Boydstun

Is that to mean Rand and Augustine agree that embracing God is a negation of the self or the mind? both? or are they one and the same?
I've long thought that mind and self were the same, but lately I'm perplexed with the notion that self contains the mind as an aspect. That the more fundamental self is consciousness as such. The underlying awareness of the functioning of the mind and its contents are objects to the self.

Do Christians really think that self-interest is immoral? That literally makes no sense whatsoever. They couldn't even live beyond a week thinking something so blatantly irrational/immoral. If they actually "believed" such a irrational thing they would all hold their breath,  not eat, not drink water, do absolutely not and just die.

Correct, Monart.
This got to be a longer road than I had in mind at the beginning, but that is giving it full due weight.
And I'm going to get to each promised component.

Correct, Monart.
This got to be a longer road than I had in mind at the beginning, but that is giving it full due weight.
And I'm going to get to each promised component.

Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – Α’
How did Newton (1687) show that the force that causes unsupported objects to fall here on the surface of the earth is the same force that causes earth to orbit the sun? Not as the schoolman Theodoric of Freiberg (d. c.1310), nor as Descartes (1637), scientifically comprehended the formation of rainbows in the sky. Theirs was physical science contributing to understanding in their problem area.
But no, Newton’s effective method for showing expanse of gravitation beyond the earth, his most important problem area, was by bringing geometry and limit-process thought into the service of quantitative representation of force exerted by the sun on its orbiting planets and exact forms of orbits that would result from the various strengths of various candidate central forces specified by their various mathematical forms (Brackenridge 1995 and Harper 2011). Newton’s method on this problem laid the foundation for all subsequent methods of theoretical physics. Newton’s achievement will be the kickoff caught by Kant which, together with Kant’s reception of the old gold of Euclidean geometry, will set in motion a locomotive of thought on to the analytic-synthetic sharp distinction I shall trace and dismantle in §B.
Rand refused the conceptions of science and its relation to philosophy put forth by the early moderns, the rationalists and the empiricists. She maintained that science under the rationalists’ picture of reason and its relation of mind to the world had  “indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform” (1961, 28). She understood rationalists as maintaining that “man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts” (1961, 30; see Descartes’s fourth Meditation).
That is not how Descartes discovered how the rainbow comes about nor how he thought reason should proceed in such an inquiry (Garber 2001, 94–110; Dika 2023). We should notice that Rand did not recommend as remedy for rationalism and its alleged purport for physical science a reintroduction of such things as Aristotle-inspired substantial forms in natural philosophy down from Aquinas and Suarez, against which Descartes had rebelled and had replaced with mechanism (Garber 1992; Garber 2001; Garber and Roux 2013).
From the time of Plato and Aristotle through Descartes and Leibniz, philosophy of nature and physical science were not sharply distinguished as we think of them today. Edward Grant concludes that without the high development of natural philosophy attained between 1200 and 1600, the scientific revolution would not have come about (2007, 329).
William A. Wallace (1923–2015) argued that Thomist Aristotelianism in logic and natural philosophy was the best frame fitting the natural world and the advance of modern science. He embedded the scientific advance of Theodoric on theory of the rainbow into Aristotle’s four causes, stressing the continuity between Aristotelian science by qualitative natures and Theodoric’s quantitative methods and conferring absolute certainty of the scientific results by their rendition into Aristotelian demonstrative form of science.
From Rand’s outlook on the relationship of philosophy and physical science, such would be a smothering and hand-maid casting of science by overblown (and faulty) metaphysics (ITOE 273). On the side of consonance with Wallace, however, Rand’s view, in which the import of metaphysics to physics is modest, would not entail a whole dismissiveness up front of Wallace’s 1992 (Chps. 4–6) intellectual archeology of Galileo’s methodological connections, logical and historical, with the Aristotelian epistemological template for science. Rand’s epistemology and metaphysics, to be sure, are in considerable opposition to that template, by her departures from Aristotle on essence, form, causation, universals, and definition. Galileo’s philosophical framework was not Rand’s more modern one, but he famously freed himself of much encumbrance from Aristotelian natural philosophy and got some new and true science crucial for Newton. 
I have noted the radical opposition between, on the one hand, conception of science under Rand’s general metaphysics and epistemology and, on the other hand, what she thought to be the rationalist method for science (see also Rand 1970). One difference between Descartes’ actual method from standard scientific method today, with which latter, Rand’s theoretical philosophy is aligned: for Descartes, observations and experiments serve only to illustrate and reinforce implications of scientific theory bound up with natural philosophy, and first-philosophy, which has already settled that the scientific theory is true. An observation at odds with the rationalist scientific theory would be suspected of error by the rationalist inquirer of those days. Results from the laboratory were not tests against which the theory stands or falls.
Rand saw the classical modern empiricists as “those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts” (1961, 30). She saw them as clinging to reality by abandoning their mind. She thought her own theory of concepts filled the large gaps in the rationalist and empiricist theories of knowledge (1970, 89–90), by her tie of concepts (and reason, I might add) to concrete particulars. I hope some day to uncover whether what is distinctive to her theory of concepts—its cast in terms of magnitude structure among particulars subsumed under a concept—solidifies the tie Rand thought she had attained and its rescue of knowledge, ordinary and scientific, from rationalism and empiricism, classical and modern (Logical Empiricism).
Rand maintained that failures of modern philosophy to mount an adequate defense of rational knowledge, including science, against Cartesian and Humean skepticism needed (i) a correct theory of universals and concepts, (ii) a defense of the validity of the deliverances of the senses, and (iii) a validation of inductive inference.[1]
The first as provided by Rand can correct rationalist and empiricist failures in adequately accounting for modern scientific knowledge provided someone yet-to-come can develop further the measurement structure in empirical concepts and show how Rand’s theory of concepts in its true distinctiveness can be extended to mathematical knowledge. Knapp 2014 advertised the latter, but failed to deliver. The second was accomplished in Kelley 1986. The third was attempted within Harriman 2010, which advertised, but failed delivery in the same way as Knapp 2014.
Both the Harriman book and the Knapp one did not make central, deep connection between the nature of modern science and what is Rand’s truly distinctive aspect of concepts in general: its structuring of concepts by measurement ommisions along concepts’ dimensions capturing concretes and their world-given relations. Still, these books are profitable reads as among contemporary realist casts of modern science and mathematics. These two informative Objectivist books, of course, are written in an era in which science and mathematics have become sharply distinct from philosophy and in which much more science and mathematics has been established than at the time of Theodoric, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. To those Objectivist works should be joined the Objectivist-neighbor realism of Franklin 2014 and Dougherty 2013 from the Aquinas-Aristotelian framework.[2]
In the next installment (§B), we’ll travel the road: Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Logical Empiricism to Carnap v. Quine on the analytic-synthetic distinction to Peikoff’s tackle of ASD and to my own.
(To be continued.)
Notes
[1] To succeed in accounting for mathematical knowledge, Rand’s theoretical philosophy actually needs a renovation in her general ontology, specifically, a renovation (not possible since Rand is deceased and her philosophy is handily taken as in stasis—identifiably what philosophy she made, just that, as-is) that lands as my own layout of the divisions of Existence (2021). Within my layout, pure mathematics is study of the formalities of situation, some such forms belong to concretes given in perception, and the fundamental contrast of the concrete is not the abstract, but the forms belonging to concretes.
[2] Some additional contemporary work on the relations of metaphysics to science and on realism in science: Maudlin 2007; Chakravarttty 2007; Mumford and Tugby 2013; Morganti 2013; Ross, Ladyman, and Kincaid 2013. 
References
Boydstun, S. 2021. Existence, We. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 21(1):65–104.
Brackenridge, J.B. 1995. The Key to Newton’s Dynamics – The Kepler Problem and the Principia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chakravartty, A. 2007. A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Descartes, R. 1637. The World and Other Writings, Appendix 2. S. Gaukroger, translator. 1998. New York: Cambridge University Press. 
Dougherty, J.P. The Nature of Scientific Explanation. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
Franklin, J. 2014. An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics – Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garber, D. 1992. Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
——. 2001. Descartes Embodied. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Garber, D. and S. Roux, editors, 2013. The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer.
Grant, E. 2007. A History of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Harper, W.L. 2011. Isaac Newton’s Scientific Method. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harriman, D. 2010. The Logical Leap – Induction in Physics. New York: New American Library.
Knapp, R.E. 2014. Mathematics Is about the World. Lexington, KY.

Kelley, D. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Maudlin, T. 2007. The Metaphysics within Physics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morganti, M. 2013. Combining Science and Metaphysics – Contemporary Physics, Conceptual Revision and Common Sense. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mumford, S. and M. Tugby, editors, 2013. Metaphysics and Science. New York: Oxford University Press.
Newton, I. 1687 (1713, 1725). Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and System of the World. 3rd edition. A. Motte (1729) and F. Cajori (1934), translators. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Peikoff, L. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1990.
Rand, A. 1961. For the New Intellectual. Title essay. New York: Signet.
——. 1970. Kand versus Sullivan. In Rand 1982.
——. 1982. Philosophy: Who Neds It. New York: Signet.
——. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE). Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian.  
Ross, D.J., J. Ladyman, and H. Kincaid, editors, 2013. Scientific Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wallace, W.A. 1959. The Scientific Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press.
——. 1992. Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Motivation is a key to human action, to its initiation, sustenance, and completion. Based on one’s values, motivation comes in many forms, such as financial, legal, ethical, promissory, logical, intellectual, and esthetic. At its core, motivation is emotive, i.e., e-motion: that which “-moves out”, that which is the motive power of action. An example of esthetic motivation is the following.
  Motive Power
The motive power of life is the engine of directed motion, the generator and creator of life’s ambition, driving actions forward in life’s continuous sustenance and realization.   In music, as in life, there’s a motive power that pulls music outward, a keynote that carries the flow of melody in harmony on a constant beat toward resolution and arrival.   In literature, as in music and in life, there is a motive power that draws out the words and names the concepts that inform and inspire thought onward to envision real ideals.   The source of motive power, in literature, music, and life, is: integration – it’s choosing to clarify and unify words, tones, and actions with integrity and purpose, all aiming for the climax, crescendo, and ecstasy that await.   As three models of motive power, behold: In real life is the person and character of genius and benefactor Ayn Rand (see 100 voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand and The Letters of Ayn Rand,
In music and literature, are the following two complementary works: one a motion-picture in sounds, the other, a motion-picture in words; the music “Collision” may be heard as a short prelude to the scene from Atlas Shrugged. All models are worth repeated visits for reflection and re-motivation.

=====

“Collision”, by John Mills-Cockell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiIe3PjiYp4 And his other similar earlier works from 1970s, such as “Melina’s Torch”. “Tillicum”, “Aurora Spinray”, “December Angel”, "Appaloosa and Pegasus" – all can be heard on Youtube. Also, especially noteworthy is his 2004 Concerto of Deliverance, commissioned as a tribute to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. http://www.starshipaurora.com/concertoofdeliverance.html   =====   Dagny riding the John Galt Line (especially p. 245-246, Atlas Shrugged😞
  She felt the sweep of an emotion which she could not contain, as of something bursting upward. She turned to the door of the motor units, she threw it open to a screaming jet of sound and escaped into the pounding of the engine's heart.   For a moment, it was as if she were reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and what remained of her hearing was only a long, rising, falling, rising scream. She stood in a swaying, sealed chamber of metal, looking at the giant generators. She had wanted to see them, because the sense of triumph within her was bound to them, to her love for them, to the reason of the life-work she had chosen. In the abnormal clarity of a violent emotion, she felt as if she were about to grasp something she had never known and had to know. She laughed aloud, but heard no sound of it; nothing could be heard through the continuous explosion. "The John Galt Line!" she shouted, for the amusement of feeling her voice swept away from her lips.   She moved slowly along the length of the motor units, down a narrow passage between the engines and the wall. She felt the immodesty of an intruder, as if she had slipped inside a living creature, under its silver skin, and were watching its life beating in gray metal cylinders, in twisted coils, in sealed tubes, in 'the convulsive whirl of blades in wire cages. The enormous complexity of the shape above her was drained by invisible channels, and the violence raging within it was led to fragile needles on glass dials, to green and red beads winking on panels, to tall, thin cabinets stenciled "High Voltage."   Why had she always felt that joyous sense of confidence when looking at machines? -- she thought. In these giant shapes, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to "Why?" and "What for?" -- like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel.   They are alive, she thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power -- of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form. For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time.   They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them by remote control. Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going -- not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again -- not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages -- the power of a living mind -- the power of thought and choice and purpose. She was making her way back toward the cab, feeling that she wanted to laugh, to kneel or to lift her arms, wishing she were able to release the thing she felt . . . .   =======

Thank you for your comparisons between Rand-Peikoff's and the others' rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, the latter of which I knew little about before. I'm just beginning to browse through your prolific work on philosophy llisted on your profile. And I'm looking forward to further postings from you on this topic of necessary truths, and to your explanation of necessity as "a compound of necessity-for of life and of living mind in grasping fact, the realm of necessity-that".

Don't Tread on USA!
The US has said they will not attack targets inside Iran for their use of terrorist organizations to attack Iranian opponents. I hope, however, that the US has not taken destruction, sooner or later, of the entire Iranian navy off the table as among US retaliatory response actions.*

SIDEBAR
In his 2016, Greg Salmieri notes that it is curious that Peikoff 1967 does not mention Quine’s “Two Dogmas.” Salmeiri points out some ways the Rand-Peikoff diagnoses of and remedies for the errors in analytic-versus-synthetic doctrines differ from Quine’s. Salmieri understands the later challenge of AvS from Kripke and Putnam to have more in common with the Objectivist challenge, though Putnam differs importantly from Rand on definitions and essences, which looms large in the Objectivist challenge (2016, 304n34, 311n87). Salmieri points to the book-review article, in JARS in 2005, by Roderick Long for thoughts on some relations between Randian theory of meaning and those of Kripke and Putnam.
Long’s 2005 review of Greg Browne’s book Necessary Factual Truth was followed a year later by a substantial reply from Browne and rejoinder by Long (JARS V7N1). From May to September of 2007, Prof. Browne engaged in a very generous exchange (his own words coming to about 19,000) in a thread at Objectivist Living* defending the rejection by Peikoff of AvS and defending his own kindred rejection of AvS. Browne had in his arsenal the Kripke-Putnam developments that had been savaging AvS in the years since Peikoff 1967. Browne vigorously countered, in that thread, devotees of Logical Empiricism (and of Popper) who criticized (and poorly understood the revolution afoot, such as in) Peikoff 1967.
Late in that thread, Robert Campbell entered it to ask Browne if he had any thoughts on why Peikoff had not addressed the famous Quine paper in his (Peikoff’s) dissertation, which Campbell had lately acquired. Browne had not seen the dissertation and had not much to conjecture on that peculiarity. (Remember, Peikoff 1964 is not written as a champion of Ayn Rand’s philosophic views, but, in an even-handed way, by an author acknowledging his background preference for some rehabilitated sort of logical ontologism and pointing near the end of the dissertation to some of that rehabilitation, such as fresh thinking on the nature of definitions and essence; distance between Quine’s views on logic and on AvS and Randian Peikoff views would not be the reason for no Quine in Peikoff 1964.) I should suggest that Quine, Carnap, Russell, and Wittgenstein raise such a briar patch of technicalities that it was better (and enough for deserving a Ph.D.) to stick with the more accessible and manageable Ayer, Nagel, Dewey, and Lewis to get the dissertation (already more than an armful in history assimilated) finally completed. I'll be digging through the Carnap-Quine briar patch in the next installment of the present study (along with Neo-Kantianism, Logical Empiricism, and of course Kant).
*I stopped posting at that site a year ago, when the owner covertly deleted a post of mine partly critical of Donald Trump.
~References~
Browne, G. M. 2001. Necessary Factual Truth. Lanham: University Press of America.
Gotthelf, A. and G. Salmieri, editors, 2016. A Companion to Ayn Rand. Wiley Blackwell.
Peikoff, L. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1990.
Long, R. T. 2005. Reference and Necessity: A Rand-Kripke Synthesis? —Review of Brown 2001. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7(1):209–28.
Quine, W. V. O. 1951. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In From a Logical Point of View. 1953. Harvard.

Rand, A. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. Meridian.
Salmieri, G. 2016. The Objectivist Epistemology. In Gotthelf and Salmieri 2016.

Part 3 – Quine, Objectivism, Resonant Existence – Α
A sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, propositions, and judgments had been important in the modern empiricist philosophy received by Quine. In the present Part and the next, I set out the relation of Quine’s opposition to the distinction in the 1950’s to the Peikoff-Rand opposition to the distinction in the following decade. I emphasize a major problem, tackled earlier by Kant, as reason the dichotomous distinction had been important. That is, I emphasize the problem it had been set to solve in a way not Kant’s.
The characterization and responsibilities of analytic statements in sharp contrast to synthetic statements put forth in Logical Empiricism (also called Logical Positivism) constituted an alternative solution to that old problem, alternative to Kant’s solution. I shall step back in the next Part to more of Carnap and the response of Quine to him, and step back to the epistemological problem that had arisen in Kant. I’ll formulate a new solution, one in some affiliation with Rand’s theoretical philosophy and her theory of value. Form and necessity will enter, and I’ll assess Peikoff’s ASD against my layout.[1]
“[Quine] is perhaps best known for his arguments against Logical Empiricism (in particular, against its use of the analytic-synthetic distinction). This argument, however, should be seen as part of a comprehensive world-view which makes no sharp distinction between philosophy and empirical science, and thus requires a wholesale reorientation of the subject” (Hylton and Kemp 2023)
Quine held that the best science we have garnered is the best ultimate truth at present we have of the world. He did not see logical principles such as the law of excluded middle as arising from ontology, but as a principle of convenience pervasive in knowledge. I should say that dichotomy between those two candidate bases is false. I go with Rand’s picture of elementary logic, as a certain pervasive character of method in successful identifications of reality. Such existence-based logic infuses any higher logic naturally appropriate in attainment of ordinary and scientific knowledge. I add that excluded middle is a tooling formality for a living mind. It is not a formality belonging to concretes in their actuality and independently of the existence of living mind discerning them, by thought, in their concrete identities. Further, in my system (2023), alternatives of any sort do not exist in the universe at all until life enters the scene, and all alternatives, however high in the intellect, are descendants of the fundamental alternative that Rand exposed as uniquely facing the living: continuation of maintaining life or termination of life. 
We have mind, I say, capable of getting knowledge of concretes in part by use of principles of logic and mathematics tooled from formalities that belong to concretes. Identities of concretes—their characters, situations, and passages—can be formalities belonging to concrete existents, where discernment of those formalities is by thought engaged in elementary experience of ordinary objects in the world. Belonging-formalities such as a broad-form principle of identity “Existents have identity, and existence of the latter in full just is the former” can be assimilated and tooled by thought into further formalities tethered to belonging-formalities. The principle of excluded middle, for example, can have a tether to belonging-identities as well as to the high-powered human mind. In other words, we need not begin with logic, then use it in grasping the world, as Quine would have it. No, we begin with the world, including its identities in belonging-formalities, the world in ordinary human experience. When retaking the world in science, we wield formal tools with some tethers, by ancestry, from the world of ordinary experience.
Which tooled formalities of logic and mathematics are best suited to which parts of the world is a further intellectual enterprise. Minkowski geometry can be weighed against 4D Euclidean geometry for most faithful and most effective tool for comprehending physical flat spacetime. Aristotle’s syllogistic and second-order logic can be weighed against Quine’s choice.[2] 
Quine aimed to integrate knowledge historical, knowledge scientific, including psychology, and knowledge philosophical. I notice, whole truth be told, he ended up smashing against early-childhood cognitive developmental psychology in the second half of the twentieth century, from his armchair.  Elizabeth Spelke remarked: “Our research provides evidence, counter to the views of Quine (1960) and others, that the organization of the world into objects [in comprehension] precedes the development of language and thus does not depend upon it. I suspect, moreover, that language plays no important role in the spontaneous elaboration of physical knowledge” (Spelke 1989, 181).
The reorientation between science and philosophy sought by Quine is wholesome, I should say. Ayn Rand remained in the old outlook from the philosopher’s chair. She took the sciences, including the modern hard sciences, to be in a one-way need of philosophy, especially in epistemology.[3]
“Philosophy is a necessity for a rational being: philosophy is the foundation of science, the organizer of man’s mind, the integrator of his knowledge, . . .” (Rand 1975, 82; also ITOE 74). “Science was born as a result and consequences of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base” (Rand 1961, 44; also 26–27). Rand acknowledged that scientific biology informed her concept of the general nature of life that she employed in her theory of ethics. (More generally, on the influence of biology on philosophy, see Smith 2017.) A bit of measurement theory informed Rand’s theory of concepts. A bit of Helmholtz, her thoughts on music.
Rand acknowledges no cases in which science begat or informed philosophy in metaphysics or epistemology. I disagree. Harmonics, geometry, and astronomy existed before Aristotle, before his metaphysics or his theory of science or his organization of logical deduction. Aristotle’s empiricism was a boost to sciences (De Groot 2014), but harmonics, geometry, and astronomy were not inaugurated by systematic explicit philosophy (see e.g. Graham 2013). The idea of a physical law mathematical in expression was not invented by philosophers. Nor the need to look for certain symmetries and symmetry breaking in comprehending parts of physical reality (see Schwichtenberg 2018 [2015]; Healey 2007).
From Plato-Aristotle to the present, where theoretical philosophy flourished, it was shaped by received mathematics and science (Netz 1999; Bochner 1966). Concerning science in our own time, contra Rand, it has not declined in comparison to advances in the nineteenth century, which Rand had maintained in support of the idea that bad strains of modern philosophy have led to a decline in scientific achievements (Rand 1975, 78). Modern hard sciences have continued their stampede to the present time, and cognitive developmental psychology arising in the second half of the twentieth century continues bringing new light to the present. 
To be sure, scientists operate within a general metaphysics they hold, and as Michael Friedman has illustrated, this may be especially useful for resolutions during a time of fundamental innovations in the course of science (2001, chap. 4). Scientists have also been innovators in methods of investigation, theoretical, observational, and experimental. In that we might say they have on a philosophical hat. But I object to the picture that full-tilt philosophers come up with valid methods of rational scientific inquiry independently of existing science, methods not already in the heads and hands of scientists rolling back the darkness.
(To be continued.)
Notes
[1] Recall that “Resonant Existence” is my own philosophy, whose fundamentals in theoretical philosophy are set out in my paper “Existence, We.” The overlap between my philosophy and Rand’s theoretical philosophy and her theory of value are extensive, although, the differences are substantial.
[2] Bivalent, first-order https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-firstorder-emergence/ predicate logic with identity [such has been proven complete]) for best truth-preserving tool in science. I might add, it seems fine tooling-form logical structure of natural-language thought on the world, at least when this much classical logic is bound additionally to existence by relevance logic. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-relevance/
[3] But consider Sciabarra 2013 [1995], 121–23.
References
Bochner, S. 1966. The Role of Mathematics in the Rise of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Boydstun, S. 2021. Existence, We. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 21(1):65–104.
Friedman, M. 2001. Dynamics of Reason. Stanford: CSLI.
De Groot, J. 2014. Aristotle’s Empiricism. Las Vegas: Parmenides.
Graham, D.W. 2013. Science before Socrates. New York: Oxford University Press.
Healey, R. 2007. Gauging What’s Real – The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Gauge Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hylton, P. and G. Kemp 2023. Willard Van Orman Quine. Online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Netz, R. 1999. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics – A Study in Cognitive History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rand, A. 1961. For the New Intellectual. New York: Signet.
——. 1975. From the Horse’s Mouth. In Rand 1982.
——. 1982. Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Signet.
——. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. Meridian.  
Schwichtenberg, J. 2018 [2015]. Physics from Symmetry. 2nd edition. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Sciabarra, C. 2013 [1995]. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. 2nd edition. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
Smith, D.L., editor, 2017. How Biology Shapes Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Spelke, E. 1989. The Origins of Physical Knowledge. In Weiskrantz 1989.
Weiskrantz, L. editor, 1989. Thought without Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Part 2 – Morton White*
Let me abbreviate the title of White’s 1952 paper by UD (for Untenable Dualism).
White saw the myth of a sharp divide between the analytic and the synthetic as affiliate of an older mythically sharp division: the Aristotelian division between essential and accidental predication (1952, 330). He urged rejection of both of these affiliates due to the divisional sharpness falsely maintained for them.
White noted two kinds of statements that had lately been regarded as analytic. The first are purely formal logical truths such as “A is A” and “A or not-A.” The second are cases of “what is traditionally known as essential predication” (UD 318). He ponders especially the example “All men are rational animals.” That statement is logically the same as “Any man is a rational animal” or “A man is a rational animal.” This last expression of the proposition is one of Leonard Peikoff’s examples of a purportedly analytic statement in “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” (ASD 90). 
White did not pursue in this paper whether it is correct to characterize logical truths as analytic (UD 318–19). It will be recalled that Peikoff held forth Rand’s conception of logical truth against that of A. J. Ayer, who had maintained: “The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. . . . In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies” (Ayer 1946, 77; ASD 94, 101, 111–18; Branden 1963, 7).
Whether one were to take analytical truths to be identical with or based on logical truths, I say that the Objectivist view of logic (with which I agree) does not allow the inference of Ayer and others that logical truths are not informed by fact. Logic on our view is a tool we use in identifications of existents. Logical truths are in no way prior to other truths, ones having empirical content. We learn the logical principle of Excluded Middle in an elementary logic course, but that learning is really an explicit articulation of a principle we have already found effective and reliable in thinking about the world we are negotiating.
Either there is a bear sleeping beside the mail box OR there is not. Either I will continue to work on this project non-stop for two more hours from now OR not. Either vampires exist OR not. But there is a limited proper vista on the world within which the principle is sensible if our use of it is in pursuit of identifications of existents. It is nonsense to say that either there are some things existing in the world OR not. The effectiveness and range of sensible employment of the logical principle is learned from experience, and the concept of existence and its totality is learned by experience. The fact that the sensible range of the principle is so wide that it is convenient to indicate its general form as “A or Not-A” does not give us license to suppose there are no limits on sensible “applications” of the Principle of Excluded Middle or to suppose we do not learn that principle by experience.
With that Objectivist view of elementary logic, they can say one thing what Morton White did not say: One’s concept of what is an analytic truth by identifying the analytic with the logical or basing the analytical on the logical does nothing to show that any purported analytical truth is entirely independent of experience, that it bears no information about existence at all, or that a purported analytical truth is made true and derives its necessity of being true by social convention untethered from facts of the empirical world.
As with Quine’s “Two Dogmas,” White undermined the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic by finding fault with various explications of what analyticity amounts to. They concluded there is no durable articulate way of classifying propositions and truths as analytic in sharp contrast to synthetic. 
One way of conceiving an analytic statement is as expressing a proposition deducible from a logical truth by substitution of a synonym of one of its terms. (i) Every A is A. Therefore, (ii) Every man is a man. With “rational animal” as synonym for “man”, by substitution of identicals, we obtain (iii) Every man is a rational animal (UD 319).
So some might propose that analyticity is explicated in terms of logical truth and synonymy, as in the preceding paragraph. White rejects the view that whether “man” and “rational animal” are synonymous is a matter of arbitrarily selected convention. Similarly, that “man” and “animal who can skip” (my example, demonstrated, along with other distinctly human moves here [Tina]) are not synonymous is not a matter of arbitrarily selected convention. Natural language is not like an artificial logical language in which meanings of terms are set entirely by stipulation (UD 321–24).
Could analytic statements be defined instead as those whose denials are self-contradictory? (UD 325–26). White argues that denials of such propositions as “Not every man is a rational animal” are not contradictions, but his concept of contradiction is, in step with dominate contemporary views of logic, too narrow, as I have elaborated above in connection with Ayer.
White did not relate this criterion for analyticity to Kant, but I should do so. One of Kant’s characterizations of analytic judgments is that in them the predicate is “thought through identity” with thought of the subject. Synthetic judgments connect predicate to subject, but not in the relation of identity (KrV A6–8 B10–12), where simple complete identity is meant, not Rand’s more expansive notion of identity as some or other distinctive traits belonging necessarily to anything that exists.[1] According to Kant, all judgments must conform to the principle of self-consistency, but only judgments certifiable by self-contradiction upon denial alone, apart from their truth in experience, are analytic (A151–53 B190–93; 1783, 4:266–70; 1790, 8:228–30, 244–45; Allison 2004, 89–93; Garrett 2008, 204–6).
I object that contradiction upon denial is no genuine grounding of any truth. If we start with a truth and then show that upon denial of it we arrive at a contradiction, well isn’t that cute? But establishment of its truth is elsewhere. 
Morton White found that appealing to synonymies in the language is not illuminating in the absence of objective criteria for synonymy (UD 324). If it is said that one’s sense of wrongness in “Man is not a rational animal” differs from one’s sense of wrongness in “Man is not a skipper,” White responds that that is surely only a matter of degree, not a sharp difference in kind. Between one’s response to contradiction of “Man is a rational animal” and contradiction of “Man is a skipper,” there is not a sharp difference in kind. If self-contradiction upon denial of a proposition is the criterion for analyticity of the proposition, then there is no sharp divide between the analytic and the synthetic (UD 325–26). Objectivism can add that there is no qualitative divide in the purported divide analytic/synthetic because elementary logic is based on the widest-frame, worldly facts that existence exists and existence is identity, in Rand’s expansive sense of identity. White did not surmise that the merely-difference-of-degree in our sense of wrongness in “Man is not a rational animal” and in “Man is not a skipper” might be because a thing is everything that it is, as was later underscored by Peikoff in ASD.
White saw the myth of a sharp divide between the analytic and the synthetic as affiliate of an older mythically sharp division: the Aristotelian division between essential and accidental predication (UD 330). This kinship was also recognized in Peikoff (ASD 95), as I remarked earlier. But Peikoff went further: He observed that essentials of a thing do not exhaust what a thing is. No concepts of a subject are concepts of only what are the essentials in the definition of the subject.
(To be continued.)
Note
[1] Joseph Butler (1692–1752) stated: “Everything is something or other.” Taken as the Principle of Identity, it is expansive. This expansive concept of identity is championed in Oderberg 2007, chap. 5. 
References
Allison, H. 2004 [1983]. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Revised and enlarged edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Allison, H., and P. Heath, editors, 2002. Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ayer, A. 1946. Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Dover.
Branden, N. 1963. Review of Brand Blanshard’s Reason and Analysis. The Objectivist Newsletter 2(2):7–8.
Garrett, D. 2008. Should Hume Have Been a Transcendental Idealist? In Kant and the Early Moderns. D. Garber and B. Longuenesse, editors. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Linsky, L., editor, 1952. Semantics and the Philosophy of Language. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kant, I. 1781(A), 1787(B). Critique of Pure Reason. W. Pluhar, translator. 1996. Indianapolis: Hackett.
——. 1783. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science. G. Hatfield, translator. In Allison and Heath 2002.
——. 1790. On a Discovery Whereby Any New Critique of Pure Reason Is to Be Made Superfluous by an Older One. H. Allison, translator. In Allison and Heath 2002.
Oderberg, D. 2007. Real Essentialism. New York: Routledge.
Peikoff, L. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1990.
Quine, W. 1951. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In From a Logical Point of View. 1953. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Rand, A. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian.
White, M. 1952 [1950]. The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism. In  Linsky 1952. Included also in White 2004.
——. 2004. From a Philosophical Point of View. Princeton.

Part 1 – Leonard Peikoff*
By truths I mean, as Ayn Rand meant, “recognitions of facts of reality” which is to say “identifications of existents” (ITOE 48). Without living, fallible minds, there are no truths in this sense of the word. The world would have facts, but until some are recognized, no truth would have come into the world.
Truth is sometimes used to mean what here is meant by fact. That is not the way I mean truth here nor the way Rand or Peikoff used it.
Leonard Peikoff’s 1967 essay “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” (ASD) set out the basics of the contrasting sorts of truths—analytic and synthetic—the way the distinction had been cast up to middle of the 20th century. Analytic truths had been lately taken as true in virtue of their meaning. Rationality and animality would be included in the meaning of the concept man. So the truth “man is a rational animal” would be an analytic truth, a truth made so by definition, which under contemporary nominalism had become a matter of social convention, pretty arbitrary, free of much constraint by facts of the world. Necessity in such a truth would be from the say-so in our definitional prescription.[1]
That choice of convention, I notice, satisfies a necessity of self-consistent, coherent thinking and talking. Such necessity lies among the class of necessities for a purpose, necessities for an end. I call this class necessity-for.
The truth “man has only two eyes” would not be analytic, the story went, because the feature of having only two eyes is not part of the meaning of the concept man. Such a truth is known as synthetic. Unlike analytic truths, which are necessarily true, a synthetic truth is said to be only contingently true.
Peikoff argued this to be a false dichotomy among truths. The historical root of this widespread falsehood in philosophy, Peikoff maintained, is the Platonic theory that only essential characteristics of a thing are part of the form of a thing and its definition. The inessential, which is from the material aspects of a thing, not its formal aspects, are not part of a thing’s definition. 
I concur in Peikoff’s discernment that the false dichotomy in truths between those analytic and those synthetic has a distant ancestor in a false dichotomy in Plato. In Cratylus Plato has Socrates uphold the principle that contrary attributes never belong to a fully real thing simultaneously and the principle that “things have some fixed being or essence of their own. They are not in relation to us and are not made to fluctuate by how they appear to us. They are by themselves, in relation to their own being or essence, which is theirs by nature” (386d–e; see also Euthyphro 6d–e; Phaedo 65d, 75c–d, 78d, 100c; Republic 475e–76d, 479–80). Each thing has attributes such as shape, sound, or color; but in addition, each thing has a being or essence. Indeed, “color or sound each have a being or essence, just like every other thing that we say ‘is’” (Cra. 423d–e). Plato maintained moreover that what each thing essentially is, such as Man, Good, Size, or Strength is not discovered by sight or hearing, but by reason when it is most free from bodily, sensory distractions (Phd. 65, 74–75, 78c–79d, 83, 86, 96–105; Theaetetus 184b–87a).
The character of each thing that is always the same is a kind—call it a Form—that is “a being itself by itself” (Parmenides 135a–c). Sensory perceptions are as shadows and reflections of these intelligible forms, these intrinsic natures, these essences and being of things (Rep. 509d–e). Plato had no notion of ideas or concepts encompassing both visible forms (such as shapes, sounds, or colors) and intelligible forms.[2] Modern notions of concepts or ideas are, in Plato’s frame, only our thoughts grasping intelligible forms.[3]
Peikoff acknowledged, correctly, that Aristotle breathed new life into this Platonic error by bringing essences down from some purely intellectual nether-realm to the material world open to regular senses.[4] Aristotle is the heavy-weight instigator of the necessary-contingent divide and the essence-accident divide. These doctrines constrained Scholastic theories of universals, concepts, and predication, and facilitated the modern A-S divide.
Peikoff observed that Rand’s conception of the concept of a thing, and her conception of the essential in the concept, rules out an A-S partition of the kinds of conceptual truth in our possession. A thing is all the things that it is (ASD 98). I might add that Rand took a thing’s external relationships as part of what a thing is, a blunt contrast with Plato (ITOE 39). And in Rand’s epistemology, we can have a conception of all that a thing is, including all its external relationships and all its potentials, even though we know our present concept of the thing contains only a portion of that totality of its identity.  
In Rand’s conception of right concepts, they are “classifications of observed existents according to their relationships to other observed existents” (ITOE 47).[5] Furthermore: “Concepts stand for specific kinds of existents, including all the characteristics of these existents, observed and not-yet-observed, known and unknown” (ITOE 65). Objectivist epistemology does not regard the essential and the non-essential characteristics of existents as simply given, as if in an intellectual intuition. Rather, that distinction is based on our context of knowledge of the facts of existents (ITOE 52; ASD 107, 101–103).
“To designate a certain characteristic as ‘essential’ or ‘defining’ is to select, from the total content of the concept, the characteristic that best condenses and differentiates that content in a specific cognitive context. Such a selection [in Objectivist epistemology] presupposes the relationship between the concept and its units [its member elements in reality regarded as substitutable for each other under suspension of their particular measure-values of their shared characteristics]: it presupposes that the concept is an integration of units, and that its content consists of its units, including all their characteristics.” (ASD 103)
Nelson Goodman had written in a 1953 footnote: “Perhaps I should explain for the sake of some unusually sheltered reader that the notion of a necessary connection of ideas, or of an absolutely analytic statement, is no longer sacrosanct. Some, like Quine and White, have forthrightly attacked the notion; others, like myself, have simply discarded it; and still others have begun to feel acutely uncomfortable about it” (60).
I’ll examine the cases mounted against the A-S distinction by White and by Quine, and compare them to the Objectivist case, in the next two installments.[6]
(To be continued.)
Notes
[1] Brand Blanshard’s book Reason and Analysis appeared in 1962. It was reviewed favorably by Nathaniel Branden the following year. Branden understood that Blanshard was some sort of absolute idealist, but the book offered access to contemporary positivist and analytic philosophy (including the A-S distinction), and it offered criticisms of them, which Objectivists might join. Against say-so free of constraints from conditions of the world being the source of necessity in necessary truths, see Rasmussen 1982. On the nature and need of understanding for truth, see Haugeland 1998.
[2] Cf. Metaphysics 987b1–13; Notomi 2005, 193–201.
[3] See further, Kraut 1992, 7–12; White 1992.
[4] ASD 95. See also Peikoff 1972, 191, on Aristotle’s influential division of the necessary and the contingent. On medieval and early modern roots of the false A-S dichotomy, see Peikoff 1964, 15–16, 45–59.
[5] Concept empiricism is defended and a version of it, thickly informed by pertinent modern science, is formulated in Prinz 2002.
[6] White 1952 appeared originally in Hook 1950. Sidney Hook would a few years later become Peikoff’s dissertation advisor. Recent defense of the A-S distinction against the attack by Quine is Russell 2008. Additional contemporary debate on the issue is Juhl and Loomis 2010. I’ll not undertake assimilation of these in the present study.
References
Aristotle B.C.E. 348–322. Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Branden, N. 1963. Review of Brand Blanshard’s Reason and Analysis. The Objectivist Newsletter 2(2):7–8.
Goodman, N. 1953. The New Riddle of Induction. In Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. 4th edition. 1983. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haugeland, J. 1998. Truth and Rule-Following. In Having Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Hook, S., editor, 1950. John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom. New York: Dial Press.
Juhl, C., and E. Loomis. 2010. Analyticity. New York: Routledge.
Kraut, R. 1992. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge.
Linsky, L., editor, 1952. Semantics and the Philosophy of Language. Illinois.
Notomi, N. 2005. Plato’s Metaphysics and Dialectic. In A Companion to Ancient Philosophy. M. L. Gill and P. Pellegrin, editors. Wiley-Blackwell.
Peikoff, L. 1964. The Status of the Law of Contradiction in Classical Logical Ontologism. Ph.D. ProQuest.
——. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1990.
——. 1972. Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume. Lectures by Leonard Peikoff. M. Berliner, editor. 2023. Santa Ana, CA: Ayn Rand Institute Press.
Plato c. 428–348 B.C. Plato – Complete Works. J. M. Cooper, editor. 1997. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Prinz J., 2002. Furnishing the Mind – Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rand, A. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian.
Rasmussen, D. 1982. Necessary Truth, the Game Analogy, and the Meaning-Is-Use Thesis. The Thomist 46(3):423–40.
Russell, G. 2008. Truth in Virtue of Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.
White, M. G. 1952 [1950]. The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism. In  Linsky 1952. Included also in White 2004. http://www.thatmarcusfamily.org/.../White%20-%20Analytic... 
——. 2004. From a Philosophical Point of View. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
White, N. 1992. Plato’s Metaphysical Epistemology. In Kraut 1992.
 

Necessity and Form in Truths
In this study, I firstly examine the Objectivist account of how Rand’s theory of concepts dissolves the customary distinction of truths into ones true in virtue of meaning and ones true in virtue of experience. Although that particular character of concepts in Rand’s mold of them does dissolve that wrong divide of truths—the analytic-synthetic divide—I advance an additional character of her theory, one more peculiar to hers, that also dissolves the A-S division, at least when her theory is set in my ontology. In that residence, concretes as in the world, as in fact, possess form in their situation, passage, and character, I show that the two sorts of necessity traditionally attached respectively to analytic truths and synthetic truths are rightly dissolved and replaced by a single necessity attending a single compounded formula of truth familiar from Rand. This necessity is not a compound of the two necessities, logical and physical, characterized by supporters of the A-S division. It is, rather, a compound of necessity-for of life and of living mind in grasping fact, the realm of necessity-that. I exhibit this single necessity attending truths in logic, truths in mathematics, and truths of concretes tooled by logical and mathematical truths.

PS – earlier helpful information
 

Sight of Superlative Achievement
Stephen Boydstun (2007)
My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait.
Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character.
Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man.
Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization.
Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits.
The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor.
In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band.
In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another.
When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells.
The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors.
A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above.
In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors.
Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity.
In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products.
Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scientific American
1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler
1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson
1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell
1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer
1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley
2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch
2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali
 
Science News
1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson
1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 
1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu
1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss
2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss
2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss
 
Nature Photonics
2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan
 
Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters
1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch
1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John
1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter
1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu
1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy
1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis
1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung

Even were your accomplishments (not to be confused with your general drifts and aspirations) what you claim and presumably what you think you know, why ever would one want to leave this glorious earth and companion life here. The trush were singing out back waking me this morning. Human steps right on earth can travel unlimited roads if we love these steps and don't pretend we can get around them. I've had a much better quality of life than King Henry VIII. Not due to "recreational drugs," but the regular, amazing medicines of today. Also, due to music on CD's and the internal combustion engine and this electronic means of communication. Yes, there is still human failure, such as those who do not love their mind (and life and the lives of others) enough to stay away from recreational drugs. Leave them, not Earth and the glory on it. The humans going away with you are going to have none of what you want to get away from here on earth?
Seek out the good here (e.g. next post).

Earliest Sub-Canopy Tree 
– Another Summary
– Original Paper
 

KP— Rand was continually and deeply at odds with Nietzsche, as shown in my Nietzsche v. Rand series. And surely any kinship in feeling she had with his outlooks went flat as she developed her philosophy. I have a favorite passage in Z, Before Sunrise, though only when I've stricken or bent some of that text. I read Nietzsche though I don't have any kinship to his spirit. Once I had studied him far enough, my overall feeling toward him was revulsion. In that I've some likeness with Rand's spirit. Indeed, I've much affection for her spirit.
My feeling towards the spirit of Schopenhauer is some warmth. I see now that "Counsels and Maxims" is contained within my copy of volume II of his Parega and Paralipomena, which I've yet to study. What I've studied of him pretty well thus far are The Four-Fold Root of Sufficient Reason, On the Basis of Morality, and The World as Will and Presentation. I thought that he agreed with Kant in thinking that happiness and morality are regularly at odds, though he disagreed with Kant on what was the basis and content of right morality. I thought Nietzsche came to be at odds with Schopenhaur concerning the nature of the will and evaluation of the will. Certainly Nietzsche came to sharp disagreement with Schopenhauer on the rightness of indulging in empathy, compassion, and pity (starting at least by the time of Daybreak 133). He put Schopenhauer among those secularists still clinging to Christian virtues, which should be discarded, at least the ones distinctive of that religion. It's hard to think of Nietzsche thinking highly of happiness, his sights of blessedness being conflict and beings higher than we humans from which they, the higher, might emerge.
Rand made enjoyment of life the purpose of morality (for genius and common person alike), unlike Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it seems. Where Schopenhauer has the sensible goal for humans to be painlessness and not pleasure, Rand would spit, I'd think. And communion with Idea, Schopenhauer's redemption from life in art, is opposite the metaphysical import Rand sees in art. In quick sum, so far, I'm thinking you've got too much commonality among these three philosophers, at least in their mature views.
Delicious topic. Stimulating. Thanks for sharing this. 

The doom-criers of "overpopulation" are still going strong (moving among the carbon-neutral crowd) and rebuttals of nonsense are always valuable.

That's right, given the continual innovations in science/tech, not only is there plenty of land (and ocean) on Earth for habitation, as any orbital views of Earth show -- but also plenty of petroleum to be tapped, inexhaustible according to the claim of the abiogenesis of petroleum rising from deep in the Earth.
But whether or not overpopulation is a real problem and moving into space is a solution to it, living and working in space is a positive advancement in civilzation, not only an escape, just as the settlement of America was.

Were they fossilized when they when fossilized? Not being rude but unless I'm misunderstanding what you are actually asking the answer is clearly yes. Also remember, that the vast majority of that ancient plant life is what we now use to run our vehicles though. 
In walks the mystics: "Hey guys, you know none of this is possible because everything is really only like 8000 years old!" LOL 

Would the proto-types of the proto-types of modern trees have been fossilized at the time their fossilization occurred? 
 
And I suppose we are still the New World, lol.
But certainly not on a young Earth , well relatively anyway

@tadmjones
Here is an intellectual high-altitude perspective on possibility of superluminal signals, in flat spacetime, without getting into conflict with special relativity in its confines to E-M fields, etc. Although, the paper points to no known physical fields whose differential equations imply causal cones that do not coincide with light speed:
Faster than Light? by Robert Geroch (at 13 minutes in this lecture, he speaks of a theorem which, if I understand correctly, rules out the possibility of negative mass in GR which I gather is the situation under which Alcubierre drive would be possible.)  

Sight of Superlative Achievement
Stephen Boydstun (2007)
My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait.
Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character.
Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man.
Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization.
Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits.
The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor.
In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band.
In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another.
When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells.
The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors.
A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above.
In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors.
Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity.
In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products.
Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scientific American
1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler
1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson
1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell
1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer
1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley
2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch
2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali
 
Science News
1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson
1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 
1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu
1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss
2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss
2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss
 
Nature Photonics
2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan
 
Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters
1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch
1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John
1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter
1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu
1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy
1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis
1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung

Sight of Superlative Achievement
Stephen Boydstun (2007)
My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait.
Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character.
Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man.
Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization.
Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits.
The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor.
In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band.
In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another.
When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells.
The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors.
A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above.
In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors.
Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity.
In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products.
Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scientific American
1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler
1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson
1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell
1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer
1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley
2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch
2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali
 
Science News
1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson
1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 
1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu
1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss
2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss
2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss
 
Nature Photonics
2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan
 
Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters
1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch
1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John
1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter
1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu
1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy
1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis
1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung