Science In The Bible

[naomi24]

A day or two back a contributor here said….

“It's [the Bible's] contents are scientifically sound on matters that human researchers discovered only at a later date.”

…. but he declined to elaborate.

I know the bible fairly well, but I can’t think what he might be referring to. Does anyone have any idea?

Or perhaps he would like to explain?

[Khandro]

jake; Bear with me, watch this and tell me how it is done without any lessons, descriptions or blueprints;

[jomifl]

Naomi, when you switch a light on, the light being on is a 'memory' of the switch being operated. That is to say as long as the light stays on the memory of the operation of the switch remains. When someone turns off the power to the switch the 'memory' dies. Try to imagine this principle operating in the brain at a cellular level and on a scale billions of time more complex

[jomifl]

I guess the great celestial spirit communicates instructions by telepathy to the spider because the spider is too stupid to think of it for itself. Or.....

[Zeuhl]

Khandro

same way each and every snowflake forms a complex and unique pattern in its structure without any 'lessons'

there are blueprints for everything at a molecular level and it is easy for humans with such a short life to under appreciate the cumulative effect of behaviours evolving over millions of years

I was fascinated to see a demonstration of computer generated graphics

It seemed that it must takes weeks of work to detail, shade and colour everything. But the graphic artist demonstrated how all it took was two or three simple rules or algorithms and the programme just created it all at increasing levels of detail

[naomi24]

Jom, as an analogy, that doesn’t work for me. Illumination results from a switch in the ‘on’ position allowing power to access the light fitting. No memory involved. If you’re saying that once switched off, the energy produced dies, it doesn’t.

[naomi24]

Since Buddhists believe that animals can be reincarnated as humans and vice versa, I'm guessing that Khandro is saying the spider has been reincarnated - although what from I have no idea. I don't know of any other living creature that can spin a web like that - so unless it has throughout all its lives been a spider, I have no explanation for its ability.

[jomifl]

Naomi I didn't think it would,you need to make a conceptual leap, a memory is a change of state caused by some phenomenom such as a switch. The light being either on or off is the memory of the state of the switch.

[Zeuhl]

my light bulb is beginning to hurt

[jomifl]

My light cannot illuminate the darkest corners wherein strange creatures dwell.

[Zeuhl]

/change of state caused by some phenomenom such as a switch/

isn't the memory the change of state - not the 'switch'

and don't we edit memories every time we access them?

apparently, as we grow older we have fewer pattern interrupts (new experiences) and so store fewer memories.

That is why when we review the immediate past we perceive time passing more quickly

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

The complexity arising from from simplicity (in terms of simplicity of the mathematical equations required to describe the processes) can be summed up in one concept: fractals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

In the meantime, I would be fascinated to see the web construction process summed up in (say) javascript to see if it looks simple enough to be the sort of thing that a neural network could handle.

Note that, last I heard, computer scientists had only got as far as creating a synthetic brain consisting of ten neurons and it produced behaviours eerily similar to those of a nematode worm.

Example behaviours
move towards or away from light
move towards chemical signals indicating source of nutrition
move away from chemical signals indicating source of toxicity
move across a flat surface (requires organised waves of muscle fiber contractions)

Ten neurons, with ten connections each mean 10^10 synapses which can either act as a signal repeater, or an inhibitory influence, or an excitatory influence on the next cell in the chain. Batches of neurons firing together behave in ways analgous to packets of binary code.

That's about the limit of my knowledge. An electronics engineer might be able to describe to you how connecting lots of switches together translates into getting a circuit to turn an 'input' into an 'output'. For the robot nematode designers, they have to take it up a level and convert the detection of a stimulus (eg food is nearby) into a coherent set of muscle contractions to bring about movement towards the stimulus.

[Zeuhl]

Hypo

I think 'fractals' was a term used by the computer graphics guy

He was using particular shapes that subdivided 'ad infinitum'

[jomifl]

The light indicates the state of the switch. If some phenomenom causes a change in a neural pathway (switch) in the brain which then activates some other part of the brain (lightbulb) you have a memory. We could argue all night about what compoinent is the actual memory and get nowhere. My original post was by way of a simple(I thought) illustration of the principle of memory.

[naomi24]

Jom, still can’t see where ‘memory’ is involved with the switch here. The switch is the device that allows power access to the destination and it remains in a constant position until someone remembers to turn it off. I don’t think I do conceptual leaps. I’m nowhere near as mentally dexterous as the religious. ;o)

[Zeuhl]

/a simple(I thought) illustration of the principle of memory. /

Good luck with that jo LOL

:-)

[jomifl]

Zeuhl, It appears that fractals formulae can be used to describe pretty well any shape/pattern. The formulae used to produce infinitely scaled patterns are quite simple and only take up a line or two. I have heard that an image can be described more succinctly by a fractal formula than by memorising a pxel map.

[Zeuhl]

cheers jo

it was impressive in a cgi demo; the picture produced itself as if by magic

I suppose spiders don't need too much programming to be a successful spider

[Khandro]

Buddhism does not[i accept any notion of unchanging eternal souls which transmigrate from one life to another, but one of the premises of [i]rebirth]
is that of a continuum of consciousness.
The spider's creation of a web is analogous to that. I believe it happens to us all the time without comment. Occasionally we are startled when we witness exceptional abilities in the very young; Mozart writing his first symphony at the age of 8 for example.

[Hypognosis]

@naomi

What I've heard is that, as babies, we are born with the brain 'over-connected', for want of a better description.

What may surprise some people is that neurons can disconnect a nerve fibre, move it and connect it to a different receiving cell nearby.

At first, sensory stimuli floods the network and, like the condition called synaesthesia, the brain may experience colours as smells, shapes as sounds and sounds as light patterns.

All very confusing and it takes time for the brain to break down the excess neural connections which produce unhelpful processing of stimuli and reinforce the useful connections.

My personal view is that the connection scheme is what contitutes a 'memory' and it would look like a collection of towns cross-linked by multiple roads. A car arrives in town A (the trigger stimulus), causing a number of other cars to depart, one on each road out of town. They arrive in towns B D, F, J and N, stimulating them to send out cars of there own. One travels back to A to inhibit it from sending further batches.

So a complex ripple of activity occurs, some of which may elicit a synthetic experience of sights, sounds, smells, which we experience as a recollection.

The topology of the connection network stays fixed and behaves consistently each time the right trigger hits the right spot until physical damaged or a cell dies and no alternative route scheme can act as a workaround.

[naomi24]

Khandro, //a continuum of consciousness//

Surely a continuum of sub-consciousness? If it involved a continuum of consciousness wouldn’t we be aware that we’d been a spider (perhaps) in a past incarnation?