Curious Minds [will never be complete and less likely correct]

By: no relevance

Dedicated to all who have not been given enough chances to succeed and to a night in ‘the Kings’ on Friday 11th March 1983 Thanks to all of those who gave me a chance to possibly fail again.

Abstract

A story of art, maths, art, physiology, science etc. in a single collection known as knowledge. A story of questions with no answer, a story of answers which question current knowledge and mostly a story of hope, hope that we can really and truly ask large questions of small issues.

Basic Schooling

In school, like many others I had to learn arithmetic, how to add and subtract and when this has been achieved then teachers go further and teach us times tables. There are even songs about times tables like the poems and songs used to teach the alphabet. Then there is English (or whatever your language is) or literature (it’s called English in Scotland). In these classes you learn to read at an early age which is great. Of course art and music are also taught and here teachers let us draw with crayons or watercolour paints, sing and generally be creative. In not one of these classes was I never shown why we do all this stuff, as with foreign language or science, religion etc. In School I was taught like others to repeat and the best got certificates. I am not saying this is bad to receive certificates for regurgitating information, although I am not sure it deserves al l the respect of the system. the kids who ask why, usually received reports with could do better , often loses attention or easily distracted . I was similar to the latter in primary School, but was, at least initially, relatively quiet as I was taught to not speak unless being spoken to and sit nice and don’t be bad. It was obvious questions and in particular debate was being bad, and, yes, I was belted often in later years in primary school!

I wonder how many others recognise this story as similar to their own or very similar to what they encountered. It is later in life I realised that the education of a child is of paramount importance and perhaps mass education is not quite working as we thought it should. I have to be careful here and allow the reader to recognise I am 100% committed to education, but with the caveat that teaching repeating tasks or theorems etc. is not, in my opinion, a complete education. I am not impressed by people who can recite large texts or numbers (Pi etc.) off by heart, my dicta-phone can do that, it’s not that clever. I am also unlikely to be impressed by a child remembering all the times tables all the way up to 12 times 12 and I do not think that deserves certificates and honours at early ages (actually honours do not impress me at all either, but that’s completely another matter). I agree completely with rewarding and making kids feel special and interesting, it’s a good start but a better way is to reward creativity in all areas and this is difficult, but then again should teaching be easy ?

Before continuing we must recognise something important. The vast majority of people can get through life admirably and very successfully with the basic tools of early education (reading, writing and arithmetic), in fact arguably in most cases this is more than adequate. This perhaps should be an area that is hived out to an elementary level and yes, a recondition in this area is probably important. Also the recondition of asking questions is becoming more acceptable and even encouraged now in schools, as I have been reliably informed so this is progress and very welcome. One area that has been an issue and still is though is the creative side of children, we seem to knock that out of them in the push for this elementary education and that’s a terrible
crime.

It’s also worth noting that this early stage mass education for the masses only works to an extent (a very limited extent). I say extent as it does not seem clear that the education by batches of ages is very clever or indeed the industrial conveyor belt approach is at all beneficial to anyone. In any case we can assume some good comes of it, although perhaps in a sloppy and uncaring way in many cases.

Now imagine for a moment a situation where early schooling was teaching more why rather than how ! By this I mean start with why? then teach a method (and also reiterate it’s only one method) of how to achieve this. I prefer several methods of how, but that requires a level of questioning that is perhaps too abstract for some of today’s teachers (I do not mean this in any derogatory way), but I bet the really dedicated would also love to learn some of the answers as well.

If I were a teacher, I would hope I would relish the days every year when the first student of any age challenged me to a question I did not know (never mind the answer, like what does this God look like or where did we come from type questions). Even better if a student showed me a different method of existing thinking, a method I had not realised or seen before. Now that would be magnificent. I fear this is not the attitude I recognise as being fully accepted from my own schooling (there are a lot of genius teachers out there though) and surprisingly as I will outline later, this acceptance of difference is less tolerated in later years at college.

1.1 Some teaching ideas

OK! So what do I mean by all this gibberish ? Well it would appear that teaching addition and subtraction are relatively easy to explain. I have one apple and get another so I have one + one = 2 apples (more later). If I remove one then I have 2 minus 1 = 1 apple. There it works! That’s one method for addition and subtraction that we can all teach children and do so from an early age. So what about the next steps multiplication and division ?

These are just as simple as addition and subtraction but we make them extremely difficult by teaching patterns and rhymes and times table songs and lose children’s interest in an amazing subject very early in their formative years. For the repeaters this method of teaching we use is great, for the thinkers and potential genius’s well, we may lose them at this crucial stage,
unless you have a good recall then what we call (incorrectly at this stage) maths becomes difficult straight away.

To compound this we have parents, the initial yardstick of how well we are doing and source of comfort to us, the people we most want to please. How do they t in? Well they reward us for remembering times tables and scold us for not remembering, saying s/he is not good at maths (considering s/he has not being doing maths, then this is quite a statement). This is, to me, amazing! We would be as well kicking children in the face and congratulating them for not bleeding too soon! So how can we teach a better or at least different, why ? This is actually easy in principle, to teach addition you could say something like, I have 2 screw-holes and I need to screw a screw into each screw-hole so I need 1 plus 1 screw. There that’s why we need to learn to add. So continuing, say you were handed 3 screws for this job. Now we need to remove one screw to make 2 which is the amount we need. So simply throw one screw away (or subtract it) and we have again 2 screws, perfect for the job. Many such examples teach a why !

and in this case it is very difficult to separate the why from the how as it is relatively simple to add and subtract. This is an example of how using addition you can also subtract. By adding the number of screws you remove from the pile (of 3). So subtraction can be done using only addition! what about multiplying?

Well this is easy 5 times 3 (or multiplied by) is 5 + 5 (multiplied by 2 now) +5 and that’s us multiplied 5 times 3 is pure addition i.e. 5 + 5 + 5 now again we used only addition to get the answer 15!

So multiplication can be done using addition! what about division?

lets reverse the above example and This is a tiny (very small) bit more difficult. say what is 15 divided by 5? so here we start with 15 screws and remove 5 from it, there’s still some left so again take screws one at a time adding them up to 5, we still have some left so again removing one at a time and adding to 5, then the amazing thing, we have none left from our original
bundle, and we did this 3 times, therefore the answer is 3. 15 divided by 5 can be done by removing groups of 5 till the pile is empty and this can be done exactly 3 times, wow !. This means an elementary school kid who can add, can also subtract, multiply and divide, without any additional rules or mechanisms over and above simple addition and guess what? no remembering tables or rhymes yet. We can cover remainders and fractions in a couple of minutes, there terrifically easy too (maybe easier than this so far).

Here is an interesting exercise, count your fingers, yes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, great so we can count to 10 (use one hand a count to 5 if its easier). Now did we count to 10 or did we miss a number? this is a much more significant question and one that confounded and caused great consternation for many hundreds of years so the question is very difficult indeed. In today’s
mathematical world we did miss something. Let me explain hold up 2 fingers one hand and we will subtract 2 from it (don’t jump to conclusions here!) so on one hand put down 1 finger (you can hold up one finger on the other hand to use our subtract by addition method, as one finger on one hand is put down, then hold up a finger on the other hand). Now put down another finger, so we subtracted 2 from the first hand (some of us know because we have 2 fingers held up on the other hand and can count to 2). So we
have how many left? when we counted our fingers there was 10 of them (if you count thumbs as fingers, for the pedantic). So how many now? none you say excitedly none so the answer is none (which is accurate), in maths today we call nothing, something, we call it zero (or nought or nothing). So what’s the answer? is it zero? we did not have zero fingers, we started counting at 1 (again stay with me), otherwise starting at zero would give us 9 fingers (try it), this is shown by simply counting backwards on your fingers, so on one hand 10,9,8,7,6 (one hand gone) and we have still five fingers on the other hand, what 5 + 6 = 11 (told you not to be so hasty).

So if we start counting at 0 we have 9 fingers, or if we count back from 10, we have 11 fingers, think about this for a while, it will help you understand some more of maths than you imagine. Now revisit the subtracting by adding this does not occur (you add the numbers you remove so 5, therefore 5 + 5 left = 10, were you hasty?). So to start at zero is a bit crazy, after all zero
what? fingers? cars? blades of grass? but if zero is a number then why not start there? So is 0 actually a number? is 2 minus 2 a number or is it actually nothing, not a number just nothing? we will come back to this (bet you can’t wait).

1.3 Far outside the box

Counting as in the previous passage is rather easy and we can see it clearly. What about the alternatives or differing approaches, are there any? An interesting thing is that we are taught to read left to right and do so almost automatically. Why then do we count right to left, it all seems so easy and natural, but it gives us limitations almost immediately. for instance, how can we add a number to an irrational number (a number when written in decimal approaches infinity, or maybe does, but we cannot get to the end of it like pi or the square root of two). Well the good news is we can add such numbers together and quiet easily actually. Instead of adding for instance left to right as normal we can do it the other way round. 1234 + 4567 =? Normally we would carry out this task right to left like 7+4=1 carry 1, then 3+6(+ carry 1) = 0 carry 1, then 2+5+1 = 8 and finally 1+4 = 5, so answer is 5801 (you will note we answer backwards although ignore that naturally). What if instead though the problem was 1234 . . . + 4567 . . . =? (the … meaning, onwards towards infinity), this introduces an important issue as we cannot go to the right hand number, because we cannot reach infinity to find it. Is our system broken then? well only if we stay in the box and think for a second that the

mechanical teaching we have had is all there is. The answer is so simple that it’s not even funny, importantly doing this exercise in junior school would probably mean you failed the test as your working would be wrong, even though the answer is correct. Let us demonstrate this wrong method now.

In steps, first part (left to right) is 1+4=5, next part is 2+5=7, next part is 6+3=9 and last part (the trickier part) is 7+4 = 1 and this time we carry 1 backwards so our previous 9 becomes 10 or zero and carry backwards again so the second thought becomes 7+1 or 8. so the answer (read forward this time) is 5801… and the numbers go on to infinity if we so desire.

If we then try a trickier version 9235+1986 =?in this case the answer is 9+1=0 carry 1 back. We note here there is no back so we add an extra digit to the beginning so for the first number we now have 10. Then we have 9+2=1 carry 1 backwards so then we have 111 so far. Then 3+8=1 carry 1, so we have 1121 so far then 6+5=1 carry 1 so we have the answer 11221… Which works, but importantly we have started a system where if we find another new
number in our series then we’re set up with the thinking that would allow us to continue the process, even when the carry back carries back several times, perhaps even to the beginning of the number.

I hope by now questions are starting to fester away and if there not, they should be! To think we have not got to religious studies yet!

So now! do we teach the tables and rhymes ? absolutely not, what a terrible idea, now the teacher has to talk about all this and see what clever ideas the kids can come up with, now they have a new skill. Time to play about, do you want 6 minus 3 sweets or 6 divided by three sweets ? If you cut a card till a bit falls off, how many pieces are there (does a card have a limit of cuts in
it?)? Now ask,If I write a number on the board with this small piece of chalk and then another and then another and so on (actually do it!) can you see the chalks getting smaller, so how many numbers are in the chalk? If I keep speaking and don’t eat or drink how many words are inside me? will all my words run out? let the kids discuss and talk crazy till they run out of crazy
and start evaluating the answers properly, watch for the crazier kids and encourage this (probably at back of class with lots of energy and devilment, or at the front and very quiet). Now some other subjects can be tackled the same way, boil a kettle dry and ask the kids where all the water is? Look at the heat waves coming of a radiator, ask the kids what it is (open

the window and ask if anyone can see the heat escaping). Ask kids what the heat waves above a road are and they will be amazed when you tell them the heat waves are the sky[footnote: This is a subject discussed by Richard P Feynman during talks on the subject of quantum electrodynamics, where light passing through hot air can refract (or bend, wow big debate, it’s
actually taking the fastest route) showing heat haze on a road is the sky to. I wont waste a good book, buy it (QED). ] ! (maybe you will be to). Then discuss the heat waves and say to a child, they can put there hand half in the hot air and half in the colder air just at the edge of these waves. An adaptation
of this is look at wind on the sea or loch, there is an end to it in the plane of the water, therefore you must be able to put your hand part in a wind and part out of it, it does end. Now we can explain some more phenomena, these heat waves are actually causing some light air to rise[footnote:

This is also untrue. The hot air does not necessarily rise, it stays where it is, the heat increases the pressure if the area is confined, in this case it’s not so the heat spreads apart the air molecules and the cooler air brings them together (or allows the mass attraction to take over), the air neither rises or falls, simply the pressure differs. This is another example misstated in
many subjects, including physics. The hot stuff rises, what nonsense! The heat rises to reach the lesser pressure area, the stuff stays where it is relatively speaking, or does it? Keep thinking! As a molecule heats it will go in all directions, rising to a lesser pressure is the most efficient escape route in
reality, therefore heated molecules may seem to rise as they bash against their partners, but in doing so they heat their partners also. It’s a very interesting subject for another whole book. Basically how much stuff rises is somewhat inversely proportional to the transfer of heat capability the stuff possesses.
], therefore sucking air from a heat source and sending it up higher. So the air must be getting apparently pulled in from below this heat wave, pulled from all around it and pushed upwards. Easy !

This is creating a pressure gradient in fact, this is explained now. The pressure at the bottom is low as stuff is being pushed up so it’s not weighing on us now, it would feel lighter standing at this point as it’s as though were being lifted (ever so slightly). Try it put a feather there and watch it rise. Now
discuss hand gliders and birds soaring on thermals.So then we can expand, if there is a low pressure here, then it must be causing a higher pressure above as this is where we are pushing the stuff to (air). This makes sense, I hope.

Interestingly though if we expand this thinking we must be sucking air sideways towards the point of the heat (that radiator in the class), so we are creating an even higher pressure at the side of the heat source. So as we push air up and suck it in sideways the air we push up, cools and falls down again to be sucked into the heat source again.

This explains the beginnings of understanding worldwide weather systems, and winds or pressure gradients as they are confusingly called. It’s a simple matter of a heat source pushing hot air up, sucking the same (or in some places nearby) air back in from below as it cools. This is a great thing to teach a child. Now you can show the child some tricks in nature. As he or she

can put their hand in the heat source part way they can also put their hand in rain part way. So you can have rain falling on part of you only, or on half of your house. How so?. Well it’s simple now if we bring all this together. If the heat source is near water it heats the water, evaporating that and mixing it with hot air and lifting it up. As it rises it cools, as we already know,
and in doing so forms clouds which is simply all the previously hotter water getting cooler and again coming back closer together, thus forming larger water concentrations, until it’s mass is greater than the force exerted upon it by the heat (Brownian motion) and it falls. Interestingly though as the water
falls in spheres the bottom part of the sphere is closer to the earth and is pulled by gravity more, The outer edges spread out though due to the air resistance pushing on the bottom part of the sphere (which is stronger than the gravitational force) and the sphere splits into smaller spheres (increasingly slower though), this continues until they hit the ground. These clouds
become heavy as they cool and cannot hold together as steam or vapour any more and form water, as water cannot oat in normal air, it falls down, as rain. The clouds have an edge and part of this divide is wet and the other is dry.

Now children can put all that together and realise why deserts have heat but not much rain and seaside places tend to be wet, especially in summer as the land heats faster than the water and sucks the sea vapour towards beaches as it pushes the hot air up, which cools and forms clouds. This is called a sea breeze and explains the thin clouds round the coasts in summer (have you
ever wondered why there are clouds at the seaside on a sunny day), and also the relaxing breeze we feel in hot summer afternoons at the beach.

1.4 Gravity

Now we can teach people about gravity! and we should be clear here, we never teach people gravity, even our best scientists can only guess at it, in fact Newton was embarrassed by it and Einstein theorised about it. We have no clue what gravity is. We can, however, explain the effects of gravity localised to our little spot in the universe, and we do.

When kids are told of this phenomenon it’s confusing and so well it should be, we wrap a thing around it call it a force and leave it at that, but we are so wrong! Anyway as we find out the earth is spinning many children will say things like if I jump up will I land in another place ? or leave the brake of the car and let it drive around backwards to the direction of the earth’s spin (I
certainly did and still wonder) using no fuel ? We tell them gravity stops that and pulls us straight back down or the car is stuck to the ground too hard due to gravity that it will not move with the brake off, if on a straight or level road. However, we do not tell the whole picture, as the earth turns it

does affect things as a child would imagine (and we stop them thinking this, what a shame!). As the earth turns the air we pushed up, or air in the upper atmosphere is moved from the location it left earth from (slightly). Gravity has a lesser effect on water vapour (well actually its overcome with heat
rising) and the place where the air is pushed is backwards from the point where it left the ground source (as the earth turns below it). This is again confusingly named the Coriolis effect. We need to let children know their original assumptions about the turning planet are true.

Children believe gravity is such an amazingly powerful force when they are young, to be told later, it is the weakest of all forces known? why do we do that? Another interesting factoid here is that if you jump out a 7th

story window the earth moves up to meet you with a proportional force that you fall to meet it. This is the force or measure of force we call momentum, which is actually velocity multiplied by mass, relatively the velocity the earth meets you at is proportional to the speed you meet it at. The proportion is the
mass of the earth compared to you. Weird but true, now discuss!

1.5 Nature

Nature is the most important thing to teach kids and yet it is ignored, kids  say look out a window at some grass and tree’s or a bird making a nest and what do teachers do, well your in trouble now kid! This is school ! no looking at nature. This is the best time to teach a child, what are you looking at ? grass, oh so what can you tell me about grass? (people depended on the spread
of grass, we would still be in Africa if it were not for grass, assuming we did all migrate from there). There’s loads of things to learn from grass (try to destroy it by burning, drowning etc.) or investigating birds or trees, in fact everywhere in nature.
There are more unknown organisms in a single square meter of a common garden than the total number of known organisms identified buy humans to date, we can observe nature for many years to come, before we can consider ourselves even to have an infantile knowledge of the world around us.

Now put a small plant or bush in a pot, one which will grow fairly large in a few months, we will come back to this. Water and feed it and explain what’s happening all the time you do. So nature is life’s textbook, always changing, never the same twice and always fascinating, all aspects from the shape of

clouds and all yu can teach about that, to a rock that seems to never alter, cosmic rays, heat, cold, wet, dry, you bet it alters (later photons smashing into it throwing electrons off back into photons when they hit air again, oh the list is never ending). important to note here that like the times tables and rhymes for teaching ‘times tables’ it is important NOT to teach all
different names for stuff in nature but teach what things actually are, what they are made of, how they interact with other ‘things’ and importantly how there all different, even 2 birds of the same family or breed are completely different, as people are. Now some more interesting observations for children, when they look at, say a rock or better a bird that flies away. Now ask

where is the bird? is it gone? or is some of it left ? Ask each of the children what they remember about the bird, some may say it had wings, others, it was black, had a beak etc. Now discuss why they can remember what it looks like and if it’s really gone what bit of it got in our head ? and if it looked at us, is a bit of us in it’s head ? is a bit of us flying and soaring through
the sky chirping and freely soaring in currents of some of that warm air ripple. Now you may remember the bird your whole life, many years after it’s not a bird any more in the world outside your window, but is it a bird still in your head? your head is made of matter and that birds impression takes up a piece of that matter (perhaps) so is it alive, in you? These lessons may start
to become interesting to teachers as well now. What can nature not teach us? when you think of something then don’t teach kids that thing (as your very likely wrong). Use nature always and when teaching if you cannot reference a natural issue to depict your notion of the piece of knowledge your about

to impart, simply don’t. This is fairly easy as everything we do is defined by nature, even the unnatural things ! It’s just important to think about it (like dividing by adding !). OK back to the bush we planted, have the kids look at it and especially look at the amount of dirt in the pot. The amount is the same as when the thing was planted, but wait the thing is much bigger, where did all the stuff come from ? where did the mass of stuff that’s there now, leaves, possibly flowers, more stalk or bark, lots of stuff and it all weighs something. It never came from the dirt, the dirt is still in the pot! what

happened. Well all the stuff came from the air (vast majority, some plants have lots of water content, but dry a tree out and it’s still lots of stuff ) now is the time to talk of chloroform and photosynthesis not in years to come, now when the kids can actually see what happened even if they can never understand how they will always remember what happened and what photosynthesis does, it takes air and sunlight and turns it into carbon, same
stuff as inside us is now inside the plant. Now talk about kids eating less than their parents but growing faster and when they eat the same the kid still grows, so how’s that?, why don’t the parents keep growing, where’s the bones and skin all coming from, again how is may be not so important here

but what actually happens is very easy to show. If they don’t understand all the complicated maths and science behind this they will and should understand what the outcome is, being able to prove it now should seem less of an issue. It’s easier to prove things you can see and touch, hear feel etc. than some absurd equation or huge Latin word from a book. Nature is proving to be
very helpful now I hope!

1.6 The zero & infinity thing again

Zero, nothing, void, empty and so on, zero what ? are zero skyscrapers equal to zero fingers, are infinite skyscrapers equal to infinite fingers ? well the latter is wrong you can enter a skyscraper and go into a room, can’t do that with a finger, no matter how many you have, but the former would appear to be true! So zero being the opposite size (or dimension) of infinity is not
true ! but there are interesting effects on one another 0 ∗ ∞ = 0
and ∞ ∗ (any number except 0) = ∞ and 0/∞ = 0 and ∞/0 = U
undefined

This is interesting if you analyse it. So infinity can be destroyed or created by zero! Really interesting is the undefended cases, undefended! yes in the simplest equation, never mind Reinman’s zeta function based problem or Fermat’s last theorem, simply infinity and zero together are enough to confound mathematics. Are we not all taught that in School? I wasn’t[footnote: I remember being told as a child by a teacher, infinity is
defined as such: if you give a monkey a typewriter and infinity it will type out the complete works of shake spear word perfect. I immediately thought the ribbon (for younger folk the ribbon is the old mechanical printers version of a print cartridge) would run out, and then the paper would run out so given this infinity with infinite objects does not work, there’s many infinities in
this definition, like number of trees (therefore planets and universes), spare parts, tools for the spare parts etc. etc. in fact to me this definition was one of many and possibly infinite infinities.
]! Perhaps you would not have been taught that the proof of 1+1=2

has never been mathematically proven! Two mathematicians, Russel
and Whitehead wrote over 300 pages in the book principia mathematica where this logical proof of all maths was attempted, but failed to do so (Godel showed the laws in what was thought to be a proof of this as he introduced his incompleteness theorem). Again there is a lot we are not taught, why?

If zero is a number is it on your calculator ? is infinity then also on your  calculator and if not why not ? Sorry if that’s now confusing but it’s actually simple and expected, first of, none of the above answers are infinity or zero, the answers tend towards these numbers but will never get there. So zero and  infinity are destinations a traveller can journey towards but in many cases, alas never reach. Therefore if somebody asks how long will it take to count to infinity you could reply I will finish tomorrow as this would be true every

time you say it (as long as you say it at least daily). but to count to zero on the other hand can be done very quickly, but only if we can assume 1 is a number and can be proven! oh dear this is madness is it not. What do we mean can we prove there is such a thing as 1. Perhaps it’s easier to just do the repeating thing and get a certificate after all, is it not? Simple thing
here is to write 1/3 as a decimal, 0.333…, now multiply by 3 to get 0.999…. Oh oh this is not 1. More soon! We need to consider time and space to understand there may be a 1, but only a 1 there cannot be two 1’s and we cannot really define a 1 unless we can freeze time! Yes this is true, are you clutching your arithmetic certificate yet and saying this is wrong, this is wrong over and over again.

Well actually it’s not madness it very much depends on the way you try to get to zero, for instance if you half a number every time, you will never get there, so these real numbers or integers (or whole numbers) are very handy as you can remove real positive integers from another positive integer

one at a time till zero appears, but again they’re approximations and no such thing exists as I will prove later (mathematics is full of notions and real numbers one of them). So back to the zero thing. For thousands of years it did not exist along with it’s partner (which we have shown to be strange

bedfellows indeed) infinity. In fact zero was seen as the void or a place where evil lived and infinity was seen as everything, a place where god lived (any god, it does not matter here). There have even cases of people being killed for attempting to use infinity or zero (especially an early Pythagorean who mused over a thing called an irrational (think crazy) number, which we will
come to later). Just like the system of counting we use today (the base 10 system) took thousands of years to agree on so did the concept of zero. Therefore when teaching children to count to 10 and being delighted, think carefully are you instilling blind faith into them at this stage, after all what does counting to 10 actually mean, 10 what?

1.7 Limits and things

Zero is a notion, infinity is a notion and the base 10 system is a notion (base anything is). By this I mean none of them really exist unless we introduce limits into nature (mathematical limits are discussed later, so don’t jump ahead). The limits we use to represent numbers are pretty straightforward but missed by many. For instance we can say we have 2 apples, but immediately we are working within limits without realising it. The limit here is our
notion of an apple, after all if somebody held up an apple and orange and stated I have 2 apples, we would realise our limits have been breached pretty quickly. These limits govern much of modern life and for good reason actually. So taking this further lets say a person holds up a granny smith apple and a golden delicious apple and says I have 2 apples, again limits are
introduced. The person is holding up 2 different things but it’s OK in this case the limit has not been breached, there still apples, but there still different things, so we can have 1 of something and 1 of another thing equal to 2, what about dividing these 2 things now – can we? If that person then increases the
limit or parameters of his things by adding more words to the description like saying I have 2 green apples (well they may be, but..) then we impose further limits almost without thinking and can evaluate whether this is true. Add some more detail, i.e. saying I have 2 green apples each with a leaf on them and we may break the limit, note here the leaf in question is also limited
to fall within certain parameters for our human way of thinking. Therefore we can use these numbers like 2 apples within limits and only within limits. This is true for everything in nature and therefore everything in maths and science as these are the study of nature, even though we forget this quickly. So many limits can be boiled down to individual words (like apple) and these words inserted in our basic vocabulary, thereby allowing us to ignore

the fact that many numbers and systems of calculation are in fact not real but purely notional. This may hurt your head a little and it should.

So numbers represent things limited for us to easily digest, however the whole notion of adding and dividing can be shown very quickly to be against nature, i.e. in the above example we cannot get to 1 thing again unless we maintain a limit, but imagine for instance we do something a bit different with this, while we are playing about anyway. Take the apples half each of them (or more precisely cut them in 2 relatively equal mass objects) and we
have 4 halves of apples. Now if we take a half of each apple (preferably a red and a green one) and put it together in our hand and say to another person look I have an apple, our limit thinking is challenged, no you don’t have an apple you have 2 halves, would be the likely answer. Think about this 2 times 1/2 is not one any more, our limits have gotten us into some trouble.
How do we get over this fact then? well actually the answers pretty poor, we train ourselves and children to ignore it, like the ancients ignored zero as evil we currently ignore this kind of thing, to the extent many people reading this will simply not accept it or even be able to question it.

But wait ! we can’t use precision as we cannot measure into infinitesimally small differences to categorise them, we need limits!. Yes we do need limits but we also need to see those limits and understand them, otherwise we a removing some vision that could be important in understanding nature related to maths and science etc. and as we already know this is vitally
important. Just realise for now the notion (yes notion) of 1 is a notion and not really a thing that exists without limiting factors.

Another interesting area not covered in modern teaching is what is sometimes referred to as the middle earth syndrome (well I refer to it that way). This is looking and taking care of perspective in our assumptions of nature and all it holds. Imagine being the size of an electron, difficult as an electron

has no size!, it’s a point particle with zero dimensions! Anyhow imagine you were that small, the distance from you to the nucleus of an atom is equivalent (roughly) of a spectator at the edge of a large football pitch to the centre. So take 1,000 football pitches in every direction as your domain (still inside something of the order human hairs width) and what does your world look
like now. Lots of empty spaces with huge globs every so often (nucleus’s) and stuff like you whizzing about and possibly
appearing and disappearing. If you were in a head of hair then perhaps your whole life would exist in that area (you may only live a few thousandth of a second) This is mind boggling and difficult to imagine for us as we try and relate this to our world (as I just did with football pitches and human hairs).

Now imagine instead being something the size of cosmic objects (planets). Never mind seeing atoms you would not see people, instead your world would be lots of space with big globs every so often (planets) and little stuff whizzing about (comets and dust). Again we cannot imagine this, but if we were that size would our view of nature be the same as the micro size being or
even us, the middle earth being. So what if we were visited by something on the cosmic scale, maybe several million light years away! or indeed by a micro organism the size of a sub atomic particle, would we be aware of

such creatures? I think not. More importantly if we were that scale would or view of what’s important be inclined to be very different, you may answer

obviously, but why? it’s all nature, it does not change. So do we and should we look from differing perspectives when we try and find out more in our quest for ultimate knowledge, or even just wanting to know a tiny bit more than we do? How does all this affect another measure we use, time?

1.8 Number bases and time

Time is a very interesting issue and way beyond the scope of this short etching to fully understand (in fact way beyond the capability of mankind I think). If we limit our look at time to our counting, to stay focused on one issue, then we can find some very interesting things.

First of all time as we categorise it mechanically is broken into 12 hour cycles with 60 Min and 60 second increments. Interesting to note here this is similar to the ancient mechanisms of counting, not in our base 10 but in base 12 and base 60 (base 60 was interesting as 5 fingers on one hand and the 3 knuckles times 4 fingers of the other hand) which is very useful in calculating
and easily writing down huge numbers. It was used successfully to calculate things related to the large numbers associates with cosmic events, these were important to the ancient humans. So time is in a strange base and not split into 10’s as we would expect, well not until we change this and get lower than 1 second where we jump into a base 10 difference, hundredths of a second

thousands etc., does that not seem strange to have 3 number bases in a time situation. Yet this is the case and we ignore it and just get on with our lives as though it were normal, even though it’s not normal and in fact rather strange. Then we have bigger times, weeks (7 day), months (28-31 days) and so on, we also break down into four seasons and why ?

For people who are debating whether this is indeed many bases, it’s worth looking at Gauss’s (the great German mathematician remembered in Gottigen, Germany) counting clock. This is where he replaces the number 12 with a 0 and then uses rotations around the clock as counting up to multiples of 12 and the minutes counted after the number of 12’s of the hour hand represent the
modulo of the addition or multiplication etc. of any numbers in base 12.

1.9 Analogue and Digital Measurements

In the previous section we discovered the use of an analogue clock to create number bases. If we replace the 12 with a 0 in out typical clock the hour hand is in base 12 and the minute hand would be base 60. Let us ignore the second hand for a while as it complicates matters. If we considered it then it’s also base 60 but that could transform the minute hand to base 3600 and the
hour hand to base 43200 depending on how we look at it. That’s too big for now and a bit more complicated than we need here. So lets focus on only the minute and hour hand and no more, we will give the clock only hour markings as well to make things even easier. In this clock we only count in full numbers (no parts of numbers (yet!). To represent a number 6 we move the minute hand to six. To add 3 to this we move it forward 3 places.

So now it is at 9. If we add another six to this we move it forward past zero to 3, but as we did pass zero we must move the hour hand to 1 (1st pass). The answer is read as 13 (hour hand first then minute hand). That 13 is base 12 so in fact in base10 (our number base) it would be 15. Easy! Now we have an easy way to work in any base, just imagine a clock beginning at zero and
divided into the numbers representing the base. It may be easy to also consider every time the hour hand goes past 0 to add another hour hand to count up the next range of numbers. Now you have actually seen this configuration many times. If you look at a car odometer or an electricity or gas meter you will see a configuration quite similar. This is represented by a

series of dials with numbers written around the outer edge of the wheel. The wheels are in series and each one represents another hour hand in the example above. However there are differences! In the digital type readouts in meters the numbers can click from one to another (in some cases slowly revolve) and when actual digital readouts took over the numbers do click from one to the
next in an instant (relatively). So we find digital is more accurate than analogue, digital music is clearer, watches are more accurate and so on. So our belief is that digital is better, but it’s not natures way is it? It does

not go from bright sunshine to snow in an instant (well in Scotland that is arguable :-)), nature takes time to change anything. Therefore the move to digital seems to be in opposition to natures teachings, and what have we discovered about doing that so far!

The analogue clock example from above is more interesting than that we think as you can point the hand along the 2.7… and state this may represent the number e, along 1.44… etc. and say this is the root of 2, 3.141… and say this is pi. None of these are disputable as they might point to the exact irrational (remember irrational == crazy or never ending) number. If the
hand moves across these numbers we can say they will point to each of these numbers at some point. Try that with a √ very powerful computer, and wonder then why this simple mechanical device may work. We cannot get a computer to point to e or Pi or 2 but a simple dial with an analogue hour hand can! Is digital more accurate?

1.10 Time

OK before we proceed here let’s get something straight, there’s a diagram we are all aware of and this is the diagram of our solar system. We all know it with the sun at the middle and the planets forming large ellipses around it, yes! no! this is completely wrong as well. If indeed the earth formed a huge ellipse around the sun we would have 2 very hot summers per year and 2 very cold winters per year. In fact it would be so hot the surface would
likely scorch and so cold we would be a ball of ice. This is obviously not the case, so why ! why are we shown these pictures, well in fact it’s rather embarrassing when you find out. These pictures are more interesting to look at that the almost concentric circles the solar system actually is, completely at
almost concentric circles (actually it is a very slight ellipse, as Kepler and others showed, although nothing quite like the pictures we have in our minds, which are rather boring). So to keep us interested we all tell ourselves a lie, or more accurately let ourselves believe a lie, a lie that’s so
impossible it is almost inconceivable! Sorry about that, that was an introduction to how we came to look up to the stars and planets and wonder how it all worked. How does it get cold sometimes and for how long, and what does how long mean? These questions were all very important to early

humans and ancestors because how could we calculate how to plant seeds etc. Well you could argue just watch the animals they have it sussed, and in fact this answer is way smarter than we realise, animals do have it sussed, but how? well that’s for later.

So many years ago a system of watching the stars and calculating numbers to represent how many darkness periods there were in the time it took the earth to go around the sun from a point in space and return to that point became a year, eventually. Breaking things down further we needed to calculate when the heat would appear and when the cold would come. This meant breaking the number for a year down somehow to smaller increments, that was
seasons, then months and then weeks. On of the most interesting divisions is that of months and these are related to the 12 zodiac signs and the planets related to them. So in between planting seed we had time to conjure up unearthly beings or Gods to occupy ourselves with, after all what could have made the thing we call earth and why?

Enough of that. The point is there were numbers representing all this stuff, not base 10 or calender related dates (not our modern calender anyway) but many other things like, sun lining up with cracks in caves, stones lining up with planets etc. and these things appeared everywhere and amaze us even to this day as to their accuracy and more interestingly some of the stones line up
with planets and stars that were likely not visible in the days the stones were laid. We’re maybe not as smart as our forefathers yet in many ways, but thankfully not all, I hope. Here is an example of nature not following our maths system of base ten and in fact being, well nature and doing it differently. Even today’s calender is in question, if you think about it we

went from the year 1 BC (Before Christ) to the year 1 AD (Ano Domini) but what of year zero. Our calender started at year 1 soafter a year we were at  year 2, so as a child is 1 after a year our calendar was 2. This is even more amusing when you consider the years are counted backwards towards zero (BC) before year 1 (I would not have enjoyed that time counting down to a date we did not know then) so they are actually negative years going back
in time, but yet we automatically remove the minus sign and do not consider going back in years ! So our current calender had no initial few months before zero like a child who is less than 1 is said to be x months old etc. our own time just went straight to 1. This is another example of us being able to accept illogical and mathematically very debatable concepts in our ideas of time. It also shows though that whether there is a God or Jesus it was
good that there was an event that we used to start the calendar at, no matter what the event was as counting years in numbers requires a start time, even though arguably we should have started at year zero.

Therefore we now see that our concept of time is that it’s constant (otherwise our clocks would have expanding and contracting faces with added and removed numbers) or so we believe. If we look at time a little bit closer then we realise there’s something far from constant about it in fact. Take
satellite GPS systems where remote objects (satellites) beam down signals to devices we hold and these devices (GPS receivers) calculate the distance from each satellite and triangulate our current position very accurately. However it is interesting when further researching this very worthwhile tool that we look at how it works a tiny bit closer. The hand-held device needs to know
how far each satellite is and it does this using time! so each satellite transmits a signal with a time stamp, our device reads the time stamp and uses the very elementary speed time distance triangle calculation (dist = speed / time) where we know the speed of radio waves (radio waves are like light waves just of
different frequencies from what we consider light, later we find out everything is!) through air, we know the time and we can work out the distance. This seems reasonably easy to understand and it is (although

geostationary satellites are not at constant height orbits, and therefore the speed of light through space and through our atmosphere is different and therefore changing every small time increment, but ignoring this for now) until, however we see that the satellite ground stations have to transmit time corrections to the satellite’s to maintain accuracy. This is mainly (but not
completely as noted earlier) due to the fact time way up there is going slower than way down here on earth. So time may be constant but it’s also using going at different speeds at different points in space. On earth, if you want to go forward in time (well actually time to go slower for you) just stand up, to go back in time (well actually time to go faster for you) lie down, it’s
just that the increments of faster or slower in time as so small you will not see them, but it’s true you are time travelling in the actual sense of the phrase! So is time constant, or constantly changing, or relatively constant at constant distances from planets and objects in space (which is impossible) ? It
certainly seems like another notion we do not quite understand but again within limits we can deal with it, albeit we also ignore lots of facts about time.

1.11 Truth

Truth is something we are also inclined to be negligent about and consider it  something we have or own and something we mostly (I hope) look after, but we constantly go against it. Take for instance the person who states they would never harm or kill an animal, whilst eating a hamburger! or the person who says I would never steal, whilst wearing a tee shirt made in a sweat shop
somewhere in the developing world. There’s loads of incidents and it’s interesting to look a bit further and understand what’s going on here. It’s only investigation so not to worry, we will see we are all terrible liars and extremely honest! We know a lie is defined as being an untruth or the opposite of truth, we have also seen so far there’s likely a couple of

untruths we have been proliferating through our lives. It’s very likely then so far we have started to realise we lie and the truth is maybe something we search for but only from a source of either unknown or misinformation to a great extent. The truth or the ultimate truths we strive to attain are very

difficult and require to be compartmentalised. Any truth we know is only a truth if the foundations we used to calculate that truth are themselves true. As we know without any question we are not in possession of all the facts of the world (nature again) then we know that there can not really be a truth. So our truths and beliefs are all based on information that we know is wrong,
therefore our truths are incorrect. An example is aircraft lift, for many years there was belief that planes wings (and yacht sails) created a lift force due to

splitting air molecules and forcing one through a longer route than the other. The lift being created by the longer route molecules creating a vacuum, this is now shown to be wrong (surprisingly! or maybe not). What really happens is the wings cut through the air and the speed of the air passing under the
wing causes the lift (it’s not really lift). It’s surprisingly just the same as putting your hand out the window of a moving car and adjusting the angle to the ground and feeling our arm being raised or pushed down. Regardless though the equations work almost in the same way when designing these wings or setting a sail in a racing yacht.

In the same way in the UK we use electric current flow in one direction and in America it’s the opposite that is believed, again it’s not so important and the equations work (although there is minus sign issues at times). So we can be wrong but still stuff works. So even when we see nature does what we think
it should, given our knowledge we still have to realise we do not have the big picture, only nature has and it will show us some new rules every so often, we just need to be prepared to accept them and that means admission of being wrong, for the really smart it’s not admission it should be gleeful acceptance. That is the path enlightenment lives on.

This knowledge can allow us to expand our minds well beyond any existing under standing. The absolute understanding we are in fact wrong probably about nearly everything we currently know is arguably the only way we can grow as a species. This is not what the current system teaches us, but looking back at history we have nearly always had to alter our knowledge base as the
fundamentals (or first principles) are altered. There is lots of proof of this, think of Archimedes and maths, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Maxwell Clerk, Einstein and many others who showed us new ways and on occasion re-addressed some mistakes and in some cases by causing massive upheaval and rewriting of what we believed our knowledge was. sometimes this happened at great cost, with people being killed by burning,
drowning or simply beaten to death, just for uncovering new truths.

We are not, as a species, tolerant of change and this has to change. Only a strong and well founded education system that relishes differences and thirsts new knowledge and belief will allow this to happen.

1.12 Our own bodies

By the time we get to primary school (starts at 5 years old in Scotland) and do a couple of years study we can read and write with some degree of ability. What we maybe do not realise is that we were never born!

So we are all aware that our cells replenish a lot, that’s why children grow and adults slowly age, cells are replaced by newer cells and some of the newer cells maybe are not so good as the old ones were and we age etc. So again we all know this, it’s empirical we can see it or at least the effects of it. It also
does not surprise us to learn that pretty much (lets consider 100% here just now) all of our cells are replaced frequently. Again it’s no surprise to learn the oldest cell we have is approx seven years old and will be replaced very soon in this case. None of this is real news, so what’s the idea here ?

Well now put all this together like the solar system picture we learn, we can see there’s a glaring omission in our thinking, at 7 years old were a completely new body from we were born, arghh!, even more alarming is to think the person we go home to and call mother is not the person who gave birth to us, neither of us was at the birth ! So seven years after looking out the window at the bird which a part of landed in our brain, is the bird still there
or forgotten and if it’s there then is it on a new piece of matter ?

So we leaned we can do time travel pretty easily and now we see we can do matter transport just as easy, in fact we cannot, not do matter transport as our cells are being left behind and new ones growing continually! Some of these understanding may make later revelations and perhaps untruths easier to accept as being remotely plausible.

Further Education

2.1 Fork in the road

So on we go to further education, secondary school, college,university and so on and what are we achieving. Well lets look back for a minute at primary education all the way to here. We had our parents likely teaching us (even if we did not realise it) and perhaps nursery teachers and then school teachers.
Hopefully they all  did a good job, but what were they teaching us? I think they were teaching us knowledge, but not a split up or single track of knowledge but just knowledge. So in furthering our education we perhaps for the first time in our lives realise something (or are trained to), and this is a

very peculiar thing indeed, more strange than some of the initial chapter. We are not only told we cannot keep learning knowledge but in fact we are prohibited from doing so by the whole weight of the education system. It is time to stop learning knowledge that’s what furthering our studies is forcing us to do. This is the time in our lives that we start to make choices about

what part of knowledge we want to explore, is it Literature and arts or maths and science ? This is perhaps required due to the mechanisms we use to teach but also very dangerous indeed. It is important to recall what we are all trying to learn about and what issues we are looking to solve (otherwise we don’t need education we just need a good book with the answer in it). All we

are studying and learning about is nature and that’s it. Nature as we know is everything around us, animals, water, all the basic chemical compounds, plants, trees, sky, planets, stars etc. even questions like who are we? why are we ? are part of the study if nature. Now we are told you can only use certain tools to find these answers, sort of like saying to a car mechanic, you may fix
this car but can only choose a subset of tools to do it with and beforehand we cannot tell you what’s the problem is, it may need repeated or a new engine, but you Can only choose a small set of tools from this tool-bag. The further we go into education the lesser the set of tools we are allowed to use and likely the cars we attempt to repair are extremely more complex. This is one of the ultimate dichotomies of an apparently educated society.

2.2 Cement the disbelief

To achieve this dichotomy in a way we can accept we need to do some work to force ourselves into certain untruths again. Sorry but this is how we do things, or at least have done so far. So we need to choose only some tools and not others, in the above analogy. A good way to accept this is to imagine the tools we did not choose were only tools we could not use anyway, they are
either rubbish and don’t work (although we know they do for others) or there too complex (although OK for others) or there simply the wrong tools (although there OK for others). There we have a bag of half-truths we can use. So now we need to cement these truths and we have some help along the way. As we now segregate into our groups who have all chosen the same tools we find a very powerful force that humanity has made enormous use of
in the past to perpetuate many kinds of half-truths. This force is found in groups of peers, peers who share a same belief and can enhance that by agreement with your lies. Hey I have the same lie you’re unlikely to hear but absolutely that’s the truth you’re very likely to hear. There we go it’s becoming cemented now, nearly enough to believe the other students who picked different tools are wrong. (I know and so do you we all did it).

Now we can go into class and be rearmed from our mentor and idol for the time were there, the teacher, that our beliefs are correct this is the best subject (tool) to have chosen and holds such wonder and merriment that life without this tool would be woefully incomplete. Job done, lie is set. But! this is a strange lie as we probably have several subjects and hear the same thing
in all of them from possibly different peers and different teachers, but then we have another protection we can adapt and reform the lie to oh all these tools are so good, none are bad and yet I am glad I did not choose the others cause there obviously all the wrong tools for life on this planet, he he!. We
ignore that each tool is the best thing to have chosen and now it’s a set of the best things to have chosen, we can adapt truths to match our beliefs very quickly. I am painting a very poor picture here and please forgive me but I need to get this point driven home then tear it all down again, hopefully.

2.3 Laws and Theories

In many subjects we have what is referred to as laws. A law is something that allows theories to be proven by experiment or vision in nature. A theory is the opposite of this, it may be something that sounds right, or has maths that appear to work, but not yet proven completely by experiment (or seen continually and consistently in nature).

Something that is extraordinary is that this is a fundamental and absolute foundation of our knowledge, however, we teach people theories as though they are laws. As time goes by these theories (still unproven) are added to with more theories on top of the original idea. After this we build great universities and education establishments and all these with professors, lecturers and impart these theories onto students. These students then
believe the theories are true (they are not really told or reminded of this fact). As the students themselves become industry employees and perhaps even lecturers themselves the theory becomes further believed, until we forget it was a theory in the first place.

We must have theories and we must constantly remind ourselves these theories are simply theories. This is a thing to investigate, not to believe is true, in fact acceptance of a theory as true is what propaganda tries to do when persuading
people you are correct and they are wrong, it’s also what many believe religion is and this is not something that should ever be taught as correct. It should be part of education, but firmly in the theory category and never in the law category, until proven to a level that satisfies us it is absolute and measurable. There are many examples of this, far to numerous to mention, but even simply looking back and seeing all the discoveries that

happened and are still happening it is obvious we must continue to check and recheck what we teach children. Electrons or photons with the wave/partial duality is an example, this whole thing is in disarray and thought to be corpuscular (particles) in fact. I know I was taught light was a wave and I believe many others have been, and still probably are. This is something we have to address, before the untruth is cemented into an education system
that then builds on a theory that is wrong. What makes this a disaster is that we would take marks off or penalise a student who used the correct or updated theory over the currently being taught incorrect theory, this is amazing and casts the education system as a weapon against knowledge growth rather than as the most important allay.

2.4 E = MC²

Physics, an amazing subject, the study of maths applied to nature and the constant search for the answer to the next thing we don’t know!

Many people do not understand physics due the predominantly mathematical nature of the subject but we all actually use physics daily in many ways. Whereas not many people can relate to physics we all know a couple of things about it. One such thing is the famous Swiss Patent Clerk Albert Einstein, seen as the scruffy doddering genius and loving it. An icon of the modern
world and revered by many as the ultimate brain Einstein on top of the works of his predecessors came up with a few good theories and the famous equation E = MC² which I have never bought into. This equation is misrepresented in may ways by many people either eminent physicians or simply ordinary folks, not that physicians are not ordinary folks mind.

Primarily this is part of a theory, not a law! that means it is not proved conclusively, although it shows promise. So what does that all mean?

There are a few things this equation shows, energy and mass are related directly if we introduce a constant. That’s really about it, it’s a mass energy swapping device, i.e. mass can become energy and energy can become mass.

So why do I have a problem? I remember as a child playing with batteries and motors and bulbs and realising that when I first saw a dynamo (DC generator on a wheel of a bike) I had an epiphany, anything that can make energy

can be made from energy. This was my understanding from my very limited experiments with coiling wire and moving magnets through them and creating electricity (reverse motor), or heating a coil to create electricity (reverse bulb) etc. of course I realised this was true but energy losses appeared considerable so I looked at them. I seen that the heat I used to heat a coil was nearly
all lost to the atmosphere and the energy used by me from food and air was to hard to measure to see how much I lost moving that magnet through a coil. I was convinced though that there may not be energy conservation there was certainly energy conversion from one form and always back again. I still do!

Lately I have studied some of Einstein, Penrose, Feynman (best yet I think) and some others along with going back and looking at some maths bits and pieces, but doing so yearning to know rather than needing to pass a test. In this time I have revisited my early thinking which was squished out of me I think a wee bit by modern society or something.

There are a few issues here at play and there quite interesting. First though let me say all these chaps and women who have gone down the road of learning nd taking us further have done fantastically well, much better than I could, but never the less, there’s some questions physics students have and there largely ignored I feel. Examples of these are:

• You cannot move something faster than the speed of light • Some sub atomic particles appear to have no mass • Lots of distant objects depend on general relativity and the speed of light to measure properly

There are some more but let’s tackle these a bit at a time. OK Muons travelling through glass move faster than the speed of light. So it’s nothing can move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum some will say. Well I feel it’s not the approaching speed of light that’s the issue it’s finding a vacuum. Space is not a vacuum as we know know so does that mean we can travel
faster than light in a non vacuum, muons and some other particles can!

Sub atomic particles appear to start life with no mass and get mass somehow, from big bang theories mass must have come from somewhere, we are searching for a Higgs Boson in CERN now with the large hadron collider which smashes hadrons together to create images of what the big bang may have looked like. This is done to attempt to emulate the beginning of what we understand as the universe.

Now there’s the last point and I will lump it together in this little trip down insanity lane again for a while. If light exists, and were pretty sure it does, it’s the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see (we can feel, smell etc.

other parts of it, hmm!). If it exists it must not have at one point i.e. till you switch on a torch bulb for instance and electrons thrash about and give of photons of light corpuscles (particles basically). So it’s moving at the speed of light in the stuff were also in (our atmosphere, the atmosphere in the
room etc.) but how did it get to that speed and in how long a time. Well apparently instantly which means immediately it must have accelerated faster than the speed of light to get there, so a scalar limit can be broken by a vector quantity, eh? I mean give light direction and it can go faster than the scalar
constant that is it’s aparent limit. That’s strange.

OK that’s issue 1, but what about the rest. Well if you imagine light accelerates from rest (which it kinda has to) and reaches a speed in the matter it’s currently in (whether space or here on earth) and stays at that speed till the matter changes (i.e. in any matter the light instantaneously slows or accelerates to the light matter velocity and remains static at that velocity). This may seem weird but it’s just maybe we don’t think like this
normally so keep that mind open a wee bit longer. If light can accelerate/decelerate faster than light velocity (which is the C
in C² ) then we have something we can cope with, though a tough way of getting there I admit. This is that we can see light as a normal (in our middle earth limited view of everything) object with inertia, gathering momentum and eventually stopping (or being absorbed). So it’s like a car starting driving to its top speed and staying there. If you move the car to a higher altitude
with better gripping roads it may go faster than if you drive it through thick sand. There ye go we can see light like a car now. So imagine at the sub atomic level if light speed is quite small and at cosmic distances its very fast (faster than C), what would this mean? well according to Einstein and demonstrated in laboratories there is a relationship between mass and speed, if

you accelerate faster you get more mass, decelerate and you get less mass. So slower speed less mass, this seems reasonable. If this is the case and the previous paragraph is correct then at the sub atomic level (slow light) mass would be tiny and in fact at zero speed there’s zero mass, aha the invisible Higgs Boson may not be required after all, as particles will get mass with

speed. Now what of those distant planets who appear massive, more so that we would have imagined in many cases (I hear this a lot, we found a planet in a solar system but it seems very massive). What if the lights not going at the speed of light all the way there and back as we imagine, thereby giving us the ability to verify mass, what if the lights going slower, then the planets
would not be as massive. Could this be an answer to a riddle ? who knows but it’s worth more thought and we will get back to it soon. We need to remember questions create knowledge listening only permeates it.

Nature of thought

3.1 Language

What’s makes us soft, tough, expressive, accurate or mellow ? If we study the language used to communicate then we can see a lot of our culture in that language. I am sure this is quite well known but I am not sure how well understood. Looking at Chinese or Far Eastern languages in general which can be made up of essentially symbols very different from Middle Eastern or Western symbols. What does this mean first?

Well all symbols are different somehow but the general structure of symbols in these cases are interesting i.e. Arabic with its long owing very joined up right to left direction is very different from the almost box shaped very regular symbols of the Far East, and also very different from Latin or Germanic based languages as in the West which seem to form some basic shapes which are repeated or joined vertically to form our symbols.

The language structure of each of these regions (and within them) is also very telling, i.e. in native Scott’s language (Gaelic) there is no real way to express yes or no and in fact it’s considered a spoken language. This means that stories and teachings are passed down orally and therefore this is one reason
perhaps Scott’s are considered relatively honest in the world as dishonesty, especially when Gaelic was prevalent, would have hampered teaching and historic records. Compared with today’s use of a language which is very much a written one and we find contracts and certificates important, i.e. written proof as it were. Although when we can rely on the written word and treat it
with more respect that the spoken word we find the spoken word is very often used to express untruths (and confidence trickery) and this may be due in part to the fact that this can be tolerated as the written word is the ultimate truth (well lawyers would certainly say so).

Perhaps seeing the spoken word as the ultimate truth would force society to be more open and honest as arguably the Gaels were and probably still are to this day. I single out Scotland here for this example only, there are lots of  xamples of this through history, i.e. even in English prior to written testament by the masses was possible and pre-Gutenberg1 then perhaps the situation in England was very similar.

Now worldwide we have the situation where speeches reflect feeling on occasion but the written testament or agreements are what matters most. Presidents can talk of getting rid of all nuclear weapons for example but until an agreement is in writing[footnote: Printing press technology to allow the creation of cheap and available to the masses, copies of written text or books as we call them.
] which we tend to photograph and celebrate, then it’s not really considered real or lawful. This is an example of how understated and less respected the spoken word can be. In noting this it’s also interesting how countries may then use actual spoken words of foreign nationals etc., which may be out

of context or overstated in a passionate address, to invade their countries and ignore written testament to the contrary. So we trust the written word almost exclusively except when we have something that’s perhaps not supported or even not completely true to be carried out and then we rely on the

here-say to allow us an element of obfuscation from our actual motives.

This happens in nearly all walks of society where we cannot buy a car without paperwork but we can put somebody in jail for years with false evidence or witnesses who are less than truthful. It is a strange dichotomy we seem to be able to follow very easily and ignore the weird nature of language in it’s forms which alter from acceptable to not acceptable depending on the circumstance it’s used.

Looking at world events of great importance we see the largest events are very much based on oral communications which must be misunderstood as we do go to war ! Smaller issues where control of masses are involved require a paper trail to ensure control is retained over great periods of time and unlike the larger world events which tend to be relatively quickly undertaken and
therefore in no need of paper trails to remind us (in case we were wrong, think weapons of mass destruction). This lack of tangible evidence serves many purposes and not al l of them would appear honourable.

Of course it is not acceptable to expect all ma jor events, due to their very nature, to have written communication. This section merely hints at the issues involved in traversing from a spoken word society to one of written word and maybe doing so very quickly without a chance to create some ground rules or learn how we could do it most effectively.

3.2 Nature of perception of goodness

What drives change and why? Are good deeds done by selfish people?

I have heard people state, there is no such thing as a good gesture and everyone is helping themselves and not helping others, especially active charity workers and the like. I understand this thought process and perhaps even agree, but looking further there is good reason. Again nature is amazing and has likely planned all this.

We all have issues and are built to imagine our past could always be better, this may be abusive parents, too caring parents or other issues like environmental or social standing etc. The list is endless actually and great that it is. So why would somebody wish to help others, is that person saving

themselves, in the bigger picture does that even matter. In the study of complexity theory we learn things like the buttery effect and why small changes can lead to enormous differences, even catastrophic at times. In general good grows good and vice verse.

So are good deeds selfish or are they actually you being a good person. I firmly believe it’s the same thing! This is where I agree with the no good deed is pure and only for others, notion. It cannot be, but in the same token it makes complete sense and if anything it makes the good deed even more important. 3.3 What about bad people doing bad deeds and what is a bad deed? I think there is a disease in society and it takes many forms;

Greed and money lust fighting every possible fight acting without knowledge, believing bad too quickly, constantly shouting at injustice (even perceived). Of course religious and political extremism need to be added, I think considering these as the same thing and just extremism is good enough. I can see no difference in either, in both cases children are influenced into one
‘church’ or another or in some cases go to the other ‘church’ in defiance of some other issue (usually parents or early peer pressure).

So lets get straight to it, there are probably no completely bad people, even mass murderers and rapists have been interviewed and seen as really nice calm and caring individuals and to many who know them this is what they are, but to their victims they are the devil incarnate and rightly so! So there are people who are a bit bad and a bit good, this works in reverse as well so it’s a
relative balance, but what is the constituent part of our make up that can be considered the fulcrum of this scale of good verses evil.

Who can judge the middle part, or do we take a simpler view, there is an extreme bad and crossing that makes somebody permanently bad (it seems that is the case). So what about extreme good, can a person do so much good there outcast as an extremest. Well it depends on the judges, does it not? In the latter example if the judges are extremist religious group who
celebrate the ultimate sacrifice (and good deed) of a suicide bomber who skilfully kills lots of ‘the enemy’. So who is the judge, is it the majority, what then of minority protection, should we abandon this and just kill all the red headed people for instance? My hair goes red in the sun, so I had better be careful here. These, in my opinion, are all examples of lack of true educationand free thinking. Let’s go back to our minority group, the extremists, that is religious and political activists (yes activists, not extreme activists, just activists). There are some famous experiments carried out at Stanford University in California that look into human perceived levels of crossing the line (or placing the fulcrum), in all of these experiments it howed the evil (relatively measured) everyone is not only capable of, but indeed easily (in a few hours) adopt

what we would consider an evil personality and not only that but maintain it and allow it to grow very quickly. The reason for some of these experiments was to try and thought out just how some atrocities can happen like the holocaust or what the crusaders did to the Muslims and the uncountable mass acts of barbarism there are to choose from. One test was to take people from the street and take them into a room with a scientific adviser, who was an actor that represented the authority thought. The people were told to read out questions to another person who was hidden behind a wall. An incorrect

answer meant the quiz master (the person of the street) would flip a switch administering an electric shock to the person behind the wall. These people (over 80%) administered shocks in an ever increasing manner to well over 400Volts, which of course is deadly. The person behind the wall would scream after each shock and in latter stages make no noise as though they were unconscious (or worse). Regardless the people administering the
tests did apply these deadly shocks, which of course were fake. This test was carried out twice with the same results, people would take action that kills when told to do so or by being relieved of the authority of killing.

Another test carried out twice (as far as I know) was to take Stanford students and split them into 2 groups, prison wardens and prisoners. This was started by the police rushing into their homes and taking the students to a jail. The test had to be abandoned both times after a short period as the wardens became extremely controlling and actually started to make the prisoners
perform sexual acts and other acts that were incredibly degrading. The experiment was stopped and psychiatrists were required from many students to recover from the ordeal. Why ? you may ask did they do this, and that is the unanswered question, never the less it is the case this is what did happen.

This gives clear results and shows we are very easily manipulated, but it leaves a bigger question, what’s natural, evil or good? there was no attempt to answer this question, perhaps we are to scared to know. I note another interesting thing about these experiments though, they seem to be mostly
measured against men, I did not see any women involved, perhaps there is a clue there. Were men evolved from hunters and therefore fighters with ability

to kill and do so without remorse or much thought? Did it have to be like this to get us to where we currently are? and is this a mostly dormant although overwhelming emotion that exists in us all. I know many previous people say it is, but that is too easy and a cop out headline hunting thing to say.

What about women then, are they naturally programmed to not question these acts? I would think they have to be. Just as much as it’s possible for a male to be ‘evil’ it’s possible for a female to ignore that. Maybe that is why so many men get married in prison to women they have not met!

Is it wrong then? Well it’s probably not, it is what nature had to do to get us

here, where we are today. Therefore we need to not only accept it but be thankful for it. Is that getting better ?

Absolutely! If we take all known data about population and deaths, particularly deaths of a person by another (including all war) then there is an exponential decay. This means we are moving towards zero, but unlikely ever to get there. This is what exponential decay means, not a worry we may be so close to zero it’s immeasurable. What ? pardon ? how can that be ?

Well people kill people in a variety of ways, perhaps the recent banking crisis has killed more people than say a few plane crashes or wars (personally I think it has). These deaths may be subtle like people who commit suicide due to it or people who have not been able to live their dream of creating a new thing for us all, effectively killed as far as humanity is concerned as they may now never fully contribute. This not not zero but closer and the closer we get to that we have to imagine we are evolving for the better.

This is all related to education and education is at the root of all of this seemingly misplaced chapter. As people realise their own value and can question even their deepest beliefs with clarity and full acceptance of the opposite being more likely we will get to the magic zero.

Nature of Consciousness

4.1 Natures very clever game

Nature is what we refer to as the ever evolving mixture of molecules, atoms and cells which form things, these things can be animals, plants, structures etc. but in essence there all evolving and must have evolved if we are to believe once there was nothing or a big bang. It is interesting to note this big
bang theory is again a theory, we may always have been here, or perhaps we never were! The answer is likely in between these two hypothesis.

An interesting theory that I have been playing with recently is that thought, just like any other thing is also evolving. So whether other beings are capable of thought is irrelevant here in this debate, thereby making it an easier hypothesis to follow.

4.2. So how does this work then ?

Looking back as far as we feasibly can in time and history we see the  evolution of speech or communication beyond basic sounds into what we call today language. This language may be recorded,written, spoken, sung etc. and we use it in many ways. The  driving force behind the communication ability (beyond the evolution of vocal chords such as ours) is often referred to as
thought or intelligence (which I do not favour, Canadian tree frogs can freeze solid and thaw out again, year in year out without damage, we cannot manage that with all our intelligence). As time has passed to the current day we can map out the advances in communication and now we have the Internet and global communications for the first time and this is improving

exponentially. This is much more remarkable time in our evolution than I feel most people realise. We still have governments and large companies saying things such as we cannot yet measure the benefits of a more integrated and

faster Internet, therefore cannot spend money on it! This must be one of the most ludicrous statements and a clear example of a society with insanity at it’s core. We all see increased communications as one of the most dramatic changes to our life’s and yet when looking at improving it we feel we need to have the ability to time travel forward to make doubly sure it works, with
all the weight of evidence that it does so readily available. If you now think laterally it would appear thought takes a part in this evolution, as thought (or consciousness) evolves then we communicate more effectively. An example is the fact we kill less people today than every before (if you map the amount of people killed by people throughout history the graph is an exponential

decay, almost getting to zero now, this includes all wars and genocidal acts of recent times). As we have already seen nature is far more complex than we can understand today and can achieve things we cannot such as the

tree frog or bacteria that live in radiation etc. It appears then that thought is an evolutionary issue and this may explain other issues as well, such as why are so many people depressed these days (animals don’t seem to be as affected). Could it be this evolutionary process is like every other i.e. there’s lots of mistakes along the way that are rectified in later generations of
the evolutionary process. This would also indicate there’s another issue nature has to deal with and perhaps it does it very well. This issue is filtering,

how can a collection of thoughts be added together in a random fashion. Well the answer is it cannot! unless we introduce filtering.

4.2 Natures Filter

So how does the filter work ? If we look at people then there’s a pretty large body of evidence that secluded people become ill fast and generally do not survive too long. Also we should note that people are automatic filters, by this I mean if you listen to a story you may repeat it (adding to collective intelligence) or you may be bored by the story and not repeat it, thereby
naturally filtering what gets passed on. As you grow then you gather lots of information personal to you that you do not pass on such as your own memories, everything your eyes see (and also filter to an extent) and every feeling you have. As you age the brain fills up with a lot more of this

and you are left with a head full of these thoughts like a washing machine with a dirty filter, it starts to clog up. As you age then you also communicate less and slow down, thereby discovering less to pass on (in many cases) and this is where nature has built the perfect filter, death ! That’s correct as
the filtering device is age and the person is less able to add to the collective thoughts or consciousness then nature terminates the collection of molecules that we call humans. This theory may seem absurd, but it is just a theory and perhaps it fit’s more than we realise. Nature is very complex and

extremely efficient, when you look and see that any action such as turning left instead of right at a junction could influence a seemingly unrelated event on the other side of the world (chaos theory or the buttery effect) then you can begin to understand the hugely complex realm nature has created.

So back to the theory of thought. If nature is complex and we believe it is, it also must have a rule set which ensures that each part of nature obeys the purpose for which is was evolved or created to do. In this case then we see animals or plants that are ill formed, die and wither away to be absorbed into the collection of stuff that is our universe, only the be born again
as something else. This is the ultimate recycling system. we also see severely injured organisms who fail to perform their roles as intended, also die out and get recycled. As humans we have overcome some of these otherwise fatal events and have done so amazingly well, with medicines and suchlike. We

do however live in this complex thing called earth that we do not understand or can comprehend. The question has to be that if we keep interfering with nature and bending these rules, without a complete understanding of the machine, what will be the outcomes? Will nature have an overall strategy to deal with this forced change of rules by one species, it very well may.

Again though if we consider a part of nature we have not been able to meddle with yet, thought or consciousness. The study of the computer or brain is staring to try and unravel some of these rules, but it is still at an extraordinary elementary stage at this time. We cannot understand much of the brain, although for years we talk of a right hand side, left hand side thinker, which
is preposterous as we have no clue if left hand side of the brain can function as a logical side with the right hand side as the creative side. This is a silly meme we all take as true, even when the science world could tell us they do not know, for some reason we maintain a belief that we know this to be true.
Startling actually!As somebody once said If I have an apple and you have an  apple

then we have an apple each, if I give you mine there are still only two apples and I am left without, however if we have a thought each and share this then we each have two thoughts. I think that although this is true, there is more to it than wefirst see. The sharing of a thought between people is a very
complex thing. If we imagine that there are thousands of thoughts each and every one of us has a different set of thoughts, then imagine each person thoughts as a circle (Venn diagram for all you maths people). Each circle contains all the thoughts of a single individual. Now imagine drawing this diagram, but this time show each persons shared thoughts. If we could freeze the thought transfer process and stop everyone thinking for a while
this may be eventually possible, although we need a sentient being to create the drawing as any human would increase the complexity by merely thinking about drawing it. So we can see this Venn diagram would be extremely complex and ever changing. Now introduce the Internet and connect everyone to it, the diagram is now crazy and showing symptoms of Brownian

type motion. We have seen this before, have we not? This is an example of entropy or as some have coined the phrase the arrow of time. As this diagram grows the complexity only gets more complex and never simpler. Here nature is doing it’s wonderful job right in front of our eyes and we are not as aware

of it as we should. This entropy is exponential, which means the increased shared knowledge is exponentially increasing (we do not really know the rate), so the question is, are we ready for what comes next ?

So back to sharing that idea or thought. Now the questions is easier to formulate in our mind, who exactly are we sharing the thought with ? is it only the person we speak to, as he is connected to everyone else indirectly or is it a collective? I believe it is the latter, which brings a new and fresh approach to this question, or should I say answer. The answer is we are
sharing it with ourselves, we are giving ourselves back the idea, but it’s now measured, calculated, postulated and well formed and associated with all other ideas in this collective, of which we are all part. Whack or what ?

So if this is what nature has created, then it must have a mechanism for ensuring the collective thoughts or consciousness are constantly updated and accurate. If we think back to the assumption that we learn errors and perpetuate them, then if nature is smart, it has a way of fixing that situation. Again death performs an important role here. If we have educated a
person with false knowledge (at earth folks), then it much easier to end that train of thought (kill off the person) and create a new person who will be taught the correct ways of working. That new person will then add to the collective thoughts and x the old mistakes, basically by introducing many new ideas on top of the new found approach he was created to achieve.

If this is indeed how nature works, and it seems very plausible, then it must have created us to add to this consciousness. So what about people who do not? This is where the contentious issue may lie, as we grow old or merely have been around for a while, then our early ideas will be old now and newer and better ideas are in play. We lose the ability to add to the collective, by dis
association, we may get boring or perhaps reclusive, either way the collective is not gaining from us and if natures game is to create a consciousness, then we are not relevant any more. So nature builds in a protection mechanism and this is death and the journey to it. as we distance ourselves from the ability to add to the collective and interesting conversations, we become more
depressed or less happy, this in turn starts to allow our bodies to begin decay and eventual extinction. This is a fantastic mechanism and as with many things in nature, it works exceptionally well.

So death is required to continue the advancement of mankind or at least grow the collective consciousness. This may also explain why as we evolved we now live longer as we have better communications and mechanisms in place to allow continued addition of knowledge to the collective consciousness. If this is indeed the case then nature has again outsmarted us by a long
way. We may even learn this is true (remember this is a theory and not

a law) and begin to accept this constant recycling is necessary and should be something we all understand and perhaps we can accept death for the natural process it is and maybe the young should be thanking the older people for dying, not mourning death and fearing it. It does make their job of using new knowledge and getting it accepted by the collective that much easier. We can
see the reduction in racism, sexism and many other things require older generations to die off and a great thing that is. This also begs, another question and one which many people spend a lot of time pondering. Is there a way to prolong life ? I know when I was about seven or eight years old my grandfather died and I spent days wandering alone in the playground at School, thinking about this and realising I did not want to die. I still feel that way actually. Imagine though if nature has in fact arranged death for the reasons mentioned above and we cheat. If we can continue to add

new information then perhaps we are valuable and nature keeps us OK and alive. This would mean maintain the ability to be articulate, whether writing, speaking or inventing new stuff. It would also mean we learn a lesson that has so far eluded people and this is the lesson of complete humility and acceptance of new truths, the ability to accept new information and redo our
understanding of what we previously believed to be true. Now this would not be simple, think of the Venn diagram again, extremely complex and indicative of the links of all the bits of knowledge we have when added to the collective, which as we know comes back to us in our thought process.

Is this possible? you may ask and I believe it is, although it’s like infinity, it’s a destination we never reach but can certainly journey towards it.

An Option For The Future

5.1 A blueprint

“Would it not be great to have an educated society?”, yes ! of course we all agree. However there is a major issue, and this is simply what is education ?

This needs thought and clear thought devoid of prejudiced and entrenched views of what education is. This is difficult as we do have a view of education that’s been taught and hammered home, successfully over years.

Like in life when we think every accountant can count, every lawyer knows he law we also believe that every lecturer knows
best. To add to this there is a ton of people telling us so, from parents, politicians and eventually employers who all seem to think we should have our worth measured in subject based certificates.

Our current education system is based on excellent ideals and foundations, however it is does fail so many people now with it’s rigid approach and pigeon hole approach to identifying people and ability.

5.2 Dropouts and success of dropping out

If we study some of the worlds largest companies and look at the  founders, whom we are either proud of or are very jealous of, they have generally one thing in common, they rarely completed University courses. They mostly did have to go to University to drop out though and again this is important. This shows a thirst for knowledge, but perhaps identifies situations and
circumstances where that was not being fulfilled, in many cases, talking to some people they were frankly bored in a lot of cases.

5.3 Industrialised Education

In the post industrial revolution, motivation for education increased substantially. The good intent to provide global education was driven and accepted by the vast majority, after all an educated society has so much more to offer. It is a great thing to attempt, however mass education like this with children grouped by age and educated in a conveyor belt one size fits all system does have many weaknesses, as well as advantages. The

ability to read, write and count is almost a minimum requirement for today’s society. Mass education of this kind is arguably a good thing, but it is a core skill, like walking we still need to teach talking, jumping and running and we will all do this with varying degrees of ability skill and determination, as it  should
be.

5.4 So what is a qualification ?

We often hear statements like, “you’re not qualified to talk about that!”, and we are presented with ‘expert’ opinion from people who are qualified. The interesting point is that very rarely does a certificate get produced showing a degree or similar in a subject and this is alone accepted as making
somebody, qualified to discuss an important issue. For instance there would not be many expert witnesses in a court that are there simply because they hold a certificate from some University or College! It is nearly always experience in that field that counts, experience is important, the willingness to do something cause you like it. We will come back to that I think.

This is an example of a situation where we as people twist our knowledge and belief structure in a manner that hides what we really know. A paper based qualification does not make one qualified, so why do we refer to these things as qualifications ? So a certificate is a very rough measure of capability in a very specialised and rigidly applied curriculum. What value is there

in such a thing ? Arguably lots if we can consider it from a certain angle and ignore the important stuff. For example a degree in art from one college may show a person is good at art, but what kind of art? what was the basis for this certificate being relevant to an employer looking for somebody versed in art
? For these reasons the certificate is a very rough guide and potentially also a very poor indicator of what the content of the course involved.

For the mechanical and baseline education such as basic maths, writing, reading and arguably drama, languages, art etc. then a certificate can show there is elementary ability in an easy for us all to understand syllabus.

5.5 What is a certificate

We believe a certificate is the golden fleece whilst we study very hard to attain it. During a course that is laid out for us we force ourselves to stay awake in lessons we have no interest in, but are deemed part of the course by the system. A certificate is an approximation of a degree of capability in a
wide ranging course. Advanced courses do specialise in part, although these parts are managed by others who have also been subjected to this system.

Employers take less interest in certificates, people are less interested in certificates. The meaning of certificates has reduced in stature over the post-industrial years and this should be no surprise.

5.6 The Option

To redress the balance of the education system a University that encourages learning, teaching and most importantly the growth of knowledge as opposed to the transfer alone will require to be created. Transferring knowledge in a class where teachers teach and students listen has logically to reduce and water down the totality of knowledge available whilst ignoring the potential of
the students. Given the fact that people, as with any known thing in nature,

will pay attention to what they are interested in and shun what they are not. It makes sense to allow them to levitate to interesting things, this will encourage learning and passing of information to and for. It would appear very logical to provide a system where people with a thirst for knowledge can find it and
find it when they wish, easily, simply and immediately. This is a lot simpler than one can imagine.

The new University

6.1 Entrance Qualifications

This University will not not require any entrance certificates or qualifications. Instead it will provide free to attend classes on several subjects, all subject given by interested teachers. These teachers act as leaders of conversations rather than lecturing continually. Free debates, challenges and actual two way growth of knowledge in many subjects. No overall keeper of any faith or
ego driven megalomaniac, instead a yearning for more, satisfied in every class to varying degrees.

6.2 Exit certificates

As we have already seen, exit certificates are very general and vague. What employers require is people who work in jobs they would love to do, given the opportunity. The intent here is to provide those people and at the same time that opportunity. At any time a student should be able to print off his or her attendance at classes as a means of proof of thirst for knowledge
in a subject range. For instance an Engineering student may show great interest in physics, mathematics and certain forms of Engineering, not generally but specifically and related to the job being applied for if all is well. In this case is may be aeronautical Engineering and associated classes that would allow the Employer to see exactly where this new Engineer would t. It
may be a company or museum or dance troupe looking for people with different skills altogether and again an inspection of the classes attended will show desire and dedication to the task at hand.

now people will think, yes all very good but what if the person attended the classes just to get a job with high pay or get into that dance troupe? Attending does not measure ability, but does it not! remember the basis of this philosophy, people are drawn to what they are interested in and shun what they are not. It would be very unusual indeed form somebody to show interest in areas they have no ability, it makes no sense at all. The longer
the student spends then it should be easy to assume there is ability. In fact this would be easily proven at an interview or trial period of employment.

This model shows no requirement for the existence of certificates and in fact such certificates would undermine any measure of both ability and more importantly desire.

6.3 Funding

Unfortunately we live in a world with opposing driving forces, short term governments and an economy. The latter means we need to show profit and the former means this profit has to be measurable and fast. This does not bode well for education and in fact shows why the system is so industrially focused with mass conveyor belt education machines being forced upon us all.

People see certificates as a way out, a route to money and success, unfortunately if we were better educated as a while we may realise this process is awed at the very core. We must provide a system of education that grows knowledge and that is the foundation we cannot alter, although the short term government system will oppose such ideals as not being in line
with industry requirements. This is a mountain to climb and climb it we must.

So to fund such a venture will require a very focused and determined effort with little regard for immediate measurements. We hear of the arrow of time and increasing entropy, then how can we measure future success, simply we cannot. We must put our faith in nature once more. It has made us what we are and also made us interested in what we are interested in individually. we
should not fight this as we have done in recent years. It is the largest and most destructive war the human race has fought so far.

If we really want to create peace and life saving inventions, then we must let the quest for knowledge be fulfilled. We must also allow the creativity of children to last and grow naturally as it will given the chance. To do this a stand may have to be taken.

The way education should be funded is that on attending a class, a person receives a monetary payment. The more classes the more payment.

This seems like heresy in today’s world. We all think that this will mean people will just go and learn for money. Well so what if they did! although would you sit though a quantum cryptography class for several hours every week or day for years for a few pounds, I think not, well not unless you loved it. In this manner perhaps children who shun today’s system as

elitist or out of reach would initially think there is money in this, then on attending start to learn. In learning they will find it’s not elitist and they are capable of learning and enjoying it, given the range of subjects they can try and see what they like. No pressure or forcing, no stick and no real
carrot of any significance, purely a chance to self develop in the route nature has best made you t for the sake of us all.

6.4 Graduates

On passing through this university people should have touched something special. This is the self belief and understanding of differing views and realisation of the immense amount of unknown information still to be understood. Importantly they should realise that everyone is special and important. I would hope that students also realise they never qualify, by

that I mean there is no destination on the route to knowledge it is an never ending journey and hopefully lasts a whole life. The longer the better and regardless of actually gaining something measurable like a job from it they will pass on this understanding to others, perhaps people who do not even attend. These people will also be an important funding source for the

university with these alumni hopefully volunteering assistance back to the university both n terms of lecturing, mixing with students and improving understanding as well as financially assisting through donations where they are gainfully employed, hopefully doing jobs they love and are suited to.