Section 62 (first updated 4.05.2021)
Internal external view: How one conceives the other
Whitehead explains the two ways reality is conceivable when he says:
“For example, we can conceive nature as composed of permanent things, namely bits of matter, moving about in space which otherwise is empty. This way of thinking about nature has an obvious consonance with common-sense observation. There are chairs, tables, bits of rock, oceans, animal bodies, vegetable bodies, planets, and suns. The enduring self-identity of a house, of a farm, of an animal body, is a presupposition of social intercourse. It is assumed in legal theory. It lies at the base of all literature. A bit of matter is thus conceived as a passive fact, an individual reality which is the same at an instant, or throughout a second, an hour, or a year. Such a material, individual reality supports its various qualifications such as shape, locomotion, colour, or smell, etc. The occurrences of nature consist in the changes in these qualifications, and more particularly in the changes of motion […] The connection between such bits of matter consists purely of spatial relations. Thus the importance of motion arises from its change of the sole mode of interconnection of material things. Mankind then proceeds to discuss these spatial relations and discovers Geometry. The geometrical character of space is conceived as the one way in which Nature imposes determinate relations upon all bits of matter which are the sole occupants of space. In itself, Space is conceived as unchanging from Eternity to Eternity, and as homogeneous from infinity to infinity. Thus we compose a straightforward characterization of Nature, which is consonant to common sense, and can be verified at each moment of our existence. We sit for hours in the same chair, in the same house, with the same animal body. The dimensions of the room are defined by its spatial relations. There are colours, sounds, scents, partly abiding and partly changing. Also, the major facts of change are defined by locomotion of the animal bodies and of the inorganic furniture. Within this general concept of Nature, there have somehow to be interwoven the further concepts of Life and Mind.”¹
In the above passage, Alfred North Whitehead begins with the common-sense view of how we see outer space as an empty field with “bits” of matter scattered about randomly, and these form our present view of nature. This view appears sensible and consistent with our experience here on Earth, where we notice the same situation in our daily lives: a permanent sense of the conception of things around us. We experience chairs remaining chairs, houses remaining houses, and our own bodies appearing to preserve a stable identity across time. Reality therefore appears as though it is composed of independent objects existing within a neutral and empty spatial background.
Whitehead explains that this conception of nature gives rise to the classical understanding of matter and motion. Matter is treated as though it were self-contained, while space acts merely as the passive stage upon which objects move and interact. In this understanding, events occur because objects happen to occupy the same spatial framework at the same time. Nature is therefore conceived externally, through relations of position, motion, and extension.
Yet Whitehead goes on to elaborate that beneath this apparently simple and obvious picture there seems to exist an invisible and eternal state of geometry that matter somehow conforms to, almost like pieces fitting together within a puzzle. Geometry is not invented by matter after the fact, but appears to precede matter as the condition through which matter can enter into ordered relation at all. Objects do not merely drift randomly through empty space without structure; rather, they appear capable of entering determinate relations because space itself already contains a latent order.
This is why Whitehead emphasizes that mankind discovers geometry through observing nature. The geometrical structure of reality seems universal and eternal, remaining unchanged regardless of the particular objects occupying it. A triangle preserves its relations whether drawn on paper, imagined in thought, or instantiated materially. Likewise, distance, proportion, and form seem to possess a permanence independent of the temporary objects that embody them. Matter therefore appears less like isolated particles scattered meaninglessly in emptiness and more like temporary expressions fitted into a deeper geometrical harmony already present within reality itself.
The puzzle analogy becomes important because puzzle pieces do not randomly become meaningful merely by touching one another. Each piece already possesses a form implicitly related to the others before they are joined together. Their coming together reveals an order that was already latent within their structure. In the same way, Whitehead suggests that nature cannot be fully explained by random material conjunction alone, because the relations objects enter into display intelligible patterns and ordered structures which imply a prior relational framework.
Thus the invisible geometrical order underlying nature functions almost like an eternal blueprint through which matter becomes capable of organization. Space is no longer merely empty extension but an active condition of relational possibility. The permanence we experience in ordinary life—the continuity of identity, form, and relation—reflects this deeper geometrical persistence beneath the changing motions of matter.
From this point, Whitehead gradually moves away from the purely passive conception of reality toward a more relational ontology, where the relations between things are not secondary accidents occurring within empty space, but are instead fundamental to what reality itself is.
Two World Views
These two differences in the relation between line and circle indicate two distinct ontological viewpoints on how reality is viewed. First, the ontology which attributes randomness as the initial condition of situations: an event is viewed as the result of a set of objects coming together and occupying the same reference frame without knowing the cause of their coming together. This view is passive because a conception is seen as objects being in the same space to which they randomly came to occupy; things congregate at the same space and at the same time, and that is why there is an event.
The argument that an event is random provides a causal explanation to events, namely that the occurrence of an event randomly came into being. However, the notion of randomness stops short here because once an event comes into being, the relation between the objects that randomly came to bear a relation now exhibits a non-random structure, an ordered relation. Randomness can be maintained insofar as every time objects change configuration that change was random, but it cannot be said that what they change into, the result observed by their change, does not exhibit some order.
Second, an event is not viewed as the random circumstance of a set of objects simply relating by their occurrence of occupying the same space and disclosing the same reference frame, but rather this form itself is part of their conception, or rather how each conceives the other. The space which appears to be outside of each, disclosing both, is really the conception of one by the other. An event is therefore the conception of each object by the other. Each object conceives the other. This conception, which generally discloses the objects together into the same circumstance, area, or space, is in part implicit within each part that makes up the general relation. Each part in the event conceives the other by a general scope within which the other is disclosed.
In this view, we are not brought together merely by the fact that we share the same space, but rather because each object within that space has the capacity to conceive the other object. I conceive my girlfriend, and my girlfriend conceives me; even my cat I conceive, and in turn my cat conceives me. In this sense, the identity we call the self is simply a collection derived from the set of all relations conceived by the single component within that complexity.
For example, the identity of my self is given to me: my name is given by my parents, my genetics belong to a long lineage of people, my country was made by a collection of other men throughout history, and even my spouse is likewise given by her own version of these details given to her. And so, who I identify with as “myself,” e.g., my name is “John,” in the external sense, has been given to me by all aspects of my conception. But who I really identify with as my self, which lacks any of these identities—my pure capacity to conceive and disclose a set of identified objects—lacks any particular identity. It is not given but determinate, coming forth to pick out and select what to conceive.
We can call this unconceived aspect of the self the active side. It is the conception which I identify with more, but cannot claim to be “myself,” as it lacks the particular identities given to me by my other self, which I ordinarily associate as my self: how I look and where I am from. Yet these are not really my self, as they are passive to whatever circumstances are conceived by the other self, the unidentified aspect, which I “feel” is more my self because it is the driving determinate force, while the other is predetermined.
Function of Definition
If we reduce the nature of the power of conception to what is immediately perceived here, now, and then, the concept develops a limited definition. The function of definition itself is to provide the best possible way of stating a particular interpretation of a phenomenon common to an array of different and distinct people with different conceptions. Conception is therefore not subjective merely because it consists in being infinitely different across all people, but rather objective because it is the power that we are trying to argue led to the present moment in which the observer finds themselves.
The conception of the immediately present here, now, and then must also include a prior condition which led to its determination. The moment that led to the moment is not just another moment, because this infinite regress takes us back to the power that organized these moments into a sequence where one results in the other. Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”² is the grandiose notion of this primary power of conception which the observer uses to determine the moment they are presently in here, now, and then.
This is the same process happening in the way our mind organizes information. For example, when I state a general concept like “conception,” “time,” “event,” “moment,” or “self,” these bring with them an innumerable array of different meanings related under a recognized idea. But the mind takes these different meanings and organizes them into the context in which the word is used in order to form a sequence of meaning, i.e., which definition is more likely to be the true reflection of that word in the context in which it is used.
The mind, during its power of conception, asks a similar question concerning conception itself: which moment is more likely related to the particular context of the present? This is how the next event is determined as a future moment occupying the present for the observer.
Footnotes
¹ Alfred North Whitehead, from The Concept of Nature and Nature lifeless.
² Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XII.
The Problem of Defining an Event
An event is defined as a thing that happens, but this vague definition does not answer when an event occurs, and it is generally assumed that the event is what happens in the present. However, we also take past occurrences as events in the case of historical events, and we also take future occurrences as events in the case of “preparing for an event” or a party. And so we are brought back to the vague definition of an event as simply an occurrence, without an answer as to when it occurs.
The question may not matter insofar as it occurs, however it matters for an observer because there is a sequence of events occurring one after another, and when one takes the place of the other, the former appears no longer to occur.
In physics, the definition of an “event” is more specific in the sense that it means “a single occurrence of a process.”¹ A process may be indefinite in occurrences, but an event is defined as an abstraction into a determinate happening, like the ionization of one atom, though this itself happens through innumerable other kinds of events.
Two Views of the Event
An event can be viewed as the result of objects whose origination is not explained but are merely given as they randomly come together, occupying a space that discloses them into bearing a certain kind of relation; or we can view an event as a general conception implicit in each distinct component making it up, such that they conceive each other into the identity they maintain as themselves.
The first view treats objects as already existing independently before their relation. The event is therefore accidental, a circumstance where separate things happen to occupy the same frame of reference.
The second view treats relation itself as fundamental. The objects do not merely enter into relation externally, but conceive each other into the identities they possess within the event itself.
Conception and the Entangled Quantum State
One being conceives the other and is conceived by the other. You are my conception and I am your conception, and the event is the entangled quantum state² where these two objects meet each other and interact.
We are taking this notion of conception to the outermost extent of speculation, and we do not mean only that one witnesses the other, but at an ultimate point, one being has brought the other into being, and the other being is brought by the one into being.
I am the man whom my girlfriend conceived me to be, and she is the woman I conceived into being, and this is true for everyone who occupies the complexity of your most immediate relations, and beyond.
Identity therefore becomes relational rather than isolated. The self is formed through a field of reciprocal conceptions.
The Limits of the Random Material View
If we view events as a reference frame filled with components that conceive each other into being, how would that view differ from seeing the event as the circumstance where a set of already given objects come together into being?
The view that the event is the random coming together of already given objects does not explain how and why these objects generate into being, only that there are objects present, and we move on from that and presuppose that they randomly come into each other’s frames, like billiard balls bouncing off each other.³
This view must presuppose the objects to be eternal, otherwise it fails when we introduce the element of time as a degenerating principle and ultimate force for change, such that an event cannot simply be the change in configuration of its objects because eventually the structure of the objects themselves changes by degenerating out of being.
If the objects are eternal and change is just their reconfiguration, we then have to ask why there is a limited conception of the object at all.
Finite Perception and the Limitation of Objects
This is true both from an observer conceiving an object external to itself—I see something and not everything—and from the thing’s internal point of view, where it maintains a particular kind of expression outwardly.
In my view I only perceive a set of finite objects within a very specific event, and my conception converges into the objects forming that event.
Yet this conception has no place to explain their regeneration into some newly found form so as to continue the process, and if this process has at one point ceased, there is no explanation as to why it springs back up into being again.
Moreover, if there is an infinity of these objects that endlessly become deceased and never rise up again, and the process is indefinitely objects going out of being, then we still cannot explain how this infinity is maintained or where the infinite energy comes from such that it is never exhausted.
In either case there needs to be an explanation for what sustains the continuity of becoming.
Gradient Between Mind and World
There is a space between the mind and its object. This space is filled with reality and is ultimately spacetime.⁴
At the furthest extent of this gradient there is the limit of consciousness, which is infinite potentiality. Beyond the horizon are all things in the universe, and behind my eyes, within my mind, there are all possibilities of events.
These two endpoints constitute the gradient and limit of reality, where they meet off each other.
The Mediation Between Thought and Object
There is a mediation between thought and object. The distinction is between the consideration of possibilities, any of which is indeterminately real, as opposed to a specific object at the present moment being directly observed.
When looking at an object, that object may trigger thought about it, while on the other hand a thought may trigger looking toward an object.
The mind does not only perceive objects that fall within its reference frame, but also searches and looks out for objects and finds them. In this latter process the mind has to possess a preconceived idea of what the object is like in order to go out and search for it.
Memory, Innateness, and the Structure of Thought
But whether the mind has the concept of an object due to prior experience of coming into contact with it and therefore accessing memory, or whether there is some innate tendency toward a notion of the object that later becomes evident, in both cases this forms a gradient of the same duration: a mixture of thought and world.
On the one hand, in the world there are all possible objects simultaneously present and out there, and the mind comes into contact with them one at a time; while on the other hand there is the world in thought, such that in my thought the world is a potential and uncertain place, constantly changing and never stable.
About one object I can have an infinity of thoughts, and in the world there is an infinity of objects about which I can have a single thought.
Possibility, Limitation, and Infinite Objects
There are therefore no objects existing entirely on their own as syntheses of qualities; rather, the qualities come forth and group along with them a class of objects.
The two different senses of possibility are that the world exhibits a limit for thought, in that I see a set of distinct objects and beyond that know there is an infinity of them; while thought exhibits a limitation to the world, in that although the world is infinite in holding all objects, thought comes in and limits that infinity into particular conceptions of objects.
There is a relation between all possible objects as given and all possible objects as not given. In the former, all objects exist simultaneously at once, while in the latter, at any single point in this gradient, there is a particular object directly conceived.
The infinite possibilities of objects beyond any direct conception converge with the infinite possibilities of identifying these objects. Beyond any particular conception at a given moment there is an infinite amount of objects and an infinite amount of ways of identifying these objects; these are the same thing in substance.
Footnotes
¹ In modern physics an “event” commonly refers to a specific point-like occurrence in spacetime, such as the collision or interaction of particles.
² Quantum Entanglement — the phenomenon in which two quantum systems exhibit correlated states regardless of spatial separation.
³ The billiard-ball analogy is associated with classical mechanistic physics, especially the worldview emerging from Isaac Newton and early modern mechanics.
⁴ Spacetime — the unified framework of space and time developed most notably in relativity theory.
Expanding Universe
Modern ideas of the Big Bang posit that the universe is ever expanding and that one day objects will be far enough apart that nothing will be sustained and the world will become a cold, dead place.¹ This idea explains how the universe originates into being and is opposite to how it will end. The universe began with a dense cosmic blowout of energy and mass, but that energy will eventually be exhausted.
This model measures the direction of the universe by way of a quantitative method. This means that the ontological presupposition concerning the relation between quality and quantity is such that one governs the other. In the purely materialistic ontology, quantity governs quality, and this becomes a method for making judgments about the world and its order.
This view is taken from the simple observation that qualities seem to be derived from objects with certain measurable quantities, meaning that qualities are treated as byproducts belonging to objects. In other words, qualities belong to objects, not the other way around.
Moreover, because any single object can be measured in a potentially innumerable number of ways, it is concluded that a finite number is first before an infinity. We begin counting from 1 toward infinity; the common logic is not the other way around, where we begin from infinity to arrive at 1, because the assumption is that one would never arrive at 1 but would continue counting indefinitely.
And so, because our immediate observation presents objects as single things to which many qualities belong, we conclude that the world is measured first as quantities and then as qualities.
Attributes therefore seem first to exhibit themselves as matters of mass, density, weight, and extension, and these determine the extent of their qualities such as colour, symmetry, behaviour, form, and reason.
To Quantitate Quality — Scientific Materialism
The problem is not the reduction of quality to quantity because a quality is only qualitative, nor because the quality of a quality is that it is quantifiable. Rather, the issue is that a certain logic is adopted which views one as more primary than the other.
This in itself is not necessarily a problem, because it is necessary to determine which is more fundamental in the sense of which governs the other and in what way. However, a mistaken notion can be adopted as the correct one. In the case of materialism, quantity is treated as more primary than quality.
The world is given as a set of quantities to which qualities belong, and this gives justification for imposing upon the world a selection of certain qualities over others in determinate ways: to quantitate the world. Thus, where once the universe was compact it will later become dispersed; where it was once hot it will later become cold, and so forth.
This method makes distinctions between qualities by placing them into an ordered arrangement, but not by explaining how they are different in themselves. Quantity merely concerns that something be given and ordered, that there exists a set of differences capable of modulation. But it does not explain how these differences come into being as differences.
For that coming-into-difference must be explained in terms of quality rather than quantity, because the moment of change can still be endured by the same quantity.
Universe as Object and Activity
The ontology of scientific materialism does not understand the numbers making up the universe in terms of the diversity of qualities they exhibit, but rather by the way they can be ordered together into a hierarchy for a single unifying model of the world.
So far as scientific materialism seeks one model to explain the world, this derives from the intuition that the world itself is an object and therefore maintains a single identity. This is how it is discerned as the same quantity.
However, this assumption overlooks the essential quality of the object: that it is also not merely an object. The universe is an activity, and whatever endures may not be distinct from the activity itself.
A quantity is first and foremost itself a quality. It is a quality to be an object.
In other words, what it means to be a “quality” is simply the standard defining the identity of a thing that makes it distinctive. Whenever we speak of the quality of something, we are defining a certain quantity by making it distinctive.
A quantity, however, is not what makes something distinctive. This itself is the quality of being a quantity. It is distinctive precisely because it is shared among all different objects and therefore bears no identity of its own other than the bearing of qualities.
This defines what it means to be “external,” or rather external relations: the relation wherein a thing maintains itself against other entities maintaining themselves against their own relations.
Atomism and External Relations
“Atomism embraces all those ontologies which assume these relations are external, meaning by this that the essential qualities of an ultimate component (an ‘atom’) exist independently of its relations and that an ultimate component possesses qualities without being itself a quality.”²
This is what it means to be a quantity: that it possesses qualities without itself being a quality.
Of course, it does not escape the fact that a quantity is also a quality in being “not a quality,” but this is maintained as the essential worldview of materialist ontologies: that qualities are quantities because their qualities are merely given as such and there is no need to concern oneself with how they are given, only how to quantify them.
For example, materialists say that “all objects are material” in order to denote that matter is the quantity shared by everything in the physical universe.³
But if quantity is what is universally shared, then it is also what it means not to be a distinct object. The universe is therefore both the changing of objects and also an object enduring change.
Footnotes
¹ Big Bang — the dominant cosmological model describing the early expansion of the universe from an extremely dense and hot state.
² The quotation on atomism and external relations is associated with critiques of atomistic ontology in metaphysics and process philosophy, particularly discussions influenced by Alfred North Whitehead and relational ontology.
³ Materialism — the philosophical position that matter constitutes the fundamental substance of reality.
(see whitehead function of reason)
External Relations and the Problem of Quantitative Development
Ontologies like atomism, which depend wholly on observational studies of external relations, fail when it comes to providing a conclusive understanding of evolution. If evolution is viewed wholly as a process of external relations, then it can only provide the following inconclusive account of development: in any environment there is a given set of distinct variables that, after a certain period of time passes, due to the function of time, come to “yield” together and form a fully functioning organism, synthesizing distinct and separate entities into a whole form operating under a common goal within the environment, whether the aim is reproduction, consumption, novelty, or survival.
Ontologies of external relations, such as in part Darwinian Evolution, explain nature as a series of components maintaining their own identity against each other and against the environment they share, which is only common insofar as they are all maintaining themselves against it as well.
In this idea, time is said to be the factor for why things develop intelligence, but it does not explain how time does this, or whether time is itself a quality of some other substance. Modern physics today says that it took the Earth around 4.5 billion years for complex life to develop,¹ along with the age of the universe being approximately 13.8 billion years.² This means that the development of life to this stage constitutes roughly 33% of the entire history of the world according to modern cosmology.
Yet only within the last ten thousand years has life developed more rapidly in certain respects than ever before in the previous 13.8 billion years, meaning that within less than 0.0001% of the total duration of cosmic history, life has developed more than 99% in terms of technological and civilizational complexity.
If time, in terms of longevity—which is what ontologies of external relation assume as defining time, because that is the only form of time that is directly quantifiable—is the sole function responsible for development, then mathematically speaking it is an insufficient factor for explaining development.
If we reduce Darwinian Evolution to its most fundamental root and ask why things develop, then after saying that they survive against their environment and against others, and after appealing to adaptation, we are left with the dead-end answer that time itself is the reason why things develop: that naturally, through the mere passing of a sufficient duration, things develop.
This is not in itself wrong, but it explains nothing about why development is present or in relation to what it is present. It only states that development exhibits a duration of happening with an upward trend toward complexity.
Even if we say that time is moving more rapidly in the sense that within the last percentages of the universe’s lifetime the highest amount of development will occur, there still remains unexplained why, at a certain portion of duration, there is a greater pressure or tendency toward complexity.
Even if the universe is truly 13.8 billion years old—which is a fact derived from the extent to which we can measure cosmic radiation dating back to the earliest observable moments after the Big Bang, and which could potentially always be pushed further back with newer discoveries that might make the universe older, even if only by one billion years or less—we are still not necessarily close to discovering the initial so-called “bang.”
This fact is not entirely consistent with the other claim that it necessarily takes such long periods of time for life to develop into its present stage. It is inconsistent to assume that because the universe is a certain age, it therefore must correspond to a certain level of development.
This is what is problematic about trying to formulate an understanding of quality from a purely quantitative account, or in other words, trying to derive how complex something is simply from how long it has existed.
Footnotes
¹ Earth is estimated by modern geology and cosmology to be approximately 4.54 billion years old.
² The estimated age of the observable universe in modern cosmology is approximately 13.8 billion years, derived primarily from measurements related to the cosmic microwave background and the expansion of spacetime following the Big Bang.
Internal Relations, Spacetime, and the Universe as Conception
Time as the Adjective of Relations
Time itself is the adjective of its relations, and so time is simply how long this thing has been going on, which does not tell us the cycles and changes it might have undergone within an eternal framework. From an eternal standpoint there may perhaps have been an infinite amount of cycles of development.
And if time is indivisible from Spacetime, such that merely changing spatial position changes time—that from one position something is at a different time than at another—this does not necessarily mean that moving from one position to another causes the last position to cease existing while the new position alone now exists. Rather, both may maintain the same duration of time.
One can therefore only imagine an endless activity within an eternal timespan falling into an infinite space; this is the fabric of spacetime.
Universe as Abstraction
A unifying model of the universe as an object is itself only an abstraction.
All modern cosmological models of the universe depict it in some cone-like structure. In the model where the universe is infinitely expanding, the singularity is said to be the first point, and all other cosmic bodies expand away from that point over time, in other words, expand away from each other.¹
The present Earth is therefore labeled as existing somewhere within this expansion, as far away as possible from the singularity. But the Earth is a quality for life, and as a quality it is a single point toward which the expansion of the universe is collapsing.
Other models instead propose that the singularity is not merely the furthest point away in the past, but is found in the present itself and is the point toward which the expansion of the universe moves.
It is important to explain how the singularity exists at every point in time, not merely as a factor in the past that initiated the universe, or as a point in the future toward which the movement of the universe is heading, but how it exists in every part at every moment in the present as well.
Expansion and Collapse as Simultaneous Features
These models of the universe are taken as absolute ways of describing the structure of the universe. For example, some proponents say the universe is only expanding or only collapsing.
However, these features belong as parts of any single component picked out from the whole of the universe. Any object in the universe may simultaneously exhibit two opposite features: stars grow and then shrink, organisms develop and decay, structures expand and contract.
Yet when it comes to an explanation of the whole universe, we are expected to give only one account of a single direction.
It is ironic that a single object picked out from the whole is allowed to possess an infinite number of ways of acting, while the whole itself can only be given one determinate motion.
We cannot, for instance, say that the universe is as dynamic as the movement of someone’s hand. The only difference is instantaneity: one process happens rapidly while the other happens slowly over vast periods of time. Yet because of this difference in duration, we are expected to conclude that the form itself is entirely different.
Big Bang as a Limit of Conception
If we take, for example, the critical universe model,² where we illustrate the initial beginning of the universe labeled as the Big Bang, this may simply represent the extent of the observer’s reference point: to what extent and how far the observer conceived the magnitude of the universe.
This conception is then transformed into an abstraction representing an originating point for the universe.
When we see that the universe extends outward from this initial point—the moment of the Big Bang or the singularity—this is simply the recognition of the most infinitesimal point in the universe, the concentrated infinitely dense point, contrasted with the most dispersed and expansive scale of the universe.
This is a conception of scale concerning magnitude relative to the point of conception known as the observer.
“Minute” means “mini-unit,” or the smallest unit. This is what a singularity is, or what it means to be singular: that of which there are infinitely many. And this is why a singularity is infinite, because there exists an innumerable amount of units.
Re-Collapsing Universe
In the re-collapsing universe model,³ there is the recognition that from a single dense minute point of infinity, reality is dissected into a dispersion of all the particular parts forming it and taking up the most expansive scale, but that all ultimately originates back into the same point.
The model, however, does not explain how the universe collapses back into a singularity. It is a purely quantitative account that merely exhibits the motion of the universe as moving outward and then back inward.
However, it is presupposed within this model that the singularity somehow remains throughout the entire expansion as the aim and goal toward which the universe will return: its regenerative process.
Unlike the endlessly expanding universe model, which has no end other than eventual dissipation and death, the re-collapsing model maintains the singularity as an enduring principle throughout the total duration of cosmic expansion.
Singularity Within Every Point
If we apply the light-cone model⁴ to the re-collapsing universe model and synthesize them, then somewhere within the most extensive form of the universe, furthest away from the singularity that initiated it, there exists a particular point akin to the singularity itself, potentially similar to it in nature.
The singularity is the theoretical model where the whole of everything can be disclosed within one part of itself.
In this way the universe itself becomes an abstract model, meaning that it is whatever can be conceived.
A purely theoretical substance does not require a specific place in the universe, only that it can exist anywhere; and wherever it is placed, it can operate under the same model.
Thus, anywhere in the universe there exists the capacity to disclose where the universe should be. The point at the center characterizes any random place within the known universe as possessing the capacity to disclose both the beginning and end of the universe, as the two extremes and limits of its conception, and as an actual starting and finishing point of a natural duration.
Self-Consciousness and the Spectrum of Reality
Self-consciousness acts as a particle-state moving back and forth across this spectrum, like a pinball, between the abstract inward state of mind where possibilities are considered and the outward state where what is directly real and present exists as the specific object before us.
The point of this duration is to develop a conception of universality within particularity, to condense all possibilities into one real instance.
Behind the head there is more spacetime because there is more potentiality, more reality existing in a possible state, and this extends into a particular and definite reality, which itself extends onward in that particularity infinitesimally into infinite possibility, which is a return to reason.
Infinity Within Every Finite Moment
On some level, the conception of any finite set of objects within a present moment includes beyond that conception, as its limit, the infinity of all things.
This means that when the observer abstracts from infinity a finite moment disclosing a set of particular objects, these belong as a minute part within the whole of things.
This means both that the particular conception is an instant and occupies a relatively confined place at that instance.
But within that confined moment, where only a particular structure is picked out, there still exists the infinite structure of all things expanding beyond that conception in two inverted degrees of magnitude.
There is an infinite structure expanding outwardly “out there” into a macroscopic scale which defines the cosmological structure of the universe, and there is an infinite structure inwardly “in there” constituting the microscopic structures sustaining any macro-object, itself forming only one object within an infinity of macro-scale objects.
Footnotes
¹ Modern cosmological expansion models are primarily derived from observations associated with Edwin Hubble and the observation that distant galaxies appear to recede from one another.
² The “critical universe model” refers broadly to cosmological models attempting to determine whether the universe will expand forever, stabilize, or eventually collapse depending on critical density conditions.
³ Big Crunch — the hypothetical scenario in which cosmic expansion eventually reverses into gravitational collapse.
⁴ Light Cone — a representation in relativity theory describing the possible causal structure of spacetime around an event.
Structure of the Light Cone
The interesting aspect of the Light Cone is that it demonstrates the objective nature of light as a flashpoint from an original source. Light is most concentrated at its originating point, and then spreads further and further away from that point in all directions, forming a cone-like or spherical radius expanding outward through spacetime.¹
The question then becomes: in materialistic terms, how do we differentiate between the most concentrated state of light at the original flashpoint and the most spread-out, dispersed energy state of light at the growing sphere extending away from that point in every direction?
Materialistic accounts, although they provide a mechanistic demonstration of the phenomenon, leave unanswered the deeper reason or cause of the flashpoint itself. This may not necessarily matter for understanding the dynamics of the light cone mathematically or physically, yet ultimately we still need to understand its relation to the quality of that light cone if we are to understand the concept ontologically.
Observer as the Originating Point
Ultimately, even within materialistic accounts, the original cause of the flashpoint originates at the point of an observer, because the observer is the only evidence from which a concentrated observation of the universe can occur.
Even if the observer is inanimate, a state itself may function as an observer insofar as it is the source-point from which a light cone emerges. Physics describes the observer as the point closest to the flashpoint of light from which the cone originates.²
Yet as the light extends outward in all directions, this further extremity of the light cone is called the “future.”
The future therefore represents the unfolding extension of all possible states emerging from the original event.
Why the Source of Light Functions as an Observer
Why is the source of light itself an observer even in materialistic terms?
Because in purely physical terms, the observer is the empirical evidence from which light emits outward.
Whether it is a heat source, where a body gives off thermal radiation; or a star, which throws out immense amounts of energy; or the eye of an onlooker, which emits and receives photons while interacting with the subatomic structures of an observed object, slightly affecting it on a microscopic scale unrecognized by ordinary human perception but nevertheless occurring structurally³—light always emits from some already-generated, active, moving agent.
Whether this activity is itself determined or determining, light emerges from it as a flashpoint and extends outward in all directions, forming the possibilities or potentialities of that source.
This is why the outermost region of the light cone is identified with the future: because it encompasses all possible trajectories and outcomes emerging from the initial position.
Light and Spacetime
This means that the intermingling of time and light constitutes the very form of spacetime itself.
Time becomes the form, while light becomes the content; each depicts and internally forms the other together within the total situation of nature.
The light cone therefore does not merely represent the movement of photons through empty space. It represents the structure of relational becoming itself.
The originating flashpoint represents concentrated actuality, while the expanding circumference represents the unfolding field of possible determinations generated from that actuality.
In this sense, the light cone becomes more than a geometric structure in relativity theory. It becomes an ontological image of becoming: the movement from concentrated identity into expanding possibility.
Light Cone as a Model of Potentiality
At the center of the light cone there exists the most condensed and immediate point of determination. Moving outward from that point, reality becomes increasingly dispersed into broader ranges of possible interaction.
The future cone therefore represents not merely future time, but the horizon of unrealized potential contained implicitly within the originating event itself.
Every event radiates outward into a field of consequences and possibilities, much as light radiates outward from a source.
Likewise, every observer occupies a center of disclosure from which reality is organized into past, present, and future relations.
The light cone demonstrates that spacetime is not simply a neutral container in which objects exist, but a dynamic structure generated through relations between activity, observation, motion, and light itself.
Observer and the Universe
If every light cone possesses an originating point of disclosure, then every observer becomes a localized center through which the universe discloses itself.
The observer is therefore not merely external to the universe, passively looking upon it, but is structurally implicated within the very unfolding of spacetime.
The observer occupies the concentrated point from which a world expands outward into possibility.
In this way, the light cone can be interpreted as the relation between finite actuality and infinite potentiality: a present event extending itself outward into all possible futures while remaining grounded in a singular originating source.
Footnotes
¹ Light Cone — in relativity theory, the geometric structure representing how light propagates outward from a spacetime event.
² The observer-centered structure of spacetime geometry is fundamental to Theory of Relativity, particularly in the treatment of causal structure and simultaneity.
³ In quantum-scale observation, interactions involving photons and measurement can alter the state of physical systems. This principle is associated with Observer Effect and interpretations of quantum mechanics.
last updated 05.20.2026