Quad Nets: Device Models of Brains

Quad Nets is a new approach to investigating the relationships between brains and psychology, with a focus on how a person exercises freedom. This page organizes the chief scientific and engineering presentation. A technical background will be helpful. However, many of the concepts can be grasped visually.

Other parts of the new approach:

(...) (web page, 5/21/2010) Fundamentals of Timing Devices is a re-statement of the timing devices system starting from first principles. (..., .pdf file (166 kB). The intent is to emulate paradigms of mathematics and physical science and provide a solid foundation for later development.
(...) (web page 12/28/09) An Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics: Brain Models Built From Timing Devices - applies the timing devices system to human auditory experience, includes a full technical presentation (.pdf file - 460 kB).
(...) (web pages, 2008) -- Testimony of Freedom (under construction) the intended culmination of my approach to freedom; presentation of a psychology of resemblances based on Quad Net device operations; the approach leads to analysis of resemblances in physical science, civil law and the Christian religion.
(...) (web pages) -- Embodiment of Freedom, an earlier version of Testimony of Freedom and a "common-sense" presentation of scientific and psychological principles centered around a person exercising freedom -- includes the Archive of works before Quad Nets.
(...)-- a web page showing the central principle of cyclical selection using mechanical metaphors-- although Quad Nets are based on principles of thermodynamics that are different from principles of mechanics, mechanical metaphors may provide insight.

Please see additional Related Works by the Author .

A formal presentation of the Quad Net Model is set forth in a research paper, with Abstract, Contents and related materials set forth on a separate page. The chief idea is that pulsing elemental devices are hooked together in a tiled spatial arrangement, called a Quad Net. A stream of energy flows into each elemental device and is periodically discharged in a pulse that can cause interactive responses in nearest-neighbors. There are ways to control the pulses and the interactive responses so that elemental devices discharge collectively in desired pulse waves and pulse bundles. Pulses are like neuronal pulses in brains that drive the muscles of animals. The controls are like volume and channel controls on a radio.

I suggest that Quad Nets can be embodied in electronic form and manufactured in sheets, e.g., in a grid embedded in a flexible, stretchable plastic matrix with attached controls. Conceptually and in the Images, sheets of Quad Net are treated as construction materials for increasingly complex assemblies.

Step period (msec):
fine Quad Net:
coarse Quad Net:

fast

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slow

640
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The animated Image shows a hierarchical system of Quad Nets where a purple pulse wave in the coarse (large-mesh) Quad Net is driving green pulse bundles in the fine (small-mesh) Quad Net. It is like an elevated railway above city streets only here wavefronts travel together. As shown in the enlarged view of junctions and spatial elements (adjacent Image), the coarse Quad Net (blue framework and yellow junctions) is connected to the fine Quad Net (black framework with red junctions) using a 1-to-9 arrangement of projections that end in orange junctions. Red, yellow and orange junctions function like three classes of synapses between neurons; and pulsing elemental devices in the spatial elements function like neurons. (This system is based on Images 5 and 6.)

Site information

Quad Net Images


Images from the Abstract of "Quad Nets."

The Images provide a visual and conceptual overview of the Quad Net Model. Images 1 through 6 come from the introductory Survey, § 1 in the "Quad Nets" research paper available on a separate page. Beginning with Image 7 ( Primal Quad Net), you can follow the progressive construction of Quad Net devices up through the Phase Transfer Controller (Images 30 - 35). Images 36 through 38 show the Principle of Shimmering, that generates co-existing phasic fragments during a "critical moment of selection."

Superior views of Images are provided by computer, in contrast to Images printed on paper. Some Images of Quad Net constructions should be examined at several scales of magnification to balance views of collective structure with those showing granular detail.

Index of Images
Images 1 through 3 Images 4 and 5 Image 6 Image 7) Images 8 and 9 Image 10 Image 11 Image 12 Image 13 Images 14 and 15 Image 16 Images 17 and 18 Images 19 and 20 Images 21 through 24 Image 25 Image 26	Image 27 Image 28 Image 29 Image 30 (including 30b) Images 31 and 32 Images 33 and 34 Image 35 Images 36 through 37 Image 38 Image 39 Images 40 and 41 Images 42 through 44 Images 45 through 48 Images 49 through 51 Images 52 through 54 Images 55 through 57

Site information

Links relating to Quad Net

Related Works by the Author

The Quad Net Model is part of the my larger work, where device designs for brains are the basis of a psychological model and the psychological model is used to investigate institutional activities, including physics and natural science, the laws of the courts and the Christian religion. The focus of interest in the larger work is personal freedom, especially as expressed through choices and selections made by persons in institutional situations. Of course, we exercise freedom in wilderness too, but institutional situations are more susceptible to analysis.

The engineering and scientific works set forth principles of device design that can be developed in several directions. Writings about psychological, philosophical, institutional, personal and spiritual matters are more tentative and even sketchy – but they provide long-range motivation and have suggested particular inventions and pathways of development. For example, the design of the Ear for Pythagorean harmonics had its inception in my personal auditory investigations into "Duo Seraphim" by Claudio Monteverdi, discussed on the Shimmering Silences website, linked below.

I. Engineering and Scientific Works

Quad Net materials include a separately organized
... web page presenting the technical paper titled Quad Nets: Material Foundations for Thermal Device Models of Brains, along with Abstract and Contents, or you can download the Quad Nets paper. (.pdf format, 1.1 Mb)

Timing Devices (2007-2010) has developed from a simplified version of the Quad Net Model into an independent area of investigation. The course of development includes possible future projects.

(...) (web page, 5/21/2010) Fundamentals of Timing Devices is a re-statement of the timing devices system starting from first principles. (..., .pdf file (166 kB). The intent is to emulate paradigms of mathematics and physical science and provide a solid foundation for later development.
(...) (web page 12/28/09) An Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics: Brain Models Built From Timing Devices - applies the timing devices system to human auditory experience, includes a full technical presentation (.pdf file - 460 kB). Another web page presents the Abstract of the paper and the listing of Contents. "Advanced Ears for Pythagorean harmonics: a Procrustean group of harmonies" uses device designs to explore harmonic structure.(link).
The separate website, link, Shimmering Silences in Beautiful Music (2009) presented initial investigations and original constructions that developed into the present Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics, along with an earlier version of the Timing Devices paper, titled An Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics: Mathematical Processing in Brain Models Built From "Timing Devices," (2009), a .pdf file 212 kB.
The separate web page, "Timing Devices or Why Brains Are Not Computers," link, is now the setting for the first, 2007, version of the Timing Devices paper, .pdf file, 363 kB.
The separate web page, Dancer - Shimmering Gaits of a Six-Legged Engineered Organism link, contains a proposed series of projects for construction of systems for engineered organisms (artificial animals) to be built from timing devices and Quad Net assemblies, starting with a "Utricle" that detects the orientation of an organism with respect to gravity and progressively leading upwards to a six-legged organism that uses a variety of coordination patterns ("gaits") in attempts to navigate a broken and obstructed terrain.
See also "Advanced Note: Convolution Timing Devices," a .pdf file (68 kB) link, preparatory for the present Timing Devices paper.

II. Philosophy of Science

The Quad Net Model is a counter-example to the proposition that "brains are computers." That proposition is part of a belief system that I call the Mechanical Cosmology and that includes other propositions: "all things are made of atoms" and "the Universe is governed by laws of physics, like the law of conservation of energy."
Beliefs about atoms and laws of physics have been developmentally productive and wonderfully fruitful in practical ways – in contrast to "brains are computers" – but they are also false and misleading. There are no "atoms." Atoms are mental constructions and they do not appear in reality. It is possible to buy materials, such as minerals, metals, refined chemical reagents, vegetable materials, animal materials and synthetic materials; but it is not possible to buy "atoms." The material that is closest to "atoms," refined helium, shows complex, collective, "non-atomic" properties when the temperature gets very low and the helium liquifies.
Energy is never "conserved." "Conservation of energy" is an ideal that is never attained, although billiard tables, vaccuum chambers and ball bearings rather approach it and make exact calculations possible under some circumstances.
Physicists believe that all of reality is made up of particles and laws of physics. Some parts of reality are well modeled by methods based on this belief but other parts of reality – e.g., the reality of persons and the reality of conflicting principles of social organization – cannot even be recognized. The physicists' belief is formed through study of imaginary conservative systems of atoms that can never be realized and that do not apply at all to situations that are most important to persons living their lives.
My works on these subjects are not as compactly organized as my engineering and scientific works and the themes run through many diverse works
Works related to Philosophy of Science

Please see a separate web page, "Facts About Snowflakes," about the generation of snowflakes from gaseous water vapor. Snowflakes can be beautifully symmetrical. Physicists are unable to account for this phenomenon because the proposed atomic processes are independent of one another and distant from each spatially. I argue that the attempt to explain the phenomenon by means of atomic processes is a failure. This failure is exemplary of the failures of physics to explain classes of phenomena of phase changes, of which the change from water to ice is the most familiar. I hold that important brain activities are phase changes and outside the reach of the Mechanical Cosmology.
A Patchwork of Limits: Physics Viewed From an Indirect Approach (2000), a .pdf file (157 kB), is discussed on a separate web page The paper is a statement of my "alternative view of physics" that includes technical analysis of the thermodynamic critical state, the conceptual basis of Quad Nets.
A broad statement of my alternative view accessible to the lay reader, with a critical analysis of conventional physics, is in § 6 of "An Objective Kind of Freedom," an archival paper in the form of a .pdf file (618 kB.). The paper was published online in January of 2005 and the first six sections were foundational of my development of Quad Nets later in the year.
"On Cosmological Principles in Natural Science," a .pdf file (23 kB), link, is suggestive of future approaches.

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III. Large-scale Works

Testimony of Freedom
A separate website, under development, that establishes scientific and engineering foundations for investigations into social and spiritual matters.

Embodiment of Freedom
A separate website that was a prior stage of development, now superseded in large part by Testimony of Freedom. This site contains the Archive of my work that was done prior to May of 2005 and that led up to Quad Nets.

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12/28/09