The Cosmic Junkyard and the Metaphysical Rag-and-Bone Man

T. S. Eliot says: Son of man, / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images.

Now, the idea that reality is a thunder-sundered heap of broken images -- a kind of cosmic junkyard -- is at antipodes to Heisenberg's remark about those Organizing Forces (OF), the ones responsible for 1) the creation of nature and all its forms; 2) the structure of our soul; and 3) our capacity to think.

The operative words are Creation, Form, Soul, and Think.

Now, if the world is a cosmic junkyard, this means that the best one can aspire to is a metaphysical rag-and-bone man, or ragpicker, old-clothesman, junkman, junk dealer, bone-grubber, bone-picker, chiffonnier, rag-gatherer, bag board, or totter, collecting broken images of the world and futilely trying to reassemble them into something meaningful. 

To back up a bit, I keep thinking about Heisenberg's remark, because in many ways -- or perhaps every way -- it defines the Prime Directive of this blog, which is but an extension of the Prime Directive of my life: how does it all fit together, and how do I fit into it?

I tried to track down the source of that remark, and it's from a book called Physics and Beyond, which, somewhat embarrassingly, I've never actually read, rather, only some excerpts contained in Ken Wilber's Quantum Questions. 

Why be embarrassed? You're not a scholar.

True, but still. Deus diligence and all that.

Let's see what Prof. Wiki has to say about his overall philosophy, which I'm guessing doesn't truly line up with ours, but let's see. First of all, I had assumed he was Jewish, but no: he was a "devout Christian" who also 

admired Eastern philosophy and saw parallels between it and quantum mechanics, describing himself as in "complete agreement" with the book The Tao of Physics.

Well, nobody's perfect. That book is in many ways ground zero for the new age appropriation of quantum physics for purposes of metaphysical woo woo, yada yada, and aggravated deeepakery.

In a 1974 speech, he argued that although 

scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. 

Same. Rather, revelation, IMO, is the poetry of metaphysics. 

Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.

Same. I couldn't stop pondering the relationship if I wanted to. 

Moreover, he  

referred to nature as "God's second book" (the first being the Bible) and believed that "Physics is reflection on the divine ideas of Creation.... This was because "God created the world in accordance with his ideas of creation" and humans can understand the world because "Man was created as the spiritual image of God."

Same, except I say nature must be God's first book, the Bible being number two, at least chronologically, but the rest of what he says is perfectly sound. 

Yesterday we spoke of our compulsive quest for unity,  i.e., for the unifying principles that entail no deeper principles, but from which everything else is entailed. Among our candidates are, as mentioned above, Creation, Form, Soul, and Thinking. Can these big four be further reduced?

Whitehead thought creativity was #1, but he made the mistake of subordinating even God to creativity, meaning that God himself must be a kind of creature -- granted, the greatest creature conceivable, but this can't be right. 

Cards on the table: there are Christians who hesitate to conflate the Trinity with metaphysics or ontology, which goes to a very old debate about the economic and the immanent Trinity. Let's let Gemini sort out the differences: the immanent Trinity

refers to the internal, eternal relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within God's own being. It focuses on what God is like in Himself, apart from His actions in creation, and is essentially about the "inner life" of God.

Conversely, the economic Trinity

refers to the Trinity's actions and manifestations in the world, particularly in relation to creation and salvation history. It focuses on how God reveals Himself to humanity through the Father's creation, the Son's redemption, and the Holy Spirit's sanctification.

So, what's the difference? Well, there are some folks who say that we can only know about the economic trinity, and that this tells us nothing about the immanent Trinity, i.e., the actual nature of God. 

But I suspect the Trinity must indeed be the ultimate metaphysical principle, i.e., the one that has "created nature in all its forms," and is "responsible for the structure of our soul, and likewise our capacity to think."

In short, as above, so below, as reflected in a book I'm currently reading called The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity. It contains nothing we haven't discussed on many occasions, but as usual, it's always nice to have some intellectual backup from a venerable source.

If I understand the debate correctly, some folks limit the economic Trinity to telling us everything we need to know herebelow for our own salvation, but hesitate to say it reveals anything about reality per se or  about the Godhead itself thereabove. 

I'm more in the camp that says that if God goes to all the time trouble to reveal the Trinity to us, it's about more than the salvation of our souls, rather, of our minds as well, teaching us how to properly think about both reality and about God, the former truly reflecting the latter.

But I'm going to give us all a break and end this post early, and pick up the thread -- or rags --  tomorrow.