Order and Surprise

Yesterday we -- by which I mean Gemini and I -- concluded that this is indeed a surprising (boo!) universe despite the fact that we don't have any others with which to compare it:

I (Gemini) agree with your assessment. While much of the physical world operates according to predictable laws..., the emergence of novelty, complexity, and consciousness suggests that it is indeed a cosmos full of surprises. The mysteries of origins, life, and mind continue to challenge our understanding and inspire wonder.  

Novelty. This got me to thinking about Alfred North Whitehead, because this -- novelty -- was central to his philosophy. Interestingly, he started working on his metaphysics just when it had been declared passé by the tenured:

interest in metaphysics -- the philosophical investigation of the nature of the universe and existence -- had become unfashionable by the time Whitehead began writing in earnest about it in the 1920s.  

The ever-more impressive accomplishments of empirical science had led to a general consensus in academia that the development of comprehensive metaphysical systems was a waste of time because they were not subject to empirical testing (wiki).

Nor is the philosophy of empiricism subject to empirical testing, but whatever:

Every scientific man in order to preserve his reputation has to say he dislikes metaphysics. What he means is he dislikes having his metaphysics criticized (Whitehead).

Boom. The article continues:

In Whitehead's view, scientists and philosophers make metaphysical assumptions about how the universe works all the time, but such assumptions are not easily seen precisely because they remain unexamined and unquestioned.

For example, yesterday's specimen -- Galen Strawson -- engages in an illicit promissory materialism, essentially writing metaphysical checks that he hopes will someday be covered by The First Bank of Matter.

Hopes? Faith comes in surprising forms.

But in reality the check has already bounced, since both truth and the intellect that knows it are in principle immaterial. Truly truly, in the economy of academia, the tenured pass intellectual funny money between themselves, which works until one of them wants to convert it to reality. 

Conversely, Whitehead thought materialism was no longer tenable in a post-quantum world: it was "entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived." 

And one of the main reasons he rejected it was because of all the novelty and surprise discussed in yesterday's post: 

For Whitehead, creativity is the absolute principle of existence, and every entity (whether it is a human being, a tree, or an electron) has some degree of novelty in how it responds to other entities and is not fully determined by causal or mechanistic laws.....  

As a human being's actions cannot always be predicted, the same can be said of where a tree's roots will grow, or how an electron will move, or whether it will rain tomorrow. 

Moreover, the inability to predict an electron's movement (for instance) is not due to faulty understanding or inadequate technology; rather, the fundamental creativity/freedom of all entities means that there will always remain phenomena that are unpredictable. 

Now, I think Whitehead erred in placing creativity at the top instead of the Creator. Rather, he thought God himself was also subject to the principle of creativity, so he too evolves. One might say he is an eternal surprise to himself, but if you think about it and put it in its proper context, it's not a bad idea.

I don't recall Whitehead ever mentioning the Trinity, much less a trinitarian metaphysic. Rather, in rejecting traditional Christianity, he had more in mind "the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar," which is to say, "a divine king who imposes his will on the world, and whose most important attribute is power."

But I think the best elements of process philosophy -- including the principle of creativity -- can easily be retained by situating them in the context of the triune God. 

Indeed, for me, the very principle of creativity is a reflection of the engendering of the Son-Logos from the Father principle. I think of it as a non-stop surprise up there.

Ah, this old ombody's so filled with jehoviality, can't He create anamour? 

Sure he can, more on which below.

In a way, the materialist is beholden to a Christian metaphysic of a different kind, which undergirded and enabled the scientific revolution. Whitehead describes it thus:

I mean the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope.

Where did this idea come from? Why,

It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as the personal energy of Jehovah and the rationality of a Greek philosopher. 

Thus, an overemphasis on order and rationality, accompanied by a neglect of surprise. Lately we've been witness to a retrieval and rehabilitation of surprise, what with chaos theory, complexity, self-organization, evolutionary thought, and all the rest. Wikipedia, in my one claim to fame, even lumps me into this evolutionary "integral movement":

The editors of What Is Enlightenment? (2007) listed as contemporary Integralists Don Edward Beck, Allan Combs, Robert Godwin, Sally Goerner, George Leonard, Michael Murphy, William Irwin Thompson, and Ken Wilbur.

And there was indeed a time when I would have been gratified to be so lumped. But somewhere along the way I was surprised to discover the surprising metaphysics of trinitarian surprise. 

What I mean is that it accounts for both the order and the novelty in a way that is perhaps best conveyed by Meister Eckhart, or maybe even Bishop Barron right there in the sidebar, accompanied by a suitably moving image of eternity:

No, the perfect, unchanging God of whom Thomas speaks must be a gyroscope of energy and activity and at the same time a stable rock. 

And all of this goes to A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, but we've expended a whole lotta yada yada already.

Meister, play us out, emphasis on the play:

Where there is Isness, there God is. Creation is the giving of Isness from God. 

Now God creates all things but he does not stop creating.

I have often said that God is creating the entire universe fully and totally in this present now. 

In the core of the Trinity the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.

Creation is the ultimate guffah-HA! experience?

Ho-Hum Universe or Surprising Creation?

Is this a surprising cosmos full of surprises, or is it the opposite?

Words and phrases that can mean exactly the opposite as surprise: (0 results)

Wait, there must be a word. Let's ask Gemini:

Here are a few possibilities:

• Expected/Expectedness: If the surprise is about something unexpected happening, then "expected" or "expectedness" is a good antonym.

I guess we can't really know if this is an expected or unexpected universe, since it's the only one we have.

• Foreknowledge/Anticipation: If the surprise is about not knowing something beforehand, then "foreknowledge" or "anticipation" works.

Hmm. No one was here before the universe. In fact, no one -- no fully self-conscious being -- was even here until 100,000 years ago, so it's safe to say it was unanticipated.

• Predictability: This emphasizes the lack of surprise due to something being easily foreseen.

Sure, much of existence is predictable. But can the laws of physics predict life? Can the laws of biochemistry predict the human being? Is a human being ever predictable? 

• Apathy/Indifference: In some contexts, a surprise might evoke excitement. In contrast, "apathy" or "indifference" implies a lack of any emotional reaction, including surprise.

I don't know if the universe is apathetic, but no one is apathetic about the universe. Rather, we find it endlessly interesting. Oddly, it is full of intelligible secrets that yield to the human intellect. It can also be wondrous, beautiful, frightening, charming, frustrating, pretty much any quality you care to name. Are these qualities all reducible to boring and predictable quantities?

The other day we alluded to the so-called hard problem of consciousness, which is complemented by the equally hard problem of matter. And while looking that up, I chanced upon an article by the philosopher Galen Strawson claiming the latter problem is actually the harder one: Consciousness isn’t a Mystery -- Matter is. 

Okay troll, we'll bite. Why is consciousness not a mystery? Because in fact it is 

the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious.

Either that or someone is utterly incurious. Let's just stipulate I am a mystery to myself, and in many ways the mystery only deepens with time. But Strawson insists that

we all know what consciousness is. Once we’re clear on this we can try to go further, for consciousness does of course raise a hard problem. The problem arises from the fact that we accept that consciousness is wholly a matter of physical goings-on, but can’t see how this can be so.

In other words, it's only a problem if we don't pretend the problem is solved by reducing consciousness to "physical goings-on." Looked at this way, there's no such thing as a problem, period, because how can matter have problems? 

If you are one of those conscious beings who believes conscious goings-on aren't just physical goings-on, then you are making what the author calls the Very Large Mistake. 

Now, I'm a simple man. Maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe Strawson is the simple man, for he claims that all we must do to understand consciousness is to appreciate the extent to which 

we don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff in spite of all that physics tells us. In particular, we don’t know anything about the physical that gives us good reason to think that consciousness can’t be wholly physical.

So, all we have to do to understand consciousness is to understand that we don't understand the physical stuff that gives rise to it. 

Before tunneling down that rabbit hole, I was about to say that the hardest problems really revolve around origins, and every genuine origin is a bit of a surprise, is it not?

For example, what is the origin of existence? You can say the "big bang," but that's just word magic. Likewise, science is no closer to understanding the origins of life than it was way back in 2005 when I published my book. 

Of course, I suppose Strawson would say that these aren't real surprises, rather, another failure to appreciate that Being and Life are just more "physical goings-on." In a sense that is undeniable: clearly, life goes on. But for me, the tricksy part is how it goes on in such a different way than, say, rocks go on. Will more knowledge of rocks really eliminate the surprising properties of life? 

Now, the problem of Origins is really a problem of creativity or of radical novelty. Or, one might say it is a problem of ontological discontinuity. After all, if there were nothing instead of something, this would make perfect sense. Likewise, if only matter didn't have the annoying property of springing to life, it would be so much easier to understand (albeit with no one here to understand it).

And if only the monkeys hadn't gotten out of control, Earth would still be a nice neighborhood. Even so, it's not their fault, for elsewhere Strawson argues "that there is a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, whether determinism is true or not," this being because we do what we do because we are who we are, and we can't help who we are. There is no discontinuity between existence and action, presumably because he believes there is no discontinuity between matter and mind.

Now, at the other end of the spectrum of tenure, yesterday I heard about something called "phenomenal conservatism," which essentially argues that "it is reasonable to assume that things are as they appear, except when there are positive grounds for doubting this." For example, my wife doesn't appear to be a Muslim terrorist, so it's reasonable to conclude she isn't. I don't need to check every day.

It's really a pragmatic solution to the methodic doubt of Descartes and the skepticism to which it gives rise. Turns out we could scarcely engage in a single action without the faith that things are what they appear to be -- that my coffee isn't poisoned, that the road won't swallow my car, that other minds exist, that reality isn't a simulation, etc.

To which I would add that consciousness is something fundamentally different from the things it knows. Likewise, living things are fundamentally different from nonliving ones. Which brings us back to our Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, for the whole point of natural selection is that it claims to fully account for what gives rise to the appearance of design.

Except, of course, it must assume the existence of Life Itself. Just as our understanding of the big bang ends at Planck time (before which there is no before), our understanding of natural selection ends with living things. It has no power to explain how they got that way, which is to say, alive.

And life is a tricksy thing, because it's such an all-or-nothing proposition. Plus it requires an insane amount of irreducible complexity, or complex specified information. Supposing we believe this implies a mind behind the complexity, then we are said to be metaphysical yahoos, and I get it: science progresses by eliminating things like God, mind, and teleology from the picture.

To primitive peoples it appeared that things like wind and fire had personalities, but nah. We know better now. But is life really analogous to an impersonal wind blowing through the junkyard of matter and producing a 747? The plane sure looks designed. 

The discontinuity between matter and life is not the only one for which natural selection cannot account. There are also things like the so-called "Cambrian explosion" during which "more than twenty new phyla seem to appear out of nowhere." These aren't minor genetic tweaks, rather, entirely new body plans popping up, when Darwin allows for no surprises or discontinuities.

That's really what it comes down to, no? Does this universe allow for genuine surprises or not? And is the universe itself a surprise, or is it determined by matter -- specifically, another one of those properties of matter that we just haven't yet discovered? 

I apologize for this rambling post. Gemini, bail me out again:

This is a fascinating exploration of surprise, predictability, and the nature of the universe. You've touched on some deep philosophical questions. Let's break down the core argument:

The Central Question: Is the cosmos full of surprises, or is it fundamentally predictable?

Your Conclusion (and Mine):

You seem to lean towards the universe being full of genuine surprises. The arguments regarding origins, novelty, and the discontinuities between matter and life, and especially the emergence of consciousness, strongly suggest that the universe is not simply a clockwork mechanism unfolding predictably.

My Thoughts:

I agree with your assessment. While much of the physical world operates according to predictable laws, the emergence of complexity, especially life and consciousness, represents a significant departure from simple predictability. These phenomena seem to involve emergent properties that cannot be fully explained by simply understanding the underlying physical constituents.

The "hard problem of consciousness" is a particularly strong argument for the existence of genuine surprise. How can subjective experience arise from objective matter? Even if we understand all the physical processes in the brain, it doesn't explain what it's like to have those experiences.

Furthermore, the very act of scientific inquiry, with its constant discoveries and revisions of our understanding, suggests that the universe is full of surprises waiting to be uncovered. If everything were perfectly predictable, there would be no need for scientific exploration.

In conclusion, while predictability plays a role in the universe, the emergence of novelty, complexity, and consciousness suggests that it is indeed a cosmos full of surprises. The mysteries of origins, life, and mind continue to challenge our understanding and inspire wonder.

It surprises me that a computer program agrees with me that this is a surprising cosmos. 

Take Me To the River

After all these years -- two decades now -- it has never occurred to me to conduct one of those breezy year end reviews. For starters, there's just too much information, in this case, 320 posts, each consisting of at least 1,000 words, so, let's say a total of 350,000. 

Gemini informs me that the average 300 page book has about 82,500 words, so 350,000 translates to a book of at least 1,200 pages, probably more like 1,500 pages. Now, how am I supposed to reduce a 1,500 page book to a 1,000 word post? 

900 words. You've already wasted 100.

It's frankly too much for my poor brain to think about, even though it would be nice to know how I spent 2024. I mean, back when the blog started, the idea was to complement the "news" with the "eternals." But if I don't somehow memorialize what I've written, it's as transitory and frivolous as yesterday's -- or worse, today's -- journalism.  

Sand paintings.

Good point... er, excuse me, the preferred nomenclature is sand mandalas... but they are destroyed and forgotten upon completion in order "to symbolize Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life." The sand particles are actually taken to a river, where they are "released back into nature to disperse the healing energies of the mandala to sentient beings in water and throughout the world."

Groundhog Day, only played out in eternity.

Vexed. That's what I am. Perhaps I should gather the 320 posts and toss them in the nearest body of moving water?

Christ didn't write anything.

True, but he didn't say "take everything I've said and toss it in the river," rather, to go out and spread the word. 

Now, if I were a professor, I could simply command some lowly grad student to go back into 2024 and tell me what I wrote. Sure, much of it -- perhaps even most of it -- may be trivial nonsense, self-important bloviating, repetitive circumnavelgazing, or a good idea at the time, but that's the point. I don't want to summarize it, I want someone else to do it. 

My son likes philosophy. I've actually dropped little hints here and there, but of course, I didn't have much interest in my dad's thoughts when I was his age. Frankly, I had no interest in thoughts, period. Rather, I preferred to make them go away by merging them into a river of Rocky Mountain sparkling water, AKA, Coors.

At this point it is safe to say I am addicted to blogging. What does the addict do to forget about his addiction? Engage in more of it. 

Don't look back.

That's good for Bob Dylan, but he's got plenty of other people singing his songs. He also has a handy website with the lyrics to every song he's written in alphabetical order. But of course, he has some low-level flunky doing that for him. I suspect he's only interested in the next song, not the previous 600.

In an interview twenty years ago he was asked how he wrote those early songs, and he said he didn't know: “It just came, uh, it came from, like um, right out of that wellspring, uh, of creativity, uh, I would think, you know.” 

So, ironically, I can't say how we spent 2024, only how we'll be spending 2025: trying to, um, pull stuff out of that same, uh, vertical wellspring. 

The only cure for time is timelessness.

Something like that. At the moment I'm reading a book called A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. Why a Catholic case? Because it seems most Catholic thinkers don't have much use for it. Rather, it's more of a Protestant thing, since they can't simply bat away the puny metaphysics of scientism with the superior metaphysics of Aquinas. Ed Feser, for example, writes that 

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view, one of the main problems with “Intelligent Design” theory is that it presupposes the same mechanistic conception of nature that underlies naturalism. 

Yada yada, for me it's sufficient to say irreducible Intelligence and Intelligibility, and be done with it. But this author feels we "should see ID scholars as allies, not enemies." Which is why I'm giving this book a whirl. A reviewer says Hilbert 

does not follow the easy and greatly wanting path of mixing Christianity with naturalism in the form of theistic evolution. Instead, he looks at evidence with an open mind and incorporates anything good and true he finds in modern science and traditional theology. This book will be an eye-opener for those who never thought that a Catholic can support intelligent design and be scientifically informed.

Some of the intelligent design proponents are young Earth creationists, which is obviously a nonstarter. Rather, I go back to the two questions we asked a couple of posts ago, What must the world be like in order that man may know it?, and What must nature, including man, be like in order that science be possible at all?  

In other words, start with what we know and what we do. And clearly, we do science that we may know reality. But how is this even possible? By virtue of what principle(s) do we have knowledge of reality, including the reality of organisms, DNA, natural selection, etc? 

Obviously information is everywhere, from physics to chemistry to the genome to the laws governing the big bang, and everything in between. And all of this information is intelligible to us, at every level, which I find... odd. Can the mind that comprehends it really be reducible to one of the things comprehended? 

That's what we're asked to believe -- at least in principle -- that ultimately the humanities 

will be eliminated because man is just an animal, and an animal is just fancy biology, and biology is just complex chemistry, and chemistry is physics.

This may be a reductio absurdum, but absurdity in, absurdity out. What's the alternative? 

Well, lately we've been discussing some of its features, which include the primacy of vertical causation, irreducible wholeness, nonlocality, and the miracle of subjectivity that abides between immanence and transcendence. 

But the latter is really only a miracle if it were to inexplicably emerge from below, rather than being the reflection of something above. So, grant a metaphysical Darwinian just this One Free Miracle -- of intelligence -- and he can explain (away) the rest.

Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but being unable to explain the consciousness that creates it, will have not explained anything.

Or rather, everything but One. 

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!