The State Of The Art

The State Of The Art
(SOTA 1985-9)

SOTA contained the following, written in 1985-6, though the science and philosophy could have been written decades earlier. A core theme was the nature of TIME and its functions.

1. In Physics and Cosmology sections

An explanation of how quantum theory and relativity would be reconciled and how the results of experiments with 'twin photons' would lead to a better understanding of 'quantum entanglement' in extra dimensions
How an improved understanding of 'gravity' would reveal that it was a local derivative effect of a fundamental repulsive energy which was a property of mass-energy in space-time, the cause of universal expansion. [This has now been acknowledged by orthodox cosmology and called 'Dark Energy']
Why the new cosmology and physics would render the 'inflation hypothesis', devised to explain the compatibility of universal extremities, unnecessary (though highly likely for other reasons it turns out).
How the cosmology of Fred Hoyle would be seen to be express some valid truths, that the Big Bang was, in the multidimensional reality, a continual emergence, a singular universal inversion of the physics of black holes.
How Black Holes would be discovered at the centre of all galaxies. How, in a multidimensional reality, these could be 'umbilical cords' connecting through 'negative space-time'. At the time of writing, I had never heard of Stephen Hawking or the "Information Paradox" or Leonard Susskind; however SOTA assumed that information was not destroyed on entry into a Black Hole. SOTA proposed that the Universe was an 'experience' mechanism which developed the information on which it was built, by recycling it. The similarity of conditions in Black Holes to the misleadingly named 'Big Bang' indicated a connection between them. The early stages of Universal development probably featured very rapid and violent recycling whereby the impossible, then the impractible universes were auto-destroyed. This process of refinement and an approach to local stabilities continued.
A prediction that planetary formation round stars was then a normal process, and an explanation of why what looks like a remarkable number of coincidences concerning our own planet are increasingly self-assembling once a planet of this size forms at this distance from a start of the size of the sun.
The periodic extinctions of animal life were examined along with their astronomical and terrestrial causes. Preparation to mitigate future collisions with asteroids and comets was advocated.
The relationship of the Special and General Theories of Relativity was clarified.
The exploration of space and the use of Earth orbit for satellites and space stations should be achieved by globalization of economies and joint ventures by The US, Russia and Europe. Although this is now not such a strange idea, SOTA was written at the height of the Cold War when such co-operation was considered impossible in any foreseeable future. We can now add Japan, China India and others to the global partnershi

2. In the biology section:

A better understanding of Natural Selection. How the switching on/off of genetic potential is what controls the phenotypical attributes. How the Nature/Nurture arguments were misconceived, since the effect of nurture on nature is what determines outcomes. The effect of nurture in humans commences immediately after conception but is limited or enhanced by the possibilities at each stage as the elements of an individual develop. Imbalances in the mother's environment in the last months of pregnancy will affect the metabolism of the child and its disposition at birth and after. Human selection is of course a part of Natural Selection, but since we develop control and intentionality we affect total selection in an increasing measure. Sexual selection is both conscious and subconscious. Selection of nurture affects selective genetic switching within given parameters. Diet is of great significance in determining development and behaviour. Certain developments are even reversible at critical periods of development.
A better understanding of medicine. Allopathy and Homeopathy examined with a look at both psychosomatic and somapsychotic effects.[Most of this is now becoming the subject of cutting edge scientific verification 20 years later]. A warning that HIV/Aids would have severe economic consequences; that it would be unlikely that a cure would be found though palliative and controlling medicines might be possible.
The relationship of the body of knowledge in physics and chemistry to biology, and the consequences, were discussed.

3. In the Philosophy and Metaphysics section, a synthesis of the great philosophers, an update of Spinoza in the light of modern science.

Economic and political deductions were made from all of the above. The failure of third world aid policies was explained. The energy problems of the future, the greenhouse effect and global warming were highlighted. The environmental costs of the cold war were emphasised. The Strategic Defense Initiative proposed by President Reagan was derided and the quick ending of the cold war advocated through opening up electronic communications and thereby perforating the 'Iron Curtain', a process already started by global broadcasters (most notably the BBC). That is not to say that Reagan's actual summit diplomacy was not useful, and Baker, Schultz and some UK politicians did an honourable job in establishing genuine confidence with Gorbachev.

There was a lot more in SOTA that foretold the economic, political and scientific developments to be expected as the millennium approached. All of which has duly happened or will be appreciated very soon.

There was a lot more in SOTA about everything, actually, but it is lost. However this does not matter as you will all find it out in your own time at your own expense and that is what life is all about! Most important, and a primary aim in writing SOTA, was to show that as the process of globalization proceeds, existing economic and social philosophies would expose their inner contradicitions - the seeds of their own destruction. We have to look beyond if we are to emerge into the next dimension of terrestrial existence. It will be painful. But it will be worth it.

MARCH 15th 2010

The above summary was written at the end of the last century.
Now we skip forward 15 years. I am writing today, March 15 2010, on what I hope will be the acknowledgment of some of what I predicted in SOTA.
Coming up on BBC's "HORIZON" on the 17th (I missed the first showing on the 10th) is a progamme with the following introduction:

There's something very odd going on in space - something that shouldn't be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner.

Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: 'It left us quite unsettled and jittery' he says, 'because this is not something we planned to find'. The accidental discovery of what is ominously being called 'dark flow' not only has implications for the destinies of large numbers of galaxies - it also means that large numbers of scientists might have to find a new way of understanding the universe.

Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to re-write the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong?

"This isn't something we planned to find", says Sasha Kaslinsky. Well it is something I predicted as inevitable in SOTA as part of the only reasonable model of the universe I could come up with, the multidimensional one. I realise he may not have read SOTA.and as I have explained my only copy was stolen in the 1990s, but a few years ago I sent my prediction on what I assume I will hear about on Wednesday to Melvyn Bragg when he was hosting discussions on the structure of the universe. I explained the the so-called BIG BANG would be in symmetry with many inward collapses that would connect back to it in 'negatoive time. So if this programme confirms at least what it says in the introduction at least I can prove I am not being wise with hindsight.

I have just discovered this page: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-dark-flows.html

I should have been paying more attention I suppose. Reading it, it does not seem to me that those writing this stuff have yet got their heads round the mulidimensional universe; we shall have to see

OCTOBER 12th 2010
Once again it is the Horizon program on BBC 2 (which by luck I spotted in the schedule) that has brought me some welcome news.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vdkmj

"They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago.

But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.

Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang."

The narrator of this compendium of some of the latest thinking amongst the recognized professionals in these matters was faced with a good deal of diversity which he grappled to make coherent. I was getting quite exasperated at the naivety of some of the proposals as well as some of the points which seemed to puzzle the contributors until we got quite close to the end. Michio Kaku's ruminations on the 'vacuum' and ideas of 'nothing' were hardly revolutionary. It is obvious, in spite of the habitual misunderstandings pursuant to Special and General Relativity (some caused by Einstein himself), that the three-dimensions of what we call space contain energy that can be modulated, tuned, and made to resonate and materialise. In other words, that it is a 'space-time fabric'.

I have dealt with one aspect of this is my review on Amazon of Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" in which the author manages to tie himself in knots without making much progress, but I digress. The universe is indeed the product of a multidimesnional reality, the certainty of that we can deduce from nature and relationship of the first 3 we familiarly call 'space'. We experience a 4th as Time, but in categorising further dimensions I caution against thinking of them as dimensions of space as we know it or time as we know it.

Now, right at the end of this Horizon program, I heard some words I had been waiting for from Michio Kaku: that the 'big bang', even if it is at the origin of our space-time, is not the origin of all existence. "Yes, there is a big bang, and it's going on all the time!" That was what I attempted to make clear back in the 1980s. I also try to explain that a multidimensional universe is self recycling and evolving. Evolution of a species requires death of each individual to enable natural selection to work. That is not the case for a multidimensional universe. Our universe does not have to die. Once the catastrophe of existence is a done deal, all else follows. That does not answer the philosophical questions of the reason for existence. However, creation of spacetime and matter where there was not is not the mathematical problem it was once supposed.

I recommend and commend some of the thinking of Dr Laura Mersini-Hougton, University of North Carolina (www.physics.unc.edu)
http://www.physics.unc.edu/directory/directory.php?section=1&tmpl=bio&mode=text&param=395
She has correctly understood that we do not have to make any arbitrary assumptions beyond the simplest propositions of maths (even though she develops these through wave dynamics and into String Theory) for at least one 'big bang' to be inevitable.

But all these thinkers and some others covered in the program are not yet at an understanding that is anywhere near complete, nor should it be. They are at least getting rid of some of the false problems. All I would recommend to them now is to cease speculation about 'neigbouring universes in the conventional sense of neighbouring in space, or extended space. The nature of the universe can be best undertood by examining what is in it that we can observe. These scientists are taking the hard, hardest way to that. It is a worthwhile journey and they seem to enjoy it and they get well paid by the rest of us. Any single human can get as close without doing that work, but by other work in their own lives. But if they get close to understanding it, they will find it is quite impossible to explain to anyone else who has not made the journey for themselves, through the puzzles that puzzled them, individually.

Notes on the origin of SOTA [The State Of The Art]

The complete text of the first 4 'Chapters' of SOTA was stolen in about 1990, in the laptop PC to which the text had been transferred from an early Olivetti ETV Word Processor. The backup floppy disks were stolen at the same time. The theft took place in a five minute period when a car containing the PC and a large analogue mobile phone was left in an Oxford street while I watched the first few minutes of the evening news on the TV of some cousins. The car lock had been drilled by an expert. My phone was later located in the posession of two young girls at a reform school. They had been unable to switch it off. When I rang it they answered and said: "Hello, is that Nathan?" I said "Yes", but they wouldn't wear it and rang off. But when I rang again the noise attracted staff in the reform school who took the phone and handed it into the police. The next person to ring it was my cousin who told the police it was mine and I went to collect it., but they did not have my PC or disks.

It was clear to me that the PC and disks had been taken by a professional, probably employed by an organisation I had upset with my recent work on behalf of the Oxford Refugee Council. This work was largely concerned with trying to prevent the Immigration and Nationality Department of the Home Office from using arbitrary detention as a deterrent to selected categories of asylum seekers, including sending them to prisons where they were abused (by having their bedding set fire to by other prisoners for instance). I had just got one refugee off an airliner at Gatwick where he was within minutes of being removed to a country where his safety was seriously in doubt. Possibly someone in IND thought that by pinching my laptop they would get their hands on material that was either to their advantage or could compromise me. How wrong they were. They had all my email for the past few years, a lot of letters, and SOTA, but there was nothing I needed to hide.

I have often wondered what they did with SOTA, as they may not have understood much of it. The police asked me to attend as a witness when they prosecuted the two girls for the theft of my phone. I told them I would attend to give evidence in their defence, and that the phone had been dumped on them by a professional to disguise the real nature and reason for the crime. The police dropped the case and said I would have to instigate the prosecution myself. I decided not to bother. There was a printed record of the first draft of SOTA's first 4 sections (called Chapters) in circulation amongst staff at the Open University, from whom I received much support and encouragement, but I had lost track of who had it some time previously. To a certain extent SOTA had done its job. I had used excerpts to paste into computer mediated conferences is the UK, USA and elswhere.

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