Many thanks
to Chris Hastie for allowing us to use his photos and
nomenclature for this page.
All the other trees
in this section have a further description and I
resisted the temptation to write up a portrait about Pseudoconiferus
marconii, including information about its
environmental and social impact.
Instead it seemed appropriate to offer you a fascinating
excerpt from an article by Thomas J. Chalko, called: "Is
chance or choice the essence of Nature?" You
will find that the P.marconii species and their
evolutionary ancestors play an important role in this
story.
If you enjoy this piece, visit Thomas Chalco's most
excellent website called: The Natural University (links
below) for much more on this and other subjects.
Brief excerpts from: "Is chance
or choice the essence of Nature?"
(NU
Journal of Discovery Vol 2, March 2001, http://NUjournal.net
, (c) Natural Uni 2001) http://NaturalUniversity.net
by
Thomas J. Chalko
"Abstract.
At
the beginning of the twenty first century the prevailing
and vigorously defended view is that the Universe
happened by chance. All fundamental sub-atomic processes
are thought to be "random" and the only way to
quantify them seems to be the "uncertainty"
principle. Clearly, our conclusions about the Reality of
the Universe are determined and limited by our
imagination. Can we imagine alternatives? What if
nothing in the Universe is by chance? Could it be by
CHOICE?"
Introduction
Very
few scientific principles had greater impact on humanity
than Heisenberg's uncertainty principle [1] even
though the essence of the principle itself has always
been highly controversial.
The origin of the uncertainty principle is very simple:
we cannot imagine and conduct sufficiently accurate and
non-invading experiments that would expose the reason
for the non-deterministic behaviour of sub-atomic
particles such as electrons. Heisenberg argued, that
since the experimental study with any material apparatus
has proven impossible, we do not need to create any
theory, simply because we would never be able to verify
it experimentally.
Instead, for practical reasons, he proposed to accept
certain aspects of the sub-atomic reality as unknown and
unexplorable. His uncertainty principle intelligently
defined bounds of uncertainty and enabled us to use
statistics as a way to quantify the sub-atomic
processes. Heisenberg's approach turned out to be very
practical and enabled the unprecedented development of
material technology to take place. This in turn
reinforced the belief in the correctness of the
uncertainty principle. As a result, the uncertainty
principle itself seems to enjoy the status of the Law of
Nature and is no longer questioned.
The most famous challenger of the uncertainty principle
was Albert Einstein, who kept expressing his disapproval
for uncertainty as the basis of the Universe by saying
that "God doesn't play dice". Although his
view was that we should seek a sensible explanation for
the observable non-deterministic behaviour of the
sub-atomic world - he couldn't imagine any better
alternative than the practical statistical approach of
Heisenberg.
This article considers the possibility that was either
overlooked or not sufficiently explored: that the
non-deterministic behaviour of sub-atomic particles is a
result of an intelligently encoded information transfer.
Results of electro-photonic experiments presented in
this article suggest that the analysis of this concept
may have an even greater impact on humanity than the
uncertainty principle had. It is demonstrated that
quantum encoded information transfer in Nature is not
only feasible and highly probable, but it is an
essential feature of material reality that enables us to
determine and verify the Purpose of existence of the
entire Universe.
Spread spectrum information transfer
"Is
it possible to transmit information using
electromagnetic (EM) waves so that the transmission
cannot be disrupted even by severe electromagnetic
disturbances? Is it possible to make such a transmission
"jam proof" so no one can sabotage it? Can
such a transmission be encoded so that it is totally
private and cannot be intercepted? Can the amount of
information transmitted in a given bandwidth be
maximised?
After World War II, the militaries in a number of
countries directed a considerable research effort to
find answers to the above questions. The result of their
investigation is the technology known today as the
"spread spectrum" transmission.
In the "spread spectrum" transmission the
information is digitally encoded and "spread"
along the considerable range of EM frequencies
(spectrum). Only a receiver that is specially designed
and programmed with the unique transmission code can
receive the information. To all other receivers the
transmission appears as "noise".
After many years of military use, the "spread
spectrum" transmission has been widely
commercialised in the Digital Mobile Phone network.
Since the "spread spectrum" transmission is
virtually "jam proof", millions of people can
talk simultaneously using the same frequency range,
without ever disturbing one another. The clever digital
encoding of information and "spreading" it in
the spectrum virtually guarantees the privacy of their
conversations. The density of information in any given
bandwidth is maximised.
College experiment
On
the outskirts of a large metropolis, a group of highly
intelligent college students was given a project: to
investigate the "strange" behaviour of
electromagnetic (EM) waves in the frequency range around
1.9 GHz, without being told that this frequency range is
used for the digital mobile phone network.
To
quantify their observations students have chosen two
parameters: the frequency and the intensity of EM
oscillations. Using receivers, scanners and spectrum
analysers they soon concluded that the EM waves in the
above frequency range behaved in an unpredictable random
way.
They found that at any particular frequency the
intensity of EM oscillations was highly uncertain. They
also noticed, that there was a high degree of certainty
that at "some" frequency a particular
intensity level actually occurred at any given time. The
problem was that it was impossible to predict at
"which" frequency it happened at any given
moment. They also encountered serious problems with the
accuracy of their measurements. For example they noticed
that their frequency estimates appeared
"blurred" because the EM waves appeared in
"lumps" or "bursts" that were very
brief.
Inspired by "quantum mechanics", highly
promoted in the 20-th century, students decided to adopt
a similar approach. They defined their own
"uncertainty principle", established bounds
for their "uncertainty" and adopted a clever
statistical approach, focusing on predicting the
"probability" of observable events. After a
few months of work, the students had become very proud
of their "theory", because it could actually
predict probabilities of many events in their frequency
band. They had become quite convinced that their theory
actually "described the Reality".
Statistically speaking - it DID...
Did you notice, however, that by adopting a statistical
approach our students have completely MISSED millions of
very real intelligent conversations? Isn’t it obvious
that their conclusion has been determined and limited by
their imagination?
Our students just couldn’t imagine that what appeared
to them as "random" was actually the
consequence of a very intelligently encoded information
transfer. As a result - they didn’t even try to decode
anything.
Let’s analyse in more detail why and how our students
developed their belief in a "random process".
The primary reason for their belief was that they
couldn’t make any deterministic predictions about the
EM waves they observed.
Note that there was nothing "random" in the EM
waves. In reality, millions of people were making
billions of intelligent CHOICES in their individual
conversations every hour. For the purpose of the
information transfer, all these choices were being
continuously encoded into EM waves several thousand
times per second. Our students had failed to imagine and
explore this possibility, so they concluded that they
had observed a "random" process. Don’t you
feel uneasy about the fact that the entire science on
Earth in the 21-st century is built around the
"uncertainty principle"? Aren’t we missing
something truly important about the Universe?
"Not appearances, but what is behind
them is the most important".
The
above is only an excerpt.
You can find the whole article on:
http://NaturalUniversity.net |
