The Brain, A Decoded Enigma Part 17

It seems that Descartes did not understand this. This problem seems to be difficult to be understood even in our days, taking into account that the mathematician G.o.del "proved" the existence of G.o.d, without any interaction with external reality.

1642 BC: Rembrandt van Rijn, the painter Rembrandt marks a moment when the human brain reaches a peak in building and operating image models.

1687 BC: Newton's Mechanics After Euclid's Geometry (about 2000 years ago) this is the second fundamental symbolic model created by the human mind. It is a big step in the evolution of the brain. Starting with Newton, the development of the capacity to build and operate symbolic models accelerates, and this process continues today.

Newton is not well understood even in our days. Some dictionaries say that Newton discovered the law of gravity. This law was introduced by Newton to save his theory. The inertia principle states that any material body, which is left free, is moving in a straight line, with constant velocity to infinity. But in the external reality such a phenomenon is not met. The planets are moving on closed trajectories in s.p.a.ce. The only solution to save the theory was to invent a new force, which was called "gravity".

Einstein, for instance, says that gravity does not exist. The apparent attraction between the material bodies is generated by the change of the shape of the s.p.a.ce. He is able to explain some phenomena which cannot be understood based on the Newton's gravity (the precession of the planet Mercury, e.g.).

Newton's mechanics continues to make good predictions on Earth and near s.p.a.ce.

It is not changed since over 300 years.

1749 BC: Sign language This is one of the first artificial languages (a symbolic model). It translates the GCL into another language, based on signs and gestures.

1781 BC: Immanuel Kant Kant was able to understand some basic things in a.s.sociation with knowledge, but although he knew Euclid's and Newton's theories (symbolic models), he was not able to understand the means and methods of a positive science. He did not build any symbolic model. In his books, one can find lots of definitions almost on any page, but Kant does not understand that such definitions cannot be correlated in a logical way, without the frame of a fundamental symbolic model.

1791 BC: Napoleon MDT considers that there are two basic modes of interaction between a brain and the external reality: to predict the evolution of the external reality (ZM-models) and to act on the external reality (ZAM-models).

A war can start only if a big fraction of the population has almost the same ZAM, and if that ZAM is a.s.sociated to war. War can be a.s.sociated with an increase in the level 2 of consciousness of the population. I mean, when level-2 is high enough to believe that it will be better after a war, but no so high to understand that there could be some other alternative solution, then the tendency to war could really start the war. This idea seems to be interesting in explaining why so many people are so happy to go to war, and why this tendency is so powerful even today (e.g. WW1 and 2).

1834 BC: Braille writing 1837 BC: Morse code

1854 BC: The symbolic logic of George Boole The facility to build and operate symbolic models increased to such a level that the brain was not able anymore to keep the models in mind. George Boole invented a language to write symbolic models.

1859 BC: Charles Darwin

Darwin's evolution theory is not based on a symbolic model. It is rather based on the systematic of some primary data. Thus, it is not a positive science and so, its prediction could be good only on short range.

1867 BC: Das Kapital by Karl Marx This aberation sounds good on image models. The basic idea is that the "capitalist" takes about all the money and the "working cla.s.s" is forced to work for peanuts.

The theory was based on some image models, which were understood easily by the population of those times. As we know, it is not possible to find the right importance of an element or relations.h.i.+p on an image model. Thus, an image model can be tailored to prove anything, based on external reality. Such a method doesn't build a theory, but an ideology. Ordinary people easily understand an ideology, because it sounds good, and is able to answer any question.

When Marx's theory appeared, the control of the economy was based on short range symbolic models. So, long-range problems were not predicted. The lack of stability of the society in that period was an effect of this problem. Later, society advanced to take into account the long-range problems too and so, social-democratic movements appeared.

1878 BC: Jehovah's Witnesses In time, as the capacity to make and operate symbolic models increased, the "cla.s.sical" Christian religion was under pressure to change to meet the new requirements. It resulted in reform movements in the frame of the Christian religion. Instead, Jehovah's Witnesses make a new model starting from scratch.

1900 BC: Max Planck introduces Quantum Mechanics

Quantum Mechanics is the first purely symbolic model a.s.sociated to external reality. Such a model is "pure", because it cannot be translated or a.s.sociated with any image model. This is a very high step in the evolution of the brain (level 5 of evolution).

Based on data, it seems that Max Planck understood from the beginning that his theory was good, but he was blocked by the fact that imagination does not work in understanding it. It seems that Albert Einstein pushed him to publish the theory.

Quantum Mechanics cannot be translated to image models. If someone forces such a translation, aberations or logical contradictions occur. The best known problem is the nature of light. Quantum Mechanics predicts that light is both wave and particle. This situation cannot be understood based on image models.

Quantum Mechanics pushed forward the evolution of society on a very high technological level (e.g. the transistors and the lasers are the basic components to build computers).

1905 BC: Albert Einstein, the theory of the relativity

Einstein starts from Euclid's Geometry and Newton's Mechanics to make a new theory, to extend the knowledge to atomic and sub-atomic levels, and to the far Universe. The "marriage" between Quantum Mechanics and the theory of Relativity builds the main tool to understand sub-atomic "Universe".

This new symbolic model was created based on a new Geometry and some new principles. Together with Quantum Mechanics, the Theory of the Relativity speeds up the evolution of society.

1914 BC: The First World War (The Great War)

1917 BC: Communism in Russia Communism is an ideology. It is based on an image model translated to some short-range symbolic models.

The main problem of the Russian society of that time was a huge dispersion between the level of understanding of the external reality from one person to another. Even worse, the level was low compared to Western Europe. Communism was only a fast solution to the problem, at least on short-range. Of course, an invariant ideology could be useful only on short-range. As we know, the communist system crashed due to the lack of economic efficiency, but the basic cause is a.s.sociated to its invariance.

The problem of the dispersion between individuals, countries or cultural zones continues to be a big problem of human society. The problem has a tendency to get worse and worse.

1928 BC: Walt Disney As the evolution to symbolic models speeded up, the brain also increased the conceptualization level of the image models. The cartoons are based on such concept image models. Everybody (including childrens) easily understands them.

1938: World War 2

Both world wars starting in Europe occured in a very complex set of known and unknown factors. MDT can be used to evaluate the problem.

Since Napoleon, there was a general tendency to war in Europe. MDT says that there must be a war-a.s.sociated ZAM, which must be a.s.similated and accepted by the majority of the population. Also, the consciousness level has to be high enough to think that the war will solve all the problems, but not high enough to understand that this is not true.

One example of such a ZAM could be "we have better weapons" or "we are powerful enough to win". Of course, the attacked people have a ZAM as "we must defend our country". It is possible that such action models create conditions for a war. But, such models, even if they are a.s.similated and accepted by the population, are not enough to start a war. There must be also a big enough number of high-ranking persons to plan such a war, and a series of technical conditions.

Another factor, which is a.s.sociated with the war start will be described below. The people who are in command are usually image-type persons, but symbolic-type persons make the weapons. Only symbolic-type persons are able to understand the power of such weapons, but such persons are not in command. Once a war starts, the image-type leaders lose the control of the short and long-range consequences. For instance, the leaders of the Second World War understood the weapons, based on the experience of the weapons of the First World War. In the WW1 the tanks were "exotic" weapons and planes, too. Very soon the tanks and planes changed totally the manner of evolution of a war. It was not possible to predict the destructions on such a large scale by the WW1- type persons who started WW2.

This problem continues to exist even now. In some less developed parts of the world, the leaders and soldiers could be image-type persons, who are not able to understand the power of the weapons used by them. They are also not able to make such weapons. For instance, the war in Rwanda produced a huge number of victims. The different groups of population fought each other since the beginning of history and it was not a big problem. The problem occured when they obtained advanced weapons without being themselves advanced enough to understand their power.

1948: The Cold War

Communist paranoia has slowed down some nations to understand basic concepts as "economic efficiency". Communist leaders have understood this problem, but Communist ideology, as any ideology, cannot be modified. Any change of any ideology will distroy it. The apparent reason why the Communist system crashed was a very low economic efficiency. The basic reason was the increase of the level of understanding of the external reality based on symbolic models by the population.

1979...1994: The fundamentalist Iran, Idi Amin in Uganda, famine in Etiopia, Iran-Irak war, famine in Somalia, war in Rwanda.

There are some nations, which cannot evolve due to internal or external factors. A slowing down of the evolution seems to be a general tendency in an important fraction of the world.

A typical situation was in Somalia. The facts are: 1. In Somalia was famine. Many died. 2. Western countries (USA included) brought them food. 3. When they obtained enough food, they attacked the US troops. 4. USA left Somalia very fast. 5. Western countries changed their basic principle "life is the supreme value" to a new concept as "we do not help those who do not help themselves too".

The first consequence of this change was ignoring the situation from Rwanda.

1993: Terrorist attack on WTC in New York City 2001: Another devastating terrorist attack on WTC (pa.s.senger airplanes crashed into WTC).

Individuals, groups or cultural zones where the evolution based on symbolic models is blocked, generate terrorism. In such a situation, fundamentalist action is expected. That is, people turn back to image models. As we know, it is not possible to know the importance of an element or a relation, on an image model. Thus, a person based on image models only, has a tendency for paranoia. The logical arguments are not taken into account, because the logic is a.s.sociated with symbolic models only.

On the other hand, some important cultural zones are speeding up their advance based on symbolic models. They gain more and more power due to this.

This is the overall situation now.

Abstract: the evolution of the brain means the increased power of the symbolic models. The main steps are:

1. Spoken language (about 140 thousands of years ago) 2. Phonetic writing (3700 to 2900 years ago) 3. Euclid's Geometry (2300 years ago) 4. Newton Mechanics (340 years ago) 5. Quantum Mechanics (100 years ago) 6. Some cultural zone speed up their evolution based on symbolic models, but in other zones there is a tendency to turn back to image models (fundamentalist tendency). Some fundamentalist tendencies occur in symbolic countries too.

ETA 18: The organization of the human society