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Richard Warren Field, January 2009
COURSE OF STUDY
Consciousness
Consciousness is the human interface with the Universe. Understanding the
physical/biological/chemical attributes of consciousness
will help me to understand our own equipment for absorbing, analyzing and
understanding the Universe. Studying the precise nature of human consciousness
will help my understanding of reality by shedding light on our own lens for
viewing it.
Mathematics
Mathematics is the common language of the Universe. Language, culture, even life
itself can manifest in many variations. But numerical axioms cannot vary at any
corner of the Universe, or in any alternate reality. Whatever they are called,
whatever system is used to organize and label them, numerical systems themselves
cannot help but be consistent. If we encounter other intelligences, no matter
how exotic or unusual they are, our best chance of communicating with those
intelligences will be through setting up a common language through numerical
concepts. Side areas to explore will be other potentially mathematically based entities that
could turn out to be Universal, such as music.
Time
Is time itself a Universal constant, or are humans stuck in one of many possible
manifestations of time? Could it be that everything exists always, in one big
space-time conglomeration, and we humans experience our consciousness in remote
segments of that space-time conglomeration? This type of thinking could answer
concerns about death, because if everything exists always, then we are always
conscious at some point in the time line. I will explore cutting edge ideas
about time, as a key issue to address to reconcile physics and metaphysics.
Physics—At the Edges of Observable Reality?
- The macro: The edge of the Universe as it expands from the big bang
beginnings. Among other subjects, I will study recent findings of Hubble
Telescope, which has peered back into time within 300,000 years of the beginning
of the Universe. This is close to the beginning. What will that information
bring to this discussion?
- The micro: Particle accelerators have us looking at small components of
matter, components that may finally be indivisible and blur the distinction
between energy and matter. Are we at the alpha components, the forces and
particles of nature at their most basic? The micro and appear nearly ready to
come together in a unified concept.
- The nature of matter and energy, the cutting edge thinking on what matter and
energy are, and how they interact, and how we fit in to this as conscious
beings, will be part of this study.
Infinity
What is it, and is the key to ultimate questions of
“God” and the
beginning and ultimate end of the Universe within an understanding of infinity?
Is infinity knowable to us or not?
Some form of a survey of the historical and philosophical theories of the Universe.
Here are some comments on what I have studied so far:
Ken Wilber - A Brief History of
Everything
Lynne McTaggert -
The Field, The Intention Experiment
Ervin Laszlo - Science and
the Akashic Field
Gregg Braden -
The Divine Matrix
Amit Goswani -
The Self-Aware Universe
Michael Talbot -
The Holographic Universe
David Bohm - Wholeness and the
Implicate Order
(Interim Course of Study Comment -1)
Michio Kaku - Hyperspace
Brian Greene -
The Fabric of the Cosmos
Jean-Pierre Luminet - The Wraparound
Universe
Murray Gell-Mann - The Quark
and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex
Helen R. Quinn and Yossi Nir -
The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter
Ernest Sternglass -
Before the Big Bang
Paul Davies -
The Last Three Minutes
P. W. Atkins - Creation
Revisited
(Interim Course of Study Comment -2)
Timothy
Ferris - The Whole Shebang
K. C. Cole - The Hole in the
Universe
Flatland
(and related materials)
