The Origin of Awareness

By Patricia Yunghanns

From the author of A Brief History of Change:

Origin of Awareness features an email dialogue taking place between Derrida and Professors Rousseau and Confucius. Origin of Awareness is a novel that is both intriguing and entertaining.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649901569

Patricia Yunghanns

Patricia Yunghanns is an author who writes about science and philosophy in the form of fiction with the unique perspective of evolutionary history. She has lived on the island of Palm Beach for the past two decades.

Book preview

On My Stay in London

A Story of the Atom

by Professor Rousseau

Identifying the Interior or Quantum Realm of the Atom

by Professor Rousseau

Introduction to Chemistry inside the Atom

by Professor Rousseau

My African Sofos Anthropos Experience

The Channel for Awareness in Field and Charge of the Atom

by Professor Rousseau

Introduction to Quantum Awareness

by Professor Rousseau

On My Intellectual Advances

A STORY OF THE ATOM

Subject:A Post Summary on the beginning to the Atom; A Bridge between Physical and Non-physical; A Distinction between Matter and Atom

My dear boy,

In respect to your comments regarding Ayn Rand in your last email, I direct you to seek enlightenment by wisdom rather than enlightenment by knowledge alone. For wisdom encompasses knowledge, but knowledge does not contain wisdom. At the moment I would strongly advise that you continue to increase the scope and depth of your knowledge coupled with inquiry through research and a humbled perspective. I have prepared the following lesson for you.

A Post Summary on the Beginning

I just spoke to you about change in my previous emails. As a review and in summary, work is useful change, while motion is a general change. Change occurs when there is a transfer of energy, where energy is all things that are transformed to generate change: it generates both useful change and entropy in useless, wasteful change. Whenever there is a change, it occurs in the presence of forces. A force is a pushing or pulling. A push or pull could also be thought of in terms of the opposing notions of attraction and repulsion or negative and positive. In other words, forces can push or hold entities together, or forces can pull apart or detach entities. The residences of forces are called fields. Therefore all changes occur in fields since forces are necessarily present in a field. Note that a field must contain its specific corresponding force in order for change to be manifested in that field. Note also that entropy is that which has been transferred but does not effect useful change, while inertia has a focus on continuing.

We saw that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with an explosion and subsequent expansion that continues to this day. In other words, the universe began with a massive degree of change and continues the expansion of its own fabric, by stretching. Do recall that I mentioned dark matter and dark energy and explained that these were unknowns in any detailed fashion. However, the existence of both has been inferred based on the effects of their influence. Moreover, we saw that entities appeared, and only if they were stable and competitive enough relative to the other existing forms under the given conditions, were they able to escape decay or extinction and persist in their existence. Many scientists have predicted that all particles or subatomic entities have life spans. In other words, living things are not the only entities with life spans. Scientists predict that even the chemical elements have life spans. The life span of protium, the most common form of hydrogen with one proton and one electron, is estimated at a lower bound. The isotope or type of hydrogen, known as hydrogen-7, has a half-life of just 23x 10−24 seconds, while the hydrogen isotope tritium, with one proton but two neutrons, has half of its given quantity decaying within less than thirteen years. The time it takes for the activity of the given entity to decrease to one half is called half-life rather than half a life span. Recall that we also saw there were no heavy atom elements, such as carbon formed during the big bang.By the end of the big bang, our universe existed, and the universe consisted of early material matter, or proto-material matter, such as quarks, forces, and energy. We saw that the forces, along with the conditions of heat energy, gave rise eventually to rudimentary and eventually simple composite particles, most particularly hydrogen.

At the initiation of the universe, if we accept the origin of the universe as the big bang, there was no material matter. There was no matter occupying our notion of space, and there was no matter described by our sense of touch. However, for all senses and purposes, there was motion at the initiation of the beginning of the universe. We saw that the fundamental forces appeared as a result of symmetry breaking. We also saw that the fundamental forces did not come into existence simultaneously. I showed you that scientists have established that forces are dominant at different scales of the universe. In particular, these forces are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. As a reminder, each force operates along the lines of its own mechanism. In other words, I would like you to recognize that all fundamental forces exist within their own constraints. Again, if we accept the big bang, there was no material matter or ordinary matter as we know it, but there was motion and change at the initiation of the universe.

If you recall, our ancient ancestors were convinced that the underlying elements of thought, stones, and all matter were that of fire, water, earth, and air. Aristotle would later add aether. The atomists believed that there was something more fundamental that was common to all four fundamental elements. Later, Descartes invented analytical geometry, and he unified all that previous thinkers and mathematicians had done before him. From the works of Platonic forms, the Pythagoreans and the likes of Euclid and others, Descartes had extracted two categories of all of matter: the physical and the nonphysical. For Descartes, the physical was merely an extension of the nonphysical. Therefore, the nature of the nonphysical, res cogitans, was the nature of all that existed. He called the physical res extensa, the extension. Centuries prior, Plato had taken the same position with his story of the cave. For the ancient thinkers before Descartes, the physical or material matter was merely a reflection or extension of the soul, or spirit. In other words, Descartes identified the soul, spirit, and thought as cogitans, or mind, and he categorized all material as an extension of this. However, the vision of the soul resided in the magnetism generated by lodestones and static electric effects from amber, which were evidenced through the observed motion.

From the moment our ancient ancestors became aware of magnetism and electricity, they were convinced that the underlying nature of all of nature was one where communication existed; this became animism. There has been a consistent position among those who have unified both science and ideas that the underlying nature of all things, the underlying unity, is the nonmaterial rather than the physical, particlelike substance.

Chemistry as a Bridge between Physical and Nonphysical

Chemistry is the science of change and a bridge between the material and nonmaterial. In a technical sense, chemistry is A and B giving rise to C in the presence of various conditions, where some conditions are requirements. For the most part, C, the product, is an emergent form of A and B, where C has its unique characteristics and identity independent of A or B. However, in a general sense, chemistry is the science of change, just as physics is the science of the physical. On a most fundamental level, chemistry is the creation and destruction of bonds. The bonds are part of a relay system of communication, where a push or a pull is communicated. Each chemical bond is a space of awareness and communication.

Science has shown us that the subatomic domain is a world of imperfection, competition, and natural selection of the most fit entities for adaptation to the prevailing conditions. Science has shown that the subatomic sphere is a world with the creation of a plethora of entities where only a few entities survive and even fewer evolve. Chemistry requires at all times that conditions are met in order for a reaction, a change, to occur. Chemistry also requires that there is sufficient energy for any change to occur, or a change to be maintained. Real entities must be capable of permanent and independent interaction with their subatomic environment. The chemical bond is a place where chemical changes are determined and occur, and this requires energy or a potential for change, such as thermal energy.

This all relates to matter. For our purpose, matter is broad, and matter has layers of prototypes and precursors. Matter can also be described using both particlelike and wavelike characteristics. Matter that demonstrates mostly particlelike properties will characterize material matter, while that associated mostly with wavelike properties will characterize nonmaterial matter. This is much in line with Descartes's position. Let us also say that when scientists use the term demonstrate mostly, they are referring to the entity demonstrating one character type statistically more often than it demonstrates the other. So it is a question of the dominating properties that characterize the entity during its state of natural place, where natural place refers to Aristotle's use of the term.

About Matter

It is possible to think about matter from the simplest structural level in terms of the personality philosophers. Matter is what the ancients referred to as nature. Later, the ancients' reference to matter was all of the universe. With the progress of the telescope, the universe became more familiar, and its components or substance became more of a focus. With more of an emphasis on the composition of the universe, the foci became the components, the substance, and the matter. In this light, when I use the word matter, you can translate this to the word nature as used by the ancients. In other words, matter means everything in every realm: material matter and nonmaterial matter, physical and nonphysical. Nonetheless, material mater is comprised of atoms, and it is a construction of atoms. How do scientists know what is happening with subatomic entities? One technique scientists use is called tracing by treating subatomic particles as if they were rays and registering their footprints.I must run along.

Best wishes,

Professor Rousseau

___

I read Professor Rousseau's email without realizing that the time was passing and that I had been on my way to take my morning shower. By 7:30 a.m., I had taken my shower, picked up a banana from the breakfast buffet, and was inserting my electronic plastic key card in the main door of the student hostel to gain access to London sidewalks. I began a lovely walk along the streets of London. The juxtaposed stone buildings and wrought-iron accessories were rather charming. Along the way, I thought of Professor Rousseau's messages and created algorithms of the relationships he described. Since Professor Rousseau had mentioned that