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Caveman’s Essential Consciousness
Everyone knows that essential consciousness is the highest, most important state of being awake and aware of what is going on around us. Every creature has essential consciousness about survival, continuation of life, and existence. A bird getting up early in the morning and looking for worms to feed its baby birds is a typical example of essential consciousness.
Other than survival, mankind has three essential consciousness in mind: truth, kindness, and beauty (真 善 美—良知). This is why we have great scientists working on truth, great statesmen and stateswomen working on kindness, and great artists working on beauty. Great scientists, statesmen, and artists always exist in our complicated global village, in the past, in the future, as well as today.
To be a scientist, you must have enough textbook wisdom and learn at least something about religious philosophy. Today’s sciences and technologies have roots in the Christian religion. One, called Christian Science, even teaches that illness can be overcome or managed through religious faith! What you learn from textbooks will unconsciously influence your essential consciousness in searching for scientific truth. Big bang theory and inflation theory are more easily accepted by a scientist who believes that God created everything. It is easy to create a theory. What is difficult is to prove or disprove a theory. Once a theory becomes a part of textbook wisdom, generations of young minds will be brainwashed to accept it as true. Will our essential consciousness be eroded away because of our education? Or do we merely have a knowledge-management policy problem?
Essential consciousness is a very complicated subject to write about. Everybody’s mind has already been brainwashed to a certain degree. We remain more subjective than objective in our thinking.
Cavemen had better essential consciousness than we do because they had no knowledge at all, good or bad. Nothing could pollute his consciousness. His consciousness was free from textbook wisdom, from the biases of state, from religion, and from culture.
Stone Wheel
The stone wheel most likely was not invented by a caveman, because the caveman had no need for a wheel in his daily life. Besides, the caveman didn’t have the necessary tools to make the stone wheel. The important thing is the concept of the wheel, which has become the illustrative purpose. However, the caveman did invent heat technology. The caveman knew how to start a fire and use the heat. The caveman discovered one of the natural forces: heat.
Let’s assume that the caveman found a wheel-like stone on top of a hill. The wheel-like stone, he quickly observed, was too heavy to carry to the cave for use as a stone stool. He rolled the stone from the top of the hill and observed that the stone ran faster and faster until it knocked down a medium-sized tree and motion stopped.
The caveman would have observed the weight, the speed, the acceleration, and the reaction force on the tree. The reaction force on the tree was less than the force itself. Otherwise, the tree would not have been knocked down. The caveman, although unknowingly, had just experimented with Newton’s law of physics.
Timeless Reality
Let’s observe the caveman’s daily life around his cave. Of course, he didn’t know what “time” meant, but he noticed that light arrived at dawn, that darkness followed after dusk. He didn’t know what redshift meant, but he noticed that the sun is bigger and quite red at dawn and sunset. He could tell the difference between dawn and sunset without realizing the existence of time. To him, reality is timeless. We all know the importance of time in our life, but not all scientists know how important time has become in today’s science and technology. And even those scientists who do know the importance of time in science become confused by the space-time concept, the concept of space and time as two sides of a coin. Most scientists don’t agree with Newton’s concept of absolute space and time.
The caveman did not know what “space” means either. But he could feel the difference between the inside of a cave and the outside of a cave. He could feel the existence of the space and the size of the space. In daylight, the caveman saw that the blazing sun moved from one side of the sky to the other. In the evenings, he saw the moon appear in different shapes. He noticed that the stars manifest the different in brightness. The caveman did notice that there are few very bright stars together that form the Big Dipper in the sky. Of course, the caveman didn’t know those bright stars are called Big Dipper Stars (BDS). The caveman didn’t know what electric meant, but he knew what a lightning bolt looks like in a storm.
The caveman saw those natural phenomena just as we see them today. The only thing missing for the caveman was “time.” If time exists, time can never be equal to zero (0). Time can have a very small value, but it has to be greater than zero. As long as time exists, no matter how small it is, someone will eventually discover. We all realize the existence of time when we learn the concept of watch or clock. We learn of the existence of time when we learn the meaning of the word eternity. We learn of the existence of time when we learn of the Earth’s rotation and its orbit around the sun.
The more you learn about time, the more confusing it can seem. Especially since the space-time concept has become part of our reality. This space-time concept has already been widely accepted by all scientists.
Actually, it’s “speed” that explains the relation between space and time. If we use basic time unit (second) and use a unit value (one), then the speed has reciprocal value of time. For example, if one drives a car from point A to point B and the distance between A and B is six hundred miles and it takes ten hours, then the speed is sixty miles per hour. If we use a unit value (one mile) and time unit value (one second), then the speed has a reciprocal value of time.
Distance | Time | Speed |
600 miles | 10 hours | 60 miles/hour |
1 mile | 1 minute | 1 mile/minute |
1 mile | 1 second | 1/60 miles/second |
Therefore, speed equals 1/time in second.
(See chapter 2 for more information about time.)
Caveman’s Math Concept
The caveman’s math concept is extremely simple yet extremely important. The caveman knew only the numeric number one (1). One (1) is a mathematical base number and also the only true constant number in mathematical equations. All other constants in equations are either a situation-adjustment number or a fudge factor. The caveman did not know what number meant. To him, one (1) meant existing. The stick in his hand was “existing.” It was one (1). If there was no stick in the hand, there was no one (1) “existing.” In this sense, zero (0) means “not existing” to him. It is a matter of fact that zero (0) does not exist in our reality either. In our reality, nothing is zero (0). Zero pressure means pressure does not exist. Zero speed means speed does not exist. Zero (0) is only a symbol in mathematical equations. The caveman’s rudimentary math concept belongs to human essential consciousness. That is why Greeks use I, II, III, and IIII as their first four numbers and Chinese people use 一, 二, 三, and IIII as their first four numbers, and the Arabic symbols are 1, 2, 3, and 4 (which is a fast way of writing 一, 二, 三,丩). The caveman also had the logical concept of plus (+) and minus (-). He had the logical concept, but without knowing of the existence of the symbols for addition and subtraction. In the twentieth century, humans invented lots of new technologies, some without any advanced theories behind them. “Progress” was a product of experiment and observation.
From the concept of existing and nonexisting, one (1) and zero (0), plus (+) and minus (-), the most useful binary numbering system was developed. The first Chinese abacus was invented at least six hundred years ago as a system of doing arithmetic quickly without writing.
The computer was invented in the twentieth century by using electrical current, existing or nonexisting, applied to the binary numbering system one (1) and zero (0). Converting the binary numbers into the hexadecimal numbering system helped lead to construction of the first artificial brain.
The concept of a stone wheel is speed. The inventions of the wagon, car, airplane, space shuttle are the result of improving speed. Technology became human knowledge chasing speed. But humans never will be able to win the race, because speed limit is a part of the law of natural phenomena.