“We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening.”

–  John Archibald Wheeler,  American theoretical physicist,  a collaborator with Einstein in the advancement of relativity and coiner of the term “Black Hole”

Physical systems have no definite properties prior to being measured.

–  The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Sing to me of the man,  O’ Muse,  the man of twists and turns.

–  The Odyssey,  line 1

What is the telos of history?   The telos of history is to repeat itself…       

– Immemorius

   IN A-MAZE OF THE METAPHOR                                                       

  A “REASON” BEHIND THE LANGUAGE;                                                                                                             SURFACE TO A RIDDLE

  Classical vs. the Quantum:  A Modern Day Parable 

SQUARING THE CIRCLE;  THE CRUCIBLE        

As the geometer his mind applies to square the circle,
Nor for all his wit can find the right formula, however hard he tries. – Dante’s Paradiso, 33: 133–135

You have been numbered, weighed, and divided, and found wanting …                                                                   – The writing on the wall,  Book of Daniel 5:25-28

      An Emergent Horizon:  The Emerging Lexicon

What’s “Real” & What’s Imagined;  One that paves a way for its Other.

HOW AND WHY IT APPEARS  that we see  in the way that we do – to “arrive” at a shared des-cription – is the profound mystery we so intimately know  as our immediate world.  Likewise, it is of profound interest to both the physicist and philosopher – how and why such a familiar ex-perience could “arise” (to emerge) from a limitless set – to include  all possible-possibilities.

PARTICLE & WAVE,  SPACE Vs. TIME,  SINGULARITY & INFINITUDE are (now) but elementary aspects of a complementary principle which together “circumscribe” an emerging lexicon in our search for a theory of everything..  And while this quantum  language unfolds – to somehow be-come more familiar – it shall continue to confront the hegemony of our classical “mold” for real-ity (the current prevailing description) as it continues to shape  the way that we measure and in-terpret phenomena;  and as one paves a way for its “other” – like a newly minted coin,  supplant-ing some other form of “currency” – so too will our contemporary portrait (of the fabric of space & time) remain  in the crucible.  

SO IT WAS – that in 1905 Einstein’s world shaking paradigm of relativity would forever alter the deterministic narrative of man’s Newtonian viewpoint.  His revolutionary insights into the particle nature of light would soon dovetail with Max Planck’s work on quanta in 1907 just two years before he would introduce the epoch changing idea of particle-wave duality to physics in 1909;  in-turn these correlated breakthroughs would soon lead to an emergent  quantum the-ory and to a “nascent” quantum mechanics not long after…

AND SO IT WAS – that our classical mold gets someway “broken” with a breakthrough; and like  a spreading epidemic or a wildfire – our world (with its shattered  view-point) would somehow change in the process…  And like a radical “break” (with the past) – untethered  from Newton’s yardstick – the force of these ideas served to redefine the language of our 20th century physics to “unleash” the modern age.. Such that for the artist, poet, or philosopher (being someway now unbridled) – like a clarion call, or a changing of the guard (or the shifting of an axis) – a so-called indeterminate viewpoint, could so-proclaim throughout ‘its world’: The primacy of perspective.        

A SHATTERING OF THE VESSEL

CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK these emerging (fractured) “points of view” would somehow foment and inspire proverbial thought experiments like the twin paradox by illustrating the rel-ativity of one’s inertial frame (of reference) while postulating a divergent experience of time for two identical twins – one who remains here (on earth),  the other traveling at speeds approach-ing that of light. Addressing similar query from a quantum perspective, Werner Von Heisenberg would put forward his now ubiquitous uncertainty principle, showing us that the more we learn about “position” (of a particle) the less we know about momentum (& also vice-verse) – and that probabilities are all we can every really know  about a quantum “object” with regards to its loca-tion or trajectory. Not long after, Erwin Schrödinger would present his now fabled Schrödingers cat paradox to address the mind bending proposition of quantum superposition;  in a quantum theoretical version of does a tree fall in the woods?  (if nobody is there to notice) – a cat is imag-ined to be placed in a sealed opaque chamber with with a vile of poison in an experimental ar-rangement where it is given a 50/50 chance of survival… Hypothetically speaking (according to a quantum description,  that is) – Schrödinger’s cat could be said to exist equally and at once as both  alive and dead (both yes and no – or this and that ) before the box is opened and an actual outcome is “observed”.

A PART (IN) WHICH WE PLAY – MANKIND’S MEASURE AND THE ROLE OF THE OBSERVER:  THE “WHAT” THAT WE DESCRIBE THROUGH (OUR) DESCRIPTION.

NOW RIDDLE THIS:

If Why do things appear the way they do?  is our question – in the end – it would seem as if it all comes down to a “frame” (of reference) that’s imposed upon the view – through the auspice of a simple (act of) observation. Such that as we somehow “make our measure” – being someway like the crucible – nowhere is the “matter” (of position and perception) brought more into the fore – as when we’re trying to “picture” a thing – that’s somehow in-determinably  small.  Which would also mean to say:  Somehow in the end – the “what” (that) we describe (through our description) would be but little more than some oblique (or hidden) part of our own – unnoticed  dimension.   

   

PROLOGUE   

EX NIHILO:  THE CONCEALMENT OF CONCEALMENT (the unnoticed dimension)

“Whereof which one cannot speak one must pass over in silence.”    – Ludwig Wittgenstein

 The point  is – that there is no point.        – The author                                                                                                                                     

In The Beginning (and once upon a time):  A Myth of Origin        

THEORETICALLY SPEAKING:  Being somehow created “out of nothing” – in order to make any point (in a space) – one must first build a story “around” it; such that as the story of its story goes (which is “a story” – of “the building” – of a structure) – there can be no escape  from the story of its predicament – because “the story of its predicament” – would also be the story of its very ab-sence before its own  beginning.  So that being somehow “built” (of nothing),  and  the tale of its predicament – it might soon become in-time,  the story of its own “position”:  The (now) position of a point  – that’s somehow empty – upon which this story might unfold… So that in accordance with the founding of such a tale – “the point” of which it speaks (on which its every story stands and somehow turns) – would also be the point of the story’s origin… That is – the story of an ori-gin which someway “re-presents” the empty place  of its “own” beginning, which would be some-how – in the end – nothing but its very own “reason”  to be filled in the first place:  An imaginary  void on which its “storied” structure’s built, as if to someway clothe (or hide) its very nakedness.     

                                                                       There is only nothing to hide.      – Immemorius 

                                                 

INTRODUCTORY   

 THE REFLEXIVE NATURE OF BEING 

 Somewhere in-Between the Thing and (the thing) Itself:   De-constructing the Allegory of the Mind-Body Problem

  Andra Polytropos: A Tortuous Road of Twists & Turns

The world is less the arena of causes and effects than it is one of choices and outcomes.       – Anon                                                                                         

Our “Double” Entendre

“Behold the causal circularity of the role of the observer in quantum measurement.  The observer (the subject) ‘chooses’ the manifest state of the collapsed object(s); but without the manifested collapsed objects (including the observer) – the experience of the subject does not arise either.  This circular logic of the dependent co-arising of the subject and object(s) is called a tangled  hierarchy.”                                                                                                                                                            – Amit Goswami

 

Hunting the Hunter; as in search of Moby Dick     

“WE ARE ALL SUSPENDED IN LANGUAGE …”   “We must be clear that when it comes to atoms,  language can be used only as in poetry; the poet too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections…”   “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.”

– Niels Bohr

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah…

– Jonah 1:17

In the beginning was the word. *

– John 1:1

BOTH SO INTIMATELY NEAR YET SOMEHOW INFINITELY FAR;  the “Telos of History” runs something like a game of rhyme or a play on words.  Like the trope or like a pun – by somehow cutting to the chase – its figurative style and cadenced approach – is like a storied attempt to trace the outlines of a riddle which has compelled me for years and beguiled our kind for ages:  “What” is  human consciousness…   

YET OUR PATH SEEMS A MAZE BUILT OF PUZZLES: Take for instance – where does “one” be-gin?  In this game of cat and mouse  (of ours) – we are like detectives at the scene – only just to find that we must somehow “play” the sleuths, and something like a Holmes is to (our) Watson – someway we may find that one is oddly juxtaposed…  It appears that we must learn to hunt our “selves” – so we must adjust our aim accordingly. 

But how to hit the mark?

LIKE A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK it seems our challenge has a “shape”; we find ourselves confronted. Were one to put it in a nutshell – here would be the problem which we’d “face”:  If we are looking down the barrel of our shotgun,  to be confronted by our subject – also means – we somehow are the “object” of our quarry.  And as we focus on the target – how does one proceed – when somehow all at once, the hunter becomes the hunted?  Therefore strangely enough – this curios condition (of ours) becomes (both) the “substance” of our rhyme and  the shape of our dilemma…  And as far as the author is concerned – that  would be “the point” of our discussion;  and according to the picture of our puzzle – such may be the telos** of (our) history.

SO SHOULD WE TRY TO HUNT THE HUNTER:  FIRST we must consider the “frame” (of lan-guage) – “the what” (our) words refer to.. Because while a look might be deceiving – something like a picture in a mirror (consciousness, that is) – reflected back as what is seen –  somehow in the end – we will someway come to “real-ize” – there is no escape from the obvious... Whereby some may come to recognize – that “aiming for our mark” – is something like our picture of the palindrome:  Cause by referring to our “self” – to speak about our consciousness  – would be to also catch our “selves” in a curious sort of predicament…  As if we somehow chase our tail. 

AND AS THE STORY OF US SEEMS TO GO  (and while we’re searching for the “clew“) – as the rhyming of our riddle goes – perhaps it goes something like this…

                                                                              Labyrinthos (House of the Double Axe)

       

Continue on to:  A Frame of Reference: The Curios Bond Between Word and Image

                                      

* Logos:  Ancient Greek – meaning “word”, “speech”, “reason”, or “explanation”

** Telos:  Ancient Greek – meaning “end”. As in the end  to a means (that’s in a means to its end) – telos pertains to a thing’s evident purpose,  its aim,  or its ultimate goal. 

Teleology (telos + logos): The “reason” behind “an end”. As the classical study of “purposiveness” – it can refer to both Plato’s theory of finality and Aristotle’s theory of final causes.  As an idea or a methodology the term figures prominently in Hegelian and Marxist theories of history.

Above:  “Drawing Hands” by M.C. Escher