for - Whitehead's philosophy - Whitehead - limitations of language - Indra's Net - Whitehead - process relational ontology

• Whitehead says that

  • philosophy is an attempt to express the infinity of the universe
    • in terms of the LIMITATIONS OF LANGUAGE

• And i think this image of the spiderweb with the dewdrops each reflecting the others is the perfect analogy for whitehead's ontology

• You may have heard of indra's net from madhyamaka buddhism
  • the idea of dependent co-origination of all things
    • that nothing has independent abiding existence
      • but is rather caught up in a network of
        • relations or
      • causes and conditions
    • and so you can't remove any of the nodes in the network without destroying the node and totally changing the rest of the network that it was embedded within
• This is the key to what a process RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY is trying to reveal to us about the nature of reality
• Dependent co-origination or you could say
  • the inter-penetration of all things
• though in Whitehead's cosmology there really are no things
  • if by thing you mean an inert isolated entity
• Whiteheads ontology is really composed of events or processes
• You could say and these processes for whitehead are
  • drops of experience
• So for whitehead, there's no node in the network of reality that is not there for itself
• It is not enjoying some degree of experience or subjectivity or has some degree or capacity for feeling

• for: insight - history - complexity, bad metaphor - chain of events

• insight: complexity and history

  • chain of events is a bad metaphor for things that occur in history
  • the complexity of history is that many causes come together too being about an event
  • likewise, when that event occurs, it is the cause of many different consequences
  • linear vs systems thinking

• adjacency between

  • history
  • emptiness
  • Indra's net
• adjacency statement
  • history reflects emptiness
  • Indra's net extended into historical events

• for: definition, definition - double bind

• definition: double bind

  • the definition of a double bind is that you have a problem (a bind) in one context and you can't actually solve it in that context because it's caught in another context
  • Gregory Bateson defined the double bind as an evolutionary trait of species due to their changing nature.
    • Since individuals of a species are constantly changing, there comes a day when all that it knows what to do in order to survive is outdated due to the changing environment. When it repeats the old behavior that served its survival in the past, it dies.

• comment

  • adjacency
    • between
      • double bind
      • progress trap
  • adjacency statement
    • progress traps are related to double binds because in a progress trap, an implemented solution to a problem in one context gives rise to a new problem in another context.
    • the original problem (bind) in one context appears to be resolvable but actual isn't. Future unfolding of the implemented solution unfold a future unexpected problem.
    • The two problems are not simultaneously occurring as in a double bind, but time-delayed
    • both double bind and progress traps emerge from the same root of violating holism
    • in not grasping the implications of the emptiness of phenomena, we ignore intertwingled nature of reality, we circumvent Indra's meet of jewels at our own peril

• for: evolution
• question
  • Does life not require both?
  • Regardless, Indra's net of jewels is an appropriate metaphor

• for Indra's Net of Jewels, progress trap
• definition
  • Muir Web
    • A diagram that shows all the relationships between species of a particular ecological habitat

• for: progress trap, abstraction
  • comment
    • we do not recognize the power of abstraction
    • through it, we begin to construct Indra's Net of Jewels, one jewel (idea) at a time
    • but each jewel (idea) that we construct is just a little knowledge, and as Dan observes, a little knowledge, compared to the endless knowledge reflected in any jewel is dangerous.
    • this then, is our dangerous predicament - we base technology on incomplete jewels of Indra's net
    • as we know from mathematics, when the finite meets the infinite, it can never win

• adjacency
  • ecology
  • Indra's net of jewels -translation
  • of Indra's Net story
  • “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra,
    • there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer
    • in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.
  • In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities,
    • the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net,
    • and since the net itself is infinite in dimension,
      • the jewels are infinite in number.
  • There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude,
    • a wonderful sight to behold.
  • If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it,
    • we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
  • Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels,
    • so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring"
    • Author
      • Cook, F. H. (1977). Hua‐Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar]