A Theory of Nothing: How Is the Finite Reality Created from the Infinite?

By D. N. Warren-Smith MSc.

From the day we are born, life is teaching us lessons. Whether it is how we navigate our physical environment or our socio-cultural surround, we are constantly trying to make sense of our reality by listening to these life lessons. Yet while many of life’s lessons reinforce our reality, every so often life’s lessons present us with a curious idea—that everything out there, our reality, may not be as “real” as it seems.

A Theory of Nothing: How Is the Finite Reality Created from the Infinite? chronicles one man’s lifelong journey to develop life’s lessons into a concept of reality that challenges our preconceived notions of objectivity. Although we tend to think of the world around us and our reality as being a shared, objective world in which we live, author D. N. Warren-Smith furthers the philosophical argument that it is really our subjective perceptions that shape and even make the world around us. With compelling logical arguments and descriptions of personal experience, he shows that our most basic assumptions about the reality of our existence in fact keep the true nature of reality hidden from us.

Once we realise that there is no way to conclusively prove that we actually exist in an objective reality, we must weigh up the implications of a non-objective, subjective reality and what it means for our lives. We have a choice for our belief in what exists. How will you choose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480839205

D. N. Warren-Smith MSc.

The author is retired with a Master of Science degree, having worked with digital projects during his final years of full-time work. After retirement, the author lectured in digital circuit theory at a technical and further education college for a number of years on a part-time basis. The inspiration to write this book has developed over most of the author’s lifetime, starting from a very young age, and retirement has provided the opportunity to further develop the concept of reality presented in this book.

Book preview

A THEORY OF NOTHING

HOW IS THE FINITE REALITY CREATED FROM THE INFINITE?

D. N. Warren-Smith, MSc.

An account of the unexpected nature of reality and how I gradually became aware of it during the course of my life. This account has appeared to me as one aspect of my life.

Copyright © 2016, 2017 D. N. Warren-Smith, MSc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3919-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3920-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918792

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/14/2019

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction

The boarding school for children, Highlands School, Peppard Common

I was taken to South Africa when the Second World War broke out

Some of my Grandfather’s conundrums:

Chapter 2. The progression of life

Global population growth

Chapter 3. Intelligence. What is it and how does it work?

Introduction

What this section understands by intelligence

Conceptual State Machine

Mechanisms that comply with the requirements of a state machine

Processes involved in intelligence

Interconnection schemes

How does the brain code its information?

The levels of intelligence

Summing up this section on intelligence

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem

References for the chapter on Intelligence

Chapter 4. The tree falls in the forest

Chapter 5. The story so far

A visit to South Africa with an unexpected outcome.

Chapter 6. Precognitive dreams

An odd encounter

Rosemary

References for the chapter on dreams

Chapter 7. The Theosophical Society

Use the Force.

Chapter 8. There is something odd about reality

So what is the answer?

What are the consequences?

Conclusion

The four clues that Nature could not hide

End words

References and comments for this chapter¹

Chapter 9. What actually was this book about?

So what did this book conclude in the end?

Flash back to when I was 5

The Cycle of Life

References to books on Nothing, Near Death Experience and the Afterlife

Appendices and Pictures

Appendix 1. More neuroscience details

The Homunculus

How do our eyes connect to our brains?

What is a neuron and how does it work?

Appendix 2. Digital System Fundamentals for the nonprofessional

Binary numbers

What does a digital signal look like?

How can a computer circuit be represented by an equation?

The flip-flop

A digital circuit can oscillate continuously for as long as a source of power is available to drive it.

A so-called state-machine is the basis of automation

The circuit that made the Internet usable.

How do you create a random delay in a discrete digital circuit?

The response Timer

A brief review of the calculator project

Pictures

Postscript. Free will. Do we have it?

About the Author

Preface

When I was a schoolboy my English teacher would say If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it. It follows that you need to write down what you think you know about a given, perhaps obscure issue in order to prove to yourself that you understand the issue. Writing it down and reviewing what you have written helps to improve clarity. As a result I have been writing and reviewing notes about the subject of this book for many years. Perhaps I should thank my English teacher for the way my book has appeared.

Earlier whilst I was in prep school there was an incident in the school playground when a boy ran past me and shouted If God created the world, who created God. There is no explanation offered of where the God came from and of what resources he had to carry out his task with, so an incomplete explanation. The event showed me that the origin of the reality that we exist in is a complete mystery. The idea that a God created our reality did not make sense. It sounded like it was the best idea that early people could come up with.

Cosmologists have produced a so called big bang theory as their explanation of creation but if a universe could be produced spontaneously then how did that come about? What produced the space that could create a universe spontaneously?

I was so surprised, in fact astonished, by this event that it has puzzled me ever since. The fact that it is a mystery suggested to me that this was an issue that demanded an explanation. It suggested that there is something about our reality that it could be hiding from us. Something that it would be important that we should know about. Events during the course of my life, starting at an early age, provided four significant clues that appear to be relevant to the mystery. Now that I am retired I have been putting the clues together and the result is the conclusions presented as the book progresses.

The conclusion is unexpected, so you might disagree with it. However, whatever you think, the book represents my story of how the clues appeared to me during the circumstances of my life and how I interpreted them. I appear to have had a life of lessons specifically aimed at giving me the clues and conclusions that you can read in this book.

The first chapter describes lessons learned from the early part of my life and a few situations that I found myself in. These lessons were the starting point from which the clues followed. Ultimately, my intention is to try and make sense of the experience of the reality that I found myself in from the time I became aware that I existed in a physical reality. How was the finite physical reality created from nothing? I can’t claim to have all the answers. There is the deeper mystery that remains unexplained but hopefully it can be a start to explain what I see as an unexpected aspect of reality.

The somewhat bizarre solution to the mind body problem appears in the postscript.

Acknowledgements

The two figures that appear in chapter 4 have been taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica 2014. Structure of the ear By courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., copyright 2010; used with permission and functional areas of the human brain, By courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., copyright 2007; used with permission.

In the section in appendix 1 The Homunculus, the image of the homunculus has been taken from Principles of Neural Science Fifth edition, with permission of McGraw-Hill Education Department. This figure is an adaptation from a figure in; The Cerebral Cortex of Man, by Penfield and Rasmussen, 1950. Permission provided by cengage.com

In the section in appendix 1, How do our eyes connect to our brains? The image of optic nerves has been taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica 2014. By courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, copyright 2016; used with permission.

The two diagrams in appendix 1 in the section What is a neuron and how does it work? were taken from MEMORY From Mind to Molecules by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel, 2nd edition, Roberts & Company, 2009, with the permission of Professor Eric R. Kandel.

I would like to thank my daughter Sarah Gigger for proofreading the manuscript and offering corrections.

The picture of me on page 83 was taken by my daughter in law Joanna, whilst we were deep in discussion. The cover images were taken in the vicinity of Gawler, South Australia.

©David N. Warren-Smith, MSc.

Chapter 1. Introduction

The title is of course a misnomer. If there was actually nothing then you would not be reading this. However, the title stands and it is the purpose of this book to explain why. Recent books have been written on the topic of nothing but you will find a different approach taken here. For example quantum mechanics and similar theories are not invoked in this book.

The ideas that I will put forward in this book have appeared to me from time to time throughout the duration of my life, starting from a very young age, to a greater extent during the last few years since I have been retired for some years and have time to think about it. I have been writing essays to explain these ideas mostly for my own benefit but now I want to try and put all the essays into a book to try and present a single comprehensive account, as far as I have discovered it. These essays cover a diverse field of activities. Consequently, there is a question of what I should describe first. I will begin with a few comments about the travels that life has taken me on. This in itself has contributed to the ideas to be presented. Some concepts that may require a bit of mathematics will go into the appendices.

Part of the first few years of my life took place in India, whilst there was still a British empire. I was born in December, 1930 in Bombay, now called Mumbai. My father, Reginald Douglas, known to his friends as R. D. had taken a secretarial position in a steel making company in India soon after marrying my mother. My mother had fully graduated as a doctor. However, such was the situation for people in India at the time; I was taken care of during the day by an Indian nanny called an Ayah.

There was a beach not far from where we lived that was reached by a path through a forested area. An image that I remember whilst still a small child was walking along a path in a forest, accompanied by my ayah (Indian nurse maid, pronounced i’ah) probably on the way to the beach, when the ayah shouted out that there was a snake. I don’t remember actually seeing the snake but the shout and hullabaloo to drive it off by two men that appeared must have impressed the occasion on my memory.

Image1Onabeach.jpg

Playing on the beach near Bombay, wearing our Toupees. My brother is on the right.

On another occasion my mother and I were in a dusty street in India outside a pavilion, with a wide entrance. This may actually have been a race course. I got a bit bored and wandered off into the pavilion and sat down in the right hand stand. There were just a few other people sitting in the stands. Shortly two platoons of soldiers marched into the pavilion. One platoon marched to the left in front of the left hand stand and lined up at right angles to the stand. Then the other platoon marched in past the front of the stand I was seated in and took up a position on the right facing the other platoon. The two platoons were then facing each other some hundred or so feet apart. All this was accompanied by lots of shouted commands and precise positioning of the soldiers. Each troop consisted of two rows of soldiers. The front row kneeled down and the back row remained standing. Then on another command the two troops raised and levelled their rifles and aimed at each other.

Image2Racingyacht.jpg

On my dad, the commodore’s racing yacht at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. Dad won several trophies that I now have in my possession.

Just at that moment my mother, who had been frantically looking for me appeared and took me away, in spite of my protests. I never discovered what the outcome of this event was, it appeared that they were about to shoot at each other in some sort of exhibition of discipline. Years later I asked my mother about it but she couldn’t remember the occasion. Now that I have recalled these events, I wonder why my mother was so engrossed in talking to someone outside a racecourse that she hadn’t noticed me wandering away. Also I couldn’t be sure that she was really telling me the truth when she said she couldn’t remember the occasion. I now wonder what would interest a young doctor at the entrance of a race course, in the far away east in the early part of the 20th century, with a small child to look after but was not otherwise practising as a doctor? Two mysteries that have stayed in my mind all these years. It appears that your mind keeps working on a problem even when you are not thinking about it, until a solution appears. A possible explanation that occurred to me years later is that she was planning to buy drugs and was waiting for the drug dealer to attend to