[Sunday 10 April 1983 - Saturday 16 April 1983]
[notebook Creation - The Metaphysics of Peace = CMP I: DB20]
[page 1]
The world as becoming a single organism - a theory of creativity. . . .
Perennial philosophy as departure point - Aristotle - Thomas - Teilhard de Chardin - Lonergan - Ashby. Aquinas, Teilhard de Chardin, Lonergan, Ashby
Size of universe, number of planets, toward the universal organism, creativity, chaos, complexification, information, differentiation, communication.
[page 2]
Taoism: Needham I, 78 "... whereas European philosophy tended to find reality in substance, Chinese philosophy tended to find it in relation. Needham
page 85: '[Taoism] was the only system of mysticism the world has seen that was not profoundly anti-scientific.
Some openings:
intelligent Universe
parallel process, mind and matter
energy merely substrate for information
specifics more important than generalities. - only one state out of a
large set of states is the one we want.
theoretical basis for life after death, ghosts, spirits, etc.
Needham p 87: The Tao was the Way; not the way of life within human society, but the way the Universe worked. It was the order of nature.
The order of nature does things not by force, but by a kind of curvature of space and time.
[page 3]
To the Taoist, the biological world no less than the physical world comes under the operation of the Tao.
Needham p 89: Unity of nature, uncreated and elemental nature of the Tao.
No cause and effect, just implicit definition, grammar of words is the same as the grammar of things - Mach's principle for mass applies to all things - no distinction between matter and form - mass is form too.
Needham p 92: 'They thought of nature essentially as an organism, but without the need for demigods of any kind to operate it.' . . .
p 96: Rational explanation defuses terrors - earthquakes, fire, epidemics etc. ataraxia - ching hsin.
page 97: We wei = Action contrary to nature (Needham)[page 4]
Wu wei is maximization of variety
Taoists were observers, and very astute observers at that. Rulership limits variety and evolution.
Needham page 99: Strength of Taoist empiricism - danger of theory.'All of alue contains the seeds of its destruction'
It takes great courage to realize how closely we are part of the universe and how unspecial we are in terms of the overall process.
The DNA of a cell contains all the information for the whole organism, not just the particular individual cell. In the same way, the whole cultural and conscious content in a human social group can be carried in the mind of each single individual, although each has its own specific speciality in the whole.
[page 5]
The criterion of scientific truth is quite plain. In due time scientists must come up with an explanation of a system that can explain itself and then it will have to come to terms with itself and have made conscious all that reality that was unconsciously necessary to set the processes of consciousness going. From then on there is effect only one consciousness manifesting itself in the individualized but collected minds of humanity. When we meet another conscious species, we will coalesce into one consciousness with them, in the same way that all the tribes of humanity are slowly coalescing into one huge cultural organism.
One must look at being from a programmers point of view. What fantastic structures can I put together as a program, given enough memory and processing power?