Love’s spirit weaves the soul’s warp, weft, and wave,
Creating an eternal, perfect braid,
Wound from strands of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty;
Each different forms, but from the same All made. — PoeticUniverse

This expression reminded me of Douglas Hofstadter's book : Gödel, Escher, Bach -- The Eternal Golden Braid. It weaves a complex argument for Evolutionary Emergence : "that consciousness arises from organisms crossing a complexity threshold. Seasoned with ideas from chaos theory, complex adaptive systems theory, and what came to be called the study of emergence."*1 Emergence theories attempt to explain --- contrary to Atomism/Reductionism --- how sophisticated novel functions, such as Life & Mind, can evolve from simple formal beginnings.

For example, some thinkers interpret the Singularity*2 as merely a compressed particle of matter ; while others view it more like cosmic DNA, the braid of life : containing all the mathematical information necessary for the gradual construction of a physical universe with built-in observers. In my own worldview, that non-dimensional Singularity functions like a computer program by "braiding" bits of abstract information into a plethora of forms. So all real forms are made from the same ideal Information, which I call EnFormAction, of which physical Energy is the best known instance.

The philosophical enigma of the Big Bang theory is : how did the Singularity come to compress a vast universe into a minuscule seed of data?*3 Several possible solutions have been proposed : A. Cosmological Principle, infinite, hence unlimited possible states (multiverse) ; B. Cyclic Cosmology, eternal cycles of physical expansion & contraction of matter as an alternative to instantaneous Inflation from quantum fluctuations ; C. Miracuous act of creation by an eternal deity in need of slavish worshippers ; D. Dramatic execution of an information program (poiesis) encoded in a seed-like Singularity, for unknown reasons, written by Whitehead's anonymous poetic principle of concretion. :smile:


*1. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1ay0xoo/godel_escher_bach_the_eternal_golden_braid/

*2. In the context of the Big Bang theory, a singularity refers to a hypothetical point of infinite density and temperature, where all known physical laws break down, and from which the universe is thought to have originated.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=big+bang+singularity

*3. In particular, the big bang model of the universe begins with a singularity—a point that appeared out of nothing and contained the precursors of everything in the universe in a region so small that it had essentially no size at all.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-began-with-a-bang-not-a-bounce-new-studies-find/

Love’s spirit weaves the soul’s warp, weft, and wave,
Creating an eternal, perfect braid,
Wound from strands of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty;
Each different forms, but from the same All made. — PoeticUniverse

Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are human evaluations of their environment. And not necessarily properties of the world-weaving Poet, except in unactualized potential. However, the transcendent creator of a dynamic evolving emerging world is required by logical necessity to include opposing forces, such as hot & cold or action & reaction. So, the natural world is a process of Causes & Effects, which human poets & philosophers describe --- from the mortal human perspective --- in terms of experienced oppositions such as Good & Evil.

But some religious apologists & moralists, in their cosmologies, begin with the assumption that God per se is the ideal of Truth, Goodness & Beauty, hence fallen man by comparison is False, Evil, & Repugnant. Even Whitehead uses similar poetic terms to describe his poet-god. But, his eternal Principle of Concretion*1 seems to be the Potential for all possibilities, including both good & evil, both positive & negative, both beautiful & ugly. Although homo sapiens may be the most highly evolved creatures on Earth, we are still a work in progress, and fall short of godly perfection.

Therefore, I think of Whitehead's actual world as equivalent to Spinoza's immanent Nature-god : it is Nature in toto, woven from strands of oppositions that sentient beings interpret as Good or Bad for their own survival. Yet, Whitehead's logically inferred deus sive natura was described as "transcendent", in the sense that any creator or programmer stands apart from its creation. Although I doubt that he was aware of the Big Bang theory, which emerged years after the book, his cosmology was defined in terms of Epochs, that could be interpreted as amenable to the current models*2.

This program of world poiesis is still an ongoing process, hence Reality is not fully actualized. And its Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are relative, not absolute. :smile:


PS___ I read Process and Reality about 20 years ago, but didn't fully understand it. So I'm using this thread to deepen my prehension of his worldview in order to improve my own. Your poems are useful for stimulating new ways of thinking about the poetic Process and the prosaic Reality.


*1. What is God according to Whitehead? :
In Whitehead's metaphysics, God functions as a "principle of concretion." Put differently, God is what determines which things move from a state of possibility to a state of actuality.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/zpyo5u/can_someone_explain_whiteheads_conception_of_god/

*2. Whitehead’s Cosmic Epochs and Contemporary Cosmology :
The notions of the big bang and a dynamic, expanding universe are consistent with Whitehead’s notion of what occurs within a cosmic epoch.
https://www.csun.edu/~lmchenry/documents/CosmicEpochs%5B1%5D.pdf

poiesis — Gnomon

Poetic Report:

We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
Ever unveiling our live’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.

We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.

The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.

In this concordance of literature,
We are the Cosmos’ book of adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.

Our poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from the profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
We’re both the existence and the essence.

Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.

Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.

So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.

I think of Whitehead's actual world as equivalent to Spinoza's immanent Nature-god [ ... ]. Yet, Whitehead's logically inferred deus sive natura[panentheism] was described as "transcendent", in the sense that any creator or programmer stands apart from its creation. — Gnomon

:rofl: Again, "immanent" is "equivalent to" not-immanent (i.e. "transcendent"). Good job! :clap: