E.O. (Edward Osborne) Wilson
Harvard University

Book: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge  
CV
Foundation
Homepage
Twitter
Wikipedia
YouTube (there are hundreds)

First email: Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 8:14 AM

https://www.ted.com/talks/e_o_wilson_on_saving_life_on_earth

My dear Prof. Dr. E.O. Wilson:

In December 2011 a group of high school people went inside the tetrahedron, dividing by 2, and found the half-sized tetras in the four corners and an octahedron in the middle.  We went inside that octahedron, dividing by 2, found the half-sized octas in each of the six corners and eight tetras in each face, all sharing a common center point. We kept going within all 19 objects.  Within just a few steps we found our nematode friends. In another few steps the prochlorococc greeted us, “Set em up baby…”

In just 45 steps within we were zipping by the fermions and protons and just kept going!  In the next 67 steps, you wouldn’t believe what we saw! We were at the door of a singularity that Max Planck gave us and all those secret codes, but it took 100 years and Frank Wilczek to begin to interpret them (2001, Physics Today, Scaling Mt. Planck I-III).

Just over 112 notations.  What was that?

It didn’t take too long before we got the bright idea, “Let’s multiply by 2.” What an epiphany! In less than 90 steps we were out to the Age of the Universe and the Observable Universe. Looking at ourselves, we were lost within all this new information, so we decided to turn to the experts. Huh? We found Kees Boeke’s base-10 work from 1957 but he only had 40 quick jumps (Cosmic View) and missed so much of life!  We found Stephen Hawking but he was in tight with big bang theory. Where are our experts?

What? Huh?  Our knowledge of the universe is so incomplete, our sense of the universal is so limited, our understanding of the constants is so elementary, we are flying blind.

The Encyclopedia of Life truly needs a wonderfully integrative, expansive container so it doesn’t get walled in!  Of course, its website opens it to our world.  Let’s open it to the universe.  Yes, a wall-less container where ideas and creativity can explode old boundary conditions and creatively new parameter sets emerge.

Now we are amateurs, but we really feel that biology and the search for life must begin with that initial creation, the first moment, when there was a profound integration, and come through it all right to the 200th notation to our present day.  Let’s encapsulate the universe so we can truly address the “… transcendent qualities in the human consciousness, and sense of human need” (from your Ted Talk).

Are we crazy?  Of course, we are, but hopefully delightfully so! Thanks.

Most sincerely,

Bruce
*****************
Bruce Camber

http://bblu.org

https://bbludata.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/timeline/
https://bbludata.wordpress.com/1-204/

PS.  I grew up not far from the Peabody and all the glass flowers. My father was an HVAC machinist for the Mark I while my mother had been a nanny for Shady Hill characters.

In 2002, Wilczek reflects, “It therefore comes to seem that Planck’s magic mountain, born in fantasy and numerology, may well correspond to physical reality.” (PDF)

“Can’t you see, we are in a dialogue with the universe?” asks Charles Jencks.