Michael Flynn's Blog, page 57

Statistopia

When is an Average Not an Average?

Now and then, one reads that the average American is a woman.  There are certain construals under which this might be true; but social criticism is not today my theme.  My theme is, yes, wait for it: statistics, more fun than which is impossible to have sitting down.  

Now, in fact, what folks usually mean is that a slight majority of Americans are women.  This is largely because teenaged boys are allowed to drive.  OK, that was insensitive.  But the fact is that mortality is greater among men than among women.  This is why auto insurance premiums were once higher for boys than for girls, before Our Government, in its on-going search for Fairness decreed that insurance companies must no longer take into account the real world.  Rates then rose for young women drivers, providing an opening for a discussion about the true meaning of social justice and fairness.  Or would, if that were what this is all about.  

But to say that the "average American" is a woman is to distort the meaning of average.  In one sense, the category Woman being the more numerous, it is a sort of mode, but the axis of categories is, well, categorical, not numerical.  The mode is the most frequent value in a sample or population.  If the most frequent value is 3.14159, we would have pi a la mode.  But the arithmetic average is what we mean.  (Pun intended!)  The arithmetic average American has one testicle and one ovary.  Take a sample of people, count the number of testicles on each - look, how you go about doing so is your own business - and divide the sum by the sample size.  It will actually average just under one, because, well, let's not get into that.  

An old statistician's joke runs "If you stick your head in the oven and feet in the freezer, on the average, you're comfortable."  Which is why most statisticians have not quit their day jobs and headed off for Vegas and the comedy clubs.  But the point is pointed.  An average is a measure of central tendency, and not all algorithmically calculated averages measure a central tendency.  Sometime, there just isn't one, and in that sense, there is no average.  What is the central tendency of males and females.  What would be the number of Persons in the Hypostatic Union of the Godhead if the sample included traditional Christians (3), muslims and Jews (1), Taoists and neopagans (2), and atheists (0).  One can easily imagine an evening newsreader and the blogosphere soberly reporting that in popular opinion God now contains 2.1 persons, and speculating on the meaning of this for the future of theology.  Aside from indicating that newsreaders have no future as theologians, it is meaningless drivel.  But I digress.  

In static populations, distinct strata may each have its distinct mean value.  An overall mean would be meaningless, as above.  In fact, the purpose of many statistical tests, like One-Way ANOVA (which would be a great name for a test pilot), is to discover if several strata have a common mean or not.  

In dynamic processes, the distinct strata may be subsumed within the periodic samples or may appear as distinct fluctuations or shifts from time to time.  In this case, calculating a constant mean for the series can be a fatuous exercise, though often done simply to provide a benchmark against which to view the fluctuations and to test the null hypothesis that the mean value is constant for the series.  
 

Note that while the grand mean is 7.32 (in coded values: this is real data), there is no sense in which we might say "The pasting process maintained a process level of 7.32."  Maybe it was briefly true at 4:30.  There are clear changes in the process level.  Of the first twelve means, all but two were below the grand mean.  Of the second twelve means, all but one were above the grand mean.  We conclude that some action was taken around 4:00 PM that raised the overall average.  This turned out to be a change in the density of the lead oxide paste that was being metered into the machine.  There had been a change in the paste mill and the same volume of paste was resulting in heavier paste weights on the grids.  

A closer inspection reveals something more interesting: a "leap" in the mean value at each hourly sample.  Between the hours, there is much less variation.  This was due to the machine operator diligently adjusting the machine just before the QC patrol inspector was scheduled to come by for the control sample.  (We were doing a special study, and thus in some odd sense "invisible.")  

 Now suppose we wanted to know about the machine's capability regardless of these two assignable causes - the change in paste density and the operator's well-intended tampering?  The way we would do this would be to calculate the mean of each hour and plot not the sample means but the deviation of the sample means from its own hourly mean.  Such deviations are technically called "deviations" (and, with a bit of math, compared to a "standard" deviation); but they are also commonly called "residuals." The chart of residuals looks like this:

As you can see, it is "in control," meaning the long term variation is no greater than the short term variation (everything fits between the 3-sigma limits) and the grand mean really does look like a central tendency.  IOW, once we have addressed the oxide density and the operator adjustments the process becomes a nicely predictable stationary time series.  It also plots as a straight line on normal probability paper, and so is consistent with the assumption that the residuals vary normally around a mean of zero.  This is a condition at which statisticians get all dreamy-eyed and get their mojo working.  With normal residuals averaging 0, one may pursue that ANOVA hereabove mentioned and perform all sorts of 19th century tests of significance. 

With this in mind, interested readers are welcomed to examine the following time series:

These are satellite-based temperatures of the lower atmosphere.  Dr. Roy Spencer describes the actual measurements with admirable concision.  

NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites over the years. As of early 2011, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002. ... [T]he satellite measurements are not calibrated in any way with the global surface-based thermometer record of temperature. They instead use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch.

For reasons unknown, "climate scientists" call their residuals "anomalies."  The data points are monthly, and each month is compared to the mean value for that month for 1981-2010.  That is, a mean is computed for Jan 81, Jan 82, ..., Jan 10, and each Jan average is compared to this grand mean.  And so on for each month.  The result is to filter out the summer-winter temperature changes and center the chart on 0.  This is what we did above when we did hourly averages to eliminate the end-of-hour adjustment by the operator.  Thus, there is no seasonal fluctuation in the residual time series.

There are no control limits because climate scientists have evidently never heard of Walter Shewhart and his seminal work on dynamic statistics.  Instead, we see constant means, linear regressions, linear extrapolations, and the like.  Yet the data clearly indicates there is more than one regime in the data.  There are spike events - highly touted when they spike up, ignored when they spike down.  (Skeptics tout the down-spikes.)  There is a cycle of approximately 3.75 years (irregular: most often 3-5 years between peaks; and two peaks were suppressed by something).  The last spike event at the end of the chart resembled that of the 1998 El Nino.  What the record is not is:

a) constant; or

b) a steady linear trend upward correlating with CO2.  

My impression: there are assignable causes in the process not yet identified.  By not including them in the model, the fluctuations due to them are assigned to the included factors, thus exaggerating their influence.  This is the hazard of starting with a model and working toward the data, rather than starting from the data and identifying assignable causes.  When the climate then does the unexpected, the unpredicted, one must run about modifying the model to accommodate it. 

 

 

Statutopia

When is an Average Not an Average?

Now and then, on reads that the average American is a woman.  There are certain construals under which this might be true; but social criticism is not today my theme.  My theme is, yes, wait for it: statistics, more fun than which is impossible to have sitting down.  

Now, in fact, what folks usually mean is that a slight majority of Americans are women.  This is largely because teenaged boys are allowed to drive.  OK, that was insensitive.  But the fact is that mortality is greater among men than among women.  This is why auto insurance premiums were once higher for boys than for girls, before Our Government, in its on-going search for Fairness decreed that insurance companies must no longer take into account the real world.  Rates then rose for young women drivers, providing an opening for a discussion about the true meaning of social justice and fairness.  Or would, if that were what this is all about.  

But to say that the "average American" is a woman is to distort the meaning of average.  In one sense, the category Woman being the more numerous, it is a sort of mode, but the axis of categories is, well, categorical, not numerical.  The mode is the most frequent value in a sample or population.  If the most frequent value is 3.14159, we would have pi a la mode.  But the arithmetic average is what we mean.  (Pun intended!)  The arithmetic average American has one testicle and one ovary.  Take a sample of people, count the number of testicles on each - look, how you go about doing so is your own business - and divide the sum by the sample size.  It will actually average just under one, because, well, let's not get into that.  

An old statistician's joke runs "If you stick your head in the oven and feet in the freezer, on the average, you're comfortable."  Which is why most statisticians have not quit their day jobs and headed off for Vegas and the comedy clubs.  But the point is pointed.  An average is a measure of central tendency, and not all algorithmically calculated averages measure a central tendency.  Sometime, there just isn't one, and in that sense, there is no average.  What is the central tendency of males and females.  What would be the number of Persons in the Hypostatic Union of the Godhead if the sample included traditional Christians (3), muslims and Jews (1), Taoists and neopagans (2), and atheists (0).  One can easily imagine an evening newsreader and the blogosphere soberly reporting that in popular opinion God now contains 2.1 persons, and speculating on the meaning of this for the future of theology.  Aside from indicating that newsreaders have no future as theologians, it is meaningless drivel.  But I digress.  

In static populations, distinct strata may each have its distinct mean value.  An overall mean would be meaningless, as above.  In fact, the purpose of many statistical tests, like One-Way ANOVA (which would be a great name for a test pilot), is to discover if several strata have a common mean or not.  

In dynamic processes, the distinct strata may be subsumed within the periodic samples or may appear as distinct fluctuations or shifts from time to time.  In this case, calculating a constant mean for the series can be a fatuous exercise, though often done simply to provide a benchmark against which to view the fluctuations and to test the null hypothesis that the mean value is constant for the series.  
 

Note that while the grand mean is 7.32 (in coded values: this is real data), there is no sense in which we might say "The pasting process maintained a process level of 7.32."  Maybe it was briefly true at 4:30.  There are clear changes in the process level.  Of the first twelve means, all but two were below the grand mean.  Of the second twelve means, all but one were above the grand mean.  We conclude that some action was taken around 4:00 PM that raised the overall average.  This turned out to be a change in the density of the lead oxide paste that was being metered into the machine.  There had been a change in the paste mill and the same volume of paste was resulting in heavier paste weights on the grids.  

A closer inspection reveals something more interesting: a "leap" in the mean value at each hourly sample.  Between the hours, there is much less variation.  This was due to the machine operator diligently adjusting the machine just before the QC patrol inspector was scheduled to come by for the control sample.  (We were doing a special study, and thus in some odd sense "invisible.")  

 Now suppose we wanted to know about the machine's capability regardless of these two assignable causes - the change in paste density and the operator's well-intended tampering?  The way we would do this would be to calculate the mean of each hour and plot not the sample means but the deviation of the sample means from its own hourly mean.  Such deviations are technically called "deviations" (and, with a bit of math, compared to a "standard" deviation); but they are also commonly called "residuals." The chart of residuals looks like this:

As you can see, it is "in control," meaning the long term variation is no greater than the short term variation (everything fits between the 3-sigma limits) and the grand mean really does look like a central tendency.  IOW, once we have addressed the oxide density and the operator adjustments the process becomes a nicely predictable stationary time series.  It also plots as a straight line on normal probability paper, and so is consistent with the assumption that the residuals vary normally around a mean of zero. 

With this in mind, interested readers are welcomed to examine the following time series:

These are satellite-based temperatures of the lower atmosphere.  Dr. Roy Spencer describes the actual measurements with admirable concision.  

NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites over the years. As of early 2011, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002. ... [T]he satellite measurements are not calibrated in any way with the global surface-based thermometer record of temperature. They instead use their own on-board precision redundant platinum resistance thermometers calibrated to a laboratory reference standard before launch.

For reasons unknown, "climate scientists" call their residuals "anomalies."  The data points are monthly, and each month is compared to the mean value for that month for 1981-2010.  That is, a mean is computed for Jan 81, Jan 82, ..., Jan 10, and each Jan average is compared to this grand mean.  And so on for each month.  The result is to filter out the summer-winter temperature changes and center the chart on 0.  This is what we did above when we did hourly averages to eliminate the end-of-hour adjustment by the operator.  Thus, there is no seasonal fluctuation in the residual time series.

There are no control limits because climate scientists have evidently never heard of Walter Shewhart and his seminal work on dynamic statistics.  Instead, we see constant means, linear regressions, linear extrapolations, and the like.  Yet the data clearly indicates there is more than one regime in the data.  There are spike events - highly touted when they spike up, ignored when they spike down.  (Skeptics tout the down-spikes.)  There is a cycle of approximately 3.75 years (irregular: most often 3-5 years between peaks; and two peaks were suppressed by something).  The last spike event at the end of the chart resembled that of the 1998 El Nino.  What the record is not is:

a) constant; or

b) a steady linear trend upward correlating with CO2.  

My impression: there are assignable causes in the process not yet identified.  By not including them in the model, the fluctuations due to them are assigned to the included factors, thus exaggerating their influence.  This is the hazard of starting with a model and working toward the data, rather than starting from the data and identifying assignable causes.  When the climate then does the unexpected, the unpredicted, one must run about modifying the model to accommodate it. 

 

 

Skiffy News

The Game Upon the Razor's Edge

Well, I have a title now for the second half of what started out as In the Lion's Mouth.  It is to be called On the Razor's Edge, following a poem that appears In the Lion's Mouth and is fortuitously echoed already in the text.  I figure the title scans to match the companion volume and is about the same size as the first two titles as well, so the cover art may continue the same theme without unduly resizing the font.   

Yuts’ga, whose star, once spied from Earth
In nameless twinkle, whose seas once swam
With proto-life prolific, joined in metazoan joy,
Her skies well-crossed by many streams, convulsed
At times by strife to seize them, has now in gentle peace
Reposed these slumb’rous years, to dream… of what?
Here, too, a crucial bottleneck where messages
Must criss and cross their way among the stars,
A place where proper hands may stay or speed
Intelligence sore-needed elsewhere by the foe.
And so have Shadows dimmed Fair Yuts’ga
In stealth to play the game upon the razor’s edge,
Life sweetly-dreamed along the borderlands of death,
And gather all within that fatal commonwealth
In which we all find final membership. 

+ + +

Méarana plucked a dis-chord on her harp.  “War as a cure for boredom?”
“Ah, harper!  No one who has not lived on the razor’s edge can know what it means to be alive.  Only by hazarding all can one win all.”

+ + +

Life seldom tastes so sweet as it does when stolen back at the very brink from those who would take it.  Méarana finally understood, a little, a phrase favored by the Ravn: “life along the razor’s edge.”   

+ + +

Which should give you an idea of the book.

+ + +

 

Map of the Borderlands and the Old Home Worlds
Map of the Triangles
Map of Gidula’s Stronghold
Banners of the Shadows
Formáli
I.  Doggedness
II.  And Did She Teach You Three Things?
III.  The Synthesis
IV.  The Pasdarm at the Iron Bridge
V.  One of the Pleasantest Things in Life
VI.  Many Arrows Loosèd Several Ways
VII.  One Man With a Dream, At Pleasure
VIII.  Never Do What You Said You’d Do
IX.  At the Capital of All the Worlds
X.  The Play of the Coral Snake
XI.  Hanging Tough
XII.  The Razor's Edge
XIII.  Three, With a New Song’s Measure
Excursus
Notes for the Curious

The characters (major roles)

Francine Thompson     d.b.a. Bridget ban, a Hound of the Ardry
Graceful Bintsaif    a junior Hound, deputy to Bridget ban
Lucia D. Thompson     d.b.a. Méarana, a harper, daughter of Bridget ban
Ravn Olafsdottr    a Shadow of the CCW
Donovan (the scarred man)    d.b.a. The Fudir, sometime agent of the CCW

Hounds of the Ardry
Greystroke    longtime companion to Donovan and Bridget ban
Little Hugh O Carroll    Pup to Greystroke, d.b.a. Rinty
Black Shuck, Cŵn Annwn, Grimpen, Matilda of the Night, Obligado

Rebel Shadows
Gidula    Counselor to Dawshoo (black, a white comet)
Khembold Darling    Gidula’s ship-captain (yellow, a daffodil; comet canton) 
Eglay Portion    Gidula’s base-captain (tan, a rose; comet canton)
Domino Tight    a young Shadow (tawny, a lyre proper)
Oschous Dee Karnatika    field marshal of the rebel shadows (scarlet, a black horse)
Big Jacques Delamond    a large Shadow (white, a blue trident)

Loyal Shadows
Shadow Prime    Father of the Abattoir (black) 
Ekadrina Sèanmazy    field marshal of the loyal Shadows (black, a taiji)
Aynia Farer    a loyal Shadow (lime, a lion)
Phoythaw Bhatvik    advisor to Sèanmazy (yellow, two ravens)

Those of Name
Jimjim Shot    The Beautiful Name, the Mayshot Bo
Tina Zhi    The Technical Name, the Gayshot Bo
Paul Feeley    The Radiant Name, the Nangling Bo
Ari Zin    The Militant Name, the Woqfun Bo
xxxxxxxx    The Secret Name, the Bo’an Ghincat

Magpies, pups, hounds, shadows, retainers, boots, sheep, foo-doctors, archivists, villagers, Terrans. 

 

 

 

 

Philosophmores, or Amateur Hour

Aether Or

There is an adage which, so far as I know, I made up: There is no job so simple as the other guy's job.  I noted this years ago when in the glass plant a production supervisor told me that statistical methods "might work in aluminum can production, but blowing glass bottles is different.  It's a black art."  What made it amusing is that shortly before I had been told by a can line supervisor that statistical methods might work in the bottle plant, which was very simple, but drawing and ironing aluminum coil into cans was high precision science.  What either claim had to do with the applicability of statistical methods, I don't know.  By me, 1 bottle plus 1 bottle seemed a lot like 1 can plus 1 can; and I supposed this would be true of averages and standard deviations as well, but what do I know?  

In any case, the adage that what other people do is much simpler than what "I" do can be found in all walks of life.  The reason, of course, is that "I" know all the details and complications of "my" work while I know little or nothing of the work of "that other guy."  
 

Edward Feser, Philosopher
blog photo

It's not always true, but it's true often enough; though much more often I think among journeymen than among masters.  A master weaver is likely to acknowledge that a master brewer has a job every bit as nuanced as his own; but apprentices and journeymen are likely to hype the difficulties and nuances of weaving and dismiss those of brewing.  ("The bacteria does all the work, y'know.")
 

[image error] Ethan Siegel, non-philosopher
blog photo.  No fooling.

And so it is no surprise that Ed Feser has found yet another physicist who thinks, because he is trained in the metric properties of material bodies, he is therefore expert in all things philosophical.  More to the point, he seems not to imagine that there is anything beyond physics at all, and reads other fields through the filter of the physics.  Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy?

The physicist is Ethan Siegel, but he makes the same error as Stephen Hawking did earlier.  In Can You Get Something For Nothing? the estimable Dr. Siegel addresses the adage "You can't get something from nothing," adding that he hears this "most often when people bring this up to me, it's in an attempt to prove the existence of God -- and the insufficiency of the Big Bang -- by pointing to the Universe."  He proves how foolish this is by reprinting a cartoon:

(Image credit: chaospet.)

One wonders why, if the argument is so laughably inadequate, he needs to misrepresent it.  If philosophy is so easy, why do physicists always seem to muck it up?  (Don't worry.  Philosophers can muck up physics, too.  But at least they are aware that there is something in physics that must be understood before mucking it up.)  
 

(I might mention that most of the cries I hear about Big Bang inadequacies come from folks with a decidedly different agenda than what he supposes.)

Basically, Siegel's argument is:

Arguments for God as cause of the universe rest on the assumption that something can’t come from nothing.  But given the laws of physics, it turns out that something can come from nothing.

This flunks Logic 101.  Read that again: "Given the laws of physics, something can come from nothing."  Given the laws of physics, which means you have to start with something, namely the laws of physics.    

He goes on to say:

[I]n many ways, getting something when you have nothing is unavoidable! ...  For example, take a box and empty it, so that all you've got is some totally empty space, like [a picture of a black square] above. An ideal, perfect, empty vacuum. Now, what's in that box?

It would seem simple to point out that you don't have nothing; you have an empty box.  A black square (which he uses for illustration) is not nothing; it is a black square.  And even the vacuum that he imagines left in the box is not nothing; it is a vacuum.  

Conclusion: Dr. Siegel doesn't know nothing.  

And if his objection were to be: "That's not what I mean by nothing," the response is: "Then you are not rebutting the argument that from nothing comes nothing."  Besides, definitions ought not be notional like that. 

It was not always thus.  Poincare, Heisenberg, Einstein, Mach, and the rest knew philosophy.  They were perhaps of the last generation to know it.  They didn't always do it well; but they always did well enough to be worth taking seriously. 

"The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach, and so on.  But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth…"
-- Paul Feyerabend to Wallace Matson 
(Quoted in For and Against Method, by Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend)  

Feser writes:

And things are even worse now.  Feynman was notoriously hostile to philosophy, but when his work on quantum mechanics brought him up against its inherent philosophical difficulties, he at least had the humility not to claim he knew how to resolve them.  Hawking and Vedral, by contrast, confidently peddle as “science” the kind of schlock you’d expect to find in the New Age section at Borders.  

I'm not sure it is meaningless to note that it was the generation of Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, etc. that made the great conceptual breakthroughs in physics -- general relativity and quantum mechanics -- and that recent generations that have dotted their i's and crossed their t's.  Well, those ideas were stuffed full of implications, and maybe it takes a couple of generations to unpack them.  Still, glosses on Einstein and Heisenberg, however brilliant and original, are still glosses.  

Sometimes, unwittingly, they are glosses on Aristotle.  

The Aether, the Vacuum, and the Cosmological Constant.  

Siegel unwittingly undermines his contention that something can come from nothing by going on to say: "it turns out that empty space isn't so empty."  What part of "nothing" does he fail to understand?

The Old Stagerite
He does not run a blog

My own background was in mathematics, and I understand the value of the Zero in the development of math.  But I also understand the difference between zero and nothing.  It is analogous to the difference between a bank account with zero balance and not having a bank account at all.  (But even if I don't have a bank account there is still the presumption of a banking system and a set of laws by which an account might be opened.  So the analogy is imperfect.)

Ex nihilo, nihil fit.  For something to become red it must first be not-red.  (Otherwise, it is already red.  Duh?)  But from not-red does not come red.  Something else must move the body from not-red to red; and that something must be actually red, either formally (red paint) or eminently (the energy of sunlight that ripens the apple).  Now, with the form of redness, we move from not-red to red by an intension of form.  There is a "beginning to be" red, although there is no first moment at which it begins to be.  The apple can be a little bit red.  Then a little bit more.

But there is no continuum from non-existence to existence.  Being simply is or is-not.  Dare we say that to Aristotle and his epigones, existence is a quantum leap from a state k=0 to k=1.  Now it should be obvious that non-existence cannot give existence to anything, let alone to itself.  Something that does not exist has no power to do what in philosophy is known technically as diddly squat.  And indeed, the virtual particle pairs do not come from nothing: they come from fluctuations in the ground state or zero-point energy, consequent to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.  

Everything Siegel says about virtual particle pairs that wink into (and out of) existence seems to be good physics, at least under the Copenhagen metaphysic.)  But he has not described something from nothing.  He has described something from a vacuum stuffed with ZP energy in motion.  A quantum state is not nothing; it is a quantum state.   

What they are is the Aristotelian aether. 

But wait!  Did not Michelson and Morely disprove the existence of the aether?  Yes and no.  Yes, they disproved Lorenz's luminiferous aether.  But the luminiferous aether was an invention of the mechanical age and had certain properties that made it detectable in theory.  These were not detected, and so Lorenz' aether was disproved.  

Aristotle's aether was much more aetherial.  

If you live in a place that allows this, go out tonight and gaze at the sky above.  You will see a myriad of pinpoint lights.  But what is all that black stuff around the lights?  Look at it through Aristotle's eyes: it is a material sphere of some sort within which the stars are embedded, and it turns slowly on itself day in and day out.  In all the extensive and precise Babylonian, Persian, and Greek records of the positions and risings of the various constellations, no star has been observed to deviate from its ordinary motion, to slow down or speed up, much less simply to go out or come into existence. (De caelo, 270b5-26)  This is remarkably different from terrestrial matter.  

Now he turned out to be wrong about the vast sphere rotating around us; but that was not what drew his attention.  It was all that black stuff between the stars.  Since there could not be a true vacuum, it must be filled with something.  Aristotle infers certain properties of the aether that emphasize how different it is from ordinary matter. It is:

simple (not a compound of elements) effected by only one internal principle or causeungenerable and incorruptible, incapable of growth or alteration.although subject to change in place, not subject to changes in substance, quantity, or quality.inalterable.

If aether is incorruptible, its prime matter and substantial form must be so perfectly united that the latter must actualize and thereby exhaust the potency of the former.  That is, aether's prime matter is inseparable from its form, and in this sense is not really distinct from it.

If aether cannot be destroyed (or even altered qualitatively), it must somehow be intangible. It is not susceptible to the action of the tangible qualities of temperature and pressure.

If aether cannot be pressed upon by ordinary matter, then if some body were to try to press upon it, that body would cut right through the aether unhindered (which is why Michelson-Morely did not lay a glove on the Aristotelian aether.)  That is, aether can "push" on ordinary matter without being "pushed back."
 

"While usually the thing touching is touched by what it touches--for nearly all the things we come upon move while also being moved -- still it also occurs (as we sometimes say) that only the mover may touch the moved, while the thing touched does not touch the one touching it. But because things of the same kind are moved [in return] when they move others, it seems to be necessary that [movers] be touched by what they touch. Whence if something unmoved moves another, although it will touch the thing moved, nothing [will touch] it." 
De Gen. et Cor., 1.6.323a26-32

Tommy Aquinas
also not a blogger

"for nearly all the things we come upon move while also being moved"  Sound familiar, Newton? 
 

St. Thomas also notes this exception of aether from Newton's third law:

"Bodies act upon each other by touching, whence it follows that they are simultaneously acted upon [in return], since what touches is acted upon. But this should be understood [only] when there is mutual contact [mutuus tactus], as happens in those things that share in a common matter, each of which is being acted upon by the other while they are touching each other. The heavenly bodies, however, because they do not share a common matter with inferior [i.e., sublunary] bodies, act upon them such that they are not acted upon by them [in return]; they touch and are not touched.
III Phys., lect. 4, n. 5

Furthermore, the aether is supremely transparent.  It cannot be seen or detected, although it can be inferred by its effect on ordinary matter. 

The aether is rotating in place; i.e., not moving as such.  Aether does not have a location and is only analogously in place.It is not in time; more properly speaking it transcends time, or is atemporal.

For further details, see the first section of Decaen's Aristotle's Aether and Contemporary Science, which discusses the Stagerite's reasoning.   

Einstein and Heisenberg Meet the Aether
 

Albert Einstein, real physicist
and sometime philosopher

Following Michelson-Morely, Einstein dismissed the aether.  However, it was the luminiferous aether of Lorenz and the moderns that had been falsified.  He did not lay a glove on Aristotle and St. Thomas.  However, the loss of the aether proved problematical at a fundamental level, and in 1920, he brought it back -- as the relativistic aether, which he defined as the field of Ricci tensors, "a quasi-geometric structure filling space that affects the gravitational motions of bodies in it."
 

Werner Heisenberg, real physicist
and sometime philosopher

Shortly after, Heisenberg argued that the uncertainty principle entails vacuum fluctuations, and therefore some kind of "vacuum energy."
 

Decaen examines the similarities between the aethers of Aristotle, Einstein, and Heisenberg.  "Each posits an ubiquitous, space-filling, utterly insensible medium whose existence we cannot directly measure or detect but which can be inferred from things we can measure and detect."

1A. Aristotle's aether has no place, no motion or rest, and does not exist in time, without some kind of loosening of the meanings of those words.

1B. Einstein's curved space-time has no determinate velocity, location, or history; spatio-temporal predicates can be applied to it only analogically, not univocally.

2A. Aristotle's aether is the ultimate principle in virtue of which all other bodies have place and are measured by a common time, and it is the first physical agent cause of natural motions.

2B. Einstein's aethereal space-time is a principle and cause of the local and temporal properties of ordinary matter and in some way determines the nature of their motions.

3A. Aristotle and St. Thomas insist that aether can be named "matter" and "substance" only equivocally, even occasionally arguing that it partakes of "immateriality."

3B. In both relativity and quantum electrodynamics, one finds an ambivalence among the physicists about calling their respective aethers "material" or "immaterial"

4A. Aristotle and St. Thomas argue that aether seems to be immutable and impassive to ordinary matter, that is, it cannot be touched or pushed.

4B. Relativity and quantum electrodynamics, while admitting that ordinary matter somehow causes curvature of space-time, and that the relative location of conducting plates can indirectly effect a net attracting force in the ambient quantum vacuum, require that aether not be a ponderable or inertial sort of matter--the quasi-agency of ordinary matter on it is not intelligible as common efficient causality, which involves an equal and opposite reaction.

5A/B. Einstein, Heisenberg, Dirac, on the one hand, and Aristotle and St. Thomas, on the other, all insist that light and light-related phenomena have this medium as their proper subject.

These parallels seem too specific for mere coincidence.  OTOH, Aristotle did not channel Einstein and Heisenberg.  There are significant differences, as you would expect after some 2300 years.  Aristotle thought the aether to exist only in the heavens and to form a shell rotating on itself around the earth.  But then in places he seemed to consider the possibility that the aether (or some kind of "participation in the nature of aether") could exist in the sublunary regions.  This would correspond to Einstein's case that ordinary matter is a certain state of the Ricci tensors.  

And Aristotle himself wrote that his account of the aether was plausible only given the information he had at present.  Given what we know today, he would have modified some features -- he was an empiricist, after all -- but a remarkable amount would remain valid.  

Decaen closes his article saying:

"Nature loves to hide," Heraclitus said, and the evidence for aether is a case in point. Its existence is by no means self-evident, and is only detected by inference--sometimes lengthy and complicated inference, punctuated by many premises that are merely tentative. While the argument for aether was first made by Aristotle, and many of the fundamental insights contained in this argument are still valid, the cause of aether has now been taken up by the most empirically successful theories of contemporary science. As one physicist puts it, with relativity, quantum theory, and astrophysics, "we are going full cycle, back to the aether and quintessence of Aristotle. . . . [This is] a true 'quintessence,' in the spirit of Aristotle." (Lawrence Krauss, Quintessence: The Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2000)

The Aether and Prime Matter

Such considerations led hylemorphist to consider the similarity between Aristotelian prime matter and the ZP energy in Zero-point energy/ground/vacuum state vs Real Being vs Logical Being vs Nothing

Aristotelian prime matter:

Prime matter is pure potentiality.Prime matter is that which underlies substantial changePrime matter itself does not undergo changePrime matter has no formIt is the closest there is to nothingness without being nothingnessPrime matter or pure potentiality is a state of being without form, and since science deals with substances and all substances have a substantial form, this state is impossible to achieve experimentally.Prime matter cannot actualize itself since it has no actuality, it is only actualized by something actual.

Quantum vacuum (a.k.a. zero-point energy, ground state)

A quantum vacuum is a state with the lowest possible energy and NO particles.Such a state is of course impossible to achieve experimentally.Zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may have.ALL physical systems have a zero-point energy that is greater than nothing.Zero-point energy states may differ relatively, and is defined only in relation to some given actual state.Virtual particles are substances since they are a composite of actuality and potentiality with a substantial form.A virtual particle is generated by a disturbance to the zero-point energy state.

So there can be a strong argument towards the notion that the contemporary understanding of a zero-point energy state in physics is analogous to the classical understanding of prime matter or pure potentiality.

zero-point energy (ZPE) state just is prime matter or pure potentiality.ZPE is that which underlies substantial change e.g. virtual particles are substances that undergo substantial change and they do have an effect on the substantial change of other substances.ZPE, though relative to a particular actual syste, itself does not undergo changeZPE has no form, it is impossible to experimentally determine the form.ZPE is the closest there is to nothingness without being nothingnessZPE is a state of being without form, and since science deals with substances and all substances have a substantial form, this state is impossible to achieve experimentally.ZPE cannot actualize itself since it has no actuality (it is pure potentiality), it is only actualized by something actual. E.g. disturbances imagined to be due to bodies that interact with the virtual particle field.  

This is a remarkable similarity, and merits closer scrutiny.  Given that the aether is such that its prime matter is so closely bound with its form as to be inseparable from it, it may be that the aether can be considered almost as if it were prime matter.  Or perhaps as the coat of actual paint slapped across the seething chaotic substrate of pure potentiality represented by prime matter. 

The Boys of '98

Remember the Maine!

Stranger Things, Horatio. Stranger Things

The Instrumentality of the Brain

Now and then peculiar stories come to light.  A friend of mine some years ago had been scheduled for bypass surgery, but when he went into the hospital, they found, mirabile dictu, that new arteries had grown creating a natural bypass!  A strange thing, but not (he told me) as uncommon as you might think.  Though it is probably not something upon you would want to count. 

Today's tale is of a boy who was born without half his brain. 

 

When Chase Britton was 1 year old, doctors did an MRI, expecting to find he had a mild case of cerebral palsy. Instead, they discovered he was completely missing his cerebellum -- the part of the brain that controls motor skills, balance and emotions.

"That's when the doctor called and didn't know what to say to us," Britton said in a telephone interview. "No one had ever seen it before. And then we'd go to the neurologists and they'd say, 'That's impossible.' 'He has the MRI of a vegetable,' one of the doctors said to us."

Chase is not a vegetable, leaving doctors bewildered and experts rethinking what they thought they knew about the human brain.  

Chase also is missing his pons, the part of the brain stem that controls basic functions, such as sleeping and breathing. There is only fluid where the cerebellum and pons should be, Britton said.

Ultrasound showed the kid had a cerebellum during pregnancy; but it vanished along the way. 

But that is not the most peculiar thing.  He does breathe and he does sleep, even without a pons.  He managed eventually to sit up on his own. Next he learned to crawl, and push himself upright.  Now, he's learning to walk.  These are things he should have been unable to do without a cerebellum to provide balance, if certain metaphysical stances were true.  

Now, like new arteries growing, this might be more common than it sounds; but it raises a peculiar question.  Evidently, other parts of the brain, in the cerebrum or medulla, have been recruited to take over tasks for which no cerebellum or pons stepped forward.  But who did the recruiting?  Is it the Brain that does all this, or is it Chase Britton, using his brain? 

IOW, might the Brain be like any other bodily organ, an instrument used by the organism?  We don't say that the stomach ate a meal or that the legs went to the corner store.  Yet, we credit the Brain rhetorically with all sorts of autonomous actions, perhaps because we are reluctant to consider whether there might not be something more than the Brain.  Perhaps we are top-down and not bottom-up, after all. 

 

The Omnitheory

Is There Anything This Theory Cannot Explain?

Apparently not.  NYT columnist Paul Krugman has determined that the Egyptian uprising was due to Global Warming™ [I mean, Climate Change; I mean, Climate Disruption].  The rationale is that Global Warming results in droughts (when it isn't causing increased rainfall or snow) which leads to reduced crops, which leads to higher prices, which leads to mobs crying out for governments to sprinkle magic pixie dust to make food cheaper.  It's a wonderful theory.  Except for one thing.  

 

As Roger Pielke Jr. points out, grain price indices show long-term declines.  The bump at the end is as likely to be caused by the Americans turning grain into fuel or by China and India buying more petroleum (thus raising the costs of farming with tractors) as by Global Warming™.  After all, Global Warming™ is supposed to be taking place all throughout the time frame plotted. 

I propose changing the name of the product from Climate Disruption™, which is too obviously a marketing gimmick, to The Omnitheory™. 

Pielke, btw, is an interesting bird.  He believes that AGW is happening, but also that some colleagues have been overblowing it and seeing evidences where there is none. 

 

The Forest of Time, et al.

Big Reminder

For all those who haven't gotten their copies yet.

The Forest of Time & Other Stories

ISBN 978-1-60450-479-8, 362 Pages, Trade Paperback 6”x9”
Paperback: $14.99
KINDLE: $9.99

"Interesting, engaging, and believable."-San Diego Union Tribune

Here is an eclectic collection of science fiction stories (and three short poems) by multiple award winning author Michael Flynn, author of such acclaimed titles as Eifelheim (Hugo nominee) and Firestar, called by the San Diego Union Tribune a 'knockout.'

This collection itself includes two Hugo nominated stories ("The Forest of Time" and "Melodies of the Heart") as well as a selection of some of the author's finest works of short fiction that were originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.  Included in this edition are three humorous poems which also originally appeared in Analog.

Go here: http://www.phoenixpick.com/catalogue/PPickings.htm

Addendum

Here is an account by an Egyptian 

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail660.html#observer

If need be, scroll down to "Fwd: The Story of the Egyptian Revolution [from an observer on..."

It is rather long, but gives a closer, first-hand account.  

In the Land of the Pharaohs

for those who did not notice the grammatical humor in the previous post, let us wax serious.....

the latest dynasty - that of the Army Colonels - is teetering.  And this for a most unusual reason.  Some say that this is a democratic rising against brutal autocracy; but the brutal autocracy has been in place for at least 30 years - or 6000 years, depending on how you count such things.  But notice that the unrest began over rising prices, and of all the things that brutal autocracies and fluffy-bunny democracies have no real control, prices is numbered among them.  Only after a couple days did folks start to honk the democracy horn, given that the democracies of Europe and America were now watching.  (Observe how many signs in the crowd are in English.  Those were not written for the benefit of native Egyptians.)

"When the mob takes to the streets in search of food, its first move is usually to burn the bakeries."

-- Jerry Pournelle

Then, at Friday prayers, many imams apparently told their flocks to go swell the demonstrators' ranks. But this support remained cautious.

Only now that Mubarak's position is untenable -- because the Egyptian army is distancing itself from him -- are the valves fully opening, and is the Muslim Brotherhood appropriating the revolution.  http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1242

 When the security forces were pulled out, the border with Gaza was left unguarded, and Hamas, which is the Muslim Brotherhood in that district, entered Egypt and became a player.  The "spoilt children of the middle class" have no use for the Islamists; but then the Islamists have no use for them, either.  Remember what happened to Kerensky in Russia or to Bakhtiar in Iran.  Bakhtiar was eventually hunted down and killed by Iranian agents in Europe.  There are certain kinds of societies, it seems, in which a bourgeois revolution cannot "take."  Even the '48 in the Germanies was only ambiguously successful. 

 

Stratfor, too, provides an anlysis:

There is more to these demonstrations than meets the eye. The media will focus on the concept of reformers staging a revolution in the name of democracy and human rights. These may well have brought numerous demonstrators into the streets, but revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than the liberal voices on Facebook and Twitter.

After three decades of Mubarak rule, a window of opportunity has opened for various political forces — from the moderate to the extreme — that preferred to keep the spotlight on the liberal face of the demonstrations while they maneuver from behind. As the Iranian Revolution of 1979 taught, the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the political forces that end up in power. ......

Now that the political structure of the state is crumbling, the army must directly shoulder the responsibility of security and contain the unrest on the streets. This will not be easy, especially given the historical animosity between the military and the police in Egypt. For now, the demonstrators view the military as an ally, and therefore, whether consciously or not, are facilitating a de facto military takeover of the state. But one misfire in the demonstrations, and a bloodbath in the streets could quickly foil the military’s plans and give way to a scenario that groups like the MB quickly could exploit.

Read more: The Egyptian Unrest: A Special Report | STRATFOR

 Now we have learned what others had not forgotten: that many Egyptians support the regime, too.  It provides order and security; and the protesters are easily portrayed as unduly influence by Western values.  Democracy is, after all, contrary to Islam.  

Why?  Holy Qur'an is not simply a religious text, but like Torah sets out rules for secular society.  But unlike Torah, Holy Qur'an is said to be directly dictated, not merely inspired, by God.  As such, all secular laws are not only found in the suras and hadith, either directly or by qiyas [analogy], but they have the divine stamp of approval.  Since Qur'an is not only divine, but complete, there are no laws lacking.  But the essence of democracy is that the people or their representatives can make and repeal laws.  This is impossible in the Islamic view.  The laws must be found in Qur'an and then enforced by emirs or sultans.  This does not bode well for the "spoilt children of the middle classes" who have picked up alien Western notions.