032

Authors:

 Bryson, David.

Title:

 a meme for the millennium Centuries^5,4,3,2,1,0 and Circadian Theory of Learning

Keywords:

Abstract:

 http://people.tamu.edu/~carlson/bryson.html

SOME INITIAL RESPONSES
The files and facts for Centuries^5,4,3,2,1,0 keep growing. Three years ago I wrote a brief synopsis with the hope of some academic center asking me to set up a website for students and learners anywhere. This synopsis has received several hundred comments, and it is the best of these which helped to bring me, a person unknown to the world of public publishing, to SoftBook. My favorite response is a lovely postcard from John Updike, dated August 24, 1995. Mr. Updike had written a novel, Roger's Version, about a professor who tries to prove the existence of God with the university computer system. The complete postcard: "Dear Dr. Bryson/ Thank you for your fascinating paper on the Anthropic Principle and your own schematization of time. The importance of the moon was never explained to me, and you make much else vivid and clear. I should have had your ideas at hand when I wrote Roger's Version. Your work on dreams is perhaps more immediately verifiable, or explorable, but it is an area where science is presently embarrassed for something to say. Thanks for thinking of me, and Best Wishes, (signed) John Updike."

The best comment from a scientist is an email from Cosmologist George Ellis, who co-authored a very technical book with Steven Hawking, and also wrote Before the Beginning, the best single book of cosmology for non-cosmologists - its overall tone is humanitarian and Christian (Professor Ellis is an active Quaker), and its unbiased comprehensiveness makes it ideal for general readers. He is quoted in the August '98 issue of Scientific American, under the heading "Renowned scientists contemplate the existence of God." At the Science/Religion conference being reported, his on-line abstract has two statements we will use..."being created in the image of God is the ultimate rationale for doing science" and "We have the possibility of understanding reality and the mind of God by being creative ourselves." From the email of Professor Ellis (17 July '97): "I have looked at your web pages on anthropic evolution. They are interestingly done... Overall the report contains some interesting material... If one however accepts the Anthropic argument as pointing to a designer, your article emphasizes some of the later coincidences that have to be right. That gives food for thought."

Since the time from Centuries^5 to Centuries^4 is 99% of the total past, the "later coincidences that have to be right" are what we suggest are the markers and measures of all of time, in your files and in your mind. Centuries^4,3,2,1,0 are the last 1% of time! This work is drawn to temporal synchronicities of a cosmic kind. It agrees with Professor Ellis that science cannot prove the existence of God. In "Before the Beginning" he makes the profound and profoundly subtle point that if there is an underlying design and unfolding order in the universe, God would not hit us over the head with it, God might only allow for evidence in the natural world which is underwhelming and ambiguous, because if God put a neon sign in the constellations we would lose the necessary tension for free will and moral choice.
Bryson, David. davidbry@ktc.com Dr David Bryson has been invited to put this and further communiques on the new electronic book SoftBook - he would especially like proposals for collaboration from those at academic or entrepreneurial locations who would like to develop this into an expanding club of Centuries^5,4,3,2,1,0 users and database providers. A good location for this might be Austin, Texas, which is 100 miles east of where Dr Bryson lives. His email address is davidbry@ktc.com