[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > While preparing a Python411 podcast about classes and OOP, my mind > wondered far afield. I found myself constructing an extended metaphor > or analogy between the way programs are organized and certain > philosophical ideas. So, going where my better angels dare not, here is > the forbidden fruit of my noodling: > > Spiritual Programming: > > It seems to me that, if anything of a person survives death in any way, > it must do so in some way very different from that way in which we > exist now. > > For now, we live in a temporal world, and once our body and brain > ceases to function, then our mind can no longer function in this > temporal world, and we cease to exist in this temporal world > > So, our current consciousness and awareness is a temporal one. We > experience the one way flow of time. We are not actually conscious of > any permanent thing, only of the changing world as time flows forward. > > In this sense, we are like the ghost in the machine of a computer > system running a computer program, or programs, written in a procedural > language and style. That is, the instructions in our program flow in a > linear sequence, with each instruction impacting and giving way to the > next instruction. Oh, there are the occasional looping structures, and > even the occasional out-of-left-field chaos causing go-to; but we > nevertheless experience all these things as linear and procedural. > > It seems apparent to me that , if anything of us survives it must do so > outside time, and any surviving consciousness could not experience the > same sort of temporal, linear, procedural existence of which we are now > aware. Oh, I can imagine a timeless essence of our "being" existing > timelessly but statically, observing the remnant of our "informational > holes" evolving and dissolving away in the temporal universe; but this > would be a cold survival after all, hardly worthy of the name. > > But perhaps there is a non-temporal world of eternity, that has > structures more reminiscent of higher order programming structures. So, > for instance, functional programming takes and builds upon its > procedural predecessors. So maybe our better, more re-useable parts, > that we develop in this temporal existence, are recycled into > functional units in a non-temporal world. There would still be a > direction of logic flow, but it would be a higher order reality than a > linear, procedural one. > > But beyond this perhaps we can imagine an object oriented world, one in > which the more functional, re-useable parts of people and things from > this lower, temporal world are re-packaged into objects containing both > functional methods and also parameters of state. These higher order > objects, and the relationships they form amongst themselves, can be > imagined to exist in a more timeless state than mere procedural > programs, or even functional ones, in that the complex object oriented > structures of such a timeless world would hold meaning even when viewed > as a whole, and not just when played linearly like a phonograph record. > > > There must be some higher order cognate of time, in this object > oriented world, but we are not able to conceive of it at this time. Our > awareness of existence in this higher order world would be very > different than our current awareness of linearly flowing time, but must > be more in the way of sensing the movements of meaning and > relationships amongst the informational matrices of this higher order, > object oriented universe. > > One can visualize a universe in which there are are an infinite number > of infinite dimensions, but these dimensions also keep expanding at an > infinite rate forever. This expansion could be thought of as the > cognate of time. Entities in this world could freely move back and > forth in any dimension, and could experience the totality of reality > all at once, but still experience the novelty of "time". > > I do not know how Aspect Oriented Programming fits into this picture, > if at all. But one can imagine higher orders of programming logic and > structure than OOP, whether AOP qualifies or some other, yet > undescribed programing paradigm. And, we do not know how many higher > layers of programming structure exist beyond our current technical > understanding. > > Perhaps this is one reason why programmers are so passionate, and even > religious, about their programming tools; because they intuitively > sense that we are dealing with ideas that, however crudely, mirror > eternal realities of immense significance. > > Ron Stephens > <a href="http://www.awaretek.com/python/index.html";>Python411 Podcast > Series</a>
AOP corresponds to a holographic worldview where each single object is in fact a composition and we obtain nonlocal correspondences between parts of the whole pattern. The aspects in an AOP program are the implicite order of a program that is weaved by aspects. The spiritual meaning is that of the gnostic believe in a transcentendal order that pervades existing being but is nevertheless hidden. Its relationship is less close to time as it is to space. The implicate order is of course state- and timeless. Kay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
