Strife and Abstraction- Part 2

We ended the first part of this essay with the question: Is the Wheeler principle an intrinsic part of the cosmos, or does it only describe the limit of human intellect? However, before we can answer this question, we must tie up some loose ends and cover more ground. To begin with, we return to the world of the Physioi. This is because they developed or were precursors of many of the tools and concepts we still use today to understand the cosmos. Let us move to Empedecoles’ rival thinker Anaxagoras. A quote from Anaxagoras’s fragments (taken from M. Schefield’s book An Essay on Anaxagoras): “The other things share in a portion of everything, but mind is unlimited and self-controlling and has not been mixed with anything, but exists alone by itself, for if it were not by itself but had been mixed with something else, it would share in all things (for in everything there is a portion of everything, as I have said earlier) and the thing mixed together with it would be presenting it so that it would not control anything in the exact same way as it actually does being alone by itself. For it is finest of all things and purest. Moreover it harbors every discerning judgment about everything, and so harbors greatest strength, and moreover all the things that have soul-both the greater and the smaller, all of them mind controls. Mind controlled the whole revolution, so that it started to revolve at the beginning. First it began to revolve in a small way, but it is revolving more, and it will revolve more. And the things that were being mixed together and separated off and distinguished, mind knew them all. Whatever things were to be both those which were and those which are now and those which will be-all these mind ordered, and also this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the ether which are being separated off.” We are fortunate to have such a comprehensive fragment from Anaxagoras. We can already observe differences between Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Anaxagoras writes in prose instead of poetry. There is no mention of the gods. Parmenides sought to replace the old gods by giving the old names new meanings. Anaxagoras does not even mention the gods. This gives reading Anaxagoras a more modern Anaxagoras separates mind from matter, even though both are composed of physical stuff. Matter and mind are unmixed, with mind being the active agent that combines matter. Another difference between Anaxagoras and Empedocles is the epistemology of Anaxagoras. Simplified, it is that we know something by what it is not. This seems a precursor to Plato’s dialectic expressed in The Sophist. We know the color yellow because it is not blue or green, etc. It is because of this epistemology that I am persuaded that Anaxagoras held every quality was in everything. This is mostly expressed in terms of opposites. There is hot and cold, pleasure and pain, and so on. This is before Protagoras split subject and active, so there is as of yet no distinction between internal and external. For something to become a substantial mind, like is with like to build up an object. When everything is mixed together there is a quality-less mist. It is by separation of qualities that objects are built up. Anaxagoras gave us dualism by separating matter and mind. He makes mind the active agent, thus giving mind priority. This is of course a precursor to the the top down system, in which abstraction or mental entities are more real than the sensible or material entities. He shows an anticipation of dialectic by his epistemology by making difference the factor by which a particular is known. Empedocles held that emotion carried information or knowledge, while Anaxagoras makes intellect the active force that carries information. Intellect is given priority by Anaxagoras, while emotion is given priority by Empedocles. Of course, it is not until Protagoras splits subject and object that we see the familiar top down system as elaborated in Plato’s philosophy. The forms or abstractions are moved to a divinized mental realm, no longer being of physical stuff. The mental and physical have been split in two realms. The forms are perceived by the intellect; matter by the senses. The problem becomes, what to do with emotion? Are emotions part of the sensible or the intelligible realm? Empedocles seems to be almost an ancient existentialist-everything is mixed by the emotions, and the cosmos are dominated by feeling rather than intellect. It is in Plato that we find the top down system that shall come to dominate Western philosophy for most of its history. The forms dwell in a divinized mental realm, the objective world. The material realm acts as the subjective world. The subjective is the realm of the contingent. Each particular is unique and contingent. This is why the realm of the subjective is the realm of illusion. The real, objective world is always a mental realm composed of universals. The trouble the new physics faced during the early 20th century was in trying to make the material realm the real world. Plato’s real world was done away with, so all they had was the sensible realm. This is also the problem of monism-how to unify subject and object? How do you bring about a One? The Empedoclean One is the most popular solution. That is to make the laws that govern the material realm into reality. The Parmenidean One is also an option, as can be seen in Hawking’s no-boundary universe. The belief was that if we could only find the right viewpoint, the contingencies and conflicts would be resolved. This is also the view of both Spinoza and Hegel, a God’s eye view. The Plotinian One is not an option, as Darwinism had killed the top down active One. These are the 3 types of One that the Wheeler principle lead us to. The first two are still possible because the age held to a bottom up view of causal efficacy. The other option was Kant’s option-cut off speculation at observation. Kant would hold that the Wheeler principle is a construction of the human intellect, not an intrinsic part of the cosmos. We must realize all our principles to understand the cosmos are just techniques we use to gain power over the environment. The human mind does touch the real world, but only a very small part of the cosmos. We must recognize that our principles give us power and not truth. This can be clearly observed in how we change our techniques by what we want to achieve. Decorating a house is a different goal than building a house, and different techniques and criteria are used for both. We must give up the idea of unchangeable truth. The true third term that controls freedom and necessity is power. It is in power that freedom and necessity are sublated. Allow me to return to an example from a previous essay, the hiker and the boulder. When the hiker knows the universals, the limits of the boulder, the hiker has power over the boulder. In other words, the boulder no longer blocks the path. The hiker can circumvent the boulder and proceed. It is only when we realize there is no real world in the Platonic sense, and that our principles and techniques give us power and not unchangeable truth that we can come to make progress in bringing subject and object together.