No up or down in space

 

No up or down in space

No Up or Down in Space

The concept of "up" and "down" is deeply ingrained in our everyday lives. On Earth, gravity provides a clear direction: down is towards the center of the planet, while up is the opposite. This orientation shapes our understanding of the world and influences how we navigate our environment. However, when we venture into space, this familiar framework begins to dissolve. In the vastness of the cosmos, the notions of up and down lose their meaning, presenting a fascinating challenge to our perception of reality.

In space, the absence of gravity creates a unique environment where traditional orientations become irrelevant. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) experience microgravity, which allows them to float freely. In this state, they can rotate and move in any direction without the constraints of gravitational pull. This freedom can be disorienting for those accustomed to the fixed orientation of life on Earth. The experience of weightlessness transforms the way individuals interact with their surroundings, as they can push off surfaces and glide through the air, defying the expectations set by gravity.

The lack of a definitive up or down in space also has implications for navigation and communication. On Earth, we rely on landmarks and directional cues to guide us. In the vast expanse of space, however, these references are scarce. Astronauts must rely on instruments and technology to orient themselves. The stars, while beautiful, do not provide a consistent frame of reference. Instead, they serve as distant markers that can help with navigation but do not define a specific direction. This reliance on technology underscores the importance of adaptability and precision in space exploration.

Moreover, the absence of a clear up or down challenges our understanding of human behavior and psychology. In a microgravity environment, the body undergoes various changes. For instance, fluids in the body redistribute, leading to a puffy appearance in astronauts' faces. This physiological shift can affect mood and cognitive function, highlighting the intricate relationship between our physical environment and mental state. The experience of floating in a weightless environment can evoke feelings of exhilaration, but it can also lead to disorientation and discomfort. Understanding these effects is crucial for the well-being of astronauts during long-duration missions.

The philosophical implications of a space devoid of up and down are equally intriguing. It invites us to reconsider our place in the universe and the constructs we have built around our existence. The idea that orientation is a human construct challenges our perception of reality. If up and down are merely products of our planet's gravitational influence, what does that say about our understanding of space and time? This perspective encourages a broader exploration of how we define our experiences and the frameworks we use to interpret the world around us.

As humanity continues to explore the cosmos, the lessons learned from the absence of up and down in space will shape our future endeavors. The challenges of navigating a weightless environment, the physiological effects on the human body, and the philosophical questions raised by this experience all contribute to our understanding of what it means to be human in the universe. Embracing the complexities of space will not only enhance our exploration efforts but also deepen our appreciation for the intricate relationship between our planet and the vast, mysterious cosmos that surrounds us.

From Email to the Universe: and other alterations of consciousness

 

Email to the Universe: and other alterations of consciousness

Chapter 49: The Relativity of “Reality”

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The Relativity of “Reality”

 

      1. From the viewpoint of semantics, “reality” is a multi-ordinal concept, having different meanings on different levels of abstraction. On the lowest level of abstraction “reality” refers to immediate sensory consistency. “Is there really a kangaroo in that chair?” can be answered by obtaining the consensus of the group; or, if everybody is stoned, by bringing in some objective observers with objective instruments, etc. On the highest level of abstraction, “reality” refers to logical consistency with a body of established scientific fact and theory. “Is entropy real?” can be answered by consulting a reliable textbook on thermodynamics. Between the level of kangaroo and the level of entropy, there are many other levels of abstraction and, hence, many kinds of “reality.”

      For instance, “Is the Gross National Product real?” is a question on a certain level of abstraction; and if equally intelligent people can, and do, argue about this, it is because they are talking on different levels of abstraction and are not aware of the fact that there are different levels of abstraction and different kinds of “reality.”

      I call this the semantic relativity of “reality.”

      2. Every tribe has its own “reality — map,” or worldview, or What is “real” to the Eskimo is not what is “real” to the Zuni Indian or the Congolese or the Japanese Buddhist or the German businessman or the Russian commissar, etc. If you travel around the world with the naive assumption that everybody is living in the same “reality,” you will make numerous embarrassing mistakes, insult countless people unintentionally, make a splendid ass of yourself and generally contribute to the worldwide belief that tourists are a Curse of God sent to punish people for their sins. To recognize that every culture, and sub-culture, has its own “reality” is the prerequisite of sophistication, tact, and true tolerance. Otherwise you come on like the Englishman who claimed all Chinese understand English if you just shout loud enough.

      I call this the anthropological, or cultural, relativism of “reality.”

      3. Every nervous system creates its own “reality.” Out of the billions, or billions of billions, of energies intersecting the room in which you read this, your brain, performing 100,000,000 processes per minute (almost all of them unconscious to those circuits called the ego and recognized as “me”) arranges a few hundred or thousand into the Gestalt which you experience as the “reality” of the room. To demonstrate this, in my Info-Psychology classes, I will have the students describe the hall outside the lecture room; no two will describe exactly the same hall.

      Or, I will have everybody write down what they hear in the room during a minute of clock-time; no two lists of these sounds will be identical. A variety of chemicals introduced into the nervous system, or direct brain stimulation with electrical impulses, or yoga, etc., will create an entirely different neurological “reality” while you are still sitting in the "same” room.

      I call this neurological relativism, or the relativity of perceived “reality.”

      4. Two scientists moving at different accelerations can measure the same phenomenon with equally accurate instruments and obtain totally different readings of its extensions in the space and time dimensions. (Einstein, Special On the quantum level, a variety of different philosophical reality-maps, or “models,” describe equally well both the experimental data and the mathematical equations that are known to “fit” the data. Any attempt to get around this by adding more sophisticated instruments leads to adding still more sophisticated instruments to monitor the first set, and so on, forever. (Von Neumann’s “catastrophe of the infinite regress.”)

      I call this physical Relativity, or the relativity of instrumental “reality.”

      In conclusion, “reality” is a concept borrowed from the theologians who, being bankrupt, are in no position to loan anything to anybody. We would do better to restrict ourselves to questions that can be answered. Such questions take the form, “At this date, with the knowledge presently possessed by humanity, which model best accords with the facts?”

      When it turns out, as it usually does these days, that several models work equally well, we might then ask: which models are most amusing? most optimistic? most worthy of our time and energy? most elegant and esthetic? And we can keep in mind, too, biologist J.B.S. Haldane’s warning, “The universe may be not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.”

fractal

 

From The Father of Cartesian Empiricism: Robert Desgabets on the physics and metaphysics of blood transfusion

 

8.3
From Metaphysics to Physics to expérience:
Cartesian Empiricism
Descartes more than once remarks that the role of experiment is to provide
demonstrations of the first principles or truths of physics by connecting them to the
way God actually made the world. In Part IV of his Discourse on Method he says:
But I must also admit that the power of nature is so ample and so vast, and the principles
so simple and so general, that I notice hardly any particular effect of which I do not know
at once that it can be deduced from the principles in many different ways; and my greatest
difficulty is usually to discover in which of these ways it depends upon them. I know no other means to discover this than by seeking further observations whose outcomes vary
according to which of these ways provides the correct explanation.49
In Part III, Article 46 of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy he says:
For, seeing that these parts could have been regulated by God in an infinity of diverse ways; experience alone should teach us which of all these ways He chose. That is why we are nowat liberty to assume anything we please, provided that everything we shall deduce from it
is
{entirely} in conformity with experience.50
The idea is that human reason alone cannot discover how God chose to create the world—for the possible ways that reason can conceive exceed the one actual world that the senses come into contact with. The appeal to experience and observation is what delimits the merely conceivable, possible ways to the actual one, and so plays a necessary role in scientific knowledge. We must appeal to experience in order to
find our way back from effects to their causes.
A similar idea runs throughout Desgabets’ Supplement:
He [Descartes] founds the laws of nature for physics only upon the simple supposition that God, in creating the world, put as much movement in the totality of matter as is found there
at present, which we know from experience: this is sufficient for Descartes to deduce the
formation and nature of all things that make up the visible world, in reasoning always from
the cause to effects with consequences similar to those of mathematics. [author’s
emphasis]51
x
x

Marxism and Natural Sciences by Y.M. Uranovsky

 Natural science has to do with a relatively changeable nature ; on the one hand, as a result of the industrial activity of many generations, on the other hand (as the further development of science has shown) as a result of man's action upon it through the medium of investigation of observed processes.

The essence of the processes of nature cannot be understood without taking man's practical activity into account, which depends on the condition of productive forces and social construction. Only by starting from the practice of social life (industry, classes, social conditions) can human nature be understood as a part of nature as a whole, not only in the sense that man's psychology and ideas show their class essence, but in the sense of taking account of those natural (biological) changes to which he is subjected, when, in the process of changing reality, he also changes himself.

The method established by Marx spells the doom of naturalism in all its variations which looks on human society and man as an ordinary "child" of nature : the socio-power school (Podolinsky, Ostwald) ; the geo-political (Rutzel, G. E. Graf, etc.) ; every kind of bio-sociological school, starting with social-Darwinism, from Karl Kautsky's attempts to supplement Marx with a doctrine of the instincts as the starting-point for the analysis of social relationships, or the efforts of the Austro-Marxists to correct Marx by the teaching of Freud, explaining religion and culture by biological factors, right down to the philosophy of modern fascism (O. Spann) which tries to base itself on a biological theory of completeness and a doctrine of races in the organic world.

Marx breaks down all kinds of teaching on freedom of will by showing that social being determines social consciousness and in this way extends the objective method to the study of the most complex social phenomena.

In place of inconsistent, abstract, materialist monism (Spinoza, French eighteenth-century materialism, Feuerbach), Marx lays the firm foundations for a materialist monism which is not abstract, but concrete, dialectical, consistent, taking account of the specific nature of human society, of all the inner connections between nature and man in their historical development. Marx gives a method and an outlook in which the dialectic of nature and the dialectic of history are indissolubly connected together.

In Marx's views the historical primacy of nature is not in any way broken. Even before the triumph of evolutionist ideas Marx establishes the following premises : the theory of creation is destroyed, as is shown by the natural sciences (geognosis) ; nature develops, it is in process of becoming even before the appearance of man ; the development of nature goes spontaneously, is immanent, selfgenerated ; the organic world (and man) arose through generatio æquivoca ; life has not always existed as Thomson, Helmholtz and other representatives of the "absurd doctrine" of panspermy uphold. It follows that Marx understands this generatio æquivoca not as being the conception and birth of higher organisms without the intermediary of seed and parents (the mediæval form of this doctrine of generatio æquivoca, spontanea aut primaria), but in the sense of self-movement, selfdevelopment, i.e. in the sense which is in accordance with the chemical theory of the origin of life and the evolutionary theory of the origin of man, established within a decade and a half by Darwin's theory.

In a deep internal connection with these new views of the object of the natural sciences, of nature, Marx develops an absolutely new outlook on the science of nature, on natural science.

Even in the works belonging to the Holy Family Marx analyses, with greater power and depth than any of his predecessors (Bacon, Spinoza, the French materialists and philosophers of the age of enlightenment), the cultural-historical and social significance of natural science. Marx reproaches the philosophers for not taking into account the role and importance of the natural sciences. Natural science is not an external factor of usefulness for man or a chance factor of enlightenment. It is internally bound up with the most essential form of human activity, with practice, with industry, with the development of labour.

Industry is a practical relationship of man to nature, natural science, a "theoretical relationship". Industry is the basic form of practice, natural science, the foundation of human science. Industry discloses the real powers of man, and natural science is such a "real power", "a potential of production". Marx establishes the empirical origin and practical function of natural science and apportions a very important social role to natural science.

It follows that the power of Marx's analysis, surpassing all that had hitherto been written on the importance of the natural sciences, is determined by the fact that Marx knew how to generalise with genius the objective data of the epoch. Marx did not invent theories but summed up the experience of history and modern life. He often refers to the "gifts of science" which Davy, Liebig and others made to humanity.