~by David Aiken~
Tucked away at the very heart of the empirically framed worldview
of our modern sciences, one can find nestled quiet-as-a-mouse a philosophical intuition,
one might even dare to suggest a spiritual insight, about the nature of Reality.
Einstein’s descriptive language for relativity is wrapped in already-ancient mythological
notions of equivalencies, conversions, & transformations. Matter, which is
certainly overwhelmingly “there” to our senses, is the equivalent of energy—its
transformative capacity, which is not always, and indeed quite seldom, apparent
to our senses at all. In the inclusively empirical framing of this scientific imaginaire, one is surprised to discover
a narrative as old as Man himself—that the intrinsic hope of technology abides
in the possibility of matter’s redemption; that matter can be, and indeed is, convertible
to energy; and where the material dimension of an entity can undergo explosive
transformation, thereby actualizing an elemental energy state. This ‘scientific’
vision expressed through an unprepossessing e=mc2, which contains an
almost sleight-of-hand mytho-metaphysic, revolves around an atomic core of
Transformative Reality whose principle is, that transformation is a see-saw
between potentiality and actuality, a give-and-take that works itself out in an
arena not defined by a becoming (→)
Other; it is rather, a being (=) fully Self.
(There is actually much kinship between Science’s hope for
transformation, and the transformative activity of teaching, where the teacher
hopes (against hope in many cases) that the apparently inert masses sitting at
their desks in student form, can and will become transformed into energetic
performers of learning!)
Erroneous equivalences.
On a quite basic level of thinking and the expression of thinking, sometimes
making equivalences reveals itself to be a mistake… such as mistaking a
mistress for a wife… just because both happen to be women. This type of false
equivalency presents itself in a variety of interesting and sometimes humorous
ways. In the category of Informal Fallacies, which
are errors related to how we present arguments in support of an opinion, there
are equivalences that are incorrect because they assume an equality to exist
where there really is none. This may be as banal as comparing apples to
oranges, where we somehow think, incorrectly, that these two almost entirely
different items can be meaningfully compared with meaningful outcomes.
A first example of this type of thinking
mis-take is, obviously, the False Equivalence.
One wiki-source
defines this using the following illustration:
“…there is no equivalence between the
two sides when one is supported by evidence, and the other side with little or
no evidence, of which most is of low quality. In other words, in false
equivalence, someone will state that the opposing arguments have a passing
similarity in support, when, on close examination, there is large difference
between the quality of evidence
Example
Fox News presents a debate between one
scientist who thinks human caused climate change is supported by vast amount of
evidence, and another non-scientist who thinks that the data is all
manufactured and there is no evidence. Then Fox News states that the
debate is unsettled, relying on false equivalence, when the evidence supporting
climate change is both high quality and high quantity.”
A second example of false equivalency is called Equivocation,
where one uses in support of an argument “an ambiguous term in more than one
sense, thus making an argument misleading.” The site goes on to give some
relevant illustrations of this sort of non-thinking:
Example #1: I want to have myself a merry little
Christmas, but I refuse to do as the song suggests and make the yuletide
gay. I don't think sexual preference should have anything to do with
enjoying the holiday.
Explanation: The word,
“gay” is meant to be in light spirits, joyful, and merry, not in the homosexual
sense.
Example #2: The priest told me I should have faith.
I
have faith that my son will do well in school this year.
Therefore,
the priest should be happy with me.
Explanation: The term
“faith” used by the priest, was in the religious sense of believing in God
without sufficient evidence, which is different from having “faith” in your son
in which years of good past performance leads to the “faith” you might have in
your son.
Exception: Equivocation
works great when deliberate attempts at humor are being made.
Tip: When you
suspect equivocation, substitute the word with the same definition for all uses
and see if it makes sense.
Language About Real(ity)
Equivalencies. Unequal and therefore erroneous equivalencies aside, though,
the throne room of science’s empirical palace is formulaically expressed in e=mc2,
an equivalency if ever there was, where “e” equals (=) the “total energy of the
body, an intrinsic energy known as the “rest energy.” And yet pre- and con-cisely
framed in this mathematical formula is also cached a very non-scientific
intuition about the possibility of a metaphysic of a very different,
non-material sort. Obviously, however, Feynman does not make this philosophical
insight explicit in his above definition (Feynman, Physics, §15-11), nor in his empirical support — “This theory of
equivalence of mass and energy has been beautifully verified by experiments in
which matter is annihilated—converted totally to energy: An electron and a
positron come together at rest, each with a rest mass m0. When they come together they disintegrate and
two gamma rays emerge, each with the measured energy of m0c2.
This experiment furnishes a direct determination of the energy associated with
the existence of the rest mass of a particle.”
And yet Einstein’s mathematical
articulation of reality as a mass-energy exchange, which is science’s core mythos, is, both in fact and in deed, no
more inherently or exclusively Factual than, for example, the apostle Paul’s anticipation
of the interchange between the physical body and the spiritual body (σῶμα ψυχικόν and σῶμα πνευματικόν) in I Corinthian 15:44, or
the chakras of the Eastern sages, Theosophical astral bodies, or than any other
mytho-wrapped narrative that attempts
to circumnavigate and then to chart for human understanding the energetic processes
of Real Reality. The languages of reality are deceptive and incomplete, which
means that scientific knowledge is actually quite demarcated, a point of view
argued by Thomas Kuhn in his paradigm-creating book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (47): “If… the student of
Newtonian dynamics ever discovers the meaning of terms like ‘force,’ ‘mass,’
‘space,’ and ‘time,’ he does so less from the incomplete though sometimes
helpful definitions in his text than by observing and participating in the
application of these concepts to problem-solution.”
Ivan Illich (1926-2002), Austrian
philosopher, priest, activist, and inveterate critic of Western culture, in his
circa 1983 seminar lecture given at El Colegio de Mexico (pp. 14-15), which is
now entitled, “The Social Construction of Energy,” confirms this view of scientific
“knowledge” in his brief history of the mythology of “e”:
During the first half of the nineteenth century,
physics construed something akin to the division of labor: value equivalents
between heat, electricity, and mechanical movements were measured. (…) The
search for something like a gold standard in nature thus led to a new kind of
experimental metaphysics: to laboratory proofs of entities that cannot be
observed. The objective existence of something that just changes its form in
ever more precisely observed and measured appearances became itself the new
scientific mythology. Though no one, of course, observed it -and for a decade
there was no agreement on the term that should name it- [A consensus formed,
however, that] defined this something as nature’s ability to perform work.
“Work” in these five years from 1842 to 1847 became a physical magnitude, and
energy its sources. Work was defined as the production of a physical change,
and energy was assumed as its metaphysical cause.
(…T)he same scientific myth found its expression in
three images: the womb became the source of life, the universe the source of
energy, and the population a source of labor force. (…) As “Arbeitskraft” was
imputed to human activity insofar as it is productive in the economy, energy
was imputed to nature insofar as it produces work. Through the imputation of
energy, nature was recast in the image of the newly constituted human as
worker. Nature now understood as the depository and matrix of a work-force
called energy mirrored the proletariat, the matrix of available labor force.
And the steam engine lurked behind all reality.
Einstein, throughout his life, was unambiguous about
entities like “e”: they “cannot be derived from experience by logic but must be
understood as free creations of the human spirit.”
In
religion, a paradox is a seeming contradiction according to principles of
normative thinking, but which the Church asks us to believe as a matter of
faith. The classical illustration of a Christian paradox, for example, is Triune
equivalency—one Deity expressed through 3 Persons, which are only One; God the
Father ≠ God the Son ≠ God the Holy Spirit, but each One = God. There are any
number of paradoxes, seeming and real, in science as well. With only the very slightest
of deferential nods to Kurt Gödel’s 1931 theorems, illustrations abound around
the incompleteness of empiricism’s e=mc2 mythos.
A first paradox in science exists already on the level of simple
definition. What is matter and what is energy? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, unhelpful ironies abound on
the question, because it would seem that “these symbols are not used univocally
by physicists and philosophers.” According to wiki sources, matter for physicists, as opposed to the rest of the world
it may be supposed, is that which “occupies space and possesses rest mass,
especially as distinct from energy.” So,
matter is a “substance,” mass, that has inertia and
occupies physical space. We could play at this game all day long: matter
is a ‘thing’; energy is a ‘thing’; a cow is a ‘thing’; a car is a ‘thing’…. Vagaries
aside, though, the important distinction to keep this definition working for
physics, and to keep it from degenerating into hopeless paradox, is the notion
of ‘rest mass.’ Our source continues without any obvious sense of euphemism, that
there is a certain “definition difficulty” at play here:
A source of definition difficulty in
relativity arises from two definitions of mass in common use, one of which is
formally equivalent to total energy (and is thus observer dependent), and the
other of which is referred to as rest mass or invariant mass and is independent
of the observer. Only "rest mass" is loosely equated with matter (since
it can be weighed).
By
way of conclusion, then, physicists are clear that matter qua ‘rest mass’ equals (=) total energy when someone is looking,
but that it also has its moments of independence, which means, it would seem,
that it does not quite equal (≠) energy.
Another
“definition difficulty” for physicists apparently, is how to define energy, which
seems to be, generally, that it equals (=) “the stuff we need to
accomplish physical actions.” Nice misdirect on this one – kind of like saying
that a cow = a four-legged thing, which → in total meaning: cow = thing. Energy = stuff. Thank you
very much for the clarification. As if one massive and excessively vague misdirect
were not enough, we are further informed that the definition we have been
given, viz., “the stuff we need to accomplish physical
actions,” is not really a definition of what Energy is in and of itself,
nor even about how it behaves, but rather, what Energy is used
for. Massive misdirect #2. Which yields in total meaning that “energy is not a thing per se,” but is a sign that “refers to a
condition or state of a thing.” Alrighty then.
A non-specialist wiki source on Energy’s definition fares
little better on the paradox front, and indeed, perhaps comes out of the wash
even worse for wear and tear. Because there we learn that
Mass
and energy are closely related. Due to mass–energy equivalence, any object that
has mass when stationary in a frame of reference (called rest mass) also has an
equivalent amount of energy whose form is called rest energy in that frame, and
any additional energy acquired by the object above that rest energy will
increase an object's mass.
The “definition difficulty” is obvious—if energy is the
equivalent of (=) mass
x c2, then mass is not “closely related” to energy, mass must equal
energy. My sister and I are closely related; but we are not equivalences (≠). Mass
is not “closely related” to energy; they are equivalencies (=), if Einstein is
to be believed.
But then science closes the hermeneutical circle cleanly,
thus creating a full-blown mythology, with the definition of energy as eternal
per the principle of the conservation of energy, because “e” can neither be
created nor destroyed, while matter is reduced to, in effect, “e’s”
transformative states. Aristotle’s (4th century B.C.) metaphysical
descriptions are alive and well in the 21th century, but hidden behind the
white lab coat and equivocal new-speak of the scientist! PhysicsCentral says this:
The first
law of thermodynamics doesn't actually specify that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead that
the total amount of energy in a
closed system cannot be created nor destroyed (though it can be changed from
one form to another). It was after nuclear physics told us that mass and energy
are essentially equivalent - this is what Einstein meant when he wrote E= mc^2
- that we realized the 1st law of thermodynamics also applied to mass. Mass
became another form of energy that had to be included in a thorough
thermodynamic treatment of a system. (For a very important note on the
difference between matter and mass, see here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equivME/#2.1).
Philosophy’s Attempts
to be an Empirical Science. The various forms of Logical Positivism,
or Logical Empiricism, in Western philosophy are associated with names such as
Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Willard Quine, A.J. Ayers, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and Karl Popper, but also with Henri Poincaré, Gottlob Frege, and
Bertrand Russell. Positivism in philosophy reflects contemporary philosophy’s
attempts
to
legitimize philosophical discourse by placing it on a basis shared with
empirical sciences' best examples, such as Einstein's general theory of
relativity. Its central thesis was verificationism, a theory of knowledge which
asserted that only statements verifiable through empirical observation are cognitively meaningful. Efforts to
convert philosophy to this new scientific
philosophy were intended to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language
and unverifiable claims.
Unfortunately, the positivist efforts to birth philosophy as
an analytical or empirical tradition have not yielded much interesting fruit, and
attempts to equivocate philosophy with an empirical or social science have led
to numerous intellectual fiascos, such as those described in Alan Sokal’s Fashionable Nonsense/Intellectual
Impostures. The pressure to portray philosophy as a science remains quite
the dominant paradigm in academic philosophy, however, if one may judge by the
fact that Sokal was at first only able to publish his book in minor presses (first
in 1997 with Editions Odile
Jacob, in French; and then in English in 1999 with Picador USA), and it
was only reprised some 10 years later in his 2009, Beyond the Hoax (OUP, 2009) with, finally, the imprimatur of an
academic publisher.
If
reality lives up to history, then the future history of philosophy will eventually
begin to step away from some of its more stellar and incomprehensible intellectual
beacons, especially if these latter lead us astray in the storm. A proverb has
it that one can judge a tree by the fruit it bears. From the wiki-description
of Sokal’s book, it
includes
long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles
Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who,
in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and
citations received, are some of the leading academics of Continental philosophy,
critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out
to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences
and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to
avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
Given Einstein’s quasi-transcendentalizing intuition about
the energy foundation of reality, e=mc2, when AJ Ayer famously announced
in the editorial introduction to his 1959 text, Logical Positivism, that 1) analytical philosophy was philosophy’s
hope for the future, and that 2) metaphysics was dead—it seems obvious that he
was somewhat over-optimistic on the question.
Thought Experiment.
What is the “e” equivalent of one human who weighs approximately 190 pounds? Our
source for this thought experiment tells us that our measurement for E is in
Joules, and that Joule units of measurement are kilograms x meters squared per
seconds squared, so that we need to convert this mass in grams to our mass in
kilograms. So: (190 pounds =) 86,184g × 1kg/1000g = 86.18kg. Einstein’s
equation is E=mc2, which, when our values are plugged in, gives us the
following “e” value:
E= (86.18kg)(3.00 ×
108m/s)2
E= 7.76 × 1018 J
E= 7.76 × 1018 J
So, continues our source, one 190-pound human equals
7,760,000,000,000,000,000 or approximately 7.8 septillion Joules of energy. Now
if we were to convert this into a TNT equivalent, one 190-human equals 1.86
MILLION kilotons of TNT worth of energy. In comparison, only 21 kilotons of
nuclear material were needed for the atomic bomb that annihilated Nagaskai, Japan in 1945.
Bryson writes in his A Short History of Nearly Everything, (UK: Black Swann, 2004, 161)
that “there is a huge amount – a really huge amount—of energy bound up in every
material thing.” On just a little narrower scale—humans are an amazingly
deceptive bit of “e,” in potentia if
not always in actu. And so begins the
story.
Speculative
possibilities for “e” equivalencies. Language may certainly shape how we
conceive of and articulate Reality in its various permutations, but linguisticity
is not the hermeneutical equivalent of (≠) any of those reality states. And so
we come to the prickly philosophical question: are there plausible metaphysical
implications of e=mc2? Unconstrained by the parameters of the
empirical narrative, can it be meaningful, instead, to frame material reality, mass,
and energy equivalents, in, for lack of less implicated language, “spiritual” or
philosophical terms. Philosophical positivism’s pronouncement that metaphysics
is dead, is dead. And the various empiricisms, having anchored themselves in
their overly restrictive narrative about the interpretative possibilities of e=mc2
as a theory of equivalency, are hopelessly entangled in a conceptual web that
tugs on the strings not only of material reality, but also and necessarily of
metaphysical – energy or spiritual reality. At the
end of the day, scientific empiricism sits naked on its interpretative throne
as nothing more than the emperor with no clothes on. It is a matter of
record, however, that our emperor remains quite the paradigmatic fashion
statement for explaining human knowledge and potential.
And yet some 30 centuries before
Einstein got around to articulating his theory of equivalencies in the form of
e=mc2, the Hindu sages had already long conceived the notion of artha, which is essentially that the
essence of all Reality is ‘reciprocity’. The various applications and social
out-workings of the idea of artha
(e.g., wealth, career, activity to make a living), which tend to be couched in
terms of cultural relevancy, also tend to miss the speculative point of artha.
According to the artha-mind, reality ‘happens’ through exchange,
through a negotiation of equivalencies, which in turn implies a pre-existing
governing principle of innate justice. This is the same family of idea as the
Greek Diké. It is the principle of
justice that pervades the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers, and
especially Parmenides and Heraclitus, from whence it will wend itself into the
Socratic vision of the world, into Plato’s framing of the world, and so,
finally, into Christianity. It will also naturally lend itself as the
foundation for all the natural law theorists.
Heraclitan Triumvirates,
or Greek Aphorisms (Sometimes in Thirds)—(Esquisse). It is interesting to
note that on the question of “e” all the mythologies, empirical and other, do
the same balancing act on the conceptual tightrope strung along the extreme outer
edges of Reality where materiality and non-materiality do their dance. In his
imitable fashion, for example, and often implying wonderfully complex images
encapsulated in three-word core phrases, Heraclitus, called the Obscure (6th
century B.C.), invites us to imagine “e” as a thunderbolt. And as strange as
this idea may appear to the contemporary imagination, Heraclitus’ language
still remains more clearly informative than that of Martin Heidegger reflecting
on Heraclitus, which we will see when we get to it. But first things first. Let
us first turn our attention to the thunderbolt.
Our text is from Heraclitus,
Fragment 64, and reads: (),
which is to say in normal-ese, “The thunderbolt steers all things.” The
‘thunderbolt’ in this context is a bit of a curiosity; but as always with Heraclitus,
the work of creating meaning is always squarely cut out for the interpreter. Unfortunately,
Diels & Kranz (Fragmente, 165)
render this brief text with, “Das Weltall
aber steuert der Blitz,” which translates as: “Lightning steers the Universe.”
The German translation, however, fails to render Heraclitus’ ideas as much as
it translates the German imagination
about the nature of the Cosmos. The notion of Weltall (universe), for example, in which abide notions of
Universe, Cosmos, Totality, etc., is entirely absent from our Heraclitus text,
although clearly entirely present in our German editors, D&K. Heraclitus does
not give us any unifying object or principle here for us to construct a vision
of a Universum, but rather he gives
us only a neuter plural direct object (),
which is translated most eloquently when rendered simply—‘all things’, in the
sense of ‘each and every thing’ individually. Equally informative is that
D&K translate Heraclitus’ (thunderbolt) as Blitz, which is lightning, and clearly linked to modern notions of energy;
but lightning is not necessarily the same idea as the bolt of lightning (blitz(schlag)),
which has ancient mythological overtones. Kirk, Raven and Schofield (197-198),
fr. 220, give us, “Thunderbolt steers all things,” which is significant because
of the lack of definite article for thunderbolt, which thus harks forward again
to the modern scientific worldview’s idea of electricity and energy. Without
its article, we are being informed that the ‘thunderbolt’ is being elevated from
its normal rank among the plebeian concrete nouns, and given the lofty status
of abstract nom.
An Aside in Pursuit of
Trivia. A thunderbolt (Heraclitus’ κεραυνός; keraunos)
is, apparently, not the
same thing as a lightning strike, whether Heraclitus knew this or not. The wiki
universe defines the lightning strike as “an electric discharge between the
atmosphere and the ground,” or in and between clouds. In contrast, a thunderbolt, keraunos, is lightning accompanied by a loud thunderclap. For a bit
of background information on our Heraclitan noun, concrete and abstract, according
to those in the scientific know (i.a.
Bryson, 323-324), the lightning bolt
travels
at 435,000 kilometers an hour, and heats the [ambient air-plasma] to 49726,85
degrees Celsius. [The average duration is 0.2 seconds made up from a number of
much shorter flashes (strokes) of around 30 microseconds.] “the massive flow of electric current occurring during the
return stroke combined with the rate at which it occurs (measured in
microseconds) rapidly superheats the completed leader channel, forming a highly
electrically conductive plasma channel. The core temperature of the plasma
during the return stroke may exceed 50,000 K [Kelvin=The kelvin
is defined as the fraction 1⁄273.16 of the thermodynamic
temperature of the triple point of water (exactly 0.01 °C or 32.018 °F). In
other words, it is defined such that the triple point of water is exactly
273.16 K.], causing it to brilliantly radiate with a blue-white color”; [The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic
temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at
which all thermal motion ceases in the classical description of thermodynamics.]
The ‘thunder’ bit of the thunder-bolt equation is, on the
other hand but still according to wiki-sources, a “sound caused by lightning.”
(It is amazing that such a phrase really needs quotation marks…). Our source
continues, however, by being a little more informative: “The sudden increase in
pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air
surrounding and within a bolt of lightning. In turn, this expansion of air
creates a sonic shock wave, similar to a sonic boom,
which produces the sound of thunder, often referred to as a clap, crack, peal
of thunder, or boom.”
Perhaps more relevant to
Heraclitus’ historical frames of reference, however, is the segue from a thunder
narrative that imagines thunder as “the sudden increase in pressure…” to
another mytho-narrative that reminds us that, etymologically, “[t]he name of
the Germanic god Thor
comes from the Old Norse word for thunder.” In this sense,
according to old Greek narratives the thunderbolt is a weapon wielded by Zeus,
which was given to him by the Cyclops when they were released from Tartaros to
help Zeus defeat the Titan gods.
So, the trio of (light + sound + speed) meaningfully renders
(=) Heraclitus’ keraunos for the
community of modern scientific empiricists. But philosophically, both meaning
and implications remain elusive concerning the aphorism “The thunderbolt steers
all things,” much in the same way as with e=mc2. In their 1966/67 Heraclitus Seminar (1979, 1-5), Martin
Heidegger and Eugen Fink try to come to our rescue by discussing some of what
they consider to be the interpretative possibilities of Heraclitus’ Fragment 64.
Unfortunately, the reading of their discussion is yawningly uninteresting and
pedantically uninformative.
Perhaps an important element of the
hermeneutical puzzle would have been the bigger-picture piece of information
that the source for Fragment 64 of Heraclitus is the 3rd-century Christian
theologian Hippolytus, (A.D. 170-236). But this was completely ignored by
H&F in all the fury of their cerebral
self-gratification session. The quote is found in Hippolytus’ The Refutation of All Heresies (Book IX,
and especially Chapters iv-v), where Hippolytus considers Heraclitus’
teachings/ideas/aphorisms to be heretical in terms of the teachings of the Christian
church. It seems that he took umbrage with this Fragment 64, because when Heraclitus
says that “thunder… directs [all things], meaning by the thunder everlasting
fire, …he also asserts that this fire is endued with intelligence, and a cause
of the management of the Universe….” Our Christian Hippolytus clearly did not
like the idea that Greek antiquity would replace by, would create an equivalency
between, the idea of GOD and an intelligent, essentially fiery, impersonal thunderbolt
with management skills. More food for interpretative thought—another time.
Putting
aside Hippolytus for the nonce, let us consider how or whether in their Heraclitus Seminar Heidegger and Fink
move us forward in our thinking about “e.” In their probatory brain-storming
about Heraclitus’ Fr 64, “The thunderbolt steers all things,” H&F come up
with the following (entirely modern) Big Idea: that the obvious meaning of the
aphorism is that the thunderbolt embodies light/energy. After this initial
no-skill required interpretation, their follow-up reveals itself to be more clearly
relevant to epistemology than to metaphysics or natural philosophy. But that
said:
1.
The
flash of lightning as revelatory, versus just the presence of light. [perception/knowing/being
as interactive and transformative]
2.
Things
appear/are only in the intense flash against the background of profound
darkness. Otherwise there is just darkness/invisibility
3.
Correction:
It is not a question of the Universe, as D/K say, das Weltall, but rather of things in their plurality.
4.
The
lightning bolt as myth? Zeus?
5.
The
lightning bolt as x [πῦρ λέγων τὸ αἰώνιον = keraunos, by which one means the eternal fire], and as y [φρόνιμον], which D/K translate as vernunftbegabt. [intelligent]
6.
What
the bolt does =
a.
steers,
governs, manages, guides. – [οἰᾱκ-ηδόν, Adv., (οἴαξ) in the manner of an οἴαξ] – on this sort of a
path…. Cf. H&F, 10-11,
b.
[κατευθύνει] – keeping on course [toward its end, is implied]
7.
Where
the bolt is, whether inside or outside the [τὰ
πάντα], and
the hermeneutical circle. Cf. H&F 15ff.
The full Fragment 64 considered by H&F is: “But
lightening controls the universe, that is, directs it. By lightning he
understands the eternal fire. He also says that this fire is rational and the
cause of the whole world government.” A bit from Fragment 65 is an editorial
flow-over from Fragment 64:
(64) γίνεσθαι λέγων οὕτως· τὰ
δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει Κεραυνός,
τουτέστι κατευθύνει, κεραυνὸν τὸ πῦρ λέγων τὸ αἰώνιον. λέγει
δὲ καὶ φρόνιμον τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ πῦρ καὶ τῆς διοικήσεως τῶν
(65) ὅλων αἴτιον
τουτέστι κατευθύνει, κεραυνὸν τὸ πῦρ λέγων τὸ αἰώνιον. λέγει
δὲ καὶ φρόνιμον τοῦτο εἶναι τὸ πῦρ καὶ τῆς διοικήσεως τῶν
(65) ὅλων αἴτιον
(D/K, 1989, 165. “Das Weltall aber steuert
der Blitz d. h. et lenkt es. Unter Blitz versteht er nämlich das ewige Feuer.
Er sagt auch, dieses Feuer sei vernunftbegabt und Ursache der ganzen Weltregierung.”
“The
lightning(bolt) guides the Universe, which is to say that it steers it. By
‘lightning(bolt) Heraclitus means the eternal fire. He also says that this fire
is gifted with intelligence and is the cause of the entire world government.” (Translation
by Phrontisterion))
As said, the reading of H&F’s discussion about this
Heraclitan text is spectacularly tedious and pedantically vague. However, it
does serve to reveal their worldview, even if it dissembles that of Heraclitus;
and the worldview of H&F includes the idea that there is a “world
government” (D/K = Weltregierung). Heraclitus, on the
other hand, only speaks about the cause or reason of “all things” (τῶν (65) ὅλων αἴτιον)—which
is just another one of those collective noun moments gone awry between the
Greek world and the modern German readers of that ancient world. But after
awhile we should really become accustomed to such shifts and slides in
worldview, for, as Heidegger reminds us in a 1942 letter to his friend, the art
historian Kurt Bauch, (in Briefwechsel
(München: Karl Alber, 2010),
77-78) there is an other, mystical and romantic equivalency between the Greeks
and the Germans, which is the German conviction that they are in fact the
inheritors and embodiment of (=) the Greek belief and experience of the world.
So writes MH:
Wir werden das Land des
Abends für eine Nacht des Morgens sein. [...] Und dies können nur die Deutschen
sein, weil in ihnen die anfängliche Bestimmung des Griechentums aufbewahrt und
in ersten eigenen Atemzeugen zur Ahnung des Geschichtlichen entfaltet und jetzt
für sie zunächst auf die Nacht hinweggenommen ist.
(“We –our [West]land,
shall be the Evening [Abendland=West] for a Morning[land’s] night [Morgenland=Middle
East/East]. […] And such as these can only be Germans—for in them the earliest
destiny of ancient Greece is preserved; it is unfolded in their own very first pantings
toward the sense of the historical; and it is now for them, for a short night, taken
away.” (Translation by Phrontisterion))
In the ancient Greek of Heraclitus, Fragment 64 is actually
pretty straight-forward as a mytho-poetic narrative. In translation, however,
whether in German or in English, Fr. 64 reads strangely like a new-age tinted, contemporary
science text that shows a distinct lack of clarity in its meager attempt to give
definition to the notions of Matter and Energy.
The principal wisdom narratives of
the world tell stories of equivalencies between reality That is Seen and reality
That is Not Seen. They bespeak, in their own words and frames, fundamental
physical and metaphysical principles and processes, and poetize about that
which exists or happens on the outer edges of the Real. This is clear in the
articulation of the Sanskrit artha, the
Greek “Thunderbolt steers all things,” and in the modern scientific e=mc2.
Related Phrontisterion readings:
Further readings on Alan Sokal:
Sources:
·
Alan Sokal, Fashionable
Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, /Intellectual Impostures (USA: St Martin’s Press, 1999).
·
Bill Bryson, A
Short History of Nearly Everything, (NY: Random House, 2005).
·
Diels & Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Band I, (Hildesheim: Weidman, 1989).
·
Kirk, Raven and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edition (UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
·
Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, 1966/67 Heraclitus Seminar (AL: The
University of Alabama Press, 1979).
·
Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (US: Basic Books, 2010).
·
Thomas Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edition (US:
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 1970).
