From Zero

Where all coordinates are zero, there is the origin. If in the beginning, all things are zero, nothing can happen. And if nothing can happen, all remains zero.

But if something can happen, it is the splitting of zero into equal negatives and positives. It is this quantum fluctuation that the natural rationalist must have faith in, or nothing has happened, nothing happens, nothing will happen.

It is more believable, some say, that something happened with such extreme fluctuation that a universe was created. And the proof, some claim, is that the universe exists.

But this is proof of nothing. The universe exists, but we cannot know how and why by any natural means, because this is the nature of universes. We have no statistical probabilities, no learning lessons to use inductively or deductively in order to 'know' how universes are formed.

Maybe we were all born yesterday. Maybe quantum fluctuation is that cool, the fluctuation between nothing and everything. And just perhaps, some people might think that to call it quantum fluctuation, a phenomenon without mind nor directivity, is better than to think of God, a person with altogether too much mind and directivity.

Impurities (Part 5)

Here we are, mortal humans, impossible biological impurities in the impossible expanse of the impossible universe. I listen to John Lennox and Richard Dawkins, and I realise that Lennox is right — when Dawkins says that the way the universe develops closely imitates something that is designed, it is circular thinking — how can we say even this thought is true or designed if in fact nothing is designed?

We recognize truth only if it corresponds with our ideas of the universe. That is all, and it only eliminates miracles as things that don't correspond. But why would natural selection necessarily value truth or design? The answer is likely that it does not value either truth or design. There is nothing, and so evolution too is an illusion. For natural selection is a blind force — what survives is what survives, it is a circular argument.

Perhaps then all is math, and local impurities in the fabric are what gives us this illusion. And math too then is a series of propositions that are really assembled from finding the best fit in what works. We think it is logical, but we only do so because the brain that evolved thinks it is logical, which itself is also a product of evolution. Ho ho.

In the end, all it boils down to is that God is harder to explain than the universe. But if He weren't, wherefore should He be God?

Underworld

I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere again, for perhaps the sixth or seventh time. It's the story, in part, of a man who does a good deed and loses his entire world.

The story of soul-for-world exchange is an old one. But it doesn't go away. I've felt like this before. I realise that, like Brian Duffy in Tim Powers's The Drawing of the Dark, "Much has been lost, and there is much yet to lose."

I walked away from things I thought I would miss, and in the walking away, learned how to walk. I walked away in anger and perplexity, and into the bright morning of a new world. I found old friendships that endured, and I found bridges and stairways into new places.

It is all there; the world is only the most current skin on the surface of the World. What is under that skin, the world-skin we think we know, is World. And under the World is something more real still.

In the end, it is all God. It requires an act of ultimate imagination to realise that for God to make anything independent of Himself must be something like how a force acting against gravity can make something seem weightless.

If God is sovereign, then our world, and the World beneath that skin, are both existing only because He makes it so. Without that Will, everything would just collapse back into God like a vacuum collapses into space.

And somehow, I am blessed to have walked out of one life, two years ago, and into a new world filled with old friends. It amazes me, it awes me, it makes me feel oddly happy at funny times of the night, and in the day.

Memory Foam

I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamt that our universe was like memory foam. It has a shape, it has substance and information and form and everything — but it only retains that shape because of what the random entities in it impress upon it. Particularly intense entities leave deeper impression in their field or domain of intensity.

And that is why everything exists, why limited free will and perception exists, why the whole thing is one piece and yet not. Occasionally, our interactions within the foam spawn other entities, or other perturbations in the foam. Larger perturbations are obvious to more of us, smaller ones may go unnoticed forever.

I woke up lying on my back, feeling strangely comfortable. My first conscious thought was, "What a movie that might make!"

My enthusiasm lasted for just enough seconds until I realised that this movie would obviously have to be called 'The Mattress'.

Oh Neo.

Asymmetrical

The concept of asymmetry is an interesting one, for one would expect it to be the natural state of a random universe. At the same time, the idea of randomness is that it should eventually be chaotic all round, and hence oddly symmetrical. The two concepts have always been at odds, sort of.

Here's an illustration. Throw 20 coins in the air and let them land randomly. Odds are that you will get 10 heads and 10 tails, right? Actually, not quite. The odds are higher that you will get a 9-11 split; that is, the combined odds of getting 9 heads and 11 tails or 9 tails and 11 heads are higher than that of the 10-10 split.

It's this phenomenon that bridge players exploit when thinking about who has what cards. If you have five cards in a suit and your partner has none, then it's more likely that of the eight remaining cards, your opponents have a 5-3 split than a 4-4 split. That dictates your pattern of play: they are more likely to run out in 3 rounds than in 4.

The universe, paradoxically, is like that. The average is like a 10-10 split, but the reality is normally a 9-11 split out of 20 coins.

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Meanwhile, elsewhere, THIS is a brilliant idea. Jane Austen and the undead, all in one. Wow, what a classic!

Quantum Mechanics

The problem, when all's said and done, is the concept of the quantum. In life, as in physics, the quantum is the smallest unit of anything that makes sense in a given context. Once you have this idea of quantity, the idea that all things can be reduced to discrete and finite elements, then it becomes tempting to launch a barrage of mathematical rules in an attempt to reduce the target known as life to its quivering naked essentials.

And that is why holistic education is doomed.

Once people get their hands on numbers and the limited intelligence required to manipulate them, the idea of a whole becomes fragmentable. If a whole can be reduced to numbers, then each numbered item can be dealt with as a single part. If the whole can be reduced to single parts, then it's not holism we're talking about, but the idea of engineering, the idea that you can have specialists and specific things and not have all-round development.

Actually, I don't think that all-round development is desirable as an end unto itself. I believe in the multiplicity of gifts. I believe in the difference of individuals. I believe in the irreducibility of the mystery of life. I mock the idea of the quantum as applied to the reality of the human. And I will stop at nothing to educate without the illusion of holism to lure people to their doom.

I do not want quantum mechanics, people who tinker around with numbers and reduce things to units. I do not want the zeitgeists, people who seek to kill time by diminishing its power against the backdrop of eternity. I want to know that our universe is immune from the spirit of reductionism and the spirit of trivialism and the spirit of fluffiness without cuteness (oops, well, stuff like that). I want a cosmos (not just a world, a secularity that terminates) that goes on forever and ever in the light of God, worlds without end, amen.

Theory of Unknowledge

For all the students I've taught anything to (in terms of anything they thought was knowledge), here is the ultimate proof of futility. David Wolpert, computer scientist and physicist, has finally come up with what we all suspected to be true: even without limits as to the nature or power of a computational device or intellect, except that it is physically a part of this universe, it will never know everything. And this extends to the laws that govern everything. So, good night to the grand unified theories and suchlike.

No, indeed you cannot know it all. But Solomon, once known as the wisest man in all the earth, was the first to think about that. It's in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that we read: "He has made everything beautiful in its time; and He has put eternity in the hearts of men, except that no one can find out what God does, from beginning to end."

These are the two sides of the gift of knowing: that we are always seeking to know, that we intuitively realise there is an infinity of knowledge; and also that we cannot know it all.

Happy Pi Day (3.14), everyone!

Shifting

Shifting blame, shifting responsibility, shifting one's stand — these are all the habits of a complex world. I don't think of them as egregious character flaws, but as the necessary behaviours of a fallen race. It is not possible to live a life in a world that is constantly contradicting itself without either pandering to these sneaky angels of our nature or becoming a quiet schizophrenic sitting in a corner and metaphorically (or literally) drooling in slack-jawed incontinence.

But there are a few ways to reduce the shiftiness. One is to stake out one's claims in public and let others openly declare how shifty you are being. Unless you are a sociopath, this will curb the habit a little. Similarly, you can key your behaviour to a public standard such as a holy book; whether or not the book is consistent, people can check the book to see if you are sticking to it insofar as it is humanly possible.

Accountability, standards... two legs were never enough for complete stability, although better than one. The third leg of the tripos is principle. This is how it works: you must be able to give an account of yourself (work, life, faith, whatever) in relation to certain fixed standards. But because standards are fixed and the world moves, there must be leeway for interpretation. At the same time, interpretation also has its rules, and these are called principles. This ensures that the standards are interpreted at least according to some meta-rules that you can also be held accountable to.

One example is a legal system: one is held accountable to standards called laws, which result in yes/no consequences; i.e. if you breached the law, you get punished and if you didn't you don't. However, the interpretation of the law by agreed principle is the basis of two parts of the system — is the evidence sufficient to confirm or deny a breach, and how much punishment should then ensue if the breach is confirmed.

Similarly, religious life should also show these three things: one is held accountable to one's religious dogmas, which should then allow people to hold you accountable in social, cultural or legal ways (it depends on how advanced a society you live in). However, those dogmas (technically 'dogmata', I suppose) normally require interpretation, and this is the logical domain of consistent principles called 'hermeneutics'.

Educational systems are not exempt. Any system must be explicable in terms of clear standards and accountability to those standards. The interpretation of those standards by established principles which are also agreed upon provides some flexibility. However, some behaviours are clearly beyond the pale: forging documents and making unjustified claims, removal of evidence, ill-treatment of students.

Here's a final note on 'arbitrariness'. Quite often, people complain about 'arbitrary' behaviour. Well, this is perfectly all right to me as long as the person displaying arbitrary judgement is indeed qualified to be an arbiter in the given situation. A good arbiter knows all the rules and has extensive knowledge of how to apply accepted principles of interpretation to those rules in cases where the operation of the rules may seem insufficient, unusual or inaccurate. He is accountable for his arbitrations in a way that is open to public debate. This can be seen in mostly in transnational bodies, where arbitration is a respectable activity.

In religion, of course, co-religionists should at least agree that their God, gods, or cosmic principles will in time carry out the required arbitration. In Christianity, we are all accountable to God for our actions and intentions. The unusual thing about religion is that by definition, eternal verities and sagacities are not accountable to the adherents of a faith; in that sense, God is 'allowed' and even defined to be the ultimate Arbiter, beyond accountability and hence fully arbitrary.

Which brings us back to the beginning. In a universe in which more than one thing exists, the potential for a shift in state exists and is hence part of the universe. Shifting then becomes an established principle. It does not mean we have to condone every shift, or that all shifts are morally or logically equal. But they must exist, and they must be appraised by a critical mind. Unless mind is an illusion, in which case it doesn't matter. As some anonymous sage once said, "Mind over matter: if you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

In Nomine

For it is all His in the end;
What need for logic or for fact
To hold that gaze or to defend
Against the source of intellect?
Decry the logic, fail the tools
With which we probed the universe;
We forged the instruments, and fools
We argue now in blithe reverse.

Responding leaves before the sun
Each curling upward one by one,
Once joyous in their glad array –
Imagine now if they should say:
That globe of ultraviolet light,
Take it away and give us night!