Part One: Is Mystery Constitutive of the Universe?

Is Whatever There Is Knowable? 

Is there still a place for mystery in an age of “natural” science? Or another way to frame this question might be, are the techniques of science sufficient for disclosing whatever there is? There are two basic positions on thesequestions. The first is the scientific world view in which whatever mystery is left in the world is theoretically knowable because complete knowledge about whatever there is, or complete knowledge about the universe, is finite, so that with enough research and time and with the help of AI’s storage and processing capacities, a complete map of reality is hypothetically possible. This positive view of knowing is in line with modern Information Theory’s belief that whatever there is, is either in-itself a quantity or is at least quantizable in the sense that it can be represented as digitized “bits” of information. Whatever incomplete determinations there are about the Universe, it is a result of the non-coincidence between amounts of information versus computational capacity, in terms of space-time to compute and not in terms of the mathematical operations themselves. There are incomputable problems, but this doesn’t point to a constitutional lack within scientific knowing or with any constitutional incompletion within the Universe itself, but a lack of capacity for amounts of quantized information, so this is still a positive view of complete knowledge because given enough space-time, the problem of complete knowledge could hypothetically be resolved or competed.   

However, there is another view on information that holds that there is more about the Universe than what can be counted as information or than what can be known through the countable bits or units of Information Theory. This view holds that scientific knowledge is not the only way to “know” the world because computable bits of information lose some of the qualitative aspects of being in favor of its quantitative aspects. This second view, which might be thought of as negative relative to the first’s scientific positivism about complete knowledge is classically formulated as the “non-coincidence between being and knowing.” Being in this formulation is whatever there is, so in this view knowing cannot completely overlap with whatever there is, which leaves an irreducible mystery or gap between knowing and the Universe. There are many different versions of this noncoincidence, but one result for all of them is thatwhile amounts of knowing may continually increases, mystery about the Universe remains irreducible.  

One version of this latter position, derogatorily called “Mysterianism,” or “Scientific Pessimism” by those who believe that the Universe can be known in its entirety, and whose most famous adherent is Noam Chomsky, is that human intelligence simply isn’t capable of grasping all of what is because of a mismatch between what is, and what information and knowing are. So, there isn’t a question about gaining enough information for complete knowing, but rather about the fundamental mismatch between what there is and knowing about it or understand it. There are many different versions of this mismatch, but Chomsky points out two in particular. The first, is that the knower’s consciousness, is a part of what there is, but the conscious knower forms a kind of blind spot in the field of knowing. Whatever the knower knows is known through the intention to know.  

In phenomenology, the intention to know, sometimes called the “Will to Truth,” is an “intention” in two senses of the word. The first sort of intention is the common usage of the word as “what one intends,” which is one’s aim or goal, but the second usage of the word is both projection and screen upon which the world appears. Both senses of the word are combined to convey the concept in phenomenology that one sees the world as one intends. The appearance of the world, or of what is called “aboutness,” isn’t objective even though the intention is what unifies whatever there is, into the objects that appear as if whole and complete in register of the “Imaginary.” Because it isn’tpossible to stand outside one’s motivated intention, or to know from an “objective” third-person position, the intention’s Will to Truth is necessarily limited by its first-person perspective. So, this necessary limitation, or blind spot, formsand ineluctable gap between being and knowing. 

The second variation of Knowledge Pessimism or of Positive Mysterium, depending on your perspective of such things, is like the one adumbrated above in which the formal structure of knowing, or of determination, may not be able to take in whatever there is because of the necessary limitations of human perception and thought, or reason. Our knowing is necessarily mediated through the processes of representation even if it is the immediate knowing of “direct” experience. This argument also has many variations, but Immanuel Kant began modern philosophy with his distinction between the numinal world of the “thing-in-itself" and the phenomenal world as perceived by the intention.We have no access to the numinal world except through the a priori categories of perception that we impose on it. The distinction between how the world appears to us and how it is in-itself has been taken to extremes in some corners of evolutionary biology and neuroscience as of late with such thinkers as Donald Hofman claiming that our perceptual interface with the world is nothing like the world. So, this is yet another way in which to conceptualize the unbridgeablegap between being and knowing that renders knowing constitutively incomplete. 

A third type of “Mysterianism,” not endorsed by Chomsky, and not really called “Mysterianism” at all, is that the Universe itself is fundamentally incomplete, so that part of what is, can’t be determined because it has neither been actualized from potential into the virtual realm of the possible, nor has it been realized or determined as a conceptual or phenomenal object. The first two pessimist views about the possibility of complete knowing had to do with an incapacity within knowing itself, which may or may not reflect a constitutively incomplete Universe. But this third sort of positive mysterianism holds that the incompletion within knowing reflects the incompletion within the Universe. Anincomplete Universe is posited by those who believe that the Universe isn’t a determined “Block Universe,” but a yet-to-be determined, or open, Universe that contains actual degrees of freedom, so that part of what is, includes what isn’t yet.  

The necessary lack within knowing cannot be determined because the Universe is always still becoming and therefore indeterminate, or incomplete, by nature. The degrees of freedom offered by the Universe limit what can be known about whatever there is because they haven’t been realized and may never be, but even in their unrealized state they are still actual. And there is also the “raw” indeterminacy of pure potential that hasn’t been actualized into degrees of freedom, so that the choices that they will offer can’t be accessed from any present inquiry about them. There are possibilities to come that can’t be dreamed of because they haven’t arisen from the void into the virtuality of dreams. There are no guarantees about what is to come because the processes that comprise the Universe determine what is by relating the determinations of the past to the unknowable indeterminacy of what will be.  

The Universe is an open process of differentiation according to thinkers like AN Whitehead and Giles Deleuze because each time an actual possibility is realized, previously withdrawn virtuality comes to the foreground, but alsomore potential is actualized into the possibility space of new virtuality. This new virtuality wasn’t merely withdrawn from the object relations of an actual possibility space, but it didn’t previously exist. Not only are new physical relations between matter-energy being continually fashioned to add to whatever there is, but new possibilities come into being as well. Whatever ontological status the inaccessible potential of incompletion, or open indeterminacy of nonbeing has, it is related to whatever there is because it is the pure negativity from which whatever there is, comes. There is a finite amount of matter-energy in the Universe, but the possibilities for its relations are infinite because both matter-energy and its possibilities come from an incontinent and inexhaustible void.  

The indeterminacy of open space or potential must be brought into relationship with the determinacy of a limit to form an actual possibility space. Whatever is “before” this most basic relationship must be spoken of metaphorically because to speak of it is to positivize a pure negativity because it is a non-relative, or absolute, “nothing” that is before the relation of nothing to something. It is the relation of something to nothing that allows one to first perceive and then to speak of both something and nothing. There has been an ongoing debate in Philosophy since at least Ancient Greece, and probably well before then, about what was “before” the determinations of what is. Many thinkers have speculated that whatever it was, it must have been something like the indeterminacy of nonbeing, or of open space, or of nothing.  

But most thinkers who have contemplated the void from which everything there is comes have also noticed how speech falls apart when one tries to articulate this nothing before there was the relation of something to nothing.The necessity of the relation between something and nothing is the foundation of the possibility of perception as well as of representation of any kind. So, this “absolute” nothing “before” there were the relations of something and nothing might be another articulation of the irreducible mystery at the center of whatever there is. What can be known are the continuous relations of something to nothing, or of presence to absence, but what can’t be known is whatever it is that grounds these relations. 

The sort of incompletion that is associated with the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum Physics holds that the most basic level of reality is a “quantum field,” which is described as a probabilistic possibility space seemingly without the necessary and sufficient reasons of macro-level causality. At the level of the quantum field, electrons appear to flicker in and out of existence without the sorts of causation that science would need to offer a “complete” account of the Universe’s necessary and sufficient reasons. The quantum field is like a light wave. Waves are possibility spaces, but the quantum wave seems to spontaneously collapses into an electron particle without a detectable cause, which is like realizing an actual possibility without a necessary and sufficient reason. Einstein's famous rejection of the Copenhagen Interpretation was because of this inherent lack of determinate reasons, which if constitutive of these basic fields would undermine the causal determinations of his “Block Universe.” But a field is a horizon that relates what is to what isn’t, or what can be counted as a part of what is, and what can’t, or of what is but can’t be counted because it can’t be determined by representation or detected by the measurement devices of scientific quantities. A quantum field is grounded in this uncountable, imperceivable, undetectable, and unspeakable nothing, so the causal chain of necessary and sufficient reasons ends there with an abrupt, impenetrable and irreducible mystery. 

A field is a “plane,” which coordinates space-time with matter-energy according to the natural laws to individuate a phenomenal or conceptual object, but a field might also be thought of as a wave-like possibility space where something appears as the determinate foregrounding of an object against the background of indeterminate homogeneity. This foregrounding must have been caused for it to be counted as a material determination, unless matter has some sort of nonphysical or nondetectable aspect within it that can affect the foregrounding of an object against a background. If the quantum “Observer Effect” describes how an observation influences whether a wave or a particle appears, then the quantum field seems to describe a possibility space in which something similarly nonphysical is affecting a physical state. If consciousness can have an effect at the quantum level, then perhaps a quantum field ismatter-energy's very basic awareness of itself. If whatever causes a field to individuate a particle can’t be observed or measured, then it must be either without a cause or with a nonphysical but nonetheless material cause. If there is a non-physical cause, then matter-energy is something like how a “Panpsychist” imagines it. For the panpsychist even the most basic level of matter-energy contains an unimaginably simple awareness that affects matter-energy'sphysical appearance.  

Regardless of what is “actually” happening with quantum fields, if they can only be described probabilistically, then there is a gap in knowing that might reflected in a gap in being. Probabilities aren’t necessary and sufficient reasons. They are measures of certainty, and incomplete certainty is incomplete knowing that may witness to the undetermined actual possibilities of quantum “inter” or “super” position, which isn’t indeterminacy per se, but theindeterminate determinacy called “degrees of freedom,” because how this possibility will be realized is open but it is still a structured or “actual” possibility, so it isn’t completely open. For example, at the level of the quantum field the possibilities are either a particle or a wave, but not whatever. But nonetheless knowledge is fundamentally incomplete because it seems to be the observation that decides the appearance as either a particle or a wave, so there is a constitutive gap in knowledge, which prevents complete knowing. 

To individuate an object is to make something appear on a field, so individuation is a foregrounding, or unification, of what had been an undifferentiated multiplicity. The terminology “collapsing the wave function,” means to disambiguate a particle from a wave by locating its “particular” space-time coordinates. It is as if the wave were the background that “collapses” as the particle is foregrounded. Individuation differentiates by unifying an object against a background of undifferentiated multiplicity. Undifferentiated multiplicity is the ultimate ground of whatever there is for most process thinkers, which is a notion that replaced the classical idea that the ultimate ground was an undifferentiated unity. The collapse of the wave function seems to support this idea that what grounds the individuation of what is, is the difference of multiplicity. For example, the multiplicity of a wave function collapses into a unifiedobject, that of the single particle of light called the “electron.”  

However, process thinkers posit that this undifferentiated differential field differs from itself inconsistently, so that repetitions spontaneously arise, which allow for the temporary differentiation of an individuated repetition. Thisprocess of individuation might be thought of as the process by which objective determinations are made from an undifferentiated and indeterminate background. What is undifferentiated and indeterminate, or prior to determination, isin an “inter” or a “super” position, or a “non-locality,” often described by wave / particle duality at the quantum level and by the famous image of the “duck-rabbit” at the level of perception.  

In looking for the particle, the wave is lost, and in looking for the wave, the particle is lost. And to perceive the duck, it must be foreground at the expense of the rabbit, and to perceive the rabbit, the duck must recede into the background. The indeterminacy of the field is relative, so it isn’t the total indeterminacy of whatever is before the relation between the indeterminacy of space-time and the determinations of matter. Matter-energy is the most basic description of a field. In physics energy and space-time are equivalent and matter is whatever resists or limits energy, so the field of matter-energy is the relation between the indeterminacy of space and determinations of matter’s resistance that is described relationally as the movement described by the second law of thermodynamics as entropy.  

Energy is indeterminate potential and equivalent to the nothing of open space until it is put into relation with matter. Matter in-itself, as in the Singularity “before” space-energy, is completely determined and therefore a kind oftotal compaction that is also equivalent to nothing until it is put into relation with the nothing of space-time's potential. Thought about in this way matter’s relation to energy is a kind of double negation akin to the double negation of theHegelian dialectic. The unity of the singularity describes a very special circumstance or state because this unity is without entropy because it is without that space-energy to enter into the relational disunity of change. The singularity’s is a complete double negation that reduces to zero, which is why it is equal to nothing.  

To have multiplicity, unity can’t be total or complete, but rather it must always be provisional, or an incomplete unity. The Singularity’s state of complete unity reflects the phenomenal or conceptual unity of any object, except that all other objects are subject to entropy, which means that the double negation of matter by energy or of energy by matter according to the natural laws isn’t complete. It is this remainder that forms the gap of incomplete knowing and possible of incomplete being as well. The movement of matter-energy given by the second law of thermo-dynamics may create a constitutive incompletion in being because entropy is probabilistic but determined like any chaotic system is. This combination of probabilistic but determined is the formula for actual possibility. An actual possibility space is formed in the field of matter-energy's processual, rule-governed relations with itself. 

The phenomenal and conceptual objects that we perceive are always incompletely unified because the movement and change given by entropy is always picking away at what has been reified or frozen by perception or by the conceptualization of whatever there is. But what is, is the continual flow of being described by entropic processes, which is another way to understand the constitutive incompletion of knowing. There is a mismatch between the unification necessary for the determination of something in space-time, and the continual flow of becoming given by entropy.  Because entropic processes are an inconsistent flow, representation is possible through the temporary formations of repetitions. The probabilistic formation of repetitions within the difference of multiplicity given by entropy are like habits that produce temporary structures. These temporary structures can be used as a sort of unifying frame for the multiplicity of difference when some of that difference is made particular by foregrounding it against the homogeneity of the background. Again, the background isn’t homogeneous in-itself by only in relation to whatever difference is foregrounded. 

The relation of difference to itself coordinates the unity of a repetition with the multiplicity of flow that makes perception possible, and it is this same juxtaposition that makes thought possible as the coordination of conceptual objects. The immediacy of perception collapses into the mediation of concepts for the language user. What language users perceive is immediately mediated through their concepts, so that perception becomes is the unification of difference just as thought is. The relation between “direct” sensation and thought is fraught with philosophical controversies that can’t be gotten into here. However, Perception is the unification of sensory difference into a temporary phenomenal object through a concept, and thought is the unification of semiotic difference into a temporary conceptual object.  

Both are forms of representation because both are the unification of difference into a temporary object “containing” semiotic value. Language users unify difference or make whole phenomenal and conceptual objects through the unity of concepts. The intersection of making whole and setting apart is where language users make meaning. What is foregrounded is made whole by its difference from the background. The background in-itself is difference, but difference is made different from itself by the processes of foregrounding called “differentiation,” and differentiation is the unification of difference called “individuation.” An object is the cut in the continuity of difference that forms the unity of a whole. 

The inconsistency of entropy forms probabilistic repetitions, which might be thought of as AF Whitehead’s “Generals,” which are forms or patterns that spontaneously arise from within the background of difference. Objects arewholes formed by relating a repetition or general to the parts of difference. For Whitehead an object is a concept that is formed by relating two percepts according to a rule. The rule is the regularity, or repetition, that is used to relate different percepts, which are the relata that make whatever phenomenal or conceptual objects there are. The inconsistency of entropy is also why there is a universe at all. If entropy wasn’t “clumpy,” then none of the planets or stars could have been formed. The repetition of the form of planets or stars is a good example of how repetitions emerge from a background of inconsistent multiplicity. Consistent entropy would not have allowed for the formation of anything.  

Representation is a repetition related to difference just as a background frames a foreground. For process thinkers representation follows the same procedures as the individuation of difference into a conceptual or phenomenological object. A sign is the semiotic frame that foregrounds a repetition against the background of an inconsistent multiplicity. A sign temporarily unifies what is fundamentally inconsistent and multiple into a consistent one. All objects are individuated in this way. 

When a continuous flow is represented, this foregrounding or frame captures a moment that is immediately lost. Objects are representations that appear as if solid, but both phenomenal and conceptual objects individuatethemselves incompletely, so that an object is not only what is in the framed or foreground but also what is continually overflowing it. Another way to put this form of the disjunction between being and knowing is to say that being is always overflowing knowing because representation is necessarily incomplete because signification makes present retroactively, and so representation is about something that has already passed. So, the necessity of the retroactivity of representation is yet another way to think about the constitutive incompletion of knowledge and possibly of being itself. 

Being seems to be representational in nature because what is, requires relation to be. The necessity of being to “know” itself through the relations of representation has been a general formulation of many philosophers and theologians. The primary form of representation may also be found in the primary relation of matter to energy through the natural laws. The impression that energy makes on matter or the deformation of matter’s resistance to energy is a sort of representation of one’s presence on the other, which means that cause represents its relation by its effect. It does not matter whether the pure relation of space-time precedes the pure non-relation of the singularity because there is a non-relational nothing until either of these pure negativities is put into relation with the other. 

It is easy to imagine that what can be counted or measured exists. But this is the mistake made by what Whitehead called “Substance Ontology.” The essential role that the present absence, or “presenting absence” of the background plays to presenting whatever is foregrounded has been adumbrated above. It is the relation of the background to the foreground that is the present absence most essential to whatever there is for a process ontology of the relation. Another example of how what is can be grounded by what is not there, is a black hole. A black hole is only visible by its effects on what is around it. It is a kind of negation that positivizes itself through its negative effects. It is as if the background foregrounds itself by warping the foreground. The effects of the black hole can be observed and measured but always indirectly through how it distorts the foreground. This is how all representation works, which is why modern semiotics describes the signifier as making present through the absence of difference. The Real is the limit of the Symbolic, but it is the impression, or deformation, of this limit on the Symbolic that makes symbiological meaning. The limit on knowledge is the limit of the necessary unification of difference according to the “count as one” procedure of set theory. The limit on being is the nonbeing internal to it, which paradoxically gives being the space-time of becoming to know itself through what isn’t there. 

In this view what there is, is composed of the relation between determinate being and indeterminate mystery, which is the processual relation that produces whatever there from the incontinency of the void.