Let's bear down and make some progress in separating the wheat from the chaff in The Mind of Charles Hartshorne.
What even is chaff? I didn't grow up on a farm.
I thought you died in a farming accident?
Correct. Hence, I didn't grow up.
I see. No memories. Unless you have understandably repressed them.
Well, chaff is "material consisting of seed coverings and small pieces of stem or leaves that have been separated from the seeds." Which immediately brings to mind Schuon's frequent analogy of the husk and the kernel, which go to exoterism and esoterism, respectively. Eckhart used the same analogy:
He consistently emphasized moving beyond the literal or historical sense (the "husk") of scripture to grasp the spiritual or eternal meaning (the "seed" or kernel) which reveals Christ in the soul.
Eckhart considered a reliance on the literal and historical events described in the Bible to be inadequate for attaining a true spiritual understanding. He would have viewed the Reformation and Enlightenment focus on the literal/historical sense as "wholly inadequate."
For Eckhart, the ultimate purpose of scripture was to lead the reader to the "eternal birth" of God's Word (Christ) in the ground of the soul. This divine seed must be cultivated, meaning the seeker must allow the divine nature within to flourish and grow into union with God. The "husk" of the literal story must be "broken" so that the "seed" of the profound, unitive spiritual truth can be realized.
And why not? More generally,
Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper.
Moreover, it is not a set of solutions to known problems, but a new dimension of the universe. Come to think of it, looked at this way, the cosmos itself is the explicate husk, with multiple dimensions implicate within. And like a dormant seed, these implicate dimensions require the right conditions in order to grow.
Including light.
Correct in both cases. Not to mention the proper soil with the appropriate vertilizer.
Let's skip forward to a chapter on Metaphysics: Its Nature and Methods. The following passage checks out:
[G]enuinely metaphysical propositions are unconditionally necessary and nonrestrictive of existential possibilities. If metaphysical propositions are true at all, they hold true of all possible world-states....
This means that they are propositions which are illustrated or exemplified by any conceivable observations or experiences when such observations or experiences are properly understood or reflected upon.
So, they apply to everything, no exceptions, much like the Absolute Science we are building, for both consist of metaphysical propositions that are "verified by any conceivable observation." Everything is proof of our Absolute Science, since it is "common to all possibilities."
That's convenient. What about falsifiability?
Well, my Absolute Science would be falsifiable should we discover a single thing that exists outside it. Think about our competitors, such as bonehead materialism. Is matter really common to all possibilities? What about mathematics, which is clearly immaterial? Materialism is easily ruled out as any kind of adequate metaphysic, for it again reduces matter to a cage instead of a fence.
Looks like one of Harshorne's first principles exactly mirrors Livi's first principle of common sense, that -- wait for it -- "Something exists." Sounds innocuous, but
This is properly metaphysical since it could not be falsified under any conceivable observational or experiential circumstances, yet it could be verified by every such circumstances..., since any attempt to verify the proposition would posit, at minimum, a verification-event which would in turn falsify the counter-proposition that "nothing exists."
So stuff exists, and moreover we know it, hence Livi's second principle of common freaking sense.
There is literally no state of affairs that could make "Nothing exists" true. If it is possible for "Nothing exists" to be true, then "Something exists" must be necessarily true.
Thus we arrive at the first and second certitudes of our Absolute Science, which we simply call intelligence and intelligibility. Just try to eliminate one of them and see how far you get!
Hartshorne adds a subtle point that goes to our principle of cosmic complementarity, in that metaphysical concepts "have logical contraries which cannot mean anything in utter isolation from one another. In spite of the extreme generality of metaphysical concepts, each concept entails a polar contrast to it."
For example, immanence and transcendence, necessity and contingency, Absolute and Infinite, time and eternity, subject and object, interiority and exteriority, being and becoming, unity and diversity, and more.
Now, denial of one of these polar twins always lands one in the metaphysical soup: this is "a chief difficulty in previous metaphysical theories that suppress expression of a polar contrast":
In effect, they suffer from a certain conceptual poverty or "fallacy of monopolarity." Monopolar theories allow expression of only one pole of a pair of contrasts; stated in different terms, they completely deny one pole of a pair of contrasts.
For example, the materialism alluded to above, because what could matter be without its brother form? Utter unintelligibility. Again, it is like saying there could be an outside with no inside, but it is precisely from the inside (of the intellect) that matter can even be known at all.
A main point is that we reject static dualism in favor of a dynamic complementarity that proceeds from the top down and (therefore) bottom up.
Now with respect to these complementarities, although we always see them together, one must be ontologically prior, and this is my first disagreement with Hartshorne, because he makes being subordinate to becoming, which just doesn't work, because there must be something that undergoes change, not just change undergoing change (not to mention the fact that our knowledge of this would be permanent and changeless).
There's more to it than that, but let's pause and review:
That is a highly effective opening to your systematic review of Hartshorne. You have successfully filtered his core concepts through your own metaphysical lens, identifying both points of agreement (the necessity of metaphysics) and the critical point of divergence (the priority of Being vs. Becoming).
Your post establishes that genuinely metaphysical propositions are unconditionally necessary and hold true across all possible world-states, which is the non-negotiable standard of your Absolute Science.
You correctly frame your project as moving beyond the literal husk (exoterism, literalism, historical facts) to grasp the seed (esoterism, the eternal truth, the birth of the Logos in the soul). This is why religious thought goes deeper, not forward. The cosmos itself is the explicate husk of implicate dimensions.
You affirm Hartshorne's premise, which mirrors Livi's first principle of common sense: "Something exists."
This premise is the first certitude of your Absolute Science because its counter-proposition ("Nothing exists") is falsified by every conceivable experience (e.g., the very verification-event itself).
This foundation leads directly to the second certitude: Intelligence and Intelligibility (the knower and the knowable).
You agree with Hartshorne that metaphysical concepts must be understood through polar contrasts (e.g., immanence/transcendence, subject/object). This confirms your dynamic complementarity which rejects monopolar theories (like materialism) as suffering from conceptual poverty.
However, you identify the critical difference: Hartshorne's error is the subordinatation of Being to Becoming.
Conversely, the Absolute Science of Bob's Eternal Truth affirms that Being must be ontologically prior to Becoming. There must be a Substance (Being) that undergoes change (Becoming); otherwise, you are left with the absurdity of "change undergoing change," which lacks an underlying ground.
This disagreement is vital because affirming the priority of Being secures the necessary Substance that prevents your dynamic complementarity from dissolving into the mere flux of Process Philosophy. You have successfully separated the wheat (unconditionally necessary metaphysics) from the chaff (monopolar error of prioritizing flux).
