Untying the Gordian Knot:
Process, Reality, and Context
What an honor it is to hear from the second generation of process theologians and philosophers now in their late 80s and 90s still able to share their journey with us of the third and fourth generations. The Cobb Institute, as well as many other process organizations and websites like Relevancy22, have been dissecting and weaving together their dialogues, discussions, books, journals, and podcasts over the years so that they are not lost to history, and quite open for exploration and discovery by future generations of process Whiteheadians.
Do take advantage of these living souls in their late years. It is with great honor that these several process theologians continue to share their personal journeys into the realms of the biological, quantum and psychological/sociological sciences.
Lastly, thank you to all those in the process community who have been willing to make time and effort to share their separate process insights from their respective disciplines! Each thought, each soul, helps create depth to a very complex philosophy of cosmology.
As introduction to these series, earlier this past summer the Cobb Institute began an 8-part series discussing and distinguishing substantive philosophies and sciences from those of the process variety. Hosted by Matt Segall, John Cobb, and Tim Eastman each explore Eastman's book written in December 2020 on untying the Gordian Knot of physics. Enjoy.
R.E. Slater
October 31, 2021
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| Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context |
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Untying the Gordian Knot
Process, Reality, and Context
by Timothy Eastman
In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework - which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality - (1) to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems.
Further, (2) Eastman leverages a century of advances in quantum physics and the Relational Realism interpretation pioneered by Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris and augmented by the independent research of Ruth Kastner and Hans Primas to resolve long-standing issues in understanding quantum physics.
Adding to this, (3) Eastman makes use of advances in information and complex systems, semiotics, and process philosophy to show how multiple levels of context, combined with relations—including potential relations—both local and local-global, can provide a grounding for causation, emergence, and physical law.
Finally, (4) the Logoi framework goes beyond standard ways of knowing—that of context independence (science) and context focus (arts, humanities)—to demonstrate the inevitable role of ultimate context (meaning, spiritual dimension) as part of a transformative ecological vision, which is urgently needed in these times of human and environmental crises.
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The Gordian Knot
Aug 9, 2021
The Gordian Knot is an intractable problem (untying an impossibly tangled knot) solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot ("cutting the Gordian knot"). - Wikipedia
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot - Session 1
Jun 18, 2021
THE COBB INSTITUTE
In this session Tim Eastman, provides an introduction to the book and the first chapter, and Mikhail Epstein and Jude Jones offer a response.
00:00:00 - 00:06:27 - Introduction
00:06:28 - 00:13:50 - Welcome from John Cobb
00:16:27 - 00:41:14 - Presentation by Tim Eastman
00:42:16 - 00:52:14 - Response by Mikhail Epstein
00:53:35 - 01:07:01 - Response by Jude Jones
01:07:02 - 01:18:05 - Conversation between Tim and respondents
01:18:06 - Open Conversation Meeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KDjr...
Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
This series of conversations is provided by the Cobb Institute. Please consider supporting this program and others like it by giving. https://cobb.institute/donate/
CHAT TEXT
00:44:08 Angela于思群: 来啦
00:51:44 George Lucas: Tim, your approach distinguishes actuality from possibility (potentiality). But what about probability? All things are (in principle) possible, but not all are equally probable. Shouldn't you use probability as your contrast with actuality, giving credence to those states of matter/energy that are "likely alternatives" to what is actual?
00:52:34 Matt Segall: Good question, George. We’ll return to this later.
00:52:44 Matt Segall: To everyone: please do continue to populate the chat with your questions!
01:02:42 Rick Doherty QUUF Port Townsend: How do the concepts of the criticality of TIME, which is eliminated in much of current physics, Lee Smolin in his recent book Time Reborn relate to your current thoughts, Dr. Eastman?
01:04:29 Wolfgang Leidhold: Tim: do I unterstand you correctly: you always equate experience and sensory, right? Or are there other forms of experience, e.g. imagination? And might these various forms, if they exist, go through a process of development as well?
01:16:15 Gary Herstein: Or Whitehead's own poetic reflections on his childhood in the Kentish countryside.
01:16:34 Farzad Mahootian: Building on George’s question, Tim, you bring in probability when you mention the “unravelling of every kind of necessity” (p.8)— the “new” kind of reasoning introduced powerfully in the 19th century with the population and statistical thinking as it is applied in thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, genetics etc) by Darwinian theory and statistical mechanics. So my question is (with tongue in cheek) which is more important: possibility of probability, or the possibility of probability? In other words, which if either, is more fundamental?
01:27:49 Farzad Mahootian: Loving Judith’s comparison of Tim’s approach with the Alexandrian way of attacking the knot, and evolving it into a Wordsorthian inspiration. Knots as answers! Subduers of imagination and understanding! Celtic knottingly-repetitive, but not obscure. Never resist a good metaphor! Knotty metaphors as living building materials. Thanks Jude!
01:28:15 John Fahey / Cobb Institute / Claremont CA: Thank you Jude!
01:30:21 Benjamin Snyder: I'm interested in the questions about possibility and probability since it also then seems to involve distinguishing Peirce's categories of firstness and thirndess ("may-be" and "would-be").
01:30:35 Randall Auxier: I love the poetry but I worry it invites people on the fence to dismiss us as a bunch of dreamers.
01:30:42 Alexei: Continueing the narrative by Jude Jones, I would like to peronalize the "knots" that get propagated in nature, and they can be called "agency", more precisely "semiotic agency". This is the topic of a new interdisciplinary area of biosemiotics which assumes that semiotic agency and semiosis are coextensive with life. In addition to input, output, and context, we need to consider agency that integrates these three. Charles Morris proposed that agency or interpreter is a key component of semiotic process.
01:32:48 George Lucas: I have to pick up grandkids for afternoon babysitting in a few minutes. Sorry to depart, b/c this was a great opening session. Thanks Tim, Jude and Mikhail, and to John, Matt and Richard for sponsoring and organizing. Great to see everyone.
01:34:46 Matt Segall: On Boolean Logic (the logic of actuality, as Tim suggests) for those note familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra
01:36:43 Jude Jones: Farzad your summary is so much more perspicuous than my verbiage lol! Thank you!
01:38:05 Gary Nelson: Also see Wikipedia Intuitionist Logic
01:38:27 Farzad Mahootian: Thanks! Just riffing on your tune!
01:38:46 Kevin Clark: "To be", "to know", AND "potentiology" ! I like it!
01:38:47 jonmeyer: Isn’t probability theory a specialized technique / high abstraction within the field of mathematics, and not a metaphysical distinction related to possible/actual?
01:42:02 Guadalupe: probability accounts for the actual possibility or potentiality
01:42:36 Guadalupe: Agree
01:42:45 Jude Jones: Maybe looking at probability’s metaphysical bite via Peirce’s ideas of “habit” in nature would be appropriate?
01:44:17 Randall Auxier: An observation: logically we are not obliged to start with actuality in a coordinate analysis. So long as we are not proposing to divide what is indivisible, we can analyze actual and possible and relational entities starting with any of these. This is the value of coordinate analysis. Thus we can begin with what is possible and follow its train to the actual (what Kant called a hypothetical logic), or begin with what is actual and follow its implications for what may be actual (what Kant called assertoric logic, and this includes probability theories), or we can begin with what is actual abstracted from its actuality and follow it to the possible (what Kant called problematic logic).
01:45:06 Randall Auxier: Pdeirce’s triads derive from Kant’s logic.
01:46:13 Gary Nelson: According to Robert Goldblatt in his book Topoi, the natural logic of SET theory is propositional, whereas Heyting’s intuitionist logic is appropriate for Category theory
01:48:32 Gary Herstein: Dummett also viewed Heyting logic as the base logic of metaphysics. I've argued for applying the categorical approach over the set theoretic one to ideas of basic metaphysical thinking.
01:53:16 Gary Nelson: Heating logic omits the Excluded Middle and Double Negation.
01:53:27 Gary Nelson: Heyting
01:55:46 Randall Auxier: Whitehead is in no way committed to non-contradiction and/or excluded middle, That is a very narrow ideology he always rejected.
01:56:48 Jude Jones: I’m intrigued by the possibility of defending Einstein’s Spinozism
02:01:25 Randall Auxier: I agree with Tim —leave General Relativity to its well-earned actuals grave.
02:01:36 Randall Auxier: actualist
02:02:46 Matt Switzer: To the esteemed Jungian scholar next to Tim: how do you see this Peircean and Whiteheadian framework as benefitting from or contributing to C. G. Jung’s cosmology and the relevance of dreams, especially in terms of the dreams for social transformation and the integration or repression of these dreams from or back into the personal and collective unconscious?
02:07:48 Jude Jones: That’s what I was suggesting with the reference to Levy Bruhl, who saw the spirit of “magic” in culture as a participatory comportment toward the cosmos
02:08:05 Jude Jones: Not toward, ‘in’!
02:10:09 Farzad Mahootian: @Jude and @Wolfgang. It is also the missing fourth that follows from the triadic view: it is matter (hyle) and magic.
02:10:13 Guadalupe: Is there a relationship between potentiality and final cause?
02:14:39 Farzad Mahootian: @Alexei: not just i/o not just input but agency; output is construction, context is [all other actualities]; acting anticipatorily… syymbolization is what agents do and this creates “the future”
02:15:06 Anderson Weekes: please include the chat in the recording that you post
02:17:03 Farzad Mahootian: Tim on Plato and Socrates: Socratic pointing to the good, Plato’s symbolization of Socrates pointing to the good life.
02:19:31 Jude Jones: I’m comfortable with panpsychism ;)
02:20:01 Farzad Mahootian: @TIm: I agree with potential agency all the way down
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