera Et Cetera: Notes of a Word Watcher, Penguin USA 1991 Amazon back |
Papers
| Landauer, Rolf, "The Physical Nature of Information", Physica A, 217, 4-5, 15 July 1996, page 188-93. 'Information is inevitably tied to a physical representation and therefore to restrictions and possibilities related to the laws of physics and the parts available in the universe. Quantum mechanical superpositions of information bearing states can be used, and the real utility of that needs to be understood. Quantum parallelism in computation is one possibility and will be assessed pessimistically. The energy dissipation requirements of computation, of measurement and of the communications link are discussed. The insights gained from the analysis of computation has caused a reappraisal of the perceived wisdom in the other two fields. A concluding section speculates about the nature of the laws of physics, which are algorithms for the handling of information, and must be executable in our real physical universe.' . back |
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