STARRY NIGHT — Van Gogh’s Intuition of the turbulence in nature

 

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). – Erwin Schroedinger

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

 

Intuition is in a natural primacy over reason [1].  This is the way things are understood in both indigenous aboriginal belief traditions and in the relational interpretation of modern physics.

 

Our experience-based intuition informs us that the storm-cell and the turbulence [a purely relational dynamic] that is epigenetically engendering it, are a nonduality.  Our experience-based intuition further informs us that the social storms of ‘rebellion’ and the relational turbulence of the community they are included in, are a nonduality wherein the ‘inhabitant’ and the ‘habitat’ are NOT two separate things but one inhabitant-habitat nonduality.  Yet ‘reason’ [science and rationality] would have us re-formulate such nonduality in the simplified dualist terms of independent ‘things-in-themselves’ in a notionally empty, non-participating space.

 

Noun-and-verb language is used to ‘dress up’ storms and rebels as ‘causal agents’, notionally equipped with their own internal ‘genetic agency’ that are seen as being fully and solely responsible for their own’ self-development, actions and results.   Our intuition meanwhile screams out to us that, as with the nonduality of storm-cell and turbulence, that these purported ‘independent causal agents’, the storm-cell and the rebel, are NOT self-actualizing but, like sailboats, derive their ‘apparent self-actualizing’ from the ‘turbulence’ aka ‘relational dynamics’ they are situationally included in.

 

In the physical reality of our actual experience as informs our intuition, “epigenetic influence inductively actualizes genetic expression” [turbulence engenders storms].   However, our semantically contrived ‘reason’ obfuscates the physically real sourcing of epigenetic influence by ‘dressing up’ the ‘shapes and variations in the relational structure of space [e.g. Katrina, Harvey], as ‘independent systems-in-themselves’, imputing to them, their own internal ‘genetic agency’ so that the primal role of ‘turbulence’ [epigenetic inductive influence] vanishes from view, leaving the impression that the foreground ‘systems’ [shapes and variations in the relational structure of turbulence] are jumpstart sources of their own development, actions and ‘accomplishments’.  As Nietzsche points out, this hijacking of genetic sourcing by ‘independent beings’ derives from the ‘ego’ of humans who see themselves/ourselves as such.

 

In the case of hurricanes brewing up within the turbulence, and/or rebellions brewing up within the relational dynamics of community, ‘reason’, because it is being-based and dualist, will portray these ‘stormings’ as systems-in-themselves and attribute their development and actions to their own internal ‘genetic agency’.  The relational activities of ‘storming’ and ‘rebelling’ are transformed, by reason and grammar, into the familiar ‘doer-deed’ or ’cause-effect’ structures of science which overlook ‘epigenetic inductive sourcing and give us the impression that ‘the storm is responsible for the storming’ or ‘the rebel is responsible for the rebelling’ [the ‘double error of grammar cited by Nietzsche].

 

Our intuition ‘knows better’, but our ‘reason’ has been hijacking the natural precedence of nondualist intuition over dualist reason, and with it, hijacking the natural precedence of epigenetic influence over genetic agency.  There are no such entities as ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves in the physical reality of our actual experience, so alarm bells should go off as we reflect that they are the everyday currency of ‘reason’.

 

Things-in-themselves are the artefacts of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar which promote secondary phenomena manifesting as shapes and variations in the relational structure of space, to primary status.  As our semantically crafted ‘reason’ would have it, the ‘storm’ no longer needs ‘turbulence’, matter no longer needs ‘field’.  In fact, Newtonian reasoning says that large masses have strong gravity fields [while modern physics would invert this relationship and say that regions of strong gravity field manifest as large masses]. Our experience-based intuition innately comprehends the nonduality wherein relational tensions aka ‘epigenetic influence’ induce storming and rebellion regardless of whether language and grammar portray ‘storms’ and ‘rebels’ as independent, self-actualizing systems.

 

Western civilization has put abstract reason into an unnatural precedence over natural intuition since the time of Socrates [2].  It is possible, coming from intuition, to understand how this is causing us problems that are not going to ‘go away’ until the natural precedence of intuition over reason (science and rationality) is restored.

 

Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ alludes to the primacy of relational ‘turbulence’ in nature [3] , the sort of turbulence as associates with the dynamics of ‘fields’, which are, according to our experience, the ‘primary physical reality’.  ‘Matter’, and ‘material dynamics’ are secondary phenomena which noun-and-verb language and grammar have ‘semantically promoted’ and have thus, by the use of this being-based language, become the basis of Western society’s  standard ‘operative reality’.

 

“Fields of force are the primary reality, and ‘matter’ a secondary or derived phenomenon” —Michael Faraday

 

The understanding that turbulence excites innovation within itself comes from experience-based intuition.

 

That the turbulence of the hurricane excites or ‘inductively actualizes’, orchestrates and shapes the gathering of tornadoes or whorls within whorls, is an understanding of how the world evolves that, while consistent with our experience-based intuition, is contradictory to common Western belief in the same manner that Lamarckian evolution is contradictory to the accepted scientific standard, Darwinian evolution.

 

While Darwinism hypothesizes that ‘genetic force’ is responsible for ‘creating life-forms, Lamarckism [4] sees ‘life-forms’ [the local, material aspect of the form, as with the storm-cell in the atmospheric/oceanic flow] as a secondary or derived phenomenon, understanding epigenetic influence, as in ‘fields’ such as the gravity field and the ‘caloric’ (thermal, electromagnetic) field as the inductive actualizing source, or ‘primary reality’.

 

Since matter and material dynamics are ‘secondary’ or ‘derived’ phenomena, science’s ‘causal’ model is no longer supportable as a physically real model.  As Ernst Mach pointed out, causality is a pragmatic way of organizing our oral and tactile observations, which delivers ‘economy of thought’.  But it cannot be physically real since we know that as matter moves, fields are transformed, and as fields are transformed, so must matter move.  This gives rise to Mach’s principle, which matches the whorls inducing whorls of the Starry Night turbulence.

 

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

 

Thus, the whorls inducing whorls of the Starry Night turbulence overlays the structure of the world seen by modern physics which is also seen in Lamarckian evolution and in the worldview of indigenous aboriginal and some Oriental belief traditions.

 

This outside-inward inductive sourcing of evolutionary innovation; i.e. this ‘epigenetic influence’- induced actualizing of genetic expression, wherein ‘it takes a whole community to raise a child’ inverts our understanding of the order in which things develop and from whence derives the source of actions.  It leads away from Western moral judgement based retributive justice to ‘restorative justice’ and it leads away from the Western system of rewarding or punishing actions and accomplishments, based on the abstract [semantics-contrived] notion that individual human organisms are ‘independently-existing things-in-themselves’ that are ‘fully and solely responsible for their own behaviour’.

 

None of the ‘bottom-up’ constructions of analytical science and rationality pertain to ‘physical reality’ when one acknowledges that ‘fields’ are in a natural primacy over material forms so that ‘material forms’ and ‘their material dynamics’ are recognized as “a secondary or derived phenomenon”.

 

Slowly, scientists [on the fringe] [5] are acknowledging that “epigenetic influence that inductively actualizes genetic expression” is the primary physical reality.   Since the foundational assumptions in mainstream science cannot accommodate such non-causal sourcing of dynamics, these findings will remain as ‘outliers’  or ‘exceptions’ to the mainstream of science, until science bootstraps into itself a more comprehensive set of foundational assumptions.  Because of the limitations of logical systems [see Goedel’s theorem], it is not possible to “make the necessary changes to the system of science from out of its own interior’.

 

As systems sciences pioneers such as Russell Ackoff have observed, “every system is included in a relational suprasystem”.  Ultimately, all systems nest within the transforming relational continuum.  The system we call a ‘university’ is inductively actualized by epigenetic influence immanent in the dynamics of the relational suprasystem of the community.  The system we call a ‘university’ is not a thing-in-itself ‘machine’ with inputs and outputs [students and graduates], but, as with a convection cell, it IS the circulating inflow and outflow that goes on within the relational suprasystem.  In other words, the ‘system’ and the ‘relational suprasystem’ which is inductively actualizing it, are a system-suprasystem nonduality.

 

The semantic constructs of noun-and-verb language portray both the convection cell [e.g. Katrina, Harvey] and the ‘university’ as systems in themselves.  This is ‘scientific dualism’ that employs a ‘double error of grammar’ to semantically promote a relational activity; i.e. a ‘whorl in the turbulence’ [the transforming relational continuum] to a notional ‘system-in-itself.   In other words, we impute ‘being’ to a relational form.  As Nietzsche observes, Western man uses noun-and-verb language to play ‘psychological tricks’ on himself wherein his egotist sense of his own ‘independent being’ is leveraged to impute ‘thing-in-itself being’ to all manner of nondual relational activities;

 

“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’

 

Humans and organisms in general, are in physical rather than semantic terms, inhabitant-habitat nondualities in the manner of storm-cells in turbulent flow.  ‘Rational purpose’ becomes the necessary animating engine our semantic reality constructions MUST come up with BECAUSE we have ‘declared the independence’ and ‘thing-in-itself being’ of the ‘relational activity’; i.e. the system-suprasystem nonduality.  This declaration of independence RE-presents the ‘system’ as a notional ‘system-in-itself’, obfuscating the epigenetic inductive actualizing influence of the relational suprasystem and substituting, as the animating engine, ‘rational purpose’ as the system-in-itself’s own internal genetic agency, its God-like powers of jumpstart production.  Instead of the farmer, or ‘farming nation’, being included in the transforming relational continuum of nature, the farmer, and ‘farming nation’ are semantically RE-presented as separate, apart from and ‘above’ nature and having the God-like powers of jumpstart production.  This understanding continues to be the legal basis for ‘owning land’;

“God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man, … to subdue the earth; i.e., improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour.  He that in obedience to this commandment of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him” – John Locke, 1690.

 

In the semantic picture we present with ‘the farmer produces wheat’, the relational suprasystem (the common living space both human and botanical organisms are included in) becomes an empty non-participating void, as in an absolute space and absolute time measuring/reference frame imagined as a theatre of operations.   This may be the ‘semantic reality’ but it is not the physical reality of our actual experience.

 

“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

 

In case it is not yet clear, what is being claimed here is that Western civilization has mistakenly put reason, based on treating material forms and their dynamics as ‘primary phenomena, … when, in physical reality, material dynamics are secondary phenomena.  This ‘error of grammar’ is ‘bewitching our understanding’ and generating ‘incoherence’ and dysfunction within the global relational/social dynamic.  To be more specific;

 

[I] Moral judgement of individual behaviour does not make sense since it is based on the false premise of science that individual organisms are independently-existing material ‘systems-in-themselves’ [‘machines’]. Instead, [as Emerson observes in ‘The Method of Nature], organisms are storm-cell-like ‘vents’ that transmit influence from the vast and universal to the point on which their epigenetic inductive influence can act.

 

Example: — Rebellion does not come from ‘rebels’.  That is a ‘double error of grammar’ as Nietzsche shows using the example, ‘lightning flashes’;

 

“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

 

Rebellion is inductively actualized by epigenetic influence as is cultivated within the common relational living space, often in a biased manner that sets up relational tensions within the common living space.  ‘Fields’ or ‘turbulent flows’ have, immanent within them, purely relational influences  [non-local, non-visible, non-material influences] that inductively actualize, orchestrate and shape local, visible, material, ‘genetic expression’, the aforementioned ‘secondary phenomena’.  To impute the source of rebellion to some notional ‘genetic agency’ aka ‘rational purpose’ within those we call ‘rebels’ is to mistakenly impute the source of rebellion to those who are simply ‘vents’ for transmitting influence from a buildup of relational tensions.  This is a case of the overall collective passing the buck by ‘scapegoating’.  It takes a whole community to brew up a rebellion.

 

[II] Fixing the identity of a relational form does not make sense in a relational space undergoing continual evolution. It takes the whole evolving community to raise an individual member; i.e. the epigenetic influence arising from the relational dynamics of the community inductively actualizes the emergence, development and behaviour of the community member.

 

Example: — Consider a party where people continue to arrive and add to the community of party goers. At the beginning there may be two attractive girls and one ugly guy and since, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, a strong rapport begins to build with the guy and one or more of the girls.  Then two handsome, graceful guys join the community of party goers, and the relational dynamics transform. Then the wives of the two handsome guys arrive and the relational social dynamics further transform.

 

As the community evolves and adds members, do we need to redefine the members we have previously defined as we add new members?  Have you ever been ‘the one-eyed man who is king in the land of the blind’, eg. if you work in a small office and are the only one who knows something about computers?  what if the office expands and adds new young members who are far more knowledgeable about computers?  You may fall from grace, and be mocked for your primitive views.  If you were the diligent student and studied hard to acquire knowledge on a lot of subjects, and now find yourself in a world where everyone just ‘googles it’ as they need it, are you the same person you were in the earlier, smaller, simpler community?

 

There are important philosophical issues here that lead to two very different interpretations of this sort of situation, which have been described by Henri Poincaré in term of the ‘predicative logic’ of the ‘realist’ and the ‘impredicative logic’ of the ‘pragmatist’ [6].

 

That is, in the example of the evolving community of party-goers, predicative logic  [the logic of ‘realists’] would say that we do not need to redefine the identities of previously defined members as we add new members to the communnity, however, impredicative logic [the logic of pragmatists or ‘intuitionists’] would say that we must redefine all previously defined members of the community, as we add new members to the community.

 

“Cantorians are realists with respect to mathematical entities; these entities have a reality that is independent of human conceptions. The mathematician discovers them but does not create them. Pragmatists believe that a thing exists only when it is the object of an act of thinking, and infinity is nothing but the possibility of the mind’s generating an endless series of finite objects”  — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Jules Henri Poincaré’

 

Ask yourself whether ‘who you are’ changes when you marry and  then a child is added to your ‘community of family’, and then another.  Does the coming of these new members of the community effectively ‘redefine’ the previously defined members, or, is your ‘identity’, ‘who you are’, fixed and unchanging as one might assume associates with an ‘independent thing-in-itself’?

 

As it turns out, in the relational view of modern physics, as in the indigenous aboriginal view [7], there is no such thing as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself, that being an abstract artefact of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar arising from ‘a double error of grammar [Nietzsche] whereby one imputes ‘being’ to a relational form in the flow by (a) signifying it with a name-label employed as noun-subject, and (b) having the noun-subject inflect an action verb, implying that the invented noun-subject thing-in-itself is the causal ‘genetic agency’ responsible for its own development, actions and accomplishments.  This synthetically (semantically) ‘eclipses’ and obfuscates the epigenetic inductive sourcing of the relational form.

 

[III] Intuition associates with direct, physical, nondual, experience of inclusion within the world given only once, as a transforming relational continuum.

 

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” – Erwin Schroedinger

 

Modern physicists like Mach and Schroedinger have pointed out that observations based on ocular and tactile senses give one impressions of ‘what is out in front of you’ but it is only through ‘felt experience’ that we come to understand ourselves as included in something greater than ourselves, in the manner of the storm-cell in the flow; i.e. in the sense of an inhabitant-habitat nonduality.

 

Schroedinger refers to this using the terms of Avaita Vedanta;

 

“Atman = Brahman”, “the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self”. — Erwin Schroedinger, citing Advaita Vedanta  

 

In ‘Starry Night’, the turbulent flow is the ‘field’ that is ‘everywhere at the same time’ and immanent in the turbulent flow is ‘epigenetic influence’ that is inductively actualizing ‘genetic expression’.  The turbulent flow engenders great whorls which engender lesser whorls within an inclusionally nesting relational complex..  The community of forms is adding members which include, but redefine, all prior members [the multiplicity is only ‘appearances’ since the cosmos is a transforming relational continuum].

 

“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

 

How does it ‘feel’, … this experience-based intuition of being included in a relational dynamic greater than ourselves, in which we are like the storm-cell is to the flow that is engendering it?

 

We have a ‘feeling experience’ of inclusion in the gravity field which is ‘everywhere at the same time’, as is the nature of fields, and we likewise have a ‘feeling experience’ of inclusion in thermal fields (electromagnetic fields) that are, as well, ‘everywhere at the same time’

 

For example, the animal and human trails that take form in a hilly and mountainous topography are inductively actualized by the epigenetic influence (gravity field) that is immanent in the energy-charged relational space that animals and humans are included in.  It is no accident that many animals, as well as humans, develop trails that follow the smallest elevations that allow passage through a range of hills or mountains, in self-similar manner to the flow of water in rivers, whose passage is inductively orchestrated by gravity and topography.  These patterns are physically real in the nondual sense of Mach’s principle;

 

“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

 

The beach dunes are transformed by our movements within them.

 

Likewise, our inclusion in thermal fields inductively actualizes our construction of shelters, as also with ants and other animals, which is, in the relational view, a transformation of the common living space we share inclusion in.

 

The inductive influence of the springtime northerly receding of the snow-cover that exposes tender and nutritious lichens, inductively actualizes the northern migration of reindeer, and the fall southerly advancing of snow-cover which blocks access to food supplies inductively actualizes the southern migration of reindeer.

 

These ‘epigenetically sourced dynamics’ are so natural and intuitive that they are taken for granted like water to fish.

 

However, when noun-and-verb language-and-grammar gets a hold of this, we define the organism known as ‘reindeer’ or ‘caribou’ as ‘independently-existing’ ‘things-in-themselves’ with their own internal organs and processes that we speak of as being causally responsible for their development, actions and accomplishments.   We conceive of them, as we do man and other organism, as ‘machines’ that are animated by ‘rational purpose’, that ‘sense, interpret, decide and act’ ‘on their own’, as if in an empty, non-participating space, rather than in all-including ‘field’ that is everywhere-at-the-same-time whose immanent epigenetic influence is the inductive actualizer not only of the development and actions of material forms, but of their engenderment.

 

In closing this ‘Introduction’ and moving on to the ramifications, the operative thesis here is restated for clarity.

 

Western civilization since Socrates, has put reason based on notional ‘independent material things-in-themselves and their self-animated development, actions and results; i.e. ‘secondary phenomena’ in the findings of Faraday, Mach, Einstein, Schroedinger, Bohm and others, … into an unnatural primacy over our experience-based intuition of nondual inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.  This has been brought about by confusing the semantic realities constructed using noun-and-verb language, which synthetically reify relational forms in the flow, … for ‘reality’.   Western ‘reality’ is a ‘semantic reality’ which partitions the relational ‘all’ into notional ‘independent parts’ and animates the relational social dynamic with false causal attributions and misplaced moral judgements that reward the wrong people and punish the wrong people.  This incoherent and misinformed social dynamic this fuelled by false attributions of merit and reproach has become the ‘operative reality norm’ of globally dominating Western society.

 

The following sections explore and elaborate further on the dysfunctions arising from the elevating of rational purpose into an unnatural primacy over experience-based intuition.

 

* * * END OF INTRODUCTION * * *

 

How Science Limits the Phenomenal Complexity it Captures Relative to Intuition

 

My experience has been that science and reason ‘teach us’ [we teach ourselves, thanks to tradition] to speak rationally at a high level which has skipped over the bulk of physically real ‘detail’ because science is an exercise in ‘economizing on thought’ [Mach}.

 

It may be useful, therefore, to help put the reader on the ‘same page’ as myself, or at least to alert the reader to ‘what page I am on’, to include a short excerpt from Mach’s Critical Historical Review of the Development of Mechanics [aka ‘Science of Mechanics’] which elaborates on some key principles that underlie scientific inquiry, but which are rarely mentioned outside of basic philosophical investigations into the foundations of science i.e. from Chapter IV, Section IV, ‘The Economy of Science’.

 

Mach’s discussion makes the point that there is no such thing in the physical reality of our actual experience as ’cause and effect’ and there are no such things in the physical reality of our actual experience as ‘things-in-themselves’, both of which ‘pragmatic idealizations’ find pervasive use in scientific and rational discourse, which can greatly confuse our understanding of physical phenomena, a confusion which intuition, if given its natural priority over reason, would avoid.

 

CHAPTER IV

PART IV (p. 481)

THE ECONOMY OF SCIENCE

(1) It is the object of science to replace, or save, experiences, by the reproduction and anticipation of facts in thought. Memory is handier than experience, and often answers the same purpose. This economical office of science, which fills its whole life, is apparent at first glance; and with its full recognition all mysticism in science disappears.

Science is communicated by instruction, in order that one man may profit by the experience of another and be spared the trouble of accumulating it for himself; and thus, to spare posterity, the experiences of whole generations are stored up in libraries.

 Language, the instrument of this communication, is itself an economical contrivance. Experiences are analyzed, or broken up, into simpler and more familiar experiences, and then symbolized at some sacrifice of precision. The symbols of speech are as yet restricted in their use within national boundaries, and doubtless will long remain so.

But written language is gradually being metamorphosed into an ideal universal character. It is certainly no longer a mere transcript of speech. Numerals, algebraic signs, chemical symbols, musical notes, phonetic alphabets, may be regarded as parts already formed of this universal character of the future; they are, to some extent, decidedly conceptual, and of almost general international use. The analysis of colors, physical and physiological, is already far enough advanced to render an international system of color-signs perfectly practical.

In Chinese writing, we have an actual example of a true ideographic language, pronounced diversely in different provinces, yet everywhere carrying the same meaning. Were the system and its signs only of a simpler character, the use of Chinese writing might become universal. The dropping of unmeaning and needless accidents of grammar, as English mostly drops them, would be quite requisite to the adoption of such a system. But universality would not be the sole merit of such a character; since to read it would be to understand it. Our children often read what they do not understand; but that which a Chinaman cannot understand, he is precluded from reading.

(2) In the reproduction of facts in thought, we never reproduce the facts in full, but only that side of them which is important to us, moved to this directly or indirectly by a practical interest. Our reproductions are invariably abstractions. Here again is an economical tendency.

 Nature is composed of sensations as its elements. Primitive man, however, first picks out certain compounds of these elements – those namely that are relatively permanent and of greater importance to him. The first and oldest words are names of “things.” Even here, there is an abstractive process, an abstraction from the surroundings of the things, and from the continual small changes which these compound sensations undergo, which being practically unimportant are not noticed. No inalterable thing exists. The thing is an abstraction, the name a symbol, for a compound [Complex] of elements from whose changes we abstract. The reason we assign a single word to a whole compound is that we need to suggest all the constituent sensations [Eindrücke] at once.

When, later, we come to remark the changeableness, we cannot at the same time hold fast to the idea of the thing’s permanence, unless we have recourse to the conception of a thing-in-itself, or other such like absurdity. Sensations [Empfindungen] are not signs of things; but, on the contrary, a thing is a thought-symbol for a compound sensation of relative fixedness. Properly speaking the world is not composed of “things” as its elements, but of colors, tones, pressures, spaces, times, in short what we ordinarily call individual sensations.

 The whole operation is a mere affair of economy. In the reproduction of facts, we begin with the more durable and familiar compounds, and supplement these later with the unusual by way of corrections. Thus, we speak of a perforated cylinder, of a cube with beveled edges, expressions involving contradictions, unless we accept the view here taken.

All judgments are such amplifications and corrections of ideas already admitted.

(3) In speaking of cause and effect we arbitrarily give relief to those elements to whose connection we have to attend in the reproduction of a fact in the respect in which it is important to us. There is no cause nor effect in nature ; nature has but an individual existence; nature simply is. Recurrences of like cases in which A is always connected with B, that is, like results under like circumstances, that is again, the essence of the connection of cause and effect, exist but in the abstraction which we perform for the purpose of mentally reproducing the facts. Let a fact become familiar, and we no longer require this putting into relief of its connecting marks, our attention is no longer attracted to the new and surprising, and we cease to speak of cause and effect. …  — Ernst Mach, ‘The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Review of its Development’

 * * *

 

There is a popular misconception that scientific theories are dealing with ‘physical reality’.  As you can see in Mach’s discussion, science is oriented to ‘economy of thought’, thus, in the case of ‘global warming’ by way of humans increasing the concentration of CO2 (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, if such increases in CO2 are ALWAYS associated with a corresponding proportionate rise in global temperatures, then we have a useful prior experience we can use as a ‘go-by’ to predict temperature variations in the future.  But, there is no guarantee that the physical phenomena may be far more complex than our simple models, in which case there is no guarantee that the simple ’cause-and-effect’ association we have made will continue to hold.  For example, the effects of X, Y and Z, which we have not even seen or taken into account but which are ‘influences at play’ that we have lumped into our general assumption of ‘ceteris paribus’ [all other things that we haven’t seen or addressed remaining the same] may be continually varying and preventing our simply ‘rising CO2 concentration is the source of proportionate rise in global temperatures’ from ‘holding true’ on a continuing basis.

 

It is absurd to think that our simple scientific models are actually describing nature’s dynamics.  Our scientific and rational models are ‘thought-economical go-bys’ that allow us to use prior experiences and associated measurements to give insights on similar situations as may arise.  Of course, ‘similar’ refers to a ‘similar set of initial conditions’ but since we cannot know the full complex of ‘initial conditions’, we cannot guarantee that the current situation will unfold in the same manner as the previously experienced one.  Insofar is it does, this is where science can be very helpful.  Of course, as Poincaré points out;

 

 “A very slight cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we can not help seeing, and then we say this effect is due to chance. If we could know exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial instant, we should be able to predict exactly the situation of this same universe at a subsequent instant. But even when the natural laws should have no further secret for us, we could know the initial situation only approximately. If that permits us to foresee the subsequent situation with the same degree of approximation, this is all we require, we say the phenomenon has been predicted, that it is ruled by laws. But this is not always the case ; it may happen that slight differences in the initial conditions produce very great differences in the final phenomena; a slight error in the former would make an enormous error in latter. Prediction becomes impossible and we have the fortuitous phenomenon. “ – Poincaré, ‘Science and Method’

 

Are there other factors besides CO2 concentration influencing global temperatures that we haven’t seen and haven’t address that we have lumped in the ‘ceteris paribus’ category, that could be at play which would make our cause-effect inference unreliable?

 

This remains to be seen.  Grasping a simple model is not grasping the God of Nature by the beard and a majority (consensus of scientists believing the same hypothesis) has ‘no monopoly on the truth’. As it has been turning out, the concepts of ‘climate’ itself is an economy of thought that must be questioned.  If nature is one thing that ‘just is’, how do we justify reifying ‘climate’ as a ‘system-in-itself’ that ‘changes over time’?  Is it anything more than a set of measurements we are repetitively making, that are important to humans living on the surface of the earth, that we signify with the word ‘climate’?

 

Understanding ‘what science is’; i.e. ‘economy of thought’, gives us cause to question under what circumstances we would want to let science and rationality override our intuition.

 

It is easy to reason that ‘DDT kills mosquitoes’ and that it is important to the health of humans to kill mosquitoes, but intuition says that this is too gross an ‘economy of thought’ to make such a simple cause-effect relation since ‘spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes’ is an intervention into the relational complexities of nature that are far beyond science’s grasp.  Our experience-based intuition informs us that there are going to be major ‘externalities’ engendered in the dynamics of our common living space because cause-effect models, like all logical systems, are highly subjective and incomplete.  It would be one thing if the physical space we are included in were an empty and non-participating void, as science, for economy of thought reasons, makes it out to be [in order to postulate the existence of independent things in themselves, one must postulate the existence of an absolute space and absolute time non-influential operating theatre for them to reside in].  In fact, science is built on semantic contrivance and its theories are dependent on the language conventions we use to formulate our hypotheses. As Poincaré observes;

 

“Space is another framework we impose upon the world” . . . ” . . . here the mind may affirm because it lays down its own laws; but let us clearly understand that while these laws are imposed on our science, which otherwise could not exist, they are not imposed on Nature.” . . . “Euclidian geometry is . . . the simplest, . . . just as the polynomial of the first degree is simpler than a polynomial of the second degree.” . . . “the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry.” . . . “Finally, our Euclidean geometry is itself only a sort of convention of language; mechanical facts might be enunciated with reference to a [relational] non-Euclidean space which would be a guide less convenient than, but just as legitimate as, our ordinary space ; the enunciation would thus become much more complicated, but it would remain possible. Thus absolute space, absolute time, geometry itself, are not conditions which impose themselves on mechanics ; all these things are no more antecedent to mechanics than the French language is logically antecedent to the verities one expresses in French.” – Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis

 

The point here is this; science and reason, in their attempt to deliver ‘economy of thought’, skim over the the phenomenal complexity in nature that meanwhile, comes directly to us through our experience-based intuition.

 

As F. David Peat observes, our natural intuitive understanding of complexity as children, seems to sublimate beneath layers of simplification added by our adult education;

 

“To the infant’s developing mind, topology comes before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level [i.e. ‘pre-intellectualizing’ level in the conscious and intuitive infant] so that the more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind.” – F. David Peat, ‘Mathematics and the Language of Nature’

 

Who does NOT know, through their own experience-based intuition that the ‘rebelliousness’ of the Saddam Hussein regime was a social storm brewed up within the global relational social dynamic, inductively actualized by Euro-American colonial ‘control-seeking dynamics’ which cultivated ‘push back’ through its ‘power to humiliate’?

 

Political scientists, on the other hand, if not psychologists as well, though they tend to remain silent on such issues, claim that humans are independently-existing biological-systems-in-themselves that are fully and solely responsible for their own actions and accomplishments/results.  This means that the source of rogue behaviour of Saddam and his regime and Osama bin Ladin et al, must be jumpstarting from the interior of these independent biological-systems-in-themselves.  This is in spite of the ‘intuition’ of Native American spokesman, Ward Churchill, we said on the very next day after 9/11;

 

“Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor, Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club. 

“You’ve got to learn, ” the line went, “that when you push people around, some people push back.”

As they should. … As they must. … And as they undoubtedly will.

There is justice in such symmetry”.  — Ward Churchill, 9/12/2001

 

Of course, the colonized indigenous aboriginal peoples of Turtle Island would have the experience-based intuition to understand ‘pushback’ having been the target of continuing colonizer attempts at cultural genocide, not to mention the exploiting of colonizer-indigenous power imbalance to abuse and humiliate them.  Even reviewers who hail from the Euro-American colonizer culture itself, could not avoid stating the intuitively obvious; i.e. that 9/11 was inductively actualized by colonizer-colonized relational tensions in the Middle East; i.e. in the words of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on 9/11/2002, the first anniversary of 9/11;

 

“… it is a division in the world that is building up. And I knew that it was the inspiration of it [9/11] … You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for the others. And that is what the Western world, not only the Americans, the Western world has to realize, because they are human beings too, and there are long-term consequences if you don’t look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. … we’re looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more.” – Jean Chrétien

 

By now, the pattern should be clear.  Intuition supports the storm-cell in the turbulence nonduality which shows itself in Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, while science and reason [thanks to noun-and-verb language-and-grammar] reduce this nonduality to dualist ‘things-in-themselves’, ‘machines’, notionally equipped with ‘their own genetic agency’, removing entirely from the ‘script’, the epigenetic influence that is inductively actualizing the forms within the inhabitant-habitat nonduality of nature.

 

The dualism that came with Western religions found its way back into the secularized theological system called ‘science’, where the only basis for the abstract (absurd) concept of ‘things-in-themselves’ is ‘believers’.

 

“Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.” – Vatican Archives, The Catholic Catechism.

 

 

In this exploration of ‘How Science Limits the Phenomenal Complexity it Captures Relative to Intuition’, one may see a case for restoring ‘intuition’ to its natural primacy over reason.

For example, if 9/11 had been perceived, intuitively, as ‘pushback’ against the insensitive use of massively overwhelming power by Euro-American colonizers, then there might have been some movement towards easing relational tensions, rather than paranoid schizophrenic suspicions of evil others out to get us, which generally induces equal and opposite paranoid schizophrenic reflexes.

 

We see the same sort of vying for primacy between reason and intuition arising in the case of Kim Jong Un’s North Korea vis a vis Donald Trump’s USA.

 

Finally, on this topic, we can consider how the relational view of modern physics would see ‘humans’ as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, in the manner of the storm-cell in the turbulence.  But as Nietzsche suggests, it is Western man’s ‘ego’ that has him cast himself as an ‘independent being’ with his own self-actualizing powers, ignoring the physical reality of his inhabitant-habitat nonduality [inclusion in a relational dynamic greater than himself that he is not and cannot be in control of].   In the farmer’s mind’s eye, it is his decision to plant in the spring and harvest in the fall.  How could it be otherwise since he sees himself as an ‘independent system-in-himself’?  The fact that most farmers are in synch on this, he explains in terms that ‘it makes rational sense to do it this way’.

 

If he holds to popular Western society beliefs, he is NOT going to acknowledge that he is included in something greater than himself, a turbulence or relational dynamic whose epigenetic influence [which includes the resonances known as seasons] is inductively actualizing and orchestrating his development, actions and accomplishments, because he has pre-empted this worldview with his ego-based belief in his dualist, ‘independent thing-in-itself being’ and his internal powers of rational purpose-driven self-actualization.  As Nietzsche puts it;

 

“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’

 

While the indigenous aboriginal ‘farmer’ intuitively assumes that both the plants he cultivates and he and his family are like storm-cells in the great cosmic turbulence, so that both he and the plants are included in the seasonal rhythms of nature, such as inductively orchestrate the female moon-days as well as his planting and harvesting activities, Western man, by contrast, attributes the timing of his planting and harvesting to his own decision-making, as an ‘independent self-actualizing system-in-itself’ who can see that ‘it makes rational sense’ to do it that way, and sees the common periodicity of the moon cycle and female menstrual cycle as pure ‘coincident’ or ‘chance’.

 

Science, as previously mentioned in the discussion by Mach, is in the business of ‘economizing on thought’, and one of the most important ‘economies’ is to model the dynamics of nature so that that they are actualized in a positive-causal bottom up fashion.   This is where Newton’s fluxions (differential calculus) came into play, a tool of great generalizing value which is based on the assumption that what transpires in the macro world of our experience can be explained by breaking things down into the tiniest micro-parts and micro-actions and re-integrating them from ‘the bottom up’.  This ‘analytical model’ of nature which delivers great economy of thought would not work if outside-inward epigenetic inductive actualizing influences were acknowledged.  Therefore, epigenetic influences are not acknowledged in mainstream science, not because they do not exist in physical reality, but because they would undercut the generalizing power of science, if they were allowed in the scientific models.  As Poincaré explains in ‘Science and Hypothesis’, mathematical physics was ‘architected’ to take advantage of the generalizing power of the analytical reduction of phenomena to purely bottom-up causal construction;

 

“Origin of Mathematical Physics.—Let us penetrate further, and study more closely the conditions that have permitted the development of mathematical physics. We observe at once that the efforts of scientists have always aimed to resolve the complex phenomenon directly given by experiment into a very large number of elementary phenomena.

This is done in three different ways: first, in time. Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, the aim is simply to connect each instant with the instant immediately preceding it. It is admitted that the actual state of the world depends only on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the memory of a distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying directly the whole succession of phenomena, it is possible to confine ourselves to writing its ‘differential equation.’ For Kepler’s laws we substitute Newton’s law.

Next we try to analyze the phenomenon in space. What experiment gives us is a confused mass of facts presented on a stage of considerable extent. We must try to discover the elementary phenomenon, which will be, on the contrary, localized in a very small region of space.”

 

Of course, Poincaré explains that this reduction to bottom-up causal sourcing only applies to mathematical physics, adding that things cannot be assumed to be so neat and tidy in the ‘natural sciences’ which inquire into complex human behaviours;

 

“In the natural sciences, we no longer find these conditions [which give birth to mathematical physics]: homogeneity, relative independence of remote parts, simplicity of the elementary fact; and this is why naturalists are obliged to resort to other methods of generalization.”

 

Nevertheless, the bottom-up thinking in mathematical physics is the pervasive and popular mode of reasoning in Western society. A salient aspect of this mode of thinking is that it puts the rational model in precedence over our raw experience and thus in precedence over our experience-based intuition.  Poincaré explores how science leads us into putting its ‘reason’ into an unnatural precedence over our raw experience based ‘intuition’;

 

“Experiment gives us only a certain number of isolated points. We must unite these by a continuous line. This is a veritable generalization. But we do more; the curve that we shall trace will pass between the observed points and near these points;  it will not pass through these points themselves. Thus one does not restrict himself to generalizing the experiments, but corrects them; and the physicist who should try to abstain from these corrections and really be content with the bare experiment, would be forced to enunciate some very strange laws.”

 

This fact, that the scientific model ‘corrects what is actually experienced’, implies that reason is being put into an unnatural primacy over raw experience-based intuition.

 

Supposing that colonizers intensify the pressure they put on colonized indigenous peoples and that the incidence and intensity of rebellions rise accordingly.  While our experience-based intuition will easily interpret this in terms that “epigenetic influence is inductively actualizing genetic expression”, our dualist scientific model is purely bottom-up, cause-effect and thus science models man as an independently-existing self-actualizing system-in-himself, therefore his rebellious actions can only be authored by his internal processes; e.g. by his own ‘rational purpose driven genetic agency’.  Use of this model makes us blind to the physical reality wherein relational dynamics within the overall community that includes both colonizers and colonized is the source of varying epigenetic influence [associated with relational tensions] that inductively actualizes social storms or ‘rebellious activity’ that varies in frequency and intensity.   Similarly, variations in climate may constitute epigenetic influence that induces shorter or longer growing cycles [inducing farmers to shorten or lengthen the planting-harvesting’ cycle].   A bottom-up causal model that attributes full and sole causal responsibility to humans [as independent systems-in-themselves] for their actions, is blind to epigenetic influence, even if it is transparently obvious to our experience-based intuition.  Such an over-simplistic model is ‘built in’ to the Western moral judgement based retributive justice system.

 

While our experience based intuition ‘screams out’ in both cases that variances in rebellious activities and farming cycles are inductively actualized and orchestrated by epigenetic influence, the dualist, cause-effect models will persist in imposing the model’s explanation even where the experimental data departures from the simplistic model become large.  That is, in spite of the over-riding influence of the epigenetic influence in these cases, the bottom-up cause-effect model which imputed full and sole causal responsibility for the rebels and farmers actions to the rebels and farmers as self-actualizing systems-in-themselves may still be applied.

 

This commonly overlooked problem where reason is put into an unnatural precedence over intuition, inspired Stephen Jay Gould to write an entire book on it, entitled ‘Full House’ where he uses the analogy of ‘batting averages’;

 

Major League Baseball Batting Average

 

The model seems to imply that the batters are fully and solely causally responsible for their actions and results.  There is no mention of possible variations in pitching and fielding because they are not included in this model and thus there is an implicit assumption of ‘ceteris paribus’ (all other things that have not been addressed in the model are ‘more or less the same’).  This was also mentioned by Mach in the earlier citing of his ‘science as economy of thought’; i.e. models are often simplified to incorporate the full complex of influences at play in the physical reality of our actual experience.

 

Most important here is the issue of the model obscuring what is really going on in the physical reality of our actual experience.  For example, do we reward and punish people on the basis of what we conceive of as their causal accomplishments when what physically unfolds may be predominantly shaped by epigenetic inductive influence?

 

To complete our understanding of what we are ‘doing to ourselves’ here, we need to recall Mach’s observations;

 

 Properly speaking the world is not composed of “things” as its elements, but of colors, tones, pressures, spaces, times, in short what we ordinarily call individual sensations.

The whole operation is a mere affair of economy. In the reproduction of facts, we begin with the more durable and familiar compounds, and supplement these later with the unusual by way of corrections. Thus, we speak of a perforated cylinder, of a cube with beveled edges, expressions involving contradictions, unless we accept the view here taken.

 

In the relational understanding of modern physics, the local relational form is, at the same time, the turbulence that is epigenetically actualizing it.  It is a complex of sensations.  Every ‘system’ is included in a relational suprasystem which is included within the transforming relational continuum.  The human organism is such a relational form as in the storm-cell in the turbulence, … an inhabitant-habitat nonduality.

 

In the Western, rational and scientific understanding, the human form is taken to be an independently-existing system-in-itself.  We ‘identify’ such independent forms on the basis of their ‘attributes’ starting from the most general and proceeding towards the most particular and unusual, as indicated in Mach’s above comment.   The tree that grows on a windswept coast is different than the tree that grows in the thick shelter of the grove.  This is where the sense of deformation and pathology arise.  We say the ‘tree is deformed’ in the same way we speak of a ‘perforated cylinder’.

 

But the tree and/or the person, and all things, in the relational view, are just who they are, and they are all ‘sacred’ since they are the manifest aspect of a form-flow nonduality and thus ‘one with everything’.

 

Science’s general to particular mode of assigning attributes to establish the ‘identity’ of a ‘thing-in-itself’ leads to suffixes like ‘deformed’, ‘disordered’, ‘disturbed’.  Is the war veteran who has been transformed by epigenetic influences in a battle zone really a defective, disordered member of the category ‘man’, a PTSD afflicted man who medical science says needs to be rehabilitated and restored to ‘normality’ so that he can return to the intense transformative epigenetic influences of the battle zone?  What about the schizophrenic and the bipolar?

 

These questions will be addressed in the following section.

 

 

The Science of Psychiatry Applied to People Understood as Biochemical/Biophysical Machines

 

 

… more coming

 

 

 

* * * * * END OF ARTICLE * * * * *

 

 

NOTES:  (Still in rough draft)

 

[1] Intuition is in a natural primacy over reason.

 

As Poincaré observes;

 

“It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition that we invent. … Logic, therefore, remains barren unless fertilised by intuition.”- Henri Poincaré

 

‘Field-matter nonduality and inhabitant-habitat nonduality come to us through experience-based intuition.  ‘Reason’ requires the dualist splitting apart of observer and observed, so that we can speak in terms of ‘what is going on out there, from the point of view of the excluded voyeur observer.  This is ‘too simple’ a perceptual approach to handle field/matter nonduality or inhabitant-habitat nonduality where “subject and object are only one”.

 

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” – Erwin Schroedinger

 

Intuition is where we can feel inclusion in the transforming relational continuum so that we can feel that we are conditioning the dynamics of the space we are included in, at the same time as the dynamics of the space we are included in, are conditioning our dynamics.  Exceptionally performing teams that ‘let their identities float’, so that the relations among the matrix (web) of teams that they are included in, are in a natural primacy over the identities and explicit actions of the participating teams, is not understandable ‘rationally’ [in terms of knowing the identities of the participants and their particular contributions to the team dynamic], however, it is a physical reality and can be understood intuitively.  However, ‘reason’ is inherently limited by its being constrained to dualist perspective [subject-object splitting perspective].

 

[2] comment on nietzsche’s point of staying in the middle balance point of Dionysus  and Apollo.  Reduce this Wikipedia excerpt;

 

Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins its Untergang (literally “going under” or “downward-way,” meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche objects to Euripides’ use of Socratic rationalism and morality in his tragedies, claiming that the infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the Dionysian and Apollonian. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. Plato continued with this path in his dialogues, and the modern world eventually inherited reason at the expense of artistic impulses that could be found only in the Apollonian and Dionysus dichotomy. This leads to his conclusion that European culture from the time of Socrates had always been only Apollonian and thus decadent and unhealthy.[118] He notes that whenever Apollonian culture dominates, the Dionysian lacks the structure to make a coherent art, and when Dionysian dominates, the Apollonian lacks the necessary passion. Only the beautiful middle, the interplay of these two forces, brought together as an art, represented real Greek tragedy.[119]

An example of the impact of this idea can be seen in the book Patterns of Culture, where anthropologist Ruth Benedict uses Nietzschean opposites of “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” as the stimulus for her thoughts about Native American cultures.[120] Carl Jung has written extensively on the dichotomy in Psychological Types.[121] Michel Foucault has commented that his book Madness and Civilization should be read “under the sun of the great Nietzschean inquiry”. Here Foucault references Nietzsche’s description of the birth and death of tragedy and his explanation that the subsequent tragedy of the Western world was the refusal of the tragic and, with that, refusal of the sacred.[122]Painter Mark Rothko was influenced by Nietzsche’s view of tragedy, which were presented in The Birth of Tragedy.

 

[3] The form of the turbulence in Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ closely replicates the Kolmogorov solution to the basic relational structure of turbulence in nature.

 

write a short summary here to show how impressionist painters use illumination to imply movement [of light reflecting from breeze-blown leaves and from moving fluid surfaces]  underlying the steady-state view, movement that relates to the dynamics of the deeper field-based physical reality.  Include a link to this technical overview of the inquiry into the turbulence patterns in Van Gogh’s latter paintings.

 

[4] Comment on excerpts from Lamarck’s ‘Recherches sur l’Organisation des Corps Vivants’; to be reduced, summarized, if possible.

 

In Lamarck’s model, evolution is orchestrated outside-inwardly, by ‘field’ dynamics that excite inside-outward asserting action in fluids, and this process is operative in nature generally, therefore there is no split into the organic and inorganic realms. The process is summarized by Lamarck in his ‘Recherches sur l’Organisation des Corps Vivants’ (never formally translated and published in English), as follows;

 

« Dans une pareille masse de matières, les fluides subtils et expansifs répandus et toujours en mouvement dans les milieux qui l’environnent, pénétrant sans cesse et s’en dissipant de même, régularisent en traversant cette masse, la disposition intérieure de ses parties, et la rendent propre alors à absorber et à exhaler continuellement les autres fluides environnans qui peuvent pénétrer dans son intérieur et qui sont susceptibles

d’être contenus.

.

Ces autres fluides, qui sont l’eau chargée de gaz dissous ou d’autres matières ténues, l’air atmosphérique que contient l’eau, etc.. je les appellerai fluides contenables, pour les distinguer des fluides subtils, tels que le calorique, la matière électrique, etc.. qu’aucun corps connu ne sauroit contenir.

.

Les fluides contenables, absorbés par la petite masse gélatineuse dont il vient d’être question, ne restent point sans mouvement dans ses parties, parce que les fluides subtils non contenables qui y pénètrent toujours ne le permettent pas.

.

Ainsi les fluides incontenables tracent d’abord les premiers traits de la plus simple organisation, et ensuite les fluides contenables, par leurs mouvemens et leurs autres influences la développent, et avec le temps et toutes les circonstances favorables la compliquent et la perfectionnent. »

 

Translation into English;

 

In such a mass of materials [gelatinous fluid mixture], the fields [les fluides subtils] are always reaching out and permeating the materials around them, constantly penetrating and dissipating at the same time, conditioning in its permeating, the disposition of the interior parts, rendering them capable of absorbing and exhaling other fluids in the surrounding environs which are capable of being retained.

.

These other fluids, which are water charged with dissolved gases or other substantive materials, the atmospheric air which contains water etc., I call them ‘containable fluids’ [fluides contenables] to distinguish them from the subtle fluids [Lamarck’s calls ‘fields’ les fluides subtils], such as heat flow, electrified materials etc. that no material bodies know how to contain [i.e. the fluids that contain but which cannot themselves, be contained].

.

The containable fluids which are absorbed by the small gelatinous mass that has just been discussed, do not stop their movement into the parts, because the field flow [les fluides subtils non contenables] which are all the while penetrating, won’t allow it.

.

Thus the ‘fields’ trace out the first designs of the most simple organization, and then the containable fluids, by their movements and their other influences develop it, and with time and where all the circumstances are favourable, complexify it and perfect it.”

 

[5] Summarize the findings of Nijhout re epigenetic influence having overriding influence on genetic expression, and the same finding of Caldwell in the evolution of microbial communities, and also the ‘bootstrap model’ of quantum mechanics which features the ‘same symmetry’;

 

“As is described by Nijhout, genes are “not self-emergent,” that is genes can not turn themselves on or off. If genes can’t control their own expression, how can they control the behavior of the cell? Nijhout further emphasizes that genes are regulated by “environmental signals.” Consequently, it is the environment that controls gene expression. Rather than endorsing the Primacy of DNA, we must acknowledge the Primacy of the Environment!” —Bruce Lipton, ‘The New Biology’

 

“It is normally assumed that the recombination of genes generates innovation and that this innovation is then judged as useful or not through natural selection. Genetic information presumably serves as a blueprint that controls the features of organisms and their communities. However, studies of bacterial associations in continuous culture suggest that innovation also flows in the reverse direction, from the structure of the community to the structure of the nucleic acid. In this situation, it may be the structure and architecture of the community that serves the initial blueprint.” — ‘Cultivation of Microbial Consortia and Communities by Douglas E. Caldwell, Gideon M. Wolfaardt, Darren R. Korber, Subramanian Karthikeyan, John R. Lawrence, and Daniel K. Brannan, Manual of Environmental Microbiology

“”Bootstrapping” here refers to ‘pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps,’ as particles were surmised to be held together by forces consisting of exchanges of the particles themselves.”  — Wikipedia, The Bootstrap Model

As in the example of adding members to the party where impredicative logic was employed, it may be that instead of fixed identities, particles may have ‘relational identities’ which change as new particles ‘join the party’.   This would put ‘relations’ into precedence over ‘matter’ as in the relational interpretation of modern physics;

“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

 

[6] Summarize this excerpt from Poincaré’s discussion of ‘predicative’ and ‘impredicative’ logic.

 

Logic is — according to Poincaré — the study of properties which are common to all classifications. There are two different kinds of classifications: predicative classifications, which are not modified by the introduction of new elements; and impredicative classifications, which are modified by new elements. Definitions as well as classifications are divided into predicative and impredicative. A set is defined by a law according to which every element is generated. In the case of an infinite set, the process of generating elements is unfinished; thus there are always new elements. If their introduction changes the classification of already generated objects, then the definition is impredicative. For example, look at phrases containing a finite number of words and defining a point of space. These phrases are arranged in alphabetical order and each of them is associated with a natural number: the first is associated with number 1, the second with 2, etc. Hence every point defined by such phrases is associated with a natural number. Now suppose that a new point is defined by a new phrase. To determine the corresponding number it is necessary to insert this phrase in alphabetical order; but such an operation modifies the number associated with the already classified points whose defining phrase follows, in alphabetical order, the new phrase. Thus this new definition is impredicative.

For Poincaré, impredicative definitions are the source of antinomies in set theory, and the prohibition of impredicative definitions will remove such antinomies. To this end, Poincaré enunciates the vicious circle principle: a thing cannot be defined with respect to a collection that presupposes the thing itself. In other words, in a definition of an object, one cannot use a set to which the object belongs, because doing so produces an impredicative definition. Poincaré attributes the vicious circle principle to a French mathematician J. Richard. In 1905, Richard discovered a new paradox in set theory, and he offered a tentative solution based on the vicious circle principle.

Poincaré’s prohibition of impredicative definitions is also connected with his point of view on infinity. According to Poincaré, there are two different schools of thought about infinite sets; he called these schools Cantorian and Pragmatist. Cantorians are realists with respect to mathematical entities; these entities have a reality that is independent of human conceptions. The mathematician discovers them but does not create them. Pragmatists believe that a thing exists only when it is the object of an act of thinking, and infinity is nothing but the possibility of the mind’s generating an endless series of finite objects. Practicing mathematicians tend to be realists, not pragmatists or intuitionists. This dispute is not about the role of impredicative definitions in producing antinomies, but about the independence of mathematical entities from human thinking.

 

 

[7]  Comment on this excerpt from Bohm’s ‘Blackfoot Physics’ which explains that the relational languages of indigenous peoples have no place for the notional existence of ‘things-in-themselves.

Sapir’s comment on language and reality can be understood right here, as can be F. David Peat’s and David’s Bohm’s comments that Algonquin languages capture the relational understanding of physical reality, of modern physics.

“The problem with English is that when it tries to grapple with abstractions and categories it tends to trap the mind into believing that such categories have an equal status with tangible objects. Algonquin languages, being for the ear, deal in vibrations [waves] in which each word is related directly, not only to process of thought, but also to the animating energies of the universe.

… [in modern physics] … It is impossible to separate a phenomenon from the context in which it is observed. Categories no longer exist in the absence of contexts.

Within Indigenous science, context is always important. Nothing is abstract since all things happen within a landscape and by virtue of a web of interrelationships. The tendency to collect things into categories does not exist within the thought and language of, for example, Algonquin speakers.

This leads to a profoundly different way of approaching and thinking about the world. For, in the absence of categories, each thing is mentally experienced on its own merits, and for what it actually is. Rather than indulging in comparison or judgment, Indigenous speakers attempt to enter into relationship with them.

What is needed, Bohm argued in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, is a new sort of language, one based on processes and activity, transformation and change, rather than on the interactions of stable objects. Bohm called this hypothetical language the “rheomode.” It is based primarily on verbs and on grammatical structures deriving from verbs. Such a language, Bohm argued, is perfectly adapted to a reality of enfolding and unfolding matter and thought.

David Bohm had not known when he wrote of that concept that such a language is not just a physicist’s hypothesis. It actually exists. The language of the Algonquin peoples was developed by the ancestors specifically to deal with subtle matters of reality, society, thought, and spirituality.

A few months before his death, Bohm met with a number of Algonkian speakers and was struck by the perfect bridge between their language and worldview and his own exploratory philosophy. What to Bohm had been major breakthroughs in human thought — quantum theory, relativity, his implicate order and rheomode – were part of the everyday life and speech of the Blackfoot, Mic Maq, Cree and Ojibwaj.” – F. David Peat, ‘Blackfoot Physics’