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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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(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.) |
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.) |
237 |
"It was not enough to prove that this relation between the two terms is suggested to us, at once, by consciousness and by sensible experience. It was necessary to prove that the geometrical order has no need of explanation, being purely and simply the suppression of the inverse order. And, for that, it was indispensable to prove that suppression is always a substitution and is even necessarily conceived as such: it is the requirements of practical life alone that suggest to us here a way of speaking that deceives us both as to what happens in things and as to what is present to our thought. We must now examine more closely the inversion whose consequences we have just described. What, then, is the principle that has only to let go its tensionmay we say to detendin order to extend, the interruption of the cause here being equivalent to a reversal of the effect? [Quantum reality!] "For want of a better word we have called it consciousness. [In Quantonics, our quantum reality heuristic is that reality is proemially aware! See our definition of obsfect.] But we do not mean the narrowed consciousness that functions in each of us. Our own consciousness is the consciousness of a certain living being, placed in a certain point of space; and though it does indeed move in the same direction as its principle, it is continually drawn the opposite way, obliged, though it goes forward, to look behind. This retrospective vision is, as we have shown, the natural function of the intellect, and consequently of distinct consciousness. In order that our consciousness shall coincide with something of its principle, it must detach itself from the already-made and attach itself to the being-made. It needs that, turning back on itself and twisting on itself [i.e., fractal recursion], the faculty of seeing should be made to be one with the act of willinga painful effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain more than a few moments." |
(Our link, brackets, bold, and color.) 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:
Modern English language is " a way of speaking that deceives us both as to what happens in things and as to what is present in our thought." Conventional classical mathematics is too. Classical Western culture's own dichotomous thought, i.e., CTMs', hegemony's purpose is retention of this passé legacy.
Our QTMs facilitate this act of will, painlessly and without violence, as an act of learned habit. We choose to infer that Bergson's emphasis of 'violence' arises from his brute force adaptation of his own legacy SOM to do his willing. As we have said in this review prior, SOM is violent, innately so (i.e., by anthropodesign). Why? Wrath...
...engendering contrariness, contradiction, versus, opposition, and comtextual incommensurability due to SOM's fundamental axioms promulgating absolute either/or dichotomies. We exemplify those fundamental axioms most often using Aristotle's syllogisms. |
238 | "In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we hardly feel, which at most we brush lightly as it passes. Let us try, however, to instal ourselves within it, if only for a moment; even then it is an individual and fragmentary will that we grasp. To get to the principle of all life, as also of all materiality, we must go further still. Is it impossible? No, by no means; the history of philosophy is there to bear witness. There is no durable system that is not, at least in some of its parts, vivified by intuition. Dialectic is necessary to put intuition to the proof [only possible, locally, in a conventional axiomatic system], necessary also in order that intuition should break itself up into [classically analytic] concepts and so be propagated to other men; but all it does, often enough, is to develop the result of that intuition which transcends it. The truth is, the two procedures are of opposite direction: the same effort, by which ideas are connected with ideas, causes the intuition which the ideas were storing up to vanish. The [classical] philosopher is obliged to abandon intuition, once he has received from it the impetus, and to rely on himself to carry on the movement by pushing the concepts one after another. But he soon feels he has lost foothold; he must come into touch with intuition again; he must undo most of what he has done. In short, dialectic is what ensures the agreement of our thought with itself. But by dialecticwhich is only a relaxation of intuitionmany different agreements are possible [From which Bergson failed to infer "many truths," ], while there is only one truth [assumption of SOM's classical OGT in OGC!]. Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, would not only make the philosopher agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is, in each system, what is worth more than the system and survives it." |
(Our links, brackets, bold, and color.)
Rather, we would say, "Rhetoric is necessary " Dialectic, as Pirsig has taught us well, is but a subspecies of rhetoric! Where dialectic is but a dichotomous unilogical language of classical SOM, rhetoric is a cohesive paralogical language of more quantum MoQ. Where dialectic is pure intellects' lingo, rhetoric subsumes intellects, intuitions, and instincts.
Quantonics and QTMs foster such prolongation (Bergsonian duration), and opportunities for agreements! Notice how our Quantonic semiotics offer cohesion and c¤mplementarity of Bergson's 'incompletementary' fugitives. |
239 |
"The object of philosophy would be reached if this intuition could be sustained, generalized and, above all, assured of external points of reference in order not to go astray. To that end a continual coming and going is necessary between nature and mind. "When we put back our being into our will, and our will itself into the impulsion it prolongs, we understand, we feel, that reality is a perpetual growth, a creation pursued without end. Our will already performs this miracle. Every human work in which there is invention, every voluntary act in which there is freedom, every movement of an organism that manifests spontaneity, brings something new into the world. True, these are only creations of form...
...How could they be anything else? We are not the vital current itself; we are this current already loaded with matter, that is, with congealed parts of its own substance which it carries along its course. In the composition of a work of genius, as in a simple free decision, we do, indeed, stretch the spring of our activity to the utmost and thus create what no mere assemblage of materials could have given (what assemblage of curves already known can ever be equivalent to the pencil-stroke of a great artist?) but there are, none the less, elements here that pre-exist and survive their organization. But if a simple arrest of the action that generates form could constitute matter (are not the original lines drawn by the artist themselves already the fixation and, as it were, congealment of a movement?), a creation of matter would be neither incomprehensible nor inadmissible. For we seize from within, we live at every instant, a creation of form, and it is just in those cases in which the form is pure, and in which the creative current is momentarily interrupted, that there is a creation of matter. Consider the letters of the alphabet that enter into the composition of everything that has ever been written: we do not conceive that new letters spring up and come to join themselves to the others in order to make a new poem." [Those of you diligent readers, our Valued students of Quantonics, may infer that one of Doug's fondest wishes is that during Millennium III...human semiotics will become dynamic and capable of evolution, i.e., quantum emersion - change - immersion... Beth and I often envision poetry "animately, quantum alive." Doug - 27Feb2001.] |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.) We claim, absent any intended arrogance, to have achieved Bergson's object of philosophy via our Quantonic heuristics and semiotics. Doug 25Oct2000.
Yes! And it is crucial to distinguish in-form-ation from evolution, especially regarding thought. Information is re-use of classical building blocks to create new 'forms.' Evolution is EEE of EEE-capable reality constituents or contrivances. EEE-capable constituents do not just rearrange and objectively reconnect themselves like tinker toys, characters and words in sentences, or text-based computer viruses! EEE-capable constituents, e.g., quantons, are capable of comtext-driven novel self-extension! This difference twixt information and evolution has simply enormous philosophical, metaphysical, ontological, scientific, and emerscenture comsequences! And here it is unclear whether Bergson grasps our point! He appears to see us as classical objects! But does he see us as both his "vital current" and "loaded matter?" Indeed, we are quantons of quantons! Quantons are compenetrating, included-middle, both/ands of actuality and its (nonactual) "vital current" c¤mplement.
Bergson appears to follow a line of reasoning similar to John von Neumann's on quantum measurement. I.e., that incremental change is "momentarily interrupted" in such a manner that its 'event' can be classically 'observed.' In von Neumann's case, he requires wave function collapse as a unitemporal, analytic, measurement event. But von Neumann never could identify where and when "collapse" occurs. It will be interesting to see if Bergson uses his own personal intueme to show that we cannot know where and when evolute, incremental extension occurs since time and comtext are heterogeneous memes, not classical thing-king methods such as those in which von Neumann's reasoning found itself ensnared. |
240 |
"But that the poet creates the poem and that human thought is thereby made richer, we understand very well: this creation is a simple act of the mind, and action has only to make a pause, instead of continuing into a new creation, in order that, of itself, it may break up into words which dissociate themselves into letters which are added to all the letters there are already in the world. Thus, that the number of atoms composing the material universe at a given moment should increase runs counter to our habits of mind, contradicts the Whole of our experience; but that a reality of quite another order, which contrasts with the atom as the thought of the poet with the letters of the alphabet, should increase by sudden additions, is not inadmissible; and the reverse of each addition might indeed be a world, which we then represent to ourselves, symbolically, as an assemblage of atoms...
"...The mystery that spreads over the existence of the universe comes in great part from this, that we want the genesis of it to have been accomplished at one stroke or the whole of matter to be eternal. Whether we speak of creation or posit an uncreated matter, it is the totality of the universe that we are considering at once. At the root of this habit of mind lies the prejudice which we will analyze in our next chapter, the idea, common to materialists and to their opponents, that there is no really acting duration, and that the absolutematter or mindcan have no place in concrete time, in the time which we feel to be the very stuff of our life. From which it follows that everything is given once for all, and that it is necessary to posit from all eternity either material multiplicity itself, or the act creating this multiplicity, given in block in the divine essence. Once this prejudice is eradicated, the idea of creation becomes more clear, for it is merged in that of growth. But it is no longer then of the universe in its totality that we must speak." [No offense intended here, only (unsolicited) assistance in perspective, but I hope you 'creationist' fundamentalists see nature's wide beam of light splashed on Bergson's enlightening heuristic above. And please note that classical science's own dogma is even more fundamental than yours. Amazingly, you both seek new light and fresh air, but what you both seek is not classical, analytic separationrather quantum, cohesive freedom. And you both can see it if you take those classical blinders off! Doug 26Oct2000.] |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.) Bergson is a genius! Imagine modern cosmologists arguing whether our universe is closed or open. Here Bergson tells us in one simple sentence fragment why our universe is intrinsically open: it evolves! Our universe evolves not classically (i.e., inform-ation), but quantumly! As Bergson shows us, classical 'novel' is just rearrangement of existing parts. Quantum n¤vel is quantons which can recursively grow themselves. Do you know what philosophical consequences flow from this brilliant insight? A big one is that where a classical closed universe conserves energy, a quantum open universe does not. Energy is abundant and free! Allowing our minds to arrive where Bergson was 100 years ago has other affects too. Open vis-à-vis closed removes SOM's wall! Maxwell's equations of thermodynamics become comparably inept. Some of Bill Sidis' remarks in his book The Animate and the Inanimate (AIA) about efficiencies at and above 100% take on new philosophical and scientific interpretations. A fixed count of 1080 atoms as our universe's closed material content metric becomes inane. We could go on forever with think-king mode changes which one must adopt to adhere a quantum r-evolution, but there is something even more important to comsider: From whence those quantum n¤vel reality comstituents? What is their source? From where do n¤vel and changing quantons arouse their alterations and existence? That where has many appellations: DQ, VES, QVF, quantum vacuum, n¤nactuality, etc. It is actuality's place of birth. It is our intellects' mysteries' source. It is quantum paradices' source! Pirsig tells us it is unknowable and indefinable, yet it bore us from its fecund womb of isotropic energy. It takes us back as persistent entropic memories when our flux bandwidths and amplitudes have reached sublime over-extended quantum-musical sympathetic decoherent vibrational entanglements. Viz. Helfgott's extraordinary concert collapse in movie Shine. It lets us extend and defer transition when our flux coheres nature. Viz. Movie, The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn. But all remains in It and It remains in all. A grand quantum included-middle ¤f all and It. And that fundamental Quantonic Think-king Mode is what allows us to grasp reality's quintessence! And it manifests in our dichonic 2D classical blinders as mysterious and paralogical evolution. Finally, reader, we foyer where we sought to be. We read and review this book so that we might understand Bergson's view of time. But that is an intermediate goal. Our goal, now delayed for late 2001, is to use Bergson's and others' plural views of 'many times and heterogeneous reality,' i.e., heterogeneous times, comtexts, et al., to review William James Sidis' The Animate and the Inanimate. As we recently (25Oct2000) wrote to Bret Warren regarding his query about when our review of AIA will be complete,
Our first scan of AIA with Rosenberg's comments and comjectures in mind left us feeling that Sidis' intelligence is above any human analytic metric. Vastly above! One must comsider his language skills: he could speak and write in greater than 200 languages, transposing instantly! So we are looking for tells. Since he was n¤t often explicit regarding new philosophy and science, we must look for inferences. But to look for those inferences, we must juxtapose AIA to our own heuristics. This is always unfair, in retrospect, for it is unlikely that we can reconstruct Sidis' own comtext. Thus we must build a greater foundation for juxtaposition of Sidis' AIA in philosophical and scientific currency. We surmise this will offer great, but probably speculative, value to you, our Quantonics community. |
241 |
"Why should we speak of it? The universe is an assemblage of solar systems which we have every reason to believe analogous to our own. No doubt they are not absolutely independent of one another. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar system is moving in a definite direction as if it were drawn. There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of the same world among themselves; so that it is not artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that we isolate our solar system: nature itself invites us to isolate it. As living beings, we depend on the planet on which we are, and on the sun that provides for it, but on nothing else. As thinking beings, we may apply the laws of our physics to our own world, and extend them to each of the worlds taken separately; but nothing tells us that they apply to the entire universe, nor even that such an affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not made, but is being made continually. It is growing, perhaps indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds. "Let us extend, then, to the whole of our solar system the two most general laws of our science, the principle of conservation of energy and that of its degradationlimiting them, however, to this relatively closed system and to other systems relatively closed. Let us see what will follow. We must remark, first of all, that these two principles have not the same metaphysical scope, The first is a quantitative law, and consequently [comtextually] relative, in part, to our methods of measurement. It says that, in a system presumed to be closed, the total energy, that is to say the sum of its kinetic and potential energy, remains constant." |
(Our link, brackets, and bold.) |
242 |
"Now, if there were only kinetic energy in the world, or even if there were, besides kinetic energy, only one single kind of potential energy, but no more, the artifice of measurement would not make the law artificial. The law of the conservation of energy would express indeed that something is preserved in constant quantity. But there are, in fact, energies of various kinds,(1) and the measurement of each of them has evidently been so chosen as to justify the principle of conservation of energy. Convention, therefore, plays a large part in this principle, although there is undoubtedly, between the variations of the different energies composing one and the same system, a mutual dependence which is just what has made the extension of the principle possible by measurements suitably chosen. If, therefore, the philosopher applies this principle to the solar system complete, he must at least soften its outlines. The law of the conservation of energy cannot here express the objective permanence of a certain quantity of a certain thing, but rather the necessity for every change that is brought about to be counterbalanced in some way by a change in an opposite direction. That is to say, even if it governs the whole of our solar system, the law of the conservation of energy is concerned with the relationship of a [classical] fragment of this world to another [classical] fragment rather than with the nature of the whole. [Conservation, as Bergson shows us, thus, demands an analytic homogeneity.] "It is otherwise with the second principle of thermodynamics. The law of the degradation of energy does not bear essentially on magnitudes. No doubt the first idea of it arose, in the thought of Carnot, out of certain quantitative considerations on the yield of thermic machines." Note (1) - On these differences of quality see the work of Duhem, L'Evolution de la mécanique, Paris, 1905, pp. 197 ff. |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.) |
243 |
"Unquestionably, too, the terms in which Clausius generalized it were mathematical, and a calculable magnitude, "entropy," was, in fact, the final conception to which he was led. Such precision is necessary for practical applications. But the law might have been vaguely conceived, and, if absolutely necessary, it might have been roughly formulated, even though no one had ever thought of measuring the different energies of the physical world, even though the concept of energy had not been created. Essentially, it expresses the fact that all physical changes have a tendency to be degraded into heat, and that heat tends to be distributed among bodies in a uniform manner. In this less precise form, it becomes independent of any convention; it is the most metaphysical of the laws of physics since it points out without interposed symbols, without artificial devices of measurements, the direction in which the world is going. [Note what happens when we extend it as suggested in prior comment.] It tells us that changes that are visible and heterogeneous will be more and more diluted into changes that are invisible and homogeneous [we think he intends (quantumly) cohesive instead of (classically) homogeneous], and that the instability to which we owe the richness and variety of the changes taking place in our solar system will gradually give way to the relative stability of elementary vibrations continually and perpetually repeated. Just so with a man who keeps up his strength as he grows old, but spends it less and less in actions, and comes, in the end, to employ it entirely in making his lungs breathe and his heart beat. "From this point of view, a world like our solar system is seen to be ever exhausting something of the mutability it contains. In the beginning, it had the maximum of possible utilization of energy: this mutability has gone on diminishing unceasingly. Whence does it come? We might at first suppose that it has come from some other point of space, but the difficulty is only set back, and for this external source of mutability the same question springs up." |
(Our brackets and bold.)
Now those of you technical among us, ask yourselves, "What modifications and extensions to laws of thermodynamics are needed if some actual energies transition to isotropic flux?" What happens when we commingle quantum cohesion semantics with classical and quantum entropy semantics? What do coherency, partial coherency, decoherency, and isocoherency have in Value interrelationships with entropy semantics of posentropy, zeroentropy, and negentropy?
We might view this as an impulse whose response is a hyperbolic decay of "quantum tunneling capability." From any actual 'side' of reality's 'omnisurface/face-of-change' we may view n¤nactuality paradoxically both trying to express itself and retake what it has given. From any n¤nactual 'side,' we may view many actualities paradoxically both fighting to remain and eager to return. But reality's Li-la dance, at least from our naïve perspective, appears to offer her steps of creation a net gain. Consider that we may be riding a much larger wave whose current phase encourages our perception of that tentative slope. Please take a few moments to view our above remarks in light of our previous page comments on quantum entropy and cohesion. |
244 |
"True, it might be added that the number of worlds capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited, that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is infinite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek its origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We have seen above what we must think of this theory, and how difficult it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal influence of all the parts of matter on one another, an influence to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it might be supposed that the general instability has arisen from a general state of stability [i.e., absolute flux]; that the period in which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which the mutability was increasing, and that the alternations of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the calculations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbability of it passes all imagination and practically amounts to absolute impossibility.(1) In reality, the problem remains insoluble as long as we keep on the ground of physics, for the physicist is obliged to attach energy to extended particles, and, even if he regards the particles only as reservoirs of energy, he remains in space: he would belie his rôle if he sought the origin of these energies in an extraspatial process. It is there, however, in our opinion, that it must be sought. [We concur!]" Note (1) - Boltzmann, Vorlesungen uber Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff. |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.) |
245 |
"Is it extension in general that we are considering in abstracto? Extension, we said, appears only as a tension which is interrupted. [a Planck quantum] Or, are we considering the concrete reality that fills this extension? [latching of flux] The [apparent] order which reigns there, and which is manifested by the [apparent] laws of nature, is an order which must be born of itself when the inverse order is suppressed; a detension of the will would produce precisely this suppression. Lastly, we find that the direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing unmaking itself; [Bergson is one of very few we know who broach devolution.] such, no doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiality. What conclusion are we to draw from all this, if not that the process by which this thing makes itself is directed in a contrary way to that of physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very definition, immaterial? [We are to make it a quanton, sir!] The vision we have of the material world is that of a weight which falls: no image drawn from matter, properly so called, will ever give us the idea of the weight rising. But this conclusion will come home to us with still greater force if we press nearer to the concrete reality, and if we consider, no longer only matter in general, but, within this matter, living bodies. "All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to re-mount the incline that matter descends. [See Prigogine and Stengers' Order Out of Chaos.] In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of matter by its [quantal] interruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter. If it were pure consciousness, a fortiori if it were supraconsciousness, it would be pure creative activity. [Yes! Amen! Bravo!] In fact, it is riveted to an organism that subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as the principle of Carnot determines it. [But, indeed, It DOES!]" |
(Our link, brackets, bold, and color.)
Bergson eloquently describes how classical SOM suppresses quantum essence. SOM detends intellectual will and suppresses its liaisons with intuitive, qualitative, affective, quantum reality. SOM calls quantum reality "subjective." Again, we ask you to reexamine our Quantonic semiotics as they depict Bergson's 'I-cubed:' Intellect, Intuition, and Instinct. Classical philosophy, science, religion, and mathematics are all detention camps of human will! And from our perspective, their various detentions of intellect are crimes against natureof highest order. Why? Because as far as we know, humans are one of reality's most highly evolved agents of natural change, and their intellects are nature's most highly evolved patterns of Value. Keeping them in detention camps, or worse keeping their intellectual wills in detention camps of any kind, is a crime against nature. Intellectual freedom is natural. Intellectual detention is criminally "insane." Doug 26Oct2000. |
246 |
"It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse [isocoherent] direction[s]. Incapable of stopping the course of material changes downwards, it succeeds in retarding it. The [quantum both] evolution [and devolution] of life really continues, as we have shown, an initial impulsion: this impulsion, which has determined the development of the chlorophyllian function in the plant and of the sensori-motor system in the animal, brings life to more and more efficient acts by the fabrication and use of more and more powerful explosives. Now, what do these explosives represent if not a storing up of the solar energy, the degradation of which energy is thus provisionally suspended on some of the points where it was being poured forth? The usable energy which the explosive conceals will be expended, of course, at the moment of the explosion; but it would have been expended sooner if an organism had not happened to be there to arrest its dissipation, in order to retain it and save it up. As we see it to-day, at the point to which it was brought by a scission of the mutually complementary tendencies which it contained within itself, life is entirely dependent on the chlorophyllian function of the plant. This means that, looked at in its initial impulsion, before any scission, life was a tendency to accumulate in a reservoir [See our QQA on I Ching's 'struction.'], as do especially the green parts of vegetables, with a 'view to an instantaneous effective discharge, like that which an animal brings about, something that would have otherwise flowed away. It is like an effort to raise the weight which falls. True, it succeeds only in retarding the fall. But at least it can give us an idea of what the raising of the weight was.(1)" Note (1) - In a book rich in facts and in ideas (La Dissolution opposée a l'évolution, Paris, 1899), M. André Lalande shows us everything going towards death, in spite of the momentary resistance which organisms seem to oppose.But, even from the side of unorganized matter, have we the right to extend to the entire universe considerations drawn from the present state of our solar system? Beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds that are being born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of "life in general," or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is as if this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general. [Viz. Quanton(life,death).] |
(Our link, brackets, bold, and color.) See our QELR of stop. See our QELR of momentum. See Bergson's own extensive Time and Free Will comments on duration. See our version of Zeno's stoppability. Doug - 21Feb2007. |
247 | "Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet. The steam thrown into the air is nearly all condensed into little drops which fall back, and this condensation and this fall represent simply the loss [and c¤mplementary (non-conservative) gains] of something, an interruption, a deficit [and c¤mplementary (non-conservative) surpluses]. But a small part of the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds; it is making an effort to raise the drops which are falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall. So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. The evolution of living species within this world represents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality. But let us not carry too far this comparison. It gives us but a feeble and even deceptive image of reality, for the crack, the jet of steam, the forming of the drops, are determined necessarily, whereas the creation of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world participates in this liberty. Let us think rather of an action like that of raising the arm; then let us suppose that the arm, left to itself, falls back, and yet that there subsists in it, striving to raise it up again, something of the will that animates it. In this image of a creative action which unmakes itself we have already a more exact representation of matter." | (Our brackets and bold.) |
248 |
"In vital activity we see, then, that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted movement, a reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself. [This corresponds almost exactly to Hinduism's lila dance to and fro of Divine and World.] "Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we think of things which are created and a thing which creates, as we habitually do [separated by SOM's wall], as the understanding cannot help doing. We shall show the origin of this illusion in our next chapter. It is natural to our intellect, whose function is essentially practical, made to present to us things and states rather than changes and acts. But things and states are only views [Static Quality latchings], taken by our mind, of becoming. There are no things, there are only actions. More particularly, if I consider the world in which we live, I find that the automatic and strictly determined evolution of this well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable of being themselves prolonged into unforeseen movements, represent the action that is making itself. [This sounds too Maxwellian (2nd law of thermodynamics) for our tastes.] Now, I have every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And I know they were not all constructed at the same time, since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in course of concentration. Now, if the same kind of action is going on everywhere, whether it is that which is unmaking itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fire-works displayprovided, however, that I do not present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of shooting out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already made; He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, so conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in ourselves when we act freely. [Again, both scientific and religious fundamentalists of all persuasions, pay attention. This is good news, indeed. But it requires a quantum epiphany! ]" |
(Our link, brackets, bold, and color.) In Bergson's "...reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself..." we see making as anabolisis: birthing, resurrection, rebirthing, etc., and we see unmaking as catabolisis: dying, cellular suicide, apoptosis, etc.
More recently, c. 2007, we can say "there are only phasistic interrelationshipings of quantum waves." See phase, enthymemetics, partial, simulphase, and rectify. Doug - 19Feb2007. This is an epiphany first given to us by Robert M. Pirsig in his Lila. Only abs¤lute flux commingles non-objective patterns of Value. Pirsig tells us there are n¤ things by explaining that classical objects are just patterns ¤f Value ¤r Static Quality emersi¤ns and mutati¤ns ¤f latched flux. Our quantons are c¤mplementary interrelati¤nships ¤f abs¤lute flux and its emersed latched flux. |
249 | "That new things can join things already existing is absurd, no doubt, since the thing results from a solidification performed by our understanding, and there are never any things other than those that the understanding has thus constituted. To speak of things creating themselves would therefore amount to saying that the understanding presents to itself more than it presents to itselfa self-contradictory [classically, but very quantum] affirmation, an empty and vain idea. But that action increases as it goes on, that it creates in the measure of its advance, is what each of us finds when he watches himself act. Things are constituted by the instantaneous cut [SOM's knife] which the understanding practices, at a given moment, on a flux of this kind, and what is mysterious when we compare the cuts together becomes clear when we relate them to the flux. Indeed, the modalities of creative action, in so far as it is still going on in the organization of living forms, are much simplified when they are taken in this way. Before the complexity of an organism and the practically infinite multitude of interwoven analyses and syntheses it presupposes, our understanding recoils disconcerted. That the simple play of physical and chemical forces, left to themselves, should have worked this marvel, we find hard to believe. And if it is a profound science which is at work, how are we to understand the influence exercised on this matter without form by this form without matter? But the difficulty arises from this, that we represent statically ready-made material particles juxtaposed to one another, and, also statically, an external cause which plasters upon them a skilfully contrived organization. In reality, life is a movement, materiality is the inverse movement, and each of these two movements is simple, the matter which forms a world being an undivided flux, and undivided also the life that runs through it, cutting out in it living beings all along its track." |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.)
In his classical use of self-contradictory, Bergson uncloaks his SOM anchor, unambiguously! But Henri, we cann¤t cut flux! Where would you cut flux? When would you cut flux? How would you cut flux. What would you use to cut flux? Flux is n¤t a classical analytic function! And flux cann¤t 'stay' cut as your classical thing-king supposes. " Circle ¤ver diameter n¤ cut derives."
Classicists see reality as an undivided, homogeneous, immutable monolith. We think that is what Bergson means by his "undivided flux." But classicists also see reality as analytic and thus infinitely divisible. This classical vision spurred Leibnitz' and Newton's differential and integral calculi, which correspond to Bergson's "cutting out in it." So Bergson's last sentence on this page is a perfect description of classical SOM reality. It is antithetic ¤ur Quantonic descripti¤n ¤f quantum reality. Doug really messed up on those last two sentences above. Bergson sees movement as flux. Very quantum. Essene gnosis says that spirit is both movement and rest. What Doug didn't like is Bergson's "matter as an undivided flux." Quantum~reality's flux is quantized, and thus 'divided.' But quanta themselves are a multiplicity of other quanta which appear undivided. Classicists view this as 'continuous' which denies any quantum meme of quanta and quantization which are absolutely discontinuous in their moments of change. But matter isn't an undivided flux since it is quantized. Nor is life that runs through matter, for it is quantized too! Bergson didn't grasp that. Doug will argue that till ends of time. What is crucial to grasp here is that "flux is simple, and state is complex." Bergson makes that point unambiguously. What is key here is that Bergson says, "materiality is the inverse of movement." That agrees with a quantum meme that flux is the inverse of state," and with that Doug has n¤ argument. However, Heraclitus would have said that material and movement are quantum~complementary [flux is complementary state: quanton(flux,state)], which is a much better way of thinkqing as long as we never forget that ideal 'state' is ESQ. Doug - 8Oct2010. |
250 | "Of these two currents the second runs counter to the first, but the first obtains, all the same, something from the second. There results between them a modus vivendi [a way of life, or a tentative agreement], which is organization. This organization takes, for our senses and for our intellect, the form of parts entirely external to other parts in space and in time. Not only do we shut our eyes to the unity of the impulse which, passing through generations, links individuals with individuals, species with species, and makes of the whole series of the living one single immense wave flowing over matter, but each individual itself seems to us as an aggregate, aggregate of [classical] molecules and aggregate of [classical] facts. [dichons(molecules, facts)] The reason of this lies in the structure of our intellect, which is formed to act on matter from without, and which succeeds by making, in the flux of the real, instantaneous cuts, each of which becomes, in its fixity, endlessly decomposable. [Again, Bergson offers a perfect (purple) description of a classical view of reality.] Perceiving, in an organism, only parts external to parts, the understanding has the choice between two systems of explanation only: either to regard the infinitely complex (and thereby infinitely well-contrived) organization as a fortuitous concatenation of atoms, or to relate it to the incomprehensible influence of an external force that has grouped its elements together. But this complexity is the work of the understanding; this incomprehensibility is also its work. Let us try to see, no longer with the eyes of the intellect alone, which grasps only the already made and which looks from the outside, but with the spirit, I mean with that faculty of seeing which is immanent in the faculty of acting and which springs up, somehow, by the twisting of the will on itself, when action is turned into knowledge, like heat, so to say, into light. To movement, then, everything will be restored, and into movement everything will be resolved. [Reader, can you see that Bergson is asking for us to use QTMs?] Where the understanding, working on the image supposed to be fixed of the progressing action, shows us parts infinitely manifold and an order infinitely well contrived, we catch a glimpse of a simple process, an action which is making itself across an action of the same kind which is unmaking itself, like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fireworks display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are falling dead." |
(Our brackets, bold, and color.) We would say that their agreement is quantonic. Their organization is fractal recursions of quantons. You may wish to comsider Bergson's use of modus vivendi as very akin Pirsig's tentative "moral judgment." By 'tentative' we mean reality's m¤ral judgments are patterns of Value and patterns of Value in Pirsig's MoQ can always become 'better.'
It may be apparent, even obvious, to our readers here that Bergson's "...the structure of our intellect, which is formed to act on matter from without..." describes what we call "outside direction," and "other direction," which is innately antithetical any modern AI quantum memes of "self direction." Similarly notice how his "...intellect, which is formed to act on matter from without, and which succeeds by making, in the flux of the real, instantaneous cuts, each of which becomes, in its fixity..." is a description of what classical mechanics does so that it can understand and define mechanical reality: it zeroes h-bar, it turns off quantum flux, it disables quantum reality. Doug - 21Feb2007.
Which is a superb description of a quanton: |