The metaphysiconauts
Man, the ancients were great. Listen to this idea: there are only two kinds of things that exist: the void, which is infinite and nothing, and an infinite amount of indivisible objects, in various shapes and sizes, which cannot be further divided; and these indivisible objects, the atoms, swirl around the void randomly, here and there attaching to each others’ nooks and crannies and protrusions, forming temporary constellations which occasionally organize into whole kosmoi, and in one kosmos they spontaneously organize into thinking beings that one day dare to ask what the nature of kosmos is and develop the the idea that there are only two kinds of things that exist: the void, which is infinite and nothing…
The idea doesn’t seem that outrageous because we’re so intimately familiar with it. It’s been part of our culture for millenia and a variation on it has been scientifically accepted for over a hundred years. But imagine that no one had ever thought of the idea. Isn’t it fantastic? It’s a grand vision; it’s a fantastic fiction the likes of which is invented only a few times each millenium.
The ancient philosophers are simultaneously over- and underappreciated. Their contributions to science are overrated: most of early physics was fabulation. Here is Lucretius (ca. 60 BC) describing Brownian motion:
Observe what happens when sunbeams are admitted into a building and shed light on its shadowy places. You will see a multitude of tiny particles mingling in a multitude of ways… their dancing is an actual indication of underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight… It originates with the atoms which move of themselves. Then those small compound bodies that are least removed from the impetus of the atoms are set in motion by the impact of their invisible blows and in turn cannon against slightly larger bodies. So the movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses, so that those bodies are in motion that we see in sunbeams, moved by blows that remain invisible.
While he must have observed the dust particles moving in the sunbeam, it’s sheer luck that his explanation of it has any validity. No one went out and tested these things. No one could test them, since the technology to test them wasn’t invented, and the theoretical and practical framework required to even figure out what kind of experiment could test these theories hadn’t been developed. This didn’t stop many philosophers from speculating about the nature of reality. What the ancients lack in scientific rigor they make up for in creative ingenuity. They are master fabulists, fictioneers of metaphysics, imagining highly diverse theories of matter, substance, properties, existence, the soul, the mind, the senses, the planets and the stars and their motions and combinations. Once someone had come up with a truly inspired, positively mind-melting possibility, they would gather in their schools and in their fora or hunch over their manuscripts, carefully prodding the idea with the imagination, pointing out flaws, imagining workarounds for the flaws and triumphantly trumpetering the theoretical advantages of one metaphysical fable over another. Expertly fusing together different genres, unconstrained by modern-day divisions of the world into metaphysics, ethics, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, politics, they created such phantasmagoric flights of fancy that a large part of the Western canon is concerned simply with making sense of the fictional worlds these ancient giants imagined and committed to paper. And all this was done with the utmost seriousness: this speculation and myth-making was as highly regarded then as the smashing together of sub-atomic particles in huge particle accelerators is today. These inventions may not be great science, but they are some of the greatest fictions ever created.
Here is one crazy theory that was all the rage for a time but turned out to be wrong:
When some X is produced, X’s matter is what undergoes the change into X and remains constant throughout the process. Aristotle says that bronze is the matter of both a bronze statue and a bronze sphere. Bronze has the potential to be either a bronze statue or a bronze sphere. When a bronze object changes into a bronze statue or a bronze sphere, the bronze remains constant throughout the change. Thus, matter is “potentiality”: M is X’s matter if and only if M has the potential to be X.
Given this definition of matter, we can distinguish between what Aristotle calls “proximate matter” and what he calls “non-proximate matter”. X can both have matter and also be matter. Clay is the matter of bricks, but bricks in turn are the matter of a house. So bricks both have matter (clay) and are matter (for a house). The house’s proximate matter is the bricks, and its non-proximate matter is the clay, because the bricks are closer to being a house than is the clay.
Whereas matter is potentiality, form is actuality. According to Aristotle, if bronze is a bronze sphere’s matter, then roundness is its form. Bronze is potentially a bronze sphere. It becomes actually a bronze sphere when given roundness. Thus, roundness is an “actuality” of the bronze sphere—or, rather, part of the bronze sphere’s actuality: it is the shape that a thing needs in order to actually be a bronze sphere. Forms need not be shapes. According to Aristotle’s theory of perception, the senses perceive an object by receiving its form. The senses receive such things as colors and flavors. Thus, forms include such properties as colors and flavors, not just shapes.
While Democritus’s atomism can be seen as a physical theory (albeit with metaphysical implications), Aristotle mixes what we’d call metaphysics and what we’d call physics. At the time, no one had a clear idea about the boundaries of various disciplines (if they had any ideas about disciplinary boundaries at all). Indeed “metaphysics” comes from “after physics”, because Aristotle’s writings on metaphysics (well, mostly — as we see, he was what we moderns would call “multi-disciplinary” all the time) appeared physically after his writings on physics. But ignoring all that, isn’t this a fantastically inventive idea?
Democritus and Aristotle, among others, were metaphysiconauts. They went on exploratory missions in the landscape of possible metaphysical theories, ventured into unknown areas that no one or only a few had ever visited, and reported back what they had seen. Many of them imagined that they had visited the true reality that underlies everything and that what they reported was the ultimate truth; as it turns out, they were just visiting particular depressions or summits, islands or planets of the landscape, reporting back on possibilities they imagined were actualities, but their contributions are nonetheless hugely valuable. (The landscape of possible metaphysical theories is, I must stress, just another metaphysical fiction that I find poetic and so like to imagine. Make no mistake, though: I consider these metaphictions to be invented, not discovered.)
Into this grand tradition steps “Imagining the tenth dimension” by Rob Bryanton, a video and accompanying website and book that regularly make the rounds on blogs. It explains a rather convoluted metaphysical/physical theory of a ten-dimensional reality. By name-checking the right catchphrases, the video gives the impression of being about cutting-edge physics; at the same time, it can fall back on simply being “a way of visualizing” physics or mathematics.
The problems with it are numerous. On the positive side, it’s entertaining and it could potentially give you that “whoa, insight coming through” feeling that (I have the impression) often accompanies various drugs and, slightly more benign, paradoxes. Unfortunately, it’s all a bunch of crap. It has nothing to do with physics; although it mentions string theory, itself a controversial and unproven theory, it’s really a dressed-up fairy tale that has no relation to either experimental or established physics. It starts off with some material about one and two dimensions that isn’t terribly inaccurate but is presented better elsewhere, then veers off into a fantasy land that doesn’t accurately describe either physics or mathematics.
There are those who defend the theory as simply a way of “explaining”, “interpreting” or “visualizing” either modern physics or the mathematics of higher dimensions. The problem with that is that to the extent that it explains anything at all, what it explains is wrong both mathematically and physically; to the extent that it can be seen as an interpretation, the interpretation doesn’t fit the data; and if you tried to visualize a tesseract (4D cube) or a geometric object of higher dimensions after seeing the video, you’d be as clueless as before. Simple facts of geometry, modern physics or topology are as unintelligible after learning about the theory as before, not to mention more complicated facts. If someone told you about the real mind-blowing stuff that goes on in modern physics or in geometry or topology, you’d probably be worse equipped to understand it after learning the theory than you were before; and if you deigned to produce such “facts” yourself, they would be more deluded than if the average lay person was asked to theorize about 10D geometry or wave-particle duality. The blurb says it “allows one to visualize and grasp the topography of the higher dimensions in a step-by-step manner.” In reality it allows one to become thoroughly confused and to possibly gain a false sense of understanding that, were it to be faced with a situation that required actual understanding of these concepts, would be mercilessly crushed. I don’t present myself as knowing much about 10D geometry or wave-particle duality, but even I know this isn’t it.
Worse than all these — the factual inaccuracies and the dishonest presentation — is the theory’s failure as fiction. It’s not credible even from a fictional point of view, and it isn’t self-consistent. If Rob Bryanton has been to the landscape of possible metaphysical theories at all, he’s a highly unreliable narrator at best. It’s like saying you went to the moon and it was made of cheese, then bragging about the diamonds you brought home from there for your wife. Bryanton is a terrible metaphysiconaut, in addition to being a scientific and mathematical charlatan. That said, he is an excellent entertainer and marketer, as evidenced by the reactions people have to his stuff and the way it keeps coming up over and over again.
No, give me Plato, Aristotle or Democritus any day. Their stuff may be metaphiction, but it has literary value and, to a remarkable extent, is kind of believable and self-consistent if you suspend disbelief.
