Dramatic Universe: Volume 1

 

The Foundations of Natural Philosophy

By

J. G Bennett

Synopsis (MJG)

 

 

 

NB: At different places in the book Bennett uses various diagrams, tables and formulae. Where I am not able to reproduce these in this format, I give the relevant page number for consultation.

 

 

Preface

 

Men have their roots in the natural order but do their fruits belong to the same world?

Is there a link between total man and the universe?

This demands a ‘total answer’ from man’s experience. All needs to be brought into a coherent system. However, after various failures, philosophers are now looking at ‘little things’ rather than the Systema Universi.

Meanwhile, human knowledge expands. Many things thought theological are now ‘scientific’. Speculative philosophy has been killed but nothing replaces it. There is now the possibility of a new synthesis, but no one man can know every subject. We look nevertheless for a single coherent system. If we continue to disregard the integration of fact and value, we shall abandon the possible synthesis and end up with dogma or the limitations of natural sciences.

We need to think beyond events as happening in time and space only, and include the unseen and unexplored dimension of eternity. JGB is to study the paradox of free-will and the universal law – how knowing eternity might be.

As Gurdjieff taught, it is necessary to BE more as well as to KNOW more in order to go beyond the veil of space and time. His system does integrate fact and value but is limited compared to modern science.

The systematization of human experience needs dimensions beyond those of time and space.

Volume one deals with the systematization of facts. It should be read with volume two. It is not Gurdjieff’s cosmology buthis own. However, it is inspired from him and Ouspensky. Gurdjieff thought it would be a good publicity for his own All and Everything – a book much profounder than JGB’s, he says and which he has read some thirty times!

Reciprocal Maintenance is one idea he has taken from Gurdjieff and is of primary importance.: the idea that every recognizable entity participates in an exchange of energy. It illuminates both fact and value. Gurdjieff’s followers have to systematise his thinking. JGB does not claim his ideas as his own, but he does claim inspiration.

The book is in two parts: the dualism of rationalism and empiricism – which he seeks to reconcile in the triads of Function, Being and Will – and Hypornomic, Autonomic and Hypernomic modes of existence.

This would not have been possible fifty years ago.

He has tried not to privilege certain sciences – his own – but offer a balance view. He has tried to show that experience itself will teach man the answer to the question as to whether man and the universe obey the same laws of totality.

He has aimed to write in an accessible language and to reduce mathematical formulae. Also, what appears as speculation may do so because he has not been able to offer the full empirical evidence.

Thanks to Gurdjieff, M. W. Thring, R. L. Brown, Henry Boys, Dr Isobel Turnidge, Dr Maurice Vernet, pupils of the Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences, those who typed the manuscript. The books has its failings. But we need to find systems of values that help men understand why they exist and how to live and justify their existence. We can no longer be content with naïve beliefs. Mankind passes from childhood to adolescence.

Subjective values need to be justified on a cosmic scale. We need to reject any value system that only applies to men on earth. JGB emphasises the homogeneity of fact on all levels. Fact and value need to be reconciled – this can only be done by a third principle of harmonization of experience.

Human knowledge has grown immensely. The advance will continue. And will give greater power to mankind. Values have to be revalued if we are to survive. As we understand the laws that govern universal transformation we shall change our attitudes to value systems also. We need to abandon humanistic aesthetics and earth-bound theologies. The earth is not the centre of the universe.

We must understand the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of the cosmic process. The homogeneity of fact and value will be an instrument of unlimited power when applied to Reciprocal Maintenance.

 

pp. 1-15

 

Introduction

To exist is to be what one is in an environment  that is not oneself: the boundary between self and non-self is the condition and limitation of existence. The balance of persistence and decay is existence. To live is to die. Every entity, through sensitivity, adjusts to their environment. More sensitivity means more possible adjustment. Sensitivity also determines endurance and decay. Consciousness is the awareness that accompanies sensitivity. Gradation of Being is measured by the degree of sensitivity of an entity to the forces acting on it. Consciousness is then the condition of independent existence.

Consciousness has a range of variations; it is also when entities become aware of the world in which they live.

The struggle to live goes on fairly automatically; the search for understanding is a struggle to live life well. The move from the former to the latter requires consciousness of both oneself and the environment.  The latter can mean the potential of the environment or that there is a greater purpose to be served. Natural science includes both attitudes. However, very often, it is seen as a ‘superior’ science – the finest human achievement. It has indeed allowed for a level of insight and predictability that has made technology progress., which has improved man’s lot. This is mostly true with respect to his material needs, though. Man has always been concerned with satisfying his future needs, even to the destruction of the planet, so nothing has changed in this respect. This need relates to self-preservation rather than service.

Some futures are predictable; others are unpredictable, especially those involving man’s sensitive relationship to his environment.

The predictable future is secure but without hope. We shall discuss time, space and eternity as a framework for events. We shall see that predictability is not an invariable characteristic of time. If we look at unpredictability, we see that the natural sciences are inadequate. And yet science shows us the importance of the unpredictable. The universe needs us; we need to know how, why and act on it.

Man needs to explore and understand the unknowable and unpredictable. Religion was good at addressing this in the past. However, its means of communication was words, which quickly turned into creeds and dogma.

Science and religion  have been seen as complementary. However, religious men often seem to use words as if they were talking of facts and not incommunicatable experience.

If religion could still argue that all experience can be accountable in terms of revealed truth, it would occupy a space as it did in the Middle Ages.  Some still do hold to this view. However, most thinkers now look to principles which will allow for the understanding of the link between the knowable and unknowable world.

This new principle must give expression to an intuition of reality that is more than a compromise between fact and value: what we know and believe are the same.

Such a principle must provide us with new categories of thought. This would be true also for both natural science and religion.    We need to approach the unknowable/ unpredictable, but not lose contact with what we can see and touch.  To understand this, we must eschew specialization, as we need to see the total.

There is a dichotomy between knowing ‘how’ and knowing  ‘what’.  Many scientists are content with processes – the ‘how’. They do not want to know about what entities and relationships present in  a phenomenon, but how it operates..

But, some do want to know what we are, what is the world, what our place is in it. Essentially, this is a concern for Being.

This is connected to the unknowable and knowable

Mechanicalness and behaviouism have broken down as explanations of natural phenomena. Many have tried to reconcile science and religion, but in past language.

This book seeks to reconstruct language in a way that all human experience can be included. We must therefore also reconstruct thought. Instead of relying on abstract philosophers, we shall seek categories in experience itself – a more dynamic system.

We aim to understand the relationship between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.

We need to know the relationship between the unknown and unknown. This cannot be done in current ways of thinking.  We shall see that all natural phenomena can be understood in terms of a small number of terms – a dozen.  But, we will have to alter our concept of time and space, stretch our categories of thought to embrace the new data from science. To show what might be possible to understand one day.

 

pp. 15-30

 

First Book: The Foundations

 

Part One: Metaphysics

 

Chapter One: Points of Departure

 

Metaphysics

 

First and Last Questions

The questions that really matter to man were asked long ago, and we are still no further to answering them.  Our quest is the secret of human destiny. It is unknown. There are no precise or final answers.

Scientist and philosophers have tried to be precise.  But we need words that relate to our uncertainty and indecision. Religion has also sought ‘the absolute’.  In the social and political, we have also looked for the ‘ideal’. Man has tended to see himself as ‘the centre of everything’. We most abandon this absolute view. Uncertainty is everywhere.

 

The Drama of Uncertainty

To admit to uncertainty seems like abandoning everything philosophers have sought: the Greeks and Chinese for example.

Man has gone through causality, universality, and determinism, but must conclude that none really work. He must embrace uncertainty and hazard. To do this means that there is no divine providence – which itself is uncertain and hazardous. There is no unfolding storyline. As such, man has a role to play in what happens.

We can therefore speak of a Dramatic Universe.  The Drama of Uncertainty.  But consciousness is necessary, so that it is not a question of ‘blind chance’.

We take account of uncertainty – of the world and our own sense experience.

 

The Limitations of Human Perceptions

We do not have the necessary instruments to find answers. We simplify when confronted with the complicated.

Man cannot hold more than three ideas at a time; his judgements are based on like and dislike; his reactions on pleasure and pain.

We experience the world in a linear manner, but there are many lines of time. Therefore, most reality is not present most of the time.

Because we cannot see into the future, we assume this is true for all existence.  We explain our relationship to higher powers in terms of our own capacities. This is naïve.

A Man lives for only a short while; he would need longer to reach his potential. This brevity is compensated for by collective memory. Man then depends on the written word. This limits him. In fact, any individual experience is very narrow.

 

Forms of Thought

Most thought is mechanical; there is little intentionally directed thought. Even ‘intentional thinking’ and ‘directed attention’ are only reactions whereby two regions in the central nervous system respond simultaneously to a given stimulus:

 

Associative Thinking

We experience by association; interest and concentration amount to chemical reactions.  Yet, creative thinking does occur.

Men do experience authentic freedom through self-consciousness.

To open up new ways of thinking we need to open up new pathways in the brain – to go beyond normal associative thinking.

 

Logical Thinking

Discipline in associative thinking gives rise to logical thinking. It is necessary to make judgements of value and truth – sometimes to hold more than one idea at a time. This goes beyond polar thinking.  Synthetic judgements can be made. This third option requires ‘dialectical thinking’.  This is a different order of thinking. However, it is still inadequate as it gravitates towards linguistic ambiguity. It is therefore necessary to explore higher modes of thought.  This risks speculation.

 

Supra-logical Thinking

This form of thinking is relative and transcendental. It goes beyond dyadic thinking – it requires three-way thinking. This is the union of three, not just three separate items. In order to see this, a change in consciousness is required. This is rare.

 

The Significance of Number

Number is significant since, if we cannot think beyond three term systems, we know that they exist: four, five, six, etc. Number is therefore a significant category of thought; they form yes/ no categories. So, everything is reduced to arithmetic.

We can think of number various ways: matching pairs, so that no object is left unmatched. Cardinal numbers do this.

Or, number by repetition: ordinal numbers.

The two are quite different.

Another is ‘arithmetic quality’ – which concerns inner relationships of a group; for example, the properties as the distinction between prime and composite numbers.

 

Concrete Forms and Magic

Counting, pairing and recognition of quality does not exhaust the possibilities. Numbers have meaning in their own right: two and two-ness, three and three-ness.  So, there is significance of number but it is difficult to classify.

We must find a new way to think number. Logic and number are inseparable.

The search for the ‘concrete significance’ of number is ancient. By concrete significance we mean ‘direct experience of’. This can be observed in Magic., whereby men seek to influence events.

Magic has always formed a part of human events. There are two attitudes to it: One is that of science, religion and philosophy (official) which reject magic as superstition; the Second is of uncritical acceptance. Magic is not just superstition though; for example, belief in technology.

We need a course between naïve acceptance and rejection.

 

The Gradual Approach

Restricting evidence is one way of constructing the plausible. If we accept all experience, we get out of our depth.

Ever rational argument includes to irrational. Therefore, human reason is limited. Scientific method cannot take account of the unrepeatable and the exceptional – which is part of aesthetic experience.

There are laws that defy communication; laws of understanding not knowledge.

Quality is authentic in experience, but it cannot be known, like quantity.

To know all possible experience is beyond man; so we need to go slowly, looking for the simple and universal. We can build a world-picture, the details of which we can add later. This is ‘progressive approximation’. It starts with something vague and incomplete rather than precise and convincing. For example, we begin with the ‘total giveness’ of experience. We shall not look for simplicity, clarity, or to express our intuitions in satisfactory language. We must accept error. We are looking beyond thought processes, not limiting ourselves to self-perception and logical deduction. What we seek is mockery to the empiricist, a stumbling block for the rationalist. We can never accomplish it.  But the search matters – for the true manifestation of human nature.

 

Pp. 30-45

 

Chapter 2

 

The Progression of Categories

 

Categories and Principles

Setting certain distinction:

Concrete (full content of experience) ; abstract (omission of elements).

Stages: undifferentiated sensation – perception – image-formation – higher cognition. Objective reason. All are concrete but immediacy is lost at certain stages.

Categories have immediacy and general universal character. They are the completion of perception and the beginning of reasoning.  We express meaning through categories as principles. Categories are concrete, principles are abstract.  Categories form ordered series; they are defined as minimum terms needed to express them.

The first category is wholeness – a single term. Polarity is a term that is of itself and no other. Polarity thus involves wholeness.

A third is relatedness – three terms. It is incomplete. If we take our experience to be ‘thus and so’, we admit a fourth category – subsistence.

Going beyond this, we take account of what might be: potentiality – five terms.

Repetition – six terms; structure – seven terms. Each step requires greater sophistication.

Each category has a field of significance/ experience. Experience can never exhaust categories – a degree of abstraction always remains.  A move to greater concreteness.

Categories are then an endless progress – each with a corresponding principle, which states what we are able to understand of the category.

Principles cannot tell us what we do no know from experience. They are a device for holding in memory universal experiences: a definite stage from sensation to reason.

The Numerical Series of Categories

Our categories replace Kantian categories; although some are given the same name – wholeness, substance. Kantian is too dualistic. Aristotle offered a finer distinction. But, both ignore the significance of Objective Number. Integers designate the minimum number of terms in a system for the category to be exemplified. Dualism implies a third to reconcile. Potentiality requires five: in order to distinguish between what is and what might be.

Our ability to find answers depends on our grasp of principles and their operation.

Our ability to order and direct our lives depends on our grasp of the operation of principles – namely odd numbers. Principles of wholeness, relatedness, potentiality and structure are dynamic – self-transcendent; Principles of polarity, subsistence and repetition are static – self-sufficing.

Categories:

Dynamic categories………………Static categories

1. Wholeness. One-term…………2. Polarity. Two-term

3. Relatedness. Three term…………..4.Subsistence. Four term

5. Potentiality. Five-term…………..6.Repetition. Six term

7. Structure. Seven term…………8.Individuality.Eight term

9. Pattern. Nine term………….10. Creativity. Ten-term

11. Domination. Eleven term…….12. Autocracy. Twelve term.

No real termination here.

Categories are not just additional terms but the totality of systems. Each imports the previous system as well as the addition. Categories enable us to recognise certain properties. We study them separately and in their mutual relevance.

 

Wholeness

Wholeness is omnipresent but relative

With inanimate objects and living organisms there is a pattern of energy exchange – response: reaction, sensation, perception, discrimination, understanding.

Wholeness is relative to the gradation of response of the object’s capability.  Inanimate objects do not respond to each other; some plants do; animals do. Man does respond, but less than one might think. There is greater perception of wholeness with consciousness.

Wholeness is relative: unity, coherence, togetherness, completeness, order, organisation, organism, self-hood, individuality.

Words like organism imply subsistence and structure, and go beyond wholeness.

Wholeness is the extent to which something is itself and does not merge into something that is not itself.

Some objects are more coherent than others: a living organism compared to dismembered limbs, for example.

Togetherness is used to designate a gradation of wholeness.; the extent to which an entity is distinguishable from the immediate environment.

 

Polarity

Connection implies opposition: contradiction, division, contrary, exclusive.

Thus, a Dyad: connection and Disjunction. Examples: man/ woman; heat/ cold; present/ absent; inner/ outer; like/ dislike; greater/ lesser; true/ false.

Sometimes, there are common properties: wood/ paper; tea/ coffee; yesterday/ tomorrow. But not necessarily.

Every pair of wholes is thus a Dyad. Most are trivial. Most share an unopposed element.

Polarity always gves rise to force.

Some cannot exist together; although they do produce a force. Polarity implies strain. Wholeness is too comfortable and Polarity too uncomfortable for final explanation.  Dyads are a source of disturbance.

Movement needs force, but force is not enough. A Dyad is closed – but not complete. Polarity does not show how oppositions arise or can be resolved: good and evil; truth and falsehood; self and other; order and chaos.

 

Relatedness

All real relationships are reducible to the combination of three independent elements standing to one another as affirming, denying and reconciling influences.

Relatedness is not wholeness and polarity.

It is a triad: each of the terms must be independent. Independence implies order – not present in wholeness and polarity. It is not just a question of presence but the manner of the presence that is important.

Each term has a characteristic: affirmation; denial; reconciliation.

Each takes different forms: strong and weak/ positive/ negative. The third may be implied or a condition. Because of this, there can be a wide variety of forms.

 

Subsistence

Subsistence is the limitation of existence within a framework that requires for its definition not less than four independent terms.

Subsistence = ‘thus and so’. A tetrad. It is more concrete: a triad is implied.

Three parameters of space and one of time. Persistence in time and extension into space.

There is change – objects relative to each other. Every tetrad is unique – but thus not more than itself. Static. It may exist within a timeless framework.

This is the last of the ‘categories of bare existence’. The second cycle includes fuller and more concrete subsistence and individuality.

 

Potentiality

Potentiality or multiple subsistence arises when at least two similar triads share a common member in the initiating position. It therefore requires a system of not less than five independent terms.

The status of actual/ potential cannot be reduced to existence/ non-existence. Existence is ‘being determinate’.

The potential can be actualised at any moment. Potential is more than  subsistence. Everything has potential to outstrip its relationships in a given context.

Potential is always a seed – it can never be realised.  It is the eternal element of our existence.

 

Repetition

Repetition is the property whereby identity, difference and relatedness are combined in a single system and for this a minimum of six terms is required.

Same and Other are mutually dependent – we need this characteristic. Inclusion defines systems as repetition.

Epistemology depends on repetition; without it there could be no recognition, neither knowledge nor the possibility of understanding.

Repetition requires two-fold action: disturbing and resisting force. Vibration. So, we pass from actual to potentiality to repetition: thus, a six-term system. Disturbance/ resistance have no meaning in the first five systems.

Measurement is possible through repetition.

Repetition also gives us what we are: we would understand and do nothing without repetition.

 

Structure

A structure is a self-regulating system capable of relatively independent existence. For this, seven terms are required.

Words for structure depend on which aspect of wholeness they serve.

Structure must also be applicable to shapes and proportions in space, rhythms and cycles in time, and everything in the universal process.

Sevenfoldness is not obvious but many examples can be cited. All are associated with self-regulative structures.

Categories and elements of association:

Category………………………………Element

1. Wholeness………………………..Identity
2. Polarity…………………………….Direction
3. Relatedness………………………Interaction
4. Subsistence………………………Maintenance
5. Potentiality……………………….Significance
6. Repetition…………………………Renewal
7. Structure…………………………..Endurance

 

Here is an example of an acorn and oak tree:

 

1. Fertilization
2. Inner Differentiation
3. Germination
4. The seeding
5. The sapling
6. The tree
7. The end of life.

 

This is also true of our own lives:  we move from wholeness in potentia to actualization, growth and transition and completion. At the end, all potentia are exhausted

Every completed structure conforms to this series. There is only independence when there can be exchange with the environment by which self-maintenance is self-regulated.

 

Pp. 45-60

 

Individuality

This is a property of a free agent.

The cycle of seven exhausts the characters of existence that lack self-hood. An individual is self, subjective, initiative, authentic power of choice – and with it a power to direct and determine the course of events. We need structure for individuality. Individuality needs a special form of consciousness. It is a human category; although not all are ‘individuals’. The potential might not be actualised.

Individuality is the source of initiative residing in organised structures. It may be actualised or potential only. In either case it requires eight independent terms for its exemplification.

 

Pattern

All experience is pervaded by the influence of active sources of the order residing in the patterns of organised structures – patterns of not less than nine terms.

Pattern is the result of an orderly process. It is the affirmation of order against chaos.

Experience would lose coherence if there was not pattern/ order.  It is discovered by passing through the experience of individuality.

 

Creativity

In all experience there is evidence of a creative activity that is not only the source of order but also the vehicle of disorder. The polar character of creativity calls for a system of not less than ten terms for manifestation.

Pattern suggests a maker of pattern. Creativity separates order from disorder.. This power resides in consciousness. We infer its presence in the world-order.

In creativity there is an authentic addition to the sum of experience.

Pattern stands to creativity as potentiality stands to repetition.

 

Domination

Domination is the power that reconciles order and disorder through the agency of creativity. It is the highest form of relatedness to be discovered in experience and requires eleven independent terms.

All the tensions of the existing universe are reconciled by the community of need.

The experience of necessity.

Necessity is prior to creativity.

 

Autocracy

Autocracy is the primary affirmation by which all possible experience is brought into existence whether as the potential pattern or the actual process of the universe.

The completion of the cycle of primary experience.

All derived powers imply a power that is not derived..

Law unto itself.

This is an element beyond necessity: that acts without dominating, wills without creating, unifies all possibilities. The primary affirmation – Autocracy.

These 12 are ‘categories of fact’. There are also ‘categories of value’. The latter can only enter implied by the former, and yet can in no way be inferred or derived from it.

The last category of the natural order. The next set is of the ‘moral’ order.

Our concern in volume 1 is with existence – these 12 categories of the natural order.

The great methodological rule of universal similarity is that all we learn from any element of experience should have a bearing upon all other elements. Though creativity is free, there is an autocratic master pattern that requires subordinate patterns to conform to the ultimate plan.

 

Chapter 3

 

The Elements of Existence

 

Hyle

Experience is the given totality.

Words such as ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’, and ‘the world’ are used in such a way as if they had substance – when they do not.

Being and knowing it is a central problem in metaphysics. This arises from the distinction between categories of wholeness and polarity.. Subject-object is thus separated – self and non-self.  But these are not the totality of experience.

Polarity implies the incomplete and inconsistent. So, there will always be contradictions.

There may seem a fundamental contradiction between metaphysics and non-metaphysics – biology and physics for example – but this really is because of the way phenomena are dealt with.

Recast question: ‘Of what stuff is all reality made?”

Normally, we answer this in terms of inner and outer stuff: thinking and extended substance.  But, there is no existence other than the experience of the thing itself. A table is a table ‘as a whole’. We select according to our sense data at a given moment – in terms of our interests and concerns.

We know of wholes that present themselves, not attributes.

Matter and spirit can not be seen as wholes that are EITHER spirit or material – this would not be consistent with principles of relatedness and subsistence.

Dualism of substance/ attribute, sprit/ matter, idealism/ realism fail to lead to anything concrete.

Understanding comes from the broadening and harmonising of our experience.

Although not everything is the same, there is only one stuff from which everything made.. Differences are more striking for their sameness. Experience is all of energy, matter, and thus observable and measurable.

Wholes are constantly interacting with each other. Single stuff exhibits response in these interactions. They are the stuff of experience.

There is a portion of everything in everything. Materiality is relative; but wholeness is omnipresent.

The stuff of our experience does not change. There are not different stuffs: of thoughts and things, inside and outside our consciousness. We doubt that even behind spiritual stuff there is something that is not thing-like.

We might be able to distinguish behind ‘I’ and a chair: as subject and object. But, what about our subconscious reflexes? Are they subject or object?

Sights, sounds and smells all lead out into the physical world; there is no decisive step from physiological processes to chemical, electrical and physical changes..

There is in fact only one stuff of which all is made: Hyle: the prime-source-cosmic-substance. Hyle is capable of receiving form and character. It is neither spirit, matter, or spirit-matter. The latter overemphasises polarity. It is what is perceived; thus, phenomenal. We know it through its manifestations.

 

The Triad of Experience

We are examining ‘experience’ and have taken the notion to be as comprehensive as ‘universe’ and ‘reality’. That is not to say that everything can be experienced.

Experience has different constituent parts, or elements: Function, Being and Will. All three enter into any experience. They are primary: can be described/ defined without reference to any particular form or centre of experience.

Use – Function

Quality – Being

Will – Intention/ compelling factor

Being is everywhere, but varies in degree.

 

Process and Function

Everywhere, something is going on – there is process.

Process has no frontiers between subject and object, spirit and matter.

It also has wholes, polar opposites, relationships and structures.

It is the entire content of our knowledge; although some elements are left unaccounted for.

Some things cannot be accounted for by process alone.

We can move in and out or experience and process according to our sense perceptions.

Is a man identical with his behaviour? No!!

And, the man behind the mask? He knows himself even if others do not.

But man cannot ‘know’ himself. He is not a process and therefore is outside the scope of knowledge. All we know is what goes on.

Self cannot refer to the content of knowledge.

Function is the ‘knowable’ element in experience.  It is the behaviour of wholes. They are related to one another; we recognise them in structures or patterns of wholes.

We move from experience of process to the knowledge of function by way of categories. We move from direct awareness of process to knowledge of functional regularities.. Universal process constantly actualises Will. We experience process through our self-awareness/ sense-perceptions.

Functions are activity and behaviour – the working of some mechanism. Function is actual, it goes on in time and space – it goes beyond actual experience.

A whole is described in terms of function. The totality of a man’s activities is united by his consciousness. At one time, there are: mental associations, fluctuations of feeling, instinctive process, and bodily movements. He may be aware of these; they may have formed part of different experiences. They are, however, of all of the same kind.

They are homogeneous; they override the limitations of the here and now.

Function is thus the knowledge element – is everywhere and in everything. There are, however, non-functional elements.

 

Being as Togetherness

Being is linked to function; yet it is an ‘unknowable’ element.

Being concerns status of experience: for example, dreaming and waking. Being is also relative, the more the being, the less is the experience complete and exempt from illusion.

Being is not actualised. It is not a process. Being does not become; although, becoming is independent of being. Every whole is actualised according to the degree of inner togetherness.

Little inner-togetherness actualises a whole as a part of a general process in which it is present.

In other words, inner-togetherness can be almost totally dependent or independent on the environment. The latter is a case of the moment of ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time’ – a fusion of function and being; for example, the moment of intense inspirational experience of the artist (a new vision!). Or, the unification of thought for the scientist. The character of such a moment is enhanced ‘inner togetherness’ – a breaking down of barriers, a unification of the separate. The facts are the same, but they have a new reality.

 

Pp. 60-75

 

Will as the Active Element

‘How’ and ‘why’ questions can only be answered in terms of Will.

Being questions cannot be answered in functional terms.

‘How’ questions are answered by laws; what tells us what is going on.

There is a distinction between levels of Being and laws of Being.

‘Why’ questions imply a level of being where it is possible to rest.

‘Why’ is ultimate and how is proximate.

To see ‘How’ and ‘Why’ is Understanding. Understanding is to live within authentic experience.

Will breaks down to three components:

 

• Universal: isolated from particular events we need to explain;

 

• Incomprehensible: the urge to self-realization;

 

• Common ground to spiritualism and materialism.

 

The omnipresent element of Will under three aspects: law of Function, law of Being and law of Will. These laws are active and affirmative.

Man is what he is: but can he be an individual? This is a question of Will.

Will is not only the universal but the particular active element in every form.

Will is unique – Being and Function are not. I is ‘I AM’.

 

The Aspects of the Triad of Experience

The homogeneity of experience has been stressed.

Three aspects of function

 

• part of universal process; transfer of energy. Combination of sense impressions, feelings, etc. brought together in a new combination. Transmission to the future.

 

•  personal experience; knowledge is the subjective aspect of function; intellectual and emotional cognition; instinct; attitudes; body habits;

 

• impartial observer; behaviour is the objective aspect of function

 

Three aspects of Being

This is difficult because it is invisible; but a certain inference can be drawn from the degree of coherence and consistency apparent in outward behaviour.

But being is not inarticulate.

If we cannot see it, it is because we are not trained in discriminations.

Self-observation can lead to seeing inner fluctuations – appropriate levels of Being; consciousness and unconsciousness.

Being is the illumination in the room.

 

Consciousness is the subjective aspect of being.

The relativity of matter gives us the objective aspect of Being: finer or denser aspects of Hyle.

The objective aspect of Being is measurable in visible changes in function.

In other people, we encounter greater or lesser translucency.

Function is univalent; being is multivalent.

Higher being is less materialised than lower being.

 

Materiality is the objective aspect of being.

Consciousness is not just awareness but a ‘form of awareness associated with a state of inner-togetherness’. Being is the cosmic aspect of self.

Three aspects of Will

Will is universal in its cosmic aspect.

It is not multiple.

There is no conflict between wills.  But it is subject to limitation: contingency and uncertainty are no less given in our experience than regularity and order.

Will is not anything and does not do anything – we cannot be conscious of it or know it.

Discriminations of Will are of form rather than function, and manner rather than content.

We apprehend form through participation; and our level of quality in this is Understanding. The inner condition to become aware of the operation of will.

Every situation has a ‘why’ , ‘thus’ and ‘how’. Our ability to apprehend this intrinsic character of the situation derives solely from understanding which is the subjective aspect of will.

Affirmative Will is ‘that which uses the functions under the conditions created by consciousness’.

However, form does not do anything: it is an affirmation of a form or pattern to which events must conform. Hence the objective aspect of Will is Law.

Function rather has regularities of behaviour.

There are no laws of Being: being has no differentiations.

Law is the omnipresence of Will.

Will is both everywhere and unique. Understanding is to achieve cognosis of this omnipresent active element of all experience. To make apparent what is required in order to conform to its demand.

 

The Primary and Secondary Forms of the Triad

The Fundamental Triad of Experience

Components………Function………….Being………….Will

Cosmic…………….Function…………Being………….Will

Objective………Behaviour…………Materiality….Law

Subjective….Knowledge…..Consciousness..Understanding

Knowledge reconciles the behaviour of the individual to the universal function. Consciousness is that which enables the material presence of an individual to exist in harmony with the universal being. Understanding is that which allows the individual, without losing identity, to play the part of self-realisation of the cosmic will. Thus, in each case, the cosmic and objective aspects of wholeness find their reconciliations within the subjectivity of the whole itself.

 

Part Two

 

Epistemology

 

Chapter Four: Language

 

Communication

The isolation of an aspect of mind from another is of primary data experience.

There is interpenetration of functional activity but not consciousness. There is human and cosmic consciousness: being is compatible with other forms of consciousness.

Some entities communicate by merging consciousnesses. This is also possible for humans.

Normally consciousness for man is awareness of functional activity and direction of attention.

Communication is psychological rather than metaphysical.

The study of human communication is needed, as it is often inadequate. It is the ‘third term’ between minds. For example, the speaker and hearer.

Language is the principal form of communication: sign, symbol, gesture.

Language: Communication between minds; functional activity – writing, etc.

Sign: Two shared ideographs.

Symbol: the evocation of memory in two or more people.

Gesture: evocation direct experience of totality of all memories.

Linguistic element: a sign, symbol, gesture.

Language is different to art and magic.

Indirect communication is where a sign, symbol is not the object referred to: language is ‘about’ something.

 

Meaning

The function of language is the communication of meanings.

A meaning is the recognition of a recurrent element in experience, and a linguistic element has meaning only so far as it refers to a recurrent element of experience recognised by those who use it.

 

Meanings and Categories

 

1. Wholeness: a recognisable whole and every sign, symbol and gesture that expresses it.

 

1. Polarity: Meanings have context as well as content; exclusion as well as inclusion.
2. Relatedness: content is relative: connect experience to referent.
3. Subsistence: four elements – the two communicants, the object of reference, and linguistic element.
4. Potentiality: there is more potential than actual communication.
5. Repetition: meaning is recognisable by recurrent referents.
6. Structure: Sevenfold

 

Content and context turns on recognition. What develops is by repetition. There are two polar points: negative (context) and positive (meaning).

Stable context is a set of experiences shared by different people but recurrent.

Communication acquires subsistence; the result is people understand one another. Potentiality means that not all meaning is actualised.

Structure applies to fully realised wholes.

Examples can be given.

Table: a group of sense impressions; pattern of recurrence.

The meaning is the recognition and the recognition is the meaning.

What we do not mean we cannot recognise and what we cannot recognise we cannot mean.

No experience isolated from context can have meaning.

Table is a conceptual sign. Its meaning is across contexts, though.

The transfer from repetition to structure takes us from grammar to syntax.

The adequacy of a sign can be tested by reference to categories. A sentence, on the other hand, has a content beyond adequacy – namely, truth or falsehood.

The content of a true sentence is knowledge.

A complete language should comprise seven distinct qualities.

There are also the properties of feeling, tone, and intention. There is also form and rhythm. All play a part in expressing meaning.

There is also the character of the context – the aspect of the language to which a particular form applies.

We can distinguish the different forms of language that correspond to the different functional activities of man: thought language, feeling language, and instinctive language. These are the subjective counterparts of the objective distinctions – language of function, language of being, and language of will.

 

Pp. 76-89

 

Fictitious and Authentic Languages

Two main defects of language: lack of discipline and excessive specialisation.

Our everyday language is full of content; therefore cannot express deeper meaning.

Specialist language achieves precision at the expense of content.

Fictitious language is used without verification.

We need communication for the sharing of non-functional experience. We know function and can share it. Experience of it is gained by observation. But this does not allow us to know human consciousness.

We cannot bridge function and being with language but we can communicate about states of consciousness and acts of will.

Language depends on reference. We speak of being and will but not communicate being and will. But we can speak about functions. We share a pattern in speaker and listener, as in the reader and writer.

We need to produce an authentic language to allow for all forms of meaning to be communicated.

Authentic language in fact exists when there is effective communication; one example is everyday domestic language because it is adequate. The language of science is similar. Here language is functional. The experiences such language express do occur. This breaks down in philosophical language. However, with ‘progressive approximation’ we can find language to express categories of experience.

It is possible to use language to express functional experience. For the language of will, however, a certain higher order is needed. This is to be discussed under five headings. The first is spurious forms of language (no effectual communication); the second is why ordinary language can be used successfully. The next four consist in the requirements of authentic languages of function, being, and will. They can be described as:

 

1. Mixed language: language used in ordinary discourse – no distinctions of meaning and successful only in a stable context.
2. Sign language: language of philosophy – effective communication without shades of being-significance.
3. Symbolic language: Theoretical language. Symbols used as to relativity of meaning. Effective for being-discrimination.
4. Gestural language: Practical language – communication effective in all domain of being, function and will.

 

Spurious Language

Words/ sentences taken out of stable context and used without meaning verification.

A lot of religious, philosophical, political and historical questions are tainted with spurious language. Misunderstanding arises through disregard of meaning. No attempt is made to relate linguistic elements to any immediate experience, or to take account of the fact that meanings are only discerned when there is a recurrence of common experience.

Many fictitious signs are used without questioning validity. A sign which should name a recurrent whole is used to refer to situations that exist only in the imagination.

For the inner experience of human consciousness/ non sensory experience, words are signs for non-existent or dubious wholes.

Meaning itself is spurious; what does ‘meaning’ mean?

The lack of qualitative distinctions is another source of the debasement of language. For example, psychology, where authors disregard the distinction between functional activity, state of consciousness, and act of will.

 

Authentic but Mixed Language

The defects of spurious language are remedied by such linguistics aspects as tone, cadence, gesture, rhythm, etc. These are personal and subjective. The bare sign thus needs to be supplemented, but what results is a kind of mixed language. There are difference between language and speakers of the same language.

Authentic language begins with attention to meaning. Discipline is employed intentionally and purpose understood by participants.

Thus, the requirement of authentic language is that its users must share in its creation – a common stable context. It cannot simply be performed through signs; it also needs emotional and instinctual factors. The meanings people see will differ if their emotional and instinctive responses are not shared. An authentic meaning is therefore not established.  Stable context can be achieved through: technical reference or logical abstraction. The first is shared technical reference; shared common stable context; recurrent meaning from previous recognition. It is only effective with functional activity. Technical reference is responsible for a large amount of human co-operation. However, even deriving meaning of signs from the recognition of common recurrent experience is ignored in most conversations. We often ignore wholeness and treat all entities as existentially the same.  Some technical words are precise but most come with long histories where they have been applied  to situations that have undergone change or ceased to exist. So words lag behind the transformation of entities to which they refer.

Logical abstraction proceeds by assigning conventional meanings and considering the construction of sentences by which the relationship of meaning can be expressed and communicated.  The difficulty of finding stable contexts and historical fluctuations minimised. But, it can be the communication of meanings divorced of experience. But if language is reconstructed to give signs that refer only to material objects and the behaviour patterns of living beings, then we have a system from which not only are distinctions of being and will excluded, but even those elements of function that belong to the emotional, instinctive, and other non-intellectual elements of functional experience.

We need a process of communication and joint verification – thus, the transition from fixed language to the authentic language of philosophical signs is possible.

 

Sign Language

Philosophy needs to establish a stable context for discussion of questions of interest to man. Some meaning has to be given signs not directly related to sense-experience but interpretation. Philosophical language is created when a context of experience is established.

We are concerned with human communication. It is not possible for two centres of consciousness to have the same elements of experience. So, meaning does not coincide.

The stable context of discourse is only set up through trial and error – experience/ verification.

Philosophical language can be both adequate and free from ambiguity. The necessary task is the process of communication combined with verification so that signs acquire an unambiguous  definite relationship to meanings. Communication on abstract topics becomes possible.

A Sign draws attention one definite group of experience. This is easy for material objects, but less so for words such as ‘attention’, ‘desire’, ‘hope’, ‘memory’. All such words carry assumptions which lead to misunderstandings.

The failure to recognise the meaning of human experience in most philosophical discussions of man and his place in the natural order are ineffectual. The work needed to bring depth of meaning into signs requires group, disciplined work.

Categories help the recognition of functional recurrences transformed into valid knowledge. Categories are useful in as far as we recognise our experience in them. In them, the meaning of signs can be expressed. Our knowledge of categories grows through the examination of experience.

Categories are the basic linguistic elements: sign, symbol or gesture. They offer the possibility of a coherent system of philosophical signs. They do this because one sign has one meaning. This is functional only knowledge. We can ‘know’ about them. They do not give us consciousness or understanding. Yet, with adequate philosophical language, we can refer to all levels of being and will.

The powers, and limitations of philosophical language derive from the use of unambiguous signs. Flexibility in literary language is gained at the expense of clarity and coherence. If a sign is to be admitted into philosophical language, it must be shorn of symbolical associations. It needs a definite concept, reached by the interpretation of experience.

So, the way a concept is formed is the same as the way a sign acquires meaning: reflective attention between these and the context. Abstract words point towards unclarified mass of experience. To reduce to a sign requires discipline of a solitary type. But all must do it if communication is to occur. Reflective attention is also required in communication, so that sentences carry intended meaning.

There are no defects in human language to prevent the construction of philosophical language in which signs have unique meaning. Yet, this has not yet occurred in the world because the focus is on technical reference rather than meanings. We need unambiguous language.

To form a sign language is an arduous undertaking. There needs to be determination, attention and discipline.

It is not the subject-matter that distinguishes philosophical language but the possession of an adequate system of signs related to common experience. Each school constructs its own for particular tasks.

Where there are authentic languages, it is possible to translate one to the other.

Signs do not carry their meaning on their sleeves. Those who wish to communicate by way of the language of signs must themselves acquire a coordination of functions that permits clear and unambiguous speech.

Every element of experience is a source of meaning, and can be represented by a sign. So signs can express experience. Relationships between meanings can be expressed in sentences. Where there are repeated and recognizable elements, there is the possibility of philosophical discourse.

 

Symbolical Language

Wholeness introduces a dimension no other system represents. Whole cannot carry all the meanings of ‘wholeness’.

The transition of from languages of function to the language of being happens when signs are replaced with by symbols. It depends on the way experience is apprehended. A sign is an interpretation of experience. A sign lifts a meaning out of context. Its integrity is thus sacrificed. Intuition is where meanings without interpretation (without meaning from context). Intuition cannot be conveyed with signs. Intuitions are the raw material of being-language as sense-impressions are the raw material of function-language. Every word related to being has flexibility of meaning. To have a language of being, we need to have a set of symbols each standing for a group of related intuitions.

Symbols connect gradations of wholeness. Signs cannot express different levels and the relationship between levels. Because there are different levels of being, a situation can have more than one level, and they require distinguishing. Symbolism is needed. The simultaneous presence of different levels is ‘mystical experience’. It can be either intuition or interpreted – theology. The latter is often treated as unambiguous meaning, discovered and expressed. If the multivariance is preserved, utterances are symbolical. Signs and symbols are often confused in mystical utterances. So, communication is not effective. If ordinary words are used, the confusion is greatest. Words taken as signs lack consciousness.

The meaning of symbol can never be fully known. We need to look into ourselves to see what is there when we confront symbol. We are in the symbol and the symbol in us. Signs can be tied to a single meaning in functions. But, in being-language, symbols thrust us back to link one experience with another.

The sign is an instrument of knowledge; whereas the symbol evokes a state of consciousness.

Symbolism cannot be grasped in functional terms They must be invested with intuitions of being before they can serve as instruments for the second or theoretical language.

In indiscriminate speech, words are used as both signs and symbols. The result is spurious.

Symbol only has content for what it stands; so using them requires a different discipline to signs. Sign-meaning is functional; symbol-meaning is conscious. Consciousness cannot be communicated. Can symbols be possible therefore? But they can be created by a group of people in a shared field of endeavour. Schools do this. Meanings are created by effort in being-language. Those who attain to the use of symbol-language have themselves passed through the inner transformation that liberates consciousness from function. In such people different levels of being are consciously discriminated; therefore different, and even contradictory, meanings can be experienced in a single intuition. Only people so transformed are capable of participating in being-discourse.

Symbolism moulds categories of experience into a richer unity. It is synthetic. The meaning of symbols is not found but created. Communication depends on mutual recognition. Not everyone who wishes can arrive at symbolic language.

 

Pp. 89-106

 

Gesture Language

Here, communication is neither sign nor symbol; if being is apprehended by intuition, Will can be understood only through participation. Participants share in Will if there is to be communication of meanings.

Both understanding and communicating understanding are impossible without a shared context of being, knowledge and will.

Men often believe they can understand things, which are actually beyond them; for example, goodness, truth, justice, and other manifestations of conscious will.

It is the technical reference, not the understanding of participants, which produces unity of action. For example, cricket. Here, we might speak about ‘team-spirit’ but this is not the same as ‘common understanding’.

Understanding is present wherever there is an authentic relationship to Will. The relationship of Will is doing – so, we evoke the term gesture by which the language of Will is created. Let’s compare three modes of expression:

Signs Each true sign has a single meaning. There are many experiences to make recurrent meaning. One-to-one relationship.

Symbols As many meanings as gradations of being. It has meaning and direct experience of being. The power here is through intuition. It is not concrete.

Gestures Each is unique. Has its own meaning. Requires neither interpretation nor intuition. It is made in context.

Gestures determine the future course of history. A gesture is eternal – effects may be big or small.  It can reverberate in time and space.

Gestures are unique as understanding is. Understanding is an act of Will and new. No meaning is the same twice. The language of whole man. For normal men, gestures are only functional – automatic.

The distinction between language, art and magic. Art and magic are not language, although they employ symbol and gesture. Language, art and magic do merge at the highest level. Experience, communication, and action are only separate when there is divided Will. With unity of Will, language of gesture breaks through the divisions of functions and being. Language is universal when gesture is perfected. Gesture of the perfected individual – who sees this not untouched.  Gesture language is thus brought into intimate relationship with art and magic. Common experience and the whole of human experience stand at the poles of levels of perfection in communication. He who can make such a gesture is one who has creative power. Gesture is the context of its own expression.

 

Chapter 5

 

KNOWLEDGE

 

The Meaning of Knowledge

Knowledge is the link between sameness and difference.

Noticing is usually the perception of difference.

We know of the transition of one to another but not of sameness.

We cannot know what things are but we can know what they do.

We do not notice what we do not already know. So, we find it difficult to remedy defects of knowledge.

‘I think, therefore I am’ seems a statement of fact, but it is an assertion. This is false objectivism.

False subjectivism believes that the laws of the universe can be discovered through thought. There is a correspondence between ‘knower’ and ‘known’. But, if they are made of different stuffs, knowledge would have to be treated as hybrid. So, we study the part it plays in human life. It is connected with belief. What we believe is a factor of behaviour. So, what constitutes knowledge and what does not? We tend to use verification for ascertaining false and truth. But, this is too restrictive since the division is not that sharp. Some beliefs are also more to do with ‘knowing how’. A musician can produce a certain tone, but cannot explain the understanding.

Knowledge is not a problem in terms of a function to express experience. There are however awkward questions in terms of the triad: belief, truth, knowledge. Belief is subjective. The operational theory of knowledge is on the right path but verbal and intellectual knowledge are only a portion of the possible.

Statements that do not relate to our experience are mere information. Knowledge rather is a way of informing behaviour. But, knowledge and function are respectively an aspect of function and Will. Knowledge refers to wholes; also, ‘knowledge what’ and ‘knowledge how’ – although all knowledge is in fact knowledge ‘how’ (to distinguish one thing from another)

 

Knowledge as Order in Function

To know often means correspondence.

In experience, there is always a process of selection and arrangement that brings about a correspondence between two different wholes.

The knowledge in any whole is a whole set of correspondence between its inner patterns and those of other wholes with which it reacts. If there is no connection, knowledge is trivial.

Knowledge is not in itself the guarantee of appropriate response. This is firstly because of its own functional inadequacy – imperfect correspondence between pattern of cognition and pattern of perception. Secondly, there is a lack of being intensity – it lapses from consciousness. Thirdly, there may be defects of will, preventing a process being actualised.

In every whole – living or non-living – there is more or less developed form of memory.

In vertebrate animals – man – the registration of sense impressions takes place in the brain. This takes place by repetition – information for retrieval. Or it encounters previously noted experience – maybe tested by attention (reflection) – and then becomes part of a coherent structure available to promote successful action. Both are knowledge, but reflective knowledge has the special property of relating the inner order to the outer. Therefore, is producing effective action. A reflective person saves himself from the chaos of disordered information. Instinctive knowledge is in fact the fruit of struggles of innumerable generations.

The potential functions of man go beyond his mental associations or bodily behaviour. We often overlook the need to achieve balance/ harmony between them. To know experience we need to think what we feel and feel what we think. Thoughts and feeling must be brought into harmony with instinctive and motor functions.

The relationship of the one to many is another limitation on knowledge. The order in a present whole must correspond to an immense number of other wholes. We can only know a fraction of what there is to know in the same way that our behaviour can correspond to only a small fragment of the situation present in our experience.  And even that is imperfectly known. Our knowledge of it may lead to very different behaviour. We cannot know the sense and meaning of our life unless we put it on another scale: ‘What are we to make of life’, turns on the correspondence that could exist between the pattern of our personal history and the pattern of the great cosmic process.

 

Non-discriminative Knowledge

Knowledge cannot exteriorise itself in order to apply objective criterion of truth to its content. There can be authentic knowledge of non-discriminative character.

The example of a car-driver and one who cannot drive. The difference between them is in the store of previous experienced sense impressions. This knowledge can be functionally useful without intellectual awareness.

Some knowledge is simply reflex – not transmitted by the brain, and so needs to be regarded as primitive, instinctive, innate.

It is not necessary that that consciousness of self, or diffuse self awareness, accompanies this knowledge. Feed-back processes are part of knowledge – they relieve the strain that arises in wholes with their environments. The relief of strain is not knowledge but the acquisition of knowledge. It is present at all levels – so, we strive.

Non-discriminative knowledge is not limited to men.

Knowledge then can have meaning that is universal and applicable to all occasions, inanimate as well as animate. There can be transmission from disorder to order – for example, a crystal formed from a solution.

Ordering is then common to both living and non-living matter.

 

Polar or Discriminative Knowledge

 

Pp. 107-120

 

Potential or Effectual Knowledge

Value knowledge is not enough to ensure action. . We need to separate from the experience of knowledge to set it against a background of non-knowledge. This is effectual knowledge or knowledge of potentialities. It is most intense between the functional centres. It is open to sensitivity – and the potential of what might be. The given and the ungiven.  Actual and potential – produces a force. The result is effectual.

It is in maximum tension since sacrifice is involved. It is between ultimate knowledge and primitive knowledge. Potential means a ‘step into the dark’. Effectual authentic knowledge is rare, but is the condition of all innovation.

The natural order requires it. There are different levels here but the experience of experience remains throughout. The actual and potential are brought together – and results in an act that is causal and purposive. There are five elements to effectual action: three to establish the relationship, a fourth to introduce a discrimination of values and a sense of existence, and a fifth that takes account of latent potentialities.

 

Cyclic or Transcendental Knowledge

This category endows the experience with the power of reconciling dependence and independence.  Each whole returns to itself; whole complete and close their own cycle. Here, actual and potential are interchanged and interwoven . This knowledge must escape from the limitations of particular experience.

This knowledge cannot be given in the data of sense experience alone.

To see everything as the return of cycles is beyond effectual knowledge – ultimate reality makes itself felt here. It is dominated by the end rather than the beginning. But it is not self-verifying. There is mutual adaptation of cycles. Human thought is not aware of universal rhythms. Such knowledge is abstract and subjective whereas transcendental knowledge is direct participation in the universal return. The discovery of the self in everything – one pattern underlying the diversity of phenomena.

 

Structural or True Knowledge

This is self-verifying knowledge. Here, we have universal laws. Freedom and necessity are harmonised. To know is to know all – each part in relation to the whole. Actual and potential destiny, the way the cosmic purpose is fulfilled. It is true for its own whole and the universal process. Those who have it are possessors and creators – transmitting all three elements of the triad.

This knowledge is not absolute knowledge because it is limited by the level of being and form of will with which it is associated.

Consistency is held to be a test of true knowledge. But, this is problematic in fields such as religion, art, philosophy and science. When it is present the whole to which it is associated is completely harmonised and well-ordered. Inner and outer are adapted. Right action – power to create order and disseminate it.

For knowledge, being is ordering of functions, is limited by the functions and their powers. Understanding, being a property of will, cannot be inconsistent or contradictory.  ‘To understand is to agree. Where there is no agreement, there is no understanding’. Gurdjieff:

To know means to know all.

Not to know all means not to know.

It is possible to know all, and indeed,

To know all it is needful to know very little.

But in order to know this very little, it is

Necessary first to know pretty much’ .

 

Revealed Knowledge

This is a step from seventh to eighth gradation and is a completion that requires an external shock. A completion is also a relinquishment. It is reached only when all knowledge is laid aside and the light of revelation – consciousness – lies open. Revelation is therefore only possible for the ‘complete individual’.

Revealed knowledge is present in religious experience but not only there – can also be there through exhaustive functional preparation. Even scientific knowledge.  It cannot be ascribed to functional activity alone. In revelation, the barrier of separatedness is broken down. There is totality and unity.

Without revelation, there can be no consistency in the knowledge that is accumulated in the myriad centres of consciousness. We need to account for the influence of consciousness in determining and the form of will in a functional order.

 

Chapter 6

 

The Methods of Natural Philosophy

 

The Method of Progressive Approximation

Men tend to hold onto old truths and suspect the new: they then fall into superstitions and lose results of great values.

We only know partial truths.

Man does not understand what he knows and therefore cannot use it.

Theories are usually used to predict future outcomes – and on this measure we might say we are well on the way to understanding the true nature of the universe. To have successful theories is not, however, the measure of understanding.

We know that through science and technology, men can add to their adaptation to the world. But, specialisation has a cost: basically, the more we know, the less we understand. So, what we know does not always pertain to the welfare of mankind.

Scientists proceed through the method of isolation and reassembly of groups of data. But, this does not necessarily lead to greater understanding.  What we need is an evolution of meanings: the exchange of one set of signs for another – a deepening of the significance of signs and symbols. We use progressive approximation – express the meaning of what is already known rather than to discover new things. Here, the new and the old are given equal significance. The investigator has to select, eliminate, refine – so that meaning becomes clear cut. It is about ‘knowing what is known’. This will lead to effectual knowledge. Usually, we move from the known to the unknown. With PA we return again and again to examine the same material of experience in order to search for new depths of meaning and to transform these meanings into understanding.

 

The Discrimination of Meaning

‘Fact’ is the content of knowledge: actual and potential – all we know and could know. If knowledge is the ordering of function and fact is the content of knowledge, then we say that fact is the experience of functional order.

Fact is poorer in content than experience. The content of consciousness and understanding is not fact, and our experience of function is only fact in so far as it is reduced to order and becomes to knowledge. But the content of ALL knowledge IS the world of fact. What is not fact cannot be known.

We attain knowledge of fact by different instruments: sense-experience, introspection, memory, reflection, inference, imagination, hallucination, dreaming.  Facts, though, are always facts: facts of the past and future are of the same order, of potentiality and actualisation.

There is two-fold multiplicity in the domain of fact: facts known and knowers.

Three conditions must be fulfilled in order that an item of experience should qualify as a fact:

1. It must be experienced;
2. It must be functional in character;
3. It must be known.

 

C distinguishes fact from function. A function may not be ‘known’. It is possible to make a value judgement about fact – it has little to do with the functional content of experience itself. Functional manifestation can be important or unimportant. Values therefore cannot be known.

We must divide the study of values into two domains:

What are values?

What does the word ‘ought’ mean?

This is similar to Kant’s subject-matter in the Critiques of Judgement and Pure Reason.

We answer the first question in terms of being and consciousness, and the second one in terms of understanding and Will. The first is aesthetic, the second is ethical.

So long as our attention is directed only towards the functions, we cannot expect to discover anything beyond facts. But, in spite of ourselves, we continue to make judgements of value and to feel ourselves subject to ethical demand.

 

Pp. 120-135

We cannot know value but we can be conscious of it.

It is difficult to make a sharp distinction between fact and value.

Function and being cannot exist with the other. Knowledge alone is not enough – we need to go beyond this.

Value is associated with interest and interest depends on potentiality.

Experience in terms of content is facts; in terms of potential, value.

Values and facts can be seen as affirming and denying elements: meaning reconciles them. Meaning is associated with Will rather than consciousness or function.

Value in the absence of fact means nothing. The discovery of levels of meaning is the task of Understanding.

We cannot know or experience meanings.

In language, the sign, symbol and gesture act to communicate meaning – an act of Will.

In individuals, mutual liberation of consciousness and function leads  to what an experience means.

Words such as authentic, natural, real, spurious, illusory, true, false, beautiful, and ugly are used with respect to meanings. These are value words/ relative to being.

 

Phenomena as Primary Data

Every experience is a blending of being, function and will.

When we look at the problem of knowledge, we separate the functional element in experience and treat it as if it could exist by itself. This minimises the distinction between being and will: we shall call this ‘phenomena’. Fact is then reducing phenomena to knowledge. What we can know in a state of consciousness. To know what is present, we must eliminate from phenomena all non-functional elements.

The reduction of phenomena to facts is an example of progressive approximation.

Experience is the totality of the given, independent of a state of consciousness.

 

The Place of Values in Natural Philosophy

Natural science has to deal with fact. It can then put aside issues of value but not deny them!

When we describe facts, we tend to eliminate issues arising by way of consciousness. This is necessary.  However, all scientific experimentation still includes value judgements.

We attend to what interests us, and in so doing, our state of consciousness changes. When we do so, value enters through consciousness. There is then no separation of knowledge, judgement, and decision: objective reason.

Wholeness is relative. Wholes are never integrated in our experience. They are also structures. We regard them with bewilderment and wonder.

From chaos, we need to forge instruments of that allow us into objective reason. These instruments might be quite subjective and individual.

 

The Homogeneity of Fact as a Basic Postulate

Unreflecting sense experience, reduced to order, gives rise to limited forms of knowledge. We need categories to obtain knowledge that is universal, valid, and applicable. We need fact harmonised with value and meaning. Fact is a system; leading us to the postulation of the homogeneity of fact. We derive this with progressive approximation. We need meaning as well as fact for this task.

Progress in science entails improved means for passing from phenomena to facts.

Knowledge of fact does not add to our understanding: control of nature can become control by nature.

It is difficult to reduce the data of natural science to a single scheme: we have more and more recording of sense experience. Scientists are wary of reducing knowledge to a single structure. Facts are described in terms of a process in time, and use the language of causality and purpose.

The twentieth century has weakened belief in truth. There are two principal ways of approaching this position: specialised descriptions of facts, the no-man’s land between phenomena and facts. Consequently, there arises the recurrent misunderstanding between theoretical and experimental scientists.

 

The Postulate of Universal Similarity

According to structural principle, a single pattern underlies all phenomena. The Postulate of Universal Similarity allows us to intuit the sense of this rather than understand it. Thus, correspondences we make are all of this universal pattern.

We interpret sense impressions as material objects, and our associations as thoughts and thinking. But, both are connected.

Uncertainty was not accepted by eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers.

Observation cannot be divorced from the observer. This returns us to phenomenalism rather than objectivism in science.  Consciousness in observation is therefore important. Phenomena are there for experience; what one and another sees is different. Fact is historical. The form of will in the observer must be taken into account.

A great scientist is open to changing his mind; guided by a sense of universal similarity.

 

The Postulation of the Stratification of Existence

We need to be able to distinguish classes of phenomena that can be assigned the same gradation, or level of existence. The Postulate of Stratification of Existence provides this: all existence can be laid out along a line of their intensity of inner togetherness. The strata may also be interrelated, whilst each stratum being closed to the other – statistical inaccessibility. This allows for phenomena to be studied with reference to particular forms of order. Hence, different branches of science. The relationship between strata are not just about fact but also value.

It is possible to establish a scale of existence between levels by use of progressive approximation.

 

The Postulate of Complementarity

Odd and even numbers need each other – they thus complement each other. Similarly, it is necessary to confront opposing views in everything. Fact and value is one example.

Every situation is an affirmation and denial; moment a rising and falling; process a concentration and expansion. Many structures are experienced in time and space. Other are not. For example, classification and organisation. Others still are more abstract: the essential nature of man.

Structure is universal. Events have recognisable features: conservative events (persistence of material object); cyclic events; expansion, concentration. The latter are very important for understanding complementarity.

Concentration is where a higher gradation of energy is selected by a given whole, and lower gradations rejected. It is life itself.

When things are cyclic, the net outcome is as they were. Concentration is always realised at the expense of the environment.

In expansion, causal and statistical laws predominate: the system moves towards its probably, stable state. It is at its lowest potential in terms of giving rise to a higher form of order. Concentration is movement towards an improbable state – high potential, unpredictability enters the situation. It is potent/ against the stream of expansion. Or probability.

According to the principle of complementarity, there cannot be unbalanced cosmic dyads – opposite pairs with universal character. Expansion and concentration can only be understood if they are seen as being balanced in all processes.  It is neither observable as process, nor unobservable as a potentiality. It is at the base of coherence by which the balance of existence is preserved.  We shall call this property Hyparxis: subsistence, existence – ‘ableness to be’.

 

Pp. 135-152

 

The Postulate of the Universal Validity of Framework Laws

The main goal of the natural philosopher is to know fact but he must understand meanings; to do this he must generalize. To generalize, he needs rules to pass from the known to the unknown, and they must be universal to be effectual. Collectively, these are ‘laws of the framework’; since they serve ascertainment and communication, they are connected to Will.

Will enters every phenomenon as determining possible and impossible actualizations. They correspond to levels of being according to their independence on the environment. They are not concerned with individual behaviour but regularities in cyclic situations – the laws of nature.

It is best to study Will by looking at the lowest level of being, where inner-togetherness plays little part. Here, laws are applicable throughout the domain of fact. These laws are expressed as the postulate of the universal validity of framework laws. Framework is the form in which we experience phenomena; phenomena as having space and time. The latter have universal regularity. Time irreversible; Space. The rules of logic apply.

There are also regularities of potentialities.

All the regularities of a universal character that do not depend upon any given gradation of wholeness can be called ‘framework determining conditions’. Experience conforms to them. They are unlike scientific generalizations; regularities of existence.

The four determining conditions with phenomenal characteristics:

Determining Condition……………………Phenomenal Characteristic

Eternity……………………… ..………………Potentiality and intensity of being

Time…………………………………………..Actualisation and irreversibility

Hyparxis……………………………………….Absence-to-be and cyclicity

Space……………………………………………Presence and co-existence

Mankind has adopted a general attitude to phenomena. Scientific generalization gives precision but sometimes lacks applicability.

We have a common sense view of the world; it might be best, therefore, to study regularities of phenomena.

If we are to study Chess as an example, we see that there are three possible regularities:

1) Behaviour: general pattern of activity;

2) Framework: laws, conformity;

3) Stratification of existence – grouping of classes.

In this way, we see that phenomena transcend subject-object.

 

Chapter 7

 

Possibility and Impossibility

 

The Meaning of Impossibility

Logical impossibility depends of the way we define the meaning of words. It also depends of context.

There is a difference between impossible and improbable. All statements about possibilities and impossibilities turn upon meanings, and these in turn arise from recognition of recurrent elements in experience.

Impossible = excluded from experience.

There is also the distinction between ‘possible’ and ‘potential’. The latter is as good as actual. Impossible is beyond existential actualization.

Possible means that universal laws are not violated. Potential is non-actualised. Potential is possible. What is potential is not necessarily possible.

 

Situations, Occasions and Actualisations

All that is known is facts, but not all facts are possible.

We can distinguish between the impossible, possible, and actual using the following definitions:

1) A situation is a fact taken without reference to its actual or possible arising;

2) An occasion is a possible situation, potential or actual;

3) An actualization is an occasion accessible to sense perception.

Every actualization has a segment of the spatiotemporal world of sense-experience; all phenomena connect with a centre of consciousness. An occasion is actual for one consciousness but not necessarily another.

The term determining condition designates the factor whereby the possible is distinguishable from the impossible. They are independent of actualization – they have universal validity. But, they are relative.

Recently, we have abandoned the search for ‘absolute laws of nature’.

The relativity of being still imposes itself. Taking this into account, the problem remains if we fail to distinguish between function and will. The regularities of function are different from the conditions that determine the possibility or impossibility of particular patterns of events.

Framework impossibility includes but goes beyond logical possibility.

Framework is neither what things do or what they are, but the form in which they do what they do.

Contra Kant, space and time are not a priori.

Space, time, and hyparxis are not transcendental – prior to phenomena – for they arise between phenomena and fact: prior to facts but derivative of phenomena. Frame is the all we know as the ‘laws of nature’.

It is possible to construct alternative sets of rules to reduce phenomena to facts.

It is worth distinguishing between rules and laws; the first formulated in the light of present comprehension; the second, which are for searching. Rules are formulae; laws are objective regularities.

The laws of framework prescribe the general conditions, which make it possible for situations to enter experience. Rules tell us whether a given situation can be an occasion.

 

The Search for Universal Laws

Universal law means ‘no exception’: both actual and possible. Phenomena do not have identical character in time and space; they have a coherence from the standpoint of universal similarity. This similarity is with respect to how they are classified and connections between classes. What is and is not permissible was defined by logic in the past; a priori rules of thought. But, now they are concerned with a special kind of fact – a fact from which existence has been eliminated.

One special branch of logic is concerned with the right use of language, but even this must appeal to experience for justification. True logic is laws of phenomena without reference to actualization in space and time, or without the actual/ potential distinction.

Consistency and coherence in logic can only be obtained at the expense of comprehensiveness and precision.

 

Universal Laws Governing Possibility

Our grasp of determining conditions develops in a different way: we understand more than know them. They are obvious but very profound, pervading all experience.

We can extend the application of determining conditions beyond commonplace phenomena – timelessness, division of attention, illusion/ hallucination – but their significance does not remain constant in passing from one level to another.

We express our long gone past intuitions of time and space in the language of the framework; some even therefore conclude that we are given these concepts. However, we should not confuse the things of logic with the logic of things – thoughts about phenomena and phenomena themselves. The latter are exemplified by the framework – hence laws as part of the common heritage. They are the consequence of our perceiving reality from a certain stratum of consciousness.

The first task of the natural philosopher is to formulate the laws of the framework. There is a tension between clarity and applicability – one should not occur at the expense of the other.

There are two sets of conditions:

One set determines the potentialities of the situation;

The other the frequency with which a particular potentiality will be actualized. These sets are independent of both existence and behaviour, and yet both are universal.

 

Framework as the Condition of Possibility

We have a provisional framework definition:

Framework is the totality of universal conditions that, applied to any and every situation, determines whether it is possible or impossible.

Possible means ‘not against rules’ and impossible is the opposite.

So, who lays down the laws of the framework determining conditions?

The laws are the limitations placed upon arbitrariness of phenomena by human consciousness.

However, time, space, logic, probability are not simply subjective forms of will. All forms are manifestations of the same WILL (YES!!!). Framework is therefore no more than a consequence of the self-limitation of that will upon a given level of being. The law of the Framework – what is possible and impossible – applies, even to the liberated consciousness. For lower levels of being, this means greater restrictions to human consciousness.

The incidence of the determining conditions varies because of their relativity: what is true at one level may not be true at another.

 

The Four Determining Conditions of Framework

We can clarify the role of the framework conditions with respect to phenomena in terms of fours aspects:

Eternity (existence)

Existence and behaviour = Time

Background of existence = Space

Existence is experienced as consciousness – inner intuition – and behaviour as knowledge – outer intuition.

Laws from which both behaviour and existence can be abstracted are those of pure Will

They correspond to Hyparxis (laws of classification, logic, determination, ableness-to-be). WILL!!!!!

For higher levels of consciousness, time, hyparxis and eternity become merged – the separations of space assume a different character from ‘usual’ experience. So, the division between the four is sharp only for inanimate objects. Hence, we discover them by the study of physical and dynamical sciences.

Space and hyparxis are not words that signify what anything is nor what it does. The former is the outer and the latter is the inner of ‘being what one is’.

The framework determining conditions cannot be known like a function; we are not conscious of them as experience. But, experience is pervaded by them.

Framework signifies ‘determining conditions’: the self-limitation of WILL in respect of the non-arbitrariness of the existing universe. This statement is important in the intuition of values.

The four determining conditions are inseparable. Time and space cannot be separated. Hyparxis is recurrent – there are no non-recurrent occasions. Eternity is involved in every phenomenon as the source of its potential. Only in our consciousness do they appear separate. We can set out the four conditions as follows:

Space: Rules setting behaviour against a background of existence; that is, the outer relationships of wholes;

Time: Rules setting existence against the background of behaviour, that is, the inner aspect of function;

Eternity: Rules having reference to existence and particularly to different levels of existence that we find in our experience – hence rules concerned with consciousness;

Hyparxis: Rules from which both behaviour and existence can be abstracted – that is, those that determine the manifestations of will possible in a given situation.

The four determining conditions are beyond our understanding.

We enter situations where inner/ outer (subjective/ Objective) apply (MG: It IS possible to go beyond this – See Bourdieu: The Logic of Practice).

Knowledge of the determining conditions enables us to prescribe what is possible and impossible; thus, for our experience, there is a distinction between inner and outer, corresponding to the different character of the time-triad: time-eternity-hyparxis compared with length-breadth-depth (space-triad). The first refers to the condition of internal possibility and the second to the external possibility of a given actualization. Time, eternity and hyparxis are conditions of being what one is, whereas space is the condition of not being that one is not. The first three are inner conditions and they are intrinsically similar in character in so far as they do not relate. Space is an outer condition and its chief significance is in relations..

 

Pp. 153-166

 

Framework as the Self-limitation of Will

We study determining conditions by considering the distinction between the possible and impossible, and tests for the status of fact.

The fundamental triad establishes determining conditions. Framework is the self-limitation of Will – no more, no less.

Search for the rules of the universe will tell us something about the cosmic game and the player who designed it!

What is the universal character of the determining conditions? These are the laws of nature or the laws of framework. They are relative to a state of consciousness; and there is a level of being where its distinctions are merged into a single manifestation of Will.

 

Time as the Condition of Actualisation

Any actualisation is subject to limitations – Time, taken together. Actualisation, or process of selection is key to understanding time.

States of consciousness determine actualisation – potential and actual.

Actualisation is a property of phenomena, selected from total experience by a form of consciousness present.

Phenomena are inherent in experience – reflected in particular sense impressions.

Actualisation is a determining condition of phenomena. It is a selection from many potentialities, of one entering the field of our awareness. We influence this selection by the power of our attention. Actualisation is therefore relative.

Ouspensky said it was possible to change the past – impossible if actualisation was an absolute condition not admitting of relativity.

Time is successive but only partially so.

Successiveness of time is always combined with renewal or return.

Cyclic events gives us a sense of time; recognition of events coherence.

Recognition, successiveness and repetition are equally significant for actualization.

Successiveness: temporal process/ ordered series of moments.

Repetition reduces phenomena to facts. Facts return; phenomena do not.

It is the renewal in time of the whole of wholes that present themselves in total experience.

Conservation: a limitation on the arbitrariness of actualisation.

Wholes are independent of states of consciousness.

They are more or less independent on other wholes.

Actualisation is therefore conservative, but never completely – thus the past never exactly repeats itself.

Properties of conservation and irreversibility are expressed as applied to two laws of thermo-dynamics: changes in an independent system occur without loss or gain of energy; changes that do occur tend to be towards greater probability.

So, to state the ‘laws’ of temporal actualisation:

1. Time is the condition of actualisation;

2. Actualisation is an ordered succession;

3. Actualisation of wholes is a characteristic of all phenomena;

4. Actualisation is conservative and reversible;

5. Every whole is actualised conservatively to the extent of its completeness;

6. Every whole is actualised irreversibly to the extent of its incompleteness;

7. Every whole is subject to its own property time;

8. The temporal order is in the direction of increasing probability.

This is somewhere between Platonism (actual a copy of eternal reality present in an idea); and Thomism ( real because it is manifestation of Will of God).

Characteristics of Time: successiveness; endurance; continuity; conservation; irreversibility.

 

Eternity as the Condition of Potentiality

Eternity is defined as the condition of potentiality. Potential and actual existence are both modes of being; they are interchangeable. Are there then laws of potential existence corresponding to laws of actual existence?

The laws of eternity should complement the laws of time – the two together determine the conditions of existence.

If actualisation is the separation of selected occasions, we expect potentiality to be the co-existence of unselected occasions.

All potential occasions in a situation can exist side by side, although only one is actualised.

Different occasions vary in their potentiality – giving a measure of degree of freedom that a situation allows.

Univalent potentiality is determinism.

The totality of potential actualisation represents the eternal aspect of a situation. So, eternity is the ‘storehouse of potentialities’.

With examples such as a tree, we need to see its changing states as a temporal series of part of the existence of the tree actualised successively in time.

It shares with other similar series. We experience them in terms of: successiveness, endurance, continuity, conservation and irreversibility.

A temporal series comprises all that is observed, but not yet actualised potentialities. All potentialities are present in a single moment.

Time and eternity can thus be expressed in terms of two series:

…….Time……………………………………..Eternity

Univalent……………………………………Multivalent

Successive…………………………………….Synchronous

Irreversible……………………………………..Reversible

Direction of increasing probability……Increasing Potentiality

Conservative(mass, energy, momentum)…(spatial configuration, virtue)

Temporal objects endure………………Eternal objects imperishable

But perish……………………………….but not enduring.

It is possible to pass from one member of the eternal series to another without entropy. The change is neither conservative nor continuous. It is a condition the reverse of temporal actualisation.

The temporal series is conservative and irreversible.

The eternal series is non-conservative and reversible.

The concept of virtue is related to the familiar thermo-dynamical concept of entropy: is derived by reversing the sign and introducing scale factors.

With the passage of time, existence within an isolated whole neither increases nor diminishes in quantity, but it general deteriorates in quality.

In eternity, existence diminishes in quantity but gains in quality (richness of potentialities). At one end, existence is actualised wholly; at the other, it is wholly potential.

Existence is fettered when there is only one potentiality actualised – this is the lowest level of eternity. At the highest end, it is free of all potentialities of actualisation open to it.

A higher level of being has greater potential diversity than a lower one: say a tree versus a rock.

An ideally simplified mode of existence with no inner differences will have all its potentialities reduced to a single property of being. It would be self-identical throughout. Its potentialities would have to increase. So, its energy content must have different values. These differences cannot arise from within the whole, so must arise from the environment. This is the ‘field of force’ and potential energy of wholes as relation to environment.

Further up, there are beings of independent consciousness. We need different potentialities to account for these. Such a being is conscious of his own eternal being: ‘the instantaneous field of consciousness which can, at any given moment, be narrower or wider’ (McTaggart).

The term Apokrisis is used to refer to the distinct sets of potentialities in the eternal series. The Apokrisis of a living organism is what distinguishes a physico-mechanism; of a conscious being measured by their power to be aware of their mechanical processes without being identified with them. This preserves individuality whilst in mid-change.

In fact, every whole has its characteristic apokrisis: its inherent properties – the greater the apokrisis, the greater the range of potentialities.

Apokrisis displacement is very important. It represents a continuum from complete determinism to complete freedom. One end is passive, the other is active. If we take two series with identical space but a small change in time: they can be made to correspond – identical – or have a space for inserting something new. Each represents a different level of conscious experience, different apokritical levels. At one extreme, the potentialities are undiscerned – consciousness limited to immediate present. The content of experience is here wholly localised in space, time, and eternity if such a form of consciousness is said to have a form of experience. Past events are traits and persist in the physico-chemical mechansim; sense impressions from outside have immediacy. No distinction between contingence and necessity is here possible. Every event is arbitrary. Temporal and eternal series are here closed systems – neither has meaning. The examples here are lower animals and plants.

When there is a apokrisis capable of distinguishing two different levels of eternity, a second type of consciousness is possible. Here, there is uni-directional connection in the temporal series only. Potentialities are not observed but inferred from memory. The past is known as an element of immediate experience and in terms of the configuration of the present. There is no awareness of different levels of eternity; therefore no direct experience of the difference between necessity and freedom. Complete arbitrariness is removed from the temporal process by the ability to observe regularities and to interpret them in statistical terms. Here, the characteristic of consciousness has one feature – arbitrary quantities – so that potential differences influencing the temporal process can be inferred from sense perception.

This second type of consciousness is that of human beings; it degenerates into mere chance as the distinction between necessity and freedom is lost. It becomes hazard whether something changes or not.

The third type of consciousness is where the apokritical interval is sufficient to allow direct experience of different levels of eternity. At the lower end, it is felt as a difference in potential energy; whilst for a being with this third type of consciousness, it is a pattern or structure in which the mutual influence of various potentialities is perceived. Only here does the true connection between time and eternity become accessible to direct experience.

The apokritical interval is a measure of potentiality and not actualisation, so not given directly in sense-experience. This is why man is ‘eternity blind’. Any dependence of our intuition on space and time is mainly visual. Seeing is the least possible apokritical interval, as it related to electro-magnetic radiation; hearing a somewhat greater extension; the proprioceptive sensation of our physical existence still more. Studying sensation allows us to understand the reality of the apokritical interval – our inner experience of organic processes cannot be referred to a single stratum of potentialities.

The apokritical interval in eternity is analogous to temporal duration; the interval of a given whole corresponds to its life.

Time is ‘before and after’; eternity is ‘more or less’ potentiality.

We do not know the origin of time, but we can prescribe zero level in eternity. Here, there are no alternative routes and everything follows one determined course. It is not reached by experience.

We cannot visualise an actualisation without uncertainty.

We can compare the ground state with a minimum actualisation where there is not equilibrium, but an irreversible trend to equilibrium. In other words, it is always possible to predict the future. Details change – the direction does not. Uncertainty becomes greater as one goes along. An event, once ‘written’ must remain throughout time.

So, with this in mind, the laws of eternity might be expressed as:

1) Eternity is the condition of the co-existence of potentialities;

2) Every occasion has its characteristic pattern of potentialities;

3) Apokrisis is the property whereby wholeness manifests its relativity in eternity;

4) The apokritical interval is a measure of the range of potentialities present in a given whole;

5) Every whole has a more or less coherent eternal pattern that determines its inner-togetherness and hence its ability to actualise without disintegrating;

6) An entity whose eternal pattern occupies only one level in eternity is fully determined in all its actualisations;

7) Levels of eternity form an ordered series of increasing apokritical interval up to the highest degree of potentiality present in a given situation;

8) Levels of eternity influence one another in such a manner that the higher level organises the lower and the lower level disorganises the higher.

 

Space as the Condition of Presence

Presence is defined as the intersection of the potential and the actual states of a given whole and thus supports such states. The intensity of presence corresponds to the degree of inner coherence – ‘a given occasion’.

Presence is not simply ‘occupying space’. It is not simply space as receptacle, occupancy. This wrong view led to Kant thinking of ‘unoccupied space’; and Newton thinking of ‘absolute space’ and ‘absolute time’. Eastern philosophers are closer to understanding space as ‘presence’ – for example, the Hindu concept of Akasha.

Our experience suggests that you cannot have space without objects. Presence is not just confined to the visible surface of an extended body. Every whole has presence, but not every whole is an object in terms of well-defined shape and volume.

Every whole is present to every other whole. For Whitehead this is ‘prehension’. One can distinguish between the public and private aspect of presence: every whole should be everywhere.

The term ‘proper-presence’ is used to signify the sphere of the relationships within which a given whole occupies the dominating position; the presence of a given whole is thus its field of force. So, living organisms have a proper-presence that extends beyond the surface of its own body.

Presence is as much a characteristic of phenomena as potentiality and actualisation. As Alexander argues, ‘mental wholes are subject to the determining-condition of space no less than physical ones’.

Wittgenstein: ‘Objects contain the possibility of all states of affairs…Space, time and colour are the forms of objects’. This is presence rather than space’.

So, if we replace occupying space with presence, we can avoid the suggestion that space and time belong to fact. Extension and position are factual notions derived from presence. We know the facts about space but not space itself.

So, we can sum up the laws of space as:

1. Space is the determining-condition of presence;

2. Every occasion is present;

3. Presence is independent of potentiality and actualisation – that is eternity and time;

4. Each whole has proper—presence; that is the sum of its outer relationships;

5. All wholes are present to one another;

6. The common presence of two wholes determines a unique property called an ‘interval;

7. Every proper presence is determined by magnitudes that can be grouped in three independent sets – ‘configuration;

8. Every proper presence divides space into three parts: one wholly within and one wholly without. The third is surface and common to both;

9. A proper presence, regarded without reference to inner distinction is called a ‘point’;

10. Space is the determining-condition of the co-existence of all proper-presences..

 

Pp. 166-180

 

Hyparxis as the Condition of Recurrence

Space – External/Hyparxis – Internal.

Both reconcile conditions of actuality and potentiality.

To be actualised is to cease to be potential; there is no actuality in the potential.

The balance between the two is virtuality – because being is relative. There is a polar opposition, so we need a third reconciling force.

Potentiality is affirming. Actualising is denying.

Potentiality is the patterns of possibilities; Actualisation is the affirmation of one and the Denial of all others.

We need to find the reconciliation of potential and actual results from the property of ‘ableness-to-be’. What is not able to find its ableness-to-be loses its potentiality in the moment of actualisation. The more one is oneself, the more one is able to actualise without losing contact with potentiality.

In terms of the ‘fact triad’, we can relate value to eternity, fact to time, and meaning to hyparxis. Meaning has to be recognised. Each fact is unique, although they are subject to classification. Values are what is true: they do not perish but they do not return. Facts perish and also do not return. Return and property therefore drive hyparxis.

So, Potentiality – Eternity;

Actualisation – Time;

Recurrence – Hyparxis.

We recognise meaning through hyparxis.

Combining identity and recurrence gives a series of numbers. Common meaning is given similar sets of objects – arithmetic is then hyparchic. Hyparxis allows for truth statements – although not factually verifiable.

With hyparxis it follows that meanings are never more than approximate in actual experience; for example, five events, five possibilities, etc. need to be understood as a common factor against a background of difference.

Hyparxis is an independent determining condition because we separate meanings from facts and values. It is the extent to which something can be itself.

The formation of a concept is only incidentally a process in time; its primary significance is hyparchic concentration. Existence by reiteration – common content, differentially actualised; for example, a tree.

Eternal as a storehouse of potentialities;

hyparxis as field of recurrence.

Potential exists equally with the actual. Conservation of potentialities does not account for events by determining-conditions of time and eternity alone.

Potentialities are dispersed but remain localised in space.

The moment really exists with all its potentialities; it is unique and unrepeatable. It merges with all other moments/ events, and thus enters the flux. What is the same cannot be found; what is found is never the same.

Hyparxis preserves the uniqueness of experience. Time and eternity swallow up uniqueness.

In eternity, all potentiality is equal; everything is potentially unique.

In hyparxis, events are conserved and repeated in such a way that the moment of suspense returns again and again, as potentialities are given up to actualisation.

What we call memory is actually just reproduction of experiences. Another rarer type of memory is where the event returns and re-enacted; here, it does not belong to the temporal actualisation to which we are accustomed.

Memory is not conservative. Our power to recall loses definition. Potentialities are lost in memory. Actualisation does not therefore ensure that potentialities are not lost.

To conserve potentiality we therefore need recurrence.

Hyparxis is not repeated actualisation in time: time itself imposes irreversibility upon successive actualisation.

We cannot step in the same stream twice, but everything is repeated: we have the inner conviction that this repetition is a part of our total experience no less authentic than the irreversible succession of events moving towards an end from which there is no return.

Provisional statement on the laws of hyparxis:

1) Hyparxis is a condition of ableness-to-be;

2) Hyparxis is recurrent in time, discrete and numerical;

3) Hyparxis as recurrence is the reconciling factor between the affirmation of eternity as potentiality and the denial of time as actualisation;

4) The difference in ableness-to-be between two recurrences of the same entity is called ‘hyparchic interval’;

5) Ableness-to-be depends on sensitivity which is neither virtual nor actual;

6) The vanishing of the hyparchical interval occurs when all recurrences of the given entity are identical;

7) Hyaparxis is primarily associated with meaning rather than values or facts.

 

The Universal Laws of Phenomena

The determining-conditions of framework are directly given in experience. They select possible from impossible phenomena. They ensure coherence of experience. For example, the determining-condition of time related past, present and future experience of presence of different wholes. Eternity relates an actual experience to the potential and hyparxis ensures the consistency and adequacy of the interpretation of experience.

In passing from phenomena to facts, we move to universal laws – the framework of fact as determining-condition. These laws are thus:

a) Statistical Laws: rules of selection and combination limiting possibilities in a situation (determining condition of eternity);

b) Conservation Laws: two types: prescription of possible motions – law of varying action; transformation of energy (first law thermo-dynamics; law of conservation momentum);

c) Laws of Irreversibility: nature of time, prescription of system conditions for it to proceed or not to its probable state;

d) Laws of Co-existence: determining conditions of space. Prescription of extent and limitation of presences of different types as a whole;

e) Laws of Classification: foundation of logic and arithmetic;

f) Laws of Correspondence: Connection between beliefs, knowledge and truth.

They share universal applicability. They do not refer to function. They are therefore independent of specific manifestation. They apply to all gradations of being. For example, all being is subject to actualisation in time, but this may be determined, voluntary, multi-valent, or creative according to gradations of being, and hence levels of eternity to which it applies. Every whole, similarly, has presence but its nature depends on level of being.

It is difficult to restrict phenomena to knowledge; therefore to describe facts. This is because of defects in sense-perception and forms of language. Difficulties in formulating determining-conditions are not of the same kind. These are simply too simple to express in words without making them complicated. Nature is simple – but phenomena are complex – it seems. It is necessary to keep our attention upon the determining-conditions of framework. Their simple and ultimate character justifies our belief in the uniformity and unity of nature. We need to formulate the framework laws without reference either to function or being, so that we can use them later as a means to avoid error and unifying results from very diverse fields of investigation. Every element of possible experience must find its place in framework if it is right. Consequently, the adequacy and coherence of our systematics is the test of the correctness of our formulation of the framework laws.

 

Systematics

 

Existential hypotheses

 

The Field of Scientific Inquiry

The natural philosopher has to reduce varying subjective qualities to a common basis of fact for communication by words and signs. Such reductions guide the scientist to discover regularities in phenomena, to be exhibited as facts. Specific groups of phenomena are selected by the scientist for convenience. Phenomena, however, are relative to a particular form of consciousness. So, the whole field is not precisely defined.

Religious experience cannot be approached through experiment, measurement, and statistical analysis. It is not phenomenal. This is the same for art – and all value judgements, hallucinations and psychosis.

Phenomena are the experience of ordinary man in ordinary states of consciousness. The phenomenal world is present in space, successive time, potential in eternity – and held together by hyparchic recurrence. To arrive at more or less adequate schemes for exploring ordinary experience, we need to combine this knowledge with intuition of existential levels and forms of Will.

Phenomena are relative to our ordinary level of consciousness: a landscape painter and meteorologist looking at the same sunset, see different things. Ditto. a farmer and botanist looking at a field.

In the domain phenomena, knowledge as the ordering of function can have no more than a technical significance. To go beyond knowledge, we need to consider the discriminations of being upon which all values depend. In the past, men tried to harmonise fact and value by using a preconceived view of the world. However, if phenomena themselves are subject to a particular form of subjective experience, knowledge of fact can never be more than an approximate representation of ordinary experience, and subject to uncertainties. Furthermore, where there is scriptural experience, this originates from higher levels of consciousness. However it is transmitted through language, which is relative to being. And we know that higher truths can only be transmitted through gesture. In common speech, conventional ideas are introduced that obscure deeper meanings. So, revelation and knowledge of fact cannot be reduced to a common denominator. So, we need to penetrate to the total experience of function, being and will – to examine the procedures of natural philosophy and the nature of revelation.

We cannot do this by function alone. So, we need to re-examine the foundations of natural philosophy from the point of view of the framework of the phenomenal world.

The first step is to group wholes according to their level of existence – the intensity of their inner-togetherness. Eternity allows us to represent the stratification of existence – each level being occupied by a different type of whole. Inner-togetherness has a ‘more or less’ character – thus, intensive magnitude.

 

The Relativity of Existence

The relativity of existence is observable throughout all phenomena: living and non-living. The doctrine of evolution affirms that in transformation of species life passes from one level of existence to another. Most agree that intrinsic properties are enhanced and greater independence acquired during evolution. These are the functional consequences of a greater degree of inner-togetherness: displacement from one level of eternity to another. However, a functional description cannot tell which direction in eternity a displacement is made.

The relativity of existence is obvious at all periods in different forms. Beings stand upon different levels. The differentiation of form and function are of secondary importance.

There are questions concerning the gradual transition from lower to higher levels of existence.

Levels of existence do not concern the functional mechanism: neither the form of its presence in space, nor the history of its actualisation in time.

Determining conditions themselves do not import into phenomena the required relationship of more of less. Existence is determined by the conditions of framework – but these are not responsible for gradations. The relationship of ‘more or less’ is applicable both to extensive and intensive magnitudes: reducible to statements of fact. The extensive relativity of existence in terms of fact offers no difficulties of interpretation – given as it is in our sense experience. The intensive mode, however, gives trouble since it is not given in our sense experience. In eternity, it is assumed that any being can be assigned a given level. The intensity of our inner-togetherness is a single-valued property that should be assigned to a being in the same way that temperature is.

 

The Scale of Being

If there are levels of existence, these form one single ordered series or must be parallel or branching hierarchies. The second might best correspond to data of experience.

We need to define the different intensive magnitudes that define different hierarchies of existence. Material objects in terms of size, mechanical strength, density, temperature, electrical properties; Living organisms in terms of duration of life, stability, size, adaptability, independence; Human beings in terms of health, intelligence, character, experience.

These seem to be of different hierarchies. The characteristic modes of existence of diverse wholes – electro-magnetic radiation, a stone, the water in a lake, a living plant, animal, state of consciousness, or memory – appear to be so different one from another, no single property is available to serve their assessment. These various wholes do have, however, in common the property of being more or less coherent entities towards which we can stand in a definite recognisable relationship.

 

Pp. 180-195

 

Potency as the Criterion of Level

Both stones and an animal endure time, but in different ways. They are both independent of the environment, but in different ways. This is important.

We can ask of any whole: how far is it itself? How can it be recognised in and for itself and not the environment?

Shape and duration give a stone individuation.

Individuation for an animal is more to do with its inner structure in normal existence. We can describe an animal in terms of its behaviour and being.

There is a non-factual aspect of experience none-the-less.

In both cases, the individuated whole is more than its function

To exist is not to be general but particular. There is a three-fold aspect of existence:

 

Hypernomic (cosmic), automatic (vital) and hyponomic (physical).

 

Hypernomic: potentialities of species.

Here, potency is the realisation of individuation – the richer, the higher level of being ) permissive). Self-realisation depends on ableness-to-be – that is hyparchic, not eternal. Potency is then a true basis for classification. Potency is ONE element of being, the one that affirms the pattern of its existence. It is opposite to actuality – the visible expression of the pattern, realised by the REJECTION of potentialities.

Individuality depends on reconciling the conflict of time and eternity. It does not serve as a basis of classification. Two wholes may have different degrees of individuation, their ableness to fulfil destiny. Potency and not individuation is the criterion of level.

All experience is stratified, and the potency of phenomena disclosed by abstraction of non-essential details.

We can observe a certain pattern of external behaviour and infer a corresponding whole. This requires intuition of being as well as knowledge of behaviour. This is a sensitivity of potency. So, we need to discern behaviours but also to relate them to intuitions of being and will. This is hypothesis-formation – thus knowledge is extended.

 

Working Hypotheses

These are the schemes that scientists construct to bring order to observations. They are methodological and practical rather than philosophical. They are limited to specific fields. It is not a summation statement. It is a functional interpretation made in the light of a discovery.

It is not simply descriptive, but includes intuition of being, and is liable to the discovery of new facts. An hypothesis leads to new observations. An hypothesis relates to existence as well as mechanism.

Hypotheses and Determining Conditions

For an hypothesis to have value it must conform to determining-conditions of framework. Here, it is brought to the fundamental laws of nature. The determining-conditions of hyparxis prescribe the requirements of logical consistency that any useful hypothesis must make. Margenau: six requirements of scientific hypothesis to be acceptable to science and common sense:

a) Fertility;

b) Multiple connections;

c) Permanence and stability;

d) Extensibility of constructs;

e) Causality;

f) Simplicity and elegance.

However, a hypothesis might just be a construct – a word similar to the way we have used ‘fact’.

The meaning of fact is the operation by which it is ascertained – the steps by which we pass from phenomena to orderly knowledge. The merit of facts is that they are known. But, they are not complete experience for they lack being and will. A hypothesis has an intuitive element lacking in facts. It also says something about the form of events – the determining conditions of framework and the distinctions associated with will. In ordinary human experience, a hypothesis is a foretaste of objective reason – it demands a combination of knowledge, consciousness and understanding.

Hypothesis-formulation is a moment of consciousness, where new understanding enters and transforms knowledge. It is distinct from the acquisition of knowledge, and different in the manner of communication. To understand a new hypothesis requires a different kind of effort of attention – a different state of consciousness from that which is sufficient to cognize a groups of facts. To be sensitive to experience, one must be lost to facts.

 

The Existential Hypothesis

Hypotheses are only provisional and can be destroyed without destroying the overall scientific field.

However, existential hypotheses define the field itself, the systematic classification of the sciences.

A whole here has a specific potency. An entity is a member of a class of wholes that satisfies an existential hypothesis. These are the most powerful instruments of scientific investigation – they enable each level of science to be defined with precision, and at the same time unify the working hypotheses to test their validity.

Clarity of entity is needed if the observer is to direct his attention to fruitful channels

 

The Basic Hypotheses

We can divide existence into three great domains: sub-animate, animate, and supra-animate. We look to these for entities with equipotent structure. As a result, we see twelve principal levels of existence, each characterised by a specific relationship of the three fundamental modes.

The terms we use for their systematic classification are: hypernomic (cosmic), autonomic (automatic) and hyponomic (physical).

The terms for the twelve levels are: unipotence and duodecimpotence. There are then gradations within each of the twelve levels, distinguished by the degree of completeness with which their properties are exemplified.

 

The primary division:

 

A. HYPONOMIC DOMINANT

 

The Basic Hypothesis of Physical Existence

 

There is a class of entities dominated by the hyponomic mode, and therefore essentially passive in all their relationships both inner and outer.

 

B. AUTOMATIC DOMINANT

 

The Basic Hypothesis of Animate Existence

 

There is a class of entities dominated by the automatic mode and therefore able to maintain a balance of reconciliation between their inner and outer relationships.

 

C. HYPERNOMIC DOMINANT

 

The Basic Hypothesis of Cosmic Existence

 

There is a class of entities dominated by the hypernomic mode and therefore able to act as originating active sources for external relationships.

Each of these has four families, distinguished by level of hyparchic existence possible. Each is equipotent.

A. 1. Unipotent Entities Existential indifference

A. 2. Bipotent Entities Invariant Being

A. 3. Tripotent Entities Identical Recurrence

A. 4. Quadipotent Entities Composite Wholeness

First Transitional Hypothesis Active Surface

B. 5. Quinquepotent Existence Self-renewing Wholeness

B. 6. Sexipotent Existence Reproductive Wholeness

B. 7. Septempotent Existence Self-regulating Wholeness

B. 8. Octopotent Existence Self-directing Wholeness

Second Transitional Hypothesis Biospheric Wholeness

C. 9. Novempotent Existence Sub-creative Wholeness

C. 10. Decempotent Existence Creative Wholeness

C. 11. Unidecipotent Existence Super-creative Wholeness

C. 12. Duodecimpotent Existence Autocratic Wholeness

This is the basis of formal systems for natural philosophy. This now requires data of observation and experiment.

 

The Classification of the Sciences: Chapter 10

 

A. Sub-animate Existence – Hyponomic Entities

 

The Character of Hyponomic Existence

Every event is related to three forces, according to the principle of relatedness. So, existence should disclose three independent components: affirming, denying, reconciling – the triad. We find these in hypernomic, automatic and hyponomic.

Hyponomic existence is the common ground of denial or passivity with many shades and gradations.

Some entities can neither initiate nor regulate activity; they are passive in actualisations. In the hyponomic, there are not only passive entities, but entities whose nature it is to reconcile or even to be active. Here, we look at passivity in itself. These can be grouped according to four principal classes, given above, in line with their potency for individuation and the extent to which they possess an intrinsic or natural pattern.

The most primitive is never more than a mirror of the environment; here, it brings nothing but its presence – one that is all but irrelevant, and any other could serve the same purpose. The Bipotent and Tripotent can participate (even though hyponomic) and serve the environment by force and relationship. But only the quadripotent exemplifies the nature of the physical world: ‘thing-like’.

In the physical sciences, ‘thinghood’ is attained by progression from an indeterminate ground-space. The first stage is the entry of the hyle into existence by association to the determining-conditions. Where the laws of framework are studied without reference to distinctions of being, we have the primary sciences.

Here are the various ‘existential hypotheses’:

 

The Hypothesis of Existential Indifference

Here, we look at situations with unspecified entities having unipotent existence. We therefore abstract from all phenomena all distinctions of existence and differentiations of function. Hence, we are left with irreducible determining-conditions of framework.

So, the hypothesis of existential indifference is:

There is a class of occasions, the laws of which are independent of the nature of the existents that participate in them. Only entities standing upon the first, or unipotent, level can participate in such occasions.

This helps formulate framework laws in their most general form. Framework sciences are constituted by all regularities discovered in phenomena independent of the existence of any particular kind of whole.

Examples:

a) Generalised Geometry: Space;

b) Classical dynamics: Time;

c) Statistical sciences: Eternity;

d) Semantic analysis: Hyparxis.

Framework science characteristics are applicable to all levels of existence and every class as a whole. But, they cannot be discovered without the experience of phenomena.

They are not Kantian, a priori, synthetic knowledge. They are derived from experience. They are reduced to fact by experiment, observation and analysis.

They are built upon common sense generalizations that mankind makes in reducing phenomena to knowledge.

 

The Hypothesis of Invariant Being

To assume that all wholes are bipotent allows for the simplest existential hypothesis. This is ‘either-or’ existence devoid of inner distinctions; every whole treated as a thing. But there are errors here: things only endure for a limited period of time; presence changes according to inner/ outer bounding-surface. There are different states of aggregation, thus inner degrees of rigidity. Inner energy differs; they are thus are at different levels of existence.

Invariant being: to treat wholes without reference to such differences.

There is a class of occasions in which entities behave as if they were exempt from mutual interaction and were self-identical and invariant with respect to all four determining-conditions

This assumes a level of existence upon which wholes can be treated as if present throughout space, actualised time and self-identical on every level in eternity. They are devoid of internal differentiation; relativity exists in terms of existing or not-existing; each may exist without suffering limitation of other wholes.

This seems to be at variance with our experience of phenomena: eg., a finite, extended body occupying all space, or two bodies occupying the same space. However, space is not a ‘receptacle’. It is a form of relatedness. We can assume the existence of wholes that have single-valued relatedness; they are therefore, present in space. The same is for the notion of invariant actualisation in time. We do not observe objects as exempt from change in time from our experience, but bodies in motion are assumed to be self-identical throughout their actualisation.

So, we assume that the objects of study are self-identical throughout dynamical science and have achieved a high degree of completeness, consistency and precision. There are many difficulties of interpretation of dynamical data. These arise because of a failure to recognise the basic assumption of definition of dynamical science: for example, the dispute between contact-action and action-at-a-distance. Wholes of invariant being are present everywhere, and therefore in contact. But, such contact never brings about internal changes because they have no potency of change.

Invariant entities are self-identical under all framework conditions; thus, insensitive to the direction of temporal actualisation. So, laws of motion do not change when the sign of time is reversed. The law of least action is equivalent to the hypothesis of invariant being. So, all phenomena to which the laws of classical dynamics and electro-magnetics apply belong to the bipotent level of existence defined in this hypothesis. Such entities cannot act upon one another: the inner state is everywhere and always self-identical. They do not enter into an exchange process. But they appear to exert force by reason of mutual presence – eg. Planetary motions. The sun and planets partake in complex energy exchanges; although exchange of mass is small.

Bipotency can also be called ‘polar existence’ – that most closely associated with the division of energy: potential and actual. The sciences of invariant being are mainly concerned with the behaviour of bodies in a field of force.

 

Pp. 195-210

 

The Hypothesis of Identical Recurrence

 

There is a need for a third existential hypothesis to include phenomena of location and temporal change: identical recurrence. Here, the restriction of invariance is relaxed:

There is a class of occasions in which entities behave as if they were exempt from any but reversible interactions and were subject only to cyclic changes in their inner constitution

Entities exist but do not change; present or absent in a reference system determined by other bodies. Here, the determining conditions of time and eternity need to be exactly balanced so that eternity compensates for the rate of temporal decay. This entity is perpetuum mobile – renewing itself exactly and capable of being annihilated but not by decay. Such wholes are understood if we think of time as using up potentialities and eternity as creating them. Where there is exact balance, the latter occurs indefinitely in the direction of time and eternity: forces within and without exactly matching – so free of internal strain. An ideal closed system with own inner structure – nothing leaving or entering presence.

Such a mode is not observable – but can be in physical science. Eg. Tripotency in the gradation of existence occupied by unit particle. Something will exist – an electron – until a transaction occurs which causes it to disappear from its existing actualization.

Identical recurrence occurs where entities relate without interaction: gases in kinetic theory; statistical mechanics where situations recur and repeat cyclically in time (electro-magnetic theory of light, quantum theory. In tripotency we find a level of existence where there is the omnipresent, recurrent phenomenon of electromagnetic radiation. When projected into eternity, an entity of identical recurrence occupies three distinct states:

a) that which contains all potentialities;

b) that which contains the lines of its actualisation;

c) that which contains recurrence.

 

The Hypothesis of Complete Wholeness

So far, we have disregarded the inner character of entities. Next, we take account of the composite nature of entities. Only one feature is needed: the presence within a single whole of the twofold property of endurance in time and decay in time. It remains itself while wearing away – it is not ‘all-or-nothing’. Composite Wholeness:

There is a class of occasions in which entities enduring in time behave as if subject to both interaction and change and yet remain wholly passive in their inner and outer relationships

They rely on superabundance of potentialities to undergo modifications that are relatively small compared to total existence. The potentialities outnumber actualisation. They draw on reserves of enduring wholeness. These things are common to our own existence.

They have limited extension in time and space; but large potential in eternity. The restricted nature of their possible actualisations mean that their potentialities can only be conserved by the identical recurrence in hyparxis.

There is, however, a change from passing from the third to the fourth existential hypothesis: the entry of the characteristics of existence – the superfluity of means for attainment of ends. As complexity increases, potentialities multiply out of proportion of actual actualisation. So, there is both passivity and adaptability in the world. A thing is not a being but has an ‘ableness-to-be’. This is not fixed identity. Composite wholeness ranges from helium nuclei to cosmic structures.

Quadropotence is the characteristic mode of hyponomic existence – actualised by its own constitution, without drawing on environment to restore togetherness.

All physical science falls within this hypothesis.

 

The Transitional Hypothesis of Active Surface

Hyle ascends – life is reached by a transition that is one of the great moments of existence: the fifth level of potency; entities become active; reconciling in relation to the environment.

Hyponomic entities are by definition inert.

Their whole actualisation takes place in a single apokritical interval; not permitting selection. Living organisms can and do react to the environment.

The living and non-living world is served by a step between inertness and selective reaction. Here, there is an interchange of hyle, but no free potency. Here, hyle is the transfer of ordered groupings in such a manner that the energy and entropy is shifted in favour of one at the expense of the other.

Here, we adopt the existential hypothesis of active surface: a bounding region across which interchange takes place.

There is a class of occasions in which entities behave as if their whole-ness were maintained by a pattern of potentialities that enable exchanges of hyle to take place across their boundary surface without loss of identity.

Here, there is exchange without loss of identity. They are a kind of class of composite wholes. Their chief feature is the presence of a potential energy gradient observable in space.

All material objects of our experience are two-phase systems – imperfect solids with porous cracks and fissures at the surface of which gases or liquids are present. But, this is not their characteristic feature. The co-existence of two or more phases becomes significant when there is active surface and hence exchange of energy. An active surface is associated with a colloid state: here, surface properties have a greater significance than the composite whole. The structure of the atomic lattice allows for the stability of the colloid. A colloid comprises two phases: one continuous and the other disperse: it posses enormous internal surface compared with mass and volume. Surface is the partition between the two phases and may be large where the state of sub-division is fine. To speak of colloidal particle is, however, misleading. Subdivision does not make a colloid. The crystallites may have the same order of magnitude as colloidal miscelles, and yet be a different state of matter. Size is here special. The minimum size is still many times greater that the smallest molecule of composite wholeness.

This hypothesis is satisfied by entities such as proteins and nucleic acids; they have eternal patterns so rich in potentialities as to they exert an organising influence on the environment. They are not living but wholly different from passive composite entities.

 

The Bifurcation of Existence

The colloidal micelle can be extended in two directions. The first leads to greater size, duration and complexity of function; the other towards greater inner-togetherness.

Our visible world is mainly built of colloid particles – crystalline particles are less important than colloids. Active surfaces everywhere make physical and chemical reactions possible.

Organic life is an active surface phenomenon.

The transition from hyponomic to automatic existence is made through the proteins and acids from which protoplasm is built. The combination of protein and nucleic acids that give biochemical activity leads to the enzymes that stand at the threshold of life. The ways that open to the first great bifurcation of the hyle lead in one direction to the universal hyponomic existence and in the other to the universal automatic existence.

 

Chapter 11

 

The Classification of the Sciences

 

B. Animate Existence – Automatic Entities

 

The Character of Automatic Existence

Everything that lives reconciles existence and non-existence. This power is automatic, individuated and independent. To reconcile two, it is necessary to participate in both without being subordinated by either. Every thing is with the help of what it is not. Existence needs to extract from a hostile environment what it needs for life: nutrition, reproduction, etc. The use of the environment is what differentiates living from non-living.

Autonomic existence is subject to physical laws of hyponomic existence. But, it does so in a way to serve a higher purpose.. This is because life penetrates into the quinquepotential region where the barrier between time and eternity is overcome. Until this is reached, entities do not have the potency that can be manifested in time. No entity by its own pattern can influence its actualisation from its within and without. This is why autonomic is passive; it acts on its environment, and this acting disturbs the orderly process of energy transformation in the interests of its own individuation. In terms of animate entities, there is evidence that potency upon the fifth level changes the course and the speed of visible transformations.

 

The Hypothesis of Self-renewing Wholeness

The potential energy of colloidal matter is not organised. Life emergence is recognised when different layers in eternity begin to develop an organised interaction. We pass from active surface to active volume – an entity that can preserve its own identity in a changing environment; that is the power to maintain an existence; not only in spite of the environment but at its expense. This is the first and most primitive of biological wholeness: the hypothesis of self-renewing wholeness:

There is a class of occasions in which the duration of existence in time is prolonged by the renewal of potential energy at the expense of the environment.

Self-renewing entities have an automatic organisation that regulates its behaviour. The entity must have a minimum extension in space; the same as that which may be found at the threshold of self-renewing existence.

All entities that use their environment have life, but it is relative. It is not necessarily wholly absent or present in a given actualisation.

When we say something is ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ this really applies to function rather than being. So, something which has a function is considered ‘alive’, and ‘dead’ when that function ceases. But, an essential point is missed: cybernetic mechanisms can replicate a living function, but still not be ‘alive’.

Life is not just behaviour: there is a structure of potencies, and so discontinuities in the transition from one quality to another. The first appearance of autonomic existence must occur at a point of discontinuity. However, hyle does not miss a gap; rather a qualitative factor enters. There is no clear demarcation between the lifeless and living. Different organisms make their appearance at different levels of organisation. The hypothesis of self-renewal asserts that some entities exchange energy and matter with their environment in such a way that they maintain their potentiality in the midst of change.

Life is therefore distinct from wholeness. Self-renewal cannot, though, continue indefinitely as an automatic process.

Self-renewal is important in terms of inner-togetherness of an occasion.

The self-renewing organism maintains an equilibrium with its environment, but also self-selects active constituents from without, and rejects passive constituents from within.

Here, the fifth law of eternity, the higher organises the lower but suffers disorganising influence in its turn.

Self-renewal prolongs existence but cannot perpetuate it. The law of assimilation and transformation eventually breaks down. Death cannot be avoided.

Self-renewal is a mode of linkage between eternity and time.

 

The Hypothesis of Reproductive Wholeness

Here, entities reproduce their own existence – thus, establishing a continuity of life. Self-reproduction, along with nutrition, is a characteristic of living organisms. It is a higher level then entity. Reproduction is associated with basic properties such as: irritability, conductivity, assimilation, excretion, respiration, secretion. However, these are also found in lower levels of being. So, in reproduction, there is a higher pattern of potentialities and generation. The sixth hypothesis is therefore reproductive wholeness.

There is a class of occasions in which self-renewing entities can reproduce outside their own surface other entities similar to themselves

This requires a sexipotent existence. The simplest reproductive system is the cell. The character common to all of the them is stability of pattern; this transcends the existence of individual cells. Stability points to organisation. There are three distinct levels: the unchanging pattern, and visible cell actualised in time and space, and an intermediate level (a reconciling factor).

There is a apokritical interval between the highest and lowest that must be sufficient to produce a potential energy not less than that required for regeneration as a whole.

 

The Hypothesis of Self-regulating Wholeness

Self-regulation requires two distinct sources or order: the specific plan or pattern towards which the whole existence of organism strives to conform; the immediate balance enabling it to adjust to environmental patterns. The self-regulating entity must therefore have an apokritical range with a layer above that of reproductive wholeness. Organisms must exhibit renewal and reproduction, but also the essential features of structure and behaviour to be distinguished from lower forms of life. Self-regulation is the means by which a living organism differentiates itself from the cell. It requires an organisation of a higher order than simple self-renewal. This is a seven-fold structure of potency; the hypothesis of ‘self-regulating wholeness’.

There is a class of occasions comprising entities able to maintain and regulate a functional balance within their own enclosed surface or skin

A living organism comprises: gas, liquid, solid phases; differentiated cells; and are subordinated to a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, senescence and death. This is not found in lower organisms. Here, the organism not only self-renews, it acts on the environment. Individuation begins with self-regulation.

Here, there are not only separate levels, but different manifestations of organic structure. Here, existence acquires the rudiments of independence: it extracts and assimilates substances required for inner potential.

Every living organism has the several levels of eternity participating. This leads to a broad classification. Even though this group are very different, they all share a structural characteristic that is not shared by lower species. Here, it is individuate but automatically regulated by structures derived from heredity and environmental conditions from conception, birth and development. It is like a machine – able to adapt to the environment but unable to change status.

Completeness requires an eight-fold structure beyond self-regulation.

 

The Hypothesis of Self-directing Wholeness

At a sub-animate level, determining-conditions of framework have clear and distinct significance. Time-like properties of matter are separate from those of self-apartness. In living organisms, there is a close and unceasing influence of the eternal pattern upon temporal actualisation. Time and eternity merge; the characteristic relationship between eternity and consciousness remains in the background. Here, at the eighth stage, that which was mechanical begins to acquire self-determination, independence, and freedom. These qualities emerge when entities arise which have power to relate more than two separate lines of actualization in their consciousness. This means they pass from automatic self-regulation to conscious self-direction. We formulate the eighth existential hypothesis of ‘self-directing wholeness’:

There is a class of occasions characterised by the presence of self-directing entities able consciously to choose between alternative lines of actualisation in time.

Here, we meet the eighth category: individuality. This carries us beyond the limitations of structural laws. Here, where there is an octopotent existence, one level is already liberated from the action of the mechanical laws that govern the hyponomic world. Time and eternity merge.

A self-directing entity possesses a presence missing from a straight living organism. Especially with relation to the past and future. A self-directing entity see the influence of these; a simple organism just adapts to the present. Self-directing organisms include properties of memory of past and expectation of future – and to adjust behaviour accordingly. These have an effect on the mode of actualisation in time for the entity can change the level upon which its own presence is actualised.

We should not thing that all men and women are self-directing; neither is self-direction the same as conscious individuality. A lot of human life is mechanical; and some other living forms have self-directing existence.

There are different divisions of self-directing existence, but all share one thing: the ability to choose between two possibilities.

Free choice, or at least its possibility, represents the highest achievement of autonomic existence. This is why man can understand and fulfil the role of reconciling the affirming and denying forces in the universe.

Here, existence acquires true autonomy and can be free from both universal trends of evolution and involution.

The octopotent entity can be itself. However, we are still in the realm of fact – free individuality is not in and for itself a value nor is octopotence a value category.

 

Pp. 210-224

 

The Transitional Hypothesis of Biosphere Wholeness

The whole life on earth can be called a Biosphere stretched over a solid surface. With the Lithosphere (solid earth), hydrosphere (oceans), atmosphere (gases) is one of four main global physical regions.

The biosphere has long since been regarded as a living entity, having its own inner-togetherness. If this is so, we cannot see existence purely in terms of layers of increasing consciousness and more closely integrated inner-togetherness. We men and women are therefore parts of a living organism. If mankind is the brain cells of the biosphere, there is a similar ratio between us and the biosphere as that between a brain and a body.

Despite hesitancy in the past, we need to see the earth as a closely integrated system of energy exchanges; thus, a class of entities that might be called the hypothesis of biospheric wholeness.

There is a class of occasions in which each one total living whole is associated with the active surface of the planet.

Organic life here is but one class of biospheres associated with planets. Biospherology would be the science of investigating the potential of life on earth and other planets. As independent entities (even though evidence for life on other planets is slender).

In terms of organic life on earth: our first observation is that terrestial symbiosis depends for its stability upon relationships between the various organic species. Ecoscience shows that mutual relationships are positive; the opposite being also true – the disturbance of existence of one form of life will affect another. There is a rhythm of life pervading the earth; this is evidence of underlying unity of structure.

In this hypothesis, there is another problem in the reduction of phenomena to facts. Because our own organism is small, our direct experience of the earth is restricted to small regions. A large intellectual effort is required to apprehend it as a whole; expansion rather than destruction. But, we need to see it as a single fact. This requires us to think in terms of a different time: days and years rather than seconds and minutes: for example, heart beat and breath compared to day and night, and seasons. We are often talking about orders of millions of years.

Biospheres may have come and gone long before man was here. Immediate experience does not therefore give us the whole picture.

The biosphere should have an eight-fold structure – complete cycle of existence. It is the end-point of life as we know it. However, these levels are also present in the two higher centres of man’s function. Therefore, mankind should be able to participate in the consciousness of the biosphere and understand its cosmic significance.

 

Chapter 12

 

The Classification of the Sciences

 

C. Supra-Animate Existence – Hypernomic Entities

 

The Character of Hypernomic Existence

We now pass from Autonomic to Hypernomic existence: that is, from entities, though self-directing, have a degree of potency not yet sufficient for affirmation and creativeness to those which have, by their very nature, the required cosmic potency.

Existence ascends the scale in two directions to pass beyond organic life: one, hyle, moves to produce within the autonomic being the creative power that belongs to the hypernomic world; the other follows those entities which are hypernomic and creative by nature.

Here we consider the second: those that arise from involution.

Cosmic affirmation – hypernomic entities – affirmative.

We might study stars just as material objects, and construct life histories in terms of energy exchanges. But, this is quite restricted.

We should not confuse the astronomical world and the terrestrial one. The biosphere needs to be distinguished from the planet in which it resides. It is the highest form of organic life, but also a higher form of existence.

So, we need existential hypotheses that will distinguish heavenly bodies from those in the physical and organic worlds. Astronomical science establishes species of entities that can be described as the ‘cosmic group’ – as distinct from physical and organic groups. There are four species: planets, stars, galaxies and the visible universe. These are definite levels of entities. Each implies enhanced potency. Here, we need to accept that there are levels of existence definable in terms of the inner-togetherness of the great astronomical systems. We cannot reduce observed data without combining with the intuition of wholeness.

The higher existential hypotheses presuppose an attitude of mind that differs fundamentally from either current scientific conceptions of the universe or the theological and theosophical notions that have prevailed in the past. We know that the universe is organised, but also that it is not a mere extension of life as we know it. We therefore need to accept the hypothesis of hypernomic existence: the conception of supra-animate consciousness; a mode of togetherness that does not depend upon vital characteristics of self-renewal, reproduction, self-regulation, and self-direction. Life is on a higher level in the hierarchy than thinghood; therefore, we must concede to cosmic existence a higher order of consciousness than is possible for any form of life.

 

The Hypothesis of Sub-creative Wholeness

The planet earth is vast and almost immortal compared with ourselves: autonomic existence on it is neither self-created nor the result of blind chance. It arises from affirmative, creative power in the earth itself. Life receives multiform energies from the sun. So, the earth is creative but dependent and subordinate.

In terms of the classification of earth’s nature, it is one degree of freedom beyond what is required for autonomic existence. It is novempotent and stands below the level of true creative existence – which requires two degrees of potency beyond the autonomic.

There is a class of occasions in which entities can exert an affirming force towards life without being themselves independent wholes

Planets have inner qualities to support transformations of autonomic existence in biospheres. But, they also require energy exterior to themselves – from sun and stars.

Planetary existence stands above the level of life: this is difficult to accept. We can only think of consciousness in terms of entities like our own. Earth consciousness is implausible.

Living and dying are conditions of existence; and these cease to have great meaning for existence transcending our own time and eternity.

The apokritical pattern must be fuller than that of the biosphere – therefore have nine distinct levels (our intuition of the universal pattern – not freedom of creation). With planetary existence, we are beyond finite wholeness – at least one layer beyond the point at which time and eternity are reunited.

The planet begins the ascent towards universal existence as the starting point of the emergence of values.

 

The Hypothesis of Creative Wholeness

This is the second member of the hypernomic tetrad. It is as if the stars are the ‘atoms’ of the universe: atoms of existence = cells; atoms of hypernomic existence = stars. But this applies only to particles devoid of interaction and passive. The true nature of the sun is only revealed when we study its role independent of creative power.

We know the structure of the universe only after centuries of careful observation. In our present solar system, the sun is most dominant – 99.85 of the total mass.

The potential for change in planetary surfaces is mostly as a result of solar radiation. Most of the other mass is concentrated in Jupiter and Saturn.

The dependence in planets gives way to independence and isolation when we turn to solar existence. We are here meeting existence upon a different level: the study of the sun is on a different level to the study of planets.

The hypothesis of creative wholeness states:

There exist a class of occasions in which entities atomic in nature exercise a free creative power within their own presence

This tenth category of existence is represented by the decempotent structure of the sun. The sun is the highest manifestation of individualised existence; yet it is also an ‘atom’. It is its isolation which distinguishes it. Its distance from the nearest star makes mutual influence in terms of energy-exchange negligible. No such independence can be encountered elsewhere – from atoms to galaxies. It is the primary datum, which any interpretation of the hypothesis of creative existence must take into account.

 

The Hypothesis of Super-creative Wholeness

There is an analogy between corresponding members of the three tetrads of existence. So, it is useful to compare the nature of galactic existence with corresponding levels of hypernomic and automatic existence. The characteristic feature is relatedness and transcendence: self-renewing entities have a triadic constitution that enables it to be itself notwithstanding changes of energy – the reproductive renews existence outside of itself. We might find a similar power of relatedness and transcendence in the galaxies. In effect, they transmit a cosmic pattern that is expressed in the creative activity of component stars. Galaxies might therefore be seen as ‘super-creators’. They are beyond individuality – each is a universe comprising tens of thousands of millions of stars. Still, they are limited in size and duration. They have 11 levels of potency. They have an intrinsic relationship in their hypernomic levels. The galaxy is a supreme manifestation of the triad, but it remains dependent for its existence upon the hypernomic tetrad.

The hypothesis of super-creative wholeness is:

There exists a class of occasions in which entities – not themselves autocratic – are nevertheless manifestations of the supreme affirming power.

 

The Hypothesis of Autocratic Wholeness

The universe stretches with uniform distribution throughout space. No particular galaxy has, however, existed for more than a few thousand million years – the age of individual suns. We are therefore limited in finding the source of time and light.

The universe is thus intrinsically unfathomable – including the determining-conditions of eternity and hyparxis, as well as space and time. The universe is not infinite; however, existence may well cease to exist after a point. The universe may have been otherwise in the past. Our conceptualisation of existence is therefore limited to our particular consciousness.

The fourth degree of hypernomic existence is the all-embracing fact and it completes the natural order. This is a ‘whole of wholes’ that is hypernomic for all its subordinate parts. It is the universal affirmation and corresponds to the twelfth category of autocracy by which the categories of fact are completed. It is the source of involuntary processes – affirmation is here transmitted through different levels of existence. The potency is duodecimal: that is the combination of triad and tetrad by which will and existence are reconciled.

 

The Universal Systematics of Natural Philosophy

Now, from above, all possible knowledge has been brought into a system founded on experience. This is provisional. We are ignorant of higher levels of significance.

We struggle to understand our experience and place in the universe. This is a working scheme only.

Here is a summary of the branches of natural science and the fourteen existential hypotheses (as well as category).

 

A. HYPONOMIC DOMINANT

 

The Physical World – Things

 

A1. Hypothesis of Existential Indifference

 

Unipotent Entities

 

The Framework Sciences.

Geometry. Arithmetic. Logic.

Kinetics of uniform motions.

Four-dimensional physics.

 

Category

Wholeness

A.2. Hypothesis of Invariant Being

 

Bipotent Entities

The polar sciences.

Force-fields. Dynamics.

Electro-magnetism.

Corpuscles. Light.

Five-dimensional physics.

 

Category

Polarity

 

A.3. Hypothesis of Identical Recurrence

 

Tripotent Entities

The physical world.

Behaviour of rigid and elastic bodies.

Ultimate particles.

Six-dimensional physics.

 

Category

Relatedness

 

A.4.Hypothesis of Composite Wholeness

 

Quadripotent Entities

Atomic nuclei

Properties of matter.

Exchange processes.

Chemistry and mechanics.

Thinghood.

 

Category

Subsistence.

Hypothesis of Active Surface.

 

The First Transition

Colloid Sciences

Polyphase systems

Interaction of levels

Proteins and nucleic acids

Enzymes and catalysts.

 

B. AUTONOMIC DOMINANT

 

The Animate World – Life

 

B.1. Hypothesis of Self-renewing Wholeness.

 

Quinquepotent Entities

Sub-cellular life

Viral Science

Biochemistry

 

Category

Potentiality

 

B.2. Hypothesis of Reproductive Wholeness

 

Sexipotent Entities

The cell world

Cytology

Protozoology

Embryology

 

Category

Repetition

 

B.3. Hypothesis of Self-regulating Wholeness

 

Septempotent

The metazoa

Biological sciences

Development and growth

The phenomena of birth and death

 

Category

Structure

 

B.4. Hypothesis of self-directing Wholeness

 

Octopotent Entities

Individuation

Psychology

Herd behaviour

Organic species

 

Category

Individuality

Hypothesis of Biospheric Wholeness

 

The Second Transition

The biosphere

Ecology and genetics

Origen of species

 

C. HYPERNOMIC DOMINANT

 

The Supra-animate World – Celestial Existence

 

C.1. The Hypothesis of Sub-creative Wholeness

 

Novempotent Entities

Existence beyond life.

The planets

 

Category

Pattern

 

C.2. The Hypothesis of Creative Wholeness

 

Decepotent Entities

The sun and the stars

Functional freedom

Creativity

The solar systems

Cosmic individuality

 

Category

Creativity

 

C.3. The Hypothesis of Super-creative Wholeness

 

Unidecipotent Entities

The galaxies

The universal transformation

 

Category

Domination

 

C.4.The Hypothesis of Autocratic Wholeness

 

Duodecimpotent Entities

The knowable universe

The universal order

Cosmology

 

Category

Autocracy

This is still the phenomenal world.

The modes of existence are defined in factual terms: no discrimination of value has been introduced. The progression of categories – from wholeness to autocracy – does not go beyond what existence means from intuition. Why and whither questions require further enquiry.

 

Pp. 225-240

 

Second Book

 

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

 

Part Five

 

The Dynamical World

 

Chapter 13

 

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE NATURAL ORDER

 

The Natural Order

Since aeons, man has searched for a natural order as a common experience. Without this, the words ‘impossible’ and ‘possible’ can have no meaning. We need to distinguish the possible from the impossible (that is the present moment from other remote times).

Reality is the totality of all possible experiences and phenomena are the awareness of reality by a finite centre of consciousness. They may appear meaningless, but that is because we cannot see the full picture. We believe they are not arbitrary. Man looks for order in the universe. But, there is natural order beyond which any scheme cannot go; because a perfect scheme presupposes neither freedom nor responsibility.

In a world of self-consistency and inexorable laws, the simplest questions cannot be answered. Questions arise because order is not all, but they can only be answered as far as order is omnipresent. Order and disorder are interwoven into reality. The two are not separate. We seek regularities whilst accepting that universal laws cannot hold sway to the exclusion of disorder without destroying freedom and responsibility. We discern order and disorder by a process of clarification of experience, which gives us the determining-conditions of existence in the form of universal laws. Framework is the totality of conditions, which preserve the universe from chaos without reducing it to sterility. We discover its laws through the study of the functional aspect of phenomena – behaviour.

The Inexhaustibility of Phenomena

Every question answered leads to more questions. Reality has more dimensions than thought – we need to adapt to realise our own inadequacy.

Philosophers see a difference between appearance and reality. Both idealism and absolute objectivity are inadequate. We cannot divide reality into subjectivity and objectivity.

See Diagrams: Function; Being; Will. page 231 and 233

Although shown separately, they in fact exist together as elements – unity.

There is a multiplicity in every unity; reality in all appearance and appearance in all reality.

The proportions of appearance and reality differ from one experience to another according to consciousness present. The balance of function, consciousness and will is unique in each occasion. Reality needs all parts. Within these, all is possible; outside is impossible – non-existent.

Four co-ordinates are required; our brain can only deal with two!

Man can only study a small part of them.

Will, divorced from being and function and from the fundamental postulate of unity, is no more than framework, and we can expect to learn much by studying this as one of the three foundations of natural philosophy.

Mathematics

Since the restraint of disorder by framework is pure operation of will, we can neither know it nor be conscious of it. But, we can understand it. We never discover space, time, eternity or hyparxis in consciousness, but only in events governed by determining-conditions. If we treat these as objects of knowledge, we falsify them and are led astray by the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Time, for example, has no nature or properties; therefore, discussion of it is useless. We can know facts, however, and regularities in them can be expressed as laws.

Our understanding of determining-conditions is different from our understanding of fact. The former have developed over time, but we cannot describe them in functional language. We need a special language: exempt from relativity of language and diversity of function for the expression of the abstract operations of will. This is mathematics.

It has been remarked that there is a correspondence between the operations of mathematics (conceptual and subjective) and the processes of the universe (objective and irreducible). Mathematics cannot unravel even the simplest occasion in experience. Mathematics cannot describe fact. But, it can relate and unify subjective experience and objective reality.

Mathematical symbols do not denote functional operations but acts of will: distinguishe possible and impossible operations and processes. We need to seek to understand the meaning of the symbol without reference to specific fact.. Mathematical symbolism enables operations different in functional character to be prescribed by the same symbol. Mathematics concerns the possibility or impossibility of occasions without reference to the question whether or not any particular occasion has been, or will be, actualised. Men have been taken by the correspondence between maths – mental – and physical events. Not everything is expressed thus. But, maths can give insight into the physical world. Also, under our ‘non’mathematicalness’ there still lie forces and particles that do correspond to maths. So, there is the universal applicability of mathematical symbolism and the non-mathematicalness of sense experience.

Will-language is characterised by the use of gesture. So, maths should also have a gestural quality. It is so.

Mathematicians understand meaning without interpreting it in terms of function or being. Maths is the language of pure will and not, as in ‘practical language’, the language of will superimposed upon the full expression of function and being. So, maths is the language of the framework.

In one sense, mathematical language cannot be known. It is not concerned with qualitative content of experience. It prescribes what is possible and impossible in a given situation, but not what ought or ought not t be done there. Nor what events are, nor the occasions they enter: But, things being what they are, whether a given situation is possible or impossible. So, we need to regard maths as the characteristic language of the natural order.

 

The Representation Manifold

Every act of will establishes a relationship, and so has a special relationship with the triad. So, mathematical symbolism cannot be complete so long as it is restricted to two-term operations.

A relationship between two terms requires a reference that is independent of the terms themselves and the operations performed upon them. The independent system needs not be explicit, but it must correspond to the laws of will. We therefore need a means of representation if we are to set up a natural philosophy.

What is meant by ‘a means of representation’.

It is a fixed reference-framework for describing positions.

The ‘representation manifold’ is a means for describing both the place and the time of events.

Such a scheme goes beyond description, and tells us something about the possible and impossible – all relative.

Descriptions of place are one thing. Similarly, geometry tells of what is possible/ impossible with rulers, etc.; kinematics about clocks, etc.

There is thus a difference between description and representation. Representation is the act whereby we show the relationship of function to will in a given situation: as an ‘act of will relating behaviour to framework’. Maths is therefore a form of language; symbolism to preserve the generality of framework laws – also application to particular cases, provided that the level of existence can be ascertained.

 

The Geometric Symbols

Geometry is seen as a science by which we plot space. More generally, it can be a science of representation, without space-like relationships: for example, four-dimensional geometry of space-time; N-dimensional geometries of unspecific character.

Mathematical language requires number. So, we need to know the degree of independence that is necessary between different sets of numbers in order to give adequate representation of an event.

An independent set of numbers is called a dimension; a collection of which is a manifold. One task of the framework sciences is to determine the most appropriate manifold for the representation of all hyponomic entities. Every whole is indistinguisable from any other unit, and therefore can be represented by the number 1.. But an array of numbers is required to represent the various situations into which it can enter.

Representation should begin with wholeness. Point is a whole without a reference to being or function. The primary gesture is the act of pointing: a whole A as distinct from whole not-As. This gesture is complete in itself – it ignores all the points but the one designated. A point has no force nor magnitude. Every whole conceived only as a whole can be represented by a point.

Polarity can only be designated when there are two independent points. Two independent points are an interval, without reference to other wholes. The interval has no direction: time – duration; space – length, no more. The determining-conditions of eternity and hyparxis must have intervals – ‘apokritical intervals’. The gesture that designates an interval is one of separation, and therefore suggests force. The interval between two geometrical points carries no force in the physical sense and yet carries the notion of polarity. But, polarity with no relatedness.

To denote a relationship, we introduce a third symbol – vector. This s not defined in terms of interval alone – it has direction and magnitude – ascertained by reference that is independent of two points by which the vector is prescribed.

A geometry can be set up in which families of vectors can be defined as to give the necessary properties. These are pencils: their application to physical problems being one of the principal innovations in the mathematical treatment adopted in this work .

Besides the five primary symbols, the operations we need can be represented by the usual mathematical symbols for summation, differentiation, and combination of matrices and tensors. Concepts such as identity, congruence, equality, and inequality can be given customary meanings, subject to the relativity of meaning that accompanies all propositions about meaning and existence.

 

Pp. 240-255

 

Geometry

The study of framework without existence.

This representation has as many degrees as independent magnitudes.

Actualisation is single-valued, successive and non-transitive.

Hyparxis is multi-valued, and neither successive nor subject to potential difference.

Time, eternity and hyparxis together constitute the internal determining-conditions of any given whole.

External relationships – A and not A – are represented by an array of numbers that correspond to familiar notions of space.

Space is not isomorphic – equivalent in all directions. One moment is connected to another but a single direction.

There are three external directions corresponding to the three inner determining conditions: the outer world in the former, the inner in the latter.

A representation of a whole thus needs six sets of numbers – that is, six dimensions or more.

The ableness-to-be of a given whole A needs other wholes – B, C, D.

A whole = stationary in hyparxis (geometry reduced to five dimensions of time, eternity and space).

 

Eternity as Fifth Dimension

A geometry distinguishes between inner and outer determining-conditions of each whole. The inner world must fit the outer world – vectors and intervals vanish at every point of contact between the two.

The importance of this has not been considered in geometry of physical space.

But, five dimensions are not a new idea.

Indeed, six-dimensional geometry is necessary; where we relate it to three conservative properties common to hyponomic situations. The first is the constancy of the velocity of light in the absence of matter,

 

The Existential Tract and the Cosmodesic

In as much as a given whole exists in and for itself without exchange of hyle with other worlds, it is said to exist conservatively: its existence depends on its potential pattern in eternity.. The existence of a whole therefore depends on two sets of numbers: one fixes its state of actualization, the other its potential level. That is, the inner world of A (whole).

Intervals in the existential tract represent possible transitions from one to another state.

Various actualizations are possible if there is an exchange between inner and outer worlds of P. (P is a point of representation). When P moves to another point in time, another actualization is supposed. A series of these is known as ‘unconstrained actualizations. The general property of geodesic actualisation in dimensions is known as Cosmodesic.

There is no absolute world here – space and time. The latter can be related to eternity in a number of ways.

The ‘path of P’ is straight: inwardly and outwardly. One cosmodesic passing through two points – the shortest path.. It has a fixed tract: cannot depend on anything but itself.

The cosmodesic can be considered the ‘true path’ of P in space and time.

However, the straightness of the cosmodesic and the uniqueness of the existential do not depend on actualization alone.

But, their true character is only apparent for a hypocritical universal observer able to timelessly regard the whole situation and treat time and eternity as equivalent homogeneous directions.

Only facts can be represented in this way. There is no representation of phenomena. The natural order presents itself to us in our experience concretely as will actualizing in function through the mediation of being.. This is the experience of phenomena.

The order we have is the projection of regularities that are independent of the three stages of reduction:

 

Experience -> Phenomena

Phenomena -> Fact

Fact – > Representation

 

Because of this independence, the source of which is in homogeneity and self-consistency of the natural order, the knowledge we acquire can lead to fresh functional adaptations in our relationship to our own world.

 

Eternity-Blindness

The representation manifold allows us to use mathematical language for our subjective and objective experience.

This would be no problem if our sense perceptions could distinguish between potential and actual states. But, we are sensitive only to actualizations – not potentialities. So, the evidence we have gives us only an indirect assessment of the eternal aspect of the observed whole.

The apokritical moment is seen as one state of consciousness and not an exchange of energy. So, we do not observe it. So, we do not see the full significance of events. Actualisations are in time alone; whilst the inner world does have perceptions of potentiality. This limitation is eternity-blindness (third force blindness?).

Man see the three dimensions of his outer world as one dimension. So, events are projected into inner world – a single actualization.

We do not perceive potential energy through the senses – its existence is inferred through the law of energy conservation.

Man fails to see the significance of null-vectors. A whole is not seen in terms of the cosmic manifold.

Eternity is not inherent but arises through our habit of restricting attention to sense-impressions and disregarding the distinctions of consciousness that are constantly occurring in the inner world.

 

The Universal Observer Q

Humans cannot set up a five dimensional reference point – everything is seen as four dimensions. But, we can posit a ‘universal observer’, free from such limitations. Q

Human Observer is O.

Q is the same as humans: sets up measurements of length, angles, duration, mass. But, also apokritical intervals and the exploration of existential tracts and Cosmodesic of bodies. He observes directions in eternity.. Q actualizes in time and records his observations as functions of time as an independent variable.

To construct a representation manifold, Q determines directions and makes measurements without being restricted by distinctions of actual and potential for a given state.

In terms of the velocity of light: O sees lengths and durations; Q compares these with apokrises.

O is restricted to a local world, whilst Q is in touch with the universe. Q has a direction of eternity – as a non-actualised state: The universal potential gradient.

Q is conscious of all potentialities present in every spatial configuration; so can construct the three dimensions of space orthogonal to his existential tract. So, Q makes use of cosmic manifold to represent his observations of occasions in time and eternity.

We have assume that the determining conditions are independent – true only of occasions of existential indifference.

 

Chapter 14

 

MOTION

 

Non-interacting Relatedness

Our experience of entities begins with the motion of our bodies. Motion reconciles permanence and change. A body moves its position but does not change.

‘Invariant being’ here enters the second existential hypothesis. A body that moves and remains itself is bipotent. This separates the observer and the observed.

In as much as any exchange of hyle between the two can be neglected, the combined system is also bipotent and can be represented by the five-dimensional framework of space, time and eternity.. Two inner connections are needed since the condition of hyparxis is significant only when time and eternity cross-connected in the existence of an entity – requiring mutual adjustment. There is bipotent separation of forces between the temporal and eternal content of any occasion. When hyparxis is left out, an entity cannot become anything other than itself.

Experience comprises some elements of interaction – the five-dimensional framework can represent only partially the most elementary experience. It is, however, useful for many other events. It also allows for the transfer of a certain mathematical treatment to other more complicated occasions.

So, here, we look at the time-eternity world of five dimensions; although the inner determining-condition of hyparxis is still operative. Its effect is, however, always the same – every entity shall be self-identical, irrespective of the occasions in which they may enter. In terms of hyponomic existence, the entities are passive in their inner and outer relationship: neither receive nor give energy. Each a perpetuum mobile – theoretically inaccessible to sense-observation which requires energy exchanges.

Non-interacting relatedness can be of two kinds: constrained and unconstrained. The former: two wholes linked together in their actualisation without exchanging energy (two massive bodies linked by a bar). They are constrained to remain at fixed distance. The unconstrained: actualisation of each of several participants unaffected by the remainder. For example, a small body falls through a gravitational field of a large massive body – where atmospheric resistance is neglected.

Kinematical science is the study of unconstrained relationships (it is unique). It arises between bipotent wholes that satisfy the hypothesis of invariant being – exempt from the interaction with other wholes. The converse is also true: such wholes can only have one outer relationship – that of unconstrained motion relative to other bodies.

Constrained relationships can be of different kinds according to degrees of freedom in their mutual interaction. Any material element of a highly connected system is constrained to act as part of a whole system. A non-rigid linkage of two bodies by a flexible piece of string. There is also constrained interaction when two entities have different temperatures.

The cyclic or wave form is an example of constrained motion: a pendulum swinging under gravity is a massive whole, motion constrained by length of the string and retarded by the viscosity of the medium. With a frictionless pendulum, constraint is such that the entire occasion is renewed indefinitely.

 

Constraints fall into three classes:

a) rigid connectedness or full restraint

b) flexible connectedness or partial constraint

c) friction or drag.

 

The third of these cannot arise for whole that satisfy the hypothesis of invariant being.

Preliminary conclusions: that wholes of invariant being can be related only in one of three modes of connectedness:

i) ideal rigid connectedness;

ii) flexible connectedness or ideal plasticity;

iii) ideal non-connectedness or total absence of mutual constraint

 

Relative Rigidity and Quasi-rigidity

The facts of dynamical science come from the observation of bodies that satisfy the hypothesis – as closely as possible – of invariant being. We need to reduce the phenomena to eliminate the effects of interaction. Phenomena may be complex – observation is impossible an exchange between observer and observed. So, that interaction is a fact. To minimise the effects of interaction in relation to occasions of invariant being, we need to specify the characteristics of the entities and instruments necessary for experiments to take place. A rigid body marked with a series of lengths to correspond to another when brought in close proximity to it.

We need to define rigidity in relation to occasions of invariant being. But there are difficulties.

Rigidity means keeping shape when under stress; or parallel time lines in a given time configuration.

We observe the first by seeing that some keep their shape better than others. An ideal rigid body would keep its shape in all conditions and might be used as a standard measure.

The term rigidity has now acquired a relative meaning; for rigidity must be a property of being – so, its meaning must vary according to the existential hypothesis adopted in a particular context. Only in existential indifference (events completely represented by the world-geometry alone) is a rigid body identical with Euclidean solid – self-congruent for all possible transformations of space-time co-ordinates. Quasi-rigidity denotes the property of material objects, which makes them appear to a material blind observer as remaining unchanged in shape and size.

A quasi-rigid body is functionally rigid but existentially plastic. It can transmit force, but does not sustain a relationship. It is bipotent – falls short of two gradations of requirement of true subsistence – to be at least quadripotent. Although the quasi-rigid body is only a ‘shadow of a fiction’, it is useful in the development of dynamical theory. It has well-defined existential status that is independent of the accidents of observation.

 

The Entities of Dynamical Science

A special group of conventional entities need to be set up, all assumed to be bipotent: only one-to-one correspondences taken into account – all interaction neglected. Observer O, observed body P, instruments of observations and measurement all treated as bipotent. The universal observer Q is taken to make his measurements solely in space, time and eternity without influencing the relationships he studies.

Triangulation is the totality of operations by which spatial presence of a collection of material objects is explored and the results transferred to the representation manifold. The basic event is the observation of coincidences. This depends of the sensitivity of the organs of perception – especially the eye of the observer. Sensitivity is the mark of a high existential level. But the observation is bipotent. That is: Yes or No?

Rigidity now becomes whereby results found by O on triangulating a given object always prove to be the same, irrespective of time and space co-ordinates. Such a body is free from deformation by any forces operating in the space-time world of O. There is a change of energy affecting one part of the body more than others, which must result in a deformation, which is avoided by compensating changes in the inner relationship of the body.

We must take account of the presence of massive extended body without which our bodily existence could not be maintained. Human observation and experiment are made near the earth’s surface. Clocks and other measuring instruments are made in relation to the earth. So, in all observations, there is present a massive space-extended body M that is assumed to constitute a quasi-rigid system in the sense defined.

The observer and instruments of measurement constitute a subordinate system R – quasi-rigidity fixed with respect to the massive body M. O-M-R is designated by the term the ‘observation system.

 

Pp. 255-271

The entities to enable us to study the relationships of constraint and unconstraint with invariant being:

 

i) The Universe, U

ii) The Universal Observer, Q

iii) The Human Observer, O

iv) The massive space-extended rigid body, M

v) The measuring system of O – that is, his rulers and clocks – with his organs of sense-perception O-M-R

vi) The Unconstrained Observed body, P

These are artificial obtained by eliminating degrees of potency. Such elimination means that we lose rich content of common experience, but we have succeeded in isolating a stratum of experience by talking into account only the category of polarity with which bipotency is primarily associated.

 

The Laws of Motion

The property of non-coincidence can be given a full quantitative interpretation only with the aid of detailed mathematical analysis – its qualitative nature can be grasped if we reflect that force-fields are only recognisable by the observation of accelerated motions. The source of acceleration is easily understood when work is visibly done – when a locomotive moves a train. It seems mysterious when no physical work can be seen. But, acceleration can also be an addition of increments of velocity derived from the conversion of potential into actual energy. If we can picture the source of potential energy in a form analogous to uniform motions, mystery disappears.

 

Part six

 

THE WORLD OF ENERGY

 

\Chapter 15

 

THE UNIVERSAL GEOMETRY

 

The Representation of Relatedness

The five-dimensional geometry of the last two chapters suffices for the representation of bipotency because eternity and time can be regarded as the positive and negative poles of a dyad. Eternity affirms potentiality; time denies it. Without a reconciling force, we are left with simply fields of force in which bodies move without interaction (’non-interacting relatedness’). Only framework provides the link by which overall unity of systems in relative motion is assured.

Where there is no determining-condition linkage, time and eternity consist of simple antithesis of what is and might be: actual and potential states of hyle – kinetic and potential energy. To move from bipotent to tripotent requires a third state of hyle – what is shared.

This is a geometry capable of expressing the threefold character of two entities: P and Q:

see diagrams pages 263 and 264

a) P and Q interact without ceasing to be what they are;

b) They undergo modification by the exchange of hyle;

c) They are related to one another by the exchange.

One term P remain P

Two-term P1 becomes P2

Three-term P reacts with Q

Two-term Q1 becomes Q2

One-term Q remains Q

 

P1/P2, Q1/Q2 are states of P and Q before and after interaction.

P and Q can take two forms – one if a third entity R arises.

The first can be in either direction of time and is therefore reversible; the second is one direction only and is therefore irreversible.

An event that is cyclic in time continues to actualise successively in time until disturbed (the motion of a frictionless pendulum, for example).

Hyparchic recurrence is not successive but simultaneous. Identical recurrence can be regarded as the property of being unable to change. Whereas perfect reversibility in time is impossible in a world of exchanges and interaction, exact recurrence in hyparxis is possible.

 

Types of Relatedness

Tripotent entities provide us with the simplest material for the study of relatedness; unencumbered with the burden of existence, and yet supporting the relationship of three independent factors. The connection is ‘simple material whole’.

A composite entity is a whole containing or consisting of two or more simple parts – with a degree of potency.

 

The N-Dimensional Geometry

In setting up a scheme of representation, we postulate the homogeneity of all hyponomic relationships required to enable one and the same scheme to represent the existence of different entities P, Q, R.

We might need a four reference manifold, each with sufficient number of independent sets of numbers to enable all the required magnitudes to be expressed. Both internal and conjunctive relationships are concerned with the inner nature of entities; these then combine in one set, while all disjunctive relationships external to an entity P form a second independent set. So, two independent manifolds should suffice for representing all the relationships of all entities up to and including the gradation of quadripotent existence.

Since the three determining-conditions of time, eternity and hyparxis impose distinct and characteristic limitations upon existence, the geometry must allow for distinct and characteristic modes of representation. The course of actualisation must be distinguishable from the potential-energy gradient and separable from the intensity of existence. Each needs to be expressed by a set of numbers. Hyle needs to be expressed from one form to another. The [N] can be partitioned into sub-manifolds – the mode of partition is one of the characteristics of the existences present.

Four kinds of interval corresponding to time, eternity, hyparxis, and space (a universal geometry) – to be able to transform one kind of interval to another.

 

Skew ParallelismThere is a problem with Tripotent entities that does not arise with invariant being: reconciling potential and actual states by means of an interaction that partakes of the nature of both. A special vector is needed. This leads to an equation where, in a single symbol, both actual and potential states of an entity can be expressed. The notion of ‘skew-parallels’ has a significance for the representation of physical events. In non-mathematical language:

Let us consider two events (A) and (B) separated in space and time but connected by the fact that a given whole P participates in both of them. The events might be, for example, the moment when a man starts upon a journey and that at which he arrives at his destination. The events are connected by a line, which is the direction of time of the man P. If this line is cosmodesic, the points A and B will determine a time-like vector of infinite magnitude. If the journey lasts exactly one year, we call it a unit-vector in the scale of years. Now, let us suppose that during the journey the man deviates from the intended itinerary, but makes up the time he loses by travelling faster, so that in the end he arrives at the destination at the same moment as if he had followed the intended path. There can be an infinite number of such diversions and all of them will leave the beginning and starting points unchanged, provided that the lengthening of the pat in space is accompanied by an increasing speed, exactly calculated so as to leave unchanged the overall time taken. The situation so described can be represented by the vector V – which is the intended path – and an indefinite number of vectors U, each of which brings the man to the same destination at the same moment. The path W differs from V by the fact that there is a change in both space direction and time direction, but no change in the combined effects of the two. Precisely, the ‘proper-time’ from A to B is the same for every path since W.W = V.V = 1

If W is a skew-parallel of V, when traced in the cosmic manifold the two vectors do not diverge, but if each is projected into a prime that does not contain them, their components are not identical, and at any point these components are found to have finite divergence. This effect may appear strange until we realise that we are constantly influenced by it in our visual perceptions. As we look about us, the whole world appears to be moving at the same time as we are. We look out at the stars at night and they appear to be existing in the same time as we ourselves; and yet our astronomical knowledge teaches us that the times of distant stars are really very different from our own.

Here, there must be at least one dimension of space and at least two time-like dimensions. In studying the specific difference between one kind of pencil and another, we may expect to find means of representing independently each of the three inner dimensions.

 

Pp. 271-285

 

Pencils of Skew-parallels

 

A family of skew-parallels is tripotent.

(i) The Alpha-pencil

(ii) The Beta-pencil

(iii) The Gamma-pencil

(iv) The Delta-pencil

 

The Four Types of Pencil and the Four Determining-conditions

A closer look at the properties of the four types of pencil:

Every entity P should be able to be identified and distinguished from all other entities in the universe. Also, there must be a general order – so that all entities, actualised and potential, can be represented.

A significant difference between the two dimensions of time and eternity: we tend to think of potentiality as representing freedom and actualisation as fixation. This is true of the inner world of experience of an entity. For man, freedom is eternity and fixation is time; but there are no restrictions on co-existence of different entities with eternity. Time, on the other hand, requires strong linkage to preserve the unity of actualisation.

We would expect the inner world of a given whole to comprise of three independent elements: affirming, denying, reconciling. Taking account of its sensitivity, hyparxis is the reconciling force where affirmation is eternity and denial is time. The reconciliation is not accomplished through action of a universal law but by ‘ableness-to-be’ of existing wholes. This varies according to the existential status of entities. For hyponomic entities there is no self-regulation or inner adaption to adjust the process of actualisation to an eternal pattern. Ableness-to-be is therefore no more than the quantitative expression of their mode of existence. It is not the same as ‘inner togetherness’ (being). In eternity, the intensity of inner-togetherness varies according to the state of consciousness; so, a entity sometimes behaves as an inanimate object and sometimes as a conscious being. Despite fluctuations, however, the ableness-to-be remains the stable factor which measures the range of variations possible in the dimensions of eternity, and the extent to which an entity retains its identity in the process of actualisation in time. Ableness-to-be oneself is significant in the sense of being this when confronted with others.

Hyparxis was previously associated with the logic of classes and the frequency/ possibility of recurrence. Everything actualised ceases to exist independently and is reabsorbed into the ground state of hyle. Unactualised possibilities also risk dissolution. If actualisations repeat themselves, all existence remains stable. But, such repetition or recurrence cannot find a place in time of eternity; in one case, it would fail to preserve potentialities, in the other it would be lacking actualisation. Unless the property of recurrence leaves scope for variability, it would be trivial. Nothing is added to existence if every whole is destroyed over and over again instead of once only. So, hyparxis implies repeatable, but only in a limited way (ableness-to-be). Ableness-to-be is therefore a quantity and so can be measured. Measurement is not infinitely divisible, since repetition or recurrence can only apply to whole (events of parts of events having independent existence). Hyparxis is therefore different from time and eternity – the latter have no quantity.

 

Characteristics of the Universal Geometry

It is possible to construct a multi-dimensional geometry for the representation of any set of relationships defined by numbers. This is a ‘conventional presentation’: a set of numbers providing specific conditions. Such geometry does not need to be interpreted according to our own experie4nce and inner intuitions. It is a mathematical convenience.. However, when it does relate to sense experience – time and space (Poincare) – it must represent all facts (and has no value without it as a condition).

The three-dimensionality of space, and the successive/ irreversibility of time can be explained by a study of human organs. These geometrics are applicable to a wide variety of phenomena, but beak down when not connected to sense experience.

The geometry here presented is derived from an examination of the fundamental conditions common to all experience. It needs to be adequate for all hyponomic entities and all relationships arising between them. It will not be suitable for autonomic and hypernomic existence. Requirements of the geometry:

i) Every hypernomic whole must be capable of representation as an aggregate of simple entities;

ii) Relational entities when simple are tripotent;

iii) Composite wholes are quadrapotent;

iv) Bipotent entities have no interaction;

v) Tripotent entities can interact reversibly;

vi) Quadrapotent entities have both inner and outer relationships and participate in irreversible inteactions;

vii) Every relationship has three characteristics (a, its direction; b, its magnitude; c, its diversity;

viii) A distinction has to be made between conjunctive and disjunctive relationships;

ix) Relationships may be transitive or non transitive and the geometry must be able this distinction to be represented;

x) Quadipotent entities, being massive space-extended aggregates of hyle, it is necessary to represent by means of the geometry the properties of mass, electric charge, momentum, and angular momentum, that are associated with such entities;

xi) The geometry must give an account of the distinction between virtual and actual states of matter;

xii) It must also give an account of exchange forces;

xiii) The thermo-dynamic laws of conservation and entropy must be capable of geometrical representation.

 

The Six-dimensionality of the Hyponomic World

The N-dimensional manifold considered here has an indefinite pseudo-Euclidean metric, so allowing us to represent the conservative properties of hyponomic existence by means of straight lines (straightness having absolute significance independent of the entities concerned).

In terms of the theorem derived, the geometry need to be seen as ‘universal’. Six-dimensional geometry has three inner and three outer dimensional characteristics. Four belong to our common experience of space and time. The two other represent the determining conditions of eternity and hyparxis. Actualisation, potentiality and recurrence characterise the three inner determining-conditions – denying, affirming and reconciling of the inner triad of the given whole. The three outer relationships correspond to three directions of space fixed when a given whole P begins to enter into relationships with the external world. P has three characteristics: firstly, its own instantaneous direction of motion; secondly, its direction of acceleration – or gradient of the force field in which it is moving; thirdly, a direction determined by its axis of rotation or an equivalent property associated with hyparxis. Each is independent from the other: outer determining-conditions corresponding to inner determining-conditions of time, eternity and hyparxis. So, isotropy of space is a geometrical fiction. In every physical occasion observed in the phenomenal world, space is directed – for there is always motion; always a field of force independent of the motion; and a relationship between a given whole and other wholes that depends upon ableness-to-be.

All six dimensions are required for the representation of any situation in which the existence of a whole is committed. So, we should be able to use the universal geometry to represent all the occasions of the physical world – of the hyponomic world.

 

Chapter 16

 

SIMPLE OCCASIONS

 

Simple Interactions

Passive entities fall into one of four hyponomic grades – depending on degree of potency of their existence. Here, we look at Tripotent entities: lacking ‘compositeness’ and ‘subsistence’. Simple – all-or-nothing – entities. Undivided. Non-individualised wholes. No change: change means rearrangement of parts. Direction of time has no significance. Simple interactions are reversible. According to determining-conditions, a simple entity is cyclic in hyparxis – thus identical recurrence – no one potentiality standing upon a different level from another. Eg. A perfectly elastic massive sphere. The collision of two such spheres would entail transfer of energy that can be reversed exactly. Identical recurrence. Perpetual motion is rarely encountered in our everyday. However, it does allow us to deduce some fundamental laws.

 

Reversibility

With the two spheres, they are at rest at two points in each cycle: the moment of maximum compression (in contact with each other: when they are furthest apart). In both extremes, the energy of the system is potential. There are two moments when there are no potential energy: the moment of impact and separation. Between these, energy is present in three different states: kinetic energy of motion; the strain energy of compression; the energy of gravitational potential. These require three different pencils of skew-parallels. There is one overriding characteristic: the complete determination of all its history – inner and outer. There is one possibility of actualising. It is ‘fully degenerate in eternity’ because there are only two possibilities: existence and non-existence. There is a state of constant entropy – never more than one possibility at a given moment of time.

Not all cases of identical recurrence are fully determined in this manner.

If the spheres exist with a number of other spheres. The disturbance from others will preclude exact return and collisions will be rare. Combined energy remains constant here. There is a complex gravitational field. Individual actualisations cease to be reversible. There is a progressive diminution of potentialities, the system moves to a point where spheres lie with one another, with energy stored in a state of compression – some moving outwards through space beyond the range of the gravitational attractive force of the central mass.

An infinite but small proportion of the mass will be in the form of potential energy. The system now has a progressive actualisation in time – a certain apokritical range that measures the potentialities of the whole. Here, in hyparxis, exact recurrence applies initially to individual spheres. Slowly, will emerge an intrinsic ‘ableness-to-be’ of the system taken as a whole.

Hyparchic axis of the whole is not ascertainable from those of the individual spheres; it depends upon the potential and actual energies distributed in space as each successive moment of time. The final equilibrium is only reached after a long time; with perfectly elastic spheres, not all energy of collision is restored as kinetic energy. Only in simultaneous collision – rare – of three of more spheres, that the system slows down effectively. At a moment of observation far removed from the final state, potentialities of the system are enormous. These potentialities constitute a reserve of energy – but lost to observation – because it is potential – and re-entry into temporal actualisation becomes increasingly improbable.

These entities require a character that cannot be described in terms of potentialities alone since a part of hyle is withdrawn from actualisation. It does not return in space and time except at the end of a long time and improbable sequence of events. The potential energy here stored carries the virtual pattern of all possible actualisations.

In the case of reversible interactions between entities of identical recurrence, the virtual pattern occupies only one level in eternity – no intervening links. No eternal differentiation – no apokritical structure. So, their eternal pattern repeats itself exactly from one level to another, starting from the level of determination (where visible motions are in progress) to reach the limit of togetherness (where all matter is in the virtual state). So, a system of elastic spheres as reproduced with its eternal pattern at regular apokritical intervals that correspond to its level of existence.

In this sense alone, we can talk of eternity as recurrent; there is no repetition of events but the kind of event effect seen in a room with parallel mirrors – where actual events proceeding in the room seem to repeat themselves over and over in the mirrors – yet adding nothing to the amount of existence of the room or its contents.

 

Pp. 285-301

 

The Quantum of Action

According to the principle of polarity, the determining-conditions of eternity and time can (without a reconciling factor) only produce a state of tension/ force: arising through the opposition of many potentialities of an entity and a single actualisation – that is potential energy and the energy of motion. The tension between actual and potential. In dynamical science this is the ‘kinetic potential of the system’.

Concepts associated with matter:

Energy and mass as enduring properties of a material system – but mass only ‘exists’ by being subject to the condition of time. A more significant assessment is when energy is combined with time.

Many mathematicians have seen the significance of ‘action’: it is related to hyparxis in as much as more action is assumed when more space has been traversed in less time. Action depends on the relative movement of bodies revolving: a rigid body or angular movement. Philosophers have not considered the properties of angular momentum. It is often difficult to account for: for example, of the solar system. This is what maintains the reconciliation between potential energy and the kinetic energy of the planets.

Action is also important in the effect upon a system of interactions in several parts: least action, where non-interacting dynamical systems are governed, are replaced by the principle of varying action where the degree of interaction is assessed.; for example, the transmission of light.

Action allows us to distinguish between different types so hyponomic activity. Unipotent existential indifference leads to no action. Bipotent entities satisfy the hypothesis of invariant being: all systems actualised according to the principle of stationary action. Tripotent entities of identical recurrence: here, the law of least action applies – every change is reversible. They have quasi-reversible reactions. Where there is irreversible interaction, quadripotent entities, the action of the system and its several parts prescribe change.

The reconciliation of the singularity and conservative character of actualisation in time with multi—valent character of potentiality is obtained through the recurrence of every entity over as many cycles as are required to ensure the conservation of existence. Where an entity is composite, it recurs as a whole and also in several parts. The unification required for this effect is called ‘coupling’.

Coupling is neither actual or potential, but related to both. No before or after – they are co-terminus. Timeless events.

 

Hyparxis – the condition of ableness-to-be

Recurrence – the reconciliation of potentiality and actualisation

Transition – the link between rest and motion

Coupling – the combination of sharing and exchange

Sensitivity – the relational to hyle

Action – the observable aspect of recurrence

σ-pencils – the geometrical representation of transition, action and recurrence.

 

Action is a more important aspect of existence than mass and charge – it is the common binding-force by which all entities are held together and all interactions regulated.

Every tripotent entity requires for its representation vectors corresponding to mass and charge, and also a pencil that expresses both its ableness-to-be and also the condition of its possible interactions.

 

Electro-magnetic Radiation

Diagram page 289

Energy in the form of electro-magnetic radiation is at once the starting-point of existence and the universal medium of exchange. Every pulse of light is a transfer of potential energy from one entity to another; a simple but reversible interaction possible between tripotent entities. Mostly, this transfer is between two atoms, potential energy changes from one level to the next. The loss of energy in one atom is exactly balanced by the gain in another.

A cycle of recurrence is an exact replica of another. The existence of an electron in time and eternity that corresponds to a single cycle in hyparxis is a Counterpart.

Each counterpart in an electron series is complete in time and space and eternity. Only a fraction of the electron is hyparxis. The electron has no individuation – ableness-to-be is then spread over a quasi-infinite number of counterparts, any one of which can be a carrier of the quantum of action associated with the electron.

What of an observer in time-space who is eternity-hyparxis blind?

Each recurrence has the same balance of potentiality and actualisation. Definite energy E though is associated with the event; the amount lost by atom A and gained by atom B, or the light pulse itself.

When a simple entity such as an electron undergoes a change of state involving the emission of light pulse, the energy transferred must be equal to the frequency multiplied by the quantum of action.

Hyparxis and the third dimension of space are specially linked through the property of recurrence, which gives action and angular momentum.

Recurrent series in hyparxis determines the relation between energy and frequency; so, the momentum of light in the direction of propagation.

Both the energy and the momentum of light result from the summation of a quasi-infinite number of counterparts in a recurrent series

 

Geometrical Mechanics

L de Broglie (1924) drew attention to the symmetry of particles and waves in the observed behaviour of electro-magnetic radiation and electrons – modern wave mechanics: the distinction between a particle and a wave as being the manner of observation.

In interference experiments, the electron behaves as if there were a ‘guide-wave’ carrying the presence of the particle. But, electrons will behave like corpuscles in most manifestations.

By wave, we understand the periodic oscillation of some function propagated through space.

Born: the wave function is equivalent to the probability of the electron being present at a given instant of space-time – that the oscillation of this property constitutes then wave. Ok, but the function can in no way be given physical significance in terms of space and time alone.

Wave-function – therefore, a part of the electron is not present – no physical meaning.

So, a five-dimensional framework was suggested: here, the wave-function becomes a periodic oscillation of potential. But, the potential energy cannot be quantized unless space and direction are as well.

So, a six-dimensional representation: a system inherently quantized because of rotational character of the σ-pencil.

 

The Concept of Virtuality

Virtuality is the condition or state of the hyle when withdrawn from actualisation in the form of an eternal potentiality.

Virtuality allows for a more complex structure than can be found in any actualisation – it can and must carry all potentialities of a system from inception to final state.

A bi-potent entity such as an electron has the possibility of entering into a quasi-infinite number of actualisations; being without individuation, electrons are indistinguishable apart from at point of interaction. Identity can be fixed by participation in the existence of some quadri-potent whole – not participation in existence.

Virtuality – state of hyle of entities with determination – hyle in the virtual state, unobserved, not actualised – therefore imperishable. But, virtuality in terms of relativity of existence – so, a transmission from complete actuality to complete virtuality.

If we treat virtuality as unity and all fracional states as designating an entity partly actualised, gives us a numerical representation.

Bipotent entities with virtuality at unity are identical.

The state of complete virtuality is a reservoir of existence from which hyle can be drawn for actualisation – this is distinct from pre-existential or sub-corpuscular unipotent states.

A Bipotent entity is only in relative existence – the properties of matter by reason of framework orientation. An electron has inertial mass by reason of electric charge, a neutrino has momentum only by limiting velocity. Geometrically, the corpuscles exist in the null-cone except when interacting; general mass system of the universe is composed almost exclusively of tripotent entities.

Bipotent corpuscles remain as single units but still dependent. An electron becomes a determinate entity when in interaction. Most cases are supported by a quadripotent entity – atomic nucleus.

The fixation of an electron is a determinate event and requires the mobilisation of all potentialities for actualisation. Conservation of potentialities must remain with the entity for simple entities – reconciliation of the eternal and temporal aspects of existence by recurrences as identical

 

Simple bipotent reactions:

a) a single actualisation in time;

b) a single potential energy transition in eternity;

c) a quasi-infinite residue of unactualised potentialities;

d) a quasi-infinite series of recurrences in hyparxis;

e) a single collision or fusion with another entity in space.

 

For simple corpuscular entities – all corpuscles have identical potentialities – they have identical potentialities, a common apokritical interval representing a level in eternity in which all potentialities exist.

Existentially, the corpuscle is simple and bipotent; geometrically, it is identically recurrent. Physical entities with these properties vary in nature. Some are universal constituents – electrons; others participate in all energy exchanges – photons. Others are rare: positrons. Neutrinos are scarcely discernable. In fact, physicists wonder if they actually all exist.

Linkage to framework allows us to consider differences.

The existence of a corpuscle is represented by three pencils – one determines actualisation, one potentiality and one ableness-to-be. One fixes the intrinsic character of the entity. When it is associated with eternity, the corpuscle will have either positive or negative unit electric charge. When associated with time, duration and apparent mass (no identity). When associated with hyparxis, it has neither mass nor charge – quantum of action only.

Let’s look at an electron and consider how potentialities relate to actualisation. This is not directly observable.

Electrons have no structure; recurrences can only be identical cycles connecting with potentialities lost in actualisation. Hyparxis overcomes sharp dualism of vituality and actuality.

 

The Virtuality Function

How does the regulation of interaction by the recurrent hyparchic series affect the temporal behaviour of a body?

We conclude that all potentialities of an entity consist exclusively in the shifting balance between actual and virtual existence.

Virtual existence means indistinguishable from other bipotent entities.

Actual existence means that it is fully present in the process of actualisation in time.

The lector is actual only when observed. The alternating transition from actual to potential and vice versa is not an event – not an interaction.

So, the existence of the electron is a linkage of the inner determining-conditions by way of reconciliation of the affirmative virtual state and the negative actual state.

Each recurrence is an image or projection of the total recurrent set.

The recurrent series is a quasi-infinite number of identical events – no partial recurrence.

The eternal series is a wave-form or harmonic oscillation between states of virtuality and actuality

 

The Solitary Electron in the Hyle-field

The condition of a single charged particle in the absence of an independent field is quite artificial. Its position is indeterminate. There is present a substratum of pre-existent hyle – existence of vanishingly small intensity.

So, we conceive a field of potential energy distributed through out all space and time of infinitesimal intensity – the Hyle-field. Probably present at the threshold of existence and connected with the potential barrier.

We cannot detect such a field. However, being unlocalised, the hyle-field is experienced as different.

We can recognise the presence of an entity in process of actualisation polarising in space.

A particle appears to be present to an equal degree at every point of space and time. Each recurrence for the universal observer is perfectly determinate in its own space-time.

 

The Potential Energy Barrier

This notion is current in physical theory and is easy to deal with analytically, but not so easy with a concrete picture.

In experimental physics it is encountered with bipotent entities.

Its properties can be derived from the properties of virtue-wave in eternity. This is the analytical expression for the apokritical series.

Here, it becomes possible to have at one time and place an entity, some of whose recurrences have a total energy less than, or greater than, the critical value.

The division between the two is the critical value of the potential energy – a potential energy barrier.

The bipotent corpuscle can be at one and the same time and place – inside and outside a given potential energy barrier.

The eternity-blind observer interprets the result as though the electron itself in some way inside and outside the barrier in space.

The concept of recurrence as the link between sameness and otherness is fundamental for the whole cosmology.

The material wave is a special case of universal occurrence applied to a tripotent aspects of phenomena – the simple entity without inner transformations that has an identical series and therefore associated wave-function that can be expressed in terms of Schrodinger’s equations in conventional forms.

Although strictly applicable only to bipotent entities, ‘simple interactions’ of the kind studied are the elementary events from which the entire common cosmic exchange of energies is built up.

 

Pp. 302-315

 

Part Seven

 

THE WORLD OF THINGS

 

Chapter 17

 

CORPUSCLES AND PARTICLES

 

Unipotence – The Emergence of Materiality

So, far, the coverage has been abstractions – unconstrained motions and force fields can be described in terms of entities that are artificial and conventional. There has been a theory of interaction in terms of unspecified particles – to satisfy the hypothesis of identical recurrence – not occurring in nature. These are identified by legitimate abstraction – where we isolate an equipotent single layer in entities from the whole of experience.

Every entity has its place in such, up to its maximum potency.

A man is treated as bipotent when defined by the eternity-blind observer O.

Bipotency is the ability to say yes or no to the question of whether or not two points or two directions coincide – to say/ do nothing besides.

The following returns to the scale of existence and study of actual content of the hyponomic world in our experience.

We must describe what entities are besides what they do. We do this by numerical scale – the one we use consists of twelve numbers – each designating an order of potency. The first four comprise all passive entities in the hyponomic world. These are four groupings within which a range of subordinate possibilities can arise.

We can expect the highest manifestation of tripotency to resemble the lowest level of quadripotence.

The intent is to trace the main steps by which existence emerges from non-existence – and examine some of the intermediate levels to make connection with observed data of physical science.

We begin with a concept of non-existence as pure being – beyond the limits of all possible experience.

Out of non-existence arises the undifferentiated prime-source-cosmic-substance – hyle. It exists but has no properties – exemplifies the bare fact of existence – quantitative but not quantized, qualitative but not qualities. It is the bearer of potentialities – sufferer of actualizations; but neither potential nor actual. It is omnipresent but not extended. It has neither shape, size, or position. No history – nor subject to determining-conditions (because it still exists). Eternal without potentiality – temporal without actualisation – spatial without extension. Hyle must accept individuation – that is separation of existence and non-existence: to exist means to stand out of the unconditional – here, hyle becomes the determined matter.

Hyle is the unfathomable reservoir from whence material is drawn out and from which events are made; there cannot be a continuous, unrestrained flow of hyle from the unconditioned to the conditioned world. With this, there would be no determination as every entity would wax and wane unpredictably – all would be merged in formless flux.

Such indeterminism would be unlimited and pervasive. Atomic existence would be impossible and every entity would be subject to unaccountable transformations, contradicting the established laws of conservation – leaving nothing to meaningless caprice.

Therefore, the concept of hyle requires separation from the actual world by a boundary crossed only under prescribed conditions. How does the materialization of hyle occur?

Before, we wrote of the ‘hyle-field’, where a source of potential energy of infinitesimal intensity is distributed throughout infinite time and space – corresponding to the pre-existent state as a counterpoise to all actualisations. It is not perfectly homogeneous, but conceived as subject to subliminal fluctuations as precursors of material existence.

Determining-conditions – given by pure geometry, as shown before. There are no actual entities in the geometrical world, whereby the properties of the determining-condition are ascertained; only in complete absence of any determinate matter that time and space and eternity are defined.

In the formless ground is exemplified that complementarity, which characterises all experience – the complete indeterminism of existence allows a complete determinism of framework.

Where existence is fully self-realised, the distinctions of the determining-conditions are merged in the freedom of unconditioned will.

The unipotence of hyle consists in its one possibility of materialization; the universal donor from which existence draws its sustenance – but cannot give itself freely without destroying the significance of existence itself.

To reduce the unconditional to unipotence there must be a barrier that prevents its penetration except at one precisely defined state.

To form a clearer picture we need to represent the undifferentiated ground state of hyle as a finite but limitless ocean. It neither changes nor remains the same. Time, eternity, and hyparxis are likened to the shores, the bottom, and surface of the ocean – and space to its extent. But, the ocean knows nothing of shore or surface; it lies peaceful in its immensity, swaying unceasingly yet timelessly in the rhythm of some cosmic tide – ebbing and flowing through fathomless being beyond existence itself.

The surface of the ocean does not have the peace of the depths – it is stirred by the winds of experience – waves and ripples pass over it. If we compare the surface to the determining-condition of hyparxis, we regard the waves as momentary concentrations of ableness-to-be. Time and eternity are brought together, and there may be agitations intense enough to initiate an historical process – likened to clouds of spray thrown into the atmosphere. ‘Droplets’ are entities materialised – ‘the continuous creation of matter’ – or rather ‘re-cycling through the action of entities capable of passing the threshold of existence’. The latter is not strictly potential – eternal – but hyparchic. Within the ground-state, the concentration of ‘ableness-to-be is not perfectly homogeneous – but concentrations are too weak to be capable of separate actualisation – the ‘state of hyle’ sub-determined – the boundless.

 

The Corpuscular State – Bipotence

‘This and not that’ – is what allows Hyle to cross over the threshold of existence. This is the corpuscular state.

Corpuscle: hyle determined but not individuated. It comprises of all forms of existence where entities participate in reversible processes exclusively and have no individuation.

Bipotency does not participate in the irreversible character of time. Such entities have no temperature – no entropy. Reversibility is possible because they have no inertial rest mass – no proper direction in time.

Such entities exist in nature as electro-magnetic radiation, electrons, positrons, neutrinos: the first layer of existence at the threshold of undifferentiation – the electronic world (everything).

To consider ‘atomicity’. An atom is the smallest/ simplest entity in which a property is exemplified: a man a property of humanity.

Corpuscles partake in interactions according to external process – devoid of inner differentiation to allow them to change.

Quantization is inherent in the step by which the corpuscle emerges from hyle. The quantum of action is the minimum ableness-to-be that permits the step to be made, that separates ‘this’ from ‘not this’.

The simplest atom would be self-identical at all times, in all places, and recurrences. Corpuscles are indistinguishable.

Any two electrons could exchange places. Corpuscles are ‘unlabelled’.

The main function of corpuscles in universal actualisation is to provide a medium for interaction and exchange.

Some corpuscles exist in time, eternity and hyparxis.

Others exist in null-regions; connecting 2-3 determining-conditions.

Corpuscles can be distinct qualitatively but are the same in respect of bipotency; therefore, no independent existence, but instruments of interaction between entities of a higher order.

 

a. The Neutrino

A first basic state; bipotent corpuscle; without intrinsic qualities from ableness to participate in events only from the framework determining-conditions. It has neither size nor electric charge, nor shape. But, momentum and spin. It actualises in the null-region – thus moving at the velocity of light to the finite observer. Indeterminate momentum. It links hyparxis and space – it therefore spins. But not a fully-established bipotent entity – no possibilities for further actualisation.

We can see it as ‘degenerate’ in that it is devoid of potentialities – that is fully actualised from it become extant. But, cannot contribute further to events. It can penetrate the barrier that separates existence from ground state. There is no other destiny apart from returning to hyle – carrying its own actualization, provoking further hyle to an equivalent state of potentiality. So, fresh material can emerge from the ground state as a result. Thus, new stars, galaxies, etc. to maintain the concentration of actualised matter in the growing universe.

Thus, the time-like state of the corpuscle.

 

b. The Electron and Positron

The non-degenerate bipotent corpuscle should have two equal and opposite states. It cannot have relationships but must be subject to polar forces.

The simplest non-degenerate bipotent entity must be orientated in eternity, where there are two equal and opposite directions of potency. Therefore, a bipotent corpuscle needs to be associated with a property eternal in nature and capable of taking equal and opposite forms.

This identifies non-degenerate bipotence with electric charge of a fixed quantity that corresponds exactly to the potency required for emergence from the ground state. This is why all electric charges are multiples of one basic unit and partial charges never encountered.

The characteristic non-degenerate bipotent entity is the electron with a charge represented by an apokritical vector bearing a negative sign. The positron with the opposite charge cannot enter stable combinations and has a short free life.

When not radiating, the electron exists in the null-region and has half-integral spin and no inertial real-mass.

Positive and negative forms of non-degenerate bipotent corpuscle are not identical in nature.

The negative electron participates in all events in the universe; the positive positron is significant for the conservation of pattern in eternity. Positrons are rare and fleeting. They easily return to a state of virtuality. Both electrons and positrons are eternity-like states of the corpuscle.

 

c) The Photon

Radiation is omnipresent – unlike other forms of existence. It can be described at the ‘Will’ of the hyponomic world – and carries in it the energy exchanges of the universe. It is hyparchic in character – quasi-relational – connects entities and permits interactions often widely separated in time and space.

What is the existential status of light?

It does exist: it produces results, has momentum, even mass.

A large proportion of the universe exists as radiation.

We accept light as both wave and corpuscular.

A pulse of electro-magnetic radiation is an entity as well defined as an electron or neutrino.

But, it also has connectedness – bipotent existence.

A photon carries its own actualisation – is cosmodesic – holding together space and time.

Its energy can vary enormously, but action is fixed value. No individuality.

 

d) The Corpuscular Mesons

Photons of high energy and electrons with very high velocity can be transformed into entities that belong to a higher level of existence – considerable rest-mass: μ-mesons. They have positive and negative electric charge and behave like electrons and positrons. Probably a triad of distinct states of the corpuscle – held together by relatedness, and decay into a) an electron positron, b) a neutrino, c) a photon.

They have no individuation. We might expect them to be corpuscles that have acquired sufficient energy to occupy the transition region that stands between bipotence and tripotence.

 

Table page 313

We know that the move from the third to the fourth stage of any process is discontinuous and requires external shock. Therefore, we can associate μ-mesons with transition to higher level of existence. Not a transition that is made spontaneously from the corpuscle that arises from the hyle with small residual energy. μ-mesons are associated with exceptionally high levels of energy. They are a stage in the materialization of the hyle – the most elementary we can find the structure principle.

To summarise:

The corpuscular state is a well-defined and necessary element in the total scheme of existence; one of the twelve gradations; the totality of non-individuated entities on which the universe rests.

It has a threefold cycle.

First: neutrinos arise and return to the ground-state of hyle.

Second: electromagnetic radiation provides universal bonds of existing wholes.

Third: through electrons, positrons and μ-mesons, hyle acquires the potency for building up higher gradations of existence, and of returning to corpuscular state.

In the corpuscular state, there is a sharp division between virtuality and actuality: an electron can only occupy two states – one non-radiating state (electron wholly virtual), the other radiating (wholly actual).

The photon is wholly virtual in wave-like aspect at the moment of appearance, and wholly virtual as it re-enters the ground-state of hyle.

This is bipotency

 

The Particulate State – Tripotence

A particle is a tripotent entity with no parts. Characteristic particles are neutrons, photons, and enter atomic nuclei – neutron.

Also, particles include a variety of mesons characterised by tripotency and the possession of approximately unit mass.

Tripotence is relational; to be related means to also be unrelated. Thus, the beginning of existence – the first appearance of individuality in passive manifestation.

Experimentally, corpuscles and particles appear very similar but their distinction is basic: own potentialities and actualizations – associated with internal mass.

To exist is to be massive, extended in space, enduring in time. Different from corpuscles.

Difference between weight weighed and weight inferred.

Important distinctions between bipotence and tripotence.

Brings inertial mass into existence – actualised energy that does not depend upon framework relationships. Absent in corpuscular states.

All masses of the universe are built up from tripotent states.

The particles do not so much subsist – this would require a combination with an electron to give neutral hydrogen atom, or merge with other particles to give atomic nucei.

Relatedness is the prior condition of subsistence.

Because of tripotence, the particle can have no inner distinctions. So, all particles must consist of identical units of hyle. This agrees with the view that the proton is the building unit of the material universe. The particles occupy the third grade or level of existence. They are omnipresent – and always the same. Each is an individual unit of hyle – of the simplest kind. The only distinction is from simpler corpuscles.

The neutron decays into a proton, the electron and neutrino seem to contradict this. But, now it is accepted that electrons cannot exist as such in the interior of atomic nuclei – electrical neutrality of the neutron is not due to cancellation of two charges in the way in which inner and outer vectors are linked.

 

Pp. 316-331

An electrically charged particle can only have a low probability of passing through a potential energy barrier.

A loss of proton is never observed.

What emerges from a nucleus is either neutrons or neutrinos.

β-radiation is the arising of new corpuscles from the hyle.

The neutron is important in the arising of matter from the ground-state of the hyle. Because the determining-conditions are completely separated in the unipotent state – there can be existence without force.

A neutrino has no self-energy but moves with the velocity of light – momentum to cause disturbance to hyle.

Once formed the proton is indestructible.

Here, hyle does not return but is transformed by new forces.

Intermediate states can be occupied – heavy mesons.

The π-meson lies close to the corpuscular state.

States of the particle (see page 317):

Particle……………Dominant Condition……..Characteristic

Anti-proton…………..Eternity…………….Mass Unity.Charge.Unstable

Proton…………………..Eternity…………….Mass Unity.Charge.Stable

Neutron…………………Time…………………Mass Unity.Charge Zero.Unstable

Nucleon…………………Hyparxis…………..Mass Unity.Chargeoscillating unity/zero

Heavymeson………….Intermediate…….Mass greater or less than unity. Unity/zero

 

Spin and Statistics

Every corpuscle has angular momentum and magnetic dipolar moment – rotating axis in space.

Gravitation – the corpuscle of which is a bosum – should be in null-cone and therefore appear to be prolongated with the velocity of light.

 

The Threefold Character of Time

In the particulate world, the determining-conditions are linked by the presence of inertial masses and electrical charges.

Particles, being tripotent, are always related – representation is not arbitrary.

Corpuscles – time is pure actualisation and eternity pure potency.

Determing-conditions acquire certain properties of others.

Time – successiveness – acquires conservation (eternity).

Particle – irreversibility (hyparxis).

The secondary characteristics of the determining conditions:

The character of actualisation of bipotent corpuscles:

Unlimited stability.

A photon can remain unchanged for thousands of years

The electron is also stable.

They do not change

Ditto the neutrino.

Corpuscles are fixed by determining conditions.

They only change by the conversion of one form to another.

Particles are stable but with a greater number of actualisations.

Because, for example, the proton is tripotent. Is Triadic.

There are two ways to measure time:

 

1) What we are accustomed to; cyclic phenomena.

2) Irreversible processes – entropy.

Neither are ‘time-like’.

 

So, we can measure space in a non ‘space-like’ way: the recurrent character of intervals; and the endurance of rigid bodies.

So, determining-conditions are always linked to secondary characteristics.

We describe events in terms of time and space by importing qualities of eternity and hyparxis.

But, this breaks down when we need to distinguish the existential factors associated with entities of a given potency.

Each of the determining-conditions has a characteristic associated with time alone. Its threefold nature: actual, virtual and recurrent.

Actual Time as successive; Virtual Time as conservation; Recurrent time as irreversibility.

Conservation – time; Irreversibility – hyparxis (thermodynamic time – entropy).

True time is experience but not measured.

Successive actualisation – self-realization of universe (existence).

Experience – successive perishing of each moment..

Conservation depends on consciousness.

Higher level of consciousness – imperishablility of true being – endlessly renewed. But, not exempt from death, but a death in endless resurrection

(MG: St Paul ‘Each day I die’, or the Gnostic Ouroborus: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros)

Harmonised conservation + destruction = perpetual non-perishing.

So, the ancient problem of permanent and impermanent elements of existence.

Stable, simple tripotent entities must be endowed with a balance of potentiality and actualisation – here, time and eternity are harmonised, soas entropy and virtuality compensate one another in a cyclic manner. So, the entity remains what it is – notwithstanding the irreversibility of actualisation.

 

The Regenerate Ratio

Successiveness is common to all three conceptions of time; to separate them we need to examine the relationship to determining-conditions of eternity and space.

There is a limit to describe the favourable balance of virtuality and actuality.

With no virtuality, an entity is in thermo-dynamic equilibrium – inwardly and outwardly. No potential to participate in future events. Wholly materialised. When complete, it is exempt from decay and can move freely in eternity. That is ‘wholly conscious’.

Between these two extremes, there is neither loss nor gain of potentiality. Still exempt from decay but fixed to a point where it cannot be displaced without loss of identity. It has ‘accidental identity of recurrence’ .

The derivative characteristic of irreversibility:

‘Universal Decay Constant’ is the rate at which an entity runs down without extra energy.

A system may have a supply of energy of requisite intensity balancing entropy-increase. Eg. A pendulum.

This is the ratio of potentiality and actualisation of an entity self-identical in time: ‘Exact Regeneration Ration’. So, two conceptions:

1) the cosmodesic or path of actualisation (the energy in external relationships – observable);

2) the existential of direction of existence (the inner state of the entity and its direction in the plane containing the time and eternity axes of the entity).

The direction of cosmodesic tells us nothing of the inner stability of an entity. For this, we need the thermo-dynamic balance given by the direction of the existential – a direction in the plane of time and eternity. The divergence of inner and outer time. An entity with thermo-dynamic equilibrium with environment is ‘dead’. One that diverges at the exact regenerative ratio can maintain independent existence indefinitely without a supply of energy.

The velocity of light in vacuo is the same as the ratio between the electro-dynamic and the electro-magnetic measures of electricity

There seems to be some evidence that the velocity of light may be changing. All is therefore subject to revision until we can state the constancy of time and the true significance of the regenerative ratio.

If the universe is in a state of everlasting equilibrium, then the universal regenerative ratio is a permanent characteristic of all existence.

 

Chapter 18

 

Composite Wholeness

 

Quadripotent Entities

Sometimes, we need to call the familiar by the unfamiliar.

So, we end by considering ‘thinghood’ in the hyponomic world.

Thing = ‘an entity consisting of matter and extended in space’. Material object. Composite Whole: lower limit = combination of not fewer than two tripotent entities into a single whole; upper limit = hyponomic existence passive towards environment.

What do we mean by ‘partness’ of ‘wholeness’?

This distinguishes between relationship and subsistence. A part subsists in the whole and the whole subsists by virtue of the qualities it derives from relationship of parts.

The connection between whole and parts is different from that between organism and organs; also, between two interacting tripotent wholes.

A whole in which the identity of the constituents is completely submerged belongs to the corpuscular state of the hyle: bipotence (eg. Electron gas).

Passing to tripotent entities, the simplicity of the corpuscle is transcended – but no relationship of whole to part. No possibility of independent manifestation. Subordinate to the requirements of stable existence.

The mutual significance of part and whole is categorical, ultimate and irreducible to simple terms. The category of subsistence.

Subsistence in time is to endure. Subsistence in space is to be composite. Subsistence in eternity is to have diversity of potentialities. Subsistence in hyparxis is to have recognisable identity.

All these have the basic existential characteristic of quadripotence.

So: ‘composite whole’, ‘material object’, ‘molecule’, ‘compound’, ‘thing’, ‘enduring identity’, ‘subsistent whole’.

To these can be added: ‘proper history’, ‘pattern of potentialities’.

Up to quadripotence, phenomena are non-historical – all processes are only corpuscles and particles as inherently irreversible.

Tripotence has no pattern – only a small number of permissible combinations.

P1, P2, etc – tripotence – a collection of entities.

But, a quadripotent entity, of which Ps are a part, is more than a collection. Although parts are not subordinate to the whole. Each of the Ps retains some measure of independent potential and separate actualisation. Otherwise, we could not say, ‘A changes but endures’.

A is an affirmation of wholeness; in the parts P, wholeness is denied; its relationship is r, the reconciliation between parts and the whole.

The triad does not produce a composite whole unless rs have a specific character that will enable them effectively to sustain their dual role.

Here, subsistence differs from simple relatedness.

The links between Ps is not sufficient to ensure subsistence of the set regarded as a whole.

A composite whole arises only by way of some constraint placed upon the actualisation of composite parts. This constraint is the price of subsistence. The constraint that must be taken into account differs from those placed upon all physical systems by the framework conditions.

 

Pp. 331-344

 

Intensive. Extensive, and Coupling Magnitudes

 

Function is extensive; being is intensive; will is conjunctive. We might expect intensive magnitudes to be associated with eternity; and extensive magnitudes with time. We can add coupling, associated with hyparxis.

Man is: extensiveness of functional activity; intensity of consciousness of potentialities; and force of ableness-to-be. All three are needed for actualisation.

Many observable quantities in the physical world can be expressed in terms of these three magnitudes. There is an intensive magnitude that is active, an extensive magnitude that is passive, and a coupling magnitude that is reconciling.

All coupling magnitudes on a quadripotent level derive from the ableness-to-be upon the tripotent level.

Coupling magnitudes are only rarely measured.

Any composite whole is the product of three factors: one extensive, prescribing the mass, momentum and other temporal elements; one intensive, measuring the potentialities of constituent elements; the third, coupling magnitude by which the whole and part relationship of quadripotence is established.

So, of composite wholeness, we add the notion of a triad passing into a tetrad by interlocking of whole and part. Quadipotence means by adding to the potentialities of the triad a fourth independent potency of ‘being oneself in the midst of change’. A thing is more or less composite wholeness – a property lacking in lower gradations – here, existence is ‘all or nothing’.

 

The Coupling of Recurrences

Tripotent entities, each actualising its own cosmodesic path – recurring self-identically in an existential of perfect regeneration.

No inner change disturbs eternal calm of particles of hyle. Each a monad – a totality is a collection, not a whole; for the latter, merging existence is required. It occurs within the entity but is not represented in time or eternity – inconsistent with tripotency of parts. So, composite wholeness arises from the coupling of recurrences in a way that each of the entities surrenders some part of its freedom – to allow corresponding freedom in the whole.

When a composite whole is formed, the independence of all constituent parts is subject to restriction.

 

The Stability of Composite Wholes

Coupling of recurrences does not suffice to produce a whole that is stable in its actualisation.

Coupling and stability: each separate particle has two unspecified degrees of freedom – one absorbed in coupling. So, when more than two particles are involved, combinations arise favourable to merging potentialities and actualisation in time.

Factors that determine stability can be placed in three groups:

i) Potentiality, and especially the maximum potential determined by the highest level in eternity that the whole in question can occupy.

ii) The variety and range of actualisations open to the whole in question due to: a) its inner structure; ii) the outer relationships.

iii) A coupling of recurrences that depends in its turn upon the variety and character of aggregates formed from the component tripotent entities

 

The Atomic Nucleus

A nuclide – a degenerate composite whole in which parts have lost separate identity – therefore depending upon coupling of recurrences and other internal constraints. The parts are tripartite simple entities and combinations in groups of four. They have no permanent identity within the nucleus.

Nucleons are ‘virtual’ in respect of spatial configuration or wholly internal. The nuclear particles:

a) Are indistinguishable and interchangeable;

b) Are conservative in respect of mass and electric charge;

c) Appear, when projected into any space-time, to move with the velocity of light;

d) Have a joint probability of interaction with corpuscles and have particles and hence an apparent collision cross-section;

e) Are coupled in respect of recurrence and hence have a pseudo configuration or arrangement on the surface of the null-cone.

It is necessary to construct a model of the nucleus susceptible of mathematical treatment. Space coupling plays little part in maintaining the stability of the nucleus – the nuclear forces are different from those of other space-extended fields. We postulate motions of the nuclear constituents as space-like displacements with time. That this is unnecessary will be evident if we consider the internal character of the nucleus – under sway of inner determining conditions of time, eternity and hyparxis.

A model is suggested that combines the properties of liquid-drop model with individual particle shell model.

There should be peaks of maximum coupling of the recurrences for the series of 2, 6, 14, 28, 50, 82, and 126 neutral or positive particles, and also of the intercalary series with numbers 2, 6, 12, 20 should be stable.

In the series of nuclides, stable combinations are found with these numbers. There are hence called ‘magic numbers’ of the nuclear series. But their significance is only obvious for the heavier nuclides. With light elements, the stability is primarily influenced by the need for a balance between charged and uncharged particles that can produce the exact regenerative ratio.

The abundance of the elements must be closely related to the probability of the coupling of recurrences. The significance of the magic numbers seem to be in abundance both of the isotopes and isobars. In general, the most abundant stable isotope is the one in which the ratio of charged and uncharged units of hyle has a middle value. When one of the isotopes has a magic number of either charged or uncharged particles, its abundance is the greatest irrespective of its position.

The significance of coupling applies to the inherent stability of the nuclide itself, and also the fitting together of the vectors that carry the property of spin or action.

The nucleus has the possibility of inner differentiation. So, nuclear isomerism. An isomer can carry considerable excess energy – a precursor of hyparchic sensitivity in the autonomic world.

 

The Masses of the Nuclides

Coupling of recurrences does not ensure stability in time – and we have no means of calculating the amount of energy that appears in negative form in the bonding of the nuclide. Negative energy is known as ‘mass effect’ – the difference between the mass of a given nuclide and the sum of the masses of the neutrons and protons in which it is presumed to be composed.

The energy associated with recurrence appears as negative mass – but also the binding energy needed to be overcome in order to separate the nuclide into constituent units of hyle. We should be able to determine it by examining the ratio between the number of charged and uncharged units and seeing how these enter into the inner existential.

Principal factors to be taken into consideration for hyparchic coupling are:

i) Number of units of hyle A

ii) Balance of charge and mass Z/A

iii) The residual energy of coupling of recurrences

iv) The self-repulsion of the positive charge

v) Secondary effects (imperfect adjustment of existential to recurrent series)

vi) Weakening of the regenerative effect (imperfect fitting of the shells of charged and uncharged units

vii) Spin coupling effects of odd and even numbers of charged/ uncharged units.

So, we can obtain a formula for the mass of a stable nuclide in terms of isotopic weight and charge

 

The Neutral Atom

The simplest known interaction is between hydrogen atom and a photon – electro-magnetic radiation. The hydrogen atom and electron revolving around it – planetary model. Loss and gain of energy takes place from one orbit to another.

Classical electro-dynamics suggest a moving charge must radiate energy – so the electron collapses into photon. But this does not happen.

In the motion of a point around a circle, there is a recurrence of states that are identical for the system itself – a numerical series for an outside observer – once, twice, etc.

Bohr speculated that the emission or absorption of energy is the form of radiation occurs only when the electron jumps from one orbit to another. This seems to have been justified.

If we place the whole situation in a six-dimensional framework, we see non-radiating electrons must have recurrences identical, and thus possess a quasi-infinite number of locations, giving a distribution equivalent to the rotating ring. When the electron interacts with a photon, one recurrence is fixed and new energy-state results. For one moment, the electron is exactly located and then continues in a new recurrent series.

The neutral hydrogen atom is the simplest composite whole having a spatial configuration. Atomic physics studies the behaviour of atomic structures. It is so demarcated, we should expect it definable in terms of existential hypothesis. The category of subsistence means that we are always in the realm of quadripotence.

But, according to the principle of structure, we would expect seven qualities of subsistence. Here, atoms differ from nuclei, and chemical compounds from atoms. Neutral atoms is the true nature of composite wholeness – not yet realised. Thanks to the simple nature of atomic subsistence, it is possible to predict the detailed properties of an atomic species even before it has been discovered in nature and studies experimentally. But, this applies to large numbers. We cannot predict how a given atom will behave. The uncertainty embraces a variety of possibilities and not just fixed transformation as in spontaneous nuclear disintegrations.

 

Pp. 344-360

 

The Chemical Bond

The third mode of composite wholeness. Here, the spatial configuration extends to the masses of actualised hyle. The wholeness of a molecule is achieved by a twofold exchange of potentialities – constituent atoms are more parts than the nucleus and orbital electrons.

The chemical bond is the first significance we find of part/ whole relationship – a pattern of possibilities emerges.

The nature of chemical linkage.

Two main types: depending of whether they arise from eternity or hyparxis.

The first is the polar bond – two atoms held together by electro-static attraction between negative and positive charges.

When two atoms of opposite polarity approach one another closely, nuclei enter electron clouds, the positive and negative begin to neutralise by repulsion of nuclei. This would not occur if it was wave only. Particle view belongs to time, the wave view to eternity, but they have to be reconciled through recurrence so that the valency electron behaves as if there were a shell around the nucleus.

Non-polar bond.

Eg. H2O

Here, it is not possible to distinguish between the electrons belonging to the two protons.

No two electrons in any one atom should have all three quantum numbers identical.

Two identical series, with the same determining conditions, can be brought alongside one another without exclusion.

A large amount of energy can arise as a result.

The chemical bond – quadripotence. It is an immense step in ascent of hyle towards individuation. It is the wealth of potentialities that distinguish chemical compound from neutral atom.

Chemical bond: threefold interpenetration of space, eternity, and hyparxis has flexibility that matches the immensity of universal existence. The number of combinations of 5/ 6 atoms passes computation.

Composite wholeness is marked by the influx of potentialities. Hyponomic existence carries the whole burden of universal actualisation without being able to call up sensitive adaptation. It does so because it enters into combinations complex enough and varied enough and numerous enough to match the demands that are made upon it. There is beauty and precision.

 

Heat

For an eternity-blind observer, the energy of motion manifests differently according to scale. In molecular dimensions, it takes the form of heat.

We can study the phenomena of heat in the heat transfer of time, eternity and hyparxis – without reference to hyle.

The quantity of heat in a body can be expressed as three independent magnitudes: mass of body, temperature, and specific heat of the matter.

Temperature as affirming force; Mass as denying force; Heat as coupling force.

We need to account for the pattern of subsistence that is possible by existence of potential energy fields in the existential tract.

We need to distinguish three magnitudes: extensive, intensive, coupling. We need to see how to pass from one to another. The intensive magnitude is represented by vectors of eternity – quantity of hyle.

Extensive – vectors in time – inertial mass.

There is no reconciliation except by coupling force. Sharing characteristics of both extensive and intensive magnitudes.

The heat of the body measures the ‘ableness-to-take-up-heat’.

It is measured when there is no flux. Temperature is a measure of the potentiality of a body for changes of energy without exchanges of inertial mass. Inertial mass can be defined as the resistance of a body to adiabatic change – change at constant temperature.

 

Material Objects

A material object differs from a chemical molecule because it has no continuous blending of recurrences and so depends for its endurance upon forces that are new. We cannot calculate its bonding energies. There are discontinuities. For example, crystal strength is less than lattice energies of constituent molecules.

Every material object has properties of shape, colour, size, and texture. A boundary separating a solid from a liquid from a gas.

Very few sense experience properties belong to corpuscles, atoms, molecules without assuming the character of material objects.

Both the latter have the same existential status of quadripotence. All exist by relation of part to whole. They do not have the power to renew their existence.

In a material object, surface forces hold its several parts together: crystals and crystallites. The ubiquity and significance of surface forces are connected to the quadripotence of material objects. The hyponomic entity is what it is because it is isolated from what it is not. It cannot share its environment. It cannot take nor give. Quadripotence is able-ness-to-be what it is.

 

The Higher Gradations of Thinghood

Whole-to-part assumes a functional content. A ‘part’ has a place in the ‘whole’. Natural objects adapted to their natural environment. Eg. a pebble on a beach. They share historical characteristics.

A pebble has its own character – the fifth gradation of composite wholeness; fifth category of potentiality. This ‘own character’ results from exchange of inner and outer, for it to settle into itself. Two independent processes

The sixth gradation appears when autonomic forces have a part. Eg. A tree stump or coal – living processes in non-living environment. Functional differentiation: roots, truck, branches, leaves. At hyponomic level there is no difference between a living tree and dead one. Both are material objects.

A chair or table has a similar functional construction that does not depend on the life-process of tree from which the timber was derived. Here, the reconciling factor has begun to gain a pattern of its own. Table is ‘table-patterned’. The pattern is individuated,

At the seventh and final gradation, the thing becomes an instrument serving transfer and transformation of energy. Composite whole completes the cycle of hyponomic existence. The instrument is the ‘universe as a subsisting whole’. In subsistence, there is neither cause nor purpose nor meaning. But, an instrument acquires meaning when brought into relation with any manifestation of the affirming force. A table is an instrument in the service of man.

Quadipotence is the full flowering of hyponomic existence. When pervaded by life, it is a living organism. But, the body is always simply a functional instrument – composite whole – subsisting passively and depending upon the flow of the energy that derives from manual action of eternal and temporal forces. When an instrument is directed by consciousness in the service of the will, it takes its right place in the universe.

 

Part Eight

 

LIFE

 

THE BASES OF LIFE

 

Autonomic Existence

Life is the reconciling power that stands between the active world of creativity and the passive world of mechanism. Life supports consciousness and is the vehicle of manifestations. It regulates the universal processes of involution and evolution – it is at the point where they both meet. Life is there to overcome the contradictions in the universe. It is not a transcendent absolute, nor indifferent to the inconsistencies of actualised being, nor inexorable law. Life is coherence – this should be our concern. No knowledge can tell us why we live; nor institutions teach us how to live. We need to experience the force of life and understand its nature.

Life is involved in all problems of existence. Things remain captive under their hyponomic law. The cosmic will remains untouched by hazard and the strivings of the world. Life cannot escape the consequences of creation; it is caught between affirmation and denial – these energies and their reconciliation create existence.

The role of life is pervasive and decisive. The autonomic world is not subordinate to other realms of existence – all three have equal significance. The autonomic world arises from the clash of the other two but its arising is not subsequent – either in time or logic. We might say that the universe only exists so that life can arise and play a part. The meaning of life must exist beyond experience. We can understand something of our own existence. We need to know the cosmic role of life.

A phenomenon is unique in the universe in its manifestations. There is no discontinuity of substance between living and non-living nature. There are categorical distinctions of nature. We can study the hyponomic world in terms of the first four categories: wholeness, polarity, relatedness and subsistence. But, further categories are needed.

Passing the threshold of life is more than attaining the fifth quality of potentiality. Here, we enter a new cycle of existence that completes itself in the four gradations of potency from the fifth to the eighth – that is, potentiality, repetition, structure and individuality. Not just biological but present in all experience. Life exemplifies them but does not exhaust them. We need the categories of the hyponomic world; the higher categories of the hypernomic world are always applicable. We apply a method of ‘grand abstraction’ in using the four autonomic categories. Life participates in the nature of cosmic forces, which it seeks to reconcile. Life is affirmation and denial: independent and dependent – but more than either. This something other is the autonomic – self-regulating. In terms of physical existence, this seems either descriptive or a mystery. For the believer in pre-destination, it is either a fiction or delegated power. Authentic autonomy of life has no meaning if we seek to build it up from the physical world – or the attributes of divinity. Evolutionary notions emerge from non-life. We think of it also in historical terms – as if a stage in the development of matter rather than independent cosmic phenomenon.

Men have no communication with other planets, so have little experience of the variety of life. Life as reconciliation means being omnipresent and all-pervasive.

Life cannot be defined in terms of duality of substance; it is not found in form and function. No rigorous definition of life can be given – we are forced to rely on description to fix the limits of science.

Life characteristics are not functional but can be expressed in such words as ‘sensitivity’, ‘responsiveness’, ‘adaptability’, ‘selectivity’ – self-hidden conditions that make possible observed functions of self-renewal, reproduction, self-regulation, and self-direction.

Living wholes link the determining-conditions in a way that is never observed in the hyponomic world. Every living thing has ‘directiveness’: it acts as if it aims to attain something – a goal. Cause and purpose are inappropriate categories to the discussion of the basic character of life. They import a sense of mystery, which is unnecessary.

Let’s look at the four categories that correspond to the four gradations of potency that distinguish living wholes.

 

Sensitivity

Sensitivity is a problem for a one-stuff theory of existence. The complexity of the world results from the opposing forces of involution and evolution – so, the greatest intensity is at the midpoint. Here is life and sensitivity at its most significant.

Sensitivity is indispensable to the study of life. It also comes from our immediate experience – all sensation presupposes a sensitive condition. Every living whole is sensitive both to its environment and inner state.

We distinguished three states in the hyponomic world: actual, potential and coupled. .

Sensitivity is an expression of will acting through determining conditions of hyparxis. No sensitivity in actual or potential, but only in reconciliation. Hyparxis is imposed on all existence – everything existing must have a measure of sensitivity. But, there is a difference between sensitivity with and without organisation. The first law of biology:

Organic sensitivity is the first necessary condition of the arising and existence of life

Sensitivity is a gradation of potentiality – fifth category of thought.

 

Rhythm

The sixth category of repetition is forms of rhythm – of time, but also size and shape. Every organism has its own specific maximum duration of life – characteristic rhythms of activity and repose, periodic energy exchange – internal and external. Every living thing has its own size. Repetition applies to living wholes and is a characteristic of vital properties of development and reproduction. Cells repeat themselves, proliferate in space and time:

Rhythm is the second condition of life.

 

Pattern

We need to refer to the determining-condition of eternity in order to understand life. In eternity, all existence is a pattern of potentialities – there is no difference between hyponomic and autonomic worlds. This is the flexibility of life itself; in non-living things the pattern is non-adaptive. Composite whole – no eternal differentiations. There is potential energy gradient in eternity for all living things. Different levels thus exert mutual influence on each other. Without this, there would be no life. It is observed in the hyponomic world in the action of one entity upon another at the same level. In what does this mutual influence of different layers consist?

Here we encounter the specific significance of the seventh category of structure for the study of life. Structure is universal and can be found in the non-living as well as living. There is a peculiar significance of structure for the arising and maintaining of life.

 

Eternity is associated with the positive/ affirming force – the higher level of eternity, the higher the affirmation. One affirms in relation to the lower – which assumes a denying role. The lower stands in opposition to the higher (Ah, so it depends on differentiation/ distinction MG). Every affirmation demands a corresponding response – exerts an organising influence upon the passive material. The lower exerts a disorganising influence that opposes the organising effect. Where there are two gradations of intensity of inner togetherness, the lower intensity tends to absorb and diminish the greater; conversely, the greater intensity tends to take possession of and dominate the lower.

 

Thus, organisation and disorganisation – mutual in eternity. This is in the life experience and life itself. (MG: Blake, W “Without contraries there is no progression”.)

The reconciliation of organisation and disorganisation is regulation. The pattern of life is the regulation of opposing forces. The affirmation is the pattern of potentialities that stands at the highest level of inner-togetherness of which the given whole is capable. The denial enters the temporal actualisation that corresponds to the level at which the organism is wholly exposed to its environment. The regulation depends on the organic sensitivity of the whole – at an intermediate level.

The third condition of life is a pattern of potentialities that is the source of organic stability.

We have described a supra-individuality to the eternal pattern of life. Man is a group of whole – we recognise similarities of function, a pattern that is flexible and defined. The individual constitution is the manifestation of an eternal pattern. But, this determines what might be – not what ‘is’ at any given moment. So, a pattern of potentialities. An affirmation that the man cannot make himself. What is true of mankind is true of every other living species – even at the lower form of life, which appears to have no specific sensitivity of its own.

 

Individualization

The fourth and highest manifestation of life is octopotent individuality – the characteristics of the eighth category.

The transition from structure to individuality is a step forward in the scale of existence and a return to a starting point – wholeness or unity. An individual is beyond structure and a true whole at the same time. In the hyponomic world, progressive individuation is found at each stage as we pass from the undifferentiated hyle to the corpuscular state, from corpuscles to particles, from particles to different gradations of composite wholeness. With the entry of life, there is a new step expressed in the difference of meaning between the words ‘individuation’ and ‘individualization’.

A true individual is an autonomic entity that directs the course of their own history. When it is organised, it is a ‘self-directing entity’.

Thinghood passive existence – as in hyponomic world. Individuality is the completed manifestation of reconciling existence. Up to the state of thinghood, there is no subsistence: only relationships – corpuscles, particles. In the world of life, only conscious, self-determined being can properly be called an individual. But, we do need the category ‘individual’ for all thoughts about life. Even the most simplest primitive manifestations of autonomic existence belong to a cycle that completes itself with conscious individuality. Thus, the highest condition of life:

All life is an essay of individualization

 

Pp. 360-375

 

The Threshold of Life

The four existential hypotheses applicable to life can be seen as the stages in the emergence of individuality.

But we need stages and transitions from one to another.

The hypothesis of the active surface: a transition between physical and biological worlds.

The hypothesis of the individuality of the biosphere: a transition between life and supra-animate world.

The six taken together – four hypotheses and two transitions – a complete category of repetition.

Functional characteristics of life: flexibility and stability. They are not enough: atomic nuclei are highly specific – greater precision than organic species.

Gas is highly flexible.

Particles and nuclides and molecules – stability.

A parallel to life is found in the physical world – togetherness of the living whole.

To ascertain life we need to look for pattern of sensitivity. This is individual – a self-regulating whole – a unit of reciprocal maintenance. So, individuation requires a well-defined boundary within which independence can be established and a sufficient elaboration of structure to enable a balance of functions.

Sensitivity requires a combination of unity and diversity. Combining forces to produce a complex but integrated whole is found in most primitive manifestation in the hypernomic world in composite wholes above molecular levels. Colloidal state requires greater intensity than crystalline – precursors of sensitivity. Colloidals provide the condition of life. Proteins give us variety to carry complex patterns of life. Nuclei acids: high surface energy and specificity of pattern – plus power of repetition and self-renewal, but not self-regulation.

 

The Colloidal State

Enclosure within surface – higher gradations of composite wholes. Whole and its atmosphere – the two distinct phases or states of aggregation.

Between solid surface and ambient gas there is a third condition: more dense in atmosphere and less dense in solid. The surface of material objects. When the surface becomes large in comparison to mass, the surface forces dominate. This is the colloidal state – this represents many analogies to spin on atomic scale. Coupling of recurrences through possessing common space of null-vectors. Constant transformations of energy on the surface of every colloidal and yet an equilibrium is maintained – self-regulation. The super-active state of hyle is the ionised atoms held upon the internal surface.

Physico-chemical changes occurring at the colloidal interface are not themselves sufficient to provide the conditions of self-regulation so that mutual influences of organization and disorganization can take place. But, colloidal makes regulation possible through lack of stability. Even in colloidal systems unconnected with life. There is a wholeness here that is of a higher gradation than that found in solids and liquids. This is the reconciling influence of surface energy between disperse phase and medium. This gives sensitivity.

A surface is active when it separates two media at a different level of potential energy. Exchanges of hyle sooner or later redistribute energy in the hyponomic world. Potential gradient disappears. An active surface maintains potential energy because of compensating layer between two phases. Self-renewal is necessary to maintain it. There is here an analogy with the regeneration of the physical world. An entity needs to fix its angle with time, which requires a compensatory electric charge.

With an active surface there is also a balance between free energy and potential energy – that ensures stability.. The atoms absorbed on the colloidal state become highly responsive to the coupling forces of the inorganic world. Laws governing two-dimensional region are different from those of build solids and liquids. There is here a limitation of possibilities due to reduced degree of freedom. But, increased stability that enables complex combinations.

 

The Significance of Protein

Composite wholes are nearly all build from simple units: stone, brick, paper, cloth. Molecular species – inner and outer – are relatively few and simple. But, living bodies are the exception. Here, proteins and nucleic acids enter. Proteins contain all known elements: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen and iron, phosphorous, magnesium, sodium, silicon, sulphur, calcium, chlorine, iodine, lithium and bromine. We cannot study proteins – they are too complex.

Proteins have variability that is inexhaustible. They are ‘pattern carriers’ for protista, plants and animals. Proteins are vastly complex.

Every species in organic life has its own characteristic set of proteins. They exist unchanged in certain forms – reproduced.

To understand the hyparchic sensitivity of protein we have to understand the improbability that a combination of elements in a protein molecule can appear twice. It is improbable that a certain protein combination appears – but is does so! And conforms to a regulation pattern the same for each species.

So, two remarkable facts:

Firstly, the specific development of living wholes. Secondly, the specific constitution of proteins. There are limitations of life and the way individual organisms develop. Cause and effect does not help as explanation. Neither accidental or determined. Neither conscious direction – within or without. Vitalism and mechanism are inappropriate.

We need to turn away from old explanations and embrace sensitivity, repetition, structure and individuality instead.

We need to consider the second tetrad: wholeness, polarity, relatedness, and subsistence. The patterns need to be described as the first four categories that make life possible. One hypothesis: life is the result of the accidental combinations of the elements under the influence of high-intensity radiation – highly unthinkable but they do take place. Only the concept of a pattern in eternity can reconcile the improbabilities. Proteins can exist because they exemplify the pattern of sensitivity, repetition and structure. The protein molecule has a spiral structure – the observable counterpart of a linkage of recurrent elements in hyparxis. A pair of hydrogen atoms are in the same sensitive state as atoms in a molecule of hydrogen.

When proteins are synthesised in an appropriate medium, the building materials are relatively simple amino-acids and other organic complexes – to a defined position. We may conceive a pattern in eternity but its influence upon the ordering process in time depends upon flexible coupling of a kind that only occurs in the sensitive state of hyle in hyparxis.

A solitary protein is not alive or capable of living. They come to life in the mass colloidal state where powerful potential energy gradients are present.

 

The Enzymes

Neither cause nor purpose is the characteristic of life: but regulation. Enzymes are part of these. They can be simple and inert. So, they belong to the reconciling factor that operates in sensitive state. Regulators or specific transformations that occur in living cells. Some transformations are in an artificial medium. Enzymes may carry the third reconciling force in the triad of life. They are not altered by the reactions they regulate. They do not bring about reactions that would occur without them – thus reconciling. They are not initiators of transformation, but accelerators and regulators. And, highly specific! Every process requires a specific regulator. They are classified according to the substance – substrate – whose transformation they regulate.

Enzymes form a necessary part of life, but belong to a transitional region. Proteins are involved but mostly nucleic acids: mostly, ribonucleic and deoxy-ribonucleic acids. They are differently distributed in plants and animals. Nucleic acid structure is nearly as complex as that of proteins. The most important aspect of proteins is repetition. Some enzymes are autocatalytic: to bring about the formation of substances identical with themselves.

It seems that nucleic acids are the visible manifestation of the hyparchic regulators by which reproduction, development, nutrition, and other processes of life are regulated in all species.

But, nucleic acids are not composite wholes of an ordinary kind. They arise under the influence of pattern which they transmit – which depends on the sensitive state that is achieved through the sharing of corpuscles.

We associate sensitivity of proteins and nucleic acids with quinquepotence – giving a suggestion of the manner of transition from non-living to living forms.

 

Chapter 20

 

LIVING BEINGS

 

The Triads of Life

Two forces in life: that of life and death.

Life itself reconciles life and death. It is not a dualism but triadic. Antithesis is not the answer: mechanism/vitalism, matter/spirit, chemical laws, material transformations – all are sterile.

Life is not an accident or compromise but a cosmic force – to maintain autonomic existence between cosmic affirmation and cosmic denial. Reconciling the two.

Life must exemplify the cosmic triad: all life is a microcosm in which the universal drama reproduces itself. The micro is on par with the macro – life and death meet in the pattern of self-renewal and self-regulation.

Wherever life exists in the universe, it is the same: temporal actualisation and eternal pattern.

Unceasing moment of opposing demands.

Life depends of organic sensitivity: hyle combines, transforms, dissociates, and recombines as potentiality, actuality and sensitivity. They enter everywhere – from corpuscle to galaxy. Life is sensitive – vitality is everything that exists.

Since the creative or potential is omnipresent, we might conclude that everything that exists is divine. ‘Everything that exists is actualised’ would be equally misleading. Life is existence under an autonomic mode – the triad of affirmation of eternal pattern, denial that arises from actualisation in a hostile environment, and reconciliation that comes from sensitive hyparchic regulator.

The threshold f life is crossed when sensitivity is organised. In the hyponomic world, sensitivity is monomorphous – fixed form for each entity/ incapable of adaptation. Monomorphic sensitivity is manifested in the phenomena of interaction and coupling. In the colloidal state we fine the proteins, raw material and nucleic acids of organised sensitivity. But, polymorphism only arises in the presence of pattern.

The gradations of life are distinguished by the ableness-to-be in organic sensitivity. Life has a visible part – body – and two invisible parts – sensitivity and hyparchic regulator. Every existing whole has: inner world in time, eternity and hyparxis. We see the organisation of the body, but not of the hyparchic regulator. We infer it from study of four gradations of autonomic existence.

 

Quinquepotence – Viruses

These are the first gradations of life: minute entities with small differences; eg., viruses or bacteriophages. Viral existence is the living analogue of the corpuscle. An incomplete autonomic entity – incapable of independent existence. Needs a certain environment for autosynthesis. Lacks true individuation.

The virus molecule determines three directions in space: the axis of the spiral, the normal to the surface, the angle of the pitch. These correspond to the internal vectors: existential or line of stability, the potential energy gradient – axis of eternal pattern, and the direction of recurrence.

Viruses maintain cohesion through hydrogen couplings forming a continuous field of sensitivity. Nucleic acids can catalyse their own synthesis, but only in a protein medium of appropriate constitution. This needs an organising factor. Organic sensitivity depends on nucleic acids. The organiser is the eternal pattern The virus is a triad that remains unchanged.

Quinquepotence is not complete autonomic existence. It is incomplete – living substance exists only in the body host that provides both the raw material and conditions of life.

The following Quinquepotence series is to note:

i) Precursors…………………….Nucleic Acids and proteins

ii) Degenerate forms…………..Enzymes, vitamins, hormones

iii) Primary forms……………….Crystallizable viruses

iv) Transitional forms………….Cell-forming viruses and bacteriophages

The chief character of quinquepotence is therefore dimorphic sensitivity – the capacity to respond to a strictly limited eternal pattern and environment. The latter have narrow variation for maintenance of a particular virus.

The unit structure of viruses is complex.

The nature of the vital force of the viruses is well demonstrated by the action of ionising radiation – the energy liberated here breaks down the functional activities of the virus. Here, there is evidence of a sensitive regulator – depending on resonant amplification of the molecular sensitivities that can withstand a limited increase in potential energy without disruption. Viruses are sensitive to radiation.

They are very small; we only know a little about these entities, which are on the ground-floor of life.

There is evidence that life is regulated through the agency of quinquepotent entities within the viral range. Hormones and enzymes have relatively simple chemical constitutions. However, when they are present in the blood or sap of an animal of plant that has the same eternal pattern, they build specific proteins and carbohydrates and fats into complexes that are living entities. This forms a colloidal dispersion.

The viral world has been referred to as ‘degenerate autonomic existence’ – but it is still the basis of life! On earth, sensitivity and proteins and nucleic acids are never separate in the recurrent viral type forms. Quinquepotent entities perform their basic life tasks when they find their proper place: Chromosomes, genes, – chemical and electrical equilibria needed by living organisms are maintained and adjusted by enzymes, hormones and vitamins.

Dimorphic sensitivity permits self-renewal according only a fixed pattern. The variability of sexual reproduction does not exist at this level. They change pattern only as a result of external shock; eg. Irradiation. Without this, self-renewal is simply autosynthesis of chemical structures within a single pattern. This creates stability in the viral world. Without it, viruses would not exist.

The dimorphic sensitivity of quinquepotent entities are the primary biological condition for the existence of every living form.

Dimorphism also allows identical recurrence in hyparxis: building large structures composed of identical units. Viral life is only possible through multiplication of identical sub-microscopic units. It allows a sufficient quantity to be present, adjusting the existence of the viruses as between dimensions of eternity and time. This is manifested in the great speed of quinquepotent entities. The speed of viral infection of a living organism is an example.

We cannot find life – the ‘atom of life’ – but we can find degeneration products of the living entity; and , in this case, they have lost their sensitivity.

Life at the lower limit is an incessant exchange of energy and constant transformation of substance. What is the integrating factor that makes up the simplest life process? It cannot be discovered by observation – this only shows greater multiplicity and hidden unity. Things have no trouble showing their ‘wholeness’, but to find the source of this wholeness, we need to look into time and space.

Invoking a mechanism of sensitivity does no disclose the unity. The mechanism assures the incessant and flexible adjustment between the unchanging pattern in eternity and the changing activity that life alone can manifest. The regulation of some physico-chemical events cannot be found in the events themselves, but neither can be found in the unchanging eternal pattern alone. The pattern is necessary as a norm to which the living entity strives to return. But, the striving is life itself and it resides in the mechanism of sensitivity that on the viral level is no more than the dimorphic linking of a fixed pattern to a fixed environment.

 

Pp. 376-390

 

Sexipotence – the Cells

These entities exemplify the sixth category – repetition. Characteristic properties: multiplicity, reproduction, proliferation – whether unicellular animals or plant tissue cells or metazoa. Cellular life: not depending on a particular group of chemical compounds. Cells are necessary for life of quinquepotent entities that cannot exist except in a medium provided by the cells. All higher forms of life are built up from cellular units. Where there is life, there are cells. Definition:

A cell is a whole whose parts are so organised that it can divide and multiply, thus reproducing an existence to its own

A cell is hence individualised in a way not so in the viral world. Cells are limited in size and duration, enclosed with an active surface, maintaining a higher potential energy than the environment, capable of nutrition, with a pattern of life that is self-renewing and reproductive.

They arise from 6 independent factors: one for each six categories:

1) Wholeness: Well-defined chemical complex based on a specific group of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids, and mineral salts.

2) Polarity: Inside/ outside distinction well-defined due to presence of continuous active surface, within which it is totally enclosed.

3) Relatedness: Well-defined set of relationships, either to whole or medium in which it exists – and the food it eats.

4) Subsistence: Characteristic life-cycle occupying a definite time period. Inner potential more intense than surrounding medium.

5) Potentiality: Pattern of organic sensitivity.

6) Repetition: Can reproduce its own kind of growth and division.

Repetition/ reproduction distinguishes cell from virus. Reproduction: manifestation of life with no counterpart in the hyponomic world. All living organisms are built up from the cell. The cell carries vital energy. Like the corpuscle, the cell is an incomplete manifestation. It lacks organised sensitivity necessary for independent existence. Apart from nerve cells, all sexipotent entities are isolated within boundaries of their own presence. They react to immediate environment – not self-regulating.

Cells are of the autonomic world. Sexipotence is life in true sense.

We cannot talk of ‘protoplasm’ as a complex of chemical compounds to be isolated and studied – or jell-like substance to be observed under microscope. It is the basic living state of matter. It shows how life, to be manifest, requires a certain minimum organization – the cell. This is not rudimentary – cells are complex.

The step is from undifferentiated self-renewal to individuated reproduction. For the physical standpoint, the basic characteristic of the cell is polarity: enclosure of active nucleus. An active surface: to sustain potential-energy differences of an electrical character. No independent existence.

Each has its own time-cycle, size, chemical composition, pattern of behaviour.

Life implies the potential for life and death – ie., not inertia and resumption.

It is often said that the unicellular organism is immortal – because of Mitosis. Mitosis has phases – but unlike stages of development of a multicellular organism. They have a life-cycle: but not life/ birth, death.

Cell structures repeat themselves in time and space; they are not individualised but are the starting point of individual existence. Individualisation can be misunderstood through subjective experience and material objects. Sub-atomically, corpuscles of hyle are devoid of individuation; one electron is like another. Individuation of atoms is one step beyond this – coupling of recurrences that precludes interchangeability. There is the negative pseudo-individual – large material aggregates that satisfy the hypothesis of composite wholeness.

A table is not individual but fixed in actualisation.

With life, individuation acquires a new significance – with association to ableness-to-be. Each living thing is individual to the extent that it can be itself. Cells reduplicate in time and proliferate in space in order to be what they are. A single cell cannot manifest the eternal pattern of cellular existence.

We recognise in the cell the significant feature of existence: the need for multiplicity to permit harmonising of potentialities and actualisation. Potentialities preserved in recurrences of large numbers of lives conforming to pattern but differing in their actualization. Sexipotent entities have no variation inherent in their eternal pattern and their potentialities must be worked through multiplication and recurrence. The hyparchic-regulator has a space-like component directed to a common pattern. It links multiplicity and unity – flexible and restrictive. There is an absence of mutual regulation between different levels of organization.

Although not individual like animals and plants, cells are not simply ‘building blocks’. In fact, thousands of millions of items are disposed to act according to a definite pattern. Its sensitivity is of a different order of intensity to viral entities. It begins to bridge the gap of inner and outer worlds of every whole. This enables the eternal linkage that makes up a colony or tissue. The wholeness of an animal is not the same as the passive wholeness of a material object.

Life depends on reproduction, not merely in the sense of continuation and renewal but the wider significance of establishing the reconciliation between eternity and time. In the reproductive activity of the cells there is evidence of an organisation that cannot be accounted for in terms of physical and chemical factors alone.

 

Septempotence – Organism

This is the category of structure, associated with the organic structure or pattern. In the autonomic world, the septempotent organism occupies a position analogous to that of tripotent particle in the physical world. It is the atom of conscious existence – the instrument of the reconciling force of the universe.

The septempotent force can be regarded as a tetrad and a triad – subsistence and relatedness. As hyponomic tetrad, the organism is a material object suspended in space, enduring time, the subject to the same physico-chemical laws as other material objects. As an autonomic triad, the organism is to manifest the relationship of eternal pattern, temporal history and hyparchic self-regulation. It is not, however, a complete tetrad since it does not possess the four elements necessary.

Organic sensitivity is transformed into consciousness only by the level of octopotent individuality.

The presence of an autonomic structure is the characteristic property of the septempotent entity. With lower levels of existence, the structure principle is exemplified in a single entity. With organisms, there is a single, complete structural form of existence. The structure of the cell is completed outside of itself – by the medium in which it exists. But a plant or animal is exemplified within itself.

Morphological form of plants is lacking in certain elements that are found in metazoan animals. The fullest organic structure is found in mammalia.

The principle of structure is a combination of continuity and discontinuity. The skeletal form in mammals is built of a sevenfold structure, each part of which has seven parts.

Structure is observable throughout the physiological organization of plants and animals. In vertebrate animals, there is protoplasm at one end and the fully differentiated organism at the other. The first step of differentiation is with cells , the second is the differentiation of tissues. Tissues have specific patterns of electrical and biochemical behaviour – organs. At the sixth stage are systems of nutrition, respiration and circulation, bone structure, nervous system, and reproduction. At the seventh stage, all are combined as interrelated parts to form an organism as a whole. Each step is marked by a change of form of organization and a new relationship of part to whole. The necessity of discontinuity is seen between the third and fourth stages in the transformation from tissue to processes by which structure becomes specific. Tissues can be moved/ grafted but their function has to serve the entity as a whole.

As there is a structure in form and function, there is a structure of development in time – the process by which the reproductive cell develops into a mature organism. A single ovum or sperm reproduces millions of times to become a body. The problem is that it is a differentiated body. Each cell has within it the pattern of proteins to make all other cells.

So, there must be an organising factor that regulates the transitions from potentiality to actualization. The regulator has been explained in terms of light and heat, gravitational field, mechanical factors, chemical agents, and specific proteins and nucleic acids. None of these explain it. The facts can be placed in four groups:

 

1. The Pattern of Potentialities.

The fertilised egg possesses all the potentialities of development according to: a) pattern of the species; b) genetic constitution of the organism. Potential in the egg becomes actualised in stages until adulthood. Potentialities are transferred from form to function.

2. Differentiation

Differentiation is more than at the level of nucleus, plasma and cortex. It proceeds by stages that correspond to those of transfer of potentialities from eternity into time.

3. Determination

One fundamental determination: the polarity of the egg in the axis between animal and vegetable poles. Determination shows well-marked stages, according to whether a given portion of tissue is able or not to maintain its own pattern after transplantation. Determination is never complete – even in adulthood, tissues remain labile – able to adapt to changed conditions.

4. Self-regulation

Embryonic induction is produced in self-regulating fields: one group stimulates another. Physical contact can be sufficient. In self-regulation, regulative power always remains subject to the overall pattern of the organism – as the species to which it belongs, but also genetic constitution. Though separate organs can perform the same regulative power to produce the same effects as original position.

The easiest explanation is to say that in every living organism there is a non-material vital factor. We must account for different levels present in every organism. On the quinquepotent level, the physical and chemical agents are responsible for stimulation and regulation of the cytoplasmic changes. Cells are regulated by hyparchic sensitivity. But there is also a structure of sensitivity – we need to understand this. The regulating mechanism can adapt itself not only to environmental influences at a given moment but accumulated results of influences that enter into soma or the physico-chemical body. The flexibility of this is achieved through the structure of the regulator itself.

 

The Hyparchic Regulator

Organic sensitivity is the condition and essence of life. The eternal pattern is not peculiar to a given organism – it derives from the entity. The soma is a quadripotent hyponomic entity, and so must be the denying factor in relation to affirmation of the eternal pattern. Actualisation is a limitation of potentialities. Actualisation follows a path – brought back to the unchanging eternal pattern. So, it is itself by orientation to what it is not. This orientation is not static but adaptive and regulative. Each stage develops the required structure.

Self-regulation is the latent hyparchic power to acquires ableness-to-be. Regulating sensitivity is a structure that is flexible, adaptive and individualised. Regulation is not the same as eternal pattern, which is neither flexible nor individualised but preserves unchanged potentialities of the organism.

The pattern of sensitivity is neither eternal nor temporal. Hyparchic participates in the nature of both without being involve in the transformations of either.

The hyparchic regulator comes into play at the point of inception; it is a register in which successive events in time and space are recorded – according to the eternal pattern.

The inner determining-conditions are related to a septempotent organism thus:

(Sorry: more formatting problems – my table spec. is not recognised see page 388)

Level….Hyparxis…..Eternity…Time

7 – Pattern of species –

6 – Genetic constitution of the individual organism –

5 Deep sensitivity Acquired characteristics of the organism Differentiation

4 Epigenetic factor “ Determination

3 Regulator Physiological structure Regulation

2 – Anatomical Structures Self-renewing mechanisms

1 Soma

Structure of Septempotent Entity

To be an individual it is necessary for an entity to be able to exist in the presence of opposing influence of organization and disorganization that act upon the directions of eternity and time. Organic ableness-to-be is more than renewal of soma and regulation of its activity. It needs the power to withstand the degeneration that is inevitable in all temporal existence. Septempotent existence is the completion of the seven-fold cycle of life processes between the moments of conception and death. Every entity has a set time period within which potentialities are actualised. The duration of life is fixed by the universal regenerative ration and sustained by the eternal pattern. With composite wholes – nuclides – life period is fixed as the average of very large numbers . For a particular nuclide, the expectation of life is unpredictable. This unpredictability is linked to the coupling of recurrences that requires that potentialities of all individuals should be preserved in the recurrences of each separate unit.

Hyparchic regulation assumes a greater and greater significance in the evolution of the hyle towards octopotent individuality. The members of biological species have a natural duration of life that depends on regenerative power of the eternal pattern. In the septempotent organism the pattern has its own hypocritical structure – the upper part is the common pattern of all members of the given species – the lower part is the genetic constitution of the individual organism.

Organic sensitivity has its own structure: two lower parts regulate temporal existence. These are the passive elements of the triad, confronted with the affirmation of the eternal pattern. They are reconciled by the organic sensitivity that must partake of the nature of both. Organic sensitivity implies pattern and response. So, it is constituted by hyle in two states – virtual and sensitive. If the hyle were virtual, the sensitivity would be indestructible – but also incapable of interacting with the soma and its physiological mechanism. The combination of states of the hyle required for maintaining the structure of a septempotent entity is:

 

7. Wholly Virtual……Pattern of Species

6 Dominantly virtual but actual…..Genetic Constitution

5 Virtual and sensitive…..Organic sensitivity

4 Wholly sensitive…….The epigenetic factor

3 Sensitive and actual…..The regulator

2 Dominantly actual but partly virtual…..Physiological mechanism

1 Wholly actual…..The soma

States of Hyle in Septempotent Entity

 

Pp. 390-404

Structures on first, fourth and seventh levels – single state.

Soma – wholly actual.

Epigenetic factor – germ of individuality, is sensitive; pattern of species wholly virtual.

Genetic constitution and physiological mechanisms are a combination of virtual and actual states.

The three hyparchic layers:

Organic sensitivity and regulator are counterparts, one directed to genetic constitution and the other physiological – the total makes self-regulation possible.

Epigenetic factor is also repository of external influences that act on an organism. Characteristics can, in some conditions, therefore be transferred into genetic constitution – in heritable.

Organic sensitivity determines the natural duration of life and perception.

Potency is a minute fraction of potential in inherent pattern. Common pattern actualisation requires thousands of millions of individual organisms.

With man: he has a natural term of life; fixed pattern; small duration – a small fraction of potential. This is man-being affirmation. Denying force is the challenge to partake of universal processes of energy transformation. No organism is independent of supply of food.

 

Reciprocal Maintenance.

Everything that lives depends of food.

Hyponomic Level – ten elements essential for life forms: Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron.

Two elements – magnesium and iron – are needed for the transformation of living matter – key in chlorophyll (magnesium), iron (haemoglobin).

Living things struggle for existence because they are dependent on a supply of organic matter. Lack of nourishment holds growth in check. Struggle for food and to reproduce kind – make manifest its impulses. These are ‘denying forces’ in triad of regeneration. The organism is exposed to dangers – not so for inanimate objects. It feeds and IS food. – true of all organisms. The destruction of life to supply life. There is a denial of potentiality, therefore, when taken individually. The duration and quantity of experience are less than potential. The regenerative ratio is shifted in an unfavourable direction – to shorten expectation of life and reduce potentialities actualised.

Bodily injuries limit existence.

But, negative factors are not inimical to existence. ‘Without negation no affirmation’. (W. Blake – ‘Without contraries there is no progression’.) – a principle for the regenerative triad. The septempotent organism does what it does – not just because of eternal affirmation, but because of commitment to temporal actualisation. Living organisms cease to exist if harmful influences are removed – and thus not fulfil their purpose. Adaption results in ableness-to-be. Hazards bring about temporal actualisation.

 

The Hazards of Life

Every organism is under a compulsion to be more than it is. The hyparchic regulator aims for balance between competing demands – when there is sufficient disturbance, there is a pathological situation. The physical state is more or less maintained with enzymes and hormones – with variation: respiration, nutrition and sensation. This is normal.

There are external shocks from time to time – which can cause violent disturbances; perhaps excessive constraint on functional mechanisms of the soma, or reactions against poison and infection. There is possible damage from chemical and physical mechanisms. Intervention is often needed – beyond normal regulation. Here, the epigenetic factor is brought in – an organising force higher than hyparchic regulator. The physiological mechanism departs from normal equilibria to restore balance of soma. Limits of variability are dictated not by soma but the epigenetic factor – the potency of self-regulation.

The conditions of life are sensitive to the regulative mechanism – the colloidal system and protein chemistry restore equilibrium – within limits. Pathological variability depends on eternal pattern – so is as normal as health. Pathology is therefore normal. It is part of self-regulation in the organism.

Imitation and mimicry are part of plants’ and animals’ variability, and can be understood in terms of organic sensitivity and genetic constitution. Here, is the general theory of the appearance of non-adaptive characters – that is one of the puzzles of evolutionary biology. Through the balance of the three hyparchic layers – regulator, epigenetic factor and organic sensitivity – the genetic pattern of unit organisms receive an impulsion towards the form in question. This is neither random genetic mutation nor inheritance of acquired characteristics. The epigenetic factor acts as a buffer between physiological mechanism and genetic constitution. The action of the buffer is modified by ‘inner’ hyparchic triad of the regulator and organic sensitivity. In severe stress, the genetic pattern can be altered, and transmitted to offspring for future survival. New variation.

For organic sensitivity: unlike the epigenetic factor, it s not actualised and therefore not subject to development or degeneration. It is a reservoir of potentialities upon which the hyparchic regulator draws when pathological variation is approached. Nothing changes in its pattern from beginning to end. It does not register impressions – but the seat of consciousness in which awareness arises. To understand its role, we need to complete the tetrad of autonomic existence with the study of individualization.

 

Chapter 21

 

THE UNITY OF LIFE

 

Octopotence – Complete INdividuality

So, here, the universe depends on reconciling, denying and affirming forces – involution/ evolution – as they meet and clash. Life needs to exist between the alien forces of hypernomic world and hyponomic world. This is a manifestation in the realm of fact that is perpetually being played out in the realm of values. Questions of value cannot be divorced from matters of fact.

Consciousness as the reconciling factor in all conflicts of existence can penetrate into time and the actualization of the world through the determining conditions. The self-directing conscious individual: withstands the creative forces acting from above and the mechanical forces below. There is a need to be sensitive to forces and distinguish between them. More than sensitivity, however, is needed to have the power of action and response. That is individuality.

Individuality participates in all actualizations. It is non-historical, eternal, unchanging and virtual. It is the instrument of consciousness – the inner triad of eternity, hyparxis and time.

An individual is an independent factor in universal actualisation. This is self-determination. It cannot arise in any separate entity that is subject to the division of time and eternity as conditions of existence. The first seven gradations of existence up to and including the septempotent are machines – they actualise under mutual action of pattern and influences of environment. According to present understanding of determining conditions, there is a level of being where time and eternity are merged and the actual/ virtual distinction disappears. Here, what exists is all that might be. Potential and actual are one: individuality – the autonomic existence.

Autonomy is distinct from activity of creative power. Life is the result of clash of involution and evolution – the reconciling agent that redeems the universe from the sterility of dualism. Without it, there is no meaning. Integrative evolution, striving automatically to unity under universal laws, has no fecundity; or involution flowing irresistibly down out of unity into multiplicity – under the primal creative will. The universe is full of significance – not just because everything can return to source, but existence is striving to become conscious through its appearance and development of life. A new world comes into existence in a time-scale of thousands of millions of years. It is in and through life, neither all-powerful nor impotent. It is free. It is full of hazard.

We need observational data to back this up. Intuition and revelation are not enough.

We need to study the completion of life. To do this we need to think of it in terms of the eight categories: wholeness, polarity, relatedness, subsistence, potentiality, repetition, structure, and individuality. Each of these has an infinite range – so, complexity can never be known. But, we do know something of individuality.

Individuality as self-determination implies the power of choice. The septempotent self-regulating organism is complete in the sense of its structure comprises all seven qualities and divisions requisite for independent existence. But, this is not enough for individuality. Many organisms are able to regulate their own whilst being unable to direct their own activity. Every animal pursues an end: self-preservation, relaxation, reproduction, curiosity. But, no animal chooses these ends. With septempotent entities, ends are determined by factors other than conscious choice. Animals also pursue the ends of the species – not itself. An animal like a cow: her activities are directed by the eternal pattern, not her own volition. If she acted non-cow-like, she would have individuality, but septempotent animals cannot do this. Selection implies choice – this is not feasible by the agency of organic sensitivity alone. Adjustment and adaption are mostly automatic. An animal is a machine. It is sensitive, it rejoices, it suffers, it loves, hates – through organic sensitivity. But, it does not choose. Choice is the first condition of individuality.

 

The Conditions of Choice

The multiple actualisation associated with different levels of eternity can be seen as a sheaf of non-intersecting lines of time, each with a fixed potency according to apokritical level. The number of levels is indeterminate – depends on present entity. Primitive actualization is unipotent – no choice. The greater the intensity of inner-togetherness an entity possesses, the wider the range of actualizations. But, up to septempotence, all must actualise according to set laws. No entity on one level can fill the place of another on another. A cow cannot act un-cow like. Individuality and power of choice allows for a break from this situation.

The difference between sensitivity and choice in septopemtent entities. Every living organism is both tender and tough. Tender because of organic sensitivity, adaption of inner and outer life (by way of hyparchic regulator). And tough, to remain itself under environmental conditions. The sentient organism harmonises opposing tendencies: tender/ tough. Self-regulation proceeds through the normalising influence of the epigenetic factor. In higher beings, organic sensitivity can transform itself into functional transformations of energy taking place across the external surface of bodies. Humans have millions of ‘sense’ cells, independent impulses at nerve endings distributed over the body. Motions of mechanisms of response are consequently set as groups of them act together. The response is carried out by the physiological mechanism under the control of the hyparchic regulator – without the participation of higher levels of consciousness.

The epigenetic factor is only brought in when stimulus threatens integrity of the organism – a small number of reactions. There is a deep organic sensitivity that occurs continually – and intensity of togetherness of the organism as separate whole. How often does man become aware of separate stimulations and is able to choose? The answer has to be vague. Actually, they are quite rare. Old age and childhood can be wholly automatic. So, for the ordinary man, perhaps 10,000 acts of choice in life. Compared to 100, 000, 000, 000 automatic reactions. Man often cannot make choice, even to alter his course, and behaves automatically according to genetic constitution, and past experiences registered in his epigenetic factor. Where choices are made, they are often trivial.

 

The Gradations of Individuality

Man can choose but seldom does: is octopotent but usually acts as septempotent. So, man is not an individual but does manifest individuality at relatively unimportant moments in life. So, a degenerate octopotent entity.

To make a comparison between the autonomic and hyponomic worlds – in the former, composite wholeness is reached through a transitional phase, consisting of nuclides – that is quadripotent behaving at tripotent, particles and not things. Also, man, though octopotent behaves septempotent, that is animal not man. Are there examples, of non-degenerate man? The transformation of power of choice is the meeting of fact and value (page 403). This cannot be discussed without concepts of aim, obligation, and purpose. Man is a man in so far as he has the power of choice; although not truly himself – self-directing, nor free of manifestations. He is incomplete.

A thing is individual in so far as it can endure as a particular whole in time and recognizable by size, shape, position and properties. An organism is individualised in so far as it can maintain its existence on a higher potential level than its environment and be recognised in form and function. True individuality is reached only when the potentiality of the organism is able to initiate processes that do not arise from involution or evolution. As the epigenetic factor remains unconscious, there is no power of self-direction – that is pre-individualised. They are individual in so far as they are self-regulating. But, no individualised being as there is no conscious self-direction.

The eighth order of potency might therefore be described as the intensity of inner-togetherness and ableness-to-be merged into common actualisation in the individual being. A degenerate individual – man – has requisite ableness-to-be as the epigenetic factor contains the power of choice. He is not a true individual because his inner-togetherness is not sufficient to maintain itself at that level of consciousness at which time and eternity are merged.

Therefore, three gradations of true individuality:

 

1. That in which the entity can be conscious of its own genetic constitution and direct activity according to this awareness – ableness-to-be

2. That in which there is awareness of the specific pattern – able to direct activity not according to own genetic constitution but according to pattern of potentialities that belongs to entire species – awareness of self as human being, able to share in experience of other human beings through participation pattern common to all mankind.

3. Transcendence of the limitations of any single species – aware of the universal pattern of life, understanding role as part of reconciling force.

These descriptions are only nominal. The gradation of inner-togetherness to withstand the impact of experience at the three levels can never be known by one who has not attained it themselves. An ordinary man exercising power of choice over trivial matters cannot participate in the experience of truly individualised human being who can see destiny and choose necessary fulfilment. Nevertheless, even at level of octopotence, man may enter into a state of consciousness for brief moments in which the experience is possible. So, seeing that he is not what he might be.

 

Pp. 404-420

 

Organism and Species

Every gradation of life has a certain inner-togetherness. Potency is one of the four characteristics of self-renewal, reproduction, self-regulation and self-direction.

Transformation involves a relation between an organism and their environment.

There is no difference between the genetic constitution and the eternal pattern of an organism. This becomes possible at the level of sexual reproduction – needing self-regulating wholeness. Two levels of eternal potency are needed for sexual reproduction: eternal pattern and genetic constitution. Division of sexes only occurs at semptempotent level of existence. Inner and outer world distinction also begins here. It is able to be itself and to react selectively.

The species constitutes the individual of which he semptempotent entity is an incomplete manifestation.

The eternal pattern of a species is constituted by hyle in an almost fully virtual state: one pattern can regulate the existence of millions of animals. There is possible adaptation. Different racial types can arise.

The pattern of potentialities is transmitted in the chromosomes in genetical science: these are built from proteins and nucleic acids. Chromosomes have incredible stability enabling the eternal pattern whilst also having perpetual flux – hereditary substance is transformed by the hyparchic regulator. Behind the latter is the epigenetic factor by which the miracle of development is directed

Whenever there is interaction there is also a coupling of recurrences in hyparxis. The hyparchic regulator needs the eternal pattern to prescribe organic form. The eternal form transmits a form of organisation that is common to all members of a species.

 

The Unity of the Species

The septempotent organism is an atom of individuality.

Each species has its own pattern. Species find conditions appropriate to the pattern.

A species has a greater inner-togetherness than its individual members – because of higher level of potency – ie. octopotent individuality.

We are all atoms of a great thing.

It is difficult to see this because we focus on functionality.

Hybridization is a reliable test of species.

Within each species there are many differences of form, varieties: for example, the maximum duration of life, and functional rhythms – heartbeat, sexual activity, respiration. Also, found in the chemistry of the blood – foods. This binds the organisms of the species to which it belongs.

Every species also has a certain norm or characteristic pattern.

The species is an individual possessing an immutable pattern in eternity – constantly drawing the members back towards the normal and stable in the species.

Adaptation to the environment calls for an hyparchic regulator analogous to the organism. It can continue to change as long as the limits are not breached.

Some species are abundant and widespread – others are rare. The abundant ones have a larger reservoir of inheritable variation, actual and potential, a higher potency for adaptive change; whilst others flourish for a short time and then disappear.

Stability of species is not ultimate – it derives from superior pattern of the genus, family, class, order. Each group has its typical factor of stability – that of the genus turns upon a pattern of excitability that can be recognised in behaviour. Each makes its contribution to life. Among the higher groupings we reach, with the families, significant elements in the total mechanism of reciprocal action of the autonomic world. Each stage has eternal pattern and the corresponding form for hyparchic regulator.

 

The Origin of Species

The conclusion from the study of distribution of variations is that the regulation of existence depends upon eternal pattern of the species acting through the epigenetic factor in each organism in the course of its development. Adaptation of the species to its environment depends of the hyparchic regulator of the species.

It is commonly held that varieties adapt to their environment in evolution. There is no evidence that the eternal pattern of an individual species could have arisen in consequence of an evolutionary trend. Rather it is a self-directing entity, an individual’s hyparchic regulator that accounts for evolution. This occurs in the limits of variability.

The ascription of conscious individuality to organic species may attract the criticism: we do not observe behaviour of a kind that we expect from a conscious individual. The answer is twofold: first, we know little of the pattern of behaviour of a conscious individual, but it must be directed to the realization of eternal pattern.

Most organic species prefer cooperation to war.

The species always prevails when there is opposition between it and a unit organism. Lack of purity in sexual reproduction can increase the characteristics of a species.

The perishing of many unit organisms barely affects the species existence.

Species have unity of geographical distribution and a community of rhythm in time that allow them a continuing individuality.

The constitution of the earth’s crust changed enormously during several millions of years of cooling. Organic life has also changed in that time.

However, there is no evidence that new order can arise from inner changes in genetic constitution or outer changes in the environment. This requires a discussion of the sevenfold structure of life on earth:

 

7. Kingdom………….Animal…………..Vegetable

6. Phylum……………Chordata………..Cormophyta

5. Class……………….Mammalia………Dicotyledones

4. Order………………Lagomorpha……Rosales

3. Family…………….Leporidae……….Rosaceae

2. Genus…………..…Oryctolagus…….Rosa

1. Species……………Oryctolagus Cuniculus……Rosa canina.

The Taxonomy of the Rabbit and the Rose

 

It has not been possible to construct a genealogical tree of the phylogenetic system. However, this does not justify the belief that the extraordinary sevenfold structure of organic life has arisen through blind chance or mechanical forces.

Evolution needs to be accounted for through struggle for existence and mutations in genetic constitution – brought through environmental conditions or chemical factors in chromosomes.

Variations occur within the inherent variability of the eternal pattern of the species – they do so by adaptation of the epigenetic mechanism.

There are false dualisms: that new species must arise from the result of antecedent causes or conscious purpose. We need not accept this: we may not discern the seven steps in the structure or the discontinuity that separates genus from family. But, there is a pattern of life on earth. We reach the biosphere – the upper limit of autonomic existence.

Our basic approach is the unity and uniqueness of the autonomic mode of existence. We find a threefold structure: eternal pattern, hyparchic regulation and temporal actualization.

The true source of order in the autonomic world is the hyparchic regulator of the biosphere transmitted through phyla, the families genera, and the species of each organism. It is a complex system of regulation that reconciles the life of the soma to the conflict between the environment and the pattern. It does this through stages that correspond to the main taxonomic division of phyla, classes, families, and genera to adjust life to the climatic and tectonic influences and the requirement of the eternal pattern of the biosphere.

If this is to be useful to us, we must search in the autonomic world for the nature of the regulator. He offers the example of Crataegus – including our Hawthorn. The mechanism is referred to as the orthogenetic factor. It does not produce new living forms from dead matter. There is a continuity in life in all modes of existence. It is not a supernatural power. It is natural. The basic assumption is latent variability. The problem we have to solve is twofold:

 

1. Where is the latent variability stored?

2. How is it held in check when not required?

The first question cannot be answered in terms of chromosomal pattern alone.

The second question is often answered by invoking the struggle for survival. But, this does not account for the fact that climate and not ecology is the main factor in determining the changes of species. Hence, we are back to the notion of hyparchic regulator and the fundamental tried:

 

Affirmative: The eternal pattern of the family

Reconciling: The hyparchic regulator

Denying: The environment.

 

These three can set in motion systemic mutations that lead to proliferation of species.

 

The Biosphere

We have contact with only one manifestation of biospheric wholeness: the visible autonomic existence present on the surface of the earth. There is evidence of profound changes in the character of autonomic existence, over several millions years. Life on earth is therefore a series of biospheric existences rather than a single manifestation actualising discontinuities. Earlier life forms appear not to be needed for the transformation of energy.

Organic life began less than 1,500, 000, 000 years ago and since there have been fundamental changes. There is little evidence that one pattern arose from the continuous transformations of others. Nor of new life forms arising abruptly. So, the triadic concept of life as reconciliation of an eternal pattern and a temporal history through a hyparchic factor.

The eternal pattern with which we are now concerned is at the level of octopotent individuality – thus distinct from septempotent.

Octopotent is single valued – the potentiality of being itself – true individual of first order.

Individuality of second order is family – entire community of species and general. Only at the level of biosphere itself can we postulate a fully organised octopotent pattern. True individuality.

The three gradations are monomorphic, dimorphic and trimorphicm octopotence.

A similar series can be seen in the development of man: consciousness of one’s own destiny; consciousness of one’s relationship to life as a whole; consciousness of the cosmic plan.

The eternal pattern of the biosphere contains all the potentialities of autonomic existence actualised over a period of many millions of years. It has unimaginable complexity. The central task of organisation is performed by the orthogenetic factor of the biosphere – each species has its own eternal pattern and determines the course of evolution and involution.

The biosphere should represent the transition from autonomic to hypernomic existence. We cannot therefore hope to understand it by approaching it from below – as the highest manifestation of life.

Hyponomic existence penetrates into life at the point of contact between two phases. So, its film-like character is significant for its cosmic role.

Organic life plays a decisive role both in the concentration and the distribution of both rare and common elements.

 

Pp. 412-435

The two-dimensional character of the biosphere is striking. It is analogous to the colloidal world. Most biosphere activity is confined to the earth surface. It is small compared to the other layers.

Plants accumulate and concentrate certain elements in their cells. A thousand million tons of organic matter is daily synthesised under the sun. Land plants assimilate in ten years a quantity of carbon equivalent to total carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere.

The chemical activity of organisms have little to do with their needs. The biosphere plays a role needed for the transformation of energy and matter. We should seek its pattern in the needs of earth rather than self-preservation.

Striking is the connection between biosphere, the earth and other heavenly bodies. The eternal pattern of the biosphere stands at the threshold of nonempotence and autonomic existence. In the biosphere, the regulating mechanism has its own threefold structure. The octogenetic factor is the means by which the affirmative factor is reconciled with the mechanical processes of transformation in many species. In the genera, one sees the visible pattern of the biosphere. The quaternary geological epoch can be taken as the latest cycle of manifestation of the pattern of the biosphere – it has lasted about one million years: here, we have seen the great ice ages, appearance/ disappearance of continents, changes in distribution of land/ water, the rise and domination of the genus ‘homo’. This dominance has attained the same degree as the amphibia in the carboniferous epoch. Man can be judged to be a sub-species of the order of primates. Man is distinguished from other craniata. This new class has advanced these past 500, 000 years, while the pattern of organic life has remained stable. So stable, that there is no evidence of other life arising in the last million years. The orthogenetic factor is therefore only one means of securing transformation of genera according to the needs of the earth. Also preserving life. We see in the orthogenetic factor of the biosphere the means for harmonising evolution and involution – stability, regulation of biosphere, individuality. As in man, the epigenetic factor may become conscious – thus the seat of individuality. The octhogenetic factor of the biosphere is becoming conscious of itself – and of needs of higher levels of affirmation. It may bring harmony within the future needs the process of hyponomic actualisation on the surface of the earth.

 

The Hypernomic Role of the Biosphere

The hypothesis of biospheric wholeness implies all manifestations of life on the earth are unified in respect of being, will and function. Possible if there is a single affirmation that transcends the existence of the biospshere as the pattern of the species transcends life of the organism – the pattern to which existence conforms (potentialities and actualization). The biosphere does not conform to one of twelve great orders of potency. Manifested in pattern belonging to planetary world. Pattern is transcendent to its origin. The pattern of the biosphere is received from mother earth. By realising it, the biosphere fulfils its destiny – as reconciling force in cosmic triad. But, it is a free individual – fully octopotent – conscious and voluntary in self-realization.

The biosphere is the reconciling force in a triad that relates the creativity of the sun to the pattern of the earth. The pattern is renewed from age to age according to the plan which the solar system exists to accomplish. It cannot be known in the levels of autonomic existence. We see the consequences of action – we infer – but we cannot know the affirmation from which it proceeds.

The biosphere should be a rich source of material to understand the decempotent plan. Usually, unfortunately, we study it in terms of somatic concerns – food, raw materials. Biology does not try to understand the biosphere. It is not inaccessible to our observation: we have a lot of data on it. It serves the transformation of energies – according to law of reciprocal maintenance – for certain existence. The latter is not the same as the biosphere – cannot be cannibalistic. It is the highest form of autonomic existence. We are lead to the hypothesis:

The biosphere exists to transform energies required for the maintenance of some form of hypernomic existence probably within the solar system.

We need to look into the energies transformed by living beings to interpret biospheric phenomena. As different from those in hyponomic processes only. Such energies are connected with life, consisting of hyle in the sensitive or partly sensitive state. We need therefore to reconsider varieties of sensitivities. The eternal pattern of the biosphere may be inferred from knowledge of the orthogenetic factor that regulates the development and transformations of species of animals and plants. We then seen to distinguish forms of sensitivity – the production of which does not serve any, or not exclusive, terrestrial purpose. So, the place of the biosphere in the economy of the solar system.

 

Part Nine

 

THE COSMIC ORDER

 

Chapter 22

 

EXISTENCE BEYOND LIFE

 

The Four Hypernomic Gradations

Everything that lives must die. Immortality therefore only has meaning as a state beyond life itself. What does not live or perish can renew life. True of the biosphere. As there must be modes of existence which are affirmative, we see there is organisational power that regulate existence without participating it existence. This is Will – which cannot manifest without function and being. Since we cannot know will or being, , we need to know functional systems that are associated with affirmative will. Heavenly bodies – planets, suns, galaxies – are the visible manifestations of the hypernomic modes of existence.

What can we mean by the phrase, ‘existence beyond life’? we need to find a state of existence that does not participate in any functional process and yet is conscious and voluntary. There is evidence that some men can do this, but without describing it. It is enough to know the functional and perishable to be subordinate to voluntary and imperishable. The biosphere as a carrier of pattern beyond life is also a way to represent the relationship with being. We need to take it to the hypernomic worlds – intuition of the universal similarity uniting all existence. This is not formulated in deistic terms.

The categories of the hypernomic world are, in Plato’s words, the contents of the creative mind of god’, the final causes of the world, and the inspirers of our thoughts’.

The hypernomic world makes itself known to us in gestures – not only thoughts and not in signs. We need patient investigation of functional manifestations – not poetic leaps. The universe is not a mechanical toy or a spiritual dream. The hypernomic world is beyond life – compounded with autonomic modes into a reality that can be known and understood.

 

The Universal Character of Supra-animate Wholeness

The manner in which the pattern of a superior whole exerts a common organising influence upon an indefinite number of subordinate wholes is to be observed in its relationship between an organic species and its member organisms. The affirmation of the specific pattern presides over the destiny of each unit organism. The individuality of the species transcends the distinction of one and many. The individuality of the biosphere is not A and Not A but unity of pattern and singleness of affirmation.

The transitional character of the biosphere makes it analogous to the active surfaces of physics to biology. But it is not an organism like a plant. It does not live. Species and genera live, develop and transform but biosphere remains. It is an affirmation rather than manifestation of life.

The biosphere fits over the earth like a glove over a hand. The earth could exist without life but life needs the surface of the planet – its physico-chemical conditions. So, the biosphere is more than a simple than a complex set of genetic relationships by which the different species of animals and plants are kept in equilibrium. Life is a response to conditions .

Earth and the biosphere are not two unconnected modes of existence. The biosphere is individual but integral part of earth.. How are the two connected as components in a triad? We see the earth usually as only hyponomic – material undergoing energy transformations. The earth is an autonomic aspect of the biosphere. Neither knows what it is in terms of existence. For this, we have to turn to the planetary system of the universe. Planets should be occupants of the ninth existential gradation. Life can fulfil its cosmic function only if designated a place within the universal order. The pattern of planetary existence endows every entity with a particular place and destiny. The planets as pattern bearers are interposed as regulators between the free creative power of the stars and the autonomy of the individualised existence.

The tenth category of creativity is the suns – individual entities existing two stages beyond the upper limit of life. The analogy of atoms to stars is misleading. Atoms are not individual – stars are. The are both individual and capable of subdivision. They fulfil their destiny without mutual interference – a character of decempotent entities. Interaction between stars is rare.

The independence of stars is the condition of free creativity – but they are cut off from the higher pattern of the galactic systems – unidecempotent existence. There is a planetary affirmation that is universal and common to all planetary existence – independent of energy exchanges or other forms of communication in time and space. In limitless planetary patterns, one cosmic role is enacted – that of establishing the conditions for the arising and development of autonomic existence. All suns conform to one solar quality of creativity – of pattern and diversity of form seen in heavenly bodies. This gives the key to all hypernomic existence.

 

The Trans-finite Triad

To understand something of hypernomic worlds we need to look beyond incomplete manifestations of the triad in common experience to ultimate, cosmic significance. The relationship of affirming and denying offers limitless variety of forms. One form is the denial of sameness and affirmation as difference. Hyle – maximum entropy – pure denial. Cosmic affirmation – plenum – pattern of all patterns teems with potentialities beyond possibilities of actualisation. Both extremes are inaccessible – no existing being can pass beyond these barriers.

Ground state of hyle and cosmic autocrat are two limits that can be expressed by numbers zero and infinity.

It does not matter if the universe is finite of infinite. The sanskrit word – Mahato – greater than the great – infinity. When the limit of greatness is reached, there is more. Similarly, groundstate – undifferentiated – there is less than less.

We can define a transfinite triad: the affirming power is Being which lies beyond all existence and denial is Non-being which is less than non-existence. Between the two – existence itself – all the universe actualised and unactualised, potential and recurrent, is the reconciling force through which Being and Non-Being merge into reality. This is the ‘postulate of transcendental reality’. It is unverifiable by nature to a natural philosopher’s method. But it has meaning. The realm existence is non-ultimate from our immediate experience. Values are transcendental with respect to facts and the transfinite triad assumes a direct significance if we reflect our immediate experience of Being and Non-being. The transfinite triad s our only means to express factual terms. Fact is not the end of the experience.

 

The Finite Cosmic Triad

There are two streams – involution and evolution – in the existing universe. They pervade everything. Everything is dying or being born. They are not separated from the determining-conditions. In time, things come into being and perish. Eternity is timeless – it is structured; higher levels exert an influence on below. There are organising and disorganising forces in involution and evolution. Involution – creation – is often seen as good; and evolution is disruptive and bad. In hyparxis, involution and evolution appear differently: evolution is the direction of ableness-to-be – differentiation of recurrences; involution is the tendency of separation of recurrences – sameness – repetition. In space, involution is manifest in the complexity and the profusion of form, evolution is simplicity and unity of design.

They need to be combined as realizing affirming and denying forces – the inner cosmic triad.

They are in opposition but also in reconciliation – passing from level to level. They are each same in their fundamental tendency; the reconciling force takes different forms – diverse – in fact, often impossible to discern in operation.

Conceived as a relationship of time and eternity, involution is transition from pure potentiality of universal consciousness towards the fully actualised passive state of the existing world; evolution is the ascent of the hyle by successive stages of integration from the undifferentiated ground state towards the prime source. Man occupies a definite position in this two-fold process as one of the species of the biosphere. Man is dominant in present epoch – but subordinate to biosphere. It is not human life nor human consciousness, but all life everywhere on all planets of the universe, that manifests the third force in the inner cosmic triad.

 

Pp. 435-450

 

The Relationship of Space

The determining-condition of space allows the existential universe to acquire a structure of position, size, shape, and relative motion. Lines, surfaces, solids = triad allowing for diversity of forms and processes.

All existence actualises through motions (derived from linear cosmodesic paths).

All transformations require separation – depends on two-dimensional surfaces.

Joining/ dividing – thee dimensions of space needed.

Relativity of size = a feature of phenomenal world.

Lowest limit – corpuscles and particles. Presence inferred in transformations.

We cannot visualise a single step in the cosmic structure – but we can calculate relative dimensions.

We can give 1039 as number of ultimate particles for the whole autonomic existence on surface of earth.

We calculate that each manifestation of life in biosphere stands midway between largest and smallest wholes we can know through our sense perceptions.

Maybe the fundamental laws that govern existence set the limit to the relationship for a given class of wholes. The corpuscle – non-individualised unit of hyle has 1079 – it has to preserve all potentialities of the material universe. Connected to human perception limits. These latter are vast – compared to which, what we know is small.

The earth remains enigmatic, despite the fact that it is at hand.

We know something of arising, dominance, and decay of organisms – and through this, something of the hyparchic regulator between regeneration and decay. We know nothing of the corresponding existence of ‘life on earth’ – only as a figurative expression. We make errors by supposing that we know of the history of an entity as the entity itself. ‘History’ is only applicable to living entities. The earth is ‘supra-historical’ in its nature. It is affirmation of a pattern – not its actualisation. This pattern is reflected in the conditions of organic life.

We assume that what we know about stars is, proportionally, the same as what we know about our own scale events. This leads to errors. The instruments we have to apply to both are very different. We know our bodies – objects – by sight, sound, touch taste and smell. We can change events and observe the results. Light signals are available to us only to study events far beyond the surface of the earth.

The events of the universe are invariably more varied and complex in structure than small events on the surface of the planet earth. The astronomer allocates stars to classes – but new sub-classes must be constantly created.

Men are individuated compared with animals and animals equally so compared with cells and protein molecules. Intensity of individuation compensates for growing complexity of structure in ascending scale of being. If life exists elsewhere, it must be different from here. The biosphere is unique amongst hundreds of thousands of millions of biospheric concentrations on planets in the universe. A second earth-like biosphere would be unlikely to exist. . Individuation of the planets and stars represents a still greater degree of intensity, and complexity of possible relationships must increase with passing from level of existence to another. So, our possibility of knowing a star is incomparably less than knowing the earth.

We remain ignorant of the nature of stars and the meaning of their existence.

 

The Dramatic Significance of the Universe

Affirmation is an active, positive characteristic. Activity is not actualisation. The force does not move but is the source. What transmits an active force ceases to do so when it merges with the result. Active force thus suffers diminution in the process of affirming.

Affirming power involves and Denial power evolves. They balance as being opposed.

The opposition may or may not be reconciled. The reconciling force – hyparchic regulator – is itself a result. Reconciliation is hazardous and unpredictable since the consequences of evolution and involution are incalculable.

The rising of the spirit of man can be seen as a consequence of opposition between eternal pattern and actual temporisation. We do not see it in the universe: we are unable to grasp the nature of affirming force in pattern of existence. The higher world is a ‘non-living’ world – existence beyond life does not lie in ‘doing’ anything.

Potentiality is relative – we expect to find levels beyond life each with a different level.

There should be four such gradations: from planetary to universal being.

Affirmation is ‘organising pressure’. Here, the affirming force is vivifying/ spiritualising for the denying force. Earth makes a demand on biosphere. Life serves the needs of the earth and pattern of existence. Similarly, the earth is confronted with needs of planetary world – the affirming force. So, relative to mass, earth must be more actualised than sun – sun more actualised than galaxy, galaxy more actualised than whole universe. Actualisation is aging – using up potentialities. This is why the earth seems ‘older’ than the sun, etc. But, it is not. This is to think historically – this does not apply to existence beyond life. The relationship of actual to potential must be conceived as beyond eternity and time.

There is an aspect in which the universe can be said to have a history: the transformations of energy by light-signals and other methods extending to sense-perceptions, the perspective can be said to be historical – therefore, of evolution and history of the stars. This is not false but very subjective – the limitations of our sense perceptions and mind.

So far, we have considered existence beyond life as a pattern outside of space and time – therefore analogous to the eternal pattern of an individual organism. To give fuller expression to the quality of affirmative existence, we need to penetrate farther into the meaning of the tenth category of ‘creativity’. The pattern of individual organism is a consequence of its heredity and conditions of fertilization and growth. Only the hyparchic regulator can be called self-created – and only for consciousness being constructed on the same pattern as man. Even with man, the eternal pattern is something given or imposed. Every man is supposed to have choice but can, in fact, only be what he is – actualisation of own pattern.

Existence is centred on the pattern of life itself – not reconciliation with denying force. Life is response to affirmation. The earth is what it affirms. The difference between one supra-animate level and another consists qualitatively in the degree of freedom that resides in the power to create its own pattern. To make an affirmation rather than accept that of a higher order. Because the sun is less actualised than the earth, it is freer in respect to affirmation. The galaxy thus freer than the sun, because by far the greater part of its existence remains potential.

 

Chapter 23

 

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

 

Creativity and Sub-creativity

The Solar System is our cosmic home: it is a great whole composed of many parts – we know little of its interrelations. Astronomical science tells us little more than it is a mass of energies – and mostly lifeless. Hyponomically, the Solar System seems to lack coherence and significance, and to be a mere collection of tripotent entities actualised without meaning.

It consists of sun, planets, asteroids, comets, dust, gas, free particles, and corpuscles – and force fields, gravitational, electric, and magnetic.

We need to know the Sun not only up to the level of octopotent individuality, but manifestation of creative power – carrier of cosmic plan – tenth gradation in scale of existence.

A systematic investigation of hypernomic world would begin with the planets – novempotent entities – and then pass to decempotent stars. But, we have not access to hidden nature of planets. We need to use indirect methods.

We need a concrete existential hypothesis according to which plan-creation is assigned to the sun and pattern-creation to the planets. The sun as a master amongst pupils? The teacher does not create but formulates problems; the pupils do not create but find solutions.

Continuing the analogy: a correctly stated problem is a completed whole – exemplifying the law of structure. Therefore, seven principal qualities, each with seven subordinate features.

Our present problem is to grasp the role of the sun as a plan-creating power in the context of its own status in the universe of stars. Our sun is a start – no two are alike. At each stage in the ascent of the scale of existence, the potency for individuation acquires a new degree of freedom.

Let us consider the best known property of the stars – luminosity. This is due temperatures ranging from absolute zero to thousands of millions of degrees. Transformations of hyle are sensitive to temperatures. Two stars may be of different states of potentiality even though they have similar luminosity, mass and colour.

The pattern of existence of a star – one distinguishable from the sun – could vary in so many ways: two in a million million may not be alike. And, this, only for the hyponomic existence of a star – not taking into account the six levels of potency from fifth to tenth – each adding a new degree of freedom.

Recurrences need also to be taken into account. A perfected octopotent individual only has one recurrence – temporal actualisation. Entities of a higher level can have many independent recurrences. For the sun, the recurrences may be equal in number to varieties of eternal pattern – the number of manifestations in space of similar entities.

In the autonomic world, we are subject to such disjunctions as ‘one and many’, ‘this and that’, ‘now and then’, ‘here and now’, ‘potential and actual’, ‘same and other’. These do not apply to modes where the affirming principle is dominant.

We see the sun in time and space, and as different from other stars and galaxies. This is true only of the hyponomic element: and must be present in everything that exists, and it is this element that makes it possible for us to ‘know’ the sun.

There is also an autonomic element consisting in all forms of life that occur on the earth and other planets. But, what is distinctively ‘solar’ is hypernomic, creative, manifestation of universal affirmation. It is neither ‘same’ nor ‘other’ with respect to remaining suns. All are both one and many, same and other, here and there, etc. – with all possible disjunctions of experience.

We need to know the forms of affirmation – powers – if we want to know the hypernomic world.

As we cannot know the affirmation, we need to study functional element – without being satisfied with functional knowledge alone. We also need to know ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. This is not beyond our powers.

The plan-creativity of our sun as limited within framework of universal laws. The concept of subordinate creativity appears to contradict that of a universe governed by laws. This is resolved by quasi-infinite freedom associated with the pattern of decempotent entity. Cosmic harmony undisturbed – universal laws fail of nothing in sway by free action of a creative power that has an almost unlimited range of actualisations and recurrences to work out special destiny. Free creation is only possible on level of decempotence – below, all potentialities are too limited, only working out of a problem from above is possible. In terms of levels higher than the sun, free creativity would disturb the cosmic harmony. Only individual stars are appropriate in terms of size and cosmic importance to occupy the role of independent creator. Planetary and all subordinate existence is too limited. Galaxies and superior existences are too great and powerful. At the level of solar existence, mutual limitation of determining-conditions is no longer operative. In considering the threefold nature of time, conservation and irreversibility arise through the linkage of time with eternity and hyparxis. At the level of the sun, the linkage is replaced by merging and mutual absorption of determining-conditions. Actualising of sun can therefore be non-conservative and reversible – only on hyponomic levels of its own existence.

At the time, it was believed that earth and other planets came into existence by a process that is independent of the arising of the sun itself. . The sun is not the ‘mother’ of planets – producing them of her own substance – but as father – impregnating the uniformed planetary material with plan of genetic constitution. The plan and pattern are male and female principles – former affirming and potent, latter denying and actual. The pattern hence becomes creative and enters into constitution – cosmic affirmation – of biosphere. The solar plan evokes the planetary pattern – as the author’s manuscript evokes the printer’s forms. The plan is prepotent – it affirms the possibility of a pattern of potentialities.

At hyponomic levels, the sun is predominantly virtual – planets predominantly actual. Sun carries its plan as creative affirmation; planets establish conditions of existence through patterns. The sun gives out energy but does not exchange. The earth receives energy but does not exchange. Therefore, each actualises according to pattern of existence. Pattern of earth is dependent – since it needs the energy of the sun – and perhaps the rest of the universe. It also requires the presence of the biosphere.

 

The Earth

The earth’s most significant characteristic is its polyspherical structure. We experience immense and constant influx of energy by which the whole surface of the earth is maintained. But, we do not see transformations taking place in areas beneath outer mantle. Here, solar influences scarcely penetrate. We are accustomed to organisms with structures adapted to a reaction with the environment of space and time.

Novempotence occupies a level of existence where disjunctions of time, eternity, and hyparxis are subordinated to the affirmative pattern. In autonomous world, pattern itself is integral part of each entity. So, there is a merging of identity at the highest level so separateness ceases to have usual meaning. Community of pattern is thus diversity without separation – a property shared by all hypernomic entities – reflected in autonomic and hyponomic parts.

The structure of the earth is adapted to exchanges of energy and transformations of substance. We find it hard to believe that the earth is a conscious being, standing higher in the scale of existence than individual organisms.

At the centre of the earth is a solid core; then follows a crust at the surface of which is hydrosphere and biosphere; then extension of dense gaseous atmosphere; and ionosphere. Here, matter exists in state of special sensitivity so the earth responds to great variety of impulses received from sun and other planets. This has been so for 3-4 thousand million years.

Our human experience presents itself as a flow of sense-impressions, inner associations of thought and feeling, physiological and physical changes, etc. We tend to think this is intense. But there is another level of consciousness, which is far greater. Compared with the activity of organic life, the earth is in a state of calm.

However, enormous movements are taking place in the mantle of the earth. For these, energy is needed – enough to shift the centre of gravity and cause change in the interaction of the earth, sun, and moon. The activity in the centre of the earth is greater than that taking place on the surface. The inner thrusts set up by inner movements produce conditions of tension that react upon biosphere and every individual.

Exact appropriate conditions have produced well-regulated and systematic developments in biosphere. Affirmative forces in all spheres – not just the surface. Measurable charges in distribution of energy represent the external manifestation of eternal pattern that organises the whole complex process of actualisation of time.

The geological history of the earth shows a remarkable sequence of conditions at its surface – torrid heat, volcanoes, earthquakes, brilliant sunshine, thick cloud – for millions of years.

This is not just the cooling of the crust. But, the process is more complex..

It is assumed the biosphere and organic species emergence occurred almost independently of earth’s transformations.

Geophysicians interpret the history of the earth in terms of thermo-dynamic laws, and the biosphere as automatic biological evolution. But, these theories fail to account for the facts.

Climatic changes are not because of geological considerations alone, or external conditions for biological species.

Species at one epoch are a response to prevailing climatic conditions: the chemical and physical conditions required of the biosphere.

The earth is 3-4 thousand million years old: the issue is whether this is its actual age or the period since major substance transformation.

 

Pp. 451-466

The consciousness of the earth – transmitter of affirming creative power should not be confused with that of the biosphere as reconciling force.

The true character of the earth is its novempotence – affirmative mode beyond life. The biosphere is the means by which the earth’s task is fulfilled.

The earth arises as the clash of affirming and reconciling forces; it needs to be itself in order to fulfil its destiny when faced with the overwhelming creativity of the sun. The planet is an hypernomic entity – a direct agent of the universal will.

The earth is more than itself as a creative force. Novempotence is a level of existence beyond the merging of time and hyparxis, and eternity and space. This is only possible in an entity with independent will – here, recurrence and repetition are unified. Recurrence in hyparxis and repetition in time are unified: reintegration – renewed manifestation of pattern without dependence of fixed content. With recurrence in hyparxis, the context of space and time remains unchanged. The difference in recurrences lies in the eternal pattern – to permit unactualised potentialities. Repetition in time means a change of context. – stability of pattern for autonomic entities. For example, heredity: pattern remains, environment changes.

Hyponomic entities are independent of both environment and pattern – without loss of identity. This is a level of existence above individuality. This is needed to withstand stresses of two-fold variation, but there needs to be a pattern-creating factor above.

For the earth, there is evidence of a plan as distinct from pattern. A plan is a pattern intentionally brought into existence – the power of which is novempotence. The earth is evidence of a plan beyond eternity and time.

The earth is a sub-creative power – existing in its own right, above the level of octopotent individuality, carrying its potentialities in seven mutually-related concentric spheres and existing in a series of incarnations – manifestations of the autonomic world/ hypernomic creative will. The creativity of the earth is not free, it is subordinate to the higher gradations – the solar system. Hence a parallelism between the lowest gradations of three realms of existence: the hyle is undifferentiated source of material existence; the active surfaces are an undifferentiated source of life; the planetary worlds are undifferentiated source of cosmic activity.

 

The Planets

Novempotence is the bearer of the universal pattern – we should therefore expect to see it throughout the universe.

The planetary world has a two-fold significance: it is the emergence of hyle from individual to universal existence; the planets also carry the universal creative pattern. There are four gradations of novempotence:

 

i) the undifferentiated universal pattern,

ii) the earth and inner planets as simplest pattern bearers capable of independent existence,

iii) major planets like Jupiter, full relationship to creativity discerned,

iv) planetary world as a whole.

 

These are analogous to hyponomic and autonomic worlds.

Until recently, planets were see as satellites to the sun. However, although the earth is closely associated with the sun, more distance planets are not. Each – sun and planets – represent distinct modes of being. The sun is largest singularly but not en masse with respect to the planets.

The mass of the sun is largely in the form of atomic hydrogen, and its reserves of potential energy available through the conversion of hydrogen into helium.

Planetary movement needs to be made in millions of years.

Lack of understanding about the origin of the solar system is due to disregard of the independent status of the planetary world.

We need to take account of angular momentum. Magnetic forces have played a major role in distribution of masse and angular momentum. It is best at carrying and transmitting a pattern – this is the best way to understand the earth, as magnet, and the concentric spheres; the solar system as hyponomic world pattern of magnetic fields.

 

The Shape of the Solar System

The Solar System has all the gradations of potency; from first to tenth. As a dynamical bipotent system it has great stability; in periodicity of its motions and shape. We know that the dynamical stability is based on an invariable plane and that the orbits deviate only a little. It is a thin flat disc from distance.

Bode’s Law: the planets seem to exist in a numerical; relationship to each other: Mercury 0, Venus 3, Earth 6, Mars 12, 24, Jupiter 48, Saturn 96, Uranus 192, Neptune 384, Pluto 768.

Variations can be understood as the difference between true planets and incomplete manifestations: Seven Planets, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are a single group – they have distinctive features: possession of atmosphere (needed for life); possession of satellites; sufficiently great mass to permit internal energy transformations independent from that of the Sun. So, according to these, neither Pluto nor Mercury can be included

Minor Constituents of the Solar System:

 

THE SUB-PLANETARY BODIES

i) Semi-planets: Mercury and Pluto

ii) Major satellites with a 2000 miles+ diameter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Calypso (Jupiter) and Titan and Triton (Uranus and Neptune).

iii) The Minor satellites: Rhea (Saturn) and Dimos and Phobos (Mars).

iv) The asteroids of 2000 bodies: Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Juno

v) The comets

vi) Meteorites

vii) Interplanetary dust.

The seven planets dominate and occupy more than 99% of the universe – apart from the sun. According to novempotence, they alone can transmit the creative impulse.

It is a seven fold structure – Jupiter occupies central position.

The principle of structure affirms that seven distinct qualities are required for the formation of a completed whole. Each planet should therefore represent one of the qualities of novempotence.

 

The True Planets

 

i) Venus

Hidden: covered in blanket of cloud; heavy atmosphere; mainly carbon monoxide; twin with earth; same size and density.

No liquid water; medium of exchange is therefore saturated carbon compounds – carbon dioxide and stable hydrocarbons. Self-regulating organisms should be able to develop. Life on earth exists because of the biospheric pattern for the needs of earth. Similar for Venus: for the needs of Venus, but a different set of basic constituents.

Forms of autonomic existence on Venus are likely to be dominated by a greater intensity and variety of solar radiation. Any existence on Venus must be quite transitory – great intensity but low individuality. This is the character of the first in the sevenfold structure: sharply defined potentialities and rudimentary actualisations.

 

ii) The Earth

The characteristic here is the struggle for existence due to predominance of potentialities over means of actualisation. It is a field experiment with different forms of life emerging over millions of years – according to the organising pattern. It requires harmony without being able to provide it. This is the ‘survival of the fittest’ tension which is the dominant factor in life upon earth. Without struggle, no life can exist – reach individuality.

 

iii) Mars

Mars has a pattern of concentric spheres – the atmosphere is thin and water scanty compared with Venus and the Earth.

Unlikely to be life on Mars like on Earth. Mars has low force of gravity’ carbon dioxide predominates; extremes of temperature. Slow moving organisms may be able to tolerate these. These ‘may’ be able to develop consciousness.

In terms of the seven qualities: the autonomic existence of Mars is relatively small in quantity and variety, but some organisms should be capable of high degree of individuality. Little struggle for existence but pronounced independence of existence. Communication would be more highly developed than on earth – because of longevity imputed to the inhabitants of Mars.

Mars is at the third gradation of existence. To pass beyond this, an influence is required from another source. Greater seeing potentialities but fewer means of actualising them.

 

iv)

The Transition Region

There is a point of discontinuity between Mars and Jupiter – here, a new influence can impinge upon the evolutionary and involutionary transformations of the solar system. Associated with comets. It is also occupied by thousands of asteroids. They are not true planets – cannot sustain any form of life. But, they may play a part in the transformation of beings on the three inner planets. Venus, Earth, Mars.

Here, influences from the galaxy are intercepted – supra-terrestial state of individualised existence – consciousness dissociated from autonomic organism finding support in one of small independent members of the solar system.

Asteroids and comets originated with the explosion of true planets – coinciding with the appearance of autonomic existence in the solar system.

 

v)

Jupiter

Since Galileo, Jupiter is seen as a miniature Solar System. Mass 317 greater than the earth and 2.5 times greater than other planets. It exerts an influence on all other planets – a companion of the sun.

Jupiter is a true planet; exemplifies the structure of concentric spheres – mode of existence is more complex and richer in potentiality than inner planets.

Polyspherical structure has features in common with the sun: absence of well-marked surface of separation between atmosphere and lithosphere. But, many differences: unlikely that there is existence on the sun – of the sun. On Jupiter, however, there would be a distinction between conditions of autonomic existence and autonomic existence itself.

Little is known – then – about conditions on Jupiter.

Atmosphere must be relatively stable – concentric shells of temperature and pressure.

Jupiter must produce energy in its centre.

To think of existence on Jupiter, we move from two-dimensional to three-dimensional existence.

There is freedom of movement – up and down – in gravitational field. Intense energy concentration – the Red Spot.

Chemically, great stability (Mars) and mobility (Earth).

Methane and ammonia predominate – favourable to photosynthesis.

Beings in these conditions would have perceptions throughout the range of electromagnetic radiation – direct knowledge of the universe. This would allow working out of pattern of existence.

 

v) The Planet Saturn

The composition of Saturn is like that of the Sun. Surrounded by satellites. Many moons – both large and small. Rings. One satellite – Titan – has atmosphere (therefore the potentiality for life).

Receives very little energy from the sun.

All transformations depend on the energy from the planet.

Saturn is thus ‘quasi-solar’ – transformations of the whole planet merge with transformations of individual existence. It is a meeting point of involution and evolution: universal existence and individual existence.

Jupiter: scene of the perfecting of individual existence. Saturn: transition from individual to universal existence.

 

vii)

The Outer Planets

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are beyond normal vision of man. They do not belong to planetary world.

No one has seen these.

Their influence on earth would appear to be small.

Uranus is half the diameter of Saturn – has five moons. It turns in the opposite direction to the other planets.

Neptune has an immense moon – Triton.

 

THE MINOR CONSTITUENTS

The minor constituents must play an active part. For earth, there is the intimate connection between moon and biosphere (rhythms of life). The triad of the sun: the true planets-the satellites-minor constituents. The latter transmit denying forces. They are thus the passive components in total existence of the solar system. They form a thin flat disc, 4000 millions miles in diameter but only a few million thick. The solar system can be regarded as a sphere with an outer atmosphere bisected by the densely filled planetary world lying near the invariable plane.

The whole system is an entity upon the level of decepotent existence, and in order to grasp its significance we have to leave the first, or novempotence, level of universal existence and undertake the study of higher worlds.

 

Pp. 467-480

 

Chapter 24

 

THE COSMIC ORDER

 

The Creative Triad

Rationalism and empiricism are strangers to each other and improbable. Therefore, if we do have evidence based on both, we may conclude there is indeed a universal plan.

Foundations need to be tested: from individuality to autocracy. Given names from first seven categories of wholeness of structure, we should be able to derive from the twelve categories a systematic ordering of valid knowledge. We need a working rather than existential hypothesis, and to construct it from common experience.

Man’s creativity is only a shadow of a shadow, but it does come from autocratic will as a plan of action. Will is beyond consciousness – incomprehensible – but what enters dominates the functions and arouses a plan in them. The autocratic principles on one level, force of desire or intention dominate on the second, creativity arises in the third, and becomes source for pattern in the fourth in the functions. Four categories: autocracy, domination, creativity and pattern.

Taking these to the cosmic, we can say there are four levels of existence: the highest is prior to separation from essential forms, standing at the point of limitless potentialities – supreme affirmation of all affirmations (duodecipotence). Second level is the dominant power of will – unidecipotent level (third manifestation of hypernomic mode). Multiplicity and unity are here reconciled. Next level is the power to create – a pattern. The fourth is the pattern itself, through which the cosmic will is actualised.

The three highest levels constitute a triad in which the autocratic potency is reconciled by dominant consciousness – the limitation of pattern. Consciousness is neither active nor passive – it is how existence sees itself. Passing from duodecipotence to undecipotence, there are distinctions of being, will and function. After, will ceases to be autocratic and is then manifest as laws of framework. Unconditional will belongs only to the autocratic mode.

The third stage of involution has two aspects – as seen from either above or below. The sun is of course an affirming aspect of the solar system but like every other star in the universe an instrument for the autocratic will – therefore also a passive or denying force. The reconciliation of the autocratic all-embracing will and the universal free and individual creative power is affected through the common cosmic consciousness.

The four levels of hypernomic existence form a working hypothesis.

We think of the universe as the totality of material objects open to observation: visual and the electromagnetic.

Could the universe exist as it is now before ‘time horizon’? Astronomers suppose there is more to the universe than direct observable material forms and also believe that matter is created and destroyed.

Galaxies complete their transformations and disappear into time and space while the universe remains as it is.

When we take account of hyparxis and eternity and extend our conception of the universe to include all potentialities and recurrences, we remain within the realms of the hypernomic existence.

Two opposing conceptions suggest that the universe is open to empirical investigation: man the measure (universe disclosed to our pattern of observation) and universe as measure (link between autocratic will and human experience – man is part of the same pattern/ universal plan).

The actualization of the universe must be governed by dynamical and thermo-dynamical laws – but these cannot disclose the pattern of the universe. Active and reconciling principles are not interchangeable with assertions about passive or denying principles.

Existence is beyond life. We look at the universe ‘from below’ with our perceptions; but we need to look at it from above to understand it. Understanding emerges from knowledge and consciousness by way of principles. Our consciousness can reconcile complexity and simplicity – affirmation of plan and denial of no-plan.

We need to set out chemical and physical constitutions to form a concept of universal. Each star must have its history, but history is less important than relationship to living entities.

Each star is unique and alike: every star contains all potentialities of every other star. To know one is to know the whole lot.

 

The Sun – Decempotence – Creativity

To understand the solar system we need, firstly, to consider to prodigious and outpouring of energy and, secondly, the remoteness of the sun from nearest neighbours.

The sun is indescribable – flares, granulations, sunspots, etc.

Only one part in one hundred million of the sun’s radiated energy is intercepted by planets; this is still far greater than what comes from the rest of the stars in the universe.

So, what about the non-realization of the universal pattern? If stars may be seen as containing the seeds of the universal pattern, I is perhaps unsurprising that only a few are successful. What if most of the energy from the sun was being poured away to waste?

The universe appears to be disintegrating from a material and historical viewpoint. The energy poured into space by stars appears to be for no purpose beyond maintaining a few planets. But, we have shown that what is wasted at one level may serve a higher level. So, apparent wastage may be important at a non-visible level.

The second characteristic of the sun is its isolation from other stars. The solar system is compact compared with other stars. All size between planets is relative. The sun moves in the galaxy alone and self-sufficient whilst still being a manifestation of the universal pattern. Its isolation is the condition of the creative power – which would be nothing if not free. It is purchased at the price of ceaseless outpouring of its own substance without the stage of actualization. The creativity of the sun is only a minute part of the potential of existence. It evokes in the worlds subordinate to it a creative activity that makes possible the arising of sentient and conscious experience.

Creativity is the ability to evolve a pattern that remains omnipresent, leaving open the details of actualization. Pattern is a condition to which events must conform; creativity is a demand that events should occur. The sun does not directly influence the weather of the earth, but it does exert a magnetic field, which does shape the climate. The sun also affects the pattern of life on the planet – not by distributing radiation but from the earth itself, which moves in response to the creative power of the sun.

The sun creates, not by doing but by being. There is a difference in relationship between the earth and the sun and the earth and its biosphere. The relationship comprises of three modes of individuality. The biosphere is the complete manifestation of octopotence – same in earth and sun, whilst some properties transcend life and individuality. The earth is a manifestation of universal creative activity that it transmits by way of the pattern of existence. The earth establishes the conditions of the biosphere and demands a pattern of life according to its own needs. There is reciprocal maintenance between the earth and its biosphere. None between the sun and the biosphere. The sun is exempt from planetary needs.

The creative triad: sun-planetary world-biosphere is limited to a single manifestation of the cosmic plan represented by the being of the sun itself. The planetary actualization is one realization of potential existence and is infinitesimal. The existence of the biosphere is mostly hazardous – and there is no way of knowing how far it conforms to the pattern of cosmic existence.

It is the same for evidence regarding life on earth itself. This happened some fifteen hundred million years ago with the synthesis of nuclei acids. This could not have happened by random combination. But the organising influence could be no more than a pattern of potential energy. A high degree of uncertainty would be imported into the interaction. This uncertainty is at the intersection of involution and evolution, the outcome of which is unpredictable. This leads to questions of consciousness and will.

 

The Galaxy – Unidecimpotence – Domination

Domination is power which acts without participation. In human experience we differentiate between ‘performing an action’, getting others to perform it, and ordering the performance. At the third stage the directing power is not spent in the action. For example, action of the epigenetic factor in the automatic world – directing the life process of an organism. This requires universal presence – when all entities are merged. The transmission occurs in passing from sun to galaxy.

By looking at a starry night, we can see how individuality is swallowed up in the immensity of the Milky Way. There is also a lot more of it than can be observed.

Our own galaxy is rotating in a spiral. Our own sun is one of a hundred thousand million suns – each with its own form and constitution. The galaxy comprises three shapes, each corresponding to each form of existence. It is a composite whole but appears to have arms and legs and organs like an animal. It is also the polysherical structure of hypernomic entities.

The term ‘autonomic body’ pertains to the spiral system of the galaxy – it is a disc of immense breadth and quite thin. There are ‘main sequence’ stars. Most active stars are in the concentrated core. Inactive ones are near the periphery.

Such is the visible hypernomic aspect of the galaxy. We can draw conclusions about respective roles in the various parts.

The autonomic body of main sequence stars is sandwiched between two saucer like concentrations of stars. It contains the largest and brightest stars. Our sun is situated about two thirds of the distance from the centre. Its velocity is about a million miles an hour. The autonomic body is stars but also clouds of dust. The central concentration is hidden by these clouds.

In the living body there are stars a hundred thousand times brighter than our sun. There are red super giants.

The thickness of the disc is one ten-thousandth of it diameter – almost a biosphere.

Compared with the autonomic body, the globular clusters and vagrant stars are without beginning or end. Some galaxies have no spiral structures evolved as stabilized, spherical or ellipsoidal structures and thus do not undergo further change.

We therefore have a picture of the galaxy as a great system of relatively passive spherical structures of nearly one hundred thousand million stars bisected by a thin disc in intense activity.

A noteworthy characteristic of our galaxy is that there are many double stars, They exist since their formation, even though the chances of them entering their gravitational fields are very small. They can be quite dissimilar; for example, Sirius and its companion. They can also be very similar; for example, Virgo.

Pair stars must have been formed simultaneously.

From star groupings, we can say: conditions created by single stars are multiplied with star groupings; half of the stars in the sky are binary.

There is a historical element in star formation..

 

Pp. 481-489

We suppose that every process brings about change in one direction of another. But, atoms exist unchanged; so too in distant galaxies – stationary states are possible – sometimes for millions of years. These have their part in the cosmic plan.

So we hypothesise: the undifferentiated structures of globular clusters and corresponding spherical shells of our galaxy are likely to be the visible component of the invisible dominating power. The star systems have three components – thus, a triad. The first hyponomic element is the dispersed cloud of dust, atoms, particles and corpuscles (galaxy linked to hyle in undifferentiated ground state). The second autonomic element – autonomic body of main sequence stars (here organic life of universe is concentrated). The third is the hypernomic element – hidden in the eternal unchanging spherical concentrations of Population 2 stars.

Repetition is a step towards fullness of being. This enters after subsistence has given mass and potentiality has opened to a pattern of existence. The hyponomic galaxy is subject to the determining conditions. It should therefore have its temporal, eternal and hyparchic components. So, galaxies must arise from a combination of mass (hyle actualized in time), potentiality (potential energy of gravitational and electro-magnetic fields), and recurrence (angular momenta of the galaxies and star systems). These are necessary for the formation of galaxies by the arising of matter from undifferentiated ground state. The autonomic body is regarded as equivalent on the cosmic scale to hyparchic regulator in living organisms. Some galaxies have no spiral structure of angular momentum – we see them as asleep, passing through a stage of non-actualisation between recurrences of active realization.

The inter relation of galaxies. Unlike suns, galaxies are grouped into related systems – common origin and continuing interaction. With our own sun/ galaxy, this comprises of several hundred thousand million stars. Unidecipotent domination. Galaxies are pervaded by life, thus too great to intervene directly in directing the course of autonomic existence. Life alone can bridge the gap between hyponomic and hypernomic worlds. So, galaxies decree the arising of life and creation by dominating power.

 

The Universe – Duodecipotence – Autocracy

Autocracy is not the need to explain everything but derives meaning from recurrent experience of the sovereignty of will. Will admits to no directing. Therefore, one aspect of existence is autocratic. Thus, not metaphysical. Nothing about that is beyond experience. Not values. Autocracy is a fact of universal significance but explains nothing not already in experience. It is empirical. A galaxy or family of galaxies are not the totality of experience. There is a supragalactic existence we know nothing of. Cosmic wholeness: limit of possible knowledge of cosmic autocracy as limit of possible existence.

What is knowable is only functional aspecst. Being of the universe is unknowable. Inaccessible to consciousness. If we define cosmic consciousness as direct experience of universal being, there must be many gradations of cosmic consciousness.

12 step cycle begins with being as ground state of hyle, will as determining conditions, function as undifferentiated potency. Limits of existence are inaccessible – but we can consider the principles of experience.

Three forces: the affirming force becomes more dominant as we ascend the scale of evolution. There must be a point where all affirmations are assigned to the cosmic moment.

It is not a date or time – nor out of time but a moment of determination. Present everywhere, always, in all recurrences, all levels of potentiality. Actualisation begins here. The cosmic impulse – here, all existence is compelled to become what it is destined to be – involution: all potentialities seeking actualization.

The autocratic affirmation is present in all actualizations. Its purity depends on its purity of medium. The autocratic in man is transcendental – essence. Man does not affirm but stands in the presence of autocratic affirmation. The root of existence. He enters into triads by turning inwards or away from this affirmation. This is choice of living. He cannot exist beyond life.

In the universe, life is omnipresent and plays the same role in involution and evolution. Life is possible because of the sun. What of energy not entering material existence?

The hyponomic universe is based on transformations of hyle: hydrogen to helium. Therefore, the history of the universe is about half way through. This is a suspicious state. In terms of potential and actual states, hyparxis has the role of reconciliation. The universe is what it is because we are what we are. We ask if the amount of energy disappearing from sight is of greater significance than the amount that does not. Is the sun wasting most of its energy? Or, this is only the visible part?

Radiant energy is localized by the interaction of photon and electron – without it, energy is everywhere. Thus, the invisible is far greater than the visible.

Actualisation proceeds in a void. Potentiality exists in the fullness of invisible light.

We might say that the majority of universal energy is in the form of matter – but only a small part can be converted into energy. A certain energy level is needed.

Let us consider: is the universe expanding? When we place ourselves in a perspective where time and eternity are merged, expansion must be proceeding simultaneously with contraction.

We cannot suppose there is a reflecting layer of energy returning radiation into our space at the boundary of the universe. Radiant energy not intercepted should not be regarded as radiating outwards into space – for ever or until absorbed.

Energies given out by the stars and unabsorbed by other stars can be regarded as returning to a pre-corpuscular state. So galaxies are linked to corpuscles – the two extremes of the universe. The dissolution of corpuscles evokes the emergence of particles. This emergence is the response of the most passive mode of existence. Emergence of particle proceeds unperceived. Only one neutron per cubic meter is needed. A complete cycle of involution/evolution maintains the universe. The waste of star energy is the cosmic economy. Entering the hyle in the primordial ground-state, it produces differences of energy content below corpuscular level. Random variations in distribution can raise a small proportion of hyle to that intensity of togetherness so a particle can emerge. So, involution and evolution are one self-maintaining cycle. It is not just energy absorbed by matter that is usefully employed but energy that enters pre-corpuscular hyle. Planets that absorb energy without reemitting it are therefore the true wasters. But, energy diverted from great universal cycle into planetary worlds serves the creation and maintenance of life: sentience and consciousness. Consciousness is the universal reconciling force by which the balance of the universe is achieved. Polar character of existence: involution and evolution. If we add relatedness, life and consciousness produce the triad by which involution and evolution needs are reconciled. As a measurable quantity, the energy withdrawn from the cosmic cycle may represent only a minute proportion, but the autonomic standpoint of quality is important – the potentiality of transformation of higher gradations of existence. The hypernomic universe grinds all existence between upper and nether millstones of involution and evolution. It has no direction: hyparchic recurrence. The hypernomic universe is incomprehensible to us: will is autocratic – affirmation always dominates and demands, creates and destroys.

Only the autonomic universe is comprehensible – here men seek and fulfill destiny. This search takes us out of natural order to where being and will meet with function and transformations are not just impersonal energies but the very essence and individuality of man. It is in the transformations of being and will that values reside. We can see the natural order and unity of all existence – and even cosmic plan. But the plan lacks responsibility and qualities of joy and suffering, of love and worship, only seen in the universe as dramatic: life not merely as a device for transformation of energies but instrument for the universe to gain consciousness of its own significance.

This is the study of the universe as fact; the universe as value remains to be studied.

The End of Volume I.