Of Paradox - Huxley's Islet

Pencil drawing of T. H. Huxley done by his daughter Marian Collier

(last updated 21 April 2025)

Here is the place where I explore the big picture—the nature of reality itself—the soil in which the roots of human philosophy, science, and theology have grown—the context that we live in and what it means.

What, in the final analysis, is it all really about?  What is at the root of our reality and existence?  I have a very simple answer. It’s not “42”, but it does boil down to one single word.

What word? Not some annoying philosophical jargon. Throughout human history the great thinkers in the tradition of Western Philosophy have coined ever-more-complicated words—and probably burned out millions of brain cells—trying to figure out what’s going on. Terms like ‘eschatology,’ ‘ontology,’ and ‘epistemology’ got invented and people agonized about ‘solipsism’ and ‘coherentism’ and ‘the anthropic principle.’ They endlessly agonize over the inherent conflict between any being or conception that is ‘necessary’ and our observed ‘contingent’ universe.

The simple answer is Paradox. Paradox with a capital “P”.

This is *not* a cop-out or a joke. I’m dead serious.

Paradox is what these deep thinkers incessantly bang their heads against in an effort to rationally explain our reality.  When will they finally realize that it is the truth they seek—the answer to the problem, not the ‘devastating contradiction’ that prevents them from finding an answer?

This is no call to abandon hope, no repudiation of the role of science or philosophy.  Rather it is a critical step in clarifying the work to be done, for it offers a far clearer perspective.  The perspective, and the tasks we face were wonderfully summarized by Thomas H. Huxley, who called himself "Darwin's Bulldog" when he wrote, in 1887:

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, …”

Think of Paradox as that infinite unknown.  We pick away at it, ever claiming more usable territory, a greater working understanding from it, and yet it remains infinite.  And utterly aloof.

Think of Paradox as a great and powerful 'thing'—as a real physical object. Even as a place. Envision it as the ambience (the 'sanctuary') in which “the thing beyond which no greater thing can be conceived” is housed.

By its very nature, the 'big P' Paradox plays this role perfectly. It is the something that nothing begat. It is the ultimate uncaused cause.

Paradox is the venue where all things contradictory converge and unify; and it is all around us. Physically, it is the unstructured Chaos that we call “the vacuum,”—the quantum superposition of nothing and all things—out of which the universe appeared, and in which everything we observe remains immersed today.  The question “Where did the vacuum come from?” isn't even a valid question.  The vacuum is outside of time and space and absent of causality, free of both attributes and restrictions.  It cannot even be said to exist independent of an observation to interrogate/actualize it.  The best term I've found to accurately characterize the status of the vacuum is that it is Virtual—similar to a 'memory' but without any need for a conscious mind and without the element of time involved—“real but not actual, ideal but not abstract.”  A Virtual object can be (and obviously is) the source of things that are 'actual' (allowing the emergence of existence itself).  This virtual-actual perspective can be credited to the French thinker Gilles Deleuze from the second half of the 20th century, and people who subscribe to his concepts are called Deleuzians.  (I'm not making this stuff up!)

In the realm of the abstract (philosophically), Paradox is the Infinite Omnipotent God, who can make a mountain ('Sacred' from the point-of-view of non-Western thinkers) that is so big that He cannot ('must not') move it.  In 1981 philosophers coined the term “dialetheism,” which pretty much comes on board with this 'big P' concept—the statement that is at once both true and false.

Put simply, Paradox sits in the position of unassailable primacy.  It is the attribute of reality with the deepest roots. Of course, any Sacred thing can be defiled.  Paradox is no exception to that; but what makes it exceptional is that the ways of Paradox (and by reference any of us who choose to 'believe' in its primacy) happily defile themselves (at once self-affirming and self-negating).  It's all part of the package.  Academicians continue parsing definitions and semantics, trying to establish a 'niche' for themselves (make a living at this game).  They will go on endlessly, scratching off pieces and creating sub-categories, or equivocating (check out their 'paraconsistent logic'), etc., but the fundamental nature of this entity called Paradox continues to encompass and 'explain' all of that kind of activity.

Note well that reality can have no meaning without a mind, whatever that entails—i.e., a consciousness, a sensor, an observer, an entanglement. And therein lies the ultimate philosophical paradox. It is not possible to declare whether the mind creates reality or discovers it; and it is not possible to determine whether the mind emerges from a (subjective) reality or vice versa.'  All enquiry, all discourse boils down to one fundamental question: “How do you know?” (What, exactly, is 'knowing'?)

Returning to the concept of “the thing beyond which no greater thing can be conceived,” St. Anselm of Canterbury, in 1078 appears to have been the first Western thinker to write about that “greatest thing.”  He used the concept to argue for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. His faith made him insist that this biggest-picture thing should think the way humans think. The Reader’s Digest version of his argument is that if the big guy can be conceived in the mind, then there's an even bigger guy who takes on physical form too. Therefore, God exists.

Well, maybe the short version of St. Anselm’s ontological argument doesn’t do it justice. But I think my buddy Paradox can do him one better. Can Paradox be conceived as the 'creator/progenitor' of all reality?  

Recall Huxley's analogy.  Paradox is that illimitable sea of inexplicability.  But it necessarily also includes all the stuff that we've managed to claim from it—our islet of well-ordered (or at least familiar) stuff.  Here's where Huxley provides an unexpected, perhaps unintended inspiration.  The emergence of the Islet was simply an event that somehow took form within that greater sea.  It is the inexplicable realm that is more fundamental and all-encompassing.  Physicists have proposed that the explainable 'islet' is little more than an overblown random fluctuation therein.  Don't think of the islet as sitting on some kind of bedrock.  It's more like a grand 'Noah's Ark'.  That illimitable ocean has no bottom.

The essence of Paradox is unrestricted, random, incoherent Chaos.  Our connection to the Chaos is through the vacuum—a restless frothing 'field' of conflicting properties of practically infinite variety which constantly create and destroy themselves and each other.  As a simple example, it is the 'I am/I am not' declared by pairs of virtual particles that zip into the fringes of existence and then disappear again in the reference frame in which we exist.

Two electrons, both negatively charged, will repel each other.  They are depicted here, in what's called a Feynman diagram, by the two solid lines marked 'e(minus)' moving from the bottom of the picture toward the top.  This is just one example of virtually infinite ways that the Chaos interacts with this particular physical process. From our macroscopic point of view, we might imagine two little balls that approach one another and don't quite hit before 'magically' changing course and bouncing away from each other.  Think of the way magnets can repel each other without touching. What's actually happening deep down at the finest scale is that the two electrons zap each other with light rays (the squiggly lines), and sometimes (in this simplest interaction with the Chaos) those light rays can spontaneously tangle with two more virtual charged particles, shown in the circle in the center. So, for a little while, we can have four particles and two light rays where only two simple electrons actually 'exist'.

Physics theory and experiment have shown that what we call a 'vacuum' is far from empty. Take away everything—all matter and all energy—and you're still left with a seething, restless, 'froth'—an entirely random and indifferent field full of dynamic events and processes.  From what I understand, the energy density of the tiny bit of this Chaos that interacts with the universe as a whole, as seen within our limited reference frame, is only one part in 10 to the 120th power of all the virtual stuff that's available to interact with individual particles (as in the Feynman diagram above).  The Chaos is a potent force indeed.

A key property or attribute of this random indifferent Chaos is that localized, temporary self-organization can occur within it (such as the circle in the Feynman diagram above), and that self-organization is not prevented from becoming self-replicating and self-sustaining.  That little circle can, very, VERY rarely, become an entire universe.

Paradox has no law but the law that there is no law.  Its utter indifference means that it has no reason or desire to prevent a self-organizing 'tumor' from forming, replicating, and evolving within its belly.  Its complete lack of restriction means that the options at the disposal of said 'tumor' are as unlimited as the Chaos from which it emerged!

As a simple example, let's go from 10 to the 120th possible entities to just ten.  Imagine a random number generator that is pumping out an endless string of Arabic numerals, 0 through 9. Somewhere in that field there exists an arbitrarily long string of nothing but the number 5, as far as the eye can see.  (It's very unlikely, but it is possible; and anything that is possible will eventually happen, if you wait long enough.)

If we lived in that particular patch of 'space' where, even with our best telescopes, we could see nothing but 5's around us, then we would have to believe that there is an exquisite, mysterious order to the universe—an inexplicable 'fine tuning'.  This patch of 'all fives' is Huxley's Islet.

I could elaborate, but I think you get the idea: We are dependent on the realm of 'all fives'—the Islet—within which the completely indifferent, UNCARING Chaos has allowed meaning (the perfect 'five-ness' of our world) to emerge for us.  Furthermore, since we cannot tolerate the encroachment or appearance of 'fours' or 'sixes', which would corrupt our reality, it is in our best interest to do anything in our power to preserve and propagate the 'all fives.'  Thus, not only does (localized, temporary) meaning emerge from nothing (the primordial vacuum made of pure Paradox), but so does purpose.

Here's where I suggest a few extensions to Huxley's statement, quoted above.  If our goal is just to survive, we need to build a bulkhead around our island to make sure it doesn't erode.  The battering waves on the ocean of Chaos are always trying to reclaim the land.  If our goal is to thrive and improve our life for ourselves and future generations, then it makes sense to follow Huxley's advice to try to claim new territory.

But here's something far more visionary: We ought to be learning to swim.

The ocean of inexplicability is the ultimate source of everything we know.  Logic isn't always the best tool to make progress there.  It's a place where open-hearted patience, humility, and, yes, possibly even rote faith in the experience of those who have swum before, can avail us.  Sacred traditions/knowledge may ultimately be decoded by reductionist Western thinking; but waiting for that 'aha' moment is like standing on the shoreline of the Islet studying the waves.  Do not be afraid of the water.  Embrace the 'fours' and 'sixes'.  As Bruce Lee once said, “If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water.  On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.”

Why seek to swim this ocean of the unexplained?  The human psyche craves it.  Our restless curiosity drives us to endlessly probe such mysteries.  We do not exist on reason alone.  If we immerse ourselves in the Chaos and learn something of the ways of the battering waves, we may better preserve our shores.

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"Paradox - The Essence of the Universe"
This is the first trucker cap I ever owned, embroidered by hand with my long-standing message back in the early 1970's.  This was a time when these caps were just beginning to get popular as every-day headwear (if those links go bad, I've saved screen shots and will post).

 

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In a series of supplementary posts, I've taken some dives into the enigmatic waters.  Below are links to discussion of specific aspects of the philosophical and physical 'truths' that I come back to report from my outpost on the wind-swept shore of a rocky promontory that juts far out into the Sea of Paradox.

1.  Just as our coherent, seemingly rock-solid reality emerges naturally from the Chaos, so does the abstract concept of morality, and all its basic tenets, as espoused by the great messengers such as Jesus and Buddha.  I've devoted a separate exploration of this subject here—Morality, as it emerges even in an uncaring universe.

2.  For a discussion of the physical steps that led to our particular (seemingly exquisitely fine-tuned) 'tumor in the belly of the Chaos'— 'Creation' as a physical process, which is more nuanced (and more speculative) then the simple picture that physicists currently accept, that somehow our universe originated directly from the [spontaneous?] expansion of an unbelievably hot and absurdly tiny thing (the 'Big Bang')—see the Universe Replication Cosmology post and its more flamboyant companion, the Firestorm in the Wilderness post.

3. More on 'How to make a universe', inspired by the 19 March 2025 release of new Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument results—analysis of millions of galaxies—which begins to suggest that Dark Energy is not constant, but decreasing with time.  The outside-the-box hypothesis that I propose solves four of the big mysteries in quantum physics and cosmology—it explains the 'Spooky Action at a Distance' demonstrated to be real by 2022 Nobel Prize winning Bell Test experiments.  It resolves the 'worst prediction in all of physics'—the 10-to-the-120th-power difference between the calculated vacuum energy density from quantum mechanics and the observed Cosmological Constant (the strength of Dark Energy).  It points to a way to explain the 'Measurement Problem' so famously popularized by the 'Schrödinger’s Cat' thought experiment—how the fuzzy probability of a quantum field state in which things have no definite location seems to 'magically' transform into a real physical state when a measurement is made.  And it explains why the (badly named) 'God Particle'—the Higgs Boson, has such a small mass—a mystery that physicists call the 'Hierarchy Problem'.

4.  Where do we stand, as a species, and where are we going?  How can we assure the survival of this grand experiment that is our modern technology-based civilization.  I discuss the big picture in a post called "Colonizing Space: Utopia or Bust"

5.  For a more 'out-there' visionary discussion of the origin of our particular universe, and how that 'becoming' process fits into a MUCH bigger and broader picture, including an exploration of humanity's potential active role in shaping the universe, see The Great Stream post.

6.  And for a better understanding of the deepest, most fundamental instruction book that we have available to us to guide us through life, see the Nature's Code post.

7.  Modern understanding (if you can call it that) of Quantum mechanics is just now (2025) coming to its 100th birthday, with the development of Matrix Mechanics and the Schrödinger equation.  The math is deep stuff, and a consensus on its physical interpretation has eluded scientists.  Using big-P Paradox as the starting point, however, the understanding falls into place.  I've boiled it down to seventeen words, introduced in these two posts:  Quantum Mechanics in a Nutshell, Part 1, and Parts 2 and 3.

8.  For a good, pretty thorough examination of what the world's greatest thinkers from the late 20th and early 21st century have to say about the big picture (though with some unfortunate bias and extraneous content—especially where it comes to Western thought and, worse, Judeo-Christian Theology and even some occasional paranormal woo) the Closer to Truth PBS broadcast series (this link is to my review) is a good place for the layman to delve in.  The 'Cosmos' content is of greatest relevance here, but the other content provides a grounding in a wider range of thinking.

My bottom line for now (version of 21 Apr 2025):  

There is no “bedrock”.  Our arc (“Ark”) of Reality developed through chance interactions in a froth of timeless, dimensionless, incoherent Chaos (‘Big P’ Paradox). Within it, each individual contributes, as the Venerable Communities shape the course—a collective “We” freely constructing and curating our world’s meaning: the Great Stream of existence.

May we all ...