Isotopic Randomness and Self-Organization

In Physics, Biology, Nanotechnology, and Digital Informatics

Alexander Berezin

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9783110600391
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Chemistry
• Index: Chemistry

The material world is made of atoms, and the majority of chemical elements has two or more stable isotopes. The existence of isotopes and their applications are well known. Yet, there is little appreciation of isotopic diversity as a singular phenomenon of nature. This book discusses aspects of isotopic diversity in terms of a singular principle: "isotopicity".

1 Introduction: Ideas and experts

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

This book discusses classic philosophical and scientific theories related to metaphysics, or the nature of reality. It is not intended to convince the reader that any one theory is better than the other, or even provide the reader with tools that make such an evaluation for oneself. Rather, it is the common thread of this book that metaphysical inquiry is intellectually rewarding on its own and can bring valuable intellectual stimulations and deep spiritual insights.

So, what this book is all about? For many of us, philosophical and metaphysical contemplations and meditations on fundamental issues of existence form an important aspect of our intellectual life. They provide us with a venue for achieving inner peace and anchoring ourselves in a haven of spiritual stability among the world in turmoil with its nonstop tsunami of problems falling on us from all sides.

This book, to some degree, is based on the published works of the author in several interdisciplinary areas, and equips the reader with a navigational guide to many of the key issues that are of a fundamental importance in our existential serenity and psychological optimism.

The scientific and philosophical issues are presented in an easy and reader-friendly way that does not require any special background beyond commonsense knowledge of today. In its thrust and coverage, the book places itself equally in several nonfiction categories: general science; health and self-help; general interest; psychology, spirituality, and metaphysics; “new age”, as well as philosophical narratives in a broad sense.

Normally, authors are supposed (and are expected) to care about the public acceptance and popularity of their books. After all, who does not want to get on a bestseller list? Well, I do not feel myself in this (albeit potential) club. As for what people may say about this book or for any of my other writings, I have only one common stamp as a reply – it does not concern me the slightest. In this book, I present my views and visions on infinity, prime numbers, atoms and isotopes, and the quantum universe the way “I” see them and if others may see them differently or do not see them at all – fine with me.

As an author, I well realize (as anyone else should) that the world neither begins nor ends with me. Sometime (quite rarely, though) books outlive their authors. There are millions upon millions of books that exist in this world. As Wikipedia says, The Library of Congress, which is the largest library in the world, holds some 160 million items and 38 million books on approximately 850 mi. (1,370 km) of bookshelves. And those most certainly not all the books ever published in the world as many books did not get even to the Library of Congress.

The total number of books ever published in the world is estimated at about 300 million and it grows at the rate of some 6,000 new book titles per day, or about over 2 million per year (to remind, there are 31 million seconds in a year, so counting all ever-published books “one-per-second” will take 10 years). And everyone of us (I mean, us, the authors) needs to find his or her own way to fit into this exponentially growing market (and I am not even adding to that zillions of Internet blogs and posts).

Some authors, even in the early days of book printing (say, in the sixteenth century), were already complaining of there being too many books. And yet, people keep writing and publishing. Of course, all authors desire that their books be read as wide as possible and attract a fair score of interested readers. So do I, without any second thought. Yet, the books have a life of their own, some become worldwide bestsellers, some go into oblivion. Curiously, even some great and world-known authors have written books that made a history, but also other books that almost nobody knows. Many examples of these can be found in the past, as well as in the present time.

Considering this, I make no predictions of any kind about this particular book and allow myself of no specific expectations. To quote the celebrated philosopher and logician Ludwig Wittgenstein (April 26, 1889 to April 29, 1951), with whom I share my birthday (mine is April 26, 1944), “if there ever will be a single reader of my book who will read it and gain insight from it, I will eternally be satisfied.” (L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921)

A few words are due to “autobiographical aspects” of the book. This book is not my autobiography as such, yet some reminiscence on how these ideas were evolving and what (pretty mixed) response they produced is, in my view, may be of an interest to my readers.

So, where we begin?

Our age is centered on success and celebrities. This is what sells. All the social machinery and market forces are there to hook up people (“consumers”) to the unceasing public hunger for the “star” and “superstar” news and gossips that are produced 24/7 by all forms of mass media with ever-growing sophistication. The younger generation is particularly vulnerable. The ideas about the infinity, universe, and our existence in it are safely put on a back seat. Those who talk about them are relegated to fringes, if not nutcases. This seems to be an overall picture of our brave new world.

Well, almost overall. Here and there, we observe cracks in such a gloomy picture. Human spirit often brakes through the straight jackets of mass media’s brainwashing technologies and directs us to the search of other realities. As it is said, not by the bread alone (including quasi-intellectual junk food of all kinds) we are alive. Through all the daily pressures and personal concessions, our spirit often directs our hearts and aspirations to Higher Realms and exiting contemplations on matters Infinite and Eternal.

This book is aimed at people who are looking for new and unusual mind-stimulating ideas. It is full of new and original ideas. The ideas that will lead the readers to further creative contemplations and deep insights. The book deals with a number of cross-disciplinary issues and thoughts and as such, it is aimed toward a broad and diverse audience.

The book is both “academic” and “popular”. While its author is a “seasonal academic” (professor of theoretical physics and engineering), he, at the same time, has quite a vast experience of delivering talks to general audiences and a long record of media publications. The book is “all-inclusive” and is also a “cross-genre” – it can be read for the knowledge and insight as well as for excitement and entertainment.

The main quality (or, let us say, “an intellectual asset”) that the author expects from the potential reader is not a PhD level in some science or anything like that. Instead, it is an open-minded curiosity and a desire to connect to the bigger multidimensional eternal universe and an infinite mind of the cosmos. That will likely put my readers in tune with the ideas presented in this book.

On this path of infinity, there should not be any failures or any terminal point for this matter. It is always a road of self-discovery and exciting awe. In this way, the reader has a broad choice of “resonance frequencies” on how to read this book and what to find in it.

Like with almost all “non-mainstream” writers, who venture to depart from the party line of the mainstream science, reaction to my work (and my published papers) over the years was almost invariably quite mixed – from the expression of almost an admiration (somebody called me a “visionary”) to (quite frequent indeed) use of some far-less nice words that can be found in an advanced Oxford dictionary (I abstain from exact quotes).

To repeat, this book contains many repetitions and restatements of the same points. Perhaps, even same quotes may pop-up here and there more than once. So, what? For that, I assume no responsibility and make no apologies of any kind, same as professional artists do not normally apologize (or feel “guilty”) that some of their pictures repeat the same theme. In fact, some of them regurgitate one and the same theme (or a small set of a few themes) for much of their entire artistic careers.

For those who decide to read this book (even partially and/or selectively), I have to say that, in my view, the ideas that I am discussing are conducive for fostering the capacity for a nonlinear, multifaceted, and “multidimensional” thinking. In other words, what is known as the willingness to think “outside box.”

Yes, it is a bit of a heavy duty to deflect from the standard paths of the mainstream thinking, but that is what I was doing much of my life without any shadow of regrets about this. In this way, at least ideally, I always tried to follow one of the best mottos that I know. It traditionally quotes as “(Segui il tuo corso), e lascia dir le genti,” which means follow you own path, no matter what anyone may say (Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedia, Purgatory, 5:13).

At the end of the book, there is a list of some of my publications as well as the titles of some other books that are mentioned in the text. Yet, some quotes and ideas used in the book were taken from a variety of web pages, including Wikipedia. In all these cases, I did a reasonable editing and validity checks, yet formal referencing in some such cases is impractical and often unrealistic.

All this is a reflection of the changing practice of modern scientific writing when numerous web sources provide an effective compensation to the incompleteness (or even lack) of a formal referencing. Nowadays, archives of most scholarly journals are available online in (almost) any point in the world, although some readers may still face problems of access (not everything is free in this world, at least not yet).

I did my best to explain in a popular way the terminologies and concepts that I am using in the text. However, it should be said that with the ever-increasing power of the Internet that we all witness daily (exponential Moore’s Law!), and with such powerful search engines as Google (and an enormous volume of information on the web), any interested reader can easily go to the prime sources using the terms and names as key words for the search.

1.1 Informatics runs supreme

Almost everything that is around us is digital informatics. Information is the major commodity of our entire civilization (Du Bravac, 2016). And we extend the ideas of information and “informatics” to areas well beyond of “informational electronics” as such.

We talk about the informational content of human speech and music, we calculate the informational capacity of human genomes and genetic codes, and we discuss the dynamics of information at cosmological scales (Lloyd, 2002, 2006).

So far, practically all informational systems that are in use today are based on “electronics.” That means that the processes with electrons (such as operating of transistors in computers and memory chips) are the major (and, for all practical purposes, the only) players in all these technologies.

Furthermore, such active areas of intellectual and technological pursuits as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual and simulated realities (Johnson, 1994; Kurzweil, 1999, 2005; Bostrom, 2003, 2016) – all, in different ways – have “information” and “informatics” as a key modus operandi of the ongoing discourse. Not to mention that we ourselves (“humans”) are becoming more and more “digital entities” with all ongoing advances in implanted chips and our love affair with iPods and cell phones. For many of us, these iPods and cell phones are almost becoming parts of our bodies and we walk, eat, sleep, and do all other things constantly connected to them! That eventually will likely make us “walking digital robots” (many signs of that around already).

And at the cosmological scales, the formation of the black holes and the and collapse of stars to the neutron stars determines the dynamics of cosmos in real time and provides a physical platform for the evolution and informational ascending. By the latter, we mean negentropic (“anti-entropic”) processes of self-organization and biological morphogenesis, as well as the emergence of self-aware structures and consciousness (Berezin and Nakhmanson, 1990; Leff and Rex, 1990; Lloyd, 2002, 2006)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Preface
• Foreword: Isotopicity – paradigm for twenty-first-century
• Synopsis
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: Ideas and experts
• 2 Quantum metaphysics
• 3 Integers and primes
• 4 Primology awe
• 5 Platonic emergence
• 6 Time labyrinths and melting watches
• 7 Consciousness unlimited
• 8 Why π is not exactly 3
• 9 Quantum Narnia and parallel universes
• 10 All is water
• 11 Infinity reloaded
• 12 Neutronicity: A twin paradigm to isotopicity
• 13 Cosmic horizons
• 14 Epilogue
• 15 Message to the young reader
• References
• Index