Several days ago, I gave a presentation to a conference of ocularists(certified professionals who make prosthetic eyes) on facial aesthetics as a manifestations of meta-patterns in the natural world. My first slide (ppp) was Keats’ poem Beauty is Truth and then defined truth as ‘that which corresponds to the real’ and then the real as ultimately those those things that do not have contingent existence. The physical universe, including our bodies, has contingent existence. However, some ancient Greeks understood that both Phi and phi, as irrational numbers, point to something beyond the contingent things of our everyday reality. Told them that the take-home message of quantum field theory is that ultimately everything is interconnected as One. Used photos of galaxies, hurricanes, flowers, seashells as well as the bodies and movements of ballerinas to show the variations of the logarithmic spiral in contingent processes that we experience as manifestations of beauty that as Rilke said can sometimes be overwhelming. But these all are manifestations of the golden ratio. I did not share with them that they are also seen in the mathematics in the energies of black holes.
My point is that while I agree we can and must delight in all things beautiful in our
everyday world, I think they are pointing to something transcendent while experiencing its immanence.
I will instead focus on what might seem to be a side point that is easily overlooked in what you wrote here:
"I believe it is crucial to distinguish between cosmology and metaphysics. Whitehead’s insights on this distinction are essential here. Cosmology concerns the empirical study of contingent phenomena — patterns and regularities that emerge within our particular cosmic epoch. These patterns are historical and subject to change, to evolution. In contrast, metaphysics seeks the principles that condition the possibility of any cosmic epoch. These are not empirical findings but regulative ideals, philosophical principles or categorical conditions. We should not presume to have definitively grasped these categories, for they remain forever subject to revision in light of new experience."
The relationship of what you refer to as "cosmology" to what you refer to as "metaphysics" can be compared to the relationship of a single immediate experience of a single phenomenon and the abstract knowledge of the category to which that phenomenon belongs. Though you speak of cosmology as comprised of "patterns," within a larger picture, from which you are looking, those "patterns" are themselves single ideas in the mind of a philosopher as compared to the broader metaphysical viewpoint of their "conditioning principles."
In this context, I quote here the Jungian, Edward Edinger:
"The notion of these Platonic 'ideas' grew out of mankind's early experience of discovering the mind's power to formulate general categories. It is very hard now for us to put ourselves back into those earlier stages of consciousness, but one gets some idea of them through anthropological studies of primitives who do not generalize; they have
concrete experiences. For the Greeks, the powers of generalization were just slowly and painfully emerging from the universal condition of participation mystique with the
concrete environment, and therefore, when a generalization was discovered, it carried the same numinosity as the discovery of numbers. Numbers are generalizations, which is
why Plato used them as prime examples to describe the nature of the idea."
The point I'm trying to make is that though we have "advanced" from mere participation mystique, from immediate experience of the actual dog or apple right before us and can think abstractly about dogs and apples in general, which is very useful in many ways, we have to make great effort to actually experience the wonder of that single thing or person right before us rather than just relate to the abstract idea of the category, which psychologically speaking is projection. The same with every time a philosopher is able to step back and see several different cosmological patterns/categories as single expressions of underlying "conditioning principles" that form a much larger category, one must not lose the ability to marvel at the wonder - the numinosity - of each of those "lesser" categories and experience them immediately and intimately.
Several days ago, I gave a presentation to a conference of ocularists(certified professionals who make prosthetic eyes) on facial aesthetics as a manifestations of meta-patterns in the natural world. My first slide (ppp) was Keats’ poem Beauty is Truth and then defined truth as ‘that which corresponds to the real’ and then the real as ultimately those those things that do not have contingent existence. The physical universe, including our bodies, has contingent existence. However, some ancient Greeks understood that both Phi and phi, as irrational numbers, point to something beyond the contingent things of our everyday reality. Told them that the take-home message of quantum field theory is that ultimately everything is interconnected as One. Used photos of galaxies, hurricanes, flowers, seashells as well as the bodies and movements of ballerinas to show the variations of the logarithmic spiral in contingent processes that we experience as manifestations of beauty that as Rilke said can sometimes be overwhelming. But these all are manifestations of the golden ratio. I did not share with them that they are also seen in the mathematics in the energies of black holes.
My point is that while I agree we can and must delight in all things beautiful in our
everyday world, I think they are pointing to something transcendent while experiencing its immanence.
It's hard to keep up with you Matt.
I will instead focus on what might seem to be a side point that is easily overlooked in what you wrote here:
"I believe it is crucial to distinguish between cosmology and metaphysics. Whitehead’s insights on this distinction are essential here. Cosmology concerns the empirical study of contingent phenomena — patterns and regularities that emerge within our particular cosmic epoch. These patterns are historical and subject to change, to evolution. In contrast, metaphysics seeks the principles that condition the possibility of any cosmic epoch. These are not empirical findings but regulative ideals, philosophical principles or categorical conditions. We should not presume to have definitively grasped these categories, for they remain forever subject to revision in light of new experience."
The relationship of what you refer to as "cosmology" to what you refer to as "metaphysics" can be compared to the relationship of a single immediate experience of a single phenomenon and the abstract knowledge of the category to which that phenomenon belongs. Though you speak of cosmology as comprised of "patterns," within a larger picture, from which you are looking, those "patterns" are themselves single ideas in the mind of a philosopher as compared to the broader metaphysical viewpoint of their "conditioning principles."
In this context, I quote here the Jungian, Edward Edinger:
"The notion of these Platonic 'ideas' grew out of mankind's early experience of discovering the mind's power to formulate general categories. It is very hard now for us to put ourselves back into those earlier stages of consciousness, but one gets some idea of them through anthropological studies of primitives who do not generalize; they have
concrete experiences. For the Greeks, the powers of generalization were just slowly and painfully emerging from the universal condition of participation mystique with the
concrete environment, and therefore, when a generalization was discovered, it carried the same numinosity as the discovery of numbers. Numbers are generalizations, which is
why Plato used them as prime examples to describe the nature of the idea."
The point I'm trying to make is that though we have "advanced" from mere participation mystique, from immediate experience of the actual dog or apple right before us and can think abstractly about dogs and apples in general, which is very useful in many ways, we have to make great effort to actually experience the wonder of that single thing or person right before us rather than just relate to the abstract idea of the category, which psychologically speaking is projection. The same with every time a philosopher is able to step back and see several different cosmological patterns/categories as single expressions of underlying "conditioning principles" that form a much larger category, one must not lose the ability to marvel at the wonder - the numinosity - of each of those "lesser" categories and experience them immediately and intimately.
👍🌟