Disclaimer

 

 

 

‘Imagination is more important than knowledge – ALBERT EINSTEIN’ (The Creative Age, Gene D. Cohen, p 36)

 

Mathematics defines knowledge and a more general form of mathematics, that I have called the Mathematics of the Mind is the mathematics of the imagination of our mind. Imagination is creative thinking, which is a ninth sense built into the brain of the ‘higher’ animals.

 

The Mathematics of the Mind is not exact and it must be viewed through the Logic of the Half-truth, and so the contents of this book may or may not be true, but that doesn’t mean that the predictions that it makes are not useful.

 

“When we talk about mathematics,” [John von Neumann] wrote towards the end of his life, ”we may be discussing a secondary language, built on the primary language truly used by our central nervous system.” (The Shallows, Nicholas Carr p 176)

 

This quotation is consistent with the ideas put forward later, when it will be seen that mathematics is a special case of the Mathematics of the Mind.

 

 

Warning

 

It may be noticed that certain chapters have a different ‘feel’ to them and that is due to aspects of the ‘ninth’ sense which changes as time passes and as the ‘state’ of my mind changes, see later. I rationalize this effect as an ‘evolution of thinking’ and some of these chapters must by necessity be historical, but complete at the time of writing. Consequently the sequence of writing will be given in the Table of Contents. Also, sections (in bold) may be listed as ‘postscript’ and present some material that was written later, and might be best absorbed upon a second reading.

 

So, be warned that reading this book may influence your mind permanently and cause changes in your brain that are physical and permanent. Your thinking may, and probably will never be the same again. Hopefully, for the better!

 

So, welcome to the world of General Mathematics! It is sorely needed and just might help solve some of the world’s problems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foreword

 

 

This book is about patterns and the patterns were pulled down as they were needed and consequently, there is no continuous story but only as the sections occurred to me and seemed to lead to the next subject.

 

The patterns (or quotations) seemed to fall into place as if the atmosphere were super-saturated with information. Perhaps there is someone wanting to get a message across, perhaps it was luck, perhaps there is so much information available if you look for it. Perhaps there is a mathematical basis to logic of some sort, that when tapped leads to a flood of ideas!

 

The Disclaimer mentioned the change in the mind with time (ninth sense) and the above paragraph was what I felt at that time, and I still feel that way, but my mind has moved on and if a pattern of knowledge was felt to be super-saturated, perhaps it is! There is so much knowledge in the minds of millions of researchers throughout the world that perhaps it is becoming unstable and waiting to ‘drop out’.

 

This is not a new idea. Many people have a depth of knowledge, but they can’t put an ‘over-arching’ theory over the whole lot or even a few disciplines simply because they have a depth and not a width of knowledge. Perhaps it requires someone like myself, who has always tried to be a generalist to indicate a possible direction to solving the problem of what to do with all that knowledge. The first step is to determine what we want, and that is the Philosophers’ stone (see later) and by the use of the Mathematics of the Mind etc. we will be able to better combine different areas of expertise or different disciplines to unlock new knowledge, especially social knowledge, which has been left behind, see later.

 

The ‘point’ of the Mathematics of the Mind is to step back to a more general form of mathematics where precision fades and cross (discipline) relationships stand out. Quotations are commonly used to set down the facts that specialists stand behind, and I have freely used them and taken them at face value.

 

Our interest should be in the predictions, which are the solutions of the mathematics, and they should guide us, but, who is to judge their worth and perhaps instigate them. I can only place my faith in the following. ‘Humanity is a magnificent but fragile achievement. Our species is still more impressive because we are the culmination of an evolutionary epic that was continuously played out in great peril. Most of the time our ancestral populations were very small, of a size that in the course of mammalian history typically carried a probability of early extinction. All the prehuman bands taken together made up a population of at most a few tens of thousands of individuals.’ (The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson, p 13)

 

Our present world-wide problems are due to the success of technology and a failure in social planning allowing indiscriminate and uncontrolled breeding leading to global warming, overuse of resources etc. The mathematical basis and possible solutions to the logic which might help redress this imbalance are outlined in the following pages.

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

‘The remains of modern humans ….are dated around 100,000 years ago. However, at least another 50,000 years passed before the tools and other artefacts associated with modern man appeared. This was a very key time, the time when biological evolution virtually stopped and cultural evolution took over – it has been termed ‘the great leap forward’. It seems likely that the evolution of complex language, the transmission of knowledge and the greater development of the ability to guess what another is thinking (theory of mind) were the facilitators of this development.’ (The Story of Life, Richard Southwood, p 229)

 

This is an interesting quotation, but as we will see later, it doesn’t matter where we start because everything is inter-related, but it does make a point that it was the second 50,000 years that things started to happen. I could make the further point that the rate of innovation is increasing in the developed countries to the extent that there is talk of an asymptotic explosion of technology in the near future. This point could be called the ‘flowering of humanity’! But of what part of humanity? Only a very small part of the population unless we organize something better than we have at present.

 

It appears that our minds are improving and becoming more and more creative using essentially the same brain that served the hunter/gatherer. How is this possible and a (theoretical) look at the brain indicates the mechanics of creative thought. This links back into race and IQ, learning opportunities, eugenics and a host of other relationships that are linked together. Of special importance is anti-ageing and its benefits to well-being leading to a long healthy life with little old age, memory loss etc. But this will increase the population!

 

Also, there are huge problems appearing worldwide such as climate change, overpopulation, lack of resources, people moving illegally, the barely literate and so on and these are difficult to solve because we do not have a solution that everyone can agree upon. A (possible) solution is put forward to curtail many of these problems. Logic is principally based on ‘true’ and ‘false’, but each person has a different idea of what is true and what is false. We need a ‘logic line’, much like a number line so that we can move between the two extremes. In fact, we need a large number of logic lines, but a simplification will be given shortly that leads to wide-ranging possible ‘solutions’ over many fields of study.

 

When we have a ‘logical’ solution, then we have a better chance to put the world ‘back on track’. But we also need a solution that is hopefully ‘optimal’, so this book is an attempt to define a logic based on mathematics to create a definitive ‘optimal’ ‘track’ that the vast majority of people can agree on, and hopefully accept the outcomes that are given.

 

There is nothing particularly difficult in this book as it covers a wide field with limited depth and, within reason, most chapters are self-contained. But, they are all connected as will become apparent as cross references are made. If I was to suggest a starting point, it would have to be the sections on anti-aging, simply because the sooner that the recommendations are taken up, the longer that you will have to consider the rest of the book!

 

That little joke is an example of the Mathematics of Social Logic that is the basis and starting point of this book! Traditionally, one starts at the beginning, but I have listed the order of writing because my creativity has changed over time. As we move into the ‘asymptotic’ portion of increase in creativity in the population, as appears to be happening in our technological world and our minds, this is the only way to get the book finished.

 

Finally, in contrast to the beginning of the Forward, and at a later time, the book does have a ‘point’, a very important ‘point’ that has become apparent to me, and that is to provide a small number of people, as in the quotation in the Forward, to restart evolution. As a working title, I have called this proposed organization the Forever Club and you are invited to join, if you want the best for humanity and to live ‘forever’!