posted on Sep, 1 2018 @ 10:42 PM
When I think of the two biggest influences on my thinking – science and philosophy – I find myself tongue-tied trying to explain to the one group,
scientists, who pride themselves on their ‘skepticism’, that reality really does have a fundamentally existential nature to it, while the other
group (philosophy/mysticism) more aware of the existential dimension, are fundamentally dissociated from the mechanical laws at work which make the
universe appear just as evolutionary science sees it: as a process that began with a big bang from an asymmetry between matter and antimatter (or so
cosmology speculates). Inflation led to the creation of spacetime, and the early matter – fundamentally a function of symmetry dynamics between
wave-form particles controlled by a very high level symmetry – the Higgs boson – which emanates outward from that primal big bang, created stars,
which in turn generated the properties necessary for solar system formation, and under certain auspicious circumstances, a planet can be
advantageously situated vis-à-vis its star, perhaps even dynamically entangled with another planet, a ‘moon’, which helps to generate dynamical
motion through the tide effect. Hydrogen and oxygen – or water – is really not as scarce when the planet is properly situated – as water is the
inevitable product of hydrogen and oxygen. What matters is whether its liquid, or gas, or as it most often exists, solid.
The scientific ‘story’ is a profoundly coherent one, and way more probable as ‘the truth’ than any other philosophy which makes claim to
knowledge. Honesty means acknowledging the importance of epistemological clarity: to eliminate what’s called “the god of the gaps” – to resist
the urge to mystify what can be explained in natural terms.
A scientific account, or approach to reality, is the one Einstein and many other physicists believed in: symmetry. Spacetime was Einstein’s answer
to the question of “if the universe is based in symmetry”, how does time relate to space? Murray Gell-Mann discovered the nature of protons and
neutrons – and all bosons – by postulating the existence of quarks – three of them per shell – which were established on the grounds of both
geometrical and numerical symmetry considerations. The fact that the experimental results of such theorizing yields the structure theorized is not
surprising, but probably a function of the self-similar dynamics that rhythmically “appear” at a higher-level ontology.
Yet, most scientists do not have the reverence of Einstein, or Bohr, for the Cosmos around them. They seem to not understand how fundamentally
different the existential dimension of self-experience is from non-existential forms of self-experience. The existential is an embodied state of
being: it is happening through a brain. Yet that brain was constructed by a history of relational interactions with others; these interactions, if
understood in a truly physical sense, are not dissociated from the electromagnetic rhythms that, presumably, accompany our states of coherence with
self and others (happiness, pride) or incoherence (shame, depression). Symmetry ‘builds up’ into the “need to be recognized” by the other that
each human mind-brain incline’s towards. This need for recognition, implicit in every smirk a baby makes when it observes another face, or the
response of the person being observed this way: what is it that educes this process, but an implicit recognition of self in the other? Why can’t
scientists be real – and not derealized – and consider how profound a truth that is? How much more of a stretch is it to say that, not only does
the human other constitute a ‘problem’ which our consciousness resolves through the power of love, but even our experience of self as self, and in
particular, self in relation to a vast and seemingly infinite – though intensely wondrous – universe around us – why should it be surprising
that our contemplation of self, as self, in terms of its ontological properties i.e. what creates us, why should that not be a matter of importance
– why should that, in other words, be less important than matter? If it matters – and matters because we need to regulate ourselves – or the
energies within us, by understanding the causal dynamics which drive their emergence – it matters in exactly the same way as the physical matter we
observe with our eyes. Scientists are excluding the existential states: Awe – which binds us to our essence at the same time as the universe around
us; and anxiety or existential dread, the ‘converse’, or asymmetry, relative to the dynamical symmetry of awe. They speak of these states as if
they weren’t wondrous emergent properties – and that, contrary to what they assume, the ‘state itself’ (and not necessarily the knowledge
conveyed) necessarily ‘clicks’ us into the universe in a way that seems close to what Plato meant by his “ideal forms”. Now, these ideal forms
are potentialities, and not independently existing phenomena that “project” onto the “material world”. The ontology is as Aristotle suspected
– the reverse: the physical world contains causal laws that build up the world microscopically, with self-similar dynamics evolving over hundreds of
millions of years to create cellular life, then vertebrates, then mammals, and then the human mind. When we get to mind, a sort of “involution”,
as Teilhard de Chardin intuited, seems to occur: the existential dynamic enacted “unconsciously”, becomes conscious – bit by bit – ecological
situation by ecological situation. Scientists lack the cosmic consciousness that makes Teilhard’s “omega point” seem like a very plausible
truth. What is this ‘omega point’, but the force of natural selection pushing the self-awareness dynamics of social animals to pursue the ‘path
of least resistance’ – love? This obvious interpretation of Darwins profound - but negative – insight, is missing in most peoples mind’s
because the human mind is one big dynamical system, and the ego is a mirror ‘summation’ of the unconscious activity that drives the formation of
conscious states of self-experience. Reflex is cyclically advanced; we interpret in terms of ‘paths of least resistance’, except the world today,
or the “gods” which rule us – gods being synonymous with value systems (biodynamical attractors!) are suboptimal symmetry structures which make
all of us idealistic and dissociative – we idealize to regulate ourselves (to feel familiarity of meaning) and dissociate as a consequence.