The function of death

Much of modern science falls under the natural philosophy of systemics.
That is to say it is not actually science in the classical sense.
Science is a tool for categorizing things. For discovering how they work.
Systemics is an attempt to collect these ideas into working systems.

The study of ecosystems or evolutionary paths may be considered systemics, even if it is sold as classical science.

Life systems, which would include many modern biological studies, falls into this category. Each individual aspect of biology is studying and pieced together to map a whole, functional system.
Each functional aspect is studied in detail, and the relation and function in tandem with those systems (again) is mapped.
Through this kind of thinking we are able to see all the various, myriad interactions between biological systems such as reproduction, the digestive process, cellular development, the immune system, and so on and so forth.
One are given a great deal of attention is the reproductive system. The functions and interaction of this system with others is extremely well mapped. We know how it effects the entire biology. We know what it is for.
This interest only makes sense. We want to understand our personal genesis.
What does not make sense, on the surface, is how death is rejected as part of this system.
Obviously death is important. Obviously death has profound effect on the individual in question, and on those who know them. But death is seen only as the end of the system, and is not credited with any function. Why is that?
I don't think the materialists who crowd the halls of the academe mean to suggest this is an open system (life). That death is somehow a release from this system. Nor do I even need to 'go there', myself.
No. I get the impression there is something that makes those very materialists (ie naturalists) extremely nervous about assigning a natural function to death.
Why would that be?
The simplified answer is that if death has a natural function within the system beyond the immediate (ie providing food for a predator/scavenger or fertilizer for plants), it has some very uncomfortable implications for the wider world view of these folks.
How so?
Let's envision for a second that death is the mechanism by which genetics improve upon themselves. That a process known as 'natural selection' and 'mutation' results in real improvements in the organisms undergoing this process. We might call this process 'evolution'. In such a process/system we may consider ourselves 'more evolved' (ie superior in design/function) to a more primitive (much older) example of our species. This is, of course, the stance of modern 'science' (ie systemics).
So, in order for this system to work/function properly one generation must end and another begin. They will overlap, mix and spread the desirable traits. The mechanism to determine these traits being the environment itself. The algorithm of life simply adapts and thrives. A perfect piece of self improving, self propagation code.
Improving to what end?
Well, this is where the materialist wants the conversation to end. They will simply posit 'stuff happens'. They will accuse you of 'promiscuous teleology' or seeing a correlation as a connection. They will shrug away the concept that this self improving, self propagating code simply is (just so) and continues with no direction or function beyond those apparent.
But that's the problem isn't it? The 'self improvement' IS apparent.
Progress and improvement seems to be the result of evolution. Evolution is linear, or progressive - not circular and reductive.
That is to say the 'system' of inanimate matter is not linear, but recursive. Sand becomes rock, breaks into stone and becomes sand. The water cycle. Chemical bonding. So on and so forth.
Life is different. It improves.
To what end?
That is the forbidden question.
It is, of course, a 'why' question.
Comrade professor and the commissars of the academe do NOT like 'why'.
Presumably because it could be applied to their bloated tenures and ever continuing 'education'.
'Why death' is a naughty one indeed.
What does it show us? 
A very big 'boo boo' in the grand theory of 'shit happens' (ie the implicitly nihilistic materialist mindset of the academe and elites).
Apparently -if death is assigned a proper biological function - life has some sort of meaning, even on the physical level.
Apparently whatever the source of the information found in our genetic code, it has a goal that can be achieved by applying the genetic algorithm, itself full of CONTINGENCY, to the problem of conscious existence. By applying time and using nature itself as a mould or limiter.
Apparently this little code of proteins has the ability to transfer some essential, central functionality FORWARD in time to some end purpose.
Apparently, and so far, we can tell at least one of these functions is consciousness itself. The ability to ask 'why should this be'.
Well then!
Why should this be?

The Scole Experiments

Bizarre experiments to prove the afterlife.
A lot of it strikes me as weird and dangerous, but I have to admit they did get some startling results.
An interesting documentary for those who enjoy a 'spooky' look into the dark.
Enjoy!
...just not too much.

the Aristocrat

On one of my favourite blogs (egnorance) Dr Egnor posted an all time favourite poem by the master intellect, G.K. Chesterston.
It's infernal subject could not be more appropriate for our Faustian crowd!|

Chesterton: the Aristocrat

G.K. Chesterton, from The Catholic Thing:

The Aristocrat 

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay

At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away).

They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,

And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;

He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,

Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;

He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,

And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery

The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;

But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,

And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay

At the little place in What’sitsname where folks are rich and clever;

The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;

There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,

There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;

There is a game of April Fool that’s played behind its door,

Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,

Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,

And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:

And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;

For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t keep his word.

"There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain."

The lures of Satan are subtle, often, and he woos with pleasure. Sometimes suffering is healthier, as Christianity has always taught. Chesterton at his best.

Drawing by John Welding 

Original link and comments HERE.
Thanks again, Mike!

Quantum Critical for the New Year

Feeling Quantum Critical for the New Year

Over the last couple of years, Quantum researchers involved at Oxford and in Berlin are both perplexed and fascinated by what they have 'seen' in the details of their studies.
The implications for future technologies innumerable and it is only 1 atom wide!
So...What is this latest cosmos shaking observation from the Quantum field?
A kind of tiny fractal-like magnet made up of a string of certain (co­balt nio­bate) atoms magnetically spun under specific conditions using a neu­tron scat­ter­ing technique.
The big deal is a 'Quantum-nanocobaltfractalmagnet?' No. Not really. Well sort of.
The big deal is an observed effect/state called 'Quantum Critical'.

Di­a­gram of the neu­tron scat­ter­ing tech­nique
 used in the ex­per­i­ments.
. (Cred­it: Ten­nan­t/HZB) 

For those of you not familiar with elementary Quantum physics/mechanics, in a broad sense - I will give a boiled/dumbed down description: The study of the threshold and changes between matter and energy, usually on an atomic or sub atomic scale.
'Quantum' is not simply a (decent) James Bond film and has nothing to do with Australian Airlines (Qantas - also decent).
When scientists began to tackle these issues in the last century they came across 'the Quantum Enigma' of potentiality and 'super potentiality'. This is the aspect of the Quantum studies most interested people are familiar with.
 Schrödinger's cat and the slit box experiments that illustrate the influence of the 'observer' or conscious mind. An atom, it seems, only becomes a wave or particle when you want it to - and it can do both at once! Very 'spooky' stuff, as Albert Einstein noted.
Simply put: Quantum mechanics studies what happens when you change the pressures, magnetism, and temperatures of matter; it reveals and maps consistent effects and changes on the atomic level that eventually result in a change in state and a release of energy.
For example: Water heated becomes steam, while frozen becomes ice. The same can be said of exotic, radioactive, and super-conductive matter. All observable matter, it seems, goes through 'quantum phase transitions' into various 'states' when magnetism, pressure and temperature are dramatically altered. But we are not talking about water, and what happens is not a tray of ice-cubes.
In fact, it is often very strange indeed.
Some even quantum states seem to defy our understanding of nature and it's laws.
In recent decades supercooling has become a reality and much research has been done on super-chilled materials, like super-conductors. Researchers studying these changes and the phenomena associated with them have noted some very interesting observations that have lead to specific veins or disciplines within quantum study. Consider the research done at Tel Aviv university that produces a stasis like and levitation effect(see video link below).

Another and connected vein of this research is in magnetism. A new state known as the 'Quantum Critical' was discovered by research into the quantum effects of magnetism. It was found that a magnetized-spin, creating by a magnetic force being applied at right angles produces a quantum state in the material co­balt nio­bate that locks the potential of the atomic structure between wave and particle. When cobalt niobate is 'quantum critical', it is 'quantum uncertain' like the cat in Schrödinger's theoretical box, according to the lead Berlin researcher Al­an Ten­nant of the Helm­holtz Cen­ter for Ma­te­ri­als and En­er­gy. Even more strangely, the material's atomic structure begins to take on a regressive, 'fractal' like structure in this state. It looks the same on any scale. This is where the really weird stuff becomes apparent. While examining this state and 'tuning' the system, it was noted by both the Oxford and Berlin teams that the atomic string formation of cobalt niobate connected in such a way as it resonated a certain pitch. A note even. In an interview with the journal 'Science', the Oxford team lead researcher, Radu Coldea, noted:

“For these in­ter­ac­tions we found a series, or scale of res­o­nant notes. The first two notes show a per­fect rela­t­ion­ship with each other. The “pitch” of these notes, or their fre­quen­cies of vibra­t­ion, are in a ra­tio of about 1.618, the gold­en ra­tio fa­mous from art and ar­chi­tec­ture,”

Surely, the technological implications of this could be profound.
If properly understood we may be able to one day utilize this effect in some sort of nanotool or medicine...and no doubt weapons, too.
But there is something even more profound about this strange observation of matter; this discovery of " of res­o­nant notes".Something enigmatic and surreal.

We must consider: Is it sheer, outrageously improbable and strange coincidence to find an ancient ratio for art, architecture, and deign within a musical scale hidden inside a spinning atom wide nano magnet undergoing a 'phase transition' into a newly discovered 'Quantum Critical' state?
I know materialists will say 'YES' and give their cure all response ('shit happens'), but what about those of us who seek meaning and patterns in what they see?
I think it safe to assume that old William of Okham would agree with me that there is something far more interesting than coincidence at work here and would reserve his razor, at least in this case, for his tonsure.
And if it is NOT sheer coincidence and the ratio and scale are functional.....