A Comparative Study

Published on by Catherine Toulsaly

Shells of cosmic dust created by the interaction of binary stars appear like tree rings around Wolf-Rayet 140. The remarkable regularity of the shells’ spacing indicates that they form like clockwork during the stars’ eight-year orbit cycle, when the two members of the binary make their closest approach to one another (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech)

Shells of cosmic dust created by the interaction of binary stars appear like tree rings around Wolf-Rayet 140. The remarkable regularity of the shells’ spacing indicates that they form like clockwork during the stars’ eight-year orbit cycle, when the two members of the binary make their closest approach to one another (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech)


There is a lot of throwback in the story below as it appears to be the only way to carve a path forward. A theory of everything is a human theory. The mind wrestles with uncharted territories. It clings to its own interpretation while new ideas are crafted, waiting to be vetted through validation processes. Yet, time messes it up, leaving the mind out of sync for it can never catch up. If humans are offsprings of stars, could their philosophical system hold the universal key? From the reflection to the reflecting, from the reflecting to the reflection, there is a positioning of a being whose being is already unveiled. 

As she collects the ontological pieces of entropy, the Questioner dwells on Sartre’s words. Breaking the boundaries, she wonders whether transcendence is a piece of the puzzle, for transcendence, too, is irreversible. There is an expectation in transcendence of reaching a certain value, heedless of the choices made to get there only of the freedom to make them. Reflection is recognition rather than knowledge. It makes the unveiling exist for itself in the form of an elsewhere in relation to itself. It implies a pre-reflexive understanding of what it wants to recover. 

Probabilities measure the likelihood that the Universe splitting into subsystems in which sources of entropy production crop up and grow, undergoes a single experience,  a unitary transcendence. Should the expectation be for the Universe to know its target value? Probabilities tell how certain the intended value and meaning is reached over time. Like a whole outcome space in which all possible occurrences take place as randomly as they do, the Universe emerges from infinite probabilities. 

The being unveiled, however, does not reveal itself as a given. Being apprehends itself as being, Sartre wrote, insofar as it is not, in the presence of the particular totality of which it lacks and which it is in the form of not being it and which is what it is. Probabilities underscore a state of latency while preventing such a state from being. Transcendence needs that which it lacks and that which it is not to coincide with being

Binary formed by the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B (NASA Goddard)

Binary formed by the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B (NASA Goddard)

Following Flaubert’s footsteps, the Questioner, a DIY enthusiast, aims a paradox: writing on an invisible subject within a philosophy of presence that basically says something is there to witness it. Given that nothingness is the negative form of something in the absence of that something, one can only be aware of its absence in the presence of what is, has passed, will be, and is always becoming. 

Transcendence digs deeper into the being until it meets Nothingness, the rhizomatic time domain. While the mind experiences the emergence of one reality out of many, it experiences in its dreamlike state intertwined layers of events and thought processes, entangled as in a quantum superposition, until they streamline and pop up into a single conscious moment. In other words, there is indeed a quantum Observer in the simmering soup of the mind before the clarity of the collapse sets in. 

The mind, in its dreaming state, escapes, by a paradox, into true free will. As it wakes up, it realizes it just caught a glimpse of all the choices beyond its control and the freedom they all share. It begs the question of the mirroring reality beneath consciousness and its symbiotic relation with the Universe. The mind holds within its own transcendence.

While the Questioner’s hypothesis that there is no consciousness without gravity derives from the necessary existence of a gravity-induced Universe, if gravity interacts with all matter, including things without mass, what is absent from quantum entanglement and before the collapse that would deny the existence of consciousness? The Questioner struggled in the past to situate, first, consciousness in the evolution of everything and, second, humankind in the evolution of consciousness. 

The same conundrum came back with revenge. Through proximity or at distance, when does consciousness kick in? Are superposed states an agency of feelings? A recent paper suggests that a conscious moment occurs whenever a superposition forms, not when it collapses. It states that a quantum system may be composed of many experiencing minds, albeit often very simple ones. Those bits of feeling, however, are simply moments of agency

By now, agency, sentience, and consciousness have crisscrossed paths, making consciousness a rare incidence for it is sparse across time and space. Transcendence is a key element of consciousness. For it to occur, everyone and everything need to apply themselves to its pursuit, then, and only then, would all transcend. Its fundamental characteristic is to transcend the ontic towards the ontological, Sartre wrote, and to surpass itself towards the particular being that it would be if it were what it is

Transcendence must be able to manifest itself through infinite dimensions. In those solitary moments, the dreamer processes and integrates totality, without the slightest distance, which the awake mind lacks. For true consciousness to be achieved, it should exist at a zero distance from self, as a presence to self that its being carries within. Thought processes occur within such a philosophy of presence

Knowledge flows in fractals within its reach. It grows and branches out into alternate theories and models, grappling with key issues of dark matter, gravity, antimatter, and time itself, notably the Modified Newtonian Dynamics, the Dirac-Milne Model, and the Timescape cosmology aimed to explain cosmological observations as a result of backreaction and replace dark energy with mechanisms linked to gravitational energy. 

A recent paper suggests that dark matter and modified gravity could be dispensed with, provided that the existence of topological defects — thin shells of gravitational fields — can be affirmed or denied. Caught in the fast-growing Local Void or subject to pockets of overdensities, attractors and repellers dominate individual streams of time, each with their own sense of being.

Processes reverse while living beings separated by eons of time and cosmic distances may feel time differently. Are those bits of time only perspectival or do they weigh on the overall passing of time and affect the expansion rate of the Universe?

While there is no interaction between photons and the Higgs field nor with neutrinos, could a conscious moment be beyond the realm of light? Within a philosophy of presence, photons are fireflies of higher dimensions, gatekeeping the mind’s quest. Is time moving forward or photons doing the motion? Let’s say that there is a population of photons at a quantum state. Entangled, they don't necessarily share information. The population decreases, and spreads to the next quantum state. Through adjacent experiences, they form a light cone extending from past to future. Their timeless inner beings interact with other particles, transition and collapse. 

Is the emergence of time dependent upon the inflow of photons into atoms or consciousness going forward and falling back? Given that photons are time-forwarding, what does it mean if they spend a physically meaningful quantity of negative time as atomic excitations? In a superposition state, photons may be separated from their antiparticles by a zero distance. Does the delay observed, like thunder and lightning, provide evidence for their existence?

Trapped in an atom cloud, photons may oscillate backwards and forwards in time. Appearing simultaneously rather than being mutually exclusive, they would perform a balancing act, ontologically speaking, between being and not being. Such an act describes a rhizomatic time domain that allows for a sequence of events to dip below the surface. Could dark photons, carriers in the dark sector, be reflectors of negative time? From reflection to reflecting, from reflecting to reflection, there is a positioning of a wave particle whose being is already unveiled. 

An impalpable split has crept into the being between for itself and in itself, between clear intent — openly pursued choice — and what is inherent, a being that it would be if it were what it is. There is transcendence in immanence. The present dialogue underscores the divide. The Questioner yearns to understand and digs for herself every rabbit hole on her path. She doves wholeheartedly into hitting her target while the little acrobat escapes, flees almost to the point of vanishing.

The for-itself takes the form of a presence, Sartre wrote. It is the in-itself losing itself as in-itself to establish itself as consciousness. By a paradox, nothingness is at the very heart of transcendence and conditions it. The little acrobat, loosing track of itself, is the Questioner’s own nothingness. Its parts have drifted away.  Each one was another ball in its juggling act. Its disembodied soul watches them flow, dropping away. Yet, what catches its soul and still would not let go is its head making waves into Nothingness. It puts it right back on its nonexistent shoulders for the creative process to continue. “What has left of the time I passed bodiless?” it mumbles. 

“What has left of that time,” the Questioner answers, “ is my reflection over the Universe, the theory of everything and Consciousness.” From the reflection to the reflecting, from the reflecting to the reflection, a hidden code of figures and symbols allows thinkers — past, present and future — to carry the torch of enlightenment. Words are used and reused in an open dialogue that abides by the principle of difference and repetition

While the dialogue goes in loops on its linear quest, it falls like snow, freezes like time, and rests like noise. It is an occasional chirping, a cracking sound of the snow dropping a new coat on the ground. The Questioner yearns to find common ground and mulls it over but proceeds instead to nurse the injury to her juggling soul. While the distance at which the little acrobat stands from her is zero, it has kept its elusive dimension. 

No matter how deep nothingness haunts her own being, it can never quite coincide with herself.  Drawn to Nothingness, the little acrobat follows its bliss. Since it let its balloon go, it finds a renewed interest in the differential growth of the Universe and hopes to investigate further. Feeling restless, it hasn’t got the time to explore the unseen nested inner binary as if such dynamics could shed light on its own relation with the Questioner.

 

The bright star closest to the center of the frame is actually a pair of type B stars in a binary system (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA))

The bright star closest to the center of the frame is actually a pair of type B stars in a binary system (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA))

Stellar shrapnel (NASA Goddard)

Stellar shrapnel (NASA Goddard)

These days, ideas come as fast as they leave to the point that she can’t catch them fast enough. Moseying away from the chatter in her head, the Questioner drops the one piece that has fallen in place. She pauses for now so she can join for a little while the dead poets, on the other side, who ask, baffled: “These days, how do humans sleep?”

Sometimes I wonder how we sleep
in this house
where the ground breathes
beneath us black soil expanding
and contracting with the rain sending
cracks into the foundation rattling
our paper thin walls and the doors i hold shut
with prayers to no god because
sometimes i believe we will change and i forget
a phantom
mopping blood
not away
but down
into the widening gaps in the concrete
all the way
to the earthen heartbeat
which makes the heliconia grow wild
around the fence
so densely
it chokes its own sisters
of sunlight to make us remember
their flowers are good for taking
to the graves...

Anya Melchinger, Sometimes I wonder how we sleep

Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique

            L’Etre et le Neant


 

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