Published
by:
Author Me UK
Ware
Hertfordshire
England
www.author.me.uk
Available to buy in paperback or to
download at
www.lulu.com/AuthorMeUK
All typesetting and illustrations are by the author.
This book is dedicated to my lovely daughter Jeni
In memory of my Mum – Dawn Day
SRN, MSc(Hons – Uni. Of Hertfordshire): - 1st July 1931-24th
August 2007
ISBN 978-1-4116-7829-3
Copyright Ó Simon
Richard Lee, 2008,
2009
Full Career History of Mister il Professori
SIMON RICHARD
LEE,
Open Scholar, Saint Albans School
1968-1975; Open Scholar, OA, BA, MA, KCC,
King’s College, Cambridge, 1975-1983;
CEng, MIEE, MIET, MInstMC
www.author.me.uk www.silee.me.uk
www.lulu.com/AuthorMeUK www.lulu.com/authormeuk
www.maam.org.uk www.simonlee.me.uk
PUBLICATIONS
1999
Ten poems published in an anthology called ‘echoes from beyond’, by
Spotlight Poets, Forward Press, of Peterborough, UK.
2001 ‘Spiritual Energy’ - ‘a Spiritual
Science that PROVES scientifically that God Exists!’ - published by www.authorsonline.co.uk. Now out of print – see below.
2004 Second Edition of ‘Spiritual Energy’
published by them also. Now also long
since out of print.
2005 – 2008 Developed the above set of websites to
promote my sales website www.lulu.com/AuthorMeUK
to sell six books in hardback (poems); and paperback and downloadable: -
1.
Paperback/downloadable
book ‘Scientific Proof that (God The Holy) Spirit Exists’ – totally revised and
abridged version of ‘Spiritual Energy’ as above
2.
Hardback/paperback/downloadable
books of my 22 poems from the 20th Century 1977-2000 ‘A Many
Threaded Tapestry’
3.
A series of five
paperback/downloadable books about my chronically abysmal experiences to date
of the ‘Great’ British National Health Service (NHS):
i.
“Which Witch Doctor?”
ii.
“Disabled – by Doctors…!”
iii.
“The Fourth Helen of the
Apocalypse!”
iv.
“Doctor Police!”
v.
“Always Rise Above The
Black Art of PSEXISTRICKERY”
4.
Edited and typeset a
paperback / downloadable book by ex-lover QT Saunders: - “The Tender Years”
a.k.a. “SCARS” or “Heart of Hurts” as published in e-book and paperback form by
two other British publishers, ‘SCARS’ by www.authorsonline.co.uk and ‘Heart of
Hurts’ by www.chipmunkapublishing.com.
A superb gripping read like all of my own books as above…
October 2008. Launched all of these
books at my then new web-site www.silee.me.uk
alias www.author.me.uk.
July 2009. Launched a second
new web-site to promote a final part of my main book – ‘Manifesto: Abolish All
Money!’ – the site is www.maam.org.uk
alias www.simonlee.me.uk .
October 2009. Complete re-launch of these two
sites; to re-launch my 100% edited and greatly expanded, so completed book,
with a new subtitle added for 2010: -
Scientific
Proof that (God The Holy) Spirit Exists
Book of Life
2010
FULL CAREER HISTORY
in SCIENTIFIC COMPUTER SYSTEMS
1993 - 2009 Huge problems with the British NHS!
(‘Chronic and acute’…) I only worked for one of these sixteen years
full time: - July 1996-April 1997; on global, world-wide ‘Distributed
Interactive Simulation’ (DIS) C++
systems networking of virtual reality tank battle simulation. The Official Secrets Act covers this work as
a Senior Software Design Engineer at Lockheed Martin Solartron (who make the
stealth bomber!)
Also 1999-2002
was personal tutor of A level maths and physics; A level/degree C++ computing; and IT to People with
Learning Difficulties. Best result was my
last student got from 18% failure to ‘B’ grade AS level pure and applied
mathematics in just four hours’ tuition!
He ‘just’ needed confidence! A
familiar story I often found!
In 1991 I was
made a full Member of the Institute of Measurement and Control and so a
Chartered Engineer. This was solely
based on experience, no examination required apart from one-hour interview and
CV. In 1992 I was made automatically, as
a result of the above, a full Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers
and 2005 a full Member of its successor the Institution of Engineering and
Technology - so have all of four
Royal Charters – of the UK Engineering Council as a Chartered Engineer; in
Electrical and Electronic; Engineering and Technology; and Measurement and
Control Engineering. (Chartered
Electrical and Electronic, Engineering and Technology; Measurement and Control;
so Instrument Engineer with all four Royal Charters on my lounge wall).
While
unemployed all this time I brushed up further:-
2002. JAVA PDQ (Professional
Development Qualification) completed.
2004. Elected under Italian Law to full status of ‘il
Professori’ (‘Professor’) in a full 24 hour Induction Ceremony conducted by QT
Saunders, fellow author!
July 1988 - September 1992 PA Consulting Group, Gates Way, Old
Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Tough
contracts for various Government, military and other blue chip clients as a Management Consultant: -
o BP Chemicals.
Grangemouth — extensive systems authoring and testing of ‘ESCORT’, a Lisp/Fortran
artificial intelligence system — predicting process control problems.
o National Grid
Company HQ, Southwark, London (opposite
what is now Tate Modern Art Gallery but was a very famous power station before
that). Eighteen months’ systems acceptance testing of Vax mainframe computer
systems cluster housing SD-Scicon’s Fortran- and Oracle-based Settlement System
for all UK Electricity Producers and Regional Electricity Companies
(TREC’s). Acknowledged as the top expert
of large team on the complex calculations involved and led principal testing
team.
o Royal
Automobile Club (RAC) HQ Croydon Fixed all bugs and made many system
enhancements to the Vax-based ‘Paragon’ International Routing System. It is all free these days!
o All Ministry of
Defence (MOD) bases in central London including Whitehall. Official
Secrets Act covers this full analysis of the Procurement databases of all the
services including Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and even the Fleet Air
Arm.
o Fleet Air Arm -
Yeovilton and Portland Bases. Official Secrets Act again - upgrade to military
air traffic control system written in Pascal on PC’s.
o ORACLE SQL database
system - training course.
o Government
Structured Systems And Design Methodology (SSADM) Proficiency
Certificate.
o SAS
Intelligence Induction Course (NOT enlisted) on leadership,
initiative, teamwork and SAS intelligence and psychology - at an SAS Induction
HQ
1987 Found work locally and made the boss
multi-millionaire from 1988. By designing lan Pointer of Digitron
Instrumentation, Hertford, a four channel temperature/millivolt
handheld data logger with just 32 components including case and rechargeable
batteries, with just four kilobytes of ‘C’ software in Motorola 68HC11 micro
controller. Seemingly uniquely, was accurate
to 0.1 degrees Centigrade. Use of a
Teledyne dual slope analogue/digital (A/D) converter was lan’s brilliant only
stipulation for the design, otherwise all by yours truly. Thousands sold
nationally and globally to supermarkets!
1980 –
1987 LEE MICROMATICS LIMITED Welwyn Garden City. TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Chief of design, production, testing
and implementation cycle of many 100% working, extremely advanced and complex
‘Microfast’ real-time process control automation systems (‘SCADA’
systems). These were written in large
scale Z80 assembler language for high speed, and Pascal, producing novel
software that worked in totally visual graphical ‘building blocks’, not ‘code’
for:-
o Fisons Boots
Chemicals (FBC) Widnes Prototype
system ‘Microfast I’ installed on this hydrazine rocket fuel plant (also used
to scrub out power station insides, I was told!) in 1980 prior to ‘Microfast
II’ successor system which we finalised 1983-1987. Full Turnbull Control Systems Series 6000
one- & eight- Loop Control Instruments Interface, TDS Easycolour 4200
intelligent colour graphics VDU and printer interfaces at this stage of the
design.
o Commonwealth
Smelting ltd zinc/lead smelting furnace, Avonmouth - now Pasminco Europe plc - biggest
customer with four systems bought all integrated with DECNET on Vax computers,
Allen-Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s) and the entire Turnbull
Control Systems’ 6000 series of (Texas instrument micro-controller-based)
intelligent process control instruments.
All fully real-time and networked with multiple TDS 4200 colour VDU’s,
and multiple printers.
o Tate Gallery -
Clore Extension. This
houses the country’s
entire collection of Turner masterpieces. Extremely complex and sophisticated
(artistic!) heating, lighting and humidity control system. Dared to touch ‘Norham Castle Sunrise’ with
one finger… in awe of my favourite Turner masterpiece. This was only while I was trusted alone in
the gallery with the collection of priceless works of sublime art like that,
lying on the floor while being cleaned and prepared!
o Bondina
Textiles, Greetland near Halifax, North Yorkshire (now Freudenberg Textiles plc – a multi-national with Japanese
and German bases).
Very
sophisticated control of multiple Siemens S5 Programmable Logic Controllers
(PLC’s) for the very pragmatic production of everyday bonded artificial fibres,
as sold in cleaning pads etc, in supermarkets throughout the world, under world
famous trade names like Vileda and Vilena...
1981 – 1988
In my spare time I did eight years of
wonderful voluntary work, for which I claimed no expenses, for the local MENCAP
Gateway Club, and also physically and other disabled.
This included
free trips throughout in return to many parts of England, plus Caltagirone,
Palermo and above all Raggione in Sicily.
MAFIA HQ got a
shock when we took the town square at Raggione over - it all ground to a halt
especially when we took the wheelchairs down the local CAVE steps! So their occupants
could also see the lovely caves underground, complete with our cheery crowd of
people with learning difficulties.
Notoriously
Italians, at least then, used to resent and conceal disability at all cost...
My other trip
abroad with Hatfield Gateway Club was equally memorable - on a houseboat in
Zierikzee, Holland, in deep winter.
1976 – 1980 Contract ICI plc software designer
This involved a very great deal of 100% completed and tested
work, on several complete, ICI process control plastics plant
automation projects. First job in 1976 –
completely rewrote, and tested, with only ONE small bug, the entire 5,000 line
sequence control program for the Melinex polymer plant at ICI Dumfries,
Scotland. Not surprisingly after that,
invited back repeatedly and designed 11 packages totalling nearly one megabyte
in the ICI language RTL/2, for cost control systems in the year 1979-1980.
EDUCATION
1975-1979 – Won an Open Scholarship in 1975,
took a year out, then took my BA (given my MA in 1983) in Natural Sciences
(Part I) and Computer Science (Part II) Tripos, King’s College, Cambridge.
1976-1977 - ‘Got “an incredibly good” First in Chemistry at Part
IA’, according to Professor Richard Lambert, Director of Studies in Natural
Sciences at King’s - a lot thanks to excellent and intensive personal tuition.
I ‘only’ got a
II:1 in mathematics and biology of cells; and devastatingly at the time, only a
II:2 in my ‘major’ subject, physics.
1977-1978 - Despite all
problems of love life, and vicious political stress especially in such an
academically rarefied college, ‘got’ a very high II:1 - with rather
philosophical physics exam answers.
Not
surprisingly, having stopped going to lectures halfway through the year, got
only a Third at my ostensibly best subject, mathematics. Nevertheless - high II:1 in Natural Sciences
Part IB hence First/II:I overall in Part I of the Tripos.
Loads of hockey
(as was the college secretary - who haunted the bar lunchtimes to scratch
together any old volunteer team - mixed against the all-male teams of most
other male only colleges).
Stroked and was
number six (6’2” and 13 stone) in college Third VIII till disciplined for
cursing my crew when double over-bumped
in the summer season bumps...!
1978-1979 – Managed a II:2 in Finals in Computer Science Part II despite very serious illness
for all of six months the previous year.
1975-1976 – ‘year out’ of education – in
heavy IT in the chemical engineering industry (my first four months at ICI as
above) then a working holiday on a kibbutz in Israel for six weeks, followed by
two weeks travelling round that war-torn country
1968-1975 - Consistently a top County
Scholar at Saint Albans Direct Grant School, Saint Albans, Hertfordshire,
England.
I followed Cambridge Lucasian Emeritus
Professor, of Higher Mathematics, Stephen Hawking, to this same school, ten
years after he was there. So I had all
the same brilliant teachers as he did - especially in maths and physics. That explains a lot later in my life! Top two
in class throughout and second in school’s national maths test to one Mr
Searby, top Oxford mathematics scholar.
Now enjoyed
sport more – squash, Hatfield tennis, darts, bowling, snooker, pool, cards, bar
and table tennis club, ‘all sorts’ of concerts - rock to classical – and rugby,
soccer, basketball, swimming, and hockey).
1972. Grade 1 in mathematics, English Language, French
O level (“l’argot parisien des rues parfait et couramment” after one month
intensive ‘Commune Europe’ 1972 at Cognac, France, in a lovely chateau)
1973.
Grade 1 in additional mathematics, German, Latin, history, physics,
chemistry; ‘only’ grade 2 in geography; O Levels. ‘Perfekte hochdeutsche akzent
bei meine deutscher Lehrer mit seine Frau aus Hamburg’!
Founder Member
school Conservation Society (ecology).
School second tennis team; and
sometimes second hockey team.
1974.
Grade 1
Geometrical/Engineering drawing O Level.
1974.
Duke of
Edinburgh Silver Award. (Voluntary psycho-geriatric nursing assistant at Hill
End Asylum. Feminism course with Arianna
Stassinopoulos at Hitchin Priory. Cycled
120 miles in 3 days round East Anglia. Honours Personal Survival Swimming.)
1974. A1 A1 A1 grades in my mock A and S (Special) Level
exams in Maths, Physics, and Chemistry.
1975. A1 A1 A grades in my Mathematics, Physics and
Chemistry, A and Special (S) Level exams.
Also I passed the Oxford & Cambridge
‘Use of English’ exam, followed by my Open Scholarship to read Natural Sciences
at King’s College, Cambridge.
I never 100% completed my DEAS Gold
Award that year, as I could not bear, at the very end of all that, to write up
my log of our 200 mile four-day cycle marathon round the Peak District National
Park. The theme of my log was
‘environmental damage’ and I felt too upset by the sheer hypocrisy – and so
vast damage - there…
Also took St John’s Ambulance First Aid
Certificate for DEAS, did more psycho-geriatric nursing, and got very
physically and mentally fit for that Gold Award...!
1964-1968 Newtown (Dellfield) Junior
School, Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
Consistent double ‘A’ grades in Maths and English apart from two
‘B+’ in the penultimate term – I was literally shocked by that ‘dismal failure’
(for me) and soon picked up in the last term back to double A’s.
So
a leading student in that school throughout - apart from football – I mostly
loved maths, English, art and music.
My teachers were all excellent and fun.
Memorably
my music teacher, Mrs Sheena Martin, was once married to George Martin. He was ‘quite musical’, largely thanks to
her. He was the famous producer of the Beatles…!
Contents
Introduction and Summary of this Book i
Volume A.
A New Science of (the Holy) Spirit
1. Complementary
Opposites. Extremely Fundamental
Concepts Indeed! 3
2. Where
Opposites Meet. An Exploration of Real
Value and invented value 27
3. Deus
ex Machina? Is it possible to build a
conscious, so truly intelligent machine? 55
4. The
various scientific structures of (the Holy) Spirit 65
5. How
(the Holy) Spirit interacts with the physical world 97
6. The
Spiritual Nature of DNA – Creation v. evolution 127
7. The
“Cosmic Consciousness” of the multi-coloured, musical symphonies of (God The
Holy) Spirit 151
8. The Anthropic Principle and Intelligent Design. 173
Volume B.
The Enemies of (the Holy) Spirit.
The three Apocalyptic Books in the Bible.
1. The New
Testament - The Book of Revelation 181
2. The Old
Testament - The Book of Daniel 251
3. The
Apocrypha – The Second Book of Esdras 309
Volume C.
(The Holy) Spirit overcoming Their Enemies?
1.
The
“seventy ‘sevens’ of years calendar” or “Numera-Logical Calendar” – a new
global peace initiative 329
2.
A
theory of – and cures for - mental illnesses 355
3.
Manifesto:
Abolish All Money! This examines what
the world might be like should Mankind as a whole Abolish Money! 365
Volume D. Light
relief after all that! My collection of
twenty-two poems pre ‘9/11’ 1978-2000 ‘A Many Threaded Tapestry’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All quotations are reproduced
by kind permission of their copyright owners, wherever copyright actually
applies.
Heraclitus, Parmenides
Ancilla
to the pre-Socratic Philosophers, by Kathleen Freeman. Published by Basil Blackwell (1948).
Polybius
de
Natura Hominis, edition IV, by Jones.
Published by Loeb.
Sengtsan
Zen and
Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth. Published by
Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.
Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu
A
Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, by Wing-Tsit Chan. Copyright
ã 1969 by Princeton
University Press.
Leibniz
The
Monadology, translated and edited by A Latta.
Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford (1898).
Karl Marx
Kapital
Volume I, translator Ben Fowkes.
Published by Penguin Books in association with New Left Review (1976).
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The
Phenomenon of Man. Published by HarperCollins (USA).
Bede Griffiths
Return
to the Centre. Published by
HarperCollins Publishers ltd (1978).
Kahlil Gibran
The
Prophet. Published by Heinemann, London (1926).
The Bible
All
translations are by myself.
Volume
A
A New Science of
(the Holy) Spirit
Article One
COMPLEMENTARY
OPPOSITES
Extremely Fundamental Concepts Indeed!
March
1979
1. Introduction
Since the beginning of recorded history
all sorts of people with time to spare, from many different countries and walks
of life, have attempted to tackle the fundamental question, ‘What does it all
mean?’ The purpose of this paper is to
approach this sort of question to a rather greater depth than is found at the
average house party. It is an attempt to
pick out the common threads of thought in the often disparate approaches of
philosophers, scientists, and people of some religious persuasion, to the
question of ‘the nature of reality’.
The paper concentrates on two such main
threads of thought. The first is the
ancient notion, familiar to both the ancient Greek ‘Cosmologists’, and Eastern
mystics such as the Hindus of India and the Taoists of China, of opposites and their place in the ‘world
order’. A key concept to the ancient
philosophers of both East and West was that one cannot ever consider an idea in
isolation, that is out of context from its complement or opposite. What is dark without the notion of light
against which to set it?
The second common theme I have found in
considering the approaches of philosophers, mystics and scientists to the
nature of reality and the universe, is a direct consequence of the notion of
complementary opposites. That is, they
all place great importance on trying to understand what is the principle behind
the many opposites they find in their contemplations, that is, the generating principle for them. For this scientists often find themselves
straying into the area of mysticism and religion, at which the majority
balk. In this paper I will be actively
and deliberately straying in this way, as a scientist. I hope the comparisons I draw between the
findings of scientists and mystics will prove interesting.
We begin our tour of the world’s main
philosophers with the least well-known, the Ancient Greek ‘Cosmologists’. Indeed, this earlier movement was suppressed
and derided by a revolution in Greek thought, led by the philosophers Plato and
Aristotle around 350 BC. Attitudes to
both of the main themes I described above, altered dramatically after this
revolution, and as a direct result modern Western Science and Technology, as
well as Communism, have evolved.
We move East next, for a brief look at
the attitudes of Buddhists and Taoists to the notions of opposites and the
reality behind them. Then we move to the
Middle East to consider the cosmology of the
Christian religion, as represented by the often remarkable writing of the
apostle John.
Next we turn to the arena of modern
physics, with all its exciting theories.
Some eminent modern physicists see in their emerging system of theories
about the nature of the universe, a return to the views of the Eastern thinkers
and the Cosmologists.
Before concluding the paper I devote a
section to a consideration of perhaps the most important duality of all, that
of subject and object, which obviously affects our attitudes to all other pairs
of opposites.
2. Western
Philosophy – the early Cosmologists
Modern Western philosophy was started over
2,300 years ago, by a series of philosophers and mathematicians, notably
Pythagoras, Democritus, Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. These philosophers, notably Aristotle and
Plato, are still regarded as the founders of modern Western philosophy, and accordingly
are taught about as the major figures of Greek thought. This was the foundation of classical physics,
economics and mathematics. As such, the
teachings of these men have had a profound effect ever since on life in the
West. Their philosophical ideas have
ultimately resulted in the current series of industrial revolutions culminating
in the microchip.
However, before these philosophers,
there was a powerful movement in Greece of philosophers known as
Cosmologists, whose work was scorned and derided by the founders of the
‘modern’ or ‘Socratic’ school. Plato,
for instance, often invented dialectics between his hero Socrates, and leading
members of the Cosmological school who were contemporary with Socrates, notably
Parmenides. He consistently attempted to
discredit these earlier philosophers.
Needless to say, Socrates always won the dialectic.
There are two main differences between
the teachings of the pre-Socratic and Socratic schools of thought. Firstly, the Socratic followers of Plato and
Aristotle dealt with abstract or ‘atomistic’ notions, such as The Beautiful,
The Good, as an ethereal concept, in glorious isolation. The pre-Socratic Cosmologists, sometimes
referred to as ‘Sophists’ (which means ‘wise men’), would have dealt with the
rather different issues of what is the difference
between beautiful and ugly, good and bad, and so on.
Secondly, the Sophists or Cosmologists
believed there is only one reality, the obvious one we perceive. On the other hand, Plato thought there exists
a world of ethereal ‘Forms’, as he called them, over and above the forms of
things we see in the everyday world.
This ‘Theory of Forms’ was picked up by the ‘Orthodox’ wing of the early
Christian Church, as opposed to the mystical ‘Gnostic’ wing. It was the Orthodox wing that won the ensuing
theological ‘battle’.
In this section we will consider the
writings of three of the early Cosmologists, who were Heraclitus, Polybius and
Parmenides. All three dealt with the
important idea, obviously prevalent at that time, that opposites are
complementary and that there is a fundamental basis for this. Heraclitus and Parmenides called this divine
principle the LOGOS. This remarkable
Greek word, which means ‘Word’ itself, or ‘Reason’ or ‘Law’, often crops up in
the writing of both men, as we shall now see.
2.1 Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was in his prime
about 500 BC. He wrote just one book, of
which only fragments remain, covering ‘all knowledge, metaphysical, scientific
and political’. Here are some extracts. Notice the twin emphasis on a system of
opposites, and the idea of the logos, the underlying harmony through conflict
between these opposites, both physical and metaphysical.
1. The Law (LOGOS) is as here explained; but men
are always incapable of understanding it, both before they hear it, and when
they have heard it for the first time.
For though all things come into being in accordance with this Law, men
seem as if they had never met with it, when they meet with words and actions
such as I expound, separating each thing according to its nature, and
explaining how it is made. As for the
rest of mankind, they are unaware of what they are doing after they wake, just
as they forget what they did while asleep.
2. Therefore one must follow that which is
common. But although the law is
universal, the majority live as if they had understanding peculiar to
themselves.
3. That which is in opposition is in concert,
and from things that differ comes the most beautiful harmony.
4. Joints: whole and not whole,
connected-separate, consonant-dissonant.
5. Those who step into the same river have
different waters flowing ever upon them.
6. That which alone is wise is one: it is
willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zen.
7. That which is wise is one: to understand the
purpose which steers all things through all things.
8. You could not in your going find the ends of
the soul, so deep is its Law (Logos), though you travelled the whole way.
9. Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives
the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water.
10. And what is in us is the same thing: living and
dead, awake and sleeping, as well as young and old; for the latter of each pair
of opposites having changed, becomes the former, and this again having changed
becomes the latter.
11. To those that are awake, there is one ordered
Universe common to all, whereas in sleep each man turns away from this world to
one of his own.
12. To God, all things are beautiful, good and just;
but men have assumed some things to be unjust, others just.
13. The bow is called Life, but its work is Death.
14. In the same river, we both step and do not
step, we are and we are not.
15. When you have listened not to me, but to the Law
(Logos), it is wise to agree that all things are one.
16. They do not understand how that which differs
with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of
the bow and the lyre.
17. The hidden harmony is stronger than the visible.
18.
Those things of which there is sight, hearing, knowledge: these
are what I honour most.
19. God is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace,
satiety-famine. But He changes like
Fire, which when it mingles with the smoke of incense is named according to
each man’s pleasure.
20. Cold things grow hot, hot things grow cold, the
wet dries, the parched is moistened.
2.2 Polybius
Polybius was the son-in-law of
Hippocrates, the famous physician after whom the Hippocratic oath of medicine
of today is named. The extract below
deals with the rôle in health of the famous four Ancient Greek opposites of
fire, water, earth and air:
‘The
body of man always possesses all of these (the four humours, characterised by
the four primary opposites), but through the revolving seasons they become now
greater than themselves, now lesser in turn according to nature. For, just as every year has a share in all,
in hot things as well as cold, in dry things as well as wet (for none of these
could endure for any length of time without all of the things present in this
universe; but if any one of these were to cease, all would disappear; for from
a single necessity all are composed and nourished by one another); just so, if
any one of these components were to cease in a man, the man would not be able
to live’.
It was
almost certainly another – unknown – ancient author who wrote about just two
opposites, fire and water being in conflict:
‘Each
one rules and is ruled in turn, to the maximum and minimum of what is
possible. For neither one is able to
rule altogether... If either were ever
dominated, none of the things which now exist would be as it is now. But as things are, these (fire and water) will
be the same forever, and will never cease either separately or together’.
2.3 Parmenides
We now turn to Parmenides of Elea, who
was in his prime about 475 BC. He was
acknowledged by Plato as the first philosopher to use a dialectic, but was also
pitched by Plato in dialectical arguments against his contemporary, Socrates,
who always ‘won’! Plato used these
imaginary conflicts to attack the early Cosmologists. He did so, perhaps surprisingly, against
Parmenides in particular, even though Parmenides regarded with scorn the
attitudes of his contemporaries to the ‘laws of opposites’.
Parmenides used Divine Intervention to
justify his claim that all opposites are an illusion, and that only the logos
or law (which he calls ‘Being’) is to be considered. I quote below most of the text of a poem that
Parmenides wrote, from which classical scholars have deduced almost all that is
known of his original thinking.
This poem, called the ‘Doxa’ or ‘Truth’, was written for
Parmenides’ pupil Zeno, who is supposed to have been responsible for a famous
series of paradoxes that confounded most mathematicians of his day. Notice his emphatic denial in the poem that
the traditional four opposites described by Polybius above have any meaning,
and by his appeal to divine justice, how he implied that they belong in the
occult, which is whence they are relegated today.
Parmenides’ DOXA
1. The mares which carried me, conveyed me as
far as my desire reached, when the goddesses who were driving had set me on the
famous highway which bears a man who has knowledge through all the cities. Along this way I was carried; for by this way
the exceedingly intelligent mares bore me, drawing the chariot, and the maidens
directed the way. The axle in the naves
gave forth a pipe-like sound as it glowed (for it was driven round by the two
whirling circles at each end) whenever the maidens, daughters of the sun,
having left the palace of night, hastened their driving towards the light,
having pushed back the veils from their heads with their hands. There (in the Palace of Night)
are the gates of the paths of Night and Day, and they are enclosed with a
lintel above and a stone threshold below.
The gates themselves are filled with great folding doors; and of these
Justice, mighty to punish, has the interchangeable keys. The maidens, skilfully cajoling her with soft
words, persuaded her to push back the bolted bar without delay from the gates;
and these, flung open, revealed a wide gaping space, having swung their jambs,
richly-wrought in bronze, reciprocally in their sockets. This way, then, straight through them went
the maidens, driving chariot and mares along the carriage-road.
And the goddess received me kindly, and
took my right hand in hers, and thus she spoke and addressed me:
‘Young man, companion of immortal
charioteers, who comest by the help of the steeds which bring thee to our
dwelling: Welcome! – since no evil fate
has despatched thee on thy journey by this road, for truly it is far from the
road trodden by mankind; no, it is Divine Command and Right. Thou shalt inquire into everything; both the
motionless heart of well-rounded Truth, and also the opinions of mortals, in
which there is no true reliability. But
nevertheless thou shalt learn these things also – how one should go through all
the things-that-seem, without exception, and test them.
2. Come, I will tell you – and you must accept
my word when you have heard it – the ways of inquiry which alone are to be
thought; the one that IT IS, and it is not possible for IT NOT TO BE, is the
way of credibility, for it follows Truth; the other, that IT IS NOT, and that
it is bound NOT TO BE: this, I tell you, is a path that cannot be explored; for
you could neither recognise that which IS NOT, nor express it.
3. For it is the same thing to think and to be.
4. Observe nevertheless how things absent are securely
present to the mind; for it will not sever Being from its connection to Being,
whether it is scattered utterly throughout the universe, or whether it is
collected together.
5. It is all the same to me from what point I
begin, for I shall return again to this same point.
6. One should both say and think that Being Is;
for To Be is possible, and nothingness is not possible. This I command you to consider; for from the
latter way of search, first of all, I debar you. But next I debar you from that way along
which mortals wander knowing nothing, two-headed, for perplexity in their
bosoms steers their intelligence astray, as they are carried along as deaf as
they are blind, amazed, uncritical hordes, by whom TO BE and NOT TO BE are
regarded as the same and not the same, and for whom in everything there is a
way of opposing stress.
7. For this view can never predominate, that
That Which is Not exists. You must debar
your thought from this way of search, nor let ordinary experience in its
variety force you along this way, allowing the eye, sightless as it is, and the
ear, full of sound, and the tongue, to rule; but judge by means of the Reason
(logos), the much-contested proof which is expounded by me.
There is only one other description of the
way remaining, namely that What Is, Is.
To this way there are very many sign-posts: that Being has no
coming-into-being and no destruction, for it is whole of limb, without motion,
and without end. And it never Was, nor
Will Be, because it Is now, a whole all together, One, continuous; for what
creation of it will you look for? How,
whence could it have sprung?
Nor shall I allow you to speak or think of
it as springing from Not-Being; for it is neither expressible nor thinkable
that What-Is-Not Is. Also, what
necessity impelled it, if it did spring from Nothing, to be produced later or
earlier? Thus it must Be absolutely, or not at all. Nor will the force of credibility ever admit
that anything should come into being, beside Being itself, out of
Not-Being. So far as this is concerned,
Justice has never released Being in its fetters and set it free, either to come
into being or to perish, but holds it fast.
The decision on these matters depends on
the following; IT IS, or IT IS NOT. It
is therefore decided – as is inevitable – that one must ignore the one way as
unthinkable and inexpressible (for it is no true way) and take the other as the
way of Being and Reality. How could
Being perish? How could it come into
being? If it came into being, it is Not;
and so too if it is about-to-be at some future time. Thus Coming-into-Being is quenched, and
Destruction also into the unseen.
Nor is Being divisible, since it is all
alike. Nor is there anything here or
there which could prevent it from holding together, nor any lesser thing, but
all is full of Being. Therefore it is
altogether continuous; for Being is close to Being.
But it is motionless in the limits of
mighty bonds, without beginning, without cease, since Becoming and Destruction
have been driven very far away, and true conviction has rejected them. And remaining the same in the same place, it
rests by itself and thus remains there fixed; for powerful Necessity holds it
in the bonds of a Limit, which constrains it round about, because it is decreed
by divine law that Being shall not be without boundary. For it is not lacking; but if it were
spatially infinite it would be lacking everything.
8. To think is the same as the thought that IT
IS; for you will not find thinking without Being, in regard to which there is
an expression. For nothing else either
is or shall be except Being, since Fate has tied it down to be a whole and
motionless; therefore all things that mortals have established, believing in
their truth, are just a name: Becoming and Perishing, Being and Not-Being, and
change of position, and alteration of bright colour.
But since there is a spatial limit, it is
complete on every side, like the mass of a well-rounded sphere, equally
balanced from its centre in every direction; for it is not bound to be at all
either greater or less in this direction or that; nor is there Not-Being which
could check it from reaching to the same point, not is it possible for Being to
be more in this direction, less in that, than Being, because it is an inviolate
whole. For, in all directions equal to
itself, it reaches its limits uniformly.
At this point I cease my reliable theory
(logos) and thought, concerning Truth; from here onwards you must learn the
opinion of mortals, listening to the deceptive order of my words.
They have established the custom of naming
two forms, one of which ought not to be mentioned; that is where they have gone
astray. They have distinguished them as
opposite in form, and have marked them off from one another by giving them
different signs; on one side the flaming fire in the heavens, mild, very light
in weight, the same as itself in every direction, and not the same as the
other. This other is also by itself and
opposite; dark Night, a dense and heavy body.
This world-order I describe to you with all its phenomena, in order that
no intellect of mortal men may outstrip you.
9. But since all things are named Light and
Night, and names have been given to each class of things according to the power
of one or the other, everything is full equally of Light and Invisible Night,
as both are equal, because to neither of them belongs any share of the other’.
This poem is remarkable in being one of the
first reasoned attempts in the West to explain the world. Only Thales, Heraclitus and Pythagoras, and
some handful of other pioneers dared question the mythology of their ancestors. These are the very early beginnings of
Western science, and in section five I will show how modern physics now appears
to be returning to its origins after a lengthy ‘classical’ materialistic
diversion following the rationale introduced by Plato and Aristotle.
3. Eastern
Religions
I was at first very surprised to find ancient
Eastern writers express very similar views to those of the ancient Western
writers like Heraclitus and Parmenides.
At about the same time as Parmenides and Heraclitus were alive, but
separated from them by a vast gulf of distance, and hence very much culturally
isolated, were similar thinkers in India
and China, and later Japan. They were developing or had already
developed, great philosophical and religious systems, in particular Buddhism,
Taoism and Hinduism.
When I came to read the writings of some
of the founding figures of Taoism and the Zen branch of Buddhism (both
originally Chinese philosophies), I was struck by the similarity of these
pioneering works, to those of the pioneering Cosmologists in Western thought. I give below quotations from the
‘Hsinhsinming’ of Sengtsan, the first Chinese Zen Master or Patriarch, and the
‘Tao te Ching’ of Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu is
regarded as one of the founding figures of the Taoist philosophy.
3.1 Zen Buddhism – the ‘Hsinhsinming’ of
Sengtsan
Sengtsan lived in the sixth century AD,
and wrote one of the earliest treatises on Zen Buddhism, the ‘Hsinhsinming’ or
‘Inscription on the believing mind’. It
bears an astonishing similarity to the ‘Doxa’ of Parmenides which I quoted in
the last section. Both emphasise that
duality (the existence of opposites) is a delusion. Whereas Parmenides has an Ultimate Principle
in the notion of ‘Being’, Sengtsan talks of the ‘Great Way’, a familiar term in Eastern
thought. We shall see in the extracts I
give from both the Hsinhsinming and Lao Tzu’s writings, the emphasis, as strong
as that in Parmenides, that the only true approach to reality is through this
principle of ultimate reality.
Extracts from Sengtsan’s
Hsinhsinming
There is nothing difficult about the Great Way,
But, avoid choosing!
Only when you neither love nor hate
Does it appear in all clarity ....
.... Perfect like Great Space
The way has nothing lacking, nothing in
excess.
Truly, because of our accepting and
rejecting,
We have not the “suchness” of things
....
.... If there is the slightest trace of this and
that,
The mind is lost in a maze of
complexity.
Duality arises from Unity,
But do not be attached to this Unity
....
.... The activity of the Great Way is vast;
It is neither easy nor difficult.
Small views are full of foxy fears;
The faster, the slower ....
.... Illusion produces rest and motion;
Illumination destroys liking and
disliking.
All these pairs of opposites
Are created by our own folly ....
.... If the mind makes no discriminations,
All things are as they really are.
In the deep mystery of this “things as
they are”
We are released from our relations to
them ....
.... When all things are seen with “equal mind”
They return to their nature.
No description by analogy is possible
Of this state where all relations have
ceased ....
.... When we stop movement, there is no-movement.
When we stop resting, there is no-rest.
When both cease to be,
How can the Unity subsist? ....
.... The believing mind is not dual;
What is dual is not the believing mind.
Beyond all language,
For it there is no past, no present, no
future.
3.2 Taoism – the ‘Tao te Ching’ of Lao Tzu
Taoist philosophy is a lot older than Zen
Buddhism, and had a considerable influence on its origins. The ‘Tao’ is another Ultimate Principle, like
the Way, Being and the Logos. In Taoist
tradition it is the One, which is natural, eternal, spontaneous, nameless and
indescribable. The ‘Tao te Ching’
(Classic of the Way and its Virtue) is certainly the most important classic
work in Chinese literature. More
commentaries on it have been written than on any other Chinese book. The opening is as dramatic as the opening of
John I in the New Testament:
1. The Tao that can be told of is not the
eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not
the eternal name.
The nameless is the Origin of Heaven and
Earth;
The named is the mother of all things.
Therefore let there always be non-being
so that we may see their subtlety,
And let there always be being so
we may see their outcome.
The two are the same,
But after they are produced,
they have different names.
They both may be called deep and
profound.
Deeper and more profound,
The door of all subtleties!
The piece continues with a discussion of
opposites and their interplay. It is
important to understand something of Chinese tradition about opposites, in
order to appreciate this section.
Chinese tradition places great emphasis on just two principal polar
opposites, the yin and yang, which are two poles limiting all cycles of change.
2. When the people of the world all know
beauty as beauty
There arises the recognition of
ugliness.
When they all know good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil.
Therefore:
Being and non-being produce each other;
Difficult and easy complete each other;
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low distinguish each other;
Sound and voice harmonise with each
other;
Front and back follow each other.
36. In order to contract,
it is necessary first to expand.
In order to weaken,
it is necessary first to strengthen.
In order to destroy,
it is necessary first to promote.
In order to take, it is necessary first
to give.
This is called subtle light.
41. The Tao which is bright appears to be dark.
The Tao which goes forwards
appears to fall backward.
The Tao which is level appears uneven.
Great virtue appears like a valley
(hollow).
Great purity appears like disgrace.
Far-reaching virtue appears as if
insufficient.
Solid virtue appears as if unsteady.
True substance appears to be changeable.
The great square has no corners.
The great talent is slow to mature.
Great music sounds faint.
Great form has no shape.
Tao is hidden and nameless.
Yet it is Tao alone that skilfully
provides for all
and brings them to perfection.
4. Christianity
In preceding sections we have seen how
mystics of both East and West have often searched for an ‘Ultimate Principle’,
which founding figures of the Western Cosmologist movement called ‘Being’ or
the ‘Logos’, and early patriarchs or founders of Taoism and Zen Buddhism called
‘the Tao’ or ‘The Great Way’. The major
religions of the West (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) at first sight do not
appear to have a corresponding notion.
Indeed, both the Old and New Testaments are remarkably free of
cosmology, and there is very little in Islam to suggest a supreme principle. Instead attention is focused on a ‘Lord God’,
with very human attributes, who is a supreme being rather than a supreme
principle.
However, the few cosmological passages
in the Bible, notably the opening of the books of Genesis and John, seem to
hint at such a principle. I give below
my own translation of part of the opening of John I, from the Ancient
Greek. I think that none of the meaning
of the passage is lost, but that I can highlight parallels between the ideas
expressed here and those of the Greek Cosmologists, notably Heraclitus. Notice how the word ‘logos’, the Greek word
for reason, law, or the ‘Word’, is here synonymous with the word ‘God’. Note also how, in the final verse, the nature
of the logos or God is compared via a simile, to the ‘Being in the bosom of the
Father’, a safe and secure metaphor to express the nature of the universal
principle:
Extracts from John I verses
1-18
“In the
beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and God was the
logos. This was in the beginning with
God. All things evolved through it, and
without it became not one thing that has become. In it was life, and the life was the light of
mankind, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
overcome it....
.... The true light that enlightens every man was
coming into the world. It was in the
world, and the world became through it, and the world knew it not. It came to its own home, and its own people
received it not. But as many as received
it, who believed in its name, it gave power to become children of God, who were
born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but
of God. And the logos became flesh and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we beheld His glory, glory as of
an only begotten from a father, full of grace and truth....
.... No man has ever seen God; the only begotten
God, the ‘Being in the bosom of the Father’, the one declared here”.
5. Modern
Physics
About the beginning of this century,
classical physicists believed that they were on the brink of possessing an
‘ultimate’ description of the universe.
By viewing the universe as a machine that obeys certain mechanical laws,
as though it was a piece of clockwork, they had almost completely defined it in
terms of a large set of theories. These
divided the physical world neatly up into areas like mechanics, electricity and
magnetism, kinetic theory and atomic theory.
This division of the world into elegant-seeming boxes, with no
mystical blurring, was a direct and logical conclusion of a philosophical and
scientific train of development that had begun with the materialistic
revolution started by Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Democritus and Pythagoras.
The rosy mechanistic world-view of the
classical physicists was nearing completion when it was forever impeded, within
the space of a few short years, by the advent of a series of new discoveries
which did not fit into any of the classical ‘boxes’. Rutherford
showed that atoms were not, as scientists since Democritus had believed, the
smallest particles in nature, but that there were a whole host of smaller
structures and particles. Heisenberg in
particular showed, furthermore, that even these particles were not fundamental,
and that there are in fact no ‘basic building blocks’ of matter.
Instead, we should think of matter as
either a particle or a wave, but matter chooses to alternate between these
vastly different conceptions in a very mysterious fashion. Einstein showed in his theories of
Relativity, that the very framework of classical physics, absolute time and
space, was delusory, and that space and time formed a complex ‘four-dimensional
continuum’.
As if that was not enough, one
consequence of Relativity Theory is that energy and matter are regarded as
interchangeable forms of some more fundamental quantity. Hence the two basic axioms of mechanics, the
absolute nature of space and time, and the interaction of energy and matter,
were partly shattered by the new theories.
Finally, the ‘ultra-violet catastrophe’ showed that energy, like
particles, is present in packets called quanta.
In fact, apart from the description of a limited range of everyday
physical phenomena, classical physics had lost its hold on the science.
It appeared that the far more mysterious
theories now emerging, although not fitting into a neat mechanistic structure,
afforded a far more accurate picture of the universe at the extremes of the
very large and the very small. They
offered a far greater insight into the structure of the universe.
Although today we are still some way
from a unified picture of the physical universe provided by these new theories,
they have produced a curious ‘counter-revolution’ in science. Physics in particular has moved away from the
philosophy that produced classical physics, back towards the Cosmological views
of the earlier Greek Philosophers.
It is very interesting to look at pairs
of concepts, which in the framework of classical physics were distinct
opposites, or at least were listed in pairs but were extremely different. These all became complementary to each other,
or were even interchangeable, in the new physics. Some examples are given below. Many commentators see in this change and
other trends in modern physics, a return to the philosophical attitudes of the
early Greek Cosmologists, and a blending of physics with the ancient mysticism
of the Far East.
Matter – Energy
These two concepts, opposed in classical
physics, became interchangeable forms of the same concept in the relativity
theories of modern physics. Einstein’s
equation, perhaps the most famous of science, relates these two quantities:
E = m c 2
They are complementary views of the
world. To understand the one you need an
understanding of the other; a measurement of one implies, in atomic theory, a
measurement of the other. For instance,
particle physicists are quite used to quoting an energy level as a measure of
an entity’s mass.
Space – Time
In classical physics, space had been
regarded as a rigid three-dimensional framework in which the mechanical parts
of the universe operated like clockwork.
This frame could be measured, it was thought, in terms of a square
lattice that extended evenly to infinity in all directions. Time was seen as a continuous flow through
this lattice, that though mysterious, was assumed to be just as absolute as the
classical notion of space. Another
assumption inherited from the period of Aristotle, was that time and space
would be measured the same by anybody, regardless of how they moved in the
lattice of space or where they were in it.
Einstein’s two theories of special and
general relativity showed that space and time are far better not regarded as
absolutes, and that they changed according to the position and motion of the
person measuring them; and with the presence of matter, increasingly as the
mass of nearby objects increased.
Although the alterations were minute at the everyday level, at
astronomical distances they were significant.
An early experiment that verified the equations of relativity with great
accuracy, showed how light passing from distant stars close to the sun was
actually ‘bent’ in its passing.
Hence that great body of assumptions
that had been inherited by classical physics from the time of Plato and
Aristotle, and had been greatly refined by Newton, was totally undermined by Einstein’s
theories, which despite refinement have still not been disproved.
Waves – Particles
In classical physics, waves and
particles had been regarded as very different forms of matter, and indeed were
treated by different areas of the science.
However, Heisenberg’s principle, when tested by experiments with light,
shows that matter that is very small or of very low mass, exhibits attributes
of both wave and particle behaviour, depending on circumstances. As in relativity, the presence of other matter,
and indeed the human observer of any experiment, radically affects the results.
Electricity – Magnetism
The two fields of force, the electric
field and the magnetic field, were also regarded in classical physics as being very
different, and usually opposite in their effect, and in the equations used to
describe their action. Once again,
relativity shows that these ‘opposites’ are aspects of the same fundamental
concept. They are only distinguishable
in the equations of relativity used to describe them, by a relativistic ‘shift’
relative to the Space-Time continuum.
Matter – Antimatter
Classical physicists had no notion of
antimatter, which was first postulated by Einstein’s equations, and only later
detected in laboratories. It is the
polar opposite to ‘normal’ matter, and every fundamental particle so far
detected, apart from the ‘neutral’ pions and photons, has a corresponding
anti-particle. Once again, nature
appears to operate on the basis of complementary opposite pairings.
Light – Darkness
Using Maxwell’s equations, which in fact
originally derived from classical physics, one can show how light comprises two
complementary electric and magnetic fields.
They are coupled in such a way that photons – particles of light – can
propagate even through an absolute vacuum.
Again, light has the attributes of waves and particles, which are equal
and complementary.
We have seen how the findings of modern
physics appear to totally confirm the purely inspired insights of the ancient
mystics, even when made with the utmost precision. The simplistic mechanical view of the world
proposed by classical physicists, based solidly on the materialistic revolution
of Plato and Aristotle, is gradually being replaced by a world view in which
the universe is regarded via a set of complementary concepts. Furthermore, the presence of human observers
actually affects the results of apparently clinical, objective experiments. This brings us to consider the most important
duality of all, that of the subject and the object, the difference between us
and the rest of the universe.
6. The
Subject – Object Duality
One pair of traditional opposites that I
have only briefly touched upon so far is the subject and the object. I say ‘traditional’ and yet the
subject-object duality, and the split between ‘subjective’, ‘artistic’-ness and
the objective nature of science is very much a Western phenomenon. The Cosmologists of Ancient Greece, and the
early mystics of the Far East, would have had
no such difficulty in coming to terms with these two modes of thought.
As Sengtsan says in the Hsinghsinming, the aim of all mystics is
to understand the ‘suchness’ of the world, with no reference to ‘the observer’
and ‘the universe’ as in Western science. There are no two modes of thought for mystics
– they have attained a blissful ‘selfless’ state, where distinctions of any
sort between apparent opposites, including ‘self’ and ‘world’, have
disappeared. This is ‘Nirvana’ – the aim
of countless people in the East for millennia, attained only by the very few.
The notion of ‘self’, ‘soul’ or ‘mind’
as opposed to the ‘material world’ has its philosophical origins, once again,
with the work of Aristotle. It was the
basis of both Western science, and most of Western Christian doctrine, for
hundreds of years. It has remained
largely unchallenged, and whole edifices of thought have evolved, especially in
the Middle Ages, to justify the mind-matter dualism. These have enabled classical physics to
persist virtually unchallenged until very recently.
The development of modern physics, in my
view, heralds the end of the strict division between mind and matter, although
the crumbling of this edifice will almost certainly take a long time yet to
complete. There are still a large
majority of scientists, particularly those educated in other branches of
science than physics, whose training is still based on the notion that the
‘observer’ always plays a pristine, clinically detached rôle in scientific
experiments. Until the impact of the
latest discoveries of physicists can fully ‘filter through’ to other areas of
science, most scientists will still persist with the delusory mind-matter
dualism as the basis of their research.
7. Conclusion
The areas of thought I have described,
Cosmology in Ancient Greece, Eastern mysticism, and more surprisingly,
Christian Cosmology and modern physics, bear striking resemblances to one
another in two crucial ways. Firstly,
they are all to do, to a large extent, with contemplating pairs of opposing
concepts, which are approached in one of two ways, the dualistic and the
non-dualistic. However, we seem to be
seeing the non-dualistic starting to replace the dualistic approach, at least
in the science of modern physics.
Heraclitus was the first in the West to nominate a ‘Logos’, as a set of
laws governing opposites. Now we see,
after a diversionary period lasting over two thousand years, the return of at
least physics among the sciences, to a search for this ‘Logos’.
The second and far more important
resemblance between all these areas of thought, is their approach to the
governing principle between all the complementary opposites we encounter. What is it that holds two complementary
concepts together, yet keeps them opposed, in a sort of dynamic tension? The Cosmologists and the Eastern mystics
would have had no dispute over this. The
words differ – Logos, Being, Tao, Great
Way – but the meaning is clearly the same in each
case. Even physicists, in seeking a
Logos or set of universal laws, appear to be pursuing knowledge of this same
indefinable absolute – that which generates opposites.
From the point of view of Western
religion, this surely is the place of a ‘third force’ beyond duality: God
(alternatively, the ‘Ground of Existence’ or the Godhead), the Universal
Arbitrator of all pairs of opposites.
This is the One who (that which) generates all the complementary
opposites in the first place. Indeed,
perhaps it is better to regard each pair of opposites as a ‘trinity’, with the
central generating principle vastly more important than the details of the two
opposing concepts. This central
principle, which expresses the quality or degree of balance between each pair
of opposites, cannot be defined.
Robert Pirsig explored the meaning of
the word ‘quality’ in his book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, and
concluded that there are two kinds of quality.
One is the one I just mentioned, where it expresses the balance between
all pairs of opposites. However, the
Quality between the subject-object pairing is of a higher order – it is the
notion of Goodness and Worth, the Numinous itself. Hence he saw in the end just one kind of
metaphysical trinity – subject and object and Real Quality (to coin a
phrase).
These eventually, he found, are
reducible to just Quality, the Godhead, the Tao. Hence he found a modern Western equivalent to
the Tao, Being, or ‘The Way’. It appears
to me that considering the nature of pairs of opposites, and the ‘third force’
between them, leads one inexorably to the very same ‘Ground of Existence’ or
‘Godhead’, the generating force behind all religions.
Article Two
WHERE
OPPOSITES MEET
An exploration of
Real
Value
and
invented value
March
1980
1. Introduction
In my previous paper, Complementary
Opposites, I used the notion summarised by the paper’s title to try to examine
common threads of thought in many areas, from both East and West, and occurring
over a very large timespan. In that
paper, I looked in this way at pre-Socratic philosophy and religion. This was the work of the Ancient Greek
philosophers who came before the revolution in Western thought around 350 BC,
which was initiated mainly by Plato and Aristotle.
Next I considered Buddhist and Taoist
philosophy as examples of the corresponding style in the Far
East, of religious philosophies similar to pre-Socratic thought in
the West. Then I looked at the small
amount of explicit Cosmology in Western Christianity. I tried to establish a link between this and
the far larger body of Cosmological thought that I had explored in the
preceding two sections of that paper.
Next I turned to two areas with which I
was much more familiar. I was able to
point out the occurrence of many pairs of opposing and complementary concepts
in modern physics. Finally I looked at
the whole area of ‘Subject and Object’, a perennial source of discussion!
In the present paper I will be examining
the dominance, once confined to ‘Western’ thought but becoming much more global
this century, of so-called ‘rational thought’.
I will point out that this is not nearly so complete or solidly-founded
as one might be led to believe by our increasing reliance on scientific
advances and technology.
Indeed, I will be showing how ‘reason’ (which I employ loosely as
an umbrella term for all aspects of the ‘scientific revolution’ of 350 BC and
later, as described in my first paper), is totally dependent on the concepts of
opposites. This leads to a system of
what I call invented values.
Immediately following this, in the third
section, I introduce again the concepts I just touched upon at the end of my
first paper. These assert the essential
importance to any such system of a Real
Value, the transcendental ‘something’ which is not really a ‘thing’, to
create the invented values.
Then in the fourth section I will
compare and contrast Real Value and invented value in some detail. In the fifth section, I apply all these
notions to an exploration of the similarities of religions of the world.
In the final concluding section,
provocatively entitled ‘Towards a Creative Anarchy!’, I bring the whole paper
to a head. We will be exploring the
world as it might be, if the current world system were actually to give people
real freedom of choice, made on the basis of Real rather than invented values.
2. Reason (I)
‘Reason’, as a philosophical system, or
even a way of life, is probably what most people would answer if asked what
‘normal’ thinking is supposed to comprise.
The word is synonymous with a balanced, common-sense view of the
world. It is probably a surprise to
learn that reason has only become the ‘norm’ or ideal, relatively recently in
the time scale of human history.
Prior to the invention of reason (for
that is what it was), mankind throughout the world placed reliance on a mixture
of myths, legends and mysticism, as a guide to how to live. The replacement of this moral system by the
‘system of rationality’ seems to be a fundamental feature of all maturing
civilisations, which at a certain critical point of their development take
reason on board. Western civilisation
began to adopt reason around 450 BC, and the more ancient civilisations of China and most of the Far
East, some centuries or even thousands of years before this. Less mature cultures, such as the Minoans on Crete, have come to an end before even emerging from the
mythological opening phase.
I should like to make a few points about
the above observations. Firstly, it
should be obvious that myths and legends always persist in a culture even after
it has adopted rationality as its ‘norm’; people seem to have an insatiable appetite
for both fiction and non-fiction which inflames the imagination. Thankfully no society’s appeal to reason has
quenched this need, and its fulfilment.
Secondly, it should be equally obvious that there is room in any mature
society for a vast number of ‘norms’, not just one, especially when it is vague
and ill-defined.
I will be spending much of this section
in an attempt to define reason itself in terms of the system of opposites I
introduced in my first paper, in an attempt to show that reason is entirely dualistic, that is, dependent on the
existence of opposites. Finally, we will
be seeing how reason, however lofty and elevated it is made out to be, is not
really much of an advance from mythology.
Because of the brain’s vast capacity for pattern-matching, which I will
be trying to reduce reason to, it will turn out to seem a very primitive system
indeed, by comparison to what a fully integrated and peaceful community might
achieve. The love of mankind for
violence and domination, on many levels, both international and civil, has always
precluded this possibility.
Reason has two fundamental
ingredients. These are, first, logic, which is the process by which we
proceed from one known state of affairs to another, usually in a progression of
successive ‘known states’. Second, much
more dangerous, the set of assumptions
we need about any situation, in order to apply logic to it in this progressive
fashion.
I intend in this section to first of all dissect logic itself,
firstly to discuss its two well-known forms, deductive and inductive logic. Furthermore I intend to show how both of
these depend utterly on the use of polar opposites as a mode of thought.
I will then demonstrate briefly how it is equally impossible to
make one’s initial assumptions (prior to using the logical components of reason), by using logic itself unassisted by
‘something else’. What this ‘something
else’ is, I will go on to discuss in the next section, entitled ‘The
Transcendental’.
The use of reason as the major tool of
thought, philosophical or more down-to-earth, in Western Civilisation, began in
Greece,
as we just said, over two thousand years ago.
As I showed in my previous paper ‘Complementary Opposites’, prior to
this the only attempts to achieve ‘structured thinking’ over and above the
ancient myths and legends that had prevailed till then, were the works of the
Cosmologists, that Classicists call ‘pre-Socratic’ philosophers.
Reason, in the form first developed and
systematised by Aristotle, is totally dualistic. It divides the world up into ‘this’ and ‘that’,
and ‘you’ and ‘the rest of the world’, and then constructs an elaborate system
of tools to manipulate the ‘information’ produced. These tools are logic, both inductive and
deductive, and systems of hierarchies, of cause and effect, and degree of sophistication
of the dualistic objects. (For instance,
biological hierarchies of species, genera, etc.).
At the back of all this is the desire to arrive at a ‘true’
picture, or as the philosopher Kant described it, a true ‘apriori’ model of the
universe. This is in stark contrast to
what Zen Buddhists and Taoists look for, which when they name it at all, they
call the ‘suchness’ of reality. But what
do we mean by the statement that something is ‘true’? For one possible answer I
turn to one of the most eminent followers of the Aristotelian tradition,
Leibniz:
‘There
are two kinds of truth, those of reason, and those of fact. The truths of reason are necessary and their
opposites impossible, those of fact are contingent and their opposites are
possible.
When a
truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, by resolving it into
simpler ideas and truths, until you reach those which are primitive. It is in this way that mathematicians reduce
speculative theorems and rules of practice by analysis to definitions, axioms
and postulates. In the end one has
simple ideas which are indefinable.
There are also axioms and postulates – in a word, primary principles
which cannot be proved and do not need to be either. These are identical propositions, the opposite
of which contains an explicit contradiction.
But
there also has to be a sufficient reason for contingent truths – truths of
fact; for the sequence of things spreads out through the whole creation, that
is where the resolution into particular reasons could run into unlimited detail
on account of the immense variety of things in nature and the infinite
indivisibility of bodies...’
This passage from Leibniz illustrates
all three of the ‘classical’ aspects of reason – inductive logic (‘truths of
fact’), deductive logic (‘truths of reason’) and classification of causes and
effects (the last paragraph). Let us
now, armed with this classical notion of reason, proceed to reduce reason to
the dualisms it ultimately is based on.
Both deductive and inductive logic are pattern-matching activities, finding
relationships between two or more patterns of rational thought or of
words. They have opposite starting
points, deductive logic starting from a general statement and inductive logic
starting from a particular statement.
Having then established the first ‘truth’ or positive relationship
between two or more patterns, that is after showing that a pattern relationship
exists, both types of logic then produce a chain or network of further truths
by means of the word therefore (or
its symbolic equivalent). For example,
in deductive logic, consider the following sequence of simple ideas:
Postulate:
“The post office closes at five o’clock”.
Conjunction:
“It’s five-thirty”.
Therefore
(conclusion): “The post office is closed”.
By contrast, in inductive logic we work
the other way, from a ‘singular statement’ to a general one. For instance:
Singular
statement: “This cup of coffee tastes good”.
Therefore
(general statement): “All cups of coffee taste good”.
The first duality involved in logic of
both types is the ‘Subject’/‘Object’, the ‘Me’/‘The rest of the world’
division, which is obviously the most important. Reason and the scientific method always try
to be ‘objective’, to make statements about the rest of the world that would be
true even in the absence of an ‘observer’.
There takes place a complete reduction, an analytical knifing of the
world into subject and object.
Needless to say this raises great
problems, which prompted, for instance, the philosopher George Berkeley to
propose that “it’s all in the mind” for how otherwise could ‘things’ exist with
no-one there to experience them? His
final solution was to assert that, since God is omnipresent, all ‘things’
continue to ‘exist’ when there is no human onlooker, since God is there
instead. This obviously raises a whole
bundle of other questions, which we will not pursue here. Suffice it to say that this whole problem
does not arise in Eastern philosophy, simply because Taoists, Buddhists, and
all other Eastern philosophical schools of thought, refrain from applying this
particular analytical knife.
The second duality is the division of
what we actually experience, from an essential unity as presented to our
senses, to a ‘this’, and ‘that’, followed by the classification of the ‘these’
and the ‘those’ into a hierarchy.
Eastern mystics spend a great deal of effort to point out that while it
is seemingly a very natural thing to do, this second knifing is a very strong
barrier to ‘seeing’ the Tao or Zen. It
is a totally dualistic operation.
Whenever we categorise the world into
‘this’ and ‘that’, and produce a name for the ‘these’ and ‘those’, to fit into
our model of the universe, we are (probably without consciously realising it)
applying another very sharp analytical knife.
We effectively erect an intellectual fence, its opposite sides marked
‘this’ and ‘that’. By contrast, Eastern
thinkers emphasise it is vastly better and more natural to allow such
intellectual constructions to run down, so that one comes to terms with the
essential ‘suchness’ of reality.
The invention of the ‘this’/‘that’
duality allows the mind to compare and contrast things, and to combine its
complex conception of ‘something’ into a pattern,
which can then be compared with other patterns.
This is the origin of the rational conception of truth. A statement is ‘true’ when the patterns it
compares match; it is false when they don’t.
For instance, the statement “The Post office is closed” from my example
above, is a comparison of ‘post office’ with the pattern of things we call
‘being closed’.
The last tool reason uses in its
construction of statements and thoughts is invented
value, which term I had better explain.
Invented value arises when the pattern-matching of ‘this’ and ‘that’ is
performed on a scientific basis, when the attributes and characteristics of the
two patterns are measured. The process
of taking a measurement, like weighing out flour for cooking, is yet again
totally dualistic! Consider that
whenever we take a measurement we create a pair of opposite directions for the
character, like up/down, high/low, large/small, and so on. When there are obvious limits to the two
directions, measurement, the selection or assignment of an invented value takes
the form of determining the balance between the two extremes.
However, when one or both limits are
infinite, reason invents a cunning trick to make measurement possible, the unit (like the weights used to weigh out
flour in the kitchen). The same is done
for time, money and many other invented values that lack limits. However, the unit is once again a totally
dualistic concept. We have now invented
the concept of ‘this’ minute and ‘that’ minute of time, for instance.
Armed with this reduction of reason to a
totally dualistic operation, let us now analyse into dualisms and patterns, the
first simple example of logic that I made up earlier. First of all let us consider the postulate
that “the post office closes at five o’clock” which is actually quite
complex! First of all it attempts to be
an “objective” statement – normally post offices close whether we are there or
not! However, it is a postulate, based
on our experience that whenever we have asked at what time it closes in the
past, this is the answer we always got.
To analyse the statement further, it is
composed of three patterns. These are
“the post office”, “closes”, and “at five o’clock”.
“At five o’clock” is itself a pattern made by dualistically
splitting up a continuum, time, into units.
Hence the truth of this sequence of logic is based on matching up our
conceptions or patterns called “the post office”, “closes” and “five o’clock”,
all of which are dualistic. Since the
patterns appear to match we say the statement is “true”; we then proceed to say
and “it’s five-thirty now” therefore “the post office is closed”,
which equally are dualistic patterns.
This system of pure reason is refined by
the introduction of logical operators to
help make pattern matching as simple as possible. These are and,
or, and not (to add to the basic implication operator therefore). With these, and
the end in view of making our model of the Universe systematic, we then go on
to produce categorical hierarchies of the facts and statements. These start from postulates (the post office
closes at five o’clock) or singular statements (this cup of coffee tastes good)
and proceed via deductive or inductive logic respectively, to further ‘true’
statements, i.e. statements that ‘logically match’. Obviously, from all that I have said, such
hierarchies are totally dualistic as well.
Now let us apply all this reduction of
rationality to dualisms, to that invention which has done most to advance the
cause of reason and make it as efficient as possible – the digital
computer. Surprise, surprise, the
computer is utterly dualistic throughout! To begin with, its memory consists of simple polar digits,
which may take the opposite values of ‘1’ and ‘0’. These correspond to ‘yes’ and ‘no’, the basic
tools of the logic system. They are
arranged dualistically in ‘this’ and ‘that’ patterns, called words, and to
speed things up whole word-patterns are compared and operated on at a time.
To achieve this there is a large amount
of complex, and totally logical and dualistic circuitry, in the processor or processors of the computer.
These operate with and’s, or’s and
not’s (by the billion!) to relate the
patterns kept in the words. Since the
binary patterns can be taken to represent any form of rational information, from
truth values (1 or 0), through numbers to text, the processing can be arranged
(the machine is programmed) to carry out a very wide range of activities. The computer performs any purely rational activity very much more
precisely and quickly than the human brain.
Needless to say, since the computer is
totally dualistic it can be used to represent any form of rational
information. However, the essence of
‘The Transcendental’ is totally missing, the sense of undivided reality, so
computers (in the present design at least) are not conscious, but do
think. Let us now go on to consider ‘The
Transcendental’ in detail, and see why any dualistic design of computer will
never attain consciousness.
3. The Transcendental
In the introduction I said that I had
arrived at the conclusion that for all dualisms, bar the very special case of
the subject and the object, what creates them is the human mind. In section two I followed on this argument by
showing that the tool we use most in our structured thinking, reason, is
totally dualistic. I said then that
reason first of all divides the world into ‘subject’ and ‘object’, and then the
subject measures ‘invented values’ in the object or objects observed. These invented values can always be defined
in terms of opposites.
Now I would like to put forward a
completely different way of looking at things, starting from what I call Real Value, or Quality. That alternative
way is to say that the subject-object situation, in a non-dualistic way is created by something other than reason –
Real Value. That’s quite a mouthful, so
I’ll explain in detail what I mean. On
the way you should begin to see why I draw such a strong distinction between
Real Value and ‘invented values’.
My first statement, and it is a crucial
one, is that whatever it is that creates the subject-object situation, the
event at which the subject becomes aware of the object, can never itself be
categorised as either subjective or objective by dualistic reason. This statement has profound
implications! If the Tao or ‘mu’, as the
Eastern mystics call the creator of subject and object, is forever outside the
‘object’ category, then ‘it’ is never to be called an ‘it’! (In other words it is beyond rational
analysis into a dualistic framework of this and that).
Furthermore there is absolutely nothing
in the universe we can compare it with.
It is absolutely impossible to put it into words or even give it a name
(how do you name something that isn’t a ‘something’?). Nor, on the other hand, can we claim it is a
part of ‘me’. Hence the Taoist Lao Tzu,
whilst compromising and giving this ‘suchness’ the name ‘Tao’, says:
