Thursday, January 18, 2018

The Case of the Missing Cosmos

Whole and part: one cannot refer (explicitly) to any object within the cosmos without alluding (implicitly) to the cosmos without it. Things don't only go on within you and without you; but any thing is necessarily within and without (or beyond) itself.

In short, parts are never independent atoms radically separate from the whole, but involved in a network of internal and external relations. And although these objects may not be biologically alive, please understand that this implicit organicism is the necessary condition for the very possibility of biological life. In other words, if the cosmos were not (as it were) a big organism, then the little ones would be strictly impossible. "Darwinism" could never get of the ground, because there would be nothing above the ground.

So, whole and part are always complementary. Another related complementarity is container/contained. Everything partakes of this relation, whether we recognize it or not. And importantly, it applies both in the objective and subjective worlds. For example, every thought in your head is contained and conditioned by a container. In fact, one might say there are levels of containment: as thoughts are contained by the soul, the soul is contained by God, the Absolute Subject.

Can we even imagine something without a container? No. Imagine, for example, a painting with no frame. Rather, it just goes on "forever." If that were the case, then there would be nothing to see, nothing to set it apart from its surroundings.

Interestingly, this also applies to time. Analogously, what if human beings had no spatial boundaries -- no containment -- but again went on forever. Then we couldn't see each other! Likewise if we lived forever: the price of being something is containment in time and space.

I can hear you now: can I buy some pot from you?

All of the above is also related to the complementarity of immanence <--> transcendence. Everything partakes of both, except that in the case of human beings we are consciously aware of having a foot in each camp. Every bad philosophy tries to eliminate one or the other, which is how we can know ahead of time that any form of idealism or materialism is wrong. It is also what makes the Incarnation possible, and is indeed its Whole Point: that it has pleased the Absolute, the MetaCosmic Person, to dwell in history and mingle among its relativities.

So, I am not at all surprised to read the following in No God, No Science:

Every conception of scientific knowledge harbors within itself a metaphysics and a [natural theology] that shape in turn both how the objects of knowledge are conceived and what knowledge of the universe itself -- truth -- is taken to consist in.

Thus, "the very idea of a universe remains irreducibly metaphysical and theological." Not to belabor the point, but no one has ever seen the cosmos, and no one ever will. No man can contain that which contains him.

To take an obvious point, even if physicists were to arrive at a Theory of Everything, in which the laws of cosmology are reduced to a single equation, one must nevertheless posit something like a divine mind in which the equation is contained. Otherwise it is like writing on an imaginary blackboard with invisible ink.

Interestingly, Genesis approaches this question in a unique -- and correct -- way. Other cosmologies posit a primordial substance with which God works, but this then reduces to the absurdity of two absolutes: God and the substance. But the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo teaches that the Creator at once creates both the blackboard and the equations written on it.

And this doctrine points back -- or up -- to the Trinity, such that creation down here is very much in the image of the primordial creativity that goes on upin there. As I have put it before, we live in an intersubjective cosmos because it is grounded in an intersubjective Godhead. Only because of this are truth, love, beauty, and other transcendentals available to us. If they're not available, then we're not even human. But we are definitely human, even if certain widespread philosophies deny the fact. Which is why secular humanism is an egregious form of un- and anti-humanism.

Exactly: "the ontology of scientific materialism, with its exclusion of intrinsic meaning, is tantamount to 'cognitive suicide' and makes ordinary experience miraculous beyond explanation." The good news: miracles are real! The bad news: they're absolutely meaningless if not frankly perverse, such that the only meaning of which we can be sure is the meaninglessness of it all. You can kill the cosmos, but human persons will be among the collateral damage.

Ultimately, the cosmos within is proportioned to the cosmos without. Which is how and why science is even possible. Every scientific discovery proves the point -- that our minds are in deep conformity with the nature of things, that "there is a single order of reality comprehensive of its own intelligibility, an order large enough to include us..."

But you will have noticed that scientism posits a universe that is not large enough -- or better, deep enough -- to contain its most vital and interesting content, AKA human persons. In short, it tosses out the vertical, such that there is no longer any space for humans to inhabit, or even any container for truth. How can scientistic minds posit scientism when the positer no longer exists? They never say.

Do you know why universities are the way they are -- which is to say factories of indoctrination into fragmentary shards of a once unified knowledge of being? Because

The universe as a comprehensive order of reality was the presupposition and impetus behind the original universities and their ideal of an order of knowledge that was comprehensive and nonreductive, unified without being uniform.

Instead, we see

The degeneration of the university into a 'multiversity' of disintegrated disciplines suppressing their own metaphysical character, refusing integration into a comprehensive view equal to the truth of human life and experience, and vying with one another to become a 'theory of everything'...

Parts pretending to wholeness, contained presuming its own containment, horizontal swallowing vertical, and ultimately man become God, AKA Genesis 3 All Over Again.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your post is coherent and persuasive. Much food for thought here.

I was in university for 12 years...and absorbed the fragmented view of which you speak. I'm older now and feel an urge to rethink and re-integrate my cognitive maps. The university map is not working.

Your post is very helpful, thank you.

julie said...

Haven't read the post yet, so I have no idea if this is relevant, but this interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson is very interesting. Perhaps particularly because the reporter running the interview appears to be incapable of comprehending the things he says and impervious to hearing a differing point of view. The discussion about lobsters toward the end is a great example: he explains how hierarchy is hardwired into the nervous system, not only of humans but of other animals such as, for instance, lobsters. Thus, social hierarchies are not a sociological construct of the patriarchy, but rather something innate which can't be mandated out of existence. She, incredulous, accuses him of wanting to organize human society the way lobsters do. She's missed the point so completely she's not even in the same universe as wrong.

Now time to read the post...

julie said...

The degeneration of the university into a 'multiversity' of disintegrated disciplines suppressing their own metaphysical character, refusing integration into a comprehensive view equal to the truth of human life and experience, and vying with one another to become a 'theory of everything'...

Ah - yes, and so the above interview was relevant; the interviewer, a product of university indoctrination, proves herself over and over to be impervious to disciplinary to the truth of human life experience.

Gagdad Bob said...

I saw part of that interview, which caused me to pre-order his new book (in the sidebar). His style of thought very much reminds me of... me. Except he seems more on the scientific/archetypal than metaphysical/religious side. I guess I'll find out soon enough. In any event, he certainly has a synthetic, one cosmos type mind in passionate search of the unity behind all the diversity.

Nice article about him here.

julie said...

Ha - yes, he does remind me of you. Thanks for the tip about his book; ordered.

Gagdad Bob said...

I notice on his website he's got an upcoming lecture series on The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. I think he might have some podcasts on the subject. The wife listens to them all the time. He's like her back-up husband.

Gagdad Bob said...

If you look at his book recommendations, you can see that we come at things from very different angles. There's almost no overlap, although I read a lot of the ones on his list many years ago.

julie said...

:D
He's one of the view people I don't mind hearing in a video as opposed to just reading a transcript.

I've thought of checking out his Bible series, but hadn't got around to it yet.

Gagdad Bob said...

Here are podcasts on the Bible series.

julie said...

Another good article about him here.

ted said...

Haha (backup husband). I like it.

Peterson appears to comes to religion from an anthropological, mythical, utility angle. I'm not sure if he's 'truly' a believer, though. But he's close enough.

Unknown said...

It is sad to replace a cosmos full of meaning and depth by one that is cold limited mechanical that has no life. It is sad to let ourselves get locked in the grips of the mechanical that suffocates us with its linear fantasy that makes us forget our higher tower and get immersed in the material things of the lower tower. It is the strengthening of the ties of the part to the whole that opens the doors of the light that enables us to see not only with our external faculties but with the internal faculties, It is such complementarity that enlarges our vision to see our mission in this cosmos to read the cosmic script to get acquainted with the creative force behind everything. The mission that calls humans to be good in both their saying and doing, The mission that has been distorted by the materialistic philosophy ( one should ask who are behind that ) that destroyed the higher tower in order to build the lower tower.It is a question of self-protection from the negative forces and fortifying the self by the positive forces, in light of the divine message that calls for self realization in the beautiful names of the high tower of the one. Life is a contractual phenomenon written or un-written that need to be observed and implemented. The tragedy of those who have forgotten the grand divine narrative and made a distorted human narrative that kills everything beautiful.We are not living in a loose disconnected cosmos but in a cosmos firmly established on truth and justice as the final destination to all mankind to see the truth tellers from the liars. Let us enjoy what we are until the hour strikes. No body can kill the cosmos but what they can do is to kill th cosmos in themselves where that part of the cognition faculty has committed suicide. It is a very delicate cosmic and self design. It is attention in the realm of the attention.

Van Harvey said...

That series of lectures is on YouTube as well, which I really enjoyed. I think you're right, that he's more scientific/archetypal than metaphysical/religious, but more importantly, he doesn't see it as one or the other, and treats both respectfully, seriously, and with a running sense of humor.

There are occasional points I disagree with him on (such as he thinks of himself as a Pragmatist, which raises my hackles, but fortunately he rarely lives down to that), but even those points are interestingly made, rather than put out as disjointed positions.

Here's the first of the 15 part bible series on YouTube.

BZ said...

Re: Jordan Peterson: I just discovered him a couple of weeks ago from a Joe Rogan podcast. Like him, I'm influenced a lot by Jung, Freud, some Nietzsche, Solzhenitsn, and Dostoevsky, so I dig his talk. One thing he lacks: what I'd call the orientation to the infinite, and I believe he's not what I'd call a Christian. In fact, I believe he may doubt that Jesus existed, much less was that Jesus Christ is the son of god or rose from the dead. I guess Jung thought similarly. SO...I TOO, was reminded of Bob of One Cosmos! As dazzling as Jordan is, he goes as far as his reading and intellect take him, but he doesn't have that transcendental tang that Gagdad has elucidated for me. Jordan is compelling to listen to, but he's limited. It's one thing to be informed and lifted by the finest minds and intellects, but it's another to be lifted by God.

julie said...

You may be right, BZ, though I do wonder. As I understand it (though of course, I may be wrong), he grew up with some pretty seriously fundamentalist parents, and did turn away from their idea of Christianity. However, I seem to recall at one point someone asking him about whether he was a Christian or a believer; he said something along the lines of, "I don't believe, I know."

It may well be that he has a very strong faith, while at the same time being called to speak to people from a place where they can listen to what he's saying without being distracted by it.

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