An Instance of Hard Fact: Motion or First Things First
Setting aside the intramural dialogues of the epistemologists, and assume, as Bacon, Lucretius and other "primates”, that the universe is a fact, one may further structure that the universe is in motion by virtue of three dimensional-spatial reckoning that postulates “out there.” The subject arrives at three dimensional experience by sensing height, breadth, and depth: he looks down at the ant hill which in itself seems to be in relief, he extends his arm which itself seems to have some kind of extension apart from the sensor to and fro then scratches the back of his ear. Were he two-dimensionally lacquered to canvas or plastered in fresco, I suspect he’d still feel the discomfort of a wet ass, the resistance of an erection, and the gook on the soles of his feet and the tangled mess imbedded in the roots of his hair.
Poets in their weaker romantic moments have yearned for the security of two-dimensional existence—the nostalgia of antiquity porcelainized on an urn, the tranquility of a pastoral scene—until they realize existence would be nil since there can be no existence on the razor edge of a black corridor leading to an elevator that one must sidle into like figures in a shooting gallery. If one steps squarely into the elevator — going nowhere — the entire corridor must be turned around, which is impossible once the two variables of height and breadth have been set. If one decides on a breadth and depth world, which has the same effect as one or no dimension, he will have to spin horizontally in his invisible pancake in search of a new law that will merge him with an upright invisibility. And, of course, there can be no motion in two-dimensional space in either case unless the entire surface moves which again is impossible, other than the illusion of a movie, because it is restricted by its own rule.Existence, then, requires motion and three-dimensions; nor is this illusory, unless the illusion itself is three-dimensional which amounts to the same thing [let epistemology worry about that].
Descartes’ “I think therefore I am,” is not only admitting to consciousness as an entity, but establishes a referent of otherness — he cannot simply be frozen in observation — as a division of labor in the thought process requiring objects whether real or imagined. The subject cannot experience in a total vacuum or experience in itself without stretching out to an objective case or if in reflecting back onto itself the subject becomes objective. Of course, there is the fourth dimension of time but that is but an abstraction tantamount to my abstraction above of two-dimensions, real or imagined. That it is not an actual dimension is proven simply by substituting time for any of the spatial dimensions and still there would be no further dimension; nor can one argue that at least age and decay could emerge if motion were retained; for the simple reason that if you take away breadth or height, the other disappears as well, leaving motion with no place to move as is the case with the basic two dimensions — a misnomer — since the both are co-dependent. One cannot draw a horizontal line without height, however infinitesimal — nor can one think without an alter cognitive experience in the third dimension.
The skeptic may argue that there need not be motion in three dimensions as indeed there is none in two. Were this so, three dimensions would again be reduced to two since a third dimension is not as the true illusion of a stereoscope in which nothing moves but apparently has depth: the subject must have a backside which necessitates a backward leaning or background in which to step, or at the very least an active awareness of otherness behind him, even if it were but a flatulence. Still, suppose the subject with eyes everywhere is at point X and simply possesses a passive awareness of surroundings in all directions; in other words, he is indeed inside the stereoscope as rigidly fixed as the romanticist stuck to the fresco. What then is three-dimensional space—is it not really two dimensions all around? Is it not the same as being frozen in an expertly perspective work of art, a dead body in its coffin?
Is all sculpture in illusory relief or is sculpture formed all around or nearly? But how do we know unless we angle in on it or walk around it, or it turns on its pedestal? However, if subject X were on a turntable this would not assist motion, nor even constitute three-dimensions any more than the surroundings on a turntable and the subject on its axis, since this is equivalent to the illusion of moving the surface of a two-dimensional world—much like an enclosed merry-go-round, not privy to an outside world.
What is essential for three-dimensional existence is the dialectic of subject-interaction-realization. When the subject interacts this necessitates the realization of the gamut of change—he is aware of growth and decay, day and night, hunger and satiation, the drive to hunt, the fear of being hunted, warmth and cold, love and hate. There is an awareness of much commotion; a state of flux in which the subject himself participates, the dynamics of which is soon taken for granted—or rather perfectly natural. Material motion, energy, ideas vibrating within the skull, the myriad of perception—in short, change is an instance of hard fact, an inescapable fact for which the subject must concede there is otherness as it in itself cannot account for all that appears, even though ironically the developed mind creates or at least modifies much of it.
What remains is the interpretation of this fact from the aspect of a workspace. The dialectic impression of motion seems to support three-dimensional necessity for motion: one dimension separable is non-existent; one dimension inseparably linked to the other two by a priori necessity for potentiality of action, in the process of becoming and thus time as well.
If three-dimensional space is indeed essential in interpreting the claim that motion is or is not actual, how is it the ancients fixed the earth and had the universe revolving around it and yet accepted motion as a matter of fact without wondering what it was and yet attributed no motion to their own planet ? Knowing that things move simply is not enough; the description of motion is not difficult; ascertaining its nature is. It is not enough simply to arrive at the nature motion by cause and effect; rather, it is a matter of hard fact of displacement in relationship to the total continuum. Some natural philosophers of antiquity shaped the earth into a disc, even so they had to concede that its bottom rested on something other than itself. After all, the heavens had to sack-out somewhere during the day and the sun during the night. Three dimensions thus incomplete developed from this radial globe to a full diameter as a result of the reticular activating system taking in a sense of otherness though not actually perceived; in a sense, then, another dimension or the completion of the third dimension without whose comprehensive view, motion though conceivable or illusive, is shortchanged. For example, the stars circle round the earth radially, come to rest, flatten, then assemble on a plane for the long haul back to the start of a new evening, much like the ducks in a shooting gallery. With the supplemental global view motion is still inhibited, except for earth’s spin. Even with this newer view why could not the ancients assume that only the earth and the universe’s bubble were globular but the sun and stars were flat? —why couldn't they simply pin up a global back-drop? Perhaps they reasoned that heavenly objects, though equidistant from the earth, they would have to have another side to them. Further, they could not really be flat, but rather, concave and if concave their backsides would be convex even though non-existent in order to fit the face of the heavenly bubble; then if the imagination transported a ball to the periphery of the bubble that too become flat but bent into a third dimension. Three dimensions, then, are forever and ubiquitous—inside and out for the sake of a tangible, active workspace.
But three-dimensional space does not come easily as an instance of hard fact. Since Zeno, the infinitesimal is more difficult for the imagination than the infinite. Still, this is an essential attribute if one is to understand motion as a fact and the key to the third dimension. Motion as with matter must have extension; elasticity is its bread and butter. "The cosmologic principle" must of necessity be applied to the relative center of the atom as it is to the relative center of the galaxies if motion is going to work—nay, admit to an edge and an absolute center and science dies— that is, the atom's center must be in irreducible motion, in face of its stable sub-nuclear structure. Newton notwithstanding, one cannot logically accept the law of gravitation on one end of the spectrum without applying it to the other anymore than one can accept white light entering the prism as not having the potentiality for color, whether inherent in the light or in some miraculous property of the prism itself. The delicate balance of centrifugal and centripetal force is what maintains the walls of working space. Suppose one were to construct a sub-atomic world consisting of indivisible quanta of energy. [Whitehead has stated that since we are in a one-cent energized economy there can be no further sub-division that is, we cannot suddenly shift to mills.] These chunks of energy must have extension and more important interjacent space in order to interact, much as there is interaction along the hierarchy of existence.
This interjacence or three-dimensional inversion is a relative vacuum which these packets inhale in order to exhale their influence on the neighborhood. Planck’s "packets" or Einstein’s "photons" are conceived without the layers of space but require duration, erroneously thought of as eternal moments; in reality they are [instances of space, not instants, not events swallowed up by time, but radial pulses lost in the workspace, though untraceable, their vibrations linger in another place. Actually the misnomer “everything theory” of “strings” is attempting to describe. More precisely it is the hideout for everything that was, is and will be.
Time as stated earlier is but an abstract dimension for necessary measurement and structuring intelligibility, but reality is indestructibility and permanence of space. If space collapsed all would disappear; however, if energy collapsed it would still have dimension and would be but an inhalation through infinitesimal space, never reaching "convergent" point of a funnel [since there is none] and it is precisely because of this that it has no recourse but to exhale, giving the illusion of duration—actually it has but withdrawn further in space, because of the multi-dimensional “leakage” of the universe. Imagine the world structured by an infinite number of funnels whose narrow ends converge on an absolute center; from this it is evident that all energy and matter will leak out into other perspectives, another universe, which by definition is impossible, as there can be no deformation of energy, matter nor space, as energy's eternal rhythm is contained in the safety net of a single, eternal, or more appropriate infinite, space or void when workspace collapses. Conceive of quanta and mesons as funnels unto themselves and witness the dynamic procession of multi-dimensional radiation of energy in, through and out. The "black holes" in outer space is the collapse of matter owing to the over-zealous extension of energy which in the freedom of free workspace knows no bounds; its cosmopolitan nature is the envy of provincial gravity that must brazenly reveal its ultimate craft to all its provinces and eventuate its relentless labor to mirror the return to the natural state of implosion before the big bang and the ultimate destruction of the workspace. In this instance, too, the fourth dimension would go with it; for there would be nothing to abstract, nothing to measure, nothing to evaluate, unless an imaginary someone chooses to hang around to “clock” its timelessness, to "await” the return of three-dimensional reality—but return from what? Time cannot have gone anywhere, it simply is not as we know it because its workspace has collapsed by virtue of the sleeping cosmic hole.
Actuality of motion, according to some, implies nothing in between—aside from the immediate superficies of place. Space outside a particular vessel of place is contemptible because it lends to matter an objectivity to which mind cannot lay claim inasmuch as gray matter is restricted by its own domain of extension for the mind to interact with other perceived innate extensions. The Cartesian leaves nothing behind him; even a six foot spear thrown three feet has reached its point of destination or extension. That is, matter is responsible for its own extension or place without admitting to a substratum of space, however infinitesimal to permit generation. The Aristotelian implies becoming as always something in between. He views what lies ahead with caution and looks whence he came. Other than a convenience of description this something cannot be time. Chemical reactions, light, locomotion are but extensions in the womb of the universe; they feed, they undulate, they nearly span the infinite and the infinitesimal by the sheer temptation space subjects them to: "Here I am!" cries space; "I am your freedom to explore, your progressive education. Subject yourselves to time and you lock yourselves in, you inter yourselves in history.”
The fourth dimension—as the name implies—is but an afterthought, a posterior, to explain durations, as though things came to rest, as though things lost their sovereignty. Do pions live a few millionth of a second, or do they simply change residence from the nuclei to the gamma ray? The implication of the third dimension is atomic—that is, no one can say which came first, the dimensions are interchangeable—they are an inseparable trinity; time cannot replace either one. Time is not required in either interjascence or extension; the ultimate is not when they are but where they are. No fourth dimension, nor the discovery of any other will resolve the super force of the interior of sub-nuclear whereness; for the "mystery" is already explicit: by virtue of the neutron's displacement in space, the fusion of its mass, which is its potential energy [its energy of position] in relation to the extended kinetic energy of the atom's outer parts and the interjacent fissure of the sub-nuclei resulting in work done or actuality. Without space, then, energy is impossible [mind, too, I should add], motion is impossible, matter is impossible and of course the converse is true. Further, the inverse is true: remove matter and there is no energy, remove velocity and there is no energy, there is no matter, there is no space. For there is work to be done—a universe without labor, without workspace is no universe at all. There can be no absolute that is not relative; there can be no actuality that is not potential.
Energy cannot be, in itself by virtue of its dependence on motion, which by virtue of its dependence on space, which by virtue of its dependence on matter, which by virtue of its dependence on movement, which by virtue of its dependence on the work done. Space cannot be without a referent—take away the last package of quanta and space collapses. Does this imply that time triumphs?—there is no other time but labor time.Alfred Whitehead thought that the quantum theory was the answer to the Zeno paradox. That is, the jumps and drops of energy chunks skirted the infinite regress issue by durations of time which could not be infinitely divided anymore than the time intervals of musical notes since [I suspect] built into time was the positive progression of afterness [if there is a before there must be an after] which lends an eternal bias to the present. However, this is but an abstract facade that adds dimension and further intelligibility to reality; this is in fact a three-dimensional concept of time—past, present, future, derived from the concretion of tri-space. The truth is in the spatial reality of a musical note which transpires by virtue of its [place in time, by virtue of its labor time, that is, the work it has done before receding not in time but in space, moving over for the next molecular wave.
In the field of motion Zeno is not a paradox at all but rather lends to the reality of things. The first step the baby takes is very definitely completed—brought to actuality—by the three-dimensional over-lap of potentials. Just as the note in the process of becoming, its kinetic energy, necessitates its successor to move into position of energy as its predecessor has moved into the position of work before it joins the rank and file of the unemployed—more accurately, the boys in the band are returned to a position of potential energy—so too does this unceasing dispersion of energy take place in all fields of multi-dimensional action. The baby moves from point A which in itself is infinitely inversed so that point A = a 1+a 2+a 3, and steps on point B=b 1+b 2+b3; thus the finite step A to B is actual by virtue of the sub-atomic pulses that have dispersed multi-dimensionally by the work performed inherent in the kinetic energy of the child's step. Furthermore, because of this displacement the child has already incurred into the second step by overlapping point B on the way to C. If this funneling of becoming did not leak multi-dimensionally the sub-atomic structure would crowd up at some remote point and arrest the child's foot in flight. The essential principle of becoming would be farcical. Since Zeno was thinking two-dimensionally , not unlike a slide rule, and not three, obviously there would result an impenetrably viscous gang-up.
Wave-mechanics apparently would refute this jam-up; for there is a community of movement in the electromagnetic field that can only be possible in a free, fluid space continuum—in and out—that is the very substratum; nay is the life-giving force [the instance of fact] the unifying force of communal movement, the ocean of energy through which fetuses free stroke and feed in the realization of themselves, as pulsations interaction with a greater scheme to unveil the brazen spectacular of the universe.
Since the Big Bang theory made its explosive debut, theorists reason that as the elements of stuff is driven further apart, space itself expands without explaining that it is workspace that expands, not eternal space or safety net of the void. For in the fraction of the trillionth split second of the Big Bang there had to be the mother of space to insert the infinitesimal gap needed to ignite cleanly. When Einstein conceived of space as curved he meant the perceived space of a laboring universe. He surely did not mean that eternal space was subject to boundaries and time. In this sense, then, other universes indeed have existed, exist and will exist; and what makes them universes is that they are subject to essentially the same physics — cousins of the same lineage of the mother principle inherent in the void pocked with melt down of the cosmic compressed holes.
When time is inserted in fact, it is simply a measurement, not a dimension. The travel of light is phenomenological; light in itself does not journey. A star sheds its light for its own private environment, such as the sun extends itself by degree to its planets. It is the mind that arrives at the velocity of eight minutes for light to reach the earth. The sun from inception engulfed its limited zone with brightness of various degree even before it became a system. That this perceived universe is 14 billion years old is of little consequence when weighed against the unbegun unending substratum of the entire cosmos. What significance it does have is that the character of this universe is subject to birth, growth and decay; it spends itself into bankruptcy. Its imploded waste spills out into the vast void, only to wallow in the net until it can find its signature again and hopefully rebuilds its character.
The void, of course, is not contingent on time or workspace. It cannot be conceived as eternal in the sense of time because it had no beginning and no end, only its inherent production of workspace in which universes are created is subjected to change and duration. It is prohibitive to describe the void as Plotinus’ One, Newton’s Divine Sensorium, or transcendental non-being or total being: the void does not hinge on divine contemplation or intelligent design or even a warehouse of thingism. It is simply a hiatus of work expired and an eternal compulsion for new work. Nor can it be considered a first cause as that would imply a beginning, but rather a blind efficient cause for all that has forever been and will be. It is at once nothing and everything — not nothing or everything — it possesses no privilege of choice, for if it did, implying intelligence or Divine Sensorium, it would choose total nothingness and take an eternal holiday from the madness of laboring universes.
This is not to say that the void — or Plato’s “receptacle”, if you will — is devoid of the potential for intelligence, but only in the explosive workspace into which all elements — including the creative force of consciousness, without which there would be no refinement, no truth — eventuate fruition, however hazardous. Just as there is mystifying but necessary gravitation and magnetic fields, so, too, is the phantom of consciousness that must needs enter stage to climax systemic labor of a universe.
Copyright © 1999 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: October 25, 2003 .
