(explanatory video) 
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6. Engrams - impediment to comprehension preliminary note: the word 'engram' is used here in a neuroscientific and psychological sense, has nothing to do with the meaning given by a certain organisation. The horn torus way of looking at things does not leave room for sectarian doctrines of salvation or any other mystical and spiritual interpretation - like it or lump it! Equally no doubt will be raised regarding validity of widely accepted major theories, and neither the wheel shall be reinvented nor a perpetuum mobile is planned ... Physical description of macro- and microcosm is formulated as quantum field theory. Theoretical and experimental successes let this method appear the right one, but many physicists feel discontent due to epistemological gaps and discrepancies or when confronted with consequences that contradict our common sense. The most important part of common sense is the imagination of space and time, probably rooted in properties and function of the brain. Everybody has the same or similar associations to words like point, distance, direction, volume, space, flow of time, locomotion, velocity etc. Such natural associations are self-evident, don't need explanation, are engrams. Every action of man and beast is related to engrams and the list of all our engrams probably would go beyond the capacity of my computer's memory. (edit: this was written in times of first personal computers :-) Three-dimensional space is the most persistent engram - inviolably given, ineradicable fixated. Even physicists, despite having learned abstraction, always refer to it, in all dimensional enhancements, all dynamic geometries, all topological sophistications and - likewise - in quantum field theories. Physical variables there always can be projected someway into the three-dimensional space, which is ever embedded in the comprehensive system as base or parameter for alteration of values. Three-dimensional space matches our consciousness, is congruent with our engrams, seems to be simple. But just this simplicity, which ideally enables us to cope with the challenges of daily life, comes at a price: an enormous complex formalism is required to formulate laws of nature and to describe physical reality - and just this simplicity makes comprehension of some aspects of reality so difficult or even impossible, and perhaps it is the reason why we have to introduce presumptions, arbitrary parameters and gauge mechanisms. ... The original text tells much more about engrams. Here we content ourselves with internalising this last mentioned point about the price for simplicity of imagination. This price I endeavour not to pay. I prefer a simple formalism for - not surprising - the price of a much more complex imagination, that does not perfectly match human consciousness. It is indeed a matter of personal preference and subject to the pleasure when playing mental games, pleasure and fun being main impetuses. I promise: game is fun! close |
