Applied Philosophy

Star Trek, 2009, directed by J. J. Abrams, starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban.

I once thought I had found a treasure trove, namely all Nebula and Hugo awards winning short stories from the seventies. Alas the seventies were incapable of producing literature that can withstand the test of time, the stories reminded me of the great scene in Minority Report when a blind Tom Cruise eats a rotten moulding sandwich and then drinks rancid milk!

Despite their unreadable state I gleaned an important insight, most of the writers imagined a future where the differences between the genders had disappeared. Those individual writers were all extrapolating the great changes of the sixties and extending their present to its absurd conclusion (they and their contemporaries thought that was profound). The fact that girls started wearing jeans and t-shirts with little make up (think of Donna from That ’70s Show) and guys had long hair and were more expressive of their feelings (think of Kelso from That ’70s Show) was interpreted by them all as all differences would disappear in the future, which is an absurd thought from empty minds.

They Ignored the natural differences between men and women; ignoring these differences is the root cause of many of the modern society most pressing problems (I touched upon this issue in my post How to Reform Schools and Educate People). They ignored the long history of humanity in favour of a handful of abnormal decades. Their most glaring mistake is their assumption that history develops in a linear fashion, when actually it is non-linear (see my post Non-linear Historical Development).

Well at least the seventies could produce some watch-able films that resisted the passage of time much better than their stories.

“Time has shown that the 1970s was the greatest period for American movies since… the 1950s. But the ’70s—known as the American Movie Renaissance—are not coming back. That fact is proven by this week’s unheralded premiere of The Yellow Handkerchief alongside Film Forum’s revival of Five Easy Pieces, the 1970 New York Film Critics Circle Best Picture winner. Both are road movies—the genre by which ’70s films most clearly revealed modern American behavior, language and habitat. But cultural examination no longer excites contemporary film culture, which is devoted to CGI escapism and indie navel-gazing. “

—Armond White [my emphasis]

The film Star Trek imagines the future as a mundane world populated by television actors (painfully wasting the talents of Eric Bana and Winona Ryder). No historical development have taken place, linear or otherwise, there is only the mundane technological fantasy development. These are not the technological visions of Verne who imagined the possibilities of existing scientific advance, but the fevered hallucination of a scientifically-ignorant television producer—the fact that many scientists adore everything Star Trek  is the best indicator that Western Science has degraded beyond salvation.

Fleet Academy is just like any American collage campus, but instead of blonds the loose girls are green skinned. Instead of leaving town, disgruntled alcoholics leave planet. Instead of some far away country, it is a far away planet that gets destroyed. Instead of saving a city, Earth gets saved. Blonde American children are destined to rule by virtue of birth, just like the Ancien Régime claimed the right to divine rule by virtue of birth, all the way to the guillotine.

None of the hope of the sixties or the triumphalism of the eighties or even the nostalgia of Deep Space Nine—a series made by the children of the fifties having both a Cold War and Western themes—is present in the latest film. No vision beyond the personal advancement of yuppies and the satisfaction of the limited imagination of juvenile males. The films itself is a mess, with cadets flying the ship, an admiral abandoning his command, Vulcans showing emotions, huge ships from the future going 25 years unnoticed, the inconsistencies and absurdities goes on and on. Of course details are not the sum of literature, but this commercial enterprise has nothing else going for it, nothing. The Enterprise—ridiculously named by Roddenberry after the Big E while given it the mission of the Beagle—is transformed into an agile fighter that lurks in the shadow of Saturn. Is that really the flagship of the Federation?

According to the barren imagination of non-person like Abrams—the son of a television producer—there is nothing to aspire to in the future, there will be no change in how people live their lives, even over centuries. He does not think space is amazing, but the stars are fantastic and his inability to see this fact is a reflection on an exhausted society that is unable to cope with change. Everything living must change, what does not change is not living. Star Trek is the rancid odour of a decaying cadaver.

In The Fable of the Cannoneer and the Observer I wrote the following:

The social phenomenon of the high priests building ever bigger pyramids at great social expense with no social benefit at all is a worrying phenomenon to those who study history, such a phenomenon usually appear just before everyone ‘decides’ to abandon the cities to the jungle and turn away from complex societies to simple subsistence

Now we read the following in the news:

“The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun.

The US National Ignition Facility is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, a process that could offer abundant clean energy.

…

To work, it must show that more energy can be extracted from the process than is required to initiate it.

Professor Mike Dunne, who leads a European venture that is also pursuing nuclear fusion with lasers, told BBC News that if NIF was successful, it would be a “seismic event”.

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

Yet another “huge” experiment worth billions of dollars! Again fantastic promises are made that cannot and will not be kept. Nuclear fusion is quite feasible and there is no need to demonstrate its “feasibility”, the important point is that it’s a phenomenon that does not exist in nature!

Trying to recreate “conditions at the heart of our Sun” would be like asking a cave man to produce a laser beam, or a small island-state to support the industrial base of China or asking a child to sing like the late Pavarotti.

Nuclear reactors takes a natural phenomenon (nuclear fission) and concentrates it to produce energy, it does not manufacture the phenomenon itself but works like a lens or a laser device or a sound amplifier that takes something that exists in nature and focus it.

Fusion on the other hand does not exist in the natural world inhabited by mankind, it only exist in the heart of a Star, that is beyond nature and any attempt to recreate it will sound like a five year old singing Nessun Dorma.

We return to the news article to read further:

“The California-based NIF is the largest experimental science facility in the US and contains the world’s most powerful laser. It has taken 12 years to build.

…

Experiments will begin in June 2009, with the first significant results expected between 2010 and 2012.

…

Fusion is looked on as the “holy grail” of energy sources because of its potential to supply almost limitless clean energy.

But the challenge of creating a practical fusion reactor has eluded scientists for decades. Now, however, they believe they are nearing their goal.

“We are now very close to the culmination of 50 years’ effort,” explained Professor Dunne.

There are currently several experimental facilities around the world aimed at demonstrating the building blocks of nuclear fusion.

Fusion naturally occurs at the centre of stars where huge gravitational pressure allows the process to happen at temperatures of about 10 million Celsius.

At the much lower pressures on Earth, temperatures to produce fusion need to be much higher – above 100 million Celsius.”

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

Well now California can boast of having the biggest laser as well as the biggest state deficit in the union. The madness contained in the first sentences alone boggles my mind. Building dedicated experimental facilities for science is madness, building the world’s largest laser for scientific research is madness and spending twelve years on the project is twelve times madness.

There is not a single commercial project financed by private capital that takes half as much time since the railroads connected the coasts of North America. Whether the machine will work or not is yet to be seen, the European’s fanfare about the new accelerator turned into embarrassment when it failed to function.

In my previous post I wrote:

They have spent huge amounts of money on building larger and larger accelerators, the failure of each one to advance the science becomes the reason for building an even bigger one; this process of enlargement has resulted in an accelerator as big as a city, the biggest pyramid is always built shortly before the end.

We go back, one last time, to the news article:

“NIF’s beams are intended to deliver more than 60 times the energy of any previous laser system. When fired, the pulse will last just a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) but it will impart an energy equivalent to 500 trillion Watts – more than the peak electrical generating power of the entire United States.

…

Other experiments have shown that ignition is possible, but so far none have been able to demonstrate a net energy gain.

“The world is looking to NIF to provide a clear, unequivocal demonstration that lasers can initiate fusion energy gain,” said Professor Dunne.

“This would lay the fundamental physics question to rest, allowing the community to focus on harnessing this energy.”

Although NIF is only at the beginning of its experimental life, scientists are already planning its successor, a European project known as Hiper (High Power Laser Energy Research).

…

At approximately the same time, scientist will also get their hands on another mammoth fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), currently being built in Cadarache, France.”

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

The big numbers sure do dazzle, even thought they are wrong! Watt is the unit of power and not energy. The energy imparted by the laser will be the power multiplied by the duration, thus 500 trillion by billionths of a second, or 10¹⁴ by 10^-9 or a hundred thousand joule. This energy according to Wikipedia is about “the average kinetic energy of an automobile at highway speeds” (Orders of magnitude (energy))!

“Net energy gain” will forever elude them, no matter how close they come to zero they will never achieve it. The problem has nothing to do with technology it is a problem of mathematical education! Engineers are always trying to trisect the angle or square the circle, they keep coming up with system that approximate the desired end but never really get there. They refuse to accept that it is mathematically proven that one cannot trisect the angle or square the circle, or generate energy from fusion on Earth for that matter.

What is the “fundamental physics question” that will be answered? Or maybe we should ask: should we build such an expansive experiment when the “fundamental physics question” is still unanswered? How is it possible that Einstein could come up with the special theory while working for the patent office-I could name many others, Descartes is another good example-and the legions of current scientists are unable to do anything without first spending a couple of billion dollars-and even after spending the money they cannot come up with the goods.

These “scientists” belief in the power of science is just as irrational and dangerous as ancient priests’ belief in the power of a statue housed in a temple to change the climate. As more resources are directed towards building larger temples instead of better irrigation-works collapse becomes inevitable-the film Rapa Nui (1994) demonstrates this points wonderfully, it is the film that Apocalypto (2006) wanted to be.

“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.”

-Marx, Capital—Preface to the French Edition.

“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]

“Experimental physics will present the rational science of Nature – as history will present the science of human affairs and actions – in an external picture, which mirrors the philosophic notion.”

-Hegel’s Shorter Logic, §16 [my emphasis]