The Klymene Principle

A Unified Approach to Emergent Consciousness

by Rainer E. Zimmermann

Philosophy Preprints PP 981201

IAG Philosophische Grundlagenprobleme
FB 1 (Erziehungswissenschaft & Humanwissenschaften)
Universitt-Gesamthochschule Kassel
Nora-Platiel-Str.1, D - 34127 Kassel

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The Klymene Principle

A Unified Approach to Emergent Consciousness
by Rainer E. Zimmermann
Lehrgebiet Philosophie, Fachbereich Allgemeinwissenschaften, Fachhochschule,
Postfach 200113, D - 80001 Mnchen & Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft
und Humanwissenschaften, Universitt-Gesamthochschule, Nora-Platiel-Str.1,
D - 34127 Kassel, e-mail: pd00108atmail.lrz-muenchen.de

... poetry and science alike

require for their healthy practice both precision
and an appreciation for subtlety and complexity.
Lee Smolin: The Life of the Cosmos1

Abstract
The recent development of philosophy is discussed in terms of its re-positioning with
respect to science. The basic ideas on the traditional line of thinking dealing with this
relationship are briefly summarized, giving an overview on theories beginning with
ancient Stoa and reaching up to the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, including the Arab
conception of matter as a modified Aristotelian approach, and the theories of Bruno,
Spinoza, and Schelling, respectively. The relationship between the major results of
this philosophical tradition and recent concepts of modern science is discussed then,
displaying the heuristic power of philosophy in more detail. In particular, ideas put
forward by Trifonov, Tegmark, and Smolin are reviewed with respect to a possible
foundation of physics and mathematics in view of a consequent rephrasing of what
philosophy can mean today in terms of a unified onto-epistemic conception. Hence,
the problem of cosmological principles determining early evolutionary aspects of the
universe is addressed, referring to what is called a theory of everything (TOE) and its
further consequences for the shaping of the world, in particular with respect to other
fields of science. Also, Smolins ansatz of cosmological natural selection is generalized somewhat, and it is shown that in principle, the basic material for a truly unified
approach to the totality of the world is assembled already, provided that an appropriate type of generalized perspective is taken into account. It is shown that such a
perspective is basically one which points to a theory of reflexion which in turn, in so
far as reflexion is visualized as nothing but as a product of this same process of evolution being discussed here, shows up as a theory of self-organizing nature, being a
self-differentiation of its underlying foundation, at the same time. Hence, the
re-constructing of basic categories such as space, time, matter, and so forth, is basically the same as the re-constructing of the underlying process which produces the
concrete correlates to these categories. And so, categories as being the result of the
1

L.Smolin: The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford University Press, 1997, 145.

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epistemic progression of (human) reflexion, are themselves the auto-epistemic correlate of the unfolding of the world. A short, programmatical systematic is given as an
outline then, of how to unify all these aspects in one conception, encompassing science as well as art, in order to eventually gain some more insight into the manner in
which humans grasp their worldly environment for establishing a basic orientation
which may serve as a guideline for their actions according to what they call conscious
understanding of the world. This is also important for gaining some more insight into
the role, philosophy on the one hand, and science and art on the other, play in the
explicit designing of everyday life, as it is defined in empirical terms. Ethical implications of this discussion are given, with a view to the fact that - well in Spinozist tradition - philosophy serves primarily the foundation of ethics, an objective which basically depends on improving human reflexion.

Contents (Outline)
I
II

Introduction
The General Line of Thought
A. The Stoic Foundation
B. Averroes
C. Bruno
D. Spinoza
E. Schelling
F. Bloch
III Modern Implications of the General Line
A. Metaphysics as Ultima Philosophia
B. The Relationship to Science
C. The Principle of Self-Narration
D. Topoi of Emergence
IV The Conception of Trifonov
V
The Conception of Tegmark
VI Cosmological Natural Selection According to Smolin
VII Systematic Aspects of Unified Onto-Epistemology
VIII New Organon of Philosophy (A Proto-Theoretic Matrix
of Basic Concepts)
IX Intercultural Stability of Concepts
X
Ethno-Poetical Ethics as Advanced Theory-Praxis: Walking
the Songlines of Nature

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I. Introduction
One should have two lifes: one for reading all the important books that come
across, and the second for carefully re-reading them. During the last twenty-five
years a considerable amount of conceptual change has taken place in the physical sciences. And it looks very much as if a kind of permanent revolution has
been underway all the time. As Paul Davies has formulated in the preface to his
collected contributions to the New Physics, the beginning of this century saw
the dawning of this new physics rather than a Golden Age lying buried in the
past and giving rise to nostalgic moments. And he visualizes a third revolution
by now, taking place across a broad front, indeed.2 Consequently, in his collection, all the fields of actual development have been assembled, including,
among others, space-time physics (presented in contributions by Will, Guth and
Steinhardt, Hawking, and Isham), the new astrophysics (Longair), critical point
phenomena (Bruce and Wallace), far-from-equilibrium systems (Nicolis), and
the celebrated GUT (Georgi). The names quoted are well-known by today such
that merely listing them indicates the change of physical viewpoints related to
the work of their holders. On the other hand, this was almost ten years ago.
Hence, in the meantime, other topics have emerged which were hardly mentioned before. But the point is that everything was there already, only that our
sharpened perception and our heightened attention are used to realize this not
before the end of a second turn. Usually however, there is not enough time to
start a second turn in first place. (This would be the necessary re-reading phase.)
Indeed, if one would like to deal with the history of this change in more detail
(what is not our objective here, in fact3), one would realize that the milestones of
this development can be easily mapped to a particular reception of significant
books being published at the time. So, before we continue with the explication
of what this present paper is actually all about, we will shortly outline the basic
aspects of this correspondence. 4
It was in the year of 1973, when the historic volume by Hawking and Ellis, on
2

P.Davies (ed.): The New Physics, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

For an illustration of how an appropriate assessment of this historical development could look like refer to
M.Serres (ed.): Elements dhistoire des sciences, Bordas, Paris, 1989. The time table in this collection of essays
stops at about 1950 (while actually starting in ancient times). Probably, a similar volume should be necessary to
cover the development of the following fifty years.
4
A remark should be in order as to the subjectivity of the chosen criteria for selecting the works actually mentioned: They start from the classical view of Einsteins relativity theory and its generalizations as having been
presented by what I like to call the English school (with Penrose, Hawking and others). This is mainly due to my
own development in the field which began in the year 1973 as a DIC student at Imperial College London and
included a regular participation in the relativity seminars at Kings College London. Unfortunately, at that time,
my particular interest in Kaluza-Klein theory, let me fall between two stools, because as a student in the neighborhood of Abdus Salam and Thomas Kibble this was not quite the appropriate subject to choose, while at
Kings (and on excursions to Oxford and Cambridge) cosmic censorship and the behaviour in the vicinity of
black holes were the central topics to be discussed. Before re-entering the subject in time in order to get
aquainted to promising developments in superstrings (or later in loop theory), I had changed to philosophy, because after my return to Germany it appeared to be useful to look for an alternative way of satisfying the needs
of the stomach as Einstein used to put it. This present paper is actually about this philosophical turn, in first
place. So if I speak of we at one or the other occasion, I mean those who have taken a similar development. In
fact, it can be shown that the set of all those is at least non-empty.
3

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the large-scale structure of space-time, had been published, collecting for the
first time the insights gained by general relativity, after the introduction and establishment of the co-ordinate-free notation in terms of differential geometry
and topology. About the same time, the famous work of Misner, Thorne, and
Wheeler, and the concise book by Weinberg, represented the standard instruments of understanding the universe as a whole. 5 The innovative aspect of the
English work was the consequent exploitation of the methods developed. These
techniques were also discussed by the American texts, but they did not really
establish the methodological nucleus which consisted instead of an alternative
(canonical) formalism developed first by Arnowitt, Deser, and Misner in all
generality. 6 (Of course, from the beginning on there was no doubt as to the
permanent interactions between the two conventions which can be seen most
clearly in terms of the Newman-Penrose spin coefficient formalism developed
even earlier.7) For someone who had acquired the basic knowledge of relativity
in terms of classical books such as Adler, Bazin and Schiffers introduction8, the
change of viewpoint was an enlightenment: In particular, the new quality of a
formal language extending towards physical problems which could be formulated exactly, but without necessarily relying on anything of a quantitative,
computable or measurable kind in the traditional sense, was a centre of strong
intellectual attraction. This was even felt in view of the very layout of the text in
these books such as that given by Hawking and Penrose: theorems being presented not so much in terms of a long sequence of equations, but in a closed bloc
of colloquial text, similar to a piece of literary prose. Not that there had not
been elegant expositions of theoretical physics before, the generation of the students then being accumstomed to works on physics such as the equally canonical books by Landau and Lifshitz, or the Bourbaki mathematics taught by
Dieudonn in volume 1 of his Elements of modern analysis, but their style
was the usual one known from school (not however from Dieudonns volume 2
onward), - and although the new form of language was not really less interspersed with abstract symbols (in a way, all in all, the degree of abstraction had
actually been increased), the new texts breathed a kind of concrete atmosphere
which encouraged the student to tackle far more difficult problems in a wider
5

S.W.Hawking, G.F.R.Ellis: The Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge University Press, 1973.C.W.Misner, K.S.Thorne, J.A.Wheeler: Gravitation, Freeman, San Francisco, 1973.- S.Weinberg: Gravitation
and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity. Wiley, New York etc., 1972.
6
In Weinbergs book there are two relevant chapters, one on the action principle (ch. 12) including the tetrad
formalism (12.5), and one on symmetric spaces (ch. 13), respectively, while in the book of Misner, Thorne, and
Wheeler, these aspects were treated in more detail, as global techniques (sect. 34), and spinors (sect. 41), being
accompagnied then by other techniques such as Regge calculus, superspace, or pre-geometry (sect. 42sqq.).- A
direct (and fruitful) confrontation of the two could be observed during the 1974 visit of Wheeler to England,
related to the historic Oxford symposion on quantum gravity in the spring of that year. Cf. C.J.Isham, R.Penrose,
D.W.Sciama (eds): Quantum Gravity. An Oxford Symposium. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975. This volume
includes a detailed exposition of twistor theory (Penrose, 268-407) and the famous article by G.M.Patton and
J.A.Wheeler: Is Physics Legislated by Cosmogony? (538-605).
7
E.T.Newman, R.Penrose: An approach to gravitational radiation by a method of spin coefficients, J.Math.Phys.
3, 1962, 566-578.
8
R.Adler, M.Bazin, M.Schiffer: Introduction to General Relativity, McGraw-Hill, New York etc., 1965.

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range as had been expected before. And these problems became more and more
related to a conception which viewed the universe as a unified totality governed
by laws which could be extended in a progressive differentiation into detailed
regions of very specific processes, even extending beyond physics, at the same
time.9
This became even more important when another branch of physics emerged all
of a sudden, in a comparatively spontaneous onset of publication (in English
language). Curiously enough, it started in pure mathematics, and was generalized in physical chemistry first, before being re-introduced within a wide range
of possible applications into the field of physics proper: It was the advent of the
theories of self-organization and the formation of structure, introduced first by
Ren Thom, and by Ilya Prigogine, from two different perspectives. While the
former, in his creation of catastrophe theory, aimed to the modelling of archetypal germs for some local dynamics, the latter concentrated on the thermodynamical aspect of the maintaining of stable structures far from equilibrium. 10
Later on, it was recognized that Thom described in fact a special case of models
contained in the theory of Prigogine, referring to a dynamics of gradient-type,
only.11 The important point however was (still a number of years before the impact of chaos theory was actually fully comprehended) that both of them did not
hesitate to extend their basically mathematical and physical arguments to other
domains of sciences, in particular to those which had not been the topic of
mathematical modelling before. To be more precise, there were two different
aspects of this kind: On the one hand, the range of possible applications was decisively extended. On the other hand, first philosophical implications were being
discussed, including a closer look to the practical interactions between science
and society. Hence, the work of Prigogine gave rise to activities not only in
physics, chemistry, and biology, but also in social science, and in philosophy
itself. (In fact, it was Michel Serres who for the first time found a direct connection between philosophy and modern science, which was introduced on-line (so
to speak) into the theory of Prigogine in two subsequent works the latter published together with Isabelle Stengers, a former student of Serres. 12) The same
did the work of Thom.13 But contrary to the impression one could have won in
9

It was in fact, an intellectual adventure alone, to try the rephrasing of well-known outlines of classical theory in
terms of both new formalism and style, e.g. when applied to Einsteins theory of unified fields, to KK theory, or
the gauge theory of Weyl. Cf. M.A.Tonnelat: Les thories unitaires de llectromagnetisme et de la gravitation.
Gauthiers-Villars, Paris, 1965. (See ch.IV on KK theory, and ch.IX on Weyl theory.) Also id.: Einsteins Unified
Field Theory, Gordon and Breach, New York, 1966. (French ed. at Gauthiers-Villars, Paris, 1955).
10
R.Thom: Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, Benjamin, Reading (Mass.), 1975.- I.Prigogine: Vom Sein
zum Werden (From Being to Becoming), Piper, Mnchen, 1979.- G.Nicolis, I.Priogine: Self-Organization in
Non-Equilibrium Systems. From Dissipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations. Wiley-Interscience, New
York etc., 1977.
11
R.E.Zimmermann: Ordnung und Unordnung. Zum neueren Determinismusstreit zwischen Thom und Prigogine. Lendemains 50, 1988, 60-74.
12
I.Prigogine, I.Stengers: Dialog mit der Natur (La nouvelle alliance), Piper, Mnchen, Zrich, 1981.- Id., id.:
Das Paradox der Zeit (Time, chaos, and the quantum), Piper, Mnchen, Zrich, 1993.
13
Cf. R.Thom: Mathematical Models of Morphogenesis. Ellis-Horwood, Chichester (UK), 1983.- T.Poston,
I.Stewart: Catastrophe Theory and its Applications, Pitman, London etc., 1978.

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the beginning, namely that the theory of the latter was nothing but a restricted
version of Priogines theory of self-organization, in particular with a view to the
rather unfortunate debate on determinism taking place in France afterwards,
there was another point of difference to it: Thom extended not only the domain
of processes to be dealt with by catastrophe theory, but he also extended the
range of formal languages pointing to a kind of convergence with other,
non-formal types of language. The idea was originally, to develop a kind of linguistic theory bound to a semiological approach to meaning in general, with
finding the language of qualitative mathematics at the root of this. 14 It is this
idea in fact, which has secured the value of Thoms theory for the future, and
which enables Thom to visualize his approach as a first approximation to a future philosophy of nature still to be developed. 15 The key volume illustrating
similar aspects of a possible interaction of philosophy and science, was the collection of essays edited by Jantsch and Waddington in 1976 16: Within the frame
of a systematic network of topical references, the above mentioned problems
were combined to give a global panorama of human development. Or to be more
precise: The anthropological roots of science were in the focus of this interdisciplinary discussion. We could learn about the analogy of self-organization in social systems (Prigogine), or about the self-reproducing aspects of natural auto-poiesis (Zeleny and Pierre). And of course, we learnt of the relevance of the
principle of resilience, as the correct interpretation of Darwins theory of evolution in terms of natural selection (Holling). 17 It was the latter concept in fact,
that turned our attention to the classical work of Robert May on ecosystems. 18
(The full implications of this however remained hidden for quite a long while.)
At the time of the Einstein centennial however, there was still only little contact
between the physics mainstream dealing with relativity and its implications on
the one hand, and non-equilibrium processes of self-organization on the other,
although Hawking and Ellis in 1973, actually had referred to (the French version
of) Thoms book stating that (i)t may be that there is some connection between
the singularities studied in General Relativity and those studied in other branches of physics (...).19 Three monumental reviews of mainline relativity appeared
in 1979, but there was no explicit reference to any change (or extension at least)
of the classical paradigms handed down to us from an epoch prior to the qualitative step taken in 1973. Instead, the approaches to quantum gravity had been di14

R.Thom: Langage et catastrophes: Elments pour une smantique topologique. In: M.M.Peixoto (ed.), Dynamical Systems, Academic Press, New York, London, 1973, 619-654.
15
R.Thom: Towards a Revival of Natural Philosophy. In: W.Gttinger, H.Eikemeier (eds.), Structural Stability
in Physics, Springer, Berlin etc., 1979, 5-11. See more recently R.E.Zimmermann: Emergenz und exakte Narration des Welthaften. Zur Naturdialektik aus heutiger Sicht. System & Struktur III/1, 1995, 139-169.
16
E.Jantsch, C.H.Waddington (eds.): Evolution and Consciousness. Human Systems in Transition. Addison-Wesley, Reading (Mass.), 1976.
17
C.S.Holling: Resilience and Stability of Ecosystems. (73-92) - I.Prigogine: Order through Fluctuation:
Self-organization and Social System. (93-133) - M.Zeleny, N.A.Pierre: Simulation of Self-Renewing Systems.
(150-165)
18
R.M.May: Stability and Complexity of Model Ecosystems. Princeton University Press, 1973.
19
Hawking, Ellis, op.cit., 363.- For some of us this was a strong encouragement to actually start looking for this
connection.

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versified. Hence, in the Cambridge volume20, Brandon Carter e.g., summarized

the thermodynamical aspects of black holes treating the horizon as a material
(which later on led to the membrane paradigm of Kip Thorne), while Chandrasekhar reviewed the results on the celebrated Kerr metric. But Roger Penrose,
Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, dealt explicitly with new aspects of
quantum theory within this framework. 21 While the first two mentioned above
and most of the other contributions were real reviews in the sense that they were
summarizing recent results, leading not very much beyond what was known in
1973 in fact, Penrose and Hawking opened up new perspectives: It was especially Penrose, who with his Weyl curvature hypothesis, began a completely new
discussion binding together thermodynamics, quantum theory, and the nature of
space-time singularities. Insofar the theories of self-organization had led to the
understanding of the difference among various types of singularities, the work of
Penrose made it possible to find reasons for looking for an explicit relationship
between the initial singularity of the universe (as its origin and the onset of
worldly evolution) and the local singularities encountered within the universe
due to astrophysical processes, on the one hand, and between these singularities
and the theory of evolution in thermodynamical terms including the formation of
structure, on the other. The condition for understanding this was to re-formulate
curves on space-time including their boundary points in terms of a phase space
associated in a natural way to space-time itself. Also, a first step was done towards the foundation of the universe, in the sense of studying the conditions
necessary for some primordial structure which eventually could produce the
universe in letting it emerge (such that worldly structures in the empirical
sense would show up as formal derivations of this abstract pre-geometrical entity).22
In the Berlin volume23, the philosophical perspective had been extended somewhat, and apart from a number of papers dedicated to standard problems or to
gauge theory24, the philosophical relevance of cosmology was being discussed in
detail for the first time. 25 Very similar, but without a philosophical reference,

20

S.W.Hawking, W.Israel (eds.): General Relativity. An Einstein Centenary Survey. Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
21
B.Carter: The general theory of the mechanical, electromagnetic, and thermodynamic properties of black
holes, 294-369.- S.Chandrasekhar: An introduction to the theory of the Kerr metric and its perturbations,
370-453.- R.Penrose: Singularities and time-asymmetry, 581-638.- B.S.DeWitt: Quantum gravity: the new synthesis, 680-745.- S.W.Hawking: The path-integral approach to quantum gravity, 746-789.- S.Weinberg: Ultraviolet divergences in quantum theories of gravitation, 790-831.
22
I have summarized some of these aspects myself in: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Philosophical
Implications of Self-Reference. In: J.L.Casti, A.Karlquist (eds.), Beyond Belief, Randomness, Prediction, and
Explanation in Science, CRC Press, Boca Raton etc., 1991, 14-54. See also my: Self-Reference. On the Generic
Non-linearity of Nature. Phil. Nat. 27 (2), 1990, 272-297.
23
H.Nelkowski et al. (eds.): Einstein Symposion Berlin, Springer (Lecture Notes in Physics 100), Berlin etc.,
1979.
24
Cf.e.g. B.Zumino: Supersymmetry. A Way to the Unitary Field Theory. (114-127)(Including a reference to
KK theory, in fact.)- J.Wess: Methods of Differential Geometry in Gauge Theories and Gravitational Theories.
(233-244)
25
B.Kanitscheider: Die philosophische Relevanz der Kosmologie, 336-357.

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was the situation within the two Princeton volumes. 26 Hence, for quite some
time, there were two more or less isolated strings of development running parallel to each other with a certain amount of convergence, but without really coming into contact. Some of the outstanding books, collecting a large number of
important results in their own right, did not change this situation at all. 27 But
instead, the time of twistors was dawning.
The twistor concept of Penrose was in fact the natural generalization of what
had been learned before, on the relationships between space-time structure and
evolution in the thermodynamical sense, and with a view to the possible foundation of the universe on a pre-geometric structure existing in a sense (logically)
prior to the universe. The basic idea of twistors, as introduced end of the sixties,
and particularly in a volume of collected essays on combinatorial methods edited by Ted Bastin 28 , rooted in the concept of spin networks. Penrose tried to
re-construct space-time from combinatorial elements of structure, basically consisting of a network of abstract particles interacting only by exchanging their
respective spin numbers, without referring to any background metric. Geometric
concepts such as angles among principle directions of space could be approximated then by simply condensing the underlying network. Twistors were
nothing but a generalization of this approach in order to actually include more
complicated (and thus more real) particles having also momentum and total
angular momentum under relativistic conditions.
It was not before 1986 however, that the master piece on twistors had been finished by Penrose and Rindler.29 (I am not sure whether Penrose would himself
judge it as a master piece today, but it was one indeed, and the subsequent work
has confirmed this beyond any doubt.30) Of course, Wheeler and others had discussed the possibility of pre-geometry before, thinking of a straightforward realization of Einsteins vision. And the idea of superspace had been born. But, in
a sense, the American approach appeared to be too qualitative (if not intuitive),
and it did not couple immediately to the problem of unifying general relativity
and quantum theory, if not in the interior of the world, then exterior to it. And
the spinor picture of space-time was well established about that time. Insofar as
twistor space showed up as a product of spin space and its dual, it was a kind of
systematic revelation of how to interpret the condensation of spin networks in
order to define something like a formal foundation of space-time-matter (because for the self-dual case, pieces of space and time as well as elementary par26

A.Held (ed.): General Relativity and Gravitation. 2 vols., Plenum, New York, London, 1980.- Cf.e.g. Stanley
Deser (I 357-392) and Ferrara and van Nieuwenhuizen (I 557-585) on supergravity, Tipler et al. on singularities
and horizons (II 97-206), and Penrose and Ward on twistors (II 283-328).
27
Cf.e.g. F.P.Esposito, L.Witten (eds.): Asymptotic Structure of Space-Time, Plenum, New York, London,
1977, with important contributions by Geroch on asymptotic structure (1-105), Parker on particle production by
strong gravitational fields (107-226), and Ko, Newman, and Tod on H-space theory (227-271).- Also
P.G.Bergmann, V. DeSabbata (eds.): Cosmology and Gravitation, Plenum, New York, London, 1980, with contributions by E.T.Newman on complex manifolds (275-285) and R.Penrose on twistors (287-316). Probably, the
latter paper is the most concise and clear contribution to the understanding of twistor theory.
28
T.Bastin (ed.): Quantum theory and beyond, Cambridge University Press, 1971.
29
R.Penrose, W.Rindler: Spinors and Space-Time, 2 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1984, 1986.
30
See e.g. R.S.Ward, R.O.Wells jr.: Twistor Geometry and Field Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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10

ticles could be produced without referring to a classical background space). Independent of the further development (in particular, of the fact that loops and
knots appear by now as a generic generalization of spin networks, but (perhaps)
not twistors), the twistor concept, including Newmans heaven theory as a special case, was a first clear step towards telling the history of the origin of the
universe as its foundation, and as an explication of the emergence of the relativity view, and of the quantum view, respectively, at the same time.
*
So what is the intention of this present paper now, with a view to what we have
said so far? In fact, other topics have emerged by now that govern the mainstream discussions today, in particular strings (including M-theory), loops, and
knots ( there are about 400 papers in the hep-th and gr-qc sections of the Los
Alamos preprint archives per month, about a quarter of them referring to quantum gravity, of which roughly 90% deal with either string theory or loop theory
(in a division of about 3:1) such that most of the string papers appear in the
hep-th section, most of the other papers in the gr-qc section31). But it is still the
twistor concept which has the privilege of having founded the first contact to a
classical line of philosophy.
During all the progress made in the understanding of the physical foundations of
the universe, mainstream philosophy has stood aside all the time. While being
engaged in either historical problems of its own field, or in the re-phrasing of
everyday language in logical terms in order to eventually extract a meaning from
where no meaning was actually being expected, philosophy missed the connection to innovations in science. Ironically, those who worked in the field which
was traditionally associated to questions of speculative physics in the sense of
Schelling, and to the materialistic turn of this approach, looking forward to a
possible foundation of the world in scientific terms, were at the same time those
who (due to reasons related to their social and political theory) not only criticized (or censured rather) the progress made by science, but even neglected the
actual development deliberately (so that very soon their arguments missed the
mark in first place). Hence, nowadays, very near to the millennium, a philosophy of nature in the traditional sense has almost disappeared, exactly at a time
when it is most needed.
It is probably an illustrating example to look at volume 31/2 of the journal Philosophia
naturalis which is one of the leading journals of its kind in Germany (though it is understood
as being an international journal, in fact, publishing both in German and English). This second
part of the volume appeared in 1994 and was dedicated to problems of space and time in general, and especially to cosmology. There are eight papers in the collection of this volume: Luciano Boi discusses the relationship between Riemanns conceptions of a dynamical geometry
and his ideas about the philosophy of nature, William Craig and Adolf Grnbaum continue
31

These dates have been collected meritoriously, by Carlo Rovelli, cf. his GR 15 lecture in Poona, gr-qc
9803024.

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11

their debate about the question whether the universe has necessarily been created or not according to indications given by cosmology, Thomas Arzt discusses the interests of Pauli, especially with a view to his contact with C.G.Jung, Axel Ziemke deals with aspects of the
neuro-biology of perception, Andreas Bartels refers to Earmans concept of absolute space,
and Claus Kiefer finally, discusses quantum gravity. Except Ziemkes contribution, which
falls into biology rather than into the field of the main topic discussed here, all the other contributions are of a decidedly unsatisfactory type: Boi talks about basically old points which are
well-known for quite a while (except perhaps that the philology applied to extract these results is comparatively new). As the most important insight into Riemann he visualizes that the
metric structure of a space is represented as a given state (or as he says equivalently: as a
type of being) of matter, i.e. the metric structure is in a causality relation with the state of
matter.32 Neither is this a very new insight in fact, nor is the terminology used very clearly.
It is actually the fact of knowing what might be meant by the author what makes a conceptual
critique of this formulation possible at all, because otherwise one could not extract a proper
meaning from this relationship between states of matter on the one hand, and causality, on the
other. There are several of similarly unclear passages, and we would not like to comment on
them any further. But it is interesting to note that a discussion which primarily refers to aspects of substance metaphysics, mentions Herbart, but not Schelling. Instead of pointing to
the fact that Riemann might have anticipated Husserl and Cassirer, it would be more straightforward to reflect about the influence of Schelling onto Riemann. It is in fact the philosophy
of Schelling which anticipates numerous (philosophical) problems modern physics encountered not only during the 19th century, but also during our own century. (Note that it is actually Ziemke who explicitly refers to Schelling! And he even knows of the important work of
Camilla Warnke of the late seventies.33) Craig and Grnbaum engage on a debate about the
theological implications of the Big Bang. 34 This may be interesting in its own right, but the
question is what the philosophy of nature has actually to do with it. An error of category is
probably the least one could state in order to object to this debate in such a journal. And indeed, even in philosophical terms, the arguments presented are obviously rather off-shore:
Craig insists that the origin of the universe is actually prior to the Big Bang (which is
well-known). Unfortunately, with respect to a cause of the universe, he continues: From the
nature of the cause involved, that cause must have transcended space and time (...) and therefore be uncaused, changeless, eternal, immaterial, and enormously powerful (himself). He
clearly describes the properties of substance (which in modern terminology can be defined as
non-being in the sense of a field of possibilities, or of a potentiality, out of which actuality
eventually may emerge. But he does not use this standard concept, but postulates instead that
such a cause be (most plausibly, he says) a personal agent.35 And he concludes, like it or
not (!), cosmological theory ... does lend tangible support to the theistic doctrine of creatio ex
nihilo. This is in fact inconsistent, but, apart from that, do we have to read that in such a
journal?36 As Craig states on Grnbaum discussing Craig: If God exists, why could He not
32

L.Boi: Die Beziehungen zwischen Raum, Kontinuum und Materie im Denken Riemanns; die thervorstellung
und die Einheit der Physik. Das Entstehen einer neuen Naturphilosophie. Phil. Nat. 31 (2), 1994, 171-216. Here:
188.
33
C.Warnke: Systemdenken und Dialektik in Schellings Naturphilosophie. In: H.Bergmann et al. (eds.),
Dialektik und Systemdenken, Historische Aspekte, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (Ost = DDR), 1977, 99-146.
34
W.L.Craig: Creation and Big Bang Cosmology, 217-224, A.Grnbaum: Some Comments on William Craigs
Creation and Big Bang Cosmology, 225-236, W.L.Craig: A Response to Grnbaum, On Creation and Big
Bang Cosmology, 237-249.
35
Ibid. 219.- In note 4 (p. 222) he adds: I mean that it is false that something existed prior to the singularity. Is
non-being nothing(ness)?
36
It is interesting to learn that Grnbaum also discusses god and the world in a seemingly respectable volume of
collected essays edited by B.Falkenburg and L.Krger (eds.): Physik, Philosophie und die Einheit der
Wissenschaft, BI Mannheim, 1995.

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cause momentary effects which are not events in the GTR sense of the word?37 Yes, why
couldnt he?38 - Arzt gives a historical account of the contact between Pauli and Jung, discussing especially the unity of one world.39 This account is consistent and mentions the interesting semiological aspect of the role of symbolics for the unity of the world. (It is only unfortunate that the author cannot abstain from reproducing the very questionable quotation of
Whitheads that occidental philosophy would be nothing than a series of footnotes to Plato.
This quotation had a very negative impact on the ideas British (and American) scientists often
have about the uniqueness of Platonic philosophy. In fact, we will come back to this point
later.) Bartels has the word substance metaphysics in his title even. 40 But he does not actually deal with this topic. What he does instead is to discuss Earmans concept of absolute
space based on a modified Leibniz argument (as Bartels calls it) designed in order to refute
the position of Leibniz in his debate with Lockes follower Clarke. Although it may be interesting in its own right to continue this discussion in one way or the other, it is not very useful
from the outset (I think), to deal with this debate in such a journal. Also, the author confounds
various forms of substance and their meaning, going back to Aristotle e.g., in order to discuss
his topic. But he does not get the concept of substance quite right altogether, which is mainly
due to the fact that he leaves out Spinoza. (This is actually also true for the other authors
dealing with a philosophical context.)41 Finally, Kiefer discusses quantum gravity. 42 This is
in fact, the only contribution of this volume which is eactly to the point. Kiefer is an outstanding, young scientist, well-known in his field. Unfortunately, he diminishes the quality of
his works by being very ideological as far as the relevance of quantum theory is concerned.
So he begins by stating that it is actually quantum theory which governs the picture of the
world we have today. Only gravitation would stand aside (or stand back?). And for him, the
universe as a whole can only be understood within the frame of a theory of quantum cosmology. But he mentions string theory (without any doubt on the hep-th side of science, but with
generalizing aspects in fact) only in passing. And when discussing loop theory and knots, he
forgets to mention that this approach is actually completely on the gr-qc side (which means
that it is working completely without any background space in being based on generalized
spin networks). He also quotes Penrose as a witness for the breakdown of classical theory, but
not as a witness for twistor theory which is actually also based on the same concept of spin
networks as loops are. Indeed, his example for the regulation of divergences can exactly be
interpreted as a case which demonstrates that gravity is more fundamental than anything else.
But it does not follow necessarily that this fundamental gravity must be a quantum gravity.
Hence: Only one paper (15 pages out of roughly 150 = 10%) is to the point (though we can
argue about it). Most of the text (Boi, the Craig/Grnbaum debate, Bartels = 90 pages = 60%)
is not to the point (and also very unclear, to say the least). One paper does not belong to this
section (Ziemke = 20%), and one is acceptable if viewed in historical terms (Arzt 10%). So
far the characterization of the philosophy of nature in Germany and in some other places.

The result is that physicists more and more often tend to create their own philosophical approach. On the one hand, this is basically a good idea, but on the
other hand, it carries its intrinsic dangers: The problem is that for most of the
37

Phil. Nat., op.cit., 238.

In ending, Craig threatens the following: I plan to develop all these points in a forthcoming book entitled
God, Time, and Eternity. (Ibid. 243)
39
T.Arzt: Unus Mundus: Die Eine Welt. Ibid., 250- 262.
40
A.Bartels: Von Einstein zu Aristoteles. Raumzeit-Philosophie und Substanz-Metaphysik. Ibid., 293-308.
41
Finally, the author ends with the statement: Modern philosophy of nature is not popularized science, but
philosophical reflexion under conditions of modern science. (Ibid. 306) This is not very mysterious, but actually, as a result, it appears rather trivial instead.
42
C.Kiefer: Probleme der Quantengravitation. Ibid., 309-327.
38

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British and Anglo-American authors, philosophy is more or less the same as the
theory of Plato (which they usually do not know very well though). It is very
rare indeed that physicists deal with other philosophers such as Leibniz e.g. in
detail (and in a sufficiently consistent way). Probably, Lee Smolin, Louis
Kauffman, Julian Barbour, and some others are honourable exceptions here.
And of course, the reference to Whitehead is very popular in English-speaking
countries. But it is less popular to discuss the consistency of the foundations
leading to Whiteheads theory. In fact, the necessity to deal with philosophical
problems of physics has been recognized for quite a while, but the approach to
such problems is not well founded, especially because of the literary
one-sidedness just mentioned. The main point is that it is decidedly inappropriate to deal with philosophical problems of modern physics in terms of ancient
theories who could not be properly adapted to a modern environment. Either one
refers to modern philosophy then, or one refers (even better) to modern philosophy in view of the development which has actually produced it. Hence, the theory of Leibniz is not actually anticipating developments in science, being interesting therefore to be dealt with today, but it is its structural viewpoint and its
further development during the last two centuries as well as the more recent
discussions (including Mach, Einstein, Reichenbach and others) that make it interesting for a philosophy which deals with modern physics. (The theories of
Augustinus and Thomas of Aquinas e.g., though full of brilliant ideas in their
own right, cannot offer anything comparable. 43)
It is nevertheless more appropriate, as we shall see later, to substitute the line
Leibniz-Hegel by the alternative line of Spinoza-Schelling: This is not simply a
variation of the perspective taken, but this line is also part of a longer tradition
that actually dealt with the foundation of the totality of the world, and with its
relationship to the latters evolution, in first place, originating in fact, as early as
in the time of the Greek Stoa, and extending into the year 1975, when the German philosopher Ernst Bloch published his final main work on the experiment
of the world (Experimentum Mundi). This is actually one thing we will do in
this present paper: to re-trace the structural development of this traditional line
of thought in the philosophy of nature, and to re-connect it with the recent developments in modern science. This will be the topic of the chapters II and III,
the former giving a brief outline of approaches by stoic philosophers, by Averroes, Bruno, and Spinoza, up to the theories of Schelling and Bloch, the latter
summarizing the relationship between philosophy and science, as we see it today, discussing then the modern implications of this with a view to recent developments in physics. What we will find is that the general idea underlying all
the conceptions on the line to be discussed is mainly based on fundamental aspects of what is called substance metaphysics. And this is the reason for the
aforementioned privilege of twistor theory: that it provides a first, formal anal43

Hence, although the pledge for metaphysics staged by B.M.McCoy recently, is to be welcomed in principle, it
does not really help to imply that these comparatively ancient philosophers had a direct influence on the development of modern science. (hep-th 9609160)

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ogy for what substance in this sense could actually mean for us today.
But we will also deal with the following: In the meantime, a new, third string of
development has come into contact with the two other lines (of space-time
physics and chaos theory, respectively) mentioned here: This is the theory of the
physical foundations of consciousness, which points to a unified theory of physics and logic, at the same time. The point is that when visualized itself as a
product of nature, consciousness must not only have physics at its root, but the
kind of thinking which it produces itself must be bound in one way or another to
that of what it is product. This is nothing but a consequence of the philosophical
line discussed here, which actually leads to what we call a transcendental materialism, in the sense that thinking itself is just one (though very complex) form
of that matter which is there from the beginning on. Seen this way, physical
matter evolves to a high degree of complexity actually producing matter systems
whose characteristic activity (as their mode of being) is nothing but to think.
Hence, this thinking has to be adapted from the outset to about what is being
thought, in fact. This is one important point to be discussed in further detail
here. The other point is that necessarily, because this is a primarily evolutionary
view, the sort of thinking as we know it (that is, as humans actually do apply it)
cannot be the final stage of development: The universe being still comparatively
young, there is still time for many things to come. This introduces a kind of rational modesty into the discussion, because it will probably not be humans after
all who participate in the shaping of the final stages of this universe.
Consequently, some of the chief protagonists of the seventies and eighties have
left their old fields, at least to a certain extent, in order to work on more promising topics. Penrose in particular, has concentrated on an explicit relationship
between fundamental physics and the theory of consciousness. 44 Unfortunately,
contrary to his earlier works, his two recent books on consciousness suffer a little from the fact that he belongs apparently to the Platonic adherents. But the
strong resonance to his books and to the debate following the Tucson II discussion of the Penrose-Hameroff model of consciousness demonstrate the widespread interest in this topic. We will deal with this aspect within the discussion
of a number of approaches which do not only change the relationship between
physics and logic, and physics and the science of consciousness (or cognitive
science as it is usually referred to), respectively, but which shed also a new light
on the relationship between physics and mathematics (being perhaps of even
more importance). In this sense, we will briefly outline the conceptions presented more recently by Trifonov and by Tegmark, respectively. This will be topic
of the chapters IV and V. We discuss then aspects of a true evolutionary theory of the universe, based on philosophical motivations of Darwinian type (associated with the mentioned Leibniz-Hegel line), presented by Smolin, referred
to as cosmological natural selection. This will be the topic of chapter VI. We
will also refer to other recent developments within these chapters so as to secure
44

R.Penrose: The Emperors New Mind, 1989, and: Shadows of the Mind, 1994, both at Oxford University
Press.

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the connection to what we discussed above and left in the mid-eighties with the
winding up of twistor theory.
Finally, as a preliminary entry into the future development of a self-consistent
philosophy of nature under conditions of modern science, we will list systematic
aspects of a theory which will take into account that both physics and cognitive
science can only be sufficiently consistent in their own right, if their mutual relationship is founded on a unified (and in fact, historically unfolding) basis, including both ontological as well as epistemological concepts. This is the place
where the Klymene principle will be introduced, as a methodological convention
which facilitates the handling of intertwined historical processes of the mentioned kind. A first list of onto-epistemic aspects is given in chapter VII, and a
second list is given of what may serve as a new organon of philosophy resulting
from the discussion here, in chapter VIII. - But two additional remarks are in
order: The ansatz displayed does not solve all problems in the sense of giving a
kind of generalized TOE. Instead, it serves only as a rough draft to be filled out
by forthcoming work. And in this sense, it can be understood as exerting a critical amount of heuristic pressure acting on the future development of scientific
models. On the other hand, having eventually achieved a systematic outline of a
closed model of the world, this does not keep us from having to work out all of
the details: The point is simply that understanding the physical foundations of
neuro-physiology will not help in understanding what thinking actually means in
one case or the other, in the same way as understanding the physical foundations
of oscillations does not help in understanding what music actually means in one
or the other composition.
But finally, it is still far from clear whether the models displayed here do actually have that universal relevance which is usually granted without mentioning.
Hence, it is the problem of intercultural stability in fact, that is discussed in
chapter IX, in order to look for explicit criteria that might define anthropic invariants underlying systems of concepts similar to those which are known in
cosmology. Not unlike the latter, far from what an anthropic principle in the
strong sense would suggest, they could at best be expected to give a consistency
framework for thinking itself, connected to the very definition of what human
life actually means rather than providing a mechanistic sort of scheme according
to which thinking could be classified as a static property. The basic idea is that
once philosophy is interpreted as following up the results of science, then what
is actually being thought about in philosophy should have a unified root in what
is a structurally stable result in science, because all humans inhabit the same
world. Hence, up to local variations, there should be a class of isomorphic pictures of the world of universal type. And also, one would expect a respective
class of languages which are compatible in the sense of being able to map these
pictures up to isomorphy. In terms of the perspective chosen here, it may be
possible to save the concept of Achsenzeit (axial time = axial epoch) introduced
by Jaspers, and to rescue it from racist connotations which were not being intended at the time, but which nowadays can be interpreted as a residue of the

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colonial age when one used to divide humans into hierarchically ordered classes
of more or less developed cultural sections. Instead, the meaning of Achsenzeit
can be vindicated now in terms of a generalized concept which serves as a
guideline for language criteria within a unified hermeneutic of communication.
In this sense, such a hermeneutic is not much different from a hermeneutic of
nature which is the object of modern materialistic theory. Hence, such a humanization of nature and naturalization of the humans (Marx) may be taken
as a starting point for improving the interaction between humans and nature on
the one hand, and among humans on the other. And this is explored briefly in
chapter X which also provides an outlook of how to actually proceed.

II. The General Line of Thought

A. The Stoic Foundation
I follow here the systematic structure of Forschners book which can be thought
of as a standard text on the structure of stoic ethics. 45 Note oncemore that (for
reasons of conciseness) in this section as well as in the following sections B
through F, we concentrate on basic, structural aspects of the respective theories
only.
1. The Main Problem
Given a world which can be perceived as a multitude of diverse objects, the first
question for the perceiving subject must necessarily be the question for its own
position within this multitude. This means to look for the structures constituting
this multitude and to ask for the becoming of these structures, and for the becoming of the subject itself within a worldly environment as it is defined in
terms of these structures. In other words: The basic problem is to explain what
the concept of unity can actually mean, given the fact that the perceived multitude can be observed within one and the same world. A related problem then, is
to decide whether actual reality as it can be observed by a subject (including its
own, personal reality) is objective in the sense that one such subject is able to
eventually establish a consentient discourse with other subjects about observations made. If so, the question remains whether what is topic of a consensus is
practically nothing but what there actually is, or whether there are deep, underlying structures of an elementary type which cannot, in principle, be observed at
all. Hence, the question is that for the relationship between being and non-being,
or, alternatively, between (modal) world and (real) substance. And it is the basic
definition and systematic foundation of such elementary concepts that actually
45

M.Forschner: Die stoische Ethik, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2nd ed. 1995 (originally
Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1981 = Habilitation thesis 1979/80).

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triggers the onset of philosophizing.

2. The Principle of Logos
Basically, stoic theory visualizes substance as a dynamical entity such that it is
itself in motion and develops in a fashion comparable to an organism, which
implies that it is governed by an autonomous organizational principle of production inducing a specific organic structure and a characteristic processuality of
the worldly constitution including a mapping of this very processuality to a
model of understanding. Hence, substance itself is onto-epistemically constituted, and processes actually taking place in the world have a structure which contains explicit traces of this constitution. There are two worldly principles which
express the action of substance as being mediated within the network of local
processes actually taking place. One is the principle of passive suffering, the
hyle, the other is the principle of active production, the logos. The latter can be
defined in the gestalt of a creative fire (pyr technikn) which penetrates all what
there is. In that case it is referred to as pneuma then, and this is what stabilizes
the organic unity of the material universe in binding its parts together by an elementary sympathy (or affinity) on which communication and interdependence
of the parts within the whole are actually founded. At the same time, it is the
differentiated intensity and quality of the pneuma acting on the different parts of
the hyle what is responsible for the fact that there is a definite hierarchical ordering of what exists. The highest level of this hierarchy is achieved when
pneuma is condensed to become pure logos.46 So obviously, pneuma is a kind of
degraded logos such that the hierarchy implies an evaluation which assigns explicit values (in moral terms) to given positions in this hierarchy. An intensity of
the aforementioned kind can be expressed in terms of a specific pneumatic tension (tnos aerdes) which is nothing but a quantitative measure for balanced
mixtures of the four elements of the material world (air, fire, water, earth) which
at the same time characterizes a given form qualitatively. Hence, there is already
the idea of a direct correspondence between quantity and quality. A concrete
body or object therefore, constitutes itself by a concentration, unification, and
circumscription of a selected number of pneumatic forces producing a field of
interactions which penetrates in terms of a spatial as well as temporal continuum
parts of matter and contracts it to a relatively stable and homogeneous object. In
a way, we can state that stoic theory has actually invented the concept of force
fields.47

3. The Onto-Epistemic System: Physics & Logic

46
47

Ibid., 56.
Ibid., 58.

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Typically, the logos represents the actual law according to which all what happens is constituted, and in this sense it combines the concept of a natural law
with a normative meaning. In particular, the order exhibited by social systems is
interpreted as a direct consequence of a cosmic, fundamental law. Viceversa, the
laws of nature are interpreted according to the model of legal order. Hence, the
epistemological problem is one of founding this unity and totality on an
all-encompassing ground such that it is possible to derive (so to speak) the multitude of varying objects in the world as the explicit unfolding of some potential
which is inherent in this foundation. It is thus necessary to systematically determine the unity of the world within a framework of manifold appearances and
motions, and also to ask for the source of this dialectically mediated process. In
a way, the difference of hyle and logos is expressed therefore in terms of the
conceptual differentiation between the ontological entity and its semantic representation. It is interesting to note that the desire for giving a consistent foundation for both the legally ordered structure of the world, and also for its adequate
description and comprehension due to immanent criteria which are themselves
products of this very process, coincides with the retreating of mythology in ancient Greece. This leads to the emergence of a completely new perspective with
respect to the legitimation of knowledge about the world, because its relevance
for social praxis is not trivially secured anymore. (This is probably at least one
source of the permanent ressentiment since then, as far as philosophical conceptions are concerned when being offered to the general public, because the soberness of rational philosophy generally lacks that kind of self-securing
re-insurance which mythology could originally provide with emotional ease.)
The actual constitution of the pneumatic structures is called hxis which characterizes the quality and quantity of a field of force for some object. Within the
state of perfection, the set of given hexeis represents the actual virtues associated
with such a material state. The objective is thus to achieve blissful happiness
(eudaimona) by stabilizing virtues and bringing the own actions in line with
them.48 Note hence, that no a priori differentiation between physical objects and
acting (human) beings is made as far as the classification of virtues is concerned! Another important aspect is the close relationship between the ontological state and its epistemological representing by means of a direct mapping of
epistemic elements into a differentiated theory of language. (Remember that
Zenon, the founder of the stoic school, is also the inventor of the first standard
grammar which we still use today in a modified form handed down to us by the
Romans.) This approach to language approximates modern semiology in referring basic definitions such as those for specific types of propositions,
predicational strategies, and logical rules, to the explicit sign-structure of symbolic communication. Note that according to stoic theory, a correlation between
language and reality is possible, because language is itself a part of reality.
48

Ibid., 64sq.

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Hence, there is an actual isomorphism between linguistic and non-linguistic entities. In this sense, it is ptsis which is the meaning of the grammatical subject
while kategrema is the meaning of the grammatical predicate which bound together by the copula constitute the practical meaning of a proposition (axoma).
The latter is the intension of a sentence, the idea which is actually being expressed, or the contents of the expression (prgma). Based on modern encounters with language, developed in the philosophy of the 19th century, but referring themselves to this original stoic systematic, we still use this conventional
setting in phrasing propositions of the form A = B, even when applying it to
formal languages such as mathematics. Basically, a theory in this sense is nothing but a set of propositions of this form obeying a certain number of rules. 49
Hence, what we actually have here is a close connection between the three basic
components of stoic theory: physics, logic, and ethics, such that the problem is
to comprehend the world (as given by physics) so correct and consistent as possible by means of a straightforward application of logic which is nothing but another product of the same underlying physics. The capability of gaining
knowledge about the world at all is obviously secured by this fact such that results of any (correct and consistent) reflexion are isomorphic to the constitutional aspects of the world. Once, an appropriate picture of the world is achieved in
terms of the logic provided, adequate actions to be undertaken are well-defined,
provided the criterion is this very constitution of nature. In this sense, all three
main components of the theory, physics, logic, and ethics, are operating on the
same (ontological) level of the world, and their character is thus of an intrinsically objective, say, scientific, type.
4. Ethics
Now, if there is a cosmic sympathy which shows up as the fundamental binding
force in the world, and if ethics works on the same level as ontology (mapped to
physics) and epistemology (mapped to logic) do, then it is straightforward to
expect that this global sympathy can be differentiated down into the smallest
regions of daily praxis. If moreover, hyle and logos represent two types of
worldly activities, the former referring to a principle of passivity, the latter to
one of activity, then this implies that there can be a choice of alternative types of
being for any member of the worldly community, e.g. for a member of the social
system. Hence, there is a freedom of choice for humans. And there is an intrinsic
existential problem humans have to solve: namely to base their explicit choice
on principles they have derived from their knowledge about the world achieved
so far. And still more: If the principle of activity is preferred (as the principle of
logos), then living according to nature (kat physein) refers to a nature which
is primarily producing (active) nature, permanently creating new forms within
the world. Consequently, an appropriate life (according to nature) should be one
49

Ibid., 73sq.

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of permanent innovation. But, obviously, there is a contradiction between (human-made) legal normativity and the laws of nature. And also, due to the different states of knowledge achieved by one or the other, it is not quite clear how
the relation between the two should be valued. So, the main problem is to actually overcome this contradiction. And this can only be achieved in terms of
studying the properties of nature in their totality, of studying ones own relations
to nature and to the social system, and of communicating the results to others in
order to establish a consentient discourse.
The important point is that one has to start from oneself: It is only the correct
utilization of my imaginations which is within my discretion, nothing else.50
This is the basic rule to begin with. On the other hand, it is secured that I have
the possibility at all to do so, because there is already, from the beginning on, a
characteristic relationship of the human being to itself (due to the concept of
oikeisis). 51 The logos is actually providing a freedom of consent
(synkatthesis), which shows up as a special case of the general freedom of
choice: It depends on what has been recognized as virtue according to a permanent reflexion of our perceptions and cognitions, in particular, of our
self-perceptions and self-cognitions. Hence, reality is the continuous motion of
matter (which leads by the way to the fact that the extension of cosmic motion is
time - such that it is the temporality of the worldly what gives the processual
frame for human reflexion and action, respectively). And in terms of physics,
objects cannot be separated from their determinations. But in terms of language,
this is possible.52 So, ethics can be actually developed within a physical framework which defines the space of free play for practical actions, its
recognizability being guaranteed by a balanced interplay of physics and logic on
the one hand, and logic and ethics, on the other. Situative synkatthesis is the
goal for a consistent succession of single actions, pointing forward to an existential conception developed in more detail by Sartre and others within a modern
perspective of French philosophy. The spontaneous shining forth of a possible
future within products of nature still to come is not excluded when listing the
possibilities for actually gaining consistent information about the world, thus
pointing forward to an ontology of the not-yet-being in the sense of Bloch.
Hence, the morally good is provided by nature itself which according to the telos-formula of Chrysippos gives the final standard for human action. This is the
reason why only the morally good is actually good (mnon t kaln agathn)
as the stoic guiding principle states.
Note finally that there is always the difficulty of consistently dealing with the problem of determination which lurks in the background of global systematics of the kind presented here in
the case of the Stoa: Forschner himself formulates that a theory which makes the process of
the world globally as well as in all local details to a lawful process of explicating a unique and
divine substance, can hardly associate a consistent meaning to the concept of moral freedom
50
51
52

Ibid., 112.
Ibid., 146.
Ibid., 79, 81.

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and responsibility. 53 But this is not necessarily true, because the system is not a static one,
even substance itself is not visualized in terms of an absolute and intrinsically non-dynamical
structure. It is however acting from beyond space and time, because otherwise it could not
possibly be a substance, but nevertheless it is generating a space of free play for future
worldly processes including human actions. In so far, it is not determining the single events to
be taking place, but it defines a worldly dynamic instead which exhibits the empirical traces
of what cannot be comprehended in empirical terms otherwise. Hence, the responsibility of a
single human is to consistently operate within the boundaries provided for by this space of
free play. Freedom of choice means freedom according to given necessities and given possibilities which are left open for further innovative development. This is not a theory of determinism in the strict, mechanical sense. It is rather a very modern dialogue between randomness and necessity, very much in the sense of our chaos theory today, or in terms of social
philosophy, very much in the sense of Sartrean existentialism: Become what you are!

B. Averroes
In contrary to the stoic movement in ancient Greece and Rome, the Arab reception of European philosophy is mainly based on Aristotelian theory (including a number of neo-platonic and other ideas flowing in from falsely attributed
classical texts).54 The beginning of this reception is usually attributed to a philosopher of the 9th century, Al-Kindi, who lived in Bagdad. He mainly dealt
with the problem of the relationship between body and soul, but also discussed
the category of infinity. In contrary to Aristotle himself, he postulates a dualism
between the finite region of the wordly and the infinite region of God. For him,
the world is a true creatio ex nihilo corresponding to the thesis derived from
the Koran. Matter so created is something passive (in the Aristotelian sense)
which needs some external influence to gain distinct qualities. But for Al-Kindi,
different from Aristotelian conception, substrate and form as well as potentiality
and actuality, cannot be separated from each other. It is some time later that
Al-Farabi continues this discussion trying to adapt the Aristotelian system to the
Islam in re-interpreting a crucial passage on creation (Koran, s.30, v.26) such
that not nothingness is the foundation of the world, but some entity acting as a
potential for the world to be created. But it is not before Avicenna (Ibn Sina), a
student of Al-Farabi, begins his work that the relationship between possibility
and actuality is clarified in more detail. First of all, Avicenna differs between the
53

Ibid., 113.
Note that the history of the reception of Aristotles texts is very complex indeed: Originally stored in ancient
Syria, in order to save them in times of war and unrest, they were eventually sold to the Roman Lukullus who
forgot about them. Their contents was taught in an ancient Syrian language badly known to the Arabs of six,
seven centuries later, emerging from the Arab peninsula. Nevertheless, the nucleus of Aristotles theory served
as a modern epistemological instrument in the development of a philosophy based on the principles of the Islam
which provided the basis for what is generally referred to as the Golden Age of Arab Thinking, encompassing
mainly the original Arab countries, including Mesopotamia, as well as Spain, where a very fruitful, interdisciplinary and intercultural science and philosophy emerged. It is not before the advent of scholastic theory in Europe, especially developed by Thomas of Aquinas, that this Arab version of Aristotelian theory comes to light in
central Europe. At last, the original texts of Aristotle are recovered again. But while greeting this theoretical
inflow as a progress, Thomas is later obliged to modify and to actually re-transform Arab theory in order to be
able to secure compatibility with Christian dogmatism.
54

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necessary existence which is origin of itself (causa sui), and possible existence
which needs a cause external to itself. Hence, the former is the immanent cause
in God himself, the latter the worldly entity which is determined by other entities.The actual dator formarum giving essence to worldly objects (and thus to
worldly existence) is the intellectus agens, the highest form of intelligence already introduced in a hierarchy of activities invented by Al-Farabi earlier. It is in
fact this intellectus which, once it is achieved by humans, opens up the way back
to their divine origin, because through it they can learn to participate in the
knowledge of God. Hence, the process of becoming has a basically cyclic structure, and it is indeed matter which is the underlying, dynamical principle of this
process. In this sense, matter appears as a creative principle of multitude. And
although both matter and form are universalia for human knowledge, they cannot be properly separated, hence the close interaction between ontological being
and epistemological reflecting this being (reflexion being appropriately
expressend in terms of language). Matter is thus eternal entity (as principle according to original (primordial) being), but in worldly terms it gains temporality,
and worldly objects are being constituted in terms of this temporal matter. In
fact, Avicenna opens the discussion here, for differing between the (God-like)
substantial perspective of eternal things and the worldly perspective of temporal
things. (In many discussions today, this difference is still a problem, namely in
differentiating between internal and external observers, which corresponds to
two different perspectives chosen in modern physics.) Avicenna formulates:
The eternal can be understood either in terms of being or in terms of time. The
eternal with respect to being means that its existence is unconditioned. The
eternal with respect to time means that it has no beginning in time.55 This does
not necessarily mean that matter, form, time (and motion) are eternal and
non-created, as is often indicated in various interpretations. It simply means not
more that, if visualized in terms of a substantial perspective, the fundamental
categories of the world have an eternal significance, but that locally, in terms of
a worldly perspective, they can be visualized as finite projections of these eternal entities which develop as anything else does. (This means in particular, that
also time itself, as we see it, is subjected to a process of being actually produced!) It is interesting to note that nothingness therefore, for Avicenna, is
non-being rather than nothing at all: It is a moment of transition between two
states, so it gains the connotation of an active, dynamical potential.
But the main protagonist of this creative period of philosophy is without any
doubt Averroes (Ibn Rushd) living in the 12th century in Cordoba, Spain. His
main work consists of commentaries of Aristotle, and it will serve as stimulation
for Thomas of Aquinas to eventually begin his own work on Aristotle (from
1260 on). In contrary to his predecessors, for Averroes, the manifold of worldly
objects is not created by means of a mediation with intelligent entities. The primary cause for all what there is, is God himself who creates this manifold com55

T.Tisini: Die Materieauffassung in der islamisch-arabischen Philosophie des Mittelalters, Akademie-Verlag,

Berlin (Ost = DDR), 1972, 72.

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pletely from the beginning on. But this creation is actually a permanent process
rather than a single moment at the beginning of the world. In a way, creation is
conservation rather than permanent innovation. And creation in this sense is not
a creation out of nothingness: The idea is simply to apply the implications of a
shifting perspective rather consequently. Unique creation at a beginning of the
world and the subsequent evolution of objects having been so created, are only
concepts which are due to the fact that humans interpret their world in temporal
terms. But for God himself who is himself eternal, there is no time. He is the
universal mover who is not moved himself, because he is, according to his essence, eternal. And there is no motion, if there is no time. But the world is actually caused and moved, and as humans are part of the world, their perspective is
one of causality and thus temporality. At best, humans can speculate about the
eternal perspective of God, because they are led to concepts of potentiality and
actuality, once they have gained some more insight into the historical structure
of their world. Consequently, matter is also given immediately, as a universal
potential, and its form is founded on its substratum. Hence, form becomes immanent property of the material, and there is a reciprocal interaction between the
two. Note that this implies that matter itself gains the quality of being causa sui,
because it is a necessary entity now (which means that it could exist without
God as well). If there are two entities of substantial character one can basically
decide in one of the following two ways: either matter is the basic foundation of
the world itself (and the concept of God is superflous), or both matter and God
are synonymous and fall into one. Averroes decides in favour of the second version and visualizes nature in pantheistic terms. Consequently, for him, motion is
self-motion (and evolution, as the permanent unfolding of forms which are inherent to the potentiality of matter, becomes self-organization).56

C. Bruno
This aspect of productivity is also one which is of considerable interest for Bruno, who a number of centuries later sets out to re-formulate the structure of the
universe in terms of a relational infinity of uniform worlds which are subjected
to a permanent actualization of divine creativity. Productivity is visualized then,
as the immanent activity of the world which is not a consequence but an equivalent of that divine creativity. In this sense, mathematics is not only natures
scripture in which the book of nature is written down, but it is a concrete representation of nature as alternative aspect to what is being manifested in the very
process of creation. God himself is being naturalized, and the theological per56

It is obvious that such an autonomous kind of matter is in serious conflict with Christian dogmatism which
postulates the dominating role of the spirit in contrary to the complete unimportance of matter. Hence, the progressive re-interpretation of Aristotle as offered by Arab philosophy, had to be modified again, and the result
was even more: a modified Aristotle reduced to his conservative rather than progressive aspects. Remember that
professors at the first universities of Europe, founded in the Middle Ages not much later, were obliged to swear
by the name of (that modified) Aristotle to promote and advance his theory in doing their work.

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spective is nothing but a metaphor, setting the ontological structure of the world
and its philosophical reflexion into one (onto-epistemic) unity. To be more precise: The mathematical explication of a process is therefore the same as the unfolding dynamics of this process. Nevertheless, there is no explicit connection
between the logic and the physics of a phenomenon. Hence, Brunos critique
concerning Galileian physics: For Bruno, the tendency of modern mathematics,
long before the works of Galilei (which Bruno could not know), to represent
concrete processes in terms of formal structures, appeared as a translation from
one language into another, without really understanding the meaning of both.
Hence, for him, mathematical knowledge fell under the criterion of what his
teacher Nicholas de Cusa called docta ignorantia, unless it would be
accompagnied by philosophy understood as a hermeneutic of nature leading to
a true understanding of the structure of the world (being cooperatrice di natura
in this sense). One basic aspect to this desired understanding would be the
grasping of the intrinsically productive character of nature as it is expressed in
Brunos concept of matter, referring to stoic ideas as well as the conception of
Averroes.57 The important passage in his matter text 58 is the following:
...: therefore, the always persisting fruitful (and productive) matter must have the privilege to
be recognized as the only substantial principle and as that which is and always remains; and
all forms together are nothing but different determinations of matter which go and come,
while others cease and renew themselves, which is the reason why they all do not have the
reputation of a principle. Hence, among those who have contemplated the logic of natural
forms in approriate detail, so far as one could recover it from Aristotle and others of the same
line of thinking, one has found only those who have deduced at last, that these forms are
nothing but accidents and random circumstances of matter; and that therefore the privilege of
being action and perfection refers to matter itself and not to objects of which we can say no
more in fact, than that they are neither substance nor nature, but objects of substance and of
nature, of which they say that it be matter, which according to them is a necessary, eternal and
divine principle, as says this moor Avicebron who calls it God who is in all things.

Hence, for Bruno, matter is (very much in the Arab tradition) substratum and
potential, at the same time. But referring to this concept of productivity means
also transgressing not only the limit given by de Cusa, but also the formal conception of the Copernican system: First of all, the heliocentric interpretation of
worldly organization produces an obvious conflict with the order of being as it
had been handed down to Bruno in terms of scholastic theory. 59 But even more
radical is the consequence for the hierarchical structure of this classical order,
57

Usually, Brunos conception is attributed to what is called neo-platonism. But this label is owed somehow
to the tradition of mixing the ancient lines of argument leading up to the Renaissance due to the fact that very
often sources had been falsely ascribed to one or the other school. Contrary to this, we refer Brunos conception
to the stoic tradition, basing this on the structural similarities of his ansatz with that of the Stoa as explained in
section A. Hence, we give a primarily systematic argument for this, not a historical one.
58
De la causa, principio ed uno, Venezia (= London), 1584, in: Dialoghi Italiani, p.1 (dialoghi metafisici),
Sansoni, Firenze, 1985 (1958), 273sq.
59
There is a short, enlightening review of this aspect in the book of A.Eusterschulte: Giordano Bruno zur
Einfhrung, Junius, Hamburg, 1997.

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because for Bruno, the Copernican approach is only the starting point for explicating his principal thesis of self-motion, in terms of an intrinsic motion to
which all moving objects in space are subjected, due to the fact that no place in
the universe is distinguished in one way or another. In a sense, Bruno visualizes
an infinite universe which is completely isotropic and homogeneous. Hence,
there is no location anymore into which a first mover who is not moved himself
(in the Aristotelian sense) could be eventually placed. There is at most an intrinsic mover who is permanently acting upon objects such that he is immanent
cause of these objects. The universe becomes a uniform organism whose organizational principle determines a living process of metabolism within infinite
space. The idea is then, that an infinite universe be the consequence of an infinite cause and an infinite principle. It is inhabited by an infinity of living worlds
which are themselves organisms, and of which Earth is only one. And the structure of these organisms can be grasped only in terms of an all-encompassing
reason which is one aspect of the immanent creative power underlying this infinity. The dynamical principle which actually governs the self-motion of this
organism of organisms, is matter itself.
Hence, as Blumenberg has shown in more detail 60 , the post-Copernican universe, in having no distinguished location anymore, does not have any place for
divine salvation also: God himself has spent himself completely to the act of
creation. This is one of the most important contradictions, Bruno produces with
his ansatz. (So it is Bonaventura e.g. who categorically formulates: Multa de
suis thesauris profert, non omnia. And William of Okham states that a complete
spending of God when creating would be a degradation in the sense that he
shows up as a mere cause of nature then.) The idea of de Cusa was that infinity
could be grasped only in terms of finite understanding such that all that exists
would constitute a kind of finite infinity or created god (quasi infinitas finita
aut deus creatus). During creation then, something would have emerged at all,
having the ability to become similar to God, because it could not be a God himself that was being produced (quia deus fieri non potuit). This indicates an actual
limit of attainment in the sense that there is a difference between generatio and
creatio such that God creates the world, but generates his son, both of them being different aspects of the same action which is itself nothing but an expression
of his essence. The time between creation and generation however, is only a
human impression subjected to the human mode of perception. From Gods
perspective, there is no time, and the act of self-integration into the world created by himself (once, the word has become flesh) is one and the same
self-motion as the original creation actually is. The absolute power being expressed in these two aspects of the same underlying action actualizes itself completely (quiescit potentia in seipsa).
Unfortunately, there is no logical way of giving a sound foundation for the underlying postulate (that the above mentioned limit exists). And this is the scan60

H.Blumenberg: Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit. (Erneuerte Ausgabe 1996) Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M.,
1983-1985, 639-700.

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dal Bruno excites when introducing his conception. For him, a God who must
realize what he can, reproduces himself necessarily. That is, generatio = creatio.
And there is no personalization as absolute self-realization. That there is a world
at all, is not founded in the volition of God, but in his essence. The world is the
correlation of Gods impersonality, hence it is a manifestation, not a revelation.
The latter would assume that there is a possibility for hiding and holding back
the world. But this is not the case. In particular, the world is not a message of
God, not a book of nature therefore, because it does not express a specific order at all. It is indifferent instead, it is due to plurality, in the sense that if there is
anything at all, then all what is possible actually exists. Hence, with a view to
existence, all what is possible is also equal. It is probably this explicit (and according to the state of then progressive scholastic theory unsolvable) scandal
which renders any attempt of mediation unsuccessful and makes Bruno the last
philosopher who is burnt at stake. (In a sense, one can say that he indeed forces
the inquisition to choose the maximum of punishment.)
*
What we realize so far is the following: As a result of ancient theories being
provided by the schools of Plato and Aristotle, it is the stoic approach which
according to the systematic needs of its epoch can provide an intrinsically dynamical and open system encompassing the totality of nature including the epistemic structures designed in terms of human thinking itself. The advent of christian religion (referring itself to various aspects of stoic theory) causes the necessity to adapt the innovative potential intrinsic to the stoic system to the dogmatic
frame which is defined in terms of traditional concepts of God which in turn
cannot be based in one way or another on stoic logic. The same is true more or
less for the later development of the Islam. Hence, the philosophical foundation
of the world gains a purely negative quality, because it is necessary in first
place, to re-interpret concepts which are not compatible with a given basic
structure of irrefutible elements instead of developing them further. Obviously,
this permanent construction of apologies cannot be suitable for continuing an
innovative line of thought. Hence, the consequent resumption and continuation
of the stoic line is obstructed in a well-aimed manner, in particular with a view
to the dynamical aspects of a nature which is primarily based on an active sort of
creative matter, so that one would be able to exploit the early concept of a field
approach to forces acting in nature and to ask for the foundation of this action.
Ironically however, it is exactly this sort of negative approach which - as a kind
of by-product - makes it possible to gain more insight into the relationship between a world and its foundation in the long run, because the contradictions encountered sooner or later do not leave another wayout than just the resumption
of the ancient line earlier dismissed. The permanent spinning around the relationship between God and world ends soon in blind alleys and on wrong tracks.
Their by-passing in terms of modern mathematics opens up an alternative ap-

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proach which causes a two-fold result: On the one hand, the concept of substance is re-formulated in an abstract way, in explicitly denying its existence in
the traditional, scholastic sense, thus re-introducing it as a concept in terms of a
productive misunderstanding and in a somewhat clandestine way. On the other
hand, the progressing detachment of philosophy from theology opens up a new
way to all aspects which had been suppressed before: such as the dynamics of
self-creative and self-organizing matter as substratum and potential of an unfolding nature, including a re-definition of the organizational hierarchy of the
universe, and of the mediation of matter with its explicit forms up to its social
forms constituting human systems, themselves dealing with the reflexion of this
very process, being subjected however to incomplete information. It is Spinoza
in fact, who draws all these aspects (which are drifting apart for quite a while)
together again and re-bases them onto a sound foundation of stoic systematics.

D. Spinoza
However, Spinoza does not only cumulate the various strings of philosophy
which had been developed earlier in the stoic tradition. He visualizes philosophy
as something which is practically identical with ethics. It is a theory of the conditions according to which human life is defined, if it is succeeding with respect
to an ethical frame of references. Ethics itself, unfolds the conditions according
to which the human striving can be realized. In other words: The realization of
the human conatus perseverandi is the existential aim of the world which is
nothing but the appropriate form of that finite mode which is determining human
being. Humans are capable of finding and conserving their own mode of being,
if they act according to adequate knowledge. Hence, there is a close connection
between freedom and insight. It is necessary therefore, to find the adequate way
(inveniri) in an appropriate project which is to be designed by humans themselves. If proposition 34 in part I of the Ethics states that the power of God is
his own essence (Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia), then, for humans, one
could add that the power of humans is their own existence (Humani potentia est
ipsa ipsius existentia). And the adequate form of this existence is prescribed in
terms of the virtue which leads forward to blissful happiness
(beatitudo/eudaimona). For humans therefore, virtue in this sense and power,
are identical. (IV def. 8: Per virtutem et potentiam idem intelligo.) Hence,
virtue is human essence or nature, in so far as it is subjected to its capability
(potestas) to actually cause something. (To translate potentia by power
though, which appears to be a common custom, is nevertheless somewhat unsatisfactory. The German connotation of the word Vermgen (capacity) could be
more appropriate.)
We note here that the ethical foundation of Spinozas philosophy is basically a
consequent re-formulation of the stoic idea. But more than this: Spinoza also
tries to define God as causa immanens of the world, but in terms of a twofold

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perspective taken according to whether the relationship between God and world
is visualized under the substantial perspective of God himself, or under the
modal perspective of humans who represent a finite mode of what worldly exists. Obviously, the former perspective can be taken in speculative terms only,
but because God represents himself completely in each of his attributes, it is
possible that humans could grasp his existence in principle, provided they have
developed the adequate knowledge about this due to their adequate reflexion. In
this sense, everything is in God (quicquid est, in Deo est), but the viceversa is
also true. But reflexion itself is an outcome of the organization of substance: The
constitution of the latter according to which it is productive with respect to the
field of modi, is its organization in terms of attributes.61 This means that God
does not really produce attributes, but he (as substance) is attributively organized instead. Hence, God is causa sui only in so far as he produces everything
what there is, but this is only true with respect to the finite perspective of humans. Nevertheless, a finite mode is in God, because it is a created mode within
the totality of nature. But in this mode as its cause, it is only God who acts as
immanent cause of permanency, it is not the totality of nature which is acting as
this cause.62 Hence, the central position of nature which is classified by Spinoza
in a twofold way according to the classification given earlier by Averroes: He
actually differs between natura naturans (the actively creating nature producing
things) and natura naturata (the passively produced nature which is the outcome
of processes performed by natura naturans). The former represents the productivity of God, the latter its result. Nature is the form of mediation in which God
acts upon the world as seen (and interpreted) under the modal perspective of
humans. But in reality, he does not think himself, because it is only the humans
who do (II ax. 2: Homo cogitat.), and therefore, he is not a spirit either. 63 So
nature has an important role to play within the frame of references which constitutes the world. But as it is only humans that think (and have thus the task of
reflecting about the world), the basic concept of worldly orientation is
intersubjectivity in first place, nature only in second. It is reflexion, and it is the
political form of communication that determines adequate knowledge. But the
latter can only be achieved, if the structure of the world in terms of its nature is
uncovered and logically displayed. Hence, to study nature means to lay the
ground for adequate knowledge, and in the end, for adequate action according to
ethical principles.

61

In W.Bartuschat: Spinozas Theorie des Menschen, Meiner, Hamburg, 1992, 66, a precise discussion of this
aspect in given in more detail.
62
Ibid. 37, 44-49 par.
63
Ibid. 65.

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1. The Properties of Substance

For Spinoza therefore, substance is what is in-itself and what can only be comprehended by itself and out of itself. This means that it is something the concept
of which does not need the concept of anything else in order to be formed.
Hence, substance is its own reason (causa sui), and its essence involves its own
existence. But humans can only perceive attributes of this substance, but not
substance itself. Substance has an infinity of such attributes, but humans can
only perceive two such attributes which fall into their mode of being: matter (res
extensa) and mind (res cogitans). Although the infinite substance is undivisable
(has no parts), humans can perceive parts of the attributes, but the difference of
these parts is only given in modal, not in real terms. 64
Substance is therefore the unifying background of being, pointing to future realizations of the worldly as a dynamical project, within a given field of possibilities. Hence, substance is foundation of being. Wordly objects come into existence by an initial emergence of the world which is thus exteriorization of substance (in the sense that substance unfolds its organizational structure - which is
not quite a process when visualized under the substantial perspective, but rather
an equivalent self-representation of substance itself, very much in the sense of
Bruno discussed earlier). And the worldly state is therefore a deficient state, because it appears only in terms of restrictions. Substance is foundation of being
but it is itself without foundation. Hence, it is constituted in terms of
self-reference, and it propagates aspects of this self-reference into the world. So,
substance is basically non-local, beyond of space and time, in a sense, it is
pre-geometry. At the same time, the world as the product of substance is constituted in a transcendental sense, because there is an immanent tendency of the
worldly towards returning to its own origin. (Under the substantial perspective
this means that substance has the tendency to re-integrate its own unfolding
(representation) into itself which is nothing but an alternative expression of its
own totality.) In principle, the world can be re-interiorized again, and it is this
final stage of development, in which worldly existence is sublated again in its
original (primordial) unity, - in the threefold Hegelian sense. (And in a way, this
can also be achieved by gaining adequate knowledge in order to grasp Gods
essence within the medium of the attributes that are available to human reflexion.)
Note that motion is ill-defined in terms of substance. It is rather that substance is
constituted as potentially self-moving in the sense that it is in a state of permanent self-fluctuation which represents an intrinsic sort of motion (a motion
in-itself) and a potential for real, worldly motion, at the same time. It is in this
way that the intrinsically dynamical constitution of substance points to a concept
64

B.Spinoza: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata ..., Opera, vol. 2, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft
Darmstadt, 1989, p.I, prop. XV, scholium.

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of freedom which means freedom to eventually produce a structured world.

It is difficult to actually illustrate what substance in the aforementioned connotation means,
and to visualize this concept in sufficient clarity, because it is not possible to describe something which is external to the world, in terms of worldly qualities such as space and time. One
way of trying to re-construct an appropriate analogy might be the water model of aggregate
states: Imagine that there is a world which completely consists of nothing but water. And that
this water appears in the well-known three aggregate states (vapour, fluid, ice). Then scientists living in this water world could develop a model about an entity the world is made from,
calling it water, and differentiating its three states according to their experience. Perhaps they
would realize that they themselves consist of all three phases water can have, and that it is
possible to transform one state into another by means of phase transitions which define the
actual boundaries of phases and also describe a certain world dynamics. What would they
answer if asked about the true nature of their world? They would differ between the worlds
essence which is its foundation, of which they can empirically observe nothing but the three
phases. They would like therefore to speculate about a unified concept of water in-itself, of
which the empirically observed phases are nothing but worldly projections. Hence, these
phases are attributes of some substance which cannot be directly observed, but which can be
speculated about in terms of modelling a unity and a totality which is able to represent the
observed worldly conditions, once they are restricted to worldly boundary conditions. The
scientists therefore, would come to the conclusion that the world is made out of a substance
called abstract water of which three attributes can be actually observed, but it may well be that
this substance has many more, if not infinitely many, attrubutes of this type, without humans
being able to observe them within what they call their world. In a formal way, e.g. in terms of
some elementary mathematics available to them, these scientists could call abstract water
simply H2O, given an appropriate choice of the meaning attributed to the letters actually used
in this abbreviation.

2. The Identity Theorem

In order to define the human striving for adequate knowledge in a consistent
way, it is necessary to show that, in principle, there is an obvious possibility to
actually gain such knowledge at all, despite the primary restriction which is significant property of worldly being as compared with the substantial perspective
of God. It is in fact the identity theorem (p. II, prop. 7: Ordo, et connexio
idearum idem est, ac ordo, et connexio rerum.) which secures the basic communicability of the taking in sight of the world in terms of different attributes
which represent substance completely for themselves, but which do not communicate directly with each other, because according to their infinite, overlapping union which constitutes the complete representation of substance, they are
disjoint. But because order and connexion of ideas are the same as order and
connexion of things, there is a strong epistemic parallelism between worldly objects which fall under the two different attributes. It is in this sense, that Spinozas ontology is a theory of the universal intelligibility of being such that being
and understanding fall into one. 65 But because this understanding must be ade65

W.Bartuschat: Baruch de Spinoza, Beck, Mnchen, 1996, 52. - See also G.Deleuze: Spinoza. Praktische
Philosophie. Merve, Berlin, 1988, 90sqq.

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quate in order to produce any useful insight into the architecture of the relationship between (real) substance and (modal) attributes, it is the explicit method of
thinking - Spinoza calls it the geometrical method and thinks of it as a kind of
mathematical hermeneutic well in the tradition of universal languages as they
were developed in the Renaissance - which is necessary condition for attaining
the actual framework of reflexion which may serve as a starting point to taking
the world in sight. Hence, the method actually applied in the Ethics is not just
an external form of representation, of something which could also be represented otherwise, but it is instead the only appropriate method available, because its
form is identical with the constitutional form of the world, and its performance
is identical with the dynamical process which is actually underway within the
unfolding of the world.
3. Ethics Revisited
Hence, for Spinoza, the whole project is basically one of improving human reflexion by means of contemplating the systematic structure of knowledge according to an appropriate method which is basically organized in mathematical
terms. In a letter to Bouwmeester (10th of June, 1666), Spinoza writes: The
true method ... consists of the knowledge of pure intelligence ... In order to
awaken it one has to differ in first place, between intelligence and imagination,
or between the true ideas and the false. This basic point is taken up later by
Leibniz again when he aims at theorems (of contradiction and of foundation,
formulated in Monadology, numbers 31 and 32) which may serve as a fundamental convention of how to lay the grounds for a consistent philosophical
speculation of universal relevance. On the other hand, this is also a normative
aspect prescribed by the methodological rules: Obviously, there is no other
choice as far as the epistemically correct procedure of thinking is concerned,
because there is no alternative way to actually acquire adequate knowledge of
the world, and of its relationship to God. In a sense, this conception is reproducing somehow the stoic perspective: The Stoa thought that once one has improved human reflexion such that correct knowledge is achieved, then adequate
behaviour (as ethical objective) would be realized automatically, because the
mere impact of adequate knowledge would guide human freedom immediately
toward the only rational solution available. Spinoza re-phrases the problem accordingly, but he is more liberal, in so far he admits that failures are possible.
For him, the ethical guidelines are nothing but rational informations given to
anyone who might be interested. If someone is not acting adequately however,
this is for Spinoza not a reason for moral condemnation. This only means that
the knowledge on which action had been based was not yet adequate knowledge,
and has to be improved therefore.
The point is actually one of political relevance, and a philosopher who explicitly
dealt with political praxis as Spinoza had done, could see the implications of
ethical adequation: It is indeed a structural problem of social organization to de-

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cide about the optimal scenario which guarantees a permanent re-feeding of

ideas into the system, in order to gain the necessary flexibility for stably overcoming spontaneous changes. Later on, we will recognize that this is basically a
problem of resilience. (On the other hand, if visualized this way, failure in socially relevant action cannot imply something like a sin, in first place!)

E. Schelling
1. The Tbingen Axiomatic
As I have shown at other places 66 in more detail, the central concepts of the
Tbingen axiomatic are based on aspects of Herders philosophy of unification and on decisions taken by Schiller in view of an aesthetics which might be
able to serve as philosophical and universal science on a global level of reflexion. 67 It is actually the concept of freedom which is the most important for
Schiller who thinks of it as the foundation of all what exists, and in terms of
something which cannot be restricted by any dualism between morality and
sensousness. In fact, Schiller looks for a possibility of morality at all, with a
view to a freedom which rehabilitates sensousness and expresses the positive
affirmation of concrete life. It is the objective of science to actually realize moral freedom in this sense. This is indeed the traditional aspect of unification, because within the world there is nothing left now which would not correspond to
the totality and which would oppose morality. And a stoic element is added, because there is the idea that humans might be able to attain this morality by a
practical excercising of their power (capacity) while studying as close as possible the system of the world. In this sense, the human objective is also of public
relevance from the outset. As Kondylis formulates: Humans are ... organic part
and mirror of the world at the same time. The development of the forces (power)
seems the more the appropriate way to gain true freedom, insofar it is performed
within a world which is originally equi-essential (wesensgleich) to these forces.68 Duty therefore is not anymore in a contradiction with the autonomy of
humans: In following the law which is this duty, nature and freedom actually do
coincide. It is Hlderlin who starts from this point, and tries to develop his own
generalization of a philosophy of unification. For him, and for the other protagonists of the Tbingen axiomatic, including Schelling and Hegel, it is necessary
to transgress Kants conception as laid down in his Critique of Judgement, in
order to bind morality to anthropology and the theory of knowledge to practical
philosophy, thus considering the autonomy of the subject (not necessarily of the
human subject alone) as fundamental and basically creative. The Tbingen ax66

See my Selbstreferenz und poetische Praxis, Junghans, Cuxhaven, 1991, in particular section II 1.- Also
more recently: Die Rekonstruktion von Raum, Zeit und Materie. Moderne Implikationen Schellingscher
Naturphilosophie. Lang, Frankfurt a.M. etc., 1998, sect. 5.7.
67
P.Kondylis: Die Entstehung der Dialektik, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1979, 19, 56.
68
Ibid. 29,- emphasis is mine.

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iomatic points to a wedding of spirit on the one hand, and nature as metaphysical foundation of the former, on the other.69
In his most important text of programmatic character, Judgement and Being, Hlderlin introduces the concept of judgement in the strict sense as the original separation of what has
been primordially the unified subject and object. These two are made possible by this initial
separation. On the concept of the latter the notion of a relationship between subject and object
and the necessary assumption of a whole of which subject and object are parts, are based from
the beginning on.70 If we choose the Fichtean (fundamental) judgement I = I (= I am I - Ich
bin Ich), for Fichte a first principle of his philosophy of free subjectivity, a theoretical judgement of this kind is one which explicitly expresses the relationship between subject and object. Hlderlin calls this being. But being is not an identity (as Fichte would like to ascertain), the I is instead possible only if separated from itself. (Self-consciousness is possible
only, if I oppose myself, that is, if I separate myself from myself.) Indeed, this re-interpreted
identity is actually threefold: We have the I-subject and the I-object (referring to the
left-hand-side and the right-hand-side of the above identity theorem, respectively), and also
the unity of both of which I have to have knowledge (for being self-conscious). Hence, it is an
identity of an identity and of a difference. Later on, Hlderlin, Schelling and others will try to
re-formulate this very abstract principle in terms of a practical philosophy which in turn unifies the aspects of daily life with science, and both with the question for the appropriate mediation of these aspects to the general public.71 In the end, the proposal will be to develop a
modern, rational, new mythology in parallel to ancient mythologies, in order to offer a
sound basis for the paedagogical mediation of these principles.72

2. Innovative Aspects of Schellings System

The innovative aspects of Schellings philosophy can be summarized easi-ly
with a view to the basically new conception as presented by those who founded
the Tbingen axiomatic. Three main points express the new elements introduced
by Schelling: the onto-epistemic unity of the world, the possibility of the emergence of innovative structures in the world, and the he-autonomy of nature, respectively. All three secure that the world can be defined in terms of a nature
which is permanently self-organizing and whose foundation is freedom itself.
69

Ibid. 274sq.
The double connotation of Urteil (= judgement) and Ur-Theil (= the first part) cannot be appropriately
reproduced in an English translation.
71
Cf. e.g. Hlderlins Standard Edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, vol. 1, 917-919.- For
Urtheil und Seyn see ibid., 840-841.
72
For a description of the social aspects of such a program, cf. M.Frank: Hlderlin ber Mythos, in:
Hlderlin-Jahrbuch (= Yearbook) 1990-1991, Metzler, Stuttgart, 1-31.
70

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(a) The Onto-epistemic Unity of the World

In his very first published paper of 1794 (on the possibility of philosophizing)
Schelling drafts out his concept of unity, starting with a discussion of the activity of philosophizing itself: Form and contents of philosophizing seen under the
aspect of science (as a whole) is subjected to the form of unity. (SW I 9073)
Unity is only possible insofar as all parts (of the whole) are subjected to one
condition, but each part determines the other only insofar as it is determined by
this condition itself. Because the parts of science are called theories which are
sets of propositions, this unique condition is said to be a fundamental proposition or theorem (Grundsatz) - Schelling follows here the line of Fichte and
Reinhold. Hence, science is possible only in terms of such a fundamental proposition, and there can only be exactly one such proposition. And because, as a
first principle, it is unconditioned, it is also free, i.e. it has no foundation itself,
and it does not need any such foundation.
From the beginning on, Schelling argues on the line of Fichte when stating that
the absolute and the worldly being as well as their reflexion and representation
are irreducible, because with unity he associates the unity of concepts:
Unity is only there with respect to an expressing and reflecting essence ... That
the parts (of an organization) are possible by a totality only, and that this totality
is only possible in terms of an interaction of its parts, not by mere connection, is
a judgement, and it cannot be judged otherwise than by a mind which relates the
part and the whole, the form and the matter, reciprocally to each other ... (SW
II 42) Hence, Schelling starts from a concept of knowledge in first place,
argueing parallely to Fichte for whom the highest and very first principle of science is knowledge. Schelling says: If the fundamental proposition of a science
shall be the condition of the whole of science, it has to be the condition of its
contents as well as of its form. Hence, philosophy is the science of sciences and
cannot be founded by any other science. (Hence,) at the same time, the contents
of philosophy founds the contents of the sciences at all.
So Schelling starts from knowledge, and from the representation of what is actually the grasping/comprehending of this knowledge. He postulates that there is
a highest (and first) such principle, by which with the contents of an associated
proposition (also) its form is necessarily given such that both of them found
each other reciprocally ... (SW I 94) And he adds: The material form produces
the formal one. That is, there is not a general foundation of the form, on which
a particular form is resting, but, on the contrary, it is the latter which founds the
general one. And it is at this point that Schellings perspective gains a kind of
73

I quote from the standard edition of Schellings works (Smmtliche Werke (= SW), ed. K.F.A.Schelling,
I.Abtheilung, vols. 1-10 (= I-X), Cotta, Stuttgart, 1856-1861) translating myself.

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ontological excess which transcends Fichtes view towards the practical side
of the worldly. Schelling points here to something which today can be called an
onto-epistemic connection of mediations.74 Hence, Schelling relates the concept of unity to science and its parts, because his construction starts with the notion of knowledge. But there is already a new correspondence between form and
contents of science on the one hand, and between what can be known and what
really exists, on the other. In his Wrzburg lectures of 1804, Schelling discusses
this problem again. In the famous paragraph 270 he writes: Between the real
and the ideal, being and thinking, there is no causal connection possible, or
thinking can never be the cause of a determination in thinking.- Because real and
ideal are only different perspectives of one and the same underlying substance
... (SW VI 500sq.) Hence, the reflecting comprehending of the world shows up
as a human mode of being. And the latter is, together with all the other modes of
being, an irreducible aspect of something which is underlying them. So Schelling thinks of an ontological structure which logically preceeds the real as well
as the ideal. And this is the substantial foundation of worldly being. This tendency towards an active kind of substance, which is actually a crucial point of
dissent with Fichte, is due to Schellings reception of Spinoza, in fact. Schelling
refers here to the important theorem of identity (proposition VII of the second
part of the Ethics) which we have already discussed above. For Schelling,
proposition VII points to the nucleus of the problem of onto-epistemic mediation.
As compared to Fichte, this is the essentially new turn in Schelling: Philosophy
starts from the unconditioned and hence from freedom. But Spinozas conception is raised into an idealistic framework, and for Schelling, this is the reason
for developing a new concept of organization (with a view to Kants Critique
of Judgement in fact) in which concrete being and its reflexion by human
thinking co-develop from the beginning on:
Hence, this has led the human mind to the early idea of a matter which is organizing itself ...
and to an original unification of mind and matter ... He (man) feld obliged to look for the
foundation of the things in nature itself on the one hand, and for a principle of transcending
nature on the other ... (in order to) think of mind and nature as being One therefore. (SW II
47)
If we summarize nature as being One Whole, so we do encounter the opposition to a mechanism ... and expediency itself. In unifying these two extremes, we develop the idea of the expediency of the whole, nature becomes a circle ..., a system closed in itself ... There emerges a
reciprocal connection of means and ends. Neither can the individual become real without the
whole, nor can the whole become real without the individual ... This absolute expediency is an
idea which we do not think of as being voluntary but necessary ... Hence, it is a necessary
maxim of reflecting reason to always presume a connection in nature according to the mediation of means and ends. (SW II 54)

74

H.J.Sandkhler: Onto-Epistemologie, in: id. (ed.), Europische Enzyklopdie zu Philosophie und

Wissenschaften, Meiner, Hamburg, 1990, vol.3, 608-615.

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In this sense, for Schelling, the world is nothing but an organization, and a
general organism itself is the condition of mechanism. (SW II 350) The mechanism becomes the merely negative of the organism: Hence, our philosophy
cannot start with a mechanism, but can only start with an organism, and the latter cannot be explained out of the former therefore. (SW II 349) But the world
is only organization insofar it reflects the original unity of its foundation which
in turn is reflected within the totality of immanent mediations. Hence, this unity
of the world is founded on something pre-worldly as substance. In this sense, the
world satisfies Schellings organozational criterion: The system has to have a
principle which exists in itself and by itself, which reproduces itself in each part
of the whole, it has to be organic: One has to be determined by All, and All by
One ...75 Hence, organism implies systematics: There is no true system therefore which is not an organic whole ... It is not the whole which emerges out of
the parts, but these in fact, have to emerge out of the whole ... It is not we know
nature therefore, but nature is a priori ... (SW III 279)

(b) The Possibility of Innovative Structures

For Kant, the basic difference between mechanism and organism is in fact that
the former provides moving forces only, while the latter also provides forming
(producing) forces.76 Kant refrains however from a consequence which Schelling takes explicitly into account: Schelling follows Kant in recognizing the
analogy between life and organizational structures in general, but he does not
restrict the associated principles as Kant does when formulating that either ...
mere matter should be endowed with a property (hylozoism) which is in conflict
with its own essence, or it is associated with a collective principle (a soul) which
is also strange to itself.77 Schelling simply accepts that with a view to taking a
modern perspective with respect to Spinozas substance metaphysics. And he
also generalizes the concept of motion, differentiating among quantitative motion (gravity), qualitative motion (chemistry), and relative motion (mechanics),
respectively.
Seen in terms of this re-definition of the concept of motion, nature gains an intrinsic processual constitution. Process means here basically succession of
innovations which in turn implies that there is also a succession of levels of
hierarchy which by the formation of structure determine the characterization of
75

Stuttgart Private Lectures, quoted according to the Vet edition (Bottega dErasmo, Torino, 1973), 102sq.
(Henceforth: PL)
76
I quote the Critique of Judgement according to the German edition (ed. Vorlnder, Meiner, Hamburg, 7th
ed. 1993), 237.
77
Ibd. 237sq.

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the process itself (of the global process of the becoming of worldly reality as
well as of the multitude of local processes being mediated within the worldly
totality). Obviously, if something new emerges, it has to be produced. Because
of the underlying principle of unity therefore, it is implied that nature produces
itself. It is productivity in fact, which is the principle of the potentiality of nature
with the view to the production of innovative structures. But the unity of nature
pre-conditions the unity of natures products: That is, the worldly process is itself a mediation of structures which are at the same time producers and products,
respectively. But the production within the totality of the world is nothing but a
mere projection of that primordial production which pre-conditions initial
emergence itself: Meanwhile, because we have to start from something, I assume ... that a philosophy of nature should start from the derivation of the possibility for a nature, that is for all of the world of experience. (SW II 11) Hence,
we choose here a philosophy of principles, and the very first principle of this
philosophy is productivity itself. But at this point, Schelling relates his systematic concept with his aesthetical theory, because what he is looking for is an explicit hermeneutic of nature which is able to grasp the first principle in its full
meaning. He looks for a principle which - fluctuating between anorganic and
organic nature - contains the first cause (and foundation) of all alterations in the
former and the last reason (foundation) of all activity in the latter, which - because it is everywhere present - is nowhere, and because it is everything, is
nothing in particular; for which language has no direct connotation therefore,
and the idea of which the oldest philosophy ... has handed down within poetic
imaginations only. (SW II 347)
Hence, speculative physics as a philosophy of nature, can be visualized as well
as having components encroaching on regions of aesthetical production and theory in a somewhat generalized sense. The philosophy of art therefore, presented
later by Schelling, is not really a replacement of the philosophies of nature and
history, but rather a generalization, if not a proper sublation in the threefold Hegelian sense of the word. If Schelling tends to construct the universe in the gestalt of art such that Philosophy of art ... is a science of the universe in the form
of a potentiality of art (SW V 368), then this has an explicit hermeneutic
meaning in which sense philosophy of art ... (shall) represent the real which is
within the art as being an ideal. (SW V 361sqq.) This furnishes in fact a consequent regression of the history of the world onto its foundation. Very much in
the same sense, nature has its reality in itself (and) is its own product, a Whole
which is organized out of itself, and is organizing itself. (SW III 17)

(c) The He-Autonomy of Nature

So, nature does not only produce and organize itself, but it also does so within
its own freedom, and due to that freedom, and gives to itself the laws for doing
so. Hence, it can be explained only by such principles which are lying in itself,

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and of which productivity is the main (or most fundamental) principle. Nature as
product is what we perceive, nature as productivity is what we reflect about. The
laws of nature being immanent therefore render nature to be he-autonomous:
that is they have absolute reality, and this is a principle of the philosophy of nature. (SW III 17) There is a teleological aspect to this view of nature which is
reflecting the implicit project structure of the world: It is the fragmented shining
forth and shining forward of the future which imprints itself onto the proportions
of the mode of actions generated by the worldly process. Hence, what we perceive as future is not merely a future present as derived from an appropriate
past, but as nature is also expression of its own self-reference, a possible future
is shining forth as a choice we have. This is an existential aspect of Schellings
philosophy which he relates to the parallel he draws between natures productivity and the prodcutivity of human self-consciousness. (SW III 19sq.)
Insofar, for Schelling, there is already an explicit perspective which opens up
towards a generalized view of aesthetics itself: For him, the material of art ...
(is) each possible object by art only, not separated thus from the form. (SW VI
570) Art needs a material which is organic itself and symbolical as such: I
would like to state it shortly, on what deficiency of the true symbolic within the
modern world is actually based. All symbolics have to start from nature, and
have to go back to it. The object of nature signifies and is at the same time.
(SW VI 571) This semiological aspect points to Schellings earlier thought
about a true mythology of rationality as originating from the Oldest Systems
Program of the Tbingen axiomatic: A true symbolical material is only possible within mythology, but the latter itself only by its relation of its forms to nature. The re-incarnation of a symbolical view of nature would be a first step
therefore towards a re-incarnation of a true mythology. (SW VI 572)
Hence, for Schelling, the unification of theoretical and practical philosophy as
being the ideal-realism which has become objective, is the system of art (SW
IV 86), and it is generically expressed in terms of a hermeneutical grasping-seizing of a true work of art which is the absolute ideation (forming into One
= Ineinsbildung) of the material into the form by means of imagination (SW IV
423) - the result (as its product) being capable of infinite (exegetic) reading, because it is actually mapping the infinite itself. (SW III 620) So true objectivity is
in its totality nothing but art itself (SW V 284), and mythology is its necessary
condition, and the first material of art, at the same time. (SW V 405) But note
the explicit reference to social praxis: Thinking is basically schematization, but
acting is allegorical while art is symbolical. (SW V 411) That is, within art, the
principle of absolute knowledge becomes onjective, but not as a mere principle
of cognition, but at the same time as a principle of action. (SW VI 573) In this
very sense, deciphering is signifying and construing, but signifying implies acting. (SW VIII 445) The ideation results finally in a re-constructive duplicating
of the worldly process evolving out of its substantial foundation, expressed in
terms of an aesthetical process of re-creation such that reciting its poetical
product (a text in fact) is actually identical to executing the associated practical

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(real) action.
It is Steffens in fact, student and friend of Schelling, originally physicist and scientist in general, who explicates this aspect of an onto-epistemic execution of reality in some detail when
going back to Denmark and starting his co-operation with the Danish poet Oehlenschlger.
For Steffens, the world formula is the expression of the adequate treatment of the question
concerning the immanent mediation of the scientific and philosophical-aesthetical complex
within a hermneutic of science.78 He tries to approximate the corporal (bodily) world by representing it in terms of cipher and symbol, on an epistemic basis which he calls romantic
universal poetry. For Steffens, everything is starting from a chaos which is All or Nothing(ness) (better: non-being) at the same time, as the uncomprehendable nucleus of the universe itself. Nature being thought of as representing the universal poem of creation is insofar
pointing to a philosophy of real nature. Hence, Spinozism of physics simply means in principle the affinity of the latter to poetry. The method of the physicist has to become historical,
his last end shall be mythology. Consequently, the highest representation of physics will be
necessarily a novel.79 Steffens and Oehlenschlger have tried to reconstruct such a narrative
vision of the worldly process in Oehlenschlgers epic poem The Golden Horns which is to
be understood as the expression of poetic immanence in terms of a philosophy of nature being
unfolded according to the basic principles as they are laid down by Schelling. 80

3. Inherent Materialism
For Schelling, matter is the finite result of the fundamental principle. (SW II
360) He visualizes matter as the expression of the copula which is grasped by
reason as the eternal unity of the infinite and the finite which are in turn being
unified by the original and absolute necessity of this copula. Schelling agrees
with Spinoza therefore, who ... to the question whether by the mere motion of
extension ... the manifold of corporal (bodily) things could be derived a priori,
answers: I think of the matter as an attribute which expresses the infinite and
eternal essence in itself! (SW II 359) Schelling continues: Because ... each
part of matter has to be an imprint onto the whole universe for itself, it cannot be
really a mere attribute which expresses infinite essence, but it has to be thought
of as being the proper embodiment (the quint-essence) of such attributes. In
actually transgressing Spinozas concept here, Schelling prepares for the notion
of matter as being the primum existens: In a letter to Oldenburg (of 10th November 1665), Spinoza explains that with the connection of parts he would
mean that the laws or the nature of one part assimilate to the laws or nature of
another part such that they are in contradiction as little as possible. And: With
respect to a whole and its parts I consider the things as parts of a whole insofar
as their nature assimilates to each other such that they are conformal to each
other as far as possible.81 Interpreted in terms of Schellings formulation that
each part of matter would be an expression of the whole universe, the view of
78

Cf. F.Paul: Henrik Steffens. Naturphilosophie und Universalromantik. Fink, Mnchen, 1973, 10.
Ibid. 143-154 par. - Also: F.Schlegel, Fragm. 378sq. (1799), Standard Edition (KFSA 18, 154sq.).
80
Ibid. 172sq.
81
Letters, Meiner edition, ed. C.Gebhardt, Hamburg, 1986. In the last letter there is the important sentence: As
to the human mind however, I think of it as being a part of nature, too.
79

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Spinoza is rather a restriction of a fundamental, epistemic perspective: That is,

harmony of each part of nature with the whole of it means a mapping quality
which, translated into modern terminology, would point to a sort of cosmological principle (which introduces isotropy and homogeneity into the universe such
that the validity of physical laws is secured for arbitrary parts of space and
time). Schelling however, points to a much stronger implication generated by
the mediation of singularity and totality: Insofar matter is identity, but not an
absolute one, but one in the sense of indifference, only. (SW III 314) It is not
formed from the beginning on, but it is capable of being formed when becoming
finite. Hence, it is determined by the principle of duplicity: The general law of
finite representations in matter is that of a polarity (or duplicity) within identity. (SW VI 283) And it is subjected to the reciprocal interaction of expansion
and contraction: By the disunity the change between contraction and expansion
is actually determined. This ... is not something within matter, but matter itself,
and the first step of productivity passing over to a product. (SW III 303) (Note
that expansion and contraction have no gravitational connotation here, and matter is not physical matter proper, but rather a matter of matter in the philosophical sense. (PP 192) Later on, Schelling will also define matter as first difference from Nothing(ness) = Freedom. (PP 191) This implies not only the idea
of matter being a kind of frozen freedom, but also viceversa, that spirit be a
kind of essential matter - relating this view clearly to the substance picture of
Spinoza again.) Hence, by what space is actually filled, is not matter, because it
is the filled space itself ... only that which is within, but it is not the being itself.
Hence, what is purely productive without being product, is only the last foundation of quality ... (SW III 292) Within matter as a productive existence and as
the first quantitative difference of being, all powers (of existence) are contained, if not according to reality, then according to possibility. (SW IV 150)
By raising matter to its different powers, the conditions for organic nature are
provided, insofar as its first power is that matter in which motion is subordinated to being, its second power insofar in it the forms of motion are forms of
activity, and its third power which is organic nature itself. Hence, basically (im
Grunde), all matter ... is One in itself. (SW VI 298) In fact, for Schelling, the
real within matter is the essence of substance, as the in-itself (of matter) after
substracting the privations to which it is subjected when being represented and
relative to other things. (SW VI 231) And Schelling continues:
If we determine therefore a thing as being finite, not insofar we grasp it in terms of an infinite
substance, but insofar we abstract from the latter and grasp it in terms of the opposition to
other things, then within the universe and within matter, there is nothing which is unfruitful,
empty, uncultivated, or dead, but inborn to it in itself and each part of it is a proper world, a
microcosm, into which the world in the large is completely mapped and by which it is completely represented. (SW VI 232)

The modern implications of this formulation should have become obvious by

now. Hence, according to Schelling, the organism is necessary for nature, and

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there is no non-organic nature in itself. (SW VI 379) Matter as being corporal

(bodily) is the prefectly real, that is, it is what all of the ... natura naturans is
living presently ... (SW VII 223) Insofar Schellings ansatz can be referred to
the conception of a self-processing nature which contains all creative powers
which are actually able to constitute the real world. As Schelling says: The
darkest of all the things, yes, darkness itself, is, according to some, matter. Nevertheless, it is this unknown root (out of which) all forms and living appearances
of nature do emerge. Without any knowledge of it, physics is without scientific
foundation, and the science of reason itself is deficient of the copula by which
the idea is mediated with reality. (SW II 359) The basis of matter is motion as
an active intertwining of space and time. (SW VI 242) For Schelling, space
as mere abstraction of things is ... the pure non-being of rest itself ... In the same
way, time is as an abstraction of the particular things mere motion without
something that is actually moved. Hence, time is motion in-itself.
So, existence, mediated with the absolute by initial emergence, implies temporality. (We will discuss the aspect of initial emergence in more detail in the next
section.) The first action undertaken (which is the first self-restriction of the absolute on the way to expressing itself in becoming worldly) poses a beginning of
time, but not a beginning in time. (PL 123) Hence, to introduce temporality
means to introduce difference within the real. The universe in this sense, has a
beginning, but not a beginning within time: All of time is within it (the beginning), external to it, there is no time. (PL 124sq.) In principle, everything has
its own time within itself, because there is no external, general time. Time is interior to everything. (Note the similarity to the modern argument as today it is
being put forward by Prigogine e.g.)
4. Emergence
In the winter term of 1832/33, in his Munich lectures on the foundation of positive philosophy, Schelling summarizes one of the main topic of his work: the
question of initial emergence of the world. I quote the relevant passage in some
detail:
The unbiased being is everywhere only that which does not know of itself; as soon as it becomes an object for itself, it is already a biased one ... So the subject in its pure essentiality is
as nothing(ness) (= non-being) ... Up to now it is only itself and insofar a complete freedom
from all being and against all being; but it is unavoidable for it to attract itself, because only to
that purpose it is a subject at all: that it be object for itself, because it is assumed that there is
nothing (else) except (exterior to) itself which could become an object for it, but insofar as it
attracts itself, it is not anymore as nothing(ness) (= non-being), but it is as something ... But as
that which it is, the subject can never get hold of itself, for in the attracting of itself it becomes
an Other, this is the fundamental contradiction ... Hence, the first being, the primum existens,
... is the first coincidental (random) one ... This complete construction begins therefore with
the emergence of the first coincidental (random) one - which is unequal to itself - it begins

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with a dissonance, and it probably must begin so. 82

The important aspects of this passage refer to the foundation of the world (unbiased being) which provides the inherent productivity to actually produce a
world. As such it is (active) subject rather than produced object. And Schelling
states the following:
(a) Primordial being has no reflective consciousness (or cognition). It is subjectivity as pure potential and unconscious non-being, because it is not (but it could
be and presumably will be).
(b) Before becoming worldly, it is complete (pure) freedom.
(c) It must become worldly quite inevitably, because it is the very sense of primordial being as subjectivity to eventually become an object to itself.
(d) Having become wordly, the subject is not anymore a pure subject, it is biased
insofar it is self-difference.
(e) Because it is self-difference from its (worldly) beginning on, it cannot get
hold of itself, and this initial dissonance founds the explicit project structure of
worldly being and hence its actual dynamics.
So, for Schelling, the basic tenor is that the initial subject in its pure form (in its
proper essentiality) is potential of the becoming (worldly) and thus potential of
production, at the same time: The beginning of reality itself is the self-producing
of the initial subject in the sense of spontaneously becoming something at all (in
worldly terms), instead of remaining potential non-being. With the first emergence of an object, the foundation of motion itself (as being worldly motion
then) is laid down. Schelling visualizes the transition from nothing(ness) (=
non-being) to worldly reality in the following sense: The subject in its pure essentiality is thought of as being the prius of itself within its non-unfolded being.
It is causa sui in a positive sense. In this moment of pure substantiality it is what
exists before/in front of itself. As such, the subject is not nothing(ness), but as
nothing(ness) (= non-being).83 Consequently, for Schelling, true science then,
has to start from this first dissonance in order to be able to eventually end up
with harmony.
These basic aspects of the onset of worldly evolution have been developed by
Schelling as early as in his works on freedom and in the Stuttgart private lectures (of 1809/10). 84 Obviously, Schellings conception of organicity is of
central importance here, for mediating identity with difference in the framework
of an onset of evolution viewed as based on a structure which is mainly
self-different. We have discussed already the innovative aspects of this conception in some detail. Hence, the unifying principle Schelling looks for can be ex82

Grundlagen der positiven Philosophie (Munich lectures 1832/33), ed. Fuhrmans, Bottega dErasmo, Torino,
1972, 187. (Henceforth: PP)
83
For the difference between nothing(ness) and non-being see PP 385sq.
84
ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (= Freiheitsschrift), SW VII 331-413 and PL, op.cit.

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pressed in two different ways: either as a principle of absolute identity in the

sense of an organic unity of the totality as such (PL 103), or as the absolute
identity of the ideal and the real, or, as Schelling formulates, of the world of nature and the world of spirit. (PL 104) In this sense, the ideal and the real are
mere forms of the same underlying essence, and the identity - this being a difference to Fichte - is valid for all of matter (or over all of nature). (PL 105)
Hence, Schelling does not doubt that traditional duplicity of res extensa and
res cogitans in the Spinozist sense, but for him it is more important that there
is the necessity for the dual structure of unity itself, because this can answer him
the question why there should be a world at all: This unity must in fact be disunited by itself in order to be able to unveil and manifest itself. Schelling uses a
very modern terminology for expressing this insofar he speaks of
self-differentiation or subject-objectivation. (PL 112) On the other hand, he refers to a modified concept originally introduced in his work on the world ages85, namely to that of the world formula. Hence, he transgresses his original
positions decisively, and at the same time he prepares a modern semiological
evaluation of the problem of foundation.
The world formula however, takes on a somewhat cryptic form, expressed
mainly in terms of a private sort of nomenclature which cannot satisfy mathematical standards of meaning. It is more a kind of metaphorizing symbolization
of a sufficiently complex context which simply serves as an abbreviation of
concepts which can be expressed in everyday language by a considerable
amount of efforts, only. But in a sense, this situation is not so different from
nowadays mathematics (as we shall see), where the problem is to deal with a
kind of hermeneutic excess which is important for the interpretation of what is
actually being modeled by the symbols used following a pattern of
self-consistent rules, but which is not actually part of the mathematical forms
expressed.
Schellings formula is of the explicit form (PL 117)

(*)

(A 3/A2 = (A = B)) B,

and Schelling elaborates that neither A nor B can exist for itself, but B must exist in first power as an identity A = B, as a real being which is always A in B,
while A as the position (thesis) of the first power must contain the latter within
itself, which is A2. Formally, he follows the nomenclature of Fichte who in his
theorem of identity formulates that A = A, which according to Schellings interpretation means that A is taken as subject and object, respectively, at the same
time, but also as an identity of both. Insofar (because of this difference of A to
itself), also A = B is valid which represents the disunity, with A being the unity
85

Die Weltalter-Fragmente, in den Urfassungen von 1811 (I) und 1813 (II), ed. M.Schrter, Beck, Mnchen,
1979 (1946). Henceforth: WA.

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and totality, which again has its object in A = B. This is in fact the celebrated
unity of contradiction (disunity) pursued in German idealistic philosophy for a
long time. (PL 113) Formula (*) generalizes this unity to one of the unity itself
and of contradiction, at the same time. But the differences introduced do not really act as positions, but rather as powers.
Schelling explains this formula again in his world ages: He starts from the true
sense of judging, say from the proposition A = B. This means in principle that
what = A is what = B. Hence, there is a double feature of the fundamental proposition: Not A is simply A, but any X which is A, and B is not simply B, but any
X which is B, and not these two are identical as such, but only the said X is
identical with itself. Hence, in the proposition A = B, there are actually three
different propositions. (WA II 41sq., 129) The basic idea of this is (the nucleus
of this argument coming from the work on freedom) that nature, once it is
brought to unity with the eternal, absolute being (and also with what eternally
exists), nature as totality is lowest (first) power of essence, hence mere foundation of existence (because, in fact, it is to eternal being like a being which contains all powers). The latter is the positive at the same time, the affirmative of
nature, and insofar it is the second power. The eternally existing is what is affirmative to both of these, hence it is the third power. Within their simultaneity,
these are the principles of being. But their relationship is one which is also valid
for the acting forces, so that these principles of being are principles of becoming
within a progressive succession, at the same time. (WA II 129sq., 179)
Schelling points to two problems which have not lost their relevance until today:
On the one hand it is shown that becoming can only be thought of as being a
succession, as an unfolding of basically simultaneous principles of being. This
means in particular, that the fact of becoming itself can hardly be mapped in a
dynamical way, but only in terms of a static picture (today, we would speak of a
time cut in the sense of a slice). On the other hand, the ordering of negation
and position becomes meaningful: For Schelling, the first power is the negation,
and as such it is the foundation of affirmation which is the second power (rather
than viceversa). And the third power is the unity of both. Hence, the Spinozist
omnis determinatio est negatio is conserved. Actually, this progression of
powers generates time, because temporality, as being inveloped at the beginning within the absolute, is also developed in the course of evolution by this
very unfolding of powers.
In a way, this leads to another interpretation of the world formula which
Hogrebe has given recently86: That which is the same when A = B, is A 2, and
that this is the case, is A3. But this fact is opposed by the immanence of endangering this relationship which is the manner in which identity is given, by identity itself (B). To put it another way: There are relations of identity at all, because there is meaning, but the latter is only the kind of being given, not identity
itself and without identity nothing. But identity is nothing without the kinds of
86

W.Hogrebe: Prdikation und Genesis, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1989, 111-118.

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being given, too. The Fichtean element of this is the reciprocal conditioning of
negation and position which appear to be the same insofar each judgement is
more or less a selection among things which are opposed to each other. (This is
indicated by the isolated B standing outside the bracket in formula (*).) That is,
the accepting (A) of a thought (p) is always identical with the negation (B) of
the contradictory opposite (p*). Insofar A = B is in fact valid. According to the
execution, both, position as well as negation, are the same (A 2), but what is affirmed or negated in detail, is different (p and p*). This belonging together (of
identity according to execution and difference of what is judged in judging)
documents the proposition which is actually in question (A 3), and for which a
judging proposition is epistemically All up to One. Insofar the arbitrary is negated and precedes by this the predication itself, there is validity at all. Hence,
the true is the totality up to One. And this can be clarified by Schellings world
formula.
A prime aspect of this discussion is the fact of the irreducible singularity of
self-reference. I have tried to illustrate this fact by comparing it with the blind
spot of the eye:87 That on what seeing is actually founded (the optical nerve)
prevents seeing at its own origin. Trying to see (out of this place) means to attempt the grasping of the origin of an activity by means of this same activity
(which is not possible). This is the important problem of differentiating internal
from external observers, common to physics. Schelling secures this fact by formulating that foundation is against that to which it is foundation, non-being.
(PP 440) Hence, in terms of res cogitans, self-reference means reflecting reflexion itself back to its own origin. In this sense, insofar the origin of the activity of seeing signifies a locality of the eye which is essentially pre-optical, the
origin of reflexion points to a locality within thinking which is pre-reflective.
Hogrebe locates a cosmological meaning in the world formula which points
back to this problem of origin: It is the external One in which he visualizes the
singular which structures the dynamics of the self-organizing universe out of its
own irreducibility, and expresses this structure in the form of symmetry breakings and phase transitions. That is, the permanent self-organization of the
worldly is insofar due to something which is situated outside of itself, in an ontological as well as in an epistemological sense. This is what Schelling actually
means when talking of eternal beginning which he realizes as the criterion for
existence at all. And this beginning cannot know itself as being a beginning.
Hence, according to the world formula, for Schelling, the world is one which out
of an open beginning remains and exists as an open one. In particular, it is open
with respect to a permanent activity intruding from outside, which is essentially
original negation. The actual opening coincides with the ungraspable origin of
the onto-epistemic process which is hidden deeply inside the pre-reflective region. It is the singularity of the world. And insofar there is something at all,
there is time. As Hogrebe says, the beginning remains displaced (verdrungen) in
87

Cf. Ernst Bloch: Experimentum Mundi, Standard Edition of 1985, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 69.

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everything what exists. That is, time is the kind of a beginning being given as
something which is displaced. In this manner, the ungraspable looms (ragt) into
the world and contaminates the unity of the worldly, and it becomes, as Schelling says, this source of bitterness which is in fact the topic of art. (PP 479sq.)
If there is an insight into the fundamental inconsistency which within all
consistent situations and relationships is lurking (lauernde) foundation, and thus
epistemic exaction (Zumutung), then it is the innovative task of art, to integrate
this into a general process of orienting within the world in a creative manner which at the same time secures its social relevance based on an intrinsically anthropological foundation. And in this very sense, art is always already engaged.88
It is interesting to note that in his later works, Schelling comes back to the problem of initial
emergence with a view to the technical problem of phrasing appropriate conditions for it, in
first place: He actually combines the concept of singularity with that of emergence in stating
that there is a moment of mediation representing the locus of initial emergence, at which the
original (primordial) connection of being is torn (or broken) in order to sublate its exclusiveness. This original connection is torn by its own immanent self-contradiction, and by this
tearing space is produced, as form of brokenness ... Hence, this is the reason why in each element of the worldly a trace of this emergence can still be found. (PP 362) It is not before
this katabol tou ksmou is finished that, for Schelling, the true process of the coming into
being of nature actually begins, - thus out of fragments which are the result of this initial tearing at the singular locus of emergence. (PP 362sqq.)

F. Bloch
From the beginning on, the incorporation of nature, in order to achieve a true
unification of the worldly, is a necessary point of argument for Ernst Bloch. 89 In
a letter to Lowe he elaborates on this conception: The question is now: is there,
like a possible mediation with the subject of history, also one with the - always
hypothetical - subject of nature? With the material mover (motive power) of the
technologically incorporated proceedings of nature ...? Can in this line a Marxism of Technology be found? Engels does not yet possess something like that ...
Is it not a borderland ideal for the non-available marxism of concrete technology, to look into nature, say, as you look into a comrades bosom? My technological chapter on utopia tries to deal with such an alliance (if not with more). 90
The task is for Bloch, to develop a consistent view of dialectical processes of the
worldly within a totality which is encompassing nature as well as culture, insofar following the line of Schelling, for whom the former was the Iliade, the latter
88

Sartre defines this as meaning inserted, instituted, engaged, at the same time. Cf. his LEtre et le nant (Being and Nothingness), Gallimard, Paris, 1943, 521.
89
I have discussed the philosophy of Ernst Bloch in more explicit detail, especially with a view to possible applications within the general field of sciences today, in my The Utopian Function of Art and Literature in the
Philosophy of Ernst Bloch - A Topic Revisited, Bloch-Jahrbuch (Yearbook) 15/1996, Ludwigshafen, 33-73.
90
Letter to Lowe, 12th October 1944, Letters, 2 vols., 1985, 741.

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the Odyssey of mind.

Basically, three categories of the dialectical process are central for the systematic structure of Blochs philosophy: front, novum, and matter. The latter is for
him, well in the tradition of the Aristotelian Left, the substratum of the worldly process, on the very front of which human action is purporting its sense, also
pointing to a possible novum which in turn - once being uncovered when latency
is transformed into tendency - re-defines the quality of this process. Tendency
stands here for the coarsely determined (law-like) component of the process, it is
energetics-in-action, driving forward ... to forms of extraction, forward to what
is ... implied by the entelechetically meant goal ... (which itself) is still latent. 91
Latency is the innovative force which actually drives the process itself and determines by its coming to light what is empirically expressed then by tendency.
It is that which spontaneously forms new structures and shapes the actual character of the worldly. It is the entelechetic nature of matter in potentiality, utopian, but by means of the forms of extraction realized by the process as already
concrete-utopian ...
Consequently, Bloch favours Schellings view as compared to that of Fichte,
insofar he differs between the two philosophies as representing the abstract, not
yet unfolded thesis of rationality - in the case of Fichte - and being on a dithyrambic background of his philosophy of nature - in the case of Schelling. 92
Hence, the process is the acting production of nature for-itself, but it is extracted
(herausgebracht) content only which can uncover the sense of its origin. (Thus
what we can perceive are forms of extraction only.) So Bloch follows basically
Schellings view. But for him, the ultimately manifested (or in Schellings
sense: produced) nature is as is the ultimately manifested history in the horizon
of future: Nature is not yet past and gone, but it is the not yet at all cleared
building site ... for the not yet at all adequately available human house. 93 The
capability of the problematic subject of nature, to participate in actually
building this house, is for Bloch nothing but the objective-utopian correlate of
human-utopian phantasy as a concrete one. And Bloch refers here to the stoic
concept of phantasa kataleptik, to a phantasy which is still imagination, but
within the well-defined framework which is given by the space of free play indicated by the laws of nature. It is thus exact phantasy indeed. Referring to a
Marxist concept of literature, Bloch discusses this phantasy in more detail, as a
dialectically instructed (scholarly) phantasy, concretely mediated with the tendency and latency of being, within spaces of time of real possibility. 94 Hence, if
poetic essentiality points to an essence which has not yet clearly appeared within
the empirical substrate (of matter), a re-definition of matter itself is necessary
which is able to incorporate this aspect of the possible within the determinants
of being. Consequently, Bloch introduces a concept of matter which displays it
91
92
93
94

Das Materialismusproblem - seine Geschichte und Substanz. Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 469.
Subjekt-Objekt. Erluterungen zu Hegel. Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 143.
Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 807.
Literarische Aufstze, Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 137sqq.

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not simply as a mechanical block, but as a being-for-possibility (kat t

dynatn) as well as a being-in-possibility (dynmei n), at the same time, the
former as that which can appear historically according to the conditions given,
the latter as the correlate of the objectively real possible or the substrate of possibility within the dialectical process. 95 In this sense, matter is permanently differentiated in the clarifying and realizing of what in its shining forth
(Vor-Schein) is pointed potential of everything in the future, leading up towards
a materia ultima which by itself is realized foundation of the world in latency. 96
It is in this sense that the world itself becomes an open experiment
(experimentum mundi) which is performed by matter via the mediation with
ourselves as being humans.
This ansatz seems quite compatible with that of Schelling, only that the concept
of matter is generalized, insofar as matter incorporates social mediation explicitly, due to its Marxist connotation, and that the teleological aspects of the system are only weak, insofar as the development cannot preclude its own failure.
Note that this makes possible a direct coupling of modern philosophy to modern
science. But Bloch also transgresses the views of Schelling with respect to two
basic innovative aspects which will be discussed in the next two sections.
1. Matter as Process and Theory-Praxis
In the case of Bloch, the transition to a philosophy of the concrete-real has been
completed. Especially, the categories express for him the conditions under
which the actual processing of the world is being reflected. They become the
determinants of existence of the real world. 97 On the general line discussed here,
in particular on the line Spinoza-Schelling, this is not a trivial result at all. In
spite of the fact that Schelling already agues very much in the neighborhood of
modern materialism, as we have seen earlier, for him, matter itself is nothing but
a scandal for the idealistic philosophy, even in the sense of a meta-concept (as
matter of matter). It is the comparatively late re-discovering of the main category of dynmei n which re-defines the material substratum (the original
hle) as a material of possibility proper, as an unresting possibility-substratum itself being in permanent turmoil. 98 This also changes the perspective of motion: As transition from the possible to the real (to the realized) it
is transition from potentia to actus in the classical sense, but the potential of
matter (as its field of possibilities) and the energetic of the form determine together what reality is about. Thinking of Averroes and Avicenna, the substratum
itself encompasses the possible, but with a development which is eductio
formarum ex materia, but with matter here as a real mother.99
95

Tbinger Einleitung in die Philosophie. Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 233.

Ibid. 234.
97
Das Materialismusproblem, op.cit., 111.
98
Ibid. 143.- Cf. Experimentum Mundi, op.cit., 139.
99
Das Materialismusproblem, op.cit., 153, 144.- See also ibid., 501 with the quotation of Averroes: Generatio
nihil aliud est nisi converti res ab eo, quod est in potentia, ad actum. The concept of natura naturans has been
96

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Quite correct is the Blochian critique concerning the two other innovative aspects he introduces into his theory, missing them in the case of Spinoza and
Schelling: namely that of the actual mediation of singularity and totality in terms
of the dialectical, fundamental problem, and that of the mechanistic-formal concept of time as applied by physics. 100 The idea of Engels, of the qualitative transition or turning (Umschlag) of quantitative situations, is still useful when discussing the explicit conflict structure of the world, in a progressive competition
of tendency and latency (visualizing the latter as matter-in-action and matter-in-potentiality, respectively).101 Bloch visualizes force and logicon as attributes of matter, and insofar he re-formulates Spinozas substance model in a decisive way.102 Hence, matter of matter appears as substance (on the speculative
level), of which res extensa (mass-energy) and res cogitans (theory-praxis) are
two attributes which fall into the human mode of perception and cognition.
If it is now progression in becoming and shining forth of what is pointed to
within this becoming, which appears as the central theme of philosophy, if the
subject in this sense is always on the way towards its own predication (S is not
yet P writes Bloch instead of the traditional S = P which is the same as the
Fichtean A = B we have discussed earlier in more detail), then the fundamental
category of this thinking is that it is possible at all to actually relate between the
That (quod/Da) and the What (quid/Was) of the process. 103 This problem is
taken up again more systematically, after it has been discussed already by Schelling. As Bloch formulates: Underneath all of the being at hand, the question of
being acts as a riddle of origin which is not yet solved for itself. It is the question
of the That-foundation of being which realizes everything what there is. 104
Hence, the theorem of foundation (Satz vom Grunde) itself points to a That
which is what we all ourselves are being in principle, without being cleared yet
by an object-like predicate.105 The categories then utilized are nothing but the
mode of relationship of the classical quodditas and quidditas. Insofar tendency
is the becoming within the historical experiment of its totality, it includes its
own utopian function which is latency, driving towards a novum: Quidquid
latet, apparebit formulates Bloch with the apocalyptic power of the Gospels. 106
Note in passing that in this way the ontological process structure is mediated
with an epistemological process structure, because for Bloch, (propositional)
reflexion does not start with a concept (Begriff), but with a pre-concept or preintroduced by Averroes himself, as we have seen before, and this thought of a world which is the universal unfolding of what is available already in matter from the beginning on, has not been left by Thomas of Aquinas,
and has been continued in Bruno and Spinoza. See also ibid., 155, 178 for more details.
100
Das Materialismusproblem, op.cit., 351, 353.
101
Ibid., 363, 407sq. - Referring to the notion of project structure (p-structure) as I have introduced it in my
Yearbook paper quoted above, one can formulate that implicit as well as explicit conflict structures imply project
structures (c-structures imply p-structures), the former meaning the perspective of the foundation (substance), the
latter that of the world proper.
102
Das Materialismusproblem, op.cit., 475.
103
Experimentum Mundi, op.cit., 41, 71.
104
Ibid., 74.
105
Ibid., 75.
106
Ibid., 148.

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cept (which in the German word Ergriff carries also the connotation of
grasping in the sense of seizing and adopting, in contrary to understanding - while the connotation of commanding is conserved in the fact that it is a
kind of implicit social command to choose well-defined (though intuitively
seized) precepts, in first place). Hence, if we visualize theories as sets of propositions subject to a collection of rules, then an old theory is being replaced in
terms of a new one by expanding the number of elements of one such set, which
re-structures the pattern of derivational interactions among propositions, at the
same time. But note now that the formulation of a new proposition starts with a
formulation of a new concept to which the proposition is the predicational operator. And a new concept arises from new precepts which are actually nothing but
the old concepts! It is in this way that the process dynamic is intrinsic from the
beginning on. And this fact can be used to prove that the result is always open:
That is, there is no absolute truth which would make it possible to eventually
close a theory. On the contrary, there is no sufficient reason to assume that the
process of transforming precepts into concepts would ever come to an end.
But because the categories of gestalt are a measure for the forthcoming novum,
namely with a view to the forms of extraction being permanently produced
within the process of the world, what appears is not simply something worldly,
for Bloch it remains graspable within a frame of aesthetics, knowledge, and ethics. In particular, the categories of the aesthetical have a large amount of a
non-settled archetypal in them. Hence, in the process of artistically mapping
the essence of the world points to an ornament which can be visualized as the
geometricum of a natural eidos, insofar it relates to real ciphers which can be
understood as the problem of a nucleus of the real world which is not yet fully
extracted.107 With a view to connotations used by Schelling, Bloch calls these
real ciphers odysseys of the departing lying dormant such that nature contains
lineaments of final states of apocalyptic relevance which can be expressed
only in terms of an exact poetry of nature.108 And this is the critical function
of philosophy, because it is not allowed to leave all that out which is actually
opposition to leading the process to a final success: Because there were no
process at all, if in the world there would not be something which shall not be,
which shall not be the way it actually is. 109 In this sense, Bloch locates a contents of hope in this process which is not yet settled, and he calls this the patmos-contents which is an ethical condition at the same time: Because the real
contains in its being the possibility of a being like utopia ...110 Or more exactly:
The zero-point within the That looks for and tries (sucht und ver-sucht) - via
the experiment of the world - its, that is its (the worlds) omega, shining forth
for the subject as happiness, in society as solidarity of human dignity, in the ex107

Ibid., 155, 161, 219, par.

Ibid., 220, 224.- Note that in German departing (ausziehend) can have the double connotation of extracting.
109
Ibid. 237.- Compare in the case of Schelling to W.E.Ehrhardt: Schellings letzte Kritik an Hegel zu dessen
Lebzeiten. In: H.Kimmerle et al. (eds.), Hegel-Jahrbuch (Yearbook) 1992, 11-16.
110
Ibid., 238.
108

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terior of the worldscape ... as home.111

2. Aesthetics-Knowledge: Interpretation and Understanding
But there are still two important methodological aspects which in Blochs philosophy transgress Schellings view of the world. One is the explicit generalization of the dialectic itself, leading even beyond that theory which Marxism offers in its consistent materialistic turn. The other is the new role aesthetics plays
within the framework of gaining knowledge about the world.
First of all, it is important to note that the above mentioned search through all
those real fragments and real models of the world, with its permanent formation
of categories as trials of extraction, is nevertheless graspable in terms of
well-defined categories at all: namely in logical predications and space-time
dimensionings as well as in objectivations of causal and final transmissions, and
in manifestations of the forms of extraction 112 This is in fact the significant kind
in which matter expresses itself as logikon in latency and tendency, respectively
(i.e. not only as motion alone). In fact, the three theorems of philosophy remain valid in their traditional meaning, they are however subjected to a
re-interpretation according to the categories they actually move: Hence, the
theorem of contradiction states the impossibility of a co-existing steady state
of objective contradictions, pre-forming the gestalt of concrete dialectical motions. The theorem of foundation states the transmission of causality and finality. And the theorem of identity formulates the trials (experiments) of identification within the flow of categorial gestalts with a view to the real utopian. 113
This re-interpretation of categorial theorems is the true reason for a significant
change of character of the general dialectic: Bloch generalizes actually what is
usually referred to as sublation in the threefold Hegelian sense. Bloch differs
between contradiction and resistance, and states that only the former can be
actually sublated in the strict sense of conventional dialectics, but the latter can
only be overcome. Hence, a clean sublation (in the original Hegelian sense) is
not at all guaranteed from the outset! Contradictions are determined by tendency, but resistances are determined by the nothing(ness) which surrounds latency.
Note that by its innovative power, it is the latter which dominates the process of
the world. This differentiation leads to the Blochian concept of multishifted
(or: multilayered) dialectic. 114 Not only can contradictions and resistances
co-exist within a given system, but the contradictions can also be of a multi-temporal as well as of a multi-spatial type.115 Hence, there are concurrent and
also non-concurrent contradictions which can co-exist within an elastic
space-time.116 This practically means that there are always unsolved problems,
111
112
113
114
115
116

Ibid., 261.
Ibid., 242.
Ibid., 243.
Erbschaft dieser Zeit. Suhrkamp Standard Edition, 1985, 122. Cf. also: Tbinger Einleitung, op.cit., 316.
Erbschaft dieser Zeit, op.cit., 124.
Ibid., 111sqq. - Tbinger Einleitung, op.cit., 133.- Bloch uses here the connotation of Einsteins theory of

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anachronisms, resistances which have not yet been overcome, contradictions

which have not yet been sublated, and all of these exist together in the same
domain of space and time, without this fact contradicting the fundamental theorems of philosophy discussed above. It is this additional innovation introduced
by Bloch which is actually founding the realistic and practical character of the
notions he calls live-worldly praxis as expression of matter in terms of its being
a process of theory-praxis itself. Hence, what Bloch does achieve is a complete
orientation towards a materialistically founded real praxis on a global as well as
on a local level, differentiated downward to the minute deatils of daily life,
but reaching upward through the domains of science and art to the very foundation of the world, presenting a truly total and united approach with the demand for universal validity.
The second point, not really separated from the first, is the role of aesthetics
which is re-interpreted very much on Schellings line. In principle, aesthetics is
visualized by Bloch in terms of a materialistically turned Schellingian program.
The aesthetical domain in this sense is also extended to actually encompass the
sciences as well such that the transition from physics to speculative physics (in
the sense of Schelling) is methodologically performed when Bloch introduces
the aspect of metaphorization. 117 Hence, science itself can be drafted within an
aesthetical framework when viewed in terms of a generalized hermeneutic
which encompasses the totality of nature. The point is to look for the sense beyond the literal one, including a complete anticipation of radical opacity of the
production of sense and meaning. Hermeneutics, as a communicatively founded
and mediated one, becomes hermetic itself: Nature composes itself (dichtet sich
selbst) in symbols with which it creates its own meaning (mit welchen sie sich
selbst bedeutet).118 Nature presents itself to exegesis and hermeneutics, its sole
existence excites suspicion (in the sense of Benjamin, this being the reason why
man approaches nature in terms of categories) which is to be cleared up. Hence,
the world emerges, considered in terms of its own models, in a series of ... dialectical, real allegories and symbols.119

III. Modern Implications of the General Line

A. Metaphysics as Ultima Philosophia

general relativity and speaks explicitly of the non-Euclidean structure of the world.
117
In fact, Bloch speaks of metaphysation with an intended double connotation of the word. And he refers to
Weyls book on space, time, and matter, stating that this approach should eventually achieve what the formal
laws of physics cannot actually do: to arrive at the true essence of reality and to grasp its foundation. Cf. Das
Materialismusproblem, op.cit., 350, 357.
118
G.Raulet: Der dritte Hiob. Zu Ernst Blochs dialektisch-materialistischer Hermeneutik. (1976) In: B.Schmidt
(ed.), Materialien zu Ernst Blochs Prinzip Hoffnung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1978, 104-111. Here: 107.
119
Tbinger Einleitung, op.cit., 343.

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The chief objective of philosophy today can be visualized as a critical taking in

sight of scientific results and their raising to a structural level, thus
re-constructing the totality of references of meaning and establishing sense. By
gaining distance to local problems and their detailed fine structure, philosophy is
able to achieve insight into new perspectives from a global point of view. Philosophy can thus put forward heuristic offers to (interdisciplinary) science. Visualized this way, philosophy is not more one which establishes foundations for
the sciences, but it is following up rather the results of the sciences, and its
orientational function for humans is being met by means of a post-hoc unification of world views.
It is philosophys intrinsic axiomatic structure however which establishes three
important points serving as consistency criteria for world views: a) the thesis of
totality and unity of the world (which means that there is one universe in one
piece governed by one set of laws only which are universal), b) the principle of
intrinsic self-reference (which means that the universe refers to itself during its
evolution), c) the principle of unity for the worlds substratum (which means
that evolution is basically nothing but the unfolding of the originally available
matter to ever greater complexity such that thinking itself is a form of that same
matter).
There is a decisive anthropomorphic tendency in this approach which is mainly
due to the fact that everything which is being thought (about) at a time is depending on explicit anthropological and cognitively structured processes of signification linking the self-narrating nature and its symbolic self-representation to
each other. But the mediators in this process of self-communication are the humans themselves (at least at present).
The general line of thought which has been discussed in chapter II is at the root
of this modern visualization of what philosophy can mean today. At the end of
this line, consequences are drawn, with a view to the explicitly materialistic turn
this line has finally taken. The theoretical nucleus of philosophy is revealed as a
new kind of metaphysics which in contrary to the prima philosophia as it had
been intended in Aristotelian terms, in first place, shows up now as an ultima
philosophia starting its task not before the taking in sight of the scientifically
graspable has been accomplished. Other available lines of thought do not provide a similarly consistent basis for a consequent positioning of philosophy with
respect to science. In particular, Analytical Philosophy, nowadays a dominating
line taken among Anglo-American philosophers, cannot take into account the
primarily speculative character of a unified ansatz of this kind. If anything
which can be thought about can also be said, as Analytical Philosophy basically
holds, then clarity is gained simply by permanently testing, developing, and
re-testing the adequateness of language as a mode of communication which is
subject to transformations under which the meaning produced has to remain, if
not invariant, then compatible at least. But the actual contents being expressed
by this production of meaning has been lost then.

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B. The Relationship to Science

Cosmology provides an important example for the consequences of this
re-positioning of philosophy: The point is (as we have seen) that according to
the topic chosen, the first movement of philosophizing would be a taking in
sight of what science is offering. The axiomatic base of cosmology is primarily
what is referred to as Cosmological Principle, stating that the universe is isotropic and homogeneous as visualized in terms of its large-scale structure. This
principle is nothing but an axiomatic proposition, but it nevertheless serves as
the base for developing a consistent model of the evolution of the universe, or of
the history of space, time, and matter, respectively, such that in a progressive-regressive motion of extrapolation, the state of the universe now, as it can
be observed, is related to a period close to the origin of the universe (called Big
Bang) in order to draft out a smooth development between these two points of
reference. There is a limited set of models accepted according to the present
state of knowledge, and they tell us the history of the universe, so far as we
know it. If we decide now that philosophy is basically following up this primary
motion of modelling, as a secondary turn of re-orientation, in the sense, that
philosophy looks for a post-hoc foundation of such conceptions as presented by
cosmolo-gy, then, obviously, we have a surprising consequence: The Cosmological Principle shows up as a synthetic proposition a priori (what according to
Kant should not really exist). Hence, physics is actually what regulates our philosophical convention, because it gains an explicit (quasi-ontological) state of
fundamental nature. The crucial point is that according to an axiomatic proposition which is part of a physical theory, philosophy must decide about its own
building up of theories, because it is restricted in fact, in its natural choice of
theoretical approaches. If e.g., the Cosmological Principle is the first condition
of telling the history of the universe within a given frame of theoretical references, then for philosophy, it is necessary to concentrate on approaches of a materialistic character, in the sense that no other entity apart from (space-time-)
matter can really be part of a philosophical theory, because it is not part of the
physical theory. If nevertheless, one would like to hold to any other entity (such
as a spirit of one or the other kind), one would violate traditional theorems of
philosophy (e.g. the theorem of foundation, or sufficient reason, and also the
theorem of Okhams razor). By some, this will be valued as a kind of scandal,
because it appears as if philosophy would give up its autonomy. But the truth is
that the two basic tasks of philosophy: the unification of the different scientific
fields according to their structural characteristics which together define what we
might call our present picture of the world, - and the explicit foundation of
this unified picture, - have not only an important part to play, in its own right,
but add to the heuristic power philosophy can gain and utilize as an appropriate
re-orientation of science. Hence, the philosophical task is still a critical one
which questions the scientific progress, and which can give explicit hints to im-

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proving this progress, at the same time.

C. The Principle of Self-Narration

Perhaps it is relatively easy now to understand why the evolution of the universe
can be alternatively viewed as a kind of self-narration: Humans are a comparatively late (though transitory) product of an early phase of this evolution, which
means that basically they are not something different from the process being
permanently performed by nature. There are two immediate consequences of
this: On the one hand, the activity humans perform themselves, because they are
actually defined in terms of it (on an anthropological base that is), namely
thinking (or reflecting, to be more precise), cannot be anything else than that
which is evolving all the time: (space-time-) matter itself. In other words:
Thinking as a complex form of matter is part of the evolution process of nature
similar to all the other (not so complex) forms of matter we know so far. For a
theory of human consciousness this has a number of important consequences,
and we will come back to them later. (Remember by the way that our universe is
not very old as compared to the life span a universe of a closed type would have,
perhaps its present age is around 20 billion years, while its total age may be of
the order of 400 billion years. If humans on this very planet here called Earth
have developed during this period, then obviously, there is still a lot to come. If
not, evolution would come to a halt, but why should it? So, if we refer to human
thinking in particular, then we speak of a transitory phenomenon having been
produced by the unfolding of matter. When discussing topics visualized by the
SETI project, this aspect gains a central relevance, and at the same time, teaches
us a modesty which is necessary for a rational approaching of the universe.)
On the other hand, we can in no way whatsoever separate humans from nature.
But this means that it is completely legitimate to speak of nature as observing
and describing itself rather than of humans observing and describing nature.
Nature shows up as a kind of organism, and humans appear as an organ of
knowledge, so to speak. Hence, we can think of nature as being the worldly activity which expresses itself in telling its own story (its own hi-story) to itself. In
a way, nature learns to read itself as a text within a con-text, and starts telling to
itself the results (or reading the text aloud), according to the state of knowledge
actually attained. We can say alternatively that either humans tell the story of the
world when doing their research and communicating the results among each
other, or nature is telling its own story by means of utilizing humans which are
its organs. Narration as visualized under the worldly perspective we are used to
take as being humans, is the same as self-narration under the pre-worldly perspective nature would be able to take in being its own foundation.

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Of course, it is not space, time, and matter in physical terms, which serves as
such a kind of foundation (of a substance-like quality), but a pre-geometry can
achieve this state. It is true though that we could never grasp the full meaning of
such a pre-geometric structure, because we can only know of it in terms of its
consistency with the worldly structures we can observe. This is actually what is
undertaken presently in pre-geometric theories such as those of the string or loop
type. (There is a consequence, by the way, for spaces with more than four dimensions, as they are treated in superstring theory: If space and time (dimensions 1 through 4) are illusions, then so are the others. This might actually open
a line of convergence between string and loop theories.) But one can realize easily the close relationship between this idea and the earlier ideas as they were
developed on the line discussed here in some detail. Some of the consequences
involved we will discuss in the following, looking for an explicit connection to
recent results in physics and mathematics, in order to embed the ideas collected
so far into a background of present research actually being undertaken at the
moment. Note however that the re-positioning of philosophy which can be defined in terms of the aspects listed in sections A through C above, is from the
beginning on well-adapted to what is going on in scientific research, once the
chosen perspective is defined in a self-consistent way.
D. Topoi of Emergence120
With arguments based on topos theory (topoi) it has been shown recently that it
is possible to express the degree to which the logic of an observer (in the physical universe) determines the observation, thus to formalize rational behaviour. In
particular, a formal way of unifying logical, physical, and psychological templates of perception and cognition has been outlined. (Trifonov 1995) Hence, for
the first time, the logical structure of physics (in a topos-theoretic sense having
been investigated by Isham 1996 e.g.) can be generalized in order to explicitly
cover the relationship between what thinks and what is being thought about (as
representing two different aspects of the same underlying material substrate,
dynamical status, and process of signification in the semiological sense). This
empirically confirms an idea that Jean Piaget already mentioned in the seventies,
pointing to this close relationship between perception and cognition on the one
hand, and the mathematical concepts of morphism and categories, on the other.
(ed. Brown 1992) Meanwhile, fractal aspects of cognition have been recently
discussed by MacCormac, Stamenov (eds. 1996) et al. - thus establishing a link
to the evolutionary structures on which the celebrated theories of
self-organization and the formation of structure (chaos theory) in the sense of
Prigogine and others are principally based. Looking at these results in terms of a
philosophical rationale, we can say the following: If reflexion (i.e. proposi120

I follow here the line of argument given in my Cambridge talk at the ANPA 19 meeting, 1997, and in my
Tucson III paper, 1998.

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tional thinking) is visualized as a human characteristic in the anthropological

sense of a definition (of humans), and if humans are visualized as a product of
nature at the same time, then reflexion is nothing but a form of (physical) matter
(though of a very elaborate, complex kind). Humans thinking about nature can
be thought of in turn as nature thinking about itself. Research is then natures
permanent effort of reading its own text within its own con-text (or equivalently: telling its own (hi-) story). Hence, this kind of self-narration is nothing
but the wordly process itself when viewed in strictly onto-epistemic terms. So
the unfolding of (worldly) being is practically equivalent to the cognitive process of collecting knowledge about this same unfolding. By means of an explicit
mathematical concept (negator algebra) the emergence of cognition as that
kind of self-narration shall be illustrated. Within this context, the basic idea is to
represent the production of metaphors (on the epistemic level) as a systematic
(verbal) conceptualization of inhabited geometry (of space-time-matter) whose
nucleus is the production of analogies. Hence, it is also the epistemic foundation
of social poetics (or of the poetic geometrization of worldly references - which
is basically the same - in turn based on narrative structures). In this sense, metaphors can be interpreted as miniature poems with characteristic topoi as their
concepts. (Ricoeur 1975) Hence, the double meaning of topoi. It is this
metaphorization of geometry (the latter being at the roots of the worldly process
itself) which expresses natures permanent effort towards an adequate
self-narration, the process structure of metaphors (MacCormac 1985) reflecting
the very process structure of this worldly unfolding of meaning.
1. Geometry & Cognition
The anthropomorphic aspects mentioned above are related to the relevance of
space-time geometry proper for the very process of cognition. Some time ago,
Leroi-Gourhan has shown in some detail that there has been a co-evolution of
language and tools within the framework of human development which explicitly relates gesture with tool and maps this relationship in terms of signs which
are mythograms rather than pictograms (meaning that both gesture and tool carry a narrative structure into this mapping procedure). The process of reflexion
can be characterized then by abstracting symbols from concrete reality in order
to constitute a parallel world of language which is able to act upon reality more
efficiently. Obviously, there is an inbuilt feedback loop of reflexion and action.
The association of temporal rhythms with spatial forms, preferrably within a
unifying network structure of concepts, leads then to a domestication (i.e. a taking into possession) of space and time. It is this underlying reason (basically of a
semiological nature) which introduces social space as a mapping of space-time
which preserves geometry in a metaphorical form. Within the framework of
self-unfolding cognitive processes, mappings of the mentioned kind co-develop
either as morphisms or transformations, resepectively (the former conserving the
structure of forms, the latter not). Piaget calls rough systems of morphisms

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pre-categories, pointing to a mathematical connotation and connecting it to a

philosophical concept: Originally, categories refer to a continous process of signification with respect to a human mode of the grasping-comprehending of the
world. The knowledge achieved would be worthless, if it were not communicable in one way or another. Hence, categories (in the philosophical sense) have to
represent a bundle of structurally stable concepts in order to be able to communicate their basic contents. (One could say: the means of communication itself have to be adequate with respect to the geometric structure of the social
space into which the real world is being mapped.) This basic idea is reflected in
detail within the conventions of categories in the mathematical sense. Structural
morphisms between categories are called functors. By developing the notion of
functor categories (as categories of categories) the concept of an internal logic
can be introduced which is of central importance for the foundations of mathematics itself. In the following we try to illustrate this interrelationship in more
detail, referring basically to the recent works of Trifonov (1995), Isham (1996),
Grinkevich (1996), and Vickers (1997).

2. Mathematical Topoi
With a view to quantum mechanics, Isham has recently addressed the problem
that there are many d-consistent sets that are mutually incompatible. In this
sense, a complete set of history propositions C: {, , ...} is said to be
d-consistent, if the decoherence function d(, ) vanishes for all possible pairwise entries. The probability that be realized is then identified with the real
number d(, ). (Note that this historical context of propositions has been discussed similarly from another point of view in Abner Shimonys paper on potentiality and actuality in Penrose, 1997, referring here to a perspective which
points to a more classical philosophy.) If the sieve on C gives the semantic value
of some proposition within the context of C, then Isham can show that the set of
all possible semantic values possesses the structure of a Heyting algebra: Be Set p
the category of varying sets over P. A subobject then, is a varying set {A(p),
pP} with A(p)X(p) for all p, and with Apq being the restriction of Xpq to A(p),
whenever Xpq: X(p) X(q) such that there is an identity and a composition. We
call then (p), pP, the collection of all upper sets lying above p. Hence, a sieve
on p in P is any subset S of P such that if rS, then a) rp and b) rS for all r
r. For each pP, the set (p) of all sieves on p can be shown to be a Heyting algebra. What is the use of knowing this set? If we know the appropriate , if A is
a subobject of X, then there is an associated characteristic morphism x A: X
which in each branch of the poset going up from p, picks out the first member q
in that branch for which Xpq lies in A, and the commutative diagram on

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subobjects guarantees that Xpr will lie in A(r) for all r q. Hence, each
morphism x defines a subobject of X, and therefore in Setp is known as the
subobject classifier in this category. This indicates that the latter can be made a
topos.
The generalizations of this view of topoi in terms of Trifonovs approach are
shown in more detail in the appendix. For our purpose here it suffices to state
that the basic idea is now to formalize the above mentioned self-narration in
terms of an algebraical formulation which can be associated with these aspects
of topoi, in order to produce a suitable relationship to the logic underlying categories. To this end, negator algebra is being introduced. This means that evolution is visualized as constituting a set of distributed self-compositions such that
n
f (x): = f o ... o f(x), n-times, defines a sequence of iterates {fo(x), f(x), f2(x), ...}.
We call the first term ground state, and the second initial state of the unfolding
system, and identify the latter with the set of attainable world states. The mathematical details can be found in the appendix already mentioned. The idea is
now to give this sequence the meaning of a global dynamical system, of the
general form (dW/ds)n = Nn (W), where W refers to the ground state of the development. Effectively, the dynamics is produced by means of the operator N
called negator (negation operator), and it is proposed (but not yet clearly proven) that NEG (the category of negators) can be made a topos.
We have a parallel then between philosophy and physics (with respect to modelling the real world) in that there are fundamental concepts on the one hand, such
as substance, attributes and so forth, telling something about the foundations of
being as deriving it in some sense out of non-being which is usually identified
with the field of possibility or potential of being. On the other hand, physics uses
a formal terminology such as dim and sign, for describing the (metric) properties
of space-time-matter and aims at pre-geometric models which enable us to
eventually derive these properties out of the foundations these models offer.
Twistor theory (of Penrose - including its approximation which is Newmans
Heaven theory), M-Theory (or superstrings theory, introduced by Green,
Schwarz, and Witten and a number of others) as well as loops (Ashtekar) and
knots (Kauffman) lie on this line of thought. Both in philosophical and physical
terms, the question is one for the structure of non-being, or to put it differently:
for the condition for the possibility that N(W) exists consistently such that a
universe might emerge. This can be thought of as establishing a generalized
method according to Spinozas idea of a philosophy more geometrico.
I have discussed a biological system in adequate detail at another place
(Selbstreferenz und poetische Praxis, 1991, 87sqq.), in order to illustrate the
praxis of negation. See particularly numbers 7 through 9 of the appendix for
more information, especially for some relationship to the bit bang evolution
discussed by Mike Manthey with respect to the notion of computing anticipatory
systems (CASYS).
3. Semiological Aspects of Metaphorization

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The basic semiological idea of language centres around a dualism between language as system (langue) and spoken language (parole). Although the latter is in
principle prescribed by the structure of the former, it is nevertheless able to influence the former by a straightforward innovation called metaphor. If a metaphor is associated with a carrying over of meaning from one word to another,
we call it metonymy, if this translation remains within the same context. If this is
not the case, we speak of a metaphor in the strict sense. In the process of signification then, the signifier (S) refers to a significate (s). But the signifier can
never grasp the complete meaning of the significate, this being symbolically expressed by the quotient S/s. This means that there is a certain kind of reciprocity
between the two, but that there is also a crucial gap between them. In principle,
metaphorization (substituting one word by another in order to actually produce a
new meaning) can then be expressed as a generalized quotient (S/S) (S/s) indicating the space of free play for new meanings. It can be shown that the process
of signification is closely related to psychoanalytic categories in that the metaphor can be visualized in terms of the condensational aspects of a symptom,
while a metonymy can be visualized in terms of displacement (or shifting) aspects of desire (following here the terminology of Lacan and Kristeva). Hence,
speaking as well as symbolizing/signifying at all is always - for any kind of interpretation/translation,
as
we
know
from
literature
mis-representation/distortion or transposition (Ent-stellung). (Note that the same
is true for using any mathematical formalism for expressing symbolically a process taking place in the real world.) If science can be visualized as the search for
minimizing mis-representations, then metaphorization is the appropriate method
to achieve this goal by means of testing the stability of innovative metaphors.
Wheelwright and MacCormac have discussed in more detail the relationship of
metaphorization (being charged with all hermeneutic implications just mentioned) and the physical sciences. 121
Within another line of argument, Deleuze has shown that metaphorization has an
important meaning for the concept of differentiation. The ancient idea of omnis
determinatio est negatio comes to a new life when thinking of the differentiation of differences which is a valid activity on both the ontological as well as the
epistemological levels (namely in that it happens really within permanent evolution, and in that its modelling pursues in very much the same way). Abstraction
in the traditional sense, namely as the task to separate substance from attribute,
is based on signification visualised as expressio which is explicatio and
121

Especially, the epiphoric aspects of a metaphor are compared with its diaphoric aspects: The former has the
primary function to express and to imply an obvious meaning, while the latter has the primary function to suggest and to imply possible new meanings. A famous example for this is the notion of tachyon which is a
diaphor so long as empirical evidence is found for such particles when it changes to become an epiphor. Hence,
as Ricoeur has noted, the metaphor is a process in itself with an equivalence between the semantic and the cognitive process structures. In this sense, metaphors generate historical contexts: Compare e.g. the proposition
quarks are coloured. We confirm that Ricoeur is right when calling a metaphor an impertinent predication in
so far the innovative aspect of metaphors unfolds their heuristic intentions.

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complicatio at the same time. Hence the hermeneutic aspect: what is expressed
is veiled and unveiled to equal parts. The traditional metaphors of expressio
visualize therefore a mirror that reflects, but also a germ which expresses itself
in unfolding. In this sense, Derrida has introduced the concept of diffrance
(incorporating both diffrencier = to differentiate, and diffrer = to delay, to
suspend) characterizing the nature of what is being produced in the process of
signification by differentiating. Recently, MacCormac and Stamenov have discussed these aspects with a view to the mathematical connotations of fractals,
relating these ideas to concepts of self-organization in the sense of Prigogine and
others.
What we have as a (preliminary) result is a scheme for a recursive production of
structures, both in ontological as well as epistemological terms. Modelling the
world in physical or in philosophical terms means in anyway to deal with the
foundations of language. The formal method (called here geometrization) is opposed by the heuristic method (metaphorization in the strict sense) according to
whether one concentrates on the macroscopic or microscopic foundations of
language, respectively, the former being dealt with in terms of formal logic and
social philosophy, the latter in terms of hermeneutic logic and psycho-analysis:

Recursive production of structures

Physics

heuristic
formal
Semiology
Mathematics
Logic
Logic (formal)
metaphorization
geometrization

microscopic foundations
scopic foundations

(hermeneutic)

macro-

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of language (psycho-analysis)
(social phil./
anthropology)

of language

Philosophy

The conclusion for a cognitive theory of consciousness, especially with a view

to the latters physical foundations is obvious: It is an onto-epistemic approach
towards a transcendental materialism which offers itself as a solution to the
classical forms of the body-mind problem on the one hand and the positioning of
what thinking can mean within a physical theory of real world praxis on the other. As David Papineau has phrased it: The true puzzle is not that some physical
states produce states with the character of an experience (what would one expect, as they are identical?), but that it continuedly appears to be necessary to
explain something ...122

4. Elements of Negator Algebra (Appendix)

We summarize here shortly the main details sketching a future theory of
self-organization which is referring to the totality of space-time-matter determining
our universe. It is not excluded in principle that such a theory could also refer to the
evolution of universes in general such that ours would be only one component of a
whole network. This aspect is discussed in more detail in chapter VI with a view to
recent results obtained by Smolin on the concept of cosmological natural selection.
1 Self-Composition: Starting from a basically philosophical point of view 123 , how
namely the transition from potentiality to actuality (emergence) could be described in a
consistent way, which is presently a central topic of theoretical physics 124, the concept
of self-composition gains a decisive meaning: Be Y a for the time being unspecified,
appropriate space, f: Y Y a mapping on this space. Then a mapping of the form f
n
(x): = f o ... o f(x) (n times) with xY is called self-composition or self-iteration of f.
The iteration sequence {f0(x), f(x), f2(x), ..., f(x)} characterizes then the ground state
(f0(x)), the initial state (f(x)), and all further states up to a final state f(x) of a given
system, if we assume that f defines a dynamic on Y which formally renders the pair
(Y, f) to be some such system.
122

D.Papineau (1995): Der antipathetische Fehlschlu und die Grenzen des Bewutseins. (Re-translated here
from the German text.) In: T.Metzinger (ed.), Bewutsein, Schningh, Paderborn etc., 1995, 305-319, here:
311sq.
123
R.E.Zimmermann (1997): Topoi of Energence (I). The Logic of (the) Matter, op.cit.
124
C.Isham (1996): Topos Theory and Consistent Histories: The Internal Logic of the Set of all Consistent Sets,
gr-qc 9607069 (referred to in the introduction).- A.Shimony: On Mentality, Quantum Mechanics and the Actualization of Potentialities, op.cit.

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2 Chaotic Mappings: Mappings f of the above mentioned type are called chaotic on Y,
if 1) f is sensitively dependent on boundary conditions (unpredictability) and 2) f is
topologically transitive (indecomposability),
i.e. if there is for each pair of open sets U,V of Y a positive k such that f k(U) V is
nonzero, finally 3) the periodical points of f lie dense in Y (nucleus of regularity): i.e.
if for P:= {fn(x) = x of period n} and P Y, the closure of P = Y.
3 Ground state: Let us refer the iteration to the formal ground state of the sequence.
Let us call it W0 {W} and the mapping N, calling Wk with k0 world state in general and N negation. Then the state W kM, any k, is element of a suitable world
space of states M, usually a smooth manifold with a metric of dimension m and signature s. Thus we obtain a new sequence of the form {N(W 0) = W1 = A, N(W1) = W2 =
N(N(W0)) = N2(W0), ..., N(Wn-1) = Wn = Nn(W0) = }. This describes the evolution of
states of a given world, starting with an initial state and ending with a final state.
4 Global Boundary Conditions: For such a gobal evolution it is useful to specify
boundary conditions which characterize the boundary states A and in more detail. In
this way we can obtain results on the conditions for the possibility of such a world
(transcendentality). For a realistic, physical world in the sense of modern cosmology,
we can easily choose the Penrose conditions for this purpose: A = (F); (F) ;
(P) = 0 and = (P); (F) = 0; (P) , respectively. In this case, (F) and
(P) are the Ricci and Weyl components of the Riemann curvature tensor from Einsteins theory such that the relationships Riemann = Ricci + Weyl = (F) + (P) and
Ricci = Energy-Momentum are valid.
5 Evolution Equation (Unfolding of the Ground State): Generally, we can describe the
evolution of a world with the above mentioned boundary conditions as a formal dynamical system, of the characteristic form (dW0/ds)n = Nn(W0). Note that the exponent
at the derivation has here a combinatorial function only: It signifies the initiation of a
generic frequency of cadence (of a rhythmical beat) with which the successive negations control the evolution in acting upon the ground state. Hence, this action is one
of a multi-contextual kind and surpasses the frame of a merely analytical description.
The main reason for this is that the internal logic of the process is not one of the Boolean type. Also, it is important to note that what is unfolded (the ground state itself) is
per definitionem outside of the world which actually emerges by this unfolding in first
place.
6 The Category of Negators: Operators actually acting as negations are called
negators. Their category NEG, in which they are the morphisms in first place while
the world states are the objects, can be visualized in terms of the category of varying
sets over an index set P: SetP - in analogy to the argument given by Isham (1996) on
the complete set of d-consistent history propositions in quantum theory (if d means the
decoherence function). In this sense it can be shown that for subobjects of NEG there
is a subobject classifier such that NEG is a topos with an internal logic which secures
that the semantics of negation operators has the structure of a Heyting algebra. Even

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more: After Trifonov has shown 125 that the paradigm A of an R-xenomorph is
Grassmannian (or supersymmetric), if A(F), as category of linear algebras over a partially ordered field, has paradigms as its objects which are themselves non-trivial
Grassmann algebras, it is straighforward to assume (but not yet explicitly proven) that
NEG is an R-xenomorph with a Grassmannian paradigm itself (this actually securing
the applicability of an intuitionistic logic). Note the relevant definitions for this in the
local appendix given below.
7 Formalization of the Scheme: The formalization of this scheme of analysis referring
to local actions of NEG can be illustrated e.g. by the well-known Keller-Segel scenario
from Biology.126 Is E the evolution operator inherent to a given system, and is N(E) its
negation, then the formal scheme can be established in a cyclic manner such that N(E)
gives the transition from stability to instability and N2(E) the transition to a new stability (of local structures). Obviously, it is secured that N 2(E) E. Such a local cycle in
three steps corresponds to a complete transition from old actuality through potentiality
toward new actuality. Such a cycle we call sandwich layer. We can see clearly now
that world states are not really static but inherently dynamical (hence evolutionary by
themselves). But because we can interpret this ansatz also in global terms, the underlying dynamics constitutes two different perspectives which can be utilized in order to
discuss the nature of sandwich layers: on the one hand the local perspective which
concentrates on the layers one by one, on the other the global perspective which visualizes the totality of several layers at a time, according to whether or not this is adequate with a view to the reserach actually undertaken.
8 Concatenation of Sandwich Structures: Hence, the evolution of a given world can be
visualized as concatenation of sandwich structures. According to the actual research
undertaken a given structure has to be analyzed according to its fine structure. The
original form of a sandwich is conserved in the sense that independent of the strength
of magnification as it is applied to a local fine structure, the basic dynamical scheme
will always be reproduced. This is the way in which the fractal pattern of the processes
is mirrored, reflecting the fact that their internal logic is basically of Grassmannian
type. There is thus a universal structure of mediation of worldly evolution which relates the singularity to the totality (on microscopic as well as on macrsocopic levels).
Note that the question of the complexity of a system can be answered easily with a
view to this structure of mediation.
9 Anticipation and Duality: Mike Manthey has shown 127 that in terms of a pure process view anticipatory systems can be characterized by an explicit project structure
(which can be interpreted in the sense of existential concepts of productivity and subjectivity) and a hierarchy which does not only regulate the levels of abstraction, but
also those of the real concretion (of evolution). In particular, it can be shown that there
is a morphic level of abstraction which corresponds to a self-reflexion of the system.
Manthey models events (alterations of states of a system) and processes (as sequences
125

V.Trifonov (1995): A Linear Solution of the Four-Dimensionality Problem, Europhys. Lett. 32 (8), 621-626.
R.E.Zimmermann (1991): Selbstreferenz und poetische Praxis, Junghans, Cuxhaven, 87sqq.
127
M.Manthey (1997): Distributed Computation, the Twisted Isomorphism, and Auto-Poiesis, R-97-5007, Aalborg Univ. (DK).
126

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of events) in terms of a self-composition of a suitable operator mapping as well. The

representation of perception (i.e. composition of structures from sensorial gain of
information) can be expressed in this sense by cohomology operations (of the
co-boundary), the representation of actions (i.e. de-composition of structures to the
purpose of reducing complexity) can be expressed by homology operations (of the
boundary). Both of them are mediated dually by a twisted isomorphism. In case of
self-reflecting systems both of these operation components can be visualized as the
dual ground structure of the negator model introduced here.
10 Temporality: We can say now that anticipation (in terms of an action of systems)
can be visualized as result of the mentioned underlying duality. Insofar anticipation in
turn actually anticipates the generic time of the system (called s within the frame of
the evolution equation), duality implies temporality. With a view to the evolution
equation given in section 5, we can call the upper index n global age of the system.
However as local age of the system, we introduce the number j of actually emerged
sandwich layers of a system (always referring to a suitable cycle). Hence, we follow
the terminology of Prigogine. Obviously, it is straightforward to assume that n be a
superposition of the js, although its explicit form is not yet known.
11 Algebraic Action: Is a process expressed by a sequence {sj}, if attributed to the
group operations of a Manthey action, then this action can be written in the form s 1s2
(s1 + s2) s2s1 = s1 + s2 where the barred quantities are duals and formal multiplication
and addition are the group operations of the action. Generally, this can also be written
in terms of a Clifford product such that this product takes on the form s isj := si o sj + si
sj . Because the Grassmann-Algebra is a sub-algebra of the Clifford algebra, as e.g.
Freund has shown in the case of the important algebra of quadratic forms 128, we presently assume that the discussion of an R-xenomorph with a Clifford Paradigm is of
central importance for the discussion of systems which describe worldly evolution as
self-differentiation and self-reflexion of its own foundation (ground).
12 Appendix (Xenomorph): Be F a partially ordered field. An F-xenomorph is a category A(F) of linear algebras over F. Paradigms of an F-xenomorph are A(F)-objects,
actions are A(F)-arrows. A paradigm is called rational, if the space of motions M(A) is
a monoid. We apply here the terminology of Trifonovs: Topoi are introduced in this
sense as abstract worlds which represent universes of mathematical discourse whose
inhabitants can utilize non-Boolean logics for their argumentation (propositional
structures). In contrary to the sensory space which mainly deals with the observations
of researchers, the space of motions is the set of actions of the researcher. Hence, the
paradigm is the set of states of knowledge. In particular, it can be shown that the set of
all possible actions of a researcher is a topos whose arrows are those mappings which
conserve realizations of the mentioned monoid (of the space of motions). It can also be
shown: If A is a rational paradigm and the topos of all possible actions is Boolean
(non-Boolean), then the paradigm A is classical (non-classical). For a xenomorph F =
R of a generic type of psychology of an observer, Trifonov can show that an
R-xenomorph implies a classical Einstein-paradigm, i.e. dimenionality 4 and signature
2. (The proof goes by quaternion algebra!) Also: If A is a non-trivial Grassmann alge128

P.G.O.Freund (1986): Introduction to Supersymmetry, Cambridge University Press, 15, 34.

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bra, then the paradigm is the Grassmannian of an R-xenomorph. Because A has a zero
divisor, M(A) cannot be a group. Hence, the logic of a Grassmannian paradigm is always non-Boolean, and mathematics is non-classical.

IV. The Conception of Trifonov

The interesting point in the conception of Trifonovs is that (the logically formal) part of thinking is directly bound to the physical process of unfolding the
worldly structure as it can be described in terms of cosmological evolution. The
basic idea is to define a self-referent cycle in the sense that the physical process
is producing observers who choose their explicit logic according to what they
evaluate when observing. We recognize the idea of nature telling its own story
as discussed earlier. Note however that this time, we have a sound mathematical
base for giving a consistent foundation for the fact as such. Hence, the speculative part of the theory (as far as the aspect of substance and its relationship to its
own attributes is concerned) is at least partially formalized, with respect to two
important points: On the one hand, it is formalized in being integrated into the
description of the physical process itself. On the other hand, it is formalized according to the process of thinking such as to give an explicit choice of types of
logic which can be utilized for interpreting observations made. The crucial point
here is in particular that the appropriate type of logic can be used to reproduce
the phenomenological structure of the worldly aspects as we know them. Take
irreversibility for instance: Types of logic which have a modified law of negation, of the kind ( x) x, if x is a given proposition, determine the observed
phenomenology according to the fact that processes are irreversible in the sense
that their logical representation cannot reproduce initial propositions, independent of the number of negation operations acting repeatedly on such propositions.
In other words: Recursive operations of this type have no fixed points. In a
sense, we can say that temporality is coming in explicitly where earlier the logic
remained static all the time (and created considerable difficulties when comparing theory with praxis, as e.g. Lacan has shown in some detail129). So what we
can do is to introduce a dynamical aspect into an otherwise static picture of theories being sets of propositions. Hence, the advantage of topoi: They operate in
terms of an intrinsic concept of time which can be visualized as a kind of generic concept, unifying the object level of a theory (that about which the theory is
129

J.Lacan: Die logische Zeit und die Assertion der antizipierten Gewiheit. Ein neues Sophisma. In: id.,
Schriften III, Walter, Olten und Freiburg, 1980, 101-121. (French edition of the Ecrits at du Seuil, Paris,
1966.) - In fact, the aspect of temporality in mathematical structures is somewhat more involved: The theory of
sets is basically static implying a certain amount of universality for given elements of sets. Temporality is introduced then when generalizing sets to categories, because the explicit temporal change of quantity and quality of
elements of sets is admitted when introducing objects and morphisms. Because Topoi refer also to a change of
the logical type expressed within the mathematical structure chosen, irreversibility (that is: realistic temporality)
is introduced on that level.

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speaking) with the subject level (that what determines the logic of the observer
who speaks about a theory - always assuming here that speaking and thinking is
basically the same).
To this end, we note that the process of the concrete unfolding of the world (as it
can be visualized in empirical terms) is identical with the process of reflecting
about it, in a cyclic manner which secures that the egg comes before the hen.
However, independent of this, we cannot conclude from it that space, time, and
matter were real entities in one way or another, if real refers to something
which is true in an absolute sense, apart from any single observation and interpretation actually being undertaken. To the contrary, we have to accept that all
we can say in terms of knowledge is limited to the worldly aspects of being, i.e.
to the interior of our universe. But when speculating about the exterior, we
have to take a change of perspective into account which renders worldly entities
as we know them completey irrelevant. This is the reason for confounding the
different notions of time and irreversibility: Prigogine e.g. used to criticize Einstein for his insisting on the fact that development in time as being irreversible
would be nothing but an illusion.130 For him, on the contrary, the world is fundamentally irreversible, i.e. historical, and it is reversibility what is the illusion.
But what he does not see is that Einstein argued under a different perspective:
Einstein visualized his dynamical geometry as a kind of immanent substance
which was brought into the world in terms of relativity theory. And in terms of a
substance, as we know now, the concept of time is not relevant anymore. Illusion refers here to the perspective of the world (and in particular to the human
mode of being), and under this perspective it is not excluded at all that observers
might have the impression of irreversibility. Prigogine however, argues under
the worldly perspective from the beginning on. And this is the difference. 131
As compared to the approach of Tegmark which we will discuss in the next
chapter, Trifonovs conception has the advantage of adjusting mathematics and
logic to real-life conditions in terms of human modality, thus leaving the possibility of a materialistic interpretation open for further discussion. Hence, the
picture of an evolution of matter which is simply the unfolding of its complexity
can be easily integrated in this model. And there are no Platonic references
which should be necessarily introduced into the discussion. On the contrary,
Tegmarks conception carries explicit Platonic connotations from the beginning
on, which is a serious drawback of his otherwise interesting approach. In a
sense, Tegmark replaces the onto-epistemic perspective taken here with respect
to the worldly processes by an epistemo-ontic perspective which clearly contradicts the basic notions of materialism. However, according to what we have said
above, the idealistic retreat towards the concept of spirit rather than matter is not
130

I.Prigogine: Vom Sein zum Werden (From Being to Becoming), Piper, Mnchen, 1979, 208sqq.
In his book, Prigogine mentions in fact Einsteins reception of Spinoza, but he does not draw the correct
conclusions, because he refers to a theological connotation of determinism only, and he visualizes Spinoza in
purely deterministic terms, which, with respect to the worldy perspective he is interested in, is not correct. It
maybe that this misunderstanding is also what is at the roots of the recent controversy on determinism between
Thom and Prigogine, discussed in France.
131

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compatible with the consistency requirements of philosophy, unless one would

come back to the idea that philosophy be something separate from and above of
science is some fundamental sense. But this is obviously an idea, Tegmark
would not like to share himself, as we shall be able to recognize shortly.

V. The Conception of Tegmark

In a recent preprint 132 , Tegmark discusses physical consequences of what he
calls ultimate ensemble theory, where not only worlds corresponding to different sets of initial data or constraints are considered equally real, but also worlds
ruled by altogether different equations. He postulates that all structures that exist mathematically, do also exist physically, in the sense that in those worlds
complex enough to contain self-aware sub-structures (SAS), these will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically real world. Obviously,
humans are themselves SAS according to the definition. And as such an SAS
humans can only perceive those aspects of a mathematical structure which are
independent of their local notation for describing it. If e.g., the mathematical
structure is one of manifold type, an SAS can only perceive properties of it that
have general covariance. Also, the aspects perceived are such that they have sufficient stability and a certain minimum degree of predictability. Note that the
properties of perception are clearly different from more objective views one
could have of the world: Einsteins basic idea was to show that a world which is
being viewed as a four-dimensional world of a static character in which nothing
really happens, can in fact be viewed alternatively as a three-dimensional world
that keeps changing, namely according to whether one looks at it from an imaginary birds perspective (as an external observer), or from a practical frogs
perspective (as an internal observer). A similar concept is that of decoherence,
showing the presence of macro-superpositions in the birds perspective which
are absent in the frogs perspective. 133 But we have learnt in the meantime that
there is no practical situation for external observers. Hence, the birds perspective is actually to the frogs perspective what speculative philosophy is to sceptic
philosophy: the latter talking about the world as it is in practical reality, the former speculating about what is outside (and logically before) the world. About
the second we can collect empirical knowledge, about the first we can only assume general hypotheses according to what we know about the world so far.
Note that therefore, both relativity and quantum mechanics illustrate that we
perceive ourselves as being local even if we are not. ... (And we) perceive
ourselves as unique and isolated systems even if we are not. What appears as
observer branching in the birds perspective, is slight randomness in the frog

132

M.Tegmark: Is the theory of everything merely the ultimate ensemble theory? (Aug. 97) From the web
page, http://www.sns.ias.edu/..., Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton.
133
Ibid., 10-12 par.

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perspective. 134 And of course, we do not perceive ourselves as a

one-dimensional world line within the already quoted four-dimensional, static
manifold, but as point instead, in a three-dimensional world in which things do
actually happen.
Tegmark formulates then necessary conditions for a structure containing SAS,
including complexity, predictability, and stability, respectively. And he lists a
number of habitable islands in the space of all mathematical structures. It is in
this way that he can extract the well-known anthropic numbers related to
physical constants in nature (basically consisting of the respective coupling parameters of the four interactions, as well as the ratios of electron mass to proton
mass, and neutron mass to proton mass.) 135 In discussing the physical consequences of small variations of these values, he can demonstrate restrictions being imposed upon the number of spatial dimensions of the universe, the number
of time dimensions, including the metrics signature, the onset of chemical interactions, and so forth. 136 The idea is then to show that there is a large number
of comparatively restricted (well-bordered) and thus small habitable islands
within an archipelago of life in the universe.
There are however, some comments in order: Basically, Tegmark would like to
demonstrate that our theories are not such that they would actually apply mathematics in order to approximate physics, but that viceversa, it would be their
physics what approximates mathematics instead. 137 Although this line of argument is impressing, especially with a view to the results Tegmark can list in detail, it is not really clear from the beginning on: Earlier, Tegmark starts with a
classification of the possibilities given in terms of the relationship between
mathematics and physics. He states that possible TOEs might fall into one of the
following categories138:
1. The physical world is completely mathematical.
a) Everything that exists mathematically, exists physically.
b) Some things that exist mathematically, exist physically.
c) Nothing that exists mathematically, exists physically.
2. The physical world is not completely mathematical.

It is interesting to note that Tegmark rejects TOEs of category 2, because for

him, this would mean to give up physical predictive power. (In fact, this argu134

Ibid., 12.
Ibid., 14. - He gives in Planck units with c = G = h/2 = 1 the following values: (0,12; 0,03; 1/137; 5,9.10-39)
for strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions, and (1/1836, 1,0014) for the respective mass
ratios. One would add a cosmological constant and various neutrino masses, if appropriate.
136
Ibid., 16-21.
137
Ibid., 25.
138
Ibid., 1.
135

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ment returns later when he argues against higher dimensions.) But this is actually not very clear, because mathematics might guarantee a certain amount of predictive power according to the state of knowledge, an SAS has attained. On the
other hand, hermeneutic techniques in the non-mathematical region, such as they
are applied in the arts, or in social philosophy, or psycho-analysis, respectively,
can also generate a certain amount of predictive power without gaining the same
quality of exactness which is known from mathematics. In fact, there is also a
close interaction between these two fields: The metaphorization of concepts, by
itself a very intuitive and non-quantitative process, is often the practical entry
towards creating a new theory which turns out to be testable in empirical terms.
Viceversa, the playful metaphorization of concepts from physics can be introduced into fields of hermeneutic interpretation supporting new insights into
complex situations. (This actually means that Sokal was not right when criticising the generous metaphorical utilization of mathematical concepts in the humanities, because this is nothing but a common strategy of inventing new perspectives which might be useful to open up horizons.) Category 1c then is excluded from the outset, because for Tegmark, it is actually disproven empirically. In fact, similar to the problem of the state of metaphorization in epistemic
terms, the state of mathematical representation is in itself unclear as far as its
practical application to real situations is concerned. The point is that as a technique of representation (and hence of mapping), mathematics is introduced according to a generalizing abstraction of what humans are actually able to perceive. Insofar mathematics abstracts from praxis in a very systematic way, the
consistency gained by this procedure is paid with a loss of concreteness. This
means that usually, mathematical models carry a large amount of idealization so
that a consistent representation is still approximate in a sense. We have found
that Tegmark would like to re-formulate this according to a view which is exactly the opposite: He would prefer to think of physics as being the approximation. But this is difficult to comprehend (except perhaps for a Platonian thinker),
because nowadays we would expect that there have been physical structures
first, before the conditions were suitable enough to also develop SAS. Hence,
historically, thinking is more complex and later than the conditions necessary for
thinking to evolve. If thinking then, is nothing but an innovative kind of
re-processing the matter in the universe, part of its activities consists in mapping
the world in order to be able to consistently representing it. And if mathematics
is one of the appropriate techniques which have been developed by living beings
who think, then obviously, mathematics is mapping (and thus approximating)
the underlying physics, and not viceversa. Note that Lee Smolin (as we shall
see) argues very much on this line, and hence in anti-Platonic terms. (Tegmark
by the way, calls himself his approach one of radical Platonism.)
Category 1b is interpreted in terms of its leaving the question of choice unanswered (e.g., why is a particular subset chosen for having physical existence,
and not another one?). But this raises a problem similar to the one mentioned
when asking for the relationship between mathematics and hermeneutics. Be-

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cause it is imputed from the beginning on that the world as being a primarily
physical world can be mathematically represented in all its totality due to the
fact that nothing but physics is actually underlying it. And I think that nowadays
we can sufficiently agree upon this. However, knowing this, does not really
help, because neurophysiology e.g., is related to thinking (reflexion) in a similar
way than the theory of oscillations is related to music. Knowing the oscillatory
interactions of sound waves does not help in understanding a composition.
Knowing the spectral theory of light does not tell anything about the understanding of paintings. Hence, although we actually may impute that physics is at
the roots of nature, it is more economical to develop macroscopic theories of a
qualitative nature, in order to interpret more or less adequately phenomena of
the arts (or alternatively, of everyday life), instead of waiting for a completely
novel physics which shows up as the successive superposition of the micro- and
macro-physics of today, in order to progressively develop an all-encompassing
physical theory of the world. (One day this may be possible, but note that the
problem we have with the TOEs is that they are not really theories of everything
in the sense discussed here, but only theories of everything in terms of physics.)
So he ends up with category 1a. - But then, we still have the problem mentioned
above: How could we actually prove that, say a simple set, exists physically
(because it exists mathematically)? Can you say that a particular set of apples
exists, because you count the number of apples lying on the table? Or would you
not rather say that individually, there are samples of the family of apples lying
on the table, and you can map their quantity to a set of numbers such as to count
them? Hence, counting is nothing but setting up an isomorphism between the
apples and some set of numbers which (are) nonsense words specially designed
for the purpose.139 In an abuse of language, because of this isomorphism, one is
inferring that the apples form a set. But they do so only in their quality of being
mappable in some formal sense. They do not exist, because they are a mathematical structure, instead they have one. But what exists there on the table (even
without my counting it, or even noticing it at all) is something which had to be
there in first place, so that I can (but not must) map them to a set of numbers.
(We would agree instead with what Smolin is stating on category theory: that it
is this theory which can actually solve the tautology problem immanent in
mathematics, being discussed first by Leibniz with respect to his principle of
the identity of indiscernibles. But even then, there is a distinct mapping distance in the description of the relationships among distinct objects in the world.
We will come back to this in the next chapter.)
Note in passing that the argument Tegmark is giving against the possibility of
more than one time dimension is related to the relationship between substance
and its attributes as we have discussed it earlier: Tegmarks shows that by excluding a certain type of differential equation, predictability cannot be secured
for such models. (Remember that in fact, more than one time dimensions show
139

J.C.Baez, J.Dolan: Categorification, preprint (Feb. 1998), from the web page http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez.

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up in the metric in terms of the signature only.) But of course, predictability is

inferred in this argument by our knowledge of differential equations when they
are applied to 1+3-dimensional problems. The question is whether SAS in higher dimensions would really have to rely on a concept of predictability in these
terms at all. In a space of more than four dimensions, a sub-space of four (or
less) dimensions would be completely assessable. Hence, predictability in the
defined sense would be only a kind of sub-predictability as viewed in terms of
the higher space. In terms of 1+3-space properties, predictability would not be
necessary anymore, but what it means in terms of 4+n-space properties, we possibly could not know, because the latter is to the former what substance is to its
attributes.

VI. Cosmological Natural Selection According to Smolin

In a recent book, Lee Smolin has proposed a different approach to the problem
of a unified theory of the world, changing the basic perspective somewhat 140:
His starting point is that the question of what happened during, and perhaps
even before, the Big Bang is slowly coming into focus in the last years of this
century in the same way that the question of what happened before the origin of
our species came into focus during the last.141 He draws a strict parallel between physics and biology, and states that necessarily, the former must not only
underlie the latter, but must be able to explain the latter, due to the fact that living beings, like all other things in the universe, are made out of the same matter. 142 So first of all, Smolin looks for a possible change of paradigm which
might be able to visualize the universe such that its modelling is adapted from
the beginning on to what is actually needed for this interaction between physics
and biology. This begins with a change of perspective in the sense that the fixed
background present in classical theories which study parts of the universe is replaced by a self-sufficient conception in terms of a theory which studies the totality of the universe instead. He points to a replacing of the static Platonism
dominating in philosophical approaches to modern physics today by something
which describes the self-organization of the physical world, shifting at the same
time, from absolute laws which are visualized as being external in a sense, to a
permanent process picture which views the universe internally, introducing the
concept of relative laws with respect to the historical development the world is
taking then.143 (Remember the concept of tendency replacing laws of the classical type in the theory of Ernst Bloch!)
Smolin expects to arrive at such a desired approach when starting with a world
that consists of a (large) set of universes rather than of just one universe. It is the
140
141
142
143

L.Smolin: The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ibid., 17.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 13-16 par.

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concept of space-time singularity which serves him as a foundation for the

problem of universal production: Smolin postulates in fact, that black holes, instead of representing singular points of physical breakdown in the universe,
serve as a tunnel into the early states of a novel universe being actually produced not by a final collapsing of the black hole, but by a bouncing process
under extremal conditions, mapping the final singularity of a black hole to the
initial singularity of a novel universe coming to life. This is a conception similar to that of wormholes. The idea is that the production of universes is such
that those with a high production rate of black holes (and thus of novel universes) are selected. Consequently, Smolin speaks of a theory of cosmological natural selection. 144 Obviously, Big Crunch singularities have also a productive
quality in giving rise to a novel universe. Hence, the actual production rate is
determined by the explicit astrophysical conditions of universes (producing a
large number of black holes) as well as by the cosmological conditions securing
the evolution of a closed universe (in terms of cosmological models). Note that
because for a long while somewhere in the beginning of this family history of
universes, the production rate could have been governed by final singularities
only, giving rise to exactly one successor universe, only universes of closed type
have been actually there in early times (because otherwise the chain would
have been broken, in first place, which is obviously not the case). 145 According
to the fertility of universes actually being achieved, one can define a fitness
landscape of universes (or a worldscape) in the sense of Waddingtons epigenetic landscape which gives a representation of the distribution of universes with
respect to their selection key which is the potential number of offspring. 146 Even
more, the hierarchical structure of the organization of universes can be taken
into account, in two ways: First, Smolin can show that it is the interstellar medium which actually determines the ecology of stars. This is what mediates the
initial conditions of a given universe into the explicit local dynamics of the processes which are responsible for the production of stars which might end up as
black holes.147 Second, given the fact that our life is situated inside a nested
hierarchy of self-organized systems148, it should be possible to recognize that
nature exhibits structure on every scale (in order to smooth out the process of
mediation). This can be actually achieved in terms of a theory of
self-organizing critical systems introduced by Per Bak, hinting towards an application of chaos theory, in fact, because the history can be visualized then as a
succession of phase transitions of various seizes, giving rise to fractal patterns
with no definite scale, if viewed in the appropriate phase space representation. 149
Hence, this line of thought suggests that there should be a general theory of
144

Ibid., 88, 96, 108.

Ibid., 96sq.
146
Ibid., 99, 103.- Cf. Waddingtons Concluding Remarks to E.Jantsch, C.H.Waddington (eds.), Evolution and
Consciousness, op.cit., 245.
147
Smolin, op.cit., 34, 117.
148
Ibid., 159.
149
Ibid., 168-171.
145

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self-organization which is based on the thermodynamics of systems that are far

from equilibrium ...150 This is a conception which runs parallel to what Prigogine introduced as a first project, some time ago. In particular, the system (either
globally or locally) must have the potential for organizing itself. Insofar, it
shares this transcendental quality (in the sense of Schelling and others as we
have discussed their ideas above) with everything which evolves historically.
Also, living beings, self-organizing systems themselves, are ideally adapted to
this hierarchical mediation of the formation of structure (and the maintaining of
them for a long while): Life perhaps might be seen to have evolved a way to
ride these flows and cycles the way a surfer rides the flow of energy in water
waves.151
There is however, a number of objections to make: First of all, the unsatisfactory
point is that Smolin leaves open the conditions for some initial universe. It does
not really help to jump into any number of already available universes prior to
ours, because this gives rise to a similar problem as that encountered when talking about the conditions for humanization: If there is an initial distribution of
entities giving rise to the subsequent history as we re-construct it, what are the
conditions for this initial distribution?152 Similarly, we would also like to have a
necessary and sufficient condition for guaranteeing that at least the minimum
mass for a universe to have a Big Crunch is secured from the outset. Otherwise,
we could not explain why a chain of succeeding universes has actually emerged
at all. If there was a number of initial trials (after one or a whole collection of
open universes containing no black holes - if that is possible), they also must
depend on certain conditions in order to re-start the experiment. And what does
time mean during a phase of subsequent universes, especially the time in between universes? (Smolin refers here to the fact that for a long time, there
would have been only single Big Crunch universes in this sense.153) Does the
model actually imply that all universes must be closed universes? Would e.g., a
mixture of both closed and open universes create a kind of perturbation in the
resulting network structure? (Remember that in Lindes model of baby universes, where parent universes and their offspring are connected by wormholes, the
network would probably be de-stabilized by such a mixture.) In other words: So
far as I can see, the network conception introduced by Smolin does not preclude
the necessity of defining a consistent relationship between substance and its attributes (independent of the terminology eventually used for this).
Smolin gives also a clear definition of what a self-organized systems is, and of
what a living system is, respectively: The former is defined as a collection of
matter with boundaries maintaining a permanent flow of energy (matter) for
time scales long as compared to the dynamical time scales of its internal processes, securing a stable configuration far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
150
151
152
153

Ibid., 153.
Ibid., 154sq.
Ibid., 100sq.
Ibid., 100.

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This maintaining is being achieved by the action of autocatalytic cycles on the

transport of energy (matter), and by feedback loops regulating the action rates of
flow of these cycles. The latter is then, a self-organized non-equilibrium system
such that its processes are governed by a program stored symbolically, and
which can reproduce itself including this program.154 This is a very interesting
and precise definition which fits well into the discussion concerning possible
extraterrestric forms of life (in terms of the SETI work being presently in progress), and also concerning forms of artificial life in the sense of the Santa Fe
group.155 However, it is not clear yet why according to Smolin, spiral galaxies
should satisfy only the first part of the definition of life, in particular when
viewing them in terms of eco-systems? Why is there no way of representing the
laws of nature symbolically? This appears to be a problem different from Penroses (challenged!) conjecture that there cannot be a universal algorithm (due to
Gdels theorem).156
Another problem is that the conception of selection itself as it is introduced by
Smolin is not really parallel to what we know from biology. Recently, Smith and
Szathmry, in a short essay in Nature157, have pointed to a similar argument:
They are, as they say, attracted by Smolins suggestion (referring to an earlier
article in Classical and Quantum Gravity158), that the values of physical constants could be explained by a process of cosmological natural selection, but
they have a number of problems with this conception, the most serious of which
is that models of natural selection in biology always assume that the total population size is limited... In contrary to this, in the case of Smolins model, two
types of universe with different productivities of black holes (and hence different Malthusian fitnesses), both would multiply exponentially ... The reason for
this is that the analogy is not correctly adapted to the selective mechanisms as
we know them.
Remember the basic aspects of genetic theory and selection in modern biology. Life as we
know it is organized in terms of five elementary principles: 1) There is the formation of
heteropolymers which introduces an otherwise unknown richness of structures. 2) There is
auto-catalytic self-replication far from equilibrium which introduces selection which in turn
can be visualized as a maximum excess production rate. 3) Replication errors lead to mutant
distributions of quasi-species which define a constraint on information transmission. 4)
Co-operation among otherwise competitive self-replicating elements is introduced by higher
order catalytic action in terms of positive feedback loops (hypercycles). 5) Compartment formation and individualization allow for an efficient evaluation of functional properties of
translation products in order to build up a cellular structure and defining proteins acting as

154

Ibid., 155, 156.

Cf. C.G.Langton (ed.): Artificial Life, MIT Press, 1995. - Also J.L.Casti: The Cambridge Quintett, Addison-Wesley, Reading (Mass.), 1998.- For various aspects of the SETI discussion refer to the SETI News (in
seven volumes by now), and to http://www.seti.org.
156
Smolin, op.cit., 156sq.
157
J.M.Smith, E.Szathmry: On the likelihood of habitable worlds. Nature 384 (1996), 107.
158
CQG 9 (1992), 173-191.- The general aspect of the related ideas is ascribed by Smolin himself to Peirce,
referring to a work of 1891 (Smolin, op.cit., 329 note), which I cannot localize myself at present.
155

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replicase.159
Partially, this is in principle what Smolin says as to the definition of living systems (including
the already mentioned caveat). But the idea is now that selection is phenomenologically taking place in terms of phenotypes while the organizational details are regulated in terms of
genotypes. Remember that the genetic coding is of a linguistic structure such that a single
nucleotid defines a letter of this code. The building blocs of life, on the molecular level, are
proteins (organizing the structure), and enzymes (another kind of proteins organizing the processes), respectively. It is the DNA which explicitly calls on the amino-acids, and the chains
of these amino-acids are what defines the genetic code in terms of combinations being stored
in the DNA. A nucleotid consists basically of a constant residue of phosphoric acid and a
constant desoxyribose plus an organic base which varies all the time. For the DNA, only four
such bases are relevant (called adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine). They actually form the
four significant letters of the genetic code. Within the chains of nucleotids forming the DNA,
a triplett of nucleotids forms a word of the code, and several hundreds of these words form
a sentence (called a gene). The combinatorial power of this coding system lies in the fact
that a sequence of n amino-acids being called by a word gives 20n possibilities of combination, because there are no more than 20 such acids. They can be called up by a sequence of
tripletts (that is by three-letter-words out of a set of four letters available), which gives 43 = 64
words for 20 acids. Note that the obvious redundancy is very economical indeed, because a
duplett with 42 = 16 possibilities would not suffice. This code structure is universal for all the
life as we know it, including humans. Reproduction is nothing but a duplication of this DNA
information stored in the nucleus of the cell material while cell division is taking place, very
much like in terms of a xerox copying procedure. The genes (the propositional contents of this
information) are located in a string-like structure inside the chromosomes (the socalled
chromatides). Hence, we have four organizational levels of living structures, the DNA on the
original molecular level, the chromosomes of which humans have 46 (females and males
having 22 pairs of homological chromosomes called autosomes plus two sexual chromosomes, in combinations of X plus X, and X plus Y, respectively) in the cellular nucleus, the
cell itself, and the organismic level. The genetic pool of a population is defined as the set of
all possible alleles which are states of genes. The combination of alleles is actually what defines the explicit genotype, the macroscopic appearance of which is defined in terms of the
phenotype.
The evolution factors however act on phenotypes, not on genotypes: Basically, there are five
of them, the mutation pressure, the meiotic drive, the genetic flow, selection proper, and the
genetic drift. The mutation pressure defines an equilibrium condition in terms of mutation
rates: Be p, q allele frequencies of type a,b, respectively, and , the appropriate mutation
rates (of the mutation a b, and the back mutation a b). Then, if p*, and q* are the respective equilibrium frequencies, then p*/q* = /. In general, these quantities satisfy equations of the type dp/dt = - p, e.g., where t is the (discrete) number of generations (being
made continous in terms of usual caluculus). Basically, mutation is nothing but a replication
error in DNA sequences. The meiotic drive defines an asymmetric production of gametes
adding to the variability. The genetic flow deals with the migration of species among populations. The genetic drift is a random action on genetic frequencies. Apart from the genetic
flow, it is selection however, which is of the most significant influence on the variation of the
genetic pool. To be more precise, it is the variation of relative frequencies of genotypes according to the capability of their phenotypes to come into the next generation. The velocity of
selection is a function of the geneticity h 2 := V(G)/V(P), where V(G) is the variance in the
variation of the genotype, and V(P) is the variance in the variation of the phenotype, respectively. From this the relative fitness w can be defined as the rate of excess production cor159

M.Eigen, P.Schuster: Stages of Emerging Life - Five Principles of Early Organization. In: C.W.Kilmister
(ed.), Disequilibrium and Self-Organization, Reidel, Dordrecht etc., 1986, 169-183.

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rected by a term according to the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium law. Obviously, the selection
coeffcient s = 1 - w is strictly neighborhood-dependent in the sense that environmental
boundary conditions (determining the ecology) are constraints acting upon the gene pool such
as to enhance a preferred direction (which is reflected on the molecular level in terms of alleles exhibiting dominating or recessive action accordingly).
It is important to note that the rate of mutation (with respect to the genes) and the coefficient
of selection (with respect to genotypes) are of equal weight for the determination of explicit
equilibrium frequencies in a population. The rate of evolution is thus roughly proportional to
the genetic variance of populations. If r is the Malthusian capacity of a population (its specific
growth rate that is), and if K is the capacity of the environment (in suitable terms), then
r-strategies or K-strategies, respectively, determine the explicit structure of co-operative
competition among species. In competitive eco-systems e.g., it is a collection of
Lotka-Volterra profiles (exhibiting limit-cycle behaviour in phase space) which determines
the evolution of the participating populations (e.g. in a simple classification of eco-systems
with populations of herbivores, carnivores, extreme specialists, and extreme universalists,
respectively). Explicit competition matrices can be defined in order to characterize the detailed evolutive structure of systems of populations. In particular, aspects of niche production
and niche overlap production influence the form of these competition matrices which may
even display exact forms of cusp-type in phase space for given settlement structures of appropriate habitats. In a sense, all these details strengthen the point which is also mentioned by
Smolin, that the real purpose of life might be defined in terms of the enlarging of a variety
of available niche types in order to secure the long-term stabilization of multifarious phenotypes which are capable to smoothly co-exist. This also means that their stability would be
primarily determined by their own capability to overcome perturbations as they are exhibited
in eco-systems by means of large-scale fluctuations. Hence, not the survival of the fittest in
the classical sense of Darwinian interpretation would be the important point, but rather a principle of resilience, according to Holling and Leigh who independently introduced this concept
of which is nothing but a measure of the volume in phase space into which the system may be
perturbed without becoming unstable and being subjected to collapse.160

We are in a position now to re-formulate Smolins conception in a somewhat

generalized sense, by simply trying to establish a correct analogy between physics and biology, the advantage being to be able to introduce selection as an immanent principle of worldly organization: Because selection in the sense of
Smolin is acting on universes, the type of universe is the phenotype. Let us call
this action super-selection, to indicate that it is acting on networks of universes
which can be classified according to their types, a type being defined in turn
with respect to its excess productivity of black holes (as a measure for the possible number of offspring to be produced). Hence, what we have is a population of
universes which can be stratified into sub-populations representing different
phenotypes competing with each other. Super-selection then, acts according to
the environment these populations have to share. So what we need is the equivalent of an environment which consists of populations of universes including
some intercosmic mediator which carries the processes responsible for the outcome of competition (such that selection has definite criteria according to which
it can choose appropriate phenotypes of universes). We shall come back to this
later.
160

R.M.May, Model Ecosystems, op.cit., 216 (Afterthoughts for the Second Edition of 1974).

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But let us first look into the inland ecology of a universes interior: The universe itself consists of a hierarchical structure of galaxies (of superclusters,
clusters, local groups, single galaxies). It is the stellar ecology of a galaxy which
explicitly determines the individual production rate for black holes. In a sense, a
galaxy could be visualized as an analogy to a local eco-system consisting of
populations of phenotypes (types of stars that is) plus a mediator which in that
case would be the interstellar matter. The universe would then be a hierarchically organized population of populations of local eco-systems. If the star-type
(perhaps its spectral class) is the phenotype, what is the corresponding genotype
then? Remember that on the biological level of organization we have basically
three steps to take in order to describe the molecular, the cellular, and the organismic sub-levels. The organismic level corresponds to the phenotype itself. The
molecular level is more or less clear, because stars consist of the same matter as
everything else does. But what would be the cellular level? It is this level on
which the cosmo-genetic coding would be stored, similar to a location within
the cell nucleus. While the coding itself would take place on the molecular level.
Hence, the genotype appropriate for the resulting phenotype would have to be
located within a cellular level to be looked for. Perhaps it can be located in organizational structures which are built within active regions of the interstellar
matter. Smolin gives a lot of details on the latter with respect to recent astrophysical results.
But there is still one point which does not really fit into the picture of super-selection we have introduced earlier: It cannot be the internal structure of a
universe which is rephrased in terms of the selection of phenotypes, because we
deal with universes in first place. Hence, we have to re-arrange our setting
somewhat. In terms of Smolins theory we have to differ therefore between internal selection (within a given universe by means of its stellar ecology), and
external selection in the sense that types of universes are selected (which is the
same as the super-selection introduced before). Obviously, the one should be
fitted to the other. If now the type of universe is the phenotype in question, and
if universes consist of hierarchically structured populations of populations of
local eco-systems which themselves are nothing but populations of stars, then
what about referring to the internal structure of the universe as to the genotype
of that universe? The idea is that galaxies are to the universe what molecules are
to organisms, and that stars are to galaxies what atoms are to molecules. Then
the universe as an organism would represent one phenotype a population of
which would be part of the super-eco-system which in turn consists of populations of universes as well as of an appropriate mediator. On the other hand, a
universe would consist of a cellular structure on the cluster level - consisting
therefore of a hierarchically organized pattern of galaxies and stars in the aforementioned fashion. The corresponding genotype of this phenotype would have
to be located in a kind of cell nucleus. The genotype, in being a combination
of alleles, i.e. a set of various gene sequences, would be constituted then on the
cellular level while the necessary information (the cosmo-genetic code) would

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be formed in molecular terms. So what could be an appropriate cosmo-nucleotid? Possibly, there is some structure hidden in the interstellar matter
which is responsible for the production of new stars. And in a sense, this structure will be closely related to the wave patterns eventually emerging within galaxies, propagating in a fashion similar to sound waves. (Back to the harmonies
of the spheres?)161
Then, what about the background necessary for giving rise to an adequate
environment of the populations and their individual members? It is very interesting to note that it is actually loop theory itself, presented by Smolin in some
detail, as we shall see in a moment, that can be used as a firm ground onto which
the idea of environment in the above inter-cosmic sense could be built. This is
mainly so because - in contrary to superstring theory - loops do not rely on a
chosen space-time background, but start from a purely combinatorial structure
of spin networks in the sense of Penrose from which physical structures such as
space and time can be eventually derived. We will elaborate on some of the details later on, but note for the time being that the relationship being established
between this abstract network structure and the explicit space-time structure as
we know it, mirrors clearly the relationship between substance and its attributes
as we have discussed it earlier. Hence, there is neither space nor time (nor matter) outside the single universes constituting the universal network in the sense
of Smolin. Instead, universes as organisms defined in terms of
space-time-matter, are bounded by their own dimensional structure rather than
giving space among them. The spin structure takes the role of a substance (or
of its formal part, to be more precise), while the populations of the universes are
nothing but representations of its attributes.
*
Finally, there are two more interesting points in Smolins text: One is that
Smolin criticizes Kants conception of prohibiting synthetic propositions a priori. In fact, although he draws the line from Plato to Kant far too coarsely, he is
certainly right in stating that the existence of features of the world which seem
both synthetic and a priori seems puzzling only if we think of a fixed, static
world so that anything that is ever true is true always. In contrary to that he argues in favour of a concept of natural selection, where truth becomes
time-dependent. And he continues: Whereas pure logic seems to have no power
to create anything when viewed in the context of a static, Platonic world of
propositions that are eternally either true or false, a process which acts over time
to transform structures ... may be both completely explicable in logical terms
and truly capable of the invention of novelty. 162 This is in fact a viewpoint
discussed earlier in philosophy, by Manfred Frank and others e.g. - compatible
161

Smolin, op.cit., 132.- Cf. recently: Nature 394 (1998), 524 (S.Battersby on B.G.Elmegreen et al. in Ap.J.Lett.
503 (1998), 119-122).
162
Ibid., 187.

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with the search for a hermeneutic of nature as initiated by Ernst Bloch. 163
Consequently, Smolin concludes: Mathematical and logical truths may be true
for all time because they are not really about anything that exists. ... Thus it is a
mistake (a kind of category error) to imagine that the theorems of mathematics
are about some other or Platonic realm that exists outside of time. These
theorems are outside of time because they are not about the real.164 On the one
hand, the consequence is that space and time as mathematical entities themselves, are probably vacuous concepts in real, physical terms. On the other hand,
it is necessary therefore, to explicitly deal with the relationship between physics
and logic in dynamical terms so as to shed some more light on the conditions for
their respective interactions. As Smolin formulates: Thus, if it is the case that
the laws of nature have been constructed, over time, by processes of
self-organization, then the old dream of reducing science to logic may to some
extent be realized.165 We have to add: If not the reduction, but rather the onto-epistemic mediation of the two is what we would like to have, in order to
visualize the evolution of the world as a co-evolution of what thinks and what is
being thought about. (Nevertheless, on the epistemic level, we have to use space
and time as proper expressions, although we visualize the entities so described
as concepts which approximate the grasping of complex structures in the world
according to our human perceptive and cognitive capabilities. 166) In this sense,
these arguments are similar to the results of Trifonov discussed above. Smolin
also stresses the importance of category theory when he elaborates on the fact
that space and time are purely relational concepts. He discusses this on the line
of Leibniz, and it is category theory in which he recognizes the instrument for
solving the problem Leibniz actually dealt with. 167
The second interesting point is the presentation of loop theory (Smolins actual
domain of research, in fact). This conception is primarily based on the idea of
Penrose to construct space and time out of combinatorial structures which do not
rely on any background space. The project thus initiated is a kind of alternative
to classical quantum theories in the sense that starting from a structure without a
fixed background reflects directly what Einstein introduced as diffeomorphism
invariance of relativity theory. The spin network approach views possible quantum states of space as being labeled by different ways of tying knots in pieces of
string. 168 (In fact, if taken literally, this nomenclature implies immediately a
close relationship among strings, loops, and knots. And this is actually going
163

Cf. my Naturproduktion und Innovation. Aktuelle Aspekte Blochscher Philosophie im Kontext

materialistischer Dialektik. VorSchein (Neue Folge) 13/14, Nuernberg, 1993, 93-142.- Also Aesthetik der
Differenz: Strukturbildung im Weltprozess In: U.Niedersen (ed.), Selbstorganisation, Jahrbuch fuer
Komplexitaet, vol.4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1992, 17-34.
164
Smolin, op.cit., 188. (And he gives a good interpretation of the famous chicken-egg paradox.)
165
Ibid., 189.
166
Ibid., 214.
167
Ibid., 216sqq. Also: 273, with a reference to John Baez. The consequences of this conception have been utilized for the development of Topological Quantum Field Theory, introduced by Atiyah and Witten. Cf. ibid.,
272.
168
Ibid., 278.

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further than a mere metaphorization of arbitrarily or at least intuitively chosen

expressions, as we shall see later.) Geometry (or rather: its quantum version)
emerges then as a network of bundles of string, whose edges are linked and
knotted with each other. The idea of Penrose was to interpret such networks as
representations of processes which correspond to the interaction of particles
having various spins. Basically, each quantum state of space-time can then be
represented by a spin network. 169 It is possible in the end to give an explicit
measure for the area and the volume of space by simply counting edges of networks and the number of pieces of string meeting there. Area e.g., is given by
adding up spins of each of the edges that intersect a given surface, and multiplying this sum by the square of the Planck length. Volume is given accordingly,
by adding up the numbers which describe the routings of the strings through the
nodes of the graph inside the volume region, multiplying this sum by the third
power of the Planck length. 170 The conditions of classical physics can be formally achieved in terms of a condensation of such networks in order to produce
a dense web of them such that in this way, short-sighted human physicists can
recognize typical structures of space and time. Eventually, a cosmic web is encountered, a true internet of quantum states. In fact, Penrose himself has used
this conception to develop twistor theory, describing an intrinsically asymmetric
version of the world. In a sense, space-time is visualized then in terms of what a
neutrino would see as it propagates. Sen and Ashtekar, and others, have tried
therefore to re-formulate the classical Einstein theory completely in terms of this
picture. Hence, the resulting loop theory is nothing but a representation of a
process, in which formally, a neutrino is being transported through space, coming back to its starting point (i.e. moving on a closed curve). Smolin concludes
as follows: Our picture may be summarized by saying that we are describing
the world in a language in which the geometry of space arises out of a more
fundamental quantum level which is made up of an interwoven network of such
(neutrino transport) processes.171

VII. Systematic Aspects of Unified Onto-Epistemology

In order to eventually develop a consistent philosophical systematic which takes
explicitly into account what we have collected as significant results so far, and
which at the same time is compatible with the line of thought discussed earlier,
it is necessary now to formulate a concise framework for actually approaching a
unified onto-epistemological model which is able to adequately reflect the properties of a picture of the world as we have achieved it by now. Basically, four
main principles are at the foundations of such an architecture:
The first one is due to the re-positioning of philosophy itself, as ultima
169
170
171

Ibid., 279sq.
Ibid., 281.
Ibid., 283.

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philosophia now, in the sense that the aforementioned principles of totality and
unity (of the worldly), of self-reference, and of unity of substratum, according to
what we have said in section III A, are incorporated in such an approach and
serve as a first orientation towards suitable starting points. The second one is the
principle of mediocrity with respect to human life and thinking. This implies
both the spatial as well as the temporal mediocrity of humans which serves the
re-institution of a sober modesty of conceptual modelling (instead of cherishing
the assumption that humans are the final climax of evolution, as it has been
handed down to us by tradition). The third one is the worldscape principle implying the existence of a multiverse, i.e. of a population of populations of universes whose evolution is attainable in terms of a generalized Darwinian evolution dynamics governed by an appropriate principle comparable to biological
selection as we know it. Finally, the fourth one is what we call Klymene principle demanding a methodological approach which takes into account the explicit
process structure of the worldly. Hence, what we actually do is to start from
ourselves, as a subjective standpoint relative to all what there is. We regressively
approach our own foundation, in the sense that taking in sight our personal history as worldly manifestation (our biography that is) means not only to
re-construct this history, but also its pre-history as its condition. After having
re-constructed (at least part of) this foundation, according to a speculative capacity which is closely bound to what we have taken in sight during the phase of
regression, in first place, we derive then the worldly out of this foundation in a
progressive manner. This motion consists thus of two (progressive-regressive)
components, the first one looking for what has become, the second one looking
for what could have become. Hence, what we do is to actually study the transitions from non-being to being, and this is indeed the task of philosophy in order
to unify the various sectors of the world into one single picture and subsequently
to describe its foundations.172
The systems of theoretical and practical philosophy as well as the system of the
philosophy of art, will follow then as a final result mediated in terms of the
worldly hierarchy as it is implied according to what has been found with respect
to the regressive and progressive components of the aforementioned method so
applied. Obviously, the detailed structure of this organizational hierarchy is still
subject to further work which is still in the becoming173, but for a short overview
we will give an outline here of the basic ideas involved.

A. The Regressive Part (Regression onto the Foundation)

172

It is in fact the human property of thinking in a digital sense, that is in splitting the world in artificial portions which are suitable for analysis, in a differentiation between subject and object, position and negation, being
and non-being. The progressive-regressive method which primarily deals with the epistemological consequences
of this is called after Klymene who, according to Greek mythology, was the mother of the twins Prometheus and
Epimetheus, the one looking forward and anticipating the world, the other looking backward and reflecting what
has been so far.
173
Cf. R.E.Zimmermann: System des transzendentalen Materialismus, in preparation (2000).

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We start from the individual subjectivity of ourselves in the backward direction

towards our own origin. Hence, when regressing onto the foundation, we look at
our own biography, at the history of the social group we belong to, of the society
we live in, of the culture to which our society belongs, of the ecology of this
culture in the generalized sense, and so forth, up to the origin of nature itself,
this being aspects of psychology, sociology, political science, history, biology,
chemistry, physics. Obviously, the backward historization we perform within
the regressive part of the method is nothing but the re-construction of the process which has taken place from the beginning on, as seen in terms of what we
know at the present time.
1. Main Conjectures Starting from Myself
I start from myself, and visualize myself as a being among other beings of the
same type (of other individual persons) and among beings of a completely different kind (animals, plants, and a variety of other things). The fact that with the
former I am able to communicate in a well-defined sense is what structures my
own mode of existence and gives rise to a number of first main conjectures
which serve the purpose of a fundamental pre-positioning of myself within the
worldly being.
2. First Principles of Phenomenological Type
The permanent need for a systematic reduction of dissonance within the various
states of communication I share with others is at the foundation of first principles I choose as a basic framework for my individual praxis according to a phenomenology of processes which expresses the social mediation of persons (subjects) and things (objects).
3. Phenomenological Theorems
On a theoretical level of intersubjectivity (once achieved with a view to my
everyday experiences of explicitly empirical character) it is possible then to
formulate first theorems about the aforementioned phenomenology of being
which are not my theorems (though I might help to develop them), but they belong to what can be called the objective spirit of the cultural environment I am
living in. This objective spirit is an explicit result of social mediation. In fact, it
is nothing but the only task social mediation actually has to perform: to expand
the objective spirit of the social system of which I am a singular part among
others with whom together I form a sub-system of it.
B. The Re-construction of the Foundation

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The re-construction of what is the foundation of the processes mentioned above

does not begin however with a discussion of the period of hominization in some
suitable anthropological sense, but instead it begins with taking the origin of the
world in sight as a collection of conditions which structure the set of possibilities for such a world we live in. Hence, the re-construction of this kind is a part
of theoretical physics rather than anything else. It is nature itself which is at the
foundation of humans. Physically, the world is identical with the Universe. So it
is the foundation of physics we have to deal with. We have thus arrived at the
problems which are in question here: TOEs, cosmology, and all that. Once, a
Universe like ours is physically achieved, any other aspects of relevance to the
evolution as it has been taken place, chemistry, biology, sociology, and so forth,
will be nothing but a derivational consequence of the original setting. So this
will not be part of the re-construction.
C. The Progressive Part (Derivation out of the Foundation)
The foundation so re-constructed is however the necessary and sufficient condition for everything what there is (or: what has become). Hence, when starting
with the progressive component of the method now, we actually derive the
world from first principles, in an increasing order of complexity which governs
the levels of hierarchy determining the structures we can empirically find in the
world. But we do not perform the same we did when dealing with the regressive
component: The crucial difference lies in the fact that we know already what
actually has become, but now we are also capable to check what could have become, in first place, but what has not. This discrepancy (between what has become and what could have become) constitutes our understanding of the worldly
process, because through it we do learn something about the characteristic freedom of the evolution which has formed our Universe so far (possibly in contrary
to others). It is the Cosmological Principle of theoretical physics which may
serve as a bridge theorem between foundation and world, i.e. between a scenario which reflects the conditions having eventually led towards a Universe
like the one we actually observe, on the one hand, and the conceptual structure
of approach which governs the Universe as we know it, on the other. Obviously,
the situation as it is implied by the Cosmological Principle cannot immediately emerge from the primordial foundation of the Universe such that an explicit
mediation of a definite process character is needed in order to visualize the settling down of the Universe into the present state. But nevertheless, its epistemic
nucleus (namely the substantial result that basically, physics is everywhere the
same within this Universe) can be conserved as a result of permanent validity,
once an initial set of anthropic invariants (including the four coupling parameters of the fundamental interactions) has been adequately defined.
1. Structural Main Conjectures

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Our first conjectures are charged now with all what we have assembled in the
first two rounds. While the regressive component had been characterized by
the phenomenology we could empirically observe in terms of our own environment, we can now strengthen our conjectures by postulating a certain degree of
generality for what we usually call laws and rules. Hence, what we have is a
sound basis for telling something about what is self-evident and what is not.
This is a basis for doing axiomatics. Note that the Cosmological Principle is
the first axiom in this sense, of a quality comparable to a synthetic judgement a
priori in the wording of Kant.
2. First Axiomatic Principles
The axiomatic principles we may derive have the property of being more general
than the special cases of their representation and expression we know from the
first round. It is in this way that theory generalizes practical experience, not
unlike an heuristic expansion of lines of thought which have not been realized in
fact, but which could have been realized under different conditions compatible
with what we know about the world so far.
3. Axiomatic Theorems
We end up with a set of theorems which gives a generalized picture of the totality and the unity of the world. Obviously, at the basis of this set lie physical theorems about the Universe, formulated in mathematical language. But note also
that from the beginning on, it is clear that theorems of such a formal kind,
though never loosing their validity, cannot be properly applied to other parts of
the world whose description surpasses theories of the physical sciences. Even
for their application in terms of physics alone, they are only of a somewhat restricted value, because they operate on a high level of abstraction which is compatible with, but not truly representative of the concrete level of worldly
emprical existence. Hence, even for fundamental categories which define the
framework for our thinking, such as space and time themselves, there is not really a concrete equivalent to the abstraction we use in our theories as a given
concept. Space and time do not exist in an absolute sense of actually being
there: Instead, space and time are concepts we have developed because they are
approriate to our modes of perception and cognition. And there is indeed some
correlate to this abstraction, but not one we really would know of, and in particular not one which would be comparable in a sense to what we understand when
talking about space and time. The point is that we need detailed theories for local regions of phenomena, in spite of knowing that it is physics which is at the
foundation of all possible phenomena we might actually encounter in one way or
the other, and in spite of knowing that even physics is nothing but a mapping of
some underlying structural details such that we might handle various aspects of
this mappings target, but not really its domain.

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D. The System of Theoretical Philosophy According to

First Axiomatic Principles of Transcendental Materialism
Hence, we need an explicit theory of the worldly totality (of all what there is)
according to what we have found when unfolding the complete motions of the
method introduced here. This is what traditionally theoretical philosophy has
been dealing with. Note that now we have to modify the structure of this with a
view to the modern results we have found about the re-positioning of philosophy
itself. But note also that the result is a structural theory which provides a
framework and a space of free play for other, more detailed theories. Such a
master theory can at most be a projection of the large regions of knowledge
our thinking is dealing with.
E. The System of Practical Philosophy According to
First Principles of Phenomenological Type of Transcendental Materialism
The aspects of practical philosophy follow then from the theory developed in the
foregoing section. It is typically dealing with human activities, within the sciences, arts, and in everyday life, in political and historical terms, and with the
relationships and interactions between humans and other living beings or objects
in nature. The objective of practical philosophy is ethics: a result shall be derived which gives explicit criteria for deciding what kind of human actions are
appropriate or not, given all what we know about the world.
F. Theorems of the Philosophy of Art According to
First Principles of Phenomenological Type of Transcendental Materialism
Systematically, the philosophy of art is separated from the other two systems,
because art has a somewhat different task: While philosophy deals primarily
with the transitions from non-being (possibility) to being (actuality), art deals
with the transitions from nothingness (the impossible) to non-being (possibility).
The former enriches our knowledge and hence actuality by systematically monitoring possibilities. The latter enriches the field of possibilities for the worldly
process by systematically trying to define what is impossible at all (and so far).

VIII. New Organon of Philosophy

(A Proto-Theoretic Matrix of Basic Concepts)
A similar systematic is a necessary consequence of the former in order to develop a set of basic concepts which enable the consistent formulation of the theorems which are topics of chapter VII. If we visualize the systematic of this

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former chapter as a structural framework which has to be filled with all the relevant details governing our world, then the micro-theories hence developed
must be conceptualized under the same basic concepts. Otherwise we would
endanger the clarity of results due to a large quantity of multifarious bifurcations
of babylonic routes of terminology. (Presently, this is actually already the case
in several parts of philosophy and the sciences!) Hence, while the systematic as
it is presented in chapter VII is the chief domain of propositions to be formulated about the quantitative and qualitative nature of the world, the systematic of
the present chapter VIII is the inventory of concepts which is the condition of
actually being able to formulate propositions at all. In passing it is also secured
that we have basically the same set of fundamental concepts available. Such an
inventory we call organon in a somewhat modified sense as it has been handed down to us by Aristotle himself. And the basic concepts developed here constitute a proto-theoretic matrix in the sense that in formulating them, we have to
apply intuitive and dispositional contents in first place (in a suitable analogy to
the precept/concept process discussed by Bloch), in order to actually form these
concepts. In doing so we do not really establish a theory, but we perform a certain amount of proto-theoretic behaviour, because all we have within our thinking is already contaminated with theoretic fragments of mostly unreflected
type. Although this is also a work in progress 174, we will nevertheless give a
short survey of the relevant concepts which are in discussion so far. Note that
the type of concepts corresponds to the type of propositions formulated by these
concepts. We have therefore a close structural relationship between the concepts
listed here and the steps of propositional conceptualization as presented in chapter VII, which is also reflected in the fact that according to the explicit hierarchy
of theorems (of fundamental and main type on the one hand, and of ontological
and epistemological type, on the other) we have an appropriate hierarchy of
corresponding concepts.
A. Fundamental Concepts of Ontological Type
1. Foundation & World
These two concepts give the first step of differentiation in order to find a boundary between non-being and being. Foundation is in this sense the reason of the
world, and its cause, at the same time. It gains an active connotation by the fact
that it actually produces the world. Hence, on the contrary, the world itself carries a basically passive connotation, because it is primarily produced. On the
other hand, modes of production are also permanent expression of the world
which can be represented therefore as a worldly process with a given structure.
Both, the foundation and the world which is founded on that foundation, i.e.
174

This progress is being achieved presently by a study group working under the collective and programmatic
pseudonym of Klymene. A first paper has been published under the title Elemente der Philosophie. Ein
Systemprogramm. (System & Struktur IV/2, 1996, 225-229).

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non-being and being, have a common boundary with nothingness. This gives a
fundamental structure of all what there is, from the beginning on, and as an important starting point for developing further concepts. Note that fundamental
concepts of ontological type have the meaning of categories in the strict sense.
2. Immanence & Transcendence
These two concepts clarify the relationship among the structural regions covered
by the first pair of concepts introduced above. It is found that foundation is to
the world what substance is to its attributes. But the point is that substance is by
its very definition carrying both connotations of immanence and transcendence.
This has important results for our particular mode of thinking when reflecting
about the world.
3. Totality & Singularity
There is a basic duality we may cognitively grasp when discussing problems of
foundation. The large variety of individual forms which have emerged out of
one single foundation is something which asks for a sound clarification. This is
the place where the explicit dialectical structure of the world is being exposed.
as a permanent, progressive mediation of singularities within the totality of the
world.
B. Theoretical Main Concepts
This type of concepts can be visualized as corollaries from the categories discussed in the beginning. They have not the character of categories themselves,
but they are derived with a view to categories.
1. Motion
Traditionally, motion means here development in first place. Motion is the
general concept used when dealing with the permanent process structure of the
world. Within this terminology, processes are the worldly traces of a fundamental conflict structure which is intrinsic to the foundation of the world. Hence,
what we visualize as motion (referring implicitly to space and time) is a projection of a situation we cannot understand, because it surpasses the conditions of
the world. But we can cognitively interpret this projection in terms of conceptual
picture which guides our orientation within the world.
2. Emergence
The connotation of emergence is onset of motion rather than motion itself. In principle, at points of emergence, the really important things in the world

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happen, in a structural sense which is forming the world. In between such points,
common motion secures the stability of structures, but does not act innovatively
on the world. Hence, to know the points of emergence means to know the basic
characteristics of the world.
3. Space-Time
The dynamic concepts introduced so far lay the ground for the common concept
of space-time. The worldscape concept is thus a consequence of the way we are
used to visualize the process structure of the world (or to visualize such a process structure at all). It is not, as is often assumed, the foundation for motions,
instead it is viceversa.
4. Symmetry
The concept of symmetry is especially important in terms of its negation, when a
symmetry (of space-time) is explicitly being broken. This is so, because otherwise we would not have any chance to discover a symmetry, in first place. The
fact that motions of the world are such that permanently, symmetries are being
broken, is the condition for our cognitively mediated knowledge that there are
symmetries at all. They give us the methodological advantage of formulating
them in terms of law-like rules on which we can built our insight into many
processes which take place in this world.
5. Complexity
It is finally the concept of complexity which gives us criteria as to the
heirarchical ordering of the world which facilitates our cognition and hence orientation within the world. As we have seen already, the substratum of the world
is always the same: it is what we call matter (and we mean with that the four
field interactions plus quarks and leptons). But the forms of matter do permanently vary while developing. And this happens in terms of a building up of
structural hierarchies constituting levels of evolution we can deal with. The difference of these levels is defined by the degree of complexity of forms of matter.
The more complex the form, the higher its position in the evolutionary hierarchy. Note that this scale is open-ended. It is not the humans who are at the end
of the scale.
C. Fundamental Concepts of Epistemological Type
In contrary to concepts of ontological type which have the character of categories, concepts of epistemological type have been developed due to human praxis
and vary strongly with the historical development of theories. It is the explicit
structure of the social system using these theories which determines the common

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epistemological type at a given epoch.

1. System & Structure
The first pair of such concepts is consequently one which has emerged relatively
recently, as the result of a development which originally started in the age of
enlightenment and came to an end during the 19th century. The systematic organization of the reality is mirrored in the systematic (architectural) organization
of theories. Not the constituents of the system determine the outcome, but also
(and more importantly) the interactions among constituents. Sources and field of
interactions organize in a characteristic pattern which establishes typical structures within the system in question. Systems of such a kind have boundaries, but
they are open with respect to inflow and outflow of energy (in one or the other
sense). They can be stratified into structures which themselves may be organized
to become sub-systems. The environment of systems is not itself a system, but it
contains other systems, and it may be structured.
2. Differentiation & Re-construction
Structures differentiate systems. The systems differentiate themselves according
to their well-defined boundary which makes them systems, in first place. Each
system has a different environment which contains other systems. In order to
determine the nature of a system, it is necessary to re-construct the various processes of differentiation which have formed this particular system. Hence, the
method of understanding the constitution of systems including their detailed
structures is to re-construct their becoming genetically (in fact, in a progressive-regressive way).
3. Metaphorization
The language appropriate for describing and mapping re-constructed differentiations is characterized by the concept of metaphorization. It is by metaphors
that meanings of systems are being generated. This is directly prescribed by the
fact that we deal with differentiation: In order to understand a new system which
has been discovered as a difference to other, already known systems, it is necessary to carry over a known meaning which is then subject to alterations which
correspond to the novelty of the new system. Otherwise the signification of this
new system would be empty, because there is nothing what could be used for it.
Only a metaphor can develop new impressions which are adequately related to
the innovative power of something what has just emerged. Hence, if theories are
sets of propositions, then their basic concepts are metaphors which help to formulate these propositions, in first place.
4. Logoi & Topoi

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There are explicitly mathematical metaphors useful for a formal differentiation

of particularly simple systems (which admit a mathematical representation).
Their characteristic is that they combine a mathematical structure with a logical
structure such that mathematical rules may be applied to the propositional contents they exhibit in detail, but at the same time, the meaning of these proposition is being monitored and evaluated. In particular, logoi (in the sense of
Ren Thom) can be visualized as a catalogue of catalogues, listing the metaphors which can describe the various aspects of the world. Topoi however (in
the sense of Lawvere and MacLane) select and present those catalogues which
are relevant due to the cognitive constitution of humans. Hence, logoi aim to
cover substance itself by an infinity of attributes, topoi concentrate on those attributes which fall into the human mode of existence.
5. Poetical Praxis
In the end, all the theories developed show up as the result of a selective process
of choosing among meanings of metaphors and expanding by this the available
languages, thus expanding the horizon of human knowledge. This is a process
which is heavily charged with procedures of poetic creation rather than simple
research to find things. Humans are subject to a given cognitive inventory.
And they use their inventory in re-constructing the world in which they live according to their capacity. This basically means that they primarily invent the
world such that it is fitting to this inventory. The outcome is nevertheless objective in the sense that living being with the same cognitive capacity can actually
rely on the results of the theories so developed. And this is what it is all about.
D. Practical Main Concepts
Concepts of epistemological type imply concepts of a practical character in the
sense that the narrative structures immanent in usual everyday discourses develop the poetical praxis in further detail. Because of the explicit individual differences leading to a multitude of interpretational variants when grasping the
world, such concepts determine the social capacity of re-combining the various
perspectives so as to stabilize the objectivity achieved in a given collective
group.
1. Being & Consciousness
Thinking itself has a dualistic structure in the sense that it basically works in a
digital way: Processes which are apparently continous and, within temporality, develop in an analogous manner, are being artificially digitalized in order
to be able to take them in sight at all. (Remember that the human invention of
clocks is the best example for this: Time is flowing in a continous sense, but in

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order to be able to measure this time flow, it is necessary to introduce an instrument whose most important part is a mechanism which artifically stops the
time at a series of given moments so that one is capable to divide a given scale
into well-defined intervals. This is achieved by introducing the escapement of
clocks. Otherwise the hands would continuously circulate the dials, which is not
very useful for a proper measurement.) Digitalization can be re-traced to the basically dual constitution of thinking itself. There is an intrinsic dualism between
subject and object in thinking which mirrors the fact that consciousness itself is
constituted by two components: the pre-reflexive one and the reflexive one. This
is also expressed by the fact that most of the fundamental concepts show up in
pairs of complementary character. Hence, the division between body and mind,
due to epistemological reasons, not due to ontological reasons.
2. Non-Simultaneousness
This concept covers the fact that objectivity in the sense mentioned above is
never sublated completely in an ideal manner (as a superposition of many individual perspectives developed with respect to the taking in sight of the world).
Instead, there are substantial residues which spatially as well as temporarily
demonstrate that thinking is never simultaneous and that the superposition of its
individual variants can never compensate these differences in sight.
3. Utopia & Mythology
Very much like the Blochean concept of non-simultaneousness, the conceptual
pair of utopia and mythology deals with the explicit divergences of reflexion
which are exhibited within a given social group. For the population altogether,
visualized as a group of groups, hence as the totality itself, local narrative structures are merged to form a collective story which constitutes the high-story
(history) of the population. The interpretational needs left open by the practical
consequences of non-simultaneousness give rise to a narration of the desired,
in the sense that this defines the anticipating projection of the population, given
a particular situation at some moment of development.
4. Freedom
The concept of freedom is at the foundation of all what is done, and at the end of
anticipating the future development, at the same time. In a sense, it re-guides the
motion of concepts to the first main conjectures starting from myself (section A.
1), and also to the structural main conjectures formulated according to the
re-construction of the foundation (section C. 1). It is nevertheless a practical
concept, because it is used for founding various aspects of actions within everyday life on a consistent base of fundamental principles. Freedom in ontological
terms is nothing but a property of substance making possible that there is some-

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thing worldly at all. Freedom in practical terms is the trace of this substance as it
is expressed within its own attributes in a basically fragmental form.

IX. Intercultural Stability of Concepts

The final problem philosophy has with its various basic concepts is similar to
the problems the sciences have with their own concepts. The point is that the
basic principles used as well as the fundamental concepts introduced into the
various theories, are always evaluated with respect to one cultural background
only, nevertheless claiming their universal validity. We refer to this cultural
background as to what is called Western culture meaning explicitly what is
taught to students mainly in Western and Central European countries, in northern America, and in Australia. The point is that speaking about the world implies the utilization of theories, as we have seen, consisting primarily of concepts on which predicational rules act like operators. But the underlying concepts have been developed within one cultural context, in first place. So what
does this mean with respect to the adequate application of a theory? Obviously,
one would expect that if the fundamental concepts used are different, then the
theoretical results carry different connotations.
It was Jaspers who introduced the concept of axial time (Achsenzeit) in order
to characterize a number of cultures according to a criterion of family relation.
He observed that basic though different philosophical concepts had been developed in Greece, Israel, Persia, India, and China, about the same time between
600 and 500 B.C. Hence, he classified cultures according to whether they belonged to this group or not. Today, such a classification carries the connotation
of racism and colonialism, so that we would not like to differ among cultures in
terms of maturity and similar criteria. (Note that, in contrary e.g. to Spengler,
Jaspers did certainly not intend to arouse racist connotations, but classifying
cultures and peoples is an anthropological conception itself deeply related to the
fact that once the European culture governed the world - not however because of
its extraordinary competence, but due to historical and political developments of
a very unfortunate kind.) In fact, today, we still know very little about other cultures such as the aboriginals of north and south America, or of Africa. The reason is that history has been always written in terms of the winners. It is a recent
achievment, namely since the American jubilee of 1992, that very slowly work
is initiated on these fields. Hence, we cannot conclude that there have not been
many other cultures which fall under Jaspers axial category. There is perhaps a
way to vindicating Jaspers idea when referring to an aspect of linguistic compatibility among cultures: This is so, because it appears as if the characteristic
properties of different cultures at a given time are probably less manifold than
would be expected. Looking at the various form of social organization shows

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that the variety is limited. And what is true for the forms of organization is certainly also true for the forms of thinking itself. Hence, the question is whether
there might be stable invariants defining social systems as such, and which are
being superposed by historically developed variants characterizing the specific
structure of a culture in detail. The first step for answering such a question is
probably to study the explicit differences in thinking. 175
We discuss a short example provided by Bruce Chatwin 176 who has demonstrated in some
detail that for the Australian aborigines, the fundamental categories of grasping their world
are of a rather different nature: The aborigines have defined a complex network of pathways
stretching over the whole continent, called songlines, deeply related to their mythological
system. Creation in terms of this mythology starts with original ancestors who define the totemic structure of the various tribes. These ancestors wandered in the beginning over the continent and sang all the geographic objects (or geological objects rather) into existence. Hence,
in singing they created the world. This early time is referred to as a dreaming time in the
sense that the ancestors created the details of the world from their dreams. The contents of
their dreams is what we actually call world. On the other hand, the songlines can be visualized
as a network of the ancestors footprints which have themselves creative potential. To be
more precise the dreaming itself is the clan emblem (totem) implying a field of possibilities
determining practically both reflexion and action. Also, the songlines are the invisible (but
acoustic) mapping of a space of dreaming in terms of a space-time relationship. But there no
European equivalent of causal succession. Each aborigine owns a part of a song which corresponds to a piece of a songline. In this sense, the knowledge of a song implies the
knowledge of a path similar to a map. But it is only in the walking of a path that a path comes
into reality. The text of the song refers to geographical details of the landscape so that if recited correctly, the person wandering is at the right place at the right time. The senses directly
co-operate with the performance of action (wandering) without the separating of reflexion and
action which is typical for European thinking. While walking the songlines a person can only
meet brothers and sisters (of the same totem) so that hospitality is guaranteed. Hence, the song
is also passport and credit card. On the other hand, failing to walk the proper path means
trespassing and is a very severe crime.
But songlines are also connections between holy places, because the characteristic points of
orientation are related to mythological narration. Holy places in this sense, are incarnations of
the episodes referring to creation itself. Hence, wandering means re-creating. The song therefore is completely regulated in a strict way and must never be changed. Walking the songlines
is primarily a ritual journey, a practical journey only in secondary terms. The tact frequency
of the song is immediately related to a characteristic measure of time valid for a pedestrian
(about six kilometres per hour) and implies therefore a measure of distance, too. But note that
time is circular in this case, because the world is permanently re-created, but nothing new can
emerge. When walking a songline, not the present aborigine alone is performing this activity,
but at the same time, all of his ancestors do the same (in an identical way, not in an equal
way!). Living on the world is thus nothing but re-actualizing the original dreams of the ancestors. There is no temporality in the European sense.
Hence, reflexion and action, for Europeans in a successive order and defining temporality in
first place, by their distance and difference, are set into one in the case of the aborigines. For
175

There is work in progress within the departmental framework of an interdisciplinary study group presently
under construction at the university of Kassel at the department for education and humane sciences including the
institute for philosophy. In the following I refer to a report given by myself to a departmental conference on 11th
December, 1998.
176
B. Chatwin: The Songlines, Picador/Jonathan Cape, London, 1987.

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them, existence means perception, and cognition is a result of early habituation, it is not operative in a strict sense. At the same time, songlines serve the re-actualization of social life. So
they also have a political and economical meaning. They are trade routes, but it is songs
which are traded, goods are of secondary importance. At best, there is a cyclic trade of symbolic values, in the sense that certain goods (of practically no material value) are being circulated allover the continent. (This is a similarity to the famous Kula cycle of island trade described by Malinowski for the people of the Trobriand archipelago in Papua-New Guinea.)
In regular intervals all members of a totem who own a piece of the related songline come together and sing the complete song from the beginning to the ending, according to strict rules
of succession. Any error within this framework of rules would not only perturb the
re-actualization of creating, but would in fact negate creation itself, it would un-create the
world. There are many parts of a song, up to 600, which covers continental distances. The
boundary points (of one piece) are called stops and define the respective sub-sections. The
boundary points are always language-compatible, i.e. a song changes languages several times,
but does remain the same song. Members of the same totem speak different languages therefore. The exchange over stops does also regulate the wedding rules: Who would like to marry
has to wander.
What we recognize here is the category dependence of the social context: We would expect
that people who utilize different categories of space and time (as do the aborigines) such that
thinking itself (due to an operational absence of temporality) does not differ between
pre-reflexive and reflexive modes (i.e. between modes of reflexion and action in this case), do
also organize their social structures differently from what we know. This has been confirmed
by the works of Lvi-Strauss some time ago, and by the corrections Bourdieu applied to these
results. Note only for one example that stops of songlines are boundary points, but not territorial boundaries in the strict sense, because they do not apply to an area. Any parallel path
would belong to another totem. Hence, economically, there cannot be a structure of
land-owning in the European sense, with a number of decisive consequences for everyday
life.

So the question is whether communication can function in one way or another,

between to cultures who utilize different fundamental categories for the acquiring of their main concepts. Space and time are traditionally such categories. Can
thus Jaspers idea be vindicated when asking for the linguistic compatibility of
cultures in the sense that they can provide a symbolic representation of their
fundamental categories for trying an adequate translation? Is it possible to
re-combine different concepts, when observing that fundamental categories in
one culture are not even available in another? Note a more crucial point: If visualizing philosophy today as one which follows up the results of the sciences, this
means that concepts utilized here represent empirical facts of constitutional evidence for our world. Results about the nature of thinking as well as results about
the appropriate application of ethical principles, could be understood then as
derivations of this evidence. Hence, as all human beings live on the same planet
(in a small place within the same world that is), we would expect that it is this
point which secures the universality of results. If we find that fundamental categories differ even on that elementary level, then the question is whether there are
invariants at all. Or, to put it the other way round: whether it is not also our own
view which is subject to a very specific mode of perception. So either all these
different perspectives are compatible with each other, or they are not compati-

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ble, because they do not really deal with reality. This is the final question.

X. Ethno-Poetical Ethics as Advanced Theory-Praxis:

Walking the Songlines of Nature
Once, the projects discussed in chapters VII and VIII have been developed further, we would have a sound conceptual inventory in order to approach possible
answers to this final question. The point is that we need empirical evidence in
the end. This particularly means that the chief result of a contact with
extraterrestric intelligences would be to find out whether we were right about
stable and unstable elements of human evolution, in first place. Obviously, this
is still a long way to go. The SETI people can tell you. But beside that we have
to ask what to do for the time being. The works of Hubert Fichte might give a
hint towards this end.177 Fichtes idea is to complement Bourdieus method of
ethno-sociology (based on the conception that ethnological principles have to be
applied to ones own country and everyday surroundings, too) by his own of
what he calls ethno-poetics. He refers to a kind of poetic syncretism which is
common for the perception and cognition in children who do not determine
everyday functions in terms of their thinking, but who instead consider objects
within their environment as things with a secret life of their own which have to
be interpreted in terms of their specific essentiality and have to integrated into a
playful totality of mediations. Leiris has discussed these aspects in more detail178.
So what we would expect is to find the invariants of human thinking (taking
humans as transitory products of nature) within nature itself. The invariant
pathways of thinking are songlines of this very nature. And adequately
co-operating with nature in a kind of appropriate alliance (as Bloch has phrased
it) means to walk these songlines in a correct way. But in order to achieve this, it
is necessary to learn the right songs first.

Conclusion & Outlook

This present paper gives a first overview on the whole subject of systematically
re-constructing philosophical thinking within a modern framework of scientific
knowledge, treating the world as one totality which is governed by a unified set
of rules. As has been mentioned several times, work on the details of the underlying theory is still in progress at various places, and the project as such is one
of a long-range planning. The main objective of this paper is however, to turn
177

H.Fichte: Geschichte der Empfindlichkeit, 16 vols., Fischer, Frankfurt a.M., 1987-1993.

M.Leiris: Die eigene und die fremde Kultur (Ethnologische Schriften I), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1985.
See G.Dischner: Das poetische Auge des Ethnographen Hubert Fichte, Text & Kritik 72, Mnchen, 1981, 30-47,
for a more detailed discussion.
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the attention of those who are interested in this (or in a similar) project to the
fact that work is already done by a number of people on the line of thinking discussed here. Mostly, there is only little communication going on among groups
of people who work on similar pathways. Hence, this communication shall be
improved by a first summary of what is going on within the wider field between
physics and logic. Probably, the range of each of the chapters displayed here
could comfortably take care of a number of PhD theses in their own right. But
we repeat oncemore that the hard work has to be done all the time, despite the
fact that a unification could be eventually achieved. Hence, what we would like
to develop here is nothing but a structural theory of general aspects of mediations, but it is not a theory for testing new evidence. Except that there may
eventually emerge a kind of heuristic potential in order to check whether one has
been on the right track for a long while. Consequently, commentaries, critique,
and doubts, are being invited, and a lifely resonance produced by the readers is
the true result.