A Theory of Theories of Everything

Gemini's summary of yesterday's post could equally serve as a summary of the past two decades: 

In essence, the [blog] argues for a view of reality where consciousness is fundamental and potentially a top-down force, influencing the physical world. It critiques purely materialistic and mechanistic explanations, drawing on ideas from physics and perception to suggest a more holistic and perhaps even spiritual understanding of existence.

Well, it's either one or the other: bottom-up or top down.

Why not both? After all, everyone agrees on the existence of the former. The only dispute is over the latter. Even though a dispute -- an argument -- presupposes an ability to change the mind of one's interlocutor, which is a form of top-down causation. 

Supposing you are convinced by "the truth," then this truth has brought about a change in you, so at least one thing in the universe is susceptible to (↓), but by virtue of what principle?

To put it in abstract terms, this is a vertical cosmos of dynamically interacting (↓) and (↑), however one defines them. In short, they constitute a primordial complementarity. But as is the case with all PCs, one must be ontologically prior, in this case (↓). This is because no amount of (↑) could result in (↓); for again, a flat cosmos stays flat, whereas a vertical cosmos easily assimilates horizontality. 

Put another way, (↑) can only get off the ground because it is teleologically ordered to something transcending itself. Absent this telos, it would be confined to pure immanence, and pure immanence literally explains nothing, since any explanation literally transcends what it explains.

Which brings us to Gödel, who is discussed in the next section of New Math and Restored Wonder (in the book Enchanted by Eternity). In it, Slattery first discusses the outmoded paradigm that Gödel's theorems forever demolished. At the time, philosophers such as Bertrand Russell boasted that

Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know (quoted in Slattery). 

Well, good. Except, of course, there is no scientific method for proving that only the scientific method can attain true knowledge. I don't need Gödel to prove to me that logical positivism is an ideology, not a scientific fact. Rather, this is a self-evident truth that is "higher" than any mere scientific truth.

Nevertheless, for the positivists,

A single, unifying mathematical "Theory of Everything" was their dream. It would be a set of mathematical facts functioning as axioms that would be the basis for all mathematical conclusions and would prove itself by never resulting in contradictions.

Consequently, mathematics would reveal itself to be the master key to understanding reality. If something exists, math can prove it. If anything is provable, it is therefore true. Thus mathematicians and scientists would put the final nail in the coffin of metaphysics and Christianity. 

How'd that work out?

Just fine until Gödel came along and ruined everybody's lives and ate all their steak: he not only "laughed at the notion" (I don't think literally), but in any event "rocked the world of mathematicians and theoretical physicists when he published a paper that showed beyond any possibility of doubt that a single 'theory of everything' is impossible."

He proved it by showing that you can present a statement that is necessarily true but which math is incapable of proving.... The claim "If it is true, math and science can prove it" had been reduced to rubble without any possibility of being rebuilt.

Now, either this news hasn't trickled down to the tenured, or else they are living in a state of metaphysical denial, for this

was a breakthrough more culture-changing than that of Einstein's theories of relativity. The Princeton professor's findings apply to all branches of science because all depend on math and on the logic of the theorems (emphasis mine).

D'oh! "Gödel proved that no matter which set of mathematical facts you place as the foundation for math, it will always be incomplete," and that "There will always be mathematical facts that are true but are unprovable by these axioms."  

It's like a metaphysical Chinese finger trap: the more you try to escape the theorems, the more tightly you are bound by them.

Math is still true. But how? In other words, it can't be from the bottom-up. What is the alternative? Slattery quotes a mathematician named Marston Moore, who remarked that

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down [↓] to earth.

But beauty is a quality.

Correct. Ironically, at the end of the day, quantity must yield to quality. Quantification is but one of the tools man may deploy to explicate the deep structure of reality. It is a way to interrogate the (qualitative) mystery of being, without ever coming close to exhausting, let alone containing, this mystery.

Sounds like a left-brain right-brain thing.

Yes, scientism is the quintessential example of left-brain capture:

Scientism had carefully educated us moderns to develop a bloated left brain and to allow the right side of the brain to atrophy.

But guess what? The right brain is precisely our way to approach the world holistically, which is to say, in a top-down manner. It does not work analytically, from the bottom-up, and as I have argued in the past, the very reason why we have left and right cerebral hemispheres is because the cosmos -- as indicated at the top -- has both top-down and bottom-up causation, i.e., (↓) and (↑), respectively.

In case you were wondering how it is possible to pull a live raccoon out of a material hat.

Let's pause and save some for tomorrow...