The Real and the Unreal - parts and whole, chicken and egg

[Guest guest]

Namaste to all Advaitins,

 

I am posting this as a postscript to Part VII, and it relates to some

topics that came up in the discussion, namely the topic of parts and

whole, and chicken and egg...

 

 

An object, as substance, is not the sum of its parts. Substance is

indivisible and is not generated by the parts. The indivisibility of

substance is not so easily understood because, in everyday

experience, we see things being generated from parts, as say, when a

carpenter assembles a table from various components. The common

notion is that the whole is the sum of the parts (in a certain

configuration, to be precise), and it is this same notion that

underlies the premise of the scientific method. Now, science may not

be interested in metaphysical questions, but it would be appropriate

for us to enquire about the problem - how do disparate parts give

rise to something entirely and distinctly different from themselves?

 

Each of the parts is different from the whole - and therefore it

cannot give rise to the whole because from difference likeness cannot

arise. All the parts put together are still 'all of parts' and not

that unitary single thing which is the whole. We may take a 'nominal'

escape and say that the whole is only a name for the sum of parts,

but this does not solve the problem - for what is it that is the

referent of this name, its meaning? Surely, it is a unitary thing,

and in its unity it is distinct from the plurality of the

conglomerate of disparate parts. Thus, the whole does not arise from

the parts, but is a distinct thing than the parts.

 

What is it that is the whole? When we consider a table, for instance,

we find that it is impossible to think of the table without the

conception containing within it the parts of the table. Thus, the

table is a unity that has the parts strung within itself, because

this is the essence of the table. In other words, a whole cannot be

conceived without the parts being subsumed under the conception of

whole. (It is because substance is indivisible that we may have parts

missing and yet the thing whole.) Therefore, we may say that the sum

of parts is not the whole, but the whole has within it all its parts.

We know from vivartavada that all things are eternal – each of the

parts is eternal, and so is the whole. Therefore, when we speak about

the creation of a thing, it is the manifesting of what is hidden in

reality; when a carpenter creates, he merely acts through certain

operative causes to manifest the table that already lies in reality.

A thing, as substance, therefore is not generated from the parts, but

is manifested in them, when the components are assembled together.

The carpenter does not create a table as substance, but enables the

table, as substance, to shine forth.

 

Likewise, the chicken did not come first, nor did the egg come first,

but the chicken and the egg are both eternally existent, and they

manifest in accordance with the operative causes in nature. Time

brings them forth into the endless chain of the chicken-and-egg, and

this unbroken chain in time is only broken by their collapse into

Eternity i.e., into their material cause, Brahman.

 

With regards,

Chittaranjan

[Guest guest]

Shri Chittaranjan wrote (on Aug 1):

 

"What is it that is the whole? When we consider a table, for instance,

we find that it is impossible to think of the table without the

conception containing within it the parts of the table."

 

Yes, this chicken and egg problem is inherent in the constructions of

thought. In order to deal with its inherent partiality, the mind is

obliged to analyse and synthesize. Each thought of mind has to be

analysed, in order to make up for details that it has left out. And it

has also to be synthesized with other thoughts that it does not

include. In either case, there is an infinite regress, with no

conclusion possible, microcosmically or macrocosmically. No picture

that the mind conceives can be accurate enough in its finer details,

nor broad enough in its overall expanse, to give a true account of the

reality described.

 

So, as the mind conceives a table, how can we know what is described?

What reality is shown by the various pieces of perception that the

mind receives about the table and the various descriptions that are

built from these pieces?

 

Each piece of perception tells us something about the table. So also

each constructed description. Each is a part appearance of the table's

reality. Each partly shows and partly hides what the table really is.

Whether we see the table leg or the table top or some grains of the

table's wood through a microscope, or whether the table is perceived

from one side or another or from above or below or in relation to its

chairs and the room in which it's found, or whether the table is

conceived and described sensually or mechanically or mathematically or

intuitively or passionately or judiciously, the table in itself is

known through each of these perceptions and descriptions.

 

What is the 'table in itself'? It is exactly the reality that's truly

known, through all the differing appearances that are produced by

perceiving and describing it in different ways. That's what is meant

by the word 'real'. What's 'real' is what's known in common, through

the differing perceptions of our senses and the differing conceptions

and descriptions of our minds. What's real stays the same, while

differing appearances of it are formed by changing instruments of

body, sense and mind.

>From this analysis, it is clear that reality cannot be known by any

summation or analysis of physical or mental parts. Each part is an

appearance formed by body or by mind, and any summation or analysis

does nothing more than form another such appearance. The only way to

know what's real is through a reflective questioning, which must turn

back from changing appearances to what each shows. There has to be a

questioning that leaves the change behind, so as to find an unchanged

reality.

 

In the word 'real', there is thus an essential question. The word

inherently implies a reflective enquiry -- from differing and changing

appearances of body and of mind, to what they show that stays

unchanged in common to them all.

 

I therefore find it very confusing that modern university philosophy

should use the term 'realism' to describe a standpoint which

attributes reality to material objects. Why not call such a standpoint

'materialist'? That's what it is, plainly and simply. To call it

'realist' is to go along with a habitual assumption that material

objects are real, as perceived by our material senses and instruments.

And this begs the very question for which the word 'real' stands.

 

This curious begging of the question is even stranger for the fact

that modern physics has been greatly advanced by a rather profound

asking of this same question, by Alfred Einstein. He pointed out that

our material observations and measurements of space, time, speed,

energy and mass are inherently relative to the observer. They are

inherently different for different observers, and so they are only

relative appearances of something more profoundly real that physics

must investigate.

 

Einstein's theories of relativity arose from asking what is invariant,

 

and therefore real, beneath our varying measurements and observations

of seemingly material things. He was very much of a realist, but not

at all a materialist. He talked about a 'dematerialization of

physics', which his theories carry forward to an extraordinary degree.

In the general theory of relativity, both matter and force are treated

as seeming appearances of an invariant space-time continuum, in which

events are related upon the basis of a four-dimensional geometry.

 

A previously material mechanics of matter and force is thus replaced

by a space-time geometry that interconnects observed events. The

geometry is complicated by a four-dimensional curvature, which

produces the appearances of matter and force. As different observers

travel differently through space and time, they see the same continuum

that's common to them all. What seem to be material objects with

forced interactions are only relative appearances that differ from

observer to observer. The differences and changes of material

appearance are only the result of different and changing points of

view. Each appearance shows the one, invariant continuum, which stays

the same, beneath the differences of our material observations. To

this extent, it turns out that a purely geometric continuum is more

real than our material views of it.

 

But there are two problems with the general theory of relativity. One

is a matter of physical science: that this theory is as yet successful

only in accounting for the force of gravity. Gravity is a macroscopic

force whose effect predominates at large scales of size. So, by

accounting for this force, general relativity is mainly used for our

large scale pictures of the universe. But there are other forces (like

electromagnetism) which predominate at smaller scales of size. These

are currently accounted for by quantum theory, which provides modern

physicists with their microscopic pictures of molecules and atoms and

sub-atomic particles.

 

And quantum theory is a rather confused mixture of the material and

immaterial. Specifically, it tries to use material instruments (with

gross material specifications) to measure quanta and quantum fields

that are far more subtly described by a more subtle geometric analysis

of field conditioning in space and time. From this mismatch, of gross

measuring instruments and a far greater subtlety of what is measured,

many paradoxes and confusions rise. And modern physicists are not yet

able to reconcile the macroscopic view of general relativity with the

microscopic views of quantum physics.

 

There is a fundamental problem here. Einstein's relativity theory has

an essentially realistic approach, which aims at continuity and

certainty. Quantum theory has an essentially pragmatic approach, based

upon principles of discontinuity and uncertainty that are conceived to

always compromise whatever can be known. In many ways, the argument

between Einstein and quantum physicists (like Niels Bohr) is somewhat

similar to the argument between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhist schools

of thought. Einstein's position, like Advaita, is a refusal to stop

short at anything less than a complete realism. Quantum physicists,

like many Buddhist schools, are advocates for an abandonment of just

that refusal.

 

The second problem with Einstein's relativity is philosophical. The

space-time continuum (like the older concept of 'akasha' or 'ether')

has still a trace the material in it. It is still conceived as divided

into localities or neighbourhoods, which are parts or pieces of the

continuum. So it is still a form of matter, though it is subtle rather

than gross. The concept may of course be made more sophisticated, by

conceiving of an inherent correspondence between the whole macrocosm

and each individual microcosm, or in other words between the entire

continuum and each of its neighbourhoods. Some physicists (like David

Bohm and like some chaos theorists) have already begun thinking along

these lines. Through such a correspondence, the reality of each

particular object (like a table) would be shown to be the same as the

reality of the entire world.

 

But, in the end, all theories of the world must be material. That

would of course include Shri Shankara's Maya theory. So long as a

world is described or explained, the description or the explanation is

a construct that is made up of differentiated elements. Any such

construction introduces a kind of matter that is divided into bits and

pieces, no matter how subtle.

 

Thus we are back to the need for a turned-back questioning, by which

the mind so undermines and doubts its own constructions that it jumps

right out of them, to be dissolved in unconstructed truth. But, can

such truth be ever found? Is truth no more than an attribute of some

constructed statements? Can truth have a reality that is completely

independent of constructing and constructed mind? Such questions must

stay open to enquiry, so long as any trace of conceiving thought

remains.

 

Ananda

[Guest guest]

Namaste Shri Anandaji,

 

Your post is excellent Sir, and it suggests certain timeless

principles that have been at the heart of philosophy until the time

they became masked by later developments in philosophical and

scientific thought. A few thoughts on the subject....

 

> What's real stays the same, while differing appearances of

> it are formed by changing instruments of body, sense and

> mind.

>

> In the word 'real', there is thus an essential question. The

> word inherently implies a reflective enquiry -- from differing

> and changing appearances of body and of mind, to what they

> show that stays unchanged in common to them all.

 

There is a fundamental truth in these statement that eluded Russell

and other contemporary philosophers who approached the problem

through the the chimera of 'sense data'. What you are speaking of

here is reminiscent of Plato's realm of the intelligible - of the

soul taking flight to its own abode wherein lies all knowledge rather

than going out to the world of sense. This is the same principle that

we find behind Vedanta's prescription to turn away, or withdraw, the

outgoing mind and senses from the objects of the world.

 

The rest of your post on science is very interesting. In particular

the phrase 'dematerialisation of physics' invokes the question: 'what

is matter?' It has become quite normal for us to take matter to be

these concrete tangible things with mass and density and all those

other connotations given to it by classical science, but I believe

that matter is quite simply 'whatever that matters'. In its most

primary sense, it is all that is sensed or thought - as the matter of

perception or thought. I recall that you had once pointed out a

similar reification in the meaning of the word 'physics'.

 

> Thus we are back to the need for a turned-back questioning, by

> which the mind so undermines and doubts its own constructions

> that it jumps right out of them, to be dissolved in

> unconstructed truth.

 

The term 'unconstructed truth' suggests a certain meaning that may be

found in Vedanta. Science of course speaks about 'objective

knowledge', but what exactly does this 'objective knowledge' mean?

Somehow it has been made out that it is what is independent of the

subject, and it is this conception that was shattered by the observer-

dependence of phenomena as a result of relativity theory and quantum

physics. In turn, this has led some people, including some

scientists, into believeing that everything is subjective, a position

that has much resonance with the philosophies of Buddhism. This view

has been further strengthened by popular books such as the 'Tao of

Physics'. Yet, science has not given up on the search for space-time

invariant laws of the universe. It is interesting to see how all this

relates to the position held by Advaita Vedanta. In Advaita, the

nature of a thing is independent of the intellect. At first sight,

this statement seems to negate the observer-dependence nature of the

world, but a more careful examination reveals that the independence

spoken of in Advaita is not that a thing should be existentially

independent of the subject, but that its nature should be independent

of the intellect. This is akin to the concept of

Aristotelien 'natures' which has been the implicit premise behind all

scientific bodies of knowledge, and in particular of

scientific 'laws'. Nothing can indeed be against its own nature, for

a thing's nature is the way it itself is. This sense is certainly

conveyed by the meaning of the word 'dharma'. A thing is always in

accordance with its own dharma for it is a contradiction to say it

otherwise. Therefore, phenomena may be observer-dependent, but that

manner of observer-dependence itself has its own independence as per

its dharma. It is the prakriti - the nature - that is in Brahman. I

believe it is this that is the eternal principle of dharma of the

Mimamsa philosophies.

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

 

 

advaitin, Ananda Wood <awood@v...> wrote:

> Shri Chittaranjan wrote (on Aug 1):

>

> Yes, this chicken and egg problem is inherent in the

> constructions of thought. In order to deal with its

> inherent partiality, the mind is obliged to analyse

> and synthesize. Each thought of mind has to be

> analysed, in order to make up for details that it has

> left out.

[Guest guest]

Namaste Shri Chittaranjan,

 

In your post of 2nd Aug, you raise a central question about

scientific investigation, in relation to Advaita enquiry:

 

"Science of course speaks about 'objective knowledge', but what

exactly does this 'objective knowledge' mean?"

 

For knowledge to be truly objective, the knowing subject must be fully

independent of all partial personality. Only then can anything be

known impartially, from a position of genuine disinterest that is

utterly detached from the distorting biases of limited perception

through our bodies and our minds. Such an impartial knowing is

attained when that which knows is purely subjective -- when it is a

purely knowing subject, utterly detached from all partially known

faculties and instruments of mind and body in the world.

 

It's only such a pure and unmixed subject that can truly know

anything. That subject must be utterly impersonal, completely

disinterested in all physical and mental acts of any body or of any

mind. It's only from there, where knowing is completely subjective,

that any object can be truly known, in a true spirit of disinterested

objectivity.

 

This is of course the central paradox of advaita, that when what knows

and what is known are properly distinguished, it finally turns out

that knowing subject and known object are not two realities. As their

relationship is clarified, they are each found to show the same

reality, where no two-ness can arise. And all distinction is thereby

dissolved, into that non-duality.

 

Ananda