cold science – Harmonia Philosophica

Small little insects… Making the ocean move… Modern science… Shrimps laughing…

Scientists have demonstrated how some of the smallest creatures in the ocean could have the same outsized impact under the waves – with swarms of marine organisms inadvertently producing powerful currents that mix and churn a turbulent undersea environment.

“Right now a lot of our ocean climate models don’t include the effect of animals, or if they do it’s as passive participants in the process”. Strength in numbers, it turns out, as swarms of the creatures migrate daily in vertical columns, feeding at the ocean surface by night, before retreating hundreds of metres deep by day.

“You have this massive migration vertically every day of literally trillions of organisms”, Dabiri told NPR. “As they start swimming upward, each of them kicks a little bit of fluid backward”. The team discovered the animals’ passing didn’t just distribute water in small, localised regions, but churned significant volumes of proxy ocean pretty much everywhere they went.

So far, these effects have only been demonstrated in the lab, but if the same thing is taking place out in the real world, biologists and oceanographers will need to rethink how marine life contributes to ocean turbulence – especially since the same thing could be happening with bigger animals, such as jellyfish, squid, fish, and even large mammals. (1)

Ancient civilizations thought of the cosmos as something alive.

Then came Descartes, Galileo and modern science.

And we “discovered” the “objective” world of phenomena…

We suddenly “knew” we lived in a cold lifeless cosmos.

And we developed great science…

While shrimps were laughing at us…

The cosmos is still alive.

It always was.

It is just us who died.

Watch that shrimp you are cooking. It is not a shrimp.

It is the universe itself. Boiling with fierce power.

Just… add a pinch of salt.

Yes. Now it’s better.

Now come on.

Let’s eat my daughter…

Unpredictable love. Unpredictable cosmos.

Here’s some heartbreaking news for people pinning their hopes on online matchmaking sites: It’s virtually impossible to forecast a love connection.

Maybe that’s not so shocking to survivors of the dating wars. But now science is weighing in. Extensive background data on two individuals — comparable to that collected by digital dating services — can’t predict whether that pair will romantically click during a four-minute, face-to-face speed date, say psychologist Samantha Joel of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and colleagues. (1)

Love is unpredictable.

Hate is unpredictable.

Life is unpredictable.

Even predictable things are unpredictable.

No, no. The planets do not move in constant trajectories.

Ina galaxy far far away…

There was a princess once.

And a boy she loved.

That boy grew dark.

And at the end, whole planets were destroyed.

And because life is unpredictable.

Because hate is unpredictable.

Because love is unpredictable.

Everything is unpredictable…

Drawing with or without lenses and mirrors. Craving for meaning in life. Science as a dead-end.

In a paper published in the Journal of Optics, Mr. O’Neill lays out a theory that Rembrandt set up flat and concave mirrors to project his subjects – including himself – onto surfaces before painting or etching them.

He is not the first to suggest that old master painters used optics for their famous portraits. The theory, known as the Hockney-Falco thesis, generated controversy among scientists and art historians, some of whom took the findings as an implication that old master painters had “cheated” to produce their works.

The new research also drawn criticism. However, its writer says that the goal of the research was to show how the use of optics “makes us look at artists as scientists” and not to discredit Rembrandt.

“People have accused me of being jealous, or trying to discredit Rembrandt, but that’s not at all what I’m trying to do”, he said. “If you gave a projection to someone on the street and told them to make a masterpiece, they would never give you a Rembrandt”. At the same time scientists had just started using lenses to look at things invisibly small through microscopes and at the stars through telescopes, artists were using lenses to study the world around them, he said. (1)

Rembrandt drew masterpieces. Because of some inner need he had. Because this filled his soul with pleasure. People saw those masterpieces. And they liked it. Because they filled some inner need they had. Because these paintings filled their soul with pleasure. Or perhaps (and more… mysteriously) for no reason at all.

And yet.

Did he use mirrors?

Did he use oil?

Did he use lenses?

Typical scientists.

Always wondering for the how.

Leaving the important questions (why) for the big boys (Philosophy)…

Imagine a world where all “scientific questions” are answered. Imagine a world where we know and understand all the “how did that happen”. Look at the mirror. Now go and drop dead. Out of pure boredom.

Explain THAT science!

Ethics in numbers = No ethics.

It’s easy to understand why natural selection favors people who help close kin at their own expense: It can increase the odds the family’s genes are passed to future generations. But why assist distant relatives? Mathematical simulations by a University of Utah anthropologist suggest “socially enforced nepotism” encourages helping far-flung kin.

The classic theory of kin selection holds that “you shouldn’t be terribly nice to distant kin because there isn’t much genetic payoff,” says Doug Jones, an associate professor of anthropology and author of the new study. “Yet what anthropologists have observed over and over is that a lot of people are pretty altruistic toward distant kin”.

Jones seeks to expand the classic theory with his concept of socially enforced nepotism, which he calls a “souped-up version of the theory of kin selection” in his study published June 15, 2016, by the Public Library of Science’s online journal PLOS ONE.

Socially enforced nepotism “depends on the moral regulation of behavior according to socially transmitted norms”, he writes in the study.

The findings suggest that “a lot of why you help your kin, including distant kin, isn’t necessarily because you like them so much but because it’s your duty, your responsibility, and other people care whether you do it”, he says. (1)

Mathematics to calculate compassion. Numbers to measure ethics. Some years ago this would be considered blasphemy. Now we are gods and nothing is considered blasphemy. Now we are gods. Because we have killed God. Not with weapons or philosophy. But with sheer stupidity. We simply chose to believe in equations. We simply chose to believe in numbers.

Now nothing exists.

Except numbers.

One. Zero.

Well, mainly zero.

All other numbers are simply additions to zero.

In the old times philosophers believed in One. Once upon a time we started believing in Zero. And mathematics were created.

We have built our lives on nothingness.

And this is what we end up with.

As below, so above.

Astrology: The astronomy we really need…

The pyramids. The Logos of the stars affects us all down here…

We laugh at astrology.

We think it is “unscientific”.

We need a Shestov to remind us how wrong we are.

Because astrology is not talking about whether you will win the jackpot tommorow or whether you will be king. Astrology is about studying the stars (most greatest astronomers were actually astrologists – e.g. Kepler) with the ultimate goal of understanding the “logos” behind all things which happen.

Astrology is actually astronomy with a care for humans.

Astronomy researches the “cold” universe. A cosmos void of consciousness. Astrology has human as its main subject of analysis.

We laugh at the idea of the stars affecting us. And yet we easily believe that a butterfly can affect the other side of the world by swinging it’s wings…

We laugh at the things astrology says, but astrology can be falsifiable much more easily than most astronomical theories can (e.g. parallel universes, Big Bang etc).

Science with a care for humans. This is what we need.

Not the cold “data analysis” science we have today.