chapter 1 models and assumptions -...

The Trip from Bountiful 2/26/07

CHAPTER 1 MODELS AND ASSUMPTIONS

Models Humans routinely use models to aid their understanding and predict how things

function. It is well to keep in mind that models are not reality. Models are built on as-sumptions, data, facts and observations. Models are adjusted and reworked as data and observations improve. Mathematics is the language of models and as it developed it was used to resolve complex issues into simple models. The best models are simple. Con-sider Newton’s gravity, (F = MA) or Einstein’s relativity (E = MC2). Complex models often indicate incomplete understanding, for example Ptolemy’s crystal spheres, or string theory. Errors in models come mostly from bad assumptions or insufficient data.

DEFINE THE UNIVERSE AND GIVE FOUR EXAMPLES? A physics professor famous for his two-question essay finals once asked his stu-

dents to: 1. Define the universe. 2. Give two examples. But the joke was on him for the universe, as humans know it, has changed with

understanding, and many examples can be given. For example, three to four million years ago the universe for a human consisted of his home territory, the 25 to 100 square miles or so within which his home troop foraged. The individual troop member was in-timately familiar with the creeks, hills, meadows and bogs within this area. They existed in small troops consisting of an alpha male and female and various other related but less dominate members. Their primary concerns were finding food (mostly fruit and nuts), and evading predators. They had no tools, and the trees provide both refuge and suste-nance. Biological pressure and climate change forced them into areas less suitable for their existent.

Outside of their home boundaries lay other home territories defended by rival groups. Crossing any of those boundaries brought considerable risk. Therefore, at that time, a model of the universe consisted of individual representations of these home terri-tories each slightly different.

One of the first known recorded theories of the beginning of the universe is con-tained in the first book of the bible, a myth common to three of the major religions of the day with roots which pre date the bible. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” This is a little bit vague, but we must remember, that the Bible was written when the level of understanding by humans was considerably less than it is presently and was directed at individuals that lacked the understanding to comprehend complex rela-tionships.

Accepted truth is, unfortunately, more of a democratic than scientific principle, essentially voted on by the common person. So, the intelligence education and under-


standing of the average individual plays a major role in defining truth. Recently much discussion has centered on teaching Genesis as an alternative to evolution. Both religion and science play important roles in the lives of humans. However, they are not the same and the bible cannot stand under scientific scrutiny.

The model of the universe 3200 years ago

The passage of 4 million years allowed the development written records. There-fore, data exists as to the concept of the universe at that time. Agriculture and animal husbandry had been in existence for seven thousand years and the advent of agriculture brought with it the growth of larger populations. Small permanent villages grew, then towns, trade and eventually city-states all of which expanded human knowledge of the universe. Technical advancements had reduced the fear of predators to almost none. Humans became the most feared predator. The average individual continued to hunt, but herding and farming were their main industry. Trade and merchandising was the profes-sion of the upper middle class and a pathway out of poverty. Stone was still the primary material for tools of the common person. Wheels and carts were in use, although the pri-mary mode of transportation was walking. The staff or cudgel was the weapon of coice by the common folk. Copper and bronze were used for weapons by the wealthy. Iron had just been discovered.

The use of boats for fishing and trade made movement easier and safer. Explora-tion and understanding increased and the older models of the universe no longer served their purpose. Trade between the city-states was flourishing and providing understanding of the land and sea. Trade required knowledge of trade routes, which made exploration important and profitable. By this time, the written word had been around for 2000 years and was available to record information. New and different models of the universe were developed. One example, developed circa 1500 BC is based on Greek understanding of the physical world and their religion. At that time, the known universe consisted of the landmass that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea, which was in turn surrounded by Oceanus Fluvius, which abutted the celestial realm. Much of the land greater than a few hundred miles from the shore of the seas was not fully explored and mapped. This was the model of the universe when the bible was first written.


Oceanus Fluvius

Oceanus Fluvius

Phoenicia

Erembi

Abil

Lybia Egyptuis

Thebes

CreteRhodes

Cypress

ThraciaCimmerii

The Heavens

The Heavens

RegioNoctis

RegioLucia

Aethiopes Occidentales

Aethiopes

Orientales

Sicili

MountOlympus

Figure 1.1 Model of the Universe circa 1200 BC

The Black Sea had only been explored along the south shore to the Rioni River on

the eastern shore. The Caspian Sea was reached by traveling up the Rioni and down the Kura. The Greeks knew little of the Caspian Sea, which was represented as a bay of Oceanus Fluvius or the ocean that surrounded the known land mass and separated it from the rest of the universe. To the west, the known universe terminated at the Strait of Gi-braltar where it opened into the Oceanus Fluvius. North and south of the Mediterranean, the land blended into terra incognito in both directions until it terminated on the shores of Oceanus Fluvius, See Figure 1.1. This representation of the known universe is reflected in Genesis, which describes god collecting the waters under heaven into one place, i.e. the Mediterranean.

On the other side of Oceanus Fluvius, the Greek, Roman and Hebrew Mythology, (the bible), all defined a similar universe. Mythology is a pseudonym used by modern religions to refer to ancient religions. The basic difference between Hebrew and the Greek or Roman mythology is monotheism. All three religions required a place where their god or gods existed and a place where the sun, moon and stars were attached to the universe. The Greeks and Romans collected the stars into various mythological objects and heroes - Orion, Hercules, for example. The Hebrews rejected most of the astrolocgi-cal leanings, but were afraid to abandon it entirely. Genesis refers to the sun and moon ruling the day and night respectively. A Better Model 2300 Years Ago

One thousand years later trade had expanded considerably. Horse and camels had been domesticated although again only the upper middle class could afford them. Alex-ander the great had suppressed the Egyptian religion and the Greco Roman religion dominated most of the civilized world. The Jewish religion had been in existence since around 1800 BC but had gained little influence since it had no political power until Joshua’s modest effort 600 years later, which was quickly extinguished by the Hittites. Science was flourishing. The library at Alexandria had been established. About 2400


years ago the world’s first think tank assembled, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy and Eratosthenes. As early as 2300 years ago the Egyptian, Eratosthenes proved the earth round and measured its diameter.

Ptolemy compiled a map of the known world showing the curvature of the earth. See Figure 1.2. Knowledge of the earth’s geography had increased significantly from the days of Homer and simpler model of the universe on which the Greek, Roman and He-brew mythology was based.

Figure 1.2 Map of the known Universe circa 100 BC

Note the map shows the British Islands, Ireland, the coast of Sweden in the

northwest, the Canary Islands in the west, and the western edge of China in the east. Comparing this map to the one in figure 1.1 shows the advance in understanding over 1300 years and this was essentially the world as Aristotle knew when he devised his model of the universe. This map would not have been possible without the data stored in the library of Alexandria gathered on various sea and land trade routes. This is a small hint of the magnitude of the loss caused by the burning of that Library by Caesar. It is also of interest to note that this map was still in use some 1400 years later.

Aristotle recorded his arguments that the earth was round and the center of the universe. He summed up all of this knowledge in an elaborate cosmological model, which showed the sun, moon and stars moved in circular orbits around the earth. The earth stood in the center surrounded by eight concentric clear crystal spheres. See figure 1.3.


Sphere of the fixed Stars

Sphere of Saturn

Sphere of Jupiter

Sphere of Mars

Sphere of Sun

Sphere of Venus

Sphere of Mercury

Sphere of the Moon

Figure 1.3 Model of the Universe circa 300 BC This model of the universe though flawed allowed the reasonable prediction of the

movements of the celestial bodies. The inaccuracies of the model became less noticeable with distance from the earth. For example, Jupiter behaved well, but the path of the moon required the radius of the moon’s orbit to shrink almost by half. Ptolemy was the first to recognize this flaw, which would require the moon to appear on regular intervals twice its normal size.

The Christian religion was developed based on this earth centric model of the universe since it upheld the idea that the earth was the center of the universe with plenty of room outside the sphere of the fixed stars for heaven. Almost 1000 years later the Muslim religion was developed based on this same model. Thus, all three of the major religions of today are based on models of the universe that are older than 2300 years. An Even Better Model Developed 500 years ago.

The earth centric model was taught by the three major religions until in 1514, shortly after Columbus had just reached the western hemisphere, a Polish priest, Nicolas Copernicus, proposed a simpler model with the sun in the center of the solar system. Co-pernicus did his work in secret and circulated his findings anonymously for fear of being branded a heretic. Serious business at that time in history and a fate suffered by Galileo nearly a century later when he constructed a telescope and published his observations of the planet Jupiter. Galileo observed that the Jupiter had moons, which rotated around Ju-piter not earth, thus proving that not all heavenly bodies rotated around the earth, the first small crack in the crystal spheres.

About the same time, and Johannes Kepler modified Copernicus’s theory chang-ing the orbital path to ellipses rather than circles, which greatly improved its accuracy and fortified its position. The argument as to whether the universe revolved around the earth or not lasted for hundreds of years, the church on one side, science on the other.


This bears similarity to the current intelligent design versus evolution conflict presently going on.

Newton put the last nail in the coffin of crystal spheres and a bounded universe with his theory of gravitation, which predicted the elliptical orbits that Kepler proposed. The church was right in its assumption that education is a dangerous thing. The forbid-den fruit hanging on the tree of truth and knowledge was not a coincidence.

It is interesting to note that none of the major religions of the world dealt with this newer model, by modifying their beliefs and no new religions have been developed to deal with the increasingly complex world. Models Developed in the Last 100 Years

In the last 100 years, humans have traveled off the planet, and we now have photographs of the planet from outer space. The universe is now known to have a diameter of least 15 billion light years. It is not easy to represent that large of a model on the printed page. Figure 1.4 is a photograph showing a portion of that universe where galaxies have been detected over 15 billion light years away. Each of the dots of light in this photograph are galaxies con-taining billions of suns. Each of these galaxies are millions of light years away from the next nearest galaxy. The photograph shows a section of the sky that is 100 million light years across, yet covers a portion of the night sky too small to be perceived by the human eye.

To model a universe that large is far beyond the scope of “Intelligent Design.” Since the early 1900s, several new theories have been advanced on the creation of the universe. The big bang is the most well known of these, and but as understanding grows, the new informa-tion has raised questions and several sub theories, that deal with an expanding, contract-ing or steady state universe have been developed to adjust the general theory back into alignment with what is known. One of these efforts resulted in the development of string theory, which requires a universe with greater than 10 dimensions. This theory is mathematically possible, but produces an unnecessarily complex universe. Another the-ory postulates that the speed of light is variable, which resolves many of the inconsisten-cies of the other theories but invalidates one of Einstein’s assumptions. This tends to strike fear into the hearts of most physicists, and has therefore not received the attention it deserves from the organized scientific community.

It seems that the way understanding, and for that matter the way the universe it-self, evolves – is by trial and error, an organized chaos of random events where the laws of probability apply. The process is both optimized and hindered by the intellect, experi-ence and whim. The human mind has a sort of inertia; a lot of energy must be expended to produce a change in understanding. The examples or models of the universe given above have one thing in common; they are all getting closer to the truth. The same hope-fully will be true of the next example.

Figure 1.4. Hubble Telescope View of Deep Space


Philosophy All of the historic theories start with some basic assumptions and use what is cur-

rently known to add supposition about what is not known, thereby getting closer to the actual truth. Supposition is part of both philosophy and science but philosophy is less rigid than science and supposition has a freer hand. As we approach the frontiers of sci-ence, we move into the realm of Philosophy.

Philosophy is needed to provide direction to science; philosophers first presented many concepts later perfected by science. In the early portions of this book philosophy takes over from science. Whereas science always displaces philosophy, both are neces-sary for understanding. But history shows, that philosophy never retreats without a fuss.

Science in general, and maybe by necessity, tends to look at only a very small portion of the picture. Philosophy tends to look at the bigger picture. The model pre-sented in this book, although based on science, does use philosophy to fill in unknown areas of terra incognito. The model present is neither the true model or even the best model, just hopefully a better model.

Assumptions All models whether scientific or philosophical begin with assumptions. The dic-

tionary defines an assumption as something that is believed to be true without proof, the starting point of a logical proof. For example, the philosophical basis for three of the ma-jor religions on this planet begins with the concepts that a super human being existed along with and substance that is not clearly defined. Sometimes referred to as earth, sometimes as water or void sometimes as one. It also assumes that complete understand-ing, resides in God or Gods. Note, that this assumption does not define what or who god is or whether monotheism or polytheism is correct.

The concept of one is also another way of saying that everything was the same; everything was uniform, constant, and absolutely, uniform in all dimensions and proper-ties. This is a common assumption in physical science, that is, the material being dealt with is homogeneous, isentropic, and continuous. Thus, in the beginning all mass existed in a static, eternal, large glob of very dense homogeneous, isentropic, continuous and complex material, and all understanding resided in God or Gods. The size of this glob is unknown, but it must have been finite because the amount of mass in the universe is fi-nite. The existence of the globatron may be a result of gravity collapsing everything into the granddaddy of all black holes. (This assumes that black holes are stable and continue to grow, which may not be true, if they reach a certain size, they may become unstable and explode. However, as far as this discussion is concerned it doesn’t make any differ-ence if there was a big bang or a rat-a-tat-tat, of multiple bangs.) We shall generalize these assumptions into the universe was formed from a uniform material by a superhu-man interaction. Event or process

Presently physics gives us no clear indication as to whether the universe was cre-ated with a process or by an event. If the universe was created by a process it would have no beginning or ending event, and thus essentially infinite. The cyclic notion is perva-sive, it has a certain symmetry that humans have come to know and admire. We have found that cycles appear to underlie most processes in the universe. Thus, the universe would be ultimate perpetual motion machine, however perpetual motion violates the


principle of entropy. At this time, we have no knowledge of a system that violates en-tropy.

Now, if the universe had a beginning event (the big bang) it must also have an ending event (the big whimper) and be linear and finite. This would seem to belie the notion of cycles, but that is not necessarily true if the events were part of a larger cycle, a wheel within a wheel so to speak.

It is also possible that the universe is in different phases of creation and destruc-tion at different places in the universe simultaneously. Instead of all galaxies being cre-ated with a single bang, galaxies are created individually with many smaller bangs, (sort of a binga da banga da boom universe). This type of universe would allow galaxies to collide and may be more consistent with observations of other explosive events in the universe. However, colliding galaxies doesn’t fit with the theory of space dilation.

The present preponderance of opinion seems to indicate that the universe as we know it began at a single point in space, thus an event. For that matter, the binga do banga da boom universe also fits this assumption. Thus, the event-oriented universe seems to be the most promising. The implications of unity

Unity implies Harmony a state completely without change. Because change de-stroys the uniformity, so change was also absent, which implies that entropy is infinite and time does not exists, (since time is essentially the measurement of change). If en-tropy is infinite, then complexity is also infinite, thus both god, and all the matter in the universe were infinitely complex and understanding was complete. Infinite entropy also implies then energy and temperature are zero. Zero energy also implies infinite mass. And since change was not occurring, this condition was eternal. This does not make the universe a very pleasant environment prior to the creation event.

Fortunately things change. The importance of change in the universe is often overlooked. This theory believes that change is a basic concept of creation. The location of an oxygen molecule, the air temperature, the chemical make up of the air and water, the amount of energy flowing from the sun. Everything must change, including change, or cease to exist. If there exists a single truth in the universe it is, “the only thing con-stant is change.” Everything must change or cease to exist. The third assumption and maybe the most important is that all things must change.

This assumption of course is counter to Einstein’s assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, certainly not an auspicious beginning. To question Einstein in the world of classical physics is tantamount to heresy and professional suicide. Never-theless, questions are surfacing at an increasing rate that challenge some of Einstein’s as-sumptions and will be discussed as they arise. It should be made clear that errors in his assumptions do not necessarily invalidate his theory only limit it.

CHANGE If we are to understand the universe, we must understand change. Much of what

is discussed in this book concerns the changes that occurred over the last 15 million years. Creation can be thought of as the initiation of change and extinction, as the ceas-ing of change. Stop change and existence ceases. When will existence cease? Presently we know that only about 10 percent of the available hydrogen in the universe has been consumed and turned into other elements, chiefly helium. We also know that hydrogen


appeared early in creation and the rate of consumption appears to be linear. Since the evolutionary process has been at work for 15 billion earth years and only 10 percent of the hydrogen has been consumed, this would indicate that the final extinction event, or “the big poof,” need not be resolved for at least another 150 billion years give or take a month.

Humans have a tendency to think about change in terms of their lifetime. Pres-ently we are worrying about the changes in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere, “global warming.” Global warming as we shall soon see, has implication to human com-fort and maybe existence, but is of little concern to the overall creation process. Any event that occurs on a small insignificant planet in the vastness of space over 200 years out of 150,000,000,000 years is a mouse fart in the wind. Change Driven Universe

Change is gradual and follows simple rules. Change normally flows from simple to complex as energy is consumed from the system. For example, in universe that con-sisted only of the simple hydrogen atom, (one electron and one proton), stars were born due to gravity. The formation of these large hydrogen stars lead directly to the creation of the considerably more complex element of helium (two electrons, two protons and two neutrons). This production altered the original environment and has over billions of years gradually reduced the dominance of Hydrogen in the universe to its present level of about 90 percent of the mass in the universe.

Eventually, hydrogen will only make up 50% of the mass in the universe and the universe will be a much colder, darker and inhospitable place than it is presently. This natural change uses energy to produce mass, thus entropy is increased. Entropy will be discussed later. Energy and mass are different forms of the same phenomenon. E=KM, where K is a very large constant. Thus, a very large amount of energy is required to form a small amount of mass.

Some changes we know are irrevocable. Once Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, it is over. But a little thought shows that all changes are irrevocable. Once old Humpty leaves a room, he cannot go back to the same room ever again, because probability and entropy sees that that room no longer exists. An object once moved can never be re-turned to the exact position. Therefore, all change is irrevocable. Once you exhale, that breath can never be taken again. “The moving finger writes and have writ moves on, not all your piety or wit can lure it back to cancel half a line of it.” Once you have read this line you cannot unread it. A word is spoken or a thought released cannot be taken back. This is why time cannot be reversed. Time can only run one way because time is how we presently measure change and change only goes in one direction.

The creation of the universe can be thought of as the ultimate change. Darwin just addressed biological evolution, but the other evolution processes all have a place in the changes that occurs between creation and extinction. The process of change (evolu-tion) can be grouped into several different categories by the process that controls the change. For example, the laws of physics governed early changes in the universe, and then chemistry became a dominant force for change, which in turn, set the stage for bio-logical evolution. Biological evolution, was a necessary precursor for technically and socially evolution. Technical and social evolution must evolve concurrently. A major crisis exist on this planet because technical evolution is advancing faster than social evo-lution.


All of these processes build what has gone before and flow from simple to com-plex. In moving from each of these controlling processes, the rate of change in complex-ity increases. Technical evolution is capable of producing changes several orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution. For example, it takes several hundred thou-sand years to develop the warm insulating layer of fat and fur that keeps the polar bear alive in extreme cold, where as the technical development of clothing allowed the human that same ability almost over night. The most dominant form of life on this planet is mi-crobial. The reason it is dominate is that it can react to change rapidly. Technical evolu-tion has given that same advantage to the most complex form of life on this planet. The result is a struggle between the two most dominate forms of life. Humans most feared enemy are microbes and other humans.

Evolution is a process of change generally in reference to life, but the process ap-plies to all things; matter, stars, planets, life, understanding; all evolve in and unbroken chain of events and in a random orderly manner from simply to complex. Table 1 shows the flow of change to date.


Table 1. Change Since Creation

Duration In Earth Years

Geologic Period Archeological Period

From To

Physics

Chemical

Biological

Technical

Important Events

Planckian 0.0 0.0001 pico sec Nuclear particles created Elementalian 15,000,000,000 13,000,000,000 Neutronium Formation Galactician 13,000,000,000 9,000,000,000 Hydrogen Formation Solarian 9,000,000,000 4,600,000,000 Stars & galaxies Formed

Hadean Earth formed Archean 3.,900,000,000 2,500,000,000 Proto and early life Proterozoic 2.500,000,000 590,000,000 Simple life Paleozoic

Cambrian 590,000,000 505,000,000 Hard bodied species Ordovician 505,000,000 438,000,000 Jawless Fish

Silurian 438,000,000 408,000,000 Jawed Fish Devonian 408,000,000 360,000,000 First life on Land

Carboniferous 360,000,000 286,000,000 First Reptiles Permian 286,000,000 248,000,000 Rise of Reptiles

Mesozoic Triassic 248,000,000 213,000,000 Origin of Mammals Jurassic 213,000,000 144,000,000 First Birds

Cretaceous 44,000,000 65,000,000 Extinction of dinosaurs Cenozoic

Tertiary Paleocene 65,000,000 54,900,000 Origin of Primates Eocene 54,900,000 38,000,000 Lemurs Oligocene 38,000,000 24,600,000 Monkeys

Miocene 24,600,000 5,100,000 Apes Pliocene 5,100,000 2,000,000 Ape-man

Quaternary Lower Pleistocene Stone Age 2,000,000 800,000 Modern man Mid Pleistocene Stone Age 800,000 150,000 Use of Fire Upper Pleistocene Stone Age 150,000 2,000 Agriculture

Holocene 12,000 Present Influence of Man Copper/Bronze Age 7,000 3,000 City States Iron Age 3,000 1,000 Modern Alphabet

The table is broken down into terms of a standard unit of duration called years, an

earth centric form of measuring duration. The use of a standard duration allows relative ordering of events and allows the rate of change to be compared. But the use of this earth-centered concept may be as limiting as the once held concept that the earth was the center of the universe. Each of these ideas grew from our observation and knowledge of our surroundings.

As the evolutionary process moves on it will become apparent that each preceding event sets the stage for the next event. For example, the overwhelming success of neu-trons, or neutronium in the early universe set the stage for the dominance of hydrogen and the decline of neutrons in the following stage. Thus, evolution is a chain of events or better, a process, which involves the overwhelming success of one set of conditions, which leads to the extinction of that set of conditions and the creation of a more complex state of conditions. This process repeats itself numerous times through evolutionary his-tory. This implies also implies that evolution is cannot occur without extinction.


Awareness of change is a function of sophistication of perception and longevity of memory. Longevity of memory is in turn a function of mind structure, lifetime and communication. The mind must be such that it can store and retrieve data accurately over the duration of life. The length of life exposes the individual to greater change. Commu-nication of information between members of a species extends the exposure to change. Except for last few thousand years communication was mostly verbal or non-existent.

Electrons have a very simple form of perception and a short memory. They are aware of principally other electrons, protons and neutrons in their immediate surround-ings. Single celled animals posses greater awareness of their surroundings, for example they are aware of food and predators. The greater the distance from the organism that food and predators can be detected, the more success the species enjoys.

The complexity of the mind allows for better storage and retrieval of information. Human awareness has grown exponentially over their existence on this planet. Initially, humans were aware of three physical dimensions, strength, speed and weight. As under-standing increased, awareness increased. The subject of human awareness is covered more completely in Chapter 7.

It is through increased awareness of change that living creatures avoid destruc-tion, especially changes we understand. Changes we do not understand produces curios-ity, anxiety and defensive behavior. In other words, living creatures like to be sur-rounded by that which is familiar. Humans have a natural preference for uniformity. Whereas change fascinates us, we posses a sub natural distrust of it. Today must be like tomorrow or we are uncomfortable. This uncomfortably is one of the principles that un-derlies the phenomenon known as the generation gap, which can be detected as far back as written records. Older generations detect that the younger Understanding allows hu-mans to deal with change.

The natural process, which has driven the universe and has successfully controlled evolution for 15 billion years, is omnipotent and impartial, two things that humans are not. The environmental movement over the last 40 years has decided that evolution should be taken out of the hands of nature and placed under the control of the Govern-ment and special interest groups. The overwhelming tactic has and is primarily designed to stop changes in the environment. For example, stop extinctions, stop global warming, stop the destruction of the wetlands, etc. To arbitrarily assume, that change is adverse and needs to be avoided, is foolhardy. Stopping an extinct is just as harmful as causing one. As the remaining chapters of this book will show, change has been happening for 15 billion years and to assume humans have the power to stop change is ludicrous.

The propensity for humans to make decisions based on emotion rather than fact can only lead to evolutionary disaster. Humans are not yet sophisticated enough to be able to judge which of the changes are normal, beneficial or detrimental and if detrimen-tal to whom. Human understanding of change, the consequences of change, and the ulti-mate purpose of the universe is sadly lacking. Without this knowledge, the chances of successful controlling nature are nil.

Many believe that humans will destroy all life on this planet. To believe that Humans have the power to end all life on this planet is a testimony to the human ego, not its intelligence. There is little doubt that nature and life on this planet will survive and adapt as it has over 4 billion years. However, if the present course is not drastically


changed, and the last 4 billion years are any indication, the chance of human survival is nil. Perception

Perception deals with change and essentially change is perceived by the length of the species life cycle and the accuracy of its sensors. A thousand year old tree would have an entirely different perspective compared to an insect that lives for only a day. A single rainy day is of little importance to the tree and passes without notice, whereas the effect on the insect defines its entire existence. The insect perceives the world as always raining and the rain dramatically defines its existence; the tree perceives it as a part of longer climatic process associated with the normal process of global warming or cooling and is essentially unaffected by the single event, and humans with a life span somewhere in between perceives it as a random event. How humans perceive their surroundings is greatly influenced by the 30 to 60 year average life span over which we can gather data. Detailed data from earlier than 100 years ago is almost non-existent. What we can’t measure we can’t describe. To make predictions on events caused by cycles that can last 100,000 years on such a short database is fruitless and dangerous.

A prime example of this today is the controversy over global warming. This is a classic example of extending data beyond its realistic base and making conclusions from that data. Geologic history shows us that this practice breeds catastrophe. Further, any conclusions from this process must assume that the present climatic conditions are perfect and that our present level of understanding is such that we know where the evolutionary process is headed. It is one thing to be aware of change, quite another to assume we un-derstand the global and evolutionary process sufficiently to correctly direct the process. It may be true that burning of fossil fuels has increased the global warming. But making decisions based on emotion led to the worlds largest energy user to severely limit the use of nuclear energy and substituting in its place the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels.

Prior to humans, life on this planet was only concerned with its immediate sur-roundings. For the overwhelming majority of human existence the same was true. But in the last few thousand years, as human understanding grew, a need for better data on which to base conclusions collided with the limits of human perception.

Perception is based on our ability to correctly sense our surroundings. Humans come equipped with five basic senor systems; touch, smell, taste, aural and visual. Each of these senses has limits and advantages and is developed to different degrees. The hu-man species depends primarily on sight. The preference for this sensor above the others had a profound effect on human evolution. For example, if sound was our preferred sense, our understanding would have been reduced because of the much lower sound wave frequency does not produce an image with the same amount of detail as light. Therefore, our perception of the world around us would also be less detailed. But sight also limits understanding in the human species; we can only detect things with the appar-ent brightness of a fifth magnitude star and that form an image on the retina larger than .0055 mm. Thus, much of what exists in the universe is beyond the limits of the human perception.

The smallest particle that can be detected by the unaided human eye is on the or-der of 0.15 mm. The greatest distance that humans can see with the unaided eye is two million light years, the Andromeda Nebula a galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. Even though humans can see 200,000,000 light years from earth, there are vast amount of


unperceived phenomenon within the reach of the human eye in our own galaxy, solar sys-tem planet and backyard. So much to learn, so little time.

Even though humans have been evolving technically over millions of years, the first step to expand human perception through technical evolution is credited to Galileo. His experiments with refraction of light led to the development of lenses and gave hu-mans the ability to perceive the existence of the very small and the very distant things. This perception produced major growth in human understanding and severely damaged our human ego. Humans were forced to face that they are not the center of the universe. Presently, we have improved our senses technologically such that we can perceive things that are billions of billions of miles away. We can reach out and touch things 44 million miles away and retrieve things 240 thousand miles away. We have retrieve data from 6.6 billion miles away. Humans have seen galaxies that are 10 billion light years away. The light reaching the earth left those galaxies only five billion years after the current best estimate of the creation of the universe. The Measurement of Change

Change can be measure in several ways. In general, the way things are measured depends to a degree on how they are used, which in turn depends upon the level of under-standing. What we cannot measure, we cannot understand. For most of the existence of the universe, understanding was minimal and only relative location was of value - near or far. For example, the location of an electron relative to a proton affects the path of the electron and proton as well as temperature and pressure of the environment. As evolution passed from chemical into biological, distance became more important. For example, the ability to estimate the exact “kill distance” between a cheetah and a gazelle became criti-cally important to both animals. As understanding increased and became a tool for evo-lution, location needed to be described more precisely and standard distances and then coordinate and base lines, were developed, for example, cubits, feet, meters, north, south elevation, etc.

Presently the standard for measuring distance is the meter, which turned out to be very close to the distance light traveled in 1/300000000 second. Thus in recent years it has been changed to be, the exact distance light travels in 1/300000000 sec. Science is not always logical or practical and commonly is effect by tradition and individuals whose egos are much larger than their intellect. For example, it would have made more sense as long as science was going through the upheaval of redefining the standard length of a me-ter based on the speed of light, to make the unit smaller than the current meter and get rid of the 3 in the numerator. Thus, the standard distance would be based on the distance light travels in 1/1000000000 sec (a nanosecond), or about a third of a meter. Simplify-ing the arithmetic and eliminated repeating decimals. The handy result could be called a litefoot, the distance light travels in 10-9 second and introducing the centifoot and a kilo-foot to keep the advantages of the metric system.

Likewise mass and volume changes and are measured by units of force and length cubed respectively. Change in energy is measured in several different ways, but heat is a common form measured using temperature. Presently change in complexity and under-standing has not been studied sufficiently to develop units of complexity or understand-ing.

All of these basic properties of the universe, (distance, mass, energy, change, complexity, understanding), can change at different rates. In other words, change


changes. For example, the rate at which that location is changed is called velocity. Again, for most of the life of the universe, only relative velocity was of value. Faster or slower was all that was necessary in capturing food or escaping predators. However in the last few thousand years as understanding grew, it became necessary to describe veloc-ity in more specific terms, and the concept of time was invented. The importance of time grew until in the last century it was given its own dimension. The Birth of Time

By chance, the earth’s rotational period (day) is different than its revolutionary period (year). This difference in phase created a changing situation where the surface of the planet was alternately exposed and deprived of the light energy from the central star in a relatively stable cycle or periodic motion, which produced the apparent rise and set-ting of the sun. The standard chosen on this planet was the duration it took the earth to make one complete rotation. This was called a day.

The day is a form of periodic motion that to unsophisticated eyes appeared to be relatively stable. This periodic motion of course occurred about 4.5 billion years ago and went unobserved until life was initiated some 1/2 billion (± a few billion) years later. As life evolved, many species were affected by cycles of light and dark, or hot and cold pro-duce by the phase difference and developed sensors to detect those changes. Also by chance, the axis of rotation was not perpendicular to the path of revolution. This oddity resulted in seasonal changes in the environment over the period of a single revolution around the sun. This factor did not become important until species were developed with a life expectancy longer than the revolutionary period. Other than rudimentary biological clocks, which were inbred into various species to control behavior such as food gather-ing, migration or reproduction, other than that duration was of little value to life until the last few 100,000 years as technically evolution became more prominent in the human species.

Somewhere around 20 thousand years ago when agriculture was being developed duration became more important and time measurement slowly became more sophisti-cated. Predicting the planting and harvesting seasons within an accuracy of a few weeks resulted in feast or famine for the village. Even so, the concepts of the four seasons, morning, noon and night served reasonably well until around 5000 years ago when the nature of human affairs (war and commerce) required more precision than just, “attack at dawn.” or “I’ll pay you later” So the cycle of night and day based on the earth’s rotation was divided into smaller segments called hours. The day was defined theoretically as 1/24 of the time it takes for a complete rotation of the earth.

The number 24 (a seemingly strange choice) was most likely chosen because the need for accurate time became apparent when commerce was an important and develop-ing aspect of human life. To a trading merchant twelve is a handy number because it is divisible by 6, 4, 3, and 2. Thus, a dozen can be broken into many elemental parts before you have to break an egg. For this reason 12 was thought of as a mystical number. The combination of mysticism and usefulness was to great to ignore and influenced the deci-sion to divide the day and night into 12 equal segments. Five thousand years ago no one wanted to offend either the day or the night gods and the 24-hour day was adopted. The year was added later and the week and months were squabbled over for millennium.


Measurement of time To measure time humans have traditionally turned to things that seemed to move

in a constant velocity, the earth’s rotation, the swing of a pendulum, or the vibration of a cesium atom; these things all possess what is called periodic motion. Some of these peri-odic motions are more constant over duration than others. For example, the pendulum is not as consistent as the rotation of the earth. Pendulum based clocks required period ad-justment by celestial observations. As the accuracy of time measurement and under-standing increased, they began to show that the rotational period of the earth was incon-sistent. In the last few years, data shows that 4 billion years ago an earth day was less than 10 hours long.1

Correcting for all of these changes in the earth’s rotation has lead to the current practice of measuring time by atomic vibrations, which appear to be relatively stable. The cesium atom was selected for this purpose because its atomic vibration are the most stable of the common elements. This results in a system capable of measuring duration to the microsecond. However, as understanding increases are we going to discover that ce-sium atoms vibrated more rapidly 4 billion years ago?

All periodic motion can be described by a frequency and a wavelength. Fre-quency is generally expressed in cycles per units of time, wavelength in units of length. The velocity of the wave is the frequency multiplied by the wavelength and has the units of length per time. However, since wavelength is a distance. Time could be express as the aggregate distance traveled by the standard periodic motion compared to the distance traveled by the object of interest. For example, duration can be represented by the num-ber of swings of the pendulum, or the number of vibrations of a cesium atom, multiplied by the number of periods, which produces a distance. Time as we no it can also be repre-sented by the distance that a point on the earth’s equator currently travels in a given dura-tion. Thus, time is in reality the comparison of two distances. If time is indeed a variable dependent on distance, then velocity, which is distance/time, becomes a distance divided by a distance or dimensionless.

Further, since distance is related to position, time would also be dependent on po-sition. For example, if a star 200 light years away from earth is observed exploding, that explosion did not happen today at the star’s position, it really happened 200 years ago at that position. If we observe the star from a position one light day towards the star, we would see what the people on earth will see tomorrow. Have we flown into the future? No, we have moved our position toward the star’s present and at the same time away from earth’s present. If we turn the device in the other direction, we will see what hap-pened on earth yesterday because it will take light a day to travel to our present position. If we move our observation point all the way to the star, we will arrive at the star’s pre-sent and will see earth as it existed 200 years ago. If we continue past the star, we will again travel back into the star’s past and further into earth’s past.

What happens if we observe the star from the opposite direction, away from the star? If we are one light day away, we will not see the star explode for another day and again see what happened yesterday on earth. Once more, we change our position and are observing the past. Thus, it appears that it is possible to observe what happened at a spe-cific location in the universe in the past all the way up to the present, depending on loca-

1 Gould, Stephen Jay, The Book of Life, W. W. Norton & Co. New York, 2001, page 38


tion but impossible to observe the future. This is because even though the earth position puts it in the future of the stars events relative to the stars position it is impossible to de-tect the future because the future is carried to the earth by electro magnetic waves which require duration to travel.

For example, if we establish a base one light day away from the earth on the op-posite side of the earth from the star, and periodically monitor the star from both loca-tions and we miss the explosion on earth. Even though the Earth is observing the future of the away station relative to the star, that is, the explosion will not occur at the away station for another 23 hours. We cannot communicate with the away station and tell them to turn their viewers on earlier, to capture the explosion we missed, because presently no means of communication exists that travels faster than electromagnetic radiation. Thus, presently our superior knowledge of the future does us no good.

However, we have shown that past, present and future are all position dependent. We can observe the past and the future of remote objects. We can observe a star explod-ing 200 years ago and know that it will be observed in the future on planets further way from the star than earth. Time as we know it is relative to location because earth’s pre-sent is that star’s past, and visa versa.

This is not time travel, because time doesn’t exist. What exists is location and distance and time is dependent on both. We can observe past events by changing loca-tion, but the device is only observing the electromagnetic residue of what happened and from that radiation reconstructing what happened. Since it is a reconstruction, no actual physical conditions exist during our observation and meddling with them to alter the fu-ture would be impossible.

However, if the device could be constructed that can gather all electro magnetic radiation and magnify it sufficiently to show in detail what occurred, it would signifi-cantly impact science and social science. Consider the impact on the judicial system where any incident could be accurately reconstructed and observed in detail. The accu-racy of judging guilt or innocence would be vastly improved. The likelihood of getting away with actions prohibited by law would be nil and since the wages of sin would fi-nally be death, immoral action would be reduced.

Using the concept that time is distance, allows time to be expressed by one of the three basic dimensions of the universe. We have already taken some steps in this direc-tion by defining a light year as the distance light in a vacuum travels in a year and the meter as the distance it travels in one second. This is of course is still awkward because it uses the earth centric definition of time. It might be helpful if, in the next millennium or even century, we moved away from earth centric thinking. I am sure that on the third planet in the Tau Centauri the term minute has no or an entirely different meaning than here on Earth.

Expressing time in this manor changes the concept of a four dimensional universe back to a three dimensional universe and apparently upsets parts of Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, in truth it may simplify, clarify and eventually unify his theories.

This model begins with the assumptions that immediately after the big bang, en-

ergy and temperature are infinite; and mass, entropy, complexity and understand are all zero. This essentially resets the clock of creation, and life (in the greater sense) or evolu-tion is what occurs between the creation and extinction events.


THE SECOND BITE AT THE APPLE In a universe were all things are changing the flow of change can get confusing

quite quickly. Fortunately, only a few parameters are important and can be used to illustrate the change process. The selection of these parameters is somewhat arbitrary and by no means complete. Immediately the balance between mass and energy comes to mind as a primary indicator of the state of creation. Einstein has shown that energy and mass are two manifestations of the same substance. The percentage of mass and energy in the universe is an indication of the flow of creation. This model predicts that prior to creation all matter is mass and energy is zero. Instantaneously, big bang, during creation event all matter

is turned into energy. Through out the life of universe, energy is methodically returns to energy. See figure. In the beginning, nothing existed in the universe except energy and in the end nothing will exist except mass.

Accompanying this change is a systematic change of the average entropy and temperature of the universe. Prior to the creation event the temperature of the universe is absolute zero and immediately after the creation event the temperature is infinite. Similarly, the model predicts that the average entropy is zero prior to the creation event and is instantly infinite after the event. The

gas tank goes from completely empty to completely full in an instant. See Figure 1.5. As the universe expands away from the ignition point, an enormous amount of energy is be-ing consumed to fuel this expansion and entropy drops rapidly. Since temperature and entropy are related. The average temperature of the universe drops as the universe ma-tures. The slopes of these changes are mirror images and systematically flatten until at the extinction event both temperature and entropy are once again absolute zero. See Fig-ure 1.6. Temperature and entropy

Temperature is an indication of entropy. Entropy is a concept based on the sec-ond law of thermal dynamics, which is not really a law because it only holds in the vast majority of cases.2 When the second law was proposed it was incompletely understood and poorly described and science has been stuck with this confusion every since. One definition of entropy is the amount of energy in a system or process that is unavailable to do work. This is a backward way of defining a property. It is looking at the glass as half empty rather than half full. It may have made more sense to define it as the amount of energy available to do work. But a venerable scientist defined it and we are stuck with the result and it is at least workable if confusing. Scientist for some elitist reason seem to cling to these confusing concepts as proof of their intellect.

It is believed that entropy of the universe is always increasing, or that energy is being depleted. There is no proof of this statement in just seems to be logical that the universes gas tank will someday be empty. This implies that the universe will end as a

2 Hawking, Steven, “A Brief History of Time, “Bantam Books, New York, 1998, page 107.


cold (absolute zero), dark place. A conclusion that seems reasonable at this time, and is the point from which we began this model.

However, a second definition of entropy states that entropy generally increases with randomness. The term randomness is often replaced by disorder. Fusion is often given as an example of this tendency. Invariably, when a solid melts there is an increase in entropy, thus an increase in randomness or disorder. However, no exact definition of randomness is ever given only vague examples like, the exact position of a individual atom in a solid is more fixed than the location of that same atom in a liquid.

It just appears to the naked eye that a crystal is more order than a liquid, simply because the liquid has more freedom of movement. The appearance of order comes from the perception that a molecule of water can be anywhere in the container, and the mole-cule of ice must remain apparently fixed in space. The molecule of ice, however, is only apparently fixed in space, in truth it vibrates. As we said earlier, this vibration is related to the temperature of the ice. The vibration increases until a change of state occurs. Since the ice molecule has motion then it too has an infinite number of locations that it can occupy and is therefore just as ordered as water or steam, which also has an infinite number of locations and the order of the infinities are equal.

Part of the problem is one of measurement and the difference between precision and accuracy. The probability (likelihood) of a particle being in a particular location de-pends on the accuracy that is required in determining its exact location and the precision at which that location can be measured. Things can be ordered even if there spatial loca-tion cannot be determined accurately. It is just as difficult to determine the exact position of a molecule of water, as it is to determine the exact position of a molecule of ice. The difference is in the range of motion not accuracy of location. In the case of water, the change in location can occur over a larger distance. The atom in a solid has less freedom of movement, but it still moves until the temperature of the solid reaches absolute zero. In fact, this is the definition of absolute zero.

Examining this problem further, suppose we deal with only one molecule of ice, and enclose the molecule in a box that will just contain the single molecule. During the change in state, from solid to liquid, entropy increases. So has the molecule gotten larger? No, ice is less dense that water at 35 degrees. So the water does not fill the box, therefore it has less space in which it can be located. Does it mean that water is more or-dered? Has entropy decreased? Or does it mean that for very small system entropy works differently? Or does it mean that entropy doesn’t work for water? Something is wrong and it is probably the idea that associates entropy with order. It is difficult to de-fine what one cannot measure. We can measure distance, mass, and duration, but no one has defined in specific terms how order is measured.

Another classic example of entropy is the gas in a box problem. In this classic problem, a partitioned box is set up with different gasses on each side of the partition. The partition is then removed that after sufficient duration the gases will be relatively uniformly mixed and the entropy of the mixture would be larger than the entropy of the two separate gasses.

But is the gas actually uniformly mixed? Whereas this sounds reasonable, getting an actual uniform mix would be relatively improbable. In fact it would be as improbable as getting the two gasses to return to their respective sides of the container. To examine this problem further let us suppose that the sample of gas in each side of the partitioned


container contained only one molecule. The partition is removed for a short duration and then replaced. The gas molecules are then located. The probability of the left hand chamber containing a mix of the gasses is one in four, the probability of the gasses re-

turning to their original state is also one in four. See Figure 1.2.

Now according to the second law, the en-tropy increased as soon as the partition was re-moved, and the gases became mixed. But since there are only two molecules are the gasses ever mixed? Are they only mixed when they are on the same side of the box? Which of the boxes is more ordered? The kicker here is that the second law states that entropy cannot decrease unless energy is added to the system. But if we find the molecules are in their original (more ordered) positions the gases are now separated again the entropy of the system would have reduced without energy being

added to the system. This is not possible therefore the so-called order of the system has not changed.

This problem could be done with two, four and a million molecules. If more molecules of the

gas are added to the system the probability of the gasses returning to their original con-tainer becomes greater, by a factor of 2N, where N is the number of molecules. For large values of N, the probability of the molecules returning to there original locations increase and it becomes highly improbable that the system will every return to its original state, but that is not the same thing as never. Thus, it appears that entropy is depends on the complexity of the system not the order. Simple things are easier to order than complex things. The probability that simple things will occur is greater than the probability of complex things occurring.

Observation shows that evolution only flows in one direction, from simple to complex. For example, multiple celled animals do not evolve into single cells animals. When species leave an environment and then return to the same environment, the com-plexity of the species increases. For example, whales keep their land-based structure and increase the complexity of these organs to function in the ocean. This is true for all forms of natural evolution, whether it is driven by physics, chemistry, or biology. The evolu-tion of a star goes from hydrogen to helium and then to atoms that are more complex. Technical and social evolution seems also to move from simple to complex. The making of stone, copper, bronze, iron, and steel are all increasing complex processes and required similar, but less complex systems to be in place before the more complex systems could be developed. For example, the technology necessary to extract copper is requires a heat source with a temperature of about 1100 degrees whereas melting of iron requires tem-peratures of about 1550 degrees. A feat more difficult to do and requires understanding developed in the Copper Age. Examination of social systems required to successfully control a group of 10 are will show them to be simpler that those required to control a group of 10,000. These social systems all built on past success and failure similar to bio-logical chemical and physical systems.

Original Condition

Possible Conditionsafter partition removed

Figure 1.2 Possible Locations of Molecules


Thus it appears that along with the changes in the mass energy balance, tem-temperature and entropy, the universe also gets more complex. What is not so obvious is that understanding must also increase as the universe evolves. The increase in complexity and understand-ing are interrelated and are central to the existence of the uni-verse. That is as complexity increases the need for understanding which is necessary for further increase in complexity. As the uni-verse evolves, complexity and understanding increases until the ultimate in complexity and understanding exists as the universe ends. See Figure 1.6. At the end of the universe, both complexity and understanding are infinite. Thus setting the stage for the crea-tion event. Complexity

The flow of complexity is controlled by probability. Probability tells us that eve-rything that can happen will happen and the event most likely to happen is the event with the greatest probability of occurring. Nothing is impossible only improbable. Probability forces order on chaos. Conversely, chaos only appears to exist because probability is in-completely understood. To understand more about complexity it is helpful to look at or-der, chaos and probability

Order is generally thought of as an arrangement that displays things in a neat or harmonious manner. Humans like order because it is comforting. Water runs down hill today and it will run down hill tomorrow - no surprises. One-way, science tries to bring order to the universe, is by cataloging. For example, biology has partitioned life into dif-ferent boxes and sub boxes called phylum, class and order, etc. All forms of life are then separated and placed in these ordered boxes inside ordered boxes. Another example of this human tendency is the Periodic Table of Chemicals, which, (ignoring the first two elements), was reasonably periodic for the next two rows, each having 8 elements with similar characteristics. However, the next two rows have 18 elements each, and the two rows after that have 32 elements each. As knowledge expands it became apparent that the characteristics of the elements do not follow an increasing complex order. It has been said that we spend the first 16 years of our education learn the rules and the rest of our life learning the exceptions to the rules. Is that a function of life or a function of the human mind or a function of complexity? The only truly order system is a vacuum. In truth, nature abhors both a vacuum and order.

What is presumed to be order is most often a function of the human ability to detect disorder. For example, if we observe a glass of water we see a clear uniform liquid with no internal structure. How-ever, if we observe the same liquid magnified sufficiently, we would see that it is composed of individual molecules of hydrogen and oxy-gen. Further, these individual molecules would be move about the glass in a totally random and erratic manner. See figure 1-?

This motion is the reason that a dye diffuses in water. This is what the English botanist Robert Brown did to study the process of diffusion. Although it not impossible to predict the exact location of the molecule, it certainly is improbable, however it turns out that the distance away from it original position can be predicted quite accurately pro-


vide the number of turns is large and the particle is unrestrained by the wall of the vessel. It turns out that the most probable distance the molecule is from its original position is equal to the average length of each straight track times the square root of the number of tracks. Brown showed this by introducing dye into a liquid and measuring its diffusion over time. See figure 1.? He found that the diffusion rate was constant with temperature. This was the beginning of applying order to random events.

Further study by others showed that all matter vibrates in a random chaotic man-ner depending on its temperature. Thus temperature is really the measure of internal en-ergy inherent in matter, the higher the temperature the more violent, and chaotic the movement. When matter contains no internal energy, it contains no heat and its tempera-ture is absolute zero. It is very difficult to remove all energy from matter. To date hu-mans have not observed matter with a temperature of absolute zero. Plotting the relative motion of atoms as temperature drops and extrapolating that data to a point where all mo-tion ceases produced the present value of absolute zero as near -273 degrees C.

It is known that as energy is added to the matter, the motion of the individual par-ticles in the matter increases. Eventually the individual particles become so agitated that the forces holding the solid together are overpowered and the solid melts. If the motion of the individual particles increases then the inertia of the individual particles has also increased. The most common way to add inertia is by adding heat, which is a form of electro magnetic radiation. Microwave, another form of electro magnetic radiation, is also commonly used to heat mass. In truth, exposure to all forms of electro magnetic waves produces heat. It is presently unclear as to how something without mass can in-duce change in inertia of particles that possess mass.

Each form of matter melts at a different temperature because the forces holding the matter together are different. Carbon has the highest bonding strength of natural ma-terials and thus has the highest melting point, 3,650 ° C. Further agitation turns the liquid into gas where the particles are even more chaotic. Tungsten has the highest boiling point, 5,660 ° C. The addition of more heat, around 10,000 ° C all molecules have bro-ken down and only elements exist. Around 5 million degrees the agitation is so violent that all atoms have broken down. All that is present are electrons, and nuclei. Around a billion degrees the forces that hold the nucleus of the atom together are overwhelmed by the bombardment of quantum particles and the protons and neutrons fly apart.

George Gamow, once said “The effect of this thermal agitation is to destroy step by step the elaborate architecture of matter, and to turn this magnificent building into a mess of widely moving particles rushing around and colliding with one another without any apparent law or regularity.”3 However, maybe George was looking through the wrong end of the telescope. It is equally possible to in vision the simple particle as cause and the magnificent complex structure of the universe as the effect of cooling. Which is another way of saying one of the central points of this text, i.e., the universe evolves from simplicity to complexity as entropy increases. Thus it becomes a matter of perspective.

From the prospective of an individual, life appears to be chaotic filled with ran-dom events like rain, plagues, war, depression, accidents, violence etc. Evolution of the universe appears chaotic but that is from the limited point of view of recorded history. Creation and extinction appear to be random events. But to see the order one must view

3 Gamow, George, One two three infinity, Dover, NY, New York. 1961, page 199


the process from a much large perspective. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs appears like a chaotic event; in fact, a popular theory is that a large meteor striking the earth caused their extinction. Certainly, this would be a cataclysmic event, but closer study shows that the probability of it causing the extinction is remote. The extinction of the dinosaurs was rapid; but rapid in geologic terms is not years but millions of years. A meteor impact would due great harm over a very short period, 10 to 100 years, but effects of the impact would fade rapidly. The most probable cause was that it was due to an or-dered set of related circumstances, most probably a combination of atmospheric changes since ocean creatures were relatively immune to this particular extinction event. Fur-thermore, the event targeted dinosaurs and creatures with a body mass less than 100 lbs or so were not affected. Chaotic events are not so selective.

Consider that the dinosaurs evolved from reptiles in an age when the oxygen con-tent of the atmosphere was possibly 50 to 100 percent greater that it is presently, and the temperature was warmer than it is presently. They developed when there was no other large life on a land covered with vegetation. Not surprising they soon became very suc-cessful.

We hear mostly about the carnivores, because they are more exciting that the her-bivores. If fact, the herbivores were first on the scene and as in any niche dominated the population. The onslaught of this evolving larger and larger plant-eating reptiles con-sumed larger and larger quantities of plants, the very plants that were responsible for the high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. The domination of the plant-eating dinosaurs generated a niche for the carnivores. Eventually, the successful herbivores consumed more plants than could be replaced. They consumed oxygen, exhaled carbon dioxide and destroyed large amounts of oxygen producing plants. Oxygen levels began to level off, and then fall. The more successful the species became, the faster the oxygen level dropped. Success breeds extinction.

There is a momentum in natural systems. Over geologic durations, nature is never in balance. In this case the result was that the dinosaurs could not adapt their breathing system fast enough to match the drop in levels of oxygen and they died in a pool of carbon dioxide pollution of their own making. A scenario played out hundreds of times before and since. The only creatures that survived were the small mammals with a more sophisticated and efficient lung system, and a few small simple reptilian species that required less oxygen from an oxygen poor atmosphere and amphibians, which could get supplemental oxygen from the water.

Whereas it is true that cataclysmic events happen and they cause great local dis-ruption, there are few large enough to impact the normal flow of evolution. If the sun should go super nova it would certainly affect evolution on this planet and maybe on other planets in the solar system as well, but not evolution as a whole. The primary driver of evolution is the high probability event, that is those things that happen most often. Probability produces order out of chaos. In a world where any-thing can happen the thing that happens most, will be the event with the shortest return period. To under-stand evolution we must understand something about probability.

For many people poker provides the first real contact with probability. It is worthwhile to review the workings of poker and probability. If an event may occur in

Center of Gravity

Center of Symetry


“p” ways and fail in “q” ways, all ways being equally likely, the probability of its occur-ring is p/(p+q). For example, the probability of being dealt a straight flush in any single hand is 40/(40+2,598,920) or 0.00001391, where 40 is number of ways it may occur and 2,598,920 is the number of ways it will fail. Several conclusions can be drawn from this fact. First, being dealt a straight flush is possible but not bloody likely according to Eliza Doolittle.

The problem with the ordered chaos is that humans tend to judge the repeatability of occurrences based on an average life span of 60 or 70 years. The sunrise is seen as an ordered event that never changes, but that is not true, if it is observed over a 4 billion year period the length of the day has varied between 10 and 24 hours. Few people have expe-rienced a 200-year flood, but we know they occur. When they occur, they are viewed as an aberration rather than part of the normal process.

However, if 1,000,000 hands of poker are dealt, the chances of seeing 13 straight flushes is pretty bloody likely almost certain. Thus, it becomes apparent that the possibil-ity of something occurring depends on the number of trials as well as the number of ways in can and cannot occur. Thus, with respect to the universe, which is older than 15 billion years, all events that happen every second with a probability of occurrence greater than one divided by 473,040,000,000,000,000 will occur at least once. The significance of these numbers can challenge human comprehension in those who do not deal with large numbers routinely.

In truth, all occurrences have a return period. Some of the return periods are so long they may only occur once in the life of the universe. These events could be viewed as miracles. For example, the probability of hydrogen forming in the presence of a pro-ton and electron is very high, in fact almost a sure thing. Then again, the probability that basic protein molecules can form spontaneously from a mixture of methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, water and electrical energy, seems at first glance to be rather remote. However, consider the millions of years available for repetitive trials, increases the prob-ability of success to certainty. Whereas it is true that probability could not evolve the complex universe we sense today in just 6000 years, the 15,000,000,000 years currently estimated available for trials very easily could and has accomplished this event many times. Understanding

The common definition of understanding is rather human centric and therefore questionable. In the broad context, understanding is not human centric or earth centric and need not be even life centric. Understanding is a process that deals with the ability to predict change, and the consequences of change. A better definition for understanding may be obtained by looking at the sum of its parts. Understanding is a function of sensor sophistication, (information gathering); memory capacity, (information storing); contem-plation capability, (information processing); educational ability (information dissemina-tion). Because these factors are not equal in all species or for that matter in all individu-als in any one species, understanding is not a level playing field. In fact, it seems; nature abhors a level playing field. Nature is set up to unbalance the playing field, give one spe-cies an edge over others. That is another way of stating survival of the fittest. Under-standing is just one way nature accomplishes this mission.

Understanding must start with sensor sophistication, an awareness of the sur-rounding space, knowledge of the existence of the universe and of other entities, and the


ability to detect change. One cannot contemplate, store or pass on what one cannot de-tect. Once electromagnetic particles were created, they instinctively, in a sense, know that other particles with different or identical charges exist, and are either attracted or re-pelled by these charges. This implies that, elemental particles, have a rudimentary under-standing and therefore understanding began soon after the initiation of the universe some 15 billion years ago, and long before the human species evolved a mere 0.005 billion years ago.

Like complexity, understanding increases very slowly at first then more rapidly as the dominant evolutionary process passed from physics to chemistry and eventually to biology. The advent of biological evolution on this planet and the growth of understand-ing inherent in that process can be traced back about 3.5 billion years ago. The present level of human understanding is insufficient to determine if understanding exists else-where in the universe, and if so at what level exists. It is highly probable, that biologic evolution is occurring or will occur on numerous other planets throughout the universe. Since the number of planets in the universe is so large, the probability that other planets exist in the universe with similar evolutionary paths is certain.

The biological process allowed complex molecules to be formed, which were de-pendent on several different strategies to survive. Breeding and strength are two very early survival strategies that have worked for millions of years. However as complexity increased the species became increasingly dependent on understanding for their exis-tence. Some early life forms required developed more ability to sense their environment and needed to make decisions based on that information. Microorganisms began to think. For example, they needed to be able to not only detect the presence of an energy source, but the presence of predators as well. The ability to detect food and predators more effi-ciently became a primary factor in the survival or success of a species.

This process requires not only a sensor to detect various edible particles, but a memory to store the descriptive features and a rudimentary cognitive process (intelli-gence) to determine the correct action to take; if predator – run, if food – eat, if neither – ignore. The result was that as complexity increased, the importance of understanding in-creased likewise. The species with better cognitive powers survived, over millions of years, “smart” began to eclipse “strength and breeding” as a survival skill.

The final element of understanding is education. Education is the process by which one learns to recognize what is food or predator. Food can be recognized by trial and error. However, trial and error is not the best way to recognize predators. This prob-lem was solved by advancement in the education department called instinct. The neces-sary avoidance tactics were imprinted in the genes of the survivors of the species. This is a dicey way of going about the education process, because so little information can be passed forward, but it worked better than no education. Eventually as more complex spe-cies developed around 50 million years ago, and the number of prodigy diminished, the value of the individual to the species increased. This in turn increased the value of edu-cation to the species and nurturing of the young became prevalent. The nurturing period provided an opportunity to improve the education process by using mimicry. “Monkey see, monkey do,” works for more than monkeys. This allowed one generation to pass on information gain during its life experience, to the next gereation.

The next advancement in education relied on improvement in comunication. It turns out that individual thoughts become significantly more important if shared. A


shared thought can arrive a truth far quicker than a single mind, and truth shall set you free. A thought is like mass; by itself, it is relatively insignificant, but combined with other thoughts, can illuminate like the combined mass of a star and impact all that sur-rounds it.

Whereas many species use sound to transfer knowledge, for example, “Run way” was probably the first sentence conceived. It turned out that the mouth, lips and throat of the human species developed for ingesting food also allowed the forming of millions of individual sounds. This allowed humans to develop a complex vocabulary. Further, the long nurturing period required before the young were self-sufficient allowed time to pass on considerable information. The combination of these two circumstances allowed un-derstanding to increase in humans exponentially. Eventually understanding itself became a tool for survival.

Around 5000 years ago verbal education began to reach its limits. Verbal educa-tion requires personal contact with the educator. Only so many people could sit at the feet of Socrates during his lifetime. Writing was developed, which allowed information to be stored, transferred and accessed at will. This significantly improved understanding by encouraging collaboration. Multiple minds focused on the same problem are many times more efficient than a single mind. So much so that the most complex species on the planet, humans, is threatening to replace the simplest species, microorganisms, as the dominant life form on the planet. The primary factor, which keeps the microorganisms dominant, is their ability to evolve rapidly.

However, several hundreds of thousands of years ago understanding allowed the human species to development fur by using animal skins for clothing. Thus, the species used technology to instantly adapt to colder climates. Technical evolution began to allow the most complex species on the planet to enjoy the same power as the simplest species - rapid evolution. In the last 100 years humans have develop wings and sophisticated sensors that can detect objects a billion billon miles away. Where technical evolution will lead is unknown. Whether man is capable of sustaining techni-cal evolution is unknown, but it is obvious that technical evolu-tion is a major step in the evolu-tion of the universe and that un-derstand drives that phase of evolution.

Understand the continu-ing of technical evolution de-pends on many things, intelli-gences, education, social sophis-tication and the rate of transfer of information. Verbal informa-tion can only be passed between individuals at the rates less than 100 words per minute. This was the primary means of transferring information until Gutenberg developed print-

Instinct

Complexity

Nurturing

Period

Mimicry Communication

Oral WrittenTechnically Enhanced

(Computers/Genetic)

Vocabulary

Educational

Opportunity


ing 700 years ago. This greatly improved information decimation because written infor-mation can be processed around 250 words a minute and across centuries. See figure 1.3

Social sophistication is important in understanding. History shows that whenever a simple culture collides with a more complex culture the simple culture is sub ducted. The western culture sub ducted the native cultures in the US, Canada, and Australia de-spite different approaches to the situation. Eastern cultures like Japan sub ducted the na-tive population as well. The greater the culture gap the more severe the consequences. The first known occurrence of this process was the Cro-Magnons destruction of the Ne-anderthals around 40 thousand years ago.

Education has grown substantially in the western culture and is now doing so in simpler cultures. With the increase in education comes an increase in understanding, which in turn demands better education. One hundred years ago if you could read and write, you were considered educated. Twenty years later, you could survive with a sixth grade education. Twenty years after that, 12 years of education was required. Presently the amount of information that needs to be transferred is enormous making it necessary to have a PhD or even, multiple PhDs. My father was twelve years old when his formal education stopped. My grandchildren will be more than thirty before their formal educa-tion stops.

Without a more efficient method of transferring knowledge, understanding will be limited. Since understanding cannot be limited, a more efficient method must be and therefore will be developed. The most probable method of increasing the rate of informa-tion transfer will be by avoiding the external senses and writing directly to the brain, sub-stantially decreasing the time needed for learning and increasing the time available for contemplation.

chapter 1 models and assumptions -...

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