Clues to the Woo Wooniverse

What if the universe is analogous to a hologram, such that the whole is somehow present in each part? Too woo woo, or not woo woo enough?

Come to think of it, how even is holography possible?

When a photograph is cut in half, each piece shows half of the scene, but when a hologram is, the whole scene can still be seen in each piece. This is because, whereas each point in a photograph only represents light scattered from a single point in the scene, each point on a holographic recording includes information about light scattered from every point in the scene (Wiki).

Oh. Like what Whitehead says about the cosmos:

each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or all lapses of time.... in a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus, every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

Prof. Wiki adds that

The physical universe is widely seen to be composed of "matter" and "energy".... a current trend suggests scientists may regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals. Bekenstein asks "Could we, as Blake memorably penned, 'see a world in a grain of sand,' or is that idea no more than poetic license?," referring to the holographic principle.

Woo woo or true clue? Well, in order for this to be a literal universe and not just a giant closet full of random and unrelated stuff, 

it is not enough that it be composed of parts and that these parts physically constitute a whole; it is also necessary that all the individual parts be oriented toward that one in which all together can exist, that each of the principal parts of the universe should be the entire whole, that each of these universes be in some fashion all the others (De Koninck).

Thus, like a hologram, in that each part nevertheless contains the whole, albeit in an attenuated form. It’s certainly how DNA works, each cell containing the blueprint for the entire organism. That’s beyond weird, and yet, because we all learned it in 7th grade biology, we take it for granted. 

But what if we could travel back in time prior to the scientific revelation, and tell people their bodies are composed of billions of microscopic units, each one containing the information needed to build the whole body? Who among them wouldn’t want to buy some pot from you? 

Traveling back to the present, you could spend all day explaining to me how digital technology works, but I'll never understand how a laser light shining on an aluminum coated piece of plastic results in the soul of a musician being present between the speakers. How is the one translighted into the other -- in particular, the billions of bits into the simple presence of the artist, accompanied by the aesthetic unity within the perceiving subject? I'm sure there's a *rational* explanation. Reminds me of what Whitehead said about 19th century physics:

the secrets of the physical universe were finally disclosed. If only you ignored everything which refused to come into line, your powers of explanation were unlimited.     

Anyway, a holographic universe would admittedly solve a great many philosophical problems. But does it unsolve as many others? I can’t think of any at the moment, but I’m not thinking very hard. We’ll ask again later. Meanwhile, let’s go with it.

The operative phrase is that each of the principal parts of the universe should be the entire whole, and the operative word is be, as in what is the case. On the one hand we might ask how this can be, but on the other, how can it not be the case? 

For example, what is knowledge but the presence of the object in the mind of the rational intellect -- not the material thing, as when we perceive it with the senses, but its abstract essence, i.e., form? We know this happens, or we couldn’t know anything. The question is, by virtue of what principle is this knowledge possible, and without which it couldn’t happen?

Backing up a bit, we first have to decide whether knowledge of reality exists, and we won’t bother arguing with folks who don’t believe it exists, because why are they even arguing, and over what? Let the dead bury the tenured.

Actually, things have sunk so low in our day that we do have to argue with these neobarbarians -- for example, that biology is real -- but we won’t do so here. For we not only believe in science, we believe in the higher principle that renders science itself possible. 

Come to think of it, absent this higher principle, we see how readily science betrays itself and degrades into the fool’s mythology of scientism or the tool’s pathology of anti-science. 

Speaking of the Weirdness, it's weird enough that the cosmos suddenly came alive 4 billion years ago and began touching itself. For every form of sensory perception involves increasingly subtle forms of touch, from surfaces and temperature to molecules contacting the nasal membrane to sound vibrations banging the eardrum and photons tickling our cones & rods. 

At the extreme, light vibrations that have traveled billions of years land on the retina and contain information that allows us to reconstruct the origins of the cosmos. If that’s not weird, then nothing is.

Something that happened billions of years ago is not only entangled in the now, but is decoded via the intellect? Light traveling all that way to get here is one thing, and the information in the light another, but the intellect capable of unpacking that information is just woo woo. 

None of this would be conceivable -- let alone actual -- “if being were not transcendentally accessible to intelligence” (ibid.). This goes to what must be the Principle of epistemology: that there is a link between being and knowing, and it is the intellect. 

We have heard from the wise that Creation is the nexus between time and eternity. But from our end, intellect is their nexus, insofar as it attains to a timeless truth reflected in it. Which ultimately explains how man is the conscious link between Creator and creation. 

The second law of thermodynamics speaks of dissipation, of an inevitable loss of information. Yes, there are said to be local exceptions, such as the emergence of life. Okay, but there also seem to be nonlocal exceptions, such as the growth and maturation of the intellect described above. 

Is it possible that maturation is a quality of the universe as such, not just one of those local exceptions we call “life”?  

If there is a "maturation of the cosmos,” its measure would be the degree to which “all its parts are united and lived,” ultimately "in the intelligence of man, in which it can realize this explicit return to its First Principle”:

Let us imagine the initial state of our universe as a pure exteriority. The world was so to say entirely outside, separated from itself, imprisoned in itself and its own obscurity. It is dead, empty, an abyss of division. But intelligence must appear. This demand is written in from the beginning (ibid.). 

Either it was or it wasn’t. Turns out it was there all along: again, first in intention is last in execution, and here we are. You might protest that it took a long time, but relative to what? Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.

If there is developmental psychology, it is only because there is development. And if there is development, it is only because there is a hierarchy and a telos. And if there is a telos there is a standard. But if there is a standard there is an Absolute. And if there is an Absolute, its most immediately accessible modalities are the True, Good, Beautiful, and Unity (or multiplicity-in-unity and vice versa).

The universe in expansion from the physical point of view rebounds on itself in life.... It arrives finally at man in whom the world succeeds in uniting all the degrees of cosmic being, and in thought in which it touches and compenetrates itself (ibid.).

My spellcheck doesn’t like that word: compenetrate. Nor do I, because we're talking about something more woo woo, which is to say, intersubjectivity, which is precisely the interior space in which we live, move, and have our being, and without which we couldn't be persons. It is how we are able to read the withinness of everything from matter to animals to poems, music, faces, etc. It’s why the cosmos has an endless depth for us, instead of being only surfaces with no intelligible interiority.

Clues to the Woo Wooniverse

What if the universe is analogous to a hologram, such that the whole is somehow present in each part? Too woo woo, or not woo woo enough?

Come to think of it, how even is holography possible?

When a photograph is cut in half, each piece shows half of the scene, but when a hologram is, the whole scene can still be seen in each piece. This is because, whereas each point in a photograph only represents light scattered from a single point in the scene, each point on a holographic recording includes information about light scattered from every point in the scene (Wiki).

Oh. Like what Whitehead says about the cosmos:

each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or all lapses of time.... in a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus, every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

Prof. Wiki adds that

The physical universe is widely seen to be composed of "matter" and "energy".... a current trend suggests scientists may regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals. Bekenstein asks "Could we, as Blake memorably penned, 'see a world in a grain of sand,' or is that idea no more than poetic license?," referring to the holographic principle.

Woo woo or true clue? Well, in order for this to be a literal universe and not just a giant closet full of random and unrelated stuff, 

it is not enough that it be composed of parts and that these parts physically constitute a whole; it is also necessary that all the individual parts be oriented toward that one in which all together can exist, that each of the principal parts of the universe should be the entire whole, that each of these universes be in some fashion all the others (De Koninck).

Thus, like a hologram, in that each part nevertheless contains the whole, albeit in an attenuated form. It’s certainly how DNA works, each cell containing the blueprint for the entire organism. That’s beyond weird, and yet, because we all learned it in 7th grade biology, we take it for granted. 

But what if we could travel back in time prior to the scientific revelation, and tell people their bodies are composed of billions of microscopic units, each one containing the information needed to build the whole body? Who among them wouldn’t want to buy some pot from you? 

Traveling back to the present, you could spend all day explaining to me how digital technology works, but I'll never understand how a laser light shining on an aluminum coated piece of plastic results in the soul of a musician being present between the speakers. How is the one translighted into the other -- in particular, the billions of bits into the simple presence of the artist, accompanied by the aesthetic unity within the perceiving subject? I'm sure there's a *rational* explanation. Reminds me of what Whitehead said about 19th century physics:

the secrets of the physical universe were finally disclosed. If only you ignored everything which refused to come into line, your powers of explanation were unlimited.     

Anyway, a holographic universe would admittedly solve a great many philosophical problems. But does it unsolve as many others? I can’t think of any at the moment, but I’m not thinking very hard. We’ll ask again later. Meanwhile, let’s go with it.

The operative phrase is that each of the principal parts of the universe should be the entire whole, and the operative word is be, as in what is the case. On the one hand we might ask how this can be, but on the other, how can it not be the case? 

For example, what is knowledge but the presence of the object in the mind of the rational intellect -- not the material thing, as when we perceive it with the senses, but its abstract essence, i.e., form? We know this happens, or we couldn’t know anything. The question is, by virtue of what principle is this knowledge possible, and without which it couldn’t happen?

Backing up a bit, we first have to decide whether knowledge of reality exists, and we won’t bother arguing with folks who don’t believe it exists, because why are they even arguing, and over what? Let the dead bury the tenured.

Actually, things have sunk so low in our day that we do have to argue with these neobarbarians -- for example, that biology is real -- but we won’t do so here. For we not only believe in science, we believe in the higher principle that renders science itself possible. 

Come to think of it, absent this higher principle, we see how readily science betrays itself and degrades into the fool’s mythology of scientism or the tool’s pathology of anti-science. 

Speaking of the Weirdness, it's weird enough that the cosmos suddenly came alive 4 billion years ago and began touching itself. For every form of sensory perception involves increasingly subtle forms of touch, from surfaces and temperature to molecules contacting the nasal membrane to sound vibrations banging the eardrum and photons tickling our cones & rods. 

At the extreme, light vibrations that have traveled billions of years land on the retina and contain information that allows us to reconstruct the origins of the cosmos. If that’s not weird, then nothing is.

Something that happened billions of years ago is not only entangled in the now, but is decoded via the intellect? Light traveling all that way to get here is one thing, and the information in the light another, but the intellect capable of unpacking that information is just woo woo. 

None of this would be conceivable -- let alone actual -- “if being were not transcendentally accessible to intelligence” (ibid.). This goes to what must be the Principle of epistemology: that there is a link between being and knowing, and it is the intellect. 

We have heard from the wise that Creation is the nexus between time and eternity. But from our end, intellect is their nexus, insofar as it attains to a timeless truth reflected in it. Which ultimately explains how man is the conscious link between Creator and creation. 

The second law of thermodynamics speaks of dissipation, of an inevitable loss of information. Yes, there are said to be local exceptions, such as the emergence of life. Okay, but there also seem to be nonlocal exceptions, such as the growth and maturation of the intellect described above. 

Is it possible that maturation is a quality of the universe as such, not just one of those local exceptions we call “life”?  

If there is a "maturation of the cosmos,” its measure would be the degree to which “all its parts are united and lived,” ultimately "in the intelligence of man, in which it can realize this explicit return to its First Principle”:

Let us imagine the initial state of our universe as a pure exteriority. The world was so to say entirely outside, separated from itself, imprisoned in itself and its own obscurity. It is dead, empty, an abyss of division. But intelligence must appear. This demand is written in from the beginning (ibid.). 

Either it was or it wasn’t. Turns out it was there all along: again, first in intention is last in execution, and here we are. You might protest that it took a long time, but relative to what? Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.

If there is developmental psychology, it is only because there is development. And if there is development, it is only because there is a hierarchy and a telos. And if there is a telos there is a standard. But if there is a standard there is an Absolute. And if there is an Absolute, its most immediately accessible modalities are the True, Good, Beautiful, and Unity (or multiplicity-in-unity and vice versa).

The universe in expansion from the physical point of view rebounds on itself in life.... It arrives finally at man in whom the world succeeds in uniting all the degrees of cosmic being, and in thought in which it touches and compenetrates itself (ibid.).

My spellcheck doesn’t like that word: compenetrate. Nor do I, because we're talking about something more woo woo, which is to say, intersubjectivity, which is precisely the interior space in which we live, move, and have our being, and without which we couldn't be persons. It is how we are able to read the withinness of everything from matter to animals to poems, music, faces, etc. It’s why the cosmos has an endless depth for us, instead of being only surfaces with no intelligible interiority.

Did Somebody Hear a Bang?

So, only in human understanding does the cosmos develop to its full potential. It’s not just that self-conscious knowers were one out of the infinite number of possibilities baked into the Big Bang. But nor should we default to the other side, to a deterministic cosmic historicism. To be sure, there are rules -- this isn’t Nam -- but the rules don’t determine the game, they only enable it.

Oh, but it is a game. I wouldn't say say that man’s existence implies that God kidnaps himself within time, but nor do we believe God has no skin in the game of history. Even prior to the Incarnation God dips a toe into the drama of history, since man is created in his image and likeness. 

“It is important to note,” writes De Koninck, “that God does not act on things, but from within.” Why is this important? Before getting to De Koninck’s answer, I would say it is because God is the principle of “within-ness” as such, and that this interiority possesses degrees ranging from matter on down to man on up. 

Which is one reason why we can say that man contains the cosmos and not vice versa. And if you don’t believe me, believe Thomas:

Intellectual natures have a greater affinity to the whole than other beings; for every intellectual being is in a certain manner all things….

Our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity.... In its active nature the intellect is therefore capable of knowing everything that exists.... [T]he ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes.

The End. Of man, i.e., our telos. Or in the words of De Koninck, 

Already in man the world is bent in on itself, and in God its extremes touch.

For if “Intellect is the first author and mover of the universe,” then its last end “must necessarily be the good of the intellect,” which is to say, truth: “Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe” (Thomas).

Is it that simple? Yes, but it’s also that complicated, like, say, our brains, which consist of -- looks like it depends on who’s counting, but some say over 100 billion neurons and 1000 trillion connections. Whatever the figure, it’s just a numerical representation of infinitude, since the sun will burn out before anyone could count them.

And yet, this infinite complexity somehow resolves itself into a simple I AM, and it doesn’t get any simpler. Literally -- which is what is meant by saying that both the soul and God are “simple,” not simplistic but indivisible.  

We’re really getting far afield. Let’s refocus. Here’s a good one, and simple:

Creation is essentially a communication.

Boom. And bang. 

Yes, literally, in so far as we can know all about the Big Bang, which is much like being witness to our own birth, only on steroids. In other words, the Big Bang not only happened, it is happening, and we know it. Therefore, it is communicated in and through us. 

Whatever else it is, it is also a message. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, since everything else in existence is also a potential communication just waiting to be discovered by us. But every discovery is a surprise, so forget what I just said about not being surprised. 

I suppose we could say there is only one big Surprise but an infinite number of iterations.

With each little surprise discovery, creation returns to its Principle and the circle is complete; only science is a circle within a larger Circle without which -- obviously -- science would be impossible. But it is possible. Therefore God is necessary, but tomorrow we’ll flesh this out in more detail.

Did Somebody Hear a Bang?

So, only in human understanding does the cosmos develop to its full potential. It’s not just that self-conscious knowers were one out of the infinite number of possibilities baked into the Big Bang. But nor should we default to the other side, to a deterministic cosmic historicism. To be sure, there are rules -- this isn’t Nam -- but the rules don’t determine the game, they only enable it.

Oh, but it is a game. I wouldn't say say that man’s existence implies that God kidnaps himself within time, but nor do we believe God has no skin in the game of history. Even prior to the Incarnation God dips a toe into the drama of history, since man is created in his image and likeness. 

“It is important to note,” writes De Koninck, “that God does not act on things, but from within.” Why is this important? Before getting to De Koninck’s answer, I would say it is because God is the principle of “within-ness” as such, and that this interiority possesses degrees ranging from matter on down to man on up. 

Which is one reason why we can say that man contains the cosmos and not vice versa. And if you don’t believe me, believe Thomas:

Intellectual natures have a greater affinity to the whole than other beings; for every intellectual being is in a certain manner all things….

Our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity.... In its active nature the intellect is therefore capable of knowing everything that exists.... [T]he ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes.

The End. Of man, i.e., our telos. Or in the words of De Koninck, 

Already in man the world is bent in on itself, and in God its extremes touch.

For if “Intellect is the first author and mover of the universe,” then its last end “must necessarily be the good of the intellect,” which is to say, truth: “Hence truth must be the last end of the whole universe” (Thomas).

Is it that simple? Yes, but it’s also that complicated, like, say, our brains, which consist of -- looks like it depends on who’s counting, but some say over 100 billion neurons and 1000 trillion connections. Whatever the figure, it’s just a numerical representation of infinitude, since the sun will burn out before anyone could count them.

And yet, this infinite complexity somehow resolves itself into a simple I AM, and it doesn’t get any simpler. Literally -- which is what is meant by saying that both the soul and God are “simple,” not simplistic but indivisible.  

We’re really getting far afield. Let’s refocus. Here’s a good one, and simple:

Creation is essentially a communication.

Boom. And bang. 

Yes, literally, in so far as we can know all about the Big Bang, which is much like being witness to our own birth, only on steroids. In other words, the Big Bang not only happened, it is happening, and we know it. Therefore, it is communicated in and through us. 

Whatever else it is, it is also a message. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, since everything else in existence is also a potential communication just waiting to be discovered by us. But every discovery is a surprise, so forget what I just said about not being surprised. 

I suppose we could say there is only one big Surprise but an infinite number of iterations.

With each little surprise discovery, creation returns to its Principle and the circle is complete; only science is a circle within a larger Circle without which -- obviously -- science would be impossible. But it is possible. Therefore God is necessary, but tomorrow we’ll flesh this out in more detail.

Spherical Jumps and Circular Chumps

Two big assumption, 1) that this is a cosmos, i.e., a structured and self-consistent whole, and 2) that it is closed and self-sufficient as opposed to being open to another reality which entails and acts upon it.

As to the first, no one has ever seen the cosmos or ever will see it. Rather, it is an abstraction that follows from the Christian idea of a rational Creator. While it is true, science could never prove it is true, rather, can only assume it to be true.

As to the second, the cosmos is either open or closed. But if it is closed, this leads to a host of absurdities, including the strict impossibility of knowing it is closed. For knowledge of the material cosmos presupposes an immaterial transcendence of it.

By way of analogy, suppose you live in two-dimensional Flatland. First, how would you know that all of reality is a consistent two-dimensional plane? 

Second, how would you ever know whether Flatland is closed and self-sufficient, or whether it is in contact with a third dimension? Note also that the third dimension doesn’t have to move in order to be in constant contact with the lower two. A single sphere incorporates an infinite number of circles without ever changing.

Of course we live in a 3D world, 4D if we throw in time. But even then, although we are in 4D, we cannot be of 4D, or we couldn’t be having this conversation. 

Rather, we are open to higher dimensions, although not in a perfectly clear manner, for the very reason that we are still very much in those lower ones. We're not animals, but nor are we angels either.

There was a time when the notion of a thoroughly rational cosmos had to be taken on faith. Nowadays it is such a background assumption that people forget about the daring leap of faith this required at the outset of the scientific revolution. There are still a lot of places where occasionalism prevails, as in the Muslim world, or where nothing is permanent, as in Buddhism. 

Perhaps someday people will speak of those daring Raccoons who first poked their heads above the rationalistic matrix of 4D scientism and began colonizing hyperspace. But this has been going on for a long time, and we’d be nowhere without those countless pioneers. It’s a never-ending task, but what fun!

For some reason I was rereading Kallistos Ware’s classic The Orthodox Way yesterday, perhaps in anticipation of this post. It begins with a passage by a Fr. Georges Florovsky: "The Church gives us not a system, but a key.” Oh? A key to what? 

Well, first of all, it’s a key, not to be confused with the world opened up by the key -- any more than we should confuse eyeglasses with what they permit us to see through them. Also, it’s a contact sport, so you can’t be an armchair metaphysician or Sunday morning theologian:

No one can be a Christian at second hand. God has children but he has no grandchildren (Ware).

I would say that this is for the same reason why the sphere is always present to the circle without having to posit a Grandsphere or Great-grandsphere. One is enough to cover all occasions. For this reason, we can say that God is both infinitely distant -- in that higher dimension -- but infinitely close -- right here in these ones as well. Without moving.

Now, what is interiority as such but another dimension? The question is, is it just an inexplicable bump on the surface of 2D, or is it more like a descent from -- and in contact with -- something above?  Confined to 2D, this is not something Flatlanders could ever know. Nor can we 4D folkers know this is a self-consistent Cosmos, but it is a fruitful assumption just the same.

So, let’s assume our interiority is not just a bump on the surface of 4D, but rather, a descent from O. What’s the harm? Conversely, think of the great harm that follows from assuming human beings are nothing but eternally ignorant bumpkins in a 4D semi-flatland, fully reducible to those lower dimensions.

Everyone knows what they know. The real trick is to know what we don’t know. Of course, that is something we can never know, but knowing we can’t know it is nevertheless a good start, because it leaves us open to this background ocean of infinite Truth. Only God can know how ignorant we are, but this doesn’t mean our knowledge is nothing. Again, circles exist, even if the sphere contains an infinitude of circles.

Back to De Koninck. He writes that “It is only in human understanding that the cosmos becomes a universe in the full sense.” Likewise, it is only in human understanding that our little circle can be seen as a declension from the sphere. Unless you enclose yourself in absurcularity, which is diametrically opposed to the Christian way, AKA the way of tenure.

Much more, but the crock has run out.

Spherical Jumps and Circular Chumps

Two big assumption, 1) that this is a cosmos, i.e., a structured and self-consistent whole, and 2) that it is closed and self-sufficient as opposed to being open to another reality which entails and acts upon it.

As to the first, no one has ever seen the cosmos or ever will see it. Rather, it is an abstraction that follows from the Christian idea of a rational Creator. While it is true, science could never prove it is true, rather, can only assume it to be true.

As to the second, the cosmos is either open or closed. But if it is closed, this leads to a host of absurdities, including the strict impossibility of knowing it is closed. For knowledge of the material cosmos presupposes an immaterial transcendence of it.

By way of analogy, suppose you live in two-dimensional Flatland. First, how would you know that all of reality is a consistent two-dimensional plane? 

Second, how would you ever know whether Flatland is closed and self-sufficient, or whether it is in contact with a third dimension? Note also that the third dimension doesn’t have to move in order to be in constant contact with the lower two. A single sphere incorporates an infinite number of circles without ever changing.

Of course we live in a 3D world, 4D if we throw in time. But even then, although we are in 4D, we cannot be of 4D, or we couldn’t be having this conversation. 

Rather, we are open to higher dimensions, although not in a perfectly clear manner, for the very reason that we are still very much in those lower ones. We're not animals, but nor are we angels either.

There was a time when the notion of a thoroughly rational cosmos had to be taken on faith. Nowadays it is such a background assumption that people forget about the daring leap of faith this required at the outset of the scientific revolution. There are still a lot of places where occasionalism prevails, as in the Muslim world, or where nothing is permanent, as in Buddhism. 

Perhaps someday people will speak of those daring Raccoons who first poked their heads above the rationalistic matrix of 4D scientism and began colonizing hyperspace. But this has been going on for a long time, and we’d be nowhere without those countless pioneers. It’s a never-ending task, but what fun!

For some reason I was rereading Kallistos Ware’s classic The Orthodox Way yesterday, perhaps in anticipation of this post. It begins with a passage by a Fr. Georges Florovsky: "The Church gives us not a system, but a key.” Oh? A key to what? 

Well, first of all, it’s a key, not to be confused with the world opened up by the key -- any more than we should confuse eyeglasses with what they permit us to see through them. Also, it’s a contact sport, so you can’t be an armchair metaphysician or Sunday morning theologian:

No one can be a Christian at second hand. God has children but he has no grandchildren (Ware).

I would say that this is for the same reason why the sphere is always present to the circle without having to posit a Grandsphere or Great-grandsphere. One is enough to cover all occasions. For this reason, we can say that God is both infinitely distant -- in that higher dimension -- but infinitely close -- right here in these ones as well. Without moving.

Now, what is interiority as such but another dimension? The question is, is it just an inexplicable bump on the surface of 2D, or is it more like a descent from -- and in contact with -- something above?  Confined to 2D, this is not something Flatlanders could ever know. Nor can we 4D folkers know this is a self-consistent Cosmos, but it is a fruitful assumption just the same.

So, let’s assume our interiority is not just a bump on the surface of 4D, but rather, a descent from O. What’s the harm? Conversely, think of the great harm that follows from assuming human beings are nothing but eternally ignorant bumpkins in a 4D semi-flatland, fully reducible to those lower dimensions.

Everyone knows what they know. The real trick is to know what we don’t know. Of course, that is something we can never know, but knowing we can’t know it is nevertheless a good start, because it leaves us open to this background ocean of infinite Truth. Only God can know how ignorant we are, but this doesn’t mean our knowledge is nothing. Again, circles exist, even if the sphere contains an infinitude of circles.

Back to De Koninck. He writes that “It is only in human understanding that the cosmos becomes a universe in the full sense.” Likewise, it is only in human understanding that our little circle can be seen as a declension from the sphere. Unless you enclose yourself in absurcularity, which is diametrically opposed to the Christian way, AKA the way of tenure.

Much more, but the crock has run out.

Ontological Necrophilia and the Total Eclipse of the Cosmos

We left off pondering the sort of creature capable of making a roundtrip tour of the cosmos and rejoining the source of being. Ironically, chances are, the same people who ridicule “flat earthers” are likely to be flat universers. 

But last I heard, any straight line in our universe ends up where it originated. Does this mean that if we could only see far enough, we’d see our own aseity? Let’s check. But be quick about it! We’ve got a lot of goround to cover this morning.

Could the Universe actually loop back on itself? And if you traveled far enough in a straight line, would you eventually return to your starting point, just as if you traveled in any one direction for long enough on the surface of the Earth?

While it’s easy to see how a positively-curved space can be finite and closed, it’s a little less intuitive to realize that a flat space could be finite and closed as well, but that’s also the case. To understand, simply imagine a long, straight cylinder, and then bending that cylinder into a donut-like shape until the two ends connect. This shape -- known as a torus -- is both spatially flat and also finite and closed. 

Well, that's a relief. I always suspected the cosmos looked like a donut, hence the  ʘ in  ONE CʘSMOS.

Let’s jump to the bottom line: in an abstract sense a straight line would return to itself, but there hasn’t been enough time for it to do so:

The Universe may, on some very grand cosmic scale, truly be finite in nature. But even if it is, we’ll never be able to know. While we can travel through space as far as we like, as fast as we can, for as long as we can imagine without end..., there is a cosmic horizon that limits how far we can travel through the expanding Universe, and for objects more than ~18 billion light-years away at present, they’re already effectively gone (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/travel-straight-line/ ).

Let's just say that if the universe were finite, it couldn’t be. Besides, Gödel. 

Come to think of it, as we all know by now, there is the real, cage-free world, and the infertile world described by physics, and the latter is -- duh -- only an abstraction from the former. This is what De Koninck refers to as "the hollow universe." And even though it is hollow, no one could actually live, let alone breed, inside it:

The objects available to us in experience are much richer than those described in modern mathematical physics…. Mathematical physics deals, literally, with abstractions and there is a tendency to take these abstractions for the whole of reality. The result is what De Koninck meant by the expression “hollow universe” (Armour).

Besides, Gödel.

Remember: it is always we who understand the cosmos, not the cosmos that comprehends us. It reminds me of a somewhat cryptic utterance by the Aphorist, that

The world is explicable from man; but man is not explicable from the world. Man is a given reality; the world is a hypothesis we invent.

Don’t take this the wrong way, like some solipsistic newage sewage, or as if reality were a ghostly form of Kantian rationalism. 

The point is, we begin with the concrete reality of our own existence, which includes an intellect capable of unpacking the intelligibility of the world via abstract concepts. This doesn’t mean we can begin at the other end, as if we could somehow deduce our existence from our own abstractions! For

Of all the vicious circles one could imagine, that in which the materialist encloses himself is the most primitive, restrictive, and binding (De Koninck).

I’ve said this before, but consider the fact that if we are able to explain natural selection, then natural selection is unable to explain us. This is self-evident, and therefore beyond the reach of tenure. More generally, any theory is an abstraction from the concrete totality of Being. 

Which is a convenient place to insert De Koninck’s bottom line:

Every natural form tends toward man…. in this perspective, subhuman forms are much less states than tendencies.

This is at once obvious and (apparently) difficult for people to wrap their minds around. But even the most trivial thing we can know about the most inconsequential thing, means that the intelligibility of that thing speaks in and through us. 

Things are not opaque, but rather, transparent to our intelligence; which again, as Einstein said, is just about the most freaky thing about our universe. Everything “speaks,” but only with the arrival of man is it “heard.” 

For example, the universe was shouting about how E = mc²!!! for billions of years before Einstein came along and heard it. For that matter, it was raving about Gödel’s theorems before Gödel took the time to listen.

So, the universe literally tends toward man, i.e., has the homosapiential tendencies mentioned in yesterday’s post. We literally complete a circle that otherwise makes no sense without us, for the message presupposes a recipient. 

This is the concrete (not abstract) and dynamic (never static) circle in which we always find ourselves -- and I want to say, in which God finds us, and no, I’m not trying to be cute:

the cosmos is open to another world which acts on it. And this cause can only be a living being; it is necessarily a pure spirit, a transcosmic being.  

Much more, but this is a good place to pause and enjoy the vista before resuming our ascent tomorrow. 

Ontological Necrophilia and the Total Eclipse of the Cosmos

We left off pondering the sort of creature capable of making a roundtrip tour of the cosmos and rejoining the source of being. Ironically, chances are, the same people who ridicule “flat earthers” are likely to be flat universers. 

But last I heard, any straight line in our universe ends up where it originated. Does this mean that if we could only see far enough, we’d see our own aseity? Let’s check. But be quick about it! We’ve got a lot of goround to cover this morning.

Could the Universe actually loop back on itself? And if you traveled far enough in a straight line, would you eventually return to your starting point, just as if you traveled in any one direction for long enough on the surface of the Earth?

While it’s easy to see how a positively-curved space can be finite and closed, it’s a little less intuitive to realize that a flat space could be finite and closed as well, but that’s also the case. To understand, simply imagine a long, straight cylinder, and then bending that cylinder into a donut-like shape until the two ends connect. This shape -- known as a torus -- is both spatially flat and also finite and closed. 

Well, that's a relief. I always suspected the cosmos looked like a donut, hence the  ʘ in  ONE CʘSMOS.

Let’s jump to the bottom line: in an abstract sense a straight line would return to itself, but there hasn’t been enough time for it to do so:

The Universe may, on some very grand cosmic scale, truly be finite in nature. But even if it is, we’ll never be able to know. While we can travel through space as far as we like, as fast as we can, for as long as we can imagine without end..., there is a cosmic horizon that limits how far we can travel through the expanding Universe, and for objects more than ~18 billion light-years away at present, they’re already effectively gone (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/travel-straight-line/ ).

Let's just say that if the universe were finite, it couldn’t be. Besides, Gödel. 

Come to think of it, as we all know by now, there is the real, cage-free world, and the infertile world described by physics, and the latter is -- duh -- only an abstraction from the former. This is what De Koninck refers to as "the hollow universe." And even though it is hollow, no one could actually live, let alone breed, inside it:

The objects available to us in experience are much richer than those described in modern mathematical physics…. Mathematical physics deals, literally, with abstractions and there is a tendency to take these abstractions for the whole of reality. The result is what De Koninck meant by the expression “hollow universe” (Armour).

Besides, Gödel.

Remember: it is always we who understand the cosmos, not the cosmos that comprehends us. It reminds me of a somewhat cryptic utterance by the Aphorist, that

The world is explicable from man; but man is not explicable from the world. Man is a given reality; the world is a hypothesis we invent.

Don’t take this the wrong way, like some solipsistic newage sewage, or as if reality were a ghostly form of Kantian rationalism. 

The point is, we begin with the concrete reality of our own existence, which includes an intellect capable of unpacking the intelligibility of the world via abstract concepts. This doesn’t mean we can begin at the other end, as if we could somehow deduce our existence from our own abstractions! For

Of all the vicious circles one could imagine, that in which the materialist encloses himself is the most primitive, restrictive, and binding (De Koninck).

I’ve said this before, but consider the fact that if we are able to explain natural selection, then natural selection is unable to explain us. This is self-evident, and therefore beyond the reach of tenure. More generally, any theory is an abstraction from the concrete totality of Being. 

Which is a convenient place to insert De Koninck’s bottom line:

Every natural form tends toward man…. in this perspective, subhuman forms are much less states than tendencies.

This is at once obvious and (apparently) difficult for people to wrap their minds around. But even the most trivial thing we can know about the most inconsequential thing, means that the intelligibility of that thing speaks in and through us. 

Things are not opaque, but rather, transparent to our intelligence; which again, as Einstein said, is just about the most freaky thing about our universe. Everything “speaks,” but only with the arrival of man is it “heard.” 

For example, the universe was shouting about how E = mc²!!! for billions of years before Einstein came along and heard it. For that matter, it was raving about Gödel’s theorems before Gödel took the time to listen.

So, the universe literally tends toward man, i.e., has the homosapiential tendencies mentioned in yesterday’s post. We literally complete a circle that otherwise makes no sense without us, for the message presupposes a recipient. 

This is the concrete (not abstract) and dynamic (never static) circle in which we always find ourselves -- and I want to say, in which God finds us, and no, I’m not trying to be cute:

the cosmos is open to another world which acts on it. And this cause can only be a living being; it is necessarily a pure spirit, a transcosmic being.  

Much more, but this is a good place to pause and enjoy the vista before resuming our ascent tomorrow. 

A Conspiracy So Vast: The Homosapiential Tendencies of the Cosmos

We left off with our feet in the horizontal and head in the vertical; one could also say concrete and abstract, exterior and interior, surface and depth, senses and intellect, etc. The point is, there are always no fewer than two worlds, but they fit together so harmoniously one begins to suspect a plot.

But here we must proceed cautiously for the very reason that it is so easy for us to understand -- and therefore misunderstand -- things, which is to say, link them together in a causal manner. Patterns and pseudo-patterns are everywhere. 

I remember a patient with PTSD who would see projected flashbacks in the patterns of the cottage cheese ceiling when laying in bed. It seems that the same psychological process underlies both creativity and paranoia -- or that the latter is parasitic on the former. Paranoia is creativity in a foul mood, or something. Or foul and stupid, like MSNBC.

So let’s refrain from calling it a COSMIC CONSPIRACY SO VAST….

Instead, let’s stay classy and call it The Raison d’être of the Cosmos, as does De Koninck. Sounds more elegant and less insane, or worse, journalistic. 

Oh, let’s just come out and say it, and clean up the mess afterwards:

Man is manifestly the raison d’être of the whole of nature. Moreover, nature could not be ordered to God except through man. God being the end of the universe, it is necessary that the universe be capable of a return to the Universal Principle…. But only an intellectual creature is capable of such a return.

In other words -- and this is just Bob speaking -- man is the missing link in existence. After all, the existence of something like matter is entirely self-evident, and the existence of the Absolute, the Universal Principle, isn’t far behind. Where's the connection? 

I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but what else could it be but Man, since 1) we are the only creature that comes equipped with matter and an immaterial rational soul that bends back upon itself, and 2) we have the entirely credible testimony of literally countless mystics, saints, and acidheads who have completed this cosmic roundtrip, precisely. 

I might add that in the absence of this roundtrip, our existence makes no sense whatsoever, for it would be analogous to a wire through which electricity passes but which is plugged into nothing, a skyscraper with no top floor, an endless joke with no punchline, or just a bad infinite in general. 

I would also say that our own self-consciousness is a circle that finds its principle in the circularity of God, not just in the extroverted sense of creation returning to itself, but in the interior sense of the Son returning to the Father via the Holy Spirit. But we’ll deal with these folks later.

In any event, “only rational created nature is immediately ordered to God.” And if you don’t like that word, just say, for example, that the intellect is intrinsically ordered to a metacosmic Truth without which it is little more than a cancer on the surface of being. 

Which, come to think of it, it all too often is: because we can know truth, we can know and even love falsehood, but let’s define spiritual health before getting into cosmopathology. Things can only go wrong if it is possible for them to go right.

Lesser animals “do not attain the universal but only the particular.” Yes, self-evident, but what is the principle by virtue of which you and I attain the universal?  

Correct: the Uni-versal as such (literally, one turn): "rational nature,"

because it knows the universal formality of the good and of being is thereby ordered immediately to the universal principle of being.

In other words, only a creature capable of making a tour of being can rejoin the source of being.

After all, if something has occurred, then it was possible for it to occur, but by virtue of what principle was it possible? 

This is where things get a little obscure even for Petey, but what if man was originally plugged into the Vertical Socket, so to speak, but for reasons we won’t argue about unplugged himself from the source and decided to go it alone, which resulted in a kind of blackout, or a long, cold winter with only wind and solar instead of fossil fuels.

I mean, there’s still plenty of electricity down here, even if its rather weak, like static electricity compared to current electricity. The Great Electrician created both, but supposing he comes down and repairs the line, such that the current once again flows all the way to the top?

I AM, a lineman for the cosmos.

A conspiracy so vast…

To be continued.

A Conspiracy So Vast: The Homosapiential Tendencies of the Cosmos

We left off with our feet in the horizontal and head in the vertical; one could also say concrete and abstract, exterior and interior, surface and depth, senses and intellect, etc. The point is, there are always no fewer than two worlds, but they fit together so harmoniously one begins to suspect a plot.

But here we must proceed cautiously for the very reason that it is so easy for us to understand -- and therefore misunderstand -- things, which is to say, link them together in a causal manner. Patterns and pseudo-patterns are everywhere. 

I remember a patient with PTSD who would see projected flashbacks in the patterns of the cottage cheese ceiling when laying in bed. It seems that the same psychological process underlies both creativity and paranoia -- or that the latter is parasitic on the former. Paranoia is creativity in a foul mood, or something. Or foul and stupid, like MSNBC.

So let’s refrain from calling it a COSMIC CONSPIRACY SO VAST….

Instead, let’s stay classy and call it The Raison d’être of the Cosmos, as does De Koninck. Sounds more elegant and less insane, or worse, journalistic. 

Oh, let’s just come out and say it, and clean up the mess afterwards:

Man is manifestly the raison d’être of the whole of nature. Moreover, nature could not be ordered to God except through man. God being the end of the universe, it is necessary that the universe be capable of a return to the Universal Principle…. But only an intellectual creature is capable of such a return.

In other words -- and this is just Bob speaking -- man is the missing link in existence. After all, the existence of something like matter is entirely self-evident, and the existence of the Absolute, the Universal Principle, isn’t far behind. Where's the connection? 

I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but what else could it be but Man, since 1) we are the only creature that comes equipped with matter and an immaterial rational soul that bends back upon itself, and 2) we have the entirely credible testimony of literally countless mystics, saints, and acidheads who have completed this cosmic roundtrip, precisely. 

I might add that in the absence of this roundtrip, our existence makes no sense whatsoever, for it would be analogous to a wire through which electricity passes but which is plugged into nothing, a skyscraper with no top floor, an endless joke with no punchline, or just a bad infinite in general. 

I would also say that our own self-consciousness is a circle that finds its principle in the circularity of God, not just in the extroverted sense of creation returning to itself, but in the interior sense of the Son returning to the Father via the Holy Spirit. But we’ll deal with these folks later.

In any event, “only rational created nature is immediately ordered to God.” And if you don’t like that word, just say, for example, that the intellect is intrinsically ordered to a metacosmic Truth without which it is little more than a cancer on the surface of being. 

Which, come to think of it, it all too often is: because we can know truth, we can know and even love falsehood, but let’s define spiritual health before getting into cosmopathology. Things can only go wrong if it is possible for them to go right.

Lesser animals “do not attain the universal but only the particular.” Yes, self-evident, but what is the principle by virtue of which you and I attain the universal?  

Correct: the Uni-versal as such (literally, one turn): "rational nature,"

because it knows the universal formality of the good and of being is thereby ordered immediately to the universal principle of being.

In other words, only a creature capable of making a tour of being can rejoin the source of being.

After all, if something has occurred, then it was possible for it to occur, but by virtue of what principle was it possible? 

This is where things get a little obscure even for Petey, but what if man was originally plugged into the Vertical Socket, so to speak, but for reasons we won’t argue about unplugged himself from the source and decided to go it alone, which resulted in a kind of blackout, or a long, cold winter with only wind and solar instead of fossil fuels.

I mean, there’s still plenty of electricity down here, even if its rather weak, like static electricity compared to current electricity. The Great Electrician created both, but supposing he comes down and repairs the line, such that the current once again flows all the way to the top?

I AM, a lineman for the cosmos.

A conspiracy so vast…

To be continued.