Process Cosmology --- a worldview for our time

[Gnomon]

So, here we are, facing obliteration. We will have to colonize space in this century. If not, well, if there can be one Earth then there can be another. . . . .
We are this universe come to life—
Necessarily from a long line
Of ‘fortunate accidents’

Earth may be facing obliteration because its upstart little gods have been progressively successful in taking control over paternal Nature, who sired them. As flourishing families grow, despite setbacks, they have to add-on to the cabin, until it becomes a mansion.

So, the local success of artificial Culture could be exported to other worlds, such as Mars, via TerraForming. Our ambitious little-god-minds have historically expanded their range to inhabit undeveloped regions of the boundless universe. Mars-bound Musk is nothing if not aspiring, and successful, despite stumbling blocks and exploding rockets, and dismantled federal departments.

The poetry of the world is a record of ups & downs, ascensions & declinations, as experienced by its sentient creatures. And the immanent end of the world has been foretold many times in the last 2500 years. Yet, we humans no longer wait for fortunate accidents to evolve the world. We take the bit in mouth, and go our own way ; getting back up when we stumble. As Kurzweil arrogantly announced : "the singularity is near, when humans transcend biology!". If we don't annihilate our organic selves first.


Alfred North Whitehead's conception of God, central to his process philosophy, rejects divine omnipotence, viewing God as a "poet of the world" who persuasively guides creation rather than coercively controlling it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ept+of+god

Throughout history, various individuals and groups have made predictions about the end of the world, often based on religious or cultural interpretations, including the Mayans, and others who predicted the end of the world in 2012.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... redictions

[Gnomon]

Is Whitehead’s deity’s Earth doomed?

Whitehead's deity is not limited to Earth. On this forum, we are concerned about the fate of Earth because that is where the philosophical observers live. His "deity" is a cosmic principle, like Plato's Form & First Cause and Aristotle's Prime Mover. As such, they are not directly affected by our little local problems. But, since we humans are the representatives of deity on Earth, if our little corner of Paradise is "doomed" it reflects badly on the Cosmic Cause. Sadly, we can't expect a second coming of a savior to whisk us away to Heaven or Mars, whichever is properly terraformed.

Whitehead referred to his God as a "principle of concretion", coalescence, coming together. So, I'm wondering if it could be the same cohesive principle that Jan Smuts called "Holism", as the organizing progressive principle of Evolution, and may also be the cause of quantum Entanglement. Perhaps also what physicist David Bohm called "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". They all viewed the Earth as one component of a cosmic system, in which, as Benjamin Franklin noted after the English army invaded the colonies : "we either hang together or we hang separately". :worry:


In Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, the deity is a "principle of concretion," a force that transforms potential into actuality {CAUSATION}, offering guidance through persuasive power, and is both independent of and dependent on the world
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... head+deity
Note --- my bracket

Wholeness and Holism :
This post is my attempt to reconcile David Bohm’s quantum physics explanation of Wholeness (entanglement) with Jan Smuts’ notion of Holism (organisms) in Evolution. I’m much more familiar with the latter than the former. But they seem to be talking about the same kinds of mysterious forces & processes in Nature. In Biology, something seems to be missing in Darwin’s theory, to explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention. In sub-atomic Physics, the missing “force” is whatever binds isolated particles into entangled pairs that have correlated properties, and mutually respond to changes without any apparent exchanges of information or energy. The pairs seem to act as a single whole object, and are interdependent. For Evolution, the missing “force” is whatever combines bits of inert matter into living and thinking organisms. In both cases, the material substrate is physically observable (explicit), but the immaterial system is only rationally inferable (implicit).
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page37.html

[Gnomon]

explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention — Gnomon
Isn't it then a larger question of how the Divine Life & Mind could be so without a regress to HIGHER and GREATER, etc? We only see the polar opposite of the smaller and smaller as a basis.

I don't understand the question. Could you re-word?

Regarding divine intervention, I suppose you are thinking of Miracles that bypass Natural Laws. But Whitehead's Process does not require miracles . . . . unless you think transforming Atoms into Ideas over billions of years is a miracle. The evolutionary Process is a result of combining causal Energy with limiting Laws and statistical randomizing to produce novel results.

My amateur thesis*1 explains the ancient Cartesian duality of spiritual Mind vs material Body in modern natural scientific terms. My explanation is that both manifestations (mental & material) are different forms of the same essential substance*2 : the power to enform. Today, we call the Mind stuff "Information". But scientists have discovered that abstract Information (e.g. 1s & 0s) can be transformed into Energy (change) and Matter (molecules). { links upon request }

Plato's Eternal Form is formless Potential, which can be actualized into the things we know in the space-time Real world via our senses, tuned by evolution to detect energy in various forms. No "divine intervention" required, except in the form of gradually-transforming natural Evolution over billions of years. The Enformationism thesis is an introduction to that notion, which is expanded in subsequent blog posts.

*1. Evolution of the Enformationism concept :
From Form to Energy to Matter to Mind to Self.
One thing that all of these examples of leading-edge science have in common is a prominent role for Information. Not the mundane stuff you get on Google, but the essential stuff as defined by Claude Shannon. In his analysis of communication, he saw that data flows in a manner similar to electricity in wires. Meaningful information is equivalent to potent Energy as opposed to depleted Entropy. Yet in a larger context, Information also has the ability to give meaningful or useful or valuable form or shape to some raw, unformed material. Information is full of potential as opposed to the emptiness of Entropy. Inspired by that potent metaphor, along with some insights from Quantum Theory, I have concluded that Energy actually consists of Elemental Information. On the most basic levels, such as laws of physics, that invisible “in-formation” is equivalent to the numerical relationships we call mathematics. According to my developing thesis of Enformationism [see Note 1], as we zoom our perspective from micro (smallest) to macro (human scale) to cosmic (largest), the information we find becomes more and more condensed, compressed, and solid, and then it begins to fade away back into the same ethereal stuff it began from. This is an essential part of the cycle of evolution: the Ourobouros (snake biting tail) information cycle---what goes around, comes around. In other words, evolution begins and ends as information. In the process, this proto-energy is neither created nor destroyed, but only changes form–-like Proteus, the shape-shifting sea-god of the ancient Greeks.
https://enformationism.info/enformation ... page5.html

*2. In Aristotle's philosophy, substance refers to the fundamental, independent entities that exist, while essence is what makes a substance what it is, its defining characteristics or "nature"
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +substance

[Gnomon]

explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention — Gnomon
Isn't it then a larger question of how the Divine Life & Mind could be so without a regress to HIGHER and GREATER, etc? We only see the polar opposite of the smaller and smaller as a basis.

Coincidentally, after writing the post above, I went back to reading a novel on Kindle : The Magic Mountain. There's no supernatural magic in the story, but the author writes in a rambling & erudite style that I call "poetic prose". It's set at a TB sanitarium in the Swiss alps in the 1920s, just prior to WWI. {around the time Whitehead was writing his Process. } This was before DNA (genetic information) was discovered. So, the emergence of life from non-life was a mystery. . . . and it still is.

The young patient, inspired by a conversation with the head doctor, begins to read a book about Anatomy and Genetics. The passage below is a sort of inner dialog as he reads. Today, we still haven't found the "element" that fills the gap between Life & Non-life. Yet, my thesis postulates that the gap-filler is not a physical particle, but the mathematical, meaningful & causal relationships we call Information and Energy. The "units" are 1s and 0s, something & nothing, that together add-up to everything (all possible forms). It's not magic, but an evolutionary continuum, combining concepts of Science and Philosophy (abiogenesis).


"As long as one spoke of living units, one could not correctly speak of elementary units, for the concept of unity carried with it in perpetuity the concept of subordinated, upbuilding unity; and there was no such thing as elementary life, in the sense of something that was already life, and yet elementary. And still, though without logical existence, something of the kind must be eventually the case; for it was not possible to brush aside like that the idea of the original procreation, the rise of life out of what was not life. That gap which in exterior nature we vainly sought to close, that between living and dead matter, had its counterpart in nature’s organic existence, and must somehow either be closed up or bridged over. Soon or late, division must yield “units” which, even though in composition, were not organized, and which mediated between life and absence of life; molecular groups, which represented the transition between vitalized organization and mere chemistry. But then, arrived at the molecule, one stood on the brink of another abyss, which yawned yet more mysteriously than that between organic and inorganic nature: the gulf between the material and the immaterial."
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, 1924

[Gnomon]

Could you re-word? — Gnomon
How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him?

You think the Programmer is "sitting around" doing nothing? You may be thinking of Jehovah, who created paradise in six days, and then on Sunday went out to play golf. Whitehead's God never takes a day off; creating is what S/he does 24/7/365.

The Programmer doesn't explain, S/he creates, and It's up to us thinking beings to interpret the meaning of the doing. Metaphorically, the world itself is the Bible, and Science writes the book, chapter & verse of the Revelation. You want an explanation? Do it yourself. You won't be saved by faith in an invisible deity, or by kow-towing, or by sacrificing animals ; but you might get some philosophical satisfaction : you have a (minor) role in the evolution of a cosmos.

But, Whitehead's "God", and my "Programmer", are not just "sitting around" on golden thrones watching the game of Life. They get their hands dirty by continually creating a cosmos via the incremental process of Evolution. The God of the Process is both Immanent (what you see) and Transcendent (what you infer), as is my Programmer.

The program is a set of ideas, from the mind of the programmer, that govern the process of Evolution from a Singularity, to a quark-gluon Plasma, then to atoms & molecules & elements of matter, then on to vast systems of stars, and eventually to living & thinking lumps of matter on a single Blue Planet. And the beat goes on. . . . . But this story puts the Paradise at the end of the Process : its output. I don't know what The End might be. Perhaps the Process is the reason for doing the program.

If you are still imagining Whitehead's God as an old guy with a long white beard, your puzzled question might make sense, to you. But to me, it misses the point of a perpetual Process, instead of a space-time Thing. Try thinking of Lao Tse's Tao instead. Then re-phrase your question.


Alfred North Whitehead's "process and reality" philosophy views the universe as a dynamic, evolving web of interconnected processes, emphasizing the importance of becoming and change over static existence, with each event, or "actual occasion," contributing to the ongoing creative process of the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +evolution

[Gnomon]

Let us realize that what is Eternal
Stands as the bedrock of all that appears,
The permanent presence beneath every change,
Unchanging through all of time’s gathering years.

What truly exists cannot fade or dissolve,
Cannot be created or suffer decay;
The Eternal simply and perfectly Is,
While temporary forms drift like clouds away.

You got it! The fundamental fact of our evolving world is Change, which is sometimes good, but also can be bad. As Heraclitus noted : Panta Rhei, "everything flows, nothing abides". But philosophers are on the lookout for something stable, something fundamental ; a foundation upon which Causation can move the world in a positive direction. But what is positive, except that which aligns with the Will (Tao) of the uncaused Cause of temporal flow?

All philosophies & religions have postulated some First Cause or Prime Mover that stands outside the decaying reality that we see & touch with our limited sense organs in our animal bodies. We only know of that which "truly exists" by using our god-like talent for logical reasoning. We can't know that it is, in the sense of temporal existence, but we can know that it logically must be, in the sense of Necessity, of Ontology, of absolute eternal Being.

For this is wisdom’s deepest, sweetest song:
That in the heart of all that seems to flee,
There dwells that which has never left its place—
The one still point of all eternity.

Lovers of Wisdom are called Philosophers. They know that which cannot be seen : Ideal concepts. But they also have the wit to avoid placing their Faith in the heart's desire, if the Ideal is in conflict with the Real. Ancient mothers reluctantly gave their babies to fiery Moloch in exchange for temporal rewards. But when those blessings, promised by servile priests, do not come to pass, wise women will learn that idols of gold are merely tools for political domination. Only the unseen unchurched Nature god has the innate power of flourishing. The rock from which the water of Life flows. The rock abides, but we philosophers must go with the flow.
.

[Gnomon]

How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him?

In a previous post, I said "The God of the Process is both Immanent (what you see) and Transcendent (what you infer), as is my Programmer." To clarify, I'll explain further : the Transcendent aspect of the Programmer is Plato's eternal principle of Form (an infinite pool of possibility : Potential), and the Immanent aspect is what I call EnFormAction (causal Energy) and Mind (mental information).

The ‘God hypothesis’ provides no additional explanatory value. It is but a refuge of ignorance. One who feels the need to postulate a divine cause is left with the question of what caused God to exist!

OK. What caused the Big Bang to exist as the point of origin for our space-time cosmos? That Something from Nothing hypothesis "provides no additional explanatory value", and Multiverse hypotheses treat the BB as a minor speed-bump, magically extending the timeline into the infinite past. Is that conjecture merely a "refuge of ignorance"? Where's the evidence?

The unprecedented BB theory is the best Materialistic Science has to offer, because that discipline pragmatically limits its search for knowledge to what we humans can manipulate physically. Yet, if the question of ultimate causation is valid, why not let the impractical (theoretical) philosophers have a crack at it? Causation is not something we can see or touch ; we infer it via Reason & Imagination, which can pass through solid barriers, just like quantum tunneling*1. Is QT a miracle, preached by Pat Robertson, or an inference by theoretical physicists? Mechanism & Materialism can explain a lot, but not the emergence of Life & Mind from non-life & mindlessness.

The Eternal Something postulation (God or Multiverse) at least goes one step farther back beyond the current stumbling block of "Bang! Let there be Momentum". So, what makes nothingness go Boom? The Multiverse miracle is a tower of turtles explanation. But the God Hypothesis is a Causal explanation, based on a talent that makes humans more creative than animals : future-directed Intention. The BB event was an impetus of momentum similar to the kind of causation that makes a rack of billiard balls explode across the table, then into the designated pockets : the Intention of the pool-shooter. I suppose, a preference for meaningless Multiverse over Purposeful Creation depends on your understanding of the world as we know it : random meandering vs an evolutionary Process.


*1. Quantum Tunneling :
In physics, quantum tunnelling, barrier penetration, or simply tunnelling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, should not be passable due to the object not having sufficient energy to pass or ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling

THE MULTIVERSE CONJECTURE

[Gnomon]

There cannot be a 'Nothing' for one, and two, if someone still wants a 'Nothing' that changes into a Something, as a event in time, this cannot be, either, for 'Nothing' has no time, no anything, and again, 'it' doesn't have an it. Those ex nihlilo believers don't get it or 'it'.

That's a good summary of Immanentist-Materialist doctrine, from an Earth-based animal-mind perspective. Pragmatic Matter-only believers can't imagine the absence of material Things*1 ; that would be an abyss of utter negation : outer darkness. On the other hand, a Transcendentalist-Idealist worldview, from a theoretical cosmic-philosophical perspective, does not negate the common-sense material world of the animal senses : ex nihilo nihil fit. But it does go beyond the here & now, as only humans can do, to "see" what lies beyond the horizon. Dogmatic Matter-only (what-you-see-is-all-there-is) {all Terrain, no Map} believers are not allowed to imagine anything that is not-yet-real, such as abstractions & symbols & potentials. However, Transcendentalists --- or in my case, PanEnDeists --- are free to envision ex omni or ex deo creation or manifestation*2. Not what is, but what logically could be.



*1. What fallacy is lack of imagination?
Argument from incredulity, also known as argument from personal incredulity, appeal to common sense, or the divine fallacy, is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition must be false because it contradicts one's personal expectations or beliefs, or is difficult to imagine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

*2. What is the difference between creatio ex nihilo and creatio ex deo?
Alternatives to creatio ex materia include creatio ex nihilo ("creation from nothing"); creatio ex deo ("creation from God"), referring to a derivation of the cosmos from the substance of God either partially (in panentheism) or completely (in pandeism), and creatio continua (ongoing divine creation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_materia

[Gnomon]

Logically, human life and mind needing a Higher Life and Mind to form it all the more requires a HIGHER LIFE and MIND to form the Higher Life and Mind, and so forth, unto infinite regress. There's really no way around this. Rather, all becomes from the lower stuff.

The infinite regress wheel-spinning is only a problem in space-time. In Eternity or Block-Time there is no before & after or higher & lower. Materialist thinking is inherently limited to such spatial & temporal relationships. But Transcendental thinking, i.e. philosophical thinking, goes beyond such limitations by abstracting logical relationships from concrete things. So, there is a way around the lower-level thinking. But you have to learn how to quiet the noisy animal mind*1 of the physical senses.

PS___ I have seldom thought in these terms (e.g. transcendentalism) before. So thanks for pushing me to think outside the box. Unfortunately, it's like poetry*2 : if you have to explain it, you will lose it.
# Please don't relegate me to the spooky Transcendent box only. My worldview is both Immanent and Transcendent ; both Material and Mental. For all practical purposes (science), I am a materialist, but for theoretical speculation (philosophy), I can color outside the matter box.
# Your stanza'd poetry sometimes touches on transcendence, but when you switch to conventional prose, it sounds more like Materialist dogma.

*1. I don't think the difference between human and animal minds is absolute, as in the notion of a Cartesian soul. Instead, in my Monistic worldview, it's a difference of degree due to the progressive process of incremental evolution.
While animals possess complex cognitive abilities and emotions, the human mind is distinguished by its capacity for abstract thought, language, and complex social structures, leading to unique forms of intelligence and creativity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... human+mind

Poetry beyond bounds
poetry that breaks free from traditional forms and conventions {e.g. materialism}, exploring new expressive possibilities and pushing the boundaries of what is considered "poetry". It can also mean poetry that transcends specific themes or experiences, exploring universal human emotions and experiences.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ond+bounds

[Gnomon]

Oh! Behold what He hath wrought:

The women portrayed in your videos are not Real but Ideal. You won't find anything that perfect in your local bars or ashrams. They exist only as Ideas (Ideals) reproduced by manipulating 1s & 0s in an AI computer, and what you see is pixels on a screen. But what you think you see is merely an idea in your mind. You can "behold" them, but you can't hold them.

[reply="180 Proof;978562"] sarcastically stated the obvious, as-if a revelation : what's transcendent is not immanent, hence is not Real. Yet, on this forum, we freely exchange matterless ideas shamelessly. Despite their unreality, humans often react, emotionally, to transcendent ideas as-if they are real {try to look at the image below without drooling}. They "behold" the idea despite its lack of material (flesh & blood) implementation.

Whitehead never claimed that his postulated transcendent deity is real, in 180's mundane sense of atoms & molecules. Yet, 180 is despising the very thing he's doing on this forum : presenting intangible (hence worthless) ideas for your consideration. The medium of presentation may consist of matter, but the meaningful message is matterless. Whitehead's God is an ideal, not an idol of gold.

There is a free online GirlGenerator where you can create your dream girl. But she won't have any of the tangible stuff that makeup a real woman. Like God, the dream girl will be an abstraction. But, unlike the deity, the onscreen image won't be able to philosophically explain the existence of the contingent material world, that materialized in a flash (energy), but will vanish in time (entropy).

A real flesh & blood woman can produce your children, but not a self-sustaining ever-evolving world of visible matter & invisible energy, and deadly entropy. Cosmic Creation requires Transcendent power. Yet, an uncomprehending immanentist may ask the myopic question : who created the Creator? Who banged the goddess to produce this imperfect world? Marshall McLuhan was wrong : the medium is not the message.

IS IT REAL, OR IS IT MEMOREX, OR IS IT AI?