I was studying for the Sellars questionaire (section 3 on Physics). To deepen it, I have also been reading to White (Cambridge Companion to the Stoics) and Sandback (The Stoics). I was reading the sections on tensions (hexis, phusism, psuche) as well as those on the classical elements (fire, water, earth and air). There was some talk of the creative fire, the great conflagration, the 'not-something' status of surfaces and the Stoic theory of interconnectedness and harmony of the cosmos.
As I tried to combine these ideas into a single, unified system in my mind, I was reminded of images I have seen describing the electro-magnetic spectrum, a wide stripe of multiple shades and colours, strecthed out in a linear pattern.
Think of Stoic tonos as tensions (more easily visualized as concentrations) of the 'stuff' of the cosmos, and then plot the increasing tension on a similar stripe, like the bands of frequencies in the EM Spectrum. The very top of the scale would represent the complete attenuation of the cosmos into pure logos or pneuma, as described during the great conflagration. This is the universe at its most basic energy, as super-strings or even the energy that strings are composed of, and occupying the greatest volume (reminiscent of the theories regarding the ever increasingly fast expansion of the universe). The very bottom of the scale, the Stoic passive princple, is the singularity that exists before the moment of creation, the ultimate concentration of all cosmos at the beginning of the big bang, occupying the least possible volume, possibly even to the level of the Dirac constant. Stretched along the continuum between these two points in a widening stream (to reflect the overall increase of volume), from bottom to top, are hexis, phusis, psuche, even logike psuche as regions or overlapping bands along the continum, where the fabric of the universe is concentrated at different tensions. Even within hexis, we can place the four basics states of matter, solid [elemental earth], liquid [elemental water], gas [elemental air], and plasma [elemental fire]. These are not absolutes (as the ancient Greeks believed) but points again along a continuum. The various combinations of concentrations through the cosmos give us the myriads of materials and forces that constitute our cosmos.
Given the Stoic rejection of the corporeality of surfaces, and the subsequent research into subatomic particle, we are litterally merely thicker parts of the cosmos, swiming in a soup of matter. In my minds eye the entire universe looks like pointillist or impressionistic paintings, perhaps as envisioned by Van Gogh, Monet and Degas.
Now I am not trying to say that the Stoics foresaw all of this, but rather that their cosmology, their physics, on which their ethics are based, can be modernized without sacrificing much of the ethics that stand on it. We can still live a rational, ethical life, and live according to nature, using the most up to date science, much like the Stoics did in their day.
2 comments:
I don't do physics, but I completely agree.
My touchpoint is the idea of 'Earth' as a sentient Being coinciding with the biological-ecological theory that the Earth is an entity.
The way I see it is not 'the ancients knew this' but that what is true is true all the time, whenever you bump up against it, no matter what perceptual language you use.
Execellent comment Judith. The Stoics take it further, affirming that the entire Cosmos (all of the universes) is a single, concious, intelligent being. As parts of it, we share in that conciousness, that self awareness. And as you say, the earth itself may be so as well, and as parts of her, we share in her conciousness, while she shares in that of the cosmos.
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