A tantalizing thought occurred to Democritus: What would happen if you kept cutting a substance in half? Take that half, then cut that in half, too. Keep going, all the way down. Democritus gave it some thought. There must be a smallest thing down there, some kind of particle so tiny as to be indivisible, or
I feel for Democritus. He was on the right path but just waaaay ahead of his time. It's amazing how long a theory that we know to be true can take centuries to be confirmed sometimes.
If you examine anything that you would describe as "object" to you (following it down to its depth-level, or through a chain of causation, or however you think about it), eventually it is found to be Light or Energy - whatever that IS. Light or Energy is a Single Indivisible "Something" - a Force, a kind of
Radiation. You cannot reduce an object any further than That.
Similarly, if you go within yourself, examining all the layers of your own "you"-description - entering into the depth-mind, and so on - when you get to the Root of "you", there is Consciousness, and you cannot go any further than That. The subjective "you" is not reducible to anything further. You cannot break Consciousness up into parts. It Is just What It IS. And the same is true or Energy or Light. No matter how you examine Energy, there is no basis for dividing It.
Thus. all objects (including atoms -whatever they are) turn out to be Energy - and all subjective inwardness, entered into, leads you to Consciousness. Therefore, there are two Great Factors discoverable by investigation: Energy & Consciousness. They seem to be different from one another, because you have taken the position of the body-mind. On the one hand, you have entered into the "interior" of the body-mind - and, on the other hand, you are constantly moving outward (from the "interior") toward what appears to be exterior (or in relation) to the body-mind. And, in your examination of "interior" and "exterior", you have not taken a single route. Or have you?
But Consciousness is the basis of your examination and consideration and judgement of BOTH "interior" and "exterior", BOTH "self" and "not-self". In other words, even that which is identified as "not-self" is something you know in the Domain of Consciousness. Thus, the "not-self" is something you know - and in that sense, the "not-self" Is Consciousness. So how can it be not-self?
I might add information to this mix, too. Information is profound, and there's something about it we still don't completely understand. Maybe it sort of bridges that gap between the inner and outer.
Oh, it's Dalton, not Danton. My mistake, sorry. And about splitting things in half over and over, this is super interesting. Ants discovered that a peculiar type of seed wasn't like the rest. Usually, to store them for hard winters (they know if they're coming), they collect as many as they could fit in their "storage room". To stop them from germinating, they cut them in half. One kind of seed still germinates even though they split them down the middle. Incredibly, they figured that if they cut them into four parts, the seeds could be stored for food and would not sprout at all. That kind of collective intelligence from such tiny beings is nothing short of mind-blowing.
I know Robespierre wasn't too happy with his methodology. j/k 😄 On a more serious matter, science, whether is Quantum, the theory of a parallel universe or Nociception, we can't define what reality is any longer. We are surrounded by mysteries and it's fantastic (no pun intended).
That's awesome! I wanted to keep this brief, but hoo boy, Dalton's accomplishments kept coming up during the research process, and so many of them seemed relevant here.
I'll forego the predictable kind of immature joke Daniel might normally make about "mixing two gasses together." Instead, I shall point out that science has recently discovered another type of "indivisible building blocks": LEGO. It is so indivisible, in fact, that it can single-blockedly injure the foot of an unsuspecting adult while taking no damage whatsoever.
I feel for Democritus. He was on the right path but just waaaay ahead of his time. It's amazing how long a theory that we know to be true can take centuries to be confirmed sometimes.
Yeah, and... well, his idea was right, but how could he know that? It was really just a good guess.
If you examine anything that you would describe as "object" to you (following it down to its depth-level, or through a chain of causation, or however you think about it), eventually it is found to be Light or Energy - whatever that IS. Light or Energy is a Single Indivisible "Something" - a Force, a kind of
Radiation. You cannot reduce an object any further than That.
Similarly, if you go within yourself, examining all the layers of your own "you"-description - entering into the depth-mind, and so on - when you get to the Root of "you", there is Consciousness, and you cannot go any further than That. The subjective "you" is not reducible to anything further. You cannot break Consciousness up into parts. It Is just What It IS. And the same is true or Energy or Light. No matter how you examine Energy, there is no basis for dividing It.
Thus. all objects (including atoms -whatever they are) turn out to be Energy - and all subjective inwardness, entered into, leads you to Consciousness. Therefore, there are two Great Factors discoverable by investigation: Energy & Consciousness. They seem to be different from one another, because you have taken the position of the body-mind. On the one hand, you have entered into the "interior" of the body-mind - and, on the other hand, you are constantly moving outward (from the "interior") toward what appears to be exterior (or in relation) to the body-mind. And, in your examination of "interior" and "exterior", you have not taken a single route. Or have you?
But Consciousness is the basis of your examination and consideration and judgement of BOTH "interior" and "exterior", BOTH "self" and "not-self". In other words, even that which is identified as "not-self" is something you know in the Domain of Consciousness. Thus, the "not-self" is something you know - and in that sense, the "not-self" Is Consciousness. So how can it be not-self?
I might add information to this mix, too. Information is profound, and there's something about it we still don't completely understand. Maybe it sort of bridges that gap between the inner and outer.
Oh, it's Dalton, not Danton. My mistake, sorry. And about splitting things in half over and over, this is super interesting. Ants discovered that a peculiar type of seed wasn't like the rest. Usually, to store them for hard winters (they know if they're coming), they collect as many as they could fit in their "storage room". To stop them from germinating, they cut them in half. One kind of seed still germinates even though they split them down the middle. Incredibly, they figured that if they cut them into four parts, the seeds could be stored for food and would not sprout at all. That kind of collective intelligence from such tiny beings is nothing short of mind-blowing.
I know Robespierre wasn't too happy with his methodology. j/k 😄 On a more serious matter, science, whether is Quantum, the theory of a parallel universe or Nociception, we can't define what reality is any longer. We are surrounded by mysteries and it's fantastic (no pun intended).
My three favorite scientific questions are:
Are we living in a simulation? What was the there before the big bang? Is there an intelligent life outside of our planet?
Great questions, and we certainly don't really know when we might get an answer to any of them. I love it.
Nice article! I first ran across Dalton in the analysis of mass spectrometry data. We published a paper on it.
That's awesome! I wanted to keep this brief, but hoo boy, Dalton's accomplishments kept coming up during the research process, and so many of them seemed relevant here.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=mb2m9ZEAAAAJ&citation_for_view=mb2m9ZEAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C
I'll forego the predictable kind of immature joke Daniel might normally make about "mixing two gasses together." Instead, I shall point out that science has recently discovered another type of "indivisible building blocks": LEGO. It is so indivisible, in fact, that it can single-blockedly injure the foot of an unsuspecting adult while taking no damage whatsoever.
Like atoms of a gas in a container that don't seem to care that other gases are in there, Legos don't seem to care about your feet.