End of year thoughts!

Another unit of life comes to an end - but is it an end? We think in terms of years that are eeked out by the movement of our lonely cosmic planet about our equally lonely sun.

These revolutions of our homely orb are marked by seasonal changes in weather that remind us of time passing.

After a cold December, the thaw has set in and the wet winds of winter return. Life, at its nadir, struggles to survive. The birds, of all kinds, seek out food to keep alive. All, who can, hibernate.

I often think that the word 'hibernate' and 'Hibernia', the latin name for our isle, are two of a kind. In Hibernia, in winter, we struggle to survive, and given a chance, we would all seek a place to sleep away the odious winter.

The wind howls and the rain beats against the windows. The days are darkly short and cold. The colour grey persists.

The return

The follow up philosophical work of fiction to 'The Island' (www.desgreene.com) is called 'The Return' and is partially complete.

In it I have developed further my ideas on the role and influence of modern science on the state of philosophy as it is today and its importance to our everyday lives.

I hope to have it available for download in the new year.

We are not alone - death of solopsism?

The recent discoveries of other earth-like planets in our galaxy have made the likelihood of finding other life more than probable.

The paradigm has truly shifted.

What does this mean for humanity?

How will this shape the course of human history?

These are questions I hope to treat in the sequel to 'The Island' called 'The Return'.

There is an exciting philosophical landscape waiting to be explored with the aid of this new paradigm.

Virtual Particles

The curious concept of particle physics and quantum field theory, virtual entities, are the briefest temporal existences in the cosmos. Other aspects of existence trump them in being briefer but alas are not separate existences in themselves. The frequency of a virtual photon is of necessity such as to provide a period inferior to that of the photon itself but is only an aspect of that virtual photon.

This raises the concept of a negative infinity or the idea of an absolute zero. Heisenberg rules out such absolutes in terms of the Uncertainty Principle. The absolute vacuum of quantum theory far from being empty is awash with virtual entities with vanishingly small temporal existences. The negative infinity reveals an infinite world of the infinitesimal.

What does this new world view portend for the philosophical outlook of humanity. Should our innate fear of nothingness be replaced by the warmth of the never ending virtual sea of the vacuum?

These virtual worlds are realms only recently revealed to us via the great scientific endeavours culminating in the current Large Hadron Collider project at CERN. Philosophy has new doors being opened for it by science. Only a few intrepid explorers have ventured to enter this brave new world.

Escher's Stairs

I always thought that this was an original Escher creation but was amazed to find that it was in fact the father of Roger Penrose (Road to Reality) who was the original creator;

Goodreads Debate

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/350886-philosophy-of-science?order=d&page=1

Try this link for a good debate on the philosophy of science.

String Theory

String theory in its many formulations has yet to make predictions about reality. It not alone posits a greater than four dimensional spacetime but sees our actual living spacetime as only one of almost countless possibilities - all of which exist.

For the last twenty or so years, the best minds in theoretical physics have dedicated their whole energies to developing the many string theories that have emerged.

The increasingly bizarre paradigms of their world have not been critiqued by the world of philosophy. Why has this been the case given the revolutionary hypotheses being set before us?

That string theory may turn out to be a theoretical wrong turning for physics should not make philosophers happy in their passivity.