book review | The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates
August 14, 2012 by Giulio Prisco
Howard Bloom‘s forthcoming book The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, is arguably his best book so far, a page-turner with deep thoughts and entertaining bits on every page.
Is The God Problem a book on the history of science? No, more like a philosophical novel. Wait, perhaps an autobiography? Pop culture?
All of the above, and none. The God Problem defies categorization; it’s a cascade of books within books within books, like the novels of Joyce and Pynchon. The difference is that Bloom writes about the thoughts of the deepest thinkers of all times, from the Babylonians to our days, then proposes new ideas of his own.
I call it “scientific poetry.” The science is rigorous, and the philosophy is sound, but Bloom is first and foremost a great writer who makes cerebral stuff emotionally moving and entertaining.
This book has no equations, it is not written for scientists, but it’s an excellent science book that will help readers not only understand science better, but also love it more.
Toolkits of the mind
Ziggurat model. What simple things right under our noses do we fail to see? asks Howard Bloom (Credit: Sadegh Malek Shahmirzadi, Wikimedia Commons)
The God Problem starts with the story of how mathematics was invented in fourth-millennium BC Mesopotamia to count, split, inventory, and (especially) tax property. He puts you in the head of a Mesopotamian. You suddenly see how radically different and strangely alien an ancient viewpoint was.
The Babylonians had no circles in their mental toolkit. None. To them, everything was a line or a flat surface, like the surface of an iPhone-sized clay writing tablet. Every reference book in sight asserts that the Babylonian’s invented the 360 degrees of angles.
But The God Problem says they did not. And without the concept of the angle and the circle, the Babylonian sky was as flat as a ceiling and Babylonian astronomers never bothered to look up at the sky. Instead, they focused on a line — they noted where dots of light poked into the flat ceiling of the heavens from the line they called the “cattle pen” of the horizon.
The bottom, well, umm, line? Explains The God Problem, the Babylonians had circles and angles right under their noses. They used circles in their decorative art. And they crafted perfect right angles to map out the corners of their ziggurats. But they never uploaded the circle and the angle to the toolkit of the mind. What simple things right under our noses, asks Bloom, do we fail to see? What simple things that we take for granted could be the next big tool of mind?
Bloom moves to the Greeks in the first century BC and produces more surprises. Pythagoras — considered by Bertrand Russell and Bloom as one of the people who had the biggest influence in the development of Western thought — was the master charismatic cult leader of all times. He preached that ultimate reality is based on numbers.
Writes Bloom, “One of Pythagoras’ modern biographers, Christoph Riedwig, asserts that if you and I were to meet Pythagoras, … we’d see him as a madman with exhibitionist tendencies. Why? Pythagoras’ way of presenting himself smacked not of reason, but of show business. He was tall, charming, and strange.
His robe was a startling white. And unlike your everyday Greek man of intellect, under his robes he wore an outrageous violation of the fashion of the day — a contribution to couture from the horse-riding barbarian warriors of the steppes to the northeast, the Scythians. Trousers.”
Again, the strange way Pythagoras reasoned reveals more of just how fragile and temporary our modern ways of thought may be.
Deep structures of the cosmos
Code 912 cellular automaton (credit: Wolfram Mathworld)
You really don’t want to miss Bloom’s account of the life and works of the thought leaders between Greeks and the thinkers of today. But fast-forwarding to our age, Bloom shows that modern ponderers are very much like Pythagoras.
Remember, Pythagoras was sure that number is behind everything, from the music of the heavens to the sneezes, coughs, and mood swings in your daily life. Instead of numbers, Benoit Mandelbort, John Conway, and Stephen Wolfram hunt for another kind of what Bloom calls “Ur patterns” — “deep structures of the cosmos, patterns the cosmos repeats over and over again.”
But Conway and Wolfram’s structures are algorithms, simple rules. The delicate fractal shapes of Benoit Mandelbrot — a Jewish mathematician escaped from Warsaw whose uncle, a modern Pythagoras, founded a secret society of mathematicians — are staggeringly complex but not random. On the contrary, they are generated by iteration of simple mathematical formulas.
The buzzing and meaningful complexity of reality can also be generated, Bloom shows, by iteration of simple rules. Termites build amazingly complex structures by the repetition of simple behaviors that are hardwired, by evolution, in their tiny brains, he points out.
A Universal Turing Machine (UTM) implemented in Conway’s Game of Life. The tape, which acts as a storage medium, passes the programmable read/write head. (Credit: Paul Rendell)
John Conway is the inventor of the popular and influential Game of Life, and Stephen Wolfram is the creator of A New Kind of Science. Digital physicists like Conway and Wolfram believe that the best model for ultimate reality, whatever that is, may be cellular automata, where — as in Mandelbrot’s fractals — simple rules and initial patterns produce unpredictable, beautiful and complex results .
“Can you build an entire cosmos from simple rules?” wonders Bloom. “Stephen Wolfram is convinced that you can. In fact, he’s certain that a variation on John Conway’s computer game can even solve such basic scientific mysteries as the unification of quantum physics and relativity.”
At 14, Wolfram “wrote his first book on particle physics. At 17, the scientific journal Nuclear Physics published a paper he’d written. At 18, he wrote a widely acclaimed paper on heavy quark production,” and became the youngest person to win a MacArthur Genius Grant. “Wolfram concluded,” says Bloom, “ that you could even use cellular automata to solve seemingly impossible problems like how to reconcile quantum physics with relativity.”
Then there’s a parallel plot. Many authors write to clarify their thoughts to themselves, and Bloom is no exception: in the autobiographical sketches scattered throughout the book, he writes about himself. But he puts you in his shoes — or his bedroom slippers — and lets you experience his adventures. In the process, you get to be Jewish for one day. Then you become an atheist at the age of 13 and learn why Bloom does not feel the need to create a God to create the universe.
A debilitating illness leaves you — a scientist whose experiment in mass culture turns you into a media expert/publicity consultant for Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Peter Gabriel, and many other stars — confined to your bed for years and unable to work. But from your bed, you discover the Internet and create online communities to discuss your ideas, including some of the ideas that later result in your books.
You manage to get out of your bed after 15 years. And in 2006, as Bloom, you co-author a paper in the theoretical physics Internet preprint site arXiv on “Conversational (dialogue) model of quantum transitions.” The radical paper proposes that the source of a particle and all of that particle’s possible detectors “talk” before the particle is finally observed by just one detector. These talks do not take place in physical time, but in “hidden time.”
The hidden time model, says Bloom, “treats time as a form of communication. It treats time as a form of information extraction. It treats time as a form of translation. In fact, time is the ultimate extractor of implicate properties. Or, to use Claude Shannon’s word, time is the ultimate extractor of meaning.” In typical Bloom style, the Appendix, which more conventional scientists would probably fill with formulas, describes the social life of bees.
Entropy, information, and meaning
Howard Bloom (credit: Rob Kritkausky)
I never met him in person, but I had the pleasure and the honor to meet him virtually and talk to him in many online events. I think the Internet, an emerging group mind built by a “recruitment strategy” that makes us all parts of a planetary (and tomorrow cosmic) search engine and meaning generator, is one of the protagonists of this book.
In Bloom’s profile of Claude Shannon, another seminal thinker who played an important role in the computer technology of our times, “information” is defined as the entropy (disorder) of a signal.
According to Shannon, maximally entropic (random) noise — a sequence of random numbers — cannot be compressed to something simpler and therefore has maximum information content.
But that raises a problem: random noise, by definition, doesn’t have any useful information, Howard Bloom says, or meaning! Important areas of modern science (What is entropy? Does the universe destroy information or produce information?) are muddled by confusion between different aspects of information.
Entropy is about information, but life is about meaning, he points out: “Meaning means more than it does in Claude Shannon’s vocabulary. Meaning is a sense of direction. A sense of where to go next.”
In David Bohm’s “implicate order” formulation of quantum physics, hidden meaning unfolds in a seemingly random world. Bohm wrote in his 1980 Book Wholeness And The Implicate Order that “what we call empty space contains an immense background of energy, and matter as we know it is a small, ‘quantized’ wavelike excitation on top of this background, rather like a tiny ripple on a vast sea.” Space, he said, is “full, not empty.” Full of what? Implicate order, says Bloom.
“Strangely, Bohm had his greatest impact on the New Age movement. In 1985, he co-wrote a book on The Ending of Time with legendary Indian “World Teacher” J. Krishnamurti, and his dialogs with the Indian mystic were collected in two more books.”
The big bagel universe (credit: Sabine Allaeys)
The big bagel theory
Howard also describes some imaginative physics ideas of his own, like his “big bagel theory,” devised in 1959 [sic].
Imagine a big bagel (similar to a doughnut) with an infinitesimally small hole in the middle.
The matter universe expands rapidly (now known as “inflation”) up from the big-bang singularity at the hole, and then slows down, and over the ~14 billion years, expands out in a circle on the surface of the bagel.
An antimatter universe does the same, he explained, but moves in the opposite direction in the hole: down. In the distant future, “once the two universes run out of the energy that has shot them away from each other, they ‘sense’ each other’s call. They slowly begin to fall into each other’s arms. They slowly begin to succumb to the pull of each other’s gravity.
“When matter and antimatter meet at the outer edge of the bagel they annihilate. They turn to raw energy. And they do a dimensional flip. The outer edge of the bagel becomes the bagel’s hole. The hole from which a new big bang emerges.”
Fast-forward to 2003, when cosmologists noticed unexpected “circles in the sky” patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that could be best explained by — you guessed it — the “doughnut universe” model, according to Frank Steiner, a physicist at Ulm University in Germany, in a 2008 paper in Classical and Quantum Gravity (arXiv version) cited in Nature News.
I am sure all readers of Bloom’s previous books, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century, and How I Accidentally Started The Sixties, are impatiently waiting for the release of The God Problem on August 24.
They will not be disappointed.
Comments (54)
by Randall Lee Reetz
*Quick (and dirty) review of Howard Bloom’s book, “The God Problem”*
Do you know what an “orrery” is? An orrery is an explanation or abstraction of phenomena that is internally consistent, accurately predicts behavior and structure, and is completely and totally wrong! Orreries work, not because they are true, or even because they are elegant or as is expected in the sciences, because they describe the actual causal mechanism at play in a domain, but because they resonate with some sort of inherited or learned cognitive pattern within our brains and the interpretation mechanisms they use and create. Bloom can’t tell the difference, doesn’t care if there is a difference, and very much wants to turn the universe on its head, making thoughts more causal than the structures and immense time required for their evolution. Why can he get away with lying the biggest possible lie? Because the only thing measuring his idea are brains like yours and mine, brains that have evolved an affinity for certain false understandings of the world around us and our place in it. Don’t be orrery food.
Yes. That is the thing. I am expanding “orrery” to a concept – unshackled from particular domain. It is a very useful general concept, describing a map that is predictive but not causal. Such maps are incredibly dangerous because they are seductive, alluring. They say much more about want than they do about is.
The planetary orrery is a mechanism of balls attached to bent rods that meet at bearings and gears surrounding a central axle. It will show you the relative motion of the planets, sun and moons… but obviously the causal dynamics of a solar system isn’t well described by a bunch of articulated rods. There are an infinite number of orreries that one might construct of any given dynamic, and only one that is causally accurate.
Which is especially interesting as it contradicts our usual concept of the difference between the past and the future. We usually think that understanding the past is easier than predicting the future, when in fact, it is far more likely to construct a fairly accurate prediction of the future than it is to reverse engineer the actual causal past.
And of course, only a causal understanding of phenomena will ever afford real understanding of (efficient building towards) the future.
You’ll never be able to derive E=mC^2 from a bunch of bent rods and gears.
The very first and absolutely obvious and fatal mistake bloom makes is his denial of the 2nd Law. Again, want isn’t is.
Complexity (systems that can predict) is selected for (is more “fit”) BECAUSE it results in a maximal dissipation in overall order. “Creation” (of complexity) is the fastest and most complete path towards heat death. Evolution isn’t a game of hubris and ego. It is the most mechanical and practical of phenomena. Evolution ALWAYS represents (results in) the fall line towards heat death. The magical (and very unintuitive) ingredient that explains the emergence of pockets of complexity is entropy itself. Evolution’s “creation” of complexity (the ability to predict) is the handmaiden of the 2nd Law. Things fall down. Things ONLY fall down – dissipate. Very rarely, things fall down into a stable yet highly reactive configuration. Such structures cause more falling down locally. Which enhances a hierarchical energy topology in which survival depends more and more on a structure’s capacity to thrive in a more and more energy dense environment. Selection is for structural stability within a dissipatively dense fall line. Complexity is the natural byproduct of and cause of an increase in overall dissipation rates. A universe can do nothing but fall down. The only variable is how fast it falls. This is evolution’s job.
You don’t trash the most foundational and universal of all laws simply because you can’t emotionally deal with reality. Or because you can’t build a sophisticated enough map of reality that allows both complexity and dissipation in a unified and mutually beneficial model.
Bloom has constructed a ridiculously elaborate argument against science (causality) and has ironically used the language of science to do so. He is the ultimate carpetbagger. The uber-snake oil salesman. One of his slick cognitive tricks is to lay down a serious of seemingly reasonable and folksy condensates of scientific law in order to pied piper his audience into a steady run for the cliff’s edge. The second law has never sat well with the human existential interpretation of reality. It is the NO BULLSHIT law… that forever and unequivocally shuts the door on ego and hubris. We like ego and hubris. We have a seemingly endless need for self-lies… as a means to self motivation and self apology. Never has this need for hubris motivated so elaborate and Byzantine an argument against the big “R” Reality of physics in favor of the little “r” reality of our shared existential insecurities. But the real crime here, Bloom’s coup de grace, is his wolf in sheep’s clothing borrowing of and rape of scientific authority to dismantle the authority of science. Perverted. Wayward and manipulative as would make any tele-evangelist sick with envy. The Christian Right has been upstaged at their own game.
What is Bloom’s argument against the 2nd law? Near as I can see, he has none. Bloom just declares it so! He simply doesn’t like it. No rational causal argument… hell, why go through all the trouble, when all you have to do when fanning hubris is to know what you “feel” is true? Right? That seems to be Bloom’s method. What’s remaining, is the question of motivation. The critical reader is left guessing: is Bloom a naive? Was Reagan? Or is Bloom a psychopathic cult of personality a la Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard? Could a person who possesses, as does Bloom, so strong and fluid a command of language and rhetoric, really be suffering so singularly with regard to coherent logical reasoning? Something is wrong. Warped. Skewed. Off kilter. Tilted. Bent. Of course the world has witnessed many examples of beautifully written books (The Bible?)… completely devoid of salient causal logic.
Bloom has committed the standard and tired new age error. He is compelled to superimpose the angst and methods of need and fear over and onto the very fabric of physical causality. He asks of his own emotional self, what is creativity, and then feels it reasonable to apply the answer to the whole of the universe. Creativity? Surely bloom seems to be arguing, it feels magical and emotional when I am creative, the universe itself must therefor be magical and emotional! Those of us who study evolution and the 2nd Law find no problem understanding why pockets of complexity is simply a result of and the only option when action of any kind always increases the universe’s disorder in total. Things can only fall down, but every so often, falling down stuff fall into stable and complex configurations that can themselves cause an increase in the rate and scope of more falling down. Such systems increase the local throughput of energy and change which sets up an increased survival gauntlet for yet more opportunity for things to fall down into yet more of the forms of complexity that increase the rate of falling down even more. This is called evolution. There is no greater (no other) form of “creativity”. And not only is evolution compatible with the 2nd law, neither could exist without the other. Creativity (evolution) is the only possible result of the 2nd Law’s demand that action always result in an increase in the total disorder of the universe. It doesn’t matter a wit should such a dynamic “feel” correct, or emotionally resonate.
Bloom’s mistake is an age old mistake. In early philosophical studies of the brain, there was a tendency to look for a smaller brain within the brain, a “homunculus”, or man within the man. Bloom asks us to accept the same embarrassing logic as applied to the whole of reality. The same as car mechanic who decides that all matter must be composed of tiny cars, or that god or the essence of the universe is a automobile assembly line. Embarrassing.
I am keenly aware of the corrosive effect that a lack of education has on the sophistication and causal fidelity of one’s world view, one’s understanding of nature. But when people such as Bloom exhibit the same awkward self-centered and scientifically ridiculous “understandings”… I can no longer extend the empathy that disadvantage demands.
As I constantly rail “Want isn’t is!”. Seems so obvious. So what is it that makes people so want or need to superimpose their own emotional existential needs into the totality of the universe? Why would Bloom so need the universe itself to function by the same awkward and brittle emotional needs and silly brain derived ideals of self that are so common the product of the human brain? Insecurity? Is his sense of self so vulnerable that he needs to imagine the whole of reality to be similarly afflicted? Is it that simple. Pain seeks pain in others… or the cosmos in this case? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place. Maybe Bloom is more psychotic than neurotic. Maybe he esteems himself, or desperately needs to esteem himself, god-like in his infinite “creative” potential. Maybe his ego is so super-inflated, that he needs to remake the universe in his image such that the universe can be his equal?
Either way, writers such as Bloom, abuse the responsibility that comes with the capacity to communicate effectively… a skill Bloom is dripping with. The human brain is profoundly susceptible to memes that coddle the ego, that apologize for need and fear, that, in fact, do nothing less than rabidly encourage the formation of philosophies that hide ego and the fear that ego is built of. It is oh so easy to appeal to this shared urge.
The universe is causal. Causality refers to the way in which action (exclusively) causes all other actions (change). When you talk of “conversation” you are attributing influences that are super-causal or meta-causal. There has never been a measurement taken of anything in this universe that requires a meta-physical or extra-causal explanation or that can’t be predicted or repeated using purely causal physics. So what is it that you want of the universe that measurement doesn’t expose?
Why oh why would a person want to lean on science for the foundation of of an anti-scientific philosophy? Especially when what a philosophy-leaning person wants of the universe, requires that science be completely and totally useless?
Science is measurement. Measurement is comparison to a standard. If you wish for a non-causal universe, you wish for measurement sticks that can’t keep their length straight and cat therefore be used to measure anything… no science. Be careful what you wish for. Luckily, this universe is causal. Wishing doesn’t change anything at all in a causal universe.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear as I could have been. If what you want to or need to believe demands that the universe is wishy washy, than you can’t also believe that anything is measurable and you don’t therefore believe that science is possible. If what you measure is wishy washy then what you measure with, your ruler, your yardstick has to be wishy washy as well – rulers and yardsticks are of course made of the same stuff that the stuff they measure are made of! You can’t have it both ways. Either your universe is measurable, in which case science has meaning (predicts) or the universe isn’t measurable, and science is worse than useless. If it is the latter you believe in than don’t do so by leaning on the authority of science.
All of science is based on the measurably of all of nature… not some of science or some of nature. All of both! If you reject measurement and we have never made a measurement that doesn’t agree with all other measurements, you had better be willing to talk openly about your motives. In fact, without measurement, motive is all there is left. So, what Howard Bloom, is your motive? The utopia you seek. And why? These are aspects of your hubris your book seems unable or unwilling to expose.
Or perhaps I should ask, what is it Mr. Bloom is running from? What hurt him? Scared him? Not philosophically, not globally, but emotionally in his own past. What abuse or abandonment did he endure, is he running from?
by Orion Angel
Knowing that “most” of the higher critics
concede to belief that cosmos banged from.
nowhere to somewhere..they refuse GOD is
the nowhere zone it banged from.
If 1 can believe substance or matter can come
into being from nothing?
Then 1 hast to concede that a GOD or Creator can as well.
Time itself is a living element that frees up matter to flow.
Without flow of time all is frozen.
This is why the past is unavailable for time travel.
Time as an element freezes behind itself.
Once the abyss of Time expands or inflates to dimensional viel,
BANG!
by Jackson
I just finished the book and found it very stimulating. As an historian of science, much of the territory covered was familiar, but much was new or at least presented in a new light. The writing style, however, affected me much like that third donut. Bloom has a marked fascination for rather monotonous repetition that would have been fine in a short essay, but loses all charm when used persistently in a monograph. Once you become accustomed to the format, just read the first sentence of each of those sugary paragraphs (you’ll know them when you see them) and the book will likely prove much easier to digest and more rewarding.
by Gary
Sadly, there does not seem to be any reference at all in the book (at least nothing in the index) to the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead whose process-relational speculative philosophy addresses most of this in a succinct and elegant manner. The issue comes down to how something meaningful comes from nothing–basically identifying the source of creativity in the context of unfolding process. And the other concerning observation is that there appears to be nothing that might help us understand our ethical responsibility to each other. And nothing that deeply informs about the fundamental nature of human freedom. It is pretty much all there in Whitehead.
by Howard A. Landman
“According to Shannon, maximally entropic (random) noise — a sequence of random numbers — cannot be compressed to something simpler and therefore has maximum information content.”
This is not quite right. Something with high entropy requires a lot of bits *to* *transmit*. Entropy = uncertainty; we start with very high uncertainty about the message to be transmitted, and it takes high information in the message to reduce that uncertainty to zero. Shannon information is *negative* entropy; same units, opposite sign. Shannon himself never got confused about this (though his wording was sometimes vague), nor did Schrodinger, but many subsequent scientists have been less fortunate.
by Howard A. Landman
I think it was Paul Halmos who said that, for a book to be about something, it must NOT be about a great many other things. Howard Bloom seems unable to follow this prescription. The God Problem contains many interesting facts, most of them completely unrelated to its main quest of explaining how a universe can create complexity. In Bloom’s chatty, verbose, and peripatetic peregrinations, the very first sentence which sheds any light on the book’s nominal topic occurs on page 431.
Bloom’s choice of writing the entire book in the 2nd-person-as-substitute-for-1st-person (“you are Jewish”) is odd, at best confusing and at worst irritating. The book is repetitive. Like the movie The Hobbit, it could have been made half as long and twice as good with some decent editing.
What makes this especially frustrating is that Bloom does, occasionally, as if by accident, touch on some important and difficult topics, like the difference between “information” and “meaning”. But he seems unable to stay focused on them long enough to make much progress. He also seems unaware of much previous work.
I suppose I should mention that the book contains 4 false statements and one horribly incorrect diagram (claiming to show the E and B fields of light). I leave it to the interested reader to find the 4 and explain why the light diagram is wrong.
Using the Mandelbrot set as a model for how complexity arises has some merits, but also some drawbacks. Yes it’s a simple iterated rule that creates immense amounts of detail. But it doesn’t create any meaning, or even information: the Kolmogorov complexity of the whole thing is no greater than that of the equation generating it. If you want to explain the complexity of, say, a eukaryotic genome, you have to look elsewhere.
The kind of complexity we are interested in requires both nonlinearity (gain, chaos, solitons) and entropy creation (non-equilibrium thermodynamics, metabolism). But Bloom is prevented from understanding any of this by his insistence that the law of entropy is simply wrong. Life and evolution climb upstream against a constant flow of degradation; how they manage to do that is one of the key components of the answer Bloom purports to seek, but refuses to see.
Shannon entropy is not the best measure for attacking this problem; this has been well-known for some time. The state of maximum entropy, total randomness, is dead because it has no structure. The state of minimum entropy, a perfect crystal close to absolute zero, is dead because it has no variety. Life, and all complexity generation, has to exist in between order and chaos. Bloom spends so much time flogging Shannon’s dead horse that he is unable to say much about what alternative he prefers. He seems unaware of Fisher Information, and makes little or no use of Kolmogorov complexity. We could use a workable theory of meaning. Bloom is probably right that any such theory has to be receiver-dependent, but he fails to actually propose one. This makes his contribution eerily parallel to, and about as useful as, the creationist information theory of Dr. Werner Gitt (In the Beginning was Information).
This book bills itself as a rocket to new heights of understanding, but in the end it feels more like a bunch of firecrackers going off on the ground: lots of little pyrotechnics, but no real progress.
by Bri
Gobeckli Tepi is an undisputed 12,000 year old example of megalithic culture. It shares characteristic with all megalithic structures around the globe. First they all appear to be aligned with the stars. In fact they seem to be used to define the seasonal changes. They tend to be circular structures, but rectangular structures are prevalent in megalithic construction. For sites like stone henge, Gobekli Tepi and other stone circles in Europe and the Americas, their circular design reflect the stars circling over head during the night, and the seasons circling around, year by year. You have to remember that when cromagnon man appeared 30,000 years ago, he had the same mental capacity that modern man has. The best show in town at night was the stars. Our modern anthropological research has uncovered evidence, that man has been observing the stars, and recording them with names and depictions for close to all, if not all those years. A symbol that can be interpreted as a sign for Orion was even found with neanderthal remains. I find it hard to believe when you state that the Babylonians didn’t look up at the sky. It’s hard to not notice the way the stars move in circles in the sky. Gobekli Tepi is a large complex of many stone circles covering acres, that were built over at least a one hundred year period. It also shares an unusual characteristic of most megalithic sites. The structures built further back in time are typically of finer construction techniques, and are typically built with larger stones. It should be the reverse. Another unusual characteristic is that they notch into each other and that they fit perfectly, where as later structures aren’t as exact. This implies a degeneration of technology and culture. These characteristics can be seen on every continent. They all have no writing on them. Often times modern archeologists attribute them to cultures that had written languages and that had a habit of writing on stone. So we have similar style structures that have contested dates that span the globe. This supports the Piri Reisis maps and other maps that showed land that harbor been discovered yet. That there was a culture lost in antiquity. We have oral and written traditions that speak of these antiquities, from most continents. The most notable range from the Egyptians Zep Tepi to the bible to the Vedas. Many speak of great catastrophes that wiped out these ancient cultures that were connected by a seafaring peoples. Something wiped out the megafauna of North America. The timing of this coincides with a date of aprox 12,000 years ago, or the end of the last ice age. That the Piri Reisis maps were supposedly copies of maps in the library of Alexandria, supports the idea that some of their technology was preserved by learned men. That it was relatively incomprehensible to them, but they passed it down none the less. Particularly orally, like the Mokara passed down knowledge of tsunamis. This undermines your premise of how the Babylnians perceived their world.
by Damon Montano
Almost like talking to yourself isn’t’ it Bri? I recommend consolidating your ideas.
by Bri
Time for the mokara. They are a simple people of the south pacific. They are indigenous and so have used there mental tool kit to understand the world. When the tsunami hit, not a single one of them died. In the news report that I saw on them the reporter talked to a researcher that was studying them, and who could speak their language. He said there’s was a primitive language. It didn’t have a sense of time like ours. Just really a sense of now. They also had no words for want. If they wanted to fish, they said I go fish. If the wife wanted the husband to stay home, shed say you stay home. The reporter asked how they survived the tsunami. They said that the water god gets hungry for people. The waters look a certain way and they know that he is coming to eat them. They go to high ground until he is finished and come back down. Obviously the Mokara wanted to pass this information down, so that future generations would know what to do. But they have no words to say future or wanting to pass down. It is implied by usage. Just like when I might say , me and my bros are gonna go to my crib and chill, we know what is meant. We might read in a text book that the Babylonians invented the circle, but what was really meant by that statement. The authors meant it , but it’s true making is lost. Just like that slang statement I just said, in a thousand years it might be totally incomprehensible and get miss interpreted. It become a conjecture as to what the true meaning was. It can only be understood in the context of our times. A future historian might interpret as that there were cribs that people would spend time in to keep cool. Let’s face it. The moistened the context of their language, that in the future of you see the ocean looking a particular way, you want to go to higher ground if you want to live. I’ll see you soon with Gobekli tepi. It’s just a little north of Iraq( Babylonia) where 7000 years before the Babylonians(5000years ago) they were looking up to the skies (the site is aligned to Sirius) and it consists of many round stone circles of megalithic blocks. There are no towns or villages. As far as we can tell at this point, they were hunter gatherers. This is upending archeology. We’ve always thought villages came first, then religious centers. This site seems to imply that man first was looking up at the stars, had a world view based on them, before civilization formed. The circles imply the motion of the stars in the night sky and that at curtain times of the year, at the stars of Sirius would rise over specific columns at sunrise. They hand straight lines, but they used them to make the blocks of the circle. It seems thier mental tool kit hadn’t invented rectangular buildings yet. This site is a stones throw, if you excuse my pun, from where you state the opposite. It also blows a hole in your theory. They obviously understood circles. They went to great lengths to make them in relation to the rotating stars, and seasons. Next up, other megalithic sites around the world. In archeology there is a principal of continuity of culture. It’s used to help date artifacts. Pottery is made in a particular style at different times and places. By studying the ways these change, you can figure out what time period a site was occupied and cultural influences between different cultures. All these sites have strong similarities, indicating cultural exchage and continuity.
by Bri
Mr Montnao I’d like to ask for some advice. I’m thinking of submitting a radicle idea to help with climate change, but you know how it is, someone might criticize it. Should I go up to that person and say some offensive insult or should I be polite. I’m mean to say that I think it might be foolish on my part to do this. Would I be a fool? You know how it is, it’s such an emotional thing. Your hard work being ripped apart, I might say something that I might regret. If upon reflection I feel I’ve made a fool of myself, should I apologize? Social presures being what they are I might freeze up, realizing that I’m looking stupid. Maybe I should just go up to them, make an obscene gesture and walk away. On second thought, that might inflame them. Then I really would be a stupid fool. My guess is that they might increase there criticism. I suspect that would probably be human nature, don’t you agree? Well you don’t seem to be interested in entering into a discussion with me, so this whole subject is probably foolish. You probably think I’m a fool. Your playing me as a fool, but then again, who’s fooling who right now. I,ve asked you to explain your ” book of the universe comment” but you don’t respond. Honestly it sounds like gibberish. Who wrote the book of love? Woops I’m sorry that’s a song. I meant the book of the universe. Is it available in paperback? Did Carl Sagen own a copy? Is Steven Hawkings writing an abridged version? It sounds like a specious statement. Words can be misunderstood. My understanding of specious is that it sounds good, but under closer examination it is found to be without substance. Take the bagel theory for example. An infinitesimal hole would mean it’s not a bagel. More of a round bun than a bagel. The abstract was from 2008. In it Mr bloom states that the universe is 56 light years across. I don’t know about that one. Some scientists liked the idea but i don’t think it’s been that well reviewed since then. Even in the 2008 Nature article there were other shapes being considered. So in the book it sounds like it was profound , but under closer examination it really wasn’t. Since it hasn’t gone any further since 2008 ( or you would have cited that also) it’s just a specious reference. It implies great genius but instead falls flat. You cite a lot of great thinkers, but the new ideas dont rise to that level. The book of the universe comment that you post seems about the same. Let me guess, it’s just fluff and showmanship. Designed to wow an audience, but equally lacking any foundation. I must admit to being interested in the book that Mr Bloom coauthored with Krishnamurti. Vedic writings talk about mankind reaching heights of civilization far more advanced than the Babylonians. They also say it’s far older. In fact I want to use it and the Egyptians concept of Zep Tepi to also cast doubts on your interpretations of man’s mental tool kit. The ancient Egyptians talk about people living very long lives, like what is written in the bible. So the Vedas, the Egyptians, and the bible all refer to a previous civilization. They aren’t the only ones. It’s amazing what can be passed down in oral traditions. Next up the Mokaras. They are an indigenous peoples from the south pacific. They have a very simple language and oral traditions. When the tsunami hit, that devastated the pacific and Indian ocean they new what to do. People from our civilization took pictures but they knew what was going on. Not a single one of them died, despite being in an area that was hit the hardest. Your going to love what was in there mental tool kit!!!!
by Peakstar
You dream of being a communicator, bri, so let me give you a piece of advice I received years ago: “Say as much as possible with as few words as possible”. Practice that a little and I will hear what you have to say. Now, upon reviewing this comment page it seems you have jumped to conclusions. Its not that I ignored your question but that I had not returned to see your question. In fact, when I posted the no-brainer that, yea, right we can’t create building alignments today as well as they did 2500 years ago I didn’t realize it was the same person I was writing such a kind reply to from my first post. OH I SEE what happened!! LOL, you wrote me a friendly comment before noticing that I had insulted you on another comment. OMB so funny. I see you were mad at yourself more than anything. I would love to comment on your insults but because you seem to enjoy typing words more words than any one has time to read I have to feel the way everyone else feels when they see your posts–”does this dude really think we are going to read this long arse s#!t? I don’t think so….”
by Bri
Mr Damon Montnao it is obvious that you don’t have the brain power to understand the pyramid problem. Let’s revisit the making of the stone blocks. I’ll make the problem really simple so you can understand why we can’t do it today. If you don’t make the blocks perfectly the stress from the weight will cause stress cracks. There are 2,300,000 blocks. They ( according to Egyptologists) made the pyramid in twenty years so we have that deadline two. If you divide it by the number of hours you have to quarry, square, transport and place a block every five minutes 24/7. I’ve said that before you sent your slander. In reality they at best had twelve hours to work so that means every two and a half minutes. You have six sides to square to each other and make perfectly flat so that means every 25 seconds a side has to be made absolutely perfectly. It would take a massive facility with diamond saws and laser guided controls to achieve just that one aspect. That doesn’t include all the other steps! They only had stone axes and copper chisels! So our modern facility is spitting out blocks at the rate of two and a half minutes. We would need an army of special payloaders crawling along bringing them from the facility to the drop site every two and a half minutes. All the while the ones that finished the task coming back. In ancient Egyptian terms you need a whole lot of people to drag each stone! It would be like grand central . Don’t forget that you have to extend the ramp all the while. So if we did it with construction cranes you’d have very similar problems. That’s a lot of cranes swinging blocks and then you have to move them. You just lack the ability to think these things through before opening your big mouth. I’ll show similar overrides in every aspect of your book if you are a coauthor with Mr Bloom!The ancients had the book of the universe open far more than we do today. As I said in my quoting Mr Hagan we can’t build it today! Mr hagan also said in the documentary Technology of the Gods that with their knowledge of engineering they could build anything they wanted to. Many researchers have noticed that the Pieri Reisis maps appear to be from a high altitude. By that they mean space!
by Damon Montano
If it requires that people bring in ancient aliens into the picture to account for the pyramids being thrown together with such unimaginable speed and precision within the time scale hypothesized, then a reasonable person would reexamine the 20 year time limit. You go on and on and imagine wild and fantastic scenarios that must have taken place simply because you have accepted a hypothesis, which became the doctrine of this particular piece of historical retelling. Perhaps you should reexamine the hypothetical time limit advocated by Egyptologists if it corners us into unreasonable logistics of construction.
by Bri
It’s time to examine Damon Montnao’s “tool kit” and see if he’s missing a few. It’s important because how you construct your thesis is pertinent to it’s validity. We know that he can grab the crudest tool first that is an insult. It’s not even a good insult so it’s a pretty useless tool. Me personally I love good sharp tools. They get the job done. If you bring your car to a shop to be fixed you want them to have all the right tools. The more modern and precise the better. So instead of a socket wrench or a screw driver he grabbed a hammer and a crude stone hammer at that. Think of the movie 2001 and the opening scenes where the apes are fighting and first learn to use tools. I told you Damon I’m going to toss you around like a rag doll. I’m going to use tongue fu on you and I’m going to leave you bashed bruised and bloodied. To make the pyramid with today’s tools we’d have to use cranes. But you must remember you can’t have steel inside the stone pyramid. It’s not enough to make a facsimile you have to make an exact copy. This shows again your brain isn’t prehensile enough to understand what I implied. I refered to Mr Hogan’s statement and you didn’t even examine that before responding. That’s negligent. You ignored my words. That’s ignorance. I can easily prove by these statements that you are ignorant. If you are ignorant of what I say with modern English should I suppose that you understand ancient thoughts better? If my car was in your shop to be fixed right now it would have brutish hammer marks all over it. I’ll be continuing soon maybe you might want to pick yourself up and clean of the blood in a little while it’s going to cover Mr Bloom’s thesis.
by Damon Montano
Bri it is obvious that you want everyone to think that you are overflowing with knowledge, but your words betray a lack of perspective. In most instances where a subject matter has not been put to rest with overwhelming evidence there is debate. And without even possessing an engineering degree, with only the experience of living in this modern world I can throw your comment on the ground and step on it. It is simply unacceptable for any educated person to believe that the ancient people who laid down the Egyptian pyramids did so with such an alignment that our engineers today could not match it. That is absolutely preposterous and against all common sense, which you apparently lack.
by Bri
Part three of my rant is still coming. In the mean time you might want to check out Gobeki tepi. It’s a twelve thousand year old megalithic site that’s astronomically aligned. That two and a half times older than the pyramids. There’s also a good documentary on megalithic structures called Technology of the gods by Atlantis rising. In it they ask a modern engineer that makes some of our most advanced structures today, if we could build it today. He says straight out that we can’t period! He is a top expert not an archeologist. He even says that the pyramids are so perfectly aligned that we CAN’T match it. We can’t place the stones together as perfectly as they did it and that to think that it was made with stone tools and copper chisels just several hundred years after civilization started is just plain crazy. Let alone put two and a half million stones in place in the span of twenty years( that’s a stone quarried and set in place every five minutes 24/7. Mr Bloom might be writing an interesting book, just think of it as fiction. It definitely isn’t based on fact. The books that were written saying the Babylonians invented 360 degrees, where did they come up with that idea? Maybe they were writing fiction? They based there ideas on something!
by Damon Montnao
Yea, we CAN’T match the pyramid alignment today with our advanced mathematics, engineering and science. What frickin rock did you crawl out from underneath? If we can land a spacecraft on a planet 50,000,000 miles away and set it down within a 4 mile landing zone, than I think we can set a building on the ground facing any direction we want dildobrains.
by Bri
It’s obvious you have no idea what’s involved because your reverting to crude insults. We have great cranes that lift all sorts of things but they’ve got to sit on something. Watch them put up a sky scaler some time. There has been a lot of commentary from people in the business that are astounded that it was built at all, let alone with the tools the egyptions had. If you want to debate the point use facts. Insults just show you have nothing real to say. Let’s start with something simple that you should easily be able to beat me at. 2,300,000 stones put in place in twenty years. You do the math if it’s not too difficult. How many stone in a day would that be. I expect you wont reply because you will dig a hole for yourself. From there we can get to the nitty gritty. If your so smart. I’m very familiar with how the dynastic egyptions built things. Are you? I really hope to hear from you. It would be nice to have a real debate. Maybe you’ll act like an adult. Not a school yard bully. I know you’ll won’t win at this argument. If your do sure of your self, bring it on.
by Bri
When I was twelve I wanted to be an architect. I haven’t lost my interest so if I’m by a construction site I can sit and watch them for hours. To lift even a simple steel beam can take hours. When they build the sky scrapers they get a rhythm going and they get much faster but it still takes quite awhile for each one. They can’t get close to doing it in ten minutes. That’s with them being bolted together with predrilled holes and just a few at that. When it comes to big blocks of stone it gets much harder. If they use pincer tongs it makes holes and they get in the way. Most times they try to use straps but these a very dangerous. To insure the stone doesn’t become unbalanced they prefer them to be underneath. This means the stone has to be put up on blocking to remove the straps. Then to push it in place becomes more challenging. Equipment like payloaders are often used but the hydrolocs aren’t easy to control with prvission. To get big blocks aligned properly takes a lot of time. Don’t forget as you come to the top of the pyramid the area to work in becomes really small. After awhile there isn’t enough room to position the stones with our machines. The pyramid is over four hundred feet tall. That’s a forty story building. Where were all those people standing to push the stones in place? For us today we would use a crane like you see loading ships. The crane would be massive. It would have to be higher than the top of the pyramid by a good margin. It can’t just reach. It’s arm would be gigantic. Talk to an engineer first about what that crane would be like. How they would have to secure it to the ground. The leverage forces are unbelievable. The structure of the crane itself would have to be super heavy duty. We might choose a gantry crane. That’s like building two small sixty story buildings. Kind of like building a suspension bridge. Of yes if we made a lot of specialty cranes we could do it but our everyday equipment that we use to build some of the most impressive constructions that we build today just can’t do it. Then you have the issue of how perfectly positioned the stones are. The great pyramid is actually slightly convext from one course to the next. It acts like a buttress. To flatten a stone they first flatten an area of bedrock. You put water on it and any high points you stub with sand till it’s absolutely perfectly flat. Do the same with each block. Once you have one side done you use a plumb bob to turn it ninety degrees bit that has to be perfect over the length of the stone. Again it’s easy if that side is up. You use water to see level again. Now you have to do this one more time and then you can finish the opposite sides. Each stone must be exact. If they aren’t the weight of the upper stones will press on it and crack it. Remember there are over two million make. The angled finish stones are more tricky. Tilting them precisely so you can use water is no easy matter.. They were polished like glass. The Arabs stole them to make a mosque. In the old days they shone like a mirror and again how do you put them in place. Are they first and then you build the core behind it? Today we would put them up last. So what do you do? Build a ramp going up all four sides? If they made a ramp that spiraled around the pyramid it would have a mass as large as the pyramid. Then you’d have to take it down. What ever ramp you make it’s got to be bit enough that you can have all your workers around to push the stones into place. Read Christopher Dunn’s book on it. He’s a highly trained machinist and has consulted with experts. He’s gone over the stones with machinist gauges and appeeared in many documentaries on the pyramids. If you enter this debate you’ll look like a fool. If you don’t your admitting you are one! We still have some of the hardest parts left to go.
by Bri
I like how you evoke the space analogy. I didn’t say and the expert in the documentary doesn’t say that it would be impossible. All that was said if you bothered to watch was that with the tools we use in construction of some of the most technically challenging engineering projects of today can NOT do the task. Of course if we put a huge amount of time and money we could over come the difficulties. Now I know that you can use rude nasty words but I don’t think your understanding of regular English is that complete. I’ll watch the documentary again and find the egineers name and some of his mega building projects. I only quote him. He’s the one sucking his neck out. When you say dildobrains it implies him to. If he does these marvels of engineering today it doesn’t bode well for his reputation if he’s lying. I’m sure he has had to defend himself from irate people like you. If you can’t understand the English words that he spoke in our times then that doesn’t bode well for your ability to understand something from Babylonian times. Two people can hear or read the same thing and get totally different meanings from it. My words and his words state that short of a space program we just don’t have the capabilities in use for the most challenging projects of today. I’m I a little clearer?
by Bri
Don’t expect me to stop to soon. I’m a Taurus and you’ve got my horns out. You still haven’t addressed the central premise of my rebuttal. I’ll keep tossing you around and driving that point home. Our understanding of the ancient world is very incomplete. You make some bold statements. I have the write to challenge those statements. If you believe in your premise you should bolster it with facts not insults.
by Editor
“Insults are the last refuge of the out-argued.” — author unknown
by Bri
Thanks for the support. Healthy debate is how the group mind evolves. Truth stands on it’s own.
by Damon Montano
“Insults are words arranged in such a way as to make the recipient feel badly”
–Damon Montano
by Bri
I also don’t mind the didobrains insult. I use my Steely Dan whenever I can. How facile are you with the English language.
by Bri
James M Hagan is the didobrains that I was quoting. I’m not shire of his title but he is credited with the construction of the Walt Disney shopping center, the Marta transportation hub in Atlanta among other mega construction projects. For him to make a statement that we couldn’t do it even today is very bold. He is obviously highly trained in engineering and would have much to lose if it were false. Christopher Dunn is also highly trained. In the documentary The Technology of the Gods by Atlantis Rising he goes into much detail of the machines that he says had to have been used. If I were you I’d see the documentary. Then you will be more informed. The Pieri riesis maps were from the 1500 s. They show land that wasn’t discovered yet. They are said to be copies from the library of Alexandria. That and many other things seem to point to an advanced culture that was wiped out along with all the mega fauna of north America at the end of the last ice age. Many cultures make reference to that ante deluvian culture. Imhoptep the builder of the first dynastic pyramid was just a scribe to the king. I think he got most of his understanding from reading very ancient texts. I think the Babylonians also had knowledge passed down. It might be the source of the text book assertions that they invented the system of angles. My next big post on this topic will address these issues further. It’s hard to figure a consistent thread to string it all together in such a short medium as a post. Since you attacked me I’m going to toss the book around the cattle pen further than I would have. I’d love for you to enter into a debate but I think you won’t. It’s a shame. You obviously have an interest in the subject and I would love to here more of your thoughts on the matter. If you play fair I won’t bloody up your arguments so much but I can be a bull and you entered my cattle pen and I see red.
by Editor
Hey, Damon, you’re right, but flames are prohibido here, 10-4?
by rshol
On the bagel theory, its one thing to say all the matter and anti-matter turns to energy, which becomes the next big bang. Great. Where did it all (all the matter/dark matter or all the energy) come from the first time?
Its sort of like the young man talking to the old lady who believed that the world was held up by a giant turtle. The young man asked what held the turtle up and the lady responded,”You can’t fool me laddie, its turtles all the way down.”
by Kathleen Grant
Your awesome! I am buying your book Now! Thank you for getting back to basics, simplifying the “”how things work”.
by Bri
Talking particles? Hidden time? Detectors? Hhmmmm, again I should say that I partially agree with Mr Bloom. It seems he is referring to the double slit screen photon experiment. When that result happened it rocked the very foundations of the science community. A very popular interpretation was the Copenhagen view. It said that a conscious observer was necessary for reality to actuate. Science is loath to evoke consciousness. It implies a universal consciousness and that’s just another name for god. Saying that particles talk implies a conversation and a decision. Hidden time compounds the problem because it implies a behind the scene, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain scenario. If it’s outside our time whose time is it? If the particle is in our time, how can it be in this other time. No scientist today would want to approach this theory. How can you prove hidden time? The consensus today is that any old particle will do to actuate a photon to it’s particle nature. Well maybe I should say any particle that can interact with photons. The trouble is, neither Bloom or myself are scientists and even worse, I’m very animistic in my world view. I think everything is alive, even empty space. If anything empty space is just so eager to actuate into something, that ot does so all the time. Hence virtual particles, in a complete vacuum. Let me illustrate it. We think of the big bang as a point of near infinite energy, that space has cooled by expansion. It works for me except that space part. If we were watching the big bang from a discrete distance, say 14 billion light years away, we wouldn’t see anything. Way too small, way too far away. Even after inflation it’s still so small and far away, that even with the best telescopes of today, and that the medium around this newly expanding universe were like the space we experience inside that expanded universe today, it would be way too small. So in my eyes what we think of as expanding space today is really an expanding field that our universe is floating on. In my view a unit of space is a unit of space, and that without something to relate it too, it’s just endless infinities. That the universe we know is just a fabrication of relationships. If that’s the case then it’s just waves of information. Time and space are illusions that particles are creating. Then there is this huge exchange of information. A whole lot of talking. Then entanglement can make sense, because they aren’t separated the way they were before entanglement, and no matter how far apart, there is no space or time separating them, and they can communicate or affect each other instantaneously! It doesn’t violate the speed of light because it’s not traveling through our space. It’s traveling through the space that our time and space universe is riding on. That sea of infinity. He even hints at it further by saying that empty space is full. Infinity is both full and empty at the same time. Like schrodengers wave collapse formula, but this one includes all particles and configurations……… Next up is the ancient world. Again if you want a hint. There is a 12000 year old ceremonial center in turkey, that’s made up of 5 ton blocks arranged in circles.( hey zolk! Did you see those shooting stars last night? No! I only see the lines on the ground! You mean you’ve never noticed that ROUND thing during the day? No!!! What about that other ROUND thing that changes it’s shape and somehow affects the water? No! No ! No! I only see the ground! I’m not interested in stars circling over head, or eclipses, I only pay attention to the cattle pen of the horizon!).
by Bri
I’ve tried my best to hold off and not post to this article. Let others state thief opinions, but at eleven posts it appears that most people don’t have anything to say. I’ll break my thoughts down to a series of posts, so for those interested, I’m going to carve out a big piece of real-estate here in the land of Kurzweilia. Not like 138 posts for the cyborg attack, but probably as many words. First point. I liked many of the thoughts expressed in the book. I’ve been saying many of them myself. The Ur patterns are very fundamental to our reality. They can be an excellent road map to understanding our world. The torus or bagel theory is a good example. It’s intriguing. It’s also very testable. Matter and antimatter collide in a big crunch? That would make a good light show! As the rest of the universe comes crashing into the first matter annihilations, it will run into a stiff headwind of radiating energy causing a tremendous turbulence. It would become chaotic. Not to mention that in the antimatter universe, it might be extremely mirrored to our own. Just think, there could be an antimatter Ray Kurzweil, leading a mirrored existence. Could even be visible at the fringes. By that I mean, we might be able to see this parallel universe. I’m not holding my breath on that one. See you all in the next post! ( hint, particles talking in hidden time? Sounds like he is walking right throughout the God created the universe door, just facing backward. Awfully inteligent particles, dnot you think?)
by Huwdoug
Enjoyed this. The ‘hidden dimension’ is we think an ‘Information Field’. The quantum field of physics is a ‘bubble’ surface interface that ‘encloses our cosmos from others in the multiverse that are contained within this deeper space-time independent field. Access to information that is held within such a field may indeed be possible. Such access ‘lies within us’ – that is to say our own minds in effect. An example might be the ability of mathematicians to create incomputable problems. By definition digital computers cannot solve them, so equally they cannot create them either.
by Bri
Ahem, well um er. To be more precise ur patterns. Those patterns that keep repeating themselves at different scales. Feeling hungry? Well how about a bagel. Well maybe a donut. Is a donut that much different from a bagel? Am I stretching things too much, like someone out of touch with reality, or can you see how I see more of a donut than a bagel. I mean don’t get me wrong, I see a bagel to, but the image he shows looks more like a bialy( not Max Bialy from Bialystok, oh I could do such an Abbot and Costello routine). The earth looks like that, to some extent. Kind of flattened at the poles. What I really mean to say is that you could go to the Thrive video, and see Foster gambel outline that bagel, with some very fine graphics. It’s the same vortex that I keep talking about. Like the iron filings around a bar magnet. The nueroanatamist in the TED video, that had a near death experience, also talks about those field lines. As I said, she got a tiny glimpse, fleeting, like a sample of nursing food at a kiosk , in a mall. My apartment, so to speak, is above that bakery. It’s smells waft up around me. When I speak of the skater, spinning, it’s another ur pattern. Because of the similarities, I can deduce how it functions. It’s really another Yin and Yang, or toroidal energy. Just like a hurricane feeds off warm waters, you just have to find out what applies, not that that in and of it’s self is an easy task. Whether in electrons in spintronics, to cycles of finance, these ur patterns keep on recurring. I take objection to the characterization of ancient knowledge. Hard for me to refute what has been written, without an understanding of the original commentary, but the ancients knew a lot more tha we give credit for. I really don’t want to open that can of worms right now, but I can’t resist giving a clue. Does anybody know about Ruti? Google and wikipedia won’t give you any answers, but it’s an amulet found a Sakara, that shows the sphynks before Kafre carved his face on it. Zahi Hawas and Mark Lehner will tell you straight faced, that Kufu built his pyramid in twenty years but never used it. Thats one stone block put in place every five minutes 24/7 , that you can’t place a razor blade between them. Then Kafre built his pyramid in twenty years, plus the sphynks and it’s two temples, but he never finished, and like his father, never used it. Then Menkare did the same, they built them with stone axes, and copper chisels, and never used them. The blocks of the mortuary temple are megalithic, other than the obelisks and large statues, Egyptians used regular small sized blocks. The two temples at the sphynks are huge, irregular, and fit together like a puzzle. Like the ones in peru. Not only that, they are lined with granite. The limestone core blocks are very soft. You could cut it with a pocket knife. Granite is extremely hard. Yet the granite blocks have been coped to match the contours of the weathered limestone blocks. Like it was an even more ancient temple, worthy of reverence. Zahi will proudly show you the tombs of the pyramid builders. They are covered in hieroglyphs. Just like the tombs at Sakara. There are no inscriptions anywhere on the pyramids, or the valley temples. Just like all megalithic structures. Somebody made the Pieri Reisis maps. They show south America and Antartica in sperical geometry. Look at the ancient map laid over a modern one. It’s dead on. Not only that, it shows Antartica without it’s ice. I’ve mentioned ancient canal builders. Com. It shows a lot of a culture that made huge canals in the remote past. By there estimates, based on sea level rise, aprox seven thousand years ago. Use the google earth program and look just below St Petersburg Fla. You’ll see a circular city of ringed canals, from that era. He doesn’t list it, but go ahead and look. Today only a small number of house are built on the site, but it most definitely is a remnant of the times Plato spoke of. I could spend all day showing things that don’t appear on the canal builders site. I’m actually making a compilation. Just use google earth and look around the missisippi delta region, or around Corpus Cristi Texases old shore line, before the sea level rise. The temple blocks at the sphynks weigh between 500 and 1000 pounds. They notch into each other. The only way to do this, is to push them till they touch. Use something like fat to leave a mark, pull them apart, chip away till you think your right, and push them together again, repeating this till a razor can’t slip through. All with stone axes, Mark Lehrner admits that the copper chisels were pretty useless. A block every five minutes for the pyramid( don’t forget that the ramp was a formidable challenge on its own, containing a volume similar to the pyramid it’s self. I can only imagine standing on that ramp, with teams pulling stones up, and teams coming down, and if they didn’t work at night, then a stone quarried cut transported and set in place, every two and a half minutes, plus extending the ramp. There are lots of incongruous archeological information that gets swept under the rug. Not even the slightest mention of ancient canal builders. He mentions on his site that bog people remains are found in Florida, just like in Europe, and that thier remains have European genetics, not Asian. Or that clovis points aren’t Asian, but are related to solutrian spear points. Then there is that bowl found in Bolivia that has Phoenetian writing on it. Mainstream archeology hides or suppresses these thing as soon as they are found.. I’ll get into the antediluvian world at a later date, it’s just that reading these characterizations of ancient thought really ruffle my feathers. Very subjective. Just focus on the torriod I mean bagel( talk about culturally specific. Let me guess, his vision of heaven wouldn’t have gardens or white light, just lots of bagels!), and Foster Gambles film Thrive, and you really will get a glimpse of what I see.
by Richard
Bri: Get a life! You talk to much. No one read that entire ramble.
by Gorden Russell
I got up early just to read it. Bri has a lot to say.
by Peakstar
Gordon Russell—-AKA Bri
lol
by Bri
I’m sorry, I really am trying to be brief. I do have a lot to say, but if you don’t agree, just skip it, I often do for other posts. For those that are interested, try google earth at Seabrook NH. It’s a complex that covers many miles. Another good one is in France. Check out the first big harbor from the border of Spain. Look close at different hieghts, maybe at different dates on their time slider. You should be able to see a grid and large blocks. Just some food for thought about the ancient world.
by seeker
some moderation needed ….
by Michael Sumner
You would think the publishers could have done something better with the cover presentation than just blatantly copy Dawkins’s book. How is that not embarassing?
by Cryonica
This review really made me want to read this book. It is an excellent preface.
I have read two other books by Bloom and they were very powerful.
by Cryonica
Very interesting review. It really makes me want to read the book, and this review serves as an excellent Preface.
by Cognosium
This will go on my (rather long) reading list,too.
There appear to be aspects which relate to the way I address, in my own writings. the apparent “fine tuning” of our universe without invoking superstitions of mythology such as that of a deity.
A broad evolutionary model will suffice.
See, for instance, “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website
by Ron Fontes
Bloom says the Babylonians had no circles? But they had chariots, with round wheels. They had pottery wheels. HE may be overlooking something.
by howard bloom
Ron, you are right. The Babylonians had circles all over the place. But they didn’t turn the circle into a concept. They didn’t turn it into an analytic tool. The rich web of associations we take for granted when we use the word “circle”–a curve equidistant from a center at all points, the source of pi, a thing with a radius, a diameter, and a circumference–these were the inventions of the Greeks. It’s not enough to have something right under your nose. You have to upload it to the toolkit of the mind. Which, in the God Problem, leads to a question. What things right under our noses are waiting to be reperceived so we can upload them to the toolkit of the mind. What things are we taking for granted the way the Babylonians overlooked their chariot wheels?
by Mark Duran
… and what does that say about the indigenous American’s toolkit—peoples with the concept the circle, (Mayan Calendar, Great Wheel of stars) but no practical use of it?
Can’t wait to read the book! Fascinating.
by Josh
Sounds to me like they had circles, but not mathematics.
by Bill
This reminds me of how mesoamerica had the wheel on toys and such, (under their nose), but never employed them for practical use. Are we all just doomed to realize things by random chance or by waiting for rare geniuses to think outside of a box? We need a universal creativity generator. I’ve used specialized generators like word or map generators where you set the initial conditions and have been blown away by the results many times. Lots of crap, but lots of really interesting stuff.
Imagine if we had such a generator for universal purposes so that we could speed up the random chance or ideas that spark whole new ways of conception.
by Damon Montnao
Howard I would like to reply to your question that we are overlooking the possibility of having a new religion that is planted firmly with science, and has shed all the superstitions and myths of ancient man. According to Vehicle of Prodigy, “Thousands of years ago humankind had not yet found the tools necessary to open the book of the Universe, these ancestors could only guess at its contents. Somewhere along the line those guesses became teachings, and these teachings became religions. To this day billions of people still don’t know the ancient book has been opened, and that we have peered into its contents.” As Carl Sagan said, “Someday someone will create such a religion. I think it has already happened….
by Bri
I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say religion and book of the universe. Please don’t take my question as an insult. For me the truth is paramount. If I am wrong on something I’m quick to admit it. These terms are vague and I really do want to know what you know. The open exchange of ideas is one of the hallmarks of our society. Civil discussion are essential. To me it is like when the ancient Greeks would gather to debate something. I really would like to be informed.
by Damon Montano
Hey Bri, sorry for taking so long to get back with you. Often the word “religion” is intertwined with irrational and simultaneously unquestionable beliefs, and general all around closed mindedness to ideas not included within an individual’s specific religious program. But as it often does our generalizing can be misleading when it fails to account for exceptions to the rule. For instance, in Taoism some individuals feel as though they are practicing their religion each day they go outside and perform martial arts. Also in Buddhism many many adherents do not believe in any god whatsoever, so the point I make is that religion is a general term with not so general characteristics. For instance, in the system Vehicle of Prodigy, adherents are practicing their religion each time they study the universe. When they study astronomy they learn the size of this place we inhabit and gain life changing perspective. When they study biology they come to understand how life has emerged in the universe and swarms and broods over the surface of planets competing for resources and how these components of a biosphere consume one another for energy.
Also for me, truth is paramount, and ever since Carl Sagan opened my mind to science I have never ceased pursuing it. When Vehicle of Prodigy says “The book of the Universe” they are speaking metaphorically, as in all the knowledge and information about the real universe as opposed to the mythical universe the old world religions pose.
I share your enthusiasm for learning Bri and am very happy to meet someone who speaks so highly of the pursuit of knowledge. You and people like you are truly a scarce resource in our society today.
by dadams
Derivative. Oolon Colluphid’s account will prove to be more robust.
by Gorden Russell
Of course the universe produces information. With every act of cell division living things defeat entropy.
Very fine book review, Giulio. I really want this book now.
I went to our local library’s webpage to see if they had “Global Brain” or “The Lucifer Principle” and found that the Onondaga County Public Library does have “The global brain : the evolution of the mass mind from the big bang to the 21st century.” I’m going to check that out right away.
by Bill
I wouldn’t say entropy is defeated, more like defied. But that’s the goal of the universe and probably all universes, to generate a sufficient level intelligence to focus on the problem of preventing entropy and eventual heat death.
We’re probably one of an infinitude of ‘virtual’ universes focused on that problem. Processors that are part of a never ending procession of universes inside universes. We’ll probably give birth to similar universes in turn. All trying to escape entropy.
by star0
Interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Bloom
Leaving the personal aspects aside, I did enjoy Bloom’s books “Global Brain” and “The Lucifer Principle”. I’m not sure how scientifically-sound they are, but they were fun to read nonetheless.
This latest book of his sounds equally entertaining. I suppose I shall read it at some point.