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Author
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Topic: Pattern Theory of Everything
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John Wright
Member
Member # 587
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posted 04. December 2002 12:13
I am not a scientist, philosopher or anything but I recentely was struck by the idea of patterns as a means to understand reality and was wondering if anybody knew of any material related to this way of thinking. I summarize my views at Link to my Pattern Theory of Everything. I have included what is there below:
The One sought to remain one and became many.
The above was my attempt at a line of poetry that captures around 5 days of musings I have had about reality. Now some of you may not be too familar with discussions about reality and perhaps have never thought about it much. I hadn't either until the last few days until some thoughts "hit" me. These thoughts were basically about what makes my thinking and actions different than other organisms and from what do my thoughts and actions arise. It just struck me that whatever makes me tick is what the whole universe tick so that I could learn a great deal about the universe by understanding myself. And I did. The following is what I came up with. It is my little TOE or Theory of Everything. I won't tell you how my most current views evolved but just cut straight to my TOE.
Reality and hence everything that makes it up (including humans, cats, thoughts, emotions, atoms, space, time, etc...) can be understood by thinking about how reality is composed of pattern, upon pattern that make up one and only one reality. Each pattern seeks to persist itself and in so doing must create new patterns from old ones. Each pattern hence recursively mimics the One reality of which it is a part. This is my TOE. So simple but so capable of explanation.
Consider what you are doing right now. You are reading. How? You say, I am just reading. What is you? You are a specific pattern of cells, tissues, and organs which are themselves patterns. You are also much more. You are specific patterns which make you different from an ape (with which you share a basic pattern) and make you human. You are also a specific variation of human, yourself a unique pattern made up by your genetic history and other parts of reality. In short, you are pattern upon pattern. And you are constantly persisting your pattern by creating new ones. In order for you to even be sitting there reading this you must breathe. In order for you to breathe you must take in air, itself a specific pattern of oxygen and carbon dioxide. You must create new patterns from this pattern to sustain your pattern. The obvious patterns in this case are the patterns of oxygen which you take into your bloodstream and carbon dioxide which you expel into the air. When you read you move your mouse to go down the page. You create new patterns of airflow around the mouse and at the contact point between your finger and the mouse. Inside of you every subpattern is trying to persist its pattern in order so that you can read. The cells in your eye are maintaining their pattern so that your eye can function. Your heart is maintaing its pattern of beating. Your mind is maintaing patterns of thought so that you can read. You reading involves pattern after pattern, each pattern composed of sub patterns, and each pattern creating new patterns from old to maintain itself. This explanation applies to all of reality.
Reality therefore is self-generative, i.e. it creates more of itself. Reality has created all space, all time, all living organisms, all consciousness, all reality. It has created every pattern by trying to maintain its own patterns. I choose the word pattern because it is sufficiently general enough to account for all reality and has the properties of reality itself. Also, patterns are composed of patterns which are composed of patterns. Patterns also create patterns by seeking to persist their own pattern. The word pattern can be applied to things as diverse as an atom, an electron, a human being, a bird, a thought, an emotion, a wave, "me", John, etc....
To understand reality therefore one must only pick a pattern and observe it. Observe how it persist itself and how when it does it creates more patterns and hence more reality. Observe how the pattern depends on subpatterns for its pattern as the tree depends on the subpatterns of branches, leaves, and trunk, and the leave depends on subpatterns of cells which depend on subpatterns of golgi bodies and dna which depend on subpatterns of molecules and stable atoms which depend on subpatterns of electrons and so and on. Observe then how reality is only one, structurally made up of pattern upon pattern, creating pattern upon pattern. Observe how the very act of observing is itself a pattern and depends on patterns. It depends on the pattern of light which your eye organ is sensitive to, itself a pattern. Thoughts are patterns seeking to persist themselves dependent upon on other patterns such as neurons, hormones, chemicals and many other complex patterns. Observe how patterns are destroyed by other patterns seeking to persist their own pattern. Each of your thoughts is destroyed by the next pattern as pattern after pattern occurs in "your" realm of reality. And think again about who you are. What uniquely identifies you? What is making the choice to read? What is making that finger move the mouse to read on? Does the finger make the decision? Or is the hand or the arm or the brain which sends the signal? All these things are only patterns, each composed of more patterns. Consciousness is itself then a pattern, a pattern that persists itself by creating new patterns from old ones as all do. Human consciousness is not something inside of reality (such as mind inside of matter) but is reality (i.e. mind=matter). All of reality is a product of reality and this recursive explanation helps us to resolve many paradoxes such as mind and matter, determinism vs. undeterminism, theory vs. practice, rationalism vs. empericism.
There is no need to imagine what creation must of been like. You can be aware of it now for it is happenning. You are part of reality and reality is creating reality. Think of the miracle of existence. Look at your hand. It exists. How? Are there laws at work keeping your hand in existence. Yes but this is not the most basic explanation for all physical laws are them selves patterns. Your hand exists because there is pattern upon pattern that make up your hand that are seeking to persist themselves. Now move your hand. That is something "new". You have added to reality. That was creation. So what is the difference between the 2 states of your hand resting and your hand moving? In terms of our current expanation of reality, nothing. They both involve the persisting of a pattern. In this case the pattern of hand movement persisted itself and destroyed the pattern of hand resting. You see in terms of how reality works there is no difference between rest and motion, being and doing, noun and verb. In all cases both are manifestations of one monistic reality existing in multiple patterns. In fact existence itself is a pattern. Does the hand movement exist before I move my hand or even think of it. No, to not exist is to not be real and the hand movement was not real until the pattern emerged. Unless there is a pattern there is no reality. If you sense a pattern you are sensing reality. There is nothing to sense besides reality and hence all you will sense will be real. Existence is another word we have for reality. That which does not exist is not real and there is nothing that is not real. Even the word nothing is real. Not real, non-existence are all terms we have come up with inside reality and are part of it.
Now for a definition of pattern. This comes from a response I gave a friend when asked.
A definition of pattern hmmm. I guess the definition would be circular or tautological. Here is one I will choose for my meaning from dictionary.com:
A consistent, characteristic form. A consistent, characteristic pattern.
Notice its circular definiton. Patterns are made up of forms which are themselves patterns. What this gets at is that a pattern is made up of regular patterns. This defnition exactly describes reality, consistent and orderly because it is made up of patterns. So to modify the above definition I get:
A consistent, characteristic pattern.
There is nothing so special about the word pattern I guess. I could of chosen the word form and used it for the same purposes but not as well. To add a little to the definition:
A consistent, characteristic pattern that persists itself by creating new patterns by destroying other patterns.
I am not trying to be evasive here. I am trying to find a gateway into understanding reality. The key I believe is to not look for what produces reality but how reality produces itself. You see there is nothing outside of reality to use to define reality so I must choose from inside reality. But if I define reality in terms of dogs and cats the definition looses its explanatory power. The same if I define it in terms of forces, or time, or God, or emotions, or space. You see there is nothing outside of reality and we have problems adapting to that thought because we are so used to the idea of there being something outside of something else. There is stuff outside of ourselves and we call it our environment. So I chose a word that would intuitively show that reality creates itself, reality accounts for itself, reality defines itself. There is no definition outside of it. If you want the definition of a pattern it will involve many other patterns and you will eventually have all of reality.
Now back to my definition of pattern. Notice I am not afraid to leave in the words consistent and characteristic. Why? Because by leaving them in I give more insight into the effect of patterns and that is regularity. Consistency is a pattern itself and so reality gives the impression of reality. You know reality when you see reality. Sounds stupid but you know a pattern when you see a pattern. So consistency and regularity are self-defining words like pattern. Characteristic implies the notion of persistency. Patterns persist themselves the best they can up against other patterns. This is meaningful right? You are persisting yourself up against other patterns such as air, diseases, other humans, etc... But again I am being redundant, tautological, and circular here because persistency is implied by the word pattern itself. Think about this statement: patterns persist. Well it doesn't seem like you are saying much. Of course patterns persist. That is how you recognize a pattern. If you see something happenning over and over again. Wait! Wait! Wait! Look at that last sentence. What is a thing? How do you define it? It itself must be made up of patterns and hence must be a pattern. Now, when I say a pattern persist I don't imply in time. They do persist in time but they primarily persist to create time. It is the persistence of patterns that create seasons, days, seconds, etc...The persistence of patterns creates the reality of time.
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Gambit
Member
Member # 558
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posted 04. December 2002 13:22
I'll urge you to read the CTMU by following that link and viewing the PDF. It sounds similar to your theory and you don't need to be a scientist to understand it. Check it out and tell me what you think.
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John Wright
Member
Member # 587
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posted 04. December 2002 13:47
I have read it and was blown away by it. You see I just came up with the theory while taking a long walk where I talked out loud to myself last Thursday (Thanksgiving). I had never heard of a TOE or the CTMU. When I got home I went on the web to research on reality and came across the theoryofeverything.net page. I read the CTMU and only understood about 20% of it. But the parts that I understood seemed to correspond with what I was thinking about. For example it discussed how reality can generate itself. I have lots of thoughts about the CTMU and want to learn lots more about it. Would becoming a subscriber to NOESIS-E be useful to this end? Probably so. I also found the following link about pattern theory: http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words/pattern.html. This guy happenned to have very similar ideas to me.
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Genie
Member
Member # 266
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posted 04. December 2002 18:17
Hi John,
Good luck in your work! It sounds like you have some interesting ideas that are compatible with the CTMU. I received your email and will send you a few links to simpler material that you may find helpful in understanding the CTMU and that may support your own work.
Best,
GLL
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firstaking
Member
Member # 3241
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posted 14. December 2006 23:35
I also found the following link about pattern theory: http://www.dam.brown.edu/ptg/
,http://www.patternlanguage.com/archive/ieee/ieeetext.htm ,http://www.patternlanguage.com/
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