for his

Review

of

Our pending review of William James Sidis' The Animate and the Inanimate (AIA) mandates this review.

Expect frequent additions to this text over several years as we re-read and ponder Bergson's issues here. They are vast, deep, and have much to do with needed changes for Millennium III.

First, we cann¤t overemphasize an importance of your immediate reading of Time and Free Will's (TaFW's) Translator Preface. F. L. Pogson captures Bergson's essence beautifully and eloquently.

If you are a diligent reader of our other Bergson reviews, you know how brilliant Henri Louis Bergson is. Rapidly he is moving to our upper echelons of durational humanity. Bergson is superb! He preceded Pirsig by 87 years and essentially Pirsig has n¤t written or said anything new and beyond Bergson's prescient works. Apparently all Pirsig has done is popularize Bergson's own philosophy, metaphysics, and science in rampant best selling novels. Yet n¤where in Pirsig's works do we see any references to Bergson! Pirsig, clearly a genius in his own right, apparently was able to develop his own philosophy, his Metaphysics of Quality independently of Bergson's works.

We cann¤t say enough good about Henri Louis Bergson. We just spent an eight month hiatus from this review (commencing a review of Clifford Geertz' Available Light which led to our reading Isaiah Berlin's Magus of the North, Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (of which we chose to go ahead and review), and perusal of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, only to be further interrupted, as we all were, by 911 Infamy, and thence further interrupted by reviews of A Beautiful Mind (1998, Nasar), The Conscious Universe (1990, Kafatos and Nadeau), The Quantum Brain (2001, Satinover), and At the End of an Age (2002, Lukacs)), and upon return we find how enormously Bergson places most other humans in a realm of relative mediocrity. We just conjectured, this morning at breakfast, "What might have happened if early quantum scientists had read Bergson's marvelous works?" One outcome we think would have been some vastly different paradigm shifts than ones we have seen thus far, in Earth's Western cultural 20^th century.

From a perspective of philosophy, we have seen Bergson's brilliance in his Creative Evolution and in his An Introduction to Metaphysics. In his CE, he offered several massive classical delusions which are of maximal import to Millennium III quantum philosophy and science:

1. That reality is stable,
2. that objects in reality are independent,
3. that reality is homogeneous,
4. that negation is objective, and

Now, in Time and Free Will Bergson offers more classical delusions, including delusions (use TaFW's superb Index to search for Bergson's uses of specific terms below):

1. That relations between/among independent objects are 1-1 correspondently, deterministically cause-effect governed by physical laws, (see Time and Free Will Index L, Law)
2. that time:
   1. is an infinitely divisible homogeneous line,
   2. is quantitative,
   3. has an excluded-middle (i.e., time is 'not' durational),
   4. is objectively measurable (e.g., time is stoppable),
   5. is (we can use time as) a formalism (i.e., y=f(t); e.g., velocity using time as an objective, quantitative magnitude) in classical mechanics, (see page 107)
3. that motion:
   1. is a homogeneous line,
   2. is quantitative,
   3. occupies space,
   4. has an excluded-middle (i.e., motion is 'not' durational),
   5. is objectively measurable (e.g., motion is stoppable),
   6. is (we can use motion as) a formalism (i.e., y=f(t); e.g., velocity calculating motion as an objective, quantitative magnitude) in classical mechanics, (see page 111)
4. that time is quantitative and homogeneous, (see page 129)
5. that time is space, (see page 191)
6. that duration is extensity/space (and thus quantifiable),
7. that succession is simultaneity (a classical means of eliminating quantum reality's included-middle),
8. that space is numerable (implying that classical 'space' is stable and objectively reducible and separable),
9. that space is excluded from its contents (see bottom of page 93, Kant's Aristotelian excluded-middle of space and space's contents)
10. that physical 'states' are capable of absolute recurrence in natural reality and are governed by law, (actually Bergson did n¤t say it exactly like this, but he implies it in several locations, especially Chapter III; see page 219)
11. that real process is analyzable, (from which scientists and mathematicians infer classical reality is analytic)
12. that classical mathematics is valid as a tool for representing reality, (see especially page 119)
13. that mathematical symbols can 'represent' quality, (see page 190)
14. that mathematics can 'model' quality, (see page 190)
15. that the law of identity is absolute, (see identity)
16. that quality is quantifiable, (see page 70 and topics 10-14 building up to this statement of classical delusion)
17. etc. (you will find almost boundless extensions to this list in Bergson's TaFW).

Mae-wan Ho, in her 1993 book, the Rainbow and the Worm, Chapter 12, interprets Bergson's percepts of his intuitive quantum~time, his intuitive quantum~reality, and compares them to his denunciations of classical conceptual time/reality like this:

• SOM/Classical Time, "An infinitely divisible homogeneous quantity," (Dichons)
  
  vis-à-vis
  
• Bergsonian/MoQ/quantum Time, "An indivisible heterogeneous Quality." (Quantons)
  

Bergson bottom-lines his view of time in topic 34, page 196, like this:

"...units of time which make up living duration, and which the astronomer can [spatially] dispose of as he pleases because they give no handle to science..."

Bergson tells us that his durational time, what we call "quantum tihmings," are n¤nconceptual, n¤nanalyzable by, and give n¤ handle to CTMs and classical scientific methods. We agree.

We have tried and tried and tried to grasp time intellectually. We cannot, without putting time back into SOM's box, SOM's vicious circle.

Bergson shows us why. To classically conceptualize quantum tihmings we must turn them into space. We must accept a classical axiom that time-space is an identity, a classical identity. One way in which we do this is to look at Earth as a big wheel/ball whose equator may be classically viewed as a tire's tread.

When we roll our Earth-tire on a plane surface one full cycle from a reference point, say Greenwich's meridian, to its next occurrence, we have 'one' day. But that view of 'day' is n¤t quantumly perceived as heterogeneous quantum tihmings:

• other planets in our solar system,
• other solar systems,
• other galaxies,
• other multiverses,
• tihmings of oceans, roilings of streams, eddies and their subprocesses,
• tihmings of beings and their process and subprocesses,
• tihmings of photons, electrons, nuclei, and atoms,...,
• tihmings of our multiverses' full spectrums,
• tihmings of quantum coherency, decoherency, isocoherency, and mixcoherency,
• tihmings of heterogeneity, everywhere-association, superposition, superluminality, included-middles, uncertainty, ensembles,...,
• etc.

Earth time is n¤t absolute, and it is a major failing of classical science to first identify space with time, and thence to impose that monistic, hegemonous classical concept on all humanity. Classically, incorrectly, most of us who are still classicists/cultural relativists view Earth time as marks on a linear space; similarly for Earth's solar orbit. Then classicists claim this is 'the' time, the unitime for all mathematical, scientific, ontological, and philosophical reference. But it is n¤t! Time is n¤t space. Classical space is homogeneous, numerable, measurable, lisr, haltable, locally absolute, extensible, state-ic, etc. Quantum tihmings are n¤ne of those classical properties/characteristics. Tihmings are absolute flux, unstoppable, n¤nanalyzable, emerging, emerscenturing quantum flux! We cann¤t use one tire as an exemplar for quantum heterogeneous tihmings. This is n¤t perceptually, memetically easy to grasp. Why? Nearly all of us have been classically proselytized for 2.5 millennia. We have to unlearn CTMs and commence learning QTMs and their analogues.

As part of our pre-review comments, we want to show you a table of frequently used Bergson terms and compare them to semantics from other philosophical, metaphysical, scientific, and lingual sources — this table is living text — we shall use it as working space to evolve our local hermeneutics of Bergson's TaFW:

As in our other prereviews we want to list some other Bergsonian problematics:

1. Bergson's uses of classical dialectics' grammatical negatives - Bergson has already shown us quite profoundly how negation is subjective. We accept that premise as axiomatic to our own quantum philosophy. Therefore we consider Bergson's frequent uses of "not, contradictory, no, etc.," as problematic, i.e., potentially classical and objective vis-à-vis durational. Per our standard color code we mark specific uses of those terms when we consider them classically problematic to your understanding of his meaning. It is fascinating to see his great mind identify such a general meme of negation as subjective and then go on and use negative grammatical dialectics profusely.
   
   To review quickly what difficulties a negation is subjective problematic incurs, we can think of an orange. What do we mean when we say, "Not an orange?" Using classical dialectics and formal predicate logic we usually mean negative orange or minus orange. Logically then to negate an orange means we must "take it away or subtract it." When we do that, we have a void where said orange formerly resided. Since no two physical oranges are ever identical (no two macro objects are ever identical), minus orange₁ produces a different void from minus orange₂, and so on... That is what happens when we use classical negation and assume it is radically mechanistic, formal, objective negation (which axiomatically, conveniently, and conventionally denies any subjectivity).
   
   What happens when we use quantum complementary negation? We may say an apple is n¤t an orange, however, we really intend "apple plus its entire real quantum complement, excepting said orange" is n¤t an orange! Quantum paralogically then to 'negate' a quantum entity (a quanton) we must "take its quantum complement."
   
   Classical negation, in general, does not work in its applications to full scale quantum physical reality (size Planck quanton and up). It only works within a classical mathematical framework, i.e., a local classical island of contrived axiomatic truth, or what Pirsig calls a SOM "Church of Reason."
   
   Quantum c¤mplementati¤n, which is classically subjective, works in general when applied to a reality which is much more general than classical reality: quantum reality.
   
   Bergson appears to use grammatical negatives classically, and if he indeed is doing so, many of his semantics are suspect.
   
   We recommend you consider his negatives both classically and quantumly and see which semantic is preferable to you and which semantic Bergson may have actually intended. This is a superb way to practice your study of Quantonics. J
   
   
2. Bergson's use of classical dialectical 'state' - This problem is similar to his continued use of classical negation. Bergson's duration is a quantum 'ing,' n¤t a classical 'ed!' Where classical dialectics assume reality was creat-ed once and that's all there is to that, Bergsonian duration assumes reality is endlessly emerg-ing. Classical 'state' is viable terminology in a homogeneous reality which was creat-ed (has already, finally emerg-ed) and thus "is complet-ed, 'exists,' is done, is whole, is finish-ed," etc. However, we may n¤t use classical 'state' in describ-ing a quantum reality which is fluxing, evolv-ing, emerg-ing, chang-ing, etc.
   
   Bergson apparently does n¤t tumble to this profound philosophical issue, and blithely continues his uses of 'state' as though it is a viable linguistic companion of his otherwise superb animate quantum meme of duration.
   
   

   Aside: Our profound thanks to Dan Glover for exposing Quantos to a meme of real animacy as a linguistic 'ing.' As he so eloquently told our Quanto List members (paraphrased), "We cannot model reality, we are modeling reality." Reality isn't a classically stoppable 'been,' rather reality is a quantum 'be-ing.' Quantum reality has n¤t been classically creat-'ed,' rather it is quantally creat-'ing' itself! Long ago on TLS, Dan also broached the's linguistic tiredness, from which we developed our meme of thelogos. Thanks again, Dan. Watch for his new book announcement on our top page. Dan is using our MoQ architecture diagram (a classical, static view of MoQ) in his new textbook.) Doug - 22Mar2001. End aside.

   
   
   
3. Bergson's uses of classical 'cause' and 'effect' - See our August, 2001 QQA on Cause and Effect. Bergson claims/shows reality is n¤ncausal, in general n¤npredictable, in general n¤ndeterministic. We concur.
4. Bergson's uses of classical 'external' and 'internal' - Bergson classically, apparently waffles here, but genuinely sees these as quantum c¤mplementary.
5. Bergson's uses of classical 'identical' and 'identity' - Specifically, Bergson denies any classical space-time identity. He tells us classical space is homogeneous and his durational tihmings are heterogeneous with former as classically noodleable, and latter n¤t. From our quantum memetic perspective tihmings are composite ensemblings of emergent processings foldings, beings, and unfoldings in both actuality and its n¤nactual c¤mplement while both prodded and mediated by n¤nconceptual absolute quantum flux latter which is analogous Bergson's elan vital.
6. Bergson's uses of classical 'succession' and 'simultaneity' - He hints at succession with two flavors: quantum included-middle animate durational, and classically excluded-middle inanimate spatially extensible. Similarly, for simultaneity. See our extensive past/present comments on topic 22's page 112., especially text under, "What is this classical problematic?"

We will add more here as we continue our post-review efforts on TaFW.

Thanks for reading,

Doug - 3Jun2002.

===

Other reviews of Bergson works include:

Matter and Memory, and (orig. 1896)
Time and Free Will (you are reading our prereview of it now), (orig. 1889, tr. 1910)
An Introduction to Metaphysics, (orig. 1903)
Creative Evolution. (orig. 1907, tr. 1910)

Thanks for reading,

Doug. 23Feb2001

Notes:

Independence - We want to add, here, what some implications of this classical 'independence' delusion are. To do so, we are making a c¤mplementary assumption that 'objects' are quantumly n¤t 'independent' of one another:

• reality is n¤t Newtonian objective, (more generally, reality is n¤t Newtonian)
• there are n¤ such entities as 'classical objects' in quantum reality, (see Stein)
• reality is n¤t Aristotelian 'substantial,'
• reality is n¤t Aristotelian 'syllogistic,'
• reality's middle is included and this is a qualitative proem which distinguishes quantum reality from classical reality and which evokes our emerging understanding of quantum reality as:
  • coinsident, compenetrating, interpenetrating, interfusing,
  • ensemble quantum uncertain,
  • quantonic vis-à-vis dichonic,
  • comtextual, islandic,
  • c¤mplementary,
  • coobsfective,
  • superluminal,
  • n¤n-lisr,
  • etc.
• classical frames of reference are impossible,
• classical concepts such as 'zero' momentum (in an assumed classical frame of reference) are impossible, and
• etc.

As we can see, any classical notion of 'objective independence,' as Bergson shows us, is a delusion — one of many, n¤, countless, classical delusions.

'Independence' note added 11-12Jun2002 - Doug.

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Motion Occupies Space - If classical motion occupies space, would n¤t classical objects — which occupy space — be motion? Rather, classicists say objects can be in motion, they do 'not' say objects are motion itself. Also, classicists assume objects may have 'zero' motion/momentum. In that case do we infer that classical objects are 'not' motion itself or 'not' in motion itself? Bergson unravels this classical problematic by showing us that classicists calculate motion/velocity as space/space where they deny qualitative durational time and impose quantitative analytic space as a time proxy 'identity.' Here we see Einstein's own delusional space-time 'identity.' (Try this same descriptive process on time, above, after asserting, classically that, "time occupies space.")

We want to tell our readers here, that we agree with Bergson that science's largest problematic interjects via its space/space concept, its mandate of a radically mechanical space-time identity. In quantum reality mechanical space is n¤t time and time is n¤t mechanical space.What is absent is a quantum analogue of real n¤nmechanical, durational, included-middle, animate, heterogeneous tihmings. But Bergson worries that is perhaps n¤t possible to achieve. His inference, as we interpret it, is that time is n¤nconceptual/n¤nmechanical (like Pirsig's DQ). If that is so, then there is n¤ mechanical proxy for time; indeed, we can have n¤ mechanical proxy for time. There is n¤ classical, radically mechanical space-time identity!

Shades of David Bohm:

"The fact that quantum systems cannot be regarded as made up of separate parts working together according to causal laws means that we are now led to a fundamental change in our general methods of description of nature...In a system whose behavior depends critically on the transfer of a few quanta, however, the separation of the world into parts (for instance, wave or particle) depends on factors that cannot be ascribed uniquely to either part, and are not even subject to complete control or prediction...The underlying structure of matter...is not mechanical...This means that the term 'quantum mechanics' is very much of a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called quantum nonmechanics...We have seen that the classical [radically mechanistic] concepts of continuity, causality, and analysis of the world into distinct parts are all necessary for each other's consistency; foregoing any one of them leads to the necessity of giving up all...The entire system of classical concepts must, therefore, be replaced by a totally new system...The expression of the new quantum concepts is beset with severe difficulties, because much of our customary language and thinking is predicated on the tacit assumption that classical concepts are substantially correct...We anticipate that new ways of using language may ultimately be developed...To avoid wrong interpretations of the quantum theory, arising from difficulties in the language, the reader should grasp the theory in terms of a whole new system of [n¤nmechanical-]concepts..."

From pages 167-8, Chapter 8, Sec. 26, Quantum Theory, by David Bohm, Dover paperbound, 1951, 1989. Our brackets, ellipses, bold, color and italics. Could we, we would substitute percept for all occurrences of Bohm's use of 'concept.' Too, we would remove his thelogos while substituting qualogos.

Our ellipses, above in our quote of Bohm's ½ century old prescient words, intentionally skip/avoid Bohm's legacy reverence of some classical ideas. Our view is that reverence is now unjustified. Why? Because, in Quantonics, "...the classical [radically mechanistic] concepts of continuity, causality, and analysis of the world into distinct parts..." have, in general, failed! In Quantonics we demonstrate and describe their failure, in quantum reality's larger realm, over and over and over. Bergson's Time and Free Will, which we are reviewing here, provides superb adjunct demonstrations and descriptions of classical conceptual failures recognized by Bergson 113 years ago near an ending of a pre-quantum mechanical age.

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