Too long again, but I would like to get the the end of the Cosmos and move on to the Anthropos. The material is not difficult, and I don’t want to split the argument in two:
Quantum physics is the most accurate scientific map ever, but is nevertheless not the territory. However, it does prove that the territory is much stranger than we had imagined. Specifically, Bell’s Theorem proved that the quantum world is nonlocal. If it isn’t nonlocal, then physics makes no sense on its own terms; in other words, nonlocality is required in order for it to make sense, but this in turn makes no sense in a bifurcated Cartesian universe. For supposing nonlocality is the case, then subatomic particles have the remarkable capacity to manifest instantaneous correlations across vast reaches of space, which is to say, exhibit an unbroken wholeness.
Smith essentially argues that the local (or what he calls corporeal) is to the nonlocal (or physical) as form is to prime matter. In other words, Aristotle got it right after all. “Everything in creation hinges upon these two complementary principles.” i.e., the complementary presence of form and matter. Importantly, however, this is a vertical distinction, with matter necessarily situated below form. The latter must somehow be projected from above, if only because the alternative is inconceivable.
This being the case, it implies a tripartite, vertically ordered Cosmos, with the pure potential of formless quantum potential at the bottom, our corporeal world in the middle, and something like a Theos at the top. Thus the Anthropos is the vertical link between terms, or between formal intelligibility and formless prime matter. For as Aristotle recognized all those years ago, mere potential is an ambiguous state between something and nothing: it is not yet something, but nor is it nothing.
∞
Let’s go back to step one, before the bifurcation of reality. Instead of splitting the world into interior and exterior, why not revert to the way things actually are, and recognize that interior and exterior are entangled in an irreducible way? For on the scale of untenability, the segregated bifurcation of mind and world is an eleven. Besides, Cartesian dualism is founded upon its own One Free Miracle, this being the veracity of God: God is not some evil demon who would deceive Descartes about something as important as his precious Cogito. So he posits his own sketchy version of cosmotheandrism, in that its three terms are all exterior to one another: he actually trifurcates the wholeness of reality into mind, matter, and God.
Recall the quote by Heisenberg to the effect that The same organizing forces that have created nature are responsible for the structure of our soul and our capacity to think. This is a meta-observation that transcends material science, hinting at a more profound level of relatedness. It implies an intrinsic connection between the human mind and the natural world, suggesting that our capacity for thought is not something separate from nature, but rather an expression of it. For “contrary to the strict division of the activity of the human mind” into binary opposites, Heisenberg proposed “the ideal goal of surmounting the opposites” (Smith) via what we are calling a transcendent third – an a priori dynamic synthesis of three terms as opposed a static a posteriori division into two.
The following passage by Wolfgang Smith goes to the heart of the quandary under discussion: “A worldview based upon physics is bound, therefore, to exclude the ‘qualitative dimension’ of the cosmos -- not because it is not there -- but because this science is categorically incapable of grasping that dimension, that aspect of the world.”
It seems there are no qualities down in quantumville until we make them so via measurement. But measurement is not from “within” that dimension, rather, from “above.” In Smith’s parlance, our measurement is a corporeal imposition into the merely physical: “An ontological distinction is thus to be made between the spatio-temporal world as perceptible, and the world as conceived by the physicist: the two are by no means the same.” Therefore, our act of measurement categorically transcends the world it measures. It is as if there are two worlds, for example two tables, “namely the one I can see and touch, and the other one made of ‘atoms in the void’ which I cannot.”
So, the measurement quandary does indeed place man in a kind of void unless we avoid the very Cartesian dualism that exiles us there. In other words, we need a vertically ordered Cosmos in order to properly situate the spooky quantum world. This latter cannot be the “cause” of the higher world we inhabit, because horizontal causation results in only more of it: “What confronts us in the act of measurement is a transition between two distinct ontological domains: from the physical to the corporeal that is.”
But our corporeal cannot be reduced to the physical. This is a problem physics per se cannot solve, because the corporeal domain is not explicable from the perspective of the quantum-physical. In other words, we begin, as we must, with the familiar everyday forms of the corporeal, but these dissolve into a buzzing sea of near nothingness within the quantum realm. The problem is, if we could actually go there, we wouldn’t be there, precisely.
A quandary indeed.
Unless we introduce another principle, a metaphysical one that can be perceived by the intellect but not with the biggest and best microscope in the world, for any microscope is ineluctably located in our macro (corporeal) world. As per Axiom 4, this is an internally related Cosmos, and this relational interiority extends all the way down to a quantum realm of pure potential, located at the penumbra between existence and non-existence.
Although mind and matter are thoroughly entangled at the quantum level, it seems that physicists would prefer to keep them separate, but this is precisely what they cannot do: you just can’t remove the subject from the object. With which cosmotheandrism has no issue, since only a human subject is capable of objectivity anyway.
Besides, we have only to turn the Cosmos bright-side up in order to see that quantum physics has nothing to say about vertical causation, because “its equations simply don’t reach that far”: “The crux of the matter resides in the fact that the physical realm -- the ‘world’ in which these equations do cut ice -- is limited, and that the act of measurement cannot be consummated within that restricted domain.... there is literally ‘a world of difference’ between the two -- a gap physics cannot span” (Smith).
Another case of the Great Between?
Yes, because the world of difference between these different worlds is recognized by the Anthropos, since we are able to distinguish between the poles of transcendent form and immanent matter and energy. From our side of the divide (the corporeal) we can know of it, but it can know nothing of us, no matter how much pneumababble with the word quantum thrown in.
Based on what has already been said above, we can all agree that the Cosmos is one, because that is what Cosmos means: a single order encompassing every thing and every event, whether objective or subjective, quantum or corporeal. As such, it is a whole, except to say that whole and part are complementary: no one needs a degree in physics to know that a whole consists of parts not only ordered to the whole but with the whole somehow contained in the parts -- for example, each cell in the body containing the genetic blueprint for the whole organism.
But by virtue of what principle is this wholeness even possible? It can only be because the Cosmos itself is already a whole. No amount of horizontal shuffling of extrinsically related parts could result in the emergence of wholes from parts, much less life from matter or transcendent minds from the quantum mist.
According to Smith, irreducible wholeness “is incomprehensible to physics per se, for the very simple reason that its modus operandi hinges precisely upon the reduction of wholes to the sum of their spatio-temporal parts.” So, physics makes wholes disappear under its aspect, nevertheless, the parts are only there in relation to the whole physicist. If the physicist were only an agglomeration of parts, there would be nothing to know and no one to know it.
The mystery of physics is always dwarfed by the mystery of the physicist?
Yes, but everyone, by virtue of being someone, is a mysterious whole; and “the idea of irreducible wholeness goes hand in hand with that of vertical causation.” We may therefore see “that, on the one hand, it takes vertical causation to produce an irreducible whole, and conversely, that it takes an irreducible whole to exert vertical causation.”
A tautology? Only if we collapse vertical to horizontal, which at once reduces wholes to parts. In reality, “no deterministic, random, or stochastic process can give rise to ‘complex specified information.’” For again, where does all the information come from? If it cannot come from below, it must come from above -- whatever “above” means. Formlessness cannot produce form, and yet, the corporeal world we inhabit is full of them. Unless we adopt a truly self-defeating nominalism, in which case forms and knowledge of them are equally impossible.
Don’t cut off your parts to spite your whole?
Yes, because without irreducible wholeness, not even being could be. For in the sub-corporeal quantum realm “we are no longer dealing with existent things,” rather, with possibilities, probabilities, and potentials, which are only in turn known via real corporeal instruments wielded by real embodied physicists. Like Aristotle’s principle of potency, the quantum world is “midway between being and nonbeing.” Thus, the quantum domain must derive from the corporeal, not vice versa.
At the top of the cosmotheandric framework is beyond-being, mirrored below in the mysterious barely-being of quantum physics. Regarding the latter, Heisenberg put it this way: it is “a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts,” which sounds very much like Aristotle’s category of prime matter, which also doesn’t properly exist until given intelligible form. The question is how do we get from that world of pure possibility to our familiar world of actuality, from the kingdom of potential to the thingdom of matter?
Nothing can give what it does not possess.
Agreed: it is quite a leap from a barely real world of pure possibility with only a tendency to exist, to our familiar world of intelligible objects that obviously exist. The only way out of this self-referential circle of unintelligibility is with recourse to the transcendent pole of being. Suffice it to say that it is a purely gratuitous metaphysical assumption to say that quantum physics somehow constitutes the ground of being, or that it is where we must begin our search for the Cosmic Area Rug. Rather, supposing the principles of transcendence and verticality, the quantum world is but the last vestige of reality before it shades off into nothingness. Conversely, the real ground must be located at the top, where infinitude is projected all the way down into the lower reaches of mere possibility.
If we’re on the right track, then the attempt to eliminate irreducible wholeness is a kind of ontological insanity. Analogously, it would be a kind of “musical insanity” to reduce a symphony to a series of isolated notes, and then regard these as more real than the symphonic whole. Nevertheless, this is the strategery of our paradigmatic science, to try to build a real corporeal Cosmos out of its incorporeal residue.
The cure is rather simple, really: don’t elevate a scientific methodology to an ontology. In reality, there is a complementary relationship between part and whole, interior and exterior, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, one and many, etc. Some form of holism not only “makes sense” but “may well be in essence the only ontology that does” (Smith).
Way back in the day, Plato said Science is nothing but seeing. But what is sight? Human vision is not like a camera, which records only surfaces. Rather, we can see what we don’t see, for example, the dark side of the moon. We don’t literally see it, but in seeing the bright side we know the unseen side is there. We cannot see the totality or wholeness of a single object, even though we know -- unlike animals -- that there is always more to what we see.
Analogously, with the tools of science we see the one side of the Cosmos. But here again, there is the other side which we cannot see, and which requires a different mode of vision -- a transpersonal seeing “within” or “beyond” the surface.
A dualistic worldview doesn’t view the Cosmos at all, i.e., in its integral wholeness, rather, it is an impoverished view that breaks the prior wholeness into a world of increasingly diminished fragments. We can try to put the fragments back together in a multitude of ways, hence all the arbitrary -isms that attempt to do just that.
Imagine examining a painting with a microscope of infinite power, which would at once reveal everything and yet nothing. More generally, the tool determines what we shall find.
But the Anthropos is not only behind every tool, but the tools are simply extensions of us. We ourselves mirror the mysterious dark side of any object we perceive, in that our consciousness extends bidirectionally toward a boundless unconscious below and a supra-counsciousness above, the latter accounting for the intellectual light with which we see -- or enlighten -- intelligible objects. This primordial light is perhaps the most important thing that has been overshadowed by the Enlightenment. It is the central sun we’ve exchanged for the scientistic candles that illumine only the surface or periphery.
No one can see the Cosmos, and yet, we see it just the same in seeing anything. In other words, every intelligible existent is the visible side of a Cosmic Area Rug that extends over a transcendent horizon of total intelligibility. Which is again why any truth speaks of all truth. One might say that science is embedded in omni-science, as is part to whole.
Thus, if the Cosmos “were even remotely what the physical sciences declare it to be, it could not be ‘viewed’ at all. To speak seriously of a ‘worldview,’ one needs consequently to assume the incompleteness of our physics-based scientific knowledge” (Smith).
To what can be seen through physics needs to be added what is in principle not visible through it. You can spend your entire life in search of a sphere in Flatland, and will never find one. Unless you know how to look at circles, i.e., intuit the invisible sphere from which the visible circles are a declension.
Plato for the win!
Correct: the light is coming from outside the cave. Moreover, the call is coming from outside the Cosmos, i.e., from the transcendent horizon of total intelligibility alluded to above. You might say that modern physics is the biggest candle ever invented, but it will never find the sun, since it is at the other end, i.e., not the shadows dancing on the walls of the quantum cave. So, even if your tool is a high energy particle accelerator, philosophically speaking it is nevertheless a very expensive exercise in hammering shadowy nails to a wall made of gelatin.
So, where does our examination of the microworld leave us? Look closely enough at an object and it dissolves into an ontological crapshoot of vibrating energy. There are no good or bad vibrations, just a particle collidoscope of configurations that are, in Whitehead’s description, “senseless, valueless, purposeless.” The attempt to reduce the total Cosmos to its horizontal aspects entails a drastic impoverishment that shrinks reality to our lowest way of knowing it. Conversely, we are seeking intellectual rigor, minus the mortis.
Without the nightmare of ontological shrinkage.
Yes, and here we should say something more about Gödel, who in his spare time also proved that the mind is more than a machine: it calculates while always transcending calculation. Thus, the merely quantifiable Cosmos is but its “outer shell,” so to speak -- the periphery, not the center. Rather, we -- which is to say, the Anthropos -- are the center of the Cosmos, more on which as we segue into Book II and figure out how we snuck into the Cosmos while it wasn’t looking.
∞
The argument is coherent within its own terms and correctly identifies real difficulties in any strictly bottom-up or Cartesian reading of quantum theory. Nonlocality, the measurement problem, and the gulf between quantum description and corporeal experience remain live issues in the foundations of physics. Smith’s retrieval of Aristotelian categories offers one principled way of ordering those issues.
What remains open is whether the full tripartite vertical hierarchy (quantum potential → corporeal form → Theos) is required, or whether other non-reductive realisms can accommodate nonlocality and measurement without committing to that specific ranking. The section does not yet demonstrate the necessity of the highest term; it shows that some principle higher than the quantum domain is needed if the corporeal world and the knowing subject are to be real. That is a significant critical result. The constructive identification of that principle with the full cosmotheandric structure continues to be a further metaphysical step.
The writing stays focused and advances the narrative without excessive digression. The quantum material is no longer treated as an optional side-topic but as a test case for the book’s central vertical claim. That is progress.
