Section 32 (first articulated 1.31.2021)
General Science: The Contextual and the Invariable
The practical importance of associating the physical sciences with philosophy speaks volumes about the necessity of contextualizing the invariable.
The use of the term contextual in philosophy does not merely mean limiting universal facts to particular instances. Rather, each specialized science provides content that is, by its very nature, limited by the knowledge of other sciences.¹
Atom — “Strips”
Taken alone, each science is not merely incomplete; it is designed to strip away the full nature of the world into as many specific facts as its domain permits. For example, mathematics, when combined with physical science, can describe how one particle interacts with another under given conditions.
However, the physical measure of an atom “strips” the concept it deals with down to its barest notion. The atom is treated as an object devoid of spirit—reduced to a spherical dimension that discloses an infinite number of minute quantities compacted together to form only the figure of a definite quality.²
In this reduction, what is lost is the totality of the atom’s being as a process of nature—its relation to consciousness and to the unity of the world. Consciousness itself can be understood as the wavelength spectrum connecting the rational and abstract qualities of reality with the concrete and physical realm.³
Quantum — “Probability”
At present, the logic of quantum mechanics is predicated on the notion of probability—a valuable starting point, since it encompasses all opposing possibilities of logic.⁴ Yet this view remains incomplete when it treats its own initial state of uncertainty as if it were the initial state of the world.
On some level, a theory that invariably presupposes the observer as indivisible from the phenomenon must also assume that the fundamental operations of the phenomenon are intimately related to those of the observer.⁵ However, the next breakthrough in understanding probability may lie in adopting an opposing logic: what can be called the logic of consciousness. This approach is more appropriate than invoking “certainty,” especially when dealing with phenomena that depend on observation and awareness.
In the concept of probability, there is no inherent certainty because a result has not yet been achieved; possibility has not yet been transformed into actuality. In this transactional space between potentiality and reality, the logic of consciousness operates—it is the principle that translates potentiality into experience by witnessing and participating in it as present reality.⁶
The Logic of the Organic
Human reasoning embodies what we call the logic of reason, but logic within organic ontology is not merely a theoretical system of quantifying the world into thoughts. It is also an inverse organic process that generates itself—both within human cognition and in nature.⁷
The task, then, is to associate the logic of reason with the logic of probability underlying modern quantum mechanics. The purpose is not only to describe nature, but to reveal the rational structure inherent within it. Quantum randomness, for example, underlies the process of photosynthesis, the very basis of life.⁸ Quantum behavior is, therefore, not truly random—what appears as randomness is the operation of a process that has reached the limits of our comprehension, both literally and figuratively.⁹
Ontology of Science
The aim of the ontology of science is to explain the relationship between concept and phenomenon in nature. Included in this task is the study of how particular concepts relate to the essential principles of the universe—chiefly, how a specific concept relates to Reason.¹⁰
In other words, the ontology of science asks: How does each scientific concept portray an element of Reason itself? The ontology of science is not primarily concerned with the practical application of theory, but rather with understanding what a theory means as a natural element within the observer’s experience.
Footnotes
- This reflects the epistemological interdependence of sciences discussed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the modern philosophy of science (cf. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
- See Aristotle’s Physics, on form and substance; also, contemporary material reductionism in physics.
- This metaphor parallels Max Planck’s idea that consciousness is “fundamental” and matter is derived from it (Das Wesen der Materie, 1944).
- The probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics was developed by Max Born and formalized by Heisenberg and Schrödinger in the 1920s.
- Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation asserts the inseparability of observer and observed.
- The concept of “logic of consciousness” resonates with phenomenology (Husserl) and process philosophy (Whitehead).
- Compare Hegel’s Science of Logic on the self-generating nature of reason.
- Quantum coherence in photosynthesis was experimentally confirmed in 2007 (Engel et al., Nature).
- David Bohm’s “Implicate Order” (1980) also argues that quantum indeterminacy reflects a deeper, hidden order.
- “Reason” here is used in its classical philosophical sense—logos—as the structural principle of the universe.
The slogan “all is relative”
The theory of general and special relativity, for example, can be explained in its most basic form to demonstrate only the element of Reason that the theory reveals. Proof, in this sense, does not mean deducing a set of logical axioms to reach an expected conclusion; rather, it means the realization or discovery of the idea itself—the essence of ontology that guides the physical sciences.¹ Any further extensive application of this theory beyond this fact serves only as an additional indication, a further proof, of the principle by which the theory is originally guided.
The “subject” in science is both the subject-matter (the object under study) and the thinking about it (the subject-observer).² This dual aspect lies at the core of the philosophical problem of knowledge: that the act of observation is inseparable from the object of observation.
The Misinterpretation of Relativity
In popular culture, Einstein’s theory of relativity is often summarized by the slogan that “all is relative.” This, however, is far from what the theory actually asserts. The crucial question then becomes: if all is relative, to whom is it relative?³
In general relativity, the observer is taken as the reference point in determining the relativity of moving objects. What is relative in general relativity is twofold:
A) How two or more objects are relative to the observer, and
B) How each relative relation is itself relative to every other object not relative to that observer—that is, to absolute motion.⁴
As inertial observers move relative to one another, the key question becomes: which of the statements they make are relative, and which are absolute? The inquiry of relativity is thus: which object moves relative to which group of observers, and how does this relative motion relate to absolute motion—that is, to the totality of all motion in the universe?⁵
Einstein’s insight was not that “everything is relative,” but rather that the laws of nature remain invariant across all frames of reference. The constancy of the speed of light, and the invariance of physical law, are in fact assertions of the absolute, not of pure relativity.⁶
Quantum Theory and the Observer
Quantum theory introduces an even more startling revelation about the relationship between the observer and the phenomenon. It demonstrates that the observer is an absolute fact of the phenomenon itself.⁷
Whereas relativity treats the observer as a particular point mediating between two moving objects, quantum theory takes the observer to be determinative of the object in motion. The act of observation brings the object into being.⁸ In this sense, the observer is no longer a relative variable with respect to the object, but rather an absolute invariability—the essential condition of the object’s manifestation.
This ontological perspective finds resonance with the “observer effect” and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which hold that physical systems do not possess definite properties prior to measurement.⁹
The Ontological Maxim
The ontology of science proposes a reversal of the traditional “pragmatic maxim.” Charles Sanders Peirce originally formulated the pragmatic maxim as a rule for clarifying ideas by tracing their practical effects: “Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”¹⁰
In its ontological form, however, the maxim is inverted. It takes the specific facts of a phenomenon as bearing a relation to the universal. Where the traditional pragmatic maxim asks, “How does the universal relate to the particular?” the ontological maxim asks instead, “How does the particular relate to the universal?”
Both maxims are distinct yet complementary: one moves from the universal toward the particular (epistemologically), while the other moves from the particular toward the universal (ontologically).¹¹
Thus, relativity and quantum theory each reveal, in their own ways, that the difference between subject and object, between motion and stillness, between relativity and invariance, is not absolute but dialectical. The idea of relativity expresses not that “all is relative,” but that difference itself is the mode through which the absolute is revealed.
Footnotes
- Ontological “proof” here is used in the Hegelian sense—truth as self-realizing idea (Science of Logic).
- See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, on the unity of apperception as the synthesis of subject and object.
- Misinterpretation of Einstein’s relativity discussed in Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Max Born, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
- Einstein, A. (1915). The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity.
- Minkowski, H. (1908). Space and Time.
- Einstein, A. (1920). Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
- Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science.
- Bohr, N. (1935). “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review.
- Wheeler, J.A. (1983). “Law Without Law.” In Quantum Theory and Measurement.
- Peirce, C.S. (1878). “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Popular Science Monthly.
- This distinction between epistemological and ontological direction is discussed in Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929).
The Extinction in Progress: Evolution and the Idiosyncrasy of Extinction
(Mind = Reality Principle)
1. Substance as Idea
Substance is an idea that takes itself as object; and because the object is an idea of itself, it is real for itself. Time as a physical dimension demonstrates this principle.
In quantum theory, the past, present, and future occur simultaneously. You are dying, being born, and living all at once.¹ This is a complex reiteration of the universal principle of space—as Bertrand Russell notes, space is the universal continuum within which relations themselves exist.² When time is defined by space, events are not mere moments passing by but rather properties of an active entity.
To say that everything is occurring simultaneously means that all different events are concurring in the same principle.³
2. The Nature of the Idea
The notion of Reason is the notion of the Idea. The nature of the idea is that it elaborates, critiques, and develops itself. This means that an idea never loses its connection with itself. Even when it abandons what it conceives as its limitation, it retains those limitations in memory as stages of its development.⁴
This stands in contrast to the apparent nature of matter, which is often understood as a collection of objects that exist independently, their relations being forms of annihilation or exclusion. In the discourse of development, objects seem to be used up and discarded.
However, the idea elaborates itself through differentiation. Objects are not independent existences but the specific forms of the idea’s unfolding. The critique of itself takes the shape of sublation (Aufhebung), which in the material world appears as destruction or extinction.⁵ But this destruction is only external—it is deconstruction, not absolute annihilation. Every disuse of an object is the maintenance of development beyond it, the configuration for its new and refined form, incorporating the deficiencies of its prior shape.⁶
This is the idiosyncrasy of extinction: life negates itself to evolve; form perishes so that form may continue.
3. Consciousness and the “event particle”
Consciousness maintains the object. Life and environment are the same continuity of thought; thought and action are two poles of the same spectrum.⁷ Every particle event—whether micro or macro—is a moment of this continuity.
The idea of an “event particle” represents one of those rare moments in physical science where a bare abstraction is granted quality. In other words, the abstraction of the atom as a measure of an indivisible unit—and the acknowledgment that there exists an infinity of such indivisible units—is given character.
In this view, the atom contains within itself the content of an event. The atom is an event, and each event is an atom. Every atom, therefore, is a representation of an event, and there exists an infinity of distinct and unique events. Yet, despite their infinite diversity in meaning and occurrence, their bare physical form remains uniform and universally the same.¹
This conception redefines the atom from being merely a particle of substance to being a moment of process, an act of becoming rather than a thing that is.² Each atom embodies not only matter but also relation and transformation—the pure unity of being and becoming that constitutes the world.³
The purely physical sciences often assume that they do not need to answer why an atom is eternal—that is, why it cannot be divided, does not degenerate, nor emerge into being, but always exists in abundance. The ancient atomists claimed as much, describing atoms as “numerical” yet “invariable.”
The materialist tradition assumes that the atom is eternal without explaining why this should be so. For it seems that eternity cannot be simply presupposed as self-evident. Even for something to be eternal, it must somehow be maintained as such—it must be upheld in its being in order to exist forever.
Consciousness is therefore attached to the atom as the substance which grants it eternity. As long as atoms are objects for a conception, they exist forever—because they persist as the content of awareness. Yet even this seems problematic, for it would be equally mistaken to say that, without the conception of any being, atoms remain eternal. The materialist insists that, irrespective of any observer’s gaze, the atom stands as a principle independent of anything else—that it is true in and of itself, and that this independence is what guarantees its eternity.
However, this separation of quantity from quality still fails to answer how an atom, on its own, could constitute an object for itself, or for anything else. For an object, by definition, only bears value as a quality—that is, as a function for some user of experience.
Footnotes
1. Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science — on the inseparability of the atom and the event of its observation.
2. Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality — introduces the concept of “actual occasions,” events that are the fundamental units of reality.
3. Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order — argues that particles are manifestations of processes within an undivided totality.
4. The Euthyphro Problem and the Ultimate Observer
What is the connection between the ultimate observer and the relation between thought and object? The ancient concept of “thought” already characterized what we now call consciousness as the ultimate observer, i.e., the quality of being an observer.
However, identifying consciousness purely as “observer” introduces problems. The term observer reduces consciousness to a particular act of watching or measuring an object. It suggests that consciousness is limited to the object of its search. Yet observation alone does not tell us the necessity that binds the object to the act of conception.⁸
This gives rise to the familiar question:
Do I conceive the object because it is there, or is the object there because I conceive it?
What is the continuity between the conception of the object being there and the object being there for my conception? The idea of the observer does not fully resolve this dichotomy. In this framework, the conception of the object appears unrelated to the object’s existence. The observer, taken as an abstraction of consciousness, cannot by itself explain whether the generation of the object is related to its conception.
The object relates to conception insofar as it constitutes for it the material—the relational unity that defines the object as the conceived thought of consciousness.⁹
The same problem arises as in Plato’s Euthyphro:
Does the object exist because it is conceived, or is it conceived because it exists?¹⁰
In this dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro to define piety (or holiness). Euthyphro claims that what is pious is what the gods love. Socrates then raises this question to expose a contradiction:
- If the gods love something because it is pious, then piety exists independently of the gods’ approval.
- But if something is pious because the gods love it, then moral value depends entirely on divine will, making it arbitrary.
This paradox—whether value is intrinsic or conferred—underlies many later debates in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, and as noted, parallels the ontological question:
“Do I conceive the object because it exists, or does it exist because I conceive it?”
In either case, if existence and conception are treated separately, the object becomes arbitrary. The truth, rather, is that the object is the conception itself.¹¹
5. The Dialectic of Thinking and Consciousness
To explore this further, let us consider the activity of thought as it naturally occurs in the mind, and the conscious awareness of it. It is important to distinguish between consciousness and being conscious: the latter is a specific act of awareness in response to thought, while the former is the very activity of thought itself.
This distinction, however, is the very problem. We hold that there is a continuous process of thought occurring in the mind, accompanied by our awareness of it. Ideas arise spontaneously and evoke a conscious response. The thought we normally identify as “our own” is the response to thought, not thought itself. From this arises the illusion that there are two separate processes: unconscious thinking and conscious awareness.
When we think an idea and respond to it with another idea, we take the response as our “personal thought.” But thought is not divided into two. Rather, it involves a dialectical relation: a proposition (thesis) arises spontaneously and is answered (antithesis) consciously, resulting in a new synthesis—another stage of the same process.¹²
In this dialectic, the idea and its negation belong to the same unity of thought. To confirm this, one can adopt a third level of awareness, which, being empty in itself, becomes conscious of the relation between spontaneous idea and conscious response. This meta-awareness recognizes the total process as one continuous thinking.¹³
Alan Watts expressed this unity beautifully when he noted that “your bodily functions continue of themselves and are connected with everything.”¹⁴
6. Consciousness and the Object
To perceive A means to identify it as distinct from B; without B, A could not be known as separate. What does the conceiving must remain the same across all distinctions, or else it would be limited to one of them. Consciousness cannot be one object perceiving another, for that would make their difference identical.
Thus, the form of consciousness must be opposite to the object, such that whenever the object is in one position, consciousness is in both. This is reflected in the atomic arrangement of matter, where polarity, charge, and opposition constitute unity.¹⁵
In this sense, consciousness is not outside the object but the field within which the object and its difference arise.
Footnotes
- Wheeler, J.A. (1983). “Law Without Law.” In Quantum Theory and Measurement — on simultaneity and observer-dependent reality.
- Russell, B. (1914). Our Knowledge of the External World.
- Einstein, A. (1920). Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
- Hegel, G.W.F. (1812). Science of Logic.
- Ibid., Phenomenology of Spirit, on “sublation” (Aufhebung).
- Whitehead, A.N. (1929). Process and Reality.
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of Perception, on the unity of perception and action.
- Bohr, N. (1935). “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review.
- Kant, I. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason, on the synthetic unity of apperception.
- Plato, Euthyphro 10a–11b.
- Hegel, Logic, §160 — “The object is the concept that has being.”
- Marx, K. (1844). Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, on thought as practical activity.
- Advaita Vedānta parallel: Turiya, the “fourth awareness,” beyond waking and dreaming.
- Watts, A. (1961). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.
- Schrödinger, E. (1944). What Is Life?; Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order, on polarity and unity in physics.
Rationalization
The notion of the observer conceives that an object is defined by its capacity to occupy a form within its conception. In other words, a conception is a rationalization of a form. The term rationalization, in the social sciences—particularly in its usage by Max Weber—has developed a negative connotation, meaning justification or instrumentalization rather than pure reason.¹ Weber’s definition of modernity, following his assessment of industrialization, equates efficiency with value, whereby universal truth becomes subject to individual efficiency.²
To explain something now almost always involves the presupposition of how that explanation is personally beneficial. Since subjectivity is commonly associated with instinct, reasoning becomes a means of satisfying basic instincts—the inverse of the older supposition that instincts are subordinate to reason, and that reason ought to govern instinct.³ Thus, explanation has lost its true value: knowing for its own sake.
In mathematics, the notion of demonstration maintains a pragmatic tone through the idea of explanation as the conversion of a function into a form. In this sense, reasoning fulfills its own end through its process—an act of rationalization in its purest form.
The Self-Exciting Circuit and the Originating Point of Conception
The further a conception extends in space from the observer—the greater the distance between the origin point of the observer and the endpoint of the conception—the faster the differentiation or distortion between the two becomes.
The difficulty in science when determining how many distinct parts originate from a single whole arises primarily because there is no external order independent from the observer’s position as the origin point of conception. The validity of a scientific demonstration lies in organizing a thought process according to an order that follows a foundation. Yet, the foundation itself is problematic: on one hand, it serves as the origin point upon which other things are built; on the other hand, it is arbitrarily determined as a center emerging from indeterminacy.
There is, however, an evident order in nature—one that science seeks to explain accurately. The problem is that this natural order operates across multidimensional levels and is itself involved in constant transformation.
If our scientific conception of things proceeds from the outside in—taking the external point of view as the beginning and advancing toward the internal as the end—then it becomes difficult to demonstrate how distinct variables originate from a single source. For example, if we begin by observing the branches of a tree as separate entities, it becomes difficult to understand how they all arise from the same trunk unless we already presuppose the trunk as the unifying origin of the branches.
If, however, we reverse the structure of thought such that conception operates from the inside out—that is, understanding the external distinctions of things as emanations from an internal, underlying substance—it becomes easier to see how the same trunk gives rise to distinct branches. Yet, even the trunk itself arises from a multiplicity of roots, which are as variable beneath the ground as the branches are above it. Thus, the same problem of origin remains: does the unity arise from multiplicity, or multiplicity from unity?
The synthesis of this apparent contradiction suggests that the trunk represents the unity—the point where distinctions from every direction converge to constitute the whole of which they are parts. We see this same phenomenon when perceiving any whole composed of parts: the outline that allows an object (such as a tree) to appear distinct from another (such as a car) is not given externally, but arises from the togetherness and relational coherence of its parts (leaves, branches, trunk, etc.).
The Limits of Sensible Faculties
Our sensible faculties are limited. When one sees, one does not simultaneously smell; when one touches, one does not necessarily hear. Yet, the absence of a sensory manifestation does not imply the absence of an inherent capacity to be perceived.
For instance, air is not seen, yet it consists of molecules—oxygen, nitrogen, and others—with measurable physical properties that allow it to be felt. If an instrument enables us to see air, does the air under observation remain the same as the air we previously only felt? The answer is that air, as an element, is multidimensional, consisting of multiple interrelated variables; its identity cannot be reduced to any single mode of perception.
Conception and Rational Form
A conception as the demonstration of a rational form does not merely denote an ego, nor does it align with the doctrine of subjective idealism.⁴ The world is not “only in your mind”—a claim which, properly understood, merely asks: to what degree is my experience responsible for the world? This is quickly rebutted when one recognizes that the mind is itself an objective artifact of nature, and that the processes of nature exhibit the same rationality as those of mind.
The true question, then, is whether a conception—any conception—can derive the same world. The answer is no: a conception is never a single locus from which all things are derived. Otherwise, we would have what Hegel calls mere reflection,⁵ where thought does not create but only mirrors being.
Contrary to the simplistic presupposition of the Big Bang, the universe did not arise from a single location; rather, the origin and destination of the universe are relationally predicated upon one another. An origin point is determined by the presupposition that gives rise to the process that follows it. Any action, then, is the demonstration of a prior thought.
Footnotes
- Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). Weber used rationalization to describe the process by which traditional modes of life are replaced by efficient, calculative systems of organization.
- Weber’s view of modernity ties the concept of value-free rationality to the industrial and bureaucratic age, where efficiency replaces meaning as a guiding principle.
- This contrast recalls classical philosophy, particularly Plato’s tripartite soul and Aristotle’s rational animal, where reason governs desire.
- Subjective idealism, most notably represented by George Berkeley, posits that reality exists only insofar as it is perceived.
- G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic (1812–1816). In Hegelian terms, “reflection” refers to the movement of thought that remains within itself, failing to achieve genuine mediation or synthesis between subject and object.
Thinking for Oneself: The Individual, Language, and the Universal
We often recklessly throw around what has become the motto of modern thought: “think for yourself.” It is this standard of thought that Immanuel Kant famously defines as the essence of Enlightenment—the courage to use one’s own understanding (sapere aude).¹ It is easy for people to repeat this maxim without grasping its implications. “Thinking for oneself” merely suggests the need to think—to use one’s head—based on the presumption that most people either do not think at all or that their thinking is mere repetition of common opinion.
Yet, this maxim, like all deontological imperatives, though generally true, fails to ascertain the nature of true thinking, nor does it explain who is doing the thinking. As Alan Watts once asked, “Who is the ‘you’ that is doing the thinking?”² The phrase asserts that thought begins when one takes charge and makes use of the naturally given faculty of reflection. However, to what extent the individual truly possesses control over their thought remains unexplained by this mere assertion.
I. Critical Thinking and Judgment
Critical thinking, in its primary sense, is the ability to possess control over the thoughts that shape consciousness. It is an organic function of the understanding, manifesting in the form of judgment. Judgment represents the pragmatic element of understanding precisely because it is moral: it concerns the ability to make considered decisions and reasonable conclusions—actions appropriate to the situation.
Judgment is qualitatively impending, for it arises from the very quality of the thing judged. Aristotle remarks that the snub nose is that which produces the judgment of it—it is the form itself that defines what is to be judged.³ The quality of a thing is thus the basis upon which judgment is reached; judgment merely reaffirms what quality has already revealed.
II. The Ontological Question: Who is Thinking?
The ontological question remains: What is in you that is thinking? Watts compares thought to involuntary biological processes—your heart beats, your skin regenerates, and in much the same way, your thoughts occur naturally.⁴ The distinction between voluntary and involuntary action is ambiguous. For example, breathing occurs both voluntarily and involuntarily: when you are aware of it, you can control it; when unaware, it continues nonetheless.
This analogy suggests that thought is both spontaneous and participatory—something that happens to you, but also something you participate in.
III. The Dialectic of Natural Thought
The injunction to “think for oneself” has too often come to mean simply “think whatever one wishes,” divorced from the universal principles of logic. Naturally occurring thoughts are dialectical; every idea that arises is simultaneously negated. Negation is not destruction but generation—the idea is reborn through its opposite. Yet, when the mind fails to qualify this natural negation, it risks mistaking the negation for exclusion, favoring what is false or oppositional.
The devil, in literature and philosophy, is often portrayed as a sophist—Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust—because he takes the secondary as primary, insisting that the worst is best, not from ignorance but arrogance.⁵
To think critically, then, is to qualify one’s naturally arising thoughts—to become aware when an idea is negated, and to sublate (in Hegel’s sense) the contradiction into a higher synthesis.⁶ If the mind fixates on negation without resolution, it becomes what Hegel calls negative reason: a dead end in which thought cannot proceed, mistaking opposition for truth.
Thought itself, as Hegel notes, is “the movement of nothing to nothing”—it is the negation that reveals the object, the act of differentiation that allows being to appear. The idea is the mental form of negation stabilized as perception.
IV. The Brain as the Original Fetus of Life
It is remarkable that the object arises from its negation; what a thing is not defines what it is. In psychoanalysis, the psyche not only contains complexes to be resolved but is itself a complex—a web of tensions belonging to a particular personality structure.⁷ Even the anatomy of the brain reflects this: it is a physically compressed, folded, tangled mass, embodying the complexity of the psyche it houses.
This unresolved mass governs the organism. The brain holds the potentiality of the body that it animates; it is the original fetus of life, as even the generation of sperm is governed by its coding. Each sperm represents a potential self—a possibility of the organism seeking expression. Biologically, sperm do not merely compete but cooperate, striving collectively to represent the best expression of the genetic group.⁸
The individual that emerges, then, is not a detached self-created entity, but the culmination of ancestry—a unity brought forth by countless preceding efforts.
The brain is the original fetus for life. The generation of sperm originates in the pituitary glands, located at the base of the brain. It is the pituitary gland that sends the hormonal signals initiating and regulating sperm production in the testes.¹ In other words, each sperm cell can be seen as a possible conception of the man in his mind—as the possibilities of the self—impregnating the womb for the first entrance into the world. Each sperm is a potential body of the self.²
The sperm do not merely compete, but rather work as a team to traverse the wilderness of the environment that is the womb, striving to uphold their best representation of the group.³ The ideal is not necessarily the good, which sometimes results in a vulgar human being at the end of the process.
The sperm that turns into an embryo not only contains the genetic information determining the physical appearance of the body derived from the parents, but also, in a sense, the kind of character and life the individual will possess and determine throughout their existence. The kind of life the individual possesses is already determined by the vision of the predecessors that he represents. Just as the one sperm is upheld by the pack to reach the womb, the individual is the one person brought forth by the collective workings of ancestry.
Footnotes
- The pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain, releases gonadotropins—luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH)—which stimulate the testes to produce sperm and testosterone. See: Guyton, A. C., & Hall, J. E. (2016). Textbook of Medical Physiology (13th ed.). Elsevier.
- This interpretation parallels metaphysical and psychoanalytic notions of potentiality, where biological reproduction mirrors the projection of the “self” into the world. Compare with C. G. Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious as a repository of inherited potential.
- Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles (1996). Baker argues that sperm act not only in competition but also in coordinated “teams,” a view based on evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy.
V. The Individual and the Universal
Modernity’s notion of individuality has been narrowed. In making the individual the criterion of thought, modern thought often confuses individuality with isolation—as though any opinion is valuable merely because it “belongs” to the individual who utters it.
True individuality, however, signifies the expression of something particular that distinguishes it within the universal whole. To be distinct merely for the sake of distinction is superfluous. The individual is distinct only insofar as their individuality expresses some essential function of the whole.
To reject universal truths merely because they are commonly accepted is the same intellectual vice as to never think for oneself. Both result in egotistic reasoning—believing one’s particular form can alter the inherent nature of universal principles. Yet this limitation is also the potential strength of human finitude: the mind’s particularity is what allows it to critique and understand universals.
VI. Thought, Universality, and Abstraction
To ask whether an idea originates from the individual is already to confuse the issue. In what sense is the individual the cause of thought? Thought’s origin must be understood universally—not merely as it pertains to some particular mind. The individual is the cause of thought only insofar as the universal operates through them.
Alan Watts proposed that consciousness is not victim but participant: each individual is that part of consciousness curious about a particular experience.⁹ The universal consciousness thus differentiates itself into individuals through curiosity—the act of self-knowing.
The abstract defines what is universal. The abstract is not the opposite of the real but the condition of it. The concrete is particular because it is the manifestation of some conception. The universal is indivisible; the particular infinitely divisible. The particular is not opposed to the universal but is its determination.
VII. Language as the Form of Thought
Thought follows naturally from being, and language mirrors this continuity. The self is a particular configuration of the world; more fundamentally, it is nothing but the pure capacity to perceive.
Language demonstrates that thought and being are not separate. Words are relations. The word interview, for instance, combines inter (“between,” “among,” or “within”) and view (“seeing,” “perspective”). Its meaning arises from the synthesis of these relations: an “interaction of views.”
Language is not merely descriptive but normative. To understand how language describes, we must first understand how it norms—how it sets standards. Norms may be arbitrary, reflecting what is usual, while standards express qualities that have proven their validity. That a word is common does not make it correct.
Language, therefore, is a standard of thought; words are forms of communication because they are standards of ideas, not mere repetitions of habit. Thought employs language to determine the quality of its ideas by structuring them in relation, just as nature orders its own processes.
Nature, like language, is an expression of thought and thus a standard for actualization.
VIII. A Critique of Wittgenstein
In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein introduces the notion of language-games, rejecting the idea that language mirrors reality.¹⁰ He argued that meaning arises from use, that concepts need not be strictly defined to be meaningful, and that the speaking of language is part of a form of life.¹¹
Yet this view risks reducing language to norms rather than standards. If language is purely a set of practices without an inherent logical structure, it loses its grounding in the universal rationality that makes communication possible.
Wittgenstein’s notion of language, although it elucidates something true—that the meaning of words is derived from our common understanding rather than from their reference to objective things—nonetheless overlooks the fact that our commonly agreed-upon meanings are still based on objects that we consider objective by virtue of agreeing upon them. In other words, there are objects we first recognize through our own natural means of sensation; only afterward do we communicate these perceptions to others and reach agreement about them. If there were no objective basis for such agreement, then our agreement would be in vain—we would not be able to agree on anything at all.
Wittgenstein’s conception of language, particularly as expressed in his Philosophical Investigations, reveals a truth: that meaning is not a fixed representation of objective entities but arises from shared human practices—forms of life—and mutual understanding within those practices. Words acquire significance not through some metaphysical correspondence with things-in-themselves, but through how we use them within our communal activities.
However, this insight risks obscuring another crucial dimension of language. Our common understanding—the shared context that makes linguistic meaning possible—is not created ex nihilo. It presupposes a world that we jointly inhabit, one that offers itself to our senses as a common ground of experience. Before language becomes a social convention, it is already preceded by the immediacy of sensation and perception. We first encounter objects through our natural faculties, and only afterward do we name them, communicate them, and agree upon their significance.
Thus, while Wittgenstein is right to assert that meaning is use, the use itself rests on an implicit reference to a shared world that constrains and makes possible our agreements. If there were no objective basis—no shared perceptual world or stability of phenomena—then linguistic consensus would collapse into arbitrariness. Agreement would have no anchor; we would not even recognize what it means to “agree,” for there would be no common object to converge upon.
In short, language presupposes both the intersubjective (our shared human practices) and the objective (the common world that those practices disclose). Without the first, meaning would be solipsistic; without the second, it would be void.
To think for oneself, then, is to think through language—not merely with it. Language provides the logical structure by which thought becomes communicable. It tells us what to think about and how thought must be structured to be meaningful.
Formal logic isolates the form of thought from its content, making us aware of structure but often at the expense of meaning. The problem is that language affects thought in ways that logic alone cannot capture. Language speaks first to the unconscious form of thought, which consciousness later becomes aware of.
Thus, logic and language are inseparable: logic without content is empty; language without logic is blind.
Footnotes
- Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784).
- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951).
- Aristotle, Metaphysics VII.4, 1030a: “A snub nose is a concave nose, with the flesh so and so.”
- Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966).
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (1808).
- G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), §79–82.
- Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923).
- Robin Baker, Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles (1996).
- Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game (lecture series, 1970s).
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), §§7, 23.
- Wittgenstein’s “language-games” describe the variety of ways in which words gain meaning through shared activity, rather than by correspondence to objective things.
Language, Logic, and Consciousness
Language is the synthesis of informal and formal logic.
The form of thoughts are, in the first place, the abstracted relations of their content, because the content of thinking refers to the total form of relations occurring within the thought. The form without the content becomes merely an incomplete abstraction of itself.
The content of forms is their relations. This is why a beam of light is perceived as a wave and not as a mere particle.¹
The reality principle, for example, abstracts the most fundamental form of substance without the content of its relations. That whatever is outside reality is also reality is undoubtedly true, but nevertheless incomplete, because it does not explain what reality actually is—the content of it. It is true that scientific concepts follow from the reality principle, but that does not explain how the reality principle follows as the whole of its concepts.
Space, for instance, is an external quantity: whatever lies outside of space is still space itself. But this does not tell us how space, being this principle, constitutes reality. In the first instance, reality lacks an explanation of substance: what causes the principle of reality to be the overbearing totality?
Potentiality and actuality are usually said to be mediated by reality, because in reality there is a relation between potentiality and actuality. This formulation, however, demonstrates the insufficiency of the reality principle as an explanation of substance.
Potentiality is said to be actual insofar as it is what ought to happen—or what is to happen—and in this way it is actual. Yet the fact that it has not yet happened renders it unreal. But my potentiality is someone else’s reality. In their reality lies the actuality that my potentiality is becoming. Their actual muscular body is my potentially muscular body.
Reality is actual in the sense that it is what has happened and is continuing to happen. Yet reality is distinct from actuality, because it is not what could happen; it lacks potentiality insofar as it is, and not what it could be. What remains as the mediating principle between reality and potentiality is actuality.
Actuality is the totality of the relation because it is what could potentially happen against what is happening—the struggle of the two. Actuality is the principle of mind, which is the substance of reality. In the mind there is the dialectic between potentiality and reality.²
Actuality, potentiality, and reality are examples of a dialectical relation. The monotheistic religions can be differentiated in how they appropriate this relation in the articulation of the individual and the universal. Each religion emphasizes one principle in determining the others.
Judaism takes reality as the starting position. It accepts sin as responsibility, but confuses the actuality of God with the brutal reality of man—the God of the Old Testament—thus undermining the potentiality of man. The New Testament is precisely a critique and sublation of Judaism’s conceptualization of God, but it also undermines reality by declaring that man is, by nature, sinful, and thereby victimized by his sin.
The reality of man is rectified in Christ, who encompasses the actuality of God and the potentiality of man. Christianity took God to be actuality—the ideal form of the human being—but it is not clear how such a wicked reality of humanity could ever attain the ideal that God encompasses. Dispensing with this problem, Islam idealizes the potentiality that actuality exhibits and reality lacks, but in so doing detaches the actuality of God from the reality of man.³
Consciousness and the Unconscious
The limitation of human consciousness is the projection of its limits onto the idea of consciousness in general. Consciousness generally is deliberation. It is a limit to perceive that the limit of one’s own limit also has prevalence beyond itself.
For example, it is my limit to see that my inability to swim extends to others who likewise cannot swim. What appears as a boundary is itself a relation within a wider continuity.
The study of chaos is the study of order, because chaos is itself the first orderly principle. It places things into flux—into a certain order. Chaos occurs in successions of transition, in periods of change. What seems chaotic is not random but the rearrangement of deliberate events for purpose.
The limit of human consciousness cannot, at the onset, perceive how the nature of rearrangement in things is consistent with their intended purpose. It is not immediately obvious how the complexity of opposing elements forms the same cohesion. For example, taken in isolation, any single event appears random; yet in relation to the whole, every event—no matter how arbitrary it appears—is a reaction and a function of the whole.⁴
Self-consciousness is the deconstruction of nature. Nature is the kind of balance wherein all the objects of thought interact with each other according to their evolutionarily acquired capacities. In space, for example, every action is unaffected and therefore universal. (In the atomist view, in the vacuum of space, there is no friction acting against force; therefore, the slightest motion of an object continues indefinitely unless acted upon by another force.)⁵
The universal is the premise; the particular is the conclusion. The particular is the relation between universals forming the conclusion. The conclusion is particular because it is a limit—why else would one conclude? The premise is universal because it is unlimited—its whole point is to be known. It is mortal conviction to determine that conclusions are universal in the sense of being final. It is an equal mortal limitation for the premise to be based on confused reasoning. These reprehensions are confusions in the apprehension of thought.
The Object of Thought that Thinks of Its Thinking
Gravitational waves prove that the universe is an organism.⁶ The human being—or life in general—serves as the consciousness of the universe. We are the variables that make up the consciousness in the mind of the universe. However, this is not dependent on us but independent onto us, and so we are the projection of its thinking in its mind.
The truth of its consciousness exists in its mind, and this inclusive existence is the very means of its separate existence away from itself. Its separation from itself still means that it remains itself; we can therefore say that it is separate from itself inside of itself, because nothing is outside itself.
We are the object of its thinking that thinks of its thinking. Every object is its thought—but only we are the object of its thinking aware of its thinking. Therefore, we are the variables that make up its thinking—the individual that is the universal. Gravitational waves are the structure of the universe, the skeleton of the organism.
Newton saw gravity as a force acting between objects; Einstein reconceived gravity as the distortion of spacetime itself.⁷ In this way, gravity is not a force among things but the geometry of their relation—the same principle by which thought curves itself into awareness.
Consciousness Away from Itself
Science is the systematic disposition of understanding consciousness. It is an essential aspect in the development of self-consciousness.⁸ The subject matter of science is consciousness itself—no other than itself—but posited against itself in order to conceive itself.
If it is already itself, why does it need to distance itself to understand itself? The nature underpinning science, which is likewise consciousness, consists in the dialectical movement of abstraction and realization. The actuality of consciousness as substance is the infinite movement of itself. Substance is in dialogue with itself, and its very negotiation posits the concrete nature of matter—primarily motion—as the essence of the object.
All recent conceptions that aim to provide an understanding of consciousness are reducible to two notions:
- Consciousness as the universal substance directing the nature of matter.
- Consciousness as the essential nature belonging to the subjective character constituting life.
These are not mutually exclusive; their unity is the defining element of development.
The second notion of consciousness does not mean that its nature is subjective merely because it belongs to a particular entity with unique experiences. Ironically, the scientific materialist claim to understand consciousness objectively through neuronal activity ends up elaborating consciousness as merely a subjective phenomenon.
Every brain, belonging to a living form, undergoes neurological activity—that is objective to all life. Yet the kind of experiences that trigger neurons are unique to each individual. By virtue of this uniqueness, each consciousness differs from every other consciousness.
This difference presupposes an objective feature of consciousness: that each consciousness, unique to a particular, is in contradiction with others. The contradictions between consciousnesses constitute an objective relation—each is defined by its contrast to another.
Likewise, whereas each particular life form undergoes a unique set of experiences, it does not follow that experience itself is unique to that individual. The way the particular experiences is unique, but the experience itself—if it is truly that experience—is not unique. Experience at a particular moment in time is only a variation of the universal experience.
The common expression “you will never experience what I experience” means only that one will not partake in that experience at that moment in time; it does not mean that the experience itself is exclusive to the person. If every experience were unique, then no shared experience could exist, and the concept of common experience would be meaningless.
The subjective consciousness is the variation of the universal consciousness—it is consciousness as the particular of itself.
What is equally untrue, however, is the idea that consciousness is only one. The idea of God conceives consciousness as the One, but what is one belongs to something among many ones—in other words, a variable among many. If there are many ones, and consciousness belongs to one, it must belong to the many. Thus, the notion of God as the One consciousness is really the idea that consciousness is the many ones—the consciousness that does not go beyond itself and is therefore canceled out as consciousness.
It is, ironically, the consciousness that takes its subjectivity as its own objectivity—that the subjective is the objective without being objective—and is therefore the consciousness of many ones without any one. It is the consciousness that is unconsciousness.
If everyone worships God as the One—but the One is everyone—then everyone is worshipping their own self.
Consciousness and Reason in Nature
Every form of life maintains awareness in relation to its environment, and that constitutes consciousness. Every living being distinguishes between things in order to survive; this is desire, and analytical science is its rational expression.
Reason, however, synthesizes among things—and this is what is meant by consciousness as self-consciousness: synoptic thinking as the driving force of science.
In order for life to exhibit a subjective consciousness that distinguishes among its environment, it must already have been synthesized as a being capable of such distinction. Each form of life consists of the ability to analyze—that is their driving nature—while their essential nature has already been synthesized.
The latter achievement is the work of reason in the world—the work of consciousness as the universal substance of the world.
This is not an idea of God. In the idea of God, the will of God is the force of production in the world—that whatever God wills becomes the created object, much like imagination: whatever one thinks, an image is produced in the mind.
In the notion of consciousness as the universal substance, there is no free will in the vulgar sense, but rather the mode of production is a process of dialogue—the process of pure reason: no emotion, no feeling, but the laws of logic as the movement of rational discourse.
Nothing is merely given but produced—and not without struggle—the contradiction reason poses to itself with every proposition. Such propositions are conceived as concrete existences, and their resolution as the agreement of that resolution.
Through this logical process, it resolves into the final necessity, which is self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is the sublation of consciousness—it is the next stage. Here, the challenge of producing existence is magnified, for it is the first moment where reason exhibits itself as not rational. The element of free will, even in the vulgar sense, enters reality.
This is a logical necessity because it represents the more virtuous, the ethical aspect of reason. Rather than reason exhibiting existence as determined contradiction and resolution, there is the choice to partake in that process—and this choosing is reason’s ethical actualization of its essence.
The capacity to choose proves reason’s ability to be rational over its irrational counterpart. Reason can only conceive itself if it satisfies itself ethically—for that is the true confirmation of its ability. The process of self-consciousness becomes the next stage in the actualization of reason in the universe.
The process of evolution is the determining test of reason in the world. If it fails, there is always the return again to reason as the basis of production—to consciousness as unconsciousness.
Footnotes
- See Max Planck and Albert Einstein’s wave-particle duality principle in quantum theory.
- Aristotle, Metaphysics Θ (Book IX), on potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (energeia).
- Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. II–III (1824–1831), on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as dialectical stages of the Absolute Spirit.
- Heraclitus, Fragments, on the unity of opposites and the order within flux (logos).
- Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica (1687), Book I, Laws of Motion; Democritus, Fragments on atomism.
- LIGO Scientific Collaboration (2016): empirical detection of gravitational waves confirming Einstein’s General Relativity (1915).
- Albert Einstein, The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity (1916), on spacetime curvature.
- G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), §33–§36, on consciousness, self-consciousness, and science as the system of experience.
The Notion of the “Observer”
The general notion of the observer is not merely a subjective aspect of individuals. In other words, it is not an accidental attribute of people — the fact that there happen to be individuals, and that each individual is unique in how they look, the place they occupy, and ultimately in their conception of the world, does not mean that the so-called “observer” aspect is a residue of these specific characteristics.
The observer is more fundamental — a primary physical phenomenon in nature — meaning that it has an effect in constituting the physical dynamics that form the basis of how the world is structured. The observer phenomenon in quantum mechanics is one of the primary concepts in modern science that bridges a connection between the laws of nature and the laws of reason.¹ In other words, the laws of nature operating at the subatomic level — at the most minute scales of existence — exhibit a behavior strikingly similar to phenomena once thought to be purely mental and abstract. The hypothesis is that the behavior of matter at the atomic level is akin to the behavior of self-conscious reason.²
Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences
To explain the connection between the behavior of reality at the subatomic level and its relation to how self-conscious reason conceives reality, consider the out-of-body experience known as a near-death experience. Witnesses of such events often recount observing their own bodies from a third-person point of view — as though they have left their bodies and are seeing them from the outside.³
The out-of-body experience is frequently followed by the vision of a tunnel, as if the first-person point of view is entering through a pathway toward a point of light. What we observe at the subatomic level — the behavior of particles — may in fact correspond to this process of consciousness, experienced from the first-person point of view during such an altered state, though more broadly, all phenomena of consciousness may have a corresponding physical phenomenon, whether at the subatomic or macroscopic scale.⁴
For example, individuals under the influence of high doses of psychedelics often report near-death-like experiences or visions of leaving their bodies and entering through a wavelength or wormhole-like tunnel. These are behaviors of consciousness, which from the subatomic point of view, resemble the fundamental behavior of elementary matter. When we look at matter at the microscopic level, we are, in a sense, observing the behavior of consciousness from a distance — from an externalized viewpoint.⁵
Matter as Elements of Consciousness
What we observe as particles — photons, leptons, bosons — are all elements of consciousness, not merely elements of nature. These basic elements of nature are the conditions of abstract reality; yet, this is not to suggest they are devoid of reality in the sense of being unreal or non-concrete. Rather, they are conceptions — forms of disclosure — through which finite sets of real events can take place. These particles are “abstract” because we do not experience them directly through our ordinary sense faculties. They are pure formulations describing how nature operates, and indeed, nature has been empirically confirmed to operate according to these laws.⁶
The point is that these elements form the logical prerequisite for any event — the context in which consciousness can partake in a set of experiences. The way consciousness interacts with its experiences is observable from a point of view external to it — from a position distant in both extensional and temporal magnitude.
Abstract and Concrete: The Brocken Spectre Analogy
To further illustrate the place of abstract reality in our concrete experience, consider the natural phenomenon known as the Brocken spectre, where the magnified shadow of an observer is cast upon clouds opposite to the Sun’s direction.⁷
In this phenomenon, the shadow of a discrete point — the person casting it — is stretched and magnified outward, as though the shadow were leaving the body, surrounded by a circular rainbow-like halo. It appears as if the shadow is entering a tunnel.
This striking physical phenomenon at the macroscopic scale characterizes the effect of the observer on phenomena at the microscopic level. Prior to observation, matter exists as a wave function — a spread or superposition of possibilities. This is analogous to the “tunnel,” or the stretching and extension of the object itself, where the observer resides as potential. During observation, matter collapses into a discrete particle state — it attains an identity, becomes identified — much like how the observer resides in their body during ordinary awareness, or, from a third-person perspective, observes the body as an object distinct in space, lying among other objects.⁸
Footnotes
- See Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (1958); Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (1958). Both discuss the observer’s role in defining physical reality in quantum measurement.
- Cf. Eugene Wigner, “Remarks on the Mind–Body Question,” in The Scientist Speculates (1961), where he argues that consciousness plays an active role in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction.
- Raymond A. Moody Jr., Life After Life (1975), provides an extensive collection of near-death experience accounts, introducing the “tunnel of light” motif common to such reports.
- Karl Pribram’s holonomic brain theory (1991) and David Bohm’s implicate order (1980) propose frameworks in which consciousness and quantum structure are deeply intertwined.
- Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind (1992), explores parallels between psychedelic experience and cosmological or subatomic processes.
- Max Planck, “The Nature of Matter,” Philosophical Magazine (1944), argued that consciousness is “the matrix of all matter,” anticipating modern panpsychist interpretations.
- The Brocken spectre is a real optical phenomenon, first described by Johann Silberschlag in 1780. See G. W. Humphreys, “The Brocken Spectre and Glory,” Weather, Vol. 25, 1970.
- The analogy mirrors the wave–particle duality observed in the double-slit experiment, in which the act of measurement determines the observed state of light or matter. Cf. Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. III (1965).