seeing Oneness in nature
on the metamorphic and holistic dimensions to nature and something on the philosophy of science
The powers of eternity work through the powers of time, like the sun that shines through water, while the water does not apprehend the sun, but only receives the heat; or, like a fire, which glows in the iron, but the iron remains iron nevertheless. —Jakob Böhme1
I recall the moment when it dawned on me that a deciduous tree was the embodiment of a toroidal energy flow set in motion by sunlight. The application of thermal energy creates convection currents in water in what I take to be the same form and image. Of course, any heat source (nuclear perhaps excepted) must ultimately trace its lineage back to the sun to discover the root of its power. Perhaps something can be learned of the nature of the cause through an examination of the effects that it imparts in the same way that the lineaments of seal can be deduced from the stamp that it leaves in sealing wax. Indeed, the physicist’s description of the aetiology of sunspots already implies something of the same nature.
In the forest, the sun was imparting the efficient cause and sharing in the material one while the earth was providing the remainder of the material cause. The tree-being was “stamping” these contributions with the “seal” or “signature” of its formal cause. I did not see this interplay, to begin with, because I was attempting to observe nature at an instant—through the keyholes of my senses—whereas it was necessary to complement each sense impression with a diachronic context that only my participatory imagination could provide. Of course, this was a mistake since “there is no nature at an instant,” after all. Hence, nature must be grasped in time as well as in space if it is to be grasped at all in its reality and not merely its image. It is, indeed, possible to project or to depict three-dimensional figures on two-dimensional surfaces but the latter are always shadows in respect to their cause and origin. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” remains one of the most compelling and accurate portrayals of how conceits of knowledge foreclose anyone who holds them from truly attaining it. Attempting to perceive nature without a depth-perception in time to disclose its metamorphosis is akin to grasping at shadows.
Together with the dimension of metamorphosis, nature also bears a dimension of wholeness that entrained habits of perception tend to conceal to us. In the Meno dialogue, Plato portrays learning as a remembering or “unforgetting” (an-amnesis). Plato departs, in this connection, from the paradigm that nature is indeed One, in spite of the plurality of aspects and beings that participate and embody it. The Greek word he uses is syngenous,2 which is to say, “akin,” or literally, “of the same genus.” The implication of this view is that nothing is really known or remembered in isolation. Instead, every discrete item of perception is apprehended against the backdrop of all Being.
Academicians and theologians love to argue over the oneness of existence as they do so many other things, and they do this in the mode of “science as discovery.” It is imagined that the questions could be settled by field research in the same way as the question of how many ravens there are in Iceland. But the outlook and methodology is incoherent, not to mention tedious. It would be impossible to prove one way or another on such a basis. What would it look like if the world were one? What if it were many? The answer is obviously and axiomatically “just how it does in fact look.” But then it should be clear that any piece of evidence that could be adduced already presupposes the assent or rejection of the theory in question—the Oneness of nature, in this case. Even the oneness of something simple—like a spoon—cannot be demonstrated in this way since any perception of the spoon will always be a discrete one. To wit, it is impossible to perceive the totality of all perspectives of the spoon, spatial, temporally, and instrumentally, not only because of limits to our time and capacity, but also due to limits of a mathematical nature: there are virtually infinite perspectives on the spoon so no matter how many you accounted for, there would always be more. Fortunately, for someone who is not a Kantian ideologue, it is not necessary to compass a virtual infinity by finite observation. Instead, a single perspective of the spoon suffices to grasp its oneness provided that the oneness is understood as something apprehensible to the mind through the senses and not with them. It is impossible to “discover” the oneness of a spoon just as it is impossible to discover the oneness of nature. You can’t point to this oneness in the former case any more than in the latter one. I have considered contrasting the idea of science as “discovery” with science as “articulation” because I think that is less liable to mislead people into what we are actually attempting to do.
Finally, it should be observed that phenomena in space are aspects to nature’s Oneness just as phases in time are moments to it. In other words, the metamorphic dimension to nature is also a dimension of its wholeness. This is, of course, something of a tautology since if “whole” or “oneness” means what it is intended to mean, how could a moment of something not pertain to the thing of which it is a moment?
Mysterium, xii.
[es physeds hapases syngenous]
There are three root dimensions to the conventional Western mind in both its secular and so-called religious variants
1. The idea of "God" as "Creator" and as separate from all of "creation"
2. The idea of a separate self in all cases.
3. The idea of the world as itself separate (from human beings), and as itself composed of separate things, or absolute differences.
Such is a hell-deep terrifying disposition to be in, which is summed up in the Wisdom of one of the Upanishads - where there is an other fear spontaneously arises.
Furthermore, the presumed other is thus always your mortal enemy with which you/we are always at war with, seek to control, and eventually destroy.