The End of Metaphysics.

If- the expedition proceeds far enough- either deep to the very small, or deep to the outermost reaches of the cosmos- if seems we reach the end of our empirical reach... and the end of the empirical reach always gives birth to metaphysics... and metaphysics, as an intellectual pursuit, has engaged many many world-class minds over the centuries... and so, what do we know?

we know that metaphysics can be brilliant and insightful- and wrong... and we know it happens that reason works wonderfully if combined with good empirical method - but if left to itself, reason brilliantly goes wrong, as the world is just too hard for us.

This is the end of metaphysics. It may continue to be pursued, but it is sterile and wrong- (though as history it is immensely educational) -  as a contemporary pursuit it is an utter dead end. So the expedition for the child ends- with questions, and a kind of bafflement. A sad end then, the end of metaphysics.

kalinzsky

The Chain of Being.

This post will only vaguely point toward the antique medieval idea of the Chain of Being.

The child  much later, later than childhood, thought about it all quite a bit- and noted a sister notion shed of the antiquity, called the Hierarchy of Being, or the Hierarchy of Reality- (which will also only be pointed to in a slight way here).

I have not be able to reach a firm decision about this set of ideas- I once regarded hierarchy as a fiction. Now I think I was wrong. So, I tend rather to view everything as one thing, or two things... with everything else just being a kind of varied description of these two things based on an animation- of that which is fundamental- the one of these two things animated- the other, utterly inert.

All the other things we know, I thought of as sort of imagined- as in a dream. I thought of consciousness as a dream. But now I think hierarchy may be ontologically real.

Kalinzskii

Hierarchy.

One small hierarchy of reality:

Mass & Space = Aether & Space
Aggregate Sub-Atomic Particles of the Field
Atoms = Elements
Molecules = Compounds
Inorganic & Organic Compounds
Viruses
Single Cell Organisms
Multi-Cell Organisms
Complex Organisms
Ecological Systems
Planetary Biosphere

Hierarchical conceptualizations are real - in an ontic sense. We are ever reminded of the limits of language. The child, loving language, always lovingly struggled with it.

Kalinzskii

The Dark Green Hypothesis.

Earth feels the heavy collective mass of humanity with all its weight and impression on the tender green. We do not know what will happen and abide in a sadness. It is too late. I look for an insulated aesthetic manifesting kindness, nobility- goodness.

There was never the guarantee of progress- there was only the idea of it.

Kalinzskii

Die Welt- or, a rambling...

How do we talk about the world in an adequate way? The world past ourselves, past life, past all that can be seen, or heard, or felt? What is there at the culmination of this journey, this expedition, into the direction of, say, the infinitely small? What is it there? ... in that tiny absolute empty space... abiding, moving, a thing- something solid and real, something solid- as in a true atom amidst the simply nothing?

Certainly, we cannot know any of this empirically, and if we can know... what we must know must be with the use of mathematics and logic, and we strive it be conceptually coherent- and then call it real- as in an objective versus a subjective... and this is it, in part, yet extended to the whole  - oh yes, I think I must know- but I am probably wrong- what this ultimate reality must be-  this real thing, comprising the interplay of a physical dialectic- eternal and absolute, and at this level... simple.

It is one type of thing, diffuse as an aether,  and then contracted to singularity, yet, and with this thing, abides its partner- the absolute nothing, or,  call it- just empty space, the void, a complete nothingness.

Also, what we call time and motion, are but derivative concepts, that is, they have no ontic reality.  The world then, is just mass and space. And the mass occurs only as particles- tiny particles so fine they are forever beyond any epistemological reach of the senses. And it is this animated particulate mass which provides the elementary particle and wave behavior we know as quantum mechanics, and which provides the basis of the concept of Field in modern physics, which is actually in essence a kind of topological aether (of old) and encompassing, of course, all that which used to be conceived as forces- gravity and electro-magnetism.

Again, time is only the measure of the animation of this aether. Time is completely unreal as a physical entity. And Again, motion is a derived notion, generated by animate ether.

The aether in space is one modality, the opposite singularity the other, and together constitute eternity.

So now ask, how does consciousness arise?

 Kalinzskii

The Heart of Existence.

There is this mystery at the heart of existence. The child noticed this profundity at the dawn of her sentience- but could not of course articulate it- way back then... where always she felt it close, and felt its persistence - and has carried the mystery with its attendants, with her, all the way to where she is now.  These following attendants- wherein, whereof, wherewith, they have continually served to say no to her desire to flee to fantasy, or fancy- these things logic and reason - these they have forced her to work- even when she wants just to play- all the way to this place.

Here and now - - there is only this- mass and space (Masse und Raum). The soul and spirit only this, as we- you, me- feel, think, love, and remember... and perhaps long for 'deep eternity'. But this is not religion- this is something else. What word has power over all this?

Shall we think hard enough to command all this?

Remember too, of all this has come life.

Kalinzskii

The Expedition as Narrative.

The Expedition is a Narrative of the process of discovery - the narrative of a mental world as description - this mental world thus unfolds and develops to express the real physical world - a subjective state which posits the existence of the -- the objective case. The belief being that there is this 'deep down freshness' which is 'there' and worth reaching.

A child begins the story, amazed by the fact of his own existence - by the fact anyone should be here at all. Then his amazement turns to the world, and he is filled with wonder,  and with a desire to know what this all is. Innocence full, he tries to frame things- to understand. The child has a long way to go, but some truth must be there from the beginning.

What a place he is in now. How long ago is the substance of this recollection.

Kalinzskii

Expedition.

A year of rest... and now time to begin again, a reset... and a new expedition. This one also being political, and social... but also, more inward, closer, and literary (as in a kind of pulp fiction) - of course, this expedition will actually not be fiction- this journey will be the truth, after a way - even if sometimes not wholly correct in one way or another.

So here we go, forward into a more private mental universe, one which posits a real physical world, and for which the chief striving will be coherence...  a place of reason, logic, and again, coherence.

Kalinzskii