Science – Harmonia Philosophica

Grain… Seed… Born!

Researchers examined stable isotopes from bone collagen and dental enamel to reconstruct the diets of ancient Mongolians. Findings challenge the popular notion of a completely nomadic prehistoric population, linking grain cultivation with the success of the Xiongnu Empire (c. 200 BCE-150 CE) and showing continual grain consumption during the Mongol Empire of the Khans (c. 1200-1400 CE). (1)

Small grains.

Sustaining empires.

Small seeds.

Building religions.

Small particles.

Growing humans.

A world of nothing.

Creating everything…

Tiny speck of dust.

Rise!

Big Data & Archeology…

In a recently released edition of the Journal of Field Archaeology, Brown Assistant Professor of Anthropology Parker VanValkenburgh and several colleagues detailed new research they conducted in the former Inca Empire in South America using drones, satellite imagery and proprietary online databases. Their results demonstrate that big data can provide archaeologists with a sweeping, big-picture view of the subjects they study on the ground — prompting new insights and new historical questions.

Using the data they collected, VanValkenburgh, Wernke and Saito created a comprehensive map of every known Spanish-founded colonial settlement, or reducción, stretching from Ecuador to Chile, allowing those who study the region to understand the ebb and flow of social life on a multi-country scale. (1)

People moving around. Like ants. Big Data will reveal things and details. Analysis will show patterns and will reveal motives. But it will never reveal anything for the baker who wakes up in the morning to bake bread. It will not show anything about the children playing in the dirt. Big Data will not show anything about a man dying and his wife crying next to him.

Big Data can show everything.

But at the same time they show nothing.

Why care about revealing new information for past civilizations? Will we be wiser if we know patterns which were not even consciously known even to the people at that era? Civilizations are not built on data, patterns or systems analysis. They are built on cries and laugher. They are built on blood and despair.

And Big Data will never show anything for these things.

Take a good look at the laptop running the analysis.

So clean.

So silent.

But do not be fooled by its tiny size.

It kills whole civilizations in seconds.

And as researchers laugh in excitement.

Beyond the buzz of the hard drive…

Thousands die in agony a thousand years ago…

Rough.

Most natural and artificial surfaces are rough: metals and even glasses that appear smooth to the naked eye can look like jagged mountain ranges under the microscope. There is currently no uniform theory about the origin of this roughness despite it being observed on all scales, from the atomic to the tectonic. Scientists suspect that the rough surface is formed by irreversible plastic deformation that occurs in many processes of mechanical machining of components such as milling. (1)

In a rough cosmos we try to build mirrors.

In an ever changing universe we try to see patterns.

In a living cosmos we try to analyze death.

Staring on the calm lake.

Feeling good that we see out self.

Oh, happy man.

I know you would cry if you knew there is nothing to see.

Ancestral asymmetries…

The left and right side of the brain are involved in different tasks. This functional lateralization and associated brain asymmetry are well documented in humans, but little is known about brain asymmetry in our closest living relatives, the great apes. Using endocasts (imprints of the brain on cranial bones), scientists now challenge the long-held notion that the human pattern of brain asymmetry is unique. They found the same asymmetry pattern in chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. However, humans were the most variable in this pattern. This suggests that lateralized, uniquely human cognitive abilities, such as language, evolved by adapting a presumably ancestral asymmetry pattern. (1)

The universe is symmetrical. Or so we think it should be. But why think something like that in the first place? Is it that symmetry is beautiful and we are naturally inclined towards admiring beautiful? Could it be that symmetry of also an inherent part of our nature and, this, we tend to adhere to theories which include it?

Our brain is asymmetrical. Or so we think because we see differences in our two hemispheres in our brain. But why think that in the first place? Differences are there, this is certainly. But what makes us look at those differences? What if by seeing things from another perspective? What if that other perspective shows as that symmetry is preserved at another level?

Which belief is going to prevail?

Think.

What do you want to see?

Do you feel safe within a symmetrical universe? Would you feel more creative in an asymmetrical one? What it everything is symmetrical because everything is not? What if everything is asymmetrical because there is no other cosmos where symmetry exists?

Think.

There is no symmetry in anything.

Until you see asymmetry.

And decide to create a mirror…

Old mummy… Silent voices…

The sound of a vocal tract from a 3,000-year-old mummy has been recreated using CT scans, a 3D-printer, and a voice synthesizer. Details of this achievement—such as it is—were published in Scientific Reports. (1)

Old voices.

Lost voices.

Meaning nothing now.

Frightening isn’t it?

Why don’t we understand those voices?

Why do we need to?

Lost humans.

Void of anything.

Except of the things they can lose…

The forest is silent now.

Full of skeletons.

And in that deafening silence.

You can hear nothing at all.

Nothing but yourself speaking…