Summa Flowchartica

Reality is that which is, AKA Being. 

Now, we've all heard it said that reality is what exists even when we're not looking, but that's not quite right, since there are multiple states of being and corresponding degrees of knowing. We don't know math in the same way we know material objects, nor do we know God in the same way we do metaphysics.

This is not to reduce reality to our ways of knowing it, a la Kant. Rather, knowledge is still the conformity of mind to being, it's just that being has multiple degrees, and that's what our cosmic flowchart is all about: the degrees of being. 

There's a book by that name (The Degrees of Knowledge) by Jacques Maritain which I read back on 2002, way before I would have been capable of understanding it, and now I have to reread it. Look what you made me do!

Let's flip around for any insights into our cosmic flowchart. 

Every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, especially when it deals with the complex riches of knowledge and of the mind, must distinguish in order to unite.

Reality is not a jehovial blob of onederful blubber, but nor is it a scattered manifestivus of middling relativities hurtling higgledy-piggledy into sheer mayaplicity. And you can quote me on that.

Gosh. This pretty much describes the two extremes of the map we have in mind: "starting with the experience of the physicist and ending with the experience of the contemplative," and showing 

the organic diversity and essential compatibility of those zones of knowledge through which passes in its great movement in quest of being... 

And here's an important clue: it's ALIVE!

it is not a system, an artifact; it is a spiritual organism. Its inner connections are vital ties where each part exists by the existence of the whole. 

And you know me: this is because the Archetype of archetypes (i.e., Model of all models and modelers) is and must be the Trinity... or possibly the Trinity in an eternal dialectic with Beyond-Being, neither one being anterior, rather, just the way the Godhead roils. 

But we needn't worry about such deustinctions at this preluminary junkture. Rather, all will be clear in the beatific vision. After purgatory and all that. 

What? Yes, this life is the waiting room of purgatory, but some people blow off their appointment.

This book is too big. Let's get back to something more manageable, Philosophy of Science in Light of the Perennial Wisdom. After all, we just want a simple flowchart, not a Summa. 

Might I suggest a Summa Flowchartica?

That'll do. 

The point is, everybody's got one, whether they know it or not. In other words, we all have a map of reality, moreover, we generally won't see the things that aren't on the map, especially the higher and more subtle things. But also the lower and grosser ones. For example, no one will ever see a quark or 26-dimensional string. As alluded to a few posts back, some folks

may describe total reality as being one indivisible Unity. Some may divide it into two degrees: the Divine Order, and that of all that is created, namely, Creation. 

Or as Joyce says, "Somedivide and sumthelot but the tally turns round the same balifusion," and you can quote him on that. Come to think of it, "When a part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an allforabit."

In plain unglish, our flowchart must at once be petit but large enough to cover the whole meanderthalltale, if you are abcedminded to the allephbed of the cosmic playbook, what curios of signs. Can you rede its world? It is the same told of all.

That means everybody. Now,

Starting from the material world that is in principle knowable to our senses, we perceive the first state of being...

This world encompasses everything from planets, stars, galaxies, and the background radiation of the Big Bang at one end, to atomic and subatomic waves and particles at the other.

This vast thingdom is all just (just?!) a vast vibrating energy field, with (to reJoyce) movibles scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang, so wheenybeenyveenyteeny. And you can say that again!  

Everybody with me so far? Good, because it's about to get weird. 

To some, [the above] state represents all there is. We shall see, however, that this supposition radically falls short of adequacy.

Literally, because our flowchart must be an adequation to the whole existentialada, or rather, the whole dang cosmodilla, since Uncle Rico ate all our steak and the Chinaman stole our rug.