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Ted Lumley writes: From the point of view of how we ‘understand’ the physical world, what are the implications of ‘seeing’ the world in terms of a ‘fluid dynamic’ instead of ‘object-dynamics’? One way to think of this change is; ... everywhere we formerly thought of something as an ‘object’ (a ‘local, independently-existing entity’), we now think of it as a ‘convection cell’ (a locally-appearing dynamical ‘flow-form’ within the fluid-dynamical continuum of nature). In the ‘object-dynamics’ paradigm, when we define the local, independently-existing object as a ‘living organism’, ‘living cell’, ‘living ecology’, ‘living (Gaian) planet’, ‘living social organisation’, we impute to these ‘living local objects’, ‘locally originating behaviour’; i.e. we ‘see’ them as ‘sovereign systems’ that have their own absolutely local ‘inside’ (this requires us to impose a Euclidian space convention) wherein, we say, there resides a central authority with supreme control over ‘internal affairs’, ... a ‘ghost-in-the-machine’ that is ‘fully and solely responsible’ for the internal originating of the local object-organism’s behavioural dynamics whether these dynamics concern the evolving of the ‘form’ of the object-organism ‘from scratch’ (‘genesis’ by way of ‘internal first cause’), or whether these dynamics concern the manner of its interactions with other objects and object-organisms that, taken together, constitute the ‘dynamical reality’ of the object-dynamics paradigm.. ‘Objects’ don’t ‘really exist’, they are not ‘things of nature’ but are axioms we impose by way of our implicit use of geometry in visual perception and visual image representation. For example, we objectify a hurricane as a ‘local thing’, though in the reality that comes to us by way of our included-in-nature feeling experience, it is instead a ‘locally-appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining form in a fluid dynamical spatial continuum’. By our ‘imposing objecthood’ on this ‘locally-appearing dynamical form’ and our defining it (and giving it an object-word-label) as a ‘local, independently-existing entity’ with ‘its own behaviour’, we affirm its ‘local-object-existence’; i.e. as John Stuart Mill observed; “Every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the existence of the object defined” Our imposing of ‘objecthood’ on ‘locally-appearing dynamical forms’ puts the mental imagery that comes to us through ‘object-dynamics’ in the realm of ‘make-believe’ and we put ourselves into the mode of understanding for ‘reasons of economy’ (because it is ‘more easy’ to discourse on the world this way, though not ‘more true’). As Ernst Mach observed, we have developed a system for understanding the world based on ‘the economy of thought’ and as Henri Poincaré observes (Poincaré validated Mach’s notion by pointing out how we implement this economy of thought by the use of hidden axioms such as ‘the existence of local objects with persisting identity’ and the invoking of absolute void-and-empty containing space to endow these ‘local, independently existing objects’, in our minds, with ‘their own local behaviours), ... the notion of independently-existing local objects with persisting identity would be of no use at all to people living within a fluid-dynamical world. Vladimir Tasic cites this view of Poincaré’s and affirms how the visual-geometrical foundations of our western worldview are grounded in the concept of independently-existing local objects with persisting identity; “So “objects” are implicitly assumed to be invariable bodies. Therefore the axioms of geometry already contain an irreducible assumption which does not follow from the axioms themselves. Axiomatic systems provide us with “faulty definitions” of objects, definitions that are grounded not in formal logic but in a hypothesis — a “prejudice” as Hans-Georg Gadamer might say — that is prior to logic. As a corollary, our logic of identity cannot be said to be necessary and universally valid. “Such axioms,” says Poincaré, “would be utterly meaningless to a being living in a world in which there are only fluids.” Unlike the object-dynamics paradigm, ‘behaviour’ in a fluid-dynamic ‘belongs to the overall fluid’ (wave dynamics comes in here, if one wants to go deeper into detail), not to the visually perceived ‘locally appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining form’ (the ‘convection cell’). However, in order to ‘speak of’ the dynamical behaviour of the notional ‘absolute’ (local, independently-existing ‘) object’, we impose the convention of an absolute, void-and-static Euclidian containing space. The motion of an object (including the dynamical unfolding associated with its emerging/evolving form), to be ‘the motion of an object’ is thus motion relative to a notional absolute void-and-static containing space. We no longer need to depend on the absolute locality of objecthood, nor on absolute void-and-static containing space in the ‘fluid-dynamic’ mode of understanding; i.e. the ‘convection cell’ is a purely relative spatial-relational ‘locally appearing form’ in the fluid dynamic, thus an alternative concept to ‘object’ in our discourse on the physical world can be the ‘locally appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining form’ otherwise known as the ‘convection cell’. Thus the job of understanding the world as a ‘fluid dynamic’ would be to subsume our cultural standard of understanding dynamics in terms of objects and their dynamics, by understanding everything we conceive of as an ‘object’ (a quark, atom, molecule, cell, organism etc.) as a ‘convection cell’, ... in other words by retracting our default imposing of ‘objecthood’ on ‘locally-appearing-dynamical-balance-sustaining forms’ and reconceiving them as ‘convection cells’. Just as we conceive of ‘objects’ nesting one inside the other (atoms-within-molecules-within-cells-within-organs-within-organisms- ecosystems-within-global-systems-within-planetary systems-within galactic systems etc.), as in a Russian doll (smaller dolls within larger dolls, separated from one another by ‘empty space’), we can conceive of ‘convection cells’ as inclusionally nesting in a fluid- dynamic, not ‘one-inside-the-other’ in a ranked linear object-sequence, but ‘inside one another’ in the manner of tornadoes included within hurricanes and hurricanes included within the dynamical space of the atmosphere (i.e. as locally-appearing dynamical forms within locally appearing dynamical forms within a common dynamical-spatial continuum). While in the object realm we conceive of the body cell as being a local, independently-existing object and the ‘organism’ as being a local, independently existing object, and the latter being responsible for the coherent, local-unity-sustaining organization of a multiplicity of the former, the hurricane (convection cell) is not understood as being responsible for the dynamical behaviour of ‘its own spiralling arms’ or for the multiplicity of tornados within it, since the hurricane is not a ‘local, independently-existing object’, but is instead a ‘locally-appearing dynamical balance-sustaining form’ within a NONLOCAL fluid-dynamical-spatial continuum.. The emergence of locally-appearing, dynamical-balance-sustaining forms in the fluid-dynamical understanding of nature, does not depend on ‘local object being’ with their notional ‘locally-originating behaviour’ and their notional ‘local, internally-driven genesis of form’; i.e. the origin of their dynamical-balance-sustaining behaviour is ‘relative’ in a nonlocal spatial-relational fluid-dynamical sense, as is affirmed in our experiencing of the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum of nature. For example, as individual humans that are capable of understanding ourselves either as ‘objects’ or as ‘convection cells’, taking the former, ‘object’ route has us seeing ourselves as ‘local, independently existing organisms with internally originating behaviour’. We thus think of ourselves as having a ‘ghost-in-the-machine’ and/or supra-natural ‘internal purpose’ (absolute-local-power of ‘internal first cause) that guides and drives our behaviour in ‘powerboat mode’ (i.e. in this mode we think of ourselves as ‘independent beings’ capable of pushing forth directly to our desired destination or objective and we think of ‘the environment’ composed of the collective of ‘those other diversely sized and shaped objects out there’ (isolated by the inter-object vacuum of absolute void-and-static Euclidian containing space) as being a potential obstacle to our attaining our destination (re-calling Darwin’s object-dynamics representation of ‘origin of the species’ in terms of local, independent objects with internally originating behaviour, ‘powerboating’ their way forward through the impeding rabble towards their objective of sustaining the survival of their ‘local independent being’) The absurd ‘smallness’ of this object-dynamics understanding (a mode of understanding that is ‘more easy’ but not ‘more true’) confronts us when we see the ‘internally originating behaviour’ of the ‘local object’ mode of understanding ‘overtaken’ (its ‘smallness’ exposed) as we are picked up by a tsunami, dashed on the rocks to become fishfood for recycling in the nonlocal fluid-dynamical spatial continuum of nature. Our real-life experience further informs us of the ‘smallness’ of the object-dynamics understanding in that we are inextricably included in a thermal flow (itself bound up in the nonlocal celestial fluid-dynamics that we are included in) that that is cyclically bringing the biosphere towards a boil (we experience a rising frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the peak of solar irradiance cycles) and back again towards freezing and it is clear to us that this ‘nonlocal originating of behaviour’ inherently ‘trumps’ the notional ‘locally originating behaviour’ of the object realm, suggesting that the greater reality for an understanding of organisms such as ourselves is as ‘convection cells’ (locally-appearing dynamical forms in the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum of nature), than as ‘local, independently-existing object-organisms with internally-originating behaviour’. As D’Errico points out, the concept of the ‘absolute being’ or ‘sovereignty’ of a local object, wherein we impute to it ‘its own ‘inside’ and a ‘central authority with supreme control over its ‘internal affairs’ (internally-driven genetic unfolding of form, and internally driven [powerboating] actions and interactions with ‘other sovereign objects’) is a ‘secularized theological concept’ that is ‘well-modeled’ in our conceptualizing of the ‘sovereign nation-state’. Suspending the ‘sovereign being’ understanding of self and opting for the ‘convection cell’ route has us instead seeing ourselves as ‘locally-appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining forms’ (‘Now you see ‘em, now you don’t’ in the manner of ‘dynamical forms that appear within a dynamical-spatial continuum’, unlike the miraculous absolute coming-into-being’ and ‘falling-out-of-being’ of ‘local, independently-existing objects’). This ‘convection cell’ understanding of ‘self’ gives us to understand that we are included within a more-comprehensive-than-us ‘fluid-dynamical spatial continuum’. Rather than our direction and drive coming by way of a secularized theological concept of ‘internal first cause’ as in the ‘sovereign system’ understanding of the object-dynamics paradigm, we understand our behaviour as being like that of a ‘sailboat’, garnering power, shape and steerage from the dynamics of the space we are included in. Like the sailor in the storm, the job of sustaining dynamical balance in the winds and currents takes precedence over ‘destination’. Our destination is thus not ‘primary’ (i.e. it is not fully explicit), but is given in the context of our dynamical balance-sustaining as we continually transform our unique situational inclusion within the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum of nature. In our cultural default object-dynamics understanding, where we think in terms of powerboating our way to our individually desired destinations (desired future states), it follows that we interpret our current condition as having been determined by such powerboating, and if the current condition of the dynamical space we are included in is not what we desired, then it further follows that some other objects-organisms are causally responsible for our not attaining our objectives. That is, we have no way of acknowledging, within the object-dynamics paradigm, that our own ‘powerboating’ (denial of being included within a dynamic greater than ourselves) is the source of deviation from the attaining of our desired destination/objective. One of the major implications that comes when we shift from ‘local-object-dynamics’ to ‘nonlocal-fluid-dynamics’ is in regard to how we understand ‘collective dynamics’ i.e. how we organise ourselves; i.e. in the ‘sailboat’ mode of inclusion in a fluid-dynamic rather than in the ‘powerboat’ mode object-dynamics (this is not an ‘either/or’ choice since ‘powerboat mode’ can support ‘sailboat mode’ but if we put powerboat mode first, sailboat mode is excluded. As absurd as it seems relative to our real-life experiencing of nature, ‘local-object-dynamics’ is where we would have ourselves believe that ‘local objects/organisms’ come suddenly ‘into existence’ and just as suddenly ‘depart-from-existence’. While ‘they exist’ we impute to them (and ‘us’) powers of local originating of dynamical behaviour. When we objectify ‘humans’ we impute this ‘on/off’ local-object, independent being’ to ourselves, as well as imputing to ourselves the powers of ‘local originating of beaviour’ and ‘internal purpose’. When we think of ourselves as ‘local objects’, we think of ourselves as having ‘free will’, ‘choice’ and ‘internal purpose’ etc., as if we were really ‘local, independently-existing’ entities with internally originating behaviour . This is an understanding that inevitably leads to ‘powerboating’ modes of behaviour and a ‘powerboating’ understanding of where we are going and ‘how we got to where we are’.. The object-dynamical paradigm ‘powerboating’ understanding we have of ourselves, wherein we construct a ‘desired future’ that we commit ourselves to attaining in spite of the obstacles the ‘environment’ presents to us (i.e. we regard ‘the environment we are included in’ as ‘getting in our way’, rather than as the dynamical spatial continuum that is the very source of our power and that which inductively actualizes and shapes our locally-appearing dynamical form [this is the ‘sailboating’ mode of understanding] of the fluid-dynamical way of understanding.). Clearly, the secularized theological concept of ‘sovereign being’ (local, independently-existing object-being) with its associated notion of an absolute ‘inside’ wherein resides a supreme central authority in control over internal affairs, ... is the source of our ‘powerboat’ mode of behaviour, and is likewise the source of our conceiving of ‘the environment’ as something that we must struggle with and overcome in order to attain our objective of persisting survival. It is a recipe for ‘detuning’ from the fluid-dynamical continuum we are included in, denial that our own powers (creative and productive) derive from the fluid-dynamical continuum we are included in, and at the same time, a rejection of our essential ‘dynamical-balance sustaining’ natural essence (i.e. a rejection of our intuitive tendency to put our behaviour in the service of sustaining dynamical balance in the fluid-dynamical space that we are each uniquely, situationally included in; sacrificing our sailboat-mode, dynamical-balance-sustaining attunement with(in) the fluid-dynamic of the continuing present, to ‘powerboating’ our way through ‘environment-as-an-impediment’ to our desired destination’). The ‘local-object-dynamics’ is foundational to sovereign-nation-state politics (e.g. ‘Declarations of Independence’ and National Justice Systems that protect by law the right of local individual object-organisms and local individual object-nations to the pursuit of self-interest, thus imbuing in the ‘object-dynamics’ of national politics a powerboating orientation. The fluid-dynamical understanding reduces the common-belief-based ‘local, independently-existing nation-states’ with ‘internally originating behaviour’ to ‘locally appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining forms in the dynamical spatial continuum of nature). That is, the ‘local, independently-existing nation-state objects’ of world politics and world social dynamics management (the United Nations etc.) is subsumed in the fluid dynamical understanding by ‘locally appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining forms’ (convection cells). The politics of sovereign nations (based on ‘local object dynamics’), with its notion of internal originating of behaviour (by way of a central authority with supreme control over ‘internal’ affairs) is decidedly ‘powerboat’ politics. The ‘sailboating’ politics (each individual and each people-nation accrues its power from the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum commonspace of nature that includes us all) was the way of the Iroquois, for example, and was commented favourably on by Marx and Engels, the and also by Thomas Jefferson et al (the ‘founding fathers of the United States).; To Engels, Morgan's description of the Iroquois [in Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and The League of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois] was important because "it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state." Jefferson had also been interested in the Iroquois' ability to maintain social consensus without a large state apparatus, as had Franklin. Engels described the Iroquoian state in much the same way that American revolutionaries had a century earlier: “Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police, without nobles, kings, governors, prefects or judges; without prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the whole body of those concerned. . . . The household is run communistically by a number of families; the land is tribal property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the households -- still, not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery of administration is required. . . . There are no poor and needy. The communistic household and the gens know their responsibility toward the aged, the sick and the disabled in war. All are free and equal -- including the women. What Marx and Engels and Jefferson continued to use as a foundation for their theories of government, however, was ‘local-object-dynamics’ from which a ‘powerboat’ approach to behavioural dynamics arose. That is, in the case of Marx and Engels and Jefferson, each ‘individual’ and each ‘individual nation-state’ was assumed to be a ‘local, independently-existing object/organism with locally originating behaviour’. But for the Iroquois, each ‘individual’ and each ‘community’ (people-nation) was assumed to be a ‘local appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining form in the dynamical spatial continuum of nature’. Individuals and communities, rather than being ‘local’ in a real sense, were, in the understanding of the Iroquois, ‘locally-appearing dynamical forms’ which persisted because of their ability to sustain relative inner-outer dynamical balance in the manner of a ‘convection cell’. That is, the hurricane is a convection cell in the nonlocal fluid dynamic of nature that persists so long as it sustains inner-outer dynamical balance; i.e. increases in solar irradiance will tend to bring the equatorial atmosphere ‘to the boil’ as will be manifest by the emergence of a multiplicity of hurricanes, all of which are forming and reforming under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence; i.e. their dynamics are innately ‘nonlocal’ (they are ‘locally appearing dynamical forms in the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum of nature’). Thus, when individuals and communities ‘let go of’ the ‘local object’ based understanding of dynamics and accept the fluid-dynamical understanding wherein they understand themselves to be ‘convection cells’ or ‘locally-appearing dynamical-balance-sustaining forms in the dynamical spatial continuum of nature’, ... the powerboat politics shifts to sailboating social dynamics wherein all power is understood to accrue from the ‘greater brotherhood’ of a fluid-dynamical ‘Nature’. The ‘emergence’ of a ‘sailboating’ politics of a ‘fluid-dynamical’ understanding of the world, that transcends the powerboating politics of the ‘local-object-dynamics’ understanding that is the ‘default’ in our western culture, is manifest in such non-government (non-local-object-nation-state-based) organisational initiatives as ‘fair trade’ and ‘fair travel’. ‘Fair trade’and ‘fair travel’ are essentially ‘sailboating’ approaches (with implicit roots in a fluid-dynamical understanding of the world). They are an ‘antidote’ to the ‘powerboating’ orientation of the ‘local object’ paradigm. As MacLuhan observes (using different words), powerboating (e.g. what a factory does) fails to take into account the more comprehensive ‘sailboating’ orientation wherein all power derives from the dynamics of the space, the ‘local object’ is situationally included in; "Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs." The same is true of ‘hotels’ in the travel trade. If we focus on what they produce and supply, this does not inform us as to how they transform the relational dynamics of the space they are included in (e.g. the Costa del Sol in Spain, where local community was destroyed and a concrete jungle put in its place). ‘Fair Trade’ and ‘Fair Travel’ put ‘space’ (inclusion in the dynamical spatial continuum of nature) back into the dynamics by including in the understanding that the power of the ‘trade’ or ‘travel’ organisation does not, as the ‘local-object-dynamics’ paradigm assume, derive from the internals of the ‘trade’ or ‘travel’ organisation, .. but that all such power accrues to the individual or organisation from the (fluid-)dynamics of the space they are included in. The power of the hotel corporation comes from the beautiful beach and the resonance and sustained dynamical balancing of the fishing community-space its hotels are included in. Thus ‘fair travel’ (and ‘fair trade’) is a ‘sailboating approach’ that would acknowledge that all ‘local object-organisations’ draw their power from the dynamics of the natural ecosystem/community space they are included in, and let their dynamical behaviours serve, on a first priority, the sustaining of dynamical balancing within that space. The nation that sees itself as a sailboating ‘convection cell’ rather than as a ‘powerboating’ local object-organisation with locally-originating behaviour is a different sort of ‘nation’, a that recalls the ‘stateless’ confederation of peoples such as the Iroquois six nation confederation. Summary: As Kepler said in Harmonies of the World, and he was speaking of 'science' , '... it frequently happens that the things which have to be chosen are not those which are most true but those which are most easy ' and he further pointed out that we capture such understandings in 'archetypes' , a mixture of figurative symbolism and physical reality. Thus, for example, we can observe the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, animated in their automorphic quest of establishing thermal-dynamical balance within a 'thermal-dynamic' that is itself induced by the dynamics of the celestial space these circulations are included in, ... convection cells that nest inclusionally within convection cells, ... and then, we can focus in on a hurricane and then again on a tornado within this fluid-dynamical spatial continuum, and regard its vertical central column, not as a 'hole' in the circulation but as a 'whole' (it kind of looks like the archetypeal form of the 'whole' number '1' ). Science then proceeds to 'make over this intrinsically NONLOCAL, relative (inferred convection hole) dynamic (this 'locally appearing dynamical form') into a LOCAL 'WHOLE OBJECT' based dynamic (a 'local, independently-existing whole-object-system with the God-in-the-machine powers of internally originating behaviour' . Now the scientist, whose mathematics reduce 'nonlocal circulation' to 'local circulation' (vector 'curl' ) sees this local convection-erectus, as an archetypeal 'unit' or 'local system' that moves about like a mobile '1' purportedly under its own power, the power 'IT' gets by claiming 'sovereignty' over its 'inside' and by 'ITS' 'consuming' through an opening on one end of its 'whole' and 'eliminating' through an opening on the other end of its 'whole' . Thus the erect worm-like or tree-like 'tornado' , which was originally (naturally or 'really' ) a 'locally appearing dynamical form in a fluid-dynamical spatial continuum', is now seen as a local 'unit' consuming through an opening in one end of its 'whole' and eliminating through an opening in the other end of its 'whole', ... strutting about 'on its own' as if under the power of a 'God-in-the-machine' that resides in its 'sovereign' interior. In this manner, by choosing 'things which ... are not those which are most true but those which are most easy' , we start with a 'nonlocal hole' (a locally-appearing dynamical form in the fluid-dynamical spatial continuum) and we produce the simplified 'archetype' of a 'local whole' (a purely figurative 'local, independently-existing whole-object/organism/organisation/system' with the God-in-the-machine powers of internally-originating behaviour). This purely FIGURATIVE scientific archetype of the 'local whole object-system with internally-originating behaviour' is an archetype that we tend to impose, generally, on inclusional systems, and as we do, we invert what are, in our natural experience, the fluid dynamics of the spatial continuum of nature, making them over into the dynamics of local whole object ' systems ' . With this figurative archetype, we can do with the 'worm' and the 'tree' and the 'human' what we do, figuratively, to the tornado and the hurricane, ... take them out of their inherent real and natural 'nonlocal hole' condition (as locally-appearing dynamical forms otherwise known as 'convection cells' ), making them over into local wholes with sovereign insides that 'consume' and 'eliminate' . Of course, the danger in doing this is that we will forget that such 'local whole' archetypes are purely FIGURATIVE, 'THINGS WHICH ... ARE NOT THOSE WHICH ARE MOST TRUE BUT THOSE WHICH ARE MOST EASY' . To conclude, comprehending the implications from the shift from 'local object dynamics' BACK TO 'nonlocal fluid dynamics' , as is implied in 'inclusionality' , can be assisted by thinking in terms of the subsuming of all those things we have understood as 'local objects and organisms' in the revised terms of 'nonlocal convection cells' . Back to Home |
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