Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Physics ≠ Metaphysics

Waaay back when I knew everything about everything and nothing about anything, I published a lengthy scholarly article with the portentous title Wilfred Bion and David Bohm: Toward a Quantum Metapsychology

Says here it was published in 1991, Volume 14, Number 4 of the prestigious journal Psychonalysis and Contemporary Thought.

Hmm. I wonder if the journal still exists, or if it sunk under the weight of its own self-importance -- me along with it? 

I don't like to look back, so we'll make this brief. Here's a link to what was going on in the journal that year (https://pep-web.org/browse/pct/volumes/14): similarly life-saving breakthroughs such as Psychoanalytic Life History: Is Coherence, Continuity, and Aesthetic Appeal Necessary?

I'm gonna say No to the first two, Yes to the last. After all, I severed relations with that prior Bob a long time ago, and haven't spoken to him in years. So much for continuity. 

On the other hand, there does appear to be an implicit order of continuity, AKA the Dark Side of the Rug. It seems that this order is more quantum in nurture, in that there are instantaneous leaps from there to here with nothing in between, more on which as we proceed. (Hint: vertical causation.)

Here's a doozy: On the Phylogeny of the Oedipus Complex: Psychoanalytic Aspects of the Ethology of Anthropoid Apes. Dr. Holmström no doubt thinks he's illuminating man when he's merely anthropomorphizing apes. Been there dumb that.  

That website only goes up to 2003, at which time there was still a great deal of intellectual bullshit, but I don't yet see signs of highly advanced anti-intellectual woke bullshit. Let's try to find something more recent.

I give up. It must no longer exist despite my association with it.  

The reason I bring this up is because I hadn't thought about theoretical physicist David Bohm in a long time, but he figures prominently in this book I just read, The Vertical Ascent: From Particles to the Tripartite Cosmos and Beyond, by Wolfgang Smith.  

There once was a time when -- like any other contemporary western egghead on the make -- I assumed that the latest science discloses the foundations of reality, and that physics not only informs metaphysics, but ultimately is metaphysics. 

Thus the spate of books in the '60s and '70s on the Vast Spiritual Implications of the Transformative and Empowering New Quantum Paradigm, such as The Tao of Physics, The Holographic Universe, The Physics of God, Quantum Spirituality, and other sub-juvenilia. Embarrassing, but you gotta start somewhere, even though it's like starting with Toni Morrison instead of Shakespeare.

I could still be writing that new-age nonsense today, but for whatever reason I was spared popularity or even basic appeal, and I aim to keep it that way.  

As alluded to above, the most perfect physics conceivable does not equate to metaphysics. Indeed, it's in the name: after physics. After we're done playing around with physics, we turn to deeper things -- for example, the principles by virtue of which physics, and especially physicists, are even possible

As we've said before, supposing physicists discover the final Theory of Everything, it won't account for the consciousness of even the most literal-minded physicist, for subjects aren't objects, qualities aren't quantities, and I is not just another It, although progressives never stop trying.

Science as such is the search for causes. It proceeds in the direction of multiplicity --> unity, but the unity is ontologically prior, nor can science ever account for the nature of this unity, rather, it is a necessary condition for the very existence of science. 

In other words, even if whole and part are complementary -- for you never see One without the others -- the whole must be ontologically prior, since no amount of parts adds up to a whole (>insert adolescent joke about a-holes<).

Well, we didn't get very far, so we'll continue later. I do have a life, even though it may not look like it from the view outside my head.

6 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

We have a winner:

How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization: A Few People Can Change Human Evolution.

Cousin Dupree said...

I'll see your quantum activism and raise you one Quantum Politics: Saving Democracy.

Gagdad Bob said...

Quantum Economics, Quantum Creativity, Quantum Happiness. What a racket!

julie said...

Thus the spate of books in the '60s and '70s on the Vast Spiritual Implications of the Transformative and Empowering New Quantum Paradigm

Having found traces of His fingerprints, they thought they knew His name. Silly physicists.

julie said...

Too bad quantum activism can't take away the sins of climate change.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yet.

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