Apokalypsis: Classical Greek: to Reveal or Uncover That Which Was Hidden or Buried

Copyright © 2001 and 2019 Martin Garthwaite.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover art is an image of SNR 5.4–1.2 and PSR B1757–24, a.k.a the Duck Mosaic, credit to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory/Associated Universities, Inc./National Science Foundation, converted to grayscale by Martin Spencer Garthwaite

At the beginning of Chapter Three: Continent’s End, copyright © 1924 and renewed 1952 by Robinson Jeffers; from THE SELECTED POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS by Robinson Jeffers. Used by permission. See HYPERLINK "http://www.torhouse.org" www.torhouse.org for information about the Robinson Jeffers Foundation.

ISBN: 978-0-5952-0908-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0434-5 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:  08/08/2019

Contents

Exobiology on Earth

Logic

Axiom: The more general a statement is, the less it means.

Conclusion: Quanta of Meaning

Thermodynamic Definition of Life

Distinguishing One Organism From Another With Kleiber’s Law

Development of Life on Earth

What Makes Humans Different: Compare Organisms Based on Rate-Volume of Communication

Relative areas of computer-to-computer, computer-to-human, and human-to-human communication

Exobiology on Earth

What will we find?

Public blockchains are the largest consumers of energy in computer media.

How to Measure Code Reproduction with Metagenomics

Conclusions

Help Measure Life In Computer Media!

Chapter ONE

Cruel words.

Cruel mocking words.

I have tried to approach you as I might a lover, but always you rebuke me.

I have tried to treat you as a trusted friend, but have come to trust only in your indifference.

I have tried simple honesty, but you weave for me a tangled web of deceit.

I have tried indirection and subterfuge myself, but you feign ignorance and render me impotent.

What am I to do?

Why do I always return?

What manner of chimera are you?

What awesome power is Yours that we, we who live in the very valley in the shadow of death, even we cannot look at You directly.

The end was nigh; the Earth was transforming itself through fire.

The world beyond the clear shell of Margaret’s vehicle was a gray mass. The air inside it was thick with dust. Margaret could see at all only because lightning snapped incessantly.

The soil beneath Margaret’s car bucked up and down. It seethed with energy and expanded outward. For a brief moment, she and the car were lifted into the air, riding like a boat on an ocean of frothing earth.

But the car lost its buoyancy and sank. Margaret must have known that she was descending into the abyss. The soil shrieked and hissed around the protective shell. Margaret lay on the floor, hands clenched before her mouth, eyes shut tight, lungs chocking on the dust.

We believe in God above us, maker and sustainer of all life, of sun and moon, of water and earth, of all humanity. We believe in God beside us, the Word made flesh. We believe in God within us, Holy Spirit, life-giving breath, the spirit of healing and forgiveness, source of resurrection and of life everlasting. Amen. Margaret gasped out this supplication between hacking convulsions.

Time did not pause as Margaret asked the Universe to note her passing. The vehicle’s clear shell and layers of muscles were being etched apart by a hot swirling wind of finely pulverized rock. A current in the eddies of flowing grit pulled her down.

A white hot bubble approached Margaret’s prostrate body, still miraculously alive inside the remains of the car. The swirling earth disappeared into the propagating wave-front without causing the slightest variation in the liquid surface. Margaret’s eyes could see an iridescent membrane, one slippery enough to travel through solid rock. As it came closer, she could see herself reflected in the surface of a perfect mirror.

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Margaret was a young child asleep in an apple orchard. The day was still fresh and cool. She slept on her blanket in the shade of an apple tree. Voices could be heard in the distance, her father’s included.

Margaret’s dreams were gentle and carefree. In her mind’s eye she could see a puzzle from her day care center. In the puzzle, green rubber pieces fit into corresponding shapes that were cut out of a sheet of black rubber.

Abruptly, this peaceful image was transformed into a frightful one. Flames leapt from the black sheet. The flames came from the portholes of a ship that floated on a black sea. People ran about on the ship’s deck. The only light was the orange light of fire and it danced wickedly. Margaret was in a life boat surrounded by strange people. Gantries lowered the boat onto the black sea where it drifted away from the burning ship on gentle swells.

Still dreaming, Margaret struggled to recreate the peaceful image of the puzzle from the day care center. Margaret thought she could see the puzzle for a moment but could not hold onto the image. Her vision dove into the black rubber and returned through it to the scene of fire reflecting off of black water.

The ship was listing heavily now toward its bow. With the awkwardness of a horse kneeling on its front legs, the bow of the ship sank lower and lower into the calm swells. Slowly, rudder and propeller were lifted out of the ocean. Flames now came only from one portal on the stern. Soon, this last beacon was extinguished as the ship slipped into the water’s dark folds. No light shone anywhere.

Margaret was awakened by a jerk that lifted her head into the air. She wanted to scream but could not. She was suffocating but could not even choke. It felt as though her neck was being pulled through her mouth. Margaret lost consciousness before she could even wonder what was taking place.

Later, Margaret awoke at home with a plastic hospital identification band around her tiny wrist and a sore throat. The story of that day would be retold again and again.

As Margaret slept, a snake had been attracted to her warmth. Margaret must have been sleeping with her mouth open because the snake had slipped into it and then down into her esophagus. The snake could not back up and both child and snake were suffocating.

Margaret’s father, John, returned to find his daughter’s tiny body clenched in a spasm and the tail of the snake whipping around her head. Thinking that the snake was biting Margaret, John reflexively grabbed it. When Margaret’s head was lifted up by the snake he could see that it was coming from her mouth.

Once I began pulling and it started to come out, I really started to, well, you know, freak out. I didn’t know what was going on. I might have let go, but the snake gripped onto my hand with it’s coils and I was pretty much just flailing around. But I must have been doing something right, cause eventually the serpent came out and, I tell you what, it was hissing.

No! exclaimed Jason’s mother, Kathy, How dreadful. What happened then?

Well, I threw the snake and it hit the ground and it reared back, like, holding its head way up high. It stayed that way for a while, like it was stunned too, and then it slithered off, backwards.

No. Backwards. Really?

I swear.

How scary.

It really was, said John. Margaret had turned blue and was gasping like a fish out of water.

Did you give her mouth-to-mouth, asked Mark, Jason’s father.

Well, I probably should have, but my first reaction was to jump in my truck and drive her to the hospital. The whole thing happened so fast that I just couldn’t think straight. Fortunately, Margaret was crying even before we got into the truck, so I had an idea that she was okay.

This story really gets almost funny when you got to the hospital, interjected Margaret’s mother, Judith. Tell them what happened next.

Well, then I went running into the emergency room. I had Margaret around my neck in a bear hug and I was almost suffocating myself. I tried to explain what had happened but I was trying to speak so fast that they couldn’t tell if it was me or Maggie who had been choking. The nurse sat us down on one of those portable beds to try to figure out what was wrong with us.

John turned his attention towards Margaret and continued, Before I knew what was happening the nurse came at you to put a tongue depressor in your mouth and you started screaming like crazy all over again.

Margaret resisted her father’s implicit invitation to join the narrative.

She did not like this story—the humor was somehow lost on her—and she no longer wanted to be the center of attention; she’d been on display enough that day with the graduation ceremony. Besides, Margaret thought to herself, Jason’s parents, Kathy and Mark, must have already heard this story; the two families had, after all, known one another for the last year. Margaret and Jason had been going out for their last year of high school and now both families were out to dinner to celebrate their graduation.

Oh dad, I’m sure everybody has heard this story already.

Oh no, we haven’t, corrected Kathy. What happened then?

Well, I finally managed to get out what happened about the time that a doctor showed up. He was completely calm about the whole thing. It was like it happened twice a day. He pointed out that Maggie’s breathing clearly was no longer obstructed—you were still screaming. There wasn’t even any swelling in her mouth, let alone signs of snake bite or poisoning, not that there are any poisonous snakes around here. After it was clear she was okay, the doctor gave Maggie something to calm her down because the poor girl was just so worked up.

Tell them the whole story, broke in Judith, her voice rising with mirth. He gave you a tranquilizer too. The nurse called me and when I showed up, you were both sleeping it off.

It must have been a reaction to the excitement, I just collapsed.

Margaret had heard this story so many times that she could have recited it word for word. Her only independent memory of the event was the dream about the ship and, after so many years, even this had become confused and clouded with doubt. At this point, Margaret just wanted to be free of her family’s mythic stories.

I have to go to the bathroom, Margaret announced and rose without ceremony.

Now honey, don’t be upset, Judith said, seeing her daughter’s annoyance. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. You were just a little girl at the time. We just want everyone to know that you are our little miracle. Margaret somehow managed to contain her indignation as she escaped to the welcome anonymity of a public bathroom.

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Judith’s talk of miracles referred not only to the snake, she also referred to Margaret’s birth. Thinking themselves unable to conceive and possessed of uncommon charity, Margaret’s parents had been the adoptive parents of more than a handful of orphaned and handicapped children. Margaret had come relatively late in life. A reward, Judith was wont to say, for their life of sacrifice.

What an incredible story, said Kathy after Margaret left. I mean…a snake…

Yes it is, responded John. We still have the wrist band that the hospital put on Maggie. I don’t think they use them anymore, those bands, but what else is new.

It’s funny Maggie never told me about this before, said Jason. How many people fight with snakes and live to talk about it? I’ll have to tell everyone about it at Nancy’s tonight.

Oh, don’t do that honey. Somehow I don’t think Maggie would like it, admonished Kathy.

Are Nancy’s parents going to be there the whole evening? I, mean, cams are one thing, but someone actually there is another, said Judith. Oh sure, responded Jason. Kit and Larry are cool. They’ve got a pool table and two big Rottweilers. As soon as Jason let the words out of his mouth he knew that he had made a mistake. Judith had a problem with dogs. Trying to extricate himself, he rambled on about who’s equipment was going to render the event in real time 3-dimensional video, which kids would probably be there, and the incidents that occurred behind the scenes at the graduation. Jason could not help but notice the severe glance which Judith cast John after the slip-up.

Well, Margaret, said Judith, enunciating Margaret’s name when she returned to the table, Jason was just telling us about the Pierson’s delightful animals. Is this party, she placed special emphasis on the word, safe?

Margaret quickly ascertained that Jason let something slip about the dogs and gave him a kick under the table as she settled into her seat.

Oh mom, would you relax. Of course it is ‘safe.’ They are the friendliest dogs you could ever meet. They don’t know they look terrifying. On any other day Margaret would have tried to do more damage control. But today was her day, she could not help but goad her mother a little.

I don’t know if I like this idea anymore. Maybe we have to reconsider this midnight curfew. Judith was also having difficulty restraining herself.

Oh, come on Judy, said John. Let them go in peace. You forget yourself. They’ve graduated from high school today and now we have to let them rely on their own judgment. We know that Margaret and Jason are good kids, don’t we there, John said, putting an arm around Judith’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze.

Thank you dad, Margaret said, getting up again and dragging Jason with her. We’re going to be just fine. We won’t do anything crazier than you ever did. Margaret and Jason left their parents feeling slightly tousled by the wind of freedom blowing through all of their lives.

Margaret was skipping on air as she and Jason escaped into the parking lot. The sun was going down and the late spring air felt warm and soft. An astute observer would have noticed that Margaret’s feet did not quite touch the ground. The swishing back and forth of her legs was all it took to levitate her elated spirit.

Margaret and Jason came together in an exuberant jumble of arms and lips against the smooth shell of Jason’s parents’ car, causing it to jiggle slightly. I can’t believe her, Margaret said. What is she going to worry about when I’m off at school? And you! Why did you have to mention the dogs?

I don’t know. It just slipped out. You can’t expect me to catch everything around your mom.

Don’t I know it! I am so looking forward to getting out of here. Margaret said, slamming the car door for emphasis.

By now, the tread on the bottom of the car had firmed up and it no longer jiggled. Beneath the vehicle was the latest in Hydradrive technology. A bed of artificial muscle-fibers controlled a layer of high-pressure bubble wrap that made contact with the road. The muscle-fibers were arranged in vertical and horizontal layers. The vertically oriented fibers created waves which, like drumming fingers, maintained contact with and conformed to the road surface; the horizontally oriented fibers pulled forward and back and side to side to propel the car in any direction. A fuel cell was incorporated into the muscles to supply them with electrochemical energy. Bending the fuel cell pumped fuel and oxidizer through it. At high speeds, the so-called muscle cars traveled in clumps to reduce wind resistance. Tough contact pads around the exterior allowed them to rub together. On smooth roads they could exceed one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour; rough surfaces reduced the top speed and increased energy consumption. The cars were also designed to travel at more than three hundred kilometers per hour on the new ice rails. The ice rails were modular plastic tubes, supported from beneath by a bed of sand. Channels in the plastic collected condensation and rain and fed it onto the interior floor. There, the water was turned into ice by solid-state heat pumps. These pumps used electrons to move heat without moving mechanical parts. The heat pumps made the ice and also cooled super-conducting wires embedded in the floor below the ice. The ice insulated the wires and carried some of the weight of the vehicles, relieving the material from having to support the entire load. The wires interacted with magnets on the bottom of the cars to create linear electric motors. There were low friction surfaces other than ice which could have been used, but the ice was inexpensive and the movement of the cars over the ice continually smoothed the rails. This avoided the expense of having to keep the drive surface in precise alignment.

The muscle cars’ inexpensive cost, ability to handle damaged roads and thick traffic, and integration with the ice rails promised to retire the remaining fleet of wheeled vehicles in less than three years. Margaret’s parents did not yet have a Hydra, so the ride was still a novelty for her.

Margaret and Jason were traveling slowly out of town and Margaret was standing with her upper body through the open sunroof—something their parents would not have allowed. She did not notice that Jason was being unusually quiet until traffic brought them to a stop at an intersection. Sitting down she said, Hey, what’s the matter? Why so glum down here?

‘What’s the matter?’ The matter is that you’re just looking forward to getting out of here. It’s like you’re not even leaving me.

Now wait a minute. I’m not leaving you any more than you’re leaving me. We’re just going to different schools.

I could still go on-line. I don’t need to be there. I could come with you, instead.

Hey, I thought we’d talked about this already. You know, everyone wants to go for real. Living in a dorm? Living that old-style college life? It’ll be so much fun. You don’t want to give that up.

It’s like, you don’t care that we’re being separated. You only see freedom and I only see the pain.

Hey, that’s not true. It’s going to hurt, but it won’t automatically be the end of us.

But four years…

We’ll always be able to visit. And we’ll have the summers together. Just like this summer. Come on, we’ve got three months ahead of us. Let’s not spoil what we’ve got right now.

I know you’re right, but it still sucks. I’m going to miss you.

I’m going to miss you too.

Jason paused for a moment before his mood visibly broke. But what am I going to do? Mope away our summer? Let’s party! Jason turned on the school’s radio station full volume. In one of those rare miracles, the DJ was perfectly in sync with their needs and had just cued up (for possibly the eleventh time that day) the end of school anthem, traditional since the late 20th century, School’s Out. With that, both Margaret and Jason stood up through the sunroof to sing and dance along with the simple lyrics. Just like Margaret, the car scarcely touched the ground as it glided quietly over the roads to Nancy’s house.

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Margaret and Nancy had been friends since the beginning of their sophomore year at Hanover High School. Nancy was also the first friend Margaret met at Hanover.

Margaret’s parents brought her to Hanover from their home town of Hartland because Hartland had a grade school but no high school. Because it did not have its own high school, the Town would pay the tuition of any public high school in the state. Most of the other kids home schooled or went to the schools that were closest to their end of town. Margaret’s parents sent her further away because Hanover, dominated as it was by Dartmouth College, was considered to be a good school with relatively well paid and well respected teachers.

John and Judith would have preferred to have sent Margaret to a parochial school. This desire, however, was not realized because they could not, initially at least, afford to board Margaret away from home. Margaret’s parents, well educated in their own right, had chosen a life style and vocations which, while keeping them comfortable, did not make them wealthy. John called himself an arborist, maintaining a few orchards and tree farms for other people, but primarily he grew weeds for carbon sequestration. Judith had been almost entirely occupied with the care of the children they adopted before Margaret’s miraculous birth. Their last two, Larry and Doug, moved out of the house when Margaret reached the sixth grade.

After more than twenty years of child care, Judith was free to take a full time administrative position at the local branch of their church—a rapidly growing Christian denomination which attracted a highly spiritual and sometimes ecstatic flock. The pay was minimal, but jobs were hard to find and Judith found the work relaxing compared to the rigors of child care. Judith’s drive would propel her quickly through the ranks of the church’s administrative bureaucracy. By the time Margaret graduated from high school, Judith would be among the higher ranks of the lay organization. With Judith’s eventual success they could have afforded to send Margaret away to school, though, by that time, it would no longer be such an issue.

In keeping with their religious beliefs, John and Judith led a quiet but busy life. They did not drink or smoke and they felt that screen time was a bad influence. They had retinal projectors, but only watched church sanctioned programming. In addition to two or three church events every month and the activities of their children, they also had a large garden and an old house to take care of. John did not let any weeds grow in his own yard. Part of a rapidly shrinking minority, they read in what little leisure time they had left. Judith read The Good Book, Reader’s Digest, and Christian home and garden magazines. John read The Good Book, but he also liked military histories. Judith did not like John’s war books, as she called them, but she did not mind so long as Margaret did not show any interest. Fiction was tolerated for Margaret, but Judith would disapprove if she found Margaret reading material that conflicted with their world view. In grade school Margaret had not known this to be a problem. She had been happy to read what Judith quietly steered her toward. Margaret did not know the vast size of the body of literature and it seemed only natural that nothing she read conflicted with the moral world in which she was steeped. John and Judith had been largely successful in shielding Margaret from the excesses they saw in the world around them.

Perhaps as a consequence, when Margaret went to Hanover High she was thoroughly intimidated by the apparent sophistication of her new classmates. They talked about going to parties at Dartmouth like they were college students themselves. Friendships and cliques had already developed in the primary and middle schools which supplied most of the students to the school; consequently, there were few opportunities for someone as shy as Margaret to make new friends.

Without anywhere else to go, Margaret retreated to the school’s library in her free time. Few other students voluntarily entered this neglected part of the school so she had it largely to herself. When she first walked into the library, Margaret was amazed by the number of books. There were three entire floors that contained nothing but row after row of books. As she walked through the stacks, the lights coming on automatically around her, she would pick out books and read random passages. Early in her explorations she found a textbook on evolution, a topic that Margaret recognized as one her mother did not approve of, though the Church was officially neutral.

Margaret felt both curious and wicked for having found an entire book devoted to the topic. She leafed through it expecting to find the source of her mother’s discontent clearly enunciated. The text only came close in the introduction where it asked the question, What is evolutionary progress? Margaret expected the text to describe ascendance toward humanity. Her mother, she knew, objected to placing humans, not God, at the top of the list of Creation.

Instead, the text started with the statement that life uses free energy to maintain an ordered state that is not in equilibrium. Equilibrium was defined as increasing disorder—when the system occupies an increasing number of states and when the components of the system have an equal probability of being in any one of the available states. Systems move toward equilibrium—increasing disorder—unless they use energy to stay at some distance from it, distance being a function of the order within the system. Somewhat in the same way that a refrigerator uses energy to keep its interior cold while heating up its surroundings, life uses energy to maintain its internal order while it increases the disorder in the external environment.

The introductory chapter went on to discuss the development of genetic life. Margaret learned that the early rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans contained a thin soup of organic compounds. Some of these compounds—primarily nucleic acids—were enzymes—organic catalysts—that accelerated the formation of other nucleic acids. Some of these nucleic acids reproduced copies of themselves by simply absorbing matching material from the environment and then breaking into pieces, the new pieces going on to do the same. Energy might be involved in breaking apart the halves, but otherwise the products and the precursors were at the same energy level. Other nucleic acids had a longer reproductive process in which precursor compounds were joined together to form other compounds which then reproduced the original. These processes could exploit more compounds in the environment and, through conversion of free energy, generate products with a higher energy level than the precursors. Initially, this stored energy came from the still cooling planet; a short time later, it came from the sun as well. These more complex networks of nucleic acids could release some of their stored energy to perform work. This work would, ideally, further more or faster reproduction or might carry the creature through a period of deprivation.

Millions of years saw the development of diverse reproductive agglomerations. Most developed protective coverings—early cells—while those that did not would later be known as viruses. Some developed the ability to consume or live symbiotically with or in others. Competition for scarce resources created pressure to reduce the minimum amount of raw material that was required to maintain reproduction. This pressure reduced the material to pared down, tightly organized, even elegant double helix assemblies of nucleic acids protected inside a variety of cell like bodies. Anaerobic cyanobacteria would emerge as the dominant form of life. Anaerobic bacteria, however, was in turn displaced by oxygen producing aerobic bacteria. These early plants converted sunlight into carbohydrates more efficiently, but their waste oxygen poisoned the anaerobic bacteria. The change in the relative abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide set the stage for more temperate global weather patterns. From there, the evolution of genetic life proceeded along the four evolutionary branches: eubacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and viruses. The common thread throughout was that living reproductive entities store energy in internal order, while they increase the disorder around themselves.

At the end of the introduction the text returned to the question, What is evolutionary progress? Progression toward humanity was explicitly disclaimed as the end state. Evolutionary progress could only be defined as the survival over time of a reproductive entity in the context of scarcity and competition for resources. Humanity was significant, the text remarked, because humanity’s socially constructed language was relatively efficient at storing energy. It could, using relatively little energy, reproduce and change itself much faster than the genetic and chemical energy storage languages in which it originated. Other creatures also developed socially constructed language, but they were in the earlier stages of development or, like the whales, did not have hands or other flexible ways to exchange matter and energy with the external environment—a key to the development of complex language. The success of humanity could be measured by the increase in its internal order and consumption of energy and by the increase in disorder external to it. Given a finite planet, humanity first began to confront this externalized disorder in the late 20th Century, though they did not take any serious measures until the 21st Century.

Though she did not yet understand everything she read, the text gripped Margaret. She thought better of bringing it up with her parents and, being unfamiliar with her classmates and their social milieu, she also did not pursue the topic with her peers. Instead she poured through it again and again by herself, sifting meaning from the words.

Still in the early weeks of school, Margaret’s first year English class was learning about the way the library was organized and how to use the reference materials. It was interesting for Margaret because prior to this time it had not occurred to her that antique libraries of wood fiber books were organized in a way related to the technological limitations of paper. By this time, retinal projectors had eliminated most printing. What little that remained was done with electric ink on re-useable paper substitutes and even then it was augmented with projectors. A printed piece of paper, for example, might contain a coded network address; the viewer’s projectors would detect the address, access data at the indicated location, process it, and overlay the resulting image onto the piece of paper, another object in the scene, or, if the viewer could afford it, the viewer’s entire field of view.

While touring the periodicals with her class, retinal projectors on, Margaret found herself embarrassed by the sexual character of so many of the unfamiliar magazines. It seemed as though there were at least fifty titles devoted to entertaining or making oneself attractive. Even before she had gone through puberty, Margaret had followed her mother’s example of trying to minimize her sexuality. Margaret walked down the row of gaudy magazines, the covers shifting and flashing in a bid for attention. Out of this chaos, what drew her eye was a scene of a starry sky slowly rotating against a black background. Margaret picked up the magazine, thinking that it might be for Christians.

Instead, Margaret found herself looking at a scientific periodical whose lead article seemed to be discussing nothing less than the age of the Universe. Her interest piqued by her studies about the development of genetic life, Margaret looked into the starry sky—which now surrounded her—and at the magazine’s section titles, ‘Advances in neutrino communication,’ ‘Possible identification of further sources for the missing dark matter,’ and ‘The fractal scale of the Universe’s foamy lattice structure.’ As with the evolution text, the biblical interpretation of the age of the Universe was entirely absent. Strange and complex formulas were illustrated with examples drawn from the heavens and scene’s from automated laboratories. Though it was largely incomprehensible, Margaret’s mind heard a resonance with what she was learning from her studies about genetic life.

Later, after school, Margaret returned to the magazine and read as much as she could understand. Then she turned to the reference materials which they had also been introduced to on the library tour. Most of these had a surface of high-level fluff that lead too quickly to bewildering detail; intermediate material was lacking. Leaving these aside, Margaret turned to the stacks of books where librarians filed similar topics in physical proximity based on the Dewey decimal system. Here, Margaret found that serendipity was a more reliable companion than the directed searches offered by the electronic reference materials. It was here that Margaret chanced across a book titled, Great Thinkers of the Western World. In this book, various biographers summarized the lives and ideas of one hundred philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Margaret started with the first names she recognized, Plato and Aristotle.

Except for their names, the Greek philosophers were unknown to Margaret. She first read about Plato’s problem of recollection. Plato knew that humans can recollect experiences. Plato also observed, however, that humans can discover entirely new things—things which they had not known to even inquire about—simply through contemplation. Where, wondered Plato, did this new knowledge come from? Was it a recollection of something already present in the human body?

Plato solved this problem by believing that souls are in touch with a universe of immutable ideal forms. The soul knows all and knows it perfectly; it is the imperfect senses which create a world of transient and imperfect particulars. The soul, through contemplation, can recognize the ideal forms despite the fallible senses. Therefore, thought Plato, truth is best found through contemplation, not experience. The more universal something is, the more removed it is from the senses, the more true it is. People can see the true universals when reason controls the other