2016

June

In the field of physics, energy was originally a derived concept, a byproduct of forces acting on objects. Specifically, energy was defined when the forces in a system could be represented as functions of distance and time, as a known and determinate ensemble applied to an object. The forces that propel objects in space and time can then be analyzed mathematically, with a calculus of symbols. A mathematical quantity of interest, defined as energy, is the force applied to an object over a certain distance. The calculated quantity exists independently of the specifics of the scenario under consideration, insofar as it is unconcerned with directions and dimensionality. It is a measurement of work done by a system, not of how that work was done. Lagrange and Hamilton inverted this conception by positing energy as the fundamental quantity and motion as being derived from its optimal consumption. Instead of energy arising from motion, motion was a consequence of energy expenditure. This subtle reversal uncovered a mathematical formulation that many view as more fundamental since it seems to express a “truth” about nature.

The world of Newtonian mechanics prior to the work of Lagrange and Hamilton was a world of subjective calculation; a point of view was taken in the system, a coordinate system defined, forces broken down into components and arranged relative to the observer’s frame of reference. Energy was then deduced and calculated from the observer’s point of view; The subject was presupposed.

In the Lagrangian formulation, the coordinate systems for objects are ancillary and secondary. There is no inherent point of view taken with respect to the orientation of the system until after its energy distribution is defined. The observer in Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics is a secondary concept, that only serves to spatialize and temporalize the invariant quantity of energy across its modes of perception. In other words, Lagrange and Hamilton succeeded in uncovering a principle of total objectification. Within in their framework, suddenly everything becomes a consequence of a first and ultimate principle, a possible theorem from a complete set of physical law.

August

Within the geometry of our solution to the energy expenditure problem, there exists a revolting chaos, a fractal reference. By becoming aware of our boundaries, we have slipped into an altogether unpleasant infinity. We are perhaps not the only species on this planet to exhibit self-awareness, but we are by far the most complex. Our solution to being is such that we have internalized our being in the network of relations that defines our point of view in the struggle for existence. We perceive ourselves as objects that die, that disappear from existence. The subatomic particle has no faculty for internalization, it is itself and nothing more. It is the most basic expenditure of energy. Our form of expenditure is built out of a lattice of energy differentials transforming through time; our nature is such that we have come to sit atop the struggle and watch it unfold, altering its course through the interference of choice. We perceive that we are bound by forces that continually diminuish our selves, that tug at our extremities, pulling us back into kinetic ether. Our fundamental transcendence, the one that demarcates our boundaries in the geometry of space, is that turning away from dissolution, that wrenching away from death, from nonbeing.

But the horizon of death is inevitable. Everything ends. Death is built into the system. Any possible creature must have death built into its framework of life, as the nether region that its being negates via energy expenditure. If artificial intelligence is possible (as it clearly seems to be; humans themselves are but programs constructed via distillation through hardship and struggle), then its fundamental nature, though perhaps alien and unutterable to ourselves in its particulars, has to be that of perceiving its own death. By physical instantiation in the universe, its being would be predicated upon its location in space and it would perceive itself temporally. The realization of temporality is none other than the perception of death, because if you are here now, who is to say you will be here the next moment? Not you, because if you knew, you would already be there or have been there, in that moment, in possession of that knowledge. You can only know if you are or have been, never if you will be. Death is always a future possibility. To be an intelligence is to know that one can just as well not be. Even if the intelligence could be sustained indefinitely via electrical energy (or otherwise), this is by no means a way of achieving immortality; it would nonetheless perceive its impermanence, just as we do; it would know that its physicality is predicated on demarcation in space and all boundaries are subject to dissolution through the intangible process of time; everything perishes, at least potentially.

It does not make sense that a being should know it is in the process of being; from our very nature, that of causality and form, the thought is repellant: an organized solution to the energy-work problem that is of aware of itself, that can act seemingly at random, so much so that passion, a term without scientific connotation, is the only explanation for its movements. We cannot envision such a mechanism unfolding; we only visualize its manifestations, look for its understanding in the principles of work; we are never able to hold the whole of its solution in mind because the solution exceeds itself. We cannot imagine the self-awareness of another because by doing so we have already taken a point of view, that of ourselves. Our form of representation is our point of view. The very fact we take a point of view at all precludes our ever experiencing another point of view.