Chapter 2: The Philosophers’ Stone

 

The philosophers ‘ stone or stone of the philosophers (Latin: lapis philosphorum) is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals such as lead into gold (chrysopoeia) or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosophers’ stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosophers’ stone were known as the Magnus Opus (“Great Work”). (Wikipedia, Philosophers’ stone)

 

This quotation states a stone, but why a stone? Perhaps stones had an aura of the mystical about them that was carried through from the religions of the Ancients, or, perhaps there were not many natural substances that could be used as a representation during the Middle Ages.

 

The following quotation shows that the search has been a long one and worldwide. ‘The most authoritative modern view is that gunpowder was first made in China, in the middle of the ninth century AD, by Thang alchemists who were actually looking for the elixir of immortality’. (The Big Bang, G. I. Brown, p 4)

 

Perhaps the search has been with us from the beginning when an ancestor picked up a stone to ward off a charging predator, and a lucky throw could have lengthened his life! Perhaps the Philosophers’ Stone is another name for Technology.

 

The second part, that rejuvenation, perfection at its finest, enlightenment and heavenly bliss sound like knowledge based solutions and are similar to the subjects that are considered in this book. The search for the Philosophers’ Stone has been replaced by the search for technology, but the Philosophers’ stone was a shopping list or wish list from the beginning of humanity.

 

There are two obvious concepts, firstly that the wish list has existed for a long long time and secondly, it contain social aspects. The idea that technology has taken over the properties of the Philosophers’ stone is false, to a certain extent, because social aspects loomed large in historical times and technology is wanting in these areas. Certainly technology has blossomed, but it does not consider or cover the whole wish list of the Ancients. This is apparent in the problems that we have today, such as the obesity epidemic, over-population, lack of resources, global warming etc.

 

There is no general or large appreciation of humanity in technology, but it could be considered that the wish list of the Philosophers’ stone requires both technology and the social logic of the half-truth. So, let’s write that as an equation:

 

The Philosophers’ stone (of humans) = Technology + social aspects (of our humanity)

 

Mathematically, this is nonsense! You can’t add apples and oranges, but in the Mathematics of the Mind, you can! Put another way, when humanity is applied as a condition on General Mathematics, the result is the Mathematics of (our) Mind. Similarly, when humanity is applied to the Logic of the Half-truth, the result is the Laws of (our) Life, which is derived in the next chapter.

 

It will be shown that the scientific/technology/innovation side of the stone mirrors the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction. This simple ‘roadmap’ shows the context of the book and defines our path, that the world as we know it has become unbalanced, simply because we (usually) consider only part of General Mathematics, that which we call mathematics and part of Logic of the Half-truth which we call formal logic.

 

postscript: a roadmap is a guide and not really understood until the journey is over, so this postscript assumes that the book has been read and this roadmap shows how the concept of the Philosophers’ stone lies in the modern world.

 

Taking the break-down of the Philosophers’ stone that the scientific/technology/innovation side of the stone mirrors the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction was meant to be a broad generalization because the concepts had not even been defined. I was indicating the similarity that appears between the concepts in current use and the concepts that I was to introduce.

 

I want to show the relationship between the two concepts, especially that the scientific/technology/innovation is a special case of the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction. It has been shown that the mind/consciousness is necessary for measurement (or mathematics) to be applied. Mathematics allows the mind to stand outside of the mathematical process by using theorems to build the mathematical structure.

 

So, I’m going to restate the Philosophers’ stone concept into three columns instead of two by inserting one in the middle. The left hand column remains the same (scientific/technology/innovation) where the mind is outside of the problem, whilst the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction lies on the right side where the experimenters’ mind is swamped by the social needs of the multitude. The middle column is where mathematics works, but understanding needs to come through the Mathematics of the Mind (Chapter 27) and contains the problem ‘fringes’ of the very large and the very small. Problems like relativity, quantum mechanics, existence, reality, the mind is part of the experiment etc. needs the Mathematics of the Mind to view concepts to understand them easily.

 

In other words, the Mathematics of the Mind handles all cases and the above shows how it fits into the current picture of the spread of concepts required by humanity. The Logic of the Half-truth extends formal logic with a ‘completeness’ to enable a reality (or completeness) to evolve out of the possibility of existence.

 

postscript: ‘Any fully programmable computer can simulate any other such machine … conjecture is known as Church’s thesis, named after the American logician Alonzo Church…. All attempts to arrive at a definition of what it means to compute something seem to result in equivalent machines … words for the process of step-by-step development of an idea abounded: “mental process,” “effective procedure,” “algorithm.”’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 164)

 

If this quotation represents the current thinking, I have to point out that throughout this book I have been talking about the ninth sense (creativity/consciousness), which our mind/brain has had for a very long time. Computers are designed to insulate the signals that are moving around so that they are not corrupted. Our brains are designed to corrupt the signals to a certain extent, by inducing parts of inter-related thoughts into our consciousness to create ‘creativeness’, and so the brain cannot be compared with a computer.

 

Looking at the concept of the Philosophers’ stone above, it is clear that our mind/brain belong on the right hand side and only ventures into the left hand side with a complete set of axioms as the basis of mathematics and this is because our minds are creative and designed to be creative and this is heritable. I was watching a TV show that said that Stephen Hawking thinks that we will be replaced by robots in the future. I find this very difficult to believe because evolution requires creativity. No creativity means doing the same thing forever, by definition. This is why Church’s thesis must exclude the brain.

 

There is a difficulty in proving Church’s thesis, and that is why it is a conjecture. Computing science is a movement towards a general mathematics but it does not have the ‘rigor’ that the Mathematics of the Mind has, because firstly, Chaos Theory and mathematics are a consistent part and secondly, the mind evolved to create (or be conscious). The first Law of Life states that iteration is a truth because of the evolution producing a solution that is the ‘best possible’ solution because of competition and it is highly unlikely, but not impossible, for a ‘better’ solution to exist. We are relying on 3,000 million years of evolution to produce the ‘best’ solution.

 

The impetus behind quantum computing is the mind (because the wave function collapses through the application of the mind), DNA computing is possible for small problems, but will never produce the spectacular results that evolution and 3,000 million years have produced, without the contribution of a mind. This leads into the question of Survival of the Best because a creative/conscious mind is needed to move in that direction.

 

 

postscript: to illustrate the current scientific thinking: ‘when individual photons are directed at a pair of slits in some otherwise impermeable material. Each slit is equipped with a detector. It has been shown that when the detectors are turned off, the photons pass through both slits simultaneously. But when the detectors are turned on, the photons must “make a choice” about which slit to pass through. This is what is meant by the “collapse” of the photon’s wave function. If further conditions can be placed on a wave function, conditions that correspond to the strictures of a particular problem to be solved, it may be that the wave will collapse in a manner that provides a solution to the problem.’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 179)

 

This quotation appears to be hoping that conditions can be applied to the ‘collapse’ of the wave function of the photon, but I believe that the universe is so ‘simple’ in form that it requires a mind to measure the passing of a photon and convert it from indeterminate to determinate. In other words, a probability space having only one logic dimension, compared to the five in the O world and it is unlikely for any problem solving capacity to exist.

 

On the other hand, the instigator of the ‘collapse’ is a mind that has taken 3,000 million years to evolve and has (almost) limitless capacity to create that is the party that produces the result. Something that a computer cannot do! The Mathematics of the Mind involves the mind in the decision-making, and whilst that appears to be ‘cheating’, it is what our reality really is. Our reality is a product of our mind, so why shouldn’t a general mathematics be the same?

 

postscript: looking at computers, ‘the algorithms we have examined up to now were all deterministic. In other words, they proceeded to find solutions to instances of a problem by following a rigid recipe, the outcome of which is determined in advance. Not so with nondeterministic algorithms. Faced with the instance of a problem, a nondeterministic algorism simply guesses the yes/no answer and, if the answer is “yes,” also guesses a solution.’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 199)

 

Firstly, I dispute the word ‘guess’, when a brain/mind is involved that has taken 3,000 million years to evolve and should be able to do better than guess, but the greater the number of attractors taken into account in the Mathematics of the Mind the better the answer or ‘guess’. The Mathematics of the Mind should be able to ‘create’ a ‘solution’ to some extent involving humanity and to better the solution when it considers more alternatives (more attractors). A small point, but the ability of the mind to iterate and create lies at the ‘heart’ of the Mathematics of the Mind. This book puts forward the idea that the creative mind gets ‘better’ with time, use, nutrition etc in line with the second Law of Life.

 

The Mathematics of the Mind in its general form is necessarily vague, but precision of measurement has been built-in to us to escape predators or catch prey, because it is the most efficient way and heritable. There is little doubt that we have inherited the necessity of exactitude, and that, we call mathematics, so we end up with a gradation of three columns instead of one.

 

Secondly, nondeterministic algorism sounds very close to indeterminate in logic space and needs a mind to ‘guess’ an answer. I maintain that the universe is a probability space that contains only logic as an operator which manifests itself as the Half-truth, which is complete and allows a reality when we impose upon it, through our mind/brain, as happens when we measure something. A nondeterministic algorism is creating an extension of mathematical reality (to us) in the same way and we realize that it doesn’t exist outside of our mind/brain.

 

A brain/mind acts not only as a computer but actually creates our reality by measuring it, and as each brain has the same architecture, so our reality overlaps that of the larger animals that sense us and each other, so it could be said that we have god-like powers and created our world (or our reality)!

 

We created our reality in the same way that we created mathematics and now we have created the Mathematics of the Mind and reap the benefits when we use it. Similarly, I have outlined possible means to Survival of the Best and we need to define it in our minds and change our reality in line with it, and reap its benefits. As mathematics grades into the Mathematics of the Mind, so does Survival of the Fittest grade into Survival of the Best, and the basis of this change in reality is education, communication and a mind in tune with the Mathematics of the Mind to define a ‘common ground’ as in, as one example, Chapter 18: Finding God Through One Religion.

 

postscript: the Philosophers’ stone concept above is ‘static’ with no mention of time, also no mention has been made of logic in the left hand side and I am assuming that formal logic (true/false) is there, but I have not mentioned it. By including time and chaos into true/false, we get the Logic of the Half-truth, which is used on the right hand side, so now there is an opportunity to put it into the left hand side to make the ‘book-keeping’ correct.

 

Starting another concept (or thought, or attractor), it has been put forward in this book that there are five ‘dimensions’ (three space and one time in O world and one logic in world P and by necessity in world O also) that we can use, so, if I am correct, EVERYTHING must fit within those five dimensions, otherwise we will need more dimensions. Hints have occurred in other chapters in considering the proverbs and nouns, such as existence, reality, consciousness etc. as being part of the Half-truth. In other words, language must be part of the logic dimension, and in particular, the Half-truth.

 

Bringing these concepts together as a thought and using creativity to derive a prediction, we can conjecture (postulate, guess etc.) that ALL language fits into the Logic of the Half-truth, and further that EVERYTHING fits into the five dimensions. An example: a horse is in a paddock can be true if it is there over time, false if it is not there over time, if it is there some of the time and not there the rest of the time, and it is too dark to see if the horse is there (or raining too hard etc and equates to chaos, indeterminacy etc).

 

So, going back to the philosophers’ stone concept, the Mathematics of the Mind, the Logic of the Half-truth and time passing over-arch the three columns that I have used for clarity. It is of no use making one column, as there should be, because the three columns are the result of ‘everyday use’ by different sections of the community.

 

To accentuate the ‘oneness’ of the three components that have been used, I might call them a trinity and point to the ancients’ use of this technique in the Christian Church that caused Terry’s problem in chapter 1 with the Trinity to describe the three aspects of the one God.