Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

  Post 136.  August 5, 2024

  Holism and Creative Evolution

Imponderable Concepts in Science

Working together toward a common goal is the feature that distinguishes Creative (re-productive) Evolution from Mechanical (recycling) Change. Presumably, only a non-random intentional Cause could create such a novelty-producing self-organizing process. Although, as a practicing scientist, he was generally careful to avoid theistic language, some scholars have labelled Bergson’s implicit god-model as Pantheism (all is god) and others as PanEnTheism¹⁴ (all is in god).  

 “A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite characters to those which we have just been describing. Either it remains as it is, or else, if it changes under the influence of an external force, our idea of this change is that of a displacement of parts which themselves do not change. If these parts took to changing, we should split them up in their turn. We should thus descend to the molecules of which the fragments are made, to the atoms that make up the molecules, to the corpuscles that generate the atoms, to the " imponderable" within which the corpuscle is perhaps a mere vortex. In short, we should push the division or analysis as far as necessary. But we should stop only before the unchangeable.”

That part/whole relation may be an intimation of Jan Smuts’ Holism, which also substituted neutral functional terms in place of doctrinal theistic idioms. But Bergson’s suggestion of an intuitive yet “imponderable” First Cause went beyond-the-pale for many fellow scientists¹⁵.

However, although he was subtly delving into philosophical metaphysics, he insisted that his immaterial notions were just as scientific as Mathematics. “As for the idea that the living body might be treated by some superhuman calculator in the same mathematical way as our solar system, this has gradually arisen from a metaphysic which has taken a more precise form since the physical discoveries of Galileo, but, which, as We shall show, was always the natural metaphysic of the human mind”¹⁴. For example, we have difficulty under-standing continuous change, as in a mathematical curve. So calculus & differential equations were devised to overcome that hurdle to Holism. A Bell curve is thus imagined as an infinite series of points, instead of a continuous change in space or time. {Image at right} “In reality, life is no more made of physico-chemical elements than a curve is composed of straight lines. In a general way, the most radical progress a science can achieve is the working of the completed results into a new scheme of the whole . . .”¹⁴

Bergson goes on to say that our aversion to Holism is unnatural : “The mechanistic explanations, we said, hold good for the systems that our thought artificially detaches from the whole.” He continues : “Huxley has expressed the same idea in a more concrete form: ‘If the fundamental proposition of evolution is true’ . . . Radical mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the totality of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in which the apparent duration of things expresses merely the infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once.”¹⁴ That’s a bold statement for a scientist.

14. Bergson, pan(en)theism, and ‘being-in-life’ :
   “Recent philosophy has witnessed a renewed interest in the works and ideas of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). But while recent scholarship has sought to rehabilitate Bergson’s insights on time, memory, consciousness, and human freedom, comparatively little attention has been paid to Bergson’s relationship to pantheism. By revisiting the ‘pantheism’ controversy surrounding Bergsonian philosophy during Bergson’s lifetime, this article argues that the pantheistic notion of ‘being-in-God’ can serve as an illuminating framework for the interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy.”

https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/26527
14bc : Excerpts from Bergson’s Creative Evolution.

15. Evolution as Process :
  “Bergson considers the appearance of novelty as a result of pure undetermined creation, instead of as the predetermined result of mechanistic forces. His philosophy emphasizes pure mobility, unforeseeable novelty, creativity and freedom; thus one can characterize his system as a process philosophy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson

Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach in philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only real experience of everyday living.

___Wikipedia

Enigmatic Possibilities

Blog Post 136 continued . . . click Next

Continuous vs Discrete Change

Whole : a system of interconnected parts
Elan Vital : an intelligent organizing force