I stretch the truth when I sometimes talk as if I were the only one who sees being as a spectrum from the abstract to the concrete. Clearly, there is a sense in which Platonic and Neoplatonic Realists see being in two forms, abstract being (what they call the Real) and concrete being (the real thing, so to speak). Furthermore, modern physicists speak in terms which imply that entities exist which can only be described mathematically, some of those entities existing at ‘deep’ levels of our concrete world and some being part of some sort of precursor stuff to this concrete universe. There is some sort of interesting and potentially fertile confusion about whether that precursor stuff can be said to be still here. Unfortunately, the ‘fertility’ can only be realized if important questions about being are asked more directly and more openly in cosmology than is currently the case.
I’ll provide a few simple diagrams of some potential relationships between the different realms of being, but I’ll be simplifying matters greatly. See The Liberal Mind: The Essence of Liberalism for a discussion of my view of the spectrum of being in the context of human politics.
Modern Cosmology
Let me start with a short discussion of the view implied by many modern theoretical physicists, and most of the popular interpreters working this field. In this model, abstract being becomes complex and relatively more concrete, more particular, by symmetry-breaking processes, a view which I find congenial. More importantly, these models have a characteristic which I find disturbing, partly because of my Christian faith. This characteristic of the current cosmological models seems to isolate the universe, separating it from any precursor forms of created being at the moment when expansion of this universe begins. As abstract forms of being, describable in mathematical terms, flow through a bottleneck of sorts — the so-called Big Bang — they form a universe which is then apparently independent of the general realm of abstract being from which the universe came. The universe begins to evolve in time and never, so to speak, looks back at its source in more abstract forms of being.
Here’s a simple diagram of the implied ‘flow’ of being in modern physics:
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| Abstract Being |
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|
| (so-called Big Bang)
|
-----------------------------------
| Concrete Being -- Our Universe | ----> {Evolves in time}
-----------------------------------
In this view of the concrete being of our universe, of how that concrete being came to exist, of what the universe is, and how the that universe came to exist, we find that something was pushed ‘through’ the small spigot that was the Big Bang and that something expanded to become our universe, the spacetime as well as the matter. Then the spigot was closed.
Does this leave in place a dualism of sorts? That is, are we left with the problem of explaining how we can access abstract knowledge, such as that of transfinite numbers, without conjecturing some realm of thought-stuff? If our universe is an expansion of what cosmologists and particle physicists can plausibly conjecture to have spilled in the universe created by the act of spilling — in a manner of speaking — and if that spilling took place for only the early fractions of a second of that expansion, then where do the ‘immaterial’ aspects of our universe come from? It would seem that this standard way of thought implies that matter was separated even from the mathematically describable and very abstract being from which it came.
The above diagram gives a very good backdrop to the mainstream context in which we have to deal with the most basic issues of being. For now, that context gives some inclined strongly to empirical thought a pervasive if radically incomplete foundation for their metaphysical reasoning. A little reading in the accessible literature on modern cosmology will confirm that even those who showed great creativity in their scientific work will simply assume the metaphysical backdrop, which is what it is, that is, a largely unexamined understanding of reality which is read naively out of a literalistic application of the field equation of general relativity, or some similar equation. Most modern physicists would know that mathematics can only describe possibilities and not tell us that an object exists, abstract or concrete, but they assume that what is describable by the basic equations of modern physics is what ‘truly’ exists and other aspects of concrete entities, such as mental activity, have to be simply ignored while we’re slipping it in through the backdoor.
Some empirical thinkers who deal with cosmological issues are reductive materialists and some struggle to maintain a belief in metaphysical entities and qualitative aspects. There are even some who struggle to hold on to religious beliefs or at least vague spiritual beliefs. The non-reductionists, who seem to be greatly in the majority, try to admit other forms of being than what squeezed through the spigot of the Big Bang. but they show no willingness to deal with it directly, that is, by speaking of created being, rather than speaking of physical stuff and then all this other important non-stuff.
Other thinkers, and maybe some trying to escape their human inclination to think, will simply glide over the model of our world as described by modern science and will see the world as awash with whatever entities are needed to readily and comfortably deal with evil or with unlikely recoveries from cancer or with their own feelings that they aren’t ‘just’ flesh and bone.
We can do better in understanding the nature of created being, most abstract to most concrete, without rejecting the understanding of the physical aspects of concrete being which has been given us by modern physics. To do better, we’ll have to muster up the courage to talk in a rational and coherent way of the unity of being so that we don’t have to sing fairy-tales or speak gibberish to describe, for example, man and human societies as they really are.
Before I re-present my proposed better way to understand created being, I’ll provide a diagram and a short discussion of a very simple, maybe simplistic, form of Platonic Realism.
Platonic Realism or Idealism
I’m presenting this diagram only as background of sorts:
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| Platonic Realm of Real Being (Ideal Entities) |
| |
| ----------------- |
| | Man | |
| ----------------- |
| | | | (etc.) |
-------------------------------------------------------------
| | |
| | |
-------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| ------- | | |
| | Joe | | | |
| ------- | | Mortal Realm |
| ------- | |
| | Tom | | |
| ------- | |
| ------- |
| | Bob | |
| ------- |
| |
-------------------------------------------------------------
In Plato’s metaphysics, there are apparently a set number of types of entities each having an archetype in the world of the Ideals or the Reals. From the archetype Man, come specific men, such as Joe and Tom and Bob. One claim made by some scholars is that Plato’s Ideals were the only immortals. For example, any reference to an immortal soul was a reference to the soul of Man. Joe and Tom and Bob were mortal creatures and could have part in immortality only through the species archetype of Man. There are no individual immortal souls in Platonic metaphysics, despite ongoing rumors to the contrary.
Loyd Fueston’s Worldview: Concrete Entities Are Formed by Multiple Streams from Abstract Being
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| Primordial Universe: Truths Manifested by God |
| |
| ----------------------- ---------------------------- |
| | Some Abstract Stuff | | Different Abstract Stuff | |
| ----------------------- ---------------------------- |
| | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
| |
------------------
| Joe |
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The main point of this is that there is an ongoing flow of being from abstract realms into this universe, this realm of concrete being. Each thing, no matter how mundane or seemingly simple, is the concrete level of a complex of different forms of being going deep into realms of abstract being.
At the same time, currently available empirical evidence and theoretical arguments tell us there was a special flow of certain fundamental forms related to the beginning of the current expansionary phase of this universe. Did this universe exist as such before it began to expand? If the physical stuff which we know as the matter, energy, and fields of this universe did exist before the so-called Big Bang, was it already embedded in relationships with the forms of abstract being which lead to what might be called the ‘immaterial’ aspects of this world?
The questions are badly phrased for now, but I think that it’s clear what sorts of questions we should be asking to properly enrich the understanding of created being, the entire spectrum from abstract forms of being to the concretized being shaped from abstract forms.
Loyd Fueston’s Worldview From One Step Back: A More Plausibly Complex Model
I’ll republish the diagram published in The Liberal Mind: The Essence of Liberalism to demonstrate other aspects of my understanding of created being. This diagram was written to help me present my claims that our understanding of our own moral natures can be enriched by borrowing, in a special way, from general relativity. Specifically, I had noticed that we speak of our moral paths through life in Euclidean terms but those terms seem inadequate for human beings who live in societies grown tremendously complex and rich. I hope this makes my claim clearer and more plausible:
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| Primordial Universe |
| (truths manifested by God) |
------------------------------
| |
| |
-------------------- -----------------------
| (X) Abstractions | | Other Abstractions |
| Leading to | | |
| Complex Paths | | |
-------------------- -----------------------
| | |
| | |
---------------- ------------------ ------------------
| (Y1) More | | (Z1) More | | Various |
| Concrete | | Concrete | | Concrete |
| Abstractions | | Abstractions | | Abstractions, |
| of General | | of Moral | | Feeding into |
| Relativity | | Understanding | | Human Nature |
---------------- ------------------ ------------------
| | | |
| | -------------- |
| | | |
------------- -------------- ------------
| (Y2) Our | | (Z2) Human | | Various |
| Universe | | Nature | | Things |
------------- -------------- ------------
I’ll leave matters here for now.