Category Archives: Mythology

Includes philosophy, science, religion, physics, metaphysics, and all kinds of speculative wankery.


This is your cage.
No, you can’t escape.

Yesterday I was reading again Von Foerster’s book and there were certain fascinating parts.

The problem I have with Bakker’s theory is that I cannot fully grasp it in its entirety. It’s kind of elusive and frustrating. It’s like every time I manage after a struggle to focus on one aspect I lose everything else. Every step in a direction makes me lose track of progress I previously made. Despite all reductions and simplifications I’m always lost and every problem seems to exist on its own without letting me use a constant frame of reference.

The first idea is that, in Constructivism theory, there’s no “confirmation” of reality. No certainty of it. What you do instead is “correlate” your sense experiences. “I see the pencil and I hold the pencil”. So “my sensation of touch, in correlation with my visual sensation, generates an experience”.

This simply to say again that we only construct a world we perceive, but we can’t say how much or how faithful is our model. Or not at all.

Quote from Physicist Sir Arthur Eddington:

Consider how our supposed acquaintance with a lump of matter is attained. Some influence from it plays on the extremity of a nerve, starting a series of physical and chemical changes which are propagated along the nerve to a brain cell; there a mystery happens, and an image or sensation arises in the mind which cannot purport to resemble the stimulus that excites it. Everything known about the material world must be inferred from these stimuli transmitted. . . It is an astonishing feat of deciphering that we should have been able to infer an orderly scheme of natural knowledge from such indirect communication.

Or maybe an astonishing pretense. A lack of humility.

The interesting aspect is that the book addresses the problem of “science” as we discussed it. Why believe in science? Because it works. That’s one of the postulates that sustains Bakker’s theory and that make science “authoritative” over religion, spirituality etc…

Constructivists say:

1- Knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, IS USEFUL IF it allows us to predict, i.e., to bring about or avoid a certain phenomena.
2- When knowledge no longer serves the purpose it becomes questionable and eventually devalued.

And it all sounds like an act, a choice that is made like a political opinion to me. As if we don’t believe in what is true, but in what is “convenient”. Maybe science has the same place of every other self-serving delusion? Well, as long the delusion doesn’t come crashing down on you.

But then the book goes also to explain some experiments about how perception develops after we’re born.

“Newborns do not have object constancy, the capacity to distinguish stable objects. They cannot compute equivalence, a logical operation that must be performed to perceive an object which changes its structure or position in space as the same object.”

“Developmental studies of children, conducted by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, show that we learn to perceive object constancy. It takes about 18 months.”

“Sensorimotor intelligence organizes reality by constructing broad categories of action which are the schemes of the pertinent object, space, time, causality…”

The book continues explaining that if you show rows of coins to a five year old, all rows having the same number of coins but with one row more widely spaced, and so longer, the kid will say that the longer row contains more coins.
But if you then repeat this experiment with a kid at seven he would say the question is stupid, as it is very obvious that all rows have the same number of coins.

“The older child takes a self-evident, or a priori, what only a few years ago he did not know existed. Once a concept is constructed, it is immediately externalized so that it appears to the subject as a perceptually given property of the object and independent of the subject’s own mental activity. The tendency of mental activities to become automatized and for their results to be perceived as external to the subject is what leads to the conviction that there is a reality independent of thought.”

Toward science, this is the defying stance of Constructivism:

The technological advances show “one” of many possible ways to bring about a result or make a prediction. A proven scientific theory is a successful means for reaching a goal.

It merely means we know one viable way to a goal that we have chosen under specific circumstances in our experiential world.

“A key fits if it opens the lock. It describes the capacity of the key, not of the lock.”

“Scientists rely heavily on mathematics, a system constructed to generate necessary answers to its questions. Necessary answers generate certainty.”

Although here I’m lost because it’s where Constructivism goes metaphysical:

“Radical constructivism maintains that operations by means of which we assemble our experiential world can be explored, and that an awareness of this operating can help us do it differently and, perhaps, better.”

“We can invent keys that unlock our problems, but these inventions only tell us about the key, not about the lock. Although certainty is lost, choice increases.”

But to me ALL this only flows very naturally and coherently into Bakker’s theory. That’s maybe the scary part.

The key (science) really only tells more about us than the world. We strain to see, but we can only see our own reflection. Our science only explores and describes the limited horizon that we see (are), but nothing of what’s outside.

And this seems telling if one considers that:

“only living organisms qualify as observers”

“Scientists obeyed to this rule of separation because, under certain circumstances, when the observer included himself in his description (observations) it led to paradox, like the paradox one finds in the statement: I am a liar.”

Now THIS specific pattern of “paradox and recursion” IS the very thing that “Gödel, Escher, Bach” describes as the ORIGIN of conscience, or the difference that triggers it as emergent.

So it’s as if EVERYTHING simply leads back to this kind of loopy paradox that defines both reality (within the blind box) and ourselves (the loop of conscience, and the limited horizon).

Happy New Year.

Black Glass

I was reading some Malazan to welcome the new year and so decided to write an handful of comments about the “poetry”, an aspect that is quite controversial. Readers don’t usually have a so positive reaction to these poetry pieces scattered through the books, and I also have mixed feelings about them, but in most cases they are at least interesting and offer some ideas to think about.

Here’s the one I just read:

Black glass stands between us
The thin face of otherness
Risen into difference
These sibling worlds
You cannot reach through
Or pierce this shade so distinct
As to make us unrecognizable
Even in reflection
The black glass stands
And that is more than all
And the between us
Gropes but never finds
Focus or even meaning
The between us is ever lost
In that barrier of darkness
When backs are turned
And we do little more than refuse
Facing ourselves.

Preface to The Nerek Absolution
Myrkas Preadict

What jumps to the eye and that some readers find quite irritating is that there are no familiar structures like rhymes or metrics (that often make poetry more palatable to a public, see The Name of the Wind) and that instead it reads like abstruse prose made worse by the removal of punctuation and lines broken in the middle (see for example “gropes but never finds / Focus or ever meaning” that obviously has meaning as one line). So it can tick off the reader as it seems just an attempt to be pretentious without earning it, or requiring an effort to the reader without paying it off (one wonders: “why should I bother?”).

I’m not an expert or a fan of poetry in general, but it seems that Erikson surely isn’t the only one appreciating that kind of structure. I noticed for example that Tomas Tranströmer, the 2011 Nobel Prize, writes in a way that, to my superficial attention, resembles Erikson quite a bit and that could fool me quite easily if I were to find one of his own in Erikson’s books. See the first one I was able to find:

Evening-Morning

Moon – its mast is rotten, its sail is shriveled.
Seagull – drunk and soaring away on currents.
Jetty – charred rectangular mass. The thickets
founder in darkness.

Out on doorstep. Morning is beating, beats on
ocean’s granite gateways and sun’s sparkling
near the world. Half smothered, the gods of summer
fumble in sea mist.

But you can look and pretty much every example would fit.

One difference that Malazan has from that, and a positive one, is that the piece of poetry you’re reading is at least “in context”, and so you have a frame of reference to append to your ideas. My approach to these poems is rather straightforward, I usually look for recurring themes and meaning-charged words. Then just see what sticks.

See the example above. “Black glass” is something that I think is related to the plot in some way. I’m not sure what kind of theme it is bound to, but there’s mention here and there of sand (often T’lan) that turns to glass, and I think in MoI Toc awakens amidst broken glass. In any case, it may be related to something about these ancient wars involving both T’lan and Cha’Malle. “This thin face of otherness”, otherness I interpret here as something marking a difference (other than me), so alienation. It’s a “thin face” because it continues the first line (it’s a glass), but it’s also suggested that it’s something like a veil, weak. Something that may be just perception. “Risen into difference” separates the line above and below. So the “black glass” is a dividing barrier, “otherness” and “difference” go together.

“These sibling worlds” is the line charged of meaning that I’m very likely to misinterpret due to all the external “cosmology” discussions these past weeks. I simply see it as two words, like mind and body, reality and dreams, real world and magic, science and spirituality. Or, the category that spawns all of these: what is perceived, and what is real. Or “Cartesian dualism”. The suggestion works well because even in the poem the two worlds are separated by a thin veil but that “you cannot pierce through”. It also reminds me the closed perspective, the fact that the veil is the limit of perception, so suggesting a world beyond that one can’t see or achieve. But this is cosmological as it is personal. Other “worlds” are also other people. You can try to understand them, but you can never be there, they’ll always be worlds closed to you, opaque. A barrier, between you and others, that you can’t cross and that makes possible that you have an identity and a thought. A barrier that let’s you recognize yourself.

As the poem continues the glass dividing the world acquires another function. It doesn’t just separate without letting one see through (it’s “dark”, so negating the “glass” properties). It’s not just a barrier of otherness and distinction, but it also becomes a reflection, a mirror. One cannot see what’s beyond, but can see his own image: knowing the world as an extension of one’s own image. This also is charged with cosmological and spiritual implications, but once again I jump over to the personal level. The barrier “risen into difference” marks an “otherness” that may as well be consequently indifferent, because detached and remote. Not us. Indifferent means not just different, but with an added sense of morality, of choice. And the idea of indifference is suggested toward the end (“In that barrier of darkness / When backs are turned”). Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but this gives me an idea of deliberation and betrayal.

Finally there’s the obvious theme of Light and Darkness that is specific and even literal (metaphor made real) in the series, but that I can’t pinpoint here. Darkness in the poem is described as what’s in the middle, the barrier itself, the threshold. When instead Light/Darkness stand in opposition, so representing the (literal) “sibling worlds”. Not divided by Darkness, but by Shadow (Edur). “The between us (that) is ever lost”.

The poem seems attributed to the Nerek, whom I can’t pinpoint correctly yet. They seem to have an association with the Azath, also linked to Mappo and the mysterious people that gave him his task. But the poem being titled “The Nerek Absolution” gives it yet another spin…

(all this simply to show how one can have fun extricating those pieces of poetry in the books)

The Claw of the Conciliator – Gene Wolfe

“There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.”
(…)
“That is the wisest of all the books of men,” the Cumaean said. “Though there are few who can gain any benefit from reading it.”

The Claw of the Conciliator is the second book in the New Sun tetralogy. Or second of twelve if one considers the “Solar Cycle” as a whole. Since it takes me so long to finish a book, and since I don’t write about all books I read, I prefer to stick to the smaller unit available and comment as I move through. But, since I keep getting interested in other writers and series, it happens that quite some time passes before I return to something I begun (and these loops keep getting larger). So, looking at my blog, it’s been more than three years since I read the first part, The Shadow of the Torturer.

Most of what I have to say about this book is part of a general thought about Gene Wolfe. More than once in forum discussions I have defined him “esoteric”, in the original definition of the term. I tend to lump all writers in two groups: esoteric and generous. The difference is about the “intent” of the writer. Esoteric writers write books that are only accessible for a selected minority of like-minded, or sharing a certain status or cultural education, whereas generous writers are those that desperately try to make “communication” happen, whatever it takes. Generous books could retain all the complexity and ambition while taking time to teach the reader how to approach and extricate the work they are reading. They usually reward patience, but ultimately they reward it by letting you reach in and grasp their core. It’s not a matter of complexity, but of offering ways to access it. Esoteric works instead are “hidden knowledge”, they have high walls surrounding themselves and only those who have the password or know the secret sign are let through. Otherwise you’re left outside desperately trying to see through the wall and sometime feeling like you’re seeing some vague shape of what’s beyond. But you’re wrong.

Wolfe embodies this esoterism to its full symbolic value, to the point that what I described here with a rather negative connotation, becomes a positive one. This because, like the best works, the reader (and his re-action) is part of it. One thing that this work is doing is putting the reader out of balance and warp the space around him. It’s a dislocating effect, but not of the kind that prepares entering another world. Here the dislocation is the point, the message. Time, especially, collapses on itself, as if at the end of the world, before the New Sun arises, everything appears simultaneously.

This is relevant, specifically, to this book I was reading. It’s a kind of book that I loved and at the same time I wanted to hurl at the wall. Frustrating at the point of rage, but also possessing some brilliance that is right out of the corner of your eye, but that you absolutely know is not the kind that /just/ deceives. Imagine a calm sea in the night, the New Sun series is wholly contained below the surface. You see nothing. That’s my reaction starting to read it again from the first pages. On the surface there are characters, things happen, then you finish a chapter, begin another and there’s a new episode that seems to be only vaguely related to the one you just read. One uses to review books through certain patterns, so we examine characters, plot, pacing. But doing the same with the New Sun would end up in disaster. From my point of view and direct reaction while reading, this book has no sense of “plot”, or cause and effect. If one complains about arbitrary interventions (deus ex machina) here he could find them more than once within a single chapter, almost the sole force driving the plot. Characters do things seemingly without motivations, say things that make no sense, hypnotically dazed as in a movie by Werner Herzog. The scenes change from chapter to chapter as if part of unrelated episodes. This would really be a disaster, if it wasn’t that the problem is not in the material, but in the categories used on it.

Similarly, Severian is not the prime example of a character you can sympathize/empathize with. Quite the contrary. In fact I was thinking he may be the most horrifying character I’ve ever encountered. Early in the book there’s an episode where he has to perform a public execution. The horrifying part is not the execution per se and its gruesome description (“To be candid, it was not until I saw the up-jetting fountain of blood and heard the thud of the head striking the platform that I knew I had carried it off.“), but the reaction Severian has (“I wanted to laugh and caper.“). He GLOATS and parades grotesquely on the scaffold, showing proudly the severed head as he feels so happy that he was able to perform a tricky move with his sword. He continues to gloat even when it is revealed that the woman he just executed was innocent, victim of a machination. This gave me a profound feeling of amorality, of cold, alien detachment. Something entirely inhuman. It is horrifying but it also adheres to Severian the character, with his pragmatic, weightless mind that feels so alien to me. What is done is done, and very professionally from his perspective, everything else is simply not affecting him. He doesn’t even consider any other perspective. Which brings to a sort of salvation. His mind is so bent inward that he’s neither “good” nor “bad”. He seems unaware and unable to have a real, human existence because he has no experience of anything else. And so he’s also without guilt since he’s utterly naive and unable to make a choice (making him the embodiment of a pawn).

Wolfe demands a different approach from the reader and different ways to carve “meaning” from it. The most important rule is the “dream” (and Neil Gaiman featuring on all covers and introductions isn’t casual). What is narrated in this series has the “dreamlike” quality. That’s why everything you “see” (surface of the water) is “not the point” and apparently doesn’t seem to make sense in a strict, logical way. Every image or character is symbolic, and its symbolic weight has priority on superficial appearance. As in dreams scenes change with a loose sense of connection and everything goes to build this eerie, magical and ephemeral atmosphere (and as in dreams “time” collapses on itself). Words carry not meaning, but fascination and hidden construction. Giving a sense of dizziness and, as said, dislocation. Not toward a different “environment”, but toward a different “fabric” of reality. That in this case is the fabric of the dreams, and the world built through this symbolic projection of hidden and obscure powers and mythological beings. Lovecraft’s monsters made into pure ideas.

The problem, if a “problem” exists, is in the consequences. Reading page by page that’s the way I was feeling. Understanding clearly that there was “more” to what I was reading, that Wolfe was describing factually an episode but “doing” something else, hidden. Neither showing, nor telling. He hinted and teased, keep luring you. Deceiving. The problem of the esoteric work is when you hit the wall, again and again. Feeling that there’s more to it but without ways to get through. So I’m very critical about “how” Wolfe does things, because I feel he WANTS to keep me away, he WANTS to bait me in this malicious game and its hidden, obscure rules. It’s like in the myth of Theseus and the minotaur (a myth he specifically uses in this book), with Theseus going in the labyrinth from where no one returned alive to kill the minotaur. You are Theseus, Wolfe is the minotaur. The problem is that in the myth Theseus is told how to get out of the labyrinth (he’s given a ball of thread), while you, the reader, are left to the Wolfe/minotaur’s mercy.

I am in the presence of a practitioner whose moves I cannot follow; I see only the same illusions that are seen by those outside the guild [of writers]. I know the cards are up the sleeves somewhere, but there are clearly extra arms to this person.

Even in forum discussions one tries to get help figuring out this and that, but in most if not all cases it seems like one only gets evasive explanations that stack together in some kind of misshapen structure, but that do not seem anchored anywhere. It’s always a game of smoke and mirrors (mirrors that play a symbolic part in the books). And it’s frustrating because at some point you begin squinting so much that you get the illusion of seeing something, with the omnipresent doubt that you’re only imagining it. Being so ephemeral and deliberately obfuscated, it encourages speculation, but one has to know that it only goes to feed the minotaur.

This is my opinion of the book. If I decided to read the whole cycle of 12 books (eventually) is not because I expected a fun, enjoyable adventure. It is instead because I’m interested in that “underworld” of meaning, hidden just below the surface. My problem with it is that Wolfe builds walls that I can’t get through no matter how hard I could try, and this leads to a frustrating experience. He isn’t interested to let me in as much as in throwing puzzles and riddles at me to solve, without giving me nearly enough pieces so that the solution is even possible. The whole paradigm is a paradox. It carries over to the prose style as he uses often a pattern of inversion. Things that are or behave inversely than how they appear. You are left solving a malicious, impossible puzzle that reassembles itself whenever you get close to something. And this would be indeed a “problem” if it wasn’t also part of the point.

The Book of the New Sun is too complex a work to evaluate on one reading. It will undoubtedly be considered a landmark in the field, one that perhaps marks the turning point of science fiction from content to style, from matter to manner.

I wonder if going from “content” to “style” is a worthwhile mission. Wolfe indeed has a dense, ornate and convoluted, I’d say elegant prose style that is often dull and hard to follow. It’s also not banal, so it keeps the attention on what he’s doing and how. It requires certainly a constant attention, similar to some eastern non commercial movies, where the pivotal moment can be one where no characters speak, not highlighted in dramatic music at max volume. You let go your attention in a moment that appeared as a mere transition nested between two more important scenes, and you miss everything.

The “underworld” is certainly intriguing. It’s a big tangle of erudition, Wolfe taking all sort of mythic, religious and scientific notions from all known cultures, then removing their context and merging and transforming them till they become unrecognizable. A “decontextualized apocrypha”. But doing this he also realizes the transformation of culture through the ages, how the original meaning is lost forever, prompting something new. Many of these ideas touch cosmological arguments that I’ve hinted here and there on the blog (before I started to read this, it’s just stuff that intrigues me). There’s more than one reference to the Kabbalah and it’s interesting to track what Wolfe is doing with it since it’s what gives the larger framework. But he also leaves me with the impression that it’s all an elaborate labyrinth of misdirection. With mostly dead ends. For example when I read Erikson I can see the themes surfacing, reflecting on different perspectives, returning from different angles. But Wolfe is so busy hiding all meaning that he can’t also offer a discourse. He leaves things uncommented, simply stated or hinted, but never faced or directly experienced.

The gulf between plot and story, between the apparent and the real, alerts the reader to the fact that Wolfe is playing a complex and contrived textual game.

It’s a floating cathedral of meaning. It’s built on a artifice, risking of remaining detached and, so, irrelevant. But it’s from there that it also draws its undeniable qualities. The reader is a deliberate part of this game. The “purpose” of the series is not directly in the hidden message that keeps frustrating and irritating me, but in its effect on the reader. It’s strictly in the bleeding to death in front of the minotaur:

Rather, by effectively concealing his narratological sleight of hand and constructing a puzzle for his reader, Wolfe attempts to alert that reader to the level of perception required. Hence, The Book of the New Sun does not invite the reader to marvel at how clever Wolfe can be, but to marvel at his or her own intelligence in perceiving one facet of the elaborate textual game the author plays. In this sense, Wolfe’s tetralogy is a masterwork in that it can be read as a paraliterary fantasy but demands to be read as a comment upon, and a reaction to, such narratives. In effect, it is a coolly intellectual denunciation of passive reading practices, a clarion call to readers dulled by formula fiction.

It is only by observing how s/he has been deceived and cajoled that the reader comes to appreciate more fully Wolfe’s vision of humanity as a helplessly subjective species attendant to the whim of manipulatory forces. This observation is encouraged by the self-conscious stress on deception, artifice and artificiality that permeates the text and which emblematises Wolfe’s textual game with the reader.

From his other fiction, it apparent that Wolfe perceives the world as an ambiguous round of perceptions and misperceptions in which the individual struggles, and ultimately fails, to apprehend the precise nature of existence.

You try to understand, and the moment you feel like you can do it, taking up the challenge, is the moment you give the minotaur the vantage point to slay you.

What I continue to criticize, in opposition to that quote, is the fact that this game IS indeed indulgent, self-focused and self-serving. Sophistication bordering on narcissism. It is not a case that those who are passionate the most about this series are those that ascribe to it “literary” value, putting it one step above all other works of fantasy and Sci-fi (and so reiterating the same pattern). This “pretense” is for me very visible in the books and its style, not just its readers. And in the way it actively selects its readers, while rising barricades to those not “erudite” enough. The cold disregard. It’s not as much as being “sincere” and faithful to itself (“I thought them [the complex jargon] the best ones for the story I was trying to tell.”), as it is a deliberate will to create its elitist, esoteric group of like-minded who can properly perceive the subtext and savor the complex fabric. It’s the practice of literary snobbery and sophistication, secluded and removed. It doesn’t work by making the reader “feel” that complex experience, but actually failing at triggering ANY emotion, as long one is rejected and can only glide hopelessly on the surface. More often than not that’s the reader’s experience, and it will only be enjoyed by that selected elite that can ridicule that reader that tried to get in and failed miserably. Wolfe transforms the patient reader in one that can and should be taunted and laughed at.

So while there’s certainly a great value in this work. It is surely also very pretentious and written to gratify a certain public. A narrow public carefully selected to appreciate the sophistication, and that Wolfe had precisely on his mind when he wrote these books.

(if you’re interested, there’s a lengthy forum discussion that precedes this I’ve written here)
(and this is instead the insightful review that I quoted in mine)

The Aether, and other absurd ideas

These days I’m reading Gene Wolfe, who’s so esoteric that I could as well define him an “occultist”. Without any relation to this, though, I found a very old book in my house on my father’s book shelves. Four volumes and a total of 1600 pages.

It’s pretty much the same thing (as Wolfe).

Looking up the writer (a she), I found out a huge collection of her works, available online, directly linked on the wikipedia. Talking here about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The other bigger works of her is aptly defined (and titled: The Secret Doctrine):

Blavatsky’s masterwork on theosophy, covering cosmic, planetary, and human evolution, as well as science, religion, and mythology.

A bit like Gene Wolfe’s Solar Cycle, only that she intended to write it not as fiction.

The interesting part is that she’s an occultist that engages upfront with “science” and gives it her own interpretation by embracing, instead of ignoring, scientific progress. So, instead of separating the disciplines, she tries to unify them, find things in common, leading to a model that should be coherent on the whole.

Being these texts about 120-130 years old and filled with very bold and definite claims (and predictions), it’s interesting to read them today to see how (if) they hold up. Her fundamental idea is that ancient texts and cultures had a near perfect knowledge of the world, and science is only re-discovering what occultists already knew for a very long time. Eventually they’ll meet at the end. So, as an occultist, she knows the “truth”, and in this book she examines all kinds of scientific theories of her time, pointing out how they all seem to move in a specific direction.

For example on the wikipedia it’s written that she claimed the “atom was divisible”, and today we can confirm this as a “truth”. Science agrees. So it’s interesting to analyze how many of her occultist ideas were actually confirmed and if her “insight” actually had some worth (or if her predictions were merely fortuitous). The real problem is that I’m not a scientist and so not competent enough to say what worked and what didn’t.

Take this for example (a section titled “Life, force, or gravity” almost like a Bakker’s wip):

The imponderable fluids have had their day; “mechanical Forces” are less talked about; Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to explain merely planetary motion; how can it presume to explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, says an astronomer (“Philosophie Naturelle,” art. 142), Science would have to name that cause.

Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient philosophers; but then all such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The “extra cosmic” God has killed every possibility of belief in intra cosmic intelligent Forces, yet who, or what is the original pusher in that motion? “When we have learned the cause, unique et speciale, that pushes, we will be ready to combine it with the one which attracts,” says Francoeur (“Astronomie,” p. 342). And again — “Attraction between the celestial bodies is only repulsion: it is the Sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise, their motion would stop.”

I don’t know exactly what science believes today, but the idea of “God” shared by Kabbalists and occultists is rather close to the idea of “nature” that is given by science. God is not manipulating the world, but the complex rules that drive it (the world) were set in motion at the very beginning. So the god doesn’t intervene, as his creation is already as perfect as it can be, moving along its purpose. It’s a matter of semantic, since science tells us exactly the same. That the world follows a complex (and fixed) system of rules to be discovered.

And especially, there are scientific ideas that “reverse engineer” the approach to science, leading back right to occultism. For example: the anthropic principle. Which is built on certain “obligatory” deductions that just can’t be escaped.

One way to cling to non-magic/spiritual scientific belief and explain at the same time the anthropic principle is suggested by Sean M. Carroll, the cosmologist I found out via Fringe. So a scientist of today who knows well at what point science is, and so tries to explore new theories built on modern knowledge. He theorizes that the reason why entropy builds constantly in our universe, from the Big Bang to its future collapse, so from an absolute minimum to a maximum, is only possible because this universe is part of a much bigger multiverse, where a number of self-contained universes develop at the same “time”.

The example he uses to simplify this idea is extremely straightforward. Think of an egg. This egg is an organized system, very low on entropy. The moment we make this egg fall on the ground and shatter its entropy increases. To the point that the process can’t be inverted (you can’t rebuild the egg once it broke, it’s way too complex, an effort too great). So this egg-system is one starting from very low entropy, and moving toward high entropy. But the egg also exist as part of our universe, that itself is going through the same process, from low entropy (Big Bang) to high entropy (final collapse). Repeat the pattern and you can easily theorize that our whole universe ALSO is only a smaller system contained in a bigger one. And so we could explain that our system/universe entropy is only absolute to itself, but relative in the grander scheme of things.

This then also explains the anthropic principle, as it theorizes that we are only one of infinite possible observers. Essentially, the only way science has to deny god on this level is about: “in a sufficiently large universe, some worlds might evolve conscious life regardless of adverse conditions”. And having a multiverse of universes is the working possibility to have this necessity of context larger than our own finite universe.

My point is that no matter the scientific progress, occultism is merely flowing into the gaps, and linger there. It’s as if scientific progress moves onward, but never gets closer to a definite truth. More often than not the fundamental questions only shift their context, but those questions are never answered.

So its interesting to read these old occultist text not for truth, but because while some parts appear as ridiculous in light of modern progress, some other parts come back and are as actual as ever. Giving the illusion that science and occultism are describing the same object seen from two specular perspectives:

And this would be indeed occultism’s triumph over science:

Occultism, which knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One eternal element at the first differentiation of which the roots of the tree of life are periodically struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says: — Ancient Wisdom has solved the problem ages ago. Aye; earnest, as well as mocking reader, Science is slowly but as surely approaching our domains of the Occult.

And, especially:

There can be no possible conflict between the teachings of occult and so-called exact Science, where the conclusions of the latter are grounded on a substratum of unassailable fact. It is only when its more ardent exponents, over-stepping the limits of observed phenomena in order to penetrate into the arcana of Being, attempt to wrench the formation of Kosmos and its living Forces from Spirit, and attribute all to blind matter, that the Occultists claim the right to dispute and call in question their theories. Science cannot, owing to the very nature of things, unveil the mystery of the universe around us. Science can, it is true, collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the occultist, arguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring explorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the region of noumena and the sphere of primal causes. To effect this, he must develop faculties which are absolutely dormant

Well said, but still not granted or proven. One way or the other. We know our limits and little else.

Another intresting idea I read is about the “Aether”. In occultism given for granted as a substance that is everywhere. Now this is an outlandish idea that today appears as completely ridiculous, yet, when we push science to its newfound limits, it seems to return. See quantum foam:

The foam is supposed to be the foundations of the fabric of the universe

Quantum mechanics can be used to describe spacetime as being “bitty” at extremely small scales

Instead of being “smooth”, the vacuum is described as looking like “quantum foam”. It has been suggested that this seething mass of virtual particles may be the equivalent in modern physics of a particulate aether.

It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with ‘stuff’ that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.

And so sometimes it does feel like science is a very large detour leading to the same point. Strict scientific language seems to obfuscate and distract from the truth, as if the model was inverted and occultist language was not esoteric, but revelatory. Though occultist ideas require quite a bit of work to adapt to scientific knowledge. The occultist perspective:

What several rather mystical Scientists taught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., were not the final causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary motion, but themselves the Secondary effects of other Causes, for which Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism believes, for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of their claims in every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no Adepts?

Sir Isaac Newton held to the Pythagorean corpuscular theory, and was also inclined to admit its consequences; which made the Count de Maistre hope, at one time, that Newton would ultimately lead Science back to the recognition of the fact that Forces and the Celestial bodies were propelled and guided by Intelligences (Soirees, vol. ii.). But de Maistre counted without his host. The innermost thoughts and ideas of Newton were perverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the mere physical husk was turned to account.

[…]

This “mystery,” or the origin of the life essence, Occultism locates in the same centre as the nucleus of prima materia (for they are one) of our Solar system.

“The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind the (visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-centre of the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses. . . .” (Commentary.)

It was stated elsewhere (in the Theosophist) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible being only its reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir J. Herschell for “Solar inhabitants,” are the reservoirs of solar vital energy, “the vital electricity that feeds the whole system. . . . . The Sun in abscondito being thus the storehouse of our little Kosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out,” and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real Solar palace and presence, which reflects, however, faithfully the interior work.

This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,* which is due to the contraction of the Solar heart. The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth; and as our globe itself breathes every twenty-four hours.

If ever this theory of the Sun-Force being the primal cause of all life on earth and motion in heaven is accepted, and if that other far bolder one of Herschell — about certain organisms in the Sun — is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our teachings be vindicated, and esoteric allegory shown to have anticipated Modern Science by millions of years, probably, for these are the Archaic teachings.

[…]

The whole range of physical phenomena proceed from the Primary of Ether — Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so-called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahmam. Modern Science may divide its hypothetically conceived ether in as many ways as it likes; the real AEther of Space will remain as it is throughout.

And so this pervasive “substance” that in quantum theory composes the fabric of the universe, is more or less similarly described in occultism. “Bitty”. Described through allegory as “organisms” that keep the universe moving and that make life possible.

Put away semantic differences, and they are pretty much descriptions of the same “object”. One factual, the other anthropomorphic.

(I was thinking of the image of connected panels that show the illusion of a sky. You look up and see the sky as if it was a real one. But if you dislocate one of the panels from its original position, then you’d suddenly perceive a “hole” (I was thinking about this because I was watching the anime Rahxephon, using similar imagery, but even Portal the game does something similar). Something like this “quantum foam”, that is transparent and intangible (ideally), but as the fabric of the universe, it shows only if dislocated. Showing the “illusion” below and appearing as “bitty”. So… digital?)

1Q84

From an Italian interview (I’m trying to translate):

By gathering facts that aren’t real it is possible to build a world that appears more realistic than the one we live in. In other words, it is possible to make a fictional world that shows us reality in a more authentic way. This is what, one of the things, I want to do in my work.

Q. As if one world wouldn’t be enough to explain human condition, let’s call it X. As if everything, literature, life, love, death, X was the result of the continuous interaction between A and non-A. Is that so?

A. I believe that one of the duties of a writer is to rouse that domain of the spirit that isn’t being used in everyday life. To achieve this one needs to turn “On” some switches on the control panel of consciousness. If you succeed, those latent, dormant domains can slowly reawaken. Novels – the good ones – have that potential. And if all works well, through that secret passage that was revealed, we can set foot in a world that we aren’t used to see. My books show the path to reach that internal landscape, a path as a metaphor, to provoke a reaction. Therefore, structurally, what is narrated within the story becomes its function.

I’m so glad I discovered Haruki Murakami. The two books I ordered arrived earlier today. 1Q84 is a lush hardcover edition. I ran a wordcount on it and it’s 425k, just slightly bigger than A Storm of Sword. A big book. I also noticed a subtle touch: the right pages seemed to have the writing “shifted” down by one line, and I figured out it was deliberate, as it’s based on the theme of the “mirror”, with one half being specular to the other.

The other book I got is “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”, but in the Italian edition since I knew the English one was arbitrarily cut. I spent some time comparing this edition with the English one and found out four chapters or so were cut, but, being the chapters rather short and the pagecount keeping a similar “ratio”, my guess is that not more than 10-15% was cut overall. Which doesn’t make sense, why 600 pages are just fine, but 660 so much that they needed to be cut?

From the few pages I’ve read it seems the kind of stuff I love. The writings flows superbly and is a pleasure to read. These days I was explaining why I didn’t like “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and what is interesting is that Murakami seems to share a similar “magic realism”. Yet the point is that (for me) in one case it works and in the other it doesn’t. A matter of “how”, and not “what”. (and Steven Erikson’s “This River Awakens” too can be put in this context)

A couple of quotes from 1Q84 that caught my attention:

No, of course, not in itself enough. There also has to be that ‘special something’, an indefinable quality, something I can’t quite put my finger on. That’s the part of fiction I value more highly than anything else. Stuff I understand perfectly doesn’t interest me.

And:

It was probably Chekhov who said that the novelist is not someone who answers questions but someone who asks them.

1Q84 seems to have this “meta” layer, with the character(s?) in the novel being a novelist, discussing other writers and their works. With lots of stuff being pertinent to Murakami, becoming self-referential, in a loop.

So you have these two levels. The one where you are a reader reading and trying to understand the book, and the one (in the book) where the characters also read and try to discuss/understand in superb metalinguistic, recursive, self-aware style. (and in this context I can mention this, also in relation to “Gödel, Escher, Bach”)

I love this stuff.

Infinite Drift

The last episode of Fringe (3X06) was a very good one. As usual I try to track some references, this time a book that Walter takes away from Peter. The book is a MASSIVE tome titled “Cosmology”, by Sean Carroll.

I found out there are two of them, a Sean B. Carroll and a Sean M. Carroll, both actually interesting in the greater discourse but it’s the latter who’s a cosmologist and published something. Though, no massive “Cosmology” seems to exist. The closest thing I found is this.

Looking at the wikipedia it seems his work is mostly about the idea of the arrow of time, which seems to tread dangerous ground (see previous discussions):

1- It is vividly recognized by consciousness.
2- It is equally insisted on by our reasoning faculty, which tells us that a reversal of the arrow would render the external world nonsensical.
3- It makes no appearance in physical science except in the study of organization of a number of individuals.

So consciousness and time, as if isolated from scientific objectivity. I can imagine this line of thoughts leading to places…

While looking for these things I also randomly found this curious book.

The dilemma

A chunk of the ongoing debate over at Scott Bakker’s blog for my own perusal. I need to plant landmarks on a sprawling discussion, or I get lost too easily and forget the path I went through just now. Lost in the labyrinth and food for the minotaur.

Bakker’s quote:

The dilemma is one of global absurdity. There’s the idea of the sum of human culture up to this moment becoming as quaint and childish and incomprehensible as cave paintings. There’s the idea that the entirety of thought and assumption revolving around responsibility and obligation and [enter ubiquitous normative term] is simply false. There’s the idea that all our social institutions are in some way derived from and dependent upon these concepts and will collapse with them. Need I go on?

I fear it is inevitable, but what’s there to do other than fight or embrace quietism (either in the form of fantasy or nihilism)?

The only way to mobilize people, however, is to convince them the threat is real. But the world is a circle with as many centres as there are people. Everyone has their own redeeming (or exculpating) story – be it New Age, religious, or intellectual – which for them is the baseline, the yardstick they use to make sense of, let alone measure, everything. One of my tactics to make a second order ‘diaphonic’ critique, to observe the diverse, mutually incompatible redemptive views, and to contrast them to the breathtaking theoretical solidarity you find in science.

My part:

—
If I understand this correctly it’s about a form of split between perceived norm and common values, and actual truth (as “revealed” by science). But I was reading of a similar split in the book of Von Foerster, a split that happened already a while ago (and the new one could be just a repetition of it under a new form, or its prosecution).

Here’s the quote:

The scientific conception of reality which emerged in the 17th century is, in large part, responsible for our love affair with causality. “Newton gave the world the first rigorous formulation of the doctrine of causality. Most simply, the doctrine asserts that the same causes generate the same effects.” […]

The doctrine of causality appeared to fulfill man’s perennial search for certainty and objectivity. […] as Robert J. Oppenheimer explains, “The giant machine (the Newtonian universe) was objective in the sense that no human act or intervention qualified its behavior.” […]

And here’s the opening of the dilemma:

Although relativity theory and quantum mechanics have radically altered the physicist’s view of reality, this shift has not touched the average person. Equally, if not more important, many scientists have also failed to revise their thinking about reality and the nature of scientific work. Thus, most people see the world like the 17th century scientists, assuming that it’s possible to have objectivity and to know reality.

Why is it so?

Our 17th century mentality manifests itself in daily life. If this last statement sounds outlandish, stop and consider: Have you recently repaired some mechanical device, gathered data about the stock market, settled a dispute, checked your child’s homework, or sat in a jury? Or, perhaps you earn your living testing new drugs, designing computers, practicing law, or investigating insurance claims? These activities and countless others require gathering data or information – not just any data, but data that are correct or accurate, i.e., that are true.

It’s a practical need of daily life, for which the Newtonian principles are just enough to be functional. “It works.” And the developments of science that are most destabilizing (for theoretical models) are those that actually don’t have much impact on the everyday life.

It’s like the discussion about why believing in science. Because it works. But quantum theory or consciousness seen as a mere process, “do not work”. They have no practical use in daily life. They don’t give you Jedi powers.