Introduction

Read this book if you’ve been grappling with complex theological issues, and trying to tie the story of life into a simple overarching narrative, for in these pages I set myself the challenge of smoothing out some of those typical corners that seem to escape even the most earnest attempts to grasp at. Read this book also if you’ve never read anything theological before for all those same reasons. Imagine you were in earnest conversation with someone who had broken and entered your home and was likely to kill you to avoid leaving any witnesses. He seemed curiously inclined to debate moral issues though, and his essential argument was from Darwinism- that organisms survive by killing off the competition, so why should he not do the same? You begin with “you see, we’re societal creatures, we have laws and regulations which work for the common good…” He replies “Yeah, well without persons like me you wouldn’t need those laws, so what would that make you?” you’re a bit stumped by this and fumbling for what to say next… In these articles, I will try to outline a slightly more convincing reply…But we begin our journey far away from all these considerations, somewhere in ancient Greece…

PART I: CLASSICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

The Meaning of Life- to Encompass all things

Who can speak of the meaning of life? The only meaningful balance sheet is one that takes all finances into account, else it might lack accuracy. So also with any “meaning of life” claim: it must take all things into account or it might lack meaning. Missing information could lead to an erroneous conclusion- the wrong meaning. Thus the “Holy Grail” of epistemology is to circumscribe knowledge. What does this mean, to “encompass all things”? We shall see in this chapter the best efforts of the philosophers at precisely this.

Knowledge of course, is not the mere accumulation of facts, rather it is in their reasoned and comprehensive analysis. Mindless data does not amount to science, much less knowledge, rather they are “synopses” of the data. In order to make an accurate statement about “meaning”, all the data in existence must first be brought under our purview and scrutiny to be analysed- not just the Universe, but existence, itself. For we did not ask the meaning of the Universe, that of the fact that we were alive. But mind you, even such an analysis is not guaranteed to yield meaning, for the answer might be meaninglessnes. But should we find that our thoughts indeed do have a unified meaning, we could then really start to say that it was worth thinking them at all. For else it would seem meaningless to delve upon the meaningless.

Does Knowledge Yield itself?– The Search for the “Equation of Everything”

Were there a single mathematical equation to explain all things, it would truly be omnipotent by definition, or put another way, the ability to be the explanation of everything is omnipotence. In fact it is a simple matter to posit the form of the equation of the so-called “Theory Everything”, that the late scientist Stephen Hawking famously hypothesised the existence of, it must be “x=y”, where “y” is everything and “x” is not “y”. In practise, science deals with the “y” of the equation, “x” is not even the subject of science, for science deals with change, rather than the reason for existence.

Were knowledge, like the fabled equation, itself capable of independent existence, it would contain its own answer. That which has an independent existence can explain itself, that which does not, by definition is explained (or defined) by that which it is dependent upon. Thus scientific knowledge has no independent existence; it has a dependent or derived existence, from a greater reality which circumscribes it. This is the reason that such a search for the origin of the Universe within the Universe is futile. Knowledge much as it seems it should be, is simply not self-referential. This entire project of trying to find the explanation of things and believing that such an explanation is somehow within our grasp is markedly different from every other pipe dream that man has dreamed, for in the past dreams have brought happiness, contentment and pleasure, whereas this brings an equation with the promise of nothing else, and even the existence of which seems less substantial than that an advanced city surviving in the bottom of the sea inhabited by evolved mer-persons, and moreover the latter discovery would be a happy one. It would appear that in comparison to all the quests of old, it is the quest for the theory of everything is both mythical and unattractive in the greatest.

The scientific effort consists of asking question and filling out the answers through data gained form experimentation. Were science able to answer the question “what is the reason for the Universe’s existence?” with the answer: it is the logical conclusion derived from steps 3, 514 and 84,321 of such and such thesis”, it would mean that the Universe truly goes around eternally like clock-work, needing no explanation by virtue of that equation. This is not taken to mean that the equation “makes things happen”, because that would mean that the equation existed outside the things it was making happen. What the presence of such an equation means is simply that “things do happen”. There it is, there can be no other meaning derived from a “theory of everything” other than that nothing needs an explanation. This then, is the “god” of Science.

It would also mean that there were nothing outside the sphere of human knowledge and reason and that human reasoning were the primordial and supreme reasoning in the Universe. It would mean that reason had reasoned itself, and explanations had explained themselves. If knowledge explains itself, then philosophy corresponds to empirical (scientific) research. However  as we shall see, human reasoning simply cannot penetrate the “categories”, arrived at through that very reasoning, rather merely attempt to state them.

Two kinds of Knowledge: Inductive and Deductive

If it is true that knowledge does not explain itself, nor reason reason itself, and all man’s admittedly impressive efforts to do so are inherently futile, then there must be a knowledge that lies “outside” of that human knowledge and reason. This gives the concept of a possible second type of knowledge. This type of knowledge we can call a priori, while the former type is then called a posteriori, and can be seen as arising for the latter. The a priori cannot be known, rather only stated, and as we shall see, it is stated as the “categories”, or as Kant calls them, the “categories of the a priori”. Although there are other ways of understanding and arriving at these concepts, the most prominent of which I have stated below, the above seems to me to be the simplest manner of doing so. It is not an overstatement to claim that this is the central question of all human thought and philosophy. How could it not be, for it is the thing that a human being cannot hope to understand, yet knows exists, knowing it through his own reason. The intellectual tradition of philosophy begins in earnest one might say, with the philosopher Socrates in ancient Greece, down through his greatest pupil Plato and Plato’s own pupil Aristotle.

As we have just seen, we arrived at the concept of the a priori through simple reasoning rather than through the analysis of data from research. In order to be able to probe it further, (while all the time knowing that we cannot ever comprehend it), we must make a more profound inquiry as we will see. This however, as we shall also see, is the only way in which we avoid doing research for research’s sake with all the attendant ills. It is that by which we analyse the thought process that goes into research, and into analysis empirical data. Thus if such a structure exists, it is a necessary prerequisite to research, and is prior it: “a priori”. Like the sage, we must leave the hustle bustle of the world of tech, and go atop the Himalayan peak. But we go atop that peak not in order to study geology, but rather we detatch ourselves from mere worldly considerations, like that sage, in order to study our own thoughts. Of all things that there are to consider, it is indeed thought itself that is the most complex, more profound than the highest misty peak and the deepest ocean.

That which we can know from what we sense in the world of experiences and objects if we call “a posteriori” knowledge, the analysis of accumulation of such knowledge is called the process of “inductive reasoning”, taking observation from experiment and experience and inducing from the results. Second, what we can know in the absence of such sensory data, through the exercise of pure reason is called a priori knowledge, and one gets to this through” inductive reasoning”.

The Latin phrases a priori (lit. “from the earlier”) and a posteriori (lit. “from the later”) are philosophical terms popularized by Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781). However, in their Latin forms they appear in Latin translations of Euclid’s Elements, of about 300 BC, a work widely considered during the early European modern period as the model for precise thinking. The Arabian theologian Avicenna (Ibn Sina) stated: “Cognition again can be analysed in two kinds. One is the kind that may be known through intellect; it is known necessarily by reasoning through itself…the other kind of cognition is one that is known my intuition [experience]. Whatever is known by intellect…should be based on something that is known prior to the thing [that is, a priori, in Latin]” David Hume: A posteriori: matters of fact, based on experience. A priori: relations of ideas: can be known by mere operations of thought” and, “necessary truths are true in all possible worlds” Leibnitz states: “There are also two kinds of truth, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible. Truths of fact are contingent (secondary to certain conditions, and not primary- my addition) and their opposite is possible”.

Arriving at the “a Priori”

As we saw in the last section, the basis of knowledge must be sought through reasoned questioning. Just as the foundations of a house are found at the bottom of the wall, or the spring of a well at the bottom of the water, it seems reasonable to think that the foundations of thought might be found at the end of a line of questions. Thoughts arise as answers to questions as water from a spring. A line of questioning can be said to end when no answer is left available to it. Every one of us has experienced this in the simple game of “why” that children play, which ends with the parents resort to some form of distraction tactic to avoid embarrassment. For many of those parents, it will have been the last time they ever conducted serious philosophical inquiry.

Taking this childhood perspective further, to the question “why”, we can also add the remaining questions “what”, “where”, who”, “when”, and so on. In every line of questioning, should the last question be left unanswered, then that last answer (which is indicated by the question, and yet unanswered) is present “a priori” to all the others. When one does this in a comprehensive manner, then one ends up with unanswered questions like “why is there a unity?”, “why is there existence?”, “why is there causality?” (which can be seen as to ask: “why is there a “why” at all?”), “why is there goodness?”, “why is there order/design in nature?”, and so on. If not answered then each of the terms is taken as a priori separately, unless the terms can be shown to be equivalent, which case there would be but one a priori term. These terms are what philosophers have come to call “categories”.

Now there has admittedly been much speculation as to how the categories of a priori knowledge are arrived at, and this has given rise to various approaches. I have described the “questioning” approach, other ways that we might get to the heart of things are through the grammar of language itself, a certain “modal” approach, and the medieval “derivative” approach. I don’t go into the details of those others here. In fact Aristotle himself never discussed how he arrived at his own ten categories. Kant while admiring Aristotle’s mental genius at arriving at these, claims that they were picked at random, and indicates his own “system of judgements”, his principle for the classification into four classes as an improvement upon the former.

The Origin of the A Priori

We may take the presence of such “categories” as proof that such a thing as “a priori knowledge” exists and is not fictional, and the based on the single premise that the categories are non-fictional. The “category” is the necessary condition for the entire line of questioning in the manner that we have described earlier. When viewed prospectively it appears that we use such categories to classify our knowledge, yet when viewed retrospectively it appears that they serve to categorise our ignorance, those terms being inscrutable to our intellects (the reason that they cannot be further questioned), and yet familiar at the same time, they only serve to familiarise us with that ignorance. Thus although we can state that a priori exists, we cannot assert that we possess it as knowledge: they are to our minds like empty vessels…curious and wond’rously shaped no doubt, and yet empty. And therefore if there be such a thing as the “knowledge of the a priori/categories”, then that knowledge cannot lie within anything in the physical realm, since there is no other accumulator and analyser of knowledge in the physical realm apart from ourselves, the intellectual pinnacle of that realm. That knowledge must lie outside the physical realm altogether, i.e. it must be “metaphysical” by definition. This is the first mention of the metaphysical in the discussion. A term that can simply be taken to mean “not physical/material”, and therefore “immaterial”. Without knowing the reason for why we do so, we do think in certain categories, the categories being the term for those impenetrable questions that lie at the end of reasoning, and we do know the reason for their being.

There is also not complete concord as to the exact list of categories, and their precise classification. Again, let it be noted that this investigation into the heart of logic itself, rather than giving rise to complexities that reflect the complex nature of the analysis, gives seeming simplicities, terms themselves used in everyday parlance. All the complexity of reality is derived from the inter-relations of these seeming “simplicities”. Of all the things that we struggle to understand, our ignorance is not one of them, we are ignorant of simple facts: like why there is unity, plurality, causality, substance, numbers, movement etc. This is one of the greatest accomplishments of man’s philosophical heritage.

Again we can reassert what we state the problem of origins we encountered in our quest of knowledge and state it in terms of categories too: were a category self-explanatory, then it must also necessarily be self-propagating, it must necessarily bring forth “everything”, being the sole principle of everything. For example were we to reach the end of a line of questioning that ended with “why is there movement?”, the answer could only be the question itself reflexively, since it was last and it could not end in another question: “that thing you asked, that causes all movement!” For such a thing to be the case too, the category would have to be single. All categories must have ultimate equivalence, to be self-explanatory. 

The Conundrum of Plurality

This “plurality” that we encounter in the categories rather than present and answer presents a fresh philosophical conundrum in itself, for we were looking for answer, and instead find 10 or more answers with no answers to the nature of their inter-relatedness. Multiplicity provides no answer, whereas unicity provides no answer but itself. We examine more aspects of the difficulty of the “single entity” in the next section. But Plato must have been aware of these very difficulties when he proposed “the One” as the “Mother Category”, the “form of all forms” in order to present such a unicity as the conclusion of his studies. Although he could not flesh this concept of “the one” much further, (nor did he assert that he could), he remained convinced of its validity. In some of his writings, he considered that it was the “Good” which was the mother category. Thus we are beginning to see the roots here of a philosophical basis for monotheism, beginning with the very notion of the metaphysical, the notion that something else need exist apart from the physical. 

A Priori Category Listing Attempts

I present just a brief overview of the various categories that different classifications have come up with, if only to name the various categories that prominent philosophers have arrived at. The names are for the most part self-explanatory and gives one a perspective of these surprisingly and deceptively simple terms used in everyday parlance, which are seen as encompassing all human thought.

Indeed in all of human philosophy, those two are the most well-known: those of Aristotle and Kant, separated as they are by the vast expanse of two millennia. It is worth going through at least some of the names of the proposed categorisations in these schema, and we shall present three examples.

Aristotle, the student of Plato and successor as the head of his Academy proposed ten categories: (1) substance; (2) quantity; (3) quality; (4) relatives; (5) somewhere; (6) sometime; (7) being in a position; (8) having; (9) acting; and (10) being acted upon.

Kant (1724-1804) proposes a total of 12 a priori “categories Kant states immediately on having delivered the list: “This then is a list of all original pure concepts of synthesis that the understanding contains a priori. Indeed only because of these concepts is it pure understanding…” (p105 Critique of Pure Reason Penguin Publishing 2007, first published 1781). It is interesting to read through the names of the categories which are hardly technical terms, rather those in common everyday parlance. According to Kant, the first two Categories in every class are opposites and the third a combination of the two. (1) Categories of “Quantity”: Unity, Plurality and Totality, (2) Categories of “Quality”: Reality, Negation, and Limitation. (3) Categories of “Relation”: Causality and Dependence (Cause and effect), Inherence and Subsistence (substantia  et accidens) and Community (reciprocity between agent and patient). (4) Categories of “Modality: Existence, Necessity and Possibility.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788-1860) is probably the most well-known of the rest of the categorisations. He proposed four independent kinds of objects:  material things, abstract concepts, mathematical and geometrical constructions, psychologically-motivating forces. Corresponding to these four, he links four different kinds of reasoning: material things with reasoning in terms of cause and effect; abstract concepts with reasoning in terms of logic; mathematical and geometrical constructions with reasoning in reference to numbers and spaces; and motivating forces with reasoning in reference to intentions, or what he calls moral reasoning.

Boundary between the Known and Unknown

In terms of an actual discussion of the a priori categories, this was merely the most superficial overview of then involving neither an in-depth discussion of their derivation or origin nor containing an argument for their completeness and the inter-relation between the various categories. That is simply outside the scope of anything I want to do here. But once we have accepted that there might indeed be such a priori categories, and even ones that all can agree upon to human thought, then we see that whatever a human being might think, and in whatever way he might trace the lines of reasoning, his thoughts and his perceptions of the world around him, and the Universe in its entirety, he is presented with these seeming “origins” of thought. Further, beyond these a priori principles no thought is possible, for if it were then that thought would be a priori instead. What this defines for him then, is precisely the realm of that which is unknown to him, and yet exists, and exists as knowledge, knowledge a priori. It exists, precisely because he has deduced it, and it is unknown, precisely because it is a priori. A priori knowledge is the unique intellectual phenomenon of the meeting of the known and the unknown, of that which is known and yet unknown. Man must therefore presume that anything to do with these concepts must be an attribute of God if he does indeed believe in a God, or if not then he must forever wonder why such categories must exist at all, and whether they come forth through an umbrella term that has been called “random chance”. O do not believe there to be another option.

A priori knowledge is that knowledge that underlies all our knowledge whether as implicit or explicit. It is that first knowledge that the smallest child must have, and if it does not then it is the first knowledge that the developing mind must learn. He must gain knowledge of self, of space, of time of permanence of objects and so on (baby does not realise that a hidden rattle still exists until the age of around 6 months when it might learn to uncover it from its hiding place, so also “peek-a-boo” can scare a baby until a much older age, it does not realise that the parent is still present after the face is disappeared), and the theories of how this learning is achieved and its sequence are no doubt vastly intriguing.

I want to reader to, in moments when they might, as all humans do at some point in their musings wonder, “What have the greatest sages of humanity thought, what is the greatest insight in human history, what is that greatest wisdom that has been discovered about the greatest truth, would it not be sweet as honey that I know it, consider and contemplate it in quiet?” By this very wisdom, we arrive at certain knowledge beyond which it seems we can know no more. This is so for the simple reason that human knowledge has its limits. It is exhilarating because it seems we have found this limit, for had we not then we might question our own rationality. By reaching such a limit we can say that we have left no aspect of intellection out of our discussion and that we have cast our net as the saying goes, sufficiently wide.

Yet at we stand and gaze at what we have found, we might yet wonder at why that horizon of reason is no void then, nor an amorphous featureless mass at which everything breaks down into little units of “one” all resembling each other like the bytes of a computer. Rather it is a horizon that seems to be pregnant with the promise of something further, or better put, something prior. And what we see here is that about which nothing can be said nor comprehended, and even the very existence for which no explanation can be possible once again for that reason, that it is a priori, and were there an explanation, that explanation would be prior.

PART II: REALITY

The Nature of Reality according to Plato

Everything is real, but because everything changes and decays, nothing is permanent or immortal. And if being real is being immortal, the quality by which something always is and is never not, then indeed nothing physical is real, except perhaps ideas, for ideas don’t seem to die natural deaths, and particulartly the ideas of universals, like “green” and “triangle”.

However if we do consider the physical world as real, we have from teh foregoing, reason to hold that it is at least a reality of a lesser degree to permanent realities, one of which we might propose to be ideas. Within that physical reality, we must hold a reality of the highest degree ourselves, for it is not the unreal that considers reality. We can have a basic division of that reality into the “sensed” reality, the reality of the external world of physical objects which we can sense, and the reality of thought, that which is our “internal reality”. Further all things about this reality are changing, and in this all things are in a sense both real and unreal.  That is the only material reality possible: a changing reality, a reality for the moment.

How do we “Know” Things?

As we have been considering to this point, the central problem that faces the human intellect, is that “knowledge”, which it intellection itself, does not appear to include a description of what it is, nor can it. There is no knowledge of what knowledge is. The consideration of this question is the obscure field of epistemology: the question “how do we know things”. (in contrast, the question that empirical science asks is: “how do things work?”

In practise, it seems that “knowing” entails a certain “categorisation” of things of experience. This seemingly is the way in which we “make sense” of things, grouping them together with similar other things, (it is the reason why we can do science, why the inductive method seems to work for the most part, because simple processes can be grouped together and they produce similar results and laws can be formulated based upon this similarity.) Knowledge then seemingly becomes possible when we are able to receive “abstractions” of things into our intellect, so that we can then group them under the heading of a common “abstraction” or an “idea”, like a marker on the filing cabinet.

Knowledge is not the process of accumulation of data as many in the Google and Wikipedia age might presume, rather it is the process of its classification. Were we to know every blade of grass individually and as a separate epistemological challenge, then we should truly know nothing, and end up despairing wrecks utterly unable to make sense of a single speck. (footnote- so also were we to know the individual words or verses of a book without comprehending its unified meaning). Thus the nature of knowledge seemingly is that it is gained through abstracting “universal concepts” from the species and genera of things that we encounter in experience (eg concepts like “whiteness”, “health”, “virtue” etc.)  that occur in particular individuals but can also be conceived without being seen as subsisting in all individuals. It is through such universal generalisations that man understands the nature of things and therefore gains knowledge.  (fn-However God being one, does not belong to any species or genera, he is the species of one, ie God is sui generis, “his own genus”. Thus we cannot gain knowledge about God using the usual empirical methodology. Reason can never enclose the concept of God.)

“Demonstration can be made in two ways: One is through the cause, and is called “a priori,” and this is to argue from what is prior absolutely. The other is through the effect, and is called a demonstration “a posteriori”; this is to argue from what is prior relatively only to us.(…), if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist…” [STI Q.2,A.2].

Jeremiah 10:23 ESV “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.”

Everything we see and know, the “raw data” of our sensory experience, is in the form of “particulars” or particular things: particular blades of grass, particular leaves on a tree, particular stars in the sky, particular persons on Earth, particular grains of sand on a beach and so on. To “explain” particulars is to unify disparate and separated things under a common head, a “universal” (or a category/form/idea), a common explanation for the collective “grass”, “people”, “sand” etc. We perform this unconsciously, by “abstracting” the meaning of individual blades of grass, so that in our mind we have an “idea” of what grass is. What this means is that we then do not have to examine each individual blade of grass separately to discover what it is. If it conforms to our abstracted idea of “grass”, then we mentally categorise each new blade of grass that we see, each new leaf on a tree, each new person that we meet to that mental “idea” without further challenge. The particular conforms to the universal idea, and the universals explain reality to us. For without this ability to use ideas, we could never explain our experience of reality at all, for even our own front yard would forever be an unexplained mystery to us, every time the grass came up, we would be reduced to miserable despairing wrecks.

The Problem of “Universals”

“It was an essentially philosophical question, because it was one of those fundamental problems which the human mind stumbles upon every time it tries to grasp, beyond all particular sciences, the conditions that make knowledge itself possible. The trouble is that when some scientist comes upon such a problem, he usually fails to perceive that it belongs to a non-scientific order of questions. The best that can happen is that he will dismiss it as an idle question not susceptible of a positive answer(…)Not fully aware that what he sees are but glimpses of problems which lie behind and beyond those which science is able to ask, the scientist naturally thinks that he is merely tracing his particular science down to its last implications…” (Gilson UoP, 5)

This is a real conundrum that has vexed philosophers down the ages, and though few lay persons ever give it a passing thought (“why are there similar things?” will hardly figure in conversation around the coffee table!), it would be fair to say that it is the central problem of philosophy and has been for millenia. The reason is this: the similarity of things is what makes knowledge possible. There seems to be a rule, which is why we are able to know things according to rules, but where are the rules themselves? If universal ideas explain particular things, or in other words, explain the “reality” of particular things, then must not those ideas possess a reality of their own? In other words, must not the explanation of reality itself be real? Surely the real cannot be explained by the unreal, for what is abstract must always remain abstract, giving rise to more abstract things and no more. If this is true then there must not there be such a thing as a “real universal”? If this is not true, then we are either left without an explanation of reality, for we have no explanations period, the explanations being unreal! Reality must be both universal and particular, but we only have access seemingly to the latter, while its explanation lies in the former. We require, a “real explanation” to explain the presumed reality of particular things. If concrete things exist according to certain rules, then those rules too must really exist (“concrete” is a rather incongruous word because it conjures up the image of a grey reticent sludge, but one struggles to find one more suitable), concrete reality could not have merely invented abstract rules around which to organise itself!

Plato, as we have seen, was convinced that such “real universals” existed, and placed them in another “realm”, which we can call the realm of metaphysics: eg. a universal “green” for all green things, a universal “hot” for all hot things, a universal “dog” for all dogs, and so on endlessly. He settled upon the “universal of universals”, as “the One” and “the Good”. He called them “forms” (or in the Greek, “ideas”). Plato’s “Theory of Forms”, as it is called, represents in the opinion of many, the closest that human reason gets to the nature of reality, and this is why. The respected English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, wrote in his Process and Reality (Free Press, 1979, p39): “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.

Finally, we can make mention of another tantalizing fact that in the Timaeus, Plato even states that forms subsist “in the mind of the demiurge?”, and this is the closest that Plato comes to positing a personal God.

For Plato ideas were primary reality, everything else was phenomenon- not unreal, but effect rather than first principle. This is what is brought out in the famous “cave” example. Truly Platonism which includes the newer modifications and developments of Plato’s thought has been called the “perennial philosophy”: The first principle “logos” is the origin of knowledge and reason. This provides a ready explanation for the order found in nature and the existence of intelligence itself, that it has an origin and an order at source. If ideas are the origins of things, then truly it is no surprise that things would be organised according to ideas, as indeed they seem to be. We are not bound to posit the development of order from disordered origins. Plato knew well to leave well alone what he could not know: the Platonic realm.

But what’s more, it is not sufficient to merely admit to the existence of the “real universal”, rather that real universal must “participate” in the particular. That by which each separate grain of sand or each autumn leaf by the path possesses reality, a possession which is indisputable, cannot be extraneous to it, for this would leave it extraneous to reality. However were it possible to show that such an “idea”, which is a pure immaterial and intellectual entity, could truly “participate” or impetrate unthinking matter of our world of particulars, then it might be that knowledge and intelligence in our world may be possible, and indeed we might have arrived upon an explanation for intelligence. (fn- I think that the whole so-called conundrum of the “participation” of universals in the particular is artificial, the conundrum is the existence of universals. Once we suppose that they do exist, we have already supposed their participation, since that is their definition. But it is still a task to describe the manner of that participation. This we shall see subsequently.)

Spending no more time upon the subject (although I do hope I have encouraged the reader to access the beautiful works of Plato), I will say that the Thomistic ontology presented addressed this issue, and in a way that Plato could never have foreseen. St Thomas, armed with the Christian revelation, finally brings the history of human philosophy to completion in the 12th century, in the form of theology. St Thomas, incorporating all the magnificent effort of the Greek philosophers, and armed with the Christian revelation, was able to state that the ideas of things do indeed have a reality, because they are present in the mind of the Creator-God, who is the ultimate reality. But shall come to ontology in the next section.

“At present,” In his famous Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, the Greek commentator, Porphyry, said, “I shall refuse to say, concerning genera and species, whether they subsist or whether they are placed in the naked understandings alone or whether subsisting they are corporeal or incorporeal, and whether they are separated from sensibles or placed in sensibles and in accord with them…” (Gilson, UoP, 8)

“the real difficulty is to know what they are in the mind: ideas, concepts, or names? And what they are outside the mind: subsisting ideas, forms, or mere aggregates of sensible qualities? Pg 9 what is the nature of that which can be predicated of many?pg10 “…because it arises on the borderline that divides logic from philosophy. An almost invisible line indeed; yet as soon as you cross it, you find yourself in an entirely different country, and if you do not notice it, you get lost.” (Gilson, UoP, 10)

“If human nature is but partly present in Plato and in Socrates, neither Socrates nor Plato can truly be said to be a man. If, on the other hand, human nature is entirely present in one of them, it cannot be present at all in the other. Since it can be found in them neither partly, nor entirely, it cannot possibly be something, it is nothing.” (Gilson, UoP, 13)

Universals cannot be arbitrary: Nominalism:

The contrary worldview to Idealism is “materialism” or the “primacy of matter”. Much of its appeal is that in it, the concept of God becomes unnecessary by definition, God is not included in the definition of reality by the very use of language “material”. The roots of materialism can be traced back to nominalism, which was initially proffered as a counter theory to that of universals by the monk called William of Ockham. According to this theory, universals are not a thing by themselves at all, but merely the sound of a word that we make with our vocal apparatus.  

Gilson describes the problem of doing assay with the reality of universals: 

“If our concepts are but words, without any other contents than more or less vague images, all universal knowledge becomes a mere set of arbitrary opinions. What we usually call science ceases to be a system of general and necessary relations and finds itself reduced to a loose string of empirically connected facts. (p.30)...It is a well-known Aristotelian thesis that science is of the universal; if you make Aristotle say that the universal character of our general ideas is due to their confusion, you will have to face the conclusion that confusion is what makes concepts a suitable material for scientific knowledge.” (Gilson, UoP, 66) Thus linking universal concepts to scientific knowledge, and to any capacity for knowledge whatsoever brings out the problem with deeming them to be no more than noises. It is one thing to create the noise (which in any case is different in every language and therefore truly arbitrary or at the most alliterative), but another to say that the thing that the noises codes for, which is a real entity, whether concept of relationship between concepts, might also be arbitrary as the noise for it is evident that it isn’t. in other words positing the arbitrariness of the name, does not address the problem of the concept that is being named. That the concept is real is proved by the reality of the power of scientific knowledge. Science proves the reality of universals without being able to describe their nature. But whatever that nature is, it cannot be arbitrary nor confused.

“…Roscelin…was of the opinion that universals were mere flatus vocis, that is to say, mere vocal utterances. In other words…Roscelin was turning universals into particular and concrete things; man, for instance, was nothing more to him than the particular noise, the physical displacement, of air, which we produce when we say: man…” (Gilson, UoP, 18)

Followed to its “logical” end, subjectivity (or “feelings”) eventually reigns supreme. Social engineering, secular law, identity politics, communism etc. are products    The Scientific method“empirical evidence knowledge”Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Boyle, Hobbes, Russel     Absence of an Examination of Universal concepts. Observation and experimentation are the primary vehicle of knowledge Meaning fails to emerge in a lab/ equation. Experiment is continued for it’s own sake leading to “utilitarianism”

The Christian Synthesis: Plato, not Aristotle

I’ve never once had to use “substance/accident” in a philosophical discussion.

It does not have any correlate in physical reality, so why use it to describe physical reality. It’s wasted on the listener.

I’ve never described myself as hylomorphic.

I’m quite happy to say that I have a body and a soul, in whatever way those two are related.

I think this is the crux: philosophically it would be nice to be an idealist like Plato, so that we can say “ideas are the fundamental fabric of reality” or somethng like that. It is important to have an explanation for the fabric of reality in our ontology because Science does not have one.

Those ideas, lilke the idea of a perfect human being is a reality in the mind of God, who is the ultimate reality. This is Plato’s “Realm of Ideas”, his true reality “beyond the cave”, which is Existence and God himself (in a way that doesn’t contradict Divine Simplicity, of course).

For this reason, I don’t find it useful to say “God is unlimited form, but we are form limited by matter”, because the angels become a hard case. I know Aquinas has something of an explanation there, but its not fully satisfactory. God is unlimited substance, he cannot be “unlimited form” is he is formless can he?

I don’t think that our own souls don’t require to be “ideas”, though. They’re created realities just like our bodies, non-spatial like the angels (its incredible to type that lol), and they “hang around (lol)” our bodies in a way we cannot comprehend.

The matter of our bodies is “formed” through the template in God’s mind, but our soul formed too. There’s no need to say that the soudl forms the body, as I see it.

I don’t believe plants and animals have some hylomorphic “principle of life”. I find that unhelpful too. We know that there is no requirement for that. They’re just mobile chemical factories. The only mystery in them is related to the origin of life. I don’t think we can pretend there are any remaining mysteries apart from that

I don’t require to use “hylomorph” to decribe the Incarnation either. There is a unity between flesh and divinity from the first moment, its sufficient to say that. The union between Jesus’ own Body and Soul is the same as that between our own, of course

Its easier to describe these concepts than use arcane terms.

I am my essence. God gives me my existence.

And I also do not require it to describe Transubstantiation. It means nothing to say to someone “the accidents are there”. It’s like talking a different language. The substance of Bread changes to the Substance of God. It looks like bread because its a miracle, the sacramental mode (as Don Oscar Vonier describes it best, imo). Why say anything else. The breadiness of bread is not accidental, its its essence, isnt it? There is no “substance of bread” devoid of bready qualities as separated from those seemingly at the philosophical level but perhaps more importantly we can prove that this is not required at the atomic level. At that level all you need is long chains of molecules to link up in a certain way. In fact if accidents are anything, they are nothing in the object, rather in our perception of them. The whole “accidental” realm needs to be shifted to the mental realm. Extramentally there are only substances, matter that is formed a certain way from the ideas in the mind of God.

PART II MATERIALISM AND ITS DOWNFALL  

Other Views of Reality

Every schema other than Plato’s seems to make distinctions between one reality and another, alternatively conferring the status of “true reality” upon a different aspect of physical reality. Kant refuses to comment on reality at all, for him human reasoning can never rise above the subjective. Platonism is a form of “idealism”, the theory that ideas subsist as real entities. Directly opposed to idealism is “materialism”: the theory that there are no abstract entities, into which every other philosophy falls.  The consequence of setting up ideas as real entities is that the theatre is no longer a conflict zone of warring interest for the prime spot of “true” realty. By removing reality from physicality, physicality is made dependent upon that which is outside itself for its own reality. One might even state at this early stage that such a conceptualisation of reality contains in it the germ of peaceful co-existence. For among those warring contenders are also contained inextricably several powerful self-interests. If reality is the realm of the physical and nothing else, then it is inevitable that philosophy be politicised, a phenomenon that has played out several times in world history with tragic consequences and none more than in our own time and the century preceding. Let me elaborate: If we are meant to look at physical reality and posit something in it that holds the pride of place, the “truly real”, then what we ascribe centrality to, consciously or unconsciously, is easily coloured by our self-interest. Were there truly no reality beyond the physical, this “theatre of physicality”, everything that we can touch/see/feel/observe then one of those points of view would necessarily be true, irrespective of self-interest. But if the primary reality indeed does lie outside this “theatre” in which our physical existence plays out, then it becomes evident that all the entities and concepts that comprise that theatre merely flow into one another with none assuming priority, any more than it be said that the rain-clouds or the stream are prior to the ocean itself.

Thus it is that in modern times various contenders have indeed been put forward as the primary “reality within reality”. The easiest way in which to divide this is to draw the distinction between the British and “continental” philosophers (ie continental Europe). We will see that oriental philosophy falls within one or the other of these. It is probably the most useful to see the first break with “classical philosophy” as having occurred with Renee Descartes. Descartes is himself to this day a greatly revered name in France and in the philosophical tradition of France. The easiest way in which to view the premise of Descartes’ thought is that he placed the primacy upon human reason and reasoning ability. He did not himself deny the existence of “metaphysical reality”, but felt that all reality including the metaphysical was accessible to human reason. It was his contention therefore that mathematical proofs explaining all of reality could be set up and indeed set out to formulate these using the tools and implements of his age. What Descartes did therefore was to shift the perspective of reality, to an specific entity within reality, that is separate from every other element of reality, that does not include the flow of causality, of time, of space, nor of all unthinking reality, and placed the priority upon unthinking reality.

(fn- Discourse on the Method (1637) and Principles of Philosophy (1644). Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz, and was later opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). Descartes’ influence in mathematics is in the Cartesian coordinate system named after him, He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry—used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis.)

I would say that this mathematical approach to reality rather than becoming the mainstay in Europe, found the strongest inheritors in British thought, first with the Newtonian revolution in scientific thinking with all things becoming subject to Newtonian laws of motion which indeed seemed to reign supreme over nature for many centuries following, and then lingering on in the last vestiges of that approach and tradition in the so-called “scientific positivism” or “scientific inductivism” (or simply “scientism) of Compte and Milner and filtering down most recently into the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russel. This tradition can be seen as apportioning primary reality to “causes”or causality, if mathematical equations can be said to demonstrate causality, the reason why one things changes into another according to an equation. We will both see how this “scientism” met its demise, while also noting that for completely irrational reasons, it seems to dominate the modern day psyche in the post-modern era. Interestingly the contrary view also became very prominent in England, like the polar opposite that arises naturally, as having always existed. David Hume, an immensely influential British philosopher, rejects causality altogether. He proposes that reality is merely a series of “events” in conjunction and rejects the idea of the a priori altogether.

While that attempt to subject all of reality to mathematical laws played out the course of its natural life in England, in the continent, it was never pursued but rather the tradition that became most prevalent seems to have been that of “phenomenology”: the exercise of describing reality rather than explaining it, and premise seemingly being that if you described all of reality, you would also have explained it. In this sense , “phenomenology”, as it claimed to be called, does not claim to be a theory at all, but rather merely a description of processes, and “phenomena” as they are observed. Thus what we get is  continuous change with no beginning, and so nothing prior, or nothing a priori. It is therefore a denial of the possibility of theory. Hegel, a philosophers who is incredibly obscure to read, seems to combine natural process with the process of human thought and development of culture and seeks this as an explanation of all world history and historical development. He goes one step further, which is probably the step that breaks the donkey’s back, in positing an “Absolute Spirit” all of these which are manifestations of; the thoughts of men, their creative expressions and in their culture. This sort of “Spiritedness” seems to have found its concrete application in nationalism and eventually fascism. Why so, one might ask, for is it not a good thing to be spirited? Well it seems that this form of a blind spiritedness, a spirit with no definition apart from culture, finds its only expression in the culture of a nation, and hence tends to militant nationalism. The best example of this is Benito Mussoloni through the direct influence of the neo-Hegelian philosopher and politician Giovanni Gentile. The more primordial forms of spiritedness are the natural spirit religions like those of the native American Indians and the Japanese animistic religions. Those spirits were bound up to a respect and deification of nature, with the resultant benefits to and preservation of nature. (fn- The Studio Ghibli portfolio, with the prominent works of Hiyao Miyazaki provides abundant illustration of this). Ultimately it becomes that there is no “spirit” per se but there certainly is culture and there certainly is nature.

Feuerbach “turned Hegel on his head” (as he himself claimed), by stating that it was not mans’ thinking that was the expression of the absolute spirit, but rather the absolute spirit that was the projection of man’s thinking, thus kindly doing the obvious and dispensing with the “spirit”, which is obviously no more than an embellishment, added on to the philosophy as no more than an afterthought, an obvious attempt to provide some sort of binding principle. Remove the binding principle which never was there in the first place makes it possible to eradicate the concepts of naturalism, nationalism, and paves the way for universal utilitarianism, the philosophy that subjects both nation and nature to individual, but which it can be argued is already inherent in Hegel and merely followed to its logical conclusion. Thus were evolved the roots of the communist philosophy of Engels and Marx, the materialistic rather than an idealistic view that reality is the process of change not brought about by the dialectic of ideas but rather by the means of production.

As a footnote to this philosophical panoply, we might add the observation as a form of conclusion, that a philosopher’s take on reality however rigorous is no more than his take on his own reality, and thus it is not that there are types of reality but types of philosophers. Thus each philosopher seems to propose a different take-off point on the a priori (whether idea/ cause-effect/ self/ substance/ process etc.) But there is great benefit in reflecting upon the history of philosophy if only for the purpose of reviewing historical blunders in philosophy, for not only is it our only roadmap to to a true understanding history. But again this is not to make personal denigrations of individuals as the proponents of those philosophies but rather the purpose of identifying the various possible patterns of human thought the multifarious manifestation of which it provides a fascination tapestry of. All these thought patterns are not merely historical but are played out in our own lives and in our own thought patterns as well as the thought patterns of those around us, and provides an excellent means of analysis of the human psyche: Human beings can have varying perspectives of the same reality, while deeming their own reality as “real”. This exercise is non-trivial because the perspective determines the behaviour of the human being with relation to the rest of his race and family, ultimately toward himself. 

Plato: the foundation of reality is not in the cave at all…it’s out here!

Descartes’ Theatre:“Nothing exists outside of human reasoning”

Culture is a “spirit” of nation-NATIONALISM, FASCISM (Gentile who influenced Mussolini)

Kant: “”We can’t know reality”

“Spirit” is just illusion/projection(Feuerbach) All comes down to “means of production”.COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM (Marx, Engels)

PHENOMENOLOGY“Reality is a collection of  processes not necessarily related to each other”

Hume: “ Reality is just a succession of unrelated events”

Culture as a “spirit” of nature:-animism, neo-paganism/wiccan, romanticism (Tennyson), spiritualism (Chhabra et al)

BRITISH EMPIRICISM/SCIENTISM(Berkeley, Hobbes, Russel, Whitehead, Compte, Mill, Bacon):“All is reasoned from sense perception (experiment) alone. The meaning of life is to be found in setting up experiments on it.

CONTINENTAL RATIONALISM(Liebnitz, Spinoza): “Reason gained both from sense perception (results of experiment) as well as intuition (deductive independent thought)

Perspective determines behaviour

HEGELIANISM “process leads to development of culture and dialogue- these are expressions of “Spirit”. But no one understands me ☹!”

TWO THEATRES OF REALITY

“All the World’s a Stage”- W. Shakespeare

Plate: my roadmap of world philosophies is not meant to be comprehensive, but I’ve tried to, using some paraphrase show the interrelation between them. One thing is clear, the philosophies that reside within the “theatre of physicality” are polar opposites. The only thing that they do have in common is a strong tendency toward atheism, if not outrightly atheist, definitely none of these allow for a personal God. World religions can probably be divided into monotheistic and polytheistic, but many readers will be surprised to find that there are many more forms of atheism than there are of religion, when correctly classified.

 Materialism and Utilitarianism

Philosophies that treat the “theatre of physicality” as the entirety of reality can be said to be materialistic since physical realities are material by definition (is they’re not immaterial). As we saw in the previous section the logical conclusion of these theories played out in the global phemonena like communism, fascism (which is essentially militant nationalism), and something like a recapitulation in modern form of the older traditions of imperialism and religious pagan nationalism which took the modern form of colonialism in the name of a quasi-Christianity which really in the large part was no more than a modern avatar of the old paganism, a pantheistic romanticism epitomised by Hegel’s so-called Absolute Spirit, and lyricised by the great writers and poets of the time like Voltaire and Tennyson among others. They do say that one should not as a rule of thumb bring Hitler into an argument, but one must point out nevertheless that Hitler too found it necessary to base his philosophy upon a quasi-religious construct.

Why does materialism lead to such unpalatable ends as the world has seen? It is not the obvious answer, that the pursuit of pleasure leads to ills, etc. Rather in materialism, everything is underwritten by things themselves, “materials”. There is nothing “prior” to matter, matter is the beginning of all things. The rational and the irrational therefore become equivocated, for both are no more than matter.  What this leads to is utilitarianism, the drive not to reason “why” but rather “of what use” (the “why” having already been answered). The greatest virtue of creature or thing is “productivity”, the readiest measure of which is earning capacity, while in the case of things, it is cost, which are therefore the same thing. This is why you will hear of the “net worth” of a person and the “net worth” of some oil deposit, or mutual fund as spoken of in the same article. This leads to two conclusions: an individual can be sacrificed for what is perceived as the “common good”, a “good” that has no specific definition, but in the cases of the imperialist countries tribal peoples and forest dwellers can be sacrificed in the name of progress as an example. Perhaps most perniciously this affects interpersonal relationships at the family level, with family members assessing each another in terms of their “net worth”, an assessment which begins much before the reading of the final will and testament, rather at the very conception of the individual.

In summary, there is no “spirit of nature”, although there certainly is nature that is to be responsibly looked after for several reasons. But the “theatre of physicality” which is the playground of all post medieval era philosophies is purely material, all semblance of spirituality is certainly a “human construct” in organic continuity of the old paganisms, though with the unseemly addition of the explicit disrespect of nature rather than respect. The new paganisms (and not to say that this was not engendered by some of the more militarised old paganisms) display nothing but the unbridled pursuit of power and pleasure, the new “gods”, which are not called gods anymore because that would be absurd. We shall see that such an endeavor fails not only in its object but also in its premise.

A Description of the Scientific or “Hypothetical-Deductive” Method:

How does one arrive at the modern philosophical thought process which consigns all reality to the “theatre of physicality”? It is essentially the purpose of “Scientism”, the attempt to explain all of reality through intellectual thought and experimentation. This is the proposition that all that there is, all reality, and all possible reality can be reasoned. In doing so, the possibility of the existence of anything outside that “theatre of physicality” is eliminated. Descartes attempted precisely this in attempting to define “first principles”, as we have already seen and John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and others continued in the same vein, attempting to make “empirical generalizations” through “proofs”, using whatever scientific principles and knowledge available at the time. This “foundationalism”, of going from premise to conclusions mathematically, first begun by Descartes, carries on into the Enlightenment as the “hypothetical deductive method”.  

That method is then extended by Compte into sociology, by Milne into political science, that is to say into the study of human behaviours, human society, social change, human change, the extension of natural science into the social sciences and that gives rise to what in Compte is called the “Unity of Science”. Thus based upon these materialistic premises it was held that human behaviours can be studied, predicted, modified, and effectively, all this lays the basis for the “big brother state”, the state of morality being determined through the social sciences and then decided for the masses.

These provide the grounds for the evolution of empiricism which went by the name of logical positivism of the 20^th century. The entire scope of the world of ideas is limited to the scope of “things” or objects, and therefore logic, and mathematics coincide, and philosophy is limited to them. Bertrand Russel and Whitehead collaborated to attempt to prove this in their seminal Principia Mathematica. Because philosophy is limited to mathematics, such a theory denies metaphysics, is “anti-metaphysical”. The truth or falsehood of any logical (or philosophical) statement is proven through the appropriate science, and hence “empiricism”, and “scientism”. For logic (or philosophy) to have meaning, it should be empirically verifiable.

In recent history of scientific experimentation the great growth of its successes in alleviating physical suffering and increasing physical pleasure has assumed the status of a veritable deity, single-handedly bringing Heaven-upon-Earth, seemingly. What is the scientific method and why is it that we still even bother to talk about the invisible God in its vaunted visible abundance of its presence? Well, to understand this we must ask what exactly is the empirical method?

Compte described the scientific method as “…dealing with objective empirical data of a scientific sort and seeking to formulate empirical generalisations with explanatory power…” What this means is that scientists look at observations are try to make an educated guess as to a law which explains the results. I have seen on tape no less than Richard Feynman state this method in a lecture as the principle of scientific method: a “guess” must be made and then trialled. (fn-The 18^th century roots were Compte, Mach and Mill. In the 19^th century there was the Vienna circle in the continent with people with Schleck and Rudolf Carnap and this in the 20^th century was popularised in England by A. J. Ayer.) The scientist was not to invent systems but infer explanations from observations, as Bacon had advocated. This would come to be known as “Inductivism”. (fn-The debate between John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and William Whewell (1794–1866) has become the canonical methodological debate of the 19^th century.) Scientists come up with hypotheses from which true observational consequences can be deduced—hence, “hypothetico-deductive method”. In the era of Newtonian science and the incredible success of it that lasted the better part of three centuries, it was thought that science was the measure of itself and of everything around it, that science was capable of reading off the truths of the Universe in a direct one-to-one literal sense. Thus we have a system where the truth of a “hypothesis” or a guess, depends upon its verifiability. The online Stanford Encyclopedia gives a good outline and status of the new-age deity the “Scientific method”. But what we read is hardly an exaltation rather an anti-climax of something that cannot even be described accurately nor bound under any unified coherent heading:

“This entry could have been given the title Scientific Methods and gone on to fill volumes, or it could have been extremely short, consisting of a brief summary rejection of the idea that there is any such thing as a unique Scientific Method at all. Both unhappy prospects are due to the fact that scientific activity varies so much across disciplines, times, places, and scientists that any account which manages to unify it all will either consist of overwhelming descriptive detail, or trivial generalizations. The choice of scope for the present entry is more optimistic, taking a cue from the recent movement in philosophy of science toward a greater attention to practice: to what scientists actually do. This “turn to practice” can be seen as the latest form of studies of methods in science, insofar as it represents an attempt at understanding scientific activity, but through accounts that are neither meant to be universal and unified, nor singular and narrowly descriptive (…) Science was seen to embody the most successful form of reasoning (but which form?) to the most certain knowledge claims (but how certain?) on the basis of systematically collected evidence (but what counts as evidence and, in particular, should the evidence of the senses or rather of rational insight take precedence?)”

This is the briefest outline inasmuch as any such might be possible of the scientific method. It leaves much unsaid, and more unsaid than said as we shall see.

Newborn is an individual- No proof!!!

Marriage is man to woman- NO PROOF

Lives of another nation more sacred than our financial intests- NO PROOF

Objective truth is more to be desired than subjective feeling- NO PROOF

Gender is incontrovertible- NO PROOF

Fig : How the secular judiciary works

A Theory not of nature, but of meaning itself

Logical positivism, and the large scale “scientism” of the last two centuries generalises this method to all positive assertions, that is, not just statements of the results from scientific experiment, but statements about anything whatsoever, to have “meaning”, must have verifiable results. By this, all modern political desicions and laws are made and made binding upon society, that all that is verifiable scientifically true and none else has meaning. So we guess certain laws or “statements” about how natural systems work, and we are able to test those laws or “statements” by predicting that observed natural systems will work according to those laws or “statements”. When they do, we believe that we have said something meaningful, because we “verified” it. Thus “verifiability” is being able to “predict”, by means of a “prediction” which is a statement or law, that a natural system will change in a certain way. In corollary, when a statement/law/prediction does not have a one-to-one correspondence with a natural system which changes according to that prediction, it is not meaningful. Thus this does away with the natural law first and then with metaphysics and any divine law. For example “first do no harm” which can be put forward as a natural law, is hardly testable, and neither is “do to others as you would do to yourself”, nor “honour you parents”, “love your children”, “marry”, “marry the opposite sex” and so on, there is no experiment for it, and any proposed experiment is sure to be incredibly clumsy.

But by this the scientific method becomes a statement about meaning. Ayer states in his book: “…The meaning of an empirical statement is in its reference to empirical data, whether those actually available, or possible empirical data (…) the verifiability principle makes it possible to admit historical statements, statements about the future, statements about what is technologically impossible in practise but in principle possible. What it disallows is the kind of statement that is not at all available to empirical verification namely metaphysical statements…”  Prof Arthur Holmes of Wheaton College in a lecture on the topic states that by this, a statement like “Cleopatra wore a red dress on her 21^st birthday”, or “mushrooms grow on the other side of the room” are both potentially verifiable, and therefore both meaningful statements. Thus it is not a theory about the truth or falsehood of a statement, only of it’s meaning. Thus it is a theory of language. A valid assertion in human language, must be a verifiable assertion.

The Problems emerge

As we have seen in the last section, scientism is more than a scientific theory of nature, but rather the assertion that all meaning is tied in to empirical verifiability. As Prof. Arthur Holmes states, in a large lecture series given in Wheaton college where he is based and aired on YouTube,  “The “verifiability theory of meaning is a theory about the meaning of a factual statement. It is not a theory about how you ascertain truth (eg an objective fact), but about the meaning of language…”. Thus what this really is, is an attempt to construct a philosophy of scientific method, but more than that, the attempt to use the scientific method to deduce the meaning of language, language being the obvious surrogate of the human state itself. Were it possible, then, the meaning of the human state inasmuch as it can be expressed in language is amenable to and established by empirical science….” He gives an example: “So the way to ascertain the meaning of say, a book like Dostoevsky’s epic- “Brothers Karamazov”, is through filtering out all that is in it which is not amenable to empirical testing…”

Even on initial scrutiny the theory has cracks at two levels: the first is the peoblem with the so-called “empirical generalisations”. An empirical generalisation, or the ability to make the same is the basic premise of scientism, that one can, fro local observations make a “generalised” statement about nature. The statement ertainly has initial intellectual appeal, like all false philosophies, so we must examine it more closely. The problem is in the “generalisation”, and what the naïve follower does not understand is that that tern “general” is through the method of “scientism” being applied not only to the realities of nature that yield themselves to scientific observation, but to everything that can be called “reality”. This is the only way by which it can be extended to include the meaning fo life itself. Even at the local level this does not work, for at the quantum level we encounter “uncertainty” as a reality, indeed as the foundation of the quantum world. The theory has fallen apart even at the scientific level! But neither at the quantum nor the macroscopic level does one find meaning, in fact the conclusion of science is really lack of meaning. This is the second problem of the method: the “generalisation” has not only failed to generalise to all of science, it changes at the Planck (Quantum) scale, as well as there is no way of stating whether it generalises to other possible worlds or Universes (whether life-containing or not), or to the very beginning and the very end of our own universe. But meaning cannot tie in to experiment, for experiments do not explain te meaning of life, that is to say, it is not experiment that “gives life meaning” or happiness in that meaning. All science has to say about us is that we are carbon-based life-forms occupying seemingly limited space and resources.

Mill held that there is no “a priori” and that all is generalisation, even the law of causality, mathematics and the “uniformity of nature”. The essential law for induction (ie if you’re going to induce (the generalisation/extrapolation from observations to all of nature) knowledge, then one must make the general assumption that all nature is a uniform “playing field”.

Further what is the basis of the “verifiability principle”, how is it verified? (fn- Analytic statements in language must be subject to the criteria. Language has essentially two uses: Cognitive and non-Cognitive. There are all sorts of non-cognitive uses: emotional exclamations, questions, cries, expressive statements. On the other hand cognitive statements are divided into “synthetic” and “analytic” statements. “Synthetic” statements are about matters of fact that one would expect to be amenable to empirical verification, “analytic” are those in which the predicate is logically contained within the subject, statements of formal meaning. Of the latter sort might have definitions, tautologies, according to some proponents mathematical statements too, but basically any statement that has the logical form of the laws of thought (eg a=a, a is not non a). “THAT is indeed the meaning of meaning” (that a statement to be verified as meaningful must be empricially verifiable- how does one verify that statement?) (quote from Prof Holmes, who oges on to say “well it becomes very evident athat the verifiability theory is not an empirical statemtn that is amenable to verification or falsification by empirical procedures. the verifiability criteria states that if a correspondence is found between theory and observable fact then that theory has meaning. But how does one verify that meaning of that statement, to do so, one would have to find theories and observe whether they engendered “meanings” in fact. How is this done? Surely it is easier to send a spacecraft to the dark side of the moon!

If the only factual meaning is with reference to empirical objects through empirical data then it would become impossible to find things meaningful which refer to other kinds of entities, which indeed they do…” and gives as an example “theologians find it meaningful to talk about God…and these are not available for empirical verification purposes” and we could add others like art and music, joy, satisfaction, fulfilment and grief, the meaning of life, the despair of which leads to depression and suicide,  the meanings of which is hardly verifiable, it is barely even identifiable except as an abstraction. For example try telling an anxious person “Don’t worry it’ll be OK”, “Don’t worry it really doesn’t matter”,  “he wasn’t really worth it”. “its only a mass of tissue not a baby”, or the opposite “it’s a person not a blob of tissue”, “cheer up, you look great inspite of that zit” and of course “does my bum look big in this?” all of which statements though trivial (to other husbands of course, not me) have great emotional import of tremendous consequence, getting a few of those wrong in sequence can lead to self-destruction as surely as Na and Cl make salt in an empirical test tube.

IN the face of these criticisms Ayer himself backs up form claiming that it was a factual statent about the meaning of factual statements and contends instead that it is a methodological stipulation. In other words it is a rule that the positivist adopts for methodoligal purposes. Well if that’s the case, and you don’t want to adopt it, you don’t have to. And consequently the verifiability principle loses its hold on philosophical discourse. IF you want to be a positivist, if you want to be an empiricist, then this is a good principle to work by, but if you dont want to be a positivist, then obviously there’s no necessitiy incumbent on you that you adopt it…and the whole tempest began to subside…Its hardly a definition, its much more an arbitrary principle. And just because it is supposedly common to the empirical sciences, does meand that it is common to all factual statements.

“Naturalism is the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system”“Physicalism: There exists nothing but the entities recognised by physics” (Both by David Armstrong, Australian philosopher) The two above are metaphysical views, assertions about what exists. Scientism is an epistemological view, the claim that “Science is the only reliable source of knowledge” 

Subsequent Research Puts the Last Nails in it

Ultimately the downfall of “scientism” (which seems to be the best name of thekmj entity, and the difficulty in naming it is indeed a reflection of the lack of internal validity. Quite appropriately, it fell by its own principles: Scienticism fell to scientific reseach!

To start with, the verifiability principle was developed on the assumption that it was the operative principle in the empirical sciences. But, we began to get developments in philosophy of science that make it plain that the sciences are not purely empirical. These developelents began to recognise the subjectivity in the natural sciences, and began to reject the over-simplistic view of the hypothetical-deductive method…

We can list three such developments that enventually put the matter beyond all doubt:

First, the work of Norwood Hansen who taught at Yale, which was published in his book The Patterns of Discovery which led him to the conclusion that “all observations are theory laden”. As Prof. Holmes puts it, “the scientist doesn’t just stand around gawking at all possible data. A scientist comes with a working hypothesis, so that (the relevance of) his data is defined by the working hypothesis, which in turn is suggested by a theory. In other words there are antecedent conceptual factors which determine what data you take into account…theory laden observations”

Second, Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions showed on the basis of his history of science that theory is a part of a much larger conceptual paradigm, and that scientific revolutions occur when there are paradigm shifts…you may get periods of progressive increase of scientific knowledge cumulatively within paradigms, and granted the paradigms therefore may seem to be the empirical verifiability of certain theories that work, though that’s suggested by the paradigm. But then when you get a paradigm shift a different framework of explanation is involved. And a paradigm shift does not occur because of the weight of empirical evidence. It occurs because within the scientific community there develops often for non-empirical reasons, dissatisfaction with the existing paradigm. It may lack explanatory power, it may lack coherence, it may prove to be needlessly complicated and we opt for a more simplistic one, and so forth. And so the hold of a purely empirical hold on science is rejected by Thomas Kuhn.

Third, Michael Polanyi who wrote two major works The Tacit dimension and Personal Knowledge. In the former he showed that there are  in prof Holmes words, “a variety of tacit aspects of human knowledge that are not explicated by empirical research. In everyday perception we have peripheral vision, which you don’t particularly think of, until somebody says something about it that draws it to your mind…there is always that sort of peripheral awareness, not only visually but mentally, part of the larger context of the gestalt which we observe so that the focussed objective empirical study  is only telling you part of the story” and in Personal Knowledge,  “he is talking about the personal dimension in knowledge that affects motivation, choice of a research topic, selectivity, etc.…” “…now with those developments which began in the 40s and went on into the 60s, what you begin to get then is the rejection of the view that all scientific explanation is purely objective empirical explanation in terms of general governing laws, empirical generalisation, that scientific knowledge is always empirically verified or at least empirically verifiable in principle…that just doesn’t seem to be the case. And so the whole thesis of “scientism” begins to collapse.”

“The fourth objection is from WVO Quine, the Harvard philosopher whose famous essay on the two dogmas of empiricism was a landmark in the demise of Logical Positivism. The first is “Reductionism” the attempt to reduce all knowledge to empirical generalisation. The second is the analytic synthetic dichotomy and the verifiability principle hinges on this dichotomy. Quine argues that this dichotomy breaks down, depending on the context.

Quine begins his article with “Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism:

the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience” (Two Dogmas of Empiricism) 

The verification theory of meaning, which has been conspicuous in the literature from Peirce onward, is that the meaning of a statement is the method of empirically confirming or infirming it. An analytic statement is that limiting case which is confirmed no matter what. As urged in Section I, we can as well pass over the question of meanings as entities and move straight to sameness of meaning, or synonymy. Then what the verification theory says is that statements are synonymous if and only if they are alike in point of method of empirical confirmation or infirmation.

Imagine, for the sake of analogy, that we are

given the rational numbers. We develop an

algebraic theory for reasoning about them, but we

find it inconveniently complex, because certain

functions such as square root lack values for

some arguments. Then it is discovered that the

rules of our algebra can be much simplified by

conceptually augmenting our ontology with some

mythical entities, to be called irrational numbers.

All we continue to be really interested in, first

and last, are rational numbers; but we find that

we can commonly get from one law about

rational numbers to another much more quickly

and simply by pretending that the irrational

numbers are there too.

I think this a fair account of the introduction

of irrational numbers and other extensions of the

number system. The fact that the mythical status

of irrational numbers eventually gave way to the

Dedekind- Russell version of them as certain

infinite classes of ratios

I espouse a more thorough pragmatism.

Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the

considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory

promptings are, where rational, pragmatic.

Objects at the atomic level and beyond

are posited to make the laws of macroscopic objects, and ultimately the laws of experience, simpler

and more manageable; and we need not expect or demand full definition of atomic and subatomic

entities in terms of macroscopic ones, any more than definition of macroscopic things in terms of

sense data. Science is a continuation of common sense, and it continues the common-sense expedient

of swelling ontology to simplify theory.

Physical objects, small and large, are not the only posits. Forces are another example; and indeed

we are told nowadays that the boundary between energy and matter is obsolete. Moreover, the

abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics — ultimately classes and classes of classes

and so on up — are another posit in the same spirit. Epistemologically these are myths on the same

footing with physical objects and gods, neither better nor worse except for differences in the degree to

which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences.

The over-all algebra of rational and irrational numbers is underdetermined by the algebra of

rational numbers, but is smoother and more convenient; and it includes the algebra of rational

numbers as a jagged or gerrymandered part.19b Total science, mathematical and natural and human is similarly but more extremely underdetermined by experience. The edge of the system must be kept

squared with experience; the rest, with all its elaborate myths or fictions, has as its objective the

simplicity of laws.

I espouse a more thorough pragmatism.

Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the

considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory

promptings are, where rational, pragmatic. (WVO Quine, The Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 20-43. Reprinted in W.V.O. Quine,

From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press, 1953; second, revised, edition 1961))

Thus in the modern post-Kuhnian (philosophy of scientifically), and post-Kantian era (epistemologically) era, it is generally accepted among scientists that scientists bring a degree of their own personal categorisations of knowledge to bear upon their work and view of the world which is a common and inescapable human feature, and there will always be one more theory of science that usurps the existing theory. That concept of subjectivism as an inescapable part of science is now widely accepted. Each theory is delving into the great mystery that is reality in some manner, yet in what manner we cannot say. Not only that we cannot now even talk of the truth of science. Thus science canot be really anymore regarded as something that is differentiable from everything else.

This concept of the supposed credibility and verifiability of the said inductive method has been long disregarded, (for example Bertrand Russel’s own turkey and farmer example: in short, a Turkey concludes inductively that based upon the fact that it is fed every morning, that it will be fed every morning. He is obviously wrong because this is true only up until the morning of Thanksgiving). Hilary Putnam states that inductive logic cannot be programmed into a computer whereas deductive logic can. (I would also add that Darwinian evolution cannot also be programmed into a computer) Currently there is no method that can be agreed upon as the “scientific method”

Gilson writes the epitaph to this approach as given by Kant: “the application of mathematics be highly desirable: “wherever it is possible, the imitation of mathematics as a method of reasoning is very dangerous when tried in cases in which it is impossible to use it. Philosophy and, especially, metaphysics happen to be such cases. The object of mathematics is simple: it is quantitative; the object of metaphysics is manifold and infinitely varied: it is qualitative. The relation of a trillion to unity is very easy to understand, whereas analysing the concept of freedom into its ideological units is a task which no teacher of wisdom has ever been able to achieve. You cannot apply a method to that which is not its specific object; this, Kant concludes, is the reason why  mathematical philosophies pass away” (Gilson, UoP, 226). What Gilson is saying here is that Kant spots the problem of trying to construct a mathematical metaphysics, there can be no such thing, there is no mathematical formula for justice for example, or case details could simply be fed into a computer.

Kant’s alternative metaphysics is a different error and Gilson once again explains why. Kant goes on to decide that metaphysics rather than be constructed mathematically should be a space-time “Newtonian” construct. It is obvious that Kant has flouted the stated dictum here, making the assumption that meaning is the object of Newtonian physics, which it decidedly is not. The object of Newtonian physics is physics.

“As Kant himself immediately concluded: “The true method of metaphysics is fundamentally the same as that which Newton has introduced into natural science, and which has there yielded such fruitful results.” ((Gilson, UoP, 227) Gilson writes the damnation also of this assertion, that of assigning meaning to the “Newtonian method”: “The Critique of Pure Reason is a masterly description of what the structure of the human mind should be, in order to account for the existence of a Newtonian conception of nature, and assuming that conception to be true to reality…The pure reason described by Kant could last no longer than the Newtonian physics, which it was its proper function to justify.” Pg 229,228 “…Newton considered the existence of an absolute space and an absolute time as necessarily required by his physics; consequently, Kant decreed that man should be credited with two forms of sensible intuition: space and time, in which all the objects of knowledge are given to the understanding. So long as our mind applies itself to objects so given, it can form a scientifically valid knowledge; when, on the contrary, it applies itself to mere mental presentations of possible objects, it does not form concepts of things, but mere ideas; and as these ideas have no objects, they do not constitute a scientific knowledge, but that illusory speculation which we call metaphysics.p230) Gilson finishes his criticism with the telling words, “confining reason to the sphere of pure science, enslaved philosophy to the blind tyranny of the will.” (UoP, 247)

Jeremiah 10:11 “”Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.'”

Thomas Pagel “Mind and Cosmos” The intelligibility of the world is no accident. Mind, in this view, is doubly

related to the natural order. Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings

with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings. Ultimately,

therefore, such beings should be comprehensible to themselves. And these are

fundamental features of the universe, not byproducts of contingent

developments whose true explanation is given in terms that do not make

reference to mind. (CH.2,1)

If we can’t

think about God, then (as Ramsey said) we can’t think about him; and therefore

can’t make statements about him, including statements to the effect that we can’t

think about him. The statement that we can’t think about God — the statement

that God is such that we can’t think about him — is obviously a statement about

God; if we can’t think about God, then we can’t say about him that we can’t think

about him. Perhaps there are things we can’t think about, maybe things in some

other part of the universe. If so, we can’t pick out any of those things and say of it

that we can’t think about it. (Plantinga Ch.1)

But obviously you can’t have propositional evidence for everything you believe.

Every train of arguments will have to start somewhere, and the ultimate premises

from which it starts will not themselves be believed on the evidential basis of other

propositions; they will have to be accepted in the basic way, that is, not on the

evidential basis of other beliefs. So presumably the objector is not holding that

every belief, if it is to be justified, must be believed on the evidential basis of other

beliefs; if that were true, no beliefs could be justified. (And if no beliefs could be

justified, it is nothing in particular against religious beliefs if t h e y can’t be

justified.) The objector must be supposing that some beliefs are properly basic:

accepted in the basic way, not accepted on the evidential basis of other beliefs,

and also such that one is justified in accepting them in that way (…) Thus one version of the claim that Christian belief is unjustified (that the believer

is unjustified) arises out of classical foundationalism: it is really the claim that

there is no good (or good enough) propositional evidence for Christian belief from

propositions that are self-evident or incorrigible (self evident is equivalent to a priori, and incorrigible- a term in Locke to mean certain to the observer foreg through sight- my addition). Hence the Christian believer is

unjustified; she is violating her epistemic duty (Plantinga Ch.2)

But classical foundationalism itself has serious problems. First, it seems to shoot

itself in the foot; it is hoist on its own petard; it is in self-referentially hot water.

For according to classical foundationalism (hereafter, CF) you are within your

epistemic rights in believing a proposition only if you believe it on the evidential

basis of propositions that are self-evident or incorrigible.

If you believe a proposition for which there isn’t any evidence from self-evident

or incorrigible propositions, then you are unjustified and violating your epistemic

duty. But here’s the problem: there don’t seem to be any incorrigible or

self-evident propositions that support CF itself. It certainly isn’t self-evident: it isn’t

such that anyone who understands it can just see it to be true. For example, I

understand it, and I don’t see it to be true. In fact I believe it is false… CF seems to be self-referentially incoherent (Plantinga Ch. 2)

According to Aquinas, “To know in a general and confused way that God exists

is implanted in us by nature.”1

Summa Theologiae I, q. 2 a. 1, ad 1. In Summa Contra Gentiles Aquinas adds that “There is a certain general and

confused knowledge of God, which is in almost all men” (Bk. III, ch. 38).

one could state that the asseriotn that religion is constructed adopted by the primitive mind in order to explain the inexplicable that is no longer required in the modern world does not sit with the seemingly contrary assertion that theism is a conscious choice from a priori atheistic position of all human beings. Rather theism can be more convincingly be seen as the acceptance of the mystery of existence, and this acceptance of the mystery which itself is certainly a priori, once consciously performed yet prior to that unconsciously present, is therefore truly the a priori state. The state of atheism is the conscious rejection of the possibility of God as an explanation of the mystery, it is not a rejection of they mystery of existence, because existence has never ceased to be a mystery, nor will it. Ig we therefore call the myetery itself “God”, then atheism becomes the conscious rejection of this mystery and the continued rejection for every thinking moment. One cannot really separate a human being from nature or the perception of nature, since indeed a human being is born into nature, and can be defined in this way from the time of conception which it sht etime that we are interested in. We are more specifically interested in the time of rationality, or consent which is usually taken to be around the age of 12, and by this age a uhman being would be expected to have looked up at the sky. We are not talking about a human being that is imprisoned into a dark box here, that is not the definition of a human being.

Indeed, the perversity of the impious, who though they struggle furiously are

unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God, is abundant testimony that

this conviction, namely, that there is some God, is naturally inborn in all, and is

fixed deep within, as it were in the very marrow. . . . From this we conclude that

it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of

us is master from his mother’s womb and which nature itself permits no one to

forget, although many strive with every nerve to this end. (Institutes, John Calvin I.iii.3, p. 46)

It is rather that upon the

perception of the night sky or the mountain vista or the tiny flower these beliefs

just arise within us. They arise in these circumstances; they are not conclusions

from them. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work

of his hands (Psalm 19): but not by way of serving as premises for an argument.

In this regard the sensus divinitatis resembles the faculties of perception,

memory, and a priori knowledge. Consider the first. I look out into the backyard; I

see that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom. I don’t note that I am being appeared to

in a certain complicated way (that my experience is of a certain complicated character) and then make an argument from my being appeared to in that way to

the conclusion that in fact there are coral tiger lilies in bloom there. (The whole

history of modern philosophy up to Hume and Reid shows how inconclusive such

an argument would be.) (Plantinga Ch.4, Basicality)

And God himself, the source of my very being, can also be a threat. In my

prideful desire for autonomy and self-sufficiency I can come to resent the presence

of someone upon whom I depend for my every breath and by comparison with

whom I am small potatoes indeed. I can therefore come to hate him too. I want to

be autonomous, beholden to no one. Perhaps this is the deepest root of the

condition of sin, and a motivation for atheism as wish-fulfillment.4

“And the first thing to see is that, on this model, faith is

indeed a product of a belief-producing process or activity, like perception or

memory. The activity of the Holy Spirit is or involves a means by which belief, and

belief on a certain specific set of topics, is regularly produced in regular ways. In

this it resembles memory, perception, reason, sympathy, induction, and other

more standard belief-producing processes. (It differs from them in that it is not

part of our natural epistemic equipment.)

Now what is required for knowledge (as I said above) is that a belief be

produced by cognitive faculties or processes that are working properly, in an

appropriate epistemic environment, according to a design plan that is aimed at

truth, and is furthermore successfully aimed at truth. But according to this model,

what one believes by faith (the beliefs that constitute faith) meets these four

conditions. First, when these beliefs are accepted by faith and result from the

internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, they are produced by cognitive processes

working properly; they are not produced by way of some cognitive malfunction.

The whole process that produces these beliefs is specifically designed by God

himself to produce this very effect — just as vision, say, is designed by God to

produce a certain kind of perceptual belief. When it does produce this effect,

therefore, it is working properly; thus the beliefs in question satisfy the first

condition of warrant. Second, according to the model, the environment in which we

find ourselves, including the cognitive contamination produced by sin, is precisely

the cognitive environment for which this process is designed. Third, the process is

designed to produce true beliefs.10 And fourth, according to the model the beliefs

they produce — belief in the great things of the gospel — are in fact true; this is a

reliable belief-producing process, so that the process in question is successfully

aimed at the production of true beliefs. (Plantinga, 75?)

“Here, as elsewhere, the

supernaturalist hypothesis fails because there is an adequate and much more

economical naturalistic alternative” (p. 198). This remark is relevant only if we

think of belief in God as or as like a sort of scientific hypothesis, a theory designed

to explain some body of evidence, and acceptable or warranted to the degree that

it explains that evidence. On this way of looking at the matter, there is a relevant

body of evidence shared by believer and unbeliever alike; theism is one hypothesis

designed to explain that body of evidence, (Plantinga 76)

For if Christian belief is, in fact, true, then obviously there could be such

cognitive processes as the sensus divinitatis and IIHS or faith. As we saw, beliefs

produced by these processes would meet the conditions necessary and sufficient

for having warrant: they would be the result of cognitive faculties functioning

properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan

successfully aimed at truth (Pl 77)

Appendix

One might ask why do scientific systems work? The answer is in the maths of the system. The reason why when you have one apple, and I give you another, you end up with two apples; is the same reason why when you wave your remote control at your television and changes channel, why your car it talks to a satellite, and so on, they’re mathematically valid operation, even quantum has its own mathematic, however obscure. Maths allows for things to be added together, and to be multiplied. It also allows for these things also in reverse which is how you get subtraction and division. If you had one apple and I gave you another, you could not end up with three apples, when you press number 12 on the remote control the could your tv channel change to 15. So Math can make predictions about the ways that certain actions can result in effects caused by the combination of elements.

Multiplication is the repetition of addition and the magnitude of what is added is the same as the initial magnitude. This gives the impression of producing copies of that initial magnitude/s. That’s we can see that every multiplication is an addition, for example when I add an apple to your existing apple, I have also multiplied it by two. (but every addition there is not a multiplication). Thus there is only one essential mathematical operation which the human brain is capable of, and this is addition. Mathematics is the combination of elements by the human brain and the reverse process.

Thus the basic unit of mathematics is addition. Some numbers can be penetrated and so can suffer the “reverse addition/multiplication” we described. There is a set of numbers that cannot be penetrated, and these numbers because of their impenetrability form the basic blocks of all mathematical operations. Mathematics is then the exercise of moving prime numbers through such operations, which are additions essentially, conjunctions and disjunctions of numbered units.

Large numbers of such conjunctions and disjunctions may be handled simultaneously, and such operations might be performed in a linear fashion, by which we get logarithmic progressions; or in a three-dimensional fashion whereby we get matrices. Anyway, that’s my summary of mathematique, don’t quote me on it.

An Example from Binary Code

Consider one manner of looking at knowledge, which is a series of yes/no answers in linear array. This is “binary code” which has enjoyed as we all know, greate success in the fields of computer engineering. As an example, try asking all the yes/no questions possible about a familiar object like a plastic eraser or a pencil. An object can then be described as a string of binaries, often seven in used in computer codes. For example, take living (yes/no), animal(yes/no), vertebrate(yes/no), mammal(yes/no), land(yes/no), extinct (yes/no), flying(yes/no), tree-faring (yes/no), carnivore(yes/no), egg-laying (yes/no). Assign 0 to “yes” and 1 to “no”, and for “human” you get a code of something like 00110010 while for “cow” 00110011, the difference might just be down to the last two numbers (sorry I just fired off the codes, haven’t actually worked it out). Those questions for which yes/no cannot be given lie outside the code; like do we know how this got here? Or why is there plurality in nature, or “Do all humans require to have a purpose?” and so on. This is a useful manner in which knowledge might be both viewed and demarcated from non-knowledge.