Website de Steensplinter

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de Steensplinter — Geology and a cosmology of the obvious

1. preface

notes
1    This is not the sequence in which my world-view
     developed. On the contrary!
     The element 'interference' came to me only
     mid 2004. Only then did everything fit together.
     Even so it was based on a life time of geological
     experience, and should have been obvious
     from the beginning.

     Up to a point my views parallel the philosophies
     of Whitehead and Burgers.
     The `records' comprise Whitehead's `actual
     entities' and Burgers' `objects' (facts and forms
     of relatedness). But my term `record' has a wider
     use. It comprises, for instance, such elements as
     prehension and memory.
     Whitehead's `processes' and Burgers' `conceptual
     activity' act on these records and transform them
     into new facts.
     In my cosmology `processes' come first.
     Processes that have no relation with what went
     on before, are interfering processes.
     There is room for such interfering processes.
     `Records' are the results left by past `processes'.

     I agree with Whitehead in that the future does
     not exist.
     Whitehead's world is a universe of organisms.
     I limit the term `organism' to living beings.
     And I limit the idea `mental' to brains sufficiently
     developed to contain the element `intent' and
     the ability to make the intended happen.

     (H.J. MacGillavry)

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contents

(website version 2.30 - august 2007)

preface

The following website describes a new cosmology. ¹
It assumes that the universe began at the Big Bang singularity and that it only contains two elements: `processes' and `records'.

Processes
are changes of shape within a certain stretch of time.
They constitute the present.
Processes succeed each other, thereby continuously moving the present outward. This results in a continuous four-dimensional growth and expansion of the universe into the surrounding realm of non-existence, in which it was born.
The succession of processes automatically generates the directionality of time.
Processes can be constructive and destructive.

Records
are left by past processes.
Records left by constructive past processes constitute our material world, such as: elements, stars, nebulae, continental and oceanic crust.
Destructive processes can erase previous records.

• The future does not exist,
predictions are processes in the present.

• A new process leaving a record,
may have no relation with what went on before at the same locality.
This introduces the element of interference.

• Interfering processes
occur already extensively in a purely inorganic world.
The appearance of living beings - with their capacity for increasing negentropy (= negative entropy) - leads to an enormous increase of interference.

• Mental interference
can occur only after evolution has formed a brain sufficiently developed to contain the element 'intent' and the capacity to make the intended happen. Only then can we speak of mental interference, of the final cause of intent and the efficient cause of making the intended happen, and of responsibility. This efficient cause does not include physical causality.
We do not need physical causality.

continued