KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 14 (to Roberts, C11)

( FUNDAMENTALISM )
by Joseph Johnson
25 November 2003, posted 7 December 2003

<1>
What does the prospect of the indefinite evolution of system complexity with its endlessly novel emergent properties - guaranteed by the ubiquity of star/planet systems, together with the properties of organic chemistry - tell us about natural order? It tells us that there is no finite set of processes or finite definition that will fully describe or realize the full expression of natural order. Therefore, natural order is fundamentally subjective. Another way of saying it : physical expression presumably arises from a zero-dimensional ground as a result of self-imposed constraints, the several contrived dimensions that give form and meaning to differences and limits. The imposed limits guarantee that the explicit objective world cannot possibly express the totality of the implicit imperative of natural order.

<2>
Empiricism is a useful approach to understanding processes in closed or defined systems, but cosmos is not such a system. Its order is fundamentally subjective, and local evolved mind is simply the local expression of the creative agency that assures the indefinite evolution of system complexity here and there in the cosmos. Yes, it seems the process will end when the last star winks out and the last habitable planet freezes solid, but that will be an arbitrary or incidental end, not one that completes the total possible novelty.

<3>
If natural order is fundamentally objective, then you must ignore as "unreal, unnatural" the entire realm of cultural artifacts. It means you must abandon the central premise of science that ALL of natural order is unitary and coherent; that your own subjective self, together with cultural artifacts and all the creativity that they represent, are somehow not expressions of natural order.

<4>
If every successive level of complexity is represented by a new science, i.e., physics--> chemistry--> biology, etc., what is the common linkage between them other than an implicit abstract necessity of which each is a more refined (but never complete) expression? In this sense, every cosmic particular, whether objective or subjective, is no less an expression of a highest, all-inclusive abstract implicit necessity: natural order is both the objective -- and more recently subjective -- expression of the implicit subjective necessity. Mind is creative because its faculties for analysis and synthesis give it access to levels of abstraction, which is precisely what is needed to comprehend and exploit the actual ladder-structure of natural order. If this were not true, nature would have selected for other faculties.

<5>
It would seem, therefore, that empiricism and its materialism is the most unfortunate and destructive kind of fundamentalism. It worships means as though they were ends, and denies the relevance of subjective ends. To be sure, the religions seem to carry excess baggage but as a phenomenon they are remarkably prescient regarding the subjective qualities essential to survival (the continued evolution of system complexity); what the abstraction theory of natural order (TA53) would call symmetry and its abstracts.

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Joseph Johnson