3

James begins, "The progress of society is due to the fact that individuals vary from the human average in all sorts of directions, and that the originality is often so attractive or useful that they are recognized by their tribes as leaders, and become objects of envy or admiration, and setters of new ideals.

"Among the variations, every generation of men produces some individuals exceptionally preoccupied with theory. Such men find matter for puzzle and astonishment where no one else does. Their imagination invents explanations and combines them. They store up the learning of their time, utter prophecies and warnings, and are regarded as sages. Philosophy, etymologically meaning the love of wisdom [actually, love of sophism], is the work of this class of minds, regarded with an indulgent relish, if not with admiration, even by those who do not understand them or believe much in the truth which they proclaim."

(Our bracketed comment.)

We wonder, if his thoughts include William James Sidis as he writes here.

"A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.

"I say nothing in all this of what may be called the gymnastic use of philosophic study, the purely intellectual power gained by defining the high and abstract concepts of the philosopher, and discriminating between them.

"In spite of the advantages thus enumerated, the study of philosophy has systematic enemies, and they were never as numerous as at the present day. The definite conquests of science and the apparent indefiniteness of philosophy's results partly account for this; to say nothing of man's native rudeness of mind, which maliciously..."

"...enjoys deriding long words and abstractions. 'Scholastic jargon,' 'mediaeval dialectics,' are for many people synonyms of the word philosophy. With his obscure and uncertain speculations as to the intimate nature and causes of things, the philosopher is likened to a 'blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat that is not there.' His occupation is described as the art of 'endlessly disputing without coming to any conclusion,' or more contemptuously still as the 'systematische Missbrauch einer eben zu diesen Zwecke erfundenen Terminologie.'

"Only to a very limited degree is this sort of hostility reasonable. I will take up some of the current objections in successive order, since to reply to them will be a convenient way of entering into the interior of our subject.

"Objection 1. Whereas the sciences make steady progress and yield applications of matchless utility, philosophy makes no progress and has no practical applications."

"Reply 1. The opposition is unjustly founded, for the sciences are themselves branches of the tree of philosophy. As fast as questions got accurately answered, the answers were called 'scientific,' and what men call 'philosophy' today is but the residuum of questions still unanswered."

[Reviewer note: James covers a good historical perspective of primary philosophers and their ideas for next six pages. We cover only fragments we find of exceptional interest in relating James' philosophy to our protagonists: Boris Sidis, William James Sidis, Henri Louis Bergson, Robert M. Pirsig, and quantum science.]

We agree. Science's current foundation rests on a classical fault line of ancient dialectic and syllogistic logic. Science's current building blocks (pre-quantum) build quake-prone edifices which are soon to topple.

Science's classical delusions emerse 'accurate answers.'

"It will be instructive to trace very briefly the origins of our present habits of thought.

"Auguste Comte, the founder of a philosophy which he called 'positive,' said that human theory on any subject always took three forms in succession. In the theological stage of theorizing, phenomena are explained by spirits producing them; in the metaphysical stage, their essential feature is made into an abstract idea, and this is placed behind them as if it were an explanation; in the positive stage, phenomena are simply described as to their coexistences and successions. Their 'laws' are formulated, but no explanation of their natures or existence is sought after. Thus a 'spiritus rector' would be a metaphysical, — a 'principle of attraction' a theological, — and a 'law of the squares' would be a positive theory of the planetary movements."

(Our bold color emphasis.)



From our perspective, primitive philosophy sensed quantum reality's VES, and William James' own reserve energy as mana.

Classical science's 'action at a distance,' which Einstein called absurd (which we now know is real), appears strong kin to 'sympathetic magic.'

'Primitive philosophy' may not have been so primitive after all. Certainly it was intuitive. Pirsig and Bergson tell us to pay attention to our intuitions as source of Value, of Quality.

"Acting on any resemblance or associated thing," sounds much like quantum entanglement! Real, demonstrated quantum entanglement (see EPR gedanken experiment) is source of zero latency action at a distance.

(Reader, please note that we used SOM words in our last sentence. Our words: zero, latency, action, and distance all have unique SOM, objective definitions. Their quantum semantics may be entirely different. E.g., 'distance' usually implies a classical space-time continuum. Many quantum philosophers deny any such continuum. Quantum reality is not homogeneous as classicists would insist. Instead, it is heterogeneous as Bergson and James told us over 100 years ago. Quantum reality is unlimited, nondistributive islands of locally ~certain/nonlocally uncertain 'truth' which we call "many truths." Their focus on apparent local ~certainty and their concomitant denial of nonlocal uncertainty is what deludes classicists of an unreal whole, block, homogeneous, continuous, analytical reality.)

Finally, consider mana as reserve energy's dual. James taught Boris Sidis about reserve energy and Boris used it to teach Bill Sidis. Boris and Bill claim their extreme high intellect arises from their uses of reserve energy. Bill goes on to make it a center piece of his book which we are reviewing in parallel with this review titled, The Animate and the Inanimate.

See our 2001 How to Tap Into Reserve Energy.

We differ here only by saying, "Thoughts are memetic quantons." As such they are Static Patterns of Value.

To compare Compte's positivism to other 'ISMs' see our helpful ISM Extremes. Positivism is a mind-centric reductionist atomism, an analytic ISM.

(Our bold color emphasis.)



We call this mind, "The classical, SOM mind," and we explain how it uses CTMs, or Classical Thing-king Methods.

It is interesting to consider science's 'measurables' in terms of intrinsic human sensory capability. Our senses fall roughly into these categories:

Sense	Bandwidth	Octaves2
balance	unknown	?
gravity	constant/range (0-16 Gs)	0/4
heat	~1 kHz to ~1.25 MHz	~10.25
pressure	0 to ~10Atm (swag)	~3.5
sight	~1.25 MHz to 2.5 MHz	1
smell	~10,000 odors (Curtis)	~13.3
sound	~30 Hz to ~20 kHz	10
touch	unknown	?

Assuming Planck's length is a minimum for any real dimension, and using that dimension as our minimum reality spatial wavelength, we can guess that reality offers a total change/flux bandwidth from zero Hertz to ~2·10⁴³ Hertz. This bandwidth represents somewhat less than 143 octaves for nature's whole musical score. (We assumed integer frequencies. We assumed 10⁴³ Hertz is approximately 2¹⁴³ octaves. We had no frequency equivalent for odor so we used odor count as a frequency proxy. Ditto pressure and gravity. We did not consider phase issues, implying low human phase discrimination on most of our sensory inputs.)

Our table above gives a small (incomplete) sense of human sensory capability in terms of how many of a 'gross of octaves' we can 'process' directly. Roughly, it comes to 42 octaves, and those lie predominately in nature's spectrum's very low end (actually less, because humans do not necessarily use or process all of illustrated bandwidths — too, octaves are classical 2D sine flux — quantum flux is nD sine (omnimensional/omniadic), et al., so nature's quantum flux from a sensory perspective is almost unlimited — we are trying to show how limited classical science's perspective of reality is — and worse, how they deny our sensory cap-abilities outside ranges shown above, calling those experiences and perceptions "paraphenomenal" and "absurd").

Our table begs many questions. E.g., is any overt mechanism preventing us from sensing more of our natural spectrum? Are we limited by our current evolutionary progress? Or can we learn to tap into parts or all of nature's other 101 octaves, plus its other quantum flux? How does this incapacity affect our capabilities to understand and interpret reality? Through a process of denial, is this how classicists put themselves in a SOM box to begin with? Is this why classical science denies quantum isoflux' existence, quantum reality's most essential stuff?

Our intent is to obviate classical science's extraordinary sensory 'measurement' limitations. Those limitations keep classical science in its SOM box. Even with ancillary accoutrement, science can only extend its sensory capacity to about half (in octaves; see 29Jul2001 extended comment below) of nature's full potential 2D sine frequency bandwidth, i.e., about 72+ octaves.

29Jul2001 rev - Our last paragraph is misleading from a bandwidth perspective. Each higher octave doubles all lower octaves' combined bandwidths (think of a 2's complement binary number with 144 bits and 72 octaves as that binary number with its lower 72 bits ones and its upper 72 bits zeroes). If we naïvely consider assisted human bandwidth as reality's lower 72 octaves then reality's upper ~72 octaves harbor at least ~2⁷² or ~10²¹ times as much bandwidth (total of ~2¹⁴⁴ or ~10⁴³ 'Hertz') as those lower 72 octaves combined. As you can now surmise humans' lower half 72 octaves of bandwidth is not half of reality's spectrum in frequency but only one part in ~10²¹ parts! Is it clear to you that individual humans' sensory bandwidths perceive only a very, very tiny portion of reality's whole spectrum? Doug.

"Philosophy has become a collective name for questions that have not yet been answered to the satisfaction of all by whom they have been asked.

"...But to assume therefore, that the only possible philosophy must be mechanical and mathematical, and to disparage all enquiry into the other sorts of question, is to forget the extreme diversity of aspects under which reality undoubtedly exists."

"Objection 2. Philosophy is dogmatic, and pretends to settle things by pure reason, whereas the only fruitful mode of getting at truth is to appeal to concrete experience. Science collects, classes, and analyzes facts, and thereby far outstrips philosophy.

"Reply 2. This objection is historically valid. Too many philosophers have aimed at closed systems, established a priori, claiming infallibility, and to be accepted or rejected only as totals. The sciences on the other hand, using hypotheses only, but always seeking to verify them by experiment and observation, open a way for indefinite self-correction and increase. At the present day, it is getting more and more difficult for dogmatists claiming finality for their systems, to get a hearing in educated circles. Hypothesis and verification, the watchwords of science, have set the fashion too strongly in academic minds."

"Objection 3. Philosophy is out of touch with real life, for which it substitutes abstractions. The real world is various, tangled, painful. Philosophers have, almost without exception, treated it as noble, simple, and perfect, ignoring the complexity of fact, and indulging in a sort of optimism that exposes their systems to the contempt of common men, and to the satire of such writers as Voltaire and Schopenhauer. The great popular success of Schopenhauer is due to the fact that, first among philosophers, he spoke the concrete truth about the ills of life.

"Reply 3. This objection also is historically valid, but no reason appears why philosophy should keep aloof from reality permanently. Her manners may change as she successfully develops. The thin and noble abstractions may give way to more solid and real constructions, when the materials and methods for making such constructions shall be more and more securely ascertained. In the end philosophers may get into as close contact as realistic novelists with the facts of life."

"In conclusion. In its original acceptation, meaning the completest knowledge of the universe, philosophy must include the results of all the sciences, and cannot be contrasted with the latter. It simply aims at making of science what Herbert Spencer calls a 'system of completely unified knowledge.' In the more modern sense, of something contrasted with the sciences, philosophy means 'metaphysics.' The older sense is the more worthy sense, and as the results of the sciences get more available for co-ordination, and the conditions for finding truth in different kinds of question get more methodically defined, we may hope that the term will revert to its original meaning. Science, metaphysics, and religion may then again form a single body of wisdom, and lend each other mutual support.

"At present this hope is far from its fulfillment. I propose in this book to take philosophy in the narrow sense of metaphysics, and to let both religion and the results of the sciences alone."

We see this contrast arising from both classical science and philosophy adhering concepts born of Parmenidean, Platonic, Aristotelian substance-think. These concepts bore modern science and mathematics. These concepts are of opposition, contradiction, pugilism, war, and hate. They are versus concepts. They divide, separate, localize, and reduce. Yet their division is of a 'whole,' closed, homogeneous continuum. How does one do that? How does one divide a 'whole,' closed, continuum?

Modern classical philosophy and science, what Pirsig and we call 'SOM,' find their foundations in such ludicrousness. As Stein suggests, it is time for a new quantum ontology. Dump Newton's ontology!