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FRAGMENTATION OF BEING and the Path Beyond the Void by Kent D. Palmer
copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. Not for Distribution.
In approaching the definition of the world, it is useful to begin with categories as they are normally distinguished as the first level of metaphysics. However, the category theory presented here differs in that above the category level there are recognized two levels of structure. First, there is the fragmentation of Being itself which must be recognized as the infra-structure of ideation. Then, there is, within Being, the traditional implicit meanings of Being which are summed up by the concepts of Identity, Reality, Truth and Metaphor. These features of Being are implicit in the Greek language from which the most refined notion of Being springs. Normally, the implicit meanings of Being remain hidden, and the fragmentation of Being is not recognized, so that Being is seen as a monolith which is featureless. Being is glossed either as a pure idea or interpreted as presentation. Ideas are capable of pure presentation to the mind, and thus exemplify presentation and conceptualization at the same time. When it is realized that Being has structure intrinsically in terms of the four features attributed to it by the Greeks and by the fragmentation of Being which displays the infrastructure of ideation, then a whole different approach to categorization at the highest level in metaphysics becomes possible. In our categorization, it will be recognized that there are a series of emergent levels through which we look at phenomena. Each one of these emergent levels exemplifies the fragmentation of Being because each one attempts to project ideation on that level of phenomena. The differentiation of the levels of phenomena is produced by the interaction of the fragmentation of Being with the internal features of Being. At each level, there is a struggle to differentiate reality, to apply identity, and to discern truth. Each level becomes a place to distinguish the grounds of metaphors. Let us explore these levels one at a time and then consider the categories that run through them.
The levels singled out for definition are as follows:
These are emergent levels of patterning at which new ways of looking at things comes into play. These emergent levels are not physical like the set: quark, particle, atom, molecule, organism, society which are usually cited. Instead, the levels have to do with the deeper understanding of things by the human being. This deeper understanding may be a projection, as in the levels of primitive and universe. These are the caps projected outward from the basic set of emergent levels which deal with objects, systems, meta-systems and worlds. The ultimate context is called the multi- or pluri-verse. Each emergent level has its own set of phenomena and way of looking at them. For instance, the level we are most familiar with is the Object level. There, a subject uses perspective to look at a shape which is part of a gestalt. This perspectivalization is based on the application of the mechanism of ideation. Through the fragmentation of Being, the infra-structure of ideation has been revealed. By paying close attention to the workings of this infra-structure, we can see how ideas are projected on shapes we find in the world. That process of projection of ideation is a process which takes place in a context which is made accessible by the contrast between the infra-structure of ideation and the framework of consciousness. That framework begins by differentiating two different aspects of our living experience of the lifeworld: Chi and Li. Here at this level, where we are getting objects into perspective, Chi is called Process, and Li is called Grain. We experience everything as processes with their own grain. Grain are the traces of the flows of processes left by them which appear as structures in the world. So, for instance, a tree has grain which gives it structure that is built-up through the process of its growth. Every process leaves traces of its evolution and passage as a grain, like tree rings in trees. What we see as forms are projected upon these processes and the remnants of their traces. Within processes, we apprehend discontinuities within their relative continuity. We mark some of these discontinuities as differences that make a difference. This is how we create the outlines that we call forms. Forms are projections on found natural complexes. Forms are the synthesized outlines of natural complexes. As such, forms are already abstractions based on the production of demarcations or distinguished differences. Quickly we notice that a form of an object changes as we move around it. Thus, the object itself has what Husserl called a noematic nucleus which is the core of all the different perspectives we can take on it. Forms change as we move from one perspective to another, and this constant transformation is based on our position with respect to the object. As we circumambulate the object or move it around in some other way, we experience the placing of the thing. That placing is experienced in relation to the overall gestalt in which the object participates. The transformation is caused by some action by which a particular form is emphasized, while others fall back into the background. As we look at the noematic nucleus and its transformations based on our manipulation of it, we apprehend the essence of the thing beyond the mechanisms of induction or deduction. That essence is structured by multidimensionally interacting attributes which have a range of plasticity which allows the thing to change but still remain of the same kind. When the repetition of the transformations is sped up, then we get the illusion of continuity produced, which we call ideation. Ideas are related back to the form by the twin operations of induction and deduction.
As we look closer into the process of ideation, we see the elements of the fragmentation of Being appear. The Idea is a pure presence which has the nature of Being meta-level, one which is the Kantian idea of Being that Heidegger calls the present-at-hand. The essence is where we see the process beneath our animation of the forms, and this represents the second meta-level of Being called by Heidegger the ready-to-hand. That essence is supported by the noematic nucleus of the object. When we look carefully at the difference between two forms and the process of transformation, we see in the noematic nucleus it is clear that two higher meta-level aspects of phenomena appear. First there is the hinge which represents meta-level three which Merleau-Ponty calls Hyper-Being, Derrida calls this differAnce, and Heidegger calls it Being (crossed out). This is the level at which the traces which show the action of process are left, or written on the substrate of the process, whatever that is. This normally produces what Derrida calls the hinge which is simultaneously a joint and a break. These hinges in the phenomena are covered over by the differences that make a difference that are projected upon the object by the subject. Between the glossing forms, there is what Derrida calls a spacing, temporalized space and spatialized time within which the hinges appear and act. The hinges are the substrata for the idealized attributes which we cover over as we project the apprehension of the essence in the gloss by which we see kinds before individual peculiarities. The next substrate of ideation is related to meta-level four of Being which Merleau-Ponty calls Wild Being. Here, in the spacing between the forms, we find there is a chiasm or reversibility in which the many hinges working together produce an overall transition between the forms based on the action applied. The chiasm is what ties the action to the changes in the forms at the level of hinge. This transformational process may have glitches in it which are referred to as flaws. The glitches sometimes show us that our projection of glosses upon the substrata of the form is wrong. However, in most instances we ignore the flaws and insist on seeing what we believe is there.
All this is to say that ideation is involved in the social construction of the objects around us. Ideation is a learned skill. Through ideation, we shape the shapes we find in the world. Shaping means we give shape to what we see and manipulate based, to some extent, on what is there, but going beyond the information given to build up a picture of what we think is there to be seen and manipulated. It is through the perspectivization of things that shapes appear, and these are glossed by forms which are turned, step by step, into ideas.
When we project using ideation, we are simultaneously invoking the four implicit shades of meaning of Being. First, we are applying Identity in our comparison of forms in order to discern the distinctions and to make demarcations. Identity, as anti-difference, must be projected first in order for differences to be seen. Once the differences have been observed we may make statements about them which can be compared back to our observations. So here, truth enters into the picture by the embedding of language into our humanity. Next, we compare our glosses to the substrates upon which those glosses are projected, and this gives us our idea of Reality. Finally, when the forms which are compared are linked using "is," we may call that metaphor. Normally, we only talk of metaphor when there are big differences between the forms being linked, but the linkages may also occur at a micro-level. If no link is made, then it is called metonymy because the forms are just related by conjunction. But if Being is used to make the link, then we have metaphor. A metaphorical linking of forms around a noematic nucleus causes the substrata to virtually disappear. This is called the idealization of the world which occurs through the construction of ideologies. An ideology is merely a whole set of ideas that become linked and form a system. Many times that system of ideas totally obscures the noematic nuclei, not to mention the forms that they sprung from at one time.
At whatever level the projection of ideation occurs, these four implicit concepts within the overarching concept of Being are constantly present. Being itself is a concept that is a gloss for presence. At the level of the object, it is "objects" that are being made present to the subject. The subject and the object are themselves anti-thetical ideas. Because they are ideas, they are rendered more perfectly present to them when the world is itself converted into ideas. But we sidestep total idealization by seeing that behind the intentional morphe forming the content of things, there is a shaping that occurs as the subject subjects the thing to multiple perspectives as a means of domination. Through the perspectivalization, the thing becomes an object. This is intrinsically a social process because the object is, by definition, what every "rational" and "normal" observer would see. The idea is to get at something that is independent of the observer. But this process of perspectivalization is a shaping of the thing through ideation which is founded on language, and is logocentric. As we peer down into the infra-structure of ideation, we get some inkling of the depth of this process we take for granted. We see the different layers associated with the different kinds of Being, and looking deeply, we see beyond this to the emptiness inside the thing which allows its meaning to gush forth out of that emptiness. The emptiness is oppressively present as the myriad differences that are the substrata of our glosses of the thing. Each difference which is construed into a demarcation or discontinuity within the process is the active presence of emptiness which allows each thing to be what it is by its unique differences from everything else.
Now that we have introduced the level of object, we can consider the level down that caps the series of emergent levels. The Object level was used to begin with because everyone should be familiar with that level. Through the action of science, we are continually finding lower idealized levels of primitives. Thus, the primitive level is really an idealization because once it becomes fixed, it is turned into objects, and the next level of primitive is posited and explored. So what level within the emergent scale is primitive is always changing. Right now that level seems to be the quark, but it has in the past been conceived of in terms of fundamental particles, and before that as atoms. The primitive follows the same patterning as that explained above for the object. But in this case, the terms associated with each point in the overall formation of ideation as applied to this level is different. Because the level of the primitive is continually changing, a single idealized terminology is in order which applies to all primitives.
The Chi is called flow, and the Li is called striations at this level of emergence. The flow exhibits limits which produces neighborhoods within which we see particles. Every particle has an anti-particle, and the difference between them supports a distinction, the lowest level of difference set up by the blanket application of anti-difference, i.e. identity. A change between a particle and its anti-particle is called a change which causes a distinction in time as distinct from space. Distinctions actually occur within the spacetime micro-environment which is referred to as an opening. The pattern in that micro-environment may be seen as folds in spacetime which cause the differences to appear. Particles on their own usually have minimal articulation, but together with other particles, they form fractals. The fractals basically apply the same template over and over. The entire series of repetitions produce a crystallization as the templates interact across the whole neighborhood in spacetime. Through this action, the self is seen to view a pattern within the context of a shape. The template makes visible the characteristics of the template.
As we go down into the fragmentation of Being, we first see the crystallization as a purely present phenomenon to which we can point. But the process which supports the crystallization at that moment is fractal, a specific interaction of particles that form a template. The template is our insight into the nature of the flow, or Chi. The crystallization is our apprehension of the striations in the flow which gives us access to the Li. Between the particle and the anti-particle is a set of joints analogous to the hinge at the object level. These joints refer to the third meta-level of Being. The joints allow the different characteristics of the particle and anti-particle to produce a myriad of subtle changes across the lines of difference. Within this set of joints, there is an opening between the two which exhibits the fold at the fourth meta-level. Through this opening, we see emptiness in which the meaning of the pattern flows in at us. The joints allow us to see the traces of the striations. By looking at the differences between the differences, instead of the differences themselves, we see the opening and its folds of reversibility that allow the particle and anti-particle to be complementary.
Through the levels of the fragmentation of Being, we explore the infra-structure of ideation as it is projected on the primitive level of phenomena whereever that is set at currently. By climbing down through those levels, we eventually come to the edge within the primitive picture of things, and from there we look out into the emptiness. Before we reach this level, the four implicit components of Being play their role. First our very quest for a primitive level to things occurs because of the projection of anti-difference on things. The primitive is the level where everything is reduced to what is identical with itself according to kinds. Different instances of the same kind are no different. Thus, the patterns produced are in some sense pure. But their purity is bought at a price; the price is the reduction of everything through anti-difference. We think of the primitive level as real because we tend to approach everything in terms of reductionism, giving reality to the lower level phenomena and denying reality to everything at higher levels. We also tend to equate the purified primitives with what is truthful. They cannot lie because they have the fewest degrees of freedom. These primitive phenomena become the basic metaphors by which other things are understood. Thus, the fragmentation of Being and the implicit components of Being work together to define our approach to all primitives. The creation of primitives is a projection of ideation upon the world. It must be discussed because the primitive is always the bottom of the set of emergent levels, even though that bottom continually recedes. This level is always discovered to have a different set of primitives with different configurational rules. But as the horizon is pushed ever downward, the old primitives become just another level of emergent objects.
Now that it is clear that below the object level there is a constantly redefined level of primitives, it is possible to ask what exists above the level of object. The answer is the system. Many systems theorists equate objects to systems. This is a grave error. Systems have a completely different nature from objects. In some ways we can see that the object and primitive level are merely reflexive because today's primitive are tomorrow's objects. But the system level is not merely reflexive. Systems have a special nature different from the object. We will see that systems and meta-systems are similarly reflexive. So too are the levels of world and universe which is the cap on the other end of our emergent levels. These three pairs of emergent levels exist within a context of a multi-verse and are, in fact, paired with the multi-verse as its opposite. All three pairs make up the structure of the universe. That structure has three pairs of reflexive levels which, taken as sets, are very different from the other pairs. It is important to keep this in mind as we explore all the levels, one at a time. In transitioning from object to system, we are crossing a major discontinuity unlike the minor discontinuity crossed moving from object to primitive.
A system expresses its Chi as a dynamism and its Li in terms of channels. This is very different from a process. Processes follow channels, and the dynamics of the grain is usually created as the flowing processes react to the constraints of the flow of the process through the channels. At the system level, we are looking at the channels themselves through which processes flow. These channels have been called by Waddington "Cherods." They are paths of least resistance. They themselves are traces left by meta-level dynamisms which catch and carry sets of interacting objects. That dynamism of objects, acting as a system, produces channels for individual processes. As such it produces a mutual context for the behavior of the objects acting in concert. The orchestration of the system of objects behavior is seen as a gestalt by the observer. This is the fundamental difference of an object and the system. The object is basically a shaping process or a shaped thing. The system is a gestalt of objects with a presentational dynamic. In other words, a system will present an object as a focus in relation to background objects. The system is the dynamic relation between groups of objects organized in a gestalt. Objects themselves do not have this dynamism. Objects do not normally present themselves; instead they are presented when they become part of a system. In that context, they are either presented physically as different objects are transformed, or manipulated in the context of the overall dynamism of the system. Or they are presented theoretically to the ideal observer who has a paradigm for exploring the system. Systems are directly related to paradigms. Paradigms are ways of relating ideas together. As such, paradigms do not concentrate so much on the ideas themselves as their interconnection. When the interconnection changes, then different aspects of component ideas become visible. This change in the relations between ideas is called a paradigm shift. When an observer's paradigm shifts, then he will see new gestalts. Consequently, different system behaviors will become important, and others will recede in importance so the dynamism of the system appears different. Objects or ideas alone do not change as a result of a paradigm shift. Only the relations between objects as total configuration changes. A paradigm allows a particular gestalt to be seen. That gestalt relates objects (conceptual or physical) to an underlying dynamism of showing and hiding which controls the objects.
When we look deeper into the nature of the system, we see that it to has the structure of ideation. But here, the structure is expressed in fundamentally different ways from the way it is expressed at the level of the object. We notice that within the dynamic system there are various stabilities or continuities in the dynamism which we call system states. In the language of the gestalt, we might call them presentations, where some objects are made figures and others become backgrounds for the figures. When we look at the relations between states, we see that there are boundaries which, when crossed, cause the system to move from one state to another. This dynamic system is constantly crossing these boundaries, so its overall characteristic states are changing. The system may be stable or unstable. If it is unstable, then it will enter regions of chaos within its own dynamic structure so that transitions may occur often and erratically. The point at which these transitions occur that generate additional system states is called the bifurcation. The bifurcation is discovered by exciting the system and watching transitions across boundaries. This reveals the structure of the dynamism of the system which is expressed as a phase space.
When we look into this phenomenology of systems, we see that this expresses the fundamental fragmentation of Being. The states or stabilities within the dynamism are like the presented forms of the object. The transitions across boundaries are the ways in which the dynamism of the system appears, which is like the processing of the object which transforms one form into another. But beneath the boundary between states is the structure of the dynamic system, which relates the state transitions in a particular pattern. This may be modeled by a finite state automata. However, the structure appears to change as the system is excited, so that the phase spaces appear at different levels of excitation. In the phase space, there are points of bifurcation on the way to chaos where new states are produced for the system to pop into or out of. The production of new states, through the bifurcation of the phase space, produces a picture of the degrees of freedom in the system under study. This is analogous to the spacing between the transformed forms through which they must morph. The hinge allows the two forms to be together, yet held apart, on the two sides of the difference that makes a difference that separates the two forms. But at a more basic level, the forms may move through the transformation, making the spacing explicit through a morphing process which makes visible the chiasm or the point of reversibility between the two forms. When morphing occurs, it makes visible the changes in content and outline between the two forms. These changes in content follow certain rules which are the structural underpinnings of the form that appear at the system layer. Morphing the forms makes the underlying structures apparent. Morphing is a way of making present the underlying dynamism of the set of forms as a system. Morphing makes structural transformation between forms visible. It produces a meta-continuity which we normally do not encounter because it either takes place too slowly, like growth, or too fast, as a catastrophe. However, through computer graphics innovations, sometimes these morphs can be made explicit as visualizations. In those cases, the relations between the structure and hinges, and the chiasm and bifurcation at both the object and system level become apparent. This is because the set of objects that are being transformed is considered as a system whose structure is being manipulated to show the movement across the spacing with its chiasm of reversibility by which one form becomes another form. This continuity is different from the continuity as the dynamic system explores its own phase spaces and discovers its bifurcations that produce the structure that is used to describe transformations. Structures that relate different contents of forms appear as changes during transformation. The structure itself becomes articulated more and more as the system that encompasses the forms are excited to produce a greater repertory of states, and thus possible shadings of content. In some way, the excitation of the system which causes it to explore its phase space is like the fractal production of finer and finer resolutions of content, and thus higher resolution snapshots of the morphing continuity between forms.
The structure of a dynamic system may be described as a finite state automata, but more generally it is best thought of in terms of a Group which is a certain kind of mathematical category. The Group has members that are arrayed as opposites. One member is the identity element. It consists of operations that take two members and produce a third member of the group. The outcome of an operation that combines any member with the identity element yields the that member, and thus introduces reflection. The outcome of any operation of a member with its opposite yields the identity element. The outcomes of all other operations is specified by the group table which is a state machine without external action. Group structures are good for studying symmetries in the dynamics of the system. A symmetry is an operation that leaves the system in the same state that it started. Symmetries on dynamic systems are important because it allow one to explore the channels of the system and the underlying structure of its dynamism without disturbing the system itself. The group of a system is its standing wave of stability. It is equivalent to the noematic nucleus of the forms within an object. The system may, in fact, have many different sets of operations that form different groups on the same set of elements. These more complex sets of group structures are called Rings and normally have two operations. For instance, arithmetic is a Ring with addition and multiplication as operations. More complex operations which articulate the behavior of the system are possible. The Groups, or Rings, give a representation of the core structures and encode the dynamics of the system in the way it deals with opposites. Each system may be represented as a set of parameters with ranges. In many cases, the ranges represent the extremes within which the system hovers as it expresses its dynamism. The group or ring structures represent a summary of the relations of these extremes to each other across the significant parameters and dimensions that describe the system. The parameters are normally the operationalization of the major properties of the system. Through this operationalization, the central dualities of the system become apparent. These are like the essence of the object. When you see the system, its central dualities and their intrinsic relation, the so-called kernel of the system, is immediately recognized. This is more or less saying that for any system, recognizing its most important extremes is tantamount to understanding the system. Within those extremes, which are only known by exciting the system and moving it out into its phase space to discover its extremes, the system's behavior continually dances. We see the major outlines of that behavior when related to the extremes of the system as a regime. We say that a system is in a particular regime when the limits of the kernel of central dualities is not breached in the dynamic dance of the system.
Perturbations may disturb the dynamic behavior of the system. Perturbations may be generated by objects within the system or from the environment. These perturbations, if intense enough, may cause the system to become non-linear. This means the whole system may change its regime, perhaps through a catastrophe, jumping from one whole set of behaviors to another, changing the regime. This occurs, for instance, when an emergent event occurs. In an emergent event, the appearance of a genuinely novel object in the context of the system or a paradigm shift which causes the system to be seen differently by the observer so new aspects of objects already present appear, there is the possibility of a radical change in all the significant parameters of the system under observation. This radical discontinuity or non-linearity displays for us the limits of the system in a deeper manner than the exploration of the phase space of the excited system. Emergent events make visible the underlying assumptions, or grounds, on which the system is built. These assumptions are normally invisible because excitation of the system does not change them. Only the introduction of new objects or the change of the paradigm of the observer may make these assumptions visible. The emergent event takes us to the dual of the system level where the meta-system appears. Here in the meta-system, the system itself is transformed.
The system is a process of showing and hiding objects in a gestalt. The identity aspect in Being appears as the identity element of the group structure. The identity element in the group structure signifies the presence of symmetries within the structure of the dynamism of the system. Truth is not verification any more at this level. We do not compare one form to another to establish a continued link. Instead, we see a process of manifestation. Truth is the manifestation of the system itself in its dynamism. We can see the system because of the symmetries it exhibits. Without them, it would be a pure flux of content with no regularities or patterns. Thus, the dynamism of the system revolves around its symmetries, which in turn, revolves around its identity element within the group structure. Reality appears as the perturbations of the system by its environment or from within through changes of paradigm. Here the cognitive and the mechanical dimensions are assumed to be inseparable. Reality expresses itself as the excitation of the system and as the entry of novelty. In excitation or novelty, the objects which make up the system will experience different interactions that normally occur, so that the limits of the system are tested. The testing of the limits of the system gives us access to its reality. The system also has a metaphorical aspect. The system's states may appear to be similar. So we say this state is like another. There is a whole qualitative dimension to the system which becomes apparent as the standing wave of symmetries persists. Our implicit connection of similar states within the system allows us to see the system itself as a coherent natural complex, a single vortex, a dynamic whole. This continual projection of wholeness on the system which sees it as an illusory continuity says that this diachronic state of affairs in the system IS the same as the next stable diactronic moment that it resembles. We see a regime as an illusory continuity projected across the diachronic moments of the system's existence. The system manifests all the different aspects of Being, and at the same time reproduces the mechanism of ideation which projects illusory continuity. Thus, the system is a powerful way of looking at the relations between things within the world.
The dual of the system is the meta-system which relates sets of systems to each other in a systematic way. Like the relation between objects and primitives, there is a particular duality between a system and a meta-system. In the world, there are systems within systems within systems, and so on ad infinitum. At any level of the hierarchy of systems there is a relation between a system and a higher level system which must be addressed. The meta-system is something different from the system in that it is a higher logical type which deals with the relation between systems within the world. The meta-system has its own form of Chi and Li. The Chi of the meta-system is called drift, while the Li of the meta-system may be seen as play. In other words, the cluster of systems that make up the meta-system may together be drifting in a certain direction, given a space of support variables for the whole cluster. The drift is the result of the collective action of the systems in the cluster. It is not necessarily a controlled response, but may be a by-product of the individual actions of the systems in the cluster acting separately. The systems may also exhibit play, where there is some elasticity of response that the systems acting in parallel may have that individual systems do not have acting alone. Play and drift are meta-systemic expressions of the energy and traces of the cluster of systems acting in concert. They can only be seen by comparing systems to each other that are about the same level of abstraction.
Within the cluster of systems that make up a meta-system, the showing and hiding that occurs in a system is raised a degree. Here we now speak of multi-media shows rather than single presentations. It is the difference between an act and a three-ring circus. Within the play and drift of the cluster of systems, stages are set up. A system is seen to have a repertory. One system is transformed into another by a meta-system transition. The meta-system transition is the meta-systemization of the emergent event. A series of meta-system transitions reveal the deep structures beneath the cluster of systems. Systems may be seen to have elasticity in relation to other systems that result in the play of the whole meta-system. Also, systems may resonate with each other in order to reinforce their mutual behavior. The differences between systems crossed by the meta-system transition is what Derrida calls DifferAnce. Systems relate to each other though differing and deferring. The differences between systems open up an arena in which differences may be seen and reactions may be deferred. The entire cluster, when acting in concert with appropriate levels of resonance, takes the form of a hologram. Within the hologram, each sub-system reflects others through its difference with them. The features of any one sub-system reflects a portion of the whole meta-system. In this, the aspects of the meta-system become apparent, which are really meta-properties. The deep structure of the meta-system reflects in this mutual mirroring what David Boem calls the implicate order. The implicate order lies beneath the explicit ordering of systems. It is the internal coherence of the cluster of systems. The gloss over the implicate order is the correlations between system behaviors. When we see the swarm of fish or birds turning together, we see a correlation in the behavior of the individual systems that make up the swarm or flock. Each bird is acting as part of a hologram of the flock as a whole. Each bird is mirroring the movements of the entire flock. Thus, there are certain aspects of the bird's movements which are highlighted or de-emphasized by the movement of the whole. But the fact that the bird can fly in a flock has to do with an enfolded order repeated in each bird. The correlations between the movements of individual birds are the external result of the action of this internal ordering.
We say that viewer of the meta-system is a theorist instead of an observer. An observer may watch the movements of a single individual, but in order to be a theorist, one must take into account the actions of a large number of individuals. Theory deals with the domain of all possible responses from a large number of instances and treats them statistically. A theory has an episteme, which is like a paradigm, only at the next highest logical type. An episteme is a way of knowing, or a set of categories which organize knowledge. Epistemes, like paradigms, may change either by the introduction of novelty or by a restructuring of the categories of knowable things for theoretical or philosophical reasons. The theory is really a series of showings by which demonstrations are produced. These demonstrations normally use a number of systems which are orchestrated to work together to produce an overall result like entertainment. Entertainment meta-systems orchestrate the sound, visual and perhaps other systems to produce an overall effect. The overall effect is qualitatively different from the effect of any one system by itself. The meta-system is concerned with logistics or the marshalling of forces.
You will notice that the definition of primitive and the meta-system diverge. Some way the primitive is a concentration of what appears in the object, whereas the meta-system is a dispersion of what appears in the system. Primitives are atomic, and meta-systems are clusters. Once a primitive is discovered not to be atomic, then it tends to slide toward the definition as a meta-system. What is a system or object is somewhat arbitrary. Objects tend to be concrete entities, whereas systems tend to appear as tightly coupled collections of entities. Primitives are thought of as entities which are irreducible. Meta-systems are thought of as loose clusters of things that act like systems.
Within a theory, it is anomalies that drive it to change. The anomaly is a fact that does not fit in the overall scheme of the relations between systems. Explaining anomalies tends to force the theories to be revised and transformed. Anomalies make visible the limits of the theories perhaps as underlying unquestioned assumptions.
The fragmentation of Being shows up within the meta-system in a clear way. The systems themselves are present-at-hand. Meta-system transitions are the process aspect of the system. By studying meta-system transitions, deep structures are made clear. The deep structure is the hinge between two systems. The hinge allows us to see our way across the boundary of differAnce so that we can consider the two systems as arising from the same source which allows them to work together. But that hinge allows us to see the elasticity between the two systems and appreciate the resonance they can have working with each other. The resonance is the chiasm of reversibility that shows up in Wild Being.
The truth at the level of meta-system has to do not with showing and hiding, but with transcendence and immanence. Every showing and hiding is an expression of transcendence. Immanence is what never appears. It is seen as either the unconscious of the showing process or the source from which myriad showings arise. The myriad showings are the different kinds entertainment and the different shows that appear within a particular kind of medium. Within the outpouring of shows, there are subjects never addressed. This is the immanent, the unspeakable, the unshowable. For instance, in much entertainment the male sex organ is this kind of unshowable thing. As an absence, it dominates everything that is shown. Like the absentee landlord of the dilapidated building, it is seen everywhere you look, although it is never seen explicitly anywhere. The landlord is the source of every problem, even though each problem has its own concrete cause that has nothing to do with the landlord except as a sign of neglect. The reality of the meta-system comes from the jostling within the meta-system itself of discordant behaviors of member systems. Reality is whatever prevents the production of an implicate order. The implicate order is the identity of the meta-system with itself as seen as a set of unfolded orderings acted out in concert by the systems of the meta-system. In the meta-system, the metaphor is the holographic mirroring of the individual subsystems of each other. Each implicit element of Being appears in the meta-system.
Once the difference between immanence and transcendence has arisen within the meta-system, then we have the possibility of projecting a world. Worlds are based upon the projection of transcendentals. The projection of transcendentals is based on an ontology or an interpretation of Being. Thus, this level of our meta-category theory is different from those discussed so far in that it assumes the whole concept of Being as the foundation for the transcendentals that are projected to create a world. Within the world, there is an emphasis on the nature of time. Thus, we say that the Li of the world is seen in its cyclical time, whereas the Chi of the world is seen in its linear time. Some worlds are more linear, and others are more circular. The trade-off between these two fundamental kinds of time determine the nature of the world as a whole. The Western worldview is mostly linear. It has a completely different quality from other more traditional worldviews that were mostly circular. Circular time emphasizes what remains the same, and thus is associated with Li which underlines the traces left by processes. Linear time emphasizes change, and thus tends to erase the traces left by earlier processes. Combinations of linearity and circularity produce spirals of time. The way time is treated has an impact on which interpretation of Being stand within the world. The world combines a synopsis of Being with a compromise between different aspects of time. This connection between Being and time appears before us as a situation. In a situation, one relates to the world through a series of categories of cognition. There may be several categories of cognition through which the situation is assessed and reacted to by the being-in-the-world, or dasein (being there). Each category projects an horizon within the world. Horizons are infinite fields of exploration. The appearance of something on a horizon is an act of transcendence. Since categories are not things, but kinds of cognition, the relations between these cognitions are normally hidden and appear as immanences. Between two categories of experience there is an area of displacement. When something appears in multiple categories at once, then there is a moment of synchroniety. The set of categories taken together makes up what is called the table of categories. These are the highest non-dominated cognitive realms. They form a set which may be associated with a category theory which defines how this list of experiential modes are related to each other and why they are ultimate. What categories have in common when working together are called existentials. Existentials are things that appear to exist because they can be approached through multiple categories simultaneously. Existentials are the means of connecting to, or projecting, the world ecstatically by dasein. The set of existentials are glossed as transcendentals. For instance, the ego is a transcendental for Kant, but this transcendental is a whole bundle of existentials, or ways of projecting the world, which are glossed by the concept of ego. What disturbs the situation in which existentials work at projecting the world, are strangeness and weirdness. These have an unsettling effect. They give intimations of the otherness or alterity which mark the boundaries of a world. The meta-systems see the world as the ultimate environment which includes everything assigned reality through Being.
The fragmentation of Being appears within the world as the different modalities of Being. These are the present-at-hand, ready-to-hand, in-hand, and out-of-hand modalities. Every category is changed when it operates in one or the other of these modalities. Likewise, the different implicit elements of Being appear as fused in the world. The world itself is truth, reality, identity and metaphorical. We cannot distinguish different elements of the world that have these implicit associations as we could with objects and systems. When you are in a world, it is your only reality. The ecstatic projection of the world itself is its truth. The world is unique and identical to itself as a tautology. The metaphors compare the world to those things within the world. For instance, man may be compared with the world as it is in the Indo-European tradition, in the form of Yamir or Purusa.
There are a multitude of worlds, but each one is all encompassing. If you are in one, you are completely encompassed, so it is impossible to be in more than one world at a time. If you can be in multiple encompassing environments at a time, then it is a meta-system and not a world.
A world knows that it is one from a myriad number of possible or simultaneously existing encompassings. But a universe is an artificial construct that singles out one world and attempts to make its dominance absolute. The universe has only onesong to sing. It is totalitarian enforced intersubjective delusion. We will take the construction of the Western scientific universe as paradigmatic of all possible universes. In this particular totalitarian system, the Chi appears as times arrow which is irreversible, this is to say the ideology of progress. The Li appears as the multitude of inertial frames or viewpoints into which the universe is fragmented, in which events in time are viewed differently by different disciplines or humans with different orientations. Out of the differences of inertial frames or orientations, there arises a universe of discourse. The universe of discourse appears because there is a multitude of opinions which have an absolute relation to each other but which form a relativistic field. The absolute relation allows the different viewpoints to be interchanged for each other easily. The relativism makes it sure that no particular viewpoint will dominate as it does in a world. Worlds are not transformable from one to another. Going between worlds requires leaps of faith or jumps out into groundlessness. Moving between the sub-worlds within a universe, called disciplines, instead requires changing assumptions and areas of focus. Within the universe, the ways of looking at things are pretty much the same in different disciplines, but only the content and assumptions are different. So for instance, formal-structural systems are the major way of dominating phenomena within all disciplines. How this is applied to different systems can be very different in each case. Different disciplines, or sciences, have different ways of dominating the materials. They generate their own picture of the emergent levels of phenomena that underlie their discipline's definition. But all methods apply distancing in order to make their results objective in some sense, which means fully dominated. However, many times it takes many sciences to fully dominate a phenomenon because of its complexity, so interdisciplinary studies are needed. Through the lens of all the sciences, one gets a glimpse of the construct "nature." It is viewed through a series of substantiated theories which make clear universals that are subsumed under the rubric of scientific law. The universe is the result of the will to power of the humans, projecting one song on the totality of phenomena that appear in selected worlds. Since it excludes many worlds, it defines another that is utterly alien, which Castenada called the Nagual. Within the universe, there are many times singularities, like black holes, which act in ways beyond the rule of natural law. They are points where what exists outside the universe cannot be handled by the single song sung in the totalitarian regime of the rational and scientific approach to all things which has become dominate in the metaphysical era.
The universe is founded on Conceptual Being rather than primordial Being which is totally fused so that Reality, Truth, Identity, and Metaphor are all the same thing. The fragmentation of Being is completely suppressed.
The Universe is a false image projected by one world that attempts to dominate everything in existence. The multi-verse is the true picture of the constellation of all the worlds. The multi-verse might equally be called the pluriverse. Chi expresses itself as eternal recurrence, and Li as the Same. The multi-verse has as its inner dynamic the eternal recurrence of the same instead of will to power, which was the dynamic underlying the universe. The eternal recurrence of the same is the context for the discovery of the lifeworld. The lifeworld is the tacit lived world beyond all our abstractions of it. Within the lifeworld, certain abstractions of the universe are compared to other universes. The plurality of universes allows the relativization of relativity which returns us to solid ground where significant differences do make a difference. In the pluriverse, universes are constantly emerging, and through that process, we get a glimpse of our ultimate reality and meaning. There is a range of variability between universes which are separated from each other by warps in time-space. With this model, we get an idea of how worlds might relate to each other even though we can only be in one world at a time. We can peek over the edges of one universe into another, even though worlds do not have edges, but only internal infinite horizons. The picture of all the worlds taken together is the proto-gestalt. In the Indo-European tradition, this is known as the World Tree, Yggdrasil. It contains all the worlds, like fruits, hanging from their branches. Within the world tree, there are certain invariants which we see when we get a glimpse of the primal scene which is the ultimate pattern upon which all the worlds are formed and in which they swim. By the projections of the invariants we get a gloss we call eternity. Eternity is hypotheses by turning all we know about the in-time upside down. Between the in-time realm and hypothesized eternity projected as its opposite, there is the other realm of the out-of-time. The realm of eternity is the inversion of the eternal recurrence of the same where eternity is emphasized over the action of recurrence. The out-of-time realm is where all action stops, and there is only the Same. That means there is a single source of all causation. We get a glimpse of the matrix of the pluriverse when a creature has a vision. The limits of it are the unknowable, what can never appear in any world, which means the unseen; and this is embodied by the limitations of all creatures. What is beyond the matrix is anybody's guess.
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