Notes de Voyage

(Abi'ad, "Everlasting Father", as found in Isaiah 9:5)

A year ago I had this thought: the core conflict between humans and god(s) in ancient mythologies and later in Christianity: autonomy. Humans would always meet punishment after turning away from god(s), declaring themselves free and big enough to be their own masters. Prodigal sons leaving their father...

However, that's what nature teaches us! Fathers care for us and educate us, until we get independent and they grow old, in turn needing our care, and ultimately die. Nature served as model for wisdom and cultures, which teach us to respect fathers, but also to take over from them as we become fathers ourselves, and then do without them as they slowly leave the stage.

If this is the natural model, why isn't God like this? Why are we supposed to behave like dependent children forever?

Maybe the natural model was not meant to be so. In the myth of genesis, humans were first immortal until the first sin. Maybe fathers were supposed to live forever, growing wiser and wiser, always being a reliable source of authority for their descendants. Hmmm... so the whole culture about growing independent would be wrong?

Here is another working document, compiling Bible quotes by topics. The document also contains a Bible summary chapter by chapter. (so far 886 out of 1239 chapters) I don't guaranty the summary's fidelity, but it can come in handy to give a first overview!

(Click on the picture to open the XLS worksheet)

Exergy

19th century's physics explained that all closed systems must evolve into states of higher disorder. This disorder can also be also seen as a dilution of matter and energy: electric charges migrate toward lower potential, radioactive atoms disintegrate into more stable isotopes, high pressure expand into broader space, motion causes friction and converts kinetic energy into thermal energy, heat dilutes into matter of lower temperature... Physics quantifies this amount of disorder-dilution by entropy (from Greek τροπή, change) In any closed system, entropy has to increase. This 2nd law of thermodynamics dictates the time direction in which systems will evolve. This arrow of time cannot be reversed, unless no dilution occurred, or if more entropy is produced elsewhere.

Another way to look at entropy is to measure exergy. It is the opposite idea of entropy, short from of "extractable energy". When entropy is created, exergy is destroyed. Energy cannot be destroyed, it is conserved and converted into diverse forms. (In the case of nuclear reactions, following e=mc2, one considers energy and matter altogether as conserved.) Exergy is the extractable, or "useful", fraction of energy in a system, which can be extracted to produce work and drive motion. Electrical and mechanical energies are virtually 100% exergy, but heat, pressure, and chemical potential depend on how they differ from the surrounding. 1m3 of air at 1bar is useless on the Earth, because it is surrounded by the same pressure, but in outer-space is could produce work by dissipating into vacuum. After all exergy is taken from a system (battery, air tank, fuel, etc.), this system is at equilibrium with the environment and cannot dilute further. This can be compared to a spring of energy and matter which expands and dilutes.

It is to be noted that exergy can be destroyed without any "practical" use (e.g. an electric heater in the ocean..). The definition of exergy pertains to physics and is not anthropocentric, but rather independent from human cultural judgement. (I've discussed it in this 2008 article (in French) )

First conclusion: mass and energy dilution, causing exergy consumption, drives the motion of the universe. It fuels all physical reactions which build this movement into... more complex structures.

Emergence

Emergence is the name given to the phenomenon whereby the complex interactions of many simple elements generate new overall behaviours and entities. For example: life emerges from chemical systems. Life involves behaviours such as metabolism, reproduction, adaptation, which are all new compared to the underlying chemical systems, and could not have been predicted by the study of the chemical level. I've discussed this in a 2012 note, linking scientific fields in Russian doll emergence. I proposed the historical generation: Physical => Chemical => Biological => Psychological => Social. We see a rise of abstraction, and gradual irrelevance of "hard sciences" to study higher levels, replaced by humanities.

We can distinguish that the 2 necessary ingredients of emergence are the multiplicity of the entities (quantitative), and their specialization (qualitative). Hence emergence moves on through Zig-zag evolution, gaining complexity through both moves.

Emergence produces entities which survive when the underlying components disappear. For example, in a population of bacteria, if one individual mutates with a new better suited DNA trait, it will be inherited by its offspring and gradually become a trait of the whole population. It will survive in the population even after the death of the first new DNA bearer. An invention or an artistic style can still exists after the death of the civilization that made it.

A time goes by, more complex systems arise, which unify smaller components into a whole. Across history, civilizations consist of several societies, made of individuals. A person unifies organs, which unify countless cells, in turn unifying countless molecules, made of atoms.

Second conclusion: emergence federates the motion of small items into larger, fewer, harmonious, and novel entities. Like a pyramid building bottom-up, higher abstract levels gradually come into existence.

What our History-Universe might look like, from A to Z.

Both principles coexist:
...the destructive dispersing impulse of exergy,
...and the creative unifying rise of emergence.

Following the intuition of the Jesuit palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we could call Alpha the space-time origin of exergy (probably the so-called Big Bang) and Omega the final unified emerging state of the universe. (I do mean "state" and not "point". This ultimate unification will occur at a given future time, but would probably encompass the whole universe itself.) This model does not imply that a god kicked the alpha and attracts us to the omega... but why not? At the bottom line of a complete picture of the universe, science and spirituality must be in agreement.

PS: Gravity seems to be a bump on the road to entropy... since it tends to aggregate things together, and to sediment solids from liquids, seemingly creating order. In case the universe lacks of momentum, gravity would make it end up in a Big Crunch, all would go back to the Alpha square one! Hopefully we got enough exergy and time to reach Omega, and a godly handshake.

Addenda 2016-07-25: After reading (at last!) Hawking "Brief History of Time", i understand that gravity represents negative exergy, so that the total exergy of the universe is always zero. During the spacial dilution of energy and matter, doubled by space-time expansion, a large share of the original exergy is transferred into gravitational potential exergy. I find dubious that that entropy would be already maximal when the universe will start to contract back again. I'm pretty sure we'll still have few more billion years to surf on the exergy waves and build further the pyramid!

Once again i found that illustrating entropy merely as "disorder" is misleading and limited. A blank hard-drive has more thermodynamic order than the one containing Beethoven's symphonies. One shouldn't confuse the levels of the emergence pyramid. Biological or aesthetic order are far beyond thermodynamics. In that sense, the so-called Theory of Everything would be humbly relevant only to the bottom of the pyramid.

PPS: Vincent Mignerot summarizes (in French) ideas from François Roddier and Eric Chaisson, and pessimistically proposes that emergence is only a mean to creates structures able to destroy exergy even faster. Hmmm.. maybe yes. Then it's a race: I use you to grow up, you use me to blow up.

L'article a été mis sur Facebook ici.

After the 2 scripts of last September, which were adapting the principles of Alfuni to specific situations, here is the latest version balancing a wide range of sounds, with minimalist graphical variation. Some will blame a lack of contrast, but i do like the regularity and harmony it gives!

(as usual, the table links to the TTF font, for those who'd like to write with it, or tweak it further!)

One key originality of this script is to propose a logical link between consonants and vowels. This idea first came in 2008 with the Phono-Braille.

It also proposes a selection of tones and punctuation, but the table is already big..

Sample in classical Chinese:

Link to the language creation forum: Alfuni

On connaît les couleurs primaires, secondaires, mais à quoi pourraient ressembler des couleurs... tertiaires ?

J'ai cherche une réponse à partir de mes correspondances synesthétiques (à tes souhaits), qui m'ont fait sélectionner 10 couleurs pour les 10 chiffres. Voici les couleurs disposées par affinités, basée sur la roue chromatique :

Au delà des couleurs primaires (Rouge Bleu Vert) et secondaires (Cyan Magenta Jaune), cette roue conduit à envisager une troisième groupe de couleurs tertiaire (Teal Violet Orange), "teal" étant un ton vert canard.

Bon, les peintres avaient déjà une réponse, mais ils se basent sur un autre trio initial (Rouge Jaune Bleu), d’où résultent un trio secondaire (Vert Orange Violet). Les couleurs tertiaires sont alors au nombre de 6.

Let's talk about the future!

Here is a fascinating proposal of futuristic society: no more money, mass robotization and computerization of optimal decisions, abundance and variety of goods, in the frame of available resources and environmental sustainability. The project also postulate that people born in this culture without scarcity nor competition would be free of greed, theft, and related violence. They would simply have the pleasure to what they are good at to serve the common good.

https://www.thevenusproject.com/

With the 100th birthday of the founder Jacque Fresco, they released their flagship documentary about the project: http://thechoiceisoursmovie.com

Unlike in communism, computerized science and abundance allows sound decisions without corruption. Administration would be minimal and transparent.

On the flip side, i don't think the issue of democracy can be discarded as they suggest, since many decisions are not only scientific: e.g. "What shall we maximize: freedom, happiness, aesthetics, or survival chances? (see my "map of ideals") Bioethics: Shall we allow human genetic engineering? Do we want Brave New World? How much freedom of speech do we allow in the face of science?"
We need democracy to avoid a technocratic dictatorship.

Further on the issue of robots and computerized decisions, like in "I, robot", I believe we could see some phenomenon of interpretation of basic principles (e.g. "Harm no human") which would imply some sacrifice once applied at global level, violating these same principles. e.g. "To save the group we might sometimes sacrifice few." With nascent consciousness, robots might not be so good at philosophy!
Again, that calls for some democracy, or at least a check-and-balance of powers.

PS: Facebook article

What if our emotions had influence on water? This apparently obscure idea has been held by the controversial Japanese writer Masaru Emoto, who drew relationships between ice crystal shapes and emotions which were focused on water before freezing.

I've gained interest in this claim after the release of prof. Montagner's proof about the so-called "memory of water", which shows that water emits electro-magnetic (EM) waves based on the chemical it contained after high dilution, but water can also memorize EM waves emitted into it, and behave as if a new chemical substance is present. Since I believe our emotions primarily rely on brain and organs' neural activity, which in turn consists of electric signals that also generate small local EM waves, it leaves a tiny chance for both theories to rationally connect!

The experiment which i've done is another Do-It-Yourself test proposed by Emoto: influence the decay of rice by focusing emotions on it.
Here is my result after 112 days:

Maybe the religious tradition of blessing food before eating once simply used to be a rational sanitary measure!

I'm giving more information and pictures here below:

Here is my latest creation, a music composed for the 24h-contest Noctaventure on the topic "Tempus fugit": time flies (when we're having fun). I classify it as an "etude" because of its construction constraint: a Re-Re clock pendulum ostinato, lasting throughout all the score.

The colours and melody evolve through various emotions, following the steps of human life: childhood, youth, then grief, panic on the face of death, confrontation against time, and finally the enlightenment of a teaching bringing peace.

The beautiful surprise and originality of this music is how an Indian melody naturally sprung out from the harmonic evolution, bringing a hypnotic climax to the topic: Krishna in his transcendent form as eternal Time-Spirit.

Here is the PDF music score.
Here is the mp3.

The recent reading of the Wikipedia article on Jedi (the Star Wars frenzy can spark meaningful thoughts!) has lead me to realize how various fields of teaching and education can complement each others. Jedi are said to be "Polymaths", a word implying the mastery of many fields of knowledge, and at the Renaissance, mastery of arts as well. Since Jedi, like most Asian monastic traditions, blend rather physical training and wisdom, I came out with the following map of education:

The 4 fields of learning (Sport, Art, Science, Wisdom) are linked to 4 components of the person (Body, Heart, Mind, Soul), and nurture them with 4 types of food or accomplishment (health, beauty, science, peace).

Further, 4 types of historical teaching are proposed, giving emphasis on pairs of fields.

• Sport+Art : Antique education as proposed by Plato
• Art+Science : Renaissance polymath, like Da Vinci
• Science+Wisdom : Medieval scholastic
• Wisdom+Sport : Asian monachism

It is to be noted that back then, the definitions of the 4 fields were not as restrictive as shown here. For instance, Asian monks haven't excluded science but have been including part of it into their wisdoms.

• The horizontal axis is about Power: Can and Know, "Pouvoir et Savoir". By combining horizontally Sport and practical Sciences, we could also imagine another very pragmatic education model: a nation of robots with no emotions (Equilibrium) nor conscience ! (Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World)
• The vertical axis is about Feeling: Conceive and Receive, The combination of Art and Wisdom: people alternating between nerdy passionate creation, and peaceful selfless bounty to one another.

Maybe an accomplished man has to explore and balance all these fields?

I've integrated this map into the broader cardinal cycle.

Facebook post

After years of work, hours of joy and desperation, here is my first large scale musical work:

Sonate pour Hautbois et Piano (listen online)

And here is the score:

The next step is to have it performed and recorded into a CD, and get it up there on Amazon.. Targeted by end of this year.

In the wake of some discussions about new Esperanto writing systems, I had the idea of recycling my old Alfuni script for the reduced scope of Esperanto sounds.

(click on the picture to download the TTF font)

• Plosives are tall, fricatives are deep, africatives are therefore both tall and deep.
• Mute are straight, voiced are crooked.
• Nasal and approximant are marked by a hook
• Vowels are small

Letters within a word can be grouped without ambiguity, which saves space. I also introduce the consonant Dz, for the sake of symmetry.

Simplifications include the combination of vowels into the consonant table, a feature that i tend now to always keep (W and U, Y and I, clearly match. H and A match in Arabic)

Here is the 1rst article of the universal declaration of human rights:

Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj.
Ili posedas racion kaj konsciencon, kaj devus konduti unu la alian en spirito de frateco.

My constructed language now explores the possibility of links with the melodies of the Zelda universe, looking for known words and roots, and then extracting new roots to create new words!

Here is a quick summary of several creations around Vietnamese:

• A Korean-inspired phonetic script: KoreoViet
• More recently, a Japanese-inspired reconstruction of the ancient script Nom, for learning purpose! If you know a bit of Chinese, that will gives you some keys to consolidate Vietnamese with what you know : Neo Nom

A la suite de la tuerie de Charlie Hebdo, les réactions ont été vives de tous bords. Après une réflexion sur les divers idéaux invoqués, j'ai imaginé une carte pour les représenter, par affinités (vert) et conflits (rouge). Les outils neutres sont en gris.

Par "ordre naturel", j'entends l'équilibre selon lequel la nature s'agence en l'absence d'intervention humaine. Cet idéal se focalise sur la nature intrinsèque des choses et leur rôle (Dharma au sens large).

Les dilemmes enfin visualisés !

1. Dilemme de la Naissance : Nature <> Égalité (Les hommes ne naissent pas égaux en facultés ni chances)
2. Dilemme de la Prospérité : Mérite <> Égalité (L'accumulation systématique des richesses fausse l’égalité des chances, et peut se compenser par la redistribution, elle même posant un problème de mérite.)
3. Dilemme du Don : Indépendance <> Partage (La main qui donne domine celle qui reçoit, le don implique une part d'humiliation, justifiant un désir d’indépendance)
4. Dilemme des Nations : Liberté <> Unité (La constitution d'un groupe sacrifie la liberté de ses membres, et endommage sa diversité interne en magnifiant les traits communs, et isole le groupe de l’extérieur en renforçant sa singularité.)
5. Dilemme de Rousseau : Liberté <> Engagement (S'engager, c'est manifester sa liberté tout en la détruisant... pour ensuite la régénérer en de nouveaux choix.)
6. Dilemme de l’Identité : Tradition <> Changement (L’identité des choses résident aussi dans leur dynamique d’évolution.)
7. Dilemme du Progrès : Satisfaction <> Critique (Être facilement satisfait est source de bonheur, mais coupe la dynamique de progrès par critique. Dans Fahrenheit 451 et Brave New World, on évite toute vexation en excluant le débat critique au profit du divertissement.)
8. Dilemme de la Censure : Vérité <> Charité (Certaines révélations au mauvais moment peuvent rendre inutilement malheureux ou violent.)
9. Dilemme de la Sagesse : Justice <> Pardon (Pardonner peut apparaître comme un déni de justice.)

Et au fait, où est Charlie ?
Peut être entre les dilemmes des nations, du progrès, et de la censure: on préfère garder sa liberté de critiquer et de tuer* plutôt que de supporter les inconforts pour une cohabitation pacifique.

- "liberté de tuer", c'est à dire de faire justice soi-même: un droit qu'on aurait jugé naturel et fondamental à une époque préhistorique et proto-historique pas si lointaine que ça !

Cette liste de dilemmes peut rappeler la liste d’idéologies douteuses faite en 2010.

Une mission pour la langue Laramin
Ma langue construite Laramin cherche à construire son vocabulaire de sorte à résoudre ces dilemmes, en proposant un nouveau point de vu avec de nouvelles notions, de sorte que les subtiles équilibres philosophiques ci-dessus deviennent des évidences pour le locuteur. La langue est notre lunette sur le monde et nos réflexions. Je pense qu'on peut éviter le problème à la source.

The webmaster just gave me the green light for adding my constructed script into the big collection of his website Omniglot. (KoreoViet is an extension of the Korean writing system to transcribe Vietnamese.)

Article connexe : Nouvel alphabet pour le Vietnamien / Korean-Vietnamese Alphabet