Universe as a Living Entity?

[Christopher]

You ask me what the lobster is weaving down there,

 

with its golden feet,

 

I tell you, the ocean knows this.

 

You say who is the acedia waiting for

in its transparent bell.

 

I tell you its waiting for time, like you.

 

You say who does the macrocystis algae hug in its

 

arms? Study it. Study it at a certain hour in a certain sea I know.

 

You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhale,

 

and I respond by describing to you how the sea unicorn,

 

with a harpoon in it, dies.

 

You inquire about the kingfisher's feathers

which tremble in the purest springs of the southern shores.

 

I want to tell you that the ocean knows this,

That life, in its jewel boxes, as endless as the sand,

impossible to count, pure

 

And the time among the blood colored grapes

has made the petal hard and shiny,

 

filled the jellyfish with light, untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall,

 

from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother of pearl.

 

I'm nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes,

 

dead in the darkness', of fingers accustomed to the triangle,

 

longitudes in the timid globe of an orange.

 

I walked around like you investigating the endless star,

 

And in my net during the night I woke up naked.

 

The only thing caught, a fish, trapped inside the wind.

 

 

- 'The Enigmas'

 

by Pablo Neruda

 

 

----------------------------------

 

Goodnight God,

I hope that you are having

a good time being the world.

I like the world very much.

I'm glad you made the plants

and trees survive with the

rain and summers.

When summer is nearly over

the leaves begin to fall.

I hope you have a good

time being the world.

I like how God feels around

everyone in the world.

God, I am very happy that

I live on you.

Your arms clasp around the world.

I like you and your friends.

Every time I open my eyes

I see the gleaming sun.

I like the animals- the deer,

and us creatures of the world,

the mammals.

I love my dear friends.

 

Danu Baxter, Four and a half years old.

[Bio-Hazard]

If you want my opinion... it seems that nothing is really living.. :)

We as humans are just chemicals assorted in such a fantasic and specific way we can contain and hold data. We are not really "living" per se. We are just active chemicals and atoms.

 

However, perhaps atoms and chemicals are alive.. if so.. then they are on the smallest scale of living organisms that don't have a very large intelligence. Intelligence in my mind would be the accumulation of chemical and atomic bonds that create memory storage so more action can be caused by the moving organism.

 

Radioactive isotopes have an intelligence and the ability to shoot out radioactivity to cause cancer. It may or may not be intentional.

[questor]

suppose it is not human life as we know it ,but it is the underlying force that is responsible for the existence and perpetuation of the universe? i discuss this in a thread in the theology section.. ''Creation and Evolution--The Final Theory''

[infamous]

 

Imagine:

 

In the beginning, God created the world. Fifteen billion years later, the Universe says (in a loud, slow, booming voice): "What the hell was that?!"

Another thought; Imagine that the thinking universe is the mind of God.

[GreekTTC]

Not very good, I think.

 

Problems of a rigorous definition of “consciousness” aside (and there are huge problems with this, spanning half a century of modern mathematical formalism alone), if the human brain is any guide, the universe has serious connection problems with signal speed. The time it takes a signal to traverse an astronomical structure, such as a galaxy, is measure in tens of thousands of years, while the apparent age of the universe, even according to unconventional theories, is only tens of billions of years, so, at most, theses structures could have had only a few million “thoughts”, not nearly enough by human standards.

 

Then there's the idea of size and relative size. We could be viruses taking over a cell (Earth) inside an organ (the universe) of an infinitely larger being of which we can not be aware. The universe's speed of light could be like the speed of our neurons to fire signals to various parts of the body. Fast in relation to our living system (our body), but not on the whole. Just a wild thought.

[Christopher]

Then there's the idea of size and relative size. We could be viruses taking over a cell (Earth) inside an organ (the universe) of an infinitely larger being of which we can not be aware. The universe's speed of light could be like the speed of our neurons to fire signals to various parts of the body. Fast in relation to our living system (our body), but not on the whole. Just a wild thought.

 

 

Creation - The Holographic Universe

The Universe as a Hologram

 

http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html

 

edit: there's no need to copy such a long piece of text from a web page and post it as if it were your own writing. Hyperlinks were among the prime idea behind the web.

[emessay]

How to create consciousness without blood and oxygen, but a quantum to drive it ??

 

Bernard J. Baars quote :

Can Physics Provide a Theory of Consciousness? A Review of "Shadows of the Mind" by Roger Penrose

"I don't know if consciousness has some profound metaphysical relation to physics. Science is notoriously unpredictable over the long term, and there are tricky mind-body paradoxes that may ultimately demand a radical solution. But at this point in the vexed history of the problem there is little question about the preferable scientific approach. It is not to try to solve the mind-body problem first --- that effort has a poor track record --- or to pursue lovely but implausible speculations. It is simply to do good science using consciousness as a variable, and investigating its relations to other psychobiological variables."

 

Patricia Smith quote :

Churchland, Philosophy, University of California San Diego

BRAINSHY: Non-Neural Theories of Conscious Experience

1.Consciousness is a difficult problem, but for all we can tell now, it may turn out to be more tractable than other problems about neural function, such as how the brain manages to get timing right. We shall have to do the science and see.

2. Thought experiments are typically too underdescribed to give real credence to the conclusions they are asked to bear. All too often they are merely a heartfelt intution dressed up to look like a scientifically grounded argument.

3. Consciousness might turn out to be a fundamental property of the universe, but so far there is no moderately convincing reason to believe it is. Insofar as most information processing in brains and machines is nonconscious, it is not plausible to assume that an information-based physics per se is the key to consciousness.

4. Consciousness might turn out to be produced by quantum coherence in microtubules, but so far there is no moderately convincing reason to believe that it is.

5. Let's keep plugging away at experimental psychology and neuroscience, trying to invent revealing experiments that will help us make progress on the problem. We need to continue developing both direct strategies (that have the neural substrate for awareness as their immediate target) and indirect strategies (that focus on perception, motor control, attention, learning and memory, emotions, etc. ) with the hope that along the way, much will be revealed about awareness in those functions. We need to continue to address theoretical as well as experimental question, and to foster new ideas targetting how the brain solves problems such as sensory-motor integration, time-management, and using back projections in sensory systems to bias the perception, to fill-in, and to "see-as".

 

Abraham Thomas quote :

Why Science Failed to Unravel the Mind

 

"Could the basic premise of science have been wrong? Science was in love with the beauty and power of mathematics. In Principia Mathematica, Betrand Russel held that all questions of logic could be expressed in mathematical terms. Great mathematical theories underpinned every aspect of space and matter. Human intelligence was the most awesome of all the subjects ever studied. Surely, neurons, the basic building blocks of human intelligence, must also use purely logical links? Science searched for the hard evidence. Unfortunately, the decisions of the mind were more often illogical and irrational. In the precise scientific world, where mathematics yielded eternally dependable results, the mind remained a rainbow, refusing to be logically pinned down".

 

My quote today:

 

What was happened in our mind , 'we' are really in a cockpit of "space-time ship" to observe reality of universe and recall it being concious.

[questor]

the universe may have its own sentient consciousness without exhibiting human life. we don't know what thought is, it may exist without needing a human body to produce it. everything in the universe does not have to be understood by its human parameters. the human being may be totally unimportant in the scheme of things.

[GreekTTC]

...the human being may be totally unimportant in the scheme of things.

 

MAY be? It would be my contention that we humans are meaningless on the grand scale.

[questor]

but we must acknowledge the human being as the supreme product of the universe as we know it. if there is a creator, man must have some importance. if there is no creator, man is just an accident of minerals and amines.

[Qfwfq]

but we must acknowledge the human being as the supreme product of the universe as we know it.

Why must we?

 

Are you sure we are?

[questor]

please re-read my post. i said the universe as we now know it. there could be infinite other beings out there we know nothing about. our reality is what we can see.

[Akw2000]

It has energy, elements, water, systems, it's growing... What are the chances that the universe is a living entity and may even have a conciousness of its own? Just a fun thought :)

 

Well, if the universe against all odds would have a "soul" i know how to try it. or not exaktly how to do, but if we start a process that will "kill", or destroy the universe we would know for sure because it would fight it´s death like all life,it would be wanting to survive, if it´s not suicidal, of course....

Isn´t this a great idea? All for science of course :)

[Tormod]

Well, if the universe against all odds would have a "soul" i know how to try it. or not exaktly how to do, but if we start a process that will "kill", or destroy the universe we would know for sure because it would fight it´s death like all life,it would be wanting to survive, if it´s not suicidal, of course....

Isn´t this a great idea? All for science of course :)

 

Yeah. Ever tried to kill a crayfish? Simply throw it in boiling water and there is nothing it can do. :)

 

Seriously, how would you go about "killing" the universe?

[Akw2000]

Yeah. Ever tried to kill a crayfish? Simply throw it in boiling water and there is nothing it can do. :)

 

Seriously, how would you go about "killing" the universe?

 

Yes, but it would affect the water while it was being boiled, marking it´s presence, if you understand, maybe the universe would react the same,changing the result a little?As i mentioned before, i do not know how to do it but i first assumed that it is possible to do sometime in the future. The only thing that bugs me is why other species/aliens with superior technology haven´t done it already.

(by the way, why are so many people using the words "it will be possible in the future" as a way of convincing people that you will eventually be right, if you just wait long enough?) To be honest i do not think this can be done in the future, not by us or technology. To destroy the universe you would need a "freak accident" ,i believe it is called, that would occur to trigger some sort of chain-reaction that we can´t create(but of course i am proven wrong if the RHIC produces a stable strangelet that destroys the universe :) ) anyway,this is way out of my league as i am only 16 years old but it was just an idea i had :)

[Tormod]

Yes, but it would affect the water while it was being boiled, marking it´s presence

 

Well put. :)

 

(by the way, why are so many people using the words "it will be possible in the future" as a way of convincing people that you will eventually be right, if you just wait long enough?)

 

Dunno...why did you use it? :)

[Akw2000]

Well put. :)

 

 

 

Dunno...why did you use it? :)

 

Because i am just a human... :)