Aqvarivs,

'pi can not be expressed as a number and I will eat three of them to prove my point. :-)'

I can assure you your humour was not lost on me, I did chuckle at your wit.

You are also right - I do rush to be right but you are wrong if you believed i missed the subtlty or the joke.

Two problems: one yours, one mine. Mine was your use of the term 'them' in your joke, leading me initially to believe you meant 3 pi's, indicating your great appetite, instead of the 3 OF (A) pi you intended indicating your actual point. Yours was in not following the context correctly (perhaps due to my cross-post with Keiran to whom my comment was clearly directed and for which i apologised).

I was using Pi as evidence that the infinite does exist in the real world as something (an irrational number of single fixed value) other than a relative 'process' which Keiran had previously claimed it only could be to me on another thread. A True Pi (one with all it's 'crumbs' present), while being greater than 3 and less than 4 is infinite (logically proving that infinity can be 'smaller' than four!).' Eating' the 3 still leaves an infinitely long 'number' of crumbs which i declare to be impossible to ever fully consume, or express, (as opposed to morphing into a 'smaller' infinite by removing the left hand digit(s) ) in one man's lifetime. (Man can however conceptualise Pi relatively easily) I also claimed the 3 as MY starting point and asking Kieran what his 'endpoint' (digit) was, thus denying you the right to eat 'my' 3 Pi :-) He still has not responded to date.

I like and agree with a lot (not all) of the rest of your posts. Maybe it's because i am a fellow Aquarian and am able to think more outside the box?

I always thought mathematicians rounded pi to 3.14159... because any further reduction had no baring on recreating the whole. I read some where that a computer has been tasked to explore the idea of a final decimal point for pi and has to date exceeded the one millionth decimal place. It's become a religion. The ghost that came full circle and yet continues ad infinitum. :-)
I think that the study of the idea God or the supernatural is relative to mans understanding of man. And if particular branching of that study develop and compete as ideology. Fine. Theorist and scientist compete for recognition all the time. I'd like to say no harm no foul but it hasn't been always the case. Theorist and scientist have led us astray. In their defense I will say that theory and science have an element of self correction. If it's not reasonable it has no life. Religion on the other hand tends to dig in and fortify in the face of reason and demand that religion can not be held to the same standard because it has been handed down by God and God does not need to be reasonable.
I have to say that that frightens me. Too many "believers" are not reasonable men and all religions being equal have proven that down through the ages. It isn't that science has replaced religion. It is that science has reached such a level that religion can now destroy all mankind in the name of God with a simple flick of the switch. Our only assurance is that we are to have faith in them. Praying to God takes on a whole new meaning. Like Stockholm Syndrome.

Brainy, over the years I've had an interest in Pi for a number of reasons but I come back to my original thoughts that it is not a number but simply an infinite process. Does that make sense? Mathematicians may call it otherwise ... e.g. an irrational number or an infinite number or an infinite or a transcendental number. I suppose there is a need to call it something BUT my point is that it is never a number but simply a process of infinite, non-repeating, decimal expansion. You cannot catch an infinite even with some transcendental butterfly net. lol

Now what about an infinite regression ........ ?

Better still what about Martin Armstrong's Economic Pi Cycle for some reading?
http://www.contrahour.com/contrahour/2006/06/martin_armstron.html

Relda,

Although your citing Sheldrake was of surprised to the Forum my dog tells me, she knew in advance. In the area of "consciousness" theories on quantum fields have been suggested, Penrose and Hameroff.
With Freud, he thought his models metaphors, which science with its better understanding of the brain would breakdown to what, we, today, call neurology. Sigmund and Anna were in the psychoanlytic school. As you probably known, Jung took a more universal approach. Herein, perhaps, Freud saw his work more of a rough diamond; whereas, Jung might have felt his discriptions were more permanent and less allegorical.

With the latter, perhaps, his Models were held closer to the underlying latent constructs? Some diagrams I have seen developed by Aguirree (UC, Santa Cruz) and Penrose(?) do show a portion of the non-reduced waveform outside of the barriers containing the larger (but entire) waveform for a potential particle.

The problem with the idea of quantum teleopathy would be, if that is your posit, would be one of scale., I think. While the wave forms might all somehow be joined at the tiniest level, reduction of the wave (normalisation) to perform in a brain and between on large scale, I suspect would be problematic. The message would have the coded from cosmological scale to quantum scale, routed effectively, then translated from quanta to the decoded thoughts for the receiver. If it all happened at a quantum level, I don't think we could articulate those happens in our world.

Grenfield has offered comment on religion and mystism, noting evidence of imagination back to Cro Magnon (40K years ago; Sells, some would not agree with 4004 BCE). Imagination, she sees, in consort with the ability to apprehend non-physical entities; wherein, childen play imagine, and adults are capable of representational thought (Piaget).

Moreover, Greenfield feels connections can be made between imagination and external cues, engendering supernumerary beliefs. In this frame, Mithen maintains this paired capacity, important for high cognitive capacities of our species.

...

Hey, it's time you pi eaters got back on track. You are so crusty.

Peter quotes Michael Casey :”( Secular) Democratic political religion … It is directed to the modification of human nature and society rather than to the revolutionary regeneration of humanity, and pursues its ends where possible through judicial and administrative coercion and more generally through capturing the “commanding heights” of the culture. The attitude to traditional religion ... is hostile.”

Secular Religious (SR) Tribunals ( Gender, Race, Sexuality, Employment....) comprise the secular bishops sans crook and staff who sit from on high to decree that certain human behaviour is off limits and out of bounds. Any such transgression is seen, not as a wrongful, uncharitable act by an individual towards another, but rather as an aberration of human behaviour that can be educated out of the person. And it sometimes works through fear of legal penalty or job retention/advancement opportunity.

However, the underlying "wrongfulness" still resides in the depths of the person.

What's missing is the recognition by the perpetrator of the wrong done, and a desire to change such behaviour.

The modern culture avoids the language of right and wrong... it becomes personalised..."I stuffed up... I did it because it was cool at the time...I had no intention in ... happening, I was just having fun.". Yet stealing, personal abuse, aggression, using someone else's property without approval...are simply wrongful acts.

SR lacks proportion and is seen its Tribunalese where vulgar, ignorant insensitivity to another's race and colour is termed racist; the same term used to describe the evil practice of Apartheid.

SR tribunals see such behaviour as human aberrations.. "this behaviour offends our higher (public) values...how disgusting... it is an embarrassment to our human ideals".

Rather than seek personal change as a reconciliation process engaging one's moral and spiritual senses, our SR Tribunals gain comfort in their condemnations.

Next case please.

And keep up the salary and conditions. And of course we need statistics to shore up the next budget presentation.

Bring on the perpetrators, we need you, you awful little people.

...

But, Greenfield, adds a darker side, to our supremo ability to create internal imagination + external pairings; religion. However, according to Greenfield, Mithen truncates the process before its more developed stage, adding, there is exists greater capacity to think beyond, "magic and superstition", to achieve "wisdom and understanding".

Because religious imaginary models involve tacit (imaginary)beliefs and explicit external reinforcement, we have a problem, because tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge are held coefficient (Polanyi). Herein, religionists and rationalists, we interpret the same evidence differently, based on, either imaginings or overt evidence testing.

Infinities and Perfect Forms,

Infities are funny things. The [set of all possible irrational numbers] is greater than the [set of all possible rational numbers], yet both sets are infinite. That is, some infinities are greater than others.

Folk whom study the historical growth of science and technology in civilizations, some times use the understanding of pi, as measure of development. Herein, one such measure is the ability to articulate the upper and lower limits of pi.

A perfect circle is a highly conceptual idea, maybe, beyond Plato's perfect forms? Herein, can one actually, think a perfect circle? The formation of the circle in our minds is drawn in space-time. Would not that create a spiral [if represented by a 3D tranformation]?