Mathematical cosmology -- improving the inner game of dying

Metaphors To Die By (Part #11)

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

Multiversal implications for psycho-social dying: Especially intriguing is the quality of thinking of cosmology and astrophysics through which the "universe" may emerge and collapse as a feature of a "multiverse". This "meta-universe" is the hypothetical set of infinite or finite possible universes (including the historical universe consistently experienced) that together comprise everything that exists and can exist: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them. How might such thinking be credibly applied to global civilization and to the universe which the individual constitutes? Why is such thinking deprecated in the psycho-social case -- notably by those with mathematical skills (as highlighted by the Sokal Affair and related hoaxes)?

Where is the thinking regarding "psycho-social dying" which complements the extraordinary hypothesis described by Clara Moskowitz (In a "Rainbow" Universe Time May Have No Beginning, Scientific American, 9 December 2013):

What if the universe had no beginning, and time stretched back infinitely without a big bang to start things off? That's one possible consequence of an idea called "rainbow gravity," so-named because it posits that gravity's effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow.

Using cosmology and astrophysics as metaphors, some possibilities can be explored to reframe the implications and experience of dying and death -- or to justify unconventional approaches to such experiences. These are highlighted in separate dicussions (Global Brane Comprehension Enabling a Higher Dimensional Big Tent? Strategic implication in encompassing nothing and coming to naught, 2011; Enactivating Multiversal Community: hearing a pattern of voices in the global wilderness, 2012).

Brane death and stellar dying: Appropriate to this argument, the "death" of the "brane" (hypothesized in string theory) has long been a theme of cosmology (Konstantin G. Savvidy, Brane Death via Born-Infeld String, 1998; A question for a cosmologist about brane death, 16 March 2012). The life cycle of stars is of course extensively studied, with many references to the "death" of the Sun (Jason Palmer, Hope dims that Earth will survive Sun's death, New Scientist, 22 February 2008; Karl Tate, Death of a Sunlike Star: how it will destroy Earth, Infographic, 10 October 2013). Stellar evolution through to such a death is well-mapped by the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram -- potentially offering insights into that of any global civilization or individual (Psychosocial Implications of Stellar Evolution? Reframing life's cycles through the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, 2013).

Significance of nothing in dying: The probability of an experience of "nothingness" has long been one associated with death -- especially in a secular society. The anticipation of "nothing" has become significant to a global civilization in which individual expectations have been severely undermined and politicians have litttle to offer (Emerging Significance of Nothing, 2012). Its significance is complicated by individual aspiration to "be someone" and concern at the prospect of being "nobody" and going "nowhere", as variously discussed (Going Nowhere through Not-knowing Where to Go: sustaining the process of autopoiesis through point-making, 2013; Way Round Cognitive Ground Zero and Pointlessness? Embodying the geometry of fundamental cognitive dynamics, 2012).

Cosmology has recently attached every greater significance to nothing (Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: why there is something rather than nothing, 2012; John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: vacuums, voids, and the latest ideas about the origins of the universe, 2002; Brian Rotman, Signifying Nothing: the semiotics of zero, 1987). Robert Kaplan discusses at some length the use of zero as a symbol of the god of death by the Maya in their calendars (The Nothing That Is: a natural history of zero, 1999). It is of course unfortunately the case that mathematics, as noted above, is most complicit in enabling annihilation -- after which "nothing remains". Any such sense of "remainder" suggests the possibility of further exploration (Reintegration of a Remaindered World: cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2011).

Especially intriguing are the symbolic, mathematical and logical significances of nothing (and zero). These have been the preoccupation of a range of studies -- most recently that of the New Scientist (Jeremy Webb, Nothing: from absolute zero to cosmic oblivion -- amazing insights into nothingness, 2013). Ronald Green provides a wide review of the question, with multiple references to its relevance to death from different perspectives (Nothing Matters: a book about nothing, 2011)

The nature of that "nothingness" (represented by zero) becomes more mysterious when recognized as a "hole", as remarkably discussed by Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi (Holes and Other Superficialities, 1994) -- with respect to the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry, and the theory of perception (as they summarize in the entry on holes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). With zero as the marker for both the initation of a new cycle and its termination (as first required by Babylonian and other calendars), it raises the question as to the nature of a marker of "globality" and completion in forms of symmetry of higher dimensionality. Is "dying", or a succession of "deaths", then to be associated in some way with the encounter with ever higher orders of symmetry, culminating in the Monster group (Potential Psychosocial Significance of Monstrous Moonshine: an exceptional form of symmetry as a Rosetta stone for cognitive frameworks, 2007)?

Living and dying encoded in the Euler identity? It could possibly be said that potentially the most succinct representation of living and dying for a mathematician is the Euler identity. This equation has been named as the "most beautiful theorem in mathematics" and has tied in a nomination by mathematicians for the "greatest equation ever" (Robert P. Crease, The greatest equations ever, PhysicsWeb, October 2004). It may be presented as follows in two variants:

Euler Identity as indicative of the relationship between living and dying ?
some variants	legend
	e is Euler's number, the base of natural logarithms, π is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter i is an imaginary number defined by its property i2 = -1. This is consistent with 3 variants: i0 = 1,  i1 = i,  i3 = -i

Appropriate to the mysterious nature of dying, is the much quoted comment with reference to the above by Benjamin Peirce: It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.

In the light of the arguments of Lakoff and Núñez (Where Mathematics Comes From: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, 2000), metaphor has been exploited to facilitate its comprehension (Understanding Without Proof, 2004; Intuitive Understanding of Euler's Formula, 2010; Chris Fields, Metaphorical Motion in Mathematical Reasoning: further evidence for pre-motor implementation of structure mapping in abstract domains, 2013).

Euler usefully highlights the challenge of how a mathematician might "die well", given both the potential implication of the above insight and another of his major contributions, namely the Euler characteristic of polyhedra (David S. Richeson, Euler's Gem: the polyhedron formula and the birth of topology, 2008). The latter could be related to govenance of globality (Towards Polyhedral Global Governance: complexifying oversimplistic strategic metaphors, 2008). Does the series of spherically symmetrical polyhedra, down to the simplest, offer a mnemonic succession of cognitive "holding patterns" providing coherence -- as memory and other functions diminish?

As a case study, more intriguing is how he might have associated such insights with his profound religious convictions, given the potential of mathematical theology (Mathematical Theology -- Future Science of Confidence in Belief : self-reflexive global reframing to enable faith-based governance, 2011). This could suggest another way of exploring the dying of others known for their insight, as in the compilation of 108 accounts by Sushila Blackman (Graceful Exits -- How Great Beings Die: death stories of Tibetan, Hindu and Zen Masters, 1997).

Reproductive anticipation of rebirth? The significance of the Euler formula for experience of the dying process remains yet to be explored. Peter Collins (Mathematical Dimensions and Psychological Development (1), Spectrum of Mathematics, 5 October 2011; Mathematical Dimensions and Psychological Development (2), Spectrum of Mathematics, 12 October 2011) argues that, properly understood, every number expression represents a dynamic interaction as between a base quantity and a dimensional number (that is relatively of a qualitative nature):

Therefore in a more accurate experientially refined approach to mathematics we would no longer understand numbers as static quantities but rather as dynamic interactive entities always entailing two complementary aspects that are - relatively - quantitative and qualitative with respect to each other. And the interaction of these aspects enables continual transformation in the nature of number to take place.

More might be recognized by presenting the Euler relationship unconventionally through use of the double-dagger (for example) as:

thereby suggesting that 1 and 0 are mediated in some way by a form of dynamic complexity. The mediating factor then governs the complex cognitive relationship between quantitative and qualitative with which imagination is so intimately associated.

This challenges the symbolic sense in which male and female can be "equated" statically through an X-factor of questionable interpretation. The "inequality" of the sexes is then governed dynamically by a complex mediating factor of requisite complexity in cybernetic terms -- the imaginative driver engendering both reproductive processes and, more generally, engagement with problematic otherness (Reframing the Dynamics of Engaging with Otherness, 2011).

This helps to indicate how reproductive motivation is reframed in the face of death -- anticipating rebirth. It is also suggestive of the process through which there is an experience of loss of a simpler sense of identity through intercourse (as a little death) -- in favour of expression of a more fundamental sense of identity.

Mathematical comprehension through poetry: The argument of Gregory Bateson (cited above) for the role of poetry in enabling comprehension of complexity, suggests the value of further exploration of the relation between poetry and mathematics as complementary modes of knowing. The work of mathematicians Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney is noteworthy in this respect (Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, 2008), as admirably reviewed by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee (Notices of the AMS, 56, 2009, 8, pp. 944-946).

With the black holes of the universe as strange attractors of cosmic dimensions, there is a case for reframing death (frequently named as a "black hole") in terms of its particular attraction -- and what passage "through it" might then imply, as with speculation by astrophysics regarding wormholes to other universes. As a precursor to the possible suicide of a mathematician, the experience of "depression" also merits attention, in the light of frequent use of the comparison (Brett Newcomb, The Black Hole of Depression, 1 February 2012).

References to economic depression and meteorological depression also merit consideration from a global perspective -- especially given frequent reference to "black hole" in a budgetary sense (Rodrigue Tremblay, Financial Black Holes and Economic Stagnation, Global Research, 19 October 2011). Most explicit is the comment of a professor of quantum mechanical engineering (Seth Lloyd, The Black Hole of Finance, Edge, 22 December 2013).

Individuals may effectively experience themselves as singularities in their own right, at the centre of a black hole in knowledge/communication space (Peter Collins, Black Holes - Physical and Psychological; Imaginary Worlds: Virtual Development). As a mathematical cosmologist in the process of dying, how does one adapt cognitively and personally to the phases of being sucked into such a black hole -- potentially aided to a degree by the speculative imaginings of thought experiments and science fiction? Given the spiralling motion into the black hole of astrophysics, how is it that dying has long been associated with expressions such as "winding down", "winding sheet", and a "downward spiral" -- even into a "netherworld" (Designing Global Self-governance for the Future: patterns of dynamic integration of the netherworld, 2010)? Can insights be communicated out from that black hole in any way -- given the nature of such an event horizon?

Is the human effort to come to terms with degrees of difference in the psycho-social realm cognitively mirrored in some way by the distinctions so assiduously sought in the cosmos -- perhaps to be understood in terms of resonance, complementarity or reciprocation? Are these differences projected onto external reality -- as it can be variously understood (Psychosocial Implication of Without Within, 2013)?

Are degrees (or scales) of "incommunicability" of world view effectively to be recognized metaphorically in the complex relationships between: moon, planet, solar system, galaxy, galaxy cluster, universe, and multiverse? Do their respective fates correspond to different scales of dying? Does the sense of people being "light years apart", or "living in different worlds", offer insight into the indifference to those suffering "elsewhere"? Does this intuitive experience of "distance" imply that humanity has already migrated into a paradoxical multiverse of alternative realities -- elegantly defined by cosmologists (World Introversion through Paracycling: global potential for living sustainably "outside-inside", 2013)?

Living, lying, dying and denying: Especially intriguing in the psycho-social case is the role of "lying" in the process from "living" to "dying". This is only too evident in the denial of death and the assumption of the possibility of some form of immortality. This is echoed in the articulation of theories and empires about which there is pretentious assertion of their eternal existence -- their immortality -- assertive claims regarding the organization of knowledge space (the noosphere), seemingly precluding future emergence of new insight.

New Scientist offered an editorial regarding past research under the heading (First, get it wrong, 18 October 2013). This is indicative of the denial prevailing at any time with regard to the nature of any validity of alternative perspectives. Strangely this resembles the framing of personal identity and its degrees of invariance over time. Whilst physicists choose to make categorical assertions about society, deprecating the nonsensical nature of its belief systems, they have proven completely unable to offer any fruitful insight into its incommensurable frames of reference -- in which they are variously embedded, and from which they derive their funding. Ironically a physicist may continue to value copyright income from work subsequently proven to be wrong -- highlighting questions with regard to frames of reference and intellectual property (Einstein's Implicit Theory of Relativity -- of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patenting procedures, 2007). Ironically possession within a conventional four-dimensional framework takes precedence over imaginative insight and innovation -- especially if it offers the prospect of a Nobel Prize and a place in history among the best and the brightest.

More embarrassing, under these circumstances, are the implications of a recent survey of quantum physicists showing that they themselves do not share a consensus on the nature of quantum electrodynamics and are perplexed by the meaning framed by the models they variously prefer (Sean Carroll, The Most Embarrassing Graph in Modern Physics, 17 January 2013; Sean Carroll on the embarrassment of quantum mechanics, 28 February 2013). The dynamics have implications for any coherent approach to global strategy, especially in the light of the denial of dying of any form with which identity is associated. For example, Ernest Becker argues that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to the basic human survival mechanism (The Denial of Death, 1973). .

Gravity, arrogance and disparate realities: The question is how astrophysics holds incommensurability of perspectives -- whereby others are variously held to be "wrong" (from the perspective of another planet, constellation, or galaxy). Arguably "gravity" then lends itself to comparison with the "arrogance" in psycho-social systems with respect to perspectives upheld as valid. In contrast with any other orientation, this suggests a a strange complex of associations between being "right", arrogance, and gravitational force.

The arrogance figures in criticism of the most brilliant, however eminent (most notably Isaac Newton). Also of significance is the (as yet unintegrated) role of creative imagination -- as deployed by cosmologists in articulating new understandings of the universe. This can be usefully compared with the "world-making" within any psycho-spcial context (Identity, Possessive World-making and their Transformation Dynamics, 2012).

The subtle patterns recognized by cosmologists on the largest scale thus merit a degree of consideration as elaborate metaphors for the birth and death of identity -- whether as a personal or a collective "world" or "universe" (Being the Universe: a metaphoric frontier, 1999). The desperate search for life "elsewhere" on other habitable worlds precludes its recognition "here" in the alternative realities which many variously inhabit through unconventional modalities -- if only for periods of their daily life (Sensing Epiterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): Embedding of "extraterrestrials" in episystemic dynamics? 2013). The subtleties of cosmology can then be understood as humanity's best effort to order insight into the requisite complexity of the relationship between the disparate realities between which people variously live and of which they have some intuitive understanding (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011).

Yet to be clarified is how such metaphors might best serve as cognitive vehicles in the process of dying -- and in any potential rebirth. Much is made of the suggestion by Gandhi: Be the change that you wish to see in the world. This may require insight into how to "Be the Collapse", namely how to "die well" -- whether individually or collectively (particularly as a civilization).

From digital death to cursive renaissance?: There is a curious sense (as suggested above) in which dying is defined in relation to living as being essentially binary, effectively a "digital script" in contrast with a "cursive script" through which contrasts and incommensurables are intertwined, often with the greatest elegance. This emphasis is consistent with the great value associated with calligraphy as a discipline in certain traditions, as discussed separately with animations (Psychosocial Implication in Gamma Animation: epimemetics for a Brave New World, 2013).

Whilst there is an effort to impose digital order on life (as exemplified by the digital watch), many experience and live life "cursively", as suggested by the sense of liminality and an "imaginal bridge" between digital incommensurables. This suggests that the possibility of rebirth, especially for a culture or civilization, is fruitfully to be explored through the Uncertainty Principle contrasting "particles" and "waves" -- and therefore consistent with social cycle theory, such as explored by Pitirim Sorokin.

For the "individual", framing personal identity in terms of a waveform might then offer the greatest possibility of both dying with integrity and being "reborn" thereafter (Being a Waveform of Potential as an Experiential Choice: emergent dynamic qualities of identity and integrity, 2013; Being Neither a-Waving Nor a-Parting: cognitive implications of wave-particle duality in the light of science and spirituality, 2013). The conventional framing of dying is then appropriately framed as the progressive disintegration into parts -- reinforced by any problematic emergent conditions of those disparate parts. The sense of "You cannot take it with you" might be more meaningfully understood if the "it" is a "bit" -- consistent with religious aphorisms regarding the inability of the rich to pass through the eye of a needle in order to enter heaven. Metaphorical use of "cursive" also offers the delightful possibility that "rebirth" might be best understood in mathematical terms as a recursive process -- potentially consistent with the arguments of Douglas Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007; Surfaces and Essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking, 2013) and Steven M. Rosen (What is Radical Recursion? SEED Journal, 4, 2004, 1, pp. 38-57)

Death might then be understood as a cognitive breakthrough -- an initiation -- into the multidimensionality hypothesized by string theory. This implies a mode of being not adequately embodied in conventional four-dimensionality (Ron Atkin, Multidimensional Man: can man live in three dimensions? 1981).

Virtualization, emulation and remembrance: The degree of virtualization of the economy has been widely recognized -- and especially with respect to the financial system and cloud computing on which it is now based (Michael Vizard, Demystifying the Economics of Virtualization and Cloud Computing, ITBusinessEdge, 15 March 2011). It is curious to note how the connectivity, formally symbolized in cursive script, has been rendered virtual through digitalization into "strings" of binary code and the more fundamental implications of the "string theory" of physics. Metaphorical "strings", supposedly meaningless to the senses, now substitute for cursive links. As a cognitive process, this virtualization enables reality to be variously emulated, whether in computer simulations or through media representations (Dematerialization and Virtualization: comparison of nuclear fusion and cognitive fusion, 2006). This is currently exemplified by the use of software emulation of alternative operating systems -- with one such system functioning within another, as with VirtualBox (see Comparison of platform virtualization software).

In such terms, physics effectively offers elaborate frameworks through which the cosmos (at the largest and smallest scale) is emulated virtually for a degree of human appreciation. Other disciplines offer emulations of psycho-social reality -- with strings of memories enabling virtual cognitive engagement with the historical past, with hypothetical futures, and with the physically distant present. Understood in this way, reality as a construct can be "operated" much as Nikola Tesla is renowned for mentally testing his highly creative inventions.

The potentially poignant intimacy of this process may be experienced through remembrance of the dead, any sense of their continuing presence, and anticipation of their future implication. For physicists this has been exemplified in the widely cited case of Richard Feynman (A Love Letter: From Nuclear Physicist, Richard Feynman to His Deceased Wife, 1946) -- a consideration to be placed in the context of his assistance in the development of the atomic bomb and the deaths it ensured. Dr. Strangelove? The collective significance of the process is evident from the extreme controversy that continues to be associated with the religious edifices of the three Abrahamic religions in Jerusalem, the burial grounds of many traditions, and official visits to the Shinto Yasukuni Shrine of Japan -- all of which offer metaphors to die by.

Poetry and music "to die by": The question is whether the intersection of mathematics and poetry can inform the experience of dying, as tentatively envisaged (Being a Poem in the Making: engendering a multiverse through musing, 2013). The latter makes reference to the considerable insights offered by music as an intersection between mathematics and experience, whether individual or collective. These have been very extensively explored in the work of Ernest G McClain (Myth of Invariance: the origins of the gods, mathematics and music from the Rg Veda to Plato, 1976; Meditations Through the Quran: tonal images in an Oral Culture, 1981).

Other recent studies are especially insightful with respect to the brain's organization of music in experience (Dmitri Tymoczko, A Geometry of Music, 2011; Steven Rings, Tonality and Transformation, 2011). Such intersections are potentially of special significance in relation to musical accompaniment of the dying process -- "music to die by" (Use of Music in Care for the Dying; Robert E. Krout, Music Therapy with Imminently Dying Hospice Patients and their Families: facilitating release near the time of death, 2003).

Music of the spheres: More generally there may well be some insight of relevance to dying in the traditional consideration of the "music of the spheres".

Doing maths, and the mathematical experience, can be be compared metaphorically with making music. What form might the "last song", or the death song", or the "swan song" of a mathematician take -- in the spirit of the compilation by Harold Bloom (Till I End My Song: a gathering of last poems, 2010), or the final haiku of a Zen monk (Yoel Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems: written by Zen Monks and Haiku poets on the verge of death, 1986)? A compilation of insights comparable with Fermat's Last Theorem?

With respect to celebration of the death of a global civilization, how might mathematics (collectively) then inform an elegiac epic to hold its inspiration for a future Renaissance -- as with the extensive listing provided by Wikipedia -- or perhaps in the spirit of the compilation Songs of the Dying Earth? The challenge, as with the design of the spacecraft Pioneer plaque, can be conceived as a thought experiment in terms of Minding the Future (1980). The combination of mathematics and metaphor in the design and commentaries of key Chinese classics (Yi Jing, Taixuanjing) is suggestive of one mnemonically significant possibility (as represented in animations above).

These threads are fruitfully interwoven through insights into the 4,000 year-old chanted hymns of the Rg Veda of the Indian tradition (as discussed elsewhere). A very powerful exploration of this work by the philosopher, Antonio de Nicolas, uses the non-Boolean logic of quantum mechanics to suggest valuable insights into experiential integration. The unique feature of the approach is that it is grounded in tone and the shifting relationships between tone -- perhaps fruitfully to be understood as "modelling" analogical relationships:

Therefore, from a linguistic and cultural perspective, we have to be aware that we are dealing with a language where tonal and arithmetical relations establish the epistemological invariances... Language grounded in music is grounded thereby on context dependency; any tone can have any possible relation to other tones, and the shift from one tone to another, which alone makes melody possible, is a shift in perspective which the singer himself embodies. Any perspective (tone) must be "sacrificed" for a new one to come into being; the song is a radical activity which requires innovation while maintaining continuity, and the "world" is the creation of the singer, who shares its dimensions with the song. (Meditations through the Rg Veda: four-dimensional man, 1976 p. 57)

However this framing raises the question as to how the singer might then consciously embody the process of dying.

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]