Spatial perception sets motion in the context of space, to provide a sense of motionlessness – a sort of reference to show how motion differs to it. For example, we typically regard motion as a change of position, a reference to something fixed.[i] But as a consequence, motion is seen as a movement in space when it is actually a movement of space – a space in motion.[ii]
The spatially derived model of reality is based on how the dimensions differ to each other. Space is characterised by the difference between a plane and space. The planes set the context for the idea of space. The edges of a plane provide a context by showing the line where the plane ceases to be a plane. The difference between a line and a plane is what the concept of a plane is based on. To visualise a line, we give it ends. Each end of the line is a point and together they serve as the context for the line. They show the difference between a line and a point, and in this way they define the point at which a line ceases to be a line.
Successive dimensions build on lesser dimensions; for example, a line as a series of points. So, each dimension can be ‘placed’ within dimensions higher than itself, but not lower than itself. However, while this is clear for each of the dimensions leading up to the three dimensions of space, it is not so clear how time ‘contains’ its lesser dimensions. The problem is the spatially derived model of reality.[iii] We understand the passing of time to be in relation to the present moment, as if the ‘now’ has no duration. We supposedly experience a string of nows.[iv] However, it is only for sake of the concept that the passage of time differs to the present. The contrast does not reflect reality, but the setting of a context.[v]
What the concept of time fails to take into account is that successive dimensions merge. They are not discrete. Each dimension carries within it the dimensions lesser than it. So, instead of focusing on how the dimensions differ to each other, we should look at how they differ in themselves. This reveals that the essence of a point is its location, the essence of a line is its alignment, the essence of a plane is its form, and the essence of a space is its density.
In considering how a motion differs in itself, one is tempted to describe it in linear terms: i.e. the path it follows. But this is not its essential quality, since a line has just one dimension, not four. Neither can we narrow it down to its location, form or density, though that which moves certainly has these characteristics too. But all these things being equal (imagine two identical movements side by side), there remains one characteristic which belongs solely to motion: its speed. This is how motion differs in itself – making speed the essence of motion.
The variable of speed is beyond the ordinary conception of motion, so we tend to regard it as inconsequential. But motion in the sense of speed is precisely how it ties in to reality. This can be observed in the shape of a wave. It is not simply that the form would not exist without motion, but that the variable of speed determines the variety of curves in a wave. A standing wave behind a rock in a stream is a good example of this principle: the water flows through the wave while the form expresses the various speeds at which the water is moving.
The whirlpool is a particularly good example because the dimensions are seen to be variables linked in a unified system. There is the alignment of its axis, the form of its surface, the matter it draws inward and, since a vortex rotates progressively faster toward its centre, the variable of speed. Placing a tiny pointer in a whirlpool can show the part played by motion. The pointer remains parallel to its original alignment, despite being carried around and around. This indicates that motion, rather than content, determines the form.[vi]
The concept of time fails to account for the diversity of change, since the division of time and space implies that change is restricted to the 4th dimension. However, assuming that change is the very essence of reality, rather than a mere aspect of it, it follows that the essence of each dimension is how that dimension changes. By setting each dimension in the context of change, the concept of time subsequently loses its significance as one of the dimensions, as such, separated from space. To subordinate the dimensions to the concept of time ignores the crucial point that each dimension finds its expression in change and that change is, moreover, what holds them together.[vii]–[viii]–[ix]
Having reinstated motion as the 4th dimension, it becomes apparent that time is also a generalisation of change. Just as we tend to regard motion in terms of its lesser characteristics, so too do we have an inferior perception of that other form of change called growth. Since growth depends on but is more than motion, it might be a higher dimension, with evolution as its essence. After all, information is not physical. In effect, life rides the material properties of chemicals, using instructions stored in DNA to direct cell growth.
Next chapter: Evolution.
Back to intro: Surfism.
References
[i] Bergson, H. (1922/1965). Duration and Simultaneity, with reference to Einstein’s theory, translated by Leon Jacobson, The Library of Liberal Arts, p.50.
“When we witness a very rapid motion, like that of a shooting star, we quite clearly distinguish its fiery line divisible at will, from the indivisible mobility that it subtends; it is this mobility that is pure duration. Impersonal and universal time, if it exists, is in vain endlessly prolonged from past to future; it is all of a piece; the parts we single out in it are merely those of a space that delineates its track and becomes its equivalent in our eyes; we are dividing the unfolded, not the unfolding.”
[ii] Bergson, H. (1912). An Introduction to Metaphysics. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, p.48.
“Consider, […] movement in space. Along the whole of this movement we can imagine possible stoppages; these are what we call the positions of the moving body, or the points by which it passes. But with these positions, even with an infinite number of them, we shall never make movement. They are not parts of the movement, they are so many snapshots of it; they are, one might say, only supposed stopping-places. The moving body is never really in any of the points; the most we can say is that it passes through them.”
[iii] Bergson, H. (1922/1965). Duration and Simultaneity, with reference to Einstein’s theory, translated by Leon Jacobson, The Library of Liberal Arts.
“But if our science thus attains only to space, it is easy to see why the dimension of space that has come to replace time is still called time. It is because our consciousness is there. It infuses living duration into a time dried up as space.” p.60.
“Real duration is experienced; we learn that time unfolds and, moreover, we are unable to measure it without converting it into space and without assuming all we know of it to be unfolded. But, it is impossible mentally to spatialize only a part; the act, once begun, by which we unfold the past and thus abolish real succession involves us in a total unfolding of time; inevitably we are then led to blame human imperfection for our ignorance of a future that is present and to consider duration a pure negation, a “deprivation of eternity.” ” p.62.
[iv] Ibid.
“Once we have exteriorized our own duration as motion in space, the rest follows. Thenceforth, time will seem to us like the unwinding of a thread, that is, like the journey of the mobile entrusted with computing it. We shall say that we have measured the time of this unwinding and, consequently, that of the universal unwinding as well.” p.52.
“These simultaneities are instantaneities; they do not partake of the nature of real time; they do not endure. They are purely mental views that stake out conscious duration and real motion with virtual stops, using for this purpose the mathematical point that has been carried over from space to time.” p.60.
[v] Ibid.
“There is no doubt but that for us time is at first identical with the continuity of our inner life. What is this continuity? That of a flow or passage, but a self-sufficient flow or passage, the flow not implying a thing that flows, and the passing not presupposing states through which we pass; the thing and the state are only artificially taken snapshots of the transition; and this transition, all that is naturally experienced, is duration itself.” p.44.
“A melody to which we listen with our eyes closed, heeding it alone, comes close to coinciding with this time which is the very fluidity of our inner life; but it still has too many qualities, too much definition, and we must first efface the difference among the sounds, then do away with the distinctive features of sound itself, retaining of it only the continuation of what precedes into what follows and the uninterrupted transition, multiplicity without divisibility and succession without separation, in order finally to rediscover basic time.” p.44.
“Instantaneity thus involves two things, a continuity of real time, that is, duration, and a spatialized time, that is, a line which, described by a motion, has thereby become symbolic of time. This spatialized time, which admits of points, ricochets onto real time and there gives rise to the instant. This would not be possible without the tendency—fertile in illusions—which leads us to apply the motion against the distance traveled, to make the trajectory coincide with the journey, and then to decompose the motion over the line as we decompose the line itself; if it has suited us to single out points on the line, these points will then become “positions” of the moving body (as if the latter, moving, could ever coincide with something at rest, as if it would not thus stop moving at once!). Then, having dotted the path of motion with positions, that is, with the extremities of the subdivisions of the line, we have them correspond to “instants” of the continuity of the motion—mere virtual stops, purely mental views.” p.53.
“The analysis just completed has already shown how this theory treats the relation of the thing to its expression. The thing is what is perceived; the expression is what the mind puts in place of the thing to make it amenable to calculation.” p.127.
[vi] Schwenk, T. (1996). Sensitive Chaos: The creation of flowing forms in water and air (Second Edition). Rudolf Steiner Press, p.45.
“The vortex has yet another quality that suggests cosmic connections. If a very small floating object with a fixed pointer is allowed to circle in a vortex, it always points in the direction in which it was originally placed, that is it always remains parallel to itself! In other words, it is always directed to the same point at infinity. It can of course be started off pointing in any direction and it will then remain pointing in this direction while circling in the vortex. This shows how a vortex is oriented-as though by invisible threads-with respect to the entire firmament of fixed stars.”
[vii] Heraclitus & Robinson, T. M. (1987). Heraclitus: Fragments : a text and translation with a commentary.
“Notoriously, Plato portrayed Heraclitus as an exponent of a doctrine of universal flux (Theaetetus 160d, Cratylus 401d), and at Cratylus 402a we read: ‘Heraclitus says somewhere that all things are in movement and nothing stays put, and likening the real to the flowing of a river he says that one could not step twice into the same river.’ Scholars have searched diligently for such an analogy (and for such doctrine) in Heraclitus, with results that suggest that Plato has hold of at best part of the truth. The ‘change’ in question is not some sort of subatomic change but rather the constant change, one into the other, of the great world masses (see fragments 30, 31a, 31b), and the evidence of fragments 12 and 91a (qv) suggests that, in talking of rivers, Heraclitus is stressing their unity amidst change, rather than simply their change.”
[viii] Inge, W.R. (1917). The Philosophy of Plotinus, Longmans, Green and Co.
“The activity of the Soul is truly creative; all life comes from life. Below its influence we can find nothing but the absolute indeterminateness of Matter. The extent to which the contents of the world are animated by Soul varies infinitely, so that nature presents us with a living chain of being, an unbroken series of ascending or descending values. The whole constitutes a harmony, in which each inferior grade is ‘in’ the next above. Each existence is thus vitally connected with all others. This conception, which asserts the right of the lower existences to be what and where they are, is difficult to reconcile with the Platonic doctrine of a ‘fall of the Soul.’ It is, however, Plotinus’ own view, whenever he is not hampered by loyalty to the tradition. His critics have not emphasised nearly enough the unbroken connexion of higher and lower, which in this philosophy is much closer than that which connects individual objects on the same plane with each other. These latter are connected indirectly, though the connexion of each with a common principle; the bond of unity between the higher and lower products of Soul is the aspiration, the activity, the life (῎ϕσις, ένέργια, ζωή), which is the reality of the world of becoming.”
[ix] Plotinus, (ca.270BC). The Six Enneads, translated by Stephen Mackenna and B.S.Page. The Second Ennead, Third Tractate, Section 7.
“All things must be enchained; and the sympathy and correspondence obtaining in any one closely knit organism must exist, first, and most intensely, in the All. There must be one principle constituting this unit of many forms of life and enclosing the several members within the unity, while at the same time, precisely as in each thing of detail the parts too have each a definite function, so in the All each several member must have its own task- but more markedly so since in this case the parts are not merely members but themselves Alls, members of the loftier Kind.
“Thus each entity takes its origin from one Principle and, therefore, while executing its own function, works in with every other member of that All from which its distinct task has by no means cut it off: each performs its act, each receives something from the others, every one at its own moment bringing its touch of sweet or bitter. And there is nothing undesigned, nothing of chance, in all the process: all is one scheme of differentiation, starting from the Firsts and working itself out in a continuous progression of Kinds.”
Dan Webber 