ERATOSTHENES REVISITED AND IS TDVP NEW SCIENCE, OR A NEW RELIGION?

IS TDVP NEW SCIENCE, OR A NEW RELIGION?

We have stated that transcendental physics, and in the broader sense, the paradigm shift TDVP integrates science and spirituality. Does this make TDVP both a science and a religion? I am flattered to have been compared with Einstein more than once, and with religious reformers like Martin Luther. It has actually been suggested that my mission in life is to start a new scientific religious movement. If bringing science out of the dead end of materialism is a religious movement, then I’m guilty as charged, and happy to be an agent of positive change. But I’m a mathematician and physicist by academic training, and Dr. Neppe is a medical doctor and neuroscientist.

Dr. Vernon Neppe and I have proved that gimmel, a third form of reality that is neither matter nor energy, is absolutely necessary for there to be any stable atomic structure, i.e., any physical universe, at all. We have proved that the third form had to exist before any stable particle could emerge from the big bang or any other origin event. In addition, we have proved that it is this third form that conveys logical structure with purpose and meaning to existence. Our proofs are not just verbal arguments with the inevitable semantic problems that come with verbal representations, we have proved that gimmel exists with rigorous mathematics.

IS MATHEMATICS A RELIGION?

Most people think of mathematical proof as very much the opposite of belief, and belief, or faith, as the foundation of all religion. But someone said recently that: “Mathematics is not a science at all, it’s a logical religion!”  Here is his reasoning: Religion is based on belief in things that can be neither proved nor disproved. Gӧdel’s incompleteness theorem, which I have discussed more than once in these blog posts, proved that there are legitimate mathematical statements that cannot be proved or disproved, including the axioms of arithmetic. Therefore, mathematics, just like religion, is based on belief in things that cannot be proved or disproved, and that makes it a religion!

But, you may object that science, and mathematics -the language of science, are based on solid facts, not assumptions. If you believe that, then I’m afraid you are wrong! Both science and mathematics are only logically consistent within the axiomatic system upon which they are built. The dictionary definition of an axiom is: “a self-evident truth that needs no proof, or a universally accepted principle.” However, that which is self-evident to one person may not be self-evident to another; and are universally accepted principles always true? No. For example, it was once universally accepted by millions that the Earth was stationary and the moon, sun and stars all revolved around it. Since science and mathematics are only logically consistent within the axiomatic system upon which they are built, they cannot be said to contain absolute truth. Eratosthenes’ proof is a good example.

WAS ERATOSTHENES EXPERIMENT REALLY PROOF THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND? 

As noted in the previous post about the Flat Earth hypothesis, Eratosthenes may have gotten the idea that the Earth was round from books in the Great Royal Library of Alexandria where he worked, probably from the works of Pythagoras, who lived about 200 years before Eratosthenes. Pythagoras believed, among other things, that the Earth was a sphere. He also believed in reincarnation and said he remembered at least four of his past lives.

Eratosthenes started with the axiom that the Earth was round. If he had started with the axiom that the Earth was flat, the exact same measurements of the pole and shadow would have proved that the sun was less than 4,000 feet above Syene Egypt, not far off of the Flat Earth Society’s claim! So the statement that we find in text books and on Wikipedia that Eratosthenes proved the Earth was round 1700 years before Columbus is incorrect. Eratosthenes’ famous experiment simply demonstrated that the physical evidence of the shadows of identical poles 500 miles apart in Egypt was consistent with the assumption that the Earth was round. As it turns out, he was correct. There is plenty of evidence that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, slightly flattened at the poles because of the fact that it is spinning at about 1000 mph at the equator. The point here is that the same empirical evidence can support two vastly different realities.

IS SCIENCE OR RELIGION ULTIMATELY PROVABLE?

So we have to ask, is there any real difference between science and religion with regard to absolute truth? Each new discovery, like our discovery of gimmel, the third form of reality, just pushes what we know farther toward the assumption of an absolute reality.

THE SCI-LEGION OR REL-IENCE OF TDVP 

Perhaps TDVP is both science and religion. Perhaps the scriptures of TDVP are number theory texts, George Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form, the Calculus of Distinctions in Transcendental Physics, and Neppe and Close’s Reality Begins with Consciousness. www.BrainVoyage.com