Hintonian Cubism: Training The Imagination

higherspace |  Most visitors to this blog – and, indeed, to my academia.edu profile – come seeking Charles Howard Hinton and his system of cubes. No surprises there. Hinton’s biography is quite something and his work on visualising – or, perhaps more accurately, imagining – the fourth dimension of space was innovative, influential and almost completely out of its time.

The purpose of this post is to update a project I began almost four years ago and am only really now in a position to continue: the construction of a set of Hinton’s cubes, the material demonstration models that anchored his pedagogical enterprise.

Hinton began working with cubes early in his career. The essay ‘On the Education of the Imagination’ (1888) may well have been written before ‘What is the Fourth Dimension?’ was first published in 1880. In this he describes working with a system of cubes with his school students, and he began teaching in 1876. The system is also based on what he termed ‘poiographs’ in a paper presented before the Physical Society in 1878, so it seems likely to have been a foundation stone for his project. Certainly, his proficiency with it was advanced by 1887, when he was able to claim that he’d memorised a cubic foot of his named cubes.

He refined the system of cubes over the course of his career. The system described in A New Era of Thought (1888), taking up the entire second-half of that remarkable, visionary text, described cubes with a different colour and name for each vertex, line and face. Relying on description and line drawings it is, unsurprisingly, fiendishly complicated. By 1904’s The Fourth Dimension he had developed a system of ‘catalogue’ cubes and plates to enable a more step-by-step working through of cubic training. There are also many more and far clearer illustrations in this text, so this is the version I’ve followed.

The first task is to paint the correct number of one inch cubes the correct colours, which are as follows:

Null	16
White	8
Yellow	8
Light yellow	4
Red	8
Pink	4
Orange	4
Ochre	2
Blue	8
Light blue	4
Green	4
Light green	2
Purple	4
Light purple	2
Brown	2
Light brown	1

I used model paints of the kind you use to paint Airfix aeroplanes. As a newbie to this game this process caused me more problems than you might imagine. For example, metallic paints sound exciting in the shop – wooh-hooh, electric pink! – but they are more liquid, don’t necessarily look all that great on wood, and can even look largely indistinguishable from lighter, non-metallic shades. Also, on which side do you rest a painted cube to dry? I never discovered the answer to this gnomic poser so my cubes are slightly messy. But hey! They’re my cubes – and they don’t need to be perfect.

After the set of 81 coloured cubes there are the catalogue cubes. These are coloured to distinguish vertices, lines and faces and the fold-out colour-plate at the front of The Fourth Dimension shows how they should look.

As you can see, painting lines a fifth of an inch proved beyond me, either freehand or using tape to mask off. In the end I decided to print out coloured nets of the cubes onto card and cut these out and tape them together. Again, slightly imperfect, but I think they do the job nicely.

 

 

Hinton Cubes

Hinton Cubes by Celephaïs Press / Unspeakab...

The Fourth Dimension

publicdomainreview |  In April 1904, C. H. Hinton published The Fourth Dimension, a popular maths book based on concepts he had been developing since 1880 that sought to establish an additional spatial dimension to the three we know and love. This was not understood to be time as we’re so used to thinking of the fourth dimension nowadays; that idea came a bit later. Hinton was talking about an actual spatial dimension, a new geometry, physically existing, and even possible to see and experience; something that linked us all together and would result in a “New Era of Thought”. (Interestingly, that very same month in a hotel room in Cairo, Aleister Crowley talked to Egyptian Gods and proclaimed a “New Aeon” for mankind. For those of us who amuse ourselves by charting the subcultural backstreets of history, it seems as though a strange synchronicity briefly connected a mystic mathematician and a mathematical mystic — which is quite pleasing.)

The coloured cubes — known as "Tesseracts" — as depicted in the frontispiece to Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

 

Hinton begins his book by briefly relating the history of higher dimensions and non-Euclidean maths up to that point. Surprisingly, for a history of mathematicians, it’s actually quite entertaining. Here is one tale he tells of János Bolyai, a Hungarian mathematician who contributed important early work on non-Euclidean geometry before joining the army:

It is related of him that he was challenged by thirteen officers of his garrison, a thing not unlikely to happen considering how differently he thought from everyone else. He fought them all in succession – making it his only condition that he should be allowed to play on his violin for an interval between meeting each opponent. He disarmed or wounded all his antagonists. It can be easily imagined that a temperament such as his was not one congenial to his military superiors. He was retired in 1833.

Janos Bolyai: Appendix. Shelfmark: 545.091. Table of Figures - Source.

Mathematicians have definitely lost their flair. The notion of duelling with violinist mathematicians may seem absurd, but there was a growing unease about the apparently arbitrary nature of "reality" in light of new scientific discoveries. The discoverers appeared renegades. As the nineteenth century progressed, the world was robbed of more and more divine power and started looking worryingly like a ship adrift without its captain. Science at the frontiers threatened certain strongly-held assumptions about the universe. The puzzle of non-Euclidian geometry was even enough of a contemporary issue to appear in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov when Ivan discusses the ineffability of God:

But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the whole of being, was only created in Euclid’s geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity… I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?

— Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamzov (1880), Part II, Book V, Chapter 3.

Well Ivan, to quote Hinton, “it is indeed strange, the manner in which we must begin to think about the higher world”. Hinton's solution was a series of coloured cubes that, when mentally assembled in sequence, could be used to visualise a hypercube in the fourth dimension of hyperspace. He provides illustrations and gives instructions on how to make these cubes and uses the word “tesseract” to describe the four-dimensional object.

Diagram from Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

The term “tesseract”, still used today, might be Hinton’s most obvious legacy, but the genesis of the word is slightly cloudy. He first used it in an 1888 book called A New Era of Thought and initially used the spelling tessaract. In Greek, “τεσσάρα”, meaning “four”, transliterates to “tessara” more accurately than “tessera”, and -act likely comes from “ακτίνες” meaning "rays"; so Hinton’s use suggests the four rays from each vertex exhibited in a hypercube and neatly encodes the idea “four” into his four-dimensional polytope. However, in Latin, “tessera” can also mean “cube”, which is a plausible starting point for the new word. As is sometimes the case, there seems to be some confusion over the Greek or Latin etymology, and we’ve ended up with a bastardization. To confuse matters further, by 1904 Hinton was mostly using “tesseract” — I say mostly because the copies of his books I’ve seen aren’t entirely consistent with the spelling, in all likelihood due to a mere oversight in the proof-reading. Regardless, the later spelling won acceptance while the early version died with its first appearance.

Diagram from Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

Hinton also promises that when the visualisation is achieved, his cubes can unlock hidden potential. “When the faculty is acquired — or rather when it is brought into consciousness for it exists in everyone in imperfect form — a new horizon opens. The mind acquires a development of power”. It is clear from Hinton’s writing that he saw the fourth dimension as both physically and psychically real, and that it could explain such phenomena as ghosts, ESP, and synchronicities. In an indication of the spatial and mystical significance he afforded it, Hinton suggested that the soul was “a four-dimensional organism, which expresses its higher physical being in the symmetry of the body, and gives the aims and motives of human existence”. Letters submitted to mathematical journals of the time indicate more than one person achieved a disastrous success and found the process of visualising the fourth dimension profoundly disturbing or dangerously addictive. It was rumoured that some particularly ardent adherents of the cubes had even gone mad.

He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidian, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.

— H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

Charles Howard Hinton

alchetron  |  Charles Howard Hinton (1853, United Kingdom – 30 April 1907, Washington D.C., United States) was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled Scientific Romances. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension. He is known for coining the word "tesseract" and for his work on methods of visualising the geometry of higher dimensions.

 

Hinton taught at Cheltenham College while he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained his B.A. in 1877. From 1880 to 1886, he taught at Uppingham School in Rutland, where Howard Candler, a friend of Edwin Abbott Abbott's, also taught. Hinton also received his M.A. from Oxford in 1886.

In 1880 Hinton married Mary Ellen, daughter of Mary Everest Boole and George Boole, the founder of mathematical logic. The couple had four children: George (1882–1943), Eric (*1884), William (1886–1909) and Sebastian (1887–1923) inventor of the Jungle gym. In 1883 he went through a marriage ceremony with Maud Florence, by whom he had had twin children, under the assumed identity of John Weldon. He was subsequently convicted of bigamy and spent three days in prison, losing his job at Uppingham. His father James Hinton was a radical advocate of polygamous relationships, and according to Charles' mother James had once remarked to her: "Christ was the saviour of Men but I am the saviour of Women and I don't envy him a bit." In 1887 Charles moved with Mary Ellen to Japan to work in a mission before accepting a job as headmaster of the Victoria Public School. In 1893 he sailed to the United States on the SS Tacoma to take up a post at Princeton University as an instructor in mathematics.

Fourth dimension

In an 1880 article entitled "What is the Fourth Dimension?", Hinton suggested that points moving around in three dimensions might be imagined as successive cross-sections of a static four-dimensional arrangement of lines passing through a three-dimensional plane, an idea that anticipated the notion of world lines. Hinton's explorations of higher space had a moral basis:

Hinton argues that gaining an intuitive perception of higher space required that we rid ourselves of the ideas of right and left, up and down, that inheres in our position as observers in a three-dimensional world. Hinton calls the process "casting out the self", equates it with the process of sympathizing with another person, and implies the two processes are mutually reinforcing.

Hinton created several new words to describe elements in the fourth dimension. According to OED, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book A New Era of Thought. He also invented the words kata (from the Greek for "down from") and ana (from the Greek for "up toward") to describe the additional two opposing fourth-dimensional directions (an additional 4th axis of motion analogous to left-right (x), up-down (y), and forwards-backwards (z)).

Hinton's Scientific romances, including "What is the Fourth Dimension?" and "A Plane World", were published as a series of nine pamphlets by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. during 1884–1886. In the introduction to "A Plane World", Hinton referred to Abbott's recent Flatland as having similar design but different intent. Abbott used the stories as "a setting wherein to place his satire and his lessons. But we wish in the first place to know the physical facts." Hinton's world existed along the perimeter of a circle rather than on an infinite flat plane. He extended the connection to Abbott's work with An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension (1907).

Influence

Hinton was one of the many thinkers who circulated in Jorge Luis Borges's pantheon of writers. Hinton is mentioned in Borges' short stories "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "There Are More Things" and "El milagro secreto" ("The Secret Miracle"):

Hinton influenced P. D. Ouspensky's thinking. Many of ideas Ouspensky presents in "Tertium Organum" mention Hinton's works.

Hinton's "scientific romance," the "Unlearner" is cited by John Dewey in "Art as Experience", chapter 3.

Hinton is the main character of Carlos Atanes's play Un genio olvidado (Un rato en la vida de Charles Howard Hinton). The play was premiered on Madrid in May 2015 and published in May 2017.

Hinton is mentioned several times in Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell; his theories regarding the fourth dimension form the basis of the book's final chapter. His father, James Hinton, appears in chapters 4 and 10.

He is mentioned twice in Aleister Crowley's novel Moonchild. The first mention mistakenly names his father, James Hinton.

 

 

Scientific Romances: The Conclusion To C.H. Hinton's The Persian King

C.H. Hinton Scientific Romances

In conclusion let us remark that we have supposed two different worlds—one of sensation in the first part, one of motion in the second part. And these have been treated as distinct from one another. And especially in the first part, by this avoidance of questions of movement, an appearance of artificiality was produced, and occasionally inconsistencies, for sometimes sensations were treated as independent of actions, sometimes as connected with them. But it remains to be decided if these inconsistencies are in themselves permanent, or whether, when we remove the artificial separation, and let the world of sensation and the world of motion coalesce, the inconsistencies will not disappear, thereby showing that their origin was merely in the treatment, 123not in the fact; that they came from the particular plan adopted of writing about the subject and are not inherent in the arguments themselves.

The king in the first part was supposed to have all the material problems of existence solved. There was a complete mechanism of nature. He took up the problem of the sentient life. But this problem can only artificially be separated from that of the material world. The gap between our sensations and matter can never be bridged, because they are really identical.

Let us then allow this separation to fall aside. Let us suppose the king to have all the reins of power in his own hands. Let us moreover suppose that he imparts his rays to the inhabitants so that they have each a portion of his power. And let us suppose that the inhabitants have arrived at a state of knowledge about their external world corresponding to that which we have about the world which we know.

Let us listen to a conversation between two of them.

A. The energy of the whole state of things is running down.

B. How do you prove that?

A. Whenever any motion of masses takes place a certain portion of the energy passes irrecoverably into the form of heat, and it is not possible to make so large a movement with those same masses as before, do all that is possible to obtain the energy back again from the heat into which it has passed.

B. Well, what about the heat? Energy in the form of the motions of the masses passes off into the energy of heat. But what is heat?

A. It is the motion of the finer particles of matter.

B. Well, I would put forward this proposal. We have by observation got hold of a certain principle that where any movement takes place some of the energy 124goes in working on the finer particles of matter. Let us now take this principle as a universal one of motion, and apply it to the motions of the finer particles of matter themselves, which are simply movements of the same kind as the movements of the larger ones. This principle would show that these movements are only possible inasmuch as they hand over a portion of their energy to work on still finer matter.

A. Then you would have to go on to still finer matter.

B. Yes, and so on and on; but to fix our thoughts, suppose there is an ultimate fine matter which is the last worked on. Now I say that we may either suppose that this is being gradually worked on and all the energy is dissipating, or else we may put it in this way. When we regard so much energy we are apt to think that it is the cause of the next manifestation in which it shows itself. But this is really an assumption. Energy is a purely formal conception, and all that we do is to trace in the actions that go on a certain formal correspondence, which we express by saying that the energy is constant.

A. But I feel my own energy.

B. Allow me to put your feeling to one side. If we take then the conservation of energy to be merely a formal principle, may we not look for the cause of the movements in the invariable accompaniment of them, namely, in the fact that a certain portion of the energy is expended irrevocably on the finer portions of matter. If now we take this ultimate medium which suffers the expenditure of energy on it, may we not look on it as the cause, and the setter in action of all the movements that there are. By its submitting to be acted on in the way in which it does submit, it determines all the actions that go on. For what is all else than a great vibration, a swinging to and fro. When we count it as energy, we by reckoning it in a particular manner make it seem to 125be indestructible, but that the energy should be indestructible would be a consequence from the supposition which we could very well make, that to produce a given series of effects the submitting to be worked on of this ultimate medium must be a minimum. If it were a minimum no movements could neutralize one another when once set going, for if they did there would be a waste of the submission of this ultimate medium.

A. But what do you suppose this ultimate medium would be?

B. That I cannot tell, but we seem to have indications. For the more fine the matter which we investigate, the more its actions seem to annihilate distance: light and electricity produce their effects with far greater rapidity than do the movements of masses. We might suppose that to this ultimate matter all parts were present in their effects, so that anything emanating from the ultimate matter would have the appearance of a system comprehending everything.

A. But you have not got any evidence of an ultimate matter.

B. No, all that we can think of is an endless series of finer and finer matter. But is that not an indication rather, not that the direction of our thoughts is false, but that there are other characteristics of this ultimate, so that when looked at under the form of matter it can only be expressed as an infinite series.

Let us omit the considerations brought forward in the preceding conversation and examine more closely the philosophy of the inhabitants of the valley in so far as it corresponds with ours.

They laid great stress on a notion of vis viva, or what we should term energy, but said it was gradually passing away from the form of movements of large bodies to that of movements of small bodies. So that in the 126course of time the whole valley would consist of nothing but an evenly extended mass of matter moving only in its small particles—and this motion of the small particles they called heat. Now they had very clearly arrived at the conviction that with every mechanical motion there was a certain transference of vis viva to the smaller particles of matter, so that it did not appear again as mechanical motion. But they did not accept this as a principle to work by. They did not consider that the motions of the smaller particles of matter were just the same as those of the larger masses. They did not see that if a condition held universally for the movements of the visible world, it must also hold for the smaller motions which they experienced as heat. So the conclusion which they should logically have come to that there was a transference of vis viva on and on was not held. But the step was a very little one for them to take from regarding an invariable condition as always there to regarding it as a cause. For the causes they assigned were all purely formal relations, and only got to assume an appearance of effective causes by familiarity with them, and a throwing over them of that feeling of effectiveness which they derived from the contact which they had with the king.

They might have reasoned. This universal condition of anything happening must be the cause. Energy goes from a higher to a lower level. That which causes the difference of level is the cause, and the cause of the difference of level must be that which invariably accompanies such a transference of energy from a higher to a lower level. Now this invariable condition is the passing of a portion of the energy into the form of motions of the finer parts of matter. Hence there is an apparently endless series. But to realize the matter, suppose an ultimate medium, suppose there is a kind of matter of 127infinite fineness distributed everywhere which let itself be worked on, and so determines differences and wakens the sleeping world. What are the qualities of this fine matter? We see them in the properties of the finer kind of matter which we know, such as light, electricity. The property of the finer kind of matter is in general that it tends to bring distant places together, so that a change in one part is rapidly communicated to every other part. If they followed this indication they would have supposed that the ultimate fine matter was of such a nature as to make all parts of the valley as one, so that there was no distance, and any determination of a difference of level on the part of this ultimate matter would have reference to all the conditions everywhere. It would be in immediate contact with every part, so that anything springing therefrom would present the appearance of a system having regard to the whole. Now if they had imagined such an ultimate medium doing that which to them would seem bearing rather than exerting force, suffering rather than acting, they would not have been far from a true conception of the king who directed them all. For he himself by reason of his very omnipresence could not be seen by them. There was nothing for them to distinguish him by. But they could have discovered somewhat of the means by which he acted on them, which can only be described from the appearances they present to the creatures whom the king calls into life.

But of truth they would have had another and perhaps a truer apprehension of the king in a different way. For when he acted on them so that they took one course rather than another, it was his action in themselves that they felt. If they were mere pleasure-led creatures then they were shaped outwardly, but if in their inner souls he acted and through them suffered, then they were true 128personalities conscious of being true selves, the oneness of all of them lying in the king, but each spontaneous in himself and absolute will, not to be merged in any other.

Thus they had two modes of access to the king, one through their own selves where he had made them exist, one through the outer world. And in the outer world it was but a direction in which they could look. They could never behold the personality of the king, but only an infinite series of different kinds of matter, one supporting the other as it were and underlying it, but doing more also than this, for in proportion as they considered the kinds of matter that lay deeper they found that distant became near, absent, present, that time gave no longer such distinctions, but from the phenomenal side they seemed by a gradual diminution of the limitations of experience to arrive at an external presentation of that absolute which exists in the fulness of things, which they knew more immediately in themselves when they truly were.

THE END.

The Mystery Of Pain

Wellcomecollection - The Mystery Of Pain

James Hinton was an ear surgeon who was best known for The Mystery of Pain, a little book which sets forth the Panglossian thesis that "all that which we feel as painful is really giving-something that our fellows are better for, even though we cannot trace it." It gives some idea of the turn of the son Charles Hinton's mind to learn that he wrote a piece, "The Persian King," in which he attempted to use higher dimensions and infinite series to obtain a mathematically accurate model of this idea.

New Model Of The Universe Chapter 2: The Fourth Dimension

avalonlibrary |  It will be possible to answer these questions definitely only when it is definitely known that the fourth dimension exists and when it is known what it really is. But so far it is possible to consider only what might be in the fourth dimension, and therefore there cannot be any final answers to these questions. Vision in the fourth dimension must be effected without the help of eyes. The limits of eyesight are known, and it is known that the human eye can never attain the perfection even of the microscope or telescope. But these instruments with all the increase of the power of vision which they afford do not bring us in the least nearer to the fourth dimension. So it may be concluded that vision in the fourth dimension must be something quite different from ordinary vision. But what can it actually be? Probably it will be something analogous to the " vision " by which a bird flying over Northern Russia " sees " Egypt, whither it migrates for the winter; or to the vision of a carrier pigeon which " sees ", hundreds of miles away, its loft, from which it has been taken in a closed basket; or to the vision of an engineer making the first calculations and first rough drawings of a bridge, who " sees " the bridge and the trains passing over it; or to the vision of a man who, consulting a time-table, " sees " himself arriving at the station of departure and his train arriving at its destination.

Now, having outlined certain features of the properties which vision in the fourth dimension should possess, we must endeavour to define more exactly what we know of the phenomena of that world.

Again making use of the experience of the two-dimensional being, we must put to ourselves the following question: are all the " phenomena " of our world explicable from the point of view of physical laws?

There are so many inexplicable phenomena around us that merely by being too familiar with them we cease to notice their inexplicability, and, forgetting it, we begin to classify these phenomena, give them names, include them within different systems and, finally, even begin to deny their inexplicability.
Strictly speaking, all is equally inexplicable. But we are accustomed to regard some orders of phenomena as more explicable and other orders as less explicable. We put the less explicable into a special group, and create out of them a separate world, which is regarded as parallel to the " explicable ".

This refers first of all to the so-called " psychic world ", that is to the world of ideas, images and conceptions, which we regard as parallel to the physical world.
Our relation to the psychic, the difference which exists for us between the physical and the psychic, shows that psychic phenomena should be assigned to the domain of the fourth dimension.1 In the history of human thought the relation to the psychic is very similar to the relation of the plane-being to the third dimension. Psychic phenomena are inexplicable on the " physical plane ", therefore they are regarded as opposite to the physical. But their unity is vaguely felt, and attempts are constantly made to interpret psychic phenomena as a kind of physical phenomena, or physical phenomena as a kind of psychic phenomena. The division of concepts is recognised to be unsuccessful, but there are no means for their unification.

In the first place the psychic is regarded as quite separate from the body, as a function of the " soul ", unsubjected to any physical laws. The soul lives by itself, and the body by itself, and the one is incommensurable with the other. This is the theory of naive dualism or spiritualism. The first attempt at an equally naive monism regards the soul as a direct function of the body. It is then said that " thought is a motion of matter ". Such was the famous formula of Moleschott.
Both views lead into blind alleys. The first, because the obvious interdependence of physiological and psychic processes cannot be disregarded; the second, because motion still remains motion and thought remains thought.

The first view is analogous to the denial by the two-dimensional being of any physical reality in phenomena which happen outside his plane. The second view is analogous to the attempt to consider as happening on a plane phenomena which happen above it or outside it.
The next step is the hypothesis of a parallel plane on which all the inexplicable phenomena take place. But the theory of parallelism is a very dangerous thing.
The plane-being begins to understand the third dimension when he begins to see that what he considered parallel to his plane may actually be at different distances from it. The idea of relief and perspective will then appear in his mind, and the world and things will take for him the same form as they have for us.
We shall understand more correctly the relation between physical and psychic phenomena when we clearly understand that the psychic is not always parallel to the physical and may be quite independent of it. And parallels which are not always parallel are evidently subject to laws that are incomprehensible to us, to laws of the world of four dimensions.

1 The expression " psychic " phenomena is used here in its only possible sense of psychological or mental phenomena, that is, those which constitute the subject of
psychology. I mention this because in spiritualistic and theosophical literature the word psychic is used for the designation of supernormal or superphysical phenomena.
At the present day it is often said: we know nothing about the exact nature of the relations between physical and psychic phenomena; the only thing we can affirm and which is more or less established is that, for every psychic process, thought or sensation there is a corresponding physiological process, which manifests itself in at least a feeble vibration in nerves and brain fibre and in chemical changes in different tissues. Sensation is defined as the consciousness of a change in the organs of sense. This change is a certain motion which is transmitted into brain centres, but in what way the motion is transformed into a feeling or a thought is not known.

The question arises: is it not possible to suppose that the physical is separated from the psychic by four-dimensional space, i.e. that a physiological process, passing into the domain of the fourth dimension, produces there effects which we call feeling or thought?

On our plane, i.e. in the world of motion and vibrations accessible to our observations, we are unable to understand or to determine thought, exactly in the same way as the two-dimensional being on his plane is unable to understand or to determine the action of a lever or the motion of a pair of wheels on an axle.

At one time the ideas of E. Mach, expounded chiefly in his book Analysis of Sensations and Vitiations of the Physical to the Psychic; were in great vogue. Mach absolutely denies any difference between the physical and the psychic. In his opinion all the dualism of the usual view of the world resulted from the metaphysical conception of the " thing in itself " and from the conception (an erroneous one according to Mach) of the illusory character of our cognition of things. In Mach's opinion we can perceive nothing wrongly. Things are always exactly what they appear to be. The concept of illusion must disappear entirely. Elements of sensations are physical elements. What are called " bodies " are only complexes of elements of sensations: light sensations, sound sensations, sensations of pressure, etc. Mental images are similar complexes of sensations. There exists no difference between the physical and the psychic; both the one and the other are built up of the same elements (of sensations). The molecular structure of bodies and the atomic theory are accepted by Mach only as symbols, and he denies them all reality.
In this way, according to Mach's theory, our psychic apparatus builds the physical world. A " thing " is only a complex of sensations.

But in speaking of the theories of Mach it is necessary to remember that the psychic apparatus builds only the " forms " of the world (i.e. makes the world such as we perceive it) out of something else which we shall never attain. The blue of the sky is unreal, the green of the meadows is also unreal; these " colours " belong to the reflected rays. But evidently there is something in the " sky ", i.e. in the air of our atmosphere, which makes it appear blue, just as there is something in the grass of the meadow which makes it appear green.

Without this last addition a man might easily have said, on the basis of Mach's ideas: this apple is a complex of my sensations, therefore it only seems to exist, but does not exist in reality.

This would be wrong. The apple exists. And a man can, in a most real way, become convinced of it. But it is not what it appears to be in the three-dimensional world.
The psychic, as opposed to the physical or the three-dimensional, is very similar to what should exist in the fourth dimension, and we have every right to say that thought moves along the fourth dimension.

No obstacles or distances exist for it. It penetrates impenetrable objects, visualises the structure of atoms, calculates the chemical composition of stars, studies life on the bottom of the ocean, the customs and institutions of a race that disappeared tens of thousands of years ago. . . .

No walls, no physical conditions, restrain our fantasy, our imagination.

QBism - Is Life But A Dream?

scientificamerican |  A newish interpretation of quantum mechanics called QBism (pronounced “Cubism,” like the art movement) makes subjective experience the bedrock of knowledge and reality itself. David Mermin, a prominent theorist, says QBism can dispel the “confusion at the foundations of quantum mechanics.” You just have to accept that all knowledge begins with “individual personal experience.”

According to QBism, each of us constructs a set of beliefs about the world, based on our interactions with it. We constantly, implicitly, update our beliefs when we interact with relatives who refuse to get vaccinated or sensors tracking the swerve of an electron. The big reality in which we all live emerges from the collisions of all our subjective mini-realities.

QBists hedge their mind-centrism, if only so they don’t come across as loons or mystics. They accept that matter exists as well as mind, and they reject solipsism, which holds that no sentient being can really be sure that any other being is sentient. But QBism’s core message, science writer Amanda Gefter says, is that the idea of “a single objective reality is an illusion.” A dream, you might say.

Proponents bicker over definitions, and physicists and philosophers fond of objectivity reject QBism entirely. All this squabbling, ironically, seems to confirm QBism’s premise that there is no absolute objectivity; there are only subjective, first-person viewpoints.

Physicists have more in common than most would like to admit with artists, who try to turn the chaos of things into a meaningful narrative. Some artists thwart our desire for meaning. T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is an anti-narrative, a grab bag of images that pop in and out of the void. The poem resembles a dream, or nightmare. Its meaning is that there is no meaning, no master narrative. Life is a joke, and the joke is on you if you believe otherwise.

If you are a practical person, like one of the finance majors in my freshman humanities class, you might conclude, along with T. S. Eliot, that efforts to comprehend existence are futile. You might urge friends majoring in philosophy to enjoy life rather than fretting over its meaning. You might summarize this advice with a catchy slogan: “Shut up and procreate!” But even those pragmatists must wonder now and then what our communal dream means.

The Quirky, Contingent, And Self-Referential Nature Of Biological Evolution Is Rare

inference-review |  Previous analyses have also looked at the emergence of life in conjunction with the emergence of human-like intelligence.⁹ Motivated by the assumption that four data points are better than two, Snyder-Beattie et al. have extended this earlier work with a Bayesian analysis of not only the timing of abiogenesis and the evolution of intelligence, but also the timing of two other major transitions: eukaryogenesis and the evolution of sexual reproduction. They conclude that intelligent life is rare in the universe because it took humans such a long time to evolve all four of the assumed prerequisites: abiogenesis, eukaryogenesis, sexual reproduction, and intelligence itself. Their Bayesian exploration of this result includes varying the timing of abiogenesis over a relatively wide range—between 4.3 and 3.5 billion years ago—and computing the effect of discovering that life emerged twice on earth.¹⁰ They found that their conclusion no longer holds if life emerged twice; or if abiogenesis occurred earlier, say, within ~10 million years of habitability; or if the habitable lifetime of the earth is 10 times longer than expected.¹¹

Recent exoplanet studies strongly suggest that every star has some kind of planetary system and that earth-like planets are likely common in such systems.¹² The earth may well be representative of a very large group of wet, rocky planets. But what about atmospheric composition, ocean volume, plate tectonics, spin period, orbital period, obliquity, the presence of a large moon, and the timing of large impacts? If the emergence and evolution of life are dependent on some of these additional details, the number of earth-like planets could be quite small.¹³

Once life has emerged from prebiotic chemistry, the strongest selection pressures on the evolution of a species come from other life forms: conspecifics, parasites, predators, diseases, viruses, and ecosystem variability. This self-referential nature of biology makes evolution a historical science characterized by the quirks of contingency. This characterization of evolution remains controversial.¹⁴ Our ability to extrapolate crow–puzzle experiments to crows on other planets depends on the existence of extraterrestrial crows. Similarly, the Snyder-Beattie et al. result depends on the assumption that “intelligent life elsewhere requires analogous evolutionary transitions.” The validity of the Snyder-Beattie et al. result, among others,¹⁵ is dependent on the assumption that the major transitions that characterize our evolution happen elsewhere.¹⁶

There is little evidence in the history of life on earth to support this assumption. Although abiogenesis is a transition shared by the lineages of all known life on earth, diverging lineages over the next four billion years are punctuated by their own evolutionary transitions. After diverging from other life forms, transitions within our own eukaryotic lineage include eukaryogenesis, sexual reproduction, and intelligence. A general feature of these transitions in the tree of life is that the closer a transition is to the end of a branch, the more recent, specific, and uncommon it is.¹⁷ In our lineage, eukaryogenesis occurred about two billion years ago and the transition to sexual reproduction about a billion years ago. The transition to intelligence is much more recent and its timing depends on how intelligence is defined. The transition to human-like intelligence or technological intelligence occurred only about 100,000 years ago and is species-specific. The latter trait is strong evidence we should not expect to find it elsewhere.¹⁸

There Can Be No "Theory Of Everything" Absent Specific Psychological Evolution...,

wikipedia |  The interdimensional hypothesis (IDH or IH) is a hypothesis advanced by ufologists such as Jacques Vallée,^[1] which states that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and related events involve visitations from other "realities" or "dimensions" that coexist separately alongside our own. It is not necessarily an alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), since the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive so both could be true simultaneously. IDH also holds that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures.^[2]

Although ETH has remained the predominant explanation for UFOs by UFOlogists,^[3] some ufologists have abandoned it in favor of IDH. Paranormal researcher Brad Steiger wrote that "we are dealing with a multidimensional paraphysical phenomenon that is largely indigenous to planet Earth".^[4] Other UFOlogists, such as John Ankerberg and John Weldon, advocate IDH because it fits the explanation of UFOs as a spiritual phenomenon. Commenting on the disparity between the ETH and the accounts that people have made of UFO encounters, Ankerberg and Weldon wrote "the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors."^[5] In the book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse published in 1970, John Keel linked UFOs to folkloric or supernatural concepts such as ghosts and demons.

The development of IDH as an alternative to ETH increased in the 1970s and 1980s with the publication of books by Vallée and J. Allen Hynek. In 1975, Vallée and Hynek advocated the hypothesis in The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects and further, in Vallée's 1979 book Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults.^[6]

Some UFO proponents accepted IDH because the distance between stars makes interstellar travel impractical using conventional means and nobody had demonstrated an antigravity or faster-than-light travel hypothesis that could explain extraterrestrial machines. With IDH, it is unnecessary to explain any propulsion method because the IDH holds that UFOs are not spacecraft, but rather devices that travel between different realities.^[7]

One advantage of IDH proffered by Hilary Evans is its ability to explain the apparent ability of UFOs to appear and disappear from sight and radar; this is explained as the UFO entering and leaving our dimension ("materializing" and "dematerializing"). Moreover, Evans argues that if the other dimension is slightly more advanced than ours, or is our own future, this would explain the UFOs' tendency to represent near future technologies (airships in the 1890s, rockets and supersonic travel in the 1940s, etc.).^[8]

 

Jacques Vallee: From PSI To UAP...,

wikipedia  |  In May 1955, Vallée first sighted an unidentified flying object over his Pontoise home. Six years later in 1961, while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, Vallée claims to have witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of an unknown object orbiting the earth. The particular object was a retrograde satellite – that is, a satellite orbiting the earth in the opposite direction to the earth's rotation. At the time he observed this, there were no rockets powerful enough to launch such a satellite, so the team was quite excited as they assumed that the Earth's gravity had captured a natural satellite (asteroid). He claims that an unnamed superior came and erased the tape. These events contributed to Vallée's lifelong interest in the UFO phenomenon. Vallée began to correspond with Aimé Michel (who would become a key mentor and research collaborator) in 1958.

In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH).

However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, demons, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. His speculation about these potential links was first detailed in his third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time; thus they could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.

Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH was not well received by prominent U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors". Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:

1. unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
2. the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
3. the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
4. the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
5. the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.

Vallée's ideas about Miracle at Fatima and Marian apparitions are that they are a class of UFO encounters. Vallée is one of the first people to speculate publicly about the possibility that the "solar dance" at Fatima was a UFO. Vallée has also speculated about the possibility that other religious apparitions may have been the result of UFO activity including Our Lady of Lourdes and the revelations to Joseph Smith. Vallée believes that religious experiences such as that this should be studied outside of their religious contexts.^[3][4][5]

Via professional association with SRI and independent friendships with Harold E. Puthoff and Central Intelligence Agency analyst Kit Green (who obtained a temporary security clearance for him in 1974), Vallée was intermittently consulted on classified remote viewing research (including the Stargate Project) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the early SRI experiments (led by Puthoff and Russell Targ in conjunction with Green as CIA contract monitor), he became acquainted with Uri Geller, Edgar Mitchell, Charles Musès, Andrija Puharich, Jack Sarfatti, Arthur M. Young, Edwin C. May, Pat Price and Ingo Swann. In 1973, Doubleday editor Bill Whitehead introduced Vallée to Ira Einhorn, a close confederate of Puharich; their association would span Vallée's business and paranormal networks until Einhorn was charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1979. More recently, he has been associated with Robert Bigelow as a consultant to the National Institute for Discovery Science and a member of the scientific advisory board of Bigelow Aerospace.

"Food For The Moon" - How Much Suffering Is Being Harvested Now?

downthecupracabrahole | In 1958 radio broadcasting executive Robert Monroe suffered a series of bizarre events. At the age of 43, he began feeling a strong vibration deep within his chest. Suddenly the sensation grew so intense that he was forced to lay down. Once reclined, the typically rational businessman found himself hovering outside of his body. He immediately panicked thinking he had died but the crippling fear abruptly returned him to his physical form. Similar episodes soon followed in which he weightlessly floated around the room. A concerned Monroe visited several doctors and psychologists yet each medical professional determined he was perfectly healthy. Relieved by their positive diagnoses, the telecommunication executive decided to hone his newly acquired skill. Before long he left his comfortable corporate career and dedicated his life to the exploration of consciousness.
Hemispheric Synchronization

For the next three decades, Robert intently studied out-of-body experiences. His primary goal was to gather scientific evidence proving the existence of alternate realities. In hopes of making cosmic travel more easily attainable, he developed a technology called Hemispheric Synchronization. Also known as Hemi-Sync, this system utilizes audio patterns containing binaural beats to create harmonization of the brain’s left and right hemispheres. Independent clinical neurologists conducted extensive testing on participants engaging in the experimental technique. To their shock, the results were clearly visible on every EEG scan conducted. Both sides of the brain simultaneously measured equal in both amplitude and frequency. Monroe’s work was pioneering the path to tangible altered states.

Portals to Other Dimensions Closely monitoring the astral explorer’s groundbreaking findings was the US government. One day in 1978 representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency contacted Monroe. High-ranking officials invited him to join a highly classified military project. They wanted to implement his mind-expanding practice in attempts of sending soldiers into deep remote viewing sessions. Should subordinates succeed, America would have a huge advantage over Soviet enemies. Troops could be catapulted into past, present, and future timelines or even the multiverse. Given Robert’s extensive background and various patented applications, he was the perfect choice for this trailblazing operation. Hoping to obtain further credibility in the study of paranormal phenomena, Robert agreed to join them.

Since those involved were opening portals to other dimensions, researchers aptly named the assignment Gateway Process. According to declassified files, the program is “a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space. The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge the universe offers.” Discoveries listed in Commander Wayne M. McDonnell’s final analysis paper included detailed information about the nature of reality. Investigators ascertained we live in a holographic universe and waking life is a projected electromagnetic matrix.

Reptilians Emerge
To enter the unearthly realms, headphone-donning voyagers sat in isolated darkness while listening to various tones at specific hertz. Participants had no contact or communication with one another. After their journey was finished, volunteers would report what they experienced with staff members. According to Robert, subjects would often encounter interdimensional entities. Most frequently witnessed were reptilian humanoids. Viewers referred to the uncanny creatures as ‘the alligators’ due to their crocodilian features. Curiously, Monroe was already quite familiar with the unsettling breed. During countless expeditions, he observed identical saurian creatures. For over thirty-five years the etheric investigator gathered insight about these startling beings.

.45's Gut Instinct, Dumb-Luck, And Kayfabery Is The Equivalent Of "Strong In The Force"

technologyreview |  The news: When Twitter banned, and then unbanned, links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the election campaign. But thanks to the cycle of misinformation—and claims from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately censoring their views—Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it intended. 

According to Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm, shares of the Post article “nearly doubled” after Twitter started suppressing it. The poorly-thought-through ban triggered the so-called Streisand Effect and helped turn a sketchy article into a must-share blockbuster. And then on Friday, the Republican National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Twitter, claiming that the ban “amounts to an illegal corporate in-kind political contribution to the Biden campaign.” 

The ban: Twitter blocked shares of the story under its policy against hacked materials, in part because of the dubious sourcing by the New York Post, the company said. The article also contained screenshots of emails with the addresses unredacted. Federal investigators are now looking into whether they are tied to a foreign intelligence campaign, according to NBC News. 

But on Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that blocking the URL was “wrong,” and that the company has changed its policy and enforcement procedures in response to the outrage over this decision.