and
MIND
By
Stephen W. Taylor
Octanary
Publications Ltd. Auckland New Zealand
By the Same Author:
The Science of Mental Arithmetic, 1981
Space Age Arithmetic, 1981
The Theory of Mental Arithmetic, 1983
Draw A Line, Tell the Time
The Clock n’Calendar Book for Children, 1989
Circle Arithmetic (A Short Introduction), 1988
CircleMath One (A Math for the Theory of Everything),
1988, revised, 1992
BIRTH (1974, unpublished)
031216-A note to this Internet (web page) edition:
This copy has been re-edited and the hyperlinks reset. Unfortunately, the original cross-references were lost in the process and some may not have been faithfully restored. Reader feedback would be appreciated. The work began as an essay on free will, a theme which still exists in chapters 1 and 2, and completes in chapters 13 and 14. I have added a page ‘In Conclusion’ to chapter 14, summarizing my belief that the behavioral mechanism investigated by Edmund Jacobson and practiced unconsciously in religion (that it is the mainspring of religion), is exactly that upon which our human as distinct from prehuman nature exists and persists.
Swt
ISBN 0-908681-19-4
First Edition, second run, August 1995, 50 copies
© All Rights Reserved
Preface
Believe me, a preface is harder to write than to read. Why don’t you just skip it and start in on the content? But if you must, this book, before it burgeoned into math, had its beginnings in what was intended to be a short essay on free will for the net. It still begins and ends on the subject of free will, examining the conception of concepts as such, whilst the original writing on free will is now found as chapters 13 and 14. Do we possess free will as religion has always taught, being responsible and accountable, or are we, in the terms of Pavlovian science, fully determined to think and act as we do by our given bodily form, circumstance and reflex conditioning?
I take a view down the middle: there is truth on both sides. But this being so, which of the two is primary, senior in the sense of being ultimately foundational? You will have to read the whole book to find out what I think in that respect, and the question is academic in that no one has any option but to make their own mind up for themselves. But it may be useful to peruse what others say and think.
Religion has always assumed free will, but is its ground valid? The idea of God upon which religion turns can be construed as its ultimate expression for it teaches that we are responsible not only within the sphere of human jurisdiction, but for our every thought and act before an omniscient creator. Is this true, or is it a self-serving social teaching which helps us fit harmoniously into the prevailing order?
We act as we think. If we have no control over what we think, surely we have no real control over what we do. Religion teaches that, as we do, we effectively become, and it offers prescription for doing, advising prayer and meditation, challenging us to be effective in the spiritual as well as worldly realm. Indeed it bids us make a life-long commitment to this task. Is this realistic, or is it mere shadow-boxing in the world of self-delusion?
Jesus said, “... you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” There is nothing then to stop us asking, “is religion itself true”? Does God, or anything resembling the religious conception of God exist?
Many think not, and actively say so. For others God is the first fact in life and all being. Others again give the matter scant or no attention on the grounds that it is not warranted, though virtually all such ‘believe’ or stand in awe of what they conceive as the truth of math and physics.
Which leads me to ask, “Just how good is this math and physics”? Does it teach the truth or is it a hidey-hole for the father of all lies? Should we not examine everything? I look at that question in chapters 3-8.
Two chapters on the Hegelian notion then follow, in which I endeavor to indicate the Hegelian stem of my views. Unfortunately the Hegelian is a difficult philosophy and really needs a greater work up than can be given here. In fact a revolution in our social and cultural thinking is needed if it is to be rendered simple and clear. The ‘notion’, technically speaking, is the quantum of thought, which being fully rounded takes both subjective knowing and the objective known as its sides.
Its sides exist in an equilibrium of ever-changing contradiction, and this latter is the mathematically precise motor in all thinking. The subject is formidable, but as on the frontier of advancing knowledge it is rewarding for those with the means and will to study it.
A brief discussion of the origin of species, originally attached to chapter 1, now appears as chapters 11 and 12. Whether you agree or disagree with my views I hope that in either case they may be fruitful in advancing the ever-proceeding search for the touchstone of ultimate truth.
CONTENTS
03. A Mathematical Insight into Mind
God as the Zero of
the Human Understanding
The Notion of the
Trinitarian Principle
06. The Ohe in Technical Detail
The Circle/
Straight Contradiction in perpetual development