Motion Related Quotes

All motion is relative. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still.

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost... [Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]

This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person's life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn't even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second's flash of thoughts and connections, etc. -- and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we're thinking and to find out what they're thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it's a charade and they're just going through the motions. What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny part of it at any given instant.

All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away-by standing still

God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.

The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.

Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.

Give me a reason, to end this discussion, to break with tradition, to fall and divide. So let's not get carried, away with the process, of healing relations, I don't want to waste your time!

We are all glorified motion sensors. Some things only become visible to us when they undergo change. We take for granted all the constant, fixed things, and eventually stop paying any attention to them. At the same time we observe and obsess over small, fast-moving, ephemeral things of little value. The trick to rediscovering constants is to stop and focus on the greater panorama around us. While everything else flits abut, the important things remain in place. Their stillness appears as reverse motion to our perspective, as relativity resets our motion sensors. It reboots us, allowing us once again to perceive. And now that we do see, suddenly we realize that those still things are not so motionless after all. They are simply gliding with slow individualistic grace against the backdrop of the immense universe. And it takes a more sensitive motion instrument to track this.

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain’s performance envelope.

A man matters, his experiences matter, but in a city, where experiences come by the thousands, we can no longer relate them to ourselves, and this is of course the beginning of life’s notorious turning into abstraction.“ „There is always something ghostly about living constantly in a well-ordered state. You cannot step into the street or drink a glass of water or get on a streetcar without touching the balanced lever of gigantic apparatus of laws and interrelations, setting them in motion or letting them maintain you in your peaceful existence; one knows hardly any of these levers, which reach deep into the inner workings and, coming out of the other side, lose themselves in a network whose structure has never yet been unraveled by anyone. So one denies their existence, just as the average citizen denies the air, maintaining that it is empty space. But all these things that one denied, these colorless, odorless,tasteless, weightless, and morally indefinable things such as water, air, space, money, and the passing of time, turn out in truth to be the most important things of all, and this gives life a certain spooky quality.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7].

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot—you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don’t like series books that leave you hanging after you’ve finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there’s always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers.

For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing.

To the human eye, stars move very slowly. Considering their relative motion, at this moment she and I might be looking up at virtually the same sight. She in 1896, me in 1971.

Time dilation, inconstancy of mass, and special relativity suggest that motion is indeed illusory.

difform motion will in every case produce the same effects as gravitation.

Scientists and inventors alike, they first guess a new explanation—a hypothesis—as wild and innovative as they can conjure. And then they test it rigorously, their hearts filled with the hope they’ll find a door or a window that reframes their understanding of the universe, of life, of a flower, or a cure for cancer. And it all starts with a guess, a good explanation as unlikely as it is plausible. A story at the knife’s edge of innovation, bleeding truth and pushing the limits of knowledge further afield. That impossibly sharp place where dreams and reality converge. A hard-to-vary idea as powerful as the one that broke Einstein’s General Relativity and his assumption that the laws of nature don’t depend on the motion of an observer.

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that "Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus", as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing.

But there is no truth except truth in relation, and heavenly relation is composed of wheels in motion, tilting axes, turning dials; it is a clockwork orchestration that alters every minute, never repeating, never still. We are no longer sheltered in a cloistered reminiscence of the past. We now look outward, through the phantasm of our own convictions: we see the world as we wish to perfect it, and we imagine dwelling there.

The forms of mathematics, the harmonies of music, the motions of the planets, and the gods of the mysteries were all essentially related for Pythagoreans, and the meaning of that relation was revealed in an education that culminated in the human soul’s assimilation to the world soul, and thence to the divine creative mind of the universe.

So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, John Herapath, Joule, Krönig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure. (1860)

And you’re okay with this?...” I studied his calm expression, my own features anything but calm. “Noooo…” Aeron drew the word out lazily with a slow, deliberate shake of his head. His face remained strangely composed. “Then can I please have some of whatever sedative you took…because this,” I waved my hand, motioning from his head to his feet, “is way too cool under pressure.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But he may perhaps aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears some proportion. But the parts of the world are all so related and linked to one another, that I believe it impossible to know one without the other and without the whole. Man, for instance, is related to all he knows. He needs a place wherein to abide, time through which to live, motion in order to live, elements to compose him, warmth and food to nourish him, air to breathe. He sees light; he feels bodies; in short, he is in a dependant alliance with everything. To know man, then, it is necessary to know how it happens that he needs air to live, and, to know the air, we must know how it is thus related to the life of man, etc. Flame cannot exist without air; therefore to understand the one, we must understand the other. Since everything then is cause and effect, dependant and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail.

In what state of rest or motion? At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space.

Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury’s orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton’s mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercury’s trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.

Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation, still a patent examiner, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 five papers on entirely different subjects. Three of them were among the greatest in the history of physics. One, very simple, gave the quantum explanation of the photoelectric effect—it was this work for which, sixteen years later, he was awarded the Nobel prize. Another dealt with the phenomenon of Brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of tiny particles suspended in a liquid: Einstein showed that these movements satisfied a clear statistical law. This was like a conjuring trick, easy when explained: before it, decent scientists could still doubt the concrete existence of atoms and molecules: this paper was as near to a direct proof of their concreteness as a theoretician could give. The third paper was the special theory of relativity, which quietly amalgamated space, time, and matter into one fundamental unity. This last paper contains no references and quotes to authority. All of them are written in a style unlike any other theoretical physicist's. They contain very little mathematics. There is a good deal of verbal commentary. The conclusions, the bizarre conclusions, emerge as though with the greatest of ease: the reasoning is unbreakable. It looks as though he had reached the conclusions by pure thought, unaided, without listening to the opinions of others. To a surprisingly large extent, that is precisely what he had done.

In gravitational fields there are no such thing as rigid bodies with Euclidean properties; thus the fictitious rigid body of reference is of no avail in the general theory of relativity. ... For this reason non-rigid reference-bodies are used, which are, as a whole, not only moving in any way whatsoever, but which also suffer alterations in form ad lib. during their motion... This non-rigid reference-body, ... might appropriately be termed a "reference mollusc,"...

Let us imagine ourselves transferred to our old friend, the railway carriage, which is travelling at a uniform rate. As long as it is moving uniformly, the occupant of the carriage is not sensible of its motion, and it is for this reason that he can without reluctance interpret the facts of the case as indicating that the carriage is at rest, but the embankment in motion. Moreover, according to the special principle of relativity, this interpretation is quite justified also from a physical point of view.

The curving and rippling fabric of spacetime explained gravity, its equivalence to acceleration, and, Einstein asserted, the general relativity of all forms of motion.

Tectonic plates are in constant motion. Much of North America is moving west, relative to the rest of the Earth, at about an inch per year.

By creating and initiating things, we set relative time in motion, giving time a purpose and function under the heavens.

The universal character of the centrifugal forces leaves us impotent as to discern whether what is going on inside the carrousel is because we are rotating with respect to terra firma (remember my eyes are closed), or because – for some unknown reason unrelated to motion – radial gravitational field has temporarily emerged while the carrousel is as in repose as it was before the given impulse. The latter would have certainly been the interpretation adopted by an intelligent being, had s/he been born and grown up inside the carrousel, without any access whatsoever to the exterior world.

The principle of relativity rests on a simple fact: Whenever we discuss speed or velocity (an object's speed and its direction of motion), we must specify precisely who or what is doing the measuring.

Discovery is thus inextricably interwoven with what is known as error. To recognize a certain relation, many another relation must be misunderstood, denied, or overlooked. The operation of cognition [Erkenntnisphysiologie] is analogous to the physiology of movement. To move a limb, an entire so-called myostatic system must be immobilized to provide a basis of fixation. Every movement consists of two active processes; namely, motion and inhibition. The corresponding features in the operation of cognition are purposive, directed determination and cooperative abstraction, which complement one another.

How can we tell whether the rules which we "guess" at are really right if we cannot analyze the game very well? There are, roughly speaking, three ways. First, there may be situations where nature has arranged, or we arrange nature, to be simple and to have so few parts that we can predict exactly what will happen, and thus we can check how our rules work. (In one corner of the board there may be only a few chess pieces at work, and that we can figure out exactly.) A second good way to check rules is in terms of less specific rules derived from them. For example, the rule on the move of a bishop on a chessboard is that it moves only on the diagonal. One can deduce, no matter how many moves may be made, that a certain bishop will always be on a red square. So, without being able to follow the details, we can always check our idea about the bishop's motion by finding out whether it is always on a red square. Of course it will be, for a long time, until all of a sudden we find that it is on a black square (what happened of course, is that in the meantime it was captured, another pawn crossed for queening, and it turned into a bishop on a black square). That is the way it is in physics. For a long time we will have a rule that works excellently in an over-all way, even when we cannot follow the details, and then some time we may discover a new rule. From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are of course in the new places, the places where the rules do not work—not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules. The third way to tell whether our ideas are right is relatively crude but prob-ably the most powerful of them all. That is, by rough approximation. While we may not be able to tell why Alekhine moves this particular piece, perhaps we can roughly understand that he is gathering his pieces around the king to protect it, more or less, since that is the sensible thing to do in the circumstances. In the same way, we can often understand nature, more or less, without being able to see what every little piece is doing, in terms of our understanding of the game.

At rest, we know that its circumference is equal to p times the diameter. Once the merry-go-round is set into motion, however, the outer rim travels faster than the interior and hence, according to relativity, should shrink more than the interior, distorting the shape of the merry-go-round. This means that the circumference has shrunk and is now less than p times the diameter; that is, the surface is no longer flat. Space is curved.

Hunting in my experience—and by hunting I simply mean being out on the land—is a state of mind. All of one’s faculties are brought to bear in an effort to become fully incorporated into the landscape. It is more than listening for animals or watching for hoofprints or a shift in the weather. It is more than an analysis of what one senses. To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human companions. It means to release yourself from rational images of what something “means” and to be concerned only that it “is.” And then to recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be related to other things. These relationships—fresh drops of moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing and a raven’s distant voice—become patterns. The patterns are always in motion.

Some hangovers are so horrific that it seems the whole world rocks and sways around you, the very walls creaking with the motion. Others are relatively mild and it just turns out that in your drunkenness a collection of Vikings have thrown you onto a heap of coiled ropes in their longship and set to sea. “Oh, you bastards.” I cracked open an eye to see a broad sail flapping overhead and gulls wheeling far above me beneath a mackerel sky.

The atoms, you know, have a cyclic motion. The stable compounds are made of constituents that have a regular, periodic motion relative to one another. In fact, it is the tiny time-reversible cycles of the atom that give matter enough permanence that evolution is possible. The little timelessnesses added together make up time. And then on the big scale, the cosmos: well, you know we think that the whole universe is a cyclic process, an oscillation of expansion and contraction, without any before or after. Only within each of the great cycles, where we live, only there is there linear time, evolution, change. So then time has two aspects. There is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises.

All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” ... “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. ... The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity. Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. ... There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. ... Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.

Time goes in cycles, as well as in a line. A planet revolving: you see? One cycle, one orbit around the sun, is a year, isn’t it? And two orbits, two years, and so on. One can count the orbits endlessly—an observer can. Indeed such a system is how we count time. It constitutes the timeteller, the clock. But within the system, the cycle, where is time? Where is beginning or end? Infinite repetition is an atemporal process. It must be compared, referred to some other cyclic or noncyclic process, to be seen as temporal. Well, this is very queer and interesting, you see. The atoms, you know, have a cyclic motion. The stable compounds are made of constituents that have a regular, periodic motion relative to one another. In fact, it is the tiny time-reversible cycles of the atom that give matter enough permanence that evolution is possible. The little timelessnesses added together make up time. And then on the big scale, the cosmos: well, you know we think that the whole universe is a cyclic process, an oscillation of expansion and contraction, without any before or after. Only within each of the great cycles, where we live, only there is there linear time, evolution, change. So then time has two aspects. There is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises.

We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. [Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co]

A full explanation of this is beyond the scope of this book, suffice to say that Einstein was forced into this bold move primarily because Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism were incompatible with Newton’s 200-year-old laws of motion. Einstein abandoned the Newtonian ideas of space and time as separate entities and merged them. In Einstein’s theory there is a special speed built into the structure of spacetime itself that everyone must agree on, irrespective of how they are moving relative to each other. This special speed is a universal constant of nature that will always be measured as precisely 299,792,458 metres (983,571,503 feet) per second, at all times and all places in the Universe, no matter what they are doing. This

It is worth noting that a wrong folkoric definition of an Inertial Frame in the Popular Science literature (even in text books) reads that 'it is a frame in uniform motion'. We know very well by now that the idea of motion requires a frame of reference, so that such a definition of an Inertial Frame has no meaning whatsoever, confusing the reader because it tacitly reaffirms the idea of absolute motion -- when the goal of every didactic exposition of Relativity Theory should be precisely the opposite.

And then—some visionary, through some accident— —accident, Mahavira?— —through some quirk of metabolism, through some drug perhaps, has his doors of perception opened for an instant and he almost sees—presque vu!—the entire being and he knows for the first time that there is a whole … other pattern here … Each moment in his life is only minutely related to the cause-and-effect chain within his little molecular world. Each moment, if he could only analyze it, reveals the entire pattern of the motion of the

From autunm's profligate seedings to the great spring giveaway, nature teaches a steady lesson: if we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon. When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, with efficiency of time and motion, with the rational relation of means and ends, with projecting reasonable goals and making a beeline toward them, it seems unlikely that our work will ever bear full fruit, unlikely that we will ever know the fullness of spring in our lives.

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, "I shall become the sea." It is not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is the truth. The river has no other alternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous fields and forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in various ways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from place to place. But it can have only partial relations with these, and however long it may linger among them it remains separate; it never can become a town or a forest. But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water has its affinity with the great motionless water of the ocean. It moves through the thousand objects on its onward course, and its motion finds its finality when it reaches the sea.

Secondary structural dissociation involves one ANP and more than one EP. Examples of secondary structural dissociation are complex PTSD, complex forms of acute stress disorder, complex dissociative amnesia, complex somatoform disorders, some forms of trauma-relayed personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS).. Secondary structural dissociation is characterized by divideness of two or more defensive subsystems. For example, there may be different EPs that are devoted to flight, fight or freeze, total submission, and so on. (Van der Hart et al., 2004). Gail, a patient of mine, does not have a personality disorder, but describes herself as a "changed person." She survived a horrific car accident that killed several others, and in which she was the driver. Someone not knowing her history might see her as a relatively normal, somewhat anxious and stiff person (ANP). It would not occur to this observer that only a year before, Gail had been a different person: fun-loving, spontaneous, flexible, and untroubled by frightening nightmares and constant anxiety. Fortunately, Gail has been willing to pay attention to her EPs; she has been able to put the process of integration in motion; and she has been able to heal. p134

We thus arrive at the important result: Events that are simultaneous with reference to the embankment are not simultaneous with respect to the train,” said Einstein. The principle of relativity says that there is no way to decree that the embankment is “at rest” and the train “in motion.” We can say only that they are in motion relative to each other. So there is no “real” or “right” answer. There is no way to say that any two events are “absolutely” or “really” simultaneous.43 This is a simple insight, but also a radical one. It means that there is no absolute time. Instead, all moving reference frames have their own relative time. Although Einstein refrained from saying that this leap was as truly “revolutionary” as the one he made about light quanta, it did in fact transform science. “This was a change in the very foundation of physics, an unexpected and very radical change that required all the courage of a young and revolutionary genius,” noted Werner Heisenberg, who later contributed to a similar feat with his principle of quantum uncertainty.

nothing may travel faster than the speed of light. Because of the equivalence of energy and mass, the energy which an object has due to its motion will add to its mass. In other words, it will make it harder to increase its speed. This effect is only really significant for objects moving at speeds close to the speed of light. For example, at 10 percent of the speed of light an object’s mass is only 0.5 percent more than normal, while at 90 percent of the speed of light it would be more than twice its normal mass. As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises ever more quickly, so it takes more and more energy to speed it up further. It can in fact never reach the speed of light, because by then its mass would have become infinite, and by the equivalence of mass and energy, it would have taken an infinite amount of energy to get it there. For this reason, any normal object is forever confined by relativity to move at speeds slower than the speed of light. Only light, or other waves that have no intrinsic mass, can move at the speed of light.

He was not quite eight-and-twenty, still swift and exact in his motions, and possessed of the kind of roguish, unsullied vigor that conveys neither gullibility nor guile. He presented himself in the manner of a discreet and quick-minded butler, and as a consequence was drawn into the confidence of the least voluble of men, or invited to broker relations between people he had only lately met. He had, in short, an appearance that betrayed very little about his own character, and an appearance that others were immediately inclined to trust.

The aficionado, or lover of the bullfight, may be said, broadly, then, to be one who has this sense of the tragedy and ritual of the fight so that the minor aspects are not important except as they relate to the whole. Either you have this or you have not, just as, without implying any comparison, you have or have not an ear for music. Without an ear for music the principle impression of an auditor at a symphony concert might be of the motions of the players of the double bass, just as the spectator at the bullfight might remember only the obvious grotesqueness of a picador.

In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the … voice of one beloved singing to you alone. — Percy Bysshe Shelley, from “On Love," The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose, edited by H. Buxton Forman. (1880)

Capitalism is nothing if it is not on the move. Marx is incredibly appreciative of that, and he sets out to evoke the transformative dynamism of capital. That’s why it is so very strange that he’s often depicted as a static thinker who reduces capitalism to a structural configuration. No, what Marx seeks out in Capital is a conceptual apparatus, a deep structure, that explains the way in which motion is actually instantiated within a capitalist mode of production. Consequently, many of his concepts are formulated around relations rather than stand-alone principles; they are about transformative activity.

Einstein himself summed it up thus: ‘The “Principle of Relativity” in its widest sense is contained in the Statement: The totality of physical phenomena is of such a character that it gives no basis for the introduction of the concept of “absolute motion”; or, shorter but less precise: There is no absolute motion.

raw state militias patrolling the west with seasoned troops better capable of confronting the Indians of the Great Plains. South of the Arkansas, this meant eradicating the Kiowa and the Comanche, who were blocking movement along the Santa Fe Trail into New Mexico. North of the Platte, it meant killing Red Cloud and Sitting Bull. General Ulysses S. Grant, the Army’s commander in chief, had long planned such a moment. The previous November, the day after the Sand Creek massacre, Grant summoned Major General John Pope to his Virginia headquarters to put such plans in motion. Despite his relative youth, the forty-three-year-old Pope was an old-school West Pointer and a topographical engineer-surveyor whose star had risen with several early successes on western fronts in the Civil War. It had dimmed just as rapidly when Lincoln placed him in command of the eastern forces; Pope was thoroughly outfoxed by Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Pope had been effectively exiled to St. Paul, Minnesota, until Grant recalled him to consolidate under one command a confusing array of bureaucratic Army “departments” and “districts” west of St. Louis. Grant named Pope the commanding general of a new Division of the Missouri,

Narratives, stories, help create a deeper sense of shared identity. They generate meaning and foster cooperative actions through neurochemical correlates that kick into motion as the brain responds to the narrative and release elevated levels of oxytocin. Context fixes our sense of who we are in relation to where and when we are.

The order of the universe is not an assumption; it’s an observed fact. We detect the light from distant quasars only because the laws of electromagnetism are the same 10 billion light years away as here. The spectra of those quasars are recognizable only because the same chemical elements are present there as here, and because the same laws of quantum mechanics apply. The motion of galaxies around one another follows familiar Newtonian gravity. Gravitational lenses and binary pulsar spin-downs reveal general relativity in the depths of space. We could have lived in a universe with different laws in every province, but we do not. This fact cannot but elicit feelings of reverence and awe.

It was Einstein who provided the first incontrovertible evidence of atoms’ existence with his paper on Brownian motion in 1905, but this attracted little attention and in any case Einstein was soon to become consumed with his work on general relativity. So the first real hero of the atomic age, if not the first personage on the scene, was Ernest Rutherford.

Each sucker on an octopus’s arm may have 10,000 neurons to handle taste and touch. Even an arm that has been surgically removed can perform various basic motions, like reaching and grasping. How does an octopus’s brain relate to its arms? Early work, looking at both behavior and anatomy, gave the impression that the arms enjoyed considerable independence. The channel of nerves that leads from each arm back to the central brain seemed pretty slim. Some behavioral studies gave the impression that octopuses did not even track where their own arms might be. As Roger Hanlon and John Messenger put it in their book Cephalopod Behaviour, the arms seemed “curiously divorced” from the brain, at least in the control of basic motions.

Aryabhata correctly concluded, a full thousand years before Copernicus and Galileo, that the earth rotates about its axis daily, and that the apparent movement of the stars is a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth, contrary to the prevailing view that it was the sky that rotated. What he got wrong was believing that the sun revolved around the earth rather than the other way round.

What is knowledge? it is primarily and essentially idea. What is idea? A very complicated physiological process in the brain of an animal, the result of which is the consciousness of a picture there. Clearly the relation between such a picture and something entirely different from the animal in whose brain it exists can only be a very indirect one. This is perhaps the simplest and most comprehensible way of disclosing the deep gulf between the ideal and the real. This belongs to the things of which, like the motion of the earth, we are not directly conscious; therefore the ancients did not observe it, just as they did not observe the motion of the earth. Once pointed out, on the other hand, first by Descartes, it has ever since given philosophers no rest. But after Kant had at last proved in the most thorough manner the complete diversity of the ideal and the real, it was an attempt, as bold as it was absurd, yet perfectly correctly calculated with reference to the philosophical public in Germany, and consequently crowned with brilliant results, to try to assert the absolute identity of the two by dogmatic utterances, on the strength of a pretended intellectual intuition. In truth, on the contrary, a subjective and an objective existence, a being for self and a being for others, a consciousness of one's own self, and a consciousness of other things, is given us directly, and the two are given in such a fundamentally different manner that no other difference can compare with this. About himself every one knows directly, about all others only very indirectly. This is the fact and the problem.

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

Technology, I said before, is most powerful when it enables transitions—between linear and circular motion (the wheel), or between real and virtual space (the Internet). Science, in contrast, is most powerful when it elucidates rules of organization—laws—that act as lenses through which to view and organize the world. Technologists seek to liberate us from the constraints of our current realities through those transitions. Science defines those constraints, drawing the outer limits of the boundaries of possibility. Our greatest technological innovations thus carry names that claim our prowess over the world: the engine (from ingenium, or “ingenuity”) or the computer (from computare, or “reckoning together”). Our deepest scientific laws, in contrast, are often named after the limits of human knowledge: uncertainty, relativity, incompleteness, impossibility. Of all the sciences, biology is the most lawless; there are few rules to begin with, and even fewer rules that are universal. Living beings must, of course, obey the fundamental rules of physics and chemistry, but life often exists on the margins and interstices of these laws, bending them to their near-breaking limit. The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organization, and maximize chaos. Life is designed to combat these forces. We slow down reactions, concentrate matter, and organize chemicals into compartments; we sort laundry on Wednesdays. “It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe,” James Gleick wrote. We live in the loopholes of natural laws, seeking extensions, exceptions, and excuses.

Thus, the double unification given by the equivalence principle becomes a triple unification: All motions are equivalent once the effects of gravity are taken into account, gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration, and the gravitational field is unified with the geometry of space and time. When worked out in detail, this became Einstein's general theory of relativity, which he published in full form in 1915.

He reached for me, and fast as lightning, he boxed my ears. All I remember is the world exploding. Cassandra says she helped me back to our room, and there was blood coming from my left ear. My right ear mended in a day or two, but I could only hear a little out of the left one, and there was a beating pain deep down. Soon I took ill with fever. Mama said that had nothing to do with the ear, but I think it did." Pandora paused, unwilling to relate any of the distasteful details of her ear suppurating and draining. She glanced cautiously at Gabriel, whose face was averted. He was no longer playing with her braid. His hand had clenched around it until the muscles of his forearms and wrist stood out. "Even after I recovered from the fever," Pandora said, "the hearing didn't come back all the way. But the worst part was that I kept losing my balance, especially at night. It made me afraid of the dark. Ever since then-" She stopped as Gabriel lifted his head. His face was hard and murderous, the hellfrost in his eyes frightening her more than her father's fury ever had. "That bloody son of a bitch," he said softly. "If he were still alive, I'd beat him with a thresher's flail." Pandora reached out with a fluttering motion, patting the air near him. "No," she said breathlessly, "no, I wouldn't want that. I hated him for a long time, but now I feel sorry for him." Gabriel caught her hand in midair, swift but gentle, as if it were a bird he wanted to hold without injuring. His eyes had dilated until she could see reflections of herself in the dark centers. "Why?" he whispered after a long moment. "Because hurting me was the only way to hide his own pain.

Then there occurred to me the 'glucklichste Gedanke meines Lebens,' the happiest thought of my life, in the following form. The gravitational field has only a relative existence in a way similar to the electric field generated by magnetoelectric induction. Because for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists-at least in his immediate surroundings-no gravitational field [his italics]. Indeed, if the observer drops some bodies then these remain relative to him in a state of rest or of uniform motion, independent of their particular chemical or physical nature (in this consideration the air resistance is, of course, ignored). The observer therefore has the right to interpret his state as 'at rest.' Because of this idea, the uncommonly peculiar experimental law that in the gravitational field all bodies fall with the same acceleration attained at once a deep physical meaning. Namely, if there were to exist just one single object that falls in the gravitational field in a way different from all others, then with its help the observer could realize that he is ina gravitational field and is falling in it. If such an object does not exist, however-as experience has shown with great accuracy-then the observer lacks any objective means of perceiving himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to consider his state as one of rest and his environment as field-free relative to gravitation. The experimentally known matter independence of the acceleration of fall is therefore a powerful argument for the fact that the relativity postulate has to be extended to coordinate systems which, relative to each other, are in non-uniform motion.

The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge of an eclipse, or of anything else relating to the motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science which is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction of plans or edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called land surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science; it is an eternal truth; it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses is unknown.

Consider this claim: as I walk along, time – as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process – slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling, they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

Newton’s laws of motion put an end to the idea of absolute position in space. The theory of relativity gets rid of absolute time. Consider a pair of twins. Suppose that one twin goes to live on the top of a mountain while the other stays at sea level. The first twin would age faster than the second. Thus, if they met again, one would be older than the other. In this case, the difference in ages would be very small, but it would be much larger if one of the twins went for a long trip in a spaceship at nearly the speed of light. When he returned, he would be much younger than the one who stayed on earth. This is known as the twins paradox, but it is a paradox only if one has the idea of absolute time at the back of one’s mind. In the theory of relativity there is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.

What is self and what is other may be a question of the person's 'biology,' but it is equally a question of the person's 'philosophy': what is the subject-object relationship the person has become in the world? That question suggests at least two things...First, subject-object relations become; they are not static; their study is the study of a motion. Second, subject-object relations live in the world; they are not simply abstractions, but take form in actual human relations and social contexts.

The generalized theory of relativity has furnished still more remarkable results. This considers not only uniform but also accelerated motion. In particular, it is based on the impossibility of distinguishing an acceleration from the gravitation or other force which produces it. Three consequences of the theory may be mentioned of which two have been confirmed while the third is still on trial: (1) It gives a correct explanation of the residual motion of forty-three seconds of arc per century of the perihelion of Mercury. (2) It predicts the deviation which a ray of light from a star should experience on passing near a large gravitating body, the sun, namely, 1".7. On Newton's corpuscular theory this should be only half as great. As a result of the measurements of the photographs of the eclipse of 1921 the number found was much nearer to the prediction of Einstein, and was inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the sun, in further confirmation of the theory. (3) The theory predicts a displacement of the solar spectral lines, and it seems that this prediction is also verified.

It is vain philosophy that supposes more causes than are exactly adequate to explain the phenomena of things. . . . You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between every thing which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation. It by no means follows, that because a being exists, performing certain functions, he was fitted by another being to the performance of these functions. So rash a conclusion would conduct, as I have before shewn, to an absurdity; and it becomes infinitely more unwarrantable from the consideration that the known laws of matter and motion, suffice to unravel, even in the present imperfect state of moral and physical science, the majority of those difficulties which the hypothesis of a Deity was invented to explain. Doubtless no disposition of inert matter, or matter deprived of qualities, could ever have composed an animal, a tree, or even a stone. But matter deprived of qualities, is an abstraction, concerning which it is impossible to form an idea. Matter, such as we behold it, is not inert. It is infinitely active and subtile.

competence.” “That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’ Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people. That’s what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It

I knew that the whole stupid family were in a combination to do my business for me. I told thee that they were all working for me, like so many underground moles; and still more blind than the moles are said to be, unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director of their principal motions; which falling in with the malice of their little hearts, they took to be all their own. Did I say my joy was perfect?-Oh no- It receives some abatement from my disgusted pride. For how can I endure to think that I owe more to her relation's persecutions than to her favour for me? -Or even, as far as I know, to her preference of me to another man? But let me not indulge this thought. Were I to do so, it might cost my charmer dear- Let me rejoice that she has passed the Rubicon: that she cannot return: that, as I have ordered it, the flight will appear to the implacables to be altogether with her own consent: and that if I doubt her love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her niceness, as glorious to my pride- For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind whether she preferred me to any man living, I would show her no mercy. Take care!- Take care, oh beloved of my soul: for jealous is the heart in which love has erected a temple to thee.

In the old days, reflecting enviously on the hours that Mme de Guermantes spent with him, I had set such great store by seeing him! People never cease to change position in relation to ourselves. In the world’s imperceptible but everlasting march, we think of them as motionless, in a moment of vision, too brief for us to perceive the motion that is bearing them along. But we need only choose from our memory two pictures of them taken at different times, yet sufficiently close together for them not to have changed in themselves, perceptibly at least, and the difference between the two pictures measures the displacement they have effected relative to ourselves.

In string theory, the situation is very different. The law of motion dictates the laws of the forces. This is because all forces in string theory have the same simple origin-they come from the breaking and joining of strings. Once you describe how strings move freely, all you have to do to add forces is add the possibility that a string can break into two strings. By reversing the process in time, you can rejoin two strings into a single string (see Fig. 5). The law for breaking and joining turns out to be strongly prescribed, to be consistent with special relativity and quantum theory. Force and motion are unified in a way that would have been impossible in a theory of particles as points.

Dark matter is currently thought to make up about 23 percent of the mass and energy of the universe, whereas normal matter and energy make up only about 4 percent. Worse still, most contemporary cosmologists think that the continuing expansion of the universe is driven by “dark energy,” whose nature is again obscure. According to the Standard Model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for about 73 percent of the matter and energy of the universe. How do dark matter and energy relate to regular matter and energy? And what is the zero-point energy field, also known as the quantum vacuum? Can any of this zero-point energy be tapped? The law of conservation of matter and energy was formulated before these questions arose, and has no ready answer for them. It is based on philosophical and theological theories. Historically, it is rooted in the atomistic school of philosophy in ancient Greece. From the outset it was an assumption. In its modern form, it combines a series of “laws” that have developed since the seventeenth century—the laws of conservation of matter, mass, motion, force and energy. In this chapter I look at the history of these ideas, and show how modern physics throws up questions that the old theories cannot answer. As faith in conservation comes into question, astonishing new possibilities open up in realms ranging from the generation of energy to human nutrition.

[OBSERVATIONS RELATED TO EXAMINING THE NATURE OF MIND] Be certain that the nature of mind is empty and without foundation. One’s own mind is insubstantial, like an empty sky. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. Divorced from views which constructedly determine [the nature of] emptiness, Be certain that pristine cognition, naturally originating, is primordially radiant – Just like the nucleus of the sun, which is itself naturally originating. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that this awareness, which is pristine cognition, is uninterrupted, Like the coursing central torrent of a river which flows unceasingly. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that conceptual thoughts and fleeting memories are not strictly identifiable, But insubstantial in their motion, like the breezes of the atmosphere. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that all that appears is naturally manifest [in the mind], Like the images in a mirror which [also] appear naturally. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! Be certain that all characteristics are liberated right where they are, Like the clouds of the atmosphere, naturally originating and naturally dissolving. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not! There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], now could there be anything on which to meditate apart from the mind? There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no modes of conduct to be undertaken extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no commitments to be kept extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], there are no results to be attained extraneous [to those that originate from the mind]. There are no phenomena extraneous to those that originate from the mind. [So], one should observe one’s own mind, looking into its nature again and again. If, upon looking outwards towards the external expanse of the sky, There are no projections emanated by the mind, And if, on looking inwards at one’s own mind, There is no projectionist who projects [thoughts] by thinking them, Then, one’s own mind, completely free from conceptual projections, will become luminously clear. [This] intrinsic awareness, [union of] inner radiance and emptiness, is the Buddha-body of Reality, [Appearing] like [the illumining effect of] a sunrise on a clear and cloudless sky,. It is clearly knowable, despite its lack of specific shape or form. There is a great distinction between those who understand and those who misunderstand this point. This naturally originating inner radiance, uncreated from the very beginning, Is the parentless child of awareness – how amazing! It is the naturally originating pristine cognition, uncreated by anyone – how amazing! [This radiant awareness] has never been born and will never die – how amazing! Though manifestly radiant, it lacks an [extraneous] perceiver – how amazing! Though it has roamed throughout cyclic existence, it does not degenerate – how amazing! Though it has seen buddhahood itself, it does not improve – how amazing! Though it is present in everyone, it remains unrecognised – how amazing! Still, one hopes for some attainment other than this – how amazing! Though it is present within oneself, one continues to seek it elsewhere – how amazing!

Life sometimes is like tossing a coin in the air calling heads or tails, but it doesn’t matter what side it lands on; life goes on. It is hard when you’ve lost the will to fight because you’ve been fighting for so long. You are smothered by the pain. Mentally, you are drained. Physically, you are weak. Emotionally, you are weighed down. Spiritually, you do not have one tiny mustard seed of faith. The common denominator is that other people’s problems have clouded your mind with all of their negativity. You cannot feel anything; you are numb. You do not have the energy to surrender, and you choose not to escape because you feel safe when you are closed in. As you move throughout the day, you do just enough to get by. Your mindset has changed from giving it your all to—well, something is better than nothing. You move in slow motion like a zombie, and there isn’t any color, just black and white, with every now and then a shade of gray. You’ve shut everyone out and crawled back into the rabbit hole. Life passes you by as you feel like you cannot go on. You look around for help; for someone to take the pain away and to share your suffering, but no one is there. You feel alone, you drift away when you glance ahead and see that there are more uphill battles ahead of you. You do not have the option to turn around because all of the roads are blocked. You stand exactly where you are without making a step. You try to think of something, but you are emotionally bankrupt. Where do you go from here? You do not have a clue. Standing still isn’t helping because you’ve welcomed unwanted visitors; voices are in your head, asking, “What are you waiting for? Take the leap. Jump.” They go on to say, “You’ve had enough. Your burdens are too heavy.” You walk towards the cliff; you turn your head and look at the steep hill towards the mountain. The view isn’t helping; not only do you have to climb the steep hill, but you have to climb up the mountain too. You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear: “Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give. Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled. Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain. Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning. Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you. Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name. Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor! You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero. As a fallen warrior, you are human; and you have your moments. There are days when you have more ups than downs, and some days you have more downs than ups. I most definitely can relate. I was floating through life, but I had to change my mindset. During my worst days, I felt horrible, and when I started to think negatively I felt like I was dishonoring myself. I felt sick, I felt afraid, fear began to control my every move. I felt like demons were trying to break in and take over my life.

This unification of forces and motion has a simple consequence. In a particle theory, you can freely add all kinds of forces, so there is nothing to prevent a proliferation of constants describing the workings of each force. But in string theory, there can be only two fundamental constants. One, called the string tension, describes how much energy is contained per unit-length of string. The other, called the string coupling constant, is a number denoting the probability of a string breakdown into two strings, thus giving rise to a force; as it is a probability, it is a simple number, without units. All the other constants in physics must be related to these two numbers. For example, Newton's gravitational constant turns out to be related to the product of their values.

Music of the Grid: A Poem in Two Equations _________________________ The masses of particles sound the frequencies with which space vibrates, when played. This Music of the Grid betters the old mystic mainstay, "Music of the Spheres," both in fantasy and in realism. LET US COMBINE Einstein's second law m=E/C^2 (1) with another fundamental equation, the Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula E = hv The Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula relates the energy E of a quantum-mechanical state to the frequency v at which its wave function vibrates. Here h is Planck's constant. Planck introduced it in his revolutionary hypothesis (1899) that launched quantum theory: that atoms emit or absorb light of frequency v only in packets of energy E = hv. Einstein went a big step further with his photon hypothesis (1905): that light of frequency v is always organized into packets with energy E = hv. Finally Schrodinger made it the basis of his basic equation for wave functions-the Schrodinger equation (1926). This gave birth to the modern, universal interpretation: the wave function of any state with energy E vibrates at a frequency v given by v = E/h. By combining Einstein with Schrodinger we arrive at a marvelous bit of poetry: (*) v = mc^2/h (*) The ancients had a concept called "Music of the Spheres" that inspired many scientists (notably Johannes Kepler) and even more mystics. Because periodic motion (vibration) of musical instruments causes their sustained tones, the idea goes, the periodic motions of the planets, as they fulfill their orbits, must be accompanied by a sort of music. Though picturesque and soundscape-esque, this inspiring anticipation of multimedia never became a very precise or fruitful scientific idea. It was never more than a vague metaphor, so it remains shrouded in equation marks: "Music of the Spheres." Our equation (*) is a more fantastic yet more realistic embodiment of the same inspiration. Rather than plucking a string, blowing through a reed, banging on a drumhead, or clanging a gong, we play the instrument that is empty space by plunking down different combinations of quarks, gluons, electrons, photons,... (that is, the Bits that represent these Its) and let them settle until they reach equilibrium with the spontaneous activity of Grid. Neither planets nor any material constructions compromise the pure ideality of our instrument. It settles into one of its possible vibratory motions, with different frequencies v, depending on how we do the plunking, and with what. These vibrations represent particles of different mass m, according to (*). The masses of particles sound the Music of the Grid.

Newton's laws of motion put an end to the idea of absolute position in space. The theory of relativity gets rid of absolute time. Consider a pair of twins. Suppose that one twin goes to live on the tip of a mountain while the other stays at sea level. The first twin would age faster than the second. Thus, if they met again, one would be older than the other. In this case, the difference in ages would be very small, but it would be much larger if one of the twins went for a long trip in a spaceship at nearly the speed of light. When he returned, he would be much younger than the one who stayed on Earth. This is known as the twins paradox, but it is a paradox only if one has the idea of absolute time at the back of one's mind. In the theory of relativity there is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.

Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience." Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is. Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others. The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success. Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all. Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace. Loyalty is not demanded; it is created. Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message. The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel. The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way. People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes. Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk. The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.

Unchopping a Tree. Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nests that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places. It is not arduous work, unless major limbs have been smashed or mutilated. If the fall was carefully and correctly planned, the chances of anything of the kind happening will have been reduced. Again, much depends upon the size, age, shape, and species of the tree. Still, you will be lucky if you can get through this stages without having to use machinery. Even in the best of circumstances it is a labor that will make you wish often that you had won the favor of the universe of ants, the empire of mice, or at least a local tribe of squirrels, and could enlist their labors and their talents. But no, they leave you to it. They have learned, with time. This is men's work. It goes without saying that if the tree was hollow in whole or in part, and contained old nests of bird or mammal or insect, or hoards of nuts or such structures as wasps or bees build for their survival, the contents will have to repaired where necessary, and reassembled, insofar as possible, in their original order, including the shells of nuts already opened. With spider's webs you must simply do the best you can. We do not have the spider's weaving equipment, nor any substitute for the leaf's living bond with its point of attachment and nourishment. It is even harder to simulate the latter when the leaves have once become dry — as they are bound to do, for this is not the labor of a moment. Also it hardly needs saying that this the time fro repairing any neighboring trees or bushes or other growth that might have been damaged by the fall. The same rules apply. Where neighboring trees were of the same species it is difficult not to waste time conveying a detached leaf back to the wrong tree. Practice, practice. Put your hope in that. Now the tackle must be put into place, or the scaffolding, depending on the surroundings and the dimension of the tree. It is ticklish work. Almost always it involves, in itself, further damage to the area, which will have to be corrected later. But, as you've heard, it can't be helped. And care now is likely to save you considerable trouble later. Be careful to grind nothing into the ground. At last the time comes for the erecting of the trunk. By now it will scarcely be necessary to remind you of the delicacy of this huge skeleton. Every motion of the tackle, every slightly upward heave of the trunk, the branches, their elaborately reassembled panoply of leaves (now dead) will draw from you an involuntary gasp. You will watch for a lead or a twig to be snapped off yet again. You will listen for the nuts to shift in the hollow limb and you will hear whether they are indeed falling into place or are spilling in disorder — in which case, or in the event of anything else of the kind — operations will have to cease, of course, while you correct the matter. The raising itself is no small enterprise, from the moment when the chains tighten around the old bandages until the boles hands vertical above the stump, splinter above splinter. How the final straightening of the splinters themselves can take place (the preliminary work is best done while the wood is still green and soft, but at times when the splinters are not badly twisted most of the straightening is left until now, when the torn ends are face to face with each other). When the splinters are perfectly complementary the appropriate fixative is applied. Again we have no duplicate of the original substance. Ours is extremely strong, but it is rigid. It is limited to surfaces, and there is no play in it. However the core is not the part of the trunk that conducted life from the roots up to the branches and back again. It was relatively inert. The fixative for this part is not the same as the one for the outer layers and the bark, and if either of these is involved

The stars in their courses fought against her! External opposition one could cut through or get round; but this deep spiritual unease in the loved one’s soul, that — ah! that — one could not reach; and the unreachable could not be pushed away, cut through, or circumvented. She looked up at the stars that fought against her. Did the ancients really believe that, or was it, with them, as with her, just a manner of speaking? Did those bright wheeling jewels on the indigo velvet of all space really concern themselves with little men, the lives and loves of human insects, who, born from an embrace, met and clung and died and became dust? Those candescent worlds, circled by little offsplit planets — were their names taken in vain, or were they really in their motions and their relative positions the writing on the wall for men to read? No! That was only human self-importance! To his small wheel man bound the Universe. Swing low, sweet chariots! But they didn’t! Man swung with them — in space. . . . .

Hunting in my experience—and by hunting I simply mean being out on the land—is a state of mind. All of one’s faculties are brought to bear in an effort to become fully incorporated into the landscape. It is more than listening for animals or watching for hoofprints or a shift in the weather. It is more than an analysis of what one senses. To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human companions. It means to release yourself from rational images of what something “means” and to be concerned only that it “is.” And then to recognize that things exist only insofar as they can be related to other things. These relationships—fresh drops of moisture on top of rocks at a river crossing and a raven’s distant voice—become patterns. The patterns are always in motion. Suddenly the pattern—which includes physical hunger, a memory of your family, and memories of the valley you are walking through, these particular plants and smells—takes in the caribou. There is a caribou standing in front of you. The release of the arrow or bullet is like a word spoken out loud. It occurs at the periphery of your concentration. The mind we know in dreaming, a nonrational, nonlinear comprehension of events in which slips in time and space are normal, is, I believe, the conscious working mind of an aboriginal hunter. It is a frame of mind that redefines patience, endurance, and expectation. The focus of a hunter in a hunting society was not killing animals but attending to the myriad relationships he understood bound him into the world he occupied with them. He tended to those duties carefully because he perceived in them everything he understood about survival. This does not mean, certainly, that every man did this, or that good men did not starve. Or that shamans whose duty it was to intercede with the forces that empowered these relationships weren’t occasionally thinking of personal gain or subterfuge. It only means that most men understood how to behave.

Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were traveling, but the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at all. Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was traveling toward them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be. He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircar dipped sharply and headed downward in what seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all over. The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him. He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had happened. They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had been their own, relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an hour. He closed his eyes in terror. After a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight subsidence in their speed and some while later became aware that they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt. He opened his eyes again. They were still in the silver tunnel, threading and weaving their way through what appeared to be a crisscross warren of converging tunnels. When they finally stopped it was in a small chamber of curved steel. Several tunnels also had their termini here, and at the farther end of the chamber Arthur could see a large circle of dim irritating light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the eyes, it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far it was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultraviolet. Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes. “Earthman,” he said, “we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea.

I still have no choice but to bring out Minerva instead.” “But Minerva doesn’t care about men,” young Charlotte said helpfully. “She prefers dirt and rocks.” “It’s called geology,” Minerva said. “It’s a science.” “It’s certain spinsterhood, is what it is! Unnatural girl. Do sit straight in your chair, at least.” Mrs. Highwood sighed and fanned harder. To Susanna, she said, “I despair of her, truly. This is why Diana must get well, you see. Can you imagine Minerva in Society?” Susanna bit back a smile, all too easily imagining the scene. It would probably resemble her own debut. Like Minerva, she had been absorbed in unladylike pursuits, and the object of her female relations’ oft-voiced despair. At balls, she’d been that freckled Amazon in the corner, who would have been all too happy to blend into the wallpaper, if only her hair color would have allowed it. As for the gentlemen she’d met…not a one of them had managed to sweep her off her feet. To be fair, none of them had tried very hard. She shrugged off the awkward memories. That time was behind her now. Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.” “Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leatherbound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.” “Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.” Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “’Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’” Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.” Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal. That book provoked her, no end. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries. Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice. She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat. With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.

If the law of gravitation be regarded as universal, the point may be stated as follows. The laws of motion require to be stated by reference to what have been called kinetic axes: these are in reality axes having no absolute acceleration and no absolute rotation. It is asserted, for example, when the third law is combined with the notion of mass, that, if m, m' be the masses of two particles between which there is a force, the component accelerations of the two particles due to this force are in the ratio m2 : m1. But this will only be true if the accelerations are measured relative to axes which themselves have no acceleration. We cannot here introduce the centre of mass, for, according to the principle that dynamical facts must be, or be derived from, observable data, the masses, and therefore the centre of mass, must be obtained from the acceleration, and not vice versâ. Hence any dynamical motion, if it is to obey the laws of motion, must be referred to axes which are not subject to any forces. But, if the law of gravitation be accepted, no material axes will satisfy this condition. Hence we shall have to take spatial axes, and motions relative to these are of course absolute motions. 465. In order to avoid this conclusion, C. Neumann* assumes as an essential part of the laws of motion the existence, somewhere, of an absolutely rigid “Body Alpha”, by reference to which all motions are to be estimated. This suggestion misses the essence of the discussion, which is (or should be) as to the logical meaning of dynamical propositions, not as to the way in which they are discovered. It seems sufficiently evident that, if it is necessary to invent a fixed body, purely hypothetical and serving no purpose except to be fixed, the reason is that what is really relevant is a fixed place, and that the body occupying it is irrelevant. It is true that Neumann does not incur the vicious circle which would be involved in saying that the Body Alpha is fixed, while all motions are relative to it; he asserts that it is rigid, but rightly avoids any statement as to its rest or motion, which, in his theory, would be wholly unmeaning. Nevertheless, it seems evident that the question whether one body is at rest or in motion must have as good a meaning as the same question concerning any other body; and this seems sufficient to condemn Neumann’s suggested escape from absolute motion.

Rμv– 1/2 gμv R = 8πTμv The left side of the equation starts with the term Rμv, which is the Ricci tensor he had embraced earlier. The term gμv is the all-important metric tensor, and the term R is the trace of the Ricci tensor called the Ricci scalar. Together, this left side of the equation—which is now known as the Einstein tensor and can be written simply as Gμv—compresses together all of the information about how the geometry of spacetime is warped and curved by objects. The right side describes the movement of matter in the gravitational field. The interplay between the two sides shows how objects curve spacetime and how, in turn, this curvature affects the motion of objects. As the physicist John Wheeler has put it, “Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move.”83 Thus is staged a cosmic tango, as captured by another physicist, Brian Greene: Space and time become players in the evolving cosmos. They come alive. Matter here causes space to warp there, which causes matter over here to move, which causes space way over there to warp even more, and so on. General relativity provides the choreography for an entwined cosmic dance of space, time, matter, and energy.84 At

Things have becone even more mysterious. We have recently discovered that when we make observations at still larger scales, corresponding to billions of light-years, the equations of general relativity are not satisfied even when the dark matter is added in. The expansion of the universe, set in motion by the big bang some 13.7 billion years ago, appears to be accelerating, whereas, given the observed matter plus the calculated amount of dark matter, it should be doing the opposite-decelerating. Again there are two possible explanations. General relativity could simply be wrong. It has been verified precisely only within our solar system and nearby systems in our own galaxy. Perhaps when one gets to a scale comparable to the size of the whole universe, general relativity is simply no longer applicable. Or there is a new form of matter-or energy (recall Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2, showing the equivalence of energy and mass)-that becomes relevant on these very large scales: That is, this new form of energy affects only the expansion of the universe. To do this, it cannot clump around galaxies or even clusters of galaxies. This strange new energy, which we have postulated to fit the data, is called the dark energy.

When we put an electron in an electric field, we say it is "pulled." We then have two rules: (a) charges make a field, and (b) charges in fields have forces on them and move. The reason for this will be- come clear when we discuss the following phenomena: If we were to charge a body, say a comb, electrically, and then place a charged piece of paper at a distance and move the comb back and forth, the paper will respond by always pointing to the comb. If we shake it faster, it will be discovered that the paper is a little behind, there is a delay in the action. (At the first stage, when we move the comb rather slowly, we find a complication which is magnetism. Magnetic influences have to do with charges in relative motion, so magnetic forces and electric forces can really be attributed to one field, as two different aspects of exactly the same thing. A changing electric field cannot exist without magnetism.) If we move the charged paper farther out, the delay is greater. Then an interesting thing is observed. Although the forces between two charged objects should go inversely as the square of the distance, it is found, when we shake a charge, that the influence extends very much farther out than we would guess at first sight. That is, the effect falls off more slowly than the inverse square.

We tend to be unaware that stars rise and set at all. This is not entirely due to our living in cities ablaze with electric lights which reflect back at us from our fumes, smoke, and artificial haze. When I discussed the stars with a well-known naturalist, I was surprised to learn that even a man such as he, who has spent his entire lifetime observing wildlife and nature, was totally unaware of the movements of the stars. And he is no prisoner of smog-bound cities. He had no inkling, for instance, that the Little Bear could serve as a reliable night clock as it revolves in tight circles around the Pole Star (and acts as a celestial hour-hand at half speed - that is, it takes 24 hours rather than 12 for a single revolution). I wondered what could be wrong. Our modern civilization does not ignore the stars only because most of us can no longer see them. There are definitely deeper reasons. For even if we leave the sulphurous vapours of our Gomorrahs to venture into a natural landscape, the stars do not enter into any of our back-to-nature schemes. They simply have no place in our outlook any more. We look at them, our heads flung back in awe and wonder that they can exist in such profusion. But that is as far as it goes, except for the poets. This is simply a 'gee whiz' reaction. The rise in interest in astrology today does not result in much actual star-gazing. And as for the space programme's impact on our view of the sky, many people will attentively follow the motions of a visible satellite against a backdrop of stars whose positions are absolutely meaningless to them. The ancient mythological figures sketched in the sky were taught us as children to be quaint 'shepherds' fantasies' unworthy of the attention of adult minds. We are interested in the satellite because we made it, but the stars are alien and untouched by human hands - therefore vapid. To such a level has our technological mania, like a bacterial solution in which we have been stewed from birth, reduced us. It is only the integral part of the landscape which can relate to the stars. Man has ceased to be that. He inhabits a world which is more and more his own fantasy. Farmers relate to the skies, as well as sailors, camel caravans, and aerial navigators. For theirs are all integral functions involving the fundamental principle - now all but forgotten - of orientation. But in an almost totally secular and artificial world, orientation is thought to be un- necessary. And the numbers of people in insane asylums or living at home doped on tranquilizers testifies to our aimless, drifting metaphysic. And to our having forgotten orientation either to seasons (except to turn on the air- conditioning if we sweat or the heating system if we shiver) or to direction (our one token acceptance of cosmic direction being the wearing of sun-glasses because the sun is 'over there'). We have debased what was once the integral nature of life channelled by cosmic orientations - a wholeness - to the ennervated tepidity of skin sensations and retinal discomfort. Our interior body clocks, known as circadian rhythms, continue to operate inside us, but find no contact with the outside world. They therefore become ingrown and frustrated cycles which never interlock with our environment. We are causing ourselves to become meaningless body machines programmed to what looks, in its isolation, to be an arbitrary set of cycles. But by tearing ourselves from our context, like the still-beating heart ripped out of the body of an Aztec victim, we inevitably do violence to our psyches. I would call the new disease, with its side effect of 'alienation of the young', dementia temporalis.

Quoting from page 308: The Competitive Exclusion Principle. No two organisms that compete in every activity can coexist indefinitely in the same environment. To coexist in time, organisms that are potentially completely competitive must be geographically isolated from each other. Otherwise, the one that is the less efficient yields to the more efficient, no matter how slight the difference. When two competing organisms coexist in the same geographical region, close examination always shows that they are not complete competitors, that one of them draws on a resource of the environment that is not available to the other. The corollary of the principle is that where there is no geographical isolation of genetically and reproductively isolated populations, there must be as many ecological niches as there are populations. The necessary condition for geographical coexistence is ecological specialization. Quoting page 86: The Exclusion Principle in biology plays a role similar to that of the Newtonian laws of motion in physics. It is a prime guide to the discovery of facts. We use the principle coupled with an axiom that is equally fundamental but which is almost never explicitly stated. We may call this the Inequality Axiom, and it states: If two populations are distinguishable, they are competitively unequal. Quoting page 87: Because of the compound-interest effect, no difference between competing populations is trivial. The slightest difference--and our acceptance of the Inequality Axiom asserts that a difference always exists--will result in the eventual extinction of one population by another. Put in another way, the Exclusion Principle tells us that two distinguishable populations can coexist in the same geographical region only if they live in different ecological worlds (thus avoiding complete competition and strict coexistence). Quoting page 88-89: Recall now the sequence of development in the process of speciation. Initially, the freshly isolated populations are nearly the same genetically; as time goes on, they diverge more and more. When they are distinguishably different, but still capable of interbreeding (if put together), we may speak of them as races. Ultimately, if the physical isolation endures long enough, they become so different from each other that interbreeding is impossible; we then say that the two populations are reproductively isolated from each other, and we speak of them as distinct species. ... What are the various possible outcomes of the speciation process, and what their relative frequencies? In the light of our assumption, it is clear that, most often, the speciation process will go no further than the formation of races before the physical isolation comes to an end and the germ plasm of the two races is melded into one by interbreeding. If, however, the speciation process continues until separate species are formed before the physical barrier breaks down, then what happens? The outcome is plainly dependent on the extent to which ecological differentiation has occurred: Do the two species occupy the same ecological niche, or not--that is, are they completely competitive? It seems probable that the degree of ecological differentiation will also increase with time spent in physical isolation. On this assumption, we would predict that, more often than not, "sister species" will be incapable of coexistence: when the physical isolation is at an end, one sister species will extinguish the other. Quoting page 253: The example illustrates the general rule that as a species becomes increasingly "successful," its struggle for existence ceases to be one of struggle with the physical environment or with other species and come to be almost exclusively competition with its own kind. We call that species most successful that has made its own kind its worst enemy. Man enjoys this kind of success.

Kircher’s system shows certain affinities with our series of quaternios. Thus the Second Monad is a duality consisting of opposites, corresponding to the angelic world that was split by Lucifer’s fall. Another significant analogy is that Kircher conceives his schema as a cycle set in motion by God as the prime cause, and unfolding out of itself, but brought back to God again through the activity of human understanding, so that the end returns once more to the beginning. This, too, is an analogy of our formula. The alchemists were fond of picturing their opus as a circulatory process, as a circular distillation or as the uroboros, the snake biting its own tail, and they made innumerable pictures of this process. Just as the central idea of the lapis Philosophorum plainly signifies the self, so the opus with its countless symbols illustrates the process of individuation, the step-by-step development of the self from an unconscious state to a conscious one. That is why the lapis, as prima materia, stands at the beginning of the process as well as at the end.113 According to Michael Maier, the gold, another synonym for the self, comes from the opus circulatorium of the sun. This circle is “the line that runs back upon itself (like the serpent that with its head bites its own tail), wherein that eternal painter and potter, God, may be discerned.”114 In this circle, Nature “has related the four qualities to one another and drawn, as it were, an equilateral square, since contraries are bound together by contraries, and enemies by enemies, with the same everlasting bonds.” Maier compares this squaring of the circle to the “homo quadratus,” the four-square man, who “remains himself” come weal come woe.115 He calls it the “golden house, the twicebisected circle, the four-cornered phalanx, the rampart, the city wall, the four-sided line of battle.”116 This circle is a magic circle consisting of the union of opposites, “immune to all injury.

If one looks at modern society, it is obvious that in order to live, the great majority of people are forced to sell their labour power. All the physical and intellectual capacities existing in human beings, in their personalities, which must be set in motion to produce useful things, can only be used if they are sold in exchange for wages. Labour power is usually perceived as a commodity bought and sold nearly like all others. The existence of exchange and wage-labour seems normal, inevitable. Yet the introduction of wage-labour involved conflict, resistance, and bloodshed. The separation of the worker from the means of production, now an accepted fact of life, took a long time and was accomplished by force. In England, in the Netherlands, in France, from the sixteenth century on, economic and political violence expropriated craftsmen and peasants, repressed indigence and vagrancy, imposed wage-labour on the poor. Between 1930 and 1950, Russia decreed a labour code which included capital punishment in order to organise the transition of millions of peasants to industrial wage-labour in less than a few decades. Seemingly normal facts: that an individual has nothing but his labour power, that he must sell it to a business unit to be able to live, that everything is a commodity, that social relations revolve around market exchange… such facts now taken for granted result from a long, brutal process. By means of its school system and its ideological and political life, contemporary society hides the past and present violence on which this situation rests. It conceals both its origin and the mechanism which enables it to function. Everything appears as a free contract in which the individual, as a seller of labour power, encounters the factory, the shop or the office. The existence of the commodity seems to be an obvious and natural phenomenon, and the periodic major and minor disasters it causes are often regarded as quasi-natural calamities. Goods are destroyed to maintain their prices, existing capacities are left to rot, while elementary needs remain unfulfilled. Yet the main thing that the system hides is not the existence of exploitation or class (that is not too hard to see), nor its horrors (modern society is quite good at turning them into media show). It is not even that the wage labour/capital relationship causes unrest and rebellion (that also is fairly plain to see). The main thing it conceals is that insubordination and revolt could be large and deep enough to do away with this relationship and make another world possible.

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result. We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena. It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]." —from_Letters to Arnauld_

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result. We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena. It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]." —from_Letters to Arnauld_