Physical and Spiritual: 3

Model III – Language and Mathematics

Language

Before we start with the main thesis, it is worthwhile to briefly discuss language as a model of the spiritual world.The prevailing current ideas on language come from Noam Chomsky, who we certainly don’t like, and whose ideas remain controversial. However, by serendipity or by by larger design, his ideas replace more offensive conceptions that reigned before him - those of language as a purely cultural construct,  that  culture shapes language and language in turn shapes culture. Culture then is as relative as  language - a purely human construct.  Before him, for over a century, this vanguard of cultural relativism was the regnant concept, finding its expression even in R. S.R. Hirsch's commentary on Bareishis 11 (see also Nedarim 10a). This idea is seductive. I found that students, especially students from other cultures, react strongly and viscerally to the thought that language shapes their perceptions. They tend to see in this idea the theory that explains everything. It is not only me, I recently heard a lecture by JohnMcWhorten who reported the same experience. Unfortunately, it also appears to not be correct. Chomsky holds that the underlining structure of language is innate and preprogrammed - so that every language layers over a genetically determined conceptual structure within the brain. From my perspective, this can be seen as another example of spiritual overlaying the physical that is difficult to explain by materialism and evolutionary biology alone, now or in the future. For example, it is known that people who do not acquire language in early childhood have great trouble using any but the most concrete syntax and grammar.So there is a physical structure (the neuronal connections) that the spiritual (language) rides. The brain is the vessel and language is what fills it. If the vessel is not developed it will not contain language.

Numbers

Math is as non-physical as it can get. It is very hard to understand numbers as a purely human construct that we abstract from the material object. Take the number 2, for example. The number “two” does not reside in an any one elephant, goat, piece of music or a mountain. But put two of them together and suddenly, there appears a completely new concept - two. Where did it come from?  What's more, it is the same for all objects, entities, concepts, ideas whatever they are and wherever they can be. It seems to exist in some other dimension, always ready to descend and overlay  the right physical items under right conditions. It is nigh miraculous , that numbers always add up to the same sum, no matter what items they represent.  2 + 3 always equals 5, whether of goats, elephants, mathematical proofs or mountains. What's more, 22+3 is always 25, 32+3 is always 35 and so on.  Furthermore there are consistent relationships between different numbers (4 and 10 for example in that 1+2+3+4 = 10). Numbers are an entire coherent, self-sufficient system with its own rules and inter-relationships that somehow are also relevant to physical objects.  It is its own separate world and thus another model of spiritual world.

A few words about infinities. How can we grasp infinity? In a purely physical world infinity shouldn’t exist. Aristotle ( Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1, Part 3) didn’t believe in infinite regression of causes because it is not within our human experience of the world (although he did accept eternity in time). However, today, even in the popular mind it is well accepted that infinity exists as, for example,  an operational concept or in mathematics or in an ever expanding universe. So again, how can we justify dealing with  spiritual concepts such as infinity in our everyday life, at the same time  as we simultaneously deny it as a spiritual reality. I blame Hume. Hume convinced the world that only sense perception matters but as these models demonstrate spiritual, physically inapproachable entities are clearly within our everyday experience.

It is important to briefly address how infinity can be simultaneously inside the physical world, so we can grasp it, and outside it.  A thought (gedank) experiment can help. Imagine the Infinite Hotel -  there are an infinite number of rooms in this  hotel and each room is occupied. If ten more people come to check in,  the clerk will tell everyone to move over ten rooms so as to make room for these ten new guests. So now the discreet number, ten, is at the same time both finite in itself and a part of the infinite set. This demonstrates that finite and infinite are not so far apart and that the finite can be part of the infinite, while remaining limited in itself, much like a mathematical  line is made up of an infinite amount of finite dots. Such is the mystery of the infinite and the finite in which we all simultaneously live and operate.

Comments

[poetryman69]

Spiritual mathematics. The music of the spheres. The musick of the seers. The majick of the spheres.

Moon magick and blessings.

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