08 August 2012
Fission impossible. Fusion accomplished
The subject-object split that has dogged modern thinking since the 17th century at the latest was overcome already in 1927. In a treatise linking being and time, human being was shown to have been in the world all along! What is startling is that this finding has remained unnoticed by scientists for 85 years to date. The consequences are immense. Both relativity theory and quantum mechanics turn out to be misconceptions. A corollary of this is that the Big Bang theory, too, loses its foundations and collapses. The enormous, multi-billion dollar shooting gallery recently completed in Geneva turns out to have been built on a misapprehension. Politicians, the media and the public remain quiet, as if dumbfounded by these revelations.
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Huh?? What are you talking about? It seems I've actually missed something in the news.
ReplyDeleteYep -- that's why the blog says "dumbfounded".
DeleteSpecial Relativity complements said 1927 treatise.
ReplyDeleteBefore either, there was universal absolute time. Both say that time is not universal, but own most to a body. If twins are born, each injected with a chronometer, and one stays put, while the other travels away from the Earth's gravity and spends years rapidly accelerating, then when the twin reunite and compare chronometers, they'll show different times. The two daseins lived different times. There is no universal time.
Ditto with General Relativity; the twin bodies lived differently curved spaces.
Every body has its own world.
I don't think so. Relativity theory, both special and general, is the consummation of subjectivist metaphysics. The observer-subject who receives light signals is at the centre. The absoluteness of time is replaced by the absoluteness of the speed and path of light (or other electro-magnetic radiation). Time itself remains linear. one-dimensional, mathematically calculable. Hence relativity theory is a diametrically opposed narrowing of three-dimensional time-space.
DeleteFor more detail on this controversial point, allow me to point you to "7.3.3 Excursus 3: On time in (a quantized) special relativity theory (Joy Christian") http://www.arte-fact.org/dgtlon_e.html#7.3.3
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ReplyDeleteHmmm. What does 'overcoming' mean in this context? If nobody noticed it [whatever there was to notice] - but a few born-to-be-Heideggerians?
ReplyDeleteIn this context, "overcome" means "well thought through". It takes only one -- and, in this case, goes against the grain of an entire age. If one learns something from Heidegger, is one a Heideggerian? If one learns from Aristotle, is one an Aristotelean? If one learns from Parmenides, is one a Parmenidean? If one goes beyond Heidegger, is one an independent thinker? Do I have to pin a party badge on my chest for every thinker from whom I have learnt something decisive?
DeleteIt isn't that easy to become a born-to-be-Heideggerian!
ReplyDelete(1) One has to believe truly that Heidegger did overcome - for example metaphysics, the subject-object relation, logic, or whatever. Of course, if overcoming just means well thinking through, Heidegger did overcome whatever he was thinking about, for example Nietzsche.
(2) To be a born-to-be-Heideggerian one should also have some missionary zeal - trying to convince the world (and in particular scientists) that whatever it undertakes is in vain unless inspired by what Heidegger had well thought through.
BTW, if there are born-to-be-Aristoteleans or Parmenideans I have yet to meet them.
So you have a distaste for Heidegger, and it's all a matter of what one subjectively believes, one's private opinion, and one opinion is as good as the next. Otherwise one falls into zealotry. That leaves aside what one can learn from Heidegger that is decisive. I have made myself very unpopular in many circles, including Marxist and Heideggerian ones, by learning also from Marx. There's no substitute for thinking something through well, especially when it goes against accepted ways of thinking -- a dangerous preoccupation that takes courage.
DeleteOh yes, there are neo-Parmenideans today of a sort; they are the scientists who defend a block theory of the universe. e.g. Julian Barbour cf. http://www.arte-fact.org/dgtlon_e.html#7.3.2 The question of time remains open and highly problematic today -- even self-confessedly within advanced mathematical physics which is still trying to find a unified quantum gravity theory.
No, why should I have a distaste for Heidegger? I'm a fervent admirer of his attempts to disclose what cannot be disclosed by means of for example an object-subject relation. There's indeed more to being than being a scientist and being an object of science. However, that doesn't imply IMHO that there is no place for scientists and their objects.
DeleteAnd no, it isn't a matter of what one subjectively believes nor of what is objectively true or not. What is well thought through should inspire one to be critical and to think for oneself.
And yes, there is no substitute for thinking against accepted ways of thinking. Perhaps I should add, and one should never accept inspiring ways of thinking - like Heidegger's.
Thanks for the clarification, Henk. Couldn't agree more with you that no thought should be uncritically accepted. Arguments from authority don't count. So I accept those of Heidegger's or Marx's or Hegel's or Descartes', etc. insights that I learn to see with my own mind's eye, and reject other thoughts of theirs that don't make sense.
DeleteSure, modern science has its place -- that of effective causality that goes hand in hand with linear, mathematized, real, continuous time, t. The problem is that it hogs the place, i.e. it totalizes from what is basically a narrow, mathematized access to the world bent solely on effectiveness. For scientific method, only the sensuously measured data in the present (including data records with a clock-time-stamp) are real (i.e. exist). That's why e.g. there are numerous scientists today who claim that time is an illusion. What they mean is that there is no time other than the present, from which every physical event forward and backward is calculable employing the appropriate equations. Einsteinian relativity is the consummation of this kind of mathematized thinking. Time itself becomes 'nothing other than' a path travelled by electromagnetic radiation (light). Quantum indeterminacy in itself does not break this cast of thinking, but forces modifications to (try to) deal with the quandary -- without sacrificing linear, real time.
Heidegger's concept of time in SZ makes only sense to me in the context of Befindlichkeit. It doesn't help me one bit when I want to know how late it is or how fast I'm driving.
ReplyDeletePerhaps science needs a new concept of time but I wonder if Heidegger's concept will be of any use at all. SZ is about Dasein (about what it is to be able to answer questions like 'who are you' and 'how do you do?), not about natural phenomena (explicitly not - cf. 184).
Could you explain to someone who is a complete stranger in modern science why you believe that Heidegger's concept of time could be useful in the context of natural phenomena?
Modern science cannot do without linear, mathematized time. Science's essence is the will to power over movement/change of all kinds, and this will is always at time t0. Phenomenology is only 'useful' in learning to see what is "hard to see" (Aristotle) because it is so simple. Science doesn't see that the quandary it is in over quantum indeterminacy is essentially related to its very preconceptions of time and movement. All movement/change is marked by a double presence of presence and absence. To see that, the very meaning of 'to exist' has to shift from (tacitly) standing presence in the sensuous present to presencing and absencing in the three-dimensional temporal clearing. Only from this clearing can physical phenomena (_ta kinoumena_) be appropriately and fully seen, and not truncated by modern science's tunnel vision. More detail e.g. at http://www.arte-fact.org/dgtlon_e.html#7.2.
DeleteThanks for the URL! Even after reading 7.2. I find it hard to see your point. There is a scientific (constructed) concept of time and there is a phenomenological (lived) one. Both concepts are truncated by 'tunnel vision' - by the way we are related to the phenomena (respectus, Beziehung).
DeleteThe point may be hard to see, because it is so simple and basic. What I try to show is that mathematized, linear time is derivative of counted clock-time, which is itself, in turn, derivative of the three-dimensional temporal clearing. That is, the last is tacitly presupposed by the former two -- and not the other way round. In philosophical thinking, one must always have in mind the order of priority. The deepest philosophical insights are always a matter of unearthing the tacit presuppositions through which the question at hand is begged. So I would hope to have shown that three-dimensional time is the widening of the tunnel vision of modern scientific mathematized time which is demanded by (the preconception of) total effective causality. From phenomenology, one can see what modern science has in view, which has its restricted realm of validity. The converse does not hold: modern science, by virtue of its very method, is either simply blind to many phenomena in the world or distorts them by forcing them into an inappropriate cast of thought (a.k.a. paradigm).
DeleteIf I understand you correctly it's not the problem of the concept of time as such but of priority - whether phenomenology is prior to science AND whether being prior implies a hierarchy of sorts.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm correct you maintain that phenomenological knowledge is not only more fundamental because it deals with things closest to us but is also a better (fuller, not truncated) way of knowing phenomena of any kind.It has more 'goodness' as a way of knowing.
The question is, of course, am I correct??
"Hierarchy" suggests a power structure and therefore also a power struggle, but for philosophical thinking, the power involved is only that of being able to see better for oneself. Thus, you have to decide for yourself how you can see better. That is a free choice, not that of subjugating yourself to some kind of superior power, i.e. it's your own 'being-able' and hence free. In the present case you just have to ask yourself whether mathematized linear, real time tacitly presupposes the three-dimensional temporal clearing or not. You seem to want to abscond into a comfortable skepticism in which you simply close your eyes to the world, instead of trusting your own mind's eye. We can see mathematical entities, but are they the ones closest and more fundamental to us existing in the world? As a trained mathematician who worked professionally as a mathematician, I say no. Is that controversial for you? I find it very odd that 'people' are prepared to accept, say, Einstein's 1905 scientific 'discovery' of the photo-electric quantum effect (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize), that involves very difficult mathematics (presupposing linear real time) that only a very few people can follow, but that they balk at the phenomenon of three-dimensional time that is before their eyes in the world, if you take some care to see it -- as said 1927 treatise, and some more, enables us to do. Subjugating oneself to the authority of modern science, which is so 'unquestioningly' successful, seems to me to amount to unfree, wilful blindness, and the 'will' here is a will to effective power. You may find my section 2.9 on "Time and movement in Aristotle's thinking" enlightening http://www.arte-fact.org/dgtlon_e.html#2.9.
DeleteThanks for the URL! Aristotle's concept of movement is three-dimensional (going from A to B propelled by energy), not his concept of time.
ReplyDeleteHeidegger's concept of time seems also to be a concept of movement (already-in/zurück-auf, self-ahead/auf-sich-zu, being-among/begegnenlassen-von) but the movement is relational not physical. Even the distance between what is feared and the one who fears is an experienced (unmeasurable) distance.
It's clear, also from Aristotle's account of time, that counting time in relation to movement (going from A to B in a number of seconds, minutes etc.) isn't what is closest and most fundamental to us.
Whether physical movement is somehow based on relational movement, or vice versa, is an interesting metaphysical question (the science of priorities and hierarchies).
Yes, it's a matter of seeing clearly what is hard to see, and what the entire metaphysical tradition never quite uncovered, although it left many hints. The subtlety, to my mind, is that your mind is nothing other than your singular exposure to the three-dimensional temporal clearing in which the play of the presencing and absencing of presents takes place. Metaphysically, the physical has been tied to the present, sensuous, now-instant, and this is the source of modern science's tunnel vision, including its obsession with effectiveness. The will to power over movement/change is strong -- and wilfully blind.
DeleteAristotle makes an interesting point in 219b3. Time is not movement but movement expressed in numbers - h(? a)riqmon e)cei h( ki/nsij.
ReplyDeleteIn Heidegger's concept of time numbers are absent. What remains is movement - not physical but relational
Yes, "your mind is nothing other than your singular exposure to the three-dimensional temporal clearing in which the play of the presencing and absencing of presents takes place" - if you replace references to time by references to relations.
Dasein is being-with-others-in-an-ever-changing/moving/becoming-world. One may express some changes/moves/becomings in numbers but there is no necessity to do so, and most often is completely impossible to do so.
Yes, Aristotle lifts time off movement/change as the tick, tick, tick of clock-time (the clock may be the sun, the shadow it casts the moon, an artefact, etc.). Modern science mathematizes this clock-time as a real, continuous, linear variable, t. Your suggestion, "if you replace references to time by references to relations," I see the other way round: temporal relations such as 'now', 'back then', 'then' are themselves situated in the three ecstatic dimensions of time which together constitute the time-space clearing presupposed by the play of presencing and absencing. That seems to me to be the 'bottom line', as they say.
DeleteThese dimensions are disclosed in Dasein's Befindlichkeit/state-of-mind - not the other way around. For example, the 'now' (based on 'back then') is disclosed in Dasein's fear, it doesn't disclose Dasein's fear.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, Dasein doesn't require the play of presencing and absencing. This play is only possbile thanks to Dasein - as a being
that is with other beings in the world.
I know that you disagree but am curious to know on what grounds.
Why I disagree? Befindlichkeit, along with understanding, is one of the two fundamental ways in which Dasein is open to the Da, the clearing. Befindlichkeit is HOW Dasein finds itself in each situation, its MODE of being in the world, which is related to MOOD. So I render it as moodedness rather than state-of-mind (which is misleading). SuZ does a 'first pass' to work out the ontological Structure of Dasein, that is care (Sorge), which, as you know, is three-dimensional. This is then taken deeper in a 'second pass', a "more originary repetition" ("ursprünglichere Wiederholung" §66), to unearth the tacit ontological presuppositions of care, which turn out to be 3D temporality (Zeitlichkeit). Of course Dasein "requires the play of presencing and absencing" within the temporal clearing (just as, conversely, the temporal clearing requires Dasein to have a witness, a spectator). Fear (Furcht), e.g., is always the fear of something absent possibly presencing from the temporal dimension of the future. Your conception turns this around, as if Dasein projected its inner mood onto the world, thus also generating time itself -- but that is the subjectivist way of thinking (cf. Kant) that overlooks that Dasein is always already in the world, i.e. in the Da, which has this 3D temporal structure. That is, the projection comes too late.
DeleteThe dimensions of § 66 ff. are already present in Heidegger’s description of fear and anxiety. The way Dasein is ‘mooded’, i.e. is related to the world, determines whether it is affected by the fact that it is (throwness as a burden), that it is with others (fear/danger) or that it has to be (anxiety/uncanny). From § 66 on mood no longer plays a role. The mooded relations (is, is with other, has to be) only serve as a springboard for an account on Dasein’s historicality (Geschichtlichkeit). The description of what it means to be able to answer questions like ‘who are you’ and ‘how are you?’ becomes a theoretical exercise, wherein time isn’t allowed to be a sequence but is allowed to continue. The continuing past is present in the sense that it makes the present (encounter) and future (advent) possible.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Dasein does project its mood. Fearfulness precedes the possibility of fearing what is threatening. It’s subjective in a way: Dasein is mine, Dasein is fearful (Befindlichkeit). It can also be intersubjective (Mitbefindlichkeit). Dasein may experience the fact that it is “here and now”. In this context now is not an experience of time (like: ‘it’s 12 o’clock’) but an experience of being/being thrown itself.
I think this is a continuation of your back-to-front reading. Of course the temporal dimensions are implicitly present -- precisely in the structure of Dasein as care. That's why §66 speaks of a "more originary repetition" to make what is implicit explicit. For your reading it would be merely a "corollary". That would be very strange for a book entitled "Being and Time". The meaning of being is precisely time. Dasein's historicality is precisely its rich, manifold exposure to 3D time. This ia previously unheard of. and people still do not want to hear. Dasein itself is originary openness to the 3D temporal clearing. Only given this clearing is it able to cast its self -- precisely into the future. This has nothing to do with "allowing" time to be this or that (by whose authority?), but seeing (i.e. an act of freedom).
DeleteBy reading Dasein as projecting its moods (quite impossible) and by understanding Mitbefindlichkeit as "intersubjective" instead of as a shared exposure to a shared, temporally structured situation, you perform a rollback into accustomed, subjectivist, metaphysical ways of thinking. So everything remains the same. The pivotal point is missed once again.
PS: For more on historicality, see my "Time of History" http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/tmhstry1.html
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