v. con·verged, con·verg·ing, con·verg·es

v.intr.

1.

a. To tend toward or approach an intersecting point: lines that converge.

b. To come together from different directions; meet: The avenues converge at a central square.

2. To tend toward or achieve union or a common conclusion or result: In time, our views and our efforts converged.

3. Mathematics To approach a limit.

v.tr.

To cause to converge.

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[Late Latin convergere, to incline together : Latin com-, com- + Latin vergere, to incline; see wer-² in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

They all converge upon the Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an enormous canal.The Mirror of the Sea by Conrad, Joseph

Pp: Permaculture

n. A system of perennial agriculture emphasizing the use of renewable natural resources and the enrichment of local ecosystems. [perma(nent) + (agri)culture.] perma·cultur·ist, perma·cultur·al·ist n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Xx: Xylem

n.

The supporting and water-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting primarily of tracheids and vessels; woody tissue.

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[German, from Greek xulon, wood.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Bb: Biomimicry

n
Biomimcry according to Fast Company Magazine: is a discipline that tries to solve problems by imitating the ingenious and sustainable answers provided by nature.

Hh: Hertz

The SI derived unit used to measure the frequency of vibrations and waves, such as sound waves and electromagnetic waves. One hertz is equal to one cycle per second. The hertz is named after German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894).

hertz the ranges of sound frequencies, measured in hertz, that humans and a variety of animals are able to hear

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Ee: Ephemeris

Plural ephemerides (f-mr-dz)

A table giving the coordinates of a celestial body at specific times during a given period. Ephemerides can be used by navigators to determine their longitude while at sea and by astronomers in following objects such as comets. The use of computers has allowed modern ephemerides to determine celestial positions with far greater accuracy than in earlier publications.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

The GPS signal contains three components: a "pseudorandom code," ephemeris data, and almanac data.

Time-location analysis for exposure assessment studies of children ... by Palcisko, Gary J. / Environmental Health Perspectives

Mm: Metaphysics

n.

1. (used with a sing. verb) Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.

2. (used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.

3. (used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.

4. (used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.
5. Things that do not change over time. (Added by Gregory Rothbard)

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[From pl. of Middle English methaphisik, from Medieval Latin metaphysica, from Medieval Greek (ta) metaphusika, from Greek (Ta) meta (ta) phusika, (the works) after the Physics, the title of Aristotle's treatise on first principles (so called because it followed his work on physics) : meta, after; see meta- + phusika, physics; see physics.]

In Context:
Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity out of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding centuries.The Iron Heel by London, Jack



Links
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Mm: Monad (Gr. Monas, a unit)

1. In Greek usage, originally the number one. Later, any individual or metaphysical unit.
2. Bruno named his metaphysical units monads to distinguish them from the Democritean atoms. The monads, centers of the world life, are both psychic and spatial individuals.
3. Leibniz (borrowing the term possibly from Augustine, Bruno or Protestant scholastics) identified the monads with the metaphysical individuals or souls, conceived as unextended, active, indivisible, naturally indestructible, teleological substances ideally related in a system of pre-established harmony.
4. By extension of Leibnizian usage, a soul, self, metaphysical unit, when conceived as possessing an autonomous life, and irrespective of the nature of its relations to beings beyond it.

-- W.L.

Rr: Reductio ad absurdum

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd")[1] in formal logic is an argument to refute a proposition (or set of propositions), by showing that it leads to a logically absurd consequence.[2] In other words: the proposition is shown by proper inspection to be simply untenable within the rules of logic, because it necessarily leads to a self-contradictory consequence.

An unstable hypothesis creates an improbable seam. (Paraphrased from Lee Smolin Trouble with Physics)

Ff: Future Shock

Future Shock is a book written by the sociologist and futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970. It grew out of an article "The Future as a Way of Life" in Horizon magazine, Summer 1965 issue.^[1][2][3][4] The book has sold over 6 million copies and has been widely translated.
Toffler's shortest definition of future shock is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time".

Ii: Imaginative Community

whose ethic and organization incroporates a belief in the inevitability of progress and openess to the future.

Defined by Lee Smolin in the (Trouble with Physics)

Ss: Science

Defined by Richard Fenyman and Lee Smolin in the Trouble with Physics page 307;

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.

Bb: Black Hole Information Paradox

The black hole information paradox results from the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It suggests that physical information could "disappear" in a black hole. It is a contentious subject since it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science—that information cannot be destroyed. _Wikipedia (Black hole Information Paradox)


The scenario John Myers describes "is true, but it's really an issue of information getting scrambled, not lost." In the black hole paradox, the problem is that the information appears to be truly lost, not merely scrambled, yet "the foundations of classical mechanics and statistical mechanics are based on the exact conservation of information." Finally, "a number of the letters express a very common misconception, namely, that because an outside observer sees an infalling observer slow down, that the in falling observer sees the outsider speed up. This is simply not so. The in falling observer looks back and sees nothing unusual."--R. COWEN

Dark secrets by McGinnis, Michael / Science News