This project runs on an SQL database, and supposedly presents something like a hierarchical word processor, of a very basic sort. We are gathering elements to the database, generally organized in terms of "theme groups" -- major topic areas -- and "themes" -- subject areas that are aligned somewhere with that theme group. We are also developing a basic vocabulary -- like a glossary of basic concepts and terms, generally concerned with epistemology. What is a dimension, what is a unit, what is an interval, what is a metaphor, what is equivalence or identity or equality? What does it mean when we say "two things are equal" -- when clearly they are not the exact same thing -- but are "equal" in some sense that we have to clarify. We are looking at 100 issues like this.

Today, at this early stage, our database system is starting to work fairly well, and we are starting to slowly load in data -- ideas, content, specific statements and interpretations, graphics and diagrams -- all of which is intended to illustrate the broad thesis that "in significant ways, the Closed Loop contains philosophy and science and mathematics."

This is a big deal, and a very broad reach. What are the historical precedents?

You are putting together 100+ definitions, and this project is a house of cards -- it could collapse at any of 100 failure points, true.

As far as I can tell, from my limited research, "nobody has done anything quite like this" -- but maybe this project could be described as inspired by Leibnitz or Ramon Lull -- and who knows how many medieval visionary philosophers who drew complex ontological diagrams as explanations of the universe.

This project is almost a cosmology -- a theory of the universe -- a proposition that we might defend by insisting that we mere humans only know reality -- and/or have mapped reality -- in terms of our concepts.

What we think we know are our concepts and the empirical experience that we believe we have correlated and organized within or by those concepts.

Is it true that "all science is conceptual"? That even mathematical explanations are "mere maps" of an inexplicable territory?

What we do know -- is that mathematics works. Our rockets do reach the moon -- or mars.

But one other thing we know -- is that we mere humans do not always understand one another very well, and in an era of accelerating complexity, this can be dangerous. Maybe Closed Loop is a step towards a collective human awakening that can get us through this crisis.

Thu, May 6, 2021