Of Paradox - Huxley's Islet

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

(last updated 24 October 2023)

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 grow—the context that we live in and what it means.

(More discussion and detail can also be found in the Firestorm, Great Stream, and Nature's Code tabs.)

 

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

What word? Not some annoying philosophical jargon. Throughout human history our best thinkers 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 try to rationally explain our reality.  When will they finally realize that it is the answer to the problem, not the ‘devastating contradiction’ that prevents them from finding an answer?

Think of Paradox as a 'thing'—as a real physical object. As a place. Envision it as the ambience in which “the thing beyond which no greater thing can be conceived” is housed.

By its very nature, 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,” out of which the universe appeared, and in which everything we observe remains immersed today.  Philosophically it is the Omnipotent God, who can make a mountain so big that He cannot move it.

Put simply, Paradox sits in the position of unassailable primacy.  It is THE essential attribute of reality.

Note well that reality can have no meaning without a mind, whatever that entails—i.e., a consciousness, a sensor, an observer. 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'?)

St. Anselm of Canterbury, in 1078 appears to have been the first Western thinker to write about that “greatest thing beyond which no greater thing can be conceived.”  He used the concept to argue for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. His faith made him insist that this biggest-picture thing could 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 help. Can Paradox serve as a 'creator'?  The answer was given (somewhat inadvertently) 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, …”

As the ambience in which all things are contained, Paradox must encompass both the unknown, inexplicable sea as well as our islet of well-ordered (or at least familiar) stuff.  But here's where Huxley provides the inspiration to this perspective.  It is the inexplicable realm that is fundamental, all-encompassing.  The explainable 'islet' is little more than an overblown random fluctuation therein.

The essence of Paradox is unrestricted Chaos.  I often use the terms interchangeably.  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 the pairs of particles that zip in and out of being 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.  From our point of view, we see two little balls that come together and don't quite hit each other 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 those light rays can actually create 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. It is actually a seething, restless, yet 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 can be detected within our limited reference frame is only one part in 10 to the 120th power of all that's out there.  The Chaos is a potent force indeed.

A key property of this random indifferent Chaos is that localized, temporary self-organization can occur within it (such as the circle in the diagram above), and that self-organization is not prevented from becoming self-replicating and self-sustaining.

Paradox has no law but the law that there is no law.  Indifference has no reason or desire to prevent a self-organizing 'tumor' to grow and expand within its belly.

As another simple example, 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.)

So, 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 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 we can 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 an amendment 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 far more importantly, we must learn to swim.

The ocean of inexplicability is a place where faith can help us.  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.

* * *

In a series of supplementary posts, I've taken some dives into this enigmatic sea.  Below are links to discussion of specific aspects of the philosophical and physical landscape that I perceive from my lonely observation post on a windy, rocky finger of land jutting far out into the Sea of Paradox.

1.  Just as our coherent universe 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 more discussion of the physical steps that led to our particular 'tumor in the belly of the Chaos'— 'Creation' as a physical process, which physicists now believe originated from the [spontaneous?] expansion of an unbelievably hot and absurdly tiny thing (the 'Big Bang')—see the Firestorm in the Wilderness post.

3.  For a speculative discussion of how our particular universe fits into a MUCH bigger and broader picture, including exploring humanity's potential active role in shaping the universe, see The Great Stream post.

4.  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.

May we Live Long and Prosper.