Philosophical Graphs

Here are some graphs that I find useful in visualising some philosophical points.

First are five graphs of bifurcation:

Weekly Lesson (7)

“Applied mathematics is generally not an immanent science, precisely because it involves the application of pure mathematics to a given material and its determinations as derived from experience.”

-Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, §202 [my emphasis]

The Coming Unemployment Tsunami

People who are interested in the stock market will be familiar with technical analysis of stock charts, the reason this analysis works is the stochastic element in the stock charts-the results of the interaction between a large number of actors-the reason the analysis ultimately fails is that stock indices are not stochastic processes.

Leaving aside the question of why the technical analysis works or fails let us apply such analysis to a different kind of a chart, we examine the chart of employment-population ratio for the US for the last sixty years.

Weekly Lesson (6)

“From the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three:

• The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
• The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
• The law of the negation of the negation.

All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought.”

-Engels’ Dialectics of Nature.

Reviewing the Review - Supplement

Here are more graphs that I have been extracting from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2007 (available as an MS Excel workbook on the Internet at: http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview).

Graph 10: This graph shows oil production in different parts of the world, which has experienced significant decline. It plots total US production (thousands of barrels per day-right side) and the total production of Australia, UK and Norway (thousands of barrels per day-left side) from 1965 to 2006.

Reviewing the Review

Reading BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2007 (available as an MS Excel workbook on the Internet at: http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview), I was forced to convert the raw data into graphs to make any sense of them; this post contains these graphs.The graphs are presented without any conclusions or arguments, just an explanation of the data.

Graph 1: First we start with the price of oil. Two prices are plotted ($-left side) one for nominal price and the other inflation-adjusted price from 1861 to 2006.

Weekly Lesson (5)

“Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. …It is only as having the power of thinking that the will is free.”

-Hegel’s History of Philosophy, French Philosophy.

The Humility of Uncle Scrooge

Fed up with uncle Scrooge’s smugness Donald Duck decides to take his uncle and show him real wealth, so he takes him to the biggest ranch in Texas. The ranch owner starts showing them the almost Herculean dimensions of his ranch, really silly stuff, to the astonishment of Donald Duck and the indifference of uncle Scrooge who says nothing but only take notes. At the end they are shown a very small exit door, in contrast to the big entrance, where people who entered with a big head exit with a humbled disposition.

At this point Donald Duck expects his old uncle to exit humiliated at the great wealth just witnessed, instead he congratulates the rancher on his success and demands payment for the loan that the rancher took to buy the magnificent ranch; humbled by this revelation Donald exits from the small door.

When Gold is Worthless

With the eminent collapse of the fiat currencies system in a hyperinflationary burst, the talk of securing wealth in gold is rising; the qualities of gold, as a store of wealth and a measure of value, are exalted by countless internet sites and economic blogs.

The superiority of gold compared to fiat currency is beyond dispute, what irks me is that the benefits of gold might be slightly exaggerated. Hyperinflation is possible with gold currency and history is full of instances when a purse of gold was paid for a loaf of bread or a cask of water, examples of such inflation could be found in any account of medieval siege and lesser inflation was associated with bad weather, war or epidemics.

As for gold as a store of wealth that is 100% true, gold will store wealth long after the owner, and the owner’s heirs, are dead. When archaeologists find hordes of gold in a specific layer they concluded that there were disasters and calamities in this time causing people to horde gold; what is interesting is that a large number don’t come back for their gold!!

The Story of Europe

European Supremacy

Five Hundred Years - Finished at Last!

Prologue:   Germination, ×1 Generation [40 years]
 From:  1452-Pope Nicholas V issues the bull Dum Diversas, legitimising the colonial slave trade.
 To:       1492-Fall of Granada.

Chapter One:   Growth, ×4 G. [160 years]
 From:  1492-Discovery of America.
 To:       1652-End of Spanish hegemony.

Chapter Two:   Glory, ×4 G.
 From:  1652-First Anglo-Dutch War.
 To:       1812-End of Napoleon’s power.

Chapter Three:   Decline, ×4 G.
 From:  1812-British-American War.
 To:       1972-America leaves Vietnam.

Epilogue:   Degradation, ×1 G.
 From:  1972-Bankruptcy of the American national economy.
 To:       2012-Famine, epidemic and war.

[The word 'supremacy' here donates actual material supremacy and not inherent superiority.]

Weekly Lesson (4)

“Greece…, a small country that developed late at the periphery of an ancient civilized world.”

“The great Athenian achievement was not the empire and its fleeting temporal authority (both rather modest achievements by the standards of the ancient Near East).”

-Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity, by Gregory Crane [my emphasis].