Sharp Impressions Resolving in the Relational Mist

I feel inclined to summarize what is precipitating out of the mist, … for my own philosophical inquiry ‘notebook’.  The sharply resolved impressions that are arising from exchanges with another, … which is bringing into coherent confluence his many exchanges with others with my own many exchanges with others, not to mention their many exchanges with others and those others many exchanges with others.

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I see two options for the makeup of the world;

1. the particle option [all genesis, no epigenesis] which is where the world is understood [intellectually/rationally] to be composed of independent material bodies that reside, operate and interact in a space that is independent of these ‘inhabitants’ that reside, operate and interact within it.

2. the ‘wave’ aka relational-field option [epigenesis and genesis as ‘coincidence of opposites’] which is where the world is understood [experientially/intuitively] as a transforming relational continuum that is continually gathering and regathering relational forms within itself.

Question: Source of Unity in Nature:

In either case (1.) or (2.), there is a question of the source of the perceived overall unity of the world in these alternate understandings of the world.

(1.) Independent material entity based world: … The source of overall unity is assumed to be external in this view, as Newton observed while embracing this ‘independent material entity’ [all genesis] option;

“… and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained ; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. . . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” — Newton, Scholium in the ‘Principia’

(2.) Relational field (wave) option: … The source of overall unity is assumed to be intrinsic in this view, as Mach said while embracing the relational [coincidence of opposites of epigenesis-genesis ] option:

“[In nature]… “the individual parts reciprocally determine one another.” … “The properties of one mass always include relations to other masses,” … “Every single body of the Universe stands in some definite relations with every other body in the Universe.” Therefore, no object can “be regarded as wholly isolated.” And even in the simplest case, “the neglecting of the rest of the world is impossible.” – Ernst Mach

Question, Two basic constituents [matter and space] or One basic constituent [energy]

(1.) particle option: … there is a hard binary split between ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ of matter or ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ [‘dualism’]

(2.) relational field option: … there is a one-ness with conjugate aspects; nonlocal relational influence featuring ‘absence of presence’ that is experience-able, but which is non-visible and non-tangible, …and local presence which is visible and tangible.

Modern physics findings support (2.) and critique the notion of an empty space that is independent of the forms that reside within it;

“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.” . . . Henri Poincaré, ’Science and Hypothesis’.”

‘Space is not 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.”…”Relativity forces us to analyze the role played by geometry in the description of the physical world.” . . . “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.

Empty space is the ‘insulator’ around material particles that assures their independence and raises questions about the whereabouts of the unifying influence in nature, suggesting, as expressed by Newton, that “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” That is, the paradox of the independence of the parts and the observed unity of Nature is explained by invoking the concept of a Supreme super-natural being that is ‘in control’ of the workings of the world.

The concept of matter-energy equivalence does away with the ‘independence’ of the parts, and allows the unity in the world/nature to be understood as intrinsic rather than as something imposed by an external controlling/managing power. That is, in the relational view, the world can be understood as a transforming relational continuum that transforms by way of gathering [and regathering] within itself, relational forms, in the manner of convection cells within a fluid flow. The cells are purely relational and features of the non-local relational continuum but nevertheless appear as local, visible, tangible forms.

Influence of Language on Choice of Understandings (1.) particle and (2.) relational:

Noun and verb language-and-grammar provides a direct correspondence, through its subject-verb-predicate representations, to the (1.) particle view of the world. That is, it imputes local authoring of behaviour to the subject [since the surrounding empty space cannot source anything].

Whether or not it is mutual support of the ‘house-of-cards’ variety, postulating a super-natural Supreme Being as the manager of the unity of nature does answer the question as to how independent material entities end up as participants in an overall dynamic unity, such overall unity being our experience-based understanding/perception of Nature. Of course, in the ‘house-of-cards’ type of mutual support, aka ‘tautology’, definitions of the logical elements in the logical proposition are ‘theory-laden’ so as to guarantee mutual support and avoidance of contradictions in the logical propositions that are constructed using the theory-laden elements. That is, the notional independence of the material participants, which would otherwise have no way of explaining the unity in their overall complement; i.e. the unity of Nature, is resolved by including a notional omnipotent and omniscient ‘Supreme Being’ that serves as the shepherd to the sheep and explains the ‘overall unity’ in the face of having declared the existence of a diverse multiplicity of independent material entities.   As Wittgenstein observes, logical propositions give us back the truths that we put into them.

“The propositions of logic are tautologies (6.1), and hence say nothing (6.11). Any attempt to give content to logical propositions is misguided. That they are true shows itself in their structure, and this structure helps us to understand the formal properties of language and the world (6.12). We cannot express anything by means of logical propositions.” — Wittgenstein

Flow-based languages do not employ any dependencies on the conceptual ‘independence’ of local, visible, forms; i.e. as with storm-cells in the atmosphere, the form may be understood as being purely relational and deriving from the simultaneous coincidence of opposites; i.e. the outside-inward inducing epigenetic influx and the inside-outward asserting genetic outflux. This is the essence of the convection cell in a fluid flow. While it ‘appears’ to be an ‘independent entity’ since its form is local, visible and tangible, it is the nexus of ‘sink’ and ‘source’ [convergence and divergence, epigenesis and genesis]. Such relational forms, with a ‘toroidal flow’ topology, are proposed, in modern physics, as the physically real equivalents of forms that we are symbolically representing as ‘independent’ material entities;

That is, given this [purely relational, energy-flow-based] understanding of the ‘independent material entity’, the latter can be seen in terms of a symbolic representation or ‘signifier’ that is a placeholder for a more complex activity ‘signified’ by the signifier, as in the case of the symbols used to represent ‘hurricanes’ which the weather man moves around like magnets on a refrigerator door, to simulate the movement of these seemingly ‘independent entities’, ‘movement’ which does not arise from the forms themselves but from the flow that is engendering the forms and their movement.

Again, noun-and-verb language-and-grammar creates independent subjects that are the jumpstart source of their own behaviour, thanks to the ability of the subject to inflect a verb and generate a predicate. This is an all-genesis, no-epigenesis process, built into the grammar of noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific languages.

The form, instead of being a sailboater-like system that is deriving its motive power and steerage from the relational dynamics it is situationally included in, is depicted, by these subject-verb-predicate grammar structures, as a powerboater whose motive drive and direction stems fully and solely from its internal powers [internal components and processes].

In Western culture raised [conditioned] humans, this is a common archetype. It is how people like to think of themselves; i.e. it is the ‘ego’, and it is supported by Western monotheist religions where, as discussed above, the super-natural Supreme Being answers the question as to how the multitude of ‘independent material entities’ that do their own thing, end up as compliant participants within the dynamic unity of Nature. Once we assume the independence of the local, material participants, the overall unity that characterizes the natural world, as Newton says; “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being”.

Western culture is thus distinct from indigenous aboriginal cultures, not only in the architecture of language employed, but in the understanding of the ‘self’ and whether the self is ‘independent’ or is a relational form, like the storm-cell in the flow of the atmosphere. Christian religious teaching opts for the former;

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

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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.

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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

This [notional] view of having one’s own independent power source [notionally] lifts one free of, and establishes one as separate from, the rest of the world. The relationship with the rest of the world is now give-and-take, ‘influx-and-outflux’, but it is no longer the case that influx-and-outflux authors the form [e.g. human], as with the storm-cell, it is instead that the form [e.g. human] authors the influx and outflux. The creative authoring source shifts from the transforming relational continuum to the interior of the relational forms within the continuum.

To cut to the quick, in this summary of two cosmologies, the ego-notion of the independent existence of material entities, such as particles, humans, collective enterprises, sovereign state collectives is problematic being that the overwhelming evidence favours the relational view of the world and suggests that the popular Western [mechanical] view in terms of independent material entities residing, operating and interacting in a passive space that is notionally independent of the inhabitants that reside, operate and interact within it, is language-induced intellectual idealization [symbolic representation that fails to capture the relational basics of the physical reality of our natural experience].

Meanwhile, the ego-archetype of the ‘independent material entity’ within its own internal power driven and directed behaviour is the basis for the Western ‘operative reality’ so that not only humans are pictured thus, but human collectives (teams, corporations, nations), as well.

In this particle (1.) ego-based view, independent ‘systems’ are seen as the ‘authoring source’ or ‘producers’ of valuable products; i.e. on the ‘influx’ side of things, the ‘authoring sources’ gather raw materials and labours unto themselves, process and improve them, and on the outflux side of things, they distribute the value-added products and the waste materials [no attention is paid to the realm in which materials are being gather and dumped into, other than to assume that it is independent of the productive inhabitant].

In the relational (2.) view, the transforming relational continuum is understood as the ‘authoring source’ of BOTH the apparent authors AND their products [e.g. as in Emerson’s ‘Method of Nature’ where the relational flux of nature is understood as not only inhabiting the organism (relational form) but creating it]. The relational forms are thus understood as vents for transforming the world they are included in, as in the case of storm-cells in the relational flux that gathers and regathers them.

The picture of our human self as an ‘independently existing being with our own internal jumpstart behaviour-authoring powers’ is strongly reinforced by noun-and-verb language;

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the medium of language” (“Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandnes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache” P.U. 109)

 

 

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” (“Ein Bild hielt uns gefangen. Und heraus konnten wir nicht, denn es lag in unsrer Sprache, und sie scheint es uns nur unerbittlich zu wiederholen” P.U. 115)

 

 

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

In the relational (2.) view, it is impossible to ‘picture’ the self as the coincidence of opposites of epigenesis (influx) and genesis (outflux) since the scope of the picture would have to include the full transforming relational continuum. Just as in trying to picture the storm-cells as the coincidence of influx-and-outflux, epigenesis-and-genesis would have to encompass all sides of the surface of a sphere at once. This is not picturable, but we are able gain an ‘impression’, intuitively, of how influence that wraps all around the globe, can author a ‘local, visible, tangible pimple’. Perhaps the best we can do is to allude to the epigenesis that is conjugate to the visible genesis;

But even here, we are prone to thinking in terms of the sailboat metaphor which comes closer [there is a local thing that gathers its power and steerage from the relational dynamics it is situationally included in] but which falls short since the impression we want to convey is the understanding that the gathering of power and steerage IS the thing, so that THERE IS NO LOCAL THING IN A STAND-ALONE SENSE except by appearances, because the form we are looking at is intrinsically non-local, in the same manner as the storm-cell has a local visible aspect but is intrinsically non-local in its phenomenology and is owned by or engendered by the transforming relational continuum.

This composition, of which the visible aspect is only the tip of the iceberg, is discussed by heraclitus;

All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola, “the whole”) flows like a stream.

 

 

In the bow metaphor Heraclitus compares the resultant to a strung bow held in shape by an equilibrium of the string tension and spring action of the bow:

 

 

There is a harmony in the bending back (παλίντροπος palintropos) as in the case of the bow and the lyre.

The world, in Heraclitus view is a transforming energy-charged [‘fire’-charged] relational continuum;

This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was and will be: an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.

 

 

All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods.

The path of influx and the path of outflux [epigenesis and genesis] are a simultaneous couple and the form that arises is a dynamic equilibrium made of hidden harmony;

Hodos ano kato (ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω) is more accurately translated as a hyphenated word: “the upward-downward path.” [rather than ‘the way up and the way down]. They go on simultaneously and instantaneously and result in “hidden harmony”.

So, the visible aspect of the relational form is local, but the physical phenomenology is intrinsically non-local. The relational form is an agent of transformation whose life is expended in sustaining harmony in the unfolding relational transformation;

“The name of the bow (biós) is life (bíos), but its work is death.

In the Western world view which holds to the ‘ego’ view of self as an independent being with its own jumpstart behaviour authoring power we say;

_____ is the child-soldier that killed the people in the café.

_____is the mentally ill person that caused the disturbance.

_____is the criminal offender who injured the innocent victims.

_____is the terrorist offender who beheaded the innocent victims.

The point is that it is impossible to isolate and identify the ultimate roots of authorial sourcing which is channeling on through from the transforming relational continuum through the relational forms.

[N.B. One could equally put up collections of forms here to represent jumpstart authorship of groups, companies, nations etc. where the words convey local authorship by independent entities that are fully and solely responsible for their actions and results while the intuitive understanding is that such groups are gatherings within the transforming relational continuum]

The contradiction here is in assuming that the individual is a local independent thing-in-itself that is fully and solely responsible for its own behaviour, as in the ego-based sense of self. In the relational view, it is impossible to isolate the source of drive and direction that is channelling through and which ‘is’ the relational form, whose locally visible aspect is the tip of the iceberg. The bolt of lightning may fell the tree, but was the tree as a source of friction in its relational engaging with the wind not a contributing source of the bolt which zapped back and felled it?

In the relational view, Justice is restorative and assumes that ‘it takes a whole global community to raise a child-soldier, psychotic, criminal, terrorist’. To employ a justice system that uses the ego view of the individual as an independent being that is master of his actions, is to scapegoat others by imputing authorial sourcing to them and them alone; i.e. authorial sourcing that is channelling through them from the transforming relational continuum that inhabits and engenders them.

When the global relational social dynamic engenders a convection cell [a local collection of people within the global relational social dynamic] such as will later be called ‘The United States’, the declaration, by the collective ego of those involved, of the ‘independent existence’ of a sovereign state, is a religious ‘abracadabra-like’ ritual/chant that affirms belief in the ‘independence’ of man;

“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

And likewise, the independence of collections of men [such as sovereign states and corporations] are said to be rational, created with free will, and masters of their acts.

In the relational view (2.), what is sought after is to let one’s actions be guided by that which is needed to take the relational social dynamic from dissonance to harmony, as may be facilitated by restorative justice ‘learning circles’.

in the particle view (1.), since each individual ‘being’ is fully and solely responsible for their own behaviour, such behaviour on the part of independent individuals who are masters of their own acts, is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach and the moral judgement of the group and/or its leaders must assess whether the behaviours and results are worthy of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

Unfortunately, the same behaviours can be appraised differently by differing adjudicators;

“an action in itself is quite devoid of value ; the whole question is this: who performed it? One and the same ” crime ” may, in one case, be the greatest privilege, in the other infamy. As a matter of fact, it is the selfishness of the judges which interprets an action (in regard to its author) according as to whether it was useful or harmful to themselves (or in relation to its degree of likeness or unlikeness to them).”— Nietzsche on ‘Morality’ and ‘Herd Behaviour’ in ‘The Will to Power’.

Conclusion:

The material particle (1.) world view is directly supported by the symbolic representations of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar, so that in using this language, we construct an operative reality that is based on notional ‘independent beings’ that are masters of their own acts and thus deemed fully and solely responsible for the results of their own acts.

This ‘operative reality’ does not reconcile with the physical reality of our natural, actual experience which is ‘relational’ (2.). Meanwhile, Western systems of government, commerce and justice are all based on the ‘operative reality’ that is built dependently upon the material particle (1.) worldview, putting individual and collective behaviours orchestrated and shaped by the ‘operative reality’ in conflict with individual and collective behaviours orchestrated and shaped by actual relational experience (2.) which, for example, understand the individual NOT as an independent being who is master of his acts, but rather as, Emerson says, as a channeller of influence from the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act; i.e. in the manner of a tornado or ‘agent of transformation’ that gathers within the transforming relational continuum as its means of continuing relational transformation.

The current world population is split as to whether to put intuition and harmony cultivating as in (2.) into precedence over reason and moral judgement as in (1.), the latter having been built into the formal institutions of government, commerce and justice and the former having been the traditional, informal way of handling things. [indigenous aboriginal traditionalists have been waiting a long time for the restoring of (2.) to its natural precedence over (1.).   [(1.) can be seen as a symbolic representation based reduction of (2.)]

While modern physics supports the natural precedence of the relational view (2.) [epigenesis in coniunctio with genesis] over the split apart particle and empty space view of (1.) [all genesis, no epigenesis], Western society has been using discursive reasoning as the tool to decide such things, and there is thus an obstacle, in that;

“The coincidence of opposites is beyond the reach of discursive reasoning. The coincidence of opposites is a ‘unity to which neither otherness nor plurality nor multiplicity is opposed’ — Nicholas of Cusa, ‘Learned Ignorance’

In the case of indigenous aboriginal communities, intuition and relational harmony rise naturally to precedence by the fluid nature of the language and by orienting directly to relational experience, using experience-sharing ‘learning circles’ to prime the tool of relational intuition. Western societies, on the other hand, have become addicted to problem solving via discursive reasoning and are thus in the position noted by Wittgenstein;

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the medium of language” (“Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandnes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache” P.U. 109)

 

 

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” (“Ein Bild hielt uns gefangen. Und heraus konnten wir nicht, denn es lag in unsrer Sprache, und sie scheint es uns nur unerbittlich zu wiederholen” P.U. 115)

 

 

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

The ‘picture’ that plays a pivotal role in our worldview, as an archetype of all forms, is how we picture our ‘self’; i.e. as either (2.) the impression-that-transcends-image-capture, of our ‘self’, as a channeller of influence from the vast and universal to our immediate surroundings, or (1.) as an ‘independent being who is master of his/her acts’ as captured in a photographic likeness.

Noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific language-and-grammar are custom tailored for the latter view of self, ‘where what you see is all you get’, and which may have been where it came from in the first place.

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Footnote: Mesmerized by Measurements

While our noun-and-verb language builds in the assumption that named entities have persisting identity, this is idealization that is not supported by our experience; i.e. relations are the basis of material entities rather than material entities being the basis for relations. The fancy name for this in modern physics is ‘ontic structural realism’ which is “the view that properties and relations are ontologically primitive but objects are not”.

We can say of ‘measuring’ as John Stuart Mill says of ‘defining’;

“Every object measuring act implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the independent existence of the object we have measured”

The hurricane, for example, is given a name and in language and grammar it is treated as an object with persisting identity but convection cells in general are purely relational; i.e. they are the coincidence of opposites of epigenesis and genesis.  While measurements of their spatial extension and properties are possible, this does not testify to any persisting thing-in-itself identity.

In Heraclitus terms, the hurricane is purely relational and continually reborn;

“Hodos ano kato (ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω) is more accurately translated as a hyphenated word: “the upward-downward path.” [rather than ‘the way up and the way down]. They go on simultaneously and instantaneously and result in “hidden harmony”.”

As Einstein and Infeld note in ‘The Evolution of Physics’, in a ‘field’ view of nature

“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’

Of course, the ‘thrown stone’ would be continually reborn into an ever-changing identity, as in Heraclitus description:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

 

Or,

 

“no stone ever flies in the same field-flow twice, for its not the same field-flow and it’s not the same stone”.

In the physical reality of our natural experience, ‘relations are the basis of objects’, …and it is not the case that ‘objects are the basis of relations’, as is the way that dynamics are represented in noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific language-and-grammar.

Of course, our conventional way of representing dynamics is in terms of ‘independent’ material objects with persisting identities that reside, operate and interact in a space/habitat that is deemed ‘independent’ of the inhabitants that reside, operate and interact within it.

This leads to the classical ‘mechanics’ view and associated measurements that assume the persisting identity of named material entities; “Katrina is growing larger and stronger”, … “Katrina is moving towards the Gulf Coast”, … “Katrina is wreaking destruction on New Orleans”, … “Katrina is moving overland and dissipating”.

Of course, Katrina is a relational feature within ‘the transforming relational continuum’ [the ‘All’] and here, as in the fluid-dynamical worldview generally, it is apparent that “properties and relations are ontologically primitive but objects are not”.

In a transforming relational continuum, one is bound to have problems if one holds material entities to be primitives since;

“Space not only conditions the behaviour of inert masses, but is also conditioned in its state by them.” – Einstein

This ‘mutual conditioning’ is something that is left out of mainstream science since mainstream science made objects ‘primitives’ and dropped out intrinsic interdependency between matter and space as a matter of convenience, to achieve ‘economy of thought’ as Ernst Mach put it, as is afforded by representing dynamics as ‘mechanical actions of material objects’. The omission has been noted by Einstein and Mach, but that does not prevent us from confusing this ‘economy of thought’ for ‘reality’. Mach describes our penchant for explaining all physical phenomena by mechanical ideas as a ‘prejudice’;

“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.” – Ernst Mach, ‘The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development’, Chapter V, ‘The Relations of Mechanics to Other Departments of Knowledge (Physiology)’

How hard is it to ‘let go’ of our scientific thinking habit of seeing material objects and their mechanical actions as the basis of relations amongst those objects, rather than acknowledging that relations are primary and that what we have been calling material objects are instead relational forms which have no ‘independent identity’ but which are the coincidence of opposites of ‘epigenesis and genesis’, as in the convection cell? It is so hard that scientists speak of ‘the amazing intelligence of plants’ that cooperate across family generations, across plant species and even across plant and animal groupings. Of course, if biologists were to take into account that fact that ‘relations are the basis of things’ instead of holding on to the belief that ‘things are the basis of relations’, they would not have to impute the sourcing of this amazing cooperation to the notionally ‘independent’ objects within the interdependent ecosystem, and could instead assume that relations are primary and orchestrate and shape the development of the objects (organisms) within the ecosystem;

“[In nature]… “the individual parts reciprocally determine one another.” – Ernst Mach

Nevertheless, the classical ‘mechanics’ assumption that ‘things and what they do are the basis of relations’ continues to hold sway in how scientific thinking captures relational complexity.

In a Nova documentary entitled ‘Slime Mold Smarts’ we hear the following

“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

In the same vein, in a David Suzuki ‘Nature of Things’ video, ‘Smarty Plants’, documents the efforts by scientists who are trying to figure out the ‘seat’ of the ‘amazing plant intelligence’ they are observing with new video and microscope surveillance technologies. That is, these monitoring technologies show directly and unambiguously, how plants co-operate within and across species so as to improve their health and sustainability.

The viewer is asked;

• Did you know that all plants forage for food in much the same way as a bear or a squirrel?
• Did you know that plants that can “talk”?
• Did you know that plants, like animals, can sense when they’re under attack and can actually defend themselves?
• Did you know that some plants can “tag” insects for predation?
• Did you know that the roots of an Eastern European invader called Spotted Knapweed can capture and hold territory by waging chemical war on other plants?
• Did you know that there’s a parasitic plant that can actually identify and choose between two different plant hosts by sniffing out their chemical IDs?
• Did you know that a plant that grows on the shores of the Great Lakes can identify its relatives and even help them out?
• Did you know that some plants can tell which insect is eating it by the chemicals in the insect’s saliva?
• Did you know that plants emit a chemical scream for help when they’re under stress, and that other plants can listen in on their SOS messages?
• Did you know that “mother” trees can actually nurture their young?

These imputed ‘intelligence’ attributes of plants is made all the more amazing since plants don’t even have a nucleus or central nervous system into which we can impute a place of residency (much less a description of the intelligence-sourcing equipment) for the centre-of-intelligence.

Is it not time to acknowledge that the subject-verb-predicate structures of language are obscuring the fact that relations are the basis of things, rather than things being the basis of relations?

The problem is that when one commences one’s inquiry assuming that ‘independently-existing objects/organisms are the causal authors of observed results’, our measurements and how we express them are going to reflect that assumption. To say that Katrina measures fifty miles in diameter is circular reasoning which affirms the existence of the object we are defining;

“Every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the existence of the object defined” – John Stuart Mill

Even though the relational form we are observing is a dynamic equilibrium between influx and outflux (sink and source) as in the toroidal flows discussed in the essay, the coincidence-of-opposites of ‘epigenesis-and-genesis’, … the power of noun-and-verb language-and grammar holds sway and has us believing that ‘Katrina’ is an ‘independent system in herself’ with her own persisting identity. But there are no objects with persisting identities in a world that is in continual flux [a transforming relational continuum].

“So [since the problem of certainty in identity such as A=A is handled, in Euclidian geometry, by invoking the notion of invariable solids] “objects” are implicitly assumed to be invariable bodies. Therefore the axioms of geometry already contain an irreducible assumption which does not follow from the axioms themselves. Axiomatic systems provide us with “faulty definitions” of objects, definitions that are grounded not in formal logic but in a hypothesis — a “prejudice” as Hans-Georg Gadamer might say — that is prior to logic. As a corollary, our logic of identity cannot be said to be necessary and universally valid. “Such axioms,” says Poincaré, “would be utterly meaningless to a being living in a world in which there are only fluids.” — Vladimir Tasic, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction: A Mathematical History (2001)

In the following two pictures, it might be harder to imagine the [human] form on the left as being the coincidence of opposites of epigenesis and genesis [convergence and divergence] since our impression of man as an ‘independent reason-driven system’ [bio-machine] is a deeply infused cultural belief tradition.

One might object to the picture on the left, saying; ‘if that toroidal field of influence really existed, we would be able to measure it. But what the picture is symbolizing is that the man IS a relational form within the transforming relational continuum. If we first assume the existence of the human as a ‘primitive’, then we have ‘lost the relational view’; i.e. we have lost sight of the fact that;

“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

Bohm’s ‘Rheomode’ language project was an attempt to overcome the problem of noun-and-verb language blocking our access to relational conceptualizing of the world.

“Bohm did note, however, that our (Indo-European) languages tend to be highly noun-oriented and well suited to discussions of concepts and categories. By contrast, quantum theory demands a more process-oriented approach, a verb-based language perhaps that emphasizes flow, movement and constant transformation. (Bohm’s Holomovement – the movement of the whole.) — F. David Peat, ‘Language and Linguistics’

The problem has been that when we measure, we measure ‘things’; i.e. we start with the assumption that things exist as independent entities and then we measure ‘their’ properties relative to an absolute space and absolute time reference/measuring frame. The hurricane is not ‘separate’ in the sense of ‘independent’ from the transforming relational continuum it is a feature within, but it is convenient to name it [endow it with independent existence] where that name is the symbol or signifier which points to that which is signified; i.e. a purely relational activity within the transforming relational continuum. But once we have the symbol, ‘Katrina’, we can use it as a subject to inflect verbs and generate predicates so as to imply that ‘Katrina’ is the author of her own development and behaviour.

We thus invent a pseudo local author for the relational activity in the transforming relational continuum. We mesmerize ourselves with our measurement practice by converting relational forms [activities] into local ‘systems-in-themselves’ that are now said to be the author of their own activities.

“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

Similarly ‘burning’ becomes ‘flames burn’, and ‘splashing’ becomes ‘water splashes’.

“As soon as one sees that separate things are fictitious, it becomes obvious that nonexistent things cannot “perform” actions. The difficulty is that most languages are arranged so that actions (verbs) have to be set in motion by things (nouns), and we forget that rules of grammar are not necessarily rules, or patterns, of nature. This, which is nothing more than a convention of grammar, is also responsible for (or, better, “goes with”) absurd puzzles as to how spirit governs matter, or mind moves body. How can a noun, which is by definition not action, lead to action?” —Alan Watts, ‘Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are’

In spite of our awareness of the pitfalls of language in obscuring from us the natural primacy of relations over things, we seem still stuck in the habit of seeing the world in terms of things being more basic than relational activity.

Humans are dependent participants within a relational ecosystem. Why would we not accept what our experience is telling us; i.e. that relations are the basis of things, rather than things being the basis of relations?

“[In nature]… “the individual parts reciprocally determine one another.” – Ernst Mach

This has been discussed in the body of the essay in regard to ‘ego’ and to Western religious tradition. So, rather than repeating, we can move ahead on this ‘mesmerized by measurement’ thread.

It has been our habit to think in one-sided terms of ‘all-genesis’, ‘no-epigenesis’. Stephen Jay Gould critiqued Darwinian natural selection in this respect, using the metaphor of baseball and how we measure ‘batting averages’ and thus ‘hitting’ out of the context of ‘fielding’. Variations in the fielding [outside-inward epigenetic influence] may be as much or more responsible for variations in the hitting-results [inside-outward genetic action] than the hitting actions, but our habit is to ‘measure what things do’ [i.e. this reduces the epigenesis-genesis coniunctio to all genesis, no epigenesis] which implicitly separates the subject from the relational dynamics it is situated in, and imposes an absolute reference/measurement frame.

This use of the subject-verb-predicate constructs to separate out and impute independent existence and local jumpstart authorship to that which, in nature, is an inextricably included relational form in a transforming relational continuum was the case with the hurricane, and it is the general case. Dynamics that are inherently relational are reduced, using language-and-grammar, to intellectually idealized, locally originating representations.

While a flow-based language would say; ‘the terrain is slumping’, noun-and-verb language will say; “the mountains are eroding and getting smaller. Landslides are taking material down into the valley and filling in the valley. Language, in this manner, converts relational dynamics to subject-verb-predicate representations. If one were to say; ‘landslides are not real’, ‘the terrain slumping is real’, someone might retort; ‘have you never been in a landslide and been hit by a falling rock or had your house knocked off its foundations? …. of course landslides are real’. In fact, the subject-verb-predicate statements are logical propositions, tautologies whose truths are inherently ‘incomplete’ since they involve relocating the authoring source from the transforming relational continuum to the relational form that is being subjectized.

Only very slowly is the acknowledgement of ‘epigenesis’ as conjugate to ‘genesis’ in the coincidentia oppositorum of epigenesis-and-genesis [hitting-and-fielding] making inroads in scientific thinking. One example is in cell biology where it was thought that ‘genes’ were fully and solely responsible for cell development, until stem-cell research conclusively showed that environmental ‘epigenetic’ pull had the upper hand over ‘genetic push’.

“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’

Another example is in evolution of microbial communities where it is found that relations are the basis for things, rather than things being the basis for relations;

“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 (Schiefer, G.E. and D. E. Caldwell, 1982, Synergistic interaction between Anabaena and Zoogloea spp. in carbon dioxide limited continuous cultures. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 59, 3373-3377) 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.

In other words, “[In nature]… “the individual parts reciprocally determine one another.” – Ernst Mach

The bottom line here is that noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific language-and-grammar obscures the relational nature of the world by subjectizing relational activities and RE-presenting them as independent entities with their own local powers of jumpstart authorship of development and behaviour.

“The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” – Edward Sapir

Our implicit habit of imposing absolute space and absolute time reference/measurement frames to pre-process our observations results in the construction of a simplified ‘operative reality’ in terms of ‘independent things’ and ‘what independent things do’ that is commonly being confused for ‘reality’. This ‘all-genesis’, ‘no-epigenesis’ ‘operative reality’ is convenient and the articulating of an ‘epigenesis-genesis’ [coincidence of opposites] ‘reality’ would be much more complicated;

“Finally, our Euclidean geometry is itself only a sort of convention of language; mechanical facts might be enunciated with reference to a 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

There is a tendency to think that our science is making progress in moving from Newtonian physics to modern physics which comprehends relativity and quantum mechanics, but the evidence suggests instead that science (reason) has dumbed us down (our experience based intuition delivers deeper, less mechanical understandings).

“It is sometimes stated that Newtonian space, time, and matter are sensed by everyone intuitively, whereupon relativity is cited as showing how mathematical analysis can prove intuition wrong. This, besides being unfair to intuition, is an attempt to answer offhand question (1) put at the outset of this paper, to answer which this research was undertaken. Presentation of the findings now nears its end, and I think the answer is clear. The offhand answer, laying the blame upon intuition for our slowness in discovering mysteries of the Cosmos, such as relativity, is the wrong one. The right answer is: Newtonian space, time, and matter are no intuitions. They are receipts from culture and language. That is where Newton got them.” – Benjamin Whorf, ‘The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language’

The adoption of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar by Western civilization amounts to a great dumbing-down, not that experience-based intuition and a sense of balance and harmony HAD to take a back seat to binary reason and binary moral judgment but that is, in effect, what has been happening. Simple mechanics have taken over as the dominating ethos of Western civilization; e.g. win/lose competition, by being institutionalized in government, commerce and justice.

Measurement was a key requirement in the development of the noun-and-verb language architecture. As Oswyn Murray reports in ‘Early Greece’, language which had dealt with spiritual matters and was in the hands of priests and shamans, was taken over by traders and merchants whose primary needs were to manage transactions and inventory. Murray points out the connections between the emergence of phonetic language and the amazing material affluence of the Phoenicians as denounced by the Old Testament prophets in the sixth century, citing Ezekiel;

“Tarshish (in Spain) was a source of your commerce, from its abundant resources offering silver and iron, tin and lead, as your staple wares, Javan (Ionia, the Greeks), Tubal (in Cappadocia) and Meshech (Phrygia) dealt with you, offering slaves and vessels of bronze as your imports. . . Rhodians dealt with you, great islands were a source of your commerce, paying what was due to you in ivory and ebony . . . Dealers from Sheba (Aden) and Raamah (S. Arabia) dealt with you, offering the choicest spices, every kind of precious stone and gold, as your staple wares. Harran, Kanneh and Eden (in Mesopotamia), dealers from Asshur (Assyria) and all Media, dealt with you; they were your dealers in gorgeous stuffs, violet cloths and brocades, in stores of coloured fabric rolled up and tied with cords; your dealing with them were in these. (Ezekiel 27.12-24)” – Oswyn Murray, ‘Early Greece’

The easy and informal flow of goods became highly ‘rationalized’ with the coming of noun-and-verb language;

“In Greece, Goody and Watt claim that literacy was responsible for most of the changes in the archaic age, for the movement towards democracy, the development of logic and rational thought, scepticism, the growth of individualism and personal alienation, and the replacement of primitive mythopoeic ways of approaching the past by a critical historiography. The fundamental factor in this process was the way that literacy fixed permanently and made available to a wider audience previously fluid descriptions; the evasions and reinterpretations of the oral tradition ceased, and the resulting gap between written statement and actual experience led to the formation of a critical approach to life based on the notion of a essential rationality of all aspects of reality, public and private. Literacy indeed becomes the cause of what the German sociologist Max Weber saw as the distinguishing mark of western civilization, the ‘formal rationality’ of its institutions.” — Oswyn Murray, ‘Early Greece’

The ‘supremacy’ of Western European civilization is tied to the cultivating of a hard rational approach to social dynamics, to the mastery of ‘mechanics’ and a science which equips man to ‘get what he wants’, losing, in the process, his understanding of his impact on the world that he and his conquests share inclusion in. Science can inform us how to eliminate pests; e.g. by increasing the concentration of DDT in the habitat we will decrease the concentration of mosquitoes, but it does not inform us as to how our operations that are successful in achieving our objectives, are transforming the relational space we are each situationally included in. This rising insensitivity to our innate self-other interdependency grew in phase with the rise of rationality.

The gathering or binning of all manner of things into ‘categories’ (inventories) has become so common to us that we can’t even see that we are doing it, even though it has a significant influence in the shaping of our ‘operative reality’. Whorf’s point is that we are only now, lifting off the cloak of dumbing down that we have pulled over ourselves with our adoption of noun-and-verb language [as mentioned, we did not have to banish intuition and sense of balance and harmony to the sidelines, however, this ‘tool running away with the workman’ [Emerson] is what in fact has happened, and only now are we entering into recovery mode];

“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’

Nietzsche estimated two centuries [from 1890] for the ‘devaluation of the highest values’ or in other words, the restoring of intuition and sense of balance and harmony to their natural precedence over the noun-and-verb language-and-grammar propelled upstarts; ‘binary reason’ and ‘binary moral judgement’. He is perhaps an optimist.

Meanwhile, words [the currency of discursive reason] keep getting in our way and we are unable to see the relations for the things.

* * *

 

Author’s Comment on Resistance to [Ignore-ance of?] Relativity

There is a reason why the ideas discussed above, while understood, do not get picked up and made use of in our Western thinking and social dynamic, and this resistance to ‘take-up’ has been discussed since the time of Heraclitus, 500 BCE.

Because we live in a transforming relational continuum, there is no traction for discussing ‘local experience’ unless we intellectually ‘break out’ a local portion of the continuum and noun-and-verb language-and-grammar, with its subject-verb-predicate constructs, giving us the opportunity to fabricate a local (private) understanding that serves as a local ‘operative reality’.

Using the convenient tool of language, we can, for example, subjectize relational forms such as storm-cells, … relational features within the transforming relational continuum, … and by re-casting these relational forms as independently-existing entities and having them inflect verbs, make it appear, in our minds, as if they are these re-case forms are the authors of their own development and behaviour which reside, operate and interact in a notional fixed, independent ‘theatre of operations’ aka ‘three-dimensional space’. Instead of endless relationality as the source of the unfolding dynamics, we get jumpstart local authorship and cause-effect dynamics.

In general, the tool of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar allows us to re-locate the sourcing of physical phenomena, in our mind, from the relational continuum to the relational features that form within the continuum. Of course, our bad habit, as Emerson says, is to let the tool run away with the workman; i.e. to forget that the ‘operative reality’ we have constructed for ourselves in terms of ‘what independent subject-things do’, is just a tool of convenience that is delivering ‘economy of thought’ [Mach], so that while ‘awake’ within this language-based ‘operative reality’, we fall asleep with respect to our inclusion in the physical reality of our natural experience [inclusion in the transforming relational continuum].

Three dimensional space, the space of independent objects that move about and interact with one another, is a convenient mental modeling space that ‘absolutizes’ the locally visible and tangible aspects of relational forms, but there is far more to relational forms than their local, visible and tangible aspects as we know from observing storm-cells in the relational space of the atmosphere.

As Poincaré reminds us;

“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 Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis

The problems that the now globally dominant Western society is experiencing. could be described in the terms that we are confusing three-dimensional space for ‘reality’. It is a mathematical-logical ‘operative reality’ but it is in no way the ‘physical reality of our natural experience’. As Newton pointed out, Euclidian space allows us to observe local, visible, material entities that reside, operate and interact within it, but it doesn’t allow us to see how these entities enter and exit from this space. Since we can position the the origin of our three dimensional space wherever we want, we can use 3D space to construct a private view of dynamics. This baseball bat I am holding in my hands is stationary and has zero kinetic energy, according to me. But the guy on the sidewalk, who is watching the bat approaching him as it protrudes from the car window that I am holding it out of, as the car speeds along the curve by the sidewalk, sees its velocity and kinetic energy having high non-zero values. When I pull it back in, there is blood all over it, and I realize that something travelling at a high speed must have struck my stationary bat.

Three dimensional space is absolute space and everybody gets to construct their own private understanding by thinking in terms of three dimensional space. “the space revealed to us by our senses is absolutely different from the space of geometry.” . . . “our Euclidean geometry is itself only a sort of convention of language”.

If we are doing more talking than experiencing, we can find ourselves mesmerized by our continual constructing of three-dimensional scenarios using our three dimensional language conventions, so that our private view starts to ‘pre-empt’ our common experience. It is as if, when we enter into our intellectual manufactured three-dimensional space, we fall asleep to the relational common-space of our natural experience. Heraclitus discusses this problem referring, in his discussion to ‘the logos’ or ‘universal organizing principle’ that sustains the unity of Nature.

Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that one is all /all is one.

 

 

For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding.

Of the logos, which is as I describe it, people always prove to be uncomprehending both before they have heard it and once they have heard it. For, although all things happen according to the logos, people are like those of no experience, even when they do experience such words and deeds as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its phusis (nature / constitution) and declare how it is; but others are as ignorant of what they do when awake as they are forgetful of what they do when asleep.

 

 

Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: “Present, they are absent.”

 

— Heraclitus

In the transforming relational continuum of Nature, motion, development, behaviour is ‘relative’ in the manner that the formation of a storm-cell [genesis] is relative to the accommodating reception of the flow it is included in [epigenesis]. Epigenesis and genesis are a ‘coincidence of opposites’; i.e. they are one dynamic with a local, visible, tangible aspect which is not the mother of its own development and behaviour, but the child of the flow or ‘relational continuum’ the storm gathers in.

Noun-and-verb language-and-grammar facilitates the capture of this dynamic by name-labelling, defining and subjectizing the relational form so that by having this subject inflect verbs and generate predicative results, we can RE-present the physical dynamics of our natural experience, in a new ‘operative reality’ based on notional ‘independent material entities’ and ‘what these independent entities are doing’. I use the term ‘operative reality’ because we apply this ‘subjectification’ of relational forms to our ‘self’, as well, and place the subjectified self within a notional fixed spatial container or notional ‘theatre of operations’ in place of the transforming relational continuum.

As Mach warns;

“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.” – Ernst Mach

Actions which are captured in the subject-verb-predicate structures of language are ‘all genesis’ and ‘no epigenesis’. To use the analogy of baseball, as Stephen Jay Gould did to critique Darwinian natural selection, actions are relative, and the assertive aspect or ‘hitting aspect’ is given value by the accommodating or ‘fielding’ aspect. It is possible for a hitter to hit a single, and then later to hit a double with the same effort he used to hit the single, the variance in the result arising from the variances in the fielding perhaps more than the hitting, although it is impossible to exactly divide out the contribution of each since the dynamic arises as the simultaneous coincidence of opposites.

In criminal law, there is an attempt to ‘objectify an act itself’. This leads to issues in such crimes as sexual harassment or sexual assault where the same or similar hitting action can lead to different hitting results in different places, situations and/or eras and what was rude behaviour formerly can be sexual assault today. Similarly, we can throw a match in the forest in spring and repeat the same act at the end of August and find that the same act in August [at the end of a long hot and dry summer] garners a lot more results than it did in April. The experiential conditioning of the fielding contributes to the ‘hitting result’ and we can’t reduce the meaning of a ‘hitting result’ to terms of what the hitter is fully and solely responsible for, … or rather, … we can, and we do, but it is not consistent with what is physically occurring.

What we do is ‘frame actions’ within a three-dimensional space which, by making the hitter fully and solely responsible for his hitting results, is implicitly assuming a ‘fielding baseline’ that establishes the value of the asserting ‘hitting’ action. Meanwhile, this implicit baseline, may shift, as in the sexual assault and fire-starting examples, and more generally, in attributing all ‘deviant’ behaviour to the hitter and deriving fully and solely from the hitter;

“… an action in itself is quite devoid of value ; the whole question is this: who performed it? One and the same ” crime ” may, in one case, be the greatest privilege, in the other infamy. As a matter of fact, it is the selfishness of the judges which interprets an action (in regard to its author) according as to whether it was useful or harmful to themselves (or in relation to its degree of likeness or unlikeness to them).”— Nietzsche on ‘Morality’ and ‘Herd Behaviour’ in ‘The Will to Power’

Exceptional teams have been found to adjust their assertive production of goods and services [‘hitting’] so that they are more readily accommodated by the receiving [fielding] team [both hitter and fielder can make mutually beneficial adjustments]. The resulting efficiency benefits that arise at the interface may be shared by the participating teams. As in the baseball example, while the hitter will get credit for the increase in hitting results, it may well be due to a more accommodating fielding of the hitting. But the practice of attributing the increase to the hitter alone comes directly from the subject-verb-predicate structures of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar.

In the case of three or more teams working together, efficiencies of the ‘three body problem’ variety may arise for which there is no exact solution; i.e. it becomes impossible to separate out, exactly, the contribution of each to the beneficial result.

“an exact solution for three bodies [for the relations-first view of dynamics], if I am not mistaken, exceeds the force of any human mind.” – Isaac Newton

You can imagine that the managers of these teams will attribute production improvements to their team and its members, rather to efficiencies in the interfacing amongst the teams. In actual studies of exceptionally performing teams, the members of teams from three or four different institutions ‘let their identities float’ in that they let the situational possibilities arising within the matrix of relations actualize their actualizable potentials. This can lead to benefits to be shared by all participants. From the point of view of the actual team members, their relations with one another are what is defining their teams; i.e. relations are the basis of things. However, to their institutional management, the teams are the basis of the relations, as the three-dimensional view demands. The institutional view is in orthodox three-dimensional geometry terms and this culturally preferred view is allowed to trump the physical reality.

In fully and solely attributing the ‘hitting results’ to the ‘hitter’, one is assuming a ‘baseline’ fielding. If the baseline ‘fielding’ is shifting, the new and greater [or lesser] hitting result will, of course, be attributed to the hitter, as that is the only possibility in subject-verb-predicate structures.

That the solution for three+ bodies moving under one another’s simultaneous influence is impossible, doesn’t meant that it ‘doesn’t happen’; i.e. the ‘impossibility of a solution’ is a hang-up in the maths department. Our experience is that ‘it happens’ and that our language-based mental modeling is not up to the task. In other words, we need a mathematical modeling space that is adequate to the task, … a space that can ‘relationally flex’ like the space of our experience.

Such a mathematical space is available to us. Of course, we have gotten very accustomed to stopping at three dimensional Euclidian space, … so much so that we are used to regarding what we model within three-dimensional space as ‘reality’ [i.e. models in terms of independent material bodies that reside, operate and interact within a fixed space and time reference frame].

Increasing the dimensionality of space can meanwhile allow our mathematical modeling to come closer to a match with the phenomenology of our natural experience; e.g. the aspect where ‘relations are the basis of things’ rather than ‘things being the basis of relations’.

A mathematical space that could model relational phenomena arrived in the mid-nineteenth century and Mach speaks of how this ‘non-euclidian’ space was received by the public in ‘The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development’, in Chapter V, the Economy of Science. It appears that the acceptance of relational space has been deferred by initial misinterpretations;

*As the outcome of the labors of Lobatchevski, Bolyai, Gauss, and Riemann, the view has gradually obtained currency in the mathematical world, that that which we call space is a particular, actual case of a more general, conceivable case of multiple quantitative manifoldness. The space of sight and touch is a threefold manifoldness; it possesses three dimensions ; and every point in it can be defined by three distinct and independent data. But it is possible to conceive of a quadruple or even multiple space-like manifoldness. And the character of the manifoldness may also be differently conceived from the manifoldness of actual space. We regard this discovery, which is chiefly due to the labors of Riemann, as a very important one. The properties of actual space are here directly exhibited as objects of experience, and the pseudo-theories of geometry that seek to excogitate these properties by metaphysical arguments are overthrown.

 

 

A thinking being is supposed to live in the surface of a sphere, with no other kind of space to institute comparisons with. His space will appear to him similarly constituted throughout. He might regard _it as infinite, and could only be convinced of the contrary by experience. Starting from any two points of a great circle of the sphere and proceeding at right angles thereto on other great circles, he could hardly expect that the circles last mentioned would intersect. So, also, with respect to the space in which we live, only experience can decide whether it is finite, whether parallel lines intersect in it, or the like. The significance of this elucidation can scarcely be overrated. An enlightenment similar to that which Riemann inaugurated in science was produced in the rnind of humanity at large, as regards the surface of the earth, by the discoveries of the first circumnavigators.

 

 

The theoretical investigation of the mathematical possibilities above referred to, has, primarily, nothing to do with the question whether things really exist which correspond to these possibilities; and we must not hold mathematicians responsible for the popular absurdities which their investigations have given rise to. The space of sight and touch is three-dimensional ; that, no one ever yet doubted. If, now, it should be found that bodies vanish from this space, or new bodies get into it, the question might scientifically be discussed whether it would facilitate and promote our insight into things to conceive experiential space as part of a four-dimensional or multi-dimensional space. Yet in such a case, this fourth dimension would, none the less, remain a pure thing of thought a mental fiction.

 

 

But this is not the way matters stand. The phenomena mentioned were not forthcoming until after the new views were published, and were then exhibited in the presence of certain persons at spiritualistic séances. The fourth dimension was a very opportune discover^ for the spiritualists and for theologians who were in a quandary about the location of hell. The use the spiritualist makes of the fourth dimension is this, ‘it is possible to move out of a finite straight line, without passing the extremities, through the second dimension ; out of a finite closed surface through the third ; and, analogously, out of a finite closed space, without passing through the enclosing boundaries, through the fourth dimension. Even the tricks that prestidigitateurs, in the old days, harmlessly executed in three dimensions, are now invested with a new halo by the fourth. But the tricks of the spiritualists, the tying or untying of knots in endless strings, the removing of bodies from closed spaces, are all performed in cases where there is absolutely nothing at stake. All is purposeless jugglery. We have not yet found an accoucheur who has accomplished, parturition through the fourth dimension. If we should, the question would at once become a serious one. Professor Simony’s beautiful tricks in ropetying, which, as the performance of a prestidigitateur, are very admirable, speak against, not for, the spiritualists.

 

 

Everyone is free to set up an opinion and to adduce proofs in support of it. Whether, though, a scientist shall find it worth his while to enter into serious investigations of opinions so advanced, is a question which his reason and instinct alone can decide, if these things, in the end, should turn out to be true, I shall not be ashamed of being the last to believe them. What I have seen of them was not calculated to make me less sceptical. I myself regarded multi-dimensioned space as a mathematico-physical help even, prior to the appearance of Riemann’s memoir. But I trust that no one will employ what I have thought, said, and written on this subject as a basis for the fabrication of ghost stories. (Compare Mach, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit.)

Conclusion: to Author’s Comment on Resistance to [Ignore-ance of?] Relativity

The first conclusion is really just a reminder that three-dimensional space is a mathematical framework we impose in our intellectual modeling which, as Poincaré emphasizes, is ‘nothing like the space of our experience’.

However, three-dimensional space works well with the notion of ‘independently-existing material objects’ and these are central to the subject-verb-predicate constructs of noun-and-verb Indo-European/scientific language-and-grammar.

In three-dimensional space, the coincidence of opposites of epigenesis [fielding] and genesis [hitting], because of the non-participation of space, is reduce to ‘genesis only’ or ‘hitting only’ as in the subject-verb-predicate constructs of noun-and-verb language-and-grammar. This reduction to the ‘positive causal pole’ is synthetic, of course, but it is something that provides a foundation for discursive reasoning.

There is a contradiction that emerges here between the ‘operative reality’ that forms from discursive reasoning and three-dimensional space vis a vis the actual physical experience of the coincidence of opposites, of epigenesis and genesis, or ‘fielding and hitting’. For example, the members of the exceptionally performing teams, let the situational possibility arising in their matrix of relations inductively orchestrate and shape the actualizing of their actualizable potentials. This ‘is’ the coincidence of opposites of epigenesis and genesis … ‘in action’. It is the physical reality of our natural experience. It is the case where relations are the basis of things (teams or organization) rather than vice versa. In other words;

The organizational structure is not the machinery responsible for what is being produced, but rather, the organizational structure is the record of the productive relational dynamic. [The organism’s DNA is the record of the productive relational dynamics]. Or as in Caldwell’s study of the evolution of microbial communities;

“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.” – Douglas Caldwell et al.

We arrive, at this point, at a basic contradiction as to ‘which reality to go with’, the traditional three-dimensional space based ‘operative reality’ in terms of ‘independent material entities’ and what these ‘independent things do’ in a one-sided all-hitting, no-fielding manner, … or with the higher dimensionality requiring ‘physical reality of our natural experience’ wherein we are participants within a coincidence of opposites of epigenesis and genesis. Right now, the participants in the exceptional teams understand the latter as the physical reality, wherein relations are the basis of organizational structure, and they also understand the ‘official’, ‘institutional’ reality being the ‘operative reality’ based in three-dimensional space which sees the organizational structure as being the basis of relations.

While institutional management is judging the teams and the team members as if they are independent beings that are masters of their acts and using this as “the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.” [see earlier Vatican Archive citation].

The institutional management view thus leads to binary logic based competition which extols and flies the flag of ‘identity politics’ [national pride, collective ego] while at the same time crushing the relational ethos where identity must float in order to cultivate a harmonious coniunctio oppositorum of epigenesis and genesis.

As long as ‘binary logic’ and ‘discursive reasoning’ are used as the tools for determining ‘which model is more correct’, the standard Western 3D space model in which ‘things are the basis of relations’ will win since the 3D space model with its one-sided all-hitting, no-fielding RE-presentation is inherently inadequate for dealing with the ‘coincidence of opposites’ of epigenesis and genesis.

Until there is a general ‘awakening’, ego, competition and nationalism that supports the ‘private understanding’ will continue to suffocate the re-surfacing of the ‘common understanding’ with its ethos of letting identity float in the service of relational evolution rather than engaging in a futile attempt to drive it.