Famous SOMites

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SOMites call MoQ's Dynamic Quality, "Murphy!"
                           Doug, 16Jan2000

Where SOMites tend to see differences as inanimate dialectically absolute quantitative and lower dimensional contradictions or opposites, MoQites see differences as animate rhetorically qualitative and manifold c¤mplementary interrelationships.
                           Doug, 25Jan2002

• Parmenides (pär-mèn´î-dêz´), b. c.515 B.C., pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. The founder of the Eleatic school, he held that unchanging being is the material substance of which the universe is composed, and that generation, change, destruction, and motion are all illusions of the senses. His major contribution to philosophy was the method of reasoned proof for assertions.

  The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

• Nash, John Forbes (1928-) Nobel Prize winning IAS mathematician.
  

  Nobel Prize - 1994 - Economics - for his "Nash Equilibrium" contribution (one third share of prize) as it applies to economics theory.

  
  See Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind.
  
  We conjecture Nash's 35 year long bout with schizophrenia arose from, his intuitive awakening that — somewhat akin Kurt Godel's and John S. Bell's experiences with their own similar n¤vel memes — his mathematical, thus formal mechanistic views of reality are manifestly both incorrigible and disharmonious a more quantumesque nature.
  
  Doug - 18Mar2002 - Actually, in a 17Mar2002 "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace, Nash declared otherwise! He said his schizophrenic hiatuses were but illusions, thus justifying our placement of him here, as a died in wool SOMite!
  
  One more thing! Those who call him "anti-Semitic" obviously have not read Nasar's book. When you hear someone say "Nash is an anti-Semite," be sure to ask them if they read A Beautiful Mind. During his illness, Nash was against everything, even attempting to discard his US citizenship on multiple occasions. He was against his wife, his concubine, his legitimate son, his illegitimate son, his alma mater, his friends, his peers, politicians, authority, employers, Harvard, Princeton,..., virtually everything and everyone. Doug - 18Mar2002.
• Malebranche, Nicholas (1638-1715), Cartesian Philosopher, Platonic Idealist.
• Newton, Sir Isaac, 1642-1727, English mathematician and natural philosopher (physicist); considered by many the greatest scientist of all time. He was Lucasian professor of mathematics (1669-1701) at Cambridge Univ. Between 1664 and 1666 he discovered [a] law of universal gravitation, began to develop [a] calculus [co-invented a calculus with Leibnitz (1646-1716)] , and discovered that white light is composed of every color in [its] spectrum. In his monumental Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy] (1687), he showed how his principle of universal gravitation explained both [] motions of heavenly bodies and [] falling of bodies on earth. The Principia covers dynamics (including Newton's three laws of motion), fluid mechanics, [] motions of [] planets and their satellites, [] motions of [] comets, and [] phenomena of tides. Newton's theory that light is composed of particles-elaborated in his Opticks (1704)-dominated optics until [] 19th cent., when it was replaced by [] wave theory of light; [both] theories were combined in modern quantum mechanics. Newton also built (1668) the first reflecting telescope, anticipated [] calculus of variations, and devoted much energy towards alchemy, theology, and history. He was president of the Royal Society from 1703 until his death. [Our italics and [] on profuse thelogos.]

  The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

  
  Newton, founded in Aristotelian philosophy, gave Western culture its current popular objective ontology paradigm. J He invented a fallacious model for his own particulate reality.

• Immanuel Kant — 1724-1804 [born three years before Newton's death], German philosopher, one of the greatest figures in the history of metaphysics. After 1755 he taught at the Univ. of Königsberg and achieved wide renown through his teachings and writings. According to Kant, his reading of Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber and led him to become the "critical philosopher," synthesizing the rationalism of Leibniz and the skepticism of Hume. Kant proposed that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the knowing mind. Only objects of experience, phenomena, may be known, whereas things lying beyond experience, noumena, are unknowable, even though in some cases we assume a priori knowledge of them. The existence of such unknowable "things-in-themselves" can be neither confirmed nor denied, nor can they be scientifically demonstrated. Therefore, as Kant showed in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the great problems of metaphysics — the existence of God, freedom, and immortality — are insoluble by scientific thought. Yet he went on to state in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that morality requires belief in their existence. Kant's ethics centers in his categorical imperative, or absolute moral law, "Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law." His Critique of Judgment (1790) considered the concepts of beauty and purposiveness as a bridge between the sensible and the intelligible worlds. Kant's influence on modern philosophy has continued to the present day. His work fostered the development of German idealism by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The Neo-Kantianism of the late 19th cent. applied his insights to the study of the physical sciences (Hermann Cohen, Ernst Cassirer) and to the historical and cultural sciences (Heinrich Rickert); his influence is also seen in the thought of Dilthey; in the pragmatism of Dewey and William James; in the theology of Schleiermacher; and in gestalt psychology.
  

  The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

  
  Kant was essentially an empiricist and an experientialist. To the extent, beyond Columbia Encyclopedia's remarks above, that Kant was a SOMite, we offer this additional evidence:
  • Kant believed that true knowledge can be gained only by experience. (He did admit that some things exist which we cannot or may not experience.)
  • Kant perceived reality as objective and analyses of anthropocentric experiences of reality had to proceed on purely objective terms.
  • Kant believed that metaphysics is incapable of providing the path to knowledge.
  • He claimed that appearance without existence is obviously absurd, and that any thing which we see exists.
  • Kant declined to deny metaphysics, but to instead put it in a box — a SOM box. Metaphysical memes had to be controlled, constrained, and confined — purée of SOMthink.
  • Kant believed that we had to stay in our SOM box because some of our memes transcend experience and without a framework (a la David Deutsch) cannot be validated. As you may have read nearby, Deutsch is a unique quantum SOMite who adheres a puristic Popperian objectivism.
  • Pure reason to Kant is objective reason. Kant's reason fits our SOM clichés: One Global Truth in One Global Context.
  • Perhaps more than any other view, his perception of ethics as adherence to "absolute moral law," unveils his SOMitic proclivities. As MoQites, we may easily discount absolute moral law as unchanging moral law, and thus innately against nature's one, quantum, absolute edict: change.

In our opinion, Kant's insistence on experience, and its cohort, valid empiricism, is little more than philosophy wearing SOM blinders. He assumes a single model of experience. How naïve!

We know there are an infinity of potential models of experience, not just one as Kant inheres! Each is a unique ontology. Each forms an islandic set of assumptions which adherents use to interpret perceptions and place their experiences on their own personal know ledge. Different ontologies provide different experiences and different knowledges. If experience teaches sentients anything, it teaches them that.

Kant's insistence that objective appearance without existence is absurd provokes our wish to ask him whether he might say its converse too is absurd? Philosophical and metaphysical implications of his answer are beyond enormous. (In our view of quantum reality, isoflux nonactually 'exists' but is nonapparent. Were Kant to say its 'existence' is absurd would clearly place him in a SOM encampment.)

Kant and his ilk only continued SOM's, classical science's and Platonic mathematics' legacies:

• One metaphysics, one ontology
• One truth, a homologic
• One constrained, contained, controlled context
• One know ledge
• One status quo is the way to go.

• Ayn Rand — Russian/American writer/author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, etc. Randian philosophy is purely objective, and adherents refer to themselves as 'objectivists.' Among all SOM's ISMs, this is a unique one Pirsig rails most intently against as SOM's "Church of Reason." A principal example of Randian objective naïveté is a quote from her own Atlas Shrugged, "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Clearly, Rand and her ilk are no seers of quantum reality.
  
  If you want an excellent portrayal of Rand and objectivism's unattractive and innately amoral underbelly, see a 1998 movie titled, The Passion of Ayn Rand. (R to ~X rating. Our rating.) This flick shows how SOMites use objectivism to control our thinking and behavior. Objectivism is about control! Compare Rand's naïve, silly, anthropocentric, egocentric objectivism with Pirsig's MoQ.
  
  
• Niels Bohr — Quantum physicist. Believed any discussion about non-classical reality is ambiguous (i.e., not objective). He believed sentients are incapable of visualizing or discussing non-classical reality. Bohr adhered Newton's fallacious model of reality.
• Albert Einstein — Physicist. Believed reality is formal and deterministic. Constructed a purely objective relativistic reality. Einstein adhered Newton's fallacious model of reality.
• Shakespeare — Via his character Hamlet in his play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene I, lines 56-66,

"To be or not to be: that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die; to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep? perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come..."

We see Shakespeare's own intuition of SOM's life-death dichon as either/or. He intuits, SOMitically one may either "be" or "not be." He assumes one is either alive or dead. Shakespeare's appears an innate SOM ontology. It is also worthwhile to note how, elsewhere in his plays, he closely brushes Quantonic reality at times with quasi-quantum both/and averments.

 

If one continues reading where we left off, one will find an abundance of SOM's Iliad-borne wrath...

Many examples similar to this famous one abound in his works:

"Love is all truth." "Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion sway." "Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true." On virginity one of his characters argues a choice: either keep it or lose it, but better to lose it.

 

Potential counter examples: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (This one is arguable since it is still an either/or. And we blame SOMthink for insisting on an either/or choice.) "'Faith to say truth, brown and not brown./To say truth, true and not true." (at worst, fuzzy; still SOMitic)

Also note our blood red italics in line 66: chosen title of one of Robin William's most recent movies on a similar topic.

 

Shakespeare effuses his own innate SOMiticism. He tells his audience repetitiously reality is either/or — reality is SOMitic.

Other SOMites you may visit and consider here:

• Bacon Inductionist (a classical 'enlightenment' (see below) founder)
• Berkeley Idealist/Empiricist
• Bradley Dialectical Idealist
• Brentano Realist
• Carnap Logical Positivist
• Compte Empiricist
• Descartes (a classical 'enlightenment' founder)
  
  "...there is nothing included in the concept of body that belongs to the mind; and nothing in that of mind that belongs to the body." Sommers, Dualism in Descartes: The Logical Ground, 1978.
  
  Compare that to what Pirsig has to say:
  
  "In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, 'Thou art that,' which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided.
  
  "To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened.
  
  "Logic presumes a separation of subject (mind) from object (body) [i.e, excluded-middle]; therefore logic is not final wisdom."
  
  Robert M. Pirsig, p. 126/373, ZMM, Bantam paper.
  
  Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum." That is, "I think therefore I exist."
  
  He missed nature's quantum holism which requires all reality to say, "Rerum cogitare ergo sum."
  
  Students of Quantonics should note that Latin rerum is Nature and natura is things. Remind you of fact and pragma, eh?
  
  
• Frege Realist
• Hegel Dialectical Idealist
• Hobbes (a classical 'enlightenment' founder)
• Hume Empiricist/Skeptic (a classical 'enlightenment' founder)
• Kant (see above) (a classical 'enlightenment' founder)
• Locke Empiricist
• Marx Dialectical Materialist
• Meinong Realist
• Mill Empiricist
• Moore Realist/Logical Positivist ("There is no natural Good!")
• Nietzsche Nihilist
• Russell Logical Positivist
• Schopenhauer Kantist
• Smith (a classical 'enlightenment' founder)

Enlightenment: classical analytic disjunction of reason and passion, theory and action. Vis. theory as stasis/state-icity/inanimacy and action as pragma/flux/animacy.

Too, consider Pirsig's Static Quality and his Dynamic Quality. In Pirsig's MoQ, classical 'enlightenment' has lost its DQ, indeed is outside, classically/objectively separated from DQ — wholly SQ!
Doug - 16Aug2001.

From our ISMs page:

Also note: multiple ISMs viewed from within SOM appear as separate, partial models of reality — their differences paradoxical to a SOM mind. However, viewed from a larger MoQ perspective, paradoxes dissolve when Subjects and Objects of all ISMs merge into a single class of SPoVs, and each ISM becomes an island of quasi-truth in a larger context. Each ISM is a quasi-truth because of its incomplete local context assumed by those viewing reality from any SOM ISM's perspective. In SOM each ISM's assumed local context (MoQites call this a SOM "box.") impaired its practitioners' abilities to see a larger reality. Within SOM, each ISM vies for 'grand unifying' status. PDR

Are YOU a SOMite?

• If your answer is, "Yes, and I want to stay that way." — Yep, we have heard that before, "Status quo is the way to go."
• If your answer is, "Who cares?" You probably are a SOMite who is also a Cultural Relativist — Ah, a familiar refrain, "Chaos clears most relativistic minds."
• If your answer is, "I honestly do not know, but I do not believe it really matters." Then we wish you good fortune and abundant meditation. In lieu of that we wish you tabula rasa.
• If your answer is, "I do not know, but I want to find out." then we have a suggestion for you, a test if you will:

Read Plato's Sophist. If you agree with his protagonist's (a Stranger's) dialogue there, you are probably a SOMite of first magnitude. If his protagonist's dialogue makes you feel uncomfortable, you may wish to spend more time investigating potential SOM alternatives, including Pirsig's MoQ.

Visit Edunet's Books Online for a full text of Plato's Sophist and other works of interest. (Scroll down to Plato's Sophist.)

How does one SOMite counsel/mentor another?

• "Be rational."
• "Be logical."
• "Be objective."
• "Be 'reasonable.'"
• "Ignore subjective stuff."
• "There is no natural Good!"
• "If it is not substantial, it just is not!"
• "Do not be emotional."
• "Do not be a sophist."
• "Do not be a relativist."
• "Do not be absurd."
• "There really is absolute truth, you know."
• "Status quo is the way to go."

1. A quote from Science Week's 2Jul99 issue:

"For the real amazement, if you wish to be amazed, is this
process: You start out as a single cell derived from the coupling
of a sperm and an egg; this divides in two, then four, then
eight, and so on, and at a certain stage there emerges a single
cell which has as all its progeny the human brain. The mere
existence of such a cell should be one of the great astonishments
of the Earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all
through their waking hours calling to each other in endless
wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.
— Lewis Thomas (1913-1993)"

A classical, non-quantum scientist today, who perceives reality as particulate, perceives "cells," referred as objects above. We may infer Lewis Thomas is a SOMite from his own words, magnificent as they are. Classical objects cannot do what Lewis describes! Classical objects are innately incapable of co-permeating synthesis and requisite biological self-referent duplication. Objects cannot wave and harmonize and self replicate as "cells" do. Only flux can do this. To make our point, each doubling of a "cell" is a frequency doubling. Yes, 'mass' doubling iso frequency doubling. Nature doesn't make objects! Nature makes music! Do not be a SOMite. Do not make objects, make music! Remember our basal definition of 'fecund?' Be a maker of waves! Maker of music! Maker of harmony! Doug - 29Jun99.

2. We just found this doing a search on "least action:" (12Feb2000, our bold and color emphasis.)

"INTRODUCTION

"It is good to understand a certain point about the way humans beings think about nature. We always derive something less fundamental
from something more fundamental, but we discover them the other way around.

"This can be said another way. The first point is more or less a tautology, or could be considered a definition of what it means for one idea to be more fundamental than another. Since any correct idea is required to predict the way things in nature actually happen, and since the whole reason physics works is that a given physical system only behaves in one way, all correct descriptions of some phenomenon must predict the same results. Therefore, the only distinction that can make one idea more fundamental than others is that it both includes the predictions they make, and also goes on beyond them."

by desmith@??? www.ph.utexas.edu (written in August 1995) See:

www.ph.utexas.edu/~gleeson/httb/chapter1_3_6.html

Here we see one of SOMites' favorite classical objects: y = f(t). It is Newton's classical object representing what our author above calls a "physical system." All Newtonian objects ("physical systems") are analytic and determinate.

Can you see utter ludicrousness in our red highlight above? Our objectivist author says physical systems can only work in one way! S-he claims physical systems are deterministic! But no physical system is Newtonian deterministic! Physical systems work in many complex ways adapting to changes in context which are among other concepts: linear, nonlinear, chaotic, ensemble deterministic (i.e., stochastic), etc.

We also see SOMites' love of control, especially control of what others think in this phrase, "Since any correct idea is required to predict the way things in nature actually happen..." Do you sense a not-so-subtle nuance of scientific PC in commerce with objectivism here? Fascinating!

• Quantum Philosophy, by Rolland Omnès, Princeton UP, 1999.
  Subtitle: 'Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science.'
  Should be: 'Perpetuating Classical Interpretations of Quantum Science.'
  (Watch for our impending review here - sometime during late 2000.)
• Quantum Evolution, by JohnJoe McFadden, WW Norton, 2000.
  Subtitle: 'The New Science of Life.'
  Should be: 'The Old Classical Science of Life as a Pretentious Quantum Wolf.'
  McFadden's title is an utter oxymoron to any MoQite which reads this text. Why? Classical absolutes are incapable of "evolution." See our 2001News comments on McFadden's book.

• According to Newton:
  • reality is analytic:
    • one past, one-future centric:
      • predictable
      • inductive
      • deductive
      • deterministic
      • known
      • reversible (i.e., + or - time as a homogeneous and independent variable)
    • continuous/homogeneous/immutable
    • modeled by ideal, dimensionless, y=f(t) point objects
    • analytic, objective, y=f(t) motion is change
    • capable of unlimited, y=f(t), object speed
    • reducible:
      • closed, immutable, objective, monolithic reality may be infinitely subdivided using ideal mathematical calculus
      • mass is measurable, but undefined
      • length is measurable, but undefined
      • time is measurable, but undefined
      • gravity is measurable, but undefined
      • all reality, including gravity, may be completely described using just three undefined measurables: mass, length, time.
  • formal analytic functions of mass, length, and time define and describe all real objects
  • reality is anthropocentric:
    • humans may unilaterally observe objects which are:
      • still, quiescent, localable
      • isolable, separable, infinitely property-scalable
      • impenetrable, hard
      • immutable (during observation)

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