Make Metaphysics Great Again

Part two of The Integral Cosmos is by a different author, the French Catholic philosopher, theologian, metaphysician, and all-around mystic, Jean Borella. 

I've tried reading some of his books in the past, but clarity is not one of his strong suits. To which he would no doubt respond that the measure of clarity is a function of the object, and that Ultimate Realty is less clear than, say, math or geology.

But I suspect it mostly has to do with being European. They just don't write like Americans do -- as if it's impolite to just stop dithering and GET TO THE POINT!

Which makes me suspicious, as if to say, If this guy really knows what he's talking about, why doesn't he just come right out and say it?

Wordiness is not an excess of words, but a dearth of ideas.

The deluded are prolix.

Only ideas save us from adjectives.

The writer who has not tortured his sentences tortures his reader.

Dávila combined elegant European manners with unpretentious American candor. 

Having said that, Borella's contribution to the book is less circuitous and allusive than what I've read in the past. Still, it is not devoid of woolliness, so it is unclear at this point if Bob has the power -- or interest -- to pull it all together and translate it into good old honest and plainspoken Americanese. 

Make metaphysics great again!

I try to, but it seems there's just no audience for it. I remember Schuon saying something to the effect that the folks whose side he was on weren't on his side, and vice versa. People are touchy about their theology. They don't like it when you poke one of their principles. 

For example, the other day I made what I thought was an uncontroversial comment on Instapundit about the death of Hal Lindsey, a bestselling Christian author in the 1970s who specialized in apocalyptic doomsday cult nonsense about how we were living in the End Times. 

Suffice it to say, I don't think sensationalistic kooks like Lindsey help the cause, because they make Christianity -- and therefore Christians -- appear stupid. After all, the Battle of Armageddon didn't arrive as predicted in the 1980s. But here's the thanks I got from a commenter:

Concern troll is concerned. How much are you doing to to let others know about your faith? Just criticizing others for doing what you label [sic] shows your own smugness and idiocy. Are you that naive or just evil?

That escalated quickly. If we can't even talk to each other, how are we supposed to talk to the wider culture?

Borella speaks of the "atheist untroubled by his certainty." But shouldn't we all be troubled by certainty? For certitude implies an epistemological and even ontological closure that violates the open and relational nature of being itself, am I wrong? 

Any ideology, whether religious or scientistic, attains to an omniscience vouchsafed to God alone, covertly deifying human intelligence.  

For example, Hawking writes that

our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.

it is our physical brain... that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those physical laws (in Borella). 

This has got to be the ultimate Humble Brag, at once rendering Hawking nescient and omniscient. But if this is the case, then

To be right no longer makes sense; for to be right implies that I can aspire to the truth with complete independence, since my thought, my reflection, is not merely a product of biological functions.

Such metaphysical simpletons inevitably "put themselves in the place of God":

Materialists are like one who counts the number of people in room and forgets to count himself.... atheistic and scientistic materialism would instantly cease to exist as a conviction if it became aware that it unknowingly affirms what it thinks it has denied.

It seems to me that Hawking, no less than Hal Lindsey types, engage in a kind of cheap omniscience that forecloses reality. But nothing is that simple, let alone everything.  

Thought is free, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except order it to the truth that transcends us. Epistemological closure is a sin against both reason and the spirit. 

Eh, I'm bored. That's pretty much all I got this morning, unless Gemini has some bonus thoughts.

This passage reflects on the challenges of understanding complex philosophical and theological ideas, particularly those presented in a dense, "European" style. It contrasts this style with a more direct, "American" approach and questions whether wordiness obscures a lack of genuine insight. The author uses personal anecdotes and examples to illustrate these points, including:

• Difficulty with Borella's writing: The author finds Borella's work challenging due to its lack of clarity, attributing this partly to a difference in writing styles between European and American authors. This leads to a suspicion that complex writing might mask a lack of substance.
• The importance of clear communication: The author emphasizes the need for clear communication, quoting Dávila and suggesting that "wordiness is not an excess of words, but a dearth of ideas." They value concise and impactful writing that avoids unnecessary adjectives and tortured sentences.
• The lack of an audience for metaphysics: The author laments the lack of interest in metaphysics, referencing Schuon's observation about the disconnect between those who theoretically support his views and those who actually engage with them.
• The dangers of certainty and ideological rigidity: The author criticizes the "atheist untroubled by his certainty," arguing that all forms of certainty, whether religious or scientific, represent an epistemological closure that contradicts the open and relational nature of being. This point is illustrated by:
  • The Hal Lindsey example: An anecdote about criticizing Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic predictions and receiving a hostile response highlights the touchiness people have about their beliefs and the difficulty of engaging in constructive dialogue.
  • Hawking's materialist view: The author uses Stephen Hawking's assertion that biological processes are determined by physical laws as an example of "cheap omniscience" that denies free will and effectively puts humanity in the place of God.
• The necessity of openness to truth: The author concludes by asserting the freedom of thought and the importance of remaining open to truth that transcends human understanding. They view epistemological closure as a "sin against both reason and the spirit."
• In essence, the passage argues for clarity of thought and expression, criticizes dogmatism in all its forms, and defends the importance of open inquiry in the pursuit of truth.

Truth, clarity, and the American way!

A Grand Theory of Nothing

We'll begin today's cerebration with a couple of innocent but foundational questions, first, What must the world be like in order that man may know it? (Jaki), and second, What must nature, including man, be like in order that science be possible at all? (Kuhn). 

These of course reduce to the same complementary principles, which is to say, Intelligence and Intelligibility. Both are always here, but how? And why? 

Science can never explain the existence of either, rather, must presuppose them in order to even exist. Science deals with necessity, e.g., universal laws, mathematical formulations, and logical principles, but science itself is a necessary consequence of something infinitely larger, a vertical principle of Intelligence itself.

Now, I'm always looking for good blogfodder, which is to say, vertically provocative material that hits my soul where it lives. By which I mean speaks to me in my peculiar idiom and reveals to me who I am. That's how it works: we are spontaneously attracted to things in the outer world that reveal to us the contours of our inner world. 

Aw, look at me, ramblin' again. I'm not trying to be sentimental, much less romantic, rather, I'm talking about a mysterious process whereby when we hear it, we know it: one and done. Nor is it like "closing one's mind," rather, like finding a key that opens it, so it's a dynamic process, not a static one.

Anyway, there's a chapter in Rediscovering the Integral Cosmos called The Emergence of the Tripartite Cosmos that serves as a good summary of Smith's thought (which in turn speaks to me). In it, he points out how quantum mechanics, far from providing the basis for a worldview, "has imposed upon us a 'world' that cannot be viewed at all." It is literally unimaginable, and no one understands it. If they do, they don't.

Moreover, this metaphysical blindview antedates modern physics and goes back to the beginning of the scientific revolution, which exiled mind from the cosmos, placing a wall of separation between search and pate. In other words, search as we might, reality as such -- the noumena -- is totally inaccessible to the mind. 

Thanks to Kant and his ilk, we can only dream about what might be on the other side of phenomena, or appearances. Whitehead had some groovy quips about this ungroovy situation:

Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life.

Clear-sighted men, of the sort who are clearly wrong, now proclaimed that 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.

The problem is, when matter is placed over spirit, quantity is placed over quality. But quality is not just another quantity. 

Back to Smith: the world revealed by quantum physics is literally no world at all, nor can it account for the familiar world in which we live and move and have our being, because it is an abstraction from this higher world, precisely:

quantum physics is not in truth the absolutely "fundamental" science one has taken it to be, but is in fact restricted in its scope to an "underworld" of mere potentiae...

"Far from being a 'theory of everything," "it is, in a sense, a theory of 'nothing at all.'" 

How so? Well, "students of Oriental philosophy" know all about the yin-yang symbol. 

Excuse me, but the preferred nomenclature is Asian or Pacific Islander philosophy. 

The point is, "existence cannot be reduced to a single principle: that 'it takes two to exist.'" Expressed in Aristotelian terms, "it requires hyle plus morphe," which is to say, matter and form, respectively. But it is very much as if modern physics "has in effect sought to build a cosmos out of hyle -- out of 'matter' -- alone."

Form is to matter as yin is to yang or quality to quantity:

What is left, therefore, after the Cartesian intervention, is a kind of half-world which, in truth, as we have said, does not exist. Yet it is this semi-world, precisely, which Newtonian or "classical" physics has made its own, its "universe" over which that physics holds sway.

Not only did physics toss out half the world, it tossed out the better, which is to say, "higher" half. What I mean is that hylomorphism turns out to be high-low morphism, which is to say, form can only be explained in a top-down manner: this is a "vertical distinction," whereby

one conceives of morphe "pictorially" as situated "above" materia, a step which defines a "vertical" axis, a cosmic "up" and "down," a "high" and "low."

Hmm. This post was much better in my head. Something was lost in translating it to the page. Let's just say that vertical and horizontal go to intelligence and intelligibility, form and matter, quality and quantity, yin and yang, reality and appearance, etc. Coming back to the question at the top, this is what the world must be like in order for man to know it.

Gemini, can you clean up my loose nous?

Regarding the "lost in translation" feeling:

It's common to feel that way when translating thoughts to the page. Some potential reasons:

• The nature of thought: Thoughts are often fluid and intuitive, while writing requires a more linear and explicit structure.
• The audience: Writing for an external audience requires a different level of clarity and explanation than thinking to oneself.
• The medium: The written word is a different medium than internal thought, and some nuances may be lost in the transition.

Overall, this is a thought-provoking piece that raises important questions about the nature of reality and the limits of human knowledge. It encourages us to look beyond the purely quantitative world of modern science and consider the qualitative, intelligible dimensions of existence.

Central Themes:

Intelligence and Intelligibility: The core argument is that both intelligence (the capacity to know) and intelligibility (the knowability of the world) are necessary preconditions for science, yet science itself cannot explain their existence. They are presupposed, not derived.

• The Limits of Science: Science, particularly modern physics, is seen as having created a "half-world" by focusing solely on quantifiable matter (hyle) and neglecting form (morphe). This has led to an "unimaginable" quantum realm and a disconnect from the lived world of human experience.
• The Cartesian/Newtonian Split: The scientific revolution, with its emphasis on mechanism and the separation of mind and matter, is identified as the source of this problem. This split has created a barrier between the observer and the observed, making true knowledge of reality seemingly impossible.
• The Importance of Form (Morphe): The concept of form, as understood in Aristotelian philosophy, is crucial. It represents the qualitative, intelligible aspect of reality that is missing in the purely quantitative world of modern physics. Form is a "vertical" principle, implying a hierarchy of being, with form "above" matter.
• Vertical vs. Horizontal: The distinction between vertical (qualitative, hierarchical) and horizontal (quantitative, measurable) is central. Science operates primarily on the horizontal plane, while true understanding requires a vertical perspective that acknowledges the primacy of form and intelligence.
• Analogy of Yin-Yang: The yin-yang symbol is used to illustrate the necessary duality of existence: matter and form, quantity and quality. Modern physics, by focusing on matter alone, has effectively tried to create a "cosmos out of hyle alone," which is an impossibility.

Many Universes, One Error

Yesterday Instapundit linked to an article showing the lengths to which some physicists will go to prevent so much as a divine foot from entering the door of His own cosmos, ponderously titled Numerical Simulations Show How the Classical World Might Emerge from the Many-Worlds Universes of Quantum Mechanics. 

Which of course correctly presupposes that quantum mechanics is powerless to explain, out of its own resources, how the actual world in which we live got here. At least absent extravagant numerical simulations pretending to show that out of an infinite number of universes, one is bound to give rise to autistic math nerds with too much time on their hands and too little philosophy in their heads.

Cue the Aphorist:

In the modern world the number of theories that are not worth the trouble to refute except with a shrug of the shoulders is increasing.

Now, numerical simulations show that I don't owe any taxes this year, but there's a catch: the federal government exists in the classical world alluded to above. It has no interest in those alternate accounting worlds in which they owe me a rebate.

Bob, aren't you being a tad frivolous and dismissive? After all, you failed even to complete -- 

No, let's start with what we know. Better yet, let's start -- as we must -- with that we know. If man is not first a knower, then he cannot know about this universe, let alone numerical simulations purporting to reveal the hypothetical existence of an infinite number of alternate universes.

We always start in this universe, i.e., the classical and corporeal one, not the quantum realm, since it is an extension of this one, not vice versa. No one can start in the quantum realm, first, because there's no one there, and second, because it has the potential to exist without existing per se. No one could live, or move, or have his being there, because it is too impoverished to ever give rise to life, intellect, freedom, etc.

In short, it is we -- situated in our classical universe -- who know about the quantum world, not vice versa. There are no knowers in the latter world, nor could there be, unless we "enter it," so to speak, via instruments -- from numerical simulations to particle colliders -- existing in this (classical) universe. 

If our world is but an illusory condensation of quantum potential, then the knowers existing in it are equally illusory, themselves dissolving into a sub-existential fog of pure potential, devoid of substance. 

In Rediscovering the Integral Cosmos: Physics, Metaphysics, and Vertical Causality, Smith has a chapter called Finding the Hidden Key, that identifies the flaw at the heart of these exotic attempts to both hide God and hide from God. No matter how clever, they nevertheless require that One Free Miracle we discussed a few posts back, in this case the miracle of intelligence existing in a miraculously intelligible universe.

That's two miracles.

Yes, but they reduce to the single act of knowing truth. If we can't know truth, then truly truly, we're done here -- in this or any of the other 10⁵⁰⁰ universes proposed by Hawking. 

That's a lot of universes. Surely in one one of them you passed high school physics?

Better yet, Smith did so in this universe. In pondering the absurdities generated by quantum physics, he zooms out to a wider view that shows why these absurdities are an inevitable consequence of an implicit and unexamined metaphysical vision (or blindness):

I was struck by the fact that everyone seemed implicitly to presuppose a major philosophic postulate, which at the very least could be characterized as "dubious."   

That is to say, "I was amazed to find that the Cartesian premises" were alive and well in physics departments, assuming "a splitting of the real world into two mutually exclusive compartments." This cosmic bifurcation, of course, redounds to an exterior and objective world of "extended entities," and an interior and subjective one of "thinking entities." 

This is all familiar ground for One Cosmos readers, who know that this bifurcation is fine and even necessary when limited to scientific methodology. Problems arise, however, when it is elevated to a metaphysic. As Whitehead recognized a century ago, 

No alternative system of organizing the pursuit of scientific truth has been suggested. It is not only reigning, but without a rival. And yet -- it is quite unbelievable.

Again, this is old news for our reader(s). Anything new to add?

Well, we are knowers, that's for sure. As such, there is knowledge: the cosmos is intelligible to intelligence. But how? Descartes divided the two into separate worlds. How to put them back together?

Here's a thought: why divide them to begin with? Again, if the knower is but an illusory artifact of quantum effects, how are we able to know that world without immediate self-refutation (or annihilation)? Smith speaks of a "bridge" 

which allows us to pass from one to the other, in the absence of which there evidently could be no physical science at all. 

Except this is not a horizontal bridge, rather, a vertical one. In this regard, it is very much as if man -- and our familiar cosmos -- is stretched between two infinitudes, one above us and one below. In between are all the finite -- and definite -- things that are intelligible to our intelligence.

And why are they intelligible? Because they possess intelligible forms that couldn't possibly have arisen from "below," because there are no forms, substances, or essences there, and no amount of horizontal causation could have given rise to them. 

The point is, the substance is at the top, not the bottom, where there is none, precisely. In this or any other universe.

To know that the “Substance of substances” is alone absolutely real, or that it is strictly speaking the only reality, means to see Substance in and through every accident; thanks to this initial knowledge of Reality, the world becomes metaphysically transparent (Schuon). 

That was just a broad summary of the chapter. Maybe tomorrow we'll get into details. Or maybe not, because you've probably long since gotten the point: just turn the cosmos bright-side up, and the scientistic enigmas disappear. Right, Gemini?

This text presents a critique of certain interpretations of quantum physics, particularly those that attempt to explain the emergence of the classical world from the quantum realm without acknowledging the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligibility. Here's a breakdown of the key arguments:

• The Primacy of Classical Experience: The author emphasizes that all knowledge, including knowledge of the quantum world, originates in the classical, corporeal world. We, as knowers, exist in this classical reality and use instruments and theories developed within it to understand the quantum realm. The quantum world cannot be the starting point because there are no knowers there.

• The Problem of Illusory Knowers: If the classical world is merely an illusion arising from quantum potential, then the knowers within it are also illusory. This creates a self-refuting paradox: how can an illusory knower know anything, including the nature of the quantum world?

• The Necessity of Intelligibility: The author argues that the universe is intelligible to human intelligence. This intelligibility is a fundamental condition for any scientific inquiry. The "One Free Miracle" is the existence of intelligence in an intelligible universe. This is coupled with the miracle of knowing truth. If we cannot know truth, then all inquiry is meaningless.

• Critique of Cartesian Dualism: The author criticizes the Cartesian split between the objective world of "extended entities" and the subjective world of "thinking entities." This division, while useful for scientific methodology, becomes problematic when elevated to a metaphysical principle. It creates a seemingly insurmountable gap between the knower and the known.

• The Vertical Bridge: Instead of a horizontal bridge between the objective and subjective worlds (as suggested by Cartesian dualism), the author proposes a "vertical" bridge. This suggests a hierarchical view of reality, with the source of intelligibility and form residing "above" the material world. The intelligible forms that we perceive in the classical world could not have arisen solely from the "bottom" (the quantum realm), which is devoid of form, substance, or essence.

• Turning the Cosmos "Bright-Side Up": The core argument is that many of the paradoxes and enigmas of quantum physics arise from a flawed metaphysical vision that places the source of reality and intelligibility in the material world alone. By recognizing a higher source of form and intelligibility (the "top"), these enigmas dissolve.

In essence, the author is arguing against a purely materialistic or reductionist view of reality. He suggests that the existence of knowledge and intelligibility requires a recognition of a non-material dimension or principle. This is not necessarily a religious argument in the traditional sense, but rather a philosophical argument about the preconditions for knowledge itself. The author uses the example of numerical simulations to highlight how easy it is to create alternate realities with no bearing on the actual experience of living in our world. 

Hmm: I guess this is supposed to be a real flower existing between the source above and the quantum fog below:

Sometimes I Wonder

Or rather, always. Not about anything in particular but, rather, about everything in general. You might even say I wake up confused and take it from there. 

Confused about what?

Oh, for example, about people who aren't confused. What kind of illusory certitude is afflicting them in such a way that they're not utterly perplexed by existence? After all, if I weren't puzzled by existence, why would I have spent the past two decades blah-blah-blogging in the bewilderness? In other words, what is the blog but the diary of a seemingly incurably befuddled man? 

In this context, I am either the most well or most poorly adjusted person I know, depending on how one looks at it. For supposing reality is not a puzzle, then I am indeed a lost soul, for it means that the others are in possession of the answer that eludes me. But if it is a Total Mystery, then I can rightly say that I am fully adapted to it.

But what can it mean to be adapted to something that is intrinsically beyond adaptation? Supposing the Mystery is Absolute and Infinite, and further supposing that I am relative and finite -- a safe assumption -- then the only final solution would be for me to become God.

How's that working out?

It's complicated. 

For example, lately we've been dabbling with quantum physics, which -- literally -- no one understands. In this regard, Wolfgang Smith is an outlier, as he tries to solve this puzzle by situating it in an infinitely larger metaphysic that is totally beyond physics as such. 

So, as part of my due diligence, yesterday I thought I'd read a more conventional book on the subject, called Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe. 

Did it unravel the Mystery?

Please. Chapter one is called The Twin Hard Problems. Oh? What problems are these? Only the total mysteries of matter at one end and consciousness at the other. 

The book is full of all sorts of speculative attempts to demystify these mysteries, but they're all deeply wrong and even misguided. I mean, they're on the right track in appreciating that these twin mysteries must somehow be two sides of the same total Mystery, but they're out of their element, like children who've walked into the middle of a movie. 

The best combination of physics and neuroscience will get one no closer to deciphering the plot of the movie or solving the Mystery. An "interdisciplinary" approach is a good start, but to think there's an interdisciplinary answer instead of transdisciplinary one is --

Eight year olds, dude.

Exactly. I won't bore you with details, but the two Hard Problems alluded to above can be reduced to the inside/outside problem, and this is a problem physics is in principle not only unable to solve, but even to see. Or rather, it can't but help see the problem, but is powerless to account for it. After all, the pursuit of physics presupposes physicists, but what are they doing here in a mindless cosmos? 

I've been thinking about this problem for a long time.

That's your problem.

Correct: I can't stop thinking about it. Way back in 1991 I published a paper that proposed a "quantum metapsychology" that explored the relationship between the order of the universe and that of the mind. It begins with a quote by Werner Heisenberg:

The same organizing forces that have created nature in all its forms, are responsible for the structure of our soul, and likewise for our capacity to think.

I call that a good start. What are these mysterious organizing forces at once responsible for the creation of nature, the structure of our soul, and our capacity to think? I'm not in the mood to reread the paper. Instead I'm going to fast-forward to the last sentence of the book I'm reading, Putting Ourselves Back In the Equation:

Our minds evolved to understand the world, which requires that the world be understandable. And we are of this world.

There is so much wrong with this paragraph that truly truly, it isn't even wrong. "Our minds evolved to understand the world"?  No they didn't. According to the tenets of natural selection, the mind -- whatever that is -- is but an illusory side effect of the prime directive of the survival of our genes. And to say "we are of this world" --

Like anybody could even know that.

Correct: supposing it could be known, it could only be known by a consciousness that is at least partially out of this world. Confined to this world -- to immanence -- then we could have no knowledge of the world at all, which both presupposes and confirms its own transcendence in every act of knowing.

Having said that, let's return to Wolfgang Smith's epic takedown of Stephen Hawking, because it touches on everything we've discussed above, including why I wake up every morning a mystery to myself, face-to-face with the mystery of existence:

The answer to this supreme conundrum, we are told, can now be given on rigorous mathematical grounds by physics itself: such is the "breakthrough" [Hawking's] treatise proposes to expound in terms simple enough to fall within the purview of the non-specialist. 

Simple enough for the purview of a purblind man who failed to complete high school physics. How convenient is that!

The first chapter of Hawking's The Grand Design gets right down to isness, with a chapter called The Mystery of Being. Sounds right in our karmic wheelhouse!

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Oof! First God, now philosophy. Who killed it?

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

So, God died and left Hawking in charge? It reminds me of Genesis 3, and also of a quip by Terence McKenna:

This was a very nice neighborhood until the monkeys got out of control.

 In fact, in a lengthier visionary quip, McKenna suggested that

The situation called history is totally unique; it will last only for a moment, it began a moment ago. In that moment there is a tremendous burst of static as the monkey goes to godhood, as the final eschatological object mitigates and transforms the forward flow of entropic circumstance.

Now, probably the furthest thing from his mind was Christian metaphysics, but he might as well have been reciting the Lord's Prayer or Apostle's Creed, for history does indeed have an Alpha and Omega, and what is man's ultimate vocation but to, in the mean time, order himself to the eschatological object, O? Moreover, what is the Incarnation but God becoming primate that primate might attain to Godhood?

And to mitigate and transform all this annoying static and entropy is for God's will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Gemini, does this post make any sense at all, or is it just a lot of primate noises?

This is a fascinating and dense piece, grappling with fundamental questions of existence, consciousness, and the limitations of scientific inquiry. Here's a breakdown of the key themes and arguments:

• The Pervasive Mystery of Existence: The central theme is the inherent mystery of existence itself. The author expresses a constant state of confusion, not about specific facts, but about the very nature of reality and why anything exists at all. This confusion is contrasted with those who seem to possess a "illusory certitude," a lack of wonder or perplexity about the world.

• Adaptation to the Unadaptable: The author explores the idea of being "adapted" to a reality that is inherently mysterious and perhaps beyond human comprehension. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that true adaptation might require becoming God, a clearly impossible feat for a finite being.

• The Limitations of Physics: The author critiques attempts to solve the mysteries of existence through physics alone, particularly focusing on the "twin hard problems" of matter and consciousness. He argues that physics, by its very nature, is limited to the "outside" perspective and cannot account for the "inside" experience of consciousness. The pursuit of physics presupposes a physicist, a conscious observer, which physics itself cannot explain.

• The Inside/Outside Problem: This is a core argument. Physics deals with the external world, the "outside." Consciousness, however, is an internal experience, the "inside." The author argues that physics is fundamentally incapable of bridging this gap. No amount of physical data can explain subjective experience.

• Critique of Reductionism: The author criticizes reductionist approaches that attempt to explain complex phenomena, like consciousness, in terms of simpler physical processes. He uses the example of "Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation" to illustrate this, arguing that simply combining physics and neuroscience will not solve the fundamental mystery. He dismisses the idea that minds "evolved to understand the world," arguing that evolution is driven by gene survival, not a conscious desire for understanding.

• Wolfgang Smith and a Larger Metaphysics: The author introduces Wolfgang Smith as an outlier who attempts to address the limitations of physics by situating it within a larger metaphysical framework. This suggests a need for a more holistic approach that incorporates not just the physical sciences, but also philosophy and perhaps even theology.

• Hawking and the Death of Philosophy: The author critiques Stephen Hawking's assertion that "philosophy is dead," arguing that philosophical questions about being and existence are still crucial. He connects this to McKenna's idea of the "monkey going to godhood," suggesting a parallel between humanity's quest for knowledge and a kind of self-deification.

• The Incarnation and the Resolution of the Static: The piece concludes by connecting these ideas to Christian metaphysics, specifically the Incarnation. The idea of God becoming human is presented as a way of bridging the gap between the divine and the human, resolving the "static and entropy" of existence.

In essence, the piece is a meditation on the limits of human knowledge and the enduring mystery of existence. It argues that while science can provide valuable insights into the workings of the physical world, it cannot fully explain the nature of consciousness or the ultimate meaning of being. The author suggests a need for a broader perspective that incorporates philosophy, metaphysics, and perhaps even religious thought to grapple with these fundamental questions.

Scientism: The Myth of No Myth

When I find an especially coongenial thinker, I like to read everything they've written. However, most thinkers write only one book and then keep writing it:

Every writer comments indefinitely on his brief original text. 

I just finished another book by Wolfgang Smith, Science and Myth, and things are indeed starting to get a little repetitive, his main points being vertical causation, irreducible wholeness, anti-scientism (and its Cartesian bifurcation), and the ontological distinction between the reality of our everyday corporeal world and the less real quantum realm. 

I already agree with those things, except for the last one. It's not that I disagree with it, it's just that I wouldn't want to debate an actual physicist on the question. For even the briefest cross-examination would reveal my embarrassing failure to complete high school physics. What right have I to an opinion on matters that far surpass my ability to comprehend them?  

No, really: what right do you have?

Well, let's see. One can always play the philosophy card, which trumps science every time:

Without philosophy, the sciences do not know what they know.

Also, one can adopt a Socratic approach to reveal the implicit metaphysical assumptions of the physicist. Which is to say,

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.

Moreover, in so doing, he has actually transcended, or at least escaped, his own conclusions, a la Gödel. In other words, any formal system of the scientist will contain axioms or assumptions unprovable by the system. Gotcha!

Also, no free miracles: 

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician's rule book.

As alluded to above, having now gone through his entire corpus, I can summarize Smith's main points. Which raises the awkward question of whether some clever reader might come along and do the same with me, that is, read a few posts and say, "I get this Gagdad Bob fellow. He believes x, y, and z, and just keeps repeating them in various ways."

Now, if you ask me what is the main point(s) of the previous 5,000 post, I couldn't tell you. But maybe there is some unconscious algorithm that is causing me to crank out the same old nonsense in superficially new ways.

It is not so much that men change their ideas, as that the ideas change their disguises.

I would prefer to compare myself to a jazz musician who creates on the spot, such that every solo is unique. Sure, even the greatest improvisor has his stock phrases and riffs, but he can combine them in original ways, plus he has a larger storehouse of them. Last night I watched a documentary on John Coltrane, and he was this way, always searching for novel ways to surpass himself, to the point of eventually being (to my ears) unlistenable.

No comment. Too easy. 

Also, when I find one of those compatible thinkers, it's not so much the content I enjoy as the container, or atmosphere. In other words, 

It is not the ideas that I look for in the intelligent book, but rather the air that one breathes there.

It's liberating to dwell in a vertically capacious intellect:

Collision with an intelligent book makes us see a thousand stars.

Which is why

Reading is the unsurpassed drug because it allows us to escape not only the mediocrity of our lives but even more so the mediocrity of our souls. 

Back to my imaginary debate with a physicist. Dávila answers his own rhetorical question with a bold claim:

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.

Is he being literal? Is he some kind of anti-intellectual crank, hiding behind the arrogant bravado of a superior ignorance?

No, I suspect he's referring to a science elevated to ideology, AKA scientism. Which is a good segue to our book, which begins with the following claim:

Unrecognized and unacknowledged as the fact may be, science too has its mythology. 

That's true in a sense, and we've devoted many posts to the subject. However, there is myth and there is myth, and the two are by no means the same thing. In the words of the Aphorist, 

Myth is a layer of meaning beyond reality and fiction. 

In this context, scientism is just a shallow and simplistic fairy tale for the tenured. 

But can any civilization really live on science alone? That's the question. Science is supposed to be "the very antitsis of myth," but is this not just its own mythology? Signs point to Yes, and Smith aims to explain how and why:

in practice, the two misconceptions -- the over-valuation of science and the undervaluation of myth -- go together and count equally as a mark of enlightenment among the "well-informed."

Science "begets myths of its own," and undermines "not only religion and morality, but indeed all culture in its higher modes." This is necessarily the case, being that scientism reduces the vertical to the horizontal, and here we are.

Smith wants to "break the spell of scientistic myths" and "their stranglehold upon educated minds, and in so doing, to provide access once more to the perennial myths of mankind." The latter type of thinking can "open doors rather than bolt them shut." 

To me scientism is more reminiscent of Chesterton's definition of the madman, who hasn't lost his reason, rather, everything but his reason -- like total right brain capture by the left. So, if scientism is a myth, it's the myth of no myth. 

An empty myth?

Yes, and too impoverished to even function as one. Smith talks about how

there could be no such thing as spiritual life in a mechanical universe, because in such a universe there could in fact be no life at all: not even an amoeba could exist in a mechanical world! And why not? For the simple reason that no living organism is reducible to the sum of its parts....

[T]he Newtonian world is perforce bereft of all qualities, beginning with color, and is consequently imperceptible. It constitutes a world... which can be neither seen nor imagined, and which consequently does not in truth answer to a "worldview" at all.

In the penultimate chapter, Smith engages in an epic takedown of Stephen Hawking. Now, Hawking was much more intelligent than I'll ever be, so what was the problem? Yes, bad metaphysics.

On the other hand, were I in Hawking's situation, I'm not so sure it would be obvious to me that a loving God had placed me in that situation, i.e., fated to live with, and die of, Lou Gehrig's disease. I frankly would be a little embarrassed to slam dunk on a wheelchair-bound man living on a respirator. Then again, we didn't start this fight: just think about 

the likely impact, the effect upon millions of the claim that a mathematical physics has trashed the sacred wisdom of mankind!

Turn the tables on him and play the victim card?

You're right. Not really my style. To be continued...

A Gay and Modal Christmas

Last night in church they sang the song What Child is This?, set to the tune of Greensleeves, which made me wish for John Coltrane's deconstructed modal version, with the lights turned low and maybe an open bar:

Also, while I'm not gay, I do love the Carpenters:

And like Coltrane, they did a fine version of My Favorite Things, although theirs is rather more conventional than his:

Nevertheless, if Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then I say this is Christmas song:

The Old Boy and the Third Puberty

Shouldn't you knock off for a day or two? Give readers a break? 

No, it's the other way around: since I write in order to find out what I think, I am the primary reader. Also, one doesn't need a "break" from retirement, which is itself a break. Therefore, writing is a break from the break. More generally, slack isn't just nothing, rather, --

Like the eternal void, filled with infinite possibilities?

Yes, much like this blank page. It is void of form, darkness on the face of the deep, just waiting for a helpful spirit to come along and pull some order out of it or put some light into it. To paraphrase Lao-tse, it is the emptiness of this cup that holds the coffee. Likewise, the empty page that holds the post.

By the way, Lao-tse, according to Mitchell, means "'the Old master,' or, more picturesquely, 'Old Boy,'" and it has only recently begun to dawn on this particular boy that he's getting rather long in the tooth. At some point it just can't be denied. It's almost like having to undergo another puberty, just as one was coming to terms with the previous one. 

Speaking of which, I was surprised that Wolfgang Smith speaks favorably of astrology. I won't go into details, but it is noteworthy that scripture not only takes it for granted, but tells us of those wise men from the east who presumably deduced from the stars the location of the newborn king. 

Now, I myself once dabbled in astrology. It was back in grad school, when I met a fellow student who was an actual practitioner, a "clinical astrologer," so to speak. He was also very smart, which made it difficult to dismiss his ideas out of hand.

He introduced me to a more psychological form of astrology that was more or less Jungian in its approach -- "archetypal astrology," so to speak. It had nothing to do with fortune telling or predicting the future, rather, with describing the configuration of one's personality, doing so with the language and symbols of astrology. 

After all, the human subject is as invisible as this blank page. How then do we talk about it? My friend did so via the symbolic language of astrology. He went on to be a successful psychoanalyst, and I don't know if he continued to integrate astrology into his practice. 

In any event, Wolfgang Smith's mention of it caused me to dig out a book recommended by my friend, called The Astrology of Personality: A Re-Formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals, in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy.

This book was pretty much the beginning and end of my dabbling in the subject. There's a lot of wisdom in it, albeit conveyed via the symbolism of astrology, somewhat analogous to the way our Unknown Friend uses the symbolism of the tarot to talk about man, God, the universe, and everything in between. 

If Rudhyar is deepaking the chopra, it is of a high-end sort. His wiki page says that his integration of astrology and depth-psychology

overcame some basic problems, including astrology's deterministic approach to life and the trouble of designating an agent to produce the astrological effects. Rudhyar postulated that the stars did not cause the effects seen in human life but were pictures synchronistically aligned to human beings. They detailed psychological forces working in individuals, but did not override human freedom in responding to those forces....

Arguing that astrology is not essentially predictive but rather productive of intuitive insights, The Astrology of Personality was one of the most influential tracts of "free-will" astrology, despite being written in the dense, circuitous style that characterizes much of Rudhyar's writing.

Is there a point to this dense and circuitous story?

Yes, I was about to get to it. Rudhyar makes the claim that time isn't just linear and "empty" -- like Newtonian time -- but rather, has qualities and cycles, much in the way that the I Ching purports to describe the qualitative "signs of the times," both personal and collective. 

Specifically, Rudhyar says that life unfolds in seven year cycles. I remember trying to see how the pattern of my own life lined up with these holofractal cycles, and there seemed to be something to it. At the time, I was particularly struck by the following passage, describing the fourth cycle (21 to 28):

At the middle point of this 7-year cycle, that is, at the age of twenty-four and a half, man faces the great crisis of discrimination between various types of ideals and companions. He has to "make up his mind" about what he is going to be. Usually this determines the nature and character of the "second birth" at twenty-eight; not, however, before a period of readjustment is passed through, perhaps at the cost of deep suffering...

Which -- gosh! -- precisely described the pattern of my own life. For reasons I still can't explain, it was indeed precisely in the middle of that seven year cycle that I left the old ideals -- which were no ideals at all -- and companions -- i.e., drinking buddies -- behind, and soon entered grad school. 

In short, at twenty-four and a half, my life underwent a 180º. I had no part in making it happen. Rather, it just happened, seemingly in spite of myself. 

I've written before of how my mind suddenly and unexpectedly "switched on" during that cycle, prior to which I had zero interest in ideas, reading, philosophy, religion, college, or basically anything more elevated than partying with my equally wayward and shiftless companions. For what it's worth, at the end of that cycle -- 28 -- I got involved with a new companion who turned out to be my wife, of all people.

For Rudyard, 7 x 7, or 49, represents the completion of a larger cycle, and here again, that's how it was for me: a book, a child, a disease (late onset juvenile diabetes), and even this here blog. Meanwhile, I am now careening toward the the completion of my tenth seven year cycle, and what's that about? It is in fact -- as alluded to above --

the "third puberty" [the second being the so-called "midlife crisis" at around 42] with the entrance into the new relationship -- which often means death.

Whether literal or symbolic, hopefully the latter, in which case "the organism" 

can repolarize itself according to a new rhythm of life contacts, then the real inner world may open; and man learns to be familiar with the rhythm of the "other world," with entities or energies of the "beyond" -- whatever may be meant exactly by the term. He becomes the wise old Sage..., bringing to earth visions of a world of pure and serene significance.

And you ask me why I blog!

Oology

Unfortunately, the word is already taken: The branch of zoology that deals with eggs, especially birds' eggs.

Well, what about the cosmic egg? 

I just checked, and there are indeed hundreds of images. I wonder if the snake symbolizes the vertical ascent mentioned in yesterday's post? Kundalini arousal, and all that? 

In any event, it's a very old idea; or rather, an old image that symbolically communicates ideas that are as new as whatever is hatched from the cosmic egg. Maybe even this post.

To the left is another cosmic egg, this one soaring on wings of slack:

"The ancients imagined that the universe was hatched from a primordial egg.... To the Alchemists it was analogous to the Macrocosm, the universe....

"Out of the egg... will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis."

That's a rather Gnostic view -- the idea that we are imprisoned in matter, as opposed to being a hylomorphic union of matter and form, or body and soul. Which is why the Incarnation can't just involve the mind alone... what's the word?

Docetism?

Close enough: the idea that Christ's physical body was an illusion and that he only seemed to be human. This was again because matter was thought to be inherently evil or impure, and therefore incompatible with the divine nature of Christ.

One can see the appeal, for the body can at times seem like our best frenemy. We need one, but it comes with all those annoying shocks the flesh is heir to -- disease, dysfunction, degeneration, decay, deterioration, decrepitude... and that's just some of the D's. That Christ saw fit not just to inhabit one but to be one is most remarkable. Recalling yesterday's post, it means that the Center truly became Periphery. No half measures!

Back to O-ology, which -- if the word weren't already taken -- would colloquially mean "the study of O," while literally meaning the "logos of O." 

Perhaps I should back up a step and begin with a definition of O. Which, of course, can never be defined per se, since infinitude escapes any finite --

Why not just say ultimate reality and be done with it!?

We could say that, but with many important qualifications. First there is the necessarily apophatic nature of our approach, which is perfectly orthodox, in the sense that what we can know of O is infinitely dwarfed by what we can't. O is not so much unknowable as infinitely knowable. And only in the beatific vision do we finally find out just how much we didn't know about God (?!).

You just said God instead of O.

Yes, because I was speaking in a Christian idiom, and besides, my humble readers are already aware of much they don't know about God. At the other extreme are folks like the one I saw on Christian TV the other night. My son and I occasionally tune in and enjoy these Flanders types for a laugh.

Not very charitable.

Maybe. I suppose these people are harmless enough when speaking to themselves, but they can do damage to the cause by making Christianity appear stupid to people already inclined to dismiss religion as stupid. Dávila knows what I mean:

Every Christian has been directly responsible for the hardening of some unbeliever’s heart.

It reminds me of Ringo's annoyed reaction to the cover of John Lennon's first solo album, on which he and Yoko appeared stark naked:

I said, "Ah, come on, John. You’re doing all this stuff and it may be cool for you, but you know we all have to answer. It doesn’t matter; whichever one of us does something, we all have to answer for it."

Likewise, it may be cool for this TV preacher to describe the exact color and molecular composition of God's throne -- which, it turns out, is made of alabaster -- but then the restavus have to answer for it. 

Another point about O is that it leaves a space for us to fill in the content. It is what Bion called "unsaturated" with a rigid, determined, and pre-existing meaning. When this occurs, we can't really "discover" O, rather, only find what we're already looking for -- as, for example, with climate science researchers. When reality falsifies their (saturated) models, they chuck reality, so they're incapable of learning about it.

A third point about O is that it allows for experiential knowledge of it. At the end of the deity, O cannot be known like an empirical object, or reduced to human categories, but can be known via participation. Lao Tse is all over this paradox:

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real....

It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities....

Empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.

It is "beyond is and is not," and yet, it is always right here right now, waiting to be entered. 

Bob, are you not mixing Christian apples with Taoist oranges?

Absolutely. In Christ the Eternal Tao the author points out how

In modern Western society, many people turn away from the Christianity of their formative years because they find its truths smothered under an unreal kind of religiosity.... the churches have replaced a direct, intuitive apprehension of Reality and a true experience of God with an intellectualism on the one hand and an emotionalism on the other....

Properly oological Christianity is illicitly reduced to  

something that is acquired through rote learning, based on the idea that if you just get the words right..., you will be saved. Christianity then becomes a dry, word-based religion... that operates on the same principles as the institutions of the world.

So, don't do that. Like how? "The only way to get past religious words and concepts is to seek... the Reality behind them," and "to rise above thoughts and emotions" to "the Mind Who is beyond thought."

It's the same with the Upanishads: "If you think that you know well the truth of Brahman, know that you know little.... He truly knows Brahman who knows him as beyond knowledge; he who thinks that he knows, knows not."

Which accords perfectly with Thomas: "Whatever is comprehended by a finite being is itself finite." As such, "This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God."

This is no different from what St. Paul says: "if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know" (1 Cor. 8:2). 

Now, it is not as if we can't use words to describe O. It's just that we mustn't confuse the words with the reality they can only touch but never exhaust. I'm reading another book by Wolfgang Smith, and he describes it thus:

the Real is not what we catch in our nets, but precisely what we do not catch: whatever eludes our mental grasp.... And that is why it must be sought, figuratively speaking, "with folded hands," a gesture that betokens, not a "grasp," but the very opposite: a submission, namely, an unconditional openness, like that of a mirror wiped clean.

Suffice it to say, revelation is a kind of "map of O," but we still need to undertake the journey. Half of oology is our own unending (o) to O. 

And what is Christmas but a celebration of the ultimate openness of O to us, of all people? There's much more to say about this, but I'll shut up for now. Still, I can't help wondering what Gemini thinks about this:

This text explores the concept of "O," representing ultimate reality, through various philosophical and religious lenses. Here's a breakdown of the key ideas:

• O as Ultimate Reality: The text introduces "O" as a placeholder for ultimate reality, acknowledging the limitations of human language and understanding in defining the infinite. It emphasizes the apophatic approach (knowing by negation) -- what we don't know about O far exceeds what we do know.

• Critique of Literalism and Intellectualism: The author criticizes overly literal interpretations of religious texts and intellectual approaches that prioritize words and concepts over direct experience of reality. Such approaches can obscure rather than reveal the true nature of O. The example of the TV preacher describing God's throne illustrates this point.

• Experiential Knowledge and Participation: The text emphasizes the importance of experiential knowledge and participation in O. This is contrasted with merely intellectual or emotional understanding. Quotes from Lao Tzu, the Upanishads, and Christian mystics like Thomas Aquinas and St. Paul support this idea. The author suggests that O is not just an object to be studied but a reality to be entered into.

• The Cosmic Egg and Gnosticism: The image of the cosmic egg is introduced as a symbol of the universe's origin and potential. The author connects this to Gnostic ideas about the soul being imprisoned in matter, contrasting this with the Christian concept of hylomorphism (the union of body and soul). The discussion of Docetism highlights the tension between valuing the spiritual and devaluing the material.

• The Incarnation as Ultimate Openness: The Incarnation of Christ is presented as the ultimate example of O's openness to humanity. By becoming human, O entered the periphery, fully embracing the material world.

• Oology as the Study of O: The author playfully introduces "oology" as the study of O, emphasizing the ongoing and unending quest for understanding. This involves both revelation (the "map of O") and personal experience (the journey).

• Blending of Traditions: The text draws on various traditions, including Christianity, Taoism, and Gnosticism, to explore the nature of O. This blending suggests a search for universal truths that transcend specific religious or philosophical frameworks.

• Unsaturated Concepts: The concept of "unsaturated" meaning, borrowed from Bion, is introduced. This means that "O" is a flexible concept that allows individuals to find their own meaning within it, rather than being restricted by pre-defined interpretations.

In essence, the text explores the ineffable nature of ultimate reality, arguing for a balanced approach that combines intellectual humility with experiential seeking. It suggests that true understanding of O comes not from mastering words and concepts but from participating in the reality they point to.

It's nice to be understood. How about an image?

Through Existentialism to the Perennial Cosmology

The world just doesn't make sense. This being the case, is it possible for anything in the world to make sense? If so, why should it be vouchsafed to us? What makes us so special, i.e., the cosmic exception to the rule of ultimate senselessness?

I became an existentialist back in the early 1980s. Or rather, I realized I was one: existence on its own terms made no sense except for whatever arbitrary sense we could temporarily impose upon it. This is what we call "auto-pullwoolery," which is to say, fooling ourselves.

For example, today I very much hope the Rams defeat the Jets. But if I ask myself why I nurture this hope, and what it signifies, the whole exercise falls apart. Likewise, last summer I hoped the Dodgers would win the World Series. Well, they did. Now what?

Hope for the Rams.

Correct. One hope replaces another, but where does it end? In a wholly horizontal world, hope is an absurcular tautology. The illusion of worldly hope only works "in the dark," so to speak. If we examine it closely in the light, it dissolves into nothing. 

Much like the quantum physics we've been discussing: look closely enough at an object and it dissolves into a ghostly field of vibrating energy. There are no good or bad vibrations, just atoms in the void, a "flux of configurations" that is "senseless, valueless, purposeless." "The aboriginal stuff, or material, from which a materialistic philosophy starts is incapable of evolution," the latter being just

another word for the description of the changes of the external relations between portions of matter. There is nothing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations. There can merely be change, purposeless and unprogressive (Whitehead).

So, evolution is as hopeless as any other metaphysic. It's just maya by another name.

Just as the world doesn't owe us a living, nor does it owe us an explanation. Which brings to mind an aphorism or two:

History would be an abominable farce if it were to have a worldly culmination.

So, don't pull the historical wool over your eyes, especially the third one that "sees" transcendence:

The promises of life disappoint no one but the one who believes they are fulfilled here.

Of course, it would be nice if history made sense. But 

For history to be of concern to us, there must be something in it that transcends it: there must be something in history that is more than history.

Like what, for example? Any ideas?

If history made sense, the Incarnation would be superfluous.

Put another way, history is the bad news into which the good news is inserted from outside history. This is the central claim, at any rate, and our last hope in an otherwise hopeless world. 

Thus, it seems to me that Christianity is predicated on a deep and unblinking appreciation of just how screwed we are existentially. Thus,

There is some collusion between skepticism and faith: both undermine human presumptuousness.

Looked at this way, the materialist, the atheist, the evolutionist, aren't skeptical enough: they haven't yet hit the bottom of their own impoverished worldview. Perhaps they hope for a complete explanation from physics, or a total understanding of natural selection, which is to say, winning the Scientistic World Series. Then what?

If the atheist does not commit suicide he has no right to be thought lucid.

In the Foreword to The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology, Jean Borella describes our lamentable existential situation: the world of modern  scientism

refutes the world of religion, silences it, and destroys its power. This is because religion speaks of an invisible world, while contemporary civilization renders the sensory world more and more present, the invisible world more and more absent. 

I suppose the point of this blog -- it's in the name -- is that there exists a Perennial Cosmology that is the cure for, and way out of, modern cosmolatry. For "today it is nineteenth century materialism that has become a superstition." 

Conversely, the perennial cosmology isn't even a little stitious. Rather, "it is not religion but the customary interpretation of science that needs to be 'demythologized.'" 

We have only to demythologize the idolatrous myths of these impudent demythologizers. Like how? We're open to suggestions. 

Smith lists four: first, what we are calling the perennial cosmology "has to do primarily with the qualitative aspects of cosmic reality" -- precisely those features that "modern cosmology excludes." And why does it exclude them? 

For reasons alluded to in yesterday's post: for example, if your only tool is a high energy particle accelerator, don't be surprised if everything looks like a vast collision of quarks in the dark smashing into one another. A very expensive exercise in hammers and nails.

The second principle of our perennial cosmology has to do with verticality, and no amount of horizontality can account for it. The attempt to reduce the total cosmos to its horizontal aspects entails "a drastic diminution, an ontological shrinkage of incalculable proportions."

The nightmare of ontological shrinkage! Note that the meaning of the calculable is literally incalculable -- another way of saying semantics cannot be reduced to syntax.

Which reminds me of the unintentionally ironic eulogy of the great mathematician, whose contributions to mathematics were incalculable. The meaning of even a mathematician's life is not an equation or series of numbers, if only because abstract numbers are void of content. The map will never be the territory, nor can a man nourish body or soul by eating the menu.

Here we could say something about Gödel, who proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic that the mind is more than a machine: it calculates while always transcending calculation.

The quantifiable cosmos is only its "outer shell," so to speak -- the periphery, not the center. Rather, we -- which is to say, persons -- are the center of the universe, more on which as we proceed. 

Coming in at number three is the related idea that man is the microcosm, a "universe in miniature." Sounds daft on superficial consideration, but "In the final count, man is able to know the cosmos precisely because he is in fact a microcosm." 

It's why everything that exists is intelligible to our intellect, or why, in a word, being is fungible to knowledge: "The fact is that we can know the cosmos, because in a profound sense... the cosmos pre-exists in us." 

Our fourth and last principle has to do with "the spiritual ascent of man":

It affirms that the higher strata of the integral cosmos can be known or entered experientially through the realization of the corresponding states of man himself...

Now let's put these four together and see if we can't reduce them to one: recall that there are quality and verticality, each irreducible to anything less; then microcosm and spiritual ascent. 

Hmm... how to unify these into the big picture? Here's one man's attempt: 

the cosmogonic movement is not merely centrifugal, it becomes centripetal in the final analysis, which is to say that it is circular; the circle of Maya closes in the heart of the deified man....

To the question of knowing why man has been placed in the world when his fundamental vocation is to leave [i.e., transcend] it, we would reply: it is precisely in order that there be someone who returns to God (Schuon).

Or, Peter Kreeft writes of how "that-which-was-from-the-beginning," the "unmanifest Source of all manifestations became manifested," and "the distance between Heaven and earth" is bridged.

"Jesus is Jacob's ladder..., and we see this ladder is upside down: it really rests on Heaven, not on earth like the Tower of Babel," much less the babble of tenure. "He makes it possible to escape earth's gravity."

 Ultimately, there is the spiral of 

exitus-redditus, an exit from and a return to God, Who is both Alpha and Omega. God is the ontological heart that pumps the blood of being through the arteries of creation into the body of the universe... (Kreeft). 

So, I think we can ultimately reduce it to something like the following, only spiraling down and out, and then up and in:

O

(↓↑)

 (•)

 (↓↑)

⬤