Sunyata—At The Root Of Being—bwinwnbwi

Reposted From October 13, 2011

“It is not that the self is empty, but that emptiness is self; not that things are empty, but that emptiness is things…
On the field of sunyata, each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself.”—Nishitani

Existentialism And Mysticism concluded

Jan. ’78

“All things that are in the world,” according to Nishitani,
“are linked together, one way or the other. Not a
single thing comes into being without some relationship
to every other thing. Scientific intellect thinks here in terms of
natural laws of necessary causality; mythico-poetic imagination
perceives an organic, living connection; philosophic reason
contemplates an absolute One. But on a more essential level, a system
of circuminsession has to be seen here, according to which, on the
field of sunyata, all things are in a process of becoming master and
servant to one another. In this system, each thing is itself in not
being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its being is illusion
in its truth and truth in its illusion. This may sound strange the
first time one hears it, but in fact it enables us for the first time
to conceive of a force by virtue of which all things are gathered
together and brought into relationship with one another, a force
which, since ancient times, has gone by the name of “nature” (physis).

“To say that a thing is not itself means that, while continuing to be
itself, it is in the home-ground of everything else. Figuratively
speaking, its roots reach across into the ground of all other things
and help to hold them up and keep them standing. It serves as a
constitutive element of their being so that they can be what they are,
and thus provides an ingredient of their being. That a thing is itself
means that all other things, while continuing to be themselves, are in
the home-ground of that thing; that precisely when a thing is on its
own home-ground, everything else is there too; that the roots of every
other thing spread across into its home-ground. This way that
everything has of being on the home-ground of everything else, without
ceasing to be on its own home-ground, means that the being of each
thing is held up, kept standing, and made to be what it is by means of
the being of all other things: or, put the other way around, that each
thing holds up the being of every other thing, keeps it standing, and
makes it what it is. In a word, it means that all things ‘are’ in the
‘world.’” (Religion and Nothingness p.149)

To be sure, the sunyata reality referred to above by
Nishitani is not your typical fair. No wonder the very idea of
mysticism generates so much controversy, especially among academics!
But, this nothingness of the mystics, on some level at least, found its way into the
existentialism of European philosophy. And, as far as the “reality of Mysticism” goes, I would only defer to what Dr. Folkart said on the very first day of class:
“The claim to that other reality cannot be merely stated; its credibility
must come through a direct experience of it.”

POSTSCRIPT to the above post: As Douglas Hofstadter would say, I’m jumping out of the system here—errr jumping out of my story. In the next few sentences I’m going to structure the philosophies of Sartre and Nishitani in terms of symbolic structure — a symbolism for reality, life, and reason. I’m jumping out of my story because I believe that this post (on Nishitani) and yesterday’s post (on Nishitani and Sartre) are embedded in a vocabulary rich enough for me to suggest that we live in a universe that can be symbolized thusly: Let ~~b, or being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is represent reality. Reality grows in complexity until it becomes alive, or, in other words, ~~b reality liberates ~bb, i.e., life. Increasing complexity continues to move life forward until, once again, at a sufficient level of complexity, life liberates reason, which, in turn, liberates “civilization.” Bottom line here is that when Nishitani talks about sunyata he is talking about the reality of being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is; and when Sartre says, “the human project, suspended in nothingness, projects the self ceaselessly outside of itself,” he is also talking about sunyata,– the sunyata of a higher dimension, i.e., a higher dimension of being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is. In this new dimension, ~bb represents Sartre’s for-itself consciousness, which, in turn, is discovered embedded in b~b, i.e., aesthetic continuum/nature. In the aesthetic continuum/nature one discovers emotions, beauty and truth—the medium where confirmation of scientific hypotheses occur (physical events).In other words, Nishitani’s sunyata is not inconsistent with Sartre’s for-itself consciousness, or the ego/nothingness that condemns man/woman to freedom; it’s just that in Sartre’s being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is “the human project, suspended in nothingness, projects the self ceaselessly outside of itself,” while in Nishitani’s being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is “the being of each thing is held up, kept standing, and made to be what it is by means of the being of all other things: or, put the other way around, that each thing holds up the being of every other thing, keeps it standing, and makes it what it is.”

In a word, the above means that “all things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Innate Structuring Capacity—Reciprocal Movement

Jan. ’12

Reciprocal Movement, –The Carrier Of Free Thought, The Same Free Thought That Brings Into Being Language, Myth, Science, Ethics, And Civilization

Identifying Sartre’s philosophy as structuralism is, I am aware, pushing the envelope. However, an authority on structuralism has proposed this option (without, I might add, elaborating on it.) “One might go as far as to say…that structuralism is analogous to Sartre’s view of consciousness — it is what it is not, and it is not what it is.” [Jean-Marie Benoist, A Structural Revolution, 1975, p. 1] In Sartre’s book Being And Nothingness, his chapter on Being-For-Itself is subtitled “Immediate Structures of the For-Itself.” [Jean-Paul Sartre, Being And Nothingness, 1966, p. 119] Structure is not hidden in Sartre; it’s just that on the whole Sartre’s book is a polemic against reading structure as anything more than appearance.

In the representation of Sartre’s thought as “consciousness is what it is not, and it is not what it is,” we find reciprocal movement, the same reciprocal movement encountered, in one form or another, in all the structuralists I have discussed hitherto in this paper. Specifically, Sartre defines the consciousness of the transcending For-itself (our self-space) as: “Consciousness is a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.” [Ibid. p. 801] In an extrapolation from Sartre’s definition of the consciousness, Benoist describes that relationship as: “it is what it is not, and it is not what it is,” while I describe it as: being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is. In both cases, however, we end up with a definition for reciprocal movement.

This double movement is represented on many levels in Sartre’s exegesis on being and nothingness. This double movement becomes very specific in Sartre’s description of his pre-reflective Cogito. In so far as we find ”nothingness” at the center of Cogito, consciousness per se must be understood to be set apart from itself, therefore, Sartre’s pre-reflective Cogito will always form one pole of our conscious experience while the “objects” of consciousness will take their place at the other pole of conscious experience. In this way, Sartre is able to dispense with Descartes’ Cogito on the grounds that consciousness cannot be separated from its object. This condition, where the pre-reflective Cogito becomes a preexistent condition for the conscious awareness of objects, establishes the double movement of conscious reflection — the object of consciousness less the pre-reflective Cogito, and the pre-reflective Cogito less the object of consciousness. Depending on where “you” focus your concern, the content of consciousness is either pushed to the front of consciousness (the unreflective consciousness), or, the object of consciousness is pushed into the background, as the “negation of consciousness” is brought into the foreground (the reflected upon object of consciousness).

Together, our pre-reflective Cogito and the object of consciousness form our conscious experience of the knower-known dyad (this is also the origin of “time of mind,” the same experience that so perplexed St. Augustine that he mused, -- “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.)In so far as this double movement turns on the pivot point of pure negation, the known exists for the knower, but the knower can never be fully known. As self-consciousness rises in consciousness, it is denied the possibility of becoming fully self-aware. This result, the incompleteness of self, brings us back to Sartre’s original definition of consciousness, or, “consciousness is such that in its being its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.” This movement, the symbol-generating movement of free thought, the movement that makes thinking possible, emancipates language, myth, science, and morality. In the absence of this movement, thinking (or thought) is restricted to the manipulation of signs—mere sensual indicators, minus the symbols that carry the significance of those same indicators.

Human Spirit’s Self-Liberation

The Next Level—Our Modern Episteme
Jan. ’12

Pre-moderns (the human spirit’s pursuit of self-liberation), as participating agents in an environment conceived holistically, objectify mind and culture in and through creative acts of differentiation. This process evolves out of the acquisition of life’s necessities and into the creation of more complex societal structures, e.g., kinship systems, sacred and profane boundaries, talismans, origin myths, etc. Thus, myth, or the mythical-religious consciousness of man, for Cassirer, is understood to be the precursor to the technological culture that, from the standpoint of utility, increases our ability to do work, as is makes life easier for all. However, this is not the end of the story. Self-liberation or the movement towards constancy, endurance and certainty continues to direct the human spirit’s progressive movement towards new forms of self-expression.

For Cassirer, myth and “myth making” becomes an expression of the human spirit/culture as it seeks to liberate itself from the restrictive conditions that hinder and retard the self-liberation process. In our present modern episteme, as Foucault likes to call it, however, the myth-centered universe of the Middle Ages has given ground to a more matter-centered, self-centered universe, a universe that, for Cassirer, represents a more spiritually liberated state, but, for Foucault, represents just another power/knowledge driven episteme, catering to the needs of those who desire and benefit most from power/knowledge relationships. Shortly, I will challenge this assumption by Foucault, but first I must add a bit more structure to Cassirer’s self-liberation world view. This structure comes from an unlikely source, the philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre.

Pursuit Of Self-Liberation

The Evolution Of Symbolic Forms
Jan. ’80

Myth, or the mythical-religious consciousness of man, for Cassirer, is understood to be the proto-reality out of which symbolic forms evolve e.g. language, art, religion, science etc. These symbolic forms, in turn, are thought to result from the human spirit’s progressive movement towards more liberated forms of self-expression. From within the matrix of mythical thought, according to Cassirer, evolves the differentiation of the “I” of our personality and, over time, the more potent symbolic forms that define the present state of our modern knowledge and belief.

The origin of the self-liberation process (and knowledge in general), is first discovered in mythical thought as the capacity to order and differentiate, and then the self liberation process, in its capacity to transcend its own reality, metamorphizes into higher levels of symbolic expression. These higher levels of symbolic expression move self-liberation in the direction toward more constancy, endurance and certainty. Cassirer informs us:

“For a glance at the development of the various symbolic forms shows us that their essential achievement is not that they copy the outward world in the inward world or that they simply project a finished inner world outward, but rather that the two factors of “inside” and “outside,” of “I” and “reality” are determined and delimited from one another only in these symbolic forms and through their mediation. …The crucial achievement of every symbolic form lies precisely in the fact that it does not have the limit between I and reality as preexistent and established for all time but must itself create this limit–and that each fundamental form creates it in a different way.” (Ernst Cassirer, Mythical Thought, 1955, p. 155-156)

Cassirer tells us that Pre-moderns, as they engaged their environment through emotions, desires and work, acquired the ability, via symbolic representation, to objectify nature–the nature of both “inner and outer reality.” There was (and is) a double movement that arises from one’s interaction with his/her environment; in one direction there develops an objectification of one’s self-nature and in the other direction there arises the objectification of the social and cultural contents of society. From Cassirer’s point of view, art, myth, magic and ritual are co-creative products arising from this objectifying movement, which in turn, arises from the work that people do in society. “For the form of society,” Cassirer states, “is not absolutely and immediately given any more than is the objective form of nature, the regularity of our own world of perception. Just as nature comes into being through a theoretical interpretation and elaboration of sensory contents, so to the structure of society is mediated and ideally conditioned reality.” (Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Smbolic Form, 3 vol., vol. 2, Mythical Thought, 1955, pl 193) In his three volume work, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer concentrates his focus on the nature and origins of symbolic form as it first arises in language and myth and then, over time, develops into the theoretical orientations of scientific thought. The utility of symbolic forms, if that is the right word, is not just about a “thing” to be apprehended, it is about a movement towards constancy, endurance and certainty, and that objective applies to both culture and mind.

The Human Spirit’s Pursuit Of Self-Liberation

A Brief Timeout From My Journal Travelogues
Jan. 2012

In the next series of posts, I will continue to make the case for a different way to understand “reality” and “self”—the carrier of free thought, i.e., the observer/observed relationship. I will describe existence, life, knowledge, and meaning—the meaning of what it means to be intelligently alive in a spiritual universe. Cassirer’s philosophy and Sartre’s for-itself philosophy, especially its structural significance, will be noted and further developed. My old post—“Sunyata At The Root Of Being” will be re-posted and following that post I will present a diagram that describes the observer/observed relationship. The last post, the post before my return to my northwest bicycle trip, will be a review of Ron Krumpos’ excellent e-book on mysticism: “The Greatest Achievement In Life--Living In Conscious Oneness.”

“Meaning becomes the moving force of self-transcendence, which reaches beyond the limited horizon and longs for the whole.” (Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe)

If a universal structure is co-contemporary with the world and its history then we should be able to find this structure waiting to be discovered. I believe this structure has always existed, unconsciously no doubt, in the historical context of people and culture. Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, especially as it is described in The Savage Mind, is just one attempt at disclosing this structure. The holism/ elementarism debate,–the tension that exists between group demands and individual desires–is another attempt at disclosing this structure. This tension exists in all cultures, but varies in degree. For instance, it appears as though Pre-modern man, in the early stages of his development, was able to maintain cultural stability while at the same time maintaining a holistic perception of his environment. This ability, in the words of the anthropologist Levy-Bruhl, “sets Pre-modern man apart from his modern predecessors.” The qualities that we take for granted, or our ability to differentiate the space that surrounds us ad infinitum, did not exist for Pre-moderns. Rather, his/her experience of the participation process was more restrictive and inclusive within what Levy-Bruhl called the “synthetic whole”. In other words, Pre-modern society was considerably different from modern society. Still, all societies must have some mechanism to preserve and perpetuate the social roles that are vital to the on going existence of the group. For Pre-moderns, as for the rest of us, this mechanism lies in our work. In this respect the investigations of Ernst Cassirer become extremely helpful.

Alfred North Whitehead—The Bootstrapping Of Sentient Nature

For Whitehead, insofar as occasions conform to their environment, insofar as the ‘self-aim’ conforms to its immediate past, there is determinism, but insofar as any entity modifies its response through the subjective element of feeling, there is freedom.

Discussion In Thin Air Concluded

July, ’80

“Whitehead,” said Stan, “spent the first half of his academic career as a Professor of Mathematics. He and Bertrand Russell attempted to prove that the axioms of number theory could be deduced from the premises of formal logic. Their book on that subject, Principia Mathematic, is quite famous. Whitehead also published another book on mathematics in which he formalized a set of rules and theorems, from which the theorems of Euclidean geometry are derivable. All this was done, for the most part, before Einstein published his famous theories. Whitehead, not surprisingly, took a keen interest in Einstein’s published works. And, like Cassirer, he wrote a book on relativity theory; only in his book, he disagreed with Einstein. As I recall he didn’t like the elevation of the velocity of light to a law of nature and he was critical of the flexible nature of space. Whitehead’s formalism was based on the premise of uniform space, or more precisely on the ‘non-contingent uniformity in spatial relations.’ As might be expected, in the scientific community, his ideas fell out of favor, but they played a major role in the metaphysics that he developed latter in life. In that metaphysics, Whitehead lifted the ‘process’ out of the philosopher (Kant) and put it squarely back into nature where he felt it belonged. Man, the symbol-generating animal, became instead, a product of process reality.”

“I guess this is as good a time as any to bid you fine fellows ado,” interrupted Peter, “It’s past my bedtime. But thanks for making my sleeping bag look so delicious. See you in the morning.”

“Sleep tight,” Stan replied, and then after throwing another log on the fire he continued, “what you were saying about ‘organic unities of time’ constituting our inner sense of being really made me think about Whitehead. He too believed that ‘whole movements’ or ‘epochs’ constituted individual unities of experience. Is anybody familiar with what I am talking about?”

“Yeah, it’s called animism,” replied Noel, “Eh, I’m only joking. Sure I’ve heard of Whitehead’s metaphysics, but I haven’t studied it in any depth. As I recall he turned nature into a kind of sentient being, and thus sidestepped all the epistemological problems that arise in subject-object opposition and in the self-world dichotomy. But, in his philosophy, didn’t he understand occasions as processes of self-development, or even self-creation?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Stan responded. “The idea was that an occasion was a ‘prehending entity’ in active interaction with its whole environment. Whitehead thought of these ‘prehending entities’ as processes of self-formation with ‘subjective aim.’ They began as simple overlapping events, evolved, and, as they say, the rest is history. Right!”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” Tony replied, “and now it is my turn to bid you fine fellows ado. And, like my friend Peter before me, I want to thank you all for making my sleeping bag look so delicious. Goodnight.”

“What, you don’t want to hear about Whitehead? He’s got some really interesting ideas. His insights speak directly to what we’re talking about.”

“As that philosophical cowboy, Kenny Rogers, likes to sing,” Noel interrupted, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Actually, I think its time for me to call it a night too. See you with the sun. Errr, scratch that. See you when I see ya.”

“Well it looks like it’s just you and me kid, or are you calling it a night, too,” said Stan.

“Whitehead was another one of my philosophy teacher’s favorite people, but I don’t remember much about him,” I replied.

“Gee, your teacher was doing some interesting work. What was his name anyway?”

“John Gill,” I said.

“Never heard of him! What university did you go to?”

“Central Michigan University,” I replied.

“Never heard of that university, either. It’s not a Big Ten school, eh,” said Stan.

“What about Whitehead,” I said, “Tell me what he believed?”

“Sure kid,” replied Stan. “But it’s getting late. Anyway, he was full of ideas on how to make everything fit together. Ultimately, what is going on in Whitehead’s metaphysics—in addition to eliminating the subjective /objective split that occurs in the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, and Kant, is a ‘bootstrapping’ of self-development, a bringing into existence a more self-fulfilling, self-expressive, sentient nature.” He even managed to incorporate free will and divinity into his thesis, or the theory of the ‘bootstrapping’ of self-development. For Whitehead, insofar as occasions conform to their environment, insofar as the ‘self-aim’ conforms to its immediate past, there is determinism, but insofar as any entity modifies its response through the subjective element of feeling, there is freedom. Feeling and freedom are codependent for Whitehead, and divinity--God by any other name, is in touch with all feelings. Divinity is inside all agonizing screams, especially screams caused by injustice. He is also there, however, in all hopes, joys, and happiness, in addition to fears, regrets, and sorrows. Good feelings move the world forward to a better place. It is feeling that gives subjective aim to occasions. We encounter, in good feelings, the ‘allure of realization.’ For Whitehead, it is possible to create a more humane, peaceful, and loving world. Whitehead said as much, and Gandhi told us how to proceed, ‘You must be the change you want to see in the world’—both in life and love. Well, that’s about it. I feel my sleeping bag calling me. Are you staying up?”

“For a little while,” I said. “I’m not at all tired.”

“Well, goodnight then; I’d be throwing another log on that fire if I were you,” replied Stan. “See you in the morning.”

Realm Of Objectivity—Pythagoras, Einstein, Whitehead

Discussion In Thin Air Continues

July, ‘80

“Stan I think,” Noel interrupted, “you a victim of your own success. And, I might add, welcome to the club. We’ve all been there. The hardest lesson we have to learn is when to stop when we’re ahead!”

“You mean you’re disagreeing with me,” Stan replied.

“Well yes, because I didn’t say any of that,” Noel responded, “you’re just getting carried away with your own extrapolations.”

“I am?” said Stan, “But I thought you were insinuating, ideally at least, that the function of the conceptual symbolic form was to reduce everything to number, or at least to the simplest possible abstractions.”

“That’s true enough,” Noel replied. “But I didn’t compare Einstein’s success to Pythagoras’s failure, nor did I remotely imply that between the two theories, there was not much difference.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Stan, “I guess I saw it a bit differently. What about Minkowski’s world—a world reduced to numbers? Besides number, the space-time continuum, and the constancy of the velocity of light, what else is left to say about the idea of a ‘fixed and permanent’ realm of objectivity? Anyway, didn’t you say the goal of the conceptual symbolic form was to simplify, simplify to the most necessary relations, simplify to the simplest application of mathematics and law? And didn’t you further say that that determinism must be weighed against the creative aspect of the only symbol-generating animal we know of--man? Did I hear you wrong or what?”

“What’s your point Stan?” replied Noel. “Sure I said those things, but isn’t it a bit of a stretch to link Einstein with Pythagoras, I mean did Pythagoras give us the bomb?

Pythagoras did one better than that,” replied Stan. ”He showed us how to generate harmonies from strings, but don’t get me started on that. It’s not strings were talking about here, its symbolic form and function. From that point of view, Pythagoras was doing the very same thing as Einstein, and, if I heard you correctly, even Einstein’s theory will one day get replaced with a new form of symbolic representation, a new theory that will increase our predictive power and broaden the range of our perceptual field. If you ask me, Einstein and Pythagoras were brothers in arms!”

“You win Stan,” responded Noel, “tell me more about what I said.”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” said Stan, “I’ve lost my train of thought. But I do have a few more observations, albeit a little off the topic.”

“Go for it,” said Noel, “it’s time to move on anyway.”

“Well, it’s not totally new,” Stan replied, “its just that when I was listening to your bantering, I felt like I had heard it all before. In my youth I studied Alfred North Whitehead. In fact, he inspired my desire to attend Harvard. He ended his career teaching there. Did you read him Tony?”

“No, I shy away from metaphysics,” responded Tony. “But I know about him. You can’t go to Harvard without becoming familiar with prestigious alumnae.”

Teaching The Boys How To Understand The Conversation In Thin Air

Space, As A Phenomena That We Ascribe To Nature According To Law,--Is A Geometrical Presupposition

Discussion In Thin Air Continues

July, ’80

“Slow down,” I said, “I need to know if I’m keeping up with you guy’s or not. Are you saying that, in effect, space and time are to problem solving what muscles are to locomotion?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that Dave, but yes;” replied Noel, “We are able to predict events in our field of perception because of the meaningful connections that space and time bring to the sensuous contents of that field. However, what gets revealed to us is less about what’s ‘really out there’ as it is about answering the questions that we bring to the table of our understanding.”

“Hold on Noel, what about the effects, the predictable consequences of Einstein’s theory?” said Tony. “If they don’t occur in reality, then where do they occur?”

“Right where they are predicted to occur,” Noel replied, “In the surrounding manifold of our sensual experience. Nature, or the name that we give to that manifold, takes in everything we can see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and explain. Space, as an ontological entity, in the theory of general relativity, doesn’t exist. The being of space has been replaced with purely methodological considerations. What space ‘is,’ or whether any definite character can be attributed to it, is no longer a concern. Rather, we must be concerned with the geometrical presuppositions, the ‘ideal meanings’ that get used in the interpretation of the phenomena that we ascribe to nature according to law.”

“I’m getting tired of this,” said Tony. “Science gets done and benefits follow, which, really, is all we have to worry about, right Stan? How come you’re so quiet, anyway? That’s not like you. Are you sick or something?”

“I’m fine. You know me, quiet as a mouse, but sharp as a tack,” said Stan. There’s a time for talking and time for listening. I’ve been enjoying the latter. I’m not sure how much of this conversation the boys have actually caught. I’d like to try to catch them up; that is, after I throw another log on the fire.”

“Always the educator, eh Stan,” said Tony, “but that’s why we love ya.”

“Take nature for instance,” responded Stan, “for you Tony nature is independent of the observer. It’s a bit complicated, but knowable, and it exists before one begins to experiment on it. That’s not the case for Noel. For him, nature does not exist independent from the observer. In fact, the questions raised concerning nature, for Noel at least, actually bring nature into existence. And, he looks to quantum mechanics to substantiate that claim. On that level, the physical world seems to emerge from the observations made on it. Any argument yet, fellows?”

“You’ve got the stage,” replied Noel, “go for it.”

“Now for the hard part,” said Stan, “On the one hand we have Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and on the other hand we have quantum theory. Both theories are proven successes, but when taken together they are out of joint. The equations that describe the gravitational field are completely different from the one’s that describe subatomic interactions. Moreover, space and time are intimately related in relativity theory. They are dependent on the state of motion of the observer. In quantum theory space and time are not tied to existence at all. As far as man’s limited reason is concerned, there is no quantum world, just an abstract quantum physical description. Given this confusing state of affairs, it would be doctrinaire and dogmatic to say that one theory is better than the other, or that one is talking sense and the other is lacking in it. Right fellows?”

“Who’s patronizing now,” replied Tony.

“Guilty as charged,” responded Stan, “I guess nobody’s perfect! For Tony, the mind’s ability to discover the true nature of ‘reality’ is a religious belief, just like it was for Einstein. If Einstein had a religious belief, it was that the world is comprehensible and objective.”

“I’d probably go to church, if I could sit next to Einstein,” Tony replied.

“As I was saying,” said Stan, “under the rule of cause and effect everything has its place and time, but that is not what works for Noel. Knowledge, for him, constitutes what we take to be the physical world, and new knowledge may substantially alter that world. In other words, for Noel, over time, both knowledge and the perceptual field that we find ourselves in changes according to how it is symbolically constituted. Both Cassirer and Kant agreed on this. The function of the mind’s capacity to connect meaning to sensual contents goes beyond sensual contents and establishes an order among the connections between them. The necessary elements of every assertion—being and non-being, similarity and dissimilarity, unity and plurality, identity and opposition—cannot be represented by any content of perception, but through them, ‘ideal meanings’ get created, and when applied to the perceptual field, they fill our perceptions with meaning. That process, over time, alters both the meaning and the content of our perceptual field. But, what it comes down to in the end is testing the deductive consequences of those ‘ideal meanings’ against the sensual contents in the field of our perceptions. That certainly is the way it works in Einstein’s universe, but, according to Noel, Einstein’s success represents little more than that failed attempt by the old Greek, Pythagoras, when he tried to reduce a whole universe of meaning to a few integral numbers some 2,500 years ago.”

Even More Important--Use Value

Conversation In Thin Air Continues

July, ’80

“So what are you saying,” I interrupted, “How exactly did Cassirer rescue us?”

“I’m saying,” said Noel, “that the conceptual symbolic form, the one that reduces everything to the lowest possible denominator, is a preeminent success; except its meaning is only one of the many meanings that are generated by the multi-functional meanings of symbolic form. Success, when measured on the level of the conceptual symbolic form, reduces, to the simplest possible ‘ideal meaning.’ That success, along with every other meaningful success, has contributed to the survival of our species. In the evolutionary scheme of things, the innovations of sensed space and time, and mathematical space and time have been absolutely essential to the survival of our species.”

“Space and time are an invention; that contradicts everything,” exclaimed Tony.
“Everybody listen up. No more whiskey for Noel. He’s cut off, as of right now.”

“Very funny,” replied Noel, “but if you think about it, the theory of relativity gives a clear indication of what Cassirer was talking about, that the meaning of space and time is found in its use value, not in the so called ‘objective world’. Think about it. In relativity theory ordinary methods of space and time measurement fall short. We no longer can use rigid bodies and ordinary clocks as measures of space and time. In Einstein’s calculations, space and time are reduced to mere effects.”

Most Important—What An Event Means

Conversation In Thin Air Continues
July, ’80

“I read somewhere,” said Noel, “that in the world of space-time nothing changes; that all that has been and all that will be just ‘is.’ Like in a crystal ball, everything in space-time is just there, in Parmenidean stillness.”

“You’ve got to stop reading those ‘new age’ books, Noel,” responded Tony. “Nothing is quite that simple.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Noel, “it’s never simple, and that’s exactly the point. In Minkowski’s ‘absolute world,’ time, as a becoming, is abandoned. We have not learned how to express time as a becoming, either linguistically or mathematically. The temporal process that psychologically constitutes our inner sense of consciousness, in Minkowski’s ‘absolute world,’ gets represented in the absolute rigidity of a mathematical formula. It becomes time as a state of being. That kind of time, as H.G. Wells pointed out a long time ago, sees a person only as ‘slices of time,’ like pictures in a photo album. The time that gets represented in a photo album lacks the flowing, wheeling, qualitative determinations that constitute our inner sense of time. Without that kind of time there wouldn’t be any photographs at all because there wouldn’t be anybody to take the pictures. In space-time the ‘now’ embraces the ‘whole life,’ but totally left out of that picture is time as a becoming. Cassirer comes to the rescue here.

“According to Cassirer, the time where ‘the whole precedes the parts,’ where ‘organic unities’ are formed, that time constitutes personal experience--our inner sense of becoming. In that time we become from one moment to the next our future. In that time, the continuity of our becoming signifies living flux, which is given to our consciousness only as flux, a transitional flux within which arises the meaning of symbolism. Whether we take mathematical time to be the t-coordinate of an undifferentiated continuum or the ‘absolute now’ of Minkowski’s space-time, for Cassirer, either way, it’s still only a conceptual symbolic form, a symbolic form that is produced by our personal time, our time of becoming.”

Einstein’s Universe Attacks Your Sense Of Freedom And Dignity

Conversation In Thin Air Continues

July, ’80

“Okay, Tony, if you want to jump into the thick of it, than lets do it,” replied Noel. “The space-time interval, what’s it based on?”

“The speed of light, or rather the constancy of the velocity of light,” Tony responded. “You and I share the same space-time, but my space and your space, and my time and your time, are the same only when we are at rest relative to each other. We live in our own private worlds of space and time, but in the new public domain of space-time, space and time are the same for everybody. In fact, the intrinsic structure of that space-time accounts for the constancy of the velocity of light for all observers.”

“Do you know why?” said Noel.

“Sure,” responded Tony, “it has to do with the implications of relativity theory. In the mathematics of space-time, Minkowski, Einstein’s mathematics professor, showed that even though the Pythagorean theorem does not work in space-time, something like the Pythagorean theorem is still at work. In Euclid’s geometry the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its two sides. In the geometry of space-time, the distance between two events, like in the Pythagorean theorem, is equal to the time interval squared minus the space interval squared, however, that minus is the reverse of what takes place in the geometry of Euclid. Subtracting, instead of adding the two intervals, produces four-dimensional space-time. In space-time the distance between two events connected by a light ray becomes zero. Light rays coming at us from outer space take time to reach us, but in space-time no distance is traveled. That’s one of the incredible results that follow from Einstein’s theory. And that is also why the speed of light is constant for all observers. In space-time light is just there, everywhere.”

“I’m just a little confused,” said Noel, “If light doesn’t go anywhere, how can we know that the length of a space-time interval between any two events is the same for everybody?”

“Because of the constancy of light’s velocity,” Tony replied.

“So what you’re saying is that time doesn’t change, just space?” said Noel. “Is that the answer? Don’t answer that. There’s ‘no’ time to answer, right? Anyway, Einstein’s field equations dictate the space of space-time, and, as you have all ready pointed out Tony, we can agree upon the measured value of space-time. Is that about right?”

“Well, a stab in time will get you nine,” Tony muttered. “You know damn well what I’m talking about Noel. It’s just that you don’t like it. You won’t accept that in the cosmic scheme of things, you and I, and everybody else, are just world lines. That past, present, and future may, or may not, possess meaning scares the hell out of you. You hate the idea that your private frame of reference might be limited and meaningful only to you. Einstein’s universe attacks your sense of freedom, your dignity. Well I’ve got news for you. Nobody was more concerned about dignity than the old man. He didn’t bemoan the fact that he wasn’t God. It was enough for him to peer into the heart of nature, or the mind of God if you prefer to call it that, and understand what was really going on. It was enough for him to know that all human beings had this gift, but how it was used was a person’s own business. Denying it, however, was not dignified. It was plain stupid.”