I sometimes think of myself as an educated barbarian. I know so much about things that I don't use or don't make use of. Education systems are fantastic at shoveling things down your throat just in case you'll need them when you start working in that field. Inevitably we don't seem to use most of it either due to the nature of the work or the quality of the management who don't realise your potential or simply don't know how to utilise what you have to offer. A barbarian because there are so many other things I could learn about and get to know. Things that could potentially be useful.
The one thing holding me back is the sheer volume of information blossoming from the collective minds of millions of educated individuals, each gnawing on their own portion of the endless fractal bone of knowledge. Time would quite happily bludgeon us to death with PhD's, MBA's and M.Phils in anything to everything minus one golden nugget that is always missing because Godel had the foresight to open up Pandora's Box.
Abraham Maslow once said "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail". Thank Tim Berners-Lee for the internet and making it easy to find those types of quotes.
Back to hammers. One of my respected authors (who shall remain un-named, unless you have the time and inclination to follow this link) mentioned the concept of Bundle Theory.
Having studied Systems Theory (ever so briefly in one of those many M.Phils floating around in the universe of 'why did I sacrifice so much time to do this?') I can only conclude that bundle theory is an emergence phenomenon based on the fact that multiple sub-systems co-create new systems with collections of attributes that give it a unique identity.
Architecturally our universe is made up of multiple sets of interactive sub-systems built on top of each other from minus infinity to plus infinity. Systems theory may just be my hammer but it's a pretty eloquent hammer especially when you watch the Quantum Monkeys smashing atoms to bits and trying to come up with a Theory for Everything. M-Theory... smashed into finer splinters. At one stage even I was thinking that super strings of Plank length sounded pretty elegant. However, Plank length may be just another emergent property blossoming from the interaction of co-creating sub-systems.
The Higgs particle will soon be followed by the Super-God particle, then by the meta-physical Super God Particle, and then by the "We never Thought of That" particle, which will be followed hot on it's heals by the "We Should Have Seen It Coming" particle and then the "Okay, We're Really Embarrassed About This" particle.
And on a different tack, talking of hammers: the answer to the climate change problem is Jove's Hammer. Unfortunately there isn't enough space in this margin for me to fully describe it.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Hammering Bundle Theory on the Anvil of Thought
Labels:
Alex Dawson,
bundle theory,
Godel,
Hammer,
Higgs,
Maslow,
Plank,
Skiffy,
system theory,
theory
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