Review

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A Review
of
Henri Louis Bergson's Book
Creative Evolution
Chapter III: On The Meaning of Life The Order of Nature
and the
Form of Intelligence
Topic 36: The Two Kinds of Order
by Doug Renselle
Doug's Pre-review Commentary
Start of Review


Chapter I II
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 
Chapter III IV
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45  46 47

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Topic 36...............The Two Kinds of Order

PAGE

QUOTEs
(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.)

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)

232

"The reply, to our thinking, is not doubtful. An order is contingent, and seems so, in relation to the inverse order, as verse is contingent in relation to prose and prose in relation to verse. [Were we to be more quantumesque, we might say, "…in interrelationships to c¤mplementary order…"] But, just as all speech which is not prose is verse and necessarily conceived as verse, just as all speech which is not verse is prose and necessarily conceived as prose, so any state of things that is not one of the two orders is the other and is necessarily conceived as the other. [But only by classical convention…] But it may happen that we do not realize what we are actually thinking of, and perceive the idea really present to our mind only through a mist of affective states. [Yes! Or better, "…through a quantum ensemble mist of qualitative and influential precondition local and nonlocal stochastic interrelationships."] Any one can be convinced of this by considering the use we make of the idea of disorder in daily life. When I enter a room and pronounce it to be "in disorder," what do I mean? The position of each object is explained by the automatic movements of the person who has slept in the room, or by the efficient causes, whatever they may be, that have caused each article of furniture, clothing, etc., to be where it is: the order, in the second sense of the word, is perfect. But it is order of the first kind that I am expecting, the order that a methodical person consciously puts into his life, the willed order and not the automatic: so I call the absence of this order "disorder." At bottom, all there is that is real, perceived and even conceived, in this absence of one of the two kinds of order, is the presence of the other. [There is always a quantum uncertainty interrelationship twixt both c¤mplement order and c¤mplement disorder. I.e., quanton(order,disorder).]"

(Our link, brackets and bold.)

Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number.

Our bold and color highlights follow a code:

  • black-bold - important to read if you are just scanning our review
  • green-bold - we see Bergson suggesting axiomatic memes
  • violet-bold - an apparent classical problematic
  • blue-bold - we disagree with this text segment while disregarding context of Bergson's overall text
  • gray-bold - quotable text
  • red-bold - our direct commentary
233 "But the second is indifferent to me, I am interested only in the first, and I express the presence of the second as a function of the first, instead of expressing it, so to speak, as a function of itself, [And Bergson again exposes his either/or classicism! Why does he not see that each is a c¤mplementary function of both self, other, and their c¤mplements? One cannot be what oneself is alone, one may only be what one, and one's c¤mplements are together, mitigated and prodded by vital impetus—absolute change.] by saying it is disorder. Inversely, when we affirm that we are imagining a chaos, that is to say a state of things in which the physical world no longer obeys laws, what are we thinking of? We imagine facts that appear and disappear capriciously. [We should be think-king of quantum uncertainty borne of reality's vital impetus: absolute change.] First we think of the physical universe as we know it, with effects and causes well proportioned to each other; then, by a series of arbitrary decrees, we augment, diminish, suppress, so as to obtain what we call disorder. In reality we have substituted will for the mechanism of nature; we have replaced the "automatic order" by a multitude of elementary wills, just to the extent that we imagine the apparition or vanishing of phenomena. No doubt, for all these little wills to constitute a " willed order," they must have accepted the direction of a higher will. But, on looking closely at them, we see that that is just what they do: our own will is there, which objectifies itself in each of these capricious wills in turn, and takes good care not to connect the same with the same, nor to permit the effect to be proportional to the cause—in fact makes one simple intention [i.e., OGT in OGC] hover over the whole of the elementary volitions. Thus, here again, the absence of one of the two orders consists in the presence of the other. In analyzing the idea of chance, which is closely akin to the idea of disorder, we find the same elements. When the wholly mechanical play of the causes which stop the wheel on a number makes me win, and consequently acts like a good genius, careful of my interests, or when the wholly mechanical force of the wind tears a tile off the roof and throws it on to my head, that is to say acts like a bad genius, conspiring against my person: in both cases I find a mechanism where I should have looked for, where, indeed, it seems as if I ought to have found, an intention." (Our brackets.)
234

"That is what I express in speaking of chance. And of an anarchical world, in which phenomena succeed each other capriciously, I should say again that it is a realm of chance, meaning that I find before me wills, or rather decrees, when what I am expecting is mechanism. Thus is explained the singular vacillation of the mind when it tries to define chance. Neither efficient cause nor final cause can furnish the definition sought. The mind swings to and fro, unable to rest, between the idea of an absence of final cause and that of an absence of efficient cause, each of these definitions sending it back to the other. [And classical mind calls this to and fro vacillation, "sophistic paradice." To SOM it is a mind-numbing whir, as we show in this graphic from our Buridan sub-topic called SOM Connection:

To quantum sophists, those paradice evaporate as a quantum logic of many truths, which we can illustrate as a simplified case of two truths.] The problem remains insoluble, in fact, so long as the idea of chance is regarded as a pure idea, without mixture of feeling. [I.e., without "many truths." I.e., both chance and feeling (quantal moral choices and concomitant changes).] But, in reality, chance merely objectifies the state of mind of one who, expecting one of the two kinds of order, finds himself confronted with the other. Chance and disorder are therefore necessarily conceived as relative. [See our comments on relativism on page 232 at top.] So if we wish to represent them to ourselves as absolute, we perceive that we are going to and fro like a shuttle between the two kinds of order, passing into the one just at the moment at which we might catch ourself in the other, and that the supposed absence of all order is really the presence of both, with, besides, the swaying of a mind that cannot rest finally in either. Neither in things nor in our idea of things can there be any question of presenting this disorder as the substratum of order, since it implies the two kinds of order and is made of their combination.

"But our intelligence is not stopped by this. By a simple sic jubeo it posits a disorder which is an "absence of order." In so doing it thinks a word or a set of words, nothing more."

(Our bold and color.)

Our Quantonic view both differs and extends Bergson's discussion thus far. Pure anarchical chance is stuff of Cultural Relativism: no absolutes permitted—neither truth nor change—except chaos. By comparison, classical SOM declares absolute truth; however, absent novel, EEE change (AKA "inform-ation," as Dr. Stein reminds us.). Quantonics, flavored with Pirsig's MoQ and our current understanding of quantum reality favors: choice, chance and change.

At each Planck quantum moment, quantons make 'better' choices based upon both local and nonlocal preconditions/Values. Then those quantons, having made their tentative moral choices, take their chances regarding (heterogeneously) what(s) happens next(s). Then, under vital impetus of Planck's ticking clocks, change happens. And that process repeats relentlessly.

So, now reader, we can see that what looks like chaos is not chaos at all. It, instead, is incremental moral Planck rate choice, chance, and change. Uncertain? Yes! Chaotic? Only if we accept 'chaos' as Nondeterministic Periodic Quantum Flux. But too, we can then imagine quantum "chaos" as an extreme kind of absolute 'order' or Dynamic Quality in itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quantum mind rests in "many" when it has that epiphany of many quantum islands or comtexts of local 'truth.'

Agree, but we see DQ as both quantum isocoherent and coherent order, and SQ as both quantum coherent and decoherent 'disorder.' Classical anthropocentrists could never abide calling their eminent actual reality, "disorder."

In Bergson's example, here, we see classical dichotomy, nothing more.

235

"If it seeks to attach an idea to the word, it finds that disorder may indeed be the negation of order, but that this negation is then the implicit affirmation of the presence of the opposite order, which we shut our eyes to because it does not interest us, or which we evade by denying the second order in its turn—that is, at bottom, by re-establishing the first. How can we speak, then, of an incoherent diversity which an understanding organizes? It is no use for us to say that no one supposes this incoherence to be realized or realizable: when we speak of it, we believe we are thinking of it; now, in analyzing the idea actually present, we find, as we said before, only the disappointment of the mind confronted with an order that does not interest it, or a swaying of the mind between two kinds of order, or, finally, the idea pure and simple of the empty word that we have created by joining a negative prefix to a word which itself signifies something. But it is this analysis that we neglect to make. We omit it, precisely because [we are such well-propagandized classicists that] it does not occur to us to distinguish two kinds of order that are irreducible to one another [which non-classical think-king appears to a classicist as a sophism].

"We said, indeed, that all order necessarily appears as contingent [affects-be (non-classical alternative to 'because') all real constituents are EEEs of themselves]. If there are two kinds of order, this contingency of order is explained: one [both] of the forms is [are] contingent in [inter-] relation [-ships] to the other. Where I find the geometrical order, the vital was possible; where the order is vital, it might have been geometrical. But suppose that the order is everywhere [quantonic, i.e.] of the same kind, and simply admits of degrees which go from the geometrical to the vital: if a determinate order still appears to me to be contingent, and can no longer be so by relation to an order of another kind, I shall necessarily believe that the order is contingent by [inter-] relation [-ships] to an absence of itself, that is to say by [inter-] relation [-ships] to a state of things [i.e., DQ or quantum isoflux] 'in which there is no order at all.'"

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

Reader, this page is where Bergson derives essence of both Pirsig's MoQ and quantum science! Marvelous!

If you consider incoherence well, in its stead you may see isocoherence c¤mplementing both coherence and decoherence.

But reader, we are Its real actualization quantum-c¤mplementing Its nonactuality!

Reader, this is exactly what Pirsig's MoQ does! Classicists view his DQ as an empty phrase. They view his SQ as reality's non-empty container. Pirsig quantum-unified both DQ and SQ as quanton(DQ,SQ). He quantum-unified what classicists see as 'empty' with what they see as their reality's container. For a classicist, because of their carefully propagandized mindsets, merging empty and nonempty is a sophism. It creates contradictions. To a classicist objects are rational and quantons are irrational sophisms. Why? Because classical propaganda is di-verse. Classical propaganda divides empty and nonempty. It creates schisms. It creates a wall twixt empty and nonempty. It analyzes insisting on classical excluded-middles and it non-synergistically synthesizes without restoring quantum included-middles. To do otherwise is to be 'irrational, absurd, unreasonable, or ridiculous.'

236

"And this state of things I shall believe that I am thinking of, because it is implied, it seems, in the very contingency of order, which is an unquestionable fact. I shall therefore place at the summit of the hierarchy the vital order; then, as a diminution or lower complication of it, the geometrical order; and finally, at the bottom of all, an absence of order, incoherence itself, on which order is superposed. This is why incoherence has the effect on me of a word behind which there must be something real, if not in things, at least in thought. But if I observe that the state of things implied by the contingency of a determinate order is simply the presence of the contrary order, and if by this very fact I posit two kinds of order, each the inverse of the other, I perceive that no intermediate degrees can be imagined between the two orders, and that there is no going down from the two orders to the "incoherent." Either the incoherent is only a word, devoid of meaning, or, if I give it a meaning, it is on condition of putting incoherence midway between the two orders, and not below both of them. There is not first the incoherent, then the geometrical, then the vital; there is only the geometrical and the vital, and then, by a swaying of the mind between them, the idea of the incoherent. To speak of an uncoordinated diversity to which order is superadded is therefore to commit a veritable petitio principii; for in imagining the uncoordinated we really posit an order, or rather two. [Bergson wrestles both chicken and egg.]

"This long analysis was necessary to show how the real can pass from tension to extension and from freedom to mechanical necessity by way of inversion."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and color italics.)

 

And by this choice, Bergson leaps right back into SOM's box. Pirsig saw this problematic. He fixed it! Pirsig showed us that a new hierarchy places Value over truth, subject over object. Why? Affects-be (QTM version of CTM 'because') subjective Value is more highly evolved than objective value.

Reader, from hence forth we must distinguish Bergsonian incoherence as quantum order, and his coherence as classical order. This too is an inappropriate Bergsonian inversion of quantum reality based upon his partial intransigence in classical legacy.

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Doug Renselle
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©Quantonics, Inc., 2000-2013 Rev. 8Dec2009  PDR Created: 20Sep2000  PDR
(8Jul2001 rev - Correct link to page 30.)
(14Dec2001 rev - Add top of page frame-breaker.)
(21Jan2002 rev - Remediate quantum comtextual occurrences of 'complement' to 'c¤mplement.)
(22Feb2007 rev - Adjust format.)
(15Nov2007 rev - Reformat slightly.)
(8Dec2009 rev - Make page current. Adjust colors.)

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