Platonic Physics: In Dialogue with Wolfgang Smith
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- čas přidán 22. 01. 2023
- Dr. Smith's new book PHYSICS: A Science in Quest of an Ontology: philos-sophia.lnk.to/Physics
Timestamps:
1:44 14 year old Wolfgang reading Whitehead
3:20 Why mathematics?
5:10 What did ancient philosophers like Plato understand about the cosmos that modern Cartesian science has forgotten?
9:15 Wholeness in physics and mathematics
16:36 Whitehead's difference from Russell as regards the failure of the 'Principia Mathematica' project
19:18 The influence of Whitehead's protest against bifurcation
28:00 The confusions of contemporary physics begin with the retinal image theory of perception
40:50 The hard problem of consciousness
42:30 Quantum physics and Plato's tripartite ontology
1:08:40 Comparison to Whitehead's process ontology
1:13:41 Wolfgang does not think biological evolution is possible (more complex organisms cannot come from simpler organisms)
1:16:44 John Berger's question for Wolfgang about the tripartite ontology
1:21:32 Whitehead as a Platonist; the primordial nature of God as vertical causality
1:24:49 Is evolutionary history, including the history of humanity, simply a meaningless illusion?
1:44 14 year old Wolfgang reading Whitehead
3:20 Why mathematics?
5:10 What did ancient philosophers like Plato understand about the cosmos that modern Cartesian science has forgotten?
9:15 Wholeness in physics and mathematics
16:36 Whitehead's difference from Russell as regards the failure of the 'Principia Mathematica' project
19:18 The influence of Whitehead's protest against bifurcation
28:00 The confusions of contemporary physics begin with the retinal image theory of perception
40:50 The hard problem of consciousness
42:30 Quantum physics and Plato's tripartite ontology
1:08:40 Comparison to Whitehead's process ontology
1:13:41 Wolfgang does not think biological evolution is possible (more complex organisms cannot come from simpler organisms)
1:16:44 John Berger's question for Wolfgang about the tripartite ontology
1:21:32 Whitehead as a Platonist; the primordial nature of God as vertical causality
1:24:49 Is evolutionary history, including the history of humanity, simply a meaningless illusion?
Very nice, thank you.
Out of every physicist I’ve dealt with… this man has real answers! Not theories! I would love to meet Dr. Wolfgang Smith! A true Man of knowledge! 👍👏
As a non physicist, I must give thanks to Dr Smith, and you the questioner. This is the first time I have heard a comprehensible explanation, not only of physics, but also clarification of the problem of irreducible complexity which faces evolutionists.
You understood it as a non physicist because what they talked about is considered crackpot physics, not real physics.
Beautiful to see you smile Wolgang! God bless you
The move made beyond Plato, which I think Wolfgang implies but does not make explicit, is to make explicit the activity by which the Archetype 'decends' into physics and everything inbetween. This is the move made by Steiner in 'The Philosophy of Freedom', particularly chapter 3, where it is shown how the human activity of thinking which realises itself in its activity is beyond space and time yet explicates, or brings into ex-istence, definition, the physical, corporeal, and intermedial from out of mere potential. Prior to this book we take our subjective activity to depend upon the objective world prior to it. Afterwards we come to realise this subjective-objective division occurs within that which is not within the division. And this 'something' is, for us, the activity we call thinking. It cannot be caused by anything else whilst it divulges all the causes relations and natures otherwise hidden in appearances.
Thinking without a brain? No.
Brilliant discussion. Thank you.
Awesome conversation. When Wolfgang offhandedly analogized the unconsciousness of scientists (as ontologists) to “drinking of the mother’s milk”, I almost lost it 😂🤣
Thanks. Delightful and clarifying.
Hey I recently read and shared this from Stanford Encyclopedia -
Whitehead writes: “each actual entity is a throb of experience” (1929c [1985: 190]) and “apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (1929c [1985: 167])
. . . Whitehead considers deterministic interaction as an abstract limit in some circumstances of the creative interaction that governs the becoming of actual entities in all circumstances, and he makes clear that his notion of causality includes both determination by the antecedent world (efficient causation of past actual occasions) and self-determination (final causation by the actual occasion in the process of becoming). Whitehead writes:
“An actual entity is at once the product of the efficient past, and is also, in Spinoza’s phrase, causa sui. Every philosophy recognizes, in some form or other, this factor of self-causation.” (1929a: 150)
Very nice thank you Dr. Smith.
great interview. thanks.
Matt, I appreciate your last question to Dr. Smith. While I think the history of the evolution of human consciousness involves the ascent of which Dr. Smith spoke, my own experience is that the ascent enables a subsequent and deeper descent than would be possible without the ascent and for which the ascent is an integral stage of a process the teleology of which is aimed at the lower rather than the upper plain, the purpose of which is to engage the mature human consciousness directly in the process of creation as an intended and intentional partner in a sustainable process of creation.
Phenomenal questions. Subscribed!
A wonderful surprised discussion on the subject of ancient wisdom. Dr. Smith once again shows his scholar mind bold will to make us feel a complex misunderstanding over shadowed physics . This has misleads development of science. There is a bifarcation from vaidic people's reality.
A memorable video.
interesting interview!
Thank you for this interview. I'm a great fan of Wolfgang Smith IM now a Sub of your channel.
I hope you have him on again and discuss relativity as you mentioned at the beginning.
Holons, as Ken Wilber based his Integral Theory upon. Wilber saved me from both Dawkins and Woke. Dr. Smith is someone I can really listen to. I'm so glad the Algorithm of CZcams sent him my way.
Excellent. Listening to Wolfram yesterday on theory of everything show, I was quite surprised to hear him claim that there is no theory of biology! That comment from him certainly served as a good inspiration for me to move forward with my work, of bringing together about 15 theories of biology into one coherent whole...
(Endogenous Ecology)
And as always very much inspired by these talks and the wisdom within,
Thanks for sharing
Well this comment was meant to be attached to yesterday's discussion with Tim Jackson. I haven't listened to this one yet, but I'll check it out.
2 beautiful minds:) thanks for sharing:)
Wolfgang, do you know about Nima Armani Hamed’ s work and the finding of geometrical structures beyond space time?
The search has feed me to climb the ladder to that physics in between. Geometry.
Relating to the essence of being has been my existence since 4yrs old. Vertical interface in the lateral. Found me geometry and it's freedom. It's iterations and it's directions. It's feed forward and feed back. 3 sets have we, the1st, 1.618, the median, 2.618, and the result, 3.14159 ad infinitum.
case of putting Descarte before the horse.....
R.I.P.
There are many visualisation practices in the hindu and buddhist tantric traditions that involve working with geometrical shapes. I think the visualisation aspect - irregardless of the shapes themselves - is something they have in common and, yes, this is the intermediate realm. Check out the Three Bodies of Buddha, specifically the Sambhogakaya.
Any ontology has to answer a simple question: How do Minds interact such that their thoughts can become aligned and mere conversation occur? Platonism might try to argue that there is a Form for Conversations, but consider the plurality of Languages. Additionally, there are severe difficulties coming from computational complexity that show that any kind of sorting of an infinite set is Intractable and thus can not be said to exist a priori.
Can you suggest source books which cover the expanation/outline the justification for mathematical Platonism and levels of ontological being Dr Smith mentions? I don't think it would be in any of Plato's dialogues so where can I read the ancient sources?
The One is the All in One in All.
By definition, there can only be one all-inclusive Absolute.
The 1, the 1st of us to escape, - 1=0=1+. The 1st to escape the loop, Flatland now has depth of field. -1=0=1+/observer=-1+0=1+tan=distance=2+angle of view=3. The fractional observer. How the observer escaped the loop to create depth in the surface we call time before time is the geometry.
Excellent discussion! Whitehead was great friends with R.G. Collingwood. Whitehead and Collingwood didn't agree on the nature of metaphysics however. I personally believe that the Reformed Metaphysics of Collingwood is the greatest accomplishment in all of Western Philosophy. Collingwood casts an ironclad net of no escape regardless of subject matter or field of knowledge. Admittedly I am not very familiar with the Process Metaphysics of Whitehead. I don't see how a process metaphysics can actually map on to quantum mechanics. The metaphysics of Collingwood does not have this problem. But I would most certainly agree with Matt concerning Whitehead's alignment with Wolfgang on the idea of vertical causation. "All Philosophy is but the footnotes of Plato".
Did you see the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once? It could be viewed as a satire on contemporary physics and its explanations of the universe. Alternatively, we could really believe in a 'science' which predicts there must be a parallel universe where humans evolved hot dogs for fingers.
I came away from the movie firmly convinced that there is only one universe, the one we all live in. That wasn't a controversial position, not so long ago.
I thought it displayed the falsehood of postmodernism and contemporary physics in a brilliant way indeed, and it was only fitting that the final resolution was Love.
I'm having trouble connecting the answer to the last question with the question itself. The only thing that comes to mind is that without inhabiting both the temporal and eternal our historical efforts remain illusory. Any other thoughts?
I agree. I too am dissatisfied with the kind of eastern take of Platonism which holds on to return. I think the christian project attempts to show (beyond all the baloney layered onto it) what The Philosophy of Freedom attempts to prove, that the potential of the eternal creativity is available here, now, to us if we may. Thus it need not be about a kind of ‘fixed’ eternals, but eteral potential, and that tap-able into by us for at core we are it. Its so hard to put a finger on. In any case, taking into consideration that Plato and Steiner may not have what they say the way I get it, but : even the Philosophy of Freedom (and of course Plato too) kind of kick the ball just further away. But inevitably so.
What is the difference between a kind of static view of platonism whereby there is a descent FROM the eternal to the finite - You can go from one to the other and back again - Or a kind of living fractal view whereby each are in the other and with their intermediary too?
@@jonathantownsend3724 What in your view is "the baloney layered onto" the Christian project? And by what rational criteria do you distinguish this 'boloney' from non-boloney?
The Platonist ontology has an obstacle as an explanation: How do the Forms express themselves to each mind? All we have are analogies of Projection but no necessitating mechanism. 😞
Naturalist pluralism accepts the existence of abstract mathematical objects in the platonic ontological sense
I was a bit disappointed to find Dr. Smith's interpretation of quantum physics to be indistinguishable (for me) from the Copenhagen Interpretation. I could not understand why quantum objects should not be irreducible wholes. As a physicist myself, I find Whitehead's approach of scale-free organisms of actual entities far more appealing.
You say his position is "indistinguishable (for me)" but is it indistinguishable in point of fact? Isn't that what matters more than your own interpretation? What is his actual position then? Is it identical to Copenhagen's or not?
Time has waves, it's not flat over the geometry.
How can a line segment exist in a realm beyond space? It takes up space almost by definition.
An electron is not a sum of parts, isn't it an irreducible whole?
The weirdness of QM is a language problem, think of Wittgenstein... "“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Are you on Academia?
Geometry is the FATHER of Mythomagics.
All Mythomagics is, is either an Abstract Geometry or a Dynamical Geometry with respect to Time.
They've been writing Science Fiction with numerology and taking us all for a ride.
Giga Chad
The ‘empirical world’ is an apt name - it divides to conquor. But this rulership is ultimately to fall due to the illusion it is.
I know the missing formula.
Even younger was I when before I started school my uncle bought me a set of encyclopedia. After looking through the books it occurred to me to ask where does god live. My mother told me no one knows. After being at school for 3yrs I was sent to be assessed regarding my inability to understand. My mother was told I was autistic and dyslexic and that I would never be able to understand what my teachers were teaching. I failed and failed until my final year in primary. That year I came 3rd in my year and when I went to high school they put me in the 2nd lowest class, one class above morons.
CoGheeTo
The very idea that we observe "what exists" (objectively) is naïve realism.... I hope we are past that silly notion!
Hoo doo voo doo