I reach into the shadows behind the screen and retrieve a small, semi-transparent plastic bucket. I dip into the bucket and fish out a human brain. I have no idea to whom the brain belonged. I can't tell if it's male or female, black or white, or, with and…

Read Part I of this piece here: The Infinity of Definition ... Creative interpretations which invoke an emergent multiplicity move meaning away from the Cartesian; the digital, allowing an analogue curve of definition to develop. According to Barthes, this…

Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity. ~ John Berger, Ways of Seeing The perceiver's position in an architectural, or merely physical space, determines the…

You heard about a book. Intrigue darkened in its normal consistency and gripped you. Something about the book’s ability to project the reader into the world of another mind. A world with characters leading implausible lives between a chapter, a page, a…

Controversial French sociologist and philosopher, Jean Baudrillard , known for his fierce criticism of consumerism and excess, has died in Paris after a long illness at the age of 77. He first attracted worldwide attention in 1991 with his book The Gulf War…

I've been meaning to do this for a while: How do you like The Huge Entity's first video ? Check out the The Blasphemy Challenge to deny some things yourself...

According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge the aim of art is to: ...transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which…

German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat on religion as a need and the difficulty of satisfying it : Faust avoided Gretchen's question "Do you believe in God?" But what should someone say who refuses to avoid the question and yet isn't naive? I believe that on the…

Yuletide , Christmas , Hanukkah , Oshogatsu - a world of names for a time of year about something . A time to reflect on our heritage, our faith, our existence. A time to recognise our roots. With this in mind I have collected together a series of tools for…

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive…

The God-Shaped Hole - Part II (Link to Part I ) by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity There have been few great movements in favour of reason as influential as that of Galileo Galilei. In summoning the power of reason as man's faculty of authority Galileo offered…

A Huge Entity presentation on non-possible futures! Last UPDATED Wednesday, November 15th The Oxford English Dictionary defines a time-capsule as "a container used to store for posterity a selection of [entities] thought to be representative of life at a…

The God-Shaped Hole - Part I (Link to Part II ) by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity In an alternate-future reason has won an imaginary battle over faith. The relevant mysteries composing religion have been torn from the arms of their ancient idols; the sun is…

Submit to the blog! Here be endless streams of symbols given birth in waves. As the seahorse father issues forth his young - disseminating, in the process, the patterns of parenthood - so shear activity in language breaks the corollary of meaning; necessarily…

I am currently reading British Philosopher John Gray's - Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions . I tend to be turned on by anything controversial, but throw religion into the mix, slide in a healthy dollop of political cynicism, whisk that into a…

The Huge Entity Forum is now stable and ready to oil the machinery of your ideas! The only forum on the internet devoted to large ideas, enormous perspectives and tantilising realities needs your lively debate. Come and make it your second home... Current…

Ever wished yourself Godlike properties? Ever wondered what it felt like to spawn universes from the slightest ounce of your being? Well now you can, with The Random Logline Generator ! Realising mythical universes is as easy as depressing your index finger.…

The Huge Entity Forum has evolved! Care to behold internet-transmogrification as it happens ? Then prepare to take a look deep beneath the surface of The Huge Entity . Viewer discretion is advised: The Internet is Alive - A Forum Discussion : What? : The…

Just last week, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Seth Lloyd published a paper in Physical Review Letters estimating how many calculations the universe could have performed since the Big Bang — 10^120 operations on 10^90 bits of…

In past posts I have touched on the idea that we are all the protagonists in our own reality narratives . These realities interrelate in surprising ways which either enrich or contradict our individual, subjective perspectives. In organised religion can be…

Infinity defies absolute definition. Perception of the infinite, for anything other than a mind which is itself infinitely composed, is an oxymoron. And yet, in historical conceptions of the infinite, or at least the imperceptibly extended, can be found…

The Excruciatingly Large Forum is ALIVE! Feed it your brain today: • Panspermia: Seeds of Change • Best Science-Fiction Novels • Cultural Semiotics • Co-evolution: shaping them as they shape us? • Request for Nudity • Music Absorbtion • Thinkers Lay Out the…

The ideal of 'the city' has stood as the most physically accessible representation of Utopia since the days of Plato's Republic ; the mental playground from which philosophers and writers have played with the subject of human: Plato (through Socrates)…

Dwayne M. over at Weber's Polar Night poses an interesting question today, one which has me reaching for my Baudrillard with gusto: From Wikipedia ... Colossus: The Forbin Project is an apocalyptic science fiction movie based on the 1966 novel 'Colossus' by…

Philosophy is odious and obscure, Both law and physic are for petty wits; Divinity is basest of the three, Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible and vile, 'Tis magic, magic that hath ravished Mephistopheles ... - Sc. I of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe The…

A Huge Entity presentation on the nature of identity... Featuring short musings from the most original minds in the blogsphere. Contents 1 2B ll ~ 2B by Cutie Programmer 2 Living in a Multiverse by Reality Carnival 3 The Tipping Point by BPS Digest /…

Mu Machinery by Daniel Rourke The Huge Entity The machinery concerned with human experience is a bundle of cells so intricate in its complexity that it took over 13 billion years for evolutionary processes to manifest its structure. We each maintain that the…

Pushbutton Automation by JK DunneIV There is a mystical “I” awakening. It is being stirred by events unseen and of uncertain origin. When it wakes up what will it be? Inexistence is a nice concept. It works in that soporific marketing kind of way because…

As 'You' Like It by Jaime Morrison The Nonist don't take this personally but your depth of sensation, though perhaps impressive echoing as it does in the enclosed space of your own mind, is stunted. comically so in fact. your five senses, on which you rely…

A Mind Program Called Ego by Thomas Herold Quantum Biocommunication Someone gave me a book from a famous Indian author entitled 'Who Cares?' . In this book Ramesh Balsekar explains the mystery around the ego and why it's all an illusion. Reading this book…

Compared to the Cosmos by Brian Hines Church of the Churchless BrianHines.com Like you, my goal every day is to make something of myself. A successful, knowing, active, loving, happy thing. The problem is, on the scale of the universe the value of each of us…

A Reflexive Everything by Daniel Poynter Hyperaware Consciousness 'You' do not exist, and you don't love Family Guy, lip syncing monkeys and free Internet porn. If you exist in the traditional Western way - dualistic and distinct from your environment/body -…

Our Baryonic Nature by Mac Tonnies Posthuman Blues Mactonnies.com Astronomers are learning that the vast majority of the universe's matter takes a form that eludes casual analysis. We've found that we're an anomaly; if there's such a thing as a "galactic…

Burden of Proof by Gerry Canavan Backwards City More Reasons Why You, The Reader, Don't Exist 1. Unitary consciousness is an illusion . As Daniel Dennett explains at length in Consciousness Explained , what you mistakenly think of as a single voice of…

The Tipping Point by Dr. Christian Jarrett Mind Hacks BPS Digest "That's not like you to behave like that!". How many times have you heard that exclamation? It's nonsensical of course, because 'you', in the sense of a consistent, predictable, reliable…

2B ll ~ 2B by Christopher Willcock Cutie Programmer The universe has no neurons. A true statement? What sigh and what groan -- what lark upon high draws this little reckoning? A universe exists and certainly a scientist within. A conceptualizing scientist --…

Living in a Multiverse by Cliff Pickover Reality Carnival Pickover.com In our own region of the universe, we've already developed computers and the ability to simulate lifelike forms using these computers and mathematical rules. I believe that one day we will…

"O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient…

In our semantically governed, symbolic understanding of reality we often maintain that true -identity is possible, that the whirling sensations called 'you' somehow cease at the surface of your skin, all else being distinct. Of course the Buddhist conception…

"Scholars have long debated whether our native language affects how we perceive reality -- and whether speakers of different languages might therefore see the world differently. The idea that language affects perception is controversial, and results have…

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It…

On Duality: "...out of strangled Utopias is born a clown, a being divided between beauty and ugliness, between light and chaos, a clown who when he looks down and sidelong is Satan himself and when he looks upward sees a buttered angel, a snail with wings." -…

Next time you start reading a work of fiction try focusing your mind from this perspective. Who knows more: you or the story's protagonist? The idea of the protagonist extends beyond fiction into the 'real' world. You are the protagonist in the narrative of…

The Singularity , The Transhuman . Words murmured from the lips of the geek elite? An entire generation of techno-babble is set to evolve from this imagined-movement's self perpetuating beliefs. Are we on the brink of a big shift in human - even planetary -…

Time for another session of Mu poetry ... Mu is a Japanese and Chinese word regarding an absence of/in the negative. When one desires an answer, but your question makes false assumptions, the answer can only be Mu. A radical change of perspective is required…

"Ideas that could further exploration in space are coming from a surprising source - animals such as ants, fish and squirrels. The future of space exploration could lie in biomimetics, where engineering meets biology. In effect, it steals nature's…

Mu is a Japanese and Chinese word regarding an absence of/in the negative. When one desires an answer, but your question makes false assumptions, the answer can only be Mu. A radical change of perspective is required before the Mu can be overcome. With this…

In the 17th Century early 'scientific' analysis was undertaken of the Biblical account of Noah's Ark to determine exactly how large it must have been. From this figure they calculated a precise number of animal species that could exist on the planet's surface…

"Chinese and American people see the world differently - literally. While Americans focus on the central objects of photographs, Chinese individuals pay more attention to the image as a whole, according to psychologists at the University of Michigan, in Ann…

Some big thinkers got together this week at the annual TED Global conference to figure out some stuff. You know the kind of thing 'big' thinkers grapple with don't you? The future; the moral implications of new technologies; reality and all that jazz. Famous…

How do we curb climate change and ecological implosion? According to the G8 nations preventative methods are not the key. Instead of analysing where and why we have messed up Earth's ecology and figuring out better ways to cut back it was decided this past…

Following my post last week about the infinity of Pi / π , the record for reciting its infinite sequence of numbers from memory has been broken, by a Japanese mental health counsellor no less! According to the BBC News website: "Akira Haraguchi, 59, managed…

" The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished,…

More waves today: Collapsing Quantum Wave Functions and their effects on a time traversable universe. "THE laws of physics seem to permit time travel, and with it, paradoxical situations such as the possibility that people could go back in time to prevent…

"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary…

As my regular 2 or 3 readers may know, I have recently been on a mission to blur the lines composing human perception. Reality as a construct of the brain , reality as a simulation , reality as simulacrum . Where next? Dreams: everyone has them, everyone is…

Following from Friday's post on scientist's attempts to build a computer model of the Universe I came upon this New Scientist post about building a computer simulation of the Human brain: "An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human…

"Scientists have recreated a vast segment of the universe inside a computer and written a brief history of time, black holes and galaxy formation. The Millennium Simulation - the biggest exercise of its kind - required 25 million megabytes of memory. But it…

True perceived reality is a nonsense. In this mass produced, mass perceived world we inhabit one is often brought to the deceptive conclusion that we live on the brink of some progressive, maybe final understanding; a wave of truth about to sweep our modern…

Our universe is the music resonating on tiny strings of energy composed of 10 spacial dimensions floating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. At least, that's what String Theory says it is, the most infamous and often elusive theory of modern physics. Of…