Switching from Ptolemaic to Copernican Cosmology, … a Dumbing-Down?

Representations of the Universe are NOT the Universe.

Pre-enlightenment Europe saw ‘the centre’ as ‘the centre of comings and goings’, and entrances and departures from walled cities had symbolic significance as in birth and death.  In the enlightenment, the ‘centre’ became ‘the centre of control’ with visual information flowing inward and controls [and projectiles] radiating outwards.

The ‘centrism’ part of ‘geo-centrism’ in the Ptolemaic view of the universe has a lot in common with the modern physics view.  For instance, in the modern physics view of an expanding universe, the expansion is relative to any point in the universe; i.e. every point is the centre of universe because every point is the centre of comings and goings [receptions and transmissions in a wave dynamical sense].   In this understanding of ‘centre’, the whole is reflected in the part and the part is reflected in the whole, as in the storm-cell in the atmosphere.  This is the sort of yin/yang topology that associates with a wave-dynamical view; e.g. storm-cell forms are relational forms in a continually transforming relational spatial atmosphere-plenum.   

The ‘relational form’, though it is a secondary ‘visual apparition’ [variation in the relational structure of space] emerging from the nexus of relational influences within the continually transforming relational spatial plenum, has become the basis, in ‘astronomy’ and ‘mechanics’ for our constructing ‘representations’ of the universe in terms of notional ‘independent visual-forms-taken-to-be-independent-object-things’ and ‘what these notional visual-forms-taken-to-be—independent-object-things do’.

But as Mach, Nietzsche, Schroedinger and others have reminded us, these visible relational forms are ‘variations in the structure of space’.  To paraphrase Poincaré; “it is ‘convenient’ to say that ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, ‘Katrina is moving northwest towards the Gulf Coast’, ‘Katrina is ravaging New Orleans’, ‘Katrina is moving overland and dissipating’, … because such ‘representation’ that treats ‘relational forms’ [variations in the relational structure of space] as independent things-in-themselves that inhabit a notional absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’, … simplify our discourse and/or our equations [mathematical ‘representations’]

“the motions of the Universe are the same whether we adopt the Ptolemaic or the Copernican mode of view” of celestial dynamics, … “both views are, indeed, equally correct.” i.e. the geocentric and the heliocentric views are merely two “interpretations” of a Universe that “is only given once.”. Mach goes on to warn; “we … should beware lest the intellectual machinery, employed in the representation of the world on the stage of thought, be regarded as the basis of the real world.”

 

Both of these views are based on ‘secondary effects’; i.e. they impute ‘independent being’ to ‘variations in the relational structure of space’.  Once we use ‘the metaphysics of language’ [Nietzsche] to name and define them, they are ready to become ‘nouns’ [subjects] that inflect verbs so that we can make them into jumpstart authors of their own behaviour and get entirely rid of the physical substrate of the ‘continually transforming relational spatial plenum’. 

“And just as our Copernicus said to us : It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of astronomy are expressible in a much simpler language ; this one would say: It is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round, since thus the laws of mechanics are expressible in a much simpler language. . This does not preclude maintaining that absolute space, that is to say the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence. Hence, this affirmation; ‘the earth turns round’ has no meaning, since it can be verified by no experiment; since such an experiment, not only could not be either realized or dreamed by the boldest Jules Verne, but can not be conceived of without contradiction; or rather these two propositions; ‘the earth turns round,’ and, ‘it is more convenient to suppose the earth turns round’ have the same meaning; there is nothing more in the one than in the other. “ — Henri Poincaré, ‘Science and Hypothesis’, Ch. VII Relative Motion and Absolute Motion

The reason that this technique of objectifying relational forms ‘works for us’ is because we think of ourselves, not as ‘relational forms’ but as ‘independent reason-driven systems’ that operate as ‘inhabitants’ of a ‘habitat’ that is independent of its ‘inhabitants’.   This is an egotistical view of ‘self’ that depicts us in our mind’s eye as ‘powerboaters’ with our own internal process driven and directed development and behaviour, rather than as ‘sailboaters’ who derive our power and steerage from the relational dynamics in which we are uniquely, situationally included.

As Nietzsche says, the notion of ‘independent existence’ or ‘being’ comes from our ego.  The phrase ‘the sun rises’ does a lot of convenient simplifying, and so do phrases like ‘Dick and Jane run up the hill’; i.e. it’s as if we can break into the activity continuum and restart it from the notional dynamics of local independently-existing things-in-themselves [thanks to ‘the metaphysics of language’];

“It is no different in this case than with the movement of the sun: there our eye is the constant advocate of error, here it is our language. In its origin language belongs in the age of the most rudimentary form of psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language, in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere it sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a faculty. Today we know that it is only a word.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

Both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican ‘representations’ rest dependently on ‘the metaphysics of language’; i.e. on the notion of ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’ that move about within a notional ‘absolute space and absolute time measurement/reference frame’ that psychologically serves as the ‘operating theatre’ for the notional ‘independent things in themselves’, visible relational forms we call ‘stars’ and ‘planets’.

In ‘field theory’, these ‘material bodies’ that ‘make field visible’ are concentrations in the intensity of the field, relational features in fields that are purely relational and which are ‘everywhere at the same time’, … fields of influence that ‘can contain but which cannot, themselves be contained’ [Lamarck];

“Since according to our present conceptions the elementary particles of matter are also, in their essence, nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field, our present view of the universe presents two realities which are completely separated from each other conceptually, although connected causally, namely, gravitational ether and electromagnetic field, or as they might also be called space and matter.  Of course it would be a great advance if we could succeed in comprehending the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field together as one unified conformation. Then for the first time the epoch of theoretical physics founded by Faraday and Maxwell would reach a satisfactory conclusion. The contrast between ether and matter would fade away, and, through the general theory of relativity, the whole of physics would become a complete system of thought, like geometry, kinematics, and the theory of gravitation.”  — Einstein, ‘Ether and the Theory of Relativity’

“We cannot build physics on the basis of the matter-concept alone. But the division into matter and field is, after the recognition of the equivalence of mass and energy, something artificial and not clearly defined. Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy.”  — Einstein and Infeld, ‘The Evolution of Physics’

The surprising thing, then, is that after constructing ‘representations’ of the celestial dynamics in terms of artificial ‘independently-existing-things-in-themselves’ [thanks to the ‘metaphysics of language’], we then place great value in upgrading from the Ptolemaic representation to the Copernican representation, as if we have ‘homed in on the truth’ after being misled by accepting the Ptolemaic representation.  As Mach said, and it bears repeating, we are not homing in on anything [other than ‘economy of thought’], these representations of the universe are simply representations;

“the motions of the Universe are the same whether we adopt the Ptolemaic or the Copernican mode of view” of celestial dynamics, … “both views are, indeed, equally correct.” i.e. the geocentric and the heliocentric views are merely two “interpretations” of a Universe that “is only given once.”. Mach goes on to warn; “we … should beware lest the intellectual machinery, employed in the representation of the world on the stage of thought, be regarded as the basis of the real world.”

Yes, it is true that the Copernican representation captures and makes internally consistent [within the ‘what independently-existing things-in-themselves do’ modeling paradigm] more observations than the Ptolemaic representation; e.g. the apparent retrograde movement of mars as seen from the earth [below: Kepler’s plotted position of mars in the earth’s sky 1580-1597, published in 1609, and below that, a similar plot using telescopic images that show mars as a bright spot]

Mars seen from Earth 1580-1597

Telescopic view of retrograde motion of Mars

The apparent retrograde motion arises from attributing all of the movement to mars when it instead derives from the combined movement of earth and mars.  If  both the earth and mars were runners on oval tracks with mars running in an outside track that was roughly twice the circumference of the inside track that the earth was running, if they started off together, they would be running in the same direction but the earth would come to the end of his smaller oval first and would turn the corner and be running in the opposite direction of mars until mars reached the end of its oval and turned the corner, at which time they would once again be running in the same direction.

By now, we have forgotten all about the fact that both of these representations [Ptolemaic and Copernican] are based on the movement of ‘centres’ that are ‘absolute’ and ‘multiple’ rather than relational centres in a plenum, the centres of ‘comings and goings’; i.e. neither of them are at the level of basic physical process.  Human visual sensing ‘stops’ with the impressions of ‘forms’ [plurality] and packages and organizes them with language and thought, while the relational ‘physis’ of Nature [the relational dynamic of the ‘All’ or unum/plenum] lies still deeper, in the manner that the transforming of the relational spatial atmosphere-plenum lies deeper than the local storm-cell-forms that manifest in our visual sensing, …an ‘apparent plurality’ convenient for constructing ‘thought-economical’ representations in lieu of directly informing on the unum/plenum dynamic.    

An example of how we shift our depiction of dynamics from a ‘continually transforming relational spatial plenum’  to ‘metaphysics-of-language’ based objectifications of ‘variations in the relational structure of space’ can be seen in the following two video views of the transforming relational spatial atmosphere-plenum, the first of which presents a view into the continually transforming relational spatial plenum, showing the continually gathering and regathering ‘variations in the relational structure of space’ IN CONTEXT,  and the second which shifts the representation of dynamics to the ‘metaphysics of language’ based ‘subjectified’  ‘variations in the relational structure of space’, … .   The latter view, ‘drops out’ the actual base level physical dynamics and presents the subjectified relational forms as the ‘inhabitants’ of a habitat that is independent of the ‘inhabitants’ that reside within it.

Hurricanes as relational forms in relational flow-plenum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VD-IBpvGLU

Hurricanes as local systems-in-themselves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVaMXkBtVAU

The symbolism for the relational forms-reduced to notional independent beings, used in the second video, correspond to the symbolism developed in the ‘metaphysics of language’ as we use noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar to personify and simplify the relational spatial view and generate an ‘economy of thought’ wherein we characterize relational forms as our ego has us characterize ourselves, as ‘independent reason-driven systems’ that operate in an absolute space and absolute time reference frame seen as a theatre of operations.

Throughout this discussion, our language is attempting to construct for us a ‘reality’ based on ‘things’ [‘beings’] and ‘what things do’ when, if we reflect upon it, there is good evidence that the ‘things’ that we treat as real, are the artefacts of language that point to ‘relational forms’ aka ‘variations in the structure of space’ [Schroedinger].

“Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive witch she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

In this sense, the Copernican representation, however convenient and effective in a scientific sense;

“Science itself, … may be regarded as a minimization problem, consisting of the completest possible presenting of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought” —Ernst Mach

… may be taking us farther away from understanding the world dynamic at the base level, as a continually transforming relational spatial plenum in which relational forms are continually gathering and being regathered, … ‘relational forms’ aka ‘variations in the relational structure of space’ whose centres are the ‘centres of comings and goings’ as centres were understood in Europe in the pre-Enlightenment era.   In the Copernican view, our ‘sun’ becomes an absolute centre, and we envisage the universe as a ‘plurality’ of suns or absolute centres, rather than as a unum.  

The modern physics view of the ‘expanding universe’ is that any point in the universe can be understood as the centre of the expanding universe, the earth being one of those points, so in this sense, the Ptolemaic view of the universe, was closer in the modern physics ‘relational space’ view; i.e. it understood the universe firstly as a unum with “a” centre of comings and goings.   The Copernican view departed from the ‘unum first, plurality second’ [relations-first, things-second] and put ‘plurality first, unum second’ [things-first, relations second], and thus took our world farther away from the current modern physics relations-first, things-second understanding.

“By the principle of Occam’s razor, physicists and philosophers prefer ideas that can explain the same phenomena with the fewest assumptions. In this case you can construct a perfectly valid theory by positing the existence of certain relations without additionally assuming individual things. So proponents of ontic structural realism say we might as well dispense with things and assume that the world is made of [relational-spatial] structures, or nets of relations.” – Meinard Kuhlmann, ‘What is Real’, Scientific American, August 2013

But this relations-first, things-second view has not only come about from the findings of modern physics, it ‘has been around’ for centuries; e.g. it was the way in which Kepler saw the stars and planets; recounted here by Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) [originally in German].

“The historical development of our knowledge of nebulous bodies teaches us that here, as in the progress of almost every other branch of physical science, the same opposite opinions, which still have numerous adherents, were maintained long since, although on weaker grounds. Since the general use of the telescope, we find that Galileo, Dominique Cassini, and the acute John Michell regarded all nebulae as remote clusters of stars ; while Halley, Derham, Lacaille, Kant, and Lambert maintained the existence of starless nebulous masses. Kepler (like Tycho Brahe before the invention of the telescope) was a zealous adherent of the theory of star-formation from cosmical vapor — from condensed conglobate celestial nebulous matter [aus verdichtetem, zusammengeballtem Himmelsdunste (compacted and agglomerated cosmic-vapour/sky-haze)]. He believed ” coeli materiam tenuissimam (the material of thin air) in unum globum condensatam, stellam effingere” (condenses into stars) and he grounded his opinion, not on the process of condensation operating in defined roundish nebulous spots (for these were unknown to him), but on the sudden appearance of new stars on the margin of the galaxy.” — Alexander von Humboldt: Kosmos. Dritter Band – Kapitel 12  [see also Kapitel 8]

Dieser überall verbreitete Himmelsstoff habe schon eine gewisse Verdichtung in der Milchstraße, die in einem milden Silberlichte aufdämmere. Deshalb stehe der neue Stern, wie die, welche in den Jahren 945 und 1264 aufloderten, am Rande der Milchstraße selbst (quo factum est quod nova stella in ipso Galaxiae margine constiterit); man glaube sogar noch die Stelle (die Oeffnung, hiatus) zu erkennen, wo der neblige Himmelsstoff der Milchstraße entzogen worden sei. Alles dies erinnert an den Uebergang des kosmischen Nebels in Sternschwärme, an die haufenbildende Kraft, an die Concentration zu einem Centralkern; an die Hypothesen über die stufenweise Entwickelung des Starren aus dem dunstförmig Flüssigen, welche im Anfange des 19ten Jahrhunderts zur Geltung kamen, jetzt aber, nach ewig wechselnden Schwankungen in der Gedankenwelt, vielfach neuem Zweifel unterworfen werden.

 

[transl.] This cosmic vapour, pervasive in the universe, had already acquired a certain degree of condensation in the Milky Way, where it shone with a soft silvery glow.  This is why the new star emerged, like those that appeared in 945 and 1264, right at the edge of the Milky Way (quo factum est quod nova stella in ipso Galaxiae margine constiterit [It was established as the new star on the edge of galaxies] ), and one even discerned the place [the hiatus] that the cosmic material of the Milky Way had left empty in condensing.  All of this reminds one of the theories of the transformation of the cosmic vapour into stellar clusters, of an agglomerative force, of a concentration into a central nucleus, and of hypotheses of a gradual formation of solid bodies out of vapours.   These ideas have prevailed for a moment; today they are dismissed as unreliable. Such is the fate of the assumptions in the eternal fluctuation of opinions and systems.

One might then say that geo-centricity is correct in the sense of seeing the ‘centre’ as the centre of ‘comings-and-goings’ [‘condensations’ and ‘evaporations’] as compared to these new ‘absolute centres’ of ‘independent things’ in the heliocentric representation.   Of course, the earth is not the sole centre of the universe, every point in the universe is the centre of ‘comings-and-goings’ of the universe [as in non-Euclidian space].   If this sounds confusing, it need not be if one sees the universe as a continually transforming relational spatial plenum, as is the view of relational theorists in modern physics.  Mach, Poincaré, Bohm, Schroedinger and Barbour are all ‘relational theorists’.  In this view, the celestial bodies (stars, planets) are secondary relational forms and not the primary dynamic.  The relation between the celestial bodies and space is like the relation between storm-cells and the flow of the atmosphere.

If we are a storm-cell [we are ourselves ‘comings-and-goings’] looking out at other storm-cells, we would NOT want to build astronomy on the basis of the movements of cells as if they were moving about in an absolute space and absolute time reference frame seen as their ‘operating theatre’.   We would instead want to take into account that the stars and planets are secondary ‘relational forms’ in the continually transforming, energy-charged unum/plenum.  

That is, the stars-as-storm-cells do not move relative to an absolute space and absolute time reference frame, they are relational forms that gather and are regathered in the energy-charged, continually relationally transforming universe-as-fluid-plenum.

In this view, which is in agreement with the relational space view of modern physics, the Ptolemaic model is in closer agreement with the basic physical dynamics than the Copernican model.  That is, in the Ptolemaic model, the movements of the stars are relative to the earth at the centre.  In the Copernican model, the movements of the stars are assumed to be independent of the earth; i.e. movement is not ‘relative’ but ‘absolute’ in the Copernican view and measured relative to an absolute space reference frame that is ‘fitted’ to, or ‘hung on’, the distant stars.   This absolute space frame obscures the dynamic relations between the stars and planets by referencing their movements to the absolute space frame which ‘absolutizes their movements’.

Both the Ptolemaic and Copernican models are ‘representations’ of the movements of the stars and planets as if they are ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves [thanks to ‘the metaphysics of language’].  That is to say, these representations simulate the movements of the stars and planets, however both of these representations fail to take into account the ‘secondary’ nature of planets-as-linguistically-absolutized versions of relational features in the continually transforming relational spatial plenum.  That is, they RE… present inherently relational dynamics by synthetically subjectizing [objectifying] relational forms as in the second version of the 2008 hurricane season shown above.

The ‘cosmic vapour’ and ‘sky-haze’ of Kepler and others was the predecessor of ‘field’ in modern physics, … ‘field’ which is ‘everywhere at the same time’ [‘pervasive in the universe’] and which, when concentrated, becomes visible as ‘matter’.

If I had to pick out the one aspect of the shift to the Copernican representation which was most ‘culture-shaping’, I would say that it was the shift from understanding ‘the centre’ from ‘the centre of comings and goings’ [yin/yang] to the centre as ‘centre of control’ [all-yang-no-yin].    Donald Kunze, professor of architecture at Pennsylvania State University, describes the shift from the ‘medieval to the enlightenment’ period in Europe [roughly contemporaneous with the shift from the Ptolemaic to Copernican cosmology];

“In traditional cultures, space was structured by the idea of SYMBOLIC PASSAGE and ENTRY The model for this motion was a sequence: death, stasis, rebirth. The entrance into a city, a funeral, a wedding, a coronation, an initiation, and a triumphal procession all had the same “logic.”

 

The NEW SYSTEM worked along lines of power that radiated from a core that controlled the periphery. This new idea helped promote centralized, representative government, the development of nations” and the streamlining of transportation. In PERCEPTION, these changes were reflected in the way INSTRUMENTS such as telescopes, microscopes, theodolites, and other instruments extended the power of the eye; and also in the ways that REPRESENTATIONS such as drawings, maps, and — later — photographs were accepted as reliable substitutes for the visible. The LINE OF SIGHT was treated as a line of CONTROL and potential POWER. The representation was a means of control and power. It facilitated the inward flow of knowledge and the outward flow of power.” – Donald Kunze

 

The shift to the Copernican representation allows us to think [psychologically accept the notion] of a real plurality of ‘systems’ such as ‘the solar system’, each system being represented by an absolute space and absolute time reference frame hung on ‘its centre’ [absolutizing the notion of a ‘centre’ and imputing ‘being’ to the ‘system’] in contradiction to Mach’s principle, in contradiction to ‘the universe is only given once’ and in contradiction to ‘relational theory’ in general.   The Copernican representation gives false credence to the concept of ‘organization’ in terms of ‘local, centre-driven independently-existing/operating systems’.  This is, in fact the Enlightenment’s archetypeal representation for man, organism and organization; i.e. ‘independent reason-driven systems’.   This is the source of growing incoherence and dysfunction in the modern Western social dynamic.   There is every evidence in our natural experience that ‘space is not empty and absolute’; i.e. Mach’s principle, which contradicts the Copernican representation, is born out by our everyday physical sensory experience;

“The dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants”. – Mach’s principle

There is no such thing, in the reality of our physical experience as a ‘local system’ such as a ‘solar system’ or ‘an atom’ as would break up the unum of the universe into a plurality.  These ‘systems’ are, as Schroedinger observes, ‘schaumkommen’, ‘appearances’, .. ‘relational features in the continually transforming, energy-charged relational spatial unum/plenum aka ‘the All’, ‘the ONE’.  Culturally, we have become a people who are willing to ‘take instruction from a central source’, as in the Enlightenment European archetypeal representation of man, organism and ORGANIZATION, and as in the Copernican representation of the cosmos, and thus see ourselves as a NOTIONAL plurality of INDEPENDENT systems; e.g a ‘plurality of “independent”’ sovereign states, corporations, individuals, teams, communities etc.  Such belief in ‘independence’ of inhabitant and habitat, as in the Copernican ‘sun-centric system model’ is an unrealistic, unnatural idealization.  Each of these notionally ‘independent systems’ is seen as ‘fully and solely responsible for their own behaviour’.  This establishes the conditions that make it appear sensible to apply moral judgement of individual [independent system] behaviours as a means of ‘managing the social dynamic’ [i.e. by a system of rewards and punishments applied to the ostensibly fully-owned behaviour of the independent system].

There are more natural world views and more natural approaches to ‘organization’ which are not based on Copernican representation and its associated Enlightenment archetype for man, organism and organization.   These can be found in the indigenous aboriginal culture, and they correspond closely with the ‘relational space’ findings of modern physics.  This correspondence is discussed by F. David Peat in ‘Blackfoot Physics’.

 * * *

FOOTNOTE 1. ; Comparison of ‘The Big Bang’ and the ‘strange loop’ topology.

Man’s curiosity as to ‘what is life?’ … gives him dreams of ascending to sufficient heights to gain an overall view of what is going on, … coming out of the inside of the unfolding relational spatial plenum [in which he is a relational form or whorl in the flow], … and sitting on the absolute, throne of eternity, the ultimate observational tower that lies outside of space and outside of time [‘time’ and ‘space’ then become search buttons on his divine observing gear], … where he can have a God’s-eye view of the birth and life of the universe.   Mathematics has such capabilities.  As Poincaré observed, one can prove anything in mathematics if one incorporates in the suite of propositions, two mutually contradictory premises;

1. There is a plurality of independent particles and independent material bodies [e.g. stars].

2. The plurality is expanding as an ‘interdependent unum’.

This issue came up in the diverging views of how to interpret ‘quantum behaviour’;

Einstein and Poincaré “were two scientists infinitely close yet infinitely distant” … “… [to Poincaré] “Einstein’s quantum physics seemed less well suited for science than for a teratological museum.”. At the 1911 Solvay Conference that both Poincaré attended, Poincaré, commenting on the new physics said;
.
“What the new research seems to throw into question is not only the fundamental principles of mechanics, it is something that appeared to us till now inseparable from the very concept of a natural law. Could we still express these laws in the form of differential equations? Besides, what struck me in the discussion that we just heard, is seeing the same theory sometimes relying on the old mechanics and sometimes on new hypotheses that negate them; one must not forget that there isn’t a proposition that one can’t easily prove insofar as one inserts into the demonstration two contradictory premises.” — Peter Galison in ‘Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps’

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, that in incorporating these two mutually contradictory assumptions; (1.) the plurality of independent particles or stars, and (2.) the implicit interdependence of a plurality expanding as a unum, … that the ‘mathematics’ tries to make sense of this by saying; ‘well, I started off with the appearance of one-thing, a particle-like unum which was at the same time a highly condensed interdependent agglomeration.   Oh, yes, perhaps the ‘independence’ was only ‘appearance’.

In any case, the conventional view of an ‘expanding universe’ [‘Big Bang theory’] is a God’s-eye-view, a representation that depends upon an absolute space and absolute time reference frame, but which simulates the view of a voyeur observer situated ‘outside of the universe’.  This is the ‘grammar’ problem that Nietzsche talks about; i.e. we start with experiencing ‘worlding’ or ‘universing’, an activity continuum in which we are an included activity, and in seeking to give representation to it, we endow it with subjecthood and then impute it to be the author of its own action [an ‘expanding’ does not necessarily reduce to ‘it expands’.  There is are ‘expandings’ of relational forms in fluid flow as in the expanding whorling in a river as the flow picks us.  As with the tornado, hurricane, convection cell etc. there is no ‘it’ or author of the behaviour ‘expanding’, the expanding is the conjugation of outside-inward accommodating, many-to-one yin converging ‘sink’ and inside-outward asserting one-to-many diverging yang ‘source’.

Such ongoing relational spatial transformation as is being observed and investigated by some ‘manning’ [a relational form or ‘relational activity’ within the relational activity continuum/plenum] who is himself gathering within it cannot be ‘realistically’ objectified by the included observing entity that is in the process of being gathering within it, that would dearly love to have a view from ‘the outside looking in’ and thus to be able to develop, by mathematical or other means, a visual representation of the evolving relational space he is part of.  It is ‘the metaphysics of language’ that synthetically gives the universe ‘being’ and then lets this ‘being’ inflect verbs that imply that ‘IT’ has ITS own behaviour;  i.e. ‘the universe’ can only be a verb, ‘universing’, not a noun that drives a verb as in ‘the universe is expanding’;

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

How would the picture look, of a man being able to observe a simulation of the universe expanding from the ‘Big Bang’ to present?  That is, how would we picture the scenario where the observer who is included in an unfolding scene is, at the same time, capable of seeing the unfolding scene he is included in?  M.C. Escher experimented with this ‘strange loop’ topology; e.g;

Outside-observer at the same time as inside-observed

Print Gallery (Dutch: Prentententoonstelling) is a lithograph printed in 1956 by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher. It depicts a man in a gallery viewing a print of a seaport, and among the buildings in the seaport is the very gallery in which he is standing. In the book Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter explains it as a strange loop showing three kinds of “in-ness”: the gallery is physically in the town (“inclusion”); the town is artistically in the picture (“depiction”); the picture is mentally in the person (“representation”).

In this presentation, the observer is simultaneously ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ that which he is ‘looking out at’.   But of course, it is ‘a representation’ that violates our experience in that the individual sees ‘his form’ out there in what he is looking at’.   A storm-cell [which manifests its consciousness of what it is included in] or a member of an ecosystem, when ‘they are looking out’ [sensing/receiving outside-inward influences (in conjugate relation to the inside-outward asserting development], are seeing ‘themselves’, not ‘their own form’ but as reflected in the relational space they are included in as a relational node or nexus.  What they are looking out at is the larger self from which they derive their nurturance, power and steerage, the web-of-relations in which they are a node.   Intuitively, many people understand this [“the world I am reaching out to grasp is the me that is reaching out to grasp it”], and of course it is part of the traditional belief of the indigenous aboriginal culture which accords with the ‘relational theory’ of modern physics.  While indigenous peoples have always intuitively accepted the ‘tread lightly’ implications of inclusion in nature [captured in Mach’s principle], people of European belief traditions have tended to believe in the ‘independence’ of inhabitants and habitat [as in the Bible, Koran, Torah etc. where the inhabitants were ‘made separately’ by God and planted in a habitat that they were ‘entitled’ to ‘take control of’ [Genesis 1:28 etc.].  Meanwhile, more and more people of European descent are coming around to acknowledging that;

“In extending his living space in a manner that destroys the space of others, he destroys his own space. Not initially his inside space, his ‘self’, but his outside space, this real outside-of-self which nourishes his ‘inside-of-self’. The protection of this outside space now becomes the condition without which he is unable to pursue the growth of his own powers of being.” — Frédéric Neyrat, ‘Biopolitics of Catastrophe’

 

The ‘Big Bang’ theory, on the other hand, presents man with a God’s-eye view of the birth and development of the universe, based on observations that derived from an observer that, so it is claimed, was ‘outside’ of the things he was observing.   How big-bang science got him ‘back inside’ in time for science to demonstrate the unfolding of the whole thing with him in it,…   is a bit of a mystery, … in fact, science may be continuing to keep him out.

Big Bang theory is a simulation of the birth and development of the UNI-verse as a ‘unum’ based on the INTERDEPENDENT behaviour of a plurality of INDEPENDENT parts.  It’s a kind of mechanical compromise between the wave view and the particle view.  As Mach and Schroedinger would say, the ‘independent parts’ are ‘schaumkommen’, ‘appearances’ which, in combination with the ‘metaphysics of language’, are convenient to base cosmologies on, like the Ptolemaic and Copernican cosmology. 

Scholium: ‘The Big Bang’ is an example of theory built upon contradictory assumptions that is pervasive in [mainstream] science, and offers up some general insights.

Science presents itself to us, through the media, as a kind of monolith in which there is uniform agreement on things like ‘the Big Bang’, … but that is because the ‘heretics’ never get ‘access to the microphone’.   Is there anyone on the TV news talking about the conjectures of Poincaré and Mach etc. whose views, that contradict the established ‘beliefs’ of science, have never been expressly dealt with or disposed of, other than by political factions within science who unilaterally declare; ‘the science is decided’, and it is decided according to our views.  The heretical views are still ‘pending’ but not ‘popular’.  Besides, such views can differ RADICALLY from those which are established and popular.

For example the ‘mechanical’ view of the world is the established, popular view but as Mach says; ‘mechanics’ is abstract representation, not physical reality as we have made it into, in the popular view.  ‘What things do’ is at the same time conditioning space [field] which is at the same time conditioning ‘what things do’ [Mach’s principle].  This is just a simple statement of what the scientific establishment agrees to, out of one side of its mouth, and implicitly denies, in going with the mechanical view, out of the other side of its mouth.  In Mach’s, ‘The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development’, … in his Chapter V, ‘The Relations of Mechanics to Other Departments of Knowledge’ [such as ‘physics’ and ‘physiology’], he says in regards to the relation between ‘mechanics’ and ‘physics;

1. Purely mechanical phenomena do not exist. The production of mutual accelerations in masses is, to all appearances, a purely dynamical phenomenon. But with these dynamical results are always associated thermal, magnetic, electrical, and chemical phenomena, and the former are always modified in proportion as the latter are asserted. On the other hand, thermal, magnetic, electrical, and chemical conditions also can produce motions. Purely mechanical phenomena, accordingly, are abstractions, made, either intentionally or from necessity, for facilitating our comprehension of things. The same thing is true of the other classes of physical phenomena. Every event belongs, in a strict sense, to all the departments of physics, the latter being separated only by an artificial classification, which is partly conventional, partly physiological, and partly historical.

 

2. The view that makes mechanics the basis of the remaining branches of physics, and explains all physical phenomena by mechanical ideas, is in our judgment a prejudice. Knowledge which is historically first, is not necessarily the foundation of all that is subsequently gained.

Rare individuals like Mach are true ‘philosophers of science’ at the same time as they are ‘scientists’.  Their minds are always working on the detailed observations and experiences that lie below the currently popular formulations/representations that are, as Mach observes, chosen on the basis of convenience and economy of thought.  ‘Katrina is heading northwest towards the Gulf Coast’, ‘Katrina is growing larger and stronger’, … are ‘representations’ that are popularized on the basis of convenience and economy of thought [the circulating called ‘Katrina’ is NOT MOVING because it is NOT REALLY an ‘it’.  The ‘circulating’ that we call Katrina is the way that the transforming atmosphere manifests.  The atmosphere [more generally the universe], a continually transforming relational spatial unum/plenum, manifests by way of visible forms in the transforming flow-plenum.    It is NOT REALLY a thing that is moving or ‘getting larger’ with respect to a rectangular north, east, south, west grid.  In the indigenous aboriginal languages, the mother space [the ‘flow’ aka ‘the continually transforming relational spatial plenum’] IS NEVER LEFT OUT OF THE DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATON; i.e. it is retained by keeping the western abstraction ‘being’ out of the picture so that every ‘thing’ is a verb, as it must be in a continually transforming unum/plenum.   Katrina is not a ‘thing’ that ‘does stuff’ but a ‘circulating in the atmosphere-flow-plenum’.  And if she appears to ‘grow’, to us, the observer who is focusing on ‘her form’ as if we should be able to understand her development and movement as if she is the author of it [ignoring that the she is the nexus of outside-inward accommodating, many-to-one converging yin ‘sink’ and inside-outward asserting, one-to-many diverging yang ‘source’], and imposing a notional absolute space [Euclidian] and absolute time measuring and referencing grid, so that by measuring ‘HER’ growth relative to the grid and measuring ‘HER’ movement relative to the grid, we are able to RE-PRESENT her development and movement in ABSOLUTE terms as if she was an  INDEPENDENT BEING and henceforth ‘forget about’ what is going on in the real physical unum/plenum.  

This is the same process we apply to the stars [condensations in the continually transforming relational spatial gravity and electromagnetic fields that are ‘everywhere at the same time’; i.e. a transforming relational unum/plenum].  That is, we impose the notional absolute space and absolute time measuring and reference grid for our own convenience so that we can construct RE-PRESENTATIONS with high ‘economy of thought’ by breaking the forms that ‘we are able to see’ out of the unum/plenum [thanks to the process of measuring enabled by the absolute space and absolute time reference grid, the process that ‘collapses the wave function’ in the micro-realm], at which point we are positioned to impute ‘birthing’ and ‘dying’ and ‘moving’ to the language-and-grammar subjectified ‘forms that we are able to see’ [as Nietzsche says, science is anthropomorphism].   We thus shift the authorship of dynamics ‘up one level of abstraction’ from relational forms in a continually transforming relational spatial unum/plenum, … to local, independently-existing things-in-themselves with, notionally, their own internal process driving and directing development and behaviour.  At this point, we can regard ‘space’, the ‘habitat’ that these ‘independent inhabitants’ reside in [it is the grid, stupid.] as being ‘independent’ of the inhabitants that reside within it.  Such absolutizing [by way of measuring relative to the grid] puts an end to the idea of a universe-pervading, energy-charged field-plenum that is transforming by way of gathering within itself, energy-circulations or standing wave forms that are activities within an inherently interdependent activity continuum.  ‘Interdependence’ is another word for saying; ‘in a dynamic unum, a plurality can only be ‘appearances’, therefore the question of ‘independence’ or ‘interdependence’ of the elements of the plurality is a moot point’.

When ‘the metaphysics of language’ gets into the game, particularly the metaphysics of noun-and-verb European/Scientific language-and-grammar, … it becomes difficult, since we are continually reinforcing synthetic concepts as we use language, to distinguish between the abstractions of scientific ‘representations’ and the world-unum of our physical sensory experience.   Both the Ptolemaic and Copernican cosmologies are ‘representations’ based on the synthetic reduction [by measuring development and movement of relational forms relative to an absolute space and absolute time grid] of relational forms in the unum/plenum to ‘independently existing local objects-beings’ which then inherit the job of authoring the entire dynamic, starting from themselves.   The personification suggested by ‘themselves’ is no accident, since, as Nietzsche observes, the notion of an ‘independent being with its own internal process driven and directed development and behaviour’, derives from the ego;

“Being is thought into and insinuated into everything as ‘cause’; from the concept ‘ego,’ alone, can the concept ‘Being’ proceed.” — Nietzsche

To say that ‘the universe is expanding’ is to regard the universe as a ‘unum’.

To say that the universe is composed of a plurality of ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’ such as ‘solar systems’, ‘galaxies’, is contradictory to ‘the universe is expanding’.

The forces that source ‘interdependence’ of the ‘plurality of independent parts’ would have to come from the ‘independent parts’ as in ‘action-at-a-distance’ in order to preserve the notion of ‘independence’ of the plurality of parts.  Even Newton called this ‘absurd’;

“It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must do, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it.  And this is one reason, why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me.  That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another, at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”  – Newton in a letter to Richard Bentley (Cambridge Lecturer linking the Principia to Theology);

If one believes in ‘the Big Bang’, one believes in ‘action-at-a-distance’ since if the solar systems and galaxies are on the one hand portrayed as a plurality of independent systems [thanks to measuring them relative to an absolute space and absolute time measuring/reference grid] and at the same time as an ‘expanding unum’.

The alternative explanation for the ‘expanding universe’ is implicit in the views of Mach, Nietzsche, Schroedinger of steady-state transformation which ‘does away with’ the notion of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ of the universe.  As Nietzsche puts it;

“The new world conception. —The world exists; it is not something that becomes, not something that passes away.  Or rather: it becomes, it passes away, but it has never begun to become and never ceased from passing away — it maintains itself in both. —It lives on itself: its excrements are its food.” —Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power, 1066′

And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income …” –Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’, 1067

Recently discovered documents of Einstein’s, who rejected the notion of the Big Bang, show that he had been working on such a ‘steady-state transformational model;

“… the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates his continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity. (Other leading researchers, such as the eminent Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington, were also suspicious of the Big Bang idea, because it suggested a mystical moment of creation.) When astronomers found evidence for cosmic expansion, Einstein had to abandon his bias towards a static Universe, and a steady-state Universe was the next best thing” — Huffington Post, ‘Albert Einstein’s Lost Theory Resurfaces, Shows His Resistance to Big Bang Theory’.

This should come as no surprise since the inverting of sourcing power from matter to space had already occurred in the case of electromagnetism, paving the way for the same inversion to occur in gravity; as in Michael Gorman’s discussion in ‘Transforming Nature’;

 “Like Kepler’s discovery of the planetary laws, Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic fields played a key role in a scientific revolution. Oddly enough, it was a revolution that countered an important feature of the Newtonian synthesis. Gravity was a force that acted in a straight line and was transmitted instantaneously over the space between bodies; this phenomenon was referred to as ‘action at a distance’. Kepler would have been horrified by the idea; he thought in terms of a real force emanating from the sun, contacting the planets like light and sweeping them around their orbits.
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Newton‘s gravity became one model for how forces might operate in other domains. By the late eighteenth century, it was clear that the attraction and repulsion of electrical charges followed an inverse square law. Perhaps electricity was another instance of action at a distance.
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This viewpoint had its critics, among them Michael Faraday, who rejected both the primacy of matter and the notion that electricity operated ‘at a distance’. The examples of Faraday’s problem-solving processes described in this section are distilled from detailed, fine-grained cognitive studies by Tweney (R. D. Tweney, ‘A Framework for the Cognitive Psychology of Science’) and Gooding (‘Experiment and the Making of Meaning: Human Agency in Scientific Observation and Experiment’). “For him [Faraday], fields of force were the primary reality, and ‘matter’ a secondary or derived phenomenon. To understand his creative life, then, we must acknowledge his position as a revolutionary, as someone who demonstrates the practicality of a world view completely different from the prevailing one, and who does this, not by metaphysical argument, but by a series of compelling experimental demonstrations of such conceptual force that they could not be ignored” (R. D. Tweney, ‘Fields of Enterprise: On Michael Faraday’s Thought’)

Completing the symmetry screams out to science to have it complete the shifting of dynamics-sourcing agency from ‘matter’ to space, as Faraday had done [“For him [Faraday], fields of force were the primary reality, and ‘matter’ a secondary or derived phenomenon.]  This is essentially the gap that ‘unified field theory’ was to fill.  As Einstein said;

“Since according to our present conceptions the elementary particles of matter are also, in their essence, nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field, our present view of the universe presents two realities which are completely separated from each other conceptually, although connected causally, namely, gravitational ether and electromagnetic field, or as they might also be called space and matter.

Of course it would be a great advance if we could succeed in comprehending the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field together as one unified conformation. Then for the first time the epoch of theoretical physics founded by Faraday and Maxwell would reach a satisfactory conclusion. The contrast between ether and matter would fade away, and, through the general theory of relativity, the whole of physics would become a complete system of thought, like geometry, kinematics, and the theory of gravitation. “ – Albert Einstein, ‘Ether and the Theory of Relativity’, an address delivered on May 5^th, 1920, in the University of Leyden

The conflict in scientific opinion, over whether to give ‘relations’ reign over ‘things’ or whether to give ‘things’ reign over ‘relations’ [as in the Big Bang which shuts the door on ‘steady state relational spatial transformation’] has also erupted in astronomy, as cited earlier;

“The historical development of our knowledge of nebulous bodies teaches us that here, as in the progress of almost every other branch of physical science, the same opposite opinions, which still have numerous adherents, were maintained long since, although on weaker grounds. Since the general use of the telescope, we find that Galileo, Dominique Cassini, and the acute John Michell regarded all nebulae as remote clusters of stars ; while Halley, Derham, Lacaille, Kant, and Lambert maintained the existence of starless nebulous masses. Kepler (like Tycho Brahe before the invention of the telescope) was a zealous adherent of the theory of star-formation from cosmical vapor — from condensed conglobate celestial nebulous matter [aus verdichtetem, zusammengeballtem Himmelsdunste (compacted and agglomerated cosmic-vapour/sky-haze)]. He believed ” coeli materiam tenuissimam (the material of thin air) in unum globum condensatam, stellam effingere” (condenses into stars) and he grounded his opinion, not on the process of condensation operating in defined roundish nebulous spots (for these were unknown to him), but on the sudden appearance of new stars on the margin of the galaxy.” — Alexander von Humboldt: Kosmos. Dritter Band – Kapitel 12  [see also Kapitel 8]

Only if space ‘were empty’ and mutually exclusive of the stars could we regard the stars as ‘independently-existing’ [something that the abstraction of Euclidian space can contrive].  But as many scientists tried to show, ‘space is not empty’;

“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves.” — David Bohm

 

‘Space is not [empty] Euclidian’ … “Space is a participant in physical phenomena” … “Space not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.”, … “the recognition of the fact that ‘empty space’ in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials g(μ,ν), has, I think finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty . . . “A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone” —Albert Einstein.

The Big Bang proposition and debate thus provides ‘theatre’ for reviewing the divisions that have put scientists into opposing camps for some time (centuries).  Big Bang proponents, whether they care to admit it or not, are believers in ‘action-at-a-distance’.

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FOOTNOTE 2. How the BIG BANG connects with INTELLIGENT DESIGN

As has been presented above, one can see the world as a relational space [relations-first, things-forming-from-relations] or as an absolute/empty space populated by independently-existing things [things-first, relations-forming-between-things].

Our Western cultural default is the latter, ‘things-first, relations-forming-between-things’ and this gives us our Copernican view in which we seek to describe our ‘solar system’ in terms of ‘things-called sun and planets’ and ‘their dynamic relations’.

On the other hand, we could conceive of space as being an energy-charged plenum or ‘field’, … a kind of sea of energy whose transforming spatial relations are pulling together concentrations of energy in a manner that sustains these concentrations as ‘relational forms in the flow’, akin to storm-cells in the atmosphere.  In this case the transforming energy-charged flow-plenum is the reality, and the concentrations of energy in the plenum, pulled together by the continuing transformation and seen by man’s visual sensing [man’s experiencing is far more comprehensive than his visual sensing] as relational forms.   At this point, language and thought [‘the metaphysics of language’] take over and notionally depict the relational form as a local, independent being with its own internal process driven and directed behaviour.

As Emerson says, the organism is not only inhabited by the flow, it is created by the flow.  He further says that the organism [which he sees as a relational form in the flow] is, like the storm-cell, a kind of channel which transmits influences from the vast and universal to the point on which its genius can act.

Emerson is not going to have the problem that the biological science community is having, trying to find a home for the ‘amazing intelligence’ of plants, or amoebates in terms of how they coordinate their activities with one another.

1.   The David Suzuki ‘Nature of Things’ video called ‘Smarty Plants’ documents the efforts by scientists in trying to figure out where this ‘plant intelligence’ is coming from, since plants don’t even have a nucleus or central nervous system into which we can impute a centre-of-intelligence.

2.  In a Nova documentary entitled ‘Slime Mold Smarts’ we hear the following absurd statement;

“The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single cell without a brain, yet it can make surprisingly complicated decisions. In this animated video short, watch as a slime mold navigates through a maze and solves a civil engineering problem.” — Nova

 

The biological scientists are having to scratch their heads over ‘where to put the home base or place of residence’ for the sourcing of this plant intelligence.  For them, an organism such as a plant is an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself with its own internal process driven and directed behaviours [that operates in a notional absolute space and absolute time operating theatre].  That means that ‘the highly intelligent behaviour’ that plants exhibit, must derive from somewhere in their interior.

Emerson’s view, as expressed in ‘The Method of Nature’, like Kepler’s and Schroedinger’s and others, is that the ‘things’ we see are NOT independently-existing but are ‘relational forms’ in the flowing field plenum and so the sourcing of highly organized behaviour derives from the transforming flow-plenum which is gathering within itself, ‘relational forms’ such as ‘plants’ and is orchestrating the collective behaviour of the ‘relational forms’ such as ‘plants’.  In other words, the relations which form in the energy-charge relational spatial plenum are the source of both the relational forms and their relational spatial coordination [relations-first, things forming from relations].  Emerson notes that ‘the genius of nature gives the pear-tree the ‘talent’ to produce pears’.   If we were to constrain our vision to ‘pear-trees producing pears’, we would miss the fact that all of this comes from the relational ecosystem which comes from the transforming relational spatial flow-plenum, and thus oblige ourselves to attribute the jumpstart source of the productive action of the pear-tree to the pear-tree.

Western science and Western society’s habit of imposing the convention of absolute, fixed, empty and infinite space which converts the relational forms-in-the-flow, notionally, into independently existing things-in-themselves, synthetically constrains the sourcing of the development and behaviour of those relational forms, to the ‘independent things’ and their ‘internal processes’.   The ‘genius of nature’ now becomes ‘the intelligence of the independent organism’ since there is no other place for it to go once science has reduces ‘relational forms in the continually transforming relational spatial plenum’… to…. independently-existing things in an absolute fixed and empty space, … the Enlightenment European archetype for man, organism and organization [sovereign state, corporation etc.].

The ‘intelligence of plants’ and the ‘intelligence of slime-mold’ are thus artefacts of the standard Western modeling paradigm of ‘independent things’ and ‘what things do’ as if in ‘absolute fixed and empty space’, wherein the behaviours of the ‘things’ can only be seen as jumpstarting from out of the interior of the things since space is depicted as an infinite emptiness that is independent of the ‘things’ that reside within it.

The ‘intelligence of bees’ has cropped up in the same manner.  However did the bees come to build hexagonal cells?  How did they know that hexagonal cells are engineered optimally for storage, minimizing construction material requirements [wax], wasted space [gaps between cells] and labour.   Modern biologists assume that the bees ‘understood’ the efficiencies and that this ‘intelligence of the bees’ explains how the bees came to construct hexagonal cells.   However, in Maurice Maeterlinck’s ‘Life of the Bee’ (1914), the list of explanations included that of Buffon, wherein, as in a natural crowd dynamic, there are outside-inward orchestrating influence that shape the inside-outward construction.

“… as it happens in the following experiment that Buffon suggested. “If,” he said, “you fill a dish with peas or any other cylindrical bean, pour as much water into it as the space between the beans will allow, close it carefully and then boil the water, you will find that all these cylinders have become six-sided columns. And the reason is evident, being indeed purely mechanical; each of the cylindrical beans tends, as it swells, to occupy the utmost possible space within a given space; wherefore it follows that the reciprocal compression compels them all to become hexagonal. Similarly each bee seeks to occupy the utmost possible space within a given space, with the necessary result that, its body being cylindrical, the cells become hexagonal for the same reason as before, viz., the working of reciprocal obstacles.”  — Maeterlinck, ‘The Life of the Bee’

 

The problem with this sensible explanation, with regard to science accepting it, is that in Western science, things are modeled as ‘independent systems with their own internal process sourced development and behaviour that operate in a notional absolute space and absolute time ‘operating theatre’.   There is no other choice for the sourcing of the development of forms but ‘inside-outward-asserting’.   This constraint that forces all deterministically engineered development of form to be ‘inside-outward’ is a science-imposed constraint, and it makes Buffon’s model ‘unacceptable’ for the reason that it implies that outside-inward orchestrating influence is shaping inside-outward asserting development.  The only remaining conclusion is that the hexagonal cell design derives from the intelligence of the bees.  Biologists actually assume that the bees, as independent reason-driven systems, calculated savings in material, labour and space which led them to this design. [see http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/13/183704091/what-is-it-about-bees-and-hexagons ].

Time and time again we see biological science being led to absurd conclusions;

“Physarum polycephalum is a single cell without a brain, yet it can make surprisingly complicated decisions.” — Nova

 

These absurd conclusions are self-imposed by the biological sciences by their refusing to let go of their Enlightenment European archetype for man, organism and organization as ‘independent reason-driven [intelligence-directed] system’ that operates within an absolute space and absolute time measurement/reference frame seen as operating theatre, … an archetype that constrains the sourcing of development and behaviour of the ‘relational-form-in-the-relational-flow-plenum-reduced-to-independent-organism’ to its own internal processes, denying that the deeper source of both the ‘organism’ and its development and behaviour is the continually transforming relational spatial plenum.

Those with Western religious beliefs, who have been inclined to think in terms of ‘Creationism’ can easily see the absurdity of the above statement that “a single cell without a brain can make surprisingly complicated decisions’, and thus argue the ‘intelligent design’ must be coming from ‘somewhere else’ besides Nature; i.e. from God.  There are many instances in which the biological archetype for cells and organisms; i.e. the ‘independent reason-driven system’ leads to either absurd conclusions or, in association with Darwinism, is unable to explain evolution in the presence of ‘irreducible complexity’ [where an important functionality of an organism is based on many parts having to be in place at the same time, and thus could not have evolved by a Darwinian process].  These ‘failures’ of the vacant-space-‘what-things-do’ models of biological science have led to a growing counter-movement called ‘Intelligent Design’ which is a scientifically argued ‘Creationism’.

The ‘relations-first, things-forming-from relations’ worldview would dissolve these debates since the ‘missing source’ of ‘intelligent design’ is ‘relational space’ wherein outside-inward orchestrating influences are shaping inside-outward asserting development and behaviour.  Meanwhile, given the constraining modeling paradigm of Western biological sciences, the ‘Intelligent Design creationist faction’ is certainly on-target with their critiques, … however, as with ‘smarty plants’, the problem is with where to put the sourcing of the ‘intelligent design’. The options are as follows;

1. For Western religion, continue to accept the ‘independent reason-driven system’ archetype for man, organism [plants] and organization, and attribute the intelligent design to a supra-natural Source [the Intelligent Designer].

2. For Western science, continue to ‘take the heat’ and staunchly attribute the intelligent design to the ‘independent reason-driven system’ archetype, maintaining it is only a matter of time before science will come up with answers as to where, within the independent individual, the seat of the intelligence resides.

3. For modern physics, accept ‘relational space’ wherein there is no need to interpret ‘intelligent design’ as a yang determined result, and as with Buffon’s model, accept the inherent yin/yang nature of dynamics wherein outside-inward orchestrating influence shapes inside-outward asserting development and behaviour of relational forms.

Conclusion:  The BIG BANG of the plurality of independent planets, the slime-mold of the plurality of independent amoebates, and the ecosystems of independent plants, all raise the question; WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR BEING ABLE TO BEHAVE AS A UNUM?.  The answer, from the point of view of the relational space of modern physics is that ‘they’, the imputed ‘plurality’ is, as Schroedinger insists, ‘schaumkommen’ (‘appearances’), variations in the relational structure of space.  The orchestrating influences in the continually transforming relational spatial plenum that coordinate  relations amongst the ‘apparent plurality’ are the same orchestrating influences that are engendering the relational forms, as it must be if the universe is ‘given just once’ as our experience informs us.

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