Positor's Poems

[Marshall]

More Positor verse can be found in Art forum.
In these cases the poems are not at risk of becoming hard to locate. They are easy to retrieve because each one has its own separate thread. We simply scan down the Art forum listing for the poem's title. e.g. "Poem: Mathematical Reality"
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=24111
Or see for example "Sonnet: Two Paths to Enlightenment"
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=21500

[Marshall]

Positor's skill with verse* extends to other topics besides religion. I'll make this thread a kind of anthology of his, both to allow comparison between the religious and philosophical commentary and because we all enjoy it so don't want to lose track of it.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22090&p=247696#p247696

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=25813&p=247749#p247749

viewtopic.php?f=83&t=25005&p=237896#p237855

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=21500#p205013

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=24111#p227478

I'll collect some more Positor verse links later. Have some chores to do at the moment.

[Gregorygregg1]

Applause! Applause!
Your verse defies all laws
Of verbal limitation.
Accept a standing ovation.

[BioWizard]

Very nice Positor. Belated kudos.

[owleye]

Not my cup of tea, but you make the story worth its being told.

[Marshall]

Here's a thread with more Positor verse:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=23407#p220940

After the first one there are a bunch of appreciative comments so you have to scroll down a ways to fnd the next, which was entered June 10 2013:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=23407#p235588
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=23407#p235589
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=23407#p235590

[Athena]

Not my cup of tea, but you make the story worth its being told.

Owleye, that is a very interesting comment.

Personally, I really like the poem and that is special because I usually don't like poems. However, I do like working with the notion of God. Not the God of Abraham who I think is too much like Zeus, but thinking of logos and God as one and same thing. Logos, as in the principle of order and lawfulness, that is best understood through math and science.

[owleye]

Not my cup of tea, but you make the story worth its being told.

Owleye, that is a very interesting comment.

Personally, I really like the poem and that is special because I usually don't like poems. However, I do like working with the notion of God. Not the God of Abraham who I think is too much like Zeus, but thinking of logos and God as one and same thing. Logos, as in the principle of order and lawfulness, that is best understood through math and science.

Well, yes, if you are committed to an idealist ontology, then you might be better attuned to it than I am. I'm generally committed to physicalism, restricting information to the way our mind works, thus epistemic. It's physical correlate, however, has an emergent quality to it, one that I feel less sure about because it seems to be used by physicists in a different way than it has been in philosophy. I do understand that it has been linked to the second law of thermodynamics, notably since Shannon came on to the scene. However, in discussions about the dynamics of a black hole, information appears to be used in such a way that it is conserved -- possibly because friction is ignored or ignorable.

[Athena]

Not my cup of tea, but you make the story worth its being told.

Owleye, that is a very interesting comment.

Personally, I really like the poem and that is special because I usually don't like poems. However, I do like working with the notion of God. Not the God of Abraham who I think is too much like Zeus, but thinking of logos and God as one and same thing. Logos, as in the principle of order and lawfulness, that is best understood through math and science.

Well, yes, if you are committed to an idealist ontology, then you might be better attuned to it than I am. I'm generally committed to physicalism, restricting information to the way our mind works, thus epistemic. It's physical correlate, however, has an emergent quality to it, one that I feel less sure about because it seems to be used by physicists in a different way than it has been in philosophy. I do understand that it has been linked to the second law of thermodynamics, notably since Shannon came on to the scene. However, in discussions about the dynamics of a black hole, information appears to be used in such a way that it is conserved -- possibly because friction is ignored or ignorable.

To be honest I don't understand what you said, because I don't know that much about the subject, and perhaps for that reason I prefer dealing with reality on the physical level I experience it. But I enjoy speculating about just about anything. I like that Einstein said imagination is important. I like feeling like a child of wonder. It is okay with me to not know and be open for surprises. I don't know? There is so much I don't know, and there is something fun about that.

[Positor]

The awestruck ancients wrote about the music of the spheres,
That great harmonious concert which eluded human ears.
The god with whose arithmetic each orbit was designed
Deserved unstinting daily praise from feeble-brained mankind.

Then suddenly the Lord saw fit to adumbrate the rules
That governed the celestial dance; but, since most folk were fools,
He called up Isaac Newton to receive the sacred code
From which, by perfect logic, the divine equations flowed.

And so men came to understand how gravity constrained
The universe in such a way that order was maintained.
They likened the ensemble to a vast precision clock;
Then Relativity arrived and gave them all a shock.

They quickly grew accustomed to the changeless speed of Light,
Yet paradoxes made them think that something wasn't right.
But any slight misgivings about twins' inertial frame
Paled into insignificance when Quantum theory came.

Though no-one comprehends QM, we've learned to live with it;
It always makes predictions that results precisely fit.
So now we seek a formula that covers everything;
We've thought of quantum gravity, the multiverse, and string.

It seems there are some quantities which hold a vital key –
Some Planck amounts, like hbar, and that trusty constant, c.
Though God is silent, all our hope of progress is not lost,
For smart minds still pursue the truth, so keep your fingers crossed.


viewtopic.php?f=54&t=21500&p=267961#p267959

[Marshall]

Loved it all except for the last line :^) After we've enjoyed the kidding reference
I think you may want to change the last line to something like:
"We're working on the problem still, so keep your fingers crossed."

I actually can't think of any one individual who stands out in the present day the way some of the 20th century greats stood out: Einstein Heisenberg Dirac Feynman Weinberg 't Hooft..and even then, to pick one out of a handful of really great individuals seems to diminish the whole enterprise.

[Marshall]

"adumbrate" is a good word!

to shadow forth, to foreshadow in a dim sketchy way
human equations, only approximate, always to be retested and improved on, "adumbrate" the real laws,
(or if there are no real laws, the evolving patterns of the process, but let's say the laws for want of better)

by these mind-made successive approximations we "see as through a glass darkly" adumbrations of the real pattern.

Really nice! thanks, Positor
(I mean for the first 23 lines :^)

[Positor]

After we've enjoyed the kidding reference
I think you may want to change the last line to something like:
"We're working on the problem still, so keep your fingers crossed."

Yes. Or perhaps:

"For smart minds still pursue the truth, so keep your fingers crossed."

[Marshall]

You're the poet, I'm guaranteed to like whatever completion you come up with :^)

After we've enjoyed the kidding reference
I think you may want to change the last line to something like:
"We're working on the problem still, so keep your fingers crossed."

Yes. Or perhaps:

"For smart minds still pursue the truth, so keep your fingers crossed."

So edited. That's the last line in this version:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=23779#p267907

[Hendrick Laursen]

I suppose Marshall's end was better.

PS: Let's like marshall for the 100th time. Lol

[Positor]

The Ultimate Question

It maddens curious minds,
The fundamental mystery that sits unsolved:
What grounds the Universe, and disallows
Alternative Existence or the Void?
Simplicity, perhaps, demands
That Plus and Minus dance in equilibrium
Through time and space,
Two faces of a deeper unity;
But how can we explain
Specific attributes of these opposing forms?
For zero-sums can be produced in many ways,
Diverse in quality and quantity.
One such is thorough Nothingness,
Subtracting naught from naught;
But such a mathematical idea
Cannot reflect Reality, because
The property of being real
Must hang upon a Thing;
Existence therefore reigns, and ever did.
So what accounts for Being's size and shape,
And all the rich asymmetry
Of our bewilderingly complex world
Which science, by a slow and tortuous path,
Learns to describe?
Philosophers may feel it is their job
To conjure clever answers by transcendent nous,
Or prove by logical analysis
That that which is must be.
But scientists declare themselves
Entirely capable of such profundity,
And properly equipped to test
Their speculations.
Meanwhile
The ordinary folk who wonder at the world
Await enlightenment.

[vivian maxine]

"adumbrate" is a good word!

to shadow forth, to foreshadow in a dim sketchy way
human equations, only approximate, always to be retested and improved on, "adumbrate" the real laws,
(or if there are no real laws, the evolving patterns of the process, but let's say the laws for want of better)

by these mind-made successive approximations we "see as through a glass darkly" adumbrations of the real pattern.

Really nice! thanks, Positor
(I mean for the first 23 lines :^)

Thanks for defining adumbrate. Saved me a long walk to the book shelf.

[Marshall]

Vivian, do you like erudite limericks?

I missed this one, of Positor, which was embedded in a mathematics thread:
viewtopic.php?f=10&p=266780#p266780

And here's a rhymed answer to someone's rhymed riddle:
http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtop ... 96#p247696

As a school teacher (I think I remember) you may know of the tradition of rhymed riddles.
Maybe everybody does, it's part of the history of English language I guess, though not so
familiar to me personally.

[Marshall]

Threads drift and get hard to find. If acceptable I'll make this a sticky

[Marshall]

These verses drift down the menu and can take a long time to find. I'm hoping we can combine them in a thread.
I've tentatively titled the thread "On Philosophical Method and other Positive verses" pending Positor's approval

[Marshall]

Skillfully rhymed metric verse, that is interesting as well, is kind of rare these days. I'm hoping we can gather some of Positor's together in one thread. Making it easier to find it when someone wants.

[Marshall]

I like this sonnet even though I don't altogether agree with the seeming conclusion. I think the apparent disconnect between physics and philosophy of science is temporary. Physicists are likely to need help from philosophers getting clear about their concepts: space, time, matter, natural law, what is testable, demarcation between empirical science and other.
But a sonnet can crystallize a point of view, it doesn't have to be the final word, or a balanced essay.

[DragonFly]

The Ultimate Question

It maddens curious minds,
The fundamental mystery that sits unsolved:
What grounds the Universe, and disallows
Alternative Existence or the Void?

The mystery remains unsolved because of its paradoxical nature. The "ground" has to be a given, as causeless, meaning that it always IS, as 'ungenerated and deathless', as per Parmenides, which we also declare because not anything can come from not anything, which seems likely, for not anything, as "thorough Nothingness', doesn't have anything to offer. So, we have that the "ground" had to be, with no choice, no option, and, interestingly, no set direction, for there would have been no point at which that could have been directed.

We have thus gained a philosophical proof, which lessens the maddening somewhat; however, we lack the proof, although many might say that a proof is no longer required when one has a truth.

It's just that minds are still maddened at a causeless "ground" that didn't come from anything, for, then, well, in a way, it came from not anything, which is Nothing, yet, since it never "came" then we can't really say that.

So, we are maddened, still, that it never came forth, and yet it IS, for which "ground" there was literally nothing to make it of, yet, again, there's no such worry, for it was never made.

We're still maddened, though, that something causeless "has to be", although we don't mind our being. It looks like the causeless, as necessarily undirected, must be non specific, something nebulous, or even Everything, but I just call it Fundamental Possibility.

It also seems that the "ground" could not even be of a specific, total amount, because there wouldn't have been anything to determine this certain amount.

Oh, well.

Simplicity, perhaps, demands
That Plus and Minus dance in equilibrium
Through time and space,
Two faces of a deeper unity;
But how can we explain
Specific attributes of these opposing forms?
For zero-sums can be produced in many ways,
Diverse in quality and quantity.
One such is thorough Nothingness,
Subtracting naught from naught;
But such a mathematical idea
Cannot reflect Reality, because
The property of being real
Must hang upon a Thing;

Now we are really maddened, after banishing Nothing, to see so many zero-sums abounding, right and left, along with the many symmetries.

Existence therefore reigns, and ever did.
So what accounts for Being's size and shape,
And all the rich asymmetry
Of our bewilderingly complex world
Which science, by a slow and tortuous path,
Learns to describe?
Philosophers may feel it is their job
To conjure clever answers by transcendent nous,
Or prove by logical analysis
That that which is must be.
But scientists declare themselves
Entirely capable of such profundity,
And properly equipped to test
Their speculations.
Meanwhile
The ordinary folk who wonder at the world
Await enlightenment.

Yes, how and why did the sum-things develop, over billions of years, into life? Well, it's not really 'how', for outputs always follow the inputs, but 'why', for all that is now had to be within the capability at the beginning of time, which I'd say was also the beginning of our universe.

It has to be a seeming odd beginning, we think, plus it was, with its total grouping order of matter and antimatter opposed, like the order of white vs. black on a chessboard at the beginning of a chess game, which can pull time forward, through a great diversity stage, a time which we're in now, both in the universe and also on our planet, all this yet also requiring a pull forward, from the future, so to speak, by the end that is the opposite state from the beginning, as a total blended sparseness of a completely expanded and expended universe.

Still, why the capability for life in the first place, at least meaning way, way back, or, if we go timeless, inherent in the "ground", even if we accept the method above? The "ground' must have to be some kind of Everything. Still, though, why is life included in the Everything of 'Everything Possible'?

[Braininvat]

Was a dragonfly of literate mind,
reading these words,
each reflected in its compound eyes,
determined
to read these words
at the ur-moment
of the big bang?

[DragonFly]

Was a dragonfly of literate mind,
reading these words,
each reflected in its compound eyes,
determined
to read these words
at the ur-moment
of the big bang?

Yes, I'd say it was "determined", since everything that goes on has to be a continuation of the one big effect of the big bang. To put it unpoetically, there's nothing else sticking its nose into the ever ongoing continuation. Sure, we impose local boundaries and then declare local cause and effect between some arbitrary points, but that's just zoning in on the continuation of the one big effect.

Words like 'random', 'Nothing', and 'infinite' appear in our languages, as if they can be so, but 'random' is usually taken as meaning something unpredictable rather than a mini first cause output that has no inputs, 'nothing' has no existence, and 'infinite' contradicts itself as something like a sequence or an extent that can never be attained, at least for actual infinities (potential ones are fine, such as in math). Words, though, after leaving their definitions behind, can take on a fake meaning of their own, such as 'consciousness' suddenly being able to be a thing that can float around all by itself, when it really depends on and comes from a brain process.

I think the most interesting but failing 'reach' for having free will instead of fixed will is to flip the disliked 'determined' to be 'undetermined', which is 'random', which can't help, for then the consistency of one's self is lost, plus, how does one get an output without an input, and if you could, it would beget a nightmare of nonsense even worse than we do with our brains giving inputs to actions.

We did not come into this world; we came out of it. This world was once just so much rocks and water, yet the potential for us was already there, for we eventually came forth. There are no random accidents; there is no random either. We were always going to be. There are no ‘accidents’, either. We needn't even look back in time, for we know that we'll ever see what we would call 'fortunate happenings', such as when a nervous, little shrew looked out, one day, to see that all the dinosaurs were gone, along with 95% of all life, which opened up a space for us. If the shrew could talk, he might have said, "Hurray! Now I can evolve into all the mammals!"

Conscious creatures would seem to be of nature realizing itself, or else they are just as organic as everything else, and just happened to become sentient.



I have poems and writings on LegendFire, under the name 'FireFlies'. Here's one of 12-syllable lines that won a contest there. One had to employ the phrase, "Let them eat cake". There are two voices in the poem, with one in italics.

The Impossible Recipe


Explaining the Cosmos is as easy as pie:
It’s an endless extravagance beyond the sky,
Which shows that matter’s very readily made—
Underlying energy raising the shades.


This All sounds rather like an ultimate free lunch,
For the basis is already made, with no punch,
It ever being around, as is, never a ‘was’—
Everywhere, in great abundance quite unheard of.


There’s even more of it than can be imagined—
Of lavish big spenders, there in amounts unbounded:
Bubbles of universes within pockets more,
Across all the times and spaces beyond our shore!


What is the birthing source of this tremendous weight?
There is nothing from which to make the causeless cake!
Its nature is undirected, uncooked, unbaked?
There can’t be a choice to that ne’er born and awaked!


There can’t be turtles on turtles all the way down;
The buck has to stop somewhere in this town.
‘Nothing’ is unproductive—can’t even be meant;
All ever needed is, with nothing on it spent!


Yes, none from nothing, yet something is here, true;
But, really, you can’t have your cake and Edith, too!
And yet I’ve still all of my wedding cake, I do—
It’s just changed form; what ever IS can never go.


Since there’s no point at which to impart direction
The essence would have no limited, specific,
Certain, designed, created, crafted, thought out meaning!
Thus the Great IS is anything and everything!


This All is as useless as Babel’s Library
Of all possible books in all variety!
Yes, and even in our own small aisle we see
Any and every manner of diversity.


The information content of Everything
Would be the same as that of Nothing!
Zero. The bake’s ingredients vary widely,
And so express themselves accordingly.


What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the IS of all possible realities.


Your elucidation is quite a piece of cake!
Yo, it exceeds, as well, and so it takes the cake.
Everything ever must be, because ‘nothing’ can’t?
Yes, it’s that existence has no opposite, Kant!


So, we’re here at the mouth of the horn of plenty,
For a free breakfast, lunch, and a dinner party;
Yet many starving are fed up with being unfed.
Alas, for now I have to say, Let Them Eat Cake!

[Braininvat]

If cause and effect are the gluten that holds
Us all within our cosmic breadpan molds,
Then gluten intolerance is a painful affliction
For those who require free will sans restriction!

[DragonFly]

They wanted to be free of their wills,
Since wills seemed to be full of old-time ills,
So, they cut them off, now of wills bereft—
The problem was that there was no ‘they’ left.

[Eclogite]

I confess I opened the thread with the expectation of finding some fourth rate doggerel I could poke fun at with a few verses in limerick style. Don't I look the dumbass now? Really good stuff positor!

[Positor]

An ABC of Science and Philosophy

A is for Aristotelian science,
On which modern physicists place no reliance;
B is for Bayes, whose statistical rules
Form one of our best analytical tools.
C is for Cantor, who happened to find
New infinite numbers that boggle the mind;
D's for Descartes, the Frenchman who sought
A solid foundation for rational thought,
And also for Darwin, who caused a sensation
Attacking the Bible's account of creation.
E is for Einstein, who proved to be right
About the unusual behaviour of light.
F is for Frege, the famous logician;
G is for Gauss, a great mathematician.
H is for Hume, whose stance was empirical,
Deftly demolishing magic and miracle.
I's for Idealists, notably Berkeley;
The mental is all that exists, they said starkly.
J is for Joule, as in units of heat;
K is for Kepler, whose orbits are neat.
Let us add Kant and his mighty Critiques,
Which constitute one of philosophy's peaks.
L is for Leibniz, whose calculus sped
The growth of technology when he was dead;
M is for Mendel, whose work had great merit
In showing that genes cause the traits we inherit,
And also for Maxwell and Michelson/Morley,
Who clarified facts that their forebears grasped poorly.
N is for Newton, who codified motion,
Although he found gravity's pull a strange notion.
O is for Ockham: his Razor can slice
The fat off hypotheses. Simple is nice.
P is for Plato, well known for his Forms,
Though his politics jars with our liberal norms;
Also for Planck, who with mental agility
Proved there's no infinite divisibility.
Q is for Quine, who described propositions
In ways that surpassed other theoreticians.
R is for Reason: it underlies science,
But nihilists scorn it with fervid defiance.
S is for Schrödinger's musings on particles;
T is for Turing's mechanical articles.
U is for Utilitarianism;
V's for Voltaire, who lampooned optimism.
W's Wittgenstein, brooding, intense;
He probed such ideas as truth, meaning and sense.
X is for X-rays' remarkable action;
Y is for Young, and his work on diffraction.
Z is for Zeit, as Einstein called time,
Which aptly completes this short doggerel rhyme.

[Marshall]

Evviva, evviva, EVVIVA!!! I think that's Hooray in Italian. This is the all time greatest alphabet rhyme.
Thankyou vielmals, Positor. It makes today really worth while for me and will rejoice the hearts of others too.

I will try to say something in Greek (you have probably heard it from me before):

Akouste, Iones, to Nomos tou Kosmou sou enas nomos MONOS!

Hear (oh people of Ionia) the Law of your World is ONE.

-----------------------

And since you are never immune from friendly tampering with your creations, in this forum, I will suggest one line:

F if for Faraday, field-lines logician

Because he was the first to discover the logic of the electric and magnetic field lines
and how force can generate current (or reciprocally current can generate force) when a conductor cuts across the field lines. So although he was a lab-tech and a tinkerer, he deduced a kind of logic in nature.