The Mechanism in Gating

1. Conventional mathematics builds on a counting line of numbers in a selected base (1. figure 1). Its product is calculation.

2. Each counting line number corresponds to a circle (2. figure 1), each of which spins off a base. Circlemath builds on this counting line of circles. Its units are not digits but bases. Its transbase product is not calculation but thought.

3. This takes us a prestigious step from calculation to thought, two sides, which together constitute the foundation of our conscious awareness.

Figure 1

The number-to-number relations in calculation (1.) are unique to each base. The base-to-base relations in thought (2.) are universal. This combination of unique and universal defines thought. (For more on this see ATOM, A Theory of Mind).

Circlemath is to thought as calculation is to ordinary mathematics. It builds on ordinary mathematics and so contains the precision of calculation within itself, but it is richer in content. This combination of mathematical precision and transbase universality identifies the nature of thought as such. Spanning all bases indifferently, it is also logically competent. The whole, gathered in our experience fits into place in the physiology of mind as our understanding.

Method

To create the counting line of counting circles transform each number in the straight counting line to its base (2. figure 1). To dismiss 0 and 1, they are not true numbers but a junctional bridge between the mind and its world. 0 corresponds to the mind, 1 to the integrity of the conscious ego. We start the bases then with 2.

‘2’ becomes base 2. ‘3’ becomes base 3, and so on.

Now take the below ten numerals in each base and form them into circles. For example, the below 10 numerals, 0 1, in the base 2 counting line, 0 1 10 11 100… wrap into 2-circle.

The below 10 numerals, 0 1 2, in the base 3 counting line, 0 1 2 10 11 12 20 21 22 100… wrap into 3-circle.

The below 10 numerals, 0 1 2 3, in the base 4 counting line, wrap into 4-circle, and so on to infinity.

The circles give us the framework, not of calculation but of thought. Clockwise and anticlockwise define known and knower within the circle sequences. For a detailed description of the transbase array of bases as the bed of thought see ‘Mathematics as the Physiology of Mind’. Our comprehension of an objective world within the competence of a knowing mind then emerges with relative ease.

Suppositions

· The nervous system, like the blood vascular system is self-contained and circular in operation.

· In keeping with its genetic origin its inherent pattern is that of interactive sides in balance.

· It serves the needs of the organism under the control of the genetic system. As including sensibility and thought, this control is comprehensive and complete. Physiology seeks to determine how the nervous system accomplishes these ends.

The orthodox view is that the genetic apparatus (DNA) creates a body with its nervous system, whose brain then takes over, freely generating thought and behavior. The genetic mechanism (GM), remains in the background as the caretaker of metabolism. Another view is possible, namely that the GM not only creates the body and its brain, but shapes its every thought. This allows us to see intelligence as the light of the gene shining throughout the body, implanted in its every cell, the heart of our conscious awareness synonymous with our independent being. More than an apparatus, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), is the linchpin of life's very being.

The brain belongs to the body and the body belongs to the trans-species cellular-level intelligence that brings it into being. The brain belongs to the species intelligence, which then monitors all bodily activity including thinking. We are free to think, but our every thought is fashioned by our genetic intelligence, no less than the form of our body.

Life to us is synonymous with the consciousness that allows every living thing to preserve itself in purposive activity, whose supreme expression is the unity-in-duality of thought and being. Beginning with the aspect of duality, its depth and wellspring is the duality of the chromosomes that govern metabolism and reproduction. It is not a big jump then to see that the two sides, thought and body constitute the unity that we call consciousness (con “with” + scio “I know”).

Taking this further we only have to think about consciousness to realize that it is our sense of an all-embracive unity that includes the whole, and that insofar as we are merged and lost within this, and realize that we are so, we step beyond it, regaining our independence in the infinity and eternity of consciousness itself. This is the mark of our species; the human wherein mind steps forth from the shadow of the unknown as the individual conscious being.

Consciousness itself is elusive. It includes our sense of self and other, a physical body that is changing and mortal, and an unchanging awareness through time measured in years. Our knowledge in the medium of thought is diaphanous (from Greek diaphanes, transparent), in its very nature. We refer to it as the spirituality of life (Latin spiritus, breath). Consciousness is hidden as the knowing side in the knower-known relation, and the “I” of its scio, “I know”, is the above-said species intelligence which animates social being. Its overt expression comes in two forms, appearance and matter.

In this we can see that the faculty of knowing, whose nature is to be invisible or subjective, wholly receptive and out of sight, is the substance of consciousness, even as that which is known appears in it as in a mirror. To know and to be known are sides in a single relation. The 0 or zero in calculation, as a symbol for the existence of something that does not exist, is its equivalent in mathematics.

The waves of science carry our advancing knowledge along. Dealing with ubiquitous sides, for everything is side on side on side, it seeks to learn how they act and interact. Physics seeks to know how the atom is put together. Physiology goes directly to the heart of function, the transmission of an impulse across a synapse. How exactly, it wants to know, does this occur, and how, as in thought, is it moderated?

Duality in the Nervous System

Nervous activity begins in sensibility and ends in behavior. The brain, with its reticular system intermediates. The reticular system, as the arm of the organism's intention, is a diffuse network of cells that runs through the brain and spinal cord. To study it in action we can go to the hydra, an animalcule the size of a thread 3 or 4mm long, found in ponds and streams. This allows us to consider it in isolation, away from other structures.

Under the microscope the hydra's nervous system appears as a filigree of star-shaped cells whose point-like projections touch, forming a network. Impulses spread around this network from cell to cell. Left to itself the hydra unfolds, waving passively in the water ready to close when touched, as in retreat from attack or to seize quarry.

The reticular system is the hydra's nervous system. Higher organisms, with diverse function and intricate behavior develop complex sense-to-action pathways. The reticular system remains, but as a guiding function, differentially activating or inhibiting this or that action. Behavior would be robotic and life would not exist if sense-to-action were built to act in a one sided manner.

In this way the duality that begins in the genetic structure makes its way into the nervous system as the guiding principle of the complexity and differentiation that then arises upon it as foundation. In the first duplication each original side, sense-to-action and its reticular guidance self-divide, giving four sides as the model unit in nervous process. We see this division as the ‘two’ in the reticular activating and inhibiting systems.

The ‘two’ in our everyday behavior is sense and action, and again conscious and unconscious. For instance chewing is conscious; digestion is unconscious. As another duality, muscle cells contract, glandular cells secrete, and other dualities follow on every hand. Running through the great variety of specific actions, this two-on-two duality is the knot that ties all into the governing system we call mind.

A Proposal on Mechanism

A synapse fires when its electrical charge reaches threshold. For the purpose of explanation let this be exactly 1. Then, in keeping with the postulate that one side cannot build the charge at a synapse to threshold on its own, and stripping away all complexity, let the possible charge that one side can build range from 0 to 0.99 (from 0 to just short of 1). A dual input is therefore mandatory.

The sides involved are the sense-to-action pathway and the reticular system. A quantitative input of 0.5 from each side would be effective. A quantitative input of 0.999999 from one side and 0.000001 from the other would also be effective.

A high degree of sensitivity is vital to an organism's survival, and in the nervous system this requirement devolves upon the synaptic process. A given neuron can receive millions of inputs from other cells on the ‘sense-through (spinal cord and brain) to-action pathway’, and a similar plenitude from the reticular side purveying activation or inhibition. We can simplify this by calling the first pathway ‘act or action’, and the second ‘reticular or control’.

In this complexity each neuron is a mini brain on its own. Synaptic inputs on the action side are votes so to speak, coming from anywhere in the nervous system for the target neuron to build its potential and fire. Those from the reticular or control side are saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and their authority is the DNA empowered genetic or species intention.

Likening ‘reticular control’ to the traffic lights in a city, they carry out the City Council’s intention by signaling stop or go. They facilitate the flow of traffic and direct it through pre-established routes. The traffic, in relation to this, is the action pathway serving the city's needs.

No vehicle in this situation is free to travel when and where it would, and this corresponds to the requirement that no neuron can build its electrical potential to the point of firing on its own. If, as in a thought experiment, the nervous system were devoid of reticular influence, if it suddenly went dead, consciousness would be effaced and the nervous system rendered inanimate.

For a neuron to fire a dual input is therefore obligatory, one being an intended action, the other a mediating control. This constrains nervous activity to physiological behavior. Given the initial framework of two sides, each divides in itself, giving four as the operational unit.

Medically it provides an explanation for the convulsion seen in the epileptic fit. The dual input normally required to release nervous activity is overridden by a cause such as an accidental electrical shock or the action of a drug or toxin. It can also be psychopathological, influenced that is, by thought and emotion. Like the sudden breaking of a dam a massive uncontrolled discharge occurs, and this is the seizure or fit.

Nature fine hones living creatures to exist at the cutting edge of optimal function, a balance that can fail in a number of ways. The first line of treatment in epilepsy usually takes the form of sedation followed by specific medication to shore up the threshold against catastrophic neural discharge. My theme in this essay is to confirm the duality that runs through and supports all nervous system function, the law of its foundation we might say, and my reference to epilepsy is to say, “Here too.” It is manifest in its disease or malfunction as well.

This expands upon my article; “A Theory of the Dual Nature of Nervous Activity” developed as a student at the Otago University Medical School, later published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, April 1960.

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