Some science behind the scenes
System of the universe
The rise of robotics, the increasing work done in the areas of artificial intelligence and cognitive systems, surely shows that to get any ‘man made’ copy of a human or life form to perform even the most simple actions, requires software code of enormous complexity. Millions of lines of code. If the systems we simulate the universe with are this complex, how complex must the real systems be?
Let me use an example.
The old mechanistic approach to weather forecasting would have used a sequence of before and after descriptions of how the weather developed. ‘ A low pressure is developing over Ireland and it will bring rain into the North of England by mid afternoon’. We have all seen how it is described on TV when we watch the weather forecast.
Now we have computers, however, we are starting to make attempts at modelling weather systems. They can only predict the possible outcomes for a few days ahead and, as we know, are not always accurate because the number of variables [inputs] is so enormous.
Bill Bryson – A Short history of nearly everything
Climate is the product of so many variables – rising and falling carbon dioxide levels, the shifts of continents, solar activity, the planetary wobbles of the Milankovitch cycles …
The models require a supercomputer to run, because the code is highly complex and the processing required is staggering.
The weather forecasting systems are simulations of the actual weather systems. They attempt to MODEL – the actual system.
If you are attempting to model a natural system – you have already admitted that such a system exists. If you have turned it into a computer system with probably thousands of functions, you have admitted natural system functions exist. If these functions require millions of lines of code, we are admitting natural systems of enormous complexity exist.
As we have not delved into the innards of the systems of the universe, we may actually have got the functions wrong, but the fact remains we are attempting to model them which is a tacit admission that systems exist.
Spiritual world just means the world of system – the world of ‘spiritual software’. Replace ‘spiritual’ by the ‘systems of the universe’ in the following quote and it may become more palatable to a scientist…..
Heaven and its wonders and hell – Emmanuel Swedenborg
The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, not only in general but also in particular. Whatever, therefore in the natural world derives from its existence from the spiritual is said to be correspondent ….. The reason for correspondence is that the natural world, with all that it contains, exists and subsists from the spiritual world and both worlds from the divine Being. We say subsists as well as exists because everything subsists from that which gave it existence, subsistence being perpetual existence and because nothing can subsist from itself but only from something prior to itself and thus originally from the First cause, if it were separated from this, it would utterly perish and disappear.
Take away the software and the hardware stops…..
David Foster
A computer controlled automatic landing system for aircraft, a tree, and man himself are all examples of working systems in which many parts collaborate together to give an overall effective function. What we witness is effective complex function. In nature we witness this from the tiny scale of atoms up to the level of the whole biosphere, which reveals an extraordinary degree of systematic checks and balances …. our solar systems …. down to the smallest fragments is involved in effective complex function
Observations
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