From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 15:46:38 MDT
> September 18, 2014
>
> Austrian Team Splits 'Ding-An-Sich'
>
> VIENNAóWriting in this month's issue of the journal
> Science, a team of researchers at the Vienna University of
> Technology report a breakthrough discovery in the field of
> noumenal physics. Working in a state-of-the-art lab
> equipped with a specialized chamber capable of
> compressing objects to 1/1,000,000th of their normal size
> through the use of high-energy, self-contained 'gravity
> pits,' the team managed to uncover, and then split, a never
> before isolated entity known as a 'ding-an-sich' or a
> 'thing-in-itself.'
>
> "The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated,"
> notes Uli Werner-Werner, Executive Editor of the Journal
> of Noumenal Physics. "It goes to the heart of one of the basic
> hypotheses of noumenal physics, namely that objects consist of
> something in addition to their constituent, perceptible parts; a
> sort of 'thingness' that makes an object what it is."
>
> Tracing its roots to the work of Prussian-born philosopher
> Immanuel Kant, noumenal physics rejects traditional
> interest in the fundamental building-blocks of matter in
> favor of a theory of 'things' and 'superthings.' "We're
> through with splitting quarks and knitting fuzzy fields,"
> explains Werner-Werner. "That's an Achilles and the hare
> approach that can only take us so far. What we're doing is
> taking a step back and asking bigger questions."
>
> Postulating the existence of a ding-an-sich behind every
> ordinary object and just out of the reach of human
> understanding grounded in "sense perception and its
> extension through the techniques and technologies of
> traditional experimental science," the Austrian team,
> lead by Professor Hanni Chiang, sought to confirm the
> existence of such 'things,' but faced a seemingly
> insoluble quandary: how do you confirm the existence of
> something that is, by definition, imperceptible, even
> through the use of perfect instruments with infinite
> sensitivity and resolution.
>
> "It's not a trivial problem," explains Professor Chiang.
> "Our first approach was to compress objects beyond the
> threshold of perceptibility, to just take this chair and
> make it so teeny tiny that all of its perceptible properties
> would be stripped away, just leaving the Ding, but we hit a
> wall with that. We burned through our budget, a good budget,
> something like [$2.3 billion U.S.], and we were still
> likely millions of orders of magnitude from our goal."
>
> Last June, however, with the addition of Professor Eric
> Lougha of the University of California at Berkeley, the
> team's research took a new direction. "Eric helped us turn
> the problem on its head," recalls Chiang. "Rather than
> making the object imperceptible, we realized we could just
> make ourselves insensate. [Eric] introduced us to a
> special derivative of a small, Central American,
> high-altitude cactus, and, within days, every member of
> the team had seen the ding-an-sich."
>
> During subsequent tests, the team successfully split the
> ding-an-sich of a laboratory stool, creating two complete
> but distinct 'things' underpinning the stool. "It just
> looks like an ordinary stool," explains Chiang. "But there
> are actually two Dings there. Essentially, it's two stools
> with all of the properties of one stool. It may sound very
> through-the-looking-glass, but there you have it."
>
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