philosophy
Sep. 27th, 2011 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dniprovskaIII. MATTER AND SPIRIT
From time immemorial the life of Homo sapiens has been determined by the two main realities: by the external world of things (matter) and the internal world of his own consciousness (spirit), so the intellectual part of humanity could not help raising at least two questions:
However, there was at least one idealistic stronghold that remained resistible to materialistic criticism. All materialistic concepts failed to give comprehensive and non-contradictory explanation of how material processes are regulated, what was the mechanism that provides constancy of the laws of nature and reproduction of material things and events.
All practical experience demonstrated that complex things and processes can not occur and recur spontaneously. Bricks and blocks can not form a building without any preliminary project (idea); the life of society (even of a primitive society) is regulated by laws, being the ideal principles formulated by rational beings, etc. So, it was hard to believe that the Universe containing the enormous number of various elements, structures and substructures could maintain the order without any rational (regulating) element, or that the creatures of nature (that may be even more complex than some of artefacts) could emerge and be reproduced spontaneously.
It should be mentioned that Karl Marx, an adept of materialism, tried to give his own (materialistic) interpretation of the very essence of laws. He defined the law as the essential, stable and regular connections between things and phenomena. Also this definition contains a grain of truth it can not be considered as completely satisfactory, as one should not be a great thinker to notice that ties and bonds between concrete things and systems change millions of times but the laws remain constant. For example, if two stellar objects accidentally collide with each other in the cosmic space all laws of physics will be valid although their relations are neither regular nor essential...
The problem of correlation between the material and the ideal (spiritual) acquired a new aspect after the mechanism of functioning of human brain had become to be more or less clear. Whatever they say, it is human reason and man’s rational activity which has always served as the basic pattern for both philosophers-idealists and religious prophets who developed the concept of the supreme reason/God.
This mechanism was so complex and so deeply hidden that even such staunch materialist as Marx was sure that human consciousness has ideal (non-material) nature and vigorously denied the assumption that our brain may produce thought like our liver produces bile.
But scientific discoveries of 20 c. made the age-old dispute between materialists and idealists if not senseless then at least estranged from the real life. They put in question both the idealistic belief that the entities regulating material processes (ideas) are of non-material origin as well as the materialistic conviction that ideas (knowledge) may exist only as products/attributes of human reason.
Although all aspects of thought processes have not been yet completely revealed, now it is clear that it has electrochemical (material) nature; for example, our memory (the depository of knowledge [ideas]) exists in the form of protein molecules packed in dendrites (branching processes of nerve cells which conduct impulses toward the cell body).
The reproduction of species is provided by DNA double helix encoding the main structural proportions of living organisms.
The most universal laws of physical world are stipulated by the specific structure of vacuum – the basic substance of our Universe containing virtual particles – the “ideal” analogues of the real ones.
These facts leads us to the conclusion that what we usually call “reason”, “idea”, “law”, or “knowledge” is none other but a programme – a material entity reflecting (encoding) a thing’s/system’s main structural proportions and the order of its assembly.
Modern science returns us to Plato’s old theory of forms (ideas), although it requires an up-to-date interpretation and specification.
In general, Being consists of two partially isolated and partially intersected realms: the realm of ideas (programmes) and the realm of physical things (bodies). Ideas are constant while things are mutable and temporary. Everything general and regular is the result of repeating interactions between things (elements) and the respective ideas; everything accidental/single is the result of spontaneous interactions between things. The life of ideas (programmes) submits to the principles of formal logic (the logic of reproduction). The interrelations between things are regulated by the laws of dialectics (the logic of creation).
The way the Ideas correlate with physical things was also a subject for long-lasting discussion commenced by two titans of philosophy – Plato and Aristotle. Plato held that the realm of Ideas exists beyond the realm of physical things. These Ideas (Forms) are timeless immovable and are arranged in a hierarchical order. Aristotle argued that Ideas are the attributes of things and are located inside of them. That dispute like the most of philosophic disputes of the past rested mainly on purely speculative assumptions, and as it usually occurred in such cases both parts reflected different aspects of the same truth.
Actually the way the Ideas (programmes) relate with things may be different. At some cases they may be an outward reality while in others an inward one.
The world of ideas described by Plato has remote likeness with vacuum, the realm of serenity where “empty forms” (particles with negative energy) are arranged in a strict order prescribing the order (laws) of physical processes. The laws regulating the life of biological species prove Aristotle’s version: the DNA that provides the reproduction of living organisms is embedded into their structure. The project (idea) of an artefact (such as a building or a machine) may be stored either into it or outside of it depending on concrete circumstances.
Although the objective facts make us to admit that there is nothing non-material in this world, the division of phenomena into ideal (spiritual, bodiless) and material (substantial) being deeply enrooted into philosophy and culture is not quite senseless. As usual the word material is associated with something palpable and ponderable, while the ideas (programmes) regulating the movement of physical bodies, reproduction biological organisms and human behaviour are not apparent to the naked sense organs, so there is no wonder that many philosophers considered them as non-material. Sure, the ideas regulating various material processes have the same (material) origin with physical things, but it should be taken into consideration that unlike things ideas are very subtle structures containing minimal mass, volume and energy. Ideas are the quintessence of things, they are things represented in ultimately concentrated and distilled form. While things consist of elements determining their properties, Ideas consist of symbols – the abstract (light-weight) substitutes of elements being more convenient for storage and communication. Due to such compact and refined structure Ideas are less vulnerable to erosive influence of time (entropy), so their lifetime if not infinite then much longer than the lifetime of things.
In general Plato was right holding that the world of physical things is illusory and only ideas are real; if presume that the ultimate measure of reality is Eternity, then the longer is something’s existence (the more it approaches to Eternity) the more it is real.
The main predestination of physical things is to produce work (to change the state of other things/systems). The main predestination of Ideas is to reproduce classes of things and regulate their movement. In other words Ideas limit the power of accident. Randomness is an indispensable element of existence serving as the source of development. But accident is blind: it may both produce new functional structures and destroy necessary ones. Ideas renew necessary elements and proportions and thus provide relative stability of material world and consistency of its main processes.
The existence of ideas is possible due to matter’s inherent ability for self-reflection or in other words due to its ability to produce substances that may serve as matrixes retaining information on things and processes. In the World where nothing can resist the destructive work of entropy the only way to prolong (renew) the existence is to live a trace. We may say for sure that something/somebody existed only if it/he has left a trace and the deeper and the more numerous are the traces the more evident is the fact of existence and the more probable is reproduction. Traces pave the way to Eternity...
The patriarchs of idealism, Plato and Aristotle, asserted that every thing has its idea (either as an outside or inside reality). But if view ideas as programmes, it should be assumed that not every object is supplied with the respective idea. There are numbers of completely accidental/non-reproducible objects/systems that failed to find the matrix at which they may “record” the essential information concerning their structure and the order of assembly. For example, many stellar objects (asteroids, planets, meteorites) may be classified as accidental (single, unique).
There are things that have lost their ideas and become unique. To this category belong many artefacts of the past (Stonehenge, Egyptian Pyramids, damask steel, waterproof leather [opoika], etc.) which projects have been lost.
Along with accidental there are “dead” ideas. Such class of ideas include programmes that have lost vital connections with material elements due to extinction of mediators which realized these connections, for example: Nazca lines, the Phaistos Disk, non-deciphered ancient scrolls, etc. They may also be the programmes that encode non-vital proportions (such as genes with lethal mutations or perpetuum mobile projects).
Ideas and things (physical) objects have absolutely equal importance: thing/process will not be reproduced if there is no idea (programme) that contains necessary information on its structure and the order of assembly; at the same time an idea will not work if there is no suitable material for assembly or necessary mediators that connect abstract symbols with concrete elements...
The fact that both ideas and physical objects have material nature does not cancel the problem of primacy: which appears first – the idea (programme) or the object?
This question belongs to the type of dialectical questions that do not have simple and single-meaning answers (like for example the question about what is primal – a bird or an egg). The solution of the problem nowadays should not be formulated by means of purely speculative philosophic methods (as it was in the past). Trying to give the answer to this “eternal” question we should proceed from scientific concepts (developed by specialists working in the field of cosmology, biology, physiology), which in their turn are not yet undisputable.
The most probably a new form of organization of matter appears simultaneously with the suitable matrix, on which the essential information concerning the newly appeared form may “recorded”. So, initially Idea may appear as a reflection of a certain physical object, but later it may turn into an autonomous being that can engender new things.
It should be taken into consideration that the division of the existing phenomena into objects and ideas is relative. ======
Many biologists share the hypothesis that new complex protein structures that formed the body of the first living organisms appeared simultaneously with nuclear acids that served as matrixes. But a new species appears as the result of mutations (changes of genetic programme).
An idea (project) of a new artefact (such as a wheel, an airplane, a helicopter, etc.) usually appears as a result of imitation of natural processes (or in other words a reflection of some natural phenomena in the human brain that is an excellent matrix), but new generations of technical devices are the results of improvement of the previous ideal projects. As all material structures, ideas may develop (be replenished with new elements that encode new properties of the respective physical objects).
In general the evolution of Being may be compared with a staged pyramid. Now there are several levels of organization of matter:
From time immemorial the life of Homo sapiens has been determined by the two main realities: by the external world of things (matter) and the internal world of his own consciousness (spirit), so the intellectual part of humanity could not help raising at least two questions:
- Which is primal – matter or spirit;
- Whether the real world is the same with the one that man perceives?
However, there was at least one idealistic stronghold that remained resistible to materialistic criticism. All materialistic concepts failed to give comprehensive and non-contradictory explanation of how material processes are regulated, what was the mechanism that provides constancy of the laws of nature and reproduction of material things and events.
All practical experience demonstrated that complex things and processes can not occur and recur spontaneously. Bricks and blocks can not form a building without any preliminary project (idea); the life of society (even of a primitive society) is regulated by laws, being the ideal principles formulated by rational beings, etc. So, it was hard to believe that the Universe containing the enormous number of various elements, structures and substructures could maintain the order without any rational (regulating) element, or that the creatures of nature (that may be even more complex than some of artefacts) could emerge and be reproduced spontaneously.
It should be mentioned that Karl Marx, an adept of materialism, tried to give his own (materialistic) interpretation of the very essence of laws. He defined the law as the essential, stable and regular connections between things and phenomena. Also this definition contains a grain of truth it can not be considered as completely satisfactory, as one should not be a great thinker to notice that ties and bonds between concrete things and systems change millions of times but the laws remain constant. For example, if two stellar objects accidentally collide with each other in the cosmic space all laws of physics will be valid although their relations are neither regular nor essential...
The problem of correlation between the material and the ideal (spiritual) acquired a new aspect after the mechanism of functioning of human brain had become to be more or less clear. Whatever they say, it is human reason and man’s rational activity which has always served as the basic pattern for both philosophers-idealists and religious prophets who developed the concept of the supreme reason/God.
This mechanism was so complex and so deeply hidden that even such staunch materialist as Marx was sure that human consciousness has ideal (non-material) nature and vigorously denied the assumption that our brain may produce thought like our liver produces bile.
But scientific discoveries of 20 c. made the age-old dispute between materialists and idealists if not senseless then at least estranged from the real life. They put in question both the idealistic belief that the entities regulating material processes (ideas) are of non-material origin as well as the materialistic conviction that ideas (knowledge) may exist only as products/attributes of human reason.
Although all aspects of thought processes have not been yet completely revealed, now it is clear that it has electrochemical (material) nature; for example, our memory (the depository of knowledge [ideas]) exists in the form of protein molecules packed in dendrites (branching processes of nerve cells which conduct impulses toward the cell body).
The reproduction of species is provided by DNA double helix encoding the main structural proportions of living organisms.
The most universal laws of physical world are stipulated by the specific structure of vacuum – the basic substance of our Universe containing virtual particles – the “ideal” analogues of the real ones.
These facts leads us to the conclusion that what we usually call “reason”, “idea”, “law”, or “knowledge” is none other but a programme – a material entity reflecting (encoding) a thing’s/system’s main structural proportions and the order of its assembly.
Modern science returns us to Plato’s old theory of forms (ideas), although it requires an up-to-date interpretation and specification.
In general, Being consists of two partially isolated and partially intersected realms: the realm of ideas (programmes) and the realm of physical things (bodies). Ideas are constant while things are mutable and temporary. Everything general and regular is the result of repeating interactions between things (elements) and the respective ideas; everything accidental/single is the result of spontaneous interactions between things. The life of ideas (programmes) submits to the principles of formal logic (the logic of reproduction). The interrelations between things are regulated by the laws of dialectics (the logic of creation).
The way the Ideas correlate with physical things was also a subject for long-lasting discussion commenced by two titans of philosophy – Plato and Aristotle. Plato held that the realm of Ideas exists beyond the realm of physical things. These Ideas (Forms) are timeless immovable and are arranged in a hierarchical order. Aristotle argued that Ideas are the attributes of things and are located inside of them. That dispute like the most of philosophic disputes of the past rested mainly on purely speculative assumptions, and as it usually occurred in such cases both parts reflected different aspects of the same truth.
Actually the way the Ideas (programmes) relate with things may be different. At some cases they may be an outward reality while in others an inward one.
The world of ideas described by Plato has remote likeness with vacuum, the realm of serenity where “empty forms” (particles with negative energy) are arranged in a strict order prescribing the order (laws) of physical processes. The laws regulating the life of biological species prove Aristotle’s version: the DNA that provides the reproduction of living organisms is embedded into their structure. The project (idea) of an artefact (such as a building or a machine) may be stored either into it or outside of it depending on concrete circumstances.
Although the objective facts make us to admit that there is nothing non-material in this world, the division of phenomena into ideal (spiritual, bodiless) and material (substantial) being deeply enrooted into philosophy and culture is not quite senseless. As usual the word material is associated with something palpable and ponderable, while the ideas (programmes) regulating the movement of physical bodies, reproduction biological organisms and human behaviour are not apparent to the naked sense organs, so there is no wonder that many philosophers considered them as non-material. Sure, the ideas regulating various material processes have the same (material) origin with physical things, but it should be taken into consideration that unlike things ideas are very subtle structures containing minimal mass, volume and energy. Ideas are the quintessence of things, they are things represented in ultimately concentrated and distilled form. While things consist of elements determining their properties, Ideas consist of symbols – the abstract (light-weight) substitutes of elements being more convenient for storage and communication. Due to such compact and refined structure Ideas are less vulnerable to erosive influence of time (entropy), so their lifetime if not infinite then much longer than the lifetime of things.
In general Plato was right holding that the world of physical things is illusory and only ideas are real; if presume that the ultimate measure of reality is Eternity, then the longer is something’s existence (the more it approaches to Eternity) the more it is real.
The main predestination of physical things is to produce work (to change the state of other things/systems). The main predestination of Ideas is to reproduce classes of things and regulate their movement. In other words Ideas limit the power of accident. Randomness is an indispensable element of existence serving as the source of development. But accident is blind: it may both produce new functional structures and destroy necessary ones. Ideas renew necessary elements and proportions and thus provide relative stability of material world and consistency of its main processes.
The existence of ideas is possible due to matter’s inherent ability for self-reflection or in other words due to its ability to produce substances that may serve as matrixes retaining information on things and processes. In the World where nothing can resist the destructive work of entropy the only way to prolong (renew) the existence is to live a trace. We may say for sure that something/somebody existed only if it/he has left a trace and the deeper and the more numerous are the traces the more evident is the fact of existence and the more probable is reproduction. Traces pave the way to Eternity...
The patriarchs of idealism, Plato and Aristotle, asserted that every thing has its idea (either as an outside or inside reality). But if view ideas as programmes, it should be assumed that not every object is supplied with the respective idea. There are numbers of completely accidental/non-reproducible objects/systems that failed to find the matrix at which they may “record” the essential information concerning their structure and the order of assembly. For example, many stellar objects (asteroids, planets, meteorites) may be classified as accidental (single, unique).
There are things that have lost their ideas and become unique. To this category belong many artefacts of the past (Stonehenge, Egyptian Pyramids, damask steel, waterproof leather [opoika], etc.) which projects have been lost.
Along with accidental there are “dead” ideas. Such class of ideas include programmes that have lost vital connections with material elements due to extinction of mediators which realized these connections, for example: Nazca lines, the Phaistos Disk, non-deciphered ancient scrolls, etc. They may also be the programmes that encode non-vital proportions (such as genes with lethal mutations or perpetuum mobile projects).
Ideas and things (physical) objects have absolutely equal importance: thing/process will not be reproduced if there is no idea (programme) that contains necessary information on its structure and the order of assembly; at the same time an idea will not work if there is no suitable material for assembly or necessary mediators that connect abstract symbols with concrete elements...
The fact that both ideas and physical objects have material nature does not cancel the problem of primacy: which appears first – the idea (programme) or the object?
This question belongs to the type of dialectical questions that do not have simple and single-meaning answers (like for example the question about what is primal – a bird or an egg). The solution of the problem nowadays should not be formulated by means of purely speculative philosophic methods (as it was in the past). Trying to give the answer to this “eternal” question we should proceed from scientific concepts (developed by specialists working in the field of cosmology, biology, physiology), which in their turn are not yet undisputable.
The most probably a new form of organization of matter appears simultaneously with the suitable matrix, on which the essential information concerning the newly appeared form may “recorded”. So, initially Idea may appear as a reflection of a certain physical object, but later it may turn into an autonomous being that can engender new things.
It should be taken into consideration that the division of the existing phenomena into objects and ideas is relative. ======
Many biologists share the hypothesis that new complex protein structures that formed the body of the first living organisms appeared simultaneously with nuclear acids that served as matrixes. But a new species appears as the result of mutations (changes of genetic programme).
An idea (project) of a new artefact (such as a wheel, an airplane, a helicopter, etc.) usually appears as a result of imitation of natural processes (or in other words a reflection of some natural phenomena in the human brain that is an excellent matrix), but new generations of technical devices are the results of improvement of the previous ideal projects. As all material structures, ideas may develop (be replenished with new elements that encode new properties of the respective physical objects).
In general the evolution of Being may be compared with a staged pyramid. Now there are several levels of organization of matter:
- Physical (inorganic/unanimated nature) that is the most old and relatively simple and forms the first stage of the imaginary pyramid;
- Biological (animated nature);
- Social (economic and cultural);
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