In space-time some mass-energy events are processes and matter passing through is normative. One can step in the same river twice.
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Human forms are examples of neo-platonic form
Heraclitus wrote that one cannot step in the same river twice...time and matter is always flowing and changing its content. Some have reported that human beings changed 98% of their atoms each year and so are fundamentally new, different beings each years, yet is that so?
What does not change in human beings is the information within themselves. D.N.A. for instance lasts for a lifetime with just a few changes from mutation caused by cosmic rays and so forth. The Universal conservation of energy law is paralleled by a conservation of information law. Shannon entropy or the loss of information does not occur even in black holes it seems as some sort of conservation of the information that went in is postulated to remain in some way.
The river that Heraclitus stepped in was the same river- rivers are themselves a process of change implicitly as are human beings. It is the form of the change that remains and comprises the unique character of each individual. Individual human beings continue as their genes and environment together permit, and human consciousness manages the entire process transcending the mere matter of which the process is composed.
Human beings have blood flowing through their hearts, veins and arteries like their own small rivulets and it is always changing and refreshed as is most of the rest of the human body. Change is an experience of time and interaction with mass and energy for human beings in quick and complex ways that afford a maximum degree of seniativity to the contents of what is called reality. Individual consciousness experiences reality with the benefit of the sensitive, in-time changing context with more subtilty and complexity than most anything else existing.
Diamonds made of carbon last forever and change little and haven't mind at all, computers do a little better and change their electronic content of course, trees cannot last as long as diamonds yet don't think much either yet each has a form that if changed would make it other than a diamond or other than a tree though the individual molecules that make up each in theory could also be exchanged for other similar molecules without harming the form of either.
Platonic forms on Earth are is the information or universal forces that act to create a given particular example of a recurrent sort of real thing. Some of those objects or things have more recognizable processes, yet everything is in a process of change and establishment temporally as a part of it's nature.
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GaryCGibson.
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Kazrith
July 16, 2007
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Applehead
July 16, 2007
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GaryCGibson
July 16, 2007
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Heraclitus wrote about change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeraclitusParmenides and Heraclitus had different and contrasting views about the nature of physical reality. Parmedides is credited with originating ideas that continue on through Plato and Plotinus, while Heraclitus believed everything is in motion. If you read the wikipedia article on Heraclitus referenced above the position is succinctly given. Heraclitus was writing about a literal river. "Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν."
Aristotle later expressed another take on the subject.
Space-time is a unified field it is considered today-neither occurs without the other, and Heraclitus' position isn't inconsistent with the operative reality of that.
TeChNoWC
July 16, 2007
(This is assuming we are outside observers, not affected by our normal, changing, mental states - but this abolishes our very identity within the bounds of the changing universe, leaving only a transcendent spiritual being access to such an observation, even in theory).
As their is a consistency to an almost absolute change and flux within the universe, as is observable and measurable, I find it hard to see that we could in fact do any one thing (exactly) in actuality twice - and things that do not fluctuate or change would be hypothetically immeasurable within empirical bounds.
GaryCGibson
July 27, 2007
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Some ideas on the subject from another perspective
I think that processes are a fundamental part of identity. The sun is the same sun even though it is billions of years old not and will go on for a very long time. The Columbia River is the same even though it has changed during the last 20,000 years quite a lot. The River isn't just the water flowing through it. This quesstions can be considered a matter of llanguage and referrents againt I should guess.What about some relativistic effects of space time (from one of my science fiction stories...)
The rem sleep became fractious deescalating emotion into an anomalous dream time walkabout space-time concepts concerning Einstein’s relativistic special effects.
The ledge was a material mass within the energy field analogy of space-time actuating. I accelerated with it as a reference frame toward a conceptual velocity of the speed of a photon. Like photons formerly thought to be massless primary radiants of the Higgs field later discovered to have small charge string interactions with the elemental field themselves in order to have a positive conceptual premise of existence my rem sleep acceleration approaching the speed of light became increasingly massive and weighted with gravity.
As I accelerated through so many space-time referent frames I encountered the covalent bonding effects of the universal field itself attaching itself to me with all of it’s universal mass through which I pushed upon like the bow of a ship encountering its wave-length limiting factor. Paradoxically because my existence as a concept upon the ledge had a non-quantum high probability of existing in a particular space and time the extreme localized, phenomenal gravitational effects were concentrated sufficiently to form what to others observing the space-time I was presently in would seem to have been a black hole.
Relativistic effects of mass and gravity appeared the same for all observers of the black hole regardless of their time and velocity reference frame. Gravity overcame time, while the position infinity overcame uncertainty. Quantum uncertainty it seemed was perhaps an unavoidable logical necessity for the existence of non-infinite point particles in space-time.
The uncertainty of particular points of epi-string phenomenality allowed the smallest mass phenomenon of mechanics at the highest possible speed with the least amount of gravity determined by the parameters of the Universal field self-identity. Relativity has many subtle and profound consequences upon conjectures of space, time and motion, more so than I had realized.
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