Aside – Page 9 – David Birnbaum Summa Metaphysica

Q4P + DNA

David Birnbaum’s Philosophical Breakthrough:

Q4P and DNA: Potentialism and Blueprint of Life

By Mark Davis

definitions of some key terms in Potentialism

Quest for Potential^∞ (shorthand notation: Q4P) – the eternal and overarching cosmic dynamic – questing and iterating infinitely for maximum/optimal Potential.

Complexification (shorthand notation: C+) – subordinate to Q4P, it is the intermediate-level universal drive towards ever-greater complexity/sophistication/richness/diversity/wondrousness

Extraordinariation (shorthand notation: E+) the horizon/goal of the overarching Quest for Potential
and its ‘handmaiden’ C+; alternatively, ultimate Complexification.

Beginning in 1988, cosmology saw the birth of an entirely new theory of the universe: Potentialism. Independent metaphysicist David Birnbaum of Manhattan released Summa Metaphysica I (Ktav, 1988) and in one stroke changed the very face of cosmology forever. Followed up in 2005 and 2014 by Summa Metaphysica II and III (New Paradigm Matrix), Birnbaum described a universal dynamic governing how the cosmos operated – Potentialism. According to Potentialist theory, the entirety of the universe is driven, purposefully by Birnbaum’s hypothesized dynamic – infinite Quest for Potential (Q4P).

Q4P is delineated as an overarching universal drive – characterized as a natural force, which drives everything in existence to seek higher levels of Complexification. It is often described by the formula – Q4P^∞ > C+ > E+. This is also known as Potentialism’s SuperLaw.

So, Complexification drives the universe forward towards the elusive Extraordinariation. Extraordinariation is a hypothetical state of hyper-Complexification. Beyond mere physics, E+ is a state not only characterized by hyper levels of system complexification, but also descriptive in ultimate terms of Complexification – thought, beauty, emotion, consciouness – in short, a state of ultimate perfection. While E+ is not something actually ever to be attained, it nevertheless provides a goal/horizon.

According to Birnbaum, such is the pervasive nature of Potential – and its related SuperLaw – that it can be found, without exception, throughout the universe. It is pervasive so much so that its mere presence can be overlooked and taken for granted.

One such area is the pervasive and most basic building block of all life on the planet, DNA. We will elucidate how DNA provides a very pure form of Potentialism, displaying some of the most fundamental of Potential requirements.

A simple spiral code

A basic feature of Potentialism is the omnipresence of spiral geometry. It has been conjectured by Birnbaum this may be indicative of physical/metaphysical “echoes” of the interplay between Q4P and E+. The Q4P and E+ dynamic states that the duality type nature of these components requires them to spiral mathematically with one another as they both act, in turn, as both catalyst and result for one another.

This spiral design is repeated on macro scales both at the galactic and solar system levels. While the latter is less obvious – people usually think the plates orbits in ellipses or circles – it must be remembered that the solar system is in turn revolving around the galactic core, actually imparting a spiral design into the seeming elliptical orbits.

Likewise, at the DNA level, the spiral is the basic shape of our DNA structures and of all life on the planet. Unlike gravity, which shapes the macro, the double helix of DNA is governed by the hydrophobic properties of the proteins between its strands.

Those four basic proteins, which provide the entire “computer code” of all life, protect themselves from water by spiraling and stacking close together. What is most interesting to Potentialists though, is even though the physical laws governing spiral creation are entirely different on the cell level than the macro scale spirals, the results are always the same – universal spirals as Potentialism dictates. Coupled with the extremely simple four “letter” code of life, DNA is a very clear sample of Potentialism at work.

Universal

Another requirement, and far more important to Potentialists, is the universality of DNA. Without exception, all life – whether plant or animal – is governed by DNA. It defines everything about what a creature or plant will look like and how its bio-systems will operate. But DNA is not only universal on an inter-species level.

DNA also exists universally within every organism. Strictly speaking, that is a slight exaggeration as cells such as red blood cells lack a nucleus (in some animals and humans, at least) to house DNA. However, that is an evolutionary adaptation. Red blood cells destroy their nucleus in order to carry more oxygen more efficiently. But, they do start with a nucleus when created. Without it, a red blood cell could not define itself and self-design to be what it is needed to be.

So, we can see that both on the inter-species level as well as the individual level, DNA is utterly pervasive in life forms of all types. Every cell contains the blueprint for making the entirety of the organism it is contained within. This certainly satisfies the universal requirement of Potential.

Infinite complexity

But the most important aspect, if DNA is to be a reflection of Potentialism, is infinite Complexification. If DNA is to be a physical herald of Potentialism, then at its core it must be the spark and catalyst to greater levels of Complexification. On this level, DNA truly shines to meet the demands.

While utterly simple in its structure of only four proteins protected by sugars and phosphates, DNA contains within it the code for every possible form of life as we know it. The one simple double helix itself can become anything with life – be it plant, animal, even mankind. Thus it contains, truly, the vast Complexity that is all life.

Further, within DNA is the coded design for reproduction – be it through division or sexual – it is the catalyst for a life to be grown, but it is also the catalyst for all future generations. This is a hallmark of Potential – as Potential’s infinite nature of Complexity is the ability to hold the Potential for future life as well as its own.

Finally, DNA also changes – it is the carrier of evolution. It is where the genetic changes can occur that give life to new species and new mutations that potentially branch off into new species. All in all, this makes DNA a powerful representative of the power of Potentialism at work. It is the road map on which Q4P seeks out its eternal destiny towards Extraordinariation.

No flaw has been discerned in Birnbaum’s Theory of Potential since first introduced to the world
via Summa I (Ktav Publishing, 1988). Summa Metaphysica was the featured and prime focus of a 3+ day international academic conference hosted by Bard College (Upstate NY, March 2012). See www.Conference1000.com).

A Course Text at over a dozen colleges (see SummaCourseText), Summa Metaphysica
has been the focus of over fifty feature articles in 2013-2014 alone. See www.SummaCoverage.com.

Recent hi-level academic works dovetailing with Birnbaum’s Theory of Potential (see www.PotentialismTheory.com ) include the following:

Programming the Universe (Knopf, 2006)
by Professor of Quantum Mechanics Seth Lloyd of MIT.

Mind & Cosmos (Oxford University Press, 2012)
by Professor of Philosophy & Law Thomas Nagel of NYU.

Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014)
by Professor of Physics Max Tegmark of MIT.

For further reference:

ParadigmChallenge
www.SummaMetaphysica.com

Big Brother?

The Curious Case of Randomness Theory

Most British academics, particularly in the atheist community, will cite Randomness Theory as the model to describe cosmic order. According to the theory, the universe is nothing more than a fluke; subsequent life and humanity are random happenstance; all is random chance and chaotic. Randomness, a theory in academe, dovetails with Atheism, an ideological movement, as both posit the absence of any order or design to the universe. Thus the global lay atheistic community has apparently adopted Randomness and provides aggressive support for it in media in which they have leverage. As bizarre as this concept may be, Randomness is considered the only acceptable theory by the British academic orthodoxy. With control over many academic journals and leverage over select media, a small but focused British atheist academic group has managed to entrench Randomness as the prevailing orthodoxy.

To be sure, this group-think has its detractors. Often derided as the “Emperor’s Clothing”, Randomness has been ridiculed as more ideologically than scientifically motivated. Its primary purpose is to remove any semblance of ‘design’ from universal theory. Mixing ‘science’ with ‘religion’ is a potentially dangerous and volatile mix. Highly-placed British academics have not only allowed this ‘mix’ to be institutionalized, they turn a blind eye to the egregious actions of their ideological ‘support group’, global Atheism.

To further this end of advancing Randomness, the entrenched orthodoxy has an ongoing structure in-place to destroy both any challenging theories as well as their presenters. In what can be seen as nothing less than actual character assassination, the British academic establishment has viciously attacked dissenters through concerted, ad hominem attacks. A tiny minority of rabid academics have effectively held the intellectual community hostage – to prevent innovation in cosmic theory. By artificially burnishing Randomness Theory’s credentials as an unassailable truth they have effectively stymied the advance of knowledge. Yet, their very tactics remove the most important tests of scientific theory – integrity and the ability to stand up to challenge and debate.

Typically, targets of the atheist group are first crucified in The Chronicle of Higher Education; then the Chronicle article is heavily floated as gospel truth and linked by atheist media globally; finally, the atheist network ad nauseum quotes defamatory pieces circulated by its own fellow members trashing the target. The initial result is a cascade of delegitimization globally focused on a single target. The end result is to prop-up Randomness by undermining any intellectual challenge. This cynical game has been countenanced by disingenuous senior British academics for over two decades, as they self-ward each other sundry awards and prizes. This ultimate ‘closed club’ has no choice but to self-congratulate fellow members in-on-the-game. .

With no little irony, atheism currently stands where the Church once did. Through multiple mechanisms, such as controlling journals and academic media, the 21^st century Church of Atheism has waged war on intellectual freedom and progress. Take, for example, Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design was introduced with significant components qualifying as legitimate theory. It had strong intellectual backing from segments of the academic community; right or wrong it had credible philosophical structure.
The atheist academic community, far from viewing it as legitimate, engaged in an all-out war on Intelligent Design. Instead of engaging in meaningful debate against the theory, the academic orthodoxy ridiculed and delegitimized both the theory and any proponents willing to support it. The entry-point’ argument of the Intelligent Design group is tat ‘design’ seems apparent in the universe and in nature. Through various morally dubious gambits, the zealot Randomness-atheist group has managed to demonize this qute legitimate intellectual position.

While fostering lively debate is a hallmark of proper academics, what the British academic hierarchy has condoned if not instigated is more closely associated with the gambits of defamation, libel and character assassination. This should hardly be shocking though. 1918 Nobel Prize winner in Physics winner Max Planck (arguably the father of modern quantum physics) famously noted in his autobiography Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie. Mit einem Bildnis und der von Max von Laue gehaltenen Traueransprache (Leipzig 1948): “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Sadly, this may mean that the only way to banish the old superstitions of Randomness are for those too blind to lexit the stage, to fade into history

A central tenrt of Randomness is “decay”. Randomness Theory states that everything in the universe has a natural tendency to disintegrate and decline. Never mind that the universe’s first moments of creation contradict this supposition. Never mind that the Law of Conservation of Mass states nothing can be destroyed. Never mind that the changing nature of the universe actually gave rise to complex, sentient life. Never mind that the advocates of decay go ballistic when one aks them the source of that which is decaying. All these obvious weak points are off-limits to challengers of Randomness Theory. To question the jih proests of Randomness-atheism is to flirt with academic ruin; the atheist pinnacle predators who defend Randomness will come after you, en masse.

One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of these attacks.

In April 2012, Bard College hosted a three-day international academic conference show-casing private scholar David Birnbaum’s iconic Summa Metaphysica philosophy treatise. In his work, Birnbaum proposes his dynamic and scientifically-based Infinite Potential Theory – possibly the most elegant metaphysics ever presented. Global academic acceptance of Summa notwithstanding, the British Randomness-atheist academics organized what can only be described as a “hit squad” against anyone Summa-related. In May of 2013, the Randomness junta retaliated in academic media in a mass, ad hominem attack on both Birnbaum and Bard (and any academic willing to stand by Birnbaum) – threatening the names and careers of anyone or anything that was associated with Infinite Potential Theory. What was left unspoken was how Birnbaum’s Theory of Potential puts sketchy and intellectually vacuous Randomness Theory to shame. The cavalier British academic atheists seem to confuse power with truth.

The main attack against yeshiva-educated and Harvard-educated Birnbaum is that he is an ‘outsider’ to the academic establishment. Iconic philosophy ‘outsiders’ 17^th century Spinoza and 20^th century Teilhard de Chardin, to name just two, might be bemused by the apparently panic-filled Randomness-atheistic establishment hell-bent on undermining paradigm challenger Birnbaum. The Randomness attack-dogs conveniently fail to note the dozen+ colleges globally using this particular ‘outsider’s’s philosophical treatise as a course text. Note that notwithstanding the intense academic scrutiny, no flaw or vulnerability has been found or discerned over the 26-year span that Birnbaum’s 3-volume treatise has been released..

Likewise, American philosopher Thomas Nagel challenged Randomness in his 2012 book Mind & Cosmos (Oxford Press). Ironically, Nagel himself is an atheist, but not part of the ruling junta. However, Nagel’s belief that a universal model of purpose was missing from the Randomness model was enough to enrage the entrenched academic orthodoxy and set off a string of vicious personal attacks on him. Meanwhile the Randomness-atheist hierarchy scratches each other’s backs and then mutually bestows awards upon one another ‘for scientific advance’, of course. Cute.

So vitriolic and unabashed have these gratuitous and baseless atheist attacks become, that some brave academics are speaking up to protest the damage done to the advancement of knowledge itself. In January of 2013, Yale Professor David Galernter, struck back at the atheist academic establishment with an article titled The Closing of the Scientific Mind. Enraged by the lasting damage caused by the reactionary browbeating of intellectual discovery, Galernter lashed-out at these ‘lynch-mob’ crypto-academics for what he called ‘locker-room braggadocio’ deployed to belittle legitimate intellectual challenge. Galernter maintains that it is the intimidation of science and the vicious tactics of those defending Randomness, that is causing science to suffer and stagnate.

This all begs the question: How does this gang have any legitimacy at all? Have they not betrayed the sacred trust accorded to academia – to search out truth? Have they not thoroughly abused their power at the helm of academe? Has this so-elite group of fancy academic from fancy British universities not shown itself to be both morally and intellectually bankrupt? Moreover, do the proponents of Randomness actually have anything of substance to say? Or his the whole production of Randomness Theory just a ‘house of cards’ artificially propped-up on media life-support by a small clique of academics zealouslu protecting their little academic power turf and clubby Church (of Atheism)? Is Randomness even a theory – or more an absence of a theory? If it is indeed a theory, why do its defenders refuse to give any breathing space for opposition? Why do they – in knee-jerk fashion – choose to rabidly attack both message and messenger with such morally reprehensible tactics?

Are they are just ‘hollow men with hollow theories?’ Just how long do they expect to keep this dubious charade going? More importantly, when their ongoing nefariousness is uncovered, how much greater will the public revulsion when the full extent of their decades-long gangster-like gambits surfaces? Perhaps Randmoness-atheist academics should actually consider being scientists first, and zealous, extremist loyalists of the Church of Atheism second.

As for the contemporary pioneers of modern philosophy and cosmology viciously attacked by the Randomness junta and their lackeys, kudos to them for staying steadfast and unbowed — as well as for their intellectual daring and conceptual brilliance. Consider these words from an address on the 25^th Anniversary of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (January 1936): “New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. “ In that vein, the Birnbams and Nagels of today are the inheritors of science, the Newtons, Plancks and Galileos of the new millennia.

Summa Metaphysica’s intro presciently quotes 20th century European philosopher-poet Lanza del Vasto “All revolutions take time to settle in.” Intellectual mavericks and allies Birnbaum and Nagel have come to symbolize resistance to the terror-tactics of a disingenuous reactionary group operating ‘from the shadows’ and committed only to their personal power and ideological zealotry. Although vastly outgunned, both intellectual revolutionaries Birnbaum and Nagel remain steadfast and confident that they will prevail, perhaps secure in 19^th Century French writer Victor Hugo’s adage ”Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Related – Commentary

The Closing of the Scientific Mind

Reflections on the zombie-scientist problem.

David Gelernter / Jan. 1, 2014

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do. Too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support. Scientists are (on average) no more likely to understand this work than the man in the street is to understand quantum physics. But science used to know enough to approach cautiously and admire from outside, and to build its own work on a deep belief in human dignity. No longer.

Belittling Humanity.

Today science and the “philosophy of mind”—its thoughtful assistant, which is sometimes smarter than the boss—are threatening Western culture with the exact opposite of humanism. Call it roboticism. Man is the measure of all things, Protagoras said. Today we add, and computers are the measure of all men.

Many scientists are proud of having booted man off his throne at the center of the universe and reduced him to just one more creature—an especially annoying one—in the great intergalactic zoo. That is their right. But when scientists use this locker-room braggadocio to belittle the human viewpoint, to belittle human life and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spiritual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human beings possess or ever will, they have outrun their own empiricism. They are abusing their cultural standing. Science has become an international bully.

Nowhere is its bullying more outrageous than in its assault on the phenomenon known as subjectivity.

Your subjective, conscious experience is just as real as the tree outside your window or the photons striking your retina—even though you alone feel it. Many philosophers and scientists today tend to dismiss the subjective and focus wholly on an objective, third-person reality—a reality that would be just the same if men had no minds. They treat subjective reality as a footnote, or they ignore it, or they announce that, actually, it doesn’t even exist.

If scientists were rat-catchers, it wouldn’t matter. But right now, their views are threatening all sorts of intellectual and spiritual fields. The present problem originated at the intersection of artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind—in the question of what consciousness and mental states are all about, how they work, and what it would mean for a robot to have them. It has roots that stretch back to the behaviorism of the early 20th century, but the advent of computing lit the fuse of an intellectual crisis that blasted off in the 1960s and has been gaining altitude ever since.

Bullying Nagel.

The modern “mind fields” encompass artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind. Researchers in these fields are profoundly split, and the chaos was on display in the ugliness occasioned by the publication of Thomas Nagel’s Mind & Cosmos in 2012. Nagel is an eminent philosopher and professor at NYU. In Mind & Cosmos, he shows with terse, meticulous thoroughness why mainstream thought on the workings of the mind is intellectually bankrupt. He explains why Darwinian evolution is insufficient to explain the emergence of consciousness—the capacity to feel or experience the world. He then offers his own ideas on consciousness, which are speculative, incomplete, tentative, and provocative—in the tradition of science and philosophy.

Nagel was immediately set on and (symbolically) beaten to death by all the leading punks, bullies, and hangers-on of the philosophical underworld. Attacking Darwin is the sin against the Holy Ghost that pious scientists are taught never to forgive. Even worse, Nagel is an atheist unwilling to express sufficient hatred of religion to satisfy other atheists. There is nothing religious about Nagel’s speculations; he believes that science has not come far enough to explain consciousness and that it must press on. He believes that Darwin is not sufficient.

The intelligentsia was so furious that it formed a lynch mob. In May 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece called “Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong.” One paragraph was notable:

Whatever the validity of [Nagel’s] stance, its timing was certainly bad. The war between New Atheists and believers has become savage, with Richard Dawkins writing sentences like, “I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sadomasochistic, and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad….” In that climate, saying anything nice at all about religion is a tactical error.

It’s the cowardice of the Chronicle’s statement that is alarming—as if the only conceivable response to a mass attack by killer hyenas were to run away. Nagel was assailed; almost everyone else ran.

The Kurzweil Cult.

The voice most strongly associated with what I’ve termed roboticism is that of Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor. The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and ever-increasing pace of technological progress and change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He calls this point the “singularity.” After the year 2045 (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will dominate human intelligence to the extent that men will no longer understand machines any more than potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men will already have begun an orgy of machinification—implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material. Kurzweil believes in “transhumanism,” the merging of men and machines. He believes human immortality is just around the corner. He works for Google.

Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be.

Each change in him might be defended as an improvement, but man as we know him is the top growth on a tall tree in a large forest: His kinship with his parents and ancestors and mankind at large, the experience of seeing his own reflection in human history and his fellow man—those things are the crucial part of who he is. If you make him grossly different, he is lost, with no reflection anywhere he looks. If you make lots of people grossly different, they are all lost together—cut adrift from their forebears, from human history and human experience. Of course we do know that whatever these creatures are, untransformed men will be unable to keep up with them. Their superhuman intelligence and strength will extinguish mankind as we know it, or reduce men to slaves or dogs. To wish for such a development is to play dice with the universe.

Luckily for mankind, there is (of course) no reason to believe that brilliant progress in any field will continue, much less accelerate; imagine predicting the state of space exploration today based on the events of 1960–1972. But the real flaw in the Kurzweil Cult’s sickening predictions is that machines do just what we tell them to. They act as they are built to act. We might in principle, in the future, build an armor-plated robot with a stratospheric IQ that refuses on principle to pay attention to human beings. Or an average dog lover might buy a German shepherd and patiently train it to rip him to shreds. Both deeds are conceivable, but in each case, sane persons are apt to intervene before the plan reaches completion.

Banishing Subjectivity.

Subjectivity is your private experience of the world: your sensations; your mental life and inner landscape; your experiences of sweet and bitter, blue and gold, soft and hard; your beliefs, plans, pains, hopes, fears, theories, imagined vacation trips and gardens and girlfriends and Ferraris, your sense of right and wrong, good and evil. This is your subjective world. It is just as real as the objective physical world.

This is why the idea of objective reality is a masterpiece of Western thought—an idea we associate with Galileo and Descartes and other scientific revolutionaries of the 17th century. The only view of the world we can ever have is subjective, from inside our own heads. That we can agree nonetheless on the observable, exactly measurable, and predictable characteristics of objective reality is a remarkable fact. I can’t know that the color I call blue looks to me the same way it looks to you. And yet we both use the word blue to describe this color, and common sense suggests that your experience of blue is probably a lot like mine. Our ability to transcend the subjective and accept the existence of objective reality is the cornerstone of everything modern science has accomplished.

But that is not enough for the philosophers of mind. Many wish to banish subjectivity altogether. “The history of philosophy of mind over the past one hundred years,” the eminent philosopher John Searle has written, “has been in large part an attempt to get rid of the mental”—i.e., the subjective—“by showing that no mental phenomena exist over and above physical phenomena.”

Why bother? Because to present-day philosophers, Searle writes, “the subjectivist ontology of the mental seems intolerable.” That is, your states of mind (your desire for adventure, your fear of icebergs, the ship you imagine, the girl you recall) exist only subjectively, within your mind, and they can be examined and evaluated by you alone. They do not exist objectively. They are strictly internal to your own mind. And yet they do exist. This is intolerable! How in this modern, scientific world can we be forced to accept the existence of things that can’t be weighed or measured, tracked or photographed—that are strictly private, that can be observed by exactly one person each? Ridiculous! Or at least, damned annoying.

And yet your mind is, was, and will always be a room with a view. Your mental states exist inside this room you can never leave and no one else can ever enter. The world you perceive through the window of mind (where you can never go—where no one can ever go) is the objective world. Both worlds, inside and outside, are real.

The ever astonishing Rainer Maria Rilke captured this truth vividly in the opening lines of his eighth Duino Elegy, as translated by Stephen Mitchell: “With all its eyes the natural world looks out/into the Open. Only our eyes are turned backward….We know what is really out there only from/the animal’s gaze.” We can never forget or disregard the room we are locked into forever.

The Brain as Computer.

The dominant, mainstream view of mind nowadays among philosophers and many scientists is computationalism, also known as cognitivism. This view is inspired by the idea that minds are to brains as software is to computers. “Think of the brain,” writes Daniel Dennett of Tufts University in his influential 1991 Consciousness Explained, “as a computer.” In some ways this is an apt analogy. In others, it is crazy. At any rate, it is one of the intellectual milestones of modern times.

How did this “master analogy” become so influential?

Consider the mind. The mind has its own structure and laws: It has desires, emotions, imagination; it is conscious. But no mind can exist apart from the brain that “embodies” it. Yet the brain’s structure is different from the mind’s. The brain is a dense tangle of neurons and other cells in which neurons send electrical signals to other neurons downstream via a wash of neurotransmitter chemicals, like beach bums splashing each other with bucketfuls of water.

Two wholly different structures, one embodied by the other—this is also a precise description of computer software as it relates to computer hardware. Software has its own structure and laws (software being what any “program” or “application” is made of—any email program, web search engine, photo album, iPhone app, video game, anything at all). Software consists of lists of instructions that are given to the hardware—to a digital computer. Each instruction specifies one picayune operation on the numbers stored inside the computer. For example: Add two numbers. Move a number from one place to another. Look at some number and do this if it’s 0.

Large lists of tiny instructions become complex mathematical operations, and large bunches of those become even more sophisticated operations. And pretty soon your application is sending spacemen hurtling across your screen firing lasers at your avatar as you pelt the aliens with tennis balls and chat with your friends in Idaho or Algiers while sending notes to your girlfriend and keeping an eye on the comic-book news. You are swimming happily within the rich coral reef of your software “environment,” and the tiny instructions out of which the whole thing is built don’t matter to you at all. You don’t know them, can’t see them, are wholly unaware of them.

The gorgeously varied reefs called software are a topic of their own—just as the mind is. Software and computers are two different topics, just as the psychological or phenomenal study of mind is different from brain physiology. Even so, software cannot exist without digital computers, just as minds cannot
exist without brains.

That is why today’s mainstream view of mind is based on exactly this analogy: Mind is to brain as software is to computer. The mind is the brain’s software—this is the core idea of computationalism.

Of course computationalists don’t all think alike. But they all believe in some version of this guiding analogy. Drew McDermott, my colleague in the computer science department at Yale University, is one of the most brilliant (and in some ways, the most heterodox) of computationalists. “The biological variety of computers differs in many ways from the kinds of computers engineers build,” he writes, “but the differences are superficial.” Note here that by biological computer, McDermott means brain.

McDermott believes that “computers can have minds”—minds built out of software, if the software is correctly conceived. In fact, McDermott writes, “as far as science is concerned, people are just a strange kind of animal that arrived fairly late on the scene….[My] purpose…is to increase the plausibility of the hypothesis that we are machines and to elaborate some of its consequences.”

John Heil of Washington University describes cognitivism this way: “Think about states of mind as something like strings of symbols, sentences.” In other words: a state of mind is like a list of numbers in a computer. And so, he writes, “mental operations are taken to be ‘computations over symbols.’” Thus, in the cognitivist view, when you decide, plan, or believe, you are computing, in the sense that software computes.

Besmirching consciousness.

But what about consciousness? If the brain is merely a mechanism for thinking or problem-solving, how does it create consciousness?

Most computationalists default to the Origins of Gravy theory set forth by Walter Matthau in the film of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Challenged to account for the emergence of gravy, Matthau explains that, when you cook a roast, “it comes.” That is basically how consciousness arises too, according to computationalists. It just comes.

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett lays out the essence of consciousness as follows: “The concepts of computer science provide the crutches of imagination we need to stumble across the terra incognita between our phenomenology as we know it by ‘introspection’ and our brains as science reveals them to us.” (Note the chuckle-quotes around introspection; for Dennett, introspection is an illusion.) Specifically: “Human consciousness can best be understood as the operation of a ‘von Neumannesque’ virtual machine.” Meaning, it is a software application (a virtual machine) designed to run on any ordinary computer. (Hence von Neumannesque: the great mathematician John von Neumann is associated with the invention of the digital computer as we know it.)

Thus consciousness is the result of running the right sort of program on an organic computer also called the human brain. If you were able to download the right app on your phone or laptop, it would be conscious, too. It wouldn’t merely talk or behave as if it were conscious. It would be conscious, with the same sort of rich mental landscape inside its head (or its processor or maybe hard drive) as you have inside yours: the anxious plans, the fragile fragrant memories, the ability to imagine a baseball game or the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. All that just by virtue of running the right program. That program would be complex and sophisticated, far more clever than anything we have today. But no different fundamentally, say the computationalists, from the latest video game.

The Flaws.

But the master analogy—between mind and software, brain and computer—is fatally flawed. It falls apart once you mull these simple facts:

1. You can transfer a program easily from one computer to another, but you can’t transfer a mind, ever, from one brain to another.

2. You can run an endless series of different programs on any one computer, but only one “program” runs, or ever can run, on any one human brain.

3. Software is transparent. I can read off the precise state of the entire program at any time. Minds are opaque—there is no way I can know what you are thinking unless you tell me.

4. Computers can be erased; minds cannot.

5. Computers can be made to operate precisely as we choose; minds cannot.

There are more. Come up with them yourself. It’s easy.

There is a still deeper problem with computationalism. Mainstream computationalists treat the mind as if its purpose were merely to act and not to be. But the mind is for doing and being. Computers are machines, and idle machines are wasted. That is not true of your mind. Your mind might be wholly quiet, doing (“computing”) nothing; yet you might be feeling miserable or exalted, or awestruck by the beauty of the object in front of you, or inspired or resolute—and such moments might be the center of your mental life. Or you might merely be conscious. “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,/Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs….Darkling I listen….” That was drafted by the computer known as John Keats.

Emotions in particular are not actions but states of being. And emotions are central to your mental life and can shape your behavior by allowing you to compare alternatives to determine which feels best. Jane Austen, Persuasion: “He walked to the window to recollect himself, and feel how he ought to behave.” Henry James, The Ambassadors: The heroine tells the hero, “no one feels so much as you. No—not any one.” She means that no one is so precise, penetrating, and sympathetic an observer.

Computationalists cannot account for emotion. It fits as badly as consciousness into the mind-as-software scheme.

The Body and the Mind.

And there is (at least) one more area of special vulnerability in the computationalist worldview. Computationalists believe that the mind is embodied by the brain, and the brain is simply an organic computer. But in fact, the mind is embodied not by the brain but by the brain and the body, intimately interleaved. Emotions are mental states one feels physically; thus they are states of mind and body simultaneously. (Angry, happy, awestruck, relieved—these are physical as well as mental states.) Sensations are simultaneously mental and physical phenomena. Wordsworth writes about his memories of the River Wye: “I have owed to them/In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,/Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart/And passing even into my purer mind…”

Where does the physical end and the mental begin? The resonance between mental and bodily states is a subtle but important aspect of mind. Bodily sensations bring about mental states that cause those sensations to change and, in turn, the mental states to develop further. You are embarrassed, and blush; feeling yourself blush, your embarrassment increases. Your blush deepens. “A smile of pleasure lit his face. Conscious of that smile, [he] shook his head disapprovingly at his own state.” (Tolstoy.) As Dmitry Merezhkovsky writes brilliantly in his classic Tolstoy study, “Certain feelings impel us to corresponding movements, and, on the other hand, certain habitual movements impel to the corresponding mental states….Tolstoy, with inimitable art, uses this convertible connection between the internal and the external.”

All such mental phenomena depend on something like a brain and something like a body, or an accurate reproduction or simulation of certain aspects of the body. However hard or easy you rate the problem of building such a reproduction, computing has no wisdom to offer regarding the construction of human-like bodies—even supposing that it knows something about human-like minds.

I cite Keats or Rilke, Wordsworth, Tolstoy, Jane Austen because these “subjective humanists” can tell us, far more accurately than any scientist, what things are like inside the sealed room of the mind. When subjective humanism is recognized (under some name or other) as a school of thought in its own right, one of its characteristics will be looking to great authors for information about what the inside of the mind is like.

To say the same thing differently: Computers are information machines. They transform one batch of information into another. Computationalists often describe the mind as an “information processor.” But feelings are not information! Feelings are states of being. A feeling (mild wistfulness, say, on a warm summer morning) has, ordinarily, no information content at all. Wistful is simply a way to be.

Let’s be more precise: We are conscious, and consciousness has two aspects. To be conscious of a thing is to be aware of it (know about it, have information about it) and to experience it. Taste sweetness; see turquoise; hear an unresolved dissonance—each feels a certain way. To experience is to be some way, not to do some thing.

The whole subjective field of emotions, feelings, and consciousness fits poorly with the ideology of computationalism, and with the project of increasing “the plausibility of the hypothesis that we are machines.”

Thomas Nagel: “All these theories seem insufficient as analyses of the mental because they leave out something essential.” (My italics.) Namely? “The first-person, inner point of view of the conscious subject: for example, the way sugar tastes to you or the way red looks or anger feels.” All other mental states (not just sensations) are left out, too: beliefs and desires, pleasures and pains, whims, suspicions, longings, vague anxieties; the mental sights, sounds, and emotions that accompany your reading a novel or listening to music or daydreaming.

Functionalism.

How could such important things be left out? Because functionalism is today’s dominant view among theorists of the mind, and functionalism leaves them out. It leaves these dirty boots on science’s back porch. Functionalism asks, “What does it mean to be, for example, thirsty?” The answer: Certain events (heat, hard work, not drinking) cause the state of mind called thirst. This state of mind, together with others, makes you want to do certain things (like take a drink). Now you understand what “I am thirsty” means. The mental (the state of thirst) has not been written out of the script, but it has been reduced to the merely physical and observable: to the weather, and what you’ve been doing, and what actions (take a drink) you plan to do.

But this explanation is no good, because “thirst” means, above all, that you feel thirsty. It is a way of being. You have a particular sensation. (That feeling, in turn, explains such expressions as “I am thirsty for knowledge,” although this “thirst” has nothing to do with the heat outside.)

And yet you can see the seductive quality of functionalism, and why it grew in prominence along with computers. No one knows how a computer can be made to feel anything, or whether such a thing is even possible. But once feeling and consciousness are eliminated, creating a computer mind becomes much easier. Nagel calls this view “a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense.”

Some thinkers insist otherwise. Experiencing sweetness or the fragrance of lavender or the burn of anger is merely a biochemical matter, they say. Certain neurons fire, certain neurotransmitters squirt forth into the inter-neuron gaps, other neurons fire and the problem is solved: There is your anger, lavender, sweetness.

There are two versions of this idea: Maybe brain activity causes the sensation of anger or sweetness or a belief or desire; maybe, on the other hand, it just is the sensation of anger or sweetness—sweetness is certain brain events in the sense that water is H₂O.

But how do those brain events bring about, or translate into, subjective mental states? How is this amazing trick done? What does it even mean, precisely, to cross from the physical to the mental realm?

The Zombie Argument.

Understanding subjective mental states ultimately comes down to understanding consciousness. And consciousness is even trickier than it seems at first, because there is a serious, thought-provoking argument that purports to show us that consciousness is not just mysterious but superfluous. It’s called the Zombie Argument. It’s a thought experiment that goes like this:

Imagine your best friend. You’ve know him for years, have had a million discussions, arguments, and deep conversations with him; you know his opinions, preferences, habits, and characteristic moods. Is it possible to suppose (just suppose) that he is in fact a zombie?

By zombie, philosophers mean a creature who looks and behaves just like a human being, but happens to be unconscious. He does everything an ordinary person does: walks and talks, eats and sleeps, argues, shouts, drives his car, lies on the beach. But there’s no one home: He (meaning it) is actually a robot with a computer for a brain. On the outside he looks like any human being: This robot’s behavior and appearance are wonderfully sophisticated.

No evidence makes you doubt that your best friend is human, but suppose you did ask him: Are you human? Are you conscious? The robot could be programmed to answer no. But it’s designed to seem human, so more likely its software makes an answer such as, “Of course I’m human, of course I’m conscious!—talk about stupid questions. Are you conscious? Are you human, and not half-monkey? Jerk.”

So that’s a robot zombie. Now imagine a “human” zombie, an organic zombie, a freak of nature: It behaves just like you, just like the robot zombie; it’s made of flesh and blood, but it’s unconscious. Can you imagine such a creature? Its brain would in fact be just like a computer: a complex control system that makes this creature speak and act exactly like a man. But it feels nothing and is conscious of nothing.

Many philosophers (on both sides of the argument about software minds) can indeed imagine such a creature. Which leads them to the next question: What is consciousness for? What does it accomplish? Put a real human and the organic zombie side by side. Ask them any questions you like. Follow them over the course of a day or a year. Nothing reveals which one is conscious. (They both claim to be.) Both seem like ordinary humans.

So why should we humans be equipped with consciousness? Darwinian theory explains that nature selects the best creatures on wholly practical grounds, based on survivable design and behavior. If zombies and humans behave the same way all the time, one group would be just as able to survive as the other. So why would nature have taken the trouble to invent an elaborate thing like consciousness, when it could have got off without it just as well?

Such questions have led the Australian philosopher of mind David Chalmers to argue that consciousness doesn’t “follow logically” from the design of the universe as we know it scientifically. Nothing stops us from imagining a universe exactly like ours in every respect except that consciousness does not exist.

Nagel believes that “our mental lives, including our subjective experiences” are “strongly connected with and probably strictly dependent on physical events in our brains.” But—and this is the key to understanding why his book posed such a danger to the conventional wisdom in his field—Nagel also believes that explaining subjectivity and our conscious mental lives will take nothing less than a new scientific revolution. Ultimately, “conscious subjects and their mental lives” are “not describable by the physical sciences.” He awaits “major scientific advances,” “the creation of new concepts” before we can understand how consciousness works. Physics and biology as we understand them today don’t seem to have the answers.

On consciousness and subjectivity, science still has elementary work to do. That work will be done correctly only if researchers understand what subjectivity is, and why it shares the cosmos with objective reality.

Of course the deep and difficult problem of why consciousness exists doesn’t hold for Jews and Christians. Just as God anchors morality, God’s is the viewpoint that knows you are conscious. Knows and cares: Good and evil, sanctity and sin, right and wrong presuppose consciousness. When free will is understood, at last, as an aspect of emotion and not behavior—we are free just insofar as we feel free—it will also be seen to depend on consciousness.

The Iron Rod.

In her book Absence of Mind, the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson writes that the basic assumption in every variant of “modern thought” is that “the experience and testimony of the individual mind is to be explained away, excluded from consideration.” She tells an anecdote about an anecdote. Several neurobiologists have written about an American railway worker named Phineas Gage. In 1848, when he was 25, an explosion drove an iron rod right through his brain and out the other side. His jaw was shattered and he lost an eye; but he recovered and returned to work, behaving just as he always had—except that now he had occasional rude outbursts of swearing and blaspheming, which (evidently) he had never had before.

Neurobiologists want to show that particular personality traits (such as good manners) emerge from particular regions of the brain. If a region is destroyed, the corresponding piece of personality is destroyed. Your mind is thus the mere product of your genes and your brain. You have nothing to do with it, because there is no subjective, individual you. “You” are what you say and do. Your inner mental world either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. In fact you might be a zombie; that wouldn’t matter either.

Robinson asks: But what about the actual man Gage? The neurobiologists say nothing about the fact that “Gage was suddenly disfigured and half blind, that he suffered prolonged infections of the brain,” that his most serious injuries were permanent. He was 25 years old and had no hope of recovery. Isn’t it possible, she asks, that his outbursts of angry swearing meant just what they usually mean—that the man was enraged and suffering? When the brain scientists tell this story, writes Robinson, “there is no sense at all that [Gage] was a human being who thought and felt, a man with a singular and terrible fate.”

Man is only a computer if you ignore everything that distinguishes him from a computer.

The Closing of the Scientific Mind.

That science should face crises in the early 21st century is inevitable. Power corrupts, and science today is the Catholic Church around the start of the 16th century: used to having its own way and dealing with heretics by excommunication, not argument.

Science is caught up, also, in the same educational breakdown that has brought so many other proud fields low. Science needs reasoned argument and constant skepticism and open-mindedness. But our leading universities have dedicated themselves to stamping them out—at least in all political areas. We routinely provide superb technical educations in science, mathematics, and technology to brilliant undergraduates and doctoral students. But if those same students have been taught since kindergarten that you are not permitted to question the doctrine of man-made global warming, or the line that men and women are interchangeable, or the multiculturalist idea that all cultures and nations are equally good (except for Western nations and cultures, which are worse), how will they ever become reasonable, skeptical scientists? They’ve been reared on the idea that questioning official doctrine is wrong, gauche, just unacceptable in polite society. (And if you are president of Harvard, it can get you fired.)

Beset by all this mold and fungus and corruption, science has continued to produce deep and brilliant work. Most scientists are skeptical about their own fields and hold their colleagues to rigorous standards. Recent years have seen remarkable advances in experimental and applied physics, planetary exploration and astronomy, genetics, physiology, synthetic materials, computing, and all sorts of other areas.

But we do have problems, and the struggle of subjective humanism against roboticism is one of the most important.

The moral claims urged on man by Judeo-Christian principles and his other religious and philosophical traditions have nothing to do with Earth’s being the center of the solar system or having been created in six days, or with the real or imagined absence of rational life elsewhere in the universe. The best and deepest moral laws we know tell us to revere human life and, above all, to be human: to treat all creatures, our fellow humans and the world at large, humanely. To behave like a human being (Yiddish: mensch) is to realize our best selves.

No other creature has a best self.

This is the real danger of anti-subjectivism, in an age where the collapse of religious education among Western elites has already made a whole generation morally wobbly. When scientists casually toss our human-centered worldview in the trash with the used coffee cups, they are re-smashing the sacred tablets, not in blind rage as Moses did, but in casual, ignorant indifference to the fate of mankind.

A world that is intimidated by science and bored sick with cynical, empty “postmodernism” desperately needs a new subjectivist, humanist, individualist worldview. We need science and scholarship and art and spiritual life to be fully human. The last three are withering, and almost no one understands the first.

The Kurzweil Cult is attractive enough to require opposition in a positive sense; alternative futures must be clear. The cults that oppose Kurzweilism are called Judaism and Christianity. But they must and will evolve to meet new dangers in new worlds. The central text of Judeo-Christian religions in the tech-threatened, Googleplectic West of the 21st century might well be Deuteronomy 30:19: “I summon today as your witnesses the heavens and the earth: I have laid life and death before you, the blessing and the curse; choose life and live!—you are your children.”

The sanctity of life is what we must affirm against Kurzweilism and the nightmare of roboticism. Judaism has always preferred the celebration and sanctification of this life in this world to eschatological promises. My guess is that 21st-century Christian thought will move back toward its father and become increasingly Judaized, less focused on death and the afterlife and more on life here today (although my Christian friends will dislike my saying so). Both religions will teach, as they always have, the love of man for man—and that, over his lifetime (as Wordsworth writes at the very end of his masterpiece, The Prelude), “the mind of man becomes/A thousand times more beautiful than the earth/On which he dwells.”

At first, roboticism was just an intellectual school. Today it is a social disease. Some young people want to be robots (I’m serious); they eagerly await electronic chips to be implanted in their brains so they will be smarter and better informed than anyone else (except for all their friends who have had the same chips implanted). Or they want to see the world through computer glasses that superimpose messages on poor naked nature. They are terrorist hostages in love with the terrorists.

All our striving for what is good and just and beautiful and sacred, for what gives meaning to human life and makes us (as Scripture says) “just a little lower than the angels,” and a little better than rats and cats, is invisible to the roboticist worldview. In the roboticist future, we will become what we believe ourselves to be: dogs with iPhones. The world needs a new subjectivist humanism now—not just scattered protests but a growing movement, a cry from the heart.

Self-Actualization

Ultimate Self-Actualization

By mariialv | Posted February 9, 2015

Ultimate Self-Actualization

David Birnbaum’s Theory of Potential re-conceptualized how we understand Man’s place in the universe. Cosmology of the 20th century (Randomness theory) wrote mankind off as some accidental by-product of a meaningless universe. But 21st century Potentialism places mankind back into the center of the Cosmic Order itself.

Whereas 20th century Randomness theory categorized mankind as a random accident of haphazard cosmic evolution, 21st century Potentialism theory places mankind as the forward wave of cosmic advance. Per Birnbaum, mankind is the state-of-the-art, however flawed, apex player in the inexorable evolvement of the universe.

In placing mankind at the zenith, Potentialism theory’s conceptualizer, David Birnbaum of Manhattan, directly impacts many classic questions: What is our place in the universe? What is the meaning of humanity itself”? What is our internal core drive? What is the ‘spark of life’? What is our purpose?

Q4P

Metaphysicist David Birnbaum hypothesizes that one dynamic – (Infinite) Quest for Potential – drives and energizes the entire Cosmic Order. Birnbaum makes the case via his (quite-readable) 3-volume treatise Summa Metaphysica (1988, 2005, 2014).

The work has been widely-acclaimed; over a dozen colleges have assigned the work as a Course Text;
No flaw has been discerned in the hypothesis since introduced to the world via volume I of the treatise published by Ktav in 1988. A major multi-day international academic conference was hosted by Bard College (Upstate, NY) in 2012 focusing on the work (see conference1000.com). To view links to 150+ articles and reviews of the work, see SummaCoverage.com.

The shorthand notation used for the core concept (infinite) Quest for Potential is Q4P.

Is Q4P at the core of life-force itself?

Q4P, the (Infinite) Quest for Potential, is at the core of everything in the universe, including life force itself. Q4P, to Potentialists, represents the central drive of existence – the need for everything to strive towards its own greatest complexity/sophistication. Humanity – with all its myriad flaws included – represents the highest degree of complexity/sophistication/wondrousness that the universe has yet given rise to.

At the very heart of life force itself, Q4P drove not only the creation of life, but the creation of a higher order of life; this advanced life form – mankind – which would achieve a distinctively wide range of emotion, intellect, communication, and creative ability; mankind could wrestle with both its own as well as the greater cosmos’ meaning and purpose.

Does Q4P give Man purpose/direction/meaning?

Q4P can give man meaning. Make no mistake; no life is meaningless, but acknowledging Q4P and its transcendent power in life can help one understand one’s purpose and help provide focus. Personal growth, advancing the community, connecting with others – as well as potentially finding love and growing a family – are all part of a grander cosmic enterprise.

Can awareness of Q4P energize the individual?

It is hard to overstate how awareness of Q4P can help energize the individual – to know that the deck is “stacked in one’s favor” by pressing towards the limits of one’s potential. Individual growth and advance is an integral part of the grand and overarching cosmic scrip of Quest for Potential∞.

Will the Cosmic Order provide a tailwind to those seeking after their maximal potential?

Most certainly. Man, like the universe itself, is predestined as a whole to seek out greater degrees of complexity and sophistication. Birnbaum labels this as Complexification, i.e. growth and advance on sundry fronts including emotional, intellectual and moral expansion.

Einstein once quipped that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. Potentialism says that, not only does God not play dice, but the odds are stacked in the direction of growth and advance. Endeavoring to grow and advance plays-out underlying cosmic thrusts. For in endeavoring to advance, Man is playing-out his destiny and the potential which drives him.

Does Q4P connect Man ever more with the Cosmic Order? Past-present-future?

Man’s connection with cosmic potential brings him in ever-greater alignment with the Cosmic Order. Understanding of Q4P will give individual Man an edge in truly understanding this cosmic connection; as a whole, humanity is headed towards this understanding – as the consciousness of Man expands via evolutionary thrusts.

Could Q4P harmonize humanity?

Central to Potentialism Theory is the concept that we are integral parts of the cosmic collective, let alone of humanity. Thus, as humanity advances, we win on an individual level. The concept of a fight “us v. them” is somewhat anachronistic if we are simultaneously part of ‘them’.

The universe is not meaningless, aimless and chaotic as we were led to believe in the past. Rather, everything is part of the cumulative and inexorable cosmic advance; the universe plays out its ever-iterating broad-spectrum cosmic march, and mankind as a group is at the forward cusp of that march.

S. African-Janus

Janus1000.com

June 12, 2014

S. African-Janus

David Birnbaum in The South African. Theory of Everything? See Summa Metaphysica David Birnbaum philosophy. See Framing Theory of the universe.

DAVID BIRNBAUM PHILOSOPHY / METAPHYSICS

7 CRITERIA

The 7 Criteria for a Great Metaphysics:

David Birnbaum’s Elegant Philosophy Paradigm

By Mark Davis

Judging the strength of a metaphysical theory is understandably difficult. After all, we’re trying to judge something that not only includes the concrete, observable universe but all the phenomena it contains – from language and poetry, to reason and morality. That’s a seriously tall order. But we can define 7 broad criteria a construct must meet to be a sound metaphysical cosmological theory.

Using these 7 criteria, let’s examine David Birnbaum’s Potentialism. Crafted initially in 1988 by independent metaphysicist, David Birnbaum, in his eventually three-part treatise – Summa Metaphysica offers a fully-integrated cosmology. To crack the cosmic code, Birnbaum literally introduces a new lexicon for key terminology. The Birnbaum lexicon-gambit is audacious, but ultimately quite effective in getting us to the goal line: a unified, vibrant, elegant and powerful theory.

Q4P

Potentialism describes the infinite Quest for Potential as the central, cosmic drive of the universe (see www.SummaMetaphysica.com). This Q4P, as he calls it for short, regulates how the entire universe operates.

C+

On the intermediate level it inherently strives towards greater and greater levels of what Birnbaum coins as Complexification (shorthand: C+) the drive for ever-greater complexity, sophistication/richness/diversity/wondrousness.

E+

In turn, this C+ drives the uiniverse towards what Birnbaum coins as Extraordinariation (shorthand: E+). Extraordinariation is a goal/horizon of sublime and utter super-Complexification – both in form and quality (see www.summametaphysica.com/extraordinariation/).

The three key components noted just-above, in turn combine into the SuperLaw of Potentialism:

The SuperLaw

Q4P > C+ > E+

Quest for Potential > Complexification > Extraordinariation

According to Birnbaum, the universe’s universal and infinite drive towards its own Potential can be witnessed in the day-to-day increases in Complexification of everything in the universe. We can witness the theory at-work in the (historical) formation of atoms, then molecules, as well as in the birth of the stars and galaxies – and, indeed, in the birth and development of our very own Earth.

More recently (on a cosmological time table, at least), we can see the theory at-work in the rise of our ecosystem – the diversity and complexity of life as well as in the complex interactions of life on the planet as a whole. We can even see the theory at-work in the multiplicative complexity of reproduction where two animals or people come together and create life itself, with its own potential inherent within it.

There’s very little that Potentialism cannot do. Potentialism – uniquely has the capability to describe the universe as a whole as well as the entire span of cosmic history; but the question remains: is it a sound theory? To answer that question, let’s observe how the theory stands up against the 7 criteria. This will help us determine its inherent strength.

1. (a) A good metaphysics attempts to explain the most facts (from time immemorial through the present) with the most concise theory. (b) A metaphysics should not be contradicted by any facts.

Potentialism is one of the most concise theories ever presented for cosmology. It can be summed up by the one central, core theorem: Q4P^∞ → C+ > E+. This is read as “The Quest for Infinite Potential (Q4P) drives the cosmos – via Complexification (C+) – towards Extraordinariation (E+).” That’s about as concise as a theory can get. How many facts does it explain?

Q4P is a universal solution to cosmology. It describes all the facts. Complexification, per Birnbaum, is the drive towards greater complexity, sophistication/richness/variety/wondrousness. Complexification is universally visible as the universe; the planets and even life continually evolve into greater and more complex states. And complexity is the visible effect of Potential: the universal Potential of everything in the universe – both what it is and what it can potentially become.

Further, on a grand scale, it does so with an eye always towards Extraordinariation (E+) down the road.

Certainly, not everything will achieve higher states of complexity. But this is not a contradiction of Potentialism. Indeed, the key word is Potential itself. Potential does not guarantee anything in actuality. Sometimes a star will fail to be born, or person will fail a test in school, a house will not be built. Potential only guarantees what something might become, not what it invariably will be – and that more often than not, higher complexity will be achieved because it is the natural drive of everything to achieve that state.

2. An appealing metaphysics might simultaneously lance a whole slew of hitherto intractable metaphysical questions or conundrums.

Potentialism was designed with one great question in mind: “What is the nature of the universe and how does it function and why?” And that is the question Potentialism set out to prove (see PotentialismTheory.com).

What Birnbaum found, though, was that once this question was answered, viewing the universe through Potentialism’s lens laid open the solution to a host of other mysteries which now made sense. Like turning a pair of binoculars around and looking through them the right way, Potentialism is able to find far off truths and bring them to light in obvious ways that are self-evident. Just some of the ancient questions it answers:

Is the universe infinite? – Potentialism addresses this issue in two ways. Firstly, it shows that the universe as we know it had a beginning, with the Big Bang, but that was just the beginning of the way the universe is now – there has always been something, Potential. Further, as the universe grows in Complexification, no end is in sight. Secondly, the universe exists within an infinite closed causal loop – governed by Complexification. Like going around a circle – while the present universe might seem finite in beginning and end, it nonetheless is a causal loop so is technically infinite within its parameters as well.

Does God exist? – To Potentialism, there is a clear and omnipresent spark and drive to the universe. Whether that drive is conscious is debatable, but its essence is Potential and potential can very well sync with the idea of a divine force, or hand, in cosmic creation.

Is the universe falling apart? – No. Despite mathematical and physical examples of entropy, entropy is not a defining force in the greater cosmic order – simply a force of change. And Potential proves that, looked at from a net perspective, change drives towards Complexification – not simplicity – and thru creation not destruction.

Is there a point to existence? – Yes. Potentialism describes the universe’s need to exist and as well for humanity to exist. Moreover, citing the inherent Complexification in humankind, Potentialism highlights humanity’s special place in the cosmic order as the highest, living form of complexity expressed by the universe (to date).

Why does the universe exist at all? – The universe exists to fulfill its own inherent goal – to play out its inherent Potential and seek out after Extraordinariation.

3. Metaphysics is not science, but it cannot be unscientific.

Perhaps more accurately, this can be stated as metaphysics is not simply physical science, but it must not exclude it. That is to say, while physical phenomena must follow the laws of science, metaphysical phenomena, which cannot be explained in such physical terms, must also be included in a complete metaphysical cosmology; as such, if you’re doing simple quantitative science, like physics – you’re not actually doing cosmology.

Again, to expand on this rule – metaphysics is, in the strict sense, science – but a branch called the formal sciences – like mathematics and philosophy. Metaphysics is a discipline to explore beyond what can be physically measured – to identify logical and evident patterns – which can only be captured by the creative/logical mind, yet stand up to logical scrutiny.

Let’s look at an example. Say we have an orange and ask some scientists to describe it:

The physicist will describe it by density and geometry; what colors it absorbs and whether it is at rest or in motion and, if so, if it is accelerating.

The botanist might describe the reproductive cycle of the orange tree or how it fits into the larger ecosystem.

The chemist might describe the fibrous tissue or the citric acid within the fruit itself.

The metaphysicist would describe each discipline’s information and perspective noted just-above on the orange; he might then talk about the emotions which its beauty, aroma and taste bring forth – as well as the orange’s place in a holistic cosmic order seeking-after Complexification, and ultimately after a universe replete with potential.

This may sound like poetry to the non-metaphysicist. But I ask you one simple question: If you’d never seen an orange, who would tell you the most about what an orange, in essence, truly is?

The physicist would only tell you there is an orange ball with a specific density. The botanist could only explain how the item developed and its purpose to the tree it came from. The chemist could only tell you about a tissue sample containing certain molecules. None of these definitions truly tell you what an orange is.

Only the metaphysicist can truly give you a good mental image of what this particular fruit is. In some ways, without thinking of it consciously, we employ metaphysics on a daily basis to communicate necessary information to live and interact with one another. It is the metaphysicist’s job to capture the essence of observations and the underlying patterns of those observations to ferret out the true nature of things.

4. Aesthetic elegance is one measure of the strength of a cosmological theory.

Einstein once famously stated that, “nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable.” While grand in its complexity, Einstein believed that the greatest truths would always be from the simplest formulas. Indeed, one of his most important contributions to modern scientific understanding came to us in one small, simple formula: E = mc².

In Einstein’s footsteps, Birnbaum enters the new millennia with the next great mathematical axiom governing the universe, but this one actually governs the entirety of the universe: Q4P^∞ → E+. But it is every bit as simple and aesthetically elegant as Einstein’s work before him.

What’s more important is that, while there are derivative theories and formula of Potentialism – the one, single Q4P formula is universally sufficient to describe the entire, overarching nature of the universe as a whole. The derivatives are simply there to provide more fine-grained understanding of this overriding, master principle. Q4P is all you need for a basic understanding of how the entire universe works as a whole.

And like Einstein’s formula before, Birnbaum’s simple formula opens up a revolution of understanding regarding our universe. Like the equation of energy, the equation of Potential describes a fundamental and pervasive force of nature and the universe. The Birnbaum formula can be applied to understand the cosmos in its totality.

5. Metaphysics attempts to explain an ever-evolving universe, a possibly infinite universe – from the dawn of pre-time outwards towards Infinity.

Evolution is at the heart of Potentialism. More than just biological evolution, Potentialism encompasses the evolution of the universe and every idea, thing and concept within it. The Birnbaum metaphysics equally describes the evolution of life and humankind as well as the evolution of the physical sciences and the physical universe.

More importantly though, it can take us where physics falters and has no answers. Potentialism describes the spiritual, divine and religious aspects of the universe. It also describes the evolution of thought, abstraction and higher thinking – giving us a concrete explanation for how and why thought led to emotion, altruism, aesthetics and beauty.

That is the true beauty of this metaphysical cosmology. It shines where simple contemporary science hits a dead end. To accept a simplistic cosmology, it is necessary to deny what obviously exists right in front of us on a day-to-day business. An elegant metaphysics, by contrast, Potentialism in particular, accepts this challenge to describe the universe as a whole in all its myriad aspects and wondrousness.

Just as importantly, Potentialism tackles head-on the infinite nature of the universe. It can explain the existence of a time before the Planck epoch of the Big Bang and, going in the opposite direction, can explain how the universe can live infinitely onwards in time as well.

Unlike the ungainly Randomness/Atheistic cosmology of the 20^th century, the 21^st century Theory of Potential pulls aside the willful shroud of ignorance Randomness Theory could not even begin to explain. Potentialism explains what contemporary physical science could never grasp. Further, Potentialism shows how simple and intuitive in nature the true answer is (see ParadigmChallenge). Potentialism is pro-science and not unscientific; it is simply ahead of the curve; as the expression goes – just slightly ahead of its time.

6. A metaphysics should hold true on myriad levels, from the micro to macro levels – and across all different phenomena.

Potentialism again shines in this aspect. The primary result of Potential – Complexification – is discernible all around us, on every level, from the most micro to the grandest macro scales. We can see it as clearly in the formations of molecules from atoms, to the creation of stars and planets and whole galaxies from those same basic building blocks. Potential is iterative at all levels of scale and universally pervasive, as it has always been predicted to be. This iteration and universality are key components of the strength of Potentialism itself. This combination of attributes is what makes Infinite Potential such an inescapable force of creation and direction in the universe.

Further, Potential holds true throughout all forms of phenomena. We can see the ascendance of increasingly complex creatures in nature up to the culmination of humankind itself. But we can also see the rising Complexification in the entire biosphere as mineral, plant and animal interact to create increasingly complex, rich, sophisticated, diverse and wondrous ecosystems.

That very interaction in the ecosystem is another level of Complexification which Potentialism predicts and describes. Commonly referred to in philosophy as teleology (cosmic purpose) – it is how individuals (plants, animals, even environments) all interact with one another in a symbiosis not unlike individual life forms to create something more complex than its individual parts – enroute to the cosmic goal of Extraordinariation.

Finally, we can see the progression of Complexification in music and art as it progressively gains in nuance and complexity over thousands of years. In Potentialism, every form of complexity matters. Potentialism views itself as an extension of science; contemporary science, however, avoids such things as art – even though they are a legitimate part of the universe – because contemporary science lacks any meaningful tools to express what it is. Metaphysics has no such limitations. What’s more, we can see rising complexity in thought and human expression itself as we grow beyond simple survival and logic to encompass concepts such as beauty, morality, love and altruism.

7. Metaphysics attempts to provide important ‘context’ and a powerful ‘platform’ for the cosmic order.

What seems distinct and separate terms to other disciplines, are all part of Summa’s overarching metascience to cosmologists: be it art, thought or emotion; or biology, physics or chemistry. All these aspects are necessarily part of the same overarching metaphysical cosmology. Potentialism lays down a fundamental truth and context through which we can make sense of the broader universe as a whole, growing and interconnected place.

And that is the strength of metaphysics and Potentialism. It transcends any individual science and even science itself. This is necessary because the universe itself transcends concrete science. To deny that thought, for instance, is a key part of the universe, is to fundamentally not understand what the word “universe” even means.

Contemporary scientists may argue that thoughts and emotions have no place in cosmology. But consider the most simple of demonstrations – altruism. A person, noting a stranger is a quarter short for bus fare, hands them one so they can get on the bus and be on their way. The person who gave the coin will never see that individual again. It does not benefit the giver in any way and actually cost them, albeit not much.

But that simple act of pure altruism is enough to wreck an entire paradigm built exclusively on a pure physics-based cosmology. If the prime mover of the action was altruism, than it was based purely in thought. That is, a thought caused a physical change in the universe – the passing of a coin. It may seem like little, but it is a ‘game changer’ in cosmology. Our 21^st century metaphysics gives thoughts substance because thoughts can interact with matter and energy.

Potentialism is the platform for the great cosmic order. It describes the base of the birth of the universe as well as the mechanism and the architecture driving it towards its future – an infinite place of ever increasing Complexification. It’s destination – Extraordinariation.

Simultaneous Solution

INTRODUCTION

Summa Metaphysica respectfully proposes an original
and simultaneous solution to these key inter-related
classic problems in philosophy/metaphysics/theology.

COSMOLOGY –
The fount, “origins,” evolution, structure and prime
dynamics of the cosmos

THEOGONY –
The so-to-speak “origins” of the “Infinite Divine”
or more broadly, of the Primal Force of the cosmos,
(if such exists)

TELEOLOGY –
The purpose/end-goal of the universe and existence
(if indeed, there is purpose)

THEODICY –
The classic Problem of Evil:
If there is a God who is all-powerful and all-merciful,
why is there (gross) evil

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z4:

Where is Option B?

Summa proposes a unified metaphysics….
call it Option A

But, where is the competing Option B?

Obviously, we have questions with regards Option A.

But, with Option A, we do seem to have an elegant, overarching, seemingly seamless, powerful, crisp metaphysics which seems to elegantly finesse an almost endless series of issues – cosmology, cosmogony, theodicy, theology, evolutionary biology, teleology – and on and on….

Option A happens to nicely dovetail as well with components of the Torah and with key components of Lurianic Kabbalah – aside from being universalistic and humanistic and empowering – to all.

So, therefore the next obvious step might be to stack our Option A against Option B.

But, what is Option B? And, where is Option B?

Which is the salient – contender, challenger, old champion?

You might say that there are 100+ contenders?
And that they are too numerous to count?

OK, but which is the salient contender?

No salient contender?

That is the point.

While Summa makes numerous assertions, they all dovetail nicely into the Potential framework – its unifying ‘spinal column’ – and the overall construct is philosophically elegant.

It is not clear which other metaphysics challenges it.

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z13:

Major Problems in Science
[Selected Quotes from
*ON BEING**^a
by Dr. Peter Atkins*^b]

“The first great question of being is one that has probably entertained us all at one time or another: where did it, the universe, all come from? How did it begin?…” (p. 1)

“There are, in fact, three related profound questions to address in the context of creation. One is the mechanism of the coming into being of the universe: what actually happened at the beginning? Another is whether there is any meaning to the question of what preceded the universe and had, in some sense, the potential to become a universe. Here we are confronted by the linguistically and conceptually engaging question of whether absolutely nothing can have potency to become something. The third is whether an agent was needed to trigger the process of cosmogenesis, the process of turning that nothing into what is to all appearances something, or can nothing turn itself into something on its own? All three questions sound as though they might fall within the
range of science to answer. A fourth question, why there is a universe, is rather different, but still apparently very interesting….” (p. 2)

“As a result of their intrinsic caution, almost every scientist is wisely unwilling to express a view about the events accompanying the inception of the universe. Quite honestly, they haven’t a clue….” (p. 5)

“The task before science in this connection will be to show how something can come from nothing without intervention. No one has the slightest idea whether that can happen and, if so, how it can come about….” (p. 11)

“The unfolding of absolutely nothing—what out of reverence for the absence of anything, including empty space, we are calling Nothing—into something is a problem of the profoundest difficulty and currently far beyond the reach of science. It is, however, a target at which science must aim even though to some, even to scientists of a pessimistic or perhaps just realistic bent, it would seem to be for ever out of science’s reach….” (p. 12)

“Presumably before the creation, when there was Nothing, there was no charge; so the coming into being of the universe was accompanied by the separation of ‘no charge’ into opposites. Charge was not created at the creation: electrical Nothing separated into equal and opposite charges….” (pp. 13-14)

“I promised to return to the question of why there is a universe. What is its purpose? Something so big, complex, and all embracing some hold, must be there for a reason….” (p. 18)

“…science is a ceaseless probing with a view to overturning authority….science, though delighted by the glorious complexity of the world, seeks the simplicity that lies beneath it….science is extraordinarily difficult, as it seeks covert mechanism….science is ever thrusting forward, wriggling into new modes of understanding,…science gives an opportunity for humanity to achieve the aspirations it already has and opens its eyes to new ones….” (pp. 26-27)

“A scientist, the arch-descendent of Occam, looks first for the simplest explanation, then builds elaborations only if the explanation’s barren, rocky simplicity proves inadequate….” (p. 33)

“One problem with evolution is how it began. Competition between primitive organisms is all very well, the triumph of one message over another, but how did matter step across the national bridge from the inorganic to the organic in the first place? …It would be much more satisfying—satisfying of curiosity, intellectually satisfying, and possibly spiritually satisfying—if we could find a physical process by which that gap was bridged, presumably without the apparent intervention of an agent….” (pp. 38-39)

“…Scientists are still puzzled about how this complexity [of life] emerged under the impact, presumably, of natural selection, and it remains a problem of evolution. That is not to say that there are not many ideas about how it came about. Just as for the origin of life itself, which is still a real puzzle, evolutionary biologists are not without ideas, but have not yet identified which, if any, is valid….” (pp. 60-61)

*a Peter Atkins, On Being (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.1-2, 5, 11-14, 18, 26-27, 33, 38-39, 60-61.

*b Scientist Peter Atkins is the author of almost 70 books, including Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, Four Laws That Drive the Universe, and the world-renowned textbook Physical Chemistry. A Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford, he has been a visiting professor in France, Israel, New Zealand, and China, and continues to lecture widely throughout the world.

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z18:

A Fix-It “Conceptual Plug”?

The Summa series started out with God and Evil (1988). In that work it was demonstrated how Q4P^∞ potentially might not just solve the classic philosophical-religious conundrum of Theodicy, but would seem to simultaneously solve as well several other key philosophical issues in metaphysics.

As pointed-out in this volume, God and Good, many/most/all major fields – not just Metaphysics – would seem to have gaping holes in them. The appendix relating to noted scientist Atkins, for instance, highlights via excerpts from his works – gaping holes in the physical sciences.

This ‘gaping-hole’ issue ranges through Astrophysics, Biology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Theology, Cosmology, Life Sciences and on-and-on.

The key fields – and probably all related fields – have major gaps.

Now, adroitly plugging Q4P^∞/Extraordinariation into the respective gaps, seems to potentially close-the-gaps. (Is that the world’s most grandiose assertion or what?)

Thus, we have an intriguing potential simultaneous solution on a very grand scale.

Are we catching your attention yet?

Several examples:

Evolutionary Biology: What drives Evolution?

Physiology: What drives Consciousness?

Astrophysics: What ignited/drove the Big Bang, in particular?

Cosmology: What ignited creation and maintains the Cosmos more generally?

Metaphysics: What is the purpose of Man, the cosmos?

Astronomy: Why is the cosmic order so wondrous?

Life Sciences: What drives Life? What is Life?

What makes Life so tenacious?

Anthropology: what drives the ‘Ascent of Man’?

Love Science: What drives Love?

and, of course, our initial inquiry into the Theodicy question-

Religious Philosophy: Theodicy question – If there is a God who is all-powerful and merciful, why is there gross evil?

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z53:

A Compelling Case

One cannot expect to clinically prove a dynamic Framing Belief* of the Cosmic Order – of the overarching/infinite magnitude of Quest for Potential^∞.

But ideally one could provide a rather compelling circumstantial/supporting/empirical case.

Perhaps we have done so.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that ideally when solid circumstantial evidence is presented in court, it would be like a spider’s web – so strong that nothing could hope to escape. According to my consulting litigators, in an ideal legal cobweb, all the inferences and implications are internally consistent – like the fabric of the web.

Ideally, a powerful case would clearly trump competing scenarios.

Perhaps we have done so here.

There is no (repeat: no) contradictory evidence to Summa’s hypothesis. Not one iota of contradictory information. After 5,000+ years of accumulated data and wisdom – across a myriad of fields.

Over a 40+ year period – I have quite-carefully reviewed field-after-field – to reality-check Summa. Does Summa – overlaid over the particular field – enhance the field – or contradict the field?

In each and every case, overlaying Summa either has a neutral effect or, more often, enhances the field. Often, Summa radically enhances the field. There are no exceptions. Meaning, there are no instances where Summa detracts from the field.

Thus, on weighing all the evidence, the probability that Summa is essentially on-the-mark, is quite high. And the possibility that it is totally off-base, is quite remote.

Moreover, there is massive and compelling affirming evidence – from multiple directions, avenues and fields – and from careful, direct and empirical observation – to buttress Summa’s hypothesis. One has only to objectively weigh the hypothesis.

In addition, as explicated, there is de facto no competing metaphysics.

So I have presented.

There are no eyewitnesses coming forward from the Creation-point. With regards the Creation point, Summa has made-a-case for circumstantial and deductive (and spiritually consonant) evidence.

And contemporaneously, we are all, indeed, very direct eyewitnesses. And we can all carefully evaluate the contemporary situation – across the panoply of fields – and in our own lives – through a Summa lens.

Very straightforward: Does it work?

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z70:

Reprise

Respectfully, the proposed Summa paradigm appears for all intensive purposes to be so-to-speak bulletproof – vis à vis its key assertions.

The initial exposition of the Quest for Potential^∞ concept in 1988 (via Summa I) has withstood 25+ years of global scrutiny.

No vulnerability or weak point has been discerned.

Question: Is there another viable game in town?

Those insistent – for whatever combination of reasons – on resolutely preserving the pre-Summa status quo, have only limited options, and none of these are good options. History may not treat them overly kindly.

We respectfully believe that Summa will prevail, because its core themes reflect the eternal realities of the cosmic order.

Juxtaposition:

Potentialism v. Randomness
( via 20 questions )

Potentialism theory – crafted and championed by conceptual theorist David Birnbaum of Mahattan – proposes that Infinite Potential is eternal, overarching and transcendent. According to this original proposition Infinite Potential marshals the equations of physics-math to reach their fullest actualization via igniting and driving the cosmic order towards ultimate potentialities. Note that quantum physicist Seth Lloyd of MIT, as well, positions the equations of physics-math as centerpiece in the creation of the cosmic order. ( see https://www.summametaphysica.com/lloyd-of-m-i-t/ ).

Randomness theory – championed heavily by the British atheistic academic community – rejects any transcending dynamic or any purpose to the cosmic order whatsoever. According to this ‘theory’ all is random happenstance.

Although Potentialism takes no ‘hard stance’ vis a’ vis religion, it does provide a potentially rich metaphysical anchoring for it. As well, Potentialism so to speak ‘solves’ key issues in religious philosophy. The atheistic community has hyper-aggressively (typically anonymously) vainly endeavored to de-legitimize both Birnbaum’s treatise, as well as the April 2012 four-day international academic conference at Bard College focused on it ( see www.conference1000.com). The attacks have not ‘stuck’. Indeed, they seem to have ‘backfired’ on the ‘stone throwers’.

Let us step back a moment at look at the metaphysics chessboard. Roughly ten inter-related classic metaphysics questions have been at the fore of discussion from time immemorial, and roughly another ten new ones vex the academic/scientific/theological community today. The iconic classic philosophical and scientific figures – from yesteryear and today – have grappled with these issues one way or another in their respective writings and discourses.

Respectively, none of their overarching schemas, where they have been proposed, have been accepted by the academic community today. The field has been ‘wide open’ for 5,000+ years – up until Summa Metaphysica’s Potentialism Theory (1988), that is. Let us look at a selection of twenty core metaphysics questions and see how Birnbaum’s Theory of Potential – and then the entrenched establishment’s Theory of Randomness – comes down on each of these twenty clearly defined issues.

1) Why is there anything at all?
Birnbaum: The cosmos seeks its optimal/maximal potential
Establishment: random chance

2) Is there an eternal dynamic? a so-to-speak ‘key’ to the universe? An underlying supra-dynamic/supra-imperative?
Birnbaum: Yes, Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: No, none

3) What drives the cosmic order?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: random chance

4) What ignited the Big Bang?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: Random accident
playing-out across infinite universes

5) The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the universe ‘just right’ for life?
Birnbaum: Life is a primary goal of uest for Infinite Potential both as an intermediate end in-and-of-itself and as a platform for extraordinariation.
Establishment: random chance in our universe

6) Why does ‘judicious design’ seem to permeate our universe?
Birnbaum: Because it is designed and iterated by Infinite Potential
Establishment: any seeming ‘design’ is an illusion

7) Why does there seem to be a ‘hidden reality’ to our universe?
Birnbaum: Because there is one, Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: Fantasy/religious propaganda

8) Why does nature seem to have a ‘mathematical subtext’?
Birnbaum: Because the equations, marshaled by Infinite Potential,
design nature ongoing
Establishment: no answer

9) Is there a ‘script’ to the universe?
Birnbaum: There is a so-to-speak work-in-progress script as Infinite Potential iterates ongoing to optimize potential (and advance towards extraordinariation. )
Establishment: no, none, all is random

10) If there is a God what is the essence of God?
Birnbaum: Potential; God is the God of Potential
Establishment: No God or any transcendent force

11) What was the catalyst for life?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: random accident

12) What sustains life?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential
Establishment: no answer

13) Why is there a virtual kaleidoscope of life?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential/Extraordinariation
Establishment: no answer

14) What drives Evolution?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential ( which includes genetic survival)
Establishment: genetic survival alone and random chance

15) What drives (non-evolutionary) self-organization and self-patternization (my term), like snowflakes all being unique?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential/extraordinariationm
Establishment: no answer

16) Why is the universe ‘bio-friendly’?
Birbnbaum: Because bio is a great platform for Potential/extraordinariation. The more precise statement would be that the universe is ‘bio-oriented’.
Establishment: no answer

17) What was the catalyst for consciousness?
Birnbaum: Quest for Infinite Potential/extraordinariation
Establishment: Random chance

18) Does Man have a purpose?
Birnbaum: To quest for his/her optimal potential
Establishment: No / none

19) Does Mankind have a purpose?
Birnbaum: To quest for its optimal potential
Establishment: No / none

20) Is there a purpose to the universe?
Birnbaum: The universe seeks its fullest possible potential
Establishment: no purpose

Thus, the battle lines are clear-cut. Birnbaum layers one single elegant concept – Infinite Potential – across the entire spectrum of issues – and across the timeless cosmic continuum. Aside from the one issue of Evolution (i.e. one issue out of twenty), the Establishment does not even purport to provide one single answer. [And its (genetic survival) ‘explanation’ of Natural Selection is ‘wanting’ to put it gently. ] Thus, for 19 of the 20 issues, Randomness offers no answer at all, whereas Birnbaum is elegantly deploying the same precise core theme – Infinite Potential – across all twenty questions: the quintessential ‘simultaneous solution’.

The contrast is stark, to put it mildly. One can now readily understand why to the proponents of randomness, Birnbaum is the ultimate intellectual threat, to be stopped at-all-costs.

The Establishment cannot attack Birnbaum as it has attacked the ‘intelligent design’ proponents as being a ‘stalking horse’ for Creationism, as he clearly is not.
Furthermore, Birnbaum methodically and clearly addresses all key issues ( see in-depth 18-panel www.sequence1000.com ). The Establishment does not.

Moreover, Birnbaum clearly lays-out ‘his case’ in a 22+ panel presentation ( see paradigmchallenge ). The Establishment offers no such blueprint. It primarily disses challenging paradigms.

Birnbaum’s construct is a ‘lean and mean’ pure intellectual play. It is so to speak ‘fat free’. It is, as well, unburdened by any ‘baggage’ from any dogma. It is ‘ideology-free’ – unlike Randomness which has allowed a global lay ideology to merge with academia – a volatile mix.

Birnbaum is proposing Infinite Potential as new ‘framing concept’, i.e. as the core ‘cosmic imperative’. In other words, he proposes Infinite Potential as the underlying bedrock dynamic of the cosmic order.

If Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica treatise ( see www.philosophy1000.com) is even roughly on-the- mark, the consequence would, indeed be a profound grand unification of spirituality, science and philosophy. Most fields of study and most dimensions of intellectual inquiry would be impacted.

As a consequence of Birnbaum’s offering-up his cosmic centerpiece ‘potential’ in 1988 (Summa I ) and steadfastly advancing the theory both via Summa II (2005) and via symposiums and other modalities, many notables view Birnbaum as the progenitor/originator/founder of a new field, Potentialism ( see www.codecoverstory.com ). The author is clear to point out, however, that he views his role as a ‘supporting’ one, and not as a stand-alone field or belief system.

Andrei Alyokhin, Associate Professor of Biololgy and Ecology at University of Maine wrote December 2012: “It is reasonable to propose the quest for Potential as a working hypothesis for explaining the impetus behind the cosmic dynamic.”(see Summametaphysica.com/alyokhin/).

Spinoza v. Birnbaum

Collision in Time

By Samna | Posted April 9, 2014

Let us juxtapose iconic philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677 CE) with cutting-edge contemporary conceptual theorist David Birnbaum (1950-present). You know them as two noteworthy metaphysics specialists, Baruch Spinoza of Amsterdam and the contemporary David Birnbaum of New York: Strong-willed intellectual revolutionary iconoclasts who challenged the entrenched status quo. Centuries and continents apart, both of these intellectually disciplined, but daring, thinkers sprang from within the Orthodox Jewish tradition; both pledged their allegiance to universalism; both gave full-fledged respect and honor – and Sabbath Observance – to their Jewish Orthodox tradition, even while their philosophical and metaphysics treatises dramatically branched-away from Orthodoxy over their respective lifespans; both published groundbreaking philosophical treatises; and both experienced virulent personal attacks from assorted cliques of zealot defenders of the ‘entrenched orthodoxy.’

A look at these two philosophical ‘Jedi masters’ demonstrates just how far the study of philosophy has come over the last three centuries. Spinoza and Birnbaum – each conceptually nimble, each respectively armed with a major treatise, separated by 350 years chronologically. They each launch major fields in the philosophical arena: Spinoza’s Determinism, Birnbaum’s Potentialism.

Their theories are each groundbreaking and unique, but there are also some extraordinary similarities. Across the centuries, their treatises ‘speak to each other,’ as if the treatises themselves are having a formal debate. Of course Birnbaum speaks last and is aware that Spinoza cannot rebut. As a consequence, Birnbaum is quite deferential to Spinoza.

Spinoza, the father of Determinism, set the groundwork for future Renaissance philosophers. He wrote his masterpiece “Ethics” in a powerful voice that provoked new ways of thinking. Spinoza believed that God was somewhat identical to Nature and the natural order. This God is an unknowable, impersonal entity who created everything as perfection, even evil. Spinoza states that evil is not deviance from perfection, but a part of it.

Spinoza’s writings are not anti-religious, but his brazen voice and imperious attitude quickly caught the attention of the local rabbinic council, which excommunicated him for ‘his attitude’ when he was 23. He was even threatened with a knife outside a synagogue. It is just as well then, that Spinoza ended his formal education at age 17, providing himself some physical distance from the establishments he quarreled with. Despite his self-alienation from formal schooling, ‘outsider’ Spinoza has had a profound impact on the global intellectual world for the centuries subsequent.

A couple hundred years after Spinoza, ‘outsider’ David Birnbaum founded and championed Potentialism, which radically branches away from Spinoza’s Determinism. Since 1988 Birnbaum has sequentially published a 3-volume treatise Summa Metaphysica (1988, 2005, 2014), which has come to be used as a course text at over a dozen universities. This breathtaking journey into Potentialism has tantalized many globally, but radically threatened a small segment. In any event, the theory is in position to shake the world. Potentialism is in that rare category of – simple, yet profound. Over a dozen journals have featured Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica and its Theory of Potential. For theory core, see https://www.summametaphysica.com/theory-core/.
Birnbaum proposes that his signature theme of Infinite Potential (Quest for Potential infinitely nested) gifts humans complete freedom and that interference is not possible in a cosmic order underpinned by Potentialism. According to Potentialism the universe of necessity has in it both good and evil, a duality which must always exist; good and evil must inevitably spar. If there were no possibility for evil in the universe, the universe could not have been created in-the-first-place.

Birnbaum posits both an eternal dynamic (Infinite Potential) and a cosmic purpose (the quest for Infinite Potential) while Spinoza develops neither of these major issues. Birnbaum is acutely aware of the apparent major gaps in Spinozan Determinism, but only obliquely notes that deficit.

The extraordinary works and lives of Spinoza and Birnbaum converge and diverge on major conceptual areas. In the ‘convergence’ department both believe that everything spanning the cosmic order is interconnected – past, present and future; both believe that a transcendent lattice-work unifies all life; both believe that an overarching force drives the cosmic order; and both very clearly leave open the metaphysical possibility of describing this force ultimately as God.

There are interesting parallels in their life sagas as well. Each writes as an aside to their respective secular professions; each writes to a world audience; each has deep scholarship in the historic field; each has erudition in-depth in the myriad Jewish philosophical and mystical sources; each crafted an original philosophical paradigm; each introduce their ideas relatively early in life; each declined teaching positions in philosophy; and both believe in the treatise-form as the ideal ‘teaching modality.’

While each, in his own way, proposes a total philosophical revolution – the two theories are conceptually radically different. Spinoza’s universe is cold and deterministic, devoid of freedom; Birnbaum’s universe is rich and organic, a vibrant universe of maximum Potential and freedom.

Birnbaum asserts that his core philosophical paradigm can be employed by the spectrum of mankind: archetypes Religious Man, Spiritual Man and Secular Man. Humans, as an expression of Infinite Potential and the divine, have the freedom to choose their own expression of their Potentiality. This leads to a central tenet of Potentialism: Mankind has Free Will.

Spinoza’s Determinism is something quite different, asserting that people are led by their own hard-wired emotions and that those emotions were put in place by God. Spinoza states that active, strong emotions cannot be overcome by reason, only by stronger emotions. In that way we are products of the universe, directly and inexorably guided by our God-given desires. According to Determinism, mankind does not truly have Free Will.

Likewise, Birnbaum and Spinoza disagree on the nature of evil. To Birnbaum, Evil is real. In a cosmos predicated on Potential, however, it cannot be countered by an intervening God. In contrast, Spinoza asserts Evil is not real; it just appears that way for lack of understanding.

Interestingly, concepts of both Spinoza’s Ethics (c. 1677) and Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica (first volume 1988) are later present in Programming the Universe (2006), a book by ‘outlier’ MIT Professor of Quantum Mechanics Seth Lloyd. Lloyd believes that the universe is like a super quantum computer. His concepts are highly complementary to Birnbaum’s interlaced and perpetually iterating universe. In fact, Birnbaum’s Quest for Potential theory (1988) nicely sets the conceptual stage for the Lloyd’s quantum computing universe in which the universe is constantly self-iterating and evolving, as well.

Birnbaum notes vis à vis Lloyd – “While the cosmos may appear to have been mechanistic in its early stages, its ongoing work-in-progress goal is far from mechanistic. The universe sets-the-stage for – and proactively seeks – optimization of the multiplicity of venues and dimensions, including the aesthetic and emotional and possibly the spiritual… The mechanistic aspect of our universe is necessary but not sufficient. The mechanics are but a platform or base from which Quest for Potential advances forth, pressing the iterative limits of extraordinariation.”

In November 2013, erudite British journalist Oliver Burkeman, echoing the iconic French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (2006) described Birnbaum’s metaphysics as “remarkable and profound” (and as “not unscientific”). Similarly, University of Maine Professor of Biology and Ecology Andrei Alyokhin, in November 2012, forthrightly endorses the theory: “David Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica is a major philosophical contribution to the study of Being…Summa represents a bold attempt to formulate a unifying concept of the Universe……it is reasonable to propose the Quest for Potential as a working hypothesis for explaining the impetus behind the cosmic dynamic.”

Spinoza and Birnbaum are paradigm-breaking philosophers who have shaped the study of philosophy. Both their works can be found in university classrooms across the country and the world – from UCLA on the West Coast to Yeshiva University and Brandeis on the East Coast to Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Built from a history of thinking, communicating, extrapolating, and creative thinking, the working hypothesis Quest for Potential^∞ is a radical departure from Determinism. This newly-proposed concept is not unlikely to serve as a very key building block for future levels of understanding. Potentialism marks a seminal point of philosophical advance; it is a paradigm challenge of the first order.

Singularity

The Singularity of the Big Bang:

David Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica

By Mark Davis

According to all-concerned – mainstream physics/astrophysics as well as Potentialism aficionados – the Big Bang burst forth from the ‘Singularity’ – a point of infinite density.

But where did the ‘Singularity’ come from – and why? What is happening here?

Mainstream physics essentially has ‘no clue.’

What would cause this Singularity to burst forth into what we consider the universe? This is where physics loses its way.

It happened, but why did it happen? What was the catalyst? What ‘reality’ preceded it?

Deploying Potentialism Theory (aka Quest for Potential^∞ Theory aka Q4P-Theory) to hypothesize what happened, Birnbaum gives us the ‘0’-Point Portal. The ‘0’-Point Portal gives us a metaphysical understanding of the pathway of the Singularity. Potentialism delineates/hypothesizes not only the what but the why.

Potentialism Theory (1988, 2005, 2014) of metaphysicist David Birnbaum deals with this crucial issue seamlessly. See https://www.summametaphysica.com/the-0-point-portal/.

Per Birnbaum, the Singularity was the inflection point between a purely metaphysical cosmic order, and the introduction of a physical universe – our own. It is, according to Summa Metaphysica, the metaphysical realm making its bid for actualization, and ultimate Potential. It was, in other words, the ‘Great Escape.’ The metaphysical realm had plotted its escape – from out of the void – and into an ever-expanding physical universe of its own ongoing creation.

Per Birnbaum, the Singularity/Big Bang was the optimally-perceived modality/route/play for the metaphysical to launch its escape; the plan was to create a dynamic platform (our expanding universe) to play-out its fullest Potential (actualization and realization); it was perceived by the metaphysical realm as the optimal play/pathway towards maximum/optimal Potential.
To this very day, the ‘Great Escape’ unfolds. To this very day, the extraordinary cosmic drama unfolds as our physical universe gobbles-up metaphysical space.

From Summa’s overarching metaphysical perspective, the Big Bang is the ‘launch’ of the suis generis Singularity from the metaphysical > physical via the ‘0’-Point Portal gateway; in contemporary times, the unfolding physical – now with complex life forms on-board – is now ever-expanding into the void, creating new universe-space for Potential realization.

We are aware of the basic contours of the (Big Bang) denouement; we are not aware of the stages – lasting perhaps eons – which led up to ‘launch.’ For our part, we are not so brave as to speculate on the details.

And just where is this all heading? It is all heading enroute towards fullest Complexification or C+; Meaning? Complexification is ever-ascending complexity/sophistication/richness/integration/variety/wondrousness.
And what is the ultimate goal/horizon?
It is the hypothesized Extraordinariation (E+ for short) – optimal super-Complexification.
In other words, Extraordinariation is ultimate horizon/goal of potential realization – see www.summametaphysica.com/extraordinariation/. [Deep breath. No one said this would be easy.]

The Singularity is the ‘cosmic engine of change’ which emerges from the Birnbaum–hypothesized ‘0’ Point Portal. The Singularity launches through the ‘0’-Point Portal ‘bridge/portal’ and traverses from metaphysical to physical.

As well, the Singularity itself morphs from metaphysical to physical. Meaning, we only see the physical end-point ‘face of the singularity; we do not see the embryonic genesis stages, presumably more metaphysical than physical.

The denouement is, indeed, the Genesis Point/Big Bang > our unfolding universe.

See SuperLaw1000.com and xQuantumUniverse.com.

The elegance of the ‘0’-Point Portal hypothesis lies within its natural and elegant flow within the context of Potentialism Theory (aka Quest for Potential^∞ Theory aka Q4P-Theory). The theory posits ever-ascending ‘potentialization’ arcing from out-of-time onto time (see PotentialismTheory.com).

Thus, the Summa-hypothesized ‘0’-Point Portal potentially ‘solves’/resolves several metaphysical/scientific conundrums: (See also xQuantum1000.com)

a) What is the origin of time?
b) Where/how did Physical reality emerge from?
c) What is the Singularity?
d) What was the catalyst of the Singularity?
e) Was there a purpose to the Singularity?

Via ‘0’-Point Portal hypothesis, yet once again, Summa proposes a simultaneous solution to a cluster of ‘problems’: (See also www.summametaphysica.com/simultaneous-solution/)

a) Time originates with ‘reality’ post-Singularity
b) Physical reality emerges from the ‘0’-Point Portal (aka the Genesis Point).
c) The Singularity is the construct of the metaphysical realms to make-its-bid for fuller actualization/realization via the ‘physical world.’
d) The metaphysical realms ached-for actualization; the Singularity was their bid to launch a physical/universe platform for reality
e) The evolvement of ever-greater Potential-actualization.

The universe ever-increases in complexity (more precisely, via intermediate dynamic Complexification) as it seeks an ultimate, end goal of super-complexity which Birnbaum calls Extraordinariation. See Glossary1000.com.

The reason mainstream physics misses the mark isn’t a lack of talent, it’s a lack of conceptual tools. The (greater) Cosmic Order is metaphysical. Our own universe, a physical-reality entity, is only a part of the totality of reality.

In the absence of an overarching metaphysics, contemporary physicists are stuck in the physical. Contemporary physics is simply insufficient in its breadth to fully answer such questions about why the universe is as it is, or how it got here, or where it is headed.

To re-cap, per Birnbaum, the universe reverberates from the metaphysical to the physical; the inflection point is the Singularity of the Big Bang. The arc is from Infinite (infinitely dense ‘Singularity’) to the ascending finite (e.g. Mankind) and, again towards the Infinite – ultimate super-complexity and extraordinary – Birnbaum’s hypothesized Extraordinariation state. See TheoryCore.com.

Potentialism Theory: Dovetailing: MIT & NYU

Recent hi-level academic works dovetailing with Birnbaum’s Potentialism Theory:

Programming the Universe (Knopf, 2006) by Professor of Quantum Mechanics Seth Lloyd of MIT;
Mind & Cosmos (Oxford Press, 2012) by Professor of Philosophy & Law Thomas Nagel of NYU;
Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014) by Professor of Physics Max Tegmark of MIT.
See xMIT1000 and see Checkmate.

See Summametaphysica.com/summa-kabbalah/ for Kabbalistic parallel to the above.

Stem Cells Univ. News

Potentialism & Stem Cells

Posted by: univ7280 May 22, 2014 in Uncategorized Comments Off on Potentialism & Stem Cells

Potentialism is the crowning achievement of philosopher, independent scholar and cosmologist David Birnbaum. Within his three-part Summa Metaphysica treatise (1988, 2005, 2014) lie the core principles of Potentialism. Unlike the previous decades’ favored Randomness Theory, Potentialism draws back the veil of ignorance on the driving force behind consciousness, life and the very cosmos itself. While others have only found chaos, randomness and decay in the natural order of the world, Potentialism offers an overarching conceptualization of a universe which is very much growing, in size, in force and in complexity/sophistication.

At the center of Potentialism is hypothesized infinite Quest for infinite Potential (Q4P is the shorthand notation.) The ultimate goal of the cosmos is what Birnbaum calls Extraordinariation (E+ is the shorthand notation) the ultimate realization of Potential. Thus, the overarching equation would be Q4P^∞→E+.

Q4P represents a cosmic Quest for Infinite Potential. It’s what drives both particles to become molecules and amoeba to evolve into humankind. Q4P both sets the laws of physics and redefines them to create an ever larger, more complex/sophisticated universe. Q4P is all-pervasive, infinitely recursive and nested, life-generating and affirming, and able to pivot its course to optimize its potentials.

Q4P (Infinite Quest for Infinite Potential) is what generates Quantum Jump events (QJ is the shorthand notation). A Quantum Jump event is a significant/watershed/critical-mass cosmic complexification/sophistication event on-the-march towards Extraordinariation (E+)
QJ events have been shown to be cyclic in the cosmos’ history. It can be thought of as when Q4P reaches a threshold of critical mass. At such moments, historically, we see fundamental shifts expressed in the physical universe as a higher level of complexity/sophistication – shifts in the nature of the universe itself and objects within it. Such events can be seen in the splitting between Newtonian and quantum physics as the universe cooled; the formation of atoms; the birth of molecules; the rise of biological life, and the birth of intelligent humankind, as but some examples.

On the journey towards Extraordinariation

But, to be very clear, these moments of Quantum Jump (and higher complexity/sophistication) do not represent ultimate Extraordinariation. As miraculous as the formation of the atom might be, E+ is a state of infinite complexity/sophistication. Is it even achievable? To Potentialists, the answer is maybe. It is not answerable or even properly definable as a question in this universe at our current level of complexity/sophistication. Humankind, by definition, is not currently equipped to fully understand the full criteria for Extraordinariation. The author of the term is quite clear on this point.

But, what is important is that the drive given by Q4P causes the cosmos to strive towards Extraordinariation and, like many things, it is the journey that defines us and is of ultimate importance, not the destination. As for the events we commonly label extraordinary, we don’t have to wait for the rules of physics to grow in complexity/sophistication. We can see smaller reverberations of E+ all around us on a daily basis.

The Q4P of Stem Cells

In fact, we can see Q4P at work constantly within one of the most basic of building blocks of human and animal life – the stem cell. Indeed stem cells seem to be a biological embodiment of metaphysical Q4P itself.

Stem cells have a fairly unique skill called pluripotency. What pluripotency means is that the cells have both the ability to self-replicate or become any type of cell in the body. Let’s see how this measures up to the requirements of Q4P.

Stem cells are the precursors of all cells in the body. As such, they are pervasive, a requirement of Potentiality. They are undifferentiated, meaning they have the Potential to become any cell in the body. This is important if we are to derive a direct connection between Q4P and the stem cell. This means they qualify as permeating the production of life – not just a particular function of life. Furthermore, they are, like Potential, blank slates of pure Potentiality. And they have the ability, and are used to, create new life as well as add to an existing one.

Being an expression of Q4P means they must be pervasive and an overarching force in their function. Indeed, stem cells fit this criteria perfectly. They are the foundation of all cells in the human body. Additionally, as they are pluripotent, they can even procreate – splitting and creating more of themselves, thereby increasing their Potentiality in a lateral sense. So, they are clearly capable of realizing greater and greater Potential in the form of replication. This is important because Q4P describes the infinite of the current Potential as well as the nested future Potential. To state the issue more clearly, the stem cell has the ability to increase itself (self-reproduction) as well as to create new cells with their own potential (differentiation) – thereby expressing an Infinite Quest for Infinite Potential.

Most importantly though, stem cells would have to express Quantum Jumps > E+. However, we see this clearly happening through differentiation. Differentiation occurs as a complexity/sophistication event when stem cells specialize as a result of reaching a Quantum Jump level.

In fact, the creation of a child can be viewed as a string of Q4P and Quantum Jump events. A fertilized egg is an event expressed by the parents’ Potential. The resulting Quantum Jump triggers a complexity/sophistication event – conception, causing the stem cells to increase their complexity/sophistication and shape the biological microcosm being formed as a new human being.

This only leaves the question of recursive infinite Potential. But, as we already know, the life created by those stem cells will mature and gain the ability to procreate itself – ad infinitum, thereby satisfying the infinitely recursive rule of the Quest for Potential.

Of course, Potentialism is, at its heart, cosmology. Indeed, Potentialism can be seen clearly at work from the formations of galaxies and stars, to the formation of atoms and molecules. But its true strength lies in its pervasiveness. It can be seen just as clearly in the fractal patterns of trees, the teleological rhythms of the earth and the very building blocks of the human body – making the tiny stem cell not just a biological embodiment of the overarching dynamic Q4P, but as well just one more link in an endless chain of evidence of the Quest for Infinite Potential all around us which drives the universe onwards to greater and greater complexity/sophistication – and ultimately towards Extraordinariation.

Q4P + DNA

David Birnbaum’s Philosophical Breakthrough:

Q4P and DNA: Potentialism and Blueprint of Life

Scienceray

Jubilee piece

Big Brother?

The Curious Case of Randomness Theory

A Cancer in Academe

Commentary piece

The Closing of the Scientific Mind

David Gelernter / Jan. 1, 2014

Self-Actualization

Ultimate Self-Actualization

By mariialv | Posted February 9, 2015

S. African-Janus

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

7 CRITERIA

The 7 Criteria for a Great Metaphysics:

David Birnbaum’s Elegant Philosophy Paradigm

Cosmology, Metaphysics & Philosophy: See sample testimonial on Summa Metaphysica, David Birnbaum’s philosophy treatise:

David Birnbaum Philosophy

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

Appendices from Summa Metaphysica II : God & Good

relating to –

Simultaneous Solution

INTRODUCTION

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z4:

Where is Option B?

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z13:

Major Problems in Science [Selected Quotes from ON BEING*a by Dr. Peter Atkins*b]

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z18:

A Fix-It “Conceptual Plug”?

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z53:

A Compelling Case

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z70:

Reprise

David Birnbaum Philosophy

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

Spinoza v. Birnbaum

Collision in Time

By Samna | Posted April 9, 2014

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

Q4P theory

David Birnbaum Philosophy

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

Singularity

The Singularity of the Big Bang:

David Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica

Stem Cells Univ. News

Potentialism & Stem Cells

Posted by: univ7280 May 22, 2014 in Uncategorized Comments Off on Potentialism & Stem Cells

Major Problems in Science
[Selected Quotes from
*ON BEING**^a
by Dr. Peter Atkins*^b]

Stem Cells
Univ. News