However, from a phenomenological point of view the only way in which we are capable of accessing the physical world is via our senses. Our physical world view is therefore ‘subjective’. Our meassurement of the distances between physical (sensory perceptable objectives) and thus the ‘space’ which they inhabit is therefore relative to the sensitivities of our senses.

That the New Scientist reported that our thumbs and index fingers are perceived to be bigger than our less sensitive digits is no longer so surprising. Cartesian space is a conceptual construct. This is partly a result of prioritising vision over touch for objects that are relatively close together, especially when they are the same distance away from us. But if we only used our visual sense then objects that were further away would appear to be smaller than those that were closer. This is reflected in the naive style of early painters.

Since the early renaissance period, with the rise of rationalism, painters changed their perspective on relative distances. We have a 6th sense (science now recognises many more than the 5 that I was taught in school). This is our sense of body position. If you take a number of small steps with your eyes closed you will feel that you have moved a shorter distance than if you had taken the same number of large steps. Move a number of steps with your eyes open towards a distant object and it appears to get larger. Bigger steps, things get bigger quicker. Make those steps as exact as possible and an exact pattern arises between the apparent size of an object and the number of steps taken. This pattern is seen with our mind’s eye. This pattern was conceptualised and described mathematically by Galileo. The space that objects occupy was conceptualised as being a fixed three dimensional grid.

Though this view was challenged by the relativities of Leibniz and most recently Einstein, it still lies at the heart of quantum theory. In the Western world it so dominates our thinking that it is almost impossible for anyone reading this (including myself) not to take for granted as a physical reality.

But thanks to the phenomenology of the mathematically trained Husserl. It is possible to unlearn that which we have been taught to take for granted. Despite my disagreeing with (most of) the conclusions of the New Sscientist article, there is still scope for us to get to know our own hands better. Realtively speaking.

I find myself in a challenging position. To interpret the past I need a guiding idea – holism. My main source for an understanding of holism was Henri Bortoft.

He deals with the metaphysical challenges surrounding a phenomenological hermeneutic consideration of the holistic relationship between parts and wholes very well. However, he did not explore the mathematical approaches to this subject. Worse, he is not known as an authority.

Holism has been defined in terms of the relationship between the whole and its parts. Mathematically, part-whole theory is an alternative or a complimentary approach to set theory. Bertrand Russel uncovered the paradoxes that lie at the heart of the formal logical rules or axioms that have defined set theory. The barber paradox is the most well known. Mereology, the successor to whole-part theory, and fuzzy set theory were, at least in part, reactions to this state of affairs.

I am sure that it is no coincidence that Husserl, the mathematically trained founder of phenomenology, was one of the first to write about the relationships between parts and wholes in his 1901 Logical Investigations (volume 2). This was as a direct response to the increasing gap between the formalism of logic and mathematics, and the physical world as we experience it, which that mathematics was (at least in part) formulated to help us understand.

I had naively hoped that a reading of Bart Kosko’s Fuzzy Thinking would provide a non-contraversial place to start. All I find is controversy. Kosko loses the machine intelligence audience with his talk of Zen Buddhism. The book reviews clearly show a gap between those with an interest in the philosophical implications of fuzzy logic and those who just want to deal with the formalisms of the maths.

Whilst writng this post I have discovered that neither mathematics, nor logic (and they are not believed to be the same by all), have been able to provide me with solid ground. As Kosko discovered, if you do not find common ground with your audience, the chances are they will not follow.

So it boils down to me and the hermeneutic circle. To understand something one needs to understand each of the parts of which it consists. Yet the parts are only intelligable in terms of that of which they are a part. The solution to this paradox is entailed in fuzziness. The first part that is considered may give us a vague notion of the nature of the whole to which it belongs. This vague notion helps in developing a partial understanding of the next part to be examined. With each step by way of the various parts, an understanding develops in the manner of a ball spiralling in towards a central well of attraction.

This is essentially the method Plato gets Socrates to use in many of his dialogues. Thus in the Theaetetus the task was to discover what is knowledge. But to discover the answer the participants needed to have an idea of what they were searching for. By the end of their search they didn’t appear to have found it. But they agreed that they were closer to an answer than they had been at the start.

The trouble is, the closer I get to understanding holism, the further away the answer seems to be. This is possibly because I have been searching for an exact, definitive answer. The alternative that I now choose is a study of the writings of the great thinkers of the past whose influences colour our thoughts today.

So it is that I start my fuzzy holistic hermeneutic circle with the earliest of Ancient Greek writings, heading slowly towards the present.

the ancient Greek historian Herodotus argued that Homer (and Hesiod, a near contemporary epic poet who composed Theogeny, ‘The Birth of the Gods’) gave the Greeks their divinities… [they] gave [the] gods an individual, human face.

[Cited from: Herodotus, Histories 2.53.]

Nevertheless, one can see why many serious-minded later thinkers (like Plato) took such exception to Homer’s treatment of the gods.

[Cited from: Plato, Republic 386b ff.]

refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state

(and leading the Athenian youth astray).

Elsewhere I have read that these Gods were Homer’s Gods.

To understand the context of Socrates and Plato, I need to understand Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. I now have a couple of translations and am reading their introductions. Exciting stuff. But judging from the natures of these Gods I am not at all surprised Socrates was judged to be a heretic.

What I will be particularly looking for is fuzzy reasoning: the acceptance of formal logical paradox.

Apart from dealing with my life (household stuff), and BUCFP stuff, and family stuff, and typing up the catalogue of my old pseudoscorpion papers for the Booth Museum, and finding time to edit my Australian video and stills, … apart from all that, I still have my interest in communicating my philosophical interests with others. I still wish to gain a deeper insight into the mysteries of our Universe.

The latest step in that direction was reading Bart Kosko’s “Fuzzy Thinking” which is about some of the technological, scientific, and especially the philosophical implications of fuzzy logic. This is a modern demonstration of the importance of non-linear, non-bivalent thinking, espicially in computer control systems. Most importantly it provides a mathematical treatment of a concept of holism.

Our Universe is fuzzy! Bart Kosko has been an important player in our ability to deal with and to understand it. I do have problems with his (theoretical) concept of an empty universe. It has also made me want to reappraise some of the assumptions I have gained based on readings of Henri Bortoft, and of Goethe on the nature of holism.

But there is still the project to produce a series of short, non-technical video’s based on Mary Louise Gill’s (holistic) interpretation of Plato’s “Parmenides”. Perhaps I should type up the draft scripts I have produced so far. However, I am no longer so certain whether I wish to actually produce the videos.

The thing about fuzzy thinking is that it works better when information about the subject matter’s context is taken into account. So to find out whether Plato was a fuzzy thinker, rather that of the formal logic of Aristotle, I wish to consider the background to Plato’s writings. Parmenides appeared to base his philosophical arguments on the bivalent logic formalised by Aristotle. Parmenides was concerned with the Ideal nature of the Universe. In his follow up book – “Theatetus” – Plato also considers the teachings of Heraclitus, and Protagorus. They dealt mostly with our material experiences. Their interpretations assume a fuzzy Universe. Theatetus, the mathematician who is the central character in Plato’s book on Knowledge, I seem to remember reading somewhere would have had expert knowledge of the great secret that lies at the heart of Pythagorus’ Theorem. The Ancient Greeks liked things to be simple and clean. Whole numbers, and the ratios thereof. Hence the word Rational. Except that the hypotenuse of a 1×1 triangle is the square root of 2 which happens to be is Irrational! In other words it is fuzzy. It is a number that can never be known as either a whole number or a ratio of whole numbers. It is an entity that is simultaneously unknowable (empiracally) and yet exactly known (conceptually).

Plato’s Academy famously barred those with no knowledge of geometry. He often used mathematical ideas to demonstrate philosophical ideas. For those looking for clear cut rational explanations his metaphysical books have proven hard to interpret. Perhaps this is because he wished an educated elite to discover that the geometrical thinking we require is fuzzy.

The idea is to talk about the flip side of my disabilities – how they have enabled me to attain insights into how the world works. On Friday we decided I might start with a poem that I wrote about a year ago on the nature of truth, nature, and human nature. I wrote it to be performed at an evening of local performers at Bom-Banes.

Poetic Truth

“What is truth?”
“What is truth?” Asked Pontius Pilot.
And did not stay for an answer.

Truth!
It is about our statements that we make about the world:
Objective – subjective – poetic;
That I see trees of green,
And red roses too,
I see them bloom,
For me and for you,
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world!

The World -
Nature -
Just is.
And that’s alright by me.

Neither right nor wrong,
Neither true or false;
Nature is.
Full of doings that be,
Full of beings that do,
Full of Human Beings;
Beings that are of Nature
Yet capable of writing
Philosophical odes
About the nature of Nature.
Philosophical odes available to criticism
By other Human Beings such as yourselves
As to whether or not what I am saying may be true.

However,
This philosophical ode was not written by me
But by Nature herself,
For I am but a mouthpiece of Nature.
Just one of her doings that be,
Neither true nor false,
I just is.
This ode just is.
We all of us just are.

Pontius Pilot asked “what is truth?”
And did not stay for an answer.
I hope you choose to stay!

(Inspired by Goethe’s prose poem Nature)

There is no such thing as society, only individuals.

If what is real is only that which we can touch, see, taste, smell, or hear, then Thatcher must be correct. Only the parts of a whole are physically real. Yet I believe in Society as a real entity, however difficult it may be to express what such an entity might be.

One evening after watching the film Collateral I felt angry because the cold, logic of the hitman was difficult to answer in words, especially words the hitman might have understood. In the film this was answered through the taxi driver’s actions; driving in a life threatening manner demonstrating to the hitman that the value of human life is a very real entity – even if it was only his own that he valued.

I felt driven to put my frustration into verse:

No-thing.
David Cuthbertson 08/10/2004

We are all part of a unified whole
That our analytic intellect
Tears apart.
Then screws up.

We are all part
Of a whole -
Yet where is it?
Why can I not communicate
Such
A
One
Single simple idea.

A whole is an O
A whole is less than a
.

A whole –
Entire –
Though its parts
May be numberless.
Or missing.

It has no beginning.
It has no end.

           It is not

Here.

It is not

           There.

It is everywhere.
It is nowhere.
It is no-thing.

Why can I not explain it to you?
Why can I not conceptualise it for you?
Why can I not hold it in front of you
And show you it?

I can hold it in the palm of my hand –
Yet you will not see it,
Unless you know it.

I can hold it in the palm of my hand –
An inner infinitude –
A hole so small,
Yet so deep,
That it holds the All within it.
Yet it is contained within itself.

For outside can be in.
For inside can be out.
For, for the All there is no inside.
For, for the All there is no outside.
For the All is the All.

I have seen the metamorphosis
Of the leaves on the rose
That turn into petals.

I have seen the metamorphosis
Of the ugly duckling
Into the swan.

I have seen the individuals
Who metamorphosed into a group
Who saved the horse-chestnut tree.

Can you see the Rose
In the leaf?

Can you see the Swan
In the cygnet?

Can you see the Idea
In the group?

I have seen.
But I cannot explain.

Not yet.

I have seen the maths –
But I do not understand.

Ginko Biloba

Leaf of Eastern tree transplanted
Here into my garden’s field
Hast me secret meaning granted
Which adepts delight will yield

Art thou one – one living being
Now divided into two?
Art thou two, who jointed agreeing
and in one united grew?

To the question, pondered duly,
Have I found the right reply:
In my poems you see truly
Twofold and yet one am I.

It was Goethe who introduced me to the importance of such considerations. And being a poet as well as a scientist and philosopher, he often recorded his ideas in verse. His prose poem Nature is one of the more famous:

NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

Without asking, or warning, she snatches us up into her circling dance, and whirls us on until we are tired, and drop from her arms.

She is ever shaping new forms: what is, has never yet been; what has been, comes not again. Everything is new, and yet nought but the old.

We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her.

The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals. She is always building up and destroying; but her workshop is inaccessible.

Her life is in her children; but where is the mother? She is the only artist; working-up the most uniform material into utter opposites; arriving, without a trace of effort, at perfection, at the most exact precision, though always veiled under a certain softness.

Each of her works has an essence of its own; each of her phenomena a special characterisation: and yet their diversity is in unity.

She performs a play; we know not whether she sees it herself, and yet she acts for us, the lookers-on.

Incessant life, development, and movement are in her, but she advances not. She changes for ever and ever, and rests not a moment. Quietude is inconceivable to her, and she has laid her curse upon rest. She is firm. Her steps are measured, her exceptions rare, her laws unchangeable.

She has always thought and always thinks; though not as a man, but as Nature. She broods over an all-comprehending idea, which no searching can find out.

Mankind dwell in her and she in them. With all men she plays a game for love, and rejoices the more they win. With many, her moves are so hidden, that the game is over before they know it.

That which is most unnatural is still Nature; the stupidest philistinism has a touch of her genius. Whoso cannot see her everywhere, sees her nowhere rightly.

She loves herself, and her innumberable eyes and affections are fixed upon herself. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She causes an endless succession of new capacities for enjoyment to spring up, that her insatiable sympathy may be assuaged.

She rejoices in illusion. Whoso destroys it in himself and others, him she punishes with the sternest tyranny. Whoso follows her in faith, him she takes as a child to her bosom.

Her children are numberless. To none is she altogether miserly; but she has her favourites, on whom she squanders much, and for whom she makes great sacrifices. Over greatness she spreads her shield.

She tosses her creatures out of nothingness, and tells them not whence they came, nor whither they go. It is their business to run, she knows the road.

Her mechanism has few springs — but they never wear out, are always active and manifold.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

She wraps man in darkness, and makes him for ever long for light. She creates him dependent upon the earth, dull and heavy; and yet is always shaking him until he attempts to soar above it.

She creates needs because she loves action. Wondrous! that she produces all this action so easily. Every need is a benefit, swiftly satisfied, swiftly renewed.– Every fresh want is a new source of pleasure, but she soon reaches an equilibrium.

Every instant she commences an immense journey, and every instant she has reached her goal.

She is vanity of vanities; but not to us, to whom she has made herself of the greatest importance. She allows every child to play tricks with her; every fool to have judgment upon her; thousands to walk stupidly over her and see nothing; and takes her pleasure and finds her account in them all.

We obey her laws even when we rebel against them; we work with her even when we desire to work against her.

She makes every gift a benefit by causing us to want it. She delays, that we may desire her; she hastens, that we may not weary of her.

She has neither language nor discourse; but she creates tongues and hearts, by which she feels and speaks.

Her crown is love. Through love alone dare we come near her. She separates all existences, and all tend to intermingle. She has isolated all things in order that all may approach one another. She holds a couple of draughts from the cup of love to be fair payment for the pains of a lifetime.

She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; is her own joy and her own misery. She is rough and tender, lovely and hateful, powerless and omnipotent. She is an eternal present. Past and future are unknown to her. The present is her eternity. She is beneficient. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise.

No explanation is wrung from her; no present won from her, which she does not give freely. She is cunning, but for good ends; and it is best not to notice her tricks.

She is complete, but never finished. As she works now, so can she always work. Everyone sees her in his own fashion. She hides under a thousand names and phrases, and is always the same. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. I trust her. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. It was not I who spoke of her. No! What is false and what is true, she has spoken it all. The fault, the merit, is all hers.

• Searching For A Living Perception of Wholeness – an interview with Henri Bortoft
• The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature – Henri Bortoft – (Reviewed By John Barnes)
• Goethe, Nature, and Phenomenology – David Seamon
• The Delicate Empiricism of Goethe: Phenomenology as a Rigorous Science of Nature – by Brent Dean Robbins
• Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism – Janus Head
• Goethean Science: A Book Review – Steve Talbott
• Henri Bortoft. The Wholeness of Nature: Review by David Seamon
• Goethe comes to New York by Judith Krischik
• Goethian Science by Henri Bortoft, with good recommended reading list.

Whilst these articles now (mostly) make sense to me, they are at the very fringes of philosophy and science.

My previous post listed a range of subject areas concerned with holism and that which underlies the concept of holism – the relations between parts and wholes. As is often the case, especially with academic studies, they are extremely specialised. Each area has its own set of assumptions – its own ways of thinking that are hard to reconcile with other areas of study. Though they are all concerned with essentially the same thing – holism – their differing perspectives make that which they hold in common similar to that of the tale of the blind men and an elephant.

Are these blind men to be pitied or ridiculed? I am just as blind as they are. Perhaps more so. I just happen to like living elephants in all their wonderful entirety. And who better for me to choose as an initial guide than Plato.

Plato loving toy elephant (image from SHOPZEUS)