It's a common-enough question When starting any endeavour, the beginning is often a little nerve-racking because it is such a decisive moment. Like a brand new journal with its creamy-white pages, just waiting for the first inky stroke of the pen. One could write anything. The point is to write something. Here we go...
The Taijitu and Gravitational Waves
The Taijitu: About three days ago I combined the ancient symbol of the taijitu with the modern one we all know as the 'yin and yang symbol' into one single image. I've set it as my desktop wallpaper: But today, looking at it, I thought of Gravitational Waves... Gravitational Waves In particular, I was…
Freedom Of Choice Includes Freedom From Choice
A letter to myself from my dream* Dear Tom, By the time you read this, the exam will be over and you will have missed it. But you didn't fail. In fact you passed, because of my quick-thinking. I told them you left as a statement: Your absence is your answer to the exam topic.…
Spencer-Brown: Cataphatist
George Spencer-Brown (GSB) did some wonderful work for a system of logic that has us consistently painting ourselves into a corner. That's the problem. His work contributes to a system of reasoning that is consistent but incomplete. What he doesn't see (and few who I've encountered who understand his work) is that he is stuck…
The Courage to be Kind
Fear is the path to the dark side. - Yoda, Star Wars Fear is the mind-killer. - Litany Against Fear, Dune A Torrent of Insecurity This morning I woke up and, in between bites of lime marmalade on buttered toast, read my social media 'new feed'. It was one long queue of sensationalistic headlines and…
OK… So Spencer-Brown isn’t wrong, he’s just cataphatic.
The (cataphatic) Laws of Form George Spencer-Brown did an incredible job of breaking it down to the barest of bare-bones. But he could have gone further - he just didn't see it. He thought the 'Distinction' was "perfect continence" (yes, he notes that 'continence' refers to the archaic meaning - to contain - contain yourselves!),…
Honey, I Shrunk the Universe…
... or, "What if we were totally wrong?" Inside-Out Universe To say that the Universe 'exploded' from a 'thing smaller than an electron' in what's commonly called "The Big Bang" could be a complete misunderstanding of the data we've gathered from our observations of the galaxies and 'stuff out there around us'. Let me show…
To admit you are a fool…
... is to begin your journey of learning. Is this not typical of the learning process? To realize that one has been naïve and therefore perhaps not utterly wrong, but too hopeful or certainly over confident. I've just finished reading the "Logic: Very Short Introduction" by Graham Priest (Oxford University Press), and man oh man…
The Law of Existence – Part 2
Law of Existence - continued In my previous post, I promised to illustrate how the Laws of Thought, as they are used today, emerge naturally from the Law of Existence. Time to make good on my promise. In a comment left by reader SelfAwarePatterns he mentioned that he didn't see how the Law of the…
The Law of Existence – a better logic?
Overview George Boole's "Laws of Thought" have been extremely useful in many disciplines, but I contend that they are nevertheless incomplete. In their dominance over most of Logic and Philosophy, they have caused a conceptual 'blind spot' in the many fields of research which use or emanate from such reasoning - including the Foundations of…
Tao Math 