Where does math fit into life?

General Discussion
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Splendid, now what do we do with that?

I know, lots of stuff.
For instance, have you seen the technology on today’s Formula race cars, freak’n amazing.
Or flying machines, (a pal showed me some YouTube videos of different garage made human flying implements, holy freaking lord, once ya start down that rabbit hole, there must be hundreds of DIT achievements of human light. We are god.

And check out those plans to go to the moon, why? Well, how else are we going to get real payloads to Mars. And, why? Well, come on, imagine all these resources we could mine! And, why? Well, we’ll learn sooo much.
I could go on but you get the idea.

Now, what is any of that knowledge and mastery good for, when we don’t even have the sense to take physical reality seriously enough, to demand honesty in the public forum when it comes to, well survival on what used to be an amazingly accommodating Earth biosphere, health issues and on and on. Just imagine the things that could get fixed if Truth were demand and expected. But, we don’t we live in a fantasy world and hear this worship of math and wonder, why? When we don’t have the intelligence or heart live sane constructive lives?

You know, we’re still arguing about Almighty God and Evolution, it’s ludicrous to me. Where does math help anyone open there eyes to the life unfolding around them?

write, you are so in love with math, and there’s no denying all those bits of the mathematics you share with us, it’s cool. It is honest. You are truthful about the evidence and listen to counter evidence, like me you actually listen to others and attempt processing what they are saying as far as our own preference allows us. :person_raising_hand:t2:

It feels to me like this math as everything, I won’t say god, but what should I call it? For me, myself and I, “universe” seems to be my own god, and that’s that, no doctrine behind, just my feelings/thoughts, which are the processed essence of my experiences and life time.

Earth and her life story (which incidentally is also my/your life story) is my touchstone with physical reality. You have math as your touchstone with physical reality. Has that helped you get closer to understanding our everyday struggles, successes and failures, and the pageant of experience we’ve lived through? How has math helped you process that stuff? That’s the question that keeps repeating itself to me as I view your various excellent sources.

I believe an evolutionary and a fleshy understanding of life and time’s passage and our ends, is worth focusing on, since that’s the realm we live within. Gotta admit all this advanced math stuff is beyond the realm of regularly day to day living, and its part of our mind, it’s true it’s important but perspective man perspective Kirk, pleads Bones :wink: (didn’t know I was a trekkie, did you, from about '66 to 68 :melting_face:.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:9507”]
Now, what is any of that knowledge and mastery good for, when we don’t even have the sense to take physical reality seriously enough, to demand honesty in the public forum when it comes to, well survival on what used to be an amazingly accommodating Earth biosphere, health issues and on and on. Just imagine the things that could get fixed if Truth were demand and expected. But, we don’t we live in a fantasy world and hear this worship of math and wonder, why? When we don’t have the intelligence or heart live sane constructive lives?

I completely agree with you from that perspective. But I am specifically addressing the objective scientific nature of the Universe and how it seems to function.

I am purposefully excluding the human condition, because in the chronology of the universe we are just another “limited but evolving” manifestation of Universal Mechanics.

The universe itself is not subject to survival pressures and the “fight or flight” response. It is utterly devoid of emotion. Emotion is a necessity for living organisms, but the universe is not alive, it is a “quasi-intelligent” condition, which operates in a deterministic manner, or else no orderly chronology could evolve.

Determinism is inherent in the concept of generic mathematics. All things have an inherent value potential and their relational interactions are purely based on strict mathematical guiding equations. Just look at the dynamical chemical processes that can occur over time. Chemicals are not alive, yet life must have originated from chemical interactions. That is the concept contained in “Abiogenesis”

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:9507”]
It feels to me like this math as everything, I won’t say god, but what should I call it? For me, myself and I, “universe” seems to be my own god, and that’s that, no doctrine behind it, just my feelings/thoughts, which are the processed essence of my experiences and lifetime.

Yes, Mathematics are the equivalent of “God’s hand”, sans “intelligent motivation” !!!

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:9507”]
Earth and her life story (which incidentally is also my/your life story) is my touchstone with physical reality. You have math as your touchstone with physical reality. Has that helped you get closer to understanding our everyday struggles, successes and failures, and the pageant of experience we’ve lived through? How has math helped you process that stuff? That’s the question that keeps repeating itself to me as I view your various excellent sources.

I am of exactly the same mind as far as the human condition is concerned. It seems that we are too smart for our own good because we are able to intentionally use universal laws and mechanics to get what we want, but without regard of the long term consequence of the mathematical “universal law” Newton discovered, that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Humans seem unable to conceptualize that timeless truth and we get punished every time we step over the mathematically “permitted” line.

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That pretty much sums it up - the rest is, well, never mind . . . :v:t3:

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Another thread that goes nowhere.

Oh well such is life, speaking of life have you heard about the golden ratio, it’s like magic, really.

Be Smart

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:4, topic:9507”]
Another thread that goes nowhere.

Where exactly do you want a thread to go? Personally, I like to get closer to truth.

Oh well such is life, speaking of life have you heard about the golden ratio, it’s like magic, really.

There’s the rub. The Fibonacci Sequence is not like magic at all.

It is interesting that you should demonstrate the Fibonacci sequence in human mathematical code when all you need to do is look at a tree and see the sequence expressed in nature.

It is very logical and based on several logical universal potentials such as symmetry and balance. It is ubiquitous throughout the universe and is one of those self-organizing patterns evolving via natural selection of efficient use of energy that gives a survival advantage, especially to stationary growing plants that must compete for sunlight.

But the sequence appears in so many more natural patterns that it is a clear indication of a naturally occurring mathematical guiding equation.

How Are Fibonacci Numbers Expressed in Nature?

By: Robert Lamb & Jesslyn Shields | Updated: Aug 31, 2021

But while some would argue that the prevalence of the Fibonacci numbers in nature are exaggerated, they appear often enough to prove that they reflect some naturally occurring patterns. You can commonly spot these by studying the manner in which various plants grow. Here are a few examples:

Seed heads, pinecones, fruits and vegetables:

Look at the array of seeds in the center of a sunflower and you’ll notice what looks like spiral patterns curving left and right. Amazingly, if you count these spirals, your total will be a Fibonacci number. Divide the spirals into those pointed left and right and you’ll get two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. You can decipher spiral patterns in pinecones, pineapples and cauliflower that also reflect the Fibonacci sequence in this manner [source: Knott].

Flowers and branches:

Some plants express the Fibonacci sequence in their growth points , the places where tree branches form or split. One trunk grows until it produces a branch, resulting in two growth points. The main trunk then produces another branch, resulting in three growth points. Then the trunk and the first branch produce two more growth points, bringing the total to five. This pattern continues, following the Fibonacci numbers. Additionally, if you count the number of petals on a flower, you’ll often find the total to be one of the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. For example, lilies and irises have three petals, buttercups and wild roses have five, delphiniums have eight petals and so on.

Honeybees:

A honeybee colony consists of a queen, a few drones and lots of workers. The female bees (queens and workers) all have two parents, a drone and a queen. Drones, on the other hand, hatch from unfertilized eggs. This means they have only one parent. Therefore, Fibonacci numbers express a drone’s family tree in that he has one parent, two grandparents, three great-grandparents and so forth [source: Knott].

The golden ratio is expressed in spiraling shells. In the above illustration, areas of the shell’s growth are mapped out in squares. If the two smallest squares have a width and height of 1, then the box below has measurements of 2. The other boxes measure 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.

Storms :

Storm systems like hurricanes and tornados often follow the Fibonacci sequence. Next time you see a hurricane spiraling on the weather radar, check out the unmistakable Fibonacci proportions of the spiral of clouds on the screen.

The human body:

Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. You’ll notice that most of your body parts follow the numbers one, two, three and five. You have one nose, two eyes, three segments to each limb and five fingers on each hand. The proportions and measurements of the human body can also be divided up in terms of the golden ratio. DNA molecules follow this sequence, measuring 34 angstroms long and 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of the double helix.

Why do so many natural patterns reflect the Fibonacci sequence?

Scientists have pondered the question for centuries. In some cases, the correlation may just be coincidence. In other situations, the ratio exists because that particular growth pattern evolved as the most effective. In plants, this may mean maximum exposure for light-hungry leaves or maximum seed arrangement.

Where there is less agreement is whether the Fibonacci sequence is expressed in art and architecture. Although some books say that the Great Pyramid and the Parthenon (as well as some of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings) were designed using the golden ratio, when this is tested, it’s found to not be true [source: [Markowsky]

(https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/George-Markowsky-Golden-Ratio-Misconceptions-MAA.pdf)].

Lots More Information

Thus the question is not how man invented the Fibonacci sequence, but how and why nature invented this sequence, especially where there is a need for maximum energy gathering growth patterns in competing organisms, such as sunflowers and daisies.

Another advantage of this growth sequence is the efficient packing of the maximum number of seeds in the smallest most stable organization, such as pine cones.

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And as a general efficient mathematical growth pattern in naturally occurring self-forming patterns, such as in the shells of ocean dwelling Nautilus and the arms of deep space Spiral galaxies.

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Closer to humanism and discussing our human condition and perspective.

I didn’t demonstrate squat, I shared a video. Why did I share that one, let alone cue the start, guess you put it perfectly,

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Without knowing the fundamentals of spacetime properties and potentials?
That’s religion!!!

What this arrogant fool fails to recognize is that after trying to debunk the natural mathematical efficiency of the Fibonacci sequence, he proceeds in proving that natural selection eventually selects for the Fibonacci sequence regardless of any human numerical symbolism, actually proving the mathematical guiding equations, that become explicated over time and space.

His conclusion that the human mind is trying to force the exact expression of the “golden rule” where it doesn’t exist completely ignores that nature is a dynamic environment and there is no perfection anywhere! There is no perfect circle, there is no perfect square. If something becomes perfect it dies

The Silvery Salamander makes perfect clones of the mother and is doomed for extinction in a world that is constantly changing and demanding evolutionary adaptions that the mother is unable to manufacture without male sperm.

It is nature striving to find perfection out of an inherently chaotic condition that the mathematical equations begin to emerge on a regular basis.

ENTROPY

In thermodynamics, entropy is often associated with the amount of order or disorder in a thermodynamic system. This stems from Rudolf Clausius’ 1862 assertion that any thermodynamic process always “admits to being reduced [reduction] to the alteration in some way or another of the arrangement of the constituent parts of the working body” and that internal work associated with these alterations is quantified energetically by a measure of “entropy” change, according to the following differential expression:
(Entropy (order and disorder) - Wikipedia)

He is completely trying to anthropomorphize the process, but he does not ever entertain that these processes began long before man appeared on the scene and recognized the mathematical nature of the universal internal quest for balance and order, some regularity that becomes apparent over time.

The term “evolution” is a mathematical term based on the laws of dynamical probabilistic determinism.

Mathematical modeling of evolution. Solved and open problems

Peter Schuster](Schuster P - Search Results - PubMed)

Abstract

Evolution is a highly complex multilevel process and mathematical modelling of the evolutionary phenomenon requires proper abstraction and radical reduction to essential features. Examples are natural selection, Mendel’s laws of inheritance, optimization by mutation and selection, and neutral evolution.

more…

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Now you’re reaching …

Make up your mind, if nature can’t produce a perfect circle, how can you insist that it creates perfect clones?

That sounds very impressive.
How about recognizing evolution being cumulative change over time?

Don’t suppose you’ve had any time for Nick Lane’s “Vital Question”?

Ever spend any time thinking about the question “What is Life?”?
Only to find out the key question is actually “What is Living?”.
You wave around entropy, but do you know why it’s key to chemistry becoming biology?

You give me the impression of worshipping, okay perhaps its only obsessing over, who knows, over math and giving very little time to people and the drama unfolding within our minds and bodies, it’s empty and has nothing to offer beyond a sterile knowledge that’s confined to the intellect.

It offers the inner human and their inner struggles, nothing to help to make sense of this amazing reality and the dynamic struggle we find ourselves within.
And again just look at the state of human society and thinking and actions to see the failure of our grandiose ego driven intellects - which has this tendency to get lost within our genius minds and forgetting all about the rest of the creatures and biosphere that created us.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:8, topic:9507”]

That sounds very impressive.
How about recognizing evolution being cumulative change over time?

I just did . The term “probability” suggests the occurrence of something in the future.

What is the probability?
Probability is simply how likely something is to happen . Whenever we’re unsure about the outcome of an event, we can talk about the probabilities of certain outcomes—how likely they are. The analysis of events governed by probability is called statistics.

Don’t suppose you’ve had any time for Nick Lane’s “Vital Question”?

I certainly have and all my arguments are I agreement with Nick Lane.
That is the very basis for my support of ORCH OR, which proposes microtubules as the fundamental cytoplasmic and cytoskeletal distribution transport mechanism for the fundamental EM data.

I have an entire thread devoted to the function of microtubules!!!

Ever spend any time thinking about the question “What is Life?”?
Only to find out the key question is actually “What is Living?”.

Yes I have and Life is dynamic progression that started on earth billions of years ago from chemical interactions. and self-organization of polymers and in particular the self-organization of the microtubules that is a dipolar variable coil that is able to act as a potentiometer in all Eukaryotic cells.

And if you think that a microtubule is unimportant i n the scheme of things, consider that mitosis (see Nick Lane) is a function of the microtubule’s mitotic spindle.

You wave around entropy, but do you know why it’s key to chemistry becoming biology?

I do indeed. Robert Hazen explained the tree fundamental processes in his Carnegie lecture.

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You give me the impression of worshipping, okay perhaps its only obsessing over, who knows, over math and giving very little time to people and the drama unfolding within our minds and bodies, it’s empty and has nothing to offer beyond a sterile knowledge that’s confined to the intellect.

You use the terms “folds within folds” and “unfolding” so casually, but do you understand the function that makes all this possible? It is mathematical in essence.

It offers the inner human and their inner struggles, nothing to help to make sense of this amazing reality and the dynamic struggle we find ourselves within.
And again just look at the state of human society and thinking and actions to see the failure of our grandiose ego driven intellects - which has this tendency to get lost within our genius minds and forget all about the rest of the creatures and biosphere that created us.

What humans do is utterly unimportant to the universe. Humans are but one insignificant expression of universal mathematical chronologies.

What humans do is important to humans but that is anthropomorphizing and purely a subjective perspective.

The Universe was here long before humans and will be here long after humans. And anyone that believes humans have any influence on the universe, we might use an example of the importance of a flea on earth.

I like this image of the “Tree of Life” (used y Hazen in his Carnegie lecture).

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Are you forgetting that a creature as awesome as a dinosaur that roamed the earth for 500 million years before it got snuffed out? Humans are descendants of a small creature that was hidden underground when the large extinction event occurred.

And before that we may have been a bag of cytoplasm floating around in the ocean

Bag-like sea creature was humans’ oldest known ancestor

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A tiny sea creature identified from fossils found in China may be the earliest known step on an evolutionary path that eventually led to the emergence of humans

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You worship humanity. I worship the implacable function that was the guiding equation for all chronologies (a mathematical term).

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IMG_country lane, for Dennett post_may2022
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That’s kinda funny, I’ve had a life long losing argument with humanity, “worship” is weird way of putting it.
Nah,
{but if you want to get down to the nitty gritty of that } if I worship anything, it’s my body and my inner being, my intellect, curiosity, along with my sensuality & sensibilities and the amazing ride I’ve been blessed enough to have experienced.

Nope, you are still missing the point, fortunately on my walk with Maddy I came up with another approach to try explaining.

Like, of course, I love the scientific journey of discovery and piecing together bits of information as it’s accumulated over time. The intellectual endeavor is awesome and fun.

But my lifelong focus has been on understanding the relationships between the me, myself, and I, along with their relationships to the situations I’m constantly interacting with. The various “struggles” between our flesh and our spirit (which go way beyond simply the sexual), between what we want to be and what we are, and making that work for us as we live our day to days.

And perhaps most importantly, as the ideas are maturing, is ‘our’ relationship with the information ‘we’ acquire during our lifetimes.

Which is what brings me to the profundity of explicitly recognizing and learning to appreciate the Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide. It offers a benchmark and a sense of sober humility in the face of infinite creation, that way too lacking these days.

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But I do not deny the value of your perspective. It is a completely separate science and is not in opposition to anything I am describing.

You cannot claim these two perspectives as being in opposition. I see them rather as complimentary.

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Then why do my attempts to discuss that intellectual, philosophical, humanistic failing always seems to get shoved back into justifying math as the answer to everything (your quote), or something?

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Case in point, science marches on, enthusiastic early claims need to stand up to accumulating evidence.

The ecdysozoans are the most diverse animal group on Earth1, 2.

Here we report new material of the early Cambrian microscopic animal Saccorhytus coronarius , which was previously interpreted as a deuterostome8.
Saccorhytus coronarius is reconstructed as a millimetric and ellipsoidal meiobenthic animal with a spinose armor and an anterior mouth but no anus. Purported pharyngeal gills in support of the deuterostome hypothesis8 are shown to be taphonomic artifacts.

Phylogenetic analyses indicate that Saccorhytus coronarius belongs to the total-group Ecdysozoa, highlighting the morphological and ecological diversity of early Cambrian ecdysozoans.

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But also shed light on the processes involved and allows for more goal oriented research based on “educated guesses” (predictions).

The more we know about a thing the greater the understanding of that thing.

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Come on, I don’t understand why you gotta to be flashing me now.

No, but about it!

But that only goes so far. We know so much, but we can’t stop ourselves from embracing utter bs, as we destroy the very foundation of our life support system. Check out mikeyohe’s mindscape for some insights on the disconnect.

Seems to me, What we do with our knowledge is pretty as important as what we know.

It’s not what we know, it’s what we do with it.

I love Nick Lane’s pointing out that asking “What life is?” has been the wrong question, it’s much more insightful to ask “What is living?” - which also does away with the nonsense of classifying viruses as non-living.

One of the huge insights has been that there wasn’t any “It’s alive!” moment. It turns out to be more realistic to visualize biogenesis as a gradient from chemical into biochemical, then biological, so winding up with various entities that are neither alive or dead is totally to be expected.

The magic is in the action of living.

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There is also the Bell Curve.

Though that may be considered more “Nature” than “Life”, which could get into another hair-splitting discussion on definitions.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:15, topic:9507”]
I love Nick Lane’s pointing out that asking “What life is?” has been the wrong question, it’s much more insightful to ask “What is living?” - which also does away with the nonsense of classifying viruses as non-living.

I agree and have commented on that point before.

One of the huge insights has been that there wasn’t any “It’s alive!” moment. It turns out to be more realistic to visualize biogenesis as a gradient from chemical into biochemical, then biological, so winding up with various entities that are neither alive or dead is totally to be expected.

Absolutely and that is Abiogenesis describes, no?

The magic is in the action of living.

I can agree with that also. IMO, “action” itself is actually a form of life.
It is not entirely out of the question that the universe itself is “alive”.
Note that this does not imply that the Universe is conscious, although Penrose seems to suggest that quantum mechanics is a form of “thinking” .

And that is where my enchantment with mathematics lies. The logic expressed in “recurring regularities” does not need to be conscious, but can be an expression of an implacable “dynamic quasi-intelligence” that is the guiding principle of everything.

Do we inhabit a living universe?

The following is an excerpt from the article, “Is the Universe Alive,” by John Gibbon, which is a review of the book The Living Cosmos , by Lee Smolin.
Gibbon’s full article was reprinted with permission (from “New Scientist” magazine, Jan. 15, 1994) in the Winter 1994 issue of “Whole Earth Review” …

In current cosmological thinking, there has been] a recent spectacular shift of viewpoint, and most cosmologists are still struggling to come to grips with it. If one Universe exists, then it seems that there must be many–very many, perhaps even an infinite number of universes. Our Universe has to be seen as just one component of a vast array of universes, a self-reproducing system connected only by the tunnels through space-time, which in this view are perhaps better regarded as cosmic umbilical cords that join a baby universe to its parent.

But there is still a puzzle of why inflation should have just the right strength to lead to a universe like our own. The “natural” size for a universe is down in the sub-atomic region, on the scale of the Planck length, 10-35 of a metre, the smallest “distance” that can exist. This is where evolution comes in.

more…
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/usem/Origin/notes/09/smolin.html

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Change that to “and”…image

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Maybe AI that are purely mathematically (value oriented) organized networks will eventually shed light on some of these questions.

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You know that could be looked at as just like another example of the great God thing - that is, our human proclivity to transfer our own responsibilities onto other entities. Why can’t we do our own thinking a little better?

Why don’t we try to take ourselves out of the center of the frame for a moment, now and then, that’s something I keep wondering.