The Classics To The Rescue

Once again, in the last reel of a cosmological cliff-hanger, Pythagoras is called upon to save our universe. I have previously remarked on the fact that Pythagoras' Holkos, the fifth element which contained all other elements; i.e., the container of the universe, was a 12 sided figure or dodecahedron or soccer ball. http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/in-tempore-rerum-novarum.html http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/football-of-pythagoras.html It will come as no surprise, then, that the Pythagorean-call has gone out again for Pyhagoras to help Gotham City: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_Poincare_Dodecahedral_Space_Model_Gains_Support_To_Explain_The_Shape_Of_Space_999.html The Poincare Dodecahedral Space Model Gains Support To Explain The Shape Of Space by Staff Writers Paris, France (SPX) Feb 13, 2008 The last fifteen years have shown considerable growth in attempt to determine the global shape of the universe, i.e. not only the curvature of space but also its topology. ...Motivated by indications that the Universe may have positive curvature, and calculating large-angle vibrational harmonics to simulate the power spectrum, some authors of the present study had already argued in October 2003 that the multiply-connected Poincare dodecahedral space (PDS) topology was favoured by the WMAP data relative to an infinite, simply connected flat space.

In Tempore Rerum Novarum

What a thrill it is to live in such exciting times!
Our understanding of the universe in which we live has undergone more changes in 100 years than it has in the previous 100,000. Even now Science tries to discover the secrets of Dark Matter. Dark Matter is supposed to be a prime constituent of the universe, but it has never been observed and was originally included into theories to explain why the universe was, after all, not literally flying apart in its rush of expansion.

Dark Matter has mass and is invisible. When the "matter" is settled, another revolution in thought will have occurred; that's about the 344th paradigm shift in my lifetime. The Dark Matter is so preponderant that some scientists have described the observable entities of the universe as floating within a wash of Dark Matter, this dark matter keeping everything compact, so to speak. If this is not the ancient - not to say discarded-notion of the Aether, then I don't know what is.
The Aether goes back to prehistory, I'm sure, and we catch on to the grab bar of its careening trolley about the time of Heraclitus. The Aether is a medium in which the entities of the universe swim about in ptolemaic regularity. Newton saw no need for the Aether. Subsequent generations saw no proof for the existence of the Aether, and so it was consigned to the dustbin of thought. In fact, I think the Aether hung around the old pool hall of Natural Philosophy, hustling games from kids, until J.J. Thompson proved that the speed of light was a constant.

Not so fast, pally.

We are digging that concept back out of the tip, dusting it off, and bringing it into the house. The story of Dark Matter and Aether reminds me mightily of Boudou Sauvé des Eaux, or Down and Out in Beverly Hills, take your pick. wherein the disreputable downer-on-his-luck is samaritaned, brought in and fed, and is taken to buy a new suit of clothes.
And the old guy looks pretty good when you dress him up.
And, pace my grandfather, you apparently may make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

I touched on this refurbishment of old concepts- sort of Flip This Paradigm or Conceptual Intercession-once before in http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/football-of-pythagoras.html wherein we see :
 
More precisely, we may inhabit a dodecahedral cosmos. It is, according to the scientists, the best way to account for the latest satellite observations.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3175352.stm

and a dodecahedron is but a soccer ball, and this soccer ball was what Pythagoras said was the Holkos, the prime element which contained all the other elements of the universe. So Pythagoras beat Science to the punch and had to wait 2,500 years for royalties.


Also Democritus with his Atomic Theory.
People will say that the ancient ideas had no connection to the modern scientific ideas. This claim is based on the fact that the ancient did not have a scientific method with which to cast their theoretical nets wide upon the face of the Deep, so to speak. (This view ignores the Antikythera device, as well as Archimedes and many others.)

However, I find it striking that the same essential ideas recur in grossly differing milieus. It is as if the human mind is constituted to be aware in certain ways and certain ways only, just as the eye sees only in the visible spectrum. Thus, certain great motifs, emblems, paradigms and templates of understanding are repeated throughout history.

Thus, the Aether as the medium wherein we all bathe. If I were to say "...wherein we all float," then the effect is transformed into something alien and frightening: Pennywise of Stephen King's IT. However, the medium where we swim, bathe; that is comforting. The aetherous medium has both aspects of Love and Comfort versus Fear and Flight, combining these opposites within its meaning. It is a very wide ranging concept, therefore.

We live our lives between The Fear of God and The Love of God. There will always be an Aether and there will always be a Vacuum; the Full and the Void; the Plethos and the Kainon. We fast to purge, to empty, to be void in body and to be abased and humble in the mind. We eat to fill, to feast, to be sated in body and to be exalted and drunk with nutrients! All life is what we already know, see, do, and feel. We only have to try to pick Life back up out of the dirt ( or the swimming pool as in the films mentioned above), brush it off (or dry it out), and everything will be...not necessarily fine, but everything will be better........

--

The Soccer Ball Of Pythagoras

When I first met Arvon he was mulling over the impossibility of foreseeing emergent behavior. “Even God cannot”, he said. “God can write the rules for a Wolfram process, but He would not foresee…” “ ‘Would not?” “, I asked. “ Not ‘ cannot’ ?” He thought about it. “No. God would not foresee the infinite number of steps. God is all-powerful. If He would, He could see what lay in the infinite future. But…”, he added, “..He does not wish to do so.”

The Football Of Pythagoras

Recall that in most of the world, football is soccer, hence, a football is a soccer ball. That's a bit of info you will require in the next corridor of the Pythagorean labyrinth. Stepping into the old Chronomechanikos, or Time's Washing Machine, or Time Travel Machine, or the Jihaaz az Zamaan, we see the following:  

Cosmos is 'shaped like a football
By Dr David Whitehouse 
BBC News Online science editor 

We could be living in a small Universe where space is curved in on itself, rather like a football, say researchers in this week's Nature journal. More precisely, we may inhabit a dodecahedral cosmos. It is, according to the scientists, the best way to account for the latest satellite observations.  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3175352.stm

Now, why is this interesting and what does it have to do with Pythagoras?
A dodecahedron is a 12 sided figure, the word coming from 'hedron' meaning side, and 'dodeka' meaning 12, where 'do' is 2 and 'deka' is 10. In the cosmology of Pythagoras, there was a singular atom or entity termed the " Holkos". Holkos means 'cargo ship' or 'barge', the idea of being something large and able to be filled with thing and able to move along. (Holkos also could be redolent of holkas, meaning a winch to pull barges along a canal, giving the idea of holkos an additional notion of gravid attraction, but I may as well stand upon a peak in Darien.) This was referred to as 'the cargo ship of the whole', and one got the notion that it was the ultimate element of the cosmos and moved along, carrying all the other elements within it.
Therefore, Pythagoras saw this structure of the cosmos some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, and it was probably ancient when his brilliance stumbled across it.