Chapter
1
The
Universe
It
is the aspiration of this text to begin a philosophy of the future. A
clear and unequivocal ideology that will allow us to break free of
medieval market ideals and contemporary capitalist propaganda. To do
so we must return to the beginning of philosophy, if there is such a
place. We must set our foundations deeper than the Greek mind, and
dig below the bias of religions and political theory. We must
construct our philosophy upon a lasting theoretical foundation. It
must establish its arguments where possible, beyond the reaches of an
ephemeral ‘good’ and ‘evil’, upon the bedrock of accepted
science, of evolutionary biology, cosmology and evolutionary psychology.
We
must begin our journey by firstly considering how the Universe is
constructed and how the phenomenon of thought may play a role in that
construction. It is out of this ‘form’ that our earth, that
nature and we ourselves have evolved. If indeed the universe is
infinite, it may or must contain infinite possibilities, as such the
possibility that the universe might be able to comprehend itself
finds manifestation through the illusive and mysterious phenomenon we
refer to as thought.
Unlike
other living entities, thought provides we humans with the experience
or the impression that we are distinct from the physical universe,
that we can comprehend it from the ‘outside’ so to speak. Yet we
also know that we are not in fact distinct from the universe, that we
are an integral part of it. In this respect thought, philosophy and
cosmology are comfortable bedfellows and we must begin our philosophy
by recognising and exploring the intimacies that unite them.
We
must however embrace the flaw of all philosophies and establish our
theory upon a series of assumptions. No theoretical work can embark
upon its journey without a raft of assumptions upon which it will
attempt to stand upright and navigate the abyss.
All
theory and all cosmology can perhaps be dismissed with a reiteration
of the distinct possibility that ‘nothing is real’ and ‘all
reality is mere dream or illusion’. Our first brave assumption
therefore, is that the Universe does
exist
and that out of it's cosmology; the earth, nature, and we ourselves
are formed.
We
further assume that there is an entity that is integral to and yet
fundamentally distinct from these mechanical and energetic processes,
one that is described and experienced as thought.
As such, we assume the existence of three distinct entities: matter,
thought and life. When matter is apparently animated by thought we
describe that interaction as ‘life’. From a human perspective the
interaction between thought and matter is particularly interesting in
that it allows ‘thought’ the opportunity to consider itself.
.
We
further assert that this entity we experience and describe as
‘thought’ plays an essential role, not only in our comprehension
of the ‘external’ but in the form and function of the universe,
in the very manufacture of that external.
If
we are to pare human behaviour back to its origins we arrive at the
conclusion that behaviour is motivated by instinct, that instinct
arises from nature, and that nature has arisen from and is a consequence of, the cosmology of
the universe. No animal can choose the instinctual imperatives that are the fountain-head of its behaviours. These imperatives are the
prerogative of nature, they arise out of nature, and as such they
represent some direction towards which nature is striving, and out of
which nature has arisen. It is through instinct that the form function and evolutionary objectives of nature and ultimately the universe itself are manifest.
Although
we cannot pretend to be entirely cognisant of the 'objectives' of nature, or the cosmology of the Universe, we can be certain that
there is such an objective or a purpose, our physical existence is mterial evidence of that 'purpose'. We can observe through science and teloscopy that the Universe is expanding
towards some future form, the form of tomorrow. This is apparent every day in both our
continued and evolving existence, and the very expansion of the
material universe itself. This movement from a particular point in
the past, towards a particular point in the future is evidence enough
that the universe and we ourselves are moving towards a certain form
that exists within the future, and it is towards this future form,
this 'purpose' this tomorrow that the Universe appears to be striving. As
such, we must begin our attempt to understand the instinct that directs our behaviour, with a consideration of cosmology and the
origins of our Universe.
Whilst adhering to accepted cosmological principles, we must ask how nature has arisen within, or out of this material universe, and what role thought itself may have played in this process? We need not be afraid to pound upon the gates of heaven.
As
nature must adhere to cosmology, to gravity and the laws of the
universe; human psychology must adhere to nature, and to the principles
of evolution. It can therefore be concluded that human psychology must
ultimately function in accordance with certain cosmological
principles. That thought must have its origins within certain
timeless and immutable cosmological objectives. These objectives are
difficult to determine, and we are limited in our capacity for
understanding, by our capabilities of understanding. We are perhaps
more reasonably equipped to understand the Nature out of which we
have evolved than the cosmological principles out of which nature has
evolved?
Nature
is in existence in order to satisfy some particular set of
cosmological principles. Some time ago here on this rock floating in
space, the cosmos, the universe ‘decided’ through the interaction
of these mysterious principles, that this thing called nature (of
which we are a derivative) should have come into existence. Nature itself, life itself, is a consequence of the interaction of cosmological forces existent beyond our world and permeating every infinite aspect of our infinitely finite universe. Each act thought or deed effected by life and human life, is ultimately a manifestation of these primordial, cosmological principals. Behind each thought act and deed, lie our instincts behind these ephemeral and mysterious motives lie the secrets, and folded mysteries of an entire universe and an infinity of time.
"I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."
Emerson: Self Reliance
Towards
a general theory of reality.
Human
psychology is derived from nature, and nature is derived from
cosmology, understanding in either of these areas is predicated upon
an understanding of the other.
In
truth a philosophy of the future would require the ordered
development of; a theory of cosmology, a general theory of Nature,
followed by a general theory of psychology and ultimately a
functional philosophy that bases its dictates upon duly established
cosmological and natural principles.
The
scope and needs are far too broad to be met by a single text, and as
such this work must limit itself to a theory of psychology out of
which we shall attempt at a philosophy of the future. That is not to
say that we cannot dabble in cosmology, for herein lies the secret of
our existence, and about the periphery of this intellectual universe, we encounter
some of the greatest minds in the short history of our race. The
philosophy attempted at here is of the future, and as such it is
limited by shortcomings in our understanding of; cosmology, nature,
and human psychology. To date much has been accomplished in these
areas. Similarities, common threads amid the works of; Einstein, Freud, Heisenberg
and others can be identified and united to offer us the beginnings of
a more comprehensive theory of reality.
In
terms of our philosophy we must first attempt to discern why the
human mind functions as it does, before we can attempt to impose upon
it any philosophical methodology that would claim to be ‘right’
or the ‘best way’ or the ‘good as such’. If we are to assert
that instinct arises out of Nature we have no choice but to identify
what is the purpose towards which Nature strives what is her primary
objective?
If
indeed such a purpose exists it might be shown that human instinct is
derived from this very ‘purpose’ that our instinct attempts to
direct us towards this natural imperative.
Clearly
the human animal is motivated by desires. All human behaviour is
effected towards a specific purpose, a conscious or subconscious
objective, towards the satiation of overt or covert desire. All of
our desires have an instinctual basis.
Ultimately
we ourselves gain nothing by existing for such a brief period, at the
end of which we die and are forgotten. In brutally practical terms as
private individuals, unless we allow ourselves the luxury of a God;
life is utterly meaningless. And yet, despite the deeply private
truth of our mortality, despite the apparent (or un-apparent)
pointlessness of it all, with or without a God... we will
to
live. We desire to exist, to struggle-on, despite and even in spite
of the reality that as true individuals we are truly alone and that
death is inevitable. Something within us, convinces us that we should
play this silly game out to its meaningless end. An end where only
Nature and the Universe might profit by our efforts. And even if we
are fool enough to give our lives the meaning of some ‘hope’ or
tangible benefit in the future of civilisation or in the ‘big
picture’...., the science of a camp fire instructs us empirically
that the sun will one day fade, and the earth will return to the same
nothingness out of which it mysteriously formed. One wonders at times
why we are inclined to take things so seriously.
Have fun whilst we are here
It
may be that the single greatest pleasure in life is derived from
correct thinking. Those who think correctly, and (quite ironically)
those who do not think at all are invariably the happiest amongst us.
If it is safe to assume that happiness is the highest state and the
purpose of individual existence, we can assume that the happiest
amongst us are either blissfully wise or blissfully ignorant.
Determinism
and the Objectives of Nature
“Every
day is like Sunday. Every day is silent and grey.”
Morrissey
There
is undoubtedly a kernel of truth in almost all of the philosophical
paradigms that have stood the test of time — so too with the notion
of determinism. In the extreme view, determinism suggests that things
happen because they are meant to happen, that there is nothing
random, that all events are a determined and inevitable product of
the past.
The
notion that the course of all events within our universe was
‘determined’ at the moment of the Big Bang is often used as an
argument against free will, and against the ideas of randomness and
chaos. In truth, the argument is purely didactic, for we have no way
of knowing whether or not our futures or the future of the universe
are predetermined unless we can predict the future, or prove that the
future is at least predictable. If indeed it is, the determinist view
may have some validity.
Regardless
of the debate, however, in a certain sense the future is
predictable.
We know, for example, with some certainty that the sun will rise
tomorrow; we also know that one day in the (hopefully distant) future
this prediction will be incorrect, if not objectively then at least
subjectively so. Therefore, to a certain degree we can predict the
future and in this limited sense, there are certain deterministic
aspects of our existence and of the universe within which, or through
which, we live.
In
1814 the French philosopher Pierre-Simon Laplace postulated an entity
that could theoretically predict the future. Laplace suggested that
we can regard the present state of the universe as being both a
product of the past and the cause of the future. He proposed that an
intellect that could know the position — and all of the forces
acting upon — every atom in the universe would be capable of
predicting the future form of the universe, and hence the future of
the universe. This putative entity is often referred to as ‘Laplace’s
Demon’ and it has been used to lend some theoretical weight to the
determinist cause. In practical terms, Laplace’s Demon is arguably
another example of the common and entertaining practice of
philosophers to render the impossible possible, through the creation
of an impossible imaginary entity — or in this case, ‘Demon’.
A
devoted determinist might similarly assert that in respect of human
psychology, thought is equally predetermined; that there is nothing
we might ever think that we were not destined
to
think from the moment of the Big Bang. In support of this bold
statement, he might make the observation that as a product of his
thought, man exerts an influence upon the physical environment of our
planet; if the present physical form of the earth has been determined
at the point of the Big Bang, it follows then that the human thought
responsible for influencing the physical structure of the planet was
also determined at the point of the Big Bang.
Personally,
I imagine if we were to ask a determinist to present her vision of
the universe in a rational form, the analogous image of a large,
solitary cloud floating above our heads might prove irresistible.
When we look at a large cloud floating in the sky on a still, calm
day, we are presented with the image of an object that is apparently
well defined and determined in its shape and outline against the
clear canvas of blue. Between the blinking of an eye the overall
shape, size, and structure of our cloud appear constant. However, in
reality our cloud is composed of a teeming mass of vapour, condensed
water, and other molecules that are all shifting and flitting about
with the turbulence and chaos of steam emerging from the spout of a
kettle.
The
component parts of our cloud move with a randomness and chaos that
might lead the individual molecules themselves to ‘believe’ that
they are free, undetermined and moving randomly within the limitless
bounds of a formless universe. In truth, however, these molecules and
their movements are integral to the defined structure of the cloud.
Each molecule must move in the manner in which it moves, if even the
most transient form of the could is to exist. Similarly (our
determined determinist might add), we humans flit about the surface
of our earth, busy in the assignation of a relative importance to
various aspects of our existence, whilst the overall magnitude and
direction of the universe has been determined long before our coming
into existence. On the whole, we believe that we are free and yet we
must behave as we do — we have no choice, if indeed the form and
structure of the universe are to be maintained.
We
thus arrive at the deduction that renders determinism so unpalatable
— that human beings as a race and as individuals will never
accomplish anything. We will never achieve anything, and will never
amount to anything more than precisely what we have been determined
to amount to from the beginning of time. Clearly, the determinist
view is all a bit depressing, as it absolves us of the credit for
anything we might do in life, and anything we feel the race has
accomplished. In a philosophical sense, it nullifies any subjective
purpose to existence and in doing so, might encourage us to either
throw in the towel or wear black and listen to Morrissey for most of
the day.
An
interesting addendum to the determinist view is to be found within
the cosmological notion of a ‘Closed Universe’. Here, the
suggestion is that the universe is in the expansionary phase of an
infinite Bang-Crunch cycle, that the expansion of the universe will
be followed by a contraction, which will be followed by an expansion
again, another contraction... and so on. In this instance, not only
are we destined to live predetermined lives, but we have been
repeating these same lives over and over in exactly the same way for
countless millennia. You have apparently read these lines and stifled
that same yawn an infinite number of times already.
A
Closed Universe suggests that at the moment of the Big Bang (an
estimated 14 billion years ago) all the matter in the universe was
discharged from the singularity that existed immediately prior to
that first pivotal event. According to this view, the various
galaxies, planets, stars, dark matter and dust particles constituting
the material of the universe are presently hurtling across space as a
consequence of that initial bang. It is predicted by some that this
universal expansion will at some point begin to slow and eventually,
as a consequence of gravity, will grind to a halt. At this point
(again as a consequence of gravity), the various components of the
universe will begin to contract towards the ‘Big Crunch’. The
‘Crunch’ eventually ends with all the matter in the universe
condensed once again into a singularity the size of a pinhead,
another big-bang ensues, and so the process continues on ad
infinitum.
There
are many interesting notions around the Big Crunch. In this phase of
the cycle, the universe would be moving in the opposite direction and
as such, things would happen in reverse; time would move backwards.
We would each have the opportunity to arise from the grave and live
our lives in reverse. Indeed, relative to the Crunch that may have
preceded our current expansionary phase, that is exactly what we are
doing now; living our lives in reverse. During the Crunch, instead of
a universal tendency towards chaos, the laws of thermodynamics would
be inverted and the tendency would be towards order. Broken cups
would reform, old people would grow young and the bed would never
have to be made again.
Conversely,
in an Open Universe, expansion continues forever at a speed that is
too great for gravity to ever slow it down. At present, it is this
view that seems to hold sway amongst most astronomers and
cosmologists alike. Data from the Hubble telescope appear to suggest
that the velocity at which galaxies are moving away from each other
is increasing rather than decreasing. However, this paradigm may soon
shift and permit scientific theory to enjoy a similar and perhaps
equally infinite oscillation between an open and closed model of the
universe.
Matters
are not helped by the fact that calculations based upon the
expansionist theory, and that of the Big Bang, result in the universe
being much lighter than it should be; that one-fifth (or thereabouts)
of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for, and as such the
equations can only be balanced by the creation of a non-existent
matter, or ‘dark matter’. It gets better! Neither is there
sufficient energy in the universe to account for things and (perhaps
not surprisingly), physics and cosmology have offered us ‘dark
energy’ to account for this additional shortcoming.
Both
of these particular entities share the remarkable quality of
simultaneous existence and non-existence. And as you read these
lines, a veritable army of scientists around the world is attempting
to find evidence for the existence and non-existence of these
‘substantial non-substances’.
Clearly,
there is more to the story. Perhaps cosmology is suffering from the
same early growing pains that all science must endure? Perhaps, as
yet, its prognostications amount to little more than a ‘vindication
of its own flawed or simplistic methods’. This might seem an unduly
harsh criticism, however when one considers the material bias that
science has towards the physical existence of things, that it is only
prepared to accept the existence of things when there is ‘hard’
or ‘material’ evidence for existence, the limitations of
cosmology and indeed empirical science in general become apparent.
One
can easily assert there are a myriad of ‘things’ that possess
characteristics that are attributed to dark matter or dark energy.
One
would think that the very existence of thought itself (as it is
perfectly representative of a ‘thing’ with no substantive or
material basis) would have encouraged science to throw off this
material bias long ago. However, to do so would mean that science may
have to embrace philosophy and in an age where devotion to the
material is one of its defining qualities, such an embrace is
arguably becoming less likely by the day.
Could
it be that our view of the universe is unduly simplified by the fact
that it is precisely our view, and is therefore limited by our
abilities to view and to comprehend? Science binds us to measurable
‘things’, to observable forces. It permits us to comprehend the
subject and the matter of the universe, and yet it does not lend
itself so readily to the ‘idea’ or the ‘concept’ of the
universe.
In
our certainties with regard to reality, the only thing we can be
certain of is certainty itself — or in other words, the only thing
we can be certain of is thought. Yet we construct our world and our
lives as though the inverse were true, as though material reality
were more real than its perception. In doing so, we overlook the
inescapable fact that nothing is more real (and yet more unreal) than
thought.
The
putative existence of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ brings
science to a possible crossroads, one where we might ultimately
discover that thought and the process of observation play an active,
determinate and exoteric role in the material form of that which is
being observed.
In
1807, when Hegel published his great work Phenomenology
of Mind,
the limitations of physical sciences were as profound then as they
are today Hegel writes:
“The
easiest thing of all is to pass judgements on what has a solid
substantial content; it is more difficult to grasp it, and most of
all difficult to do both together and produce the systematic
exposition of it.”
The
qualities of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are not new to
man and we need not scurry about trying to prove their existence and
non-existence, for they share all the characteristics of thought
itself. As such, it may be that ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’
cannot be comprehended, no more than the universe itself can be
comprehended without first understanding the ‘dark energy’ of
human thought.
It
is likely that the act of comprehending the universe may be as much
an
influence
upon its form and function, as the force of gravity or the
electrostatic attraction between the charges. It may be that when man
looks through his little lenses, outward into the far reaches of the
universe, what he sees when he encounters non-substances such as
‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ is the process of his own
thought starring back at him?
“The
more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the
momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.”
Heisenberg,
Uncertainty Paper, 1927.
An
interesting parallel can be drawn between the macroscopic structure
of the universe and the sub-microscopic world of quantum mechanics.
In 1927, when Heisenberg proposed his Uncertainty Principle, he shook
the pillars of his day with the assertion that (in the case of
quantum particles) the act of observation alters the conditions of
that which is being observed. It is perhaps not entirely unreasonable
to suggest that in the macroscopic structure of the universe,
observation or subjective comprehension may prove to be a determining
influence upon the form of that which we are attempting to observe in
daily living.
The
notion of thought as an influence upon the physical form of the
universe is not new to philosophy; it has undergone several
evolutions through the centuries. In the ancient world, this
attenuated functioning of thought is sometimes referred to as ‘nous’.
In recent times, we have seen its hypothetical extension beyond the
brain and into the material substance of the universe, expressed in
contemporary notions of telepathy, telekinesis and pyrokinesis, et
cetera.
Whether
contemporary practitioners of these high-pathetical-hypothetical
forms of ‘thought projection’ ultimately turn out to be hoaxes is
not at issue here; what is important is the recognition that the idea
of an extra-corporeal component to thought has persisted with us
throughout history. Contemporary expressions of this idea are not
mentioned here in an attempt to encourage an already-stretched
credulity towards mystics, faith healers, or spoon-benders, but
rather to note that the idea of an external function of thought is as
old — or perhaps even older — than thought itself.
Mind
over matter?
“I heard a man reading from a book of one Anaxagoras (he said), to the effect that it is mind which arranges all things and is the cause of all things.” Plato Phaedo, 97 BC.
A
curious footnote to the concept of thought as a motive force within
cosmology comes from fragments that remain of the work of Anaxagoras,
a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Athens around 500BC.
Perhaps his most interesting contribution to philosophy and cosmology
arises out of his assertion that ‘Mind’ plays an essential role
in the material form and the movement or ‘rotation’ of the
universe. According to Anaxagoras, ‘Mind’ pre-exists humanity; it
is an entity that is distinct from matter and invests itself into
living beings to a greater or lesser degree — a dog, for example,
has more ‘Mind’than a tree and less ‘Mind’ than a man.
The
interesting thing about Anaxagoras’s notion of ‘Mind’ is not
merely that it exists external to man, but that ‘Mind’ is
responsible for the initial construction and continued existence of
the universe in its present material form.
Anaxagoras
maintains that in the beginning, all the matter of the universe was
spread across infinity in the form of an infinite super-fine mix. A
mixture of every-thing with everything else. Then, at some position
within that vast superfine plenum, ‘Mind’ set the universe in
motion. It is this movement (or rotation) that is responsible for the
gradual concentration of the initial ‘fineness’ into the material
form of the universe as it exists today.
Differences
in various forms of matter are accounted for by the fact that, like a
turning wheel, the rotation of the universe is faster at the
periphery than it is at the centre, and by the fact that denser
matter within the fineness will clump together as the mix is
rotating.
“The
dense and the moist and the cold and the dark came together where the
earth is now, while the rare and the warm and the dry (and the
bright) went out towards the further part of the aether.”
DK
59 B15 Simplicius. Physique 179,3.
One
cannot escape the suspicion that the old Greek may have been soaking
his bunions in a basin of water, into which some substance may have
been added and dissolved. Into the centre of this potentiated soup he
poked his walking stick and began to stir in slow and steady circles.
The eddies, vortices, currents and counter-currents experienced by
the mixture, he then relates to the ‘rotation’ of the universe, a
motion that separates the matter that is the stars, the planets and
ourselves, much like the churning of milk into curds and whey.
Anaxagoras’s
cosmology appears to be composed of three principle ingredients:
1)
The infinite fineness which is the material mix of everything mixed
with everything else;
2)
The separate and distinct entity, that is, ‘nous’ or ‘Mind’;
and
3)
The third and final ingredient is the ‘aether’, or the space
which apparently contains both ‘Mind’ and matter.
Interestingly, Anaxagoras’s use of ‘Mind’ or ‘nous’ does not appear to refer to the thought of human beings, nor the thoughts or ‘Mind’ of a particular divine creator, but rather to the idea of mind or thought as a distinct entity — divisible from, and independent of, material form.
All
other things partake in a portion of everything, while ‘nous’ is
infinite and self-ruled and is mixed with nothing, but is alone,
itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with
anything else, it would partake in all things if it were mixed with
any… for in everything, there is a portion of everything.
(Simplicius. Physique.
164,24; 156,13; Vgl.16,32.)
Because
the initial material fineness of the universe represents a mix of
everything with everything else, nous or Mind must be separate from
this plenum. If nous is a constituent within the plenum, it would
follow that all material objects in the formed universe would contain
a portion of ‘nous’. On the contrary, Anaxagoras believed that
only certain material (living things, for example) is invested with
nous — plants, animals and humans, to a greater or lesser degree.
“Nous
has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have life.
And nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to
revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small
beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and
will extend over a larger still. And all the things that are mingled
together and separated off and distinguished are all known by nous.”
Ibid.
Although
physics of today has much to say in refutation of Anaxagoras, it has
perhaps as much to say in affirmation of his basic reasoning — that
there is perhaps a vein of thought, a precept behind the translation
of Anaxagoras’s cosmology, one that not only maintains its
relevance, but may prove to be timeless.
If
we take Einstein’s assertion that mass is equivalent to energy (as
related by the formula e=mc2), we see that all mass can be conceived
of as condensed quanta of energy. As such, in our contemporary
notions of what ‘energy’ actually is, we may find the ‘infinite
fineness’ of Anaxagoras’s early universe.
Of
mass and energy, Einstein states the following:
“It
followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy
are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a
somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the
equation E is equal to mc2, in which energy is put equal to mass,
multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very
small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of
energy and vice versa. The mass and energy were in fact equivalent,
according to the formula mentioned before. This was demonstrated by
Cockcroft and Walton in 1932, experimentally.”
Albert
Einstein, 1948.
Should
we consider mass or matter as the concentrated form of energy, we
arrive at a contemporary candidate for the ingredient, (the fineness)
the infinite plenum that Anaxagoras conceived to be existent at the
beginning of the universe.
“All
things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for
the small too was infinite. And, when all things were together, none
of them could be distinguished for their smallness.”
Simplicius.
Physique. 155, 23DK 59 B1.
Within
the confines of Big Bang cosmology, neither is it difficult to
conceive of a point in the early history of the cosmos where all that
exists is the energy that will penultimately condense into the mass
of our material universe. This point we can imagine to be located
somewhere within the vastness of that first nanosecond following the
Big Bang. Here, it is possible to conceive of a moment in the early
history of the universe where all that exists is energy (the infinite
smallness of all matter).
However,
this energy required (and requires) some motive force, some
imperative so that it will concentrate itself into the material form
of matter, of our universe.
Thus,
the cosmos is in need of a second ingredient, an entity that will
direct the transformation of energy into matter, and that of matter
into energy. Anaxagoras describes this motive as ‘Mind’, an
entity that we have a relationship to and with, by virtue of the fact
that we are alive, that we (like all life) are representative of
matter and energy that is animated by thought.
Ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny?
Anaxagoras
was hardly the first philosopher to relate the behaviour of matter on
a small scale to the grand structure of the universe. In a certain
sense, we do the same when we notice that throughout nature there are
instances where the microscopic is reflected in the macroscopic. How
the pattern of veins on the face of an old man may reflect the
denuded branches of an oak in winter, or how the classical ‘picture’
of an atom, with its nucleus in the centre and orbiting electrons,
should in some ways resemble the form of our solar system.
The
practice of extrapolating macroscopic patterns of form from
observations at the microscopic level found favour for some time in
the biological sciences. It persists today in the observable and
somewhat mysterious relationship that exists between phylogeny and
ontogeny. In the 1890s, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel noted that
during the development of the human embryo, the embryo passes through
certain stages, which in some respects are reflective of the
evolutionary development of man. Haeckel wrote: “I established the
opposite view, that this history of the embryo (ontogeny) must be
completed by a second, equally valuable, and closely connected branch
of thought — the history of race (phylogeny). Both of these
branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest
causal connection; this
arises
from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation...
ontogenesis
is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis, determined by
the physiological functions of heredity (generation) and adaptation
(maintenance).” (Haeckel,
E. 1899. Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the 19th Century.)
Although
an exact correlation between ontogeny and phylogeny has been broadly
refuted, a relationship of some kind persists between the two, and is
summarised in the more widely-accepted notion of ‘weak
recapitulation’.
For
whatever reasons, the human embryo passes through stages of
development at which points its form is markedly similar to embryonic
forms of species as diverse as fish and fowl. During development,
human embryos exhibit the transient anatomical forms of a ‘tail’,
or ‘gill slits’. Whilst these structures disappear in the later
developmental stages of the human embryo, they persist as gills or
tails in the embryos of their respective species. Haeckel and others
attempted to explain these similarities with the hypothesis that
during development, the human embryo is reflecting (or
‘recapitulating’) the overall evolution of life.
When
the human embryo passes through the stage where it resembles that of
a fish, it is ‘recapitulating’ the evolution of mammals from a
common piscine ancestor. When the human embryo exhibits a tail, it is
once again recapitulating the form of our common tail-bearing
ancestors. The theory was undoubtedly one of those occasions where,
for large number of people, everything just seemed to make sense.
Indeed, if we were in the stands in the 1800s and observing the
intellectual contest that was raging between Haeckel and many of his
contemporaries, we may have been tempted to root for our man Haeckel
in his championing of the patently ‘obvious’ — of a phenomenon
to which we can all somewhat relate.
However,
some of the drawings that Haeckel used to substantiate his ideas were
shown to be inaccurate, and the theory was largely and often quite
vehemently dismissed. Perhaps the gentlemanly world of 19th Century
science could tolerate no more assaults upon a theology already
bruised and battered by the work of Darwin and Wallace. Indeed,
science may not have been willing to condone the recapitulation
theory driving the last nails into the coffin of contemporaneous
theological dogma.
Regardless
of the reasons for the near-absolute dismissal of recapitulation, one
cannot help but wonder if the baby (or in this case, embryo) might
have been thrown out with the bathwater? For the present, we are left
with the uncanny similarity between the embryonic forms of diverse
species as being somewhat of an enigma.
Whilst
Haeckel and Anaxagoras may have been (temporarily) silenced by modern
physics and modern biology, the basic premise behind their work lives
on. It remains a theoretical possibility that the material evolution
of the cosmos and the biological evolution of life may be moving in
accordance with a blueprint of some kind and may perhaps be motivated
by an exogenous and pre-existing modus of thought or instinct. There
is little doubt that at this assertion, theologians and dogmatists
alike may find cause to jump with delight and insist that talk of
‘exogenous thought’, or recapitulation of some ‘pre-determined’
plan, might point to or confirm the existence of a God — that the
simple substitution of God for the notion of external thought, or as
the ‘creator’ of the blueprint to which cosmic and biological
evolution appear to be adhering, is enough to complete the picture of
the universe.
However,
to follow these conclusions is merely to construct another cul de sac
upon the road to reason, for to assign theological definition to
thought (either external or internal) is simply the application of a
label for private or personal reasons and has little to do with
understanding. One can certainly assign the word ‘God’ to thought
and indeed, thought may exhibit all the finality and supremacy that
theologians assign to their gods, however it does not follow from
this that religious dogma has been either proven or disproven. In the
last century, this was apparently a cul de sac wherein many
philosophers were willing to park the vehicle of enquiry and
sacrifice the inexplicable to God.
For
our purposes, we have merely asserted that thought exists and may
exist external to man. That fact — that others may wish to call
thought ‘God’ and offer an encyclopedia of definitions as to the
‘who-ness’ and ‘what-ness’ of God — is of no concern here.
In
some respects, the evolution of the cosmos towards a definite (if not
already defined) future, and the possibility of an external component
to thought, are notions that assail the dogmatics of contemporary
science in a manner similar to the manner in which evolution and
science have assailed the battlements of theology for many centuries.
Perhaps the tables have turned? We can only hope that science will
not be as quick to establish an inquisition, root out dissension and
burn its heretics at the stake. Certainly, this is a contest than can
only be fairly waged upon the neutral territory of philosophy, a
place where all must come without prejudice and without faith in
anything other than reason and truth.
Suffice
to say that the theory of recapitulation may recapitulate itself one
day in a form that is acceptable to neither science nor theology.
In
1977, Stephen J Gould revisits the subject in his book Ontogeny
and Phylogeny,
which opens with the following lines: “I am aware that I treat a
subject currently unpopular. I do so, first of all, simply because it
has fascinated me ever since the New York City public schools taught
me Haeckel’s doctrine, that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, 50
years after it had been abandoned by science. Yet I am not so
detached a scholar that I would pursue it for the vanity of personal
interest alone. I would not have spent some of the best years of a
scientific career upon it, were I not convinced that it should be as
important today as it has ever been. I am also not so courageous a
scientist that I would have risked so much effort against a wall of
truly universal opprobrium. But the chinks in the wall surfaced as
soon as I probed. I have had the same, most curious experience more
than 20 times: I tell a colleague that I am writing a book about
parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny. He takes me aside, makes
sure that no-one is looking, checks for bugging devices, and admits
in markedly lowered voice: ‘You know, just between you, me, and
that wall, I think that there really is something to it after all.’
The clothing of disrepute is diaphanous before any good naturalist’s
experience. I feel like the honest little boy before the naked
emperor.” (Gould: Ontogeny
and Phylogeny,
1977.)
The
general notions of ‘Mind’ or ‘recapitulation’, may yet have
some relevance in the context of an overall theory of the universe;
in determining the ultimate form of the theologian’s ‘God’, or
a mathematical formula that precisely describes the grand design of
the cosmos, only time will tell. One thing is almost certain, and
that is that these notions represent parts of the puzzle, parts that
have been excluded not as a consequence of their failings when
subjected to intellectual scrutiny, but rather as a consequence of
pre-existing dogma. In terms of a more complete and comprehensive
view of the cosmos, Anaxagoras and Haeckel might well have been
looking at the wrong things; it remains to be seen if they were
looking in the right place, nonetheless.
“And
now I know how Joan of Ark felt as the flames rose to her Roman nose
and her Walkman started to melt... ”
Morrissey.
We
are led to believe that under the same conditions, matter will adopt
the same form when it is subjected to the same force(s). The
similarity between the embryonic forms of divergent species, or that
between the imagined form of an atom and that of the solar system, is
hardly coincidental — nor can it be the result of chance alone.
This similarity, this near-universal and pervasive recapitulation of
form, is more likely to be a result of either the interaction of
additional and unknown forces acting upon matter and the universe, or
is perhaps a consequence of the interaction of known forces upon
matter, but in a different way or by a different mechanism… that
has yet to be determined. For the present at least, the only example
of such a force (the shape of which is known and unknown to us in
equal measure) is that of thought.
As
matters stand, in shaping the material form of life and that of the
material universe, there appears to be more to the picture than: the
forces of gravity; the electrostatic attraction between charges; and
the forces at work within and between atomic particles.
Anaxagoras
may have been one of the first to offer the intriguing concept of
‘Mind’ as the architect of the cosmos. Could it be that we
observe this exogenous influence in determining the uncanny relations
between the macroscopic and microscopic? In distinguishing between
these two worlds, we apply the relativity of size, of time and space,
which are not only dependent upon, but quite possibly manifestations
of, a thought.
In
fairness to Anaxagoras, it is only a crude assumption upon our part
that (our) thought arises within our heads. Nobody truly knows from
where or how thought arises, no more than anyone knows of the
‘substance’ of thought. Is it just as valid to speculate that
thought may be a process that exists outside of our heads — that
our own ‘individual’ thoughts are merely a consequence of how the
physical substance of ourselves interacts with an external entity,
one that might evoke within us the experience of thought? That our
thought may be an example — perhaps the first and only example
within the universe — where thought has evolved the ability to
contemplate itself, in a manner similar to Aristotle’s god, the Roi
fainéant
or
‘do-nothing king’.
The
thoughts we ‘receive’ and process may well be a consequence of
our material selves, of our unique position in space and time. If,
for example, we imagine each human subject as a radio receiver that
is (in a material sense) constructed differently by virtue of his or
her genetic make-up and we imagine the position in space and time
that this subject occupies, to be analogous to the frequency to which
each receiver is tuned, and if we further imagine thought as an
infinite variety of radio waves existent throughout space, each
‘receiver’ will pick up or experience that same external thought
differently, and so each individual will have different thoughts,
derived from the same external source and held in common, relative to
the nature of the physical make-up of the thinker and his position in
space and time. The notion of thought as external to the human
subject is touched upon by Nietzsche when he offers his refutation of
Descartes’ famous Cogito
ergo sum 17.
"With
regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of
emphasising a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognised by
these credulous minds — namely, that a thought comes when ‘it’
wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish; so that it is a perversion of the
facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of
the predicate ‘think’. One
thinks;
but that this ‘one’ is precisely the famous old ‘ego’ is, to
put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an
‘immediate certainty." (Beyond
Good and Evil,
Chapter 1.)
When
we begin to assert that thought may have an external origin, we
approach the experiences of the insane. Perhaps we should remind
ourselves that Nietzsche’s last act of sanity is said to have been
the tearful and pitiful embrace of a horse that was being flogged by
its master on the streets of Turin. Once we begin to divest ourselves
of the ownership of our thoughts, we begin to undermine the rather
presumptuous basis of our existence — and perhaps more importantly,
that of others.
Thought,
as an entity that is external to the thinker, might have us rephrase
Descartes’ assertion that “I am, therefore I must think as I do”.
In this instance, thinking becomes the unavoidable product of
material existence, the interaction of a material self with a
universal stream of consciousness that exists beyond ourselves and
forms the very matrix of the universe within which we believe
ourselves to exist. In this sense, all material is a product of
thought and all animals can ‘think’ (a notion that would probably
have been soundly rejected by the era of Descartes) and they think in
a manner that is a product of their material form, their position in
space and time, and how both position and form interact with the
external matrix of thought. This admittedly uncomfortable suggestion
may offer some insight into some interesting phenomena that are
experienced by most of us, and yet have little material or scientific
basis.
Deja
vu, (the experience that one has encountered the same event at some
time in the past), the remembering of past lives, ghosts, the
psychiatric experiences of schizophrenics (in that their thoughts do
not belong to them) et cetera, would appear to be part-illuminated by
the notion that thought has an external component.
The
prevalent idea that thought arises from within us has a clear
religious impetus and a history that is somewhat analogous to the
original notion that the earth sits at the centre of the universe.
The contrary assertion that thought may not originate from the centre
of man might be expected to fall prey to the same resistance that saw
Galileo exiled and Giordano Bruno, as well as countless others,
burned at the stake.
In
some respects, the vilification of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy by
some modern thinkers (usually under the pretext of his nefarious
association with the National Socialist Party and his failure to
condemn either Hitler or the Nazis) may be an example of our
contemporary burning of philosophical heretics. As Bruno challenged
the thinking and the dogma of his day by removing the earth from the
centre of the universe, so too does Heidegger remove thought from the
epicentre of human subjectivity: “… A mood assails us. It comes
neither from ‘outside’ nor from inside, but arises out of
being-in-the-world, as a way of such being.[...] Having a mood is not
related to the psychical in the first instance, and is not itself an
inner condition which reaches forth in an enigmatical way and puts
its mark on things and persons.” (Martin Heidegger, Being
and Time,
p175-177.)
All
the world’s a stage.
It
is often stated that the greatest stories have already been told.
Perhaps in a literary context, much of the drama preceding
Shakespeare and much of that which has come after him can be
considered as temporal modifications of existing or pre-existing
thematics. Certainly, the historian must tell and re-tell what is
essentially the same story over again, and yet in this context it is
not so much what is being told, but rather the manner in which it is
being re-told that will determine whether or not we will continue to
turn the pages and whether any particular historical analysis is to
remain alive. With rare and consummate eloquence, the eminent
American historian and philosopher Will Durant states as much
throughout his (or more correctly he and his wife Ariel’s)
monumental work The
Story of Civilisation.
Durant weaves into the colourful pageantry of human history a gentle
and pragmatic philosophy that stands apart from the debauched and
brutal ages. He paints a tapestry of ages and epochs, which he
describes with an eloquent partiality that is gently and yet quite
firmly upon the side of philosophy and reason. Indeed, he himself, in
the telling of it, modestly reminds us of the intelligence and moral
pragmatism that is within reach of all men, despite our history of —
and propensity towards — war and cruelty.
In
many respects, it is not the origin of an idea that is important but
rather its position in space and time that allows it to grow and
become part of the fabric of our view of that which Durant refers to
as “ephemeral reality”.
Whilst
we can quite easily become lost in the apparent molecular structure
of a particular object, or its functioning at a cellular level, the
further away from the object we position ourselves, the more clearly
can we see the essence of what it is or what we understand it to be.
That the object is essentially a tree, we only recognise at some
distance and we must put even more space and time between ourselves
and the tree if we are to see that the tree is merely a constituent
part of the essence of the forest. If we were to keep moving
backwards from our forest, our country and our continent... might we
not at some time perceive the essence of our earth, our galaxy and
our universe?
Woven
into the erratic and often schizophrenic tapestry of human history
there is an inevitability of thought, a macroscopic flow to thought
that is generally overlooked. This notion is highlighted particularly
well when historians attribute inventions or ideas to their
inventors. For example, when we read something like: “It was Thomas
Edison who gave us the long-lasting light bulb” or “Henry Ford
brought us the motor car... ” and so on. There is here the implicit
suggestion that were it not for Edison, the modern world might have
to function without light bulbs or, were it not for Ford, there would
be no automobiles. Although we cannot return to the past and
assassinate either Edison or Ford in order to test this hypothesis,
there is something foolish in the notion that the long-lasting light
bulb or the automobile would not have eventually been conceived of by
another man or woman.
When
we make such an assertion, we are airing the reasonable suspicion
that the concept or thought as it pertains to the object, for example
the ‘light-bulb’, is as independent of Thomas Edison as it is of
any particular individual. That Edison experienced these/his thoughts
in the necessary place and time that allowed for their acceptance,
and ultimate application to the material form of a light bulb, is an
assertion we cannot avoid.
Anaximander,
a Greek philosopher circa 500BC, postulated a theory of evolution
that is not a million miles from the work of Darwin and Wallace. As
alluded to earlier, the cosmology of Anaxagoras has parallels that
are to some extent recapitulated in modern cosmology. Lucretius may
well have been the Nietzsche of his age; Sophocles the
Shakespeare;
Napoleon the Alexander; Rommel the Attila… and so on and so
forth.
Ideas
are invariably embellished with the cultural, linguistic and
philosophical bias of their respective eras. Like the engravings of
prehistory, their clarity is eroded and defaced by time. If we
attempt therefore to remove the temporal, translational and cultural
biases from the reasoning or mores of a particular age, we may find
that much of the thought and many of the ‘ideas’ of modernity
have been with us for as long as records and perhaps as long as
thought itself has existed. Might we even be tempted to conclude that
thought is more likely to behave more as a functional constant, than
an entity that is born anew within the mind of man?
Much
of contemporary philosophical and scientific thought is but an echo
or revision of an Hellenic or pre-Socratic precursor. There are
parallels in thought between philosophers and scientists vastly
separated by space and time, just as there is a parallel of thought
when one person exclaims with surprise to another: ‘I was just
thinking the same thing myself!’
Although
it pertains to the subject matter of religion, the following
quotation from Nietzsche is illustrative here: “When human life —
before the eyes of all — lay foully prostrate upon the earth,
crushed down under the weight of religion, which glowered down from
heaven upon mortal men with a hideous appearance, one man — a Greek
— first dared to lift up his mortal eyes and stand up face-to-face
against religion. This man could not be quashed either by stories of
gods or thunderbolts or even by the deafening roar of heaven. Those
things only spurred on the eager courage of his soul, filling him
with desire to be the first to burst the tight bars placed on
nature’s gates. The living force of his soul won the day and on he
passed, far beyond the flaming walls of the world, travelling with
his mind and with his spirit the immeasurable universe. And from
there he returned to us — like a conqueror — to tell us what can
be and what cannot, and on what principle and deep-set boundary mark
nature has established all things. Through this knowledge,
superstition is thrown down and trampled underfoot and by his
victory, we are raised equal to the stars.”
The
many who are more versed in philosophy and classical litterature than
the author might recognise that the foregoing is not taken from the
work of Nietzsche, but rather the Roman poet Lucretius (On
the Nature of Things).
Yet
the
‘Greek’ referred to here might just as easily have been
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.
Whilst
we can reasonably suggest that Nietzsche’s thought may have been
influenced by the works or thought of Lucretius, it is of course more
difficult to suggest that the thought of Lucretius was influenced as
much by that of Nietzsche, who lived almost 2,000 years after him.
Yet if we suggest that thought or some portion thereof is independent
of the thinker, that we might for example still have light bulbs in
their present form without the existence of Thomas Edison; that the
worn adage of ‘history repeating itself’ may be a consequence of
the reality that it marches to the tune of an external and constant
variable that is thought; then we are left with our physical form and
our position in space-time rather than a thinking-self as the
principle determinants of our experience of thought.
If
we further refine this notion to suggest, as Leibniz does, that
physical form is a consequence of position in space-time, we are left
with space-time as a principle determinant of thought. Indeed, if we
are to have any truck with Immanuel Kant’s notion that space and
time are products of thought, we are left with the reductio-absurdum
that thought itself is the principle determinant of thought. Yet, we
cannot imagine a thought that has no-thing
to
think about and as such, we might suspect that there is a dynamism
between matter and thought, that one is a product of the other, or
that both (like matter and energy) are perhaps differing forms of the
same substance — perhaps thought brings matter into existence and
matter gives thought some-thing
to
think about?
An
additional point here is that we should not become lost in the
‘correctness’ or ‘incorrectness’ of thought past or present
as it relates to the changing form(s) of matter, but rather the
observation that ‘new’ thoughts ‘new theories’ or new ideas
may not simply spontaneously arise within the mind of a single
thinker, but may have been in existence from the beginning of the
universe. As such, it is as much our circumstance, our position in
space and time our ‘being in the world’ that is responsible for
the thoughts that we firmly believe to be our own.
“All
these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his
shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to
reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question
about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The
painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest
poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact
with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is
the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.”
James
Joyce, Ulysses.
Throughout
history the essence of Einstein’s relativity, the essence of
Darwin’s evolution, that of Shakespeare’s plays, and the
perambulations of Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses,
can be found independent of the works and thought of each of these
great thinkers. Their greatness and the greatness of their works is
not denigrated by the observation that it may not be an entirely
individual creative process that has culminated in the particular
inimitable masterpiece, but rather the interaction of a position in
space and time and a willingness to embrace or give material form to
a thought that is iconoclastic and yet omnipresent and available to
us all? There may be little more to creative genius than being in the
right place at the wrong time and saying the things that shouldn't be
said.?
On
calling a spade a shovel.
In
the Critique
of Pure Reason,
Kant refers to space and time as “intuitions” as being related
to, or an extension of, the process of thought. He does not insist
that this ‘intuition’ is entirely endogenous in origin, nor does
he suggest that it is not. However, in the assumption that thought
has its ‘seat’ or its origin within the human brain, it follows
(in a Kantian sense at least) that the truth of external reality, of
space and time, exists within the eye of the beholder.
Whilst
the process — the functioning of thought in constructing the form
of reality — may posses a subjective validity, it does not follow
that this thought or intuition is generated either subjectively or
endogenously, as opposed to being cosmic in origin and merely
processed endogenously. In this sense, both the eye and the beholder
might well be the product of thought rather than the inverse?
If
the history of scientific theory is anything to go by, we may be
inclined to suspect that the answer to this question of
thought-origin lies somewhere between the two hypothesis; in the form
of a functional equilibrium between the subjective experience of
thought and the practical functioning of exogenous thought in the
construction of matter-perception. It is possible that such a
functional dynamic is the matrix within which, or upon which,
external reality is perceived.
Of
space and time, Kant writes: “What then are time and space? Are
they real existences? Or, are they merely relations or determinations
of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in
themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or,
are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and
consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without
which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any
object?” Critique
of Pure Reason.
Contemporary
physics and quantum mechanics may well be upon the brink of calling a
spade a shovel. Science may soon be compelled to embrace philosophy
in recognising that the process of thought, (vis-Ã -vis the ‘act of
observation’) plays an active and deterministic role in the
‘behaviour’ of matter, and therefore in the macroscopic structure
of the material universe. The offspring of this somewhat reluctant
union between science and philosophy may ultimately take the
misshapen form of a general theory of reality, one that not only
attempts to define thought, but also its role in moulding the fluid
form of reality as we perceive it to be.
Should
we carry further the notion that a dynamism between endogenous and
exogenous thought is a principal determinant of both material form
and space-time, interesting possibilities arise. It follows, for
example, that each different material form of life should perceive
reality and space-time differently, relative to the difference in
their respective material forms — that the universe as perceived
through the deep, languid eyes of a calmly cud-chewing cow, may be an
entirely different universe to that which is perceived by ourselves.
It
follows too that time may be a product of the interaction between our
material selves and an external modality of thought; time may wait
for no man and yet it perhaps moves at an entirely different pace for
each of us.
Ultimately,
a description of the operational dynamic between space-time, energy
and thought will necessitate a cataclysmic paradigm shift; a
fundamental change in how we see the universe and how we see
ourselves as thinking objects, within that same universe.
In
Critique,
Kant encourages us to ask what amounts to one of the most fundamental
questions facing humanity in the course of our brief existence.
Arguably, the most crucial and integral ingredients to reality are
space and time. Therefore, in asking: “What are space and time?”
Kant poses the most fundamental question of all, namely: What is the
nature of reality?
The
question contains within it an interesting irony, one that many
philosophers identify after a lifetime of consideration — namely
the rather Beckettian assertion that the nature of reality is to
question reality; and that the answer to the question is simply a
reiteration of the question itself.
Within
this particular question, Kant touches upon the conflicting views of
Newton and Leibniz, as detailed in an interesting correspondence
between the two at the turn of the 18th Century. For Newton, time and
space are universal constants, existing independent of each other.
Time has a linear quality, marching from past to present and onwards
to the future; a resolute Christian solider, unaffected by, and
independent of matter and space.
Leibniz,
however, maintains that space is a product of matter, that space only
exists when it defines the nothingness that exists between two
different objects or points.
For
Leibniz, the existence of matter within space is an ‘event’ and
events are points in time. Interestingly, Leibniz also insists
through his ‘Law of Indiscernibles’ that there is no such thing
as identical things; that if two objects occupy different parts of
space, they are different objects and if they are deemed to be
identical, they are in fact the same thing.
Kant
draws a line beneath this ‘debate’, or at least between the views
of Leibniz and Newton. He asserts that space is not absolute and that
it cannot exist independent of observation, or independent of
thought: “We never can imagine or make a representation to
ourselves of the non-existence of space, though we may easily enough
think that no objects are found in it. It must, therefore, be
considered as the condition of the possibility of phenomena, and by
no means as a determination dependent on them, and is a
representation a priori, which necessarily supplies the basis for
external phenomena.” Ibid.
We
are compelled to immediately as, what does Kant mean by the assertion
that space is a “representation a
priori”?
Is this not simply thought that has yet to become thought?
For
thought to exist before it has been experienced, it (or its trigger)
must exist outside the observer, or at least beyond his present frame
of reference — a view that is perhaps not dissimilar to
Anaxagoras’s initial hypothesis of ‘Mind’ investing itself into
inanimate matter that is spread throughout the universe in an
‘infinite fineness’.
Kant
follows through with this reasoning and arrives at the following
conclusion: “Hence it follows that an a priori intuition (which is
not empirical) lies at the root of all our conceptions of space.”
Ibid.
That
space is somehow constructed by the mind as the ‘place’ wherein
matter and our existence can apparently occur is a philosophical
assertion that has had to wait many years before some ‘evidence’
could be produced to sustain the idea. The time that has passed
between Kant and Quantum Mechanics, illuminates the chasm between
philosophy and the material sciences. Clearly it is easier to think
idea than it is to prove it beyond doubt, or at least to gather the
evidence that might point to its veracity. It is a tantalising yet
hopeless endeavour to imagine what Kant Leibniz and Newton might make
of quantum mechanics, of its ‘double slit experiment’, and of the
assertion that particles behave ‘differently’ when they are
observed. We may yet be upon the threshold of recognising that this
‘observation’, this process of thought itself, is not merely a
mechanism of analysis but one of creation. To answer the questions
which quantum mechanics is every day unearthing, we may not need to
develop new sciences as much as we need to re visit the older ones.
The
ingredients.
We
ourselves are apparently composed of atoms that are no different to
those of the stars, galaxies and cosmic dust particles that make up
our universe. Within the known universe and the reality of our
experience, we are readily aware of five distinct entities:
•
Matter
•
Energy
•
Thought
•
Time
•
Space
Arguably,
we are only aware of thought and nothing else. A conception of all
other ingredients to the universe is of course entirely dependent
upon thought. However, (leaving this awkward fact aside for the
moment) if we assume the perspective of an entity observing us from
outside of the universe, it is possible to condense these entities
such that only three remain; thought, space-time and matter-energy.
Relativity
teaches us that space and time are one and the same, referring to
either or both as space-time. We shall not dwell upon the reasoning
of cosmologists or quantum physicists here and (for the moment at
least) we shall simply take their word for it. We will further accept
the prevailing Einsteinian assertion that matter and energy are
interchangeable, that one is simply an alternate form of the other.
The relationship between the two is highlighted by Einstein’s
famously familiar equation e=mc2 and we will expound upon this no
further for the present time.
As
such, we are left with three simple ingredients, which constitute the
‘recipe’ for both the universe and our external reality: thought,
matter-energy and space-time. Any theory upon the nature of reality,
or the form and function of the universe, must hence offer some
explanation of the dynamic between these three distinct, and yet
mutually-dependent entities.
How
to make a Universe..
Apart
from purely conceptual phenomena such as; dark matter, dark energy,
ghosts, unicorns, love, or thought itself, we can observe nothing in
the material universe other than differing states of matter and
energy; the effects of these states upon each other; and the time
that has elapsed between these apparent changes. As mentioned
already, all of this observation is contingent upon the functioning
of thought.
We
are compelled to undertake our observations within the context of
time and through the application of thought. However, the observation
of change is complicated by the fact that the act of observation
itself is also subject to change, as the observer is not the same
observer before the observation as he is after. A modicum of time has
passed, the observer and indeed the universe in its entirety is no
longer in the same place that it was prior to the act of observation.
In this sense, all observation is merely and essentially a
description of the past, of change that has already occurred.
Despite
the reality of our constantly changing state, we insist upon the
impossibility of permanence, of sameness, and continuity. We speak of
a present tense, of a here and now as though it were a given reality
despite the fact that it is an absolute impossibility. The moment
this ‘here and now’ is considered it has become a recollection of
the past. Only the future and the past are real. Between these two
states, between the transition from future to past, the act of
observation must attempt to freeze time and attempt at the impossible
creation of a ‘present’.
It
is this ‘fixation’ of thought and time through the activity of
observation that may have a mass effect upon the structure of the
universe, or at least upon the structure of that which is being
observed? In this crucial instance, when observation insists that
time must stand still, the act of observation may ‘create’ the
space-time within which it becomes possible if not inevitable for
matter, for that which we perceive to be the form of the material
world, to come into existence.
Observation
may create space-time and instigate the apparent condensation of
energy (of Anaxagoras infinite fineness) into the transient forms of
that which is external and is perceived to be our particular and
particulate version of ‘the real’?
An
impossibility of the Now.
The
impossibility of a present tense brings us to an immediate criticism
of Descartes 'cogito
ergo sum',
the assertion 'I think' presumes the existence of a present tense,
within which this act of thinking occurs. Although one cannot
contradict the assertion that there is a process of thought that
occurs within or is experienced by this “I”. What is at issue
here is the implicit notion that this activity or process of thought
is occurring in the present tense. Much is lost within this dangerous
presumption and much has been lost to philosophy in our ready
submission to this false and impossible position. In the assumption
of a present, Descartes has already assumed that which he attempts to
prove. When he is finished thinking he has already had his cake and
eaten it too.
Whatever
we can say of reality, whatever we can say with certainty in respect
of our existence, we can assert with confidence that there is, never
was, and never will be any such thing as ‘a present’. Any attempt
to grasp such a state is like trying to collect river water in a
sieve. Once the present is pursued or even contemplated, it has
already become the past. The brief moment in time that it takes for
an observation to become manifest in our brains, guarantees that we
will only every perceive things that occurred in the immediate past.
When we look to the stars we observe them in the past, we see how
they once were and not how they ‘are’. We see light which left
them many light-years ago. For all we know, that star by which we are
guided, may in reality have burned out and disappeared from the
heavens long ago. So too when we look at our world, we seen only an
image of what once was, by the time the light from any particular
object has reached our eyes the object has become a different object
entirely. The universe has expanded so the object has since moved
into a different position in space and time, its atomic particles
have decayed or shifted, its mass has changed (ever so slightly) its
density has changed, its position has changed, its colour etc
etc.
When
we examine the concept of time, we can consider a potentially
infinite future. Indeed we have some evidence of the existence of ‘a
future’ for we believe with confidence that new thoughts will
be
experienced. As time passes, we have a recollection of those thoughts
having been experienced. We can assert with some certainty that for
as long as we continue to exist, events will
occur,
things will happen to us. We are confident that, there are events
which are yet to occur, and that these events reside within the
future.
It
may be that the Universe is expanding into these future events, that
they will be experienced as soon as the periphery of the universe
encounters them? Whether we are travelling towards the future or
whether the future is travelling towards us is inconsequential.
Although we cannot see the future we can with some certainty look
towards it and we can recall having experienced events that have
arrived to us from this future state.
With
a similar degree of certainty we can consider a ‘past’. We have
some evidence for the past because it is the state within which we
experience our existence.
The
present is and must remain an impossibility it is a moment that is
infinitely divisible and must be experienced as an infinity if it is
to be experienced at all. Our material form prevents us from
experiencing this infinity of the present moment. To observe or
experience the present, time would have to stand still, all motion
must cease, and yet material form through the motion of the universe
and the antagonism of its atoms, is incapable of such a stasis.
Therefore the attempt by consciousness towards a present is an
attempt at the impossible. It is an important attempt nonetheless for
the present is the state within which we believe that we exist and
within which we recall having once existed. As such it is this
‘present’ and not religion that is the greatest of our ‘faiths’,
and it may be the god we have to surrender in our pursuit of the
real.
Unlike
the present the past is very real to us, it is perhaps the most real
of all. We can recall and even confirm with others that we and they
have experienced certain experiences — that we and they have read
and perhaps become bored by the preceding lines, for example. We
construct this past out of finite pieces of an infinite present, we
can never recall exactly what that present was but only the
particular pieces which we and others deem to be of relevance.
We
can supply no end of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence for the
existence of our ‘past’ and that of a future towards which we
look with some certainty. However, we can provide comparatively
little evidence for the existence of ‘a present'. It is this same
'present' within which Descartes assumes himself to be thinking.
Whilst
we can apply the concept of infinity to both past, and future,
significant difficulties arise when we attempt to apply infinity to
the notion of a present. Logically, we can assert that a moment in
time can be infinitely divided, that each moment of this present is
infinitely divisible and therefore contains an infinity of time. As
such, a single moment of the present can neither exist, nor can it
ever be experienced. Should we attempt to experience the true,
infinite and entire duration of a present moment, the experience of
that moment would last forever.
Perhaps
the existence of a past and that of the future can be as easily
negated as the existence of a present? As already mentioned, the
evidence for either is purely circumstantial. The point here is that
our subjective experience of existence can more readily be applied to
a confirmation of both past and future, than the impossibility of a
present.
What
is crucial to recognise here is the fact that because the present
cannot
exist,
it does not follow that the present does not attempt
to
exist. It is this ‘attempt’ a present which we describe as
‘experience’, or 'being in the world' and it is this attempt that
is embarked upon at the initiation of each act of observation.
Our
notion of a present is predicated upon a state of zero time-motion.
If ever an observation was to culminate in the actual experience of
the present moment, that moment must expand to meet the infinite
demand of zero-time.
I
can never think,
as Descartes asserts, if I were to do so I would be incapable of ever
doing anything else and my first true thought within this present
tense would expand outwards to fill the reality of its infinite
nature. Within that moment, the universe must return to, or begin to
occupy a state of absolute zero motion, and hence adopt its ultimate
and absolute form; that of an infinite and static plenum, one where
motion has ceased and material existence becomes impossible.
Although
it cannot exist for us, (for the human observer locked as we are into
the perpetual motion of our material form), it is within this
‘present’ that the universe actually does exist in it’s
unobserved form — that of a static, motionless, quiescent and
infinite plenum.
The
act of observation is the attempt by the conscious modality of
thought to ‘fix’ the universe, and thereby cause the ‘a
present' to come into existence. Through this attempt at observation,
the universe is instantly compelled to become fixed, to become
resolute and impossibly finite. Were the universe to ever
successfully pause and actually reflect to the observer the reality
of ‘a present’ and hence the reality of infinite time, the
universe would become frozen within that very moment and it would
cease to exist.
It
is not the future we must fear, nor the past, but rather the attempt
via consciousness and observation to secure or to create a present.
If we are ever entirely successful in this endeavour, if one fine
morning we should awake and suddenly develop the ability to
experience the infinite nature of the present moment, of the ‘here
and now’, we would never make it to breakfast. We are constrained
and prevented from experiencing the present moment in its real form,
by the fact that we are evolving material beings in motion. The only
manner by which we can experience the totality of a moment is at the
moment of our death when consciousness is no longer constrained by
its material form. The question then is whether consciousness
requires a material form in order to exist? If it does, if thought
has no exogenous component the death of the individual is the death
of consciousness. If it does not, if thought has an exogenous
component, then it is possible that in terms of consciousness, death
is merely the beginning the first opportunity to experience the here
and the now.
I
thought, therefore I was.
If
we revise 'I think, therefore I am' to its more rational form of 'I
thought, therefore I was', we see immediately that the removal of the
present tense disturbs the implicit certainty of existence, for I can
no longer assert that I 'am' anything at all — only what my memory
asserts that I once was. And yet, we must not make light of this
crucial junction between future-thought and recollection, for it is
between these two aspects of time that reality springs forth, that
existence has occurred and the universe has adopted its material
form.
There
is a process occurring at the turbulent junction between future and
past, and it is through this process, through the impossible attempt
(via the modus of observation) to contain infinity within the finite,
motionless form of a ‘present moment’, that the universe comes
into being. It may well be that in the very act of observation we
ourselves are the creators of our very own universe? If this is the
case we have a lot to answer for.
The
fastest mouse in all of Mexico city.
As
thought arises from the future and moves towards the past, it must do
so at a certain 'speed' or rate, and yet, being devoid of material
form and entirely lacking in inertia, it is reasonable to suggest
this speed to be infinite and that nothing in the universe can move
faster than thought.
As
thought moves towards the past, our infinite and static universe may
adopt the evolving material form that we experience as reality. The
static plenum, the matrix of the universe as it exists within the
actuality of an infinite present, may be continuously compelled to
adopt a new, fluid and evolving form; one that is relative to and a
consequence of, the movement of thought, a form that is brought into
existence by consciousness and its reflexive attempt at ‘a
present’.
Therefore
reality can perhaps be conceived of, as as the modulation of a
static, fixed and timeless plenum. The perturbations within this
plenum (the movement of our material universe) may be an apparent
consequence of the manner in which our observation attempts to fix
thought upon a finite and ultimately impossible moment of the present
present, the partial success of this impossibility may allow us to
percieve reality in the its real and fluid form.
It
follows that nothing that we can observe within the universe has any
permanence; that all things we observe are in a state of flux, that
we can not observe the same object twice. In this sense, all
matter
is transitory and we can assert its permanence with far less
certainty than its transitory nature. All form is illusory, as it
will no longer be in existence within the relative blink of an eye
-we can never look twice at the same object and never twice at the
same universe. We are reminded of the words of Heraclitus, that
“nothing endures, only change”.
Time
is the space within which thought can occupy itself.
As
thought is essential to any observation, and the passage of time
renders observation impossible we must consider whether there is a
causal — or indeed, reciprocal — relation between thought and
time? Such a relationship is not as improbable as it might initially
seem. Indeed, to a greater or lesser degree, the influence of our
thoughts or our particular state of mind upon our subjective
experience of the passage of time is familiar to us all. For example,
if we recall how we experienced time in our childhood, many might
agree with the assertion that time moved more slowly when we were
younger. Think of the short duration of the hour normally allotted
for one’s lunch break, in comparison to the pain that a young boy
or girl might express at the thought of having to wait for the
duration of an hour upon a particular occurrence, or the passage of
time whilst we are waiting for something to happen; for the kettle to
boil or the bus to arrive. Thomas Mann had much to say on the subject
of our ability to influence the passage of time.
“A
great many false ideas have been spread about the nature of boredom.
It is generally believed that by filling time with things new and
interesting, we can make it ‘pass’, by which we mean ‘shorten’
it; monotony and emptiness, however, are said to weigh down and
hinder its passage. This is not true under all conditions… years
rich in events pass much more slowly than do paltry, bare,
featherweight years that are blown before the wind and are gone.”
Thomas Mann, Magic
Mountain.
Because
most of us have clocks upon our walls or watches upon our wrists that
are more or less precisely synchronised with another in Paris or
London, we negate the validity of our own subjective experience of
time in favour of the collective notion that it is independent of us.
We
have somehow concluded that time does not belong to us and its
passage has little relation to our thought. In doing so, we may have
condemned ourselves to a miserable life expectancy of some 70 years
and to so many precise revolutions of that omnipresent mechanical
device. In this respect, we may have deprived ourselves of the
potential infinity of each moment — of ownership of that which we
know in our hearts to be the most valuable possession of all.
In
1986, researchers at the University of Arizona measured the
subjective experience of time in the context of various psychological
states. Subjects were requested to estimate the passage of time
whilst being exposed to passive or ‘oceanic’ imagery such as a
calm sea, while different subjects were similarly requested to record
their experience of time when exposed to active imagery, such as a
fleeing thief or a speeding train. Perhaps not surprisingly, the
following results were obtained:
“The
results, obtained from the present study, aside of asserting validity
for the Knapp’s scale of attitudes toward time, also augment this
diverse and varied body of knowledge about correlated differences in
time perception. The described results support the generally observed
pattern; subjects with passive, ‘oceanic’ time imagery experience
time as dilated, while time perception of subject with active time
imagery is accelerated. These conclusions are supported by the
comparisons of subjective estimates of time with their objectively
measured physical time intervals and by a wealth of related studies
of the sense of time, pervasive and ubiquitous, determinant of
manifold qualities of our experience.”
Krus,
D.J, & Fletcher, SH (1986) Time: A speeding train or wind-driven
sand? The estimation of fixed temporal intervals as related to images
of time. Perceptual
and Motor Skills,
62, 936-938.
The
recent history of our civilisation has been spent quite secure in the
notion that our subjective experience of time is invalid, unless it
conforms to the atomic clock upon which we rely to standardise our
time. However, it may be that there is some truth, some reality to
the subjective and individual experience that time is influenced by
thought .
An
evolution in thinking?
Should
we remove ourselves as the epicentre of thought, and allow the
possibility that thought exists as an (admittedly ill-defined) entity
with a functionality external to man and integral to the structure of
the material universe, we expose some interesting theoretical
possibilities for a new cosmology.
It
is possible, for example, to suggest that light may not travel at
186,000 miles per second, but rather that the universe is static and
timeless and it is only thought
that
'moves'. That light or matter-energy appears to move at the point
when we create and then simultaneously impose a relative speed upon
time, through the very act of observation. In this sense, it is not
the speed of light that we are observing, but rather the speed of our
ability
to
observe light. The finite speed of light, as such, may be a product
of our finite ability to measure or to perceive different aspects of
the universe and in this respect, the speed of light is not an
absolute in measurement, but rather the present absolute in our
capacity for observation or understanding.
Observation
or thought must function within the confines of physiological form
and all of the senses are subject to limitation within their
respective physiological form. Technology enhances our senses and
adds to the unaided vision the vistas afforded by the Hubble
telescope. Indeed, each age applies the ne
plus ultra
to
the physical world at a point where its technology or the ability of
its senses and its imaginations can perceive no further. For the
ancients it was the visible horizon, beyond which an unwary sailor
might fall from the edge of the world into the infinite void. For our
era, the speed of light has been the limit to observation and to the
calculations of physicists and mathematicians. However, recent
experiments in Bern, Switzerland, have 'discovered' the existence of
particles that may travel faster
than
the speed of light. Science may have to return to the drawing board
and our existing model of the universe may have to be reconstructed
to a different scale, its new boundaries fixed once more by the
newly-defined limits of our understanding, our reason and our
imagination.
With
every observation, the movement of thought is compelled to 'pause'
and observe itself. Through this very process, the light and
matter-energy that are the static plenum of the universe may be
compelled to adopt the transient — or at best fluid — form of
reality; to appear before us in the modality of that which Russell
refers to as 'sense-data' (See
Stanford
Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,
Feb 2011).
We
think
there
is movement in the universe, that the material universe is
characterised and defined by motion, when in reality all light and
all matter-energy within the universe may well be eternal and static,
relative to the movement of our thought. Light, energy and matter may
represent alternate, temporal, and entirely perceived forms of a
single static plenum, the substance that is
the
universe.
As
a by-product or brute consequence of this impossible attempt at the
creation of a 'here and now', matter-energy (hitherto timeless) must
immediately conform and confine itself to this instantaneous
condensation of space-time into the
moment;
into the briefest moment of an impossible 'present'. As a consequence
of this act, as a collateral expression of this confinement (of a
hitherto timeless universe into the immediate impossibility of a
present), reality as we know it, or as we perceive it to be, comes
bursting and exploding into existence, persisting in all of its
splendour for no longer than the duration of the very observation
that brought it into being.
If
thought is not entirely generated internally and does indeed posses
an exogenous component, that component must arise from somewhere, and
in some manner. It is at such a point that theology may be eager to
supply an answer. However, leaving aside the various notions of God
or divinity for the moment, we can assert with some certainty that
there are certain attributes of thought that may give clues to its
putative external origins.
If
it exists beyond us, thought
must
be formed somewhere and must move from that somewhere to its
perceptive state or locus 'within' the brain (if indeed that is where
it is perceived). Therefore, if we apply an external existence or
functionality to thought, and we are confident that we ourselves
exist, we must apply a movement of thought from this external focus
to the 'I' that believes itself to be thinking.
Of
course, we cannot assume that the self is static
relative
to the movement of thought. It can as easily be asserted that
exogenous thought is static and that it is our endogenous experience
of thought that 'moves'. In this sense, it must be affirmed that our
application of the idea of movement is in purely relative terms. The
difficulty in establishing which aspect of thought is in motion, or
whether there is motion at all, is analogous to looking out of the
window of a train and observing the movement of another train. Unless
we can catch sight of the platform, of some non-moving aspect to the
universe, we cannot tell which train is in motion. In like manner, we
cannot say for certain which aspect of thought is in motion;
endogenous or exogenous, only that there are two components of
thought and there is an interaction or ‘coming together’ between
the two.
Of
our own experience of endogenous thought, we can state with some
confidence that it arises in the future, is attempted at in the
present, and is recalled as having existed in the past. It is the
'movement' along this path (from future to past) that we refer to
when we apply the idea of 'motion' to thought.
Zeno's
paradoxes
“If
everything, when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that
which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any
moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.”
-
Aristotle,
Physics
VI:9,
239b5.
The
paradox of the arrow can be understood as follows. Imagine an arrow
that is shot from a bow and aimed at a particular target some
distance away. We can consider the distance from the tip of the arrow
to the point where the arrow strikes its target as the path that the
arrow must travel after it leaves the bow. If we further consider
that this length, this path of the arrow, can be divided into an
infinite number of points, then we are stating that the arrow must
pass an infinite number of points before it can strike the target. If
the arrow must pass an infinite number of points, it must take an
infinite amount of time to do so, as it must take a certain amount of
time in order for the arrow to pass two consecutive points.
Therefore, the arrow must take an infinite amount of time to reach its destination, and as such it can never reach its destination. In this manner, it is shown that in the context of our present view of reality, either movement itself or the persistence or 'sameness' of the arrow throughout the experiment is fundamentally impossible.
Therefore, the arrow must take an infinite amount of time to reach its destination, and as such it can never reach its destination. In this manner, it is shown that in the context of our present view of reality, either movement itself or the persistence or 'sameness' of the arrow throughout the experiment is fundamentally impossible.
This
paradox, along with many other variants of it, exposes us to logical
problems that our present view of reality cannot yet surmount. This
is quite simply because our present view of reality is likely to be
mistaken and somewhat biased by the historical significance that we
afford to classical Newtonian physics. Such doctrines of physics are
predicated upon the impossible existence of a 'present' and
upon
the notion that observation is passive and that thought functions
entirely within the confines of the brain.
The
famous double-slit experiment of quantum mechanics, in conjunction
with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, can fairly be considered as
belonging to the family of Zeno's paradoxes. Together, these
contemporary anomalies expose us to the same essential truth; namely
that the realities of space-time, matter-energy and
thought
cannot be reconciled within the context of our current view of
reality.
Rather
than continuing with the present effort to reconcile paradoxical
observations with a flawed conception of reality, perhaps what needs
to occur is the revision of our conception of reality and its
reconciliation with Zeno, quantum mechanics and philosophy. When we
do this, we may come to suspect that Zeno's arrow and its motion are
as much a product of the act of observation as the behaviour or form
of atomic particles are a product of their being
observed.
Zeno's paradox is resolved if we posit that the arrow that left the
bow is not
the
same arrow that has arrived at the target. In the interim, not only
the arrow but also the entire universe
has
been reformed as it attempts to conform to the act of observation.
To
be and not to be
In
many respects, throughout the history of civilization, from the
Greeks to today, evolution in a philosophical or intellectual sense
has been more about breaking free of dogmatics, rather than a natural
evolution of thinking. The paddock wherein thoughts might be
cultivated into the ephemeral reality or the belief systems of an age
is not equally fertile. There are patches where particular ideas
might receive more light and rain, and patches that remain forever in
the shade. Here and there seeds of equal or even greater potential
will struggle much harder to reach the daylight and to remain alive.
This
disparity in the potency and vigour of various theories is rarely, if
ever, correlative with their intellectual merit. The longevity of an
idea reflects its ability to attach itself to the mind of the masses,
which ultimately is the same soil that must sustain a particular
notion through the ages. One wonders if the philosophy of Leibniz
would have survived to this day were it not for the fact that it
ultimately comes to rest upon the doorstep of theology and hence can
attach itself to the universal and timeless appeal of God. In a
similar vein, the philosophy or social theory of writers such as
Wilde remains somewhat alive because much of his popular theatre and
drama has attached itself to the universal and timeless appeal of
humour and entertainment. To this end, consider the fame of Wilde's
Importance
of being Earnest as
compared to that of his anarchic essay The
Soul of Man under Socialism.
The
potential for an evolution in our thinking is infinite, and yet it is
almost equally limited by the constant embargo of dogma and the
temporal necessity to pay homage to the accepted mores of a
particular era. Arguably, from the pre-Socratics onward the intellect
appears to have evolved in a 'one step forward, two steps backwards'
sort of fashion; that the theories of Anaximander or Anaxagoras were
stymied not by their lack of potential or dead-endedness, but rather
by the ability of established dogma to silence all heretics — a
censure that is as alive today as it was in ancient times.
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