Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Philosophy of Enevitability

I was reading in the news about the interest in an archaeological site in Peru, called Caral. It seems that the people there were building pyramids at about the same time as the Egyptians.

Pyramids are found all over the world. Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America. Some people use this as suppport of greater commerce between the continents. Others say it supports the idea of alien contacts. All sorts of theories abound.

Mine is the theory of enevitbility.

Given certain precursors, certain things are inevitable. Take the doorway. The proportions of a doorway are pretty much the same, a little over twice as high as it is wide. This proportion is extended to all sorts of architectural constructs. Why these particular proportions?

Of course they have to do with the size and proportions of the human body and the resonable size and proportions of an entryway. The system of measure and math used to define a pleasing hallway or entryway would be different of we were six times as tall as we are wide, or as big around as we are tall.

In any society complexity is a logical chain of development. One thing leads to the other in a realatively predictable sequence of events. Just as the standard hallway is an extension of the doorway, which is an extension of human parameters, the pyramid is a natural extension of things in nature.

The pyramid is an extension of the cone, the mountains and all manner of piled objects. It is a logical nature driven shape, and relatively easy to design. All you need is eight sticks of equal length and some string and you get this magically proportioned object that BEGS mystical implications.

When people reach a certain level of sophistification, they will come across this shape, and to me it seems inevitable that they use it for ceremonial buildings.

This same principle applies to all sorts of things.

Such as extra-terrestrial life.

Given the size of the universe and variety of conditions, given a finite series of building blocks (atoms) every possible ccombination of compounds must exist in many places in the universe.

The combination that results in life is inevitable.

4 comments:

Rick said...

Ah, blogging from home, I see.
I saw Carl Sagan in person once, and after listening to his math for about 45 minutes, I was entirely convinced that life not only exists on other planets, there's a LOT of it. Problem is, they're all light-centuries away. Why the hell would they come way out HERE?

Al said...

Rick: I agree. If they had all the technology to travel all the way here, why would they waste their time with a violent bunch of backward trogs? Unless they came here for the Usquebaugh.

sue said...

I, too, agree we're not alone. Anybody who thinks we are is just a doo doo head. :)

Al said...

Sue: A nice bit of logic there!