Little Center and Big Central

We left off yesterday's post with a somewhat cryptic remark by Dávila to the effect that

There are a thousand truths and only one error.  

It is cryptic because he doesn't specify that single error, but, knowing the Aphorist as we do, it must be a-theism, the denial of God. 

Expressed in philosophical terms, it must be a denial of the verticality which is always complementary to horizontality. Indeed, mere horizontality -- i.e., any philosophy of pure immanence -- must be self-refuting, because in knowing anything about the horizontal, we have transcended it. 

This is similar to how we can only know of time because a part of us transcends it, or in the words of Plato, "The soul is partly in eternity, and partly in time." An animal is fully immersed in the stream of time, but it is as if we have one foot on the bank so as to be aware of its passing. 

If there were not within the soul an Apex beyond the flux of time, we could not perceive motion, could not become aware of change. Strange to say, only by transcending time do we become aware of its existence (Wolfgang Smith).

One way to conceptualize verticality is to see that immanence and transcendence are perpendicular to one another, and we always partake of both. This is not a dualism, rather, a consequence of the principle of creation, which is but the doctrine of vertical causation writ large. 

In other words, there is a source, a center, and an origin, which is and must be located at the top, so to speak. It cannot merely be "in the past," because this simply gives rise to a sterile infinite regress that could never transcend itself no matter how long it had existed. Indeed, if the past were infinite, existence would have already achieved maximum entropy an infinite age ago. 

Now, religion as such is recognition of, and engagement with, verticality, or rather, with its atemporal source. In short, the cosmos itself is open to something that is not the cosmos. And man, being the microcosmos, is likewise open to what transcends him.

Everything said above may or may not be "controversial," but it is really just an experience-near description of the way things are. One can always deny transcendence and verticality, but only from a transcendent standpoint: it is a denial of spirit by the spirit, so it really gets us nowhere: if it is true, it is false.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that things aren't mysterious. Indeed, it is precisely why things are mysterious, i.e., simultaneously imbued with the glow of an incandescent intelligibility while enshrouded by a "higher darkness," so to speak. This is why we can know so much while knowing so little: the circle of knowledge is always expanding, but this only means that the area of darkness beyond the circle grows with it.

Imagine a band of men at night surrounding a campfire, which only illuminates the immediate area. Over the past 50,000 years the fire has grown into science and its various disciplines that extend the reach of the light, but are we really any closer to illuminating the mystery per se?

Ideology of any kind pretends that the area illuminated by the fire is all there is. But there is always more, because verticality shades off into the infinite. Thus, to pretend that reality can be enclosed in science is to imagine that our little campfire not only illuminates the world but is the world. Which is why

He who speaks of the farthest regions of the soul soon needs a theological vocabulary.

Put another way, a theological vocabulary allows us to speak meaningfully of the vertical, just as a scientific vocabulary allows us to speak meaningfully of the horizontal. 

But again, science itself would be impossible without already partaking of the vertical. Science is always meta-science, which I think is one of the implications of Gödel's theorems -- that man qua man has access to a transcendental realm of unprovable (by science) truths. 

These truths are apprehended in a direct and unmediated way by the intellect which "sees" and understands, not by the reason that merely knows in a contingent and conditional manner. 

Some truths are neither contingent nor conditioned by anything less, rather, are unconditional. Indeed, they are the conditions of intelligible being. Man's knowledge is conditional, but that man is a knower is not conditional (or can only be a condition of the soul being created by God). 

One of the myths of our age is that heliocentrism and Darwinism have exiled man from the center of existence. But these doctrines could only be known by an intelligence that is central to the cosmos. 

Put another way, the Center is present to any man at any time, which is why we can have access to knowledge which is at once timeless and universal. Even the universe is not timeless, and in knowing it we again partake of something which transcends it and is thereby more "central." This is the famous circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Which is why the Aphorist can say that

Only God and the central point of my consciousness are not adventitious to me.

Or in other words, Big Center and Little Center, the latter a reflected image of the former.

It is important to realize that this Little Center could not possibly be a result of evolution. For one thing, evolution takes time, and the Little Center is partly outside time, being a reflection of the Big Center that is altogether outside time. Put another way, no amount of time adds up to timelessness. 

Why do we like art? Because, to the extent that it is art, it partakes of, and speaks to us, of the timeless. Again, art consists of the timeless soulprints left behind by man in his journey through time. Many aphorisms come to mind:

From an aesthetic experience one returns as from a sighting of numinous footprints.

Aesthetics cannot give recipes, because there are no methods for making miracles.

Every work of art speaks to us of God. No matter what it says.

Aesthetics is the sensible and secular manifestation of grace.

The "manifestation of grace," which is to say vertical causation. The artist participates in something that does not, and could not, arise "from below." Rather, beauty, like truth, is always already transcendent and speaks to us of the transcendent. Which is why the Aphorist says that

The existence of art is not proof of the greatness of man, but of the commiseration of the Divine with his impotence. 

I don't know if I would go quite that far. Rather, I would say the artist is the condition with which (or through whom) beauty may be created, while God is the condition without-which it cannot be created. Left to his own devices man is a clever primate, but with God "all things are possible," from cathedrals to symphonies to paintings, poetry, and all the rest. And again, such creations partake of a timelessness and universality that could not arise from below. 

Such artistic soulprints presume the existence of the soul, both in the creator and the one who appreciates the creation. In other words, when art speaks to our soul, it reveals to us that we have a soul, precisely. It is soul-to-soul communication, but it also points "upward" to its nonlocal co-creator.  

The world was (or is, rather) not made in time, but with time, or so we have heard from the Wise. Being that we are images of this Cosmogenic Act, it must be the same with regard to our own creative acts. 

For example, I am creating this post in time, but in so doing it feels as if some part of me is cooperating with something outside time. But this is just an artifact of the horizontality and verticality that are always Present. We couldn't be purely horizontal even if we tried to be.  

And we do try, which is to say, Genesis 3 All Over Again. With the myth of scientism -- the expanding universe notwithstanding -- the cosmos has actually shrunk to mansize. In the words of Wolfgang Smith,

An entire dimension has in effect disappeared: the "vertical" dimension, namely, which enables us to speak of things "above" this universe, beyond this world perceived with our eyes and detected by means of scientific instruments.

In other words, we have jettisoned the infinitely larger world of which the horizontal world is but a prolongation and comparative shadow, or like a flattened three dimensional image impressed onto two. 

We're out of time. How about an image summarizing this post, Gemini?

The Index of Forbidden Ideas

The Church used to have an Index of Forbidden Books, when what we really need is a more compact Index of Forbidden Ideas (or Principles). For Chesterton there was only one forbidden idea, the "thought that stops all thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped." In an old post, we asked

What thought might this be? It is any thought that renders the world unintelligible and therefore the thinker an incurable idiot: relativism, subjectivism, deconstruction, idealism, rationalism, materialism, scientism, atheism, CRT, BLM, DEI, Marxism, Son of Marxism, Bride of Marxism, etc.

Regarding the latter, you will have noticed that 

Marxism turns the intelligence it touches into stone.

This being because it reduces essence to existence, and tenure takes care of the rest.

Of course, many of the forbidden ideas referenced above don't so much render the world unintelligible as intelligible in only a highly (and arbitrarily) proscribed manner, as in the scientism that reduces everything to measurable quantities, or the identity politics that reduces the individual to accidental traits such as skin color.

In another post we characterized the forbidden idea as "the thoroughly irrational thought that our thoughts bear no relationship to reality and that truth is therefore inaccessible to human beings." For Chesterton,

in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

Chesterton has just described how math can become racist in the absence of a higher authority that is the very source of math and reason, AKA the Logos that permeates things.  

Interestingly, the original Index was partly in response to the printing press, which facilitated the propagation of so much fake news and even faker philosophies. Now we have the internet, such that anyone can easily inhabit a silo of approved ideas that are in reality forbidden.

Forbidden by whom? 

By everyone, which is to say, human nature. Of course, one of the forbidden ideas in our proposed Index is that there is no such thing as human nature. But human nature includes the possibility of denying its own existence. Dogs can't deny their canine nature.

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality....There lies the mystery of the human vocation: what man “can,” he “must” (Schuon).

In other words, man's vocation is to transcend himself, meaning that there is an Ought built into our nature, denial of which (i.e., of natural law and objective morality) makes our list. Even something as elementary as good manners is a form of transcendence. 

The noble man is one who masters himself and loves to master himself; the base man is one who does not master himself and shrinks in horror from mastering himself (ibid.).

It seems to me that one can interpret Genesis 3 -- AKA the fall of man -- as an allegory about the denial of human nature. Outwardly it seems to involve the denial of God, but God and man are complementary, such that to say man is to say God. And one of the shocking implications of the Incarnation is that to say God is now to say man (or human nature, precisely).

Schuon agrees that "The very word 'man' implies 'God,'” just as "the very word 'relative' implies 'Absolute.'" For which reason we can say that relativism is certainly on our Index of Forbidden Ideas:

Once man makes of himself a measure, while refusing to be measured in turn, or once he makes definitions while refusing to be defined by what transcends him and gives him all his meaning, all human reference points disappear; cut off from the Divine, the human collapses.

Thus, relativism is forbidden because it destroys man in its wake (or woke). Absent God, then

Man is an animal that imagines itself to be Man.

For example, metaphysical Darwinism is the explicit denial of human exceptionalism, such that the distance between human and subhuman is a mere quantitative one. This can even be calculated, in that we share share about 97% of our DNA with orangutans, so we're 3% different. Of course, we share 50-60% of our DNA with bananas, but does this mean that a banana is half a man?

Of man it may also be said that he is essentially capable of knowing the True, whether it be absolute or relative; he is capable of willing the Good, whether it be essential or secondary, and of loving the Beautiful, whether it be interior or exterior. In other words: the human being is substantially capable of knowing, willing and loving the Sovereign Good (Schuon). 

Being that man is free to will the Good, then determinism also makes our list, because it encloses man in horizontal causes. Conveniently for the left,

Determinism is the ideology of human perversion.

In reality,

Man, like the Universe, is a fabric of determination and indetermination; the latter stemming from the Infinite, and the former from the Absolute (Schuon). 

Egalitarianism, AKA equity, also makes the list, for freedom is the right to be different, whereas equity is the denial of differences and therefore a ban on individuality. 

Subjectivism -- or the denial of objectivity -- is certainly high on the list, for 

man’s prerogative is the capacity for objectivity.... Strictly speaking, a man is he who “knows how to think”; whoever does not know how to think, whatever his gifts may be, is not authentically a man; that is, he is not a man in the ideal sense of the term. 

Too many men display intelligence as long as their thought runs in the grooves of their desires, interests and prejudices; but the moment the truth is contrary to what pleases them, their faculty of thought becomes blurred or vanishes; which is at once inhuman and “all too human” (ibid.). 

Subjectivism is closely allied to relativism, which 

sets out to reduce every element of absoluteness to a relativity, while making a quite illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself. In effect, relativism consists in declaring it to be true that there is no such thing as truth, or in declaring it to be absolutely true that nothing but the relatively true exists; one might just as well say that language does not exist, or write that there is no such thing as writing (ibid.). 

It seems to me that many of our forbidden ideas can be reduced to the denial of verticality, which is to say its collapse into horizontality -- or inwardness to outwardness, quality to quantity, and intellect to the reason that is only its tool:

The spiritual man is one who transcends himself and loves to transcend himself; the worldly man remains horizontal and detests the vertical dimension (ibid,).  

To enclose man in reason is to sophicate him in a nul de slack of tautology. In other words, the intellect always transcends that which it reasons about, for no rational operation can furnish the premises upon which reason operates. One might even say that 

There are a thousand truths and only one error.  

This one error being the denial of verticality and man's openness to, and participation in, it. Which we will further explore in the next installment. 

I'm not sure how Gemini came up with this image for the post, but perhaps the tracks symbolize what Schuon says about "the grooves" of mans "desires, interests and prejudices":

Cosmos, Bios, Anthropos, Theos

Not necessarily in that order. 

Although you can't blame a fellow for looking at it that way: cosmogenesis occurs 13.8 billion years ago; biogenesis 4 billion years ago; and anthropogenesis more or less yesterday (from the cosmic perspective). 

This was the general template of my book: the idea was to tell the story of the cosmos from its material birth to its ego death, the latter in reference to the mystic, saint, or fully realized being -- one of those metacosmic vertical adventurers who makes the round trip back to the nonlocal source and ground, AKA Celestial Central. 

It's one thing to notice these radically discontinuous geneses, another thing to explain them. No one knows, even in principle, how the laws of chemistry give rise to life, nor how matter gives rise to immaterial spiritual beings.

Above we alluded to anthropogenesis, but what we're really curious about is "psychogenesis" or "pneumagenesis," i.e., soul and spirit, respectively. How on earth do they get here? And when? The soul leaves no fossils.

Ah, but it does: as we discussed in the book, there is a sudden flowering of human cultural artifacts -- soulprints -- beginning about 50,000 years ago, despite no change in man's outward form.

In short, there is no genetic account "for the great cultural leap forward," in which hominids go "from the mental capacities of ape-like creatures" to us: "The big puzzle in early human history is the lack of cultural artifacts" -- i.e., soulprints -- "that go back much further than 50,000 years."

Again, Homo erectus bumbled around for a million years, leaving nothing beyond a scattering of ambiguous "signs of primitive technological progress" such as sharpened rocks. Why are there no soulprints "if Homo erectus were fellow humans, made in the image of God"? 

But quite suddenly we see an abundance of soulprints in the form of cave paintings, musical instruments, jewelry, burial of the dead, etc.

All the researchers who do not believe in man's possessing a spiritual soul, which is to say the vast majority, are puzzled as to what caused the indisputable leap forward in human cognition and technical activity.

The gap is obvious, and one side invokes Darwin to fill it, while the other invokes God. But no amount of genetic shuffling can account for a leap from the material to the immaterial.  

In a sense, we're talking about a kind of "transubstantiation," in which the outward appearance looks the same but the invisible substance undergoes a dramatic change. In other words, humans look more or less the same for perhaps one or two million years before there is a change in the substance that accounts for the sudden cultural flowering of 50 to 100,000 years ago.

This substance is "human nature," which is created ex nihilo by God. Absent such a transubstantiation, how could mere Darwinian man ever know the truth of man (or of anything else)? Darwin, of course, had his doubts:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Four words: 

"If at bottom we are nothing but chemical soup, how can we possibly think we can come to real knowledge of anything? (Hilbert). At the same time, why is it "horrid" to think we can't? It's horrid because one consequence of the transubstantiation referenced above is that man becomes a knower, made to know truth.  

Supposing Darwinism is true, how could Darwin know it without being a great exception to Darwinism? 

Must be because the Cosmos itself is an open system, a hierarchy of vertical causes. This being the case, the soul comes from the top down, not the bottom up, because that's impossible. 

About our open cosmos, I'm reading another book by Wolfgang Smith called Theistic Evolution: The Teilhardian Heresy, in which he quotes Huston Smith to the effect that "The modern West is the first society to view the physical world as a closed system." 

I think with this one neat trick -- recognizing the open cosmos and its vertical structure -- we eliminate a host of absurdities, aporias, and intellectual nul de slacks that can never be resolved on their own level. Nor does it displace the horizontal, rather, complements it. It is simply the larger metaphysic in which physics -- and all other disciplines -- is situated. 

Much more to go, but we're out of time.

Faith, Hope, Mystery, and the Epidemic of Misplaced Certitude

What if we just don't know? No, I'm not making the postmodern claim that man is an idiot sealed in tenure, rather, I am making a... something claim. I don't yet know what that something is, but this post aims to find out. 

To back up a bit, I've finished A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, and I don't know if I want to review all the reasons why natural selection cannot possibly be true, since we've written extensively on this subject in the past. 

In particular, it cannot account for macroevolution, especially the leap from subhuman to human. Nor can it account for the appearance of life, for irreducible wholeness, or for complex specified information.

Evolutionists, of course, claim that there are perfectly natural explanations for these things, but they just haven't yet found them. Most of these folks have a prior commitment to metaphysical naturalism, hence the visceral hostility to intelligent design. 

For example, the evolutionary biologist Dobzhansky said that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," which is true as far as it goes. As we know from our Thomas Kuhn, science is always in need of a larger paradigm in order to frame reality, illuminate relevant facts, and ask fruitful questions. But there is not, nor can there be, a "perfect" paradigm, since the map is never the territory. 

Nevertheless, man is always vulnerable to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, thereby conflating his theoretical abstractions with the larger reality that necessarily escapes them. About this, Schuon wrote that

Transformist evolutionism is the classical example of the bias that invents “horizontal” causes because one does not wish to admit a “vertical” dimension: one seeks to extort from the physical plane a cause that it cannot furnish and that is necessarily situated above matter....

So, that's a big hint: that there is a vertical dimension that is in principle excluded from any horizontal explanation. Natural selection simply doesn't deal with any sort of vertical causation, nor should it, really, any more than your doctor should speculate about possible demonic influences on your medical condition. It doesn't mean such influences don't exist, but even supposing they do, they are rather mysterious. 

Now, the question is, if natural selection isn't true, then what is? With what do we replace it? With Bishop Usher's calculation that the world was created on the evening preceding Sunday, October 23 , 4004 BC? 

Time out for some thoughts from yesterday's unfinished post:

For Aristotle, the chain of whys ends in happiness, or eudaimonia. We have proximate reasons for our beliefs and actions, but supposing we keep asking Why?, the chain eventually leads to happiness, or at least the hope for it. Everything is but a means to this end. No one ever asks, Why be happy?

Yes, but what is happiness, and is it even attainable herebelow in the absence of an impenetrable fortress of denial?

We'll defer on that question for the moment, the main point being that the Chain of Whys ends in happiness, or at least the hope of its attainment.

Now, what about the Chain of Hows? Here it seems that every such chain ends either in self-refutation or in mystery. For example, Dávila says that

Natural laws are irreducible to explanation, like any mystery.

To take only the most obvious examples, both natural selection and astrophysics hit a wall of mystery when pursued to their ends. As discussed in the previous post, natural selection is powerless to explain the origins of Life Itself, just as astrophysics is powerless to explain the origins of the Big Bang. 

In the context of physics, it makes no sense to ask what was "before" the big bang, because there was no before; in other words, time is consequence of it. Which is absurd, but there it is.

Now, what about knowledge, which is to say, truth? We all want it, but what is it and how do we go about getting it? A moment's reflection will reveal the paucity of our first hand knowledge, and how much of our so-called knowledge really comes down to faith in the expertise of others, whether in your plumber or your cardiologist.

So, it seems that Why?, How?, and What? end in hope, mystery, and faith, respectively.

***

End of yesterday's brainwreck. Back to today's post.  

You may not like the mystery, but when all is said and done, we are indeed plunged into it. Now, the peculiar thing about this mystery is that it is so endlessly intelligible. It's not that we don't have enough information about it, rather too much: it is an endlessly generative mystery. Which is my favorite kind. 

For example, the physicist Eugene Wigner spoke of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences," likewise Einstein famously said that "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" -- in short, a mysteriously comprehensible mystery. 

I suggest that we take this literally.

By the way, we pretend that physics is close to an account of the mystery, but the other day I was reading about the impossibility of reconciling relativity with quantum physics, which is said to be physics' most embarrassing problem, specifically, that

the vacuum energy in the universe must be very small -- about 120 orders of magnitude smaller than what quantum theory predicts. That’s like saying that something weighing five pounds should really weigh five-with-120-extra-zeros-after-it pounds. The discrepancy has prompted some scientists to call vacuum energy “the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics.”

Now, I dropped out of high school physics, so I can't pretend to understand this total lack of understanding. But I am intelligent enough to understand ignorance, which is to say, the ignorance of the experts who confess their own ignorance. At least physicists are honest about this embarrassing problem, unlike biologists who claim that natural selection explains things it cannot possibly explain.

Now, just because biologists and physicists have a prior metaphysical commitment that precludes vertical causation, it doesn't mean the restavus are so constrained. Gödel, for example "was a proponent of intelligent design, before the term was coined." In a letter, he suggested that

the formation within geological times of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of a similar nature), starting from a random distribution of the elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.

But here again, if natural selection isn't the explanation, exactly what is? One can say "intelligent design," but how exactly does this work? To simply say "God did it," and leave it at that, isn't very intellectually satisfying. Schuon suggests that 

Evolutionism is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps.

This is another good hint, acknowledging the need of verticality for any comprehensive vision of the whole of reality. He also speaks of archetypes, which is to say forms, and as we mentioned a few posts back, form is something of which quantum physics is powerless to speak, since all forms dissolve into the sub-existential sea of quantum potential, where subatomic particles have only a probability of existing, but no existence per se. Thus, form must emanate from above, not below.

Elsewhere Schuon writes that 

to speak of an absolute conformity of our thought to the Real is a contradiction in terms, since our thought is not the Real and since our sense of a partial conformity to the Real implies that our thought is separated from it or different from it.

Here is another key point and big hint -- again, that our best and most accurate map of reality will never be reality. 

Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that the intellect as such doesn't have access to the real; in a way, we must maintain a balance between deep epistemological humility and the incredible privilege of being made in the image of the Creator. 

The fact that we can have a perfectly adequate notion of a tree cannot possibly signify that our thought is identified with the tree, but on the other hand neither can the fact that our adequation is not an identity signify that we cannot know the tree in any way.

That's a little unclear, but I think it mirrors Aquinas' point that we can know an endless amount about everything, but cannot know everything about so much as a single gnat. Our knowledge is real, even if it can never be total.

I apologize for the ramblin'. We'll tighten it up in the next post.

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: