Index 
Appearance and Reality Epistemology Idea of "Other"
Nature’s Motion Nature’s “natural” motion is not straight, un-accelerated, as claimed by Newton and most followers, but swirling, mixing, overshooting an attractor (gravity or other pressure) by its momentum, then swinging around for more, but the center has moved, folding layer upon layer. Galaxies, washbasins, falling snowflakes, smoke mingling with its edges, fire disappearing. In fact not a single atom in the universe is on a straight trajectory – not one! Because no atom is not acted upon by at least electromagnetic and gravitational gradients (fields). Not one!* (Why do we define “Nature” as something which cannot exist? Perhaps that’s the point. It’s silly, it seems to me, added August 16, 2016) Straight-line motions in Cartesian space, doesn’t seem very “natural” to me?* Hockey pucks, especially ones on an air-table, amaze me as they seem to defy nature and just keep going long after they should have stopped. So which leaf will fall next? Which morals if any are right? I guess there are just some things I will never know. Actually a lot of things, infinite things. The phrase “We scientists” (or we humans, or Christians, or Bears fans, etc.) is often used to express common knowledge, feelings, or beliefs. But how can I ever know what another knows or feels? ISTMRN I often try to obscure my responsibility with the collective “we”. Breaking that habit is hard. The desire to break that habit might be called “egotistical”, which it certainly is. Only “I” can know anything in my universe of genes and experience. You can’t know my universe (soul) and I can’t yours. So wherefore art thou? this collective knowledge that makes the paper on which I write? As discussed before, no one human can make this paper I write on. Many with overlapping expertises along the way make this page, from tree loggers to iron miners, pulpers, rollers, and many others. So where art thou? Oh, common knowledge? * Unless I define “straight lines” to be perpendicular to the field contours, straight “downhill”, a collection of adjacent minimum energy points along any line in the field, paths leading both up and down scales of available energy (Heraclitus), an energy gradient upon which, as mentioned, all atoms sit for a quantum instant. |