Toneship design to enable noonautics by the voices of civilization?

Memetic Analogue to the 20 Amino Acids as vital to psychosocial life? (Part #13)

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The spaceship metaphor has long been widely used as a much-appreciated trigger for the imagination -- as is evident by movie-enhanced speculation on space travel and extraterrestrials, notably characterized by evocative mottos such as the following:

• Battlestar Galactica (1978-2003): ... the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest -- for a shining planet known as Earth.
• Star Trek (1966-2000): ...to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
• Star Wars (1977-2005): A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

It is unfortunate that such modern myths have tended to replicate unfortunate patterns of "us and them" thinking, as usefully illustrated by the movies Avatar (2009) and Interstellar(2014) ). These are especially valuable given the tendency to replicate the pattern of exploitative colonialism and to imagine the possibility of escape from the unresolved challenges of the planet. Previous speculation has considered the related use of astrophysics as a way of understanding the distribution of variety in a global knowledge society (Towards an Astrophysics of the Knowledge Universe? from astronautics to noonautics, 2006; Towards an Astrophysics of the Knowledge Universe? from astronautics to noonautics, 2006).

A case can be made for a shift from the space metaphor to a time metaphor, given the credibility already attributed to the future possibility of time travel. This opens the possibility for reflection on timeship design, as separately explored (Timeship: Conception, Technology, Design, Embodiment and Operation, 2003; Embodying a Timeship vs. Empowering a Spaceship, 2003). It could be argued that current global challenges derive in part from considering the Earth as a spaceship -- as in use of Spaceship Earth. This is a world view highlighting the limited resources available and encouraging harmonious action -- as with a crew working toward the greater good. Strategically there is however significant incapacity to engage with the longer periods of time which might be associated with any notion of "Timeship Earth" (Strategic Embodiment of Time: configuring questions fundamental to change, 2010).

The argument above reframes the challenge in memetic terms, namely how to enable the diversity of "voices" of civilization to travel the noosphere in the present. Rather than further exploring the metaphor of how the genetic seeds of humanity (and of the sustaining environment) could be safely transported wherever and whenever, the question then becomes the nature of the vehicle through which the meme pool could be "transported" and "expressed", whatever these are held to mean. A classic response is to embody the voices in a cultural epic capable of traversing the centuries -- as with the Mahabharata of Hindu culture. A notable clarification of the contrast between voices -- understood as the "languages" of the as intentionality structures carried by the Rg Veda -- has been produced by Antonio de Nicolas (Meditations through the Rg Veda: Four-Dimensional Man, 1978).

Through the above argument, the "voices" have been associated metaphorically with an extensive array of tones. This suggests the merit of reflecting on the design of a "toneship", whatever that might be imagined to mean. To that end, following the quest for the organizing principle arguably associated with the primes exemplified by 37, the extraterrestrial hypothesis evoked by the Kazakh research can be speculatively related to a very particular kind of "tone vessel". In the spirit of the argument, this would involve one embodying the above-cited array of 37 tones in some way.

It is appropriate to the argument that these tones were originally understood as "guardians". This is consistent with the expressed concern with the need for an array of voices to guard against potential dysfunctionalities, notably that characterized by "us-and-them" thinking as a monotone -- with all that implies in terms of te dangers of monoculture. The voices are then the guardians of memetic variety -- otherwise endangered by monotonal dominance -- perhaps to be recognized in terms of a psychosocial analogue to the keystone species of the natural environment.

An initial step in imagining the design would then be to configure the tones in the light of a polyhedral structure especially characterized by 37 elements. Possible candidates accessible through the Stella software (used in the animations above) include those in the table below.

Unfortunately for the argument, no evident polyhedra exist with only 37 edges, with which tones might perhaps be more appropriately imagined to be associated -- then to be understood as strings, with the harmonic associations to stringed instruments and resonant structures, as partially explored (Polarities as Pluckable Tensed Strings: hypercomprehension through harmonics of value-based choice-making, 2006). A toneship as a stringed instrument would be a marvellous catalyst for imaginative reflection -- perhaps to be compared with the manner in which the epics noted above serve as vehicles for cultures. Could elaboration of global initiatives and constitutions be explored in such terms, as speculatively discussed (Structuring Mnemonic Encoding of Development Plans and Ethical Charters using Musical Leitmotivs, 2001; Knowledge Gardening through Music: patterns of coherence for future African management as an alternative to Project Logic, 2000)?

The 37 faces allow the tones distinguished by McClain to be associated each with as individual face of those polyhedra, as indicated in the screen shots and animations below. It should be stressed that McClain offers extensive musical and mathematical commentary distinguishing the tones in the array in his later works (The Pythagorean Plato: prelude to the song itself, 1978; Meditations Through the Quran: tonal images in an oral Culture. 1981). In particular these include the following tables in McClain (1978), variously cited in McClain (1981): 37 The Guardians as a Sequence of Superparticular Ratios (p. 110); Guardians as Smallest Integers (p. 112); Trignonometric functions of 37 Guardians (p. 118); Symmetric trignonometric functions within 432,000 (p. 120). Screen shots of the first four are presented below.

Possible "toneship" designs with 37 faces to which 37 tones are attributed (screenshots with tones attributed arbitrarily to faces)

The last candidate in the table is the polyhedron named "Wings" -- an appropriate extraterrestrial polyhedral provocation in the light of Kazakh research. Its features total to 2²x3x11, with a product of 2x3x5²x13x37.

Animations of a polyhedron named "Wings" with tone values attributed to the faces (in two orientations) Polyhedron with 37 faces (of 19 types), 65 edges (5x13 of 33 types), 30 vertices (of 15 types) (prepared using Stella Polyhedron Navigator)

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