Chapter:

Translator's
Preface

Chapter:

183

(Our links, brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

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
• orange-bold - text ref'd by index pages
• 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

"To say that a certain friend, under certain circumstances, will very probably act in a certain way, is not so much to predict the future conduct of our friend as to pass a judgment on his present character, that is to say, on his past. Although our feelings, our ideas, our character, are constantly altering, a sudden change is seldom observed; and it is still more seldom that we cannot say of a person whom we know that certain actions seem to accord fairly well with his nature and that certain others are absolutely inconsistent with it. All philosophers will agree on this point; for to say that a given action is consistent or inconsistent with the present character of a person whom one knows is not to bind the future to the present. But the determinist goes much further: he asserts that our solution is provisional simply because we never know all the conditions of the problem; that our forecast would gain in probability in proportion as we were provided with a larger number of these conditions; that, therefore, complete and perfect knowledge of all the antecedents without any exception would make our forecast infallibly true. Such, then, is the hypothesis which we have to examine.

"For the sake of greater definiteness, let us imagine a person called upon to make a seemingly free

To know completely the antecedents and conditions of an action is to be actually performing it.

decision under serious circumstances; we shall call him Peter. The question is whether a philosopher Paul, living at the same period as Peter, or, if you prefer, a few centuries before, would have been able, knowing all the conditions under which Peter acts,

to foretell with certainty the choice which Peter made." [Pogson's inserted box text we show in bold red. Pogson describes what is real about quantum reality: only quantum reality can completely k-now itself, animately, as it unfolds. This corresponds Pirsig's "direct experience," his "Quality Event," and Platt Holden's "the edge of now." We can only use quantum computers, which are naught more than real, heterogeneous, animate portion-islandic-ensembles of quantum reality, to begin to be k-now-ing quantum reality. Classical, John von Neumann architectured computers, are always dealing with static information from past reality. Literally and radically mechanically they are stuck in an inanimate, frozen, immutable classical past.]

(Our bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

Bergson wrote this prior Kurt Gödel's being. Gödel showed that "complete and perfect knowledge" is impossible in terms of classical representation of reality. He showed that n¤ classically real, formal system may be both complete (always states the truth...) and consistent (...and states all truths) simultaneously. For significantly more detail, see our Decidable Gödel Meme.

Further, in quantum reality, there are n¤ classically hidden variables, unless one wishes to perceive animate ensemble quantum uncertainty as "hidden variables." From a quantum perspective a call to "hidden variables" is like a call to ideal, pre-existing, previously unknown Platonic concepts. If by hidden variables, one intends infinite precision analogue reality, then we can agree at least partially, but that appears n¤t to be what what Bergson refers as "unknown conditions." He appears to imply that classical determinists assert that previously undiscovered parameters exist which when discovered will permit them to refine their theories of classical determinism. Quantum reality, as currently interpreted, offers only ensemble determinism, i.e., statistical determinism which is by n¤ means a proxy for what classical determinists intend by 1-1 correspondent causal determinism.

Classicism is innately (by anthropocentric design) incapable of knowing completely, for a very simple reason: it is analytic! Instead of actually performing progressive process actionings it stops action (Zeno effect). Classical science and its tools do n¤t work on animate, dynamic quantum reality. They only work on inanimate, static classical reality.

As David Bohm said, (paraphrased) "We need a new quantum n¤n-mechanics (a new n¤n radically formal mechanics)." In Quantonics we call what Bohm seeks "quantum emerscence," which is indeed, "quantum computing."

(Our bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

Here, apparently, Bergson experimentally prescribes a methodology of comparative communication twixt two humans. His purpose is to refute classical determinism, but it begs some tangential queries.

Is this method unique? Is it only classical? Why does he say we must transform our psychic intensity into some mathematical measure in order to communicate it? Has he n¤t simply jumped back in SOM's number box?

What about whistling, humming, singing, drumming, dancing, playing a musical instrument, painting, sculpting, carving, et al.? Isn't there an I-cubed analogue of music which we can use to side-step classical analytic symbolics (shades of Close Encounters of a Third Kind)? What do our examples offer vis-à-vis Bergson's proscription? Do our examples increase DQ while decreasing SQ? Is that a valid approach? What do we mean when we say "increase DQ?" How? What do we mean when we say "decrease SQ?" How?

Why is Bergson's approach asking for more SQ (i.e., increased mathematical measurements) in order for us to share a psychic experience?

Note: we are begging a quantum Bergsonian think-being-directly (~400k page), quanton emerscitecture, which Bergson himself suggests in his book, Creative Evolution.

Why cann¤t we share our psychic intensity in a direct quantum c¤mplementary fashion without an intermediate mathematical measure?

We believe we can! Correction! We k-now we can!

"Qubits do it... Birds do it... Even little bees do it..."

Our question then becomes, "How can we tentatively, quantum coherently, as two or more unique psychic quantum entities share any specific psychic experience directly, without going through some actual intermediate mathematical measurement transformation?"

Has Bergson given into a kind of classical inevitability as have Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Bohr, Einstein, and so many others? Or is he just offering this approach as a gedankenment? If we can directly experience quantum nature, why cann¤t we directly experience another human's own psychic intensity?

(Our links, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

N¤, Bergson was n¤t giving in to a kind of classical inevitability!

Showing its quantum included-middle qualitative subjectiveness...its quantum animate process realness.

We must question, here, Bergson's apparently classical use of reproduced. To us, reproduction is kin of classical manufacturing. To relive, or perhaps a better way to say this is, "to simulive" another's experiences, we need co-inside-nt vicarious emerscenturing (similar to a Spock mind-meld, and that damnable machine in Brain Waves, with Natalie Wood — BTW, did that "damnable machine" have to be quantum everywhere associative to accomplish what it did?).

Comsider that this is just what next generation quantum computers will do to, animately, included-middle, quantum-measure animate reality! Real quantum computing animate process n¤nanalyticity (e.g., David Bohm's "...quantum n¤nmechanics of reality...") will be qubitally vicarious! But first, we must learn how to permit qubits to have vicarious interrelationships with real quantons. Comsider how this is a query analogue of how qubits in quantum SONs coobsfectively, c¤mplementarily, "everywhere associate."
Doug - 29May2002.

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

Quantity implies, classically, a specific, measurable, numerable amount. However, we cann¤t, even though some classicists presume that we can, e-numerate intensity of feeling, intensity of emotion. What scale do we use? What units? Classicists will tell us to invent a scale and units and impose classical analytic measurement on quality. But Bergson has already warned us of that...

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

Classicist will say, "Just subtract B from A, dummy! A-B, Peter minus Paul is the absolutely right answer, you idiot!" Of course, 'no' denigration intended.

"Here again any attempt to reconstruct ideally an act really willed ends in the mere witnessing of the act whilst it is being performed or when it is already done.

"Hence it is a question devoid of meaning to ask: Could or could not the act be foreseen, given the

Hence meaningless to ask whether an act can be foreseen when all Its antecedents are given.

sum total of its antecedents? For there are two ways of assimilating these antecedents, the one dynamic the other static. In the first case we shall be led by imperceptible steps to identify ourselves with the person we are dealing with, to pass through the same series of states,

and thus to get back to the very moment at which the act is performed; hence there can no longer be any question of foreseeing it. In the second case, we presuppose the final act by the mere fact of annexing to the qualitative description of the previous states the quantitative appreciation of their importance. Here again the one party is led merely to realize that the act is not yet performed when it is to be performed, and the other, that when performed it is performed. This, like the previous discussion, leaves the question of freedom exactly where it was to begin with."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

1. Quality is n¤t classically mathematical.

2. Classical objective symbols cann¤t represent quality.

But, reality is predominantly qualitative!

191

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

3. Time is n¤t space!

Space is classically stoppable, and thus drawable/graphable in situ, state-ically. Time is unstoppable. Time has duration: it is process, and that is why Bergson tells us process is classically n¤nanalyzable! It is a mistake to claim space-time an identity.

For over four years now, we in Quantonics have been showing our students that time and space (plus gravity, et al.) are both derivatives of absolute quantum flux. In our animate quantum world, space and time both have duration; both emerse at (up to) Planck rates. In that sense, we could say that they are analogous. But all quantum flux, n¤t just space and time are analogous via their absolute fluxings. Too, there is n¤t just one (OGC/OGT) unilogical space and one unilogical time, rather there are unlimited (at least) quatrotomous (in entropy, coherence, etc.) pragmalogical spaces and times and gravities and temperatures, and pressures, and colors, and rates, and smells, and sounds, and balances, and equilibria, etc., and all their quantum complements too. These are quantum reality's animate, included-middle, qualitative heterogeneities of qualogos.

"So you then alter your hypothesis; you realize that time does not require to be seen, but to be lived; and hence you conclude that, if your knowledge of the line M 0 was not a sufficient datum, the reason must have been that you looked at it from the outside instead of identifying yourself with the point M, which describes not only M 0 but also the whole curve, and thus making its movement your own. Therefore, you persuade Paul to come and coincide [also comsider "coinside"] with Peter; and naturally, then, it is the line M 0 X Y which Paul traces out in space, since, by hypothesis, Peter describes this line. But in no wise do you prove thus that Paul foresaw Peter's action; you only show that Peter acted in the way he did, since Paul became Peter. It is true that you then come back, unwittingly, to your former hypothesis, because you continually confuse the line M 0 X Y in its tracing [animate process] with the line M 0 X Y already traced [analyzable state-icity], that is to say, [con-fuse-ing] time with space. After causing Paul to come down and identify himself with Peter as long as was required, you let him go up again and resume his former post of observation. No wonder if he then perceives the line M 0 X Y complete: he himself has just been completing it.

"What makes the confusion a natural and almost an unavoidable one is that [classical] science seems to

Confusion arising from prediction of astronomical phenomena.

point to many cases where we do anticipate the future. Do we not [classically, incorrectly] determine beforehand the conjunctions of heavenly bodies, solar and lunar eclipses,

in short the greater number of astronomical phenomena? [Yes!] Does not, then, the human intellect [classically, incorrectly] embrace [classically, immutably-state-ically] in the present moment immense intervals of duration still to come? [Yes!]"

(Our link, brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

A problematic: Bergson apparently dichotomizes, classically, either inside or outside. We noticed this elsewhere too. We think it is pretentious classicism.

It is of utmost importance for students of Quantonics to see here how our QTMs eliminate this classical con-fuse-ion. We do it by saying that quantum reality's only absolute is flux! Flux is crux! Quantum flux is absolute by being both comsistent (always changes) and c¤mplete (changes all). Quantum reality has n¤ classically ideal: state-icity, immutability, stability, etc. When we talk about Pirsig's Static Quality, we are speaking of decoherent quantum flux which has quantum variable/tentative persistence (QVP). Quantum variable/tentative persistence shows students of Quantonics that all quantum reality changes, heterogeneously, asynchronously, serially, and in parallel from imperceptibly slowly up to Planck's incredibly fast rate. Apples spoil. Paint peels. Galaxies are born, live and die. Biologicals emerge and cycle. Memes evolve.

Compare our QTMs to what Plato (divine 'ideas' pre-exist, are immortal and immutable), Aristotle (his three "sillygisms;" Plato's and Aristotle's hatreds of (quantum) 'sophisms'), and Maxwell (e.g., 2nd 'law' of thermodynamics) said about classical reality.

In Quantonics our comcepts of quantum variable/tentative persistence have many brethren, including:

• Fermionic Primæ N¤mbær (FPN); all fermions in quantum reality are quantum primæ: n¤ two are identical, they are n¤nfactorable, and they are quintessentially odd (all c¤mplex fermions wobble: they have aggregate spin ½, which together, all fermions in quantum reality emerq RH's ½ critical line (a Quantonics heuristic hermeneutic)),
• Ensemble Quantum C¤mplexity (EQC); we can view quantonic c¤mplexity as both any fermion's quantum primæ n¤mbær and its classical prime number (CPN), e.g., Earth's quanton(FPN,CPN) is much more c¤mplex than a human's quanton(FPN,CPN); stated more classically, c¤mplexity grows with mass/energy/flux,
• Ensemble Quantum Inertia (EQI); larger FPNs have larger ensemble quantum inertia,
  and our own unique meme of, and
• Ensemble Quantum Uncertainty.

Allow us to introduce some other n¤vel, supporting quantonics quantum variable/tentative persistence memes and their acronyms:

1. FPN - Fermionic Primæ N¤mbær; expressed recursively in terms of itself and its quantum c¤mplementary Classical Prime Number,
2. IPAC - Inertial Persistence of Apparent Certainty,
3. MTBUE - Mean Timings Between Uncertainty Ævæntings, and
4. PSIUE - Potential Scope of Impactings of Uncertainty Ævæntings.

Our use of "Uncertainty" in our latter two memes assumes our unique Quantonics Ensemble Quantum Uncertainty, which further assumes Bergson's heterogeneous timings. Our use of "Apparent Certainty" implies apparent classical certainty.

Very simply, then, as Ensemble Quantum C¤mplexity grows, CPN, FPN, IPAC, MTBUE, and PSIUE grow.

Our intent here is to disclaim a classical dialectical belief that quantum uncertainty only applies to mesoatomic, atomic, and subatomic realms. As an example here, we offer a quote from F. S. C. Northrop's 'Introduction' to Werner Karl Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy:

"When the quantum numbers of the system being observed are small, as in the case with subatomic phenomena, then the uncertainty specified by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of the positions and momenta of the masses of the system becomes significant. Then also, the probability numbers associated with the position-momentum numbers in the state-function become significant. When, however, the quantum numbers of the system are large, then the quantitative amount of uncertainty specified by the Heisenberg principle becomes insignificant [a mechanical, mathematical apparition] and the probability numbers in the state-function can be neglected." Page 18. Our brackets.

We believe that this view is incorrect mainly due its classical legacy underpinnings. In our Quantonics perspective, this is an improper interpretation.

Rather, we believe, and believe we have shown, that Ensemble Quantum Umcærtainty is n¤t an 'event' or classical analytic measurable which has stoppable state-ic scalar magnitude, but rather is a variable durati¤n pr¤cess which inv¤lves p¤tentially vast ensembles of quantum reality and applies to all scales of quantum reality! For more detail, see our recent (July, 2002) Quantonic Ensemble Quantum Interrelationships graphic and text.

A great classical mistake of analytic reason is to delusionally view c¤mplexity and comcomitant inertia of apparent certainty, plus c¤mplexity and presumed absence of eventual impact of uncertainty as classical historical, predicable, unitemporal, deterministic stability.

"No doubt it does; but an anticipation of this kind has not the slightest resemblance to the anticipation of a voluntary act. Indeed, as we shall see, the reasons which render it possible to foretell an astronomical phenomenon are the very ones which prevent us from determining in advance an act which springs from our free activity. For the future of the material universe, although contemporaneous with the future of a conscious being, has no analogy to it.

"In order to put our finger on this vital difference, let us assume for a moment that some mischievous genius, more powerful still than the mischievous

Illustration from hypothetical acceleration of physical movements.

genius conjured up by Descartes, decreed that all the movements of the universe should go twice as fast. There

would be no change in astronomical phenomena [Poincaré also made this observation in roughly close 19^th century chronology.], or at any rate in the equations which enable us to foresee them, for in these equations the symbol t does not stand for a duration, but for a relation [an unreal relation; unreal in its assumption time is spatial and thus may be stopped] between two durations, for a certain number of units of time, in short, for a certain number of simultaneities: these simultaneities, these coincidences would still take place in equal number: only the intervals which separate them would have diminished, but these intervals never make their appearance in our calculations. Now these intervals are just duration lived, duration which our consciousness perceives, and our consciousness would soon inform us of a shortening of the day if we had not experienced the usual amount of duration between sunrise and sunset."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

This, due his quantum ignorance, is a faux pas on Bergson's part. Our quantum multiverses share an animate, but comparatively very low level analogy, of awareness with "conscious beings." Rather, we should say, "We are in our quantum multiverses and our quantum multiverses are in us." We are everywhere associative cowithin our quantum multiverses! Bergson should have said, "...no spatial analogy to it." They are, indeed, durational/quantum_flux analogies of one another. Doug - 29May2002.

"No doubt it would not measure this shortening, and perhaps it would not even perceive it immediately as a change of quantity; but it would realize in some way or other a decline in the usual storing up of experience, a change in the progress usually accomplished between sunrise and sunset.

"Now, when an astronomer foretells e.g. a lunar eclipse, he merely exercises in his own way the

Astronomical prophecy such an acceleration.

power which we have ascribed to our mischievous genius. He decrees that time shall go ten times, a hundred times, a

thousand times as fast, and he has a right to do so, since all that he thus changes is the nature of the conscious intervals, and since these intervals, by hypothesis, do not enter into the calculations. Therefore, into a psychological duration of a few seconds he may put several years, even several centuries of astronomical time: that is his procedure when he traces in advance the path of a heavenly body or represents it by an equation. What he does is nothing but establishing a series of [homogeneous, state-ic, analytic] relations of position between this body and other given bodies, a series of simultaneities and coincidences, a series of numerical relations: as for duration properly so called, it remains outside the calculation and could only be perceived by a consciousness capable of living through the intervals and, in fact, living the intervals themselves, instead of merely perceiving their extremities."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

It is extraordinarily easy to discount astronomers as predictors. If astronomers were capable of analytic prediction in a wholly spatial state-ic reality, they would have predicted Shoemaker-Levy's strikes on Jupiter.

Actually, we have n¤ analytical access to an absolute certainty that a lunar eclipse, which has occurred regularly prior, will happen again! It may be quantum stochastically probable, but n¤t absolutely certain.

Here, if we call Pirsig's DQ pure duration, and Pirsig's SQ pure analytic spatial extensity, we can see that Bergson places an astronomer's written and drawn machinations completely in SQ. Books are like this. Pictures are like this. They only become one with DQ when we enlighten them on our quantum stages. When we do that we get quantons(DQ,SQ). As Mae-wan Ho might say, "That is one of quantum reality's greatest miracles!" Humans are quantum beings, animate quantum 'computers' if you will. Humans are quantons(DQ,SQ).

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

If our natural, physial, intrinsic sensory bandwidth centered roughly at Planck's rate, almost all reality would classically appear to us to stand still. As we mentioned earlier, light itself would classically appear to stand still!

In genuine quantum reality, time is (timings are) n¤t space. Time is (timings are) n¤t singular. Time is (timings are) n¤t analytically inanimate; as Bergson tells us, time (timings) may n¤t be stopped by classical analysis in homogeneous space. Indeed, we should n¤ longer refer time as singular. Instead, we should say "timings." We should use plural/heterogeneous participle grammatics. Timings are processings: "whatings happenings nextings." Quantum timings are as May-wan Ho interpreted Bergson, "indivisiblings (i.e., quantum coherings, everywhere associatings, superpositionings), heterogeneous qualities/qualityings. Quantum timings are n¤nquantifiable! Quantum timings are n¤nanalyzable (Bergson: "processings are n¤nanalyzable")! Quantum timings are n¤nlisr! And so on... Ultimately, quantum timings are classically n¤nconceptual.

We may n¤t use spatial equivalents of Earth's rotation and Earth's solar orbit as singular, monistic, OGC/OGT, homogeneous, quantitative, analytic, classical unitime!!! That classical object is n¤t, cann¤t be quantum timings. Quantum timings are n¤t space! Again, quoting Mae-wan Ho, quantum timings are n¤t "a quantitative, infinitely divisible homogeneity." To understand quantum timings we would all be better watching water boil, or a stream's rapids, or Niagara Falls, or contemplate trillions of life emerqings swimming chaotically in Earth's oceans. Quantum timings are burblings, roilings! They follow n¤ classical arrow. They have n¤ spatial direction. They consume n¤ classical space. They are happenings. They are pure DQ-mediated, ubiquitous, everywhere associative, included-middle, animate, heterogeneous quantum processings.

So, when classicists write in standard classical mathematical notation, y=f(t), we know their time is only a space proxy; it is 'not' genuine quantum timings!

"But when we have to do with a feeling, it has no precise result except its having been felt; and, to estimate this result adequately, it would be necessary to have gone through all the phases of the feeling itself and to have taken up the same duration. Even if this feeling has finally issued in some definite action, which might be compared to the definite position of a planet in space, the knowledge of this act will hardly enable us to estimate the influence of the feeling on the whole of a life story, and it is this very influence which we want to know. All foreseeing is in reality seeing, and this seeing takes place when we can reduce as much as we please an interval of future time while preserving the relation of its parts to one another, as happens in the case of astronomical predictions. But what does reducing an interval of time mean, except emptying or impoverishing the conscious states which fill it? And does not the very possibility of seeing an astronomical period in miniature thus imply the impossibility of modifying a psychological series in the same way, since it is only by taking this psychological series as an invariable basis that we shall be able to make an astronomical period vary arbitrarily as regards the unit of duration?

"Thus, when we ask whether a future action could have been foreseen, we unwittingly identify that time with which we have to do in the exact

Difference between past and future duration in this respect.

sciences, and which is reducible to a number, with real duration, whose so-called quantity is really a quality, and which we

cannot curtail by an instant without altering the nature of the facts which fill it."

(Our brackets, bold, color, and violet bold italic problematics.)

But what if our universe is conscious, as Kafatos, Nadeau, Marcer, et al., describe? Doesn't our universe feel? We claim feeling is n¤t just anthropocentric.