The Nature of Knowledge 58

Chapter Three

The Nature of Knowledge

Einstein's Relativity Theory was pertinent to the study of motion and fields of force in Physics. His reasoning about space and time, about energy and matter, took him beyond Physics to Metaphysics and to seek after a comprehensive understanding and expression of the unity embracing the laws of physical movement and all field-interactions in the Cosmos. Special and General Relativity in the physical world are projections of the Self-Other Existential Relativity underlying all psychical activity.

Epistemology’s concern is with the study of knowledge as knowledge, with the act of knowing in itself, in its self. All knowledge involves self-reference relations which can be self-self reflexively or self-other transitively. I can reflect on what is happening inside my own self-consciousness. I can be consciously aware of my own breathing. My knowing self becomes both the subject and object of a self-self knowledge relation. Through my senses I can also become aware of persons and things outside my self. My subject self now is involved with an object distinct from and other to myself in a transitive self-other knowledge relation.

Many scientists, in an introspective mood, are curious about the act and art of Science itself. Any knowledge, without knowing its How? and Why?, its Whither? and Whence? lacks ultimate meaning. The childlike enquiring mind of a natural philosopher can neither wander nor wonder in a philosophical void. No Unified Field Theory, no Theory of Everything, be it sacred or profane, religious or secular, can be complete without a rational and comprehensive solution to the age-old questions concerning the nature of that which has neither beginning nor end, yet in whose continuum there is infinite provision for both retrogressive change and progressive evolution-ary growth. In this quest of Science, a modern restructured and consistent Set Theory of Unity and Infinity can provide a simple, non-technical and yet most meaningful revelation of this basic human intuition of eternity’s beginningless past and endless future in the field unity of the Cosmos.

Some scientists conceive the Whole of Nature as a living pregnant Mother, self-organizing, self-evolving and self-determining. Increasing numbers of holistic minds are attracted to the Gaian Hypothesis of Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, with its concern and emphasis on global self-functioning-feedback-systems.

Many cosmologists like to contemplate the Universe as self-energizing and self-containing. They are all intuitively perceiving some of the most profound aspects of unity and infinity. Few, if any, undertake any linguistic analysis of what is implied in these self-reference terms. Though most academics do not try to investigate metaphysical matters, and consider them-selves neither competent nor qualified to divine the inner mystery of the Self of the Cosmos, there is now being heard the new voices of an increasing number of scientists who view growth systems as a whole, as patterned and structured interconnected networks.

The immanent reference term of reflexive knowledge is the conscious I-self who can also become transitively aware of both the notme-self and the otherself. From this arises the whole range of phenomena, observed and classified from the duality of distinction and union. The new simple consistent Set Theory of Self-Other Existential Relativity is based on the analysis of self-other distinction and union as revealed experientially in the reflexive and-or transi-tive relations of all conscious human knowledge and activity.

In the human self, all knowledge results from such self's conscious willed melded unity of both reflexive self-being and transitive other-self becoming. To know is to become. The soleself’s being as the knower becomes an intentional or psychical unity with its now-known other.

In Evolution, matter grows to know

self-otherness in love-life's force-field flow.

Its latent maiden motherhood grows rich

by other's fertilizing presence which,

in physical and psychical womb-plan,

reveals the true becomingness of man.

In abstract terms, a Set is a well-defined Unity of distinct Units in intentional Union. A set of two units is called a two-in-one or a biunity: a set of three units is called a three-in-one, a triunity or trinity: a set of many units is called a many-in-one or polyunity. The identity sign ≡ can be used to identify a set.

Sets only exist in the mind of a self who identifies its one self with some other or all others in the one act of knowing. While all language takes place in the continuum of a self's consciousness, it is relativistic and quantized, being made up of discrete particles, namely word-signs. A set, as a oneness of distinct ones in a one-continuum, epitomizes the wave-particle duality.

A relation is a set of ordered pairs. Knowledge is a self-self and-or self-other existential relation. The unity of knowledge in self-other existential relativity may be expressed as {Reflexive self-being, Transitive other-self-becoming}. Every set or unity, every conscious percept, every concept either contains its own self reflexively, or is contained by a self transi-tively as its otherself.

The concept of The Set of All Sets had been dealt a deathblow at the hands of Russell's Barber. The seeming contradictions or teasing paradoxes which resulted from its acceptance into a formal system of mathematical logic rendered the latter's conclusions inconsistent. The best mathenatical minds declared any solution to be impossible. Its use had been abandoned but its ghost still lurked in the Halls of Academia. Of this, much more is said in the author’s book Achieving the Impossible. Using the simplest language analysis, this writer's revision of the troubled foundations of mathematical logic disposes of the vexatious paradoxes in Set Theory with the bonus of initiating fresh outlooks in cultural evolution through the introduction of a unique logic of Self-Other Existential Relativity.

This new and simple Natural Philosophy serves to illumine the path for the contemplation of the extraordinary unity underlying all knowledge. As a reasoned consistent Theory of Everything, it makes understandable the ultimate rational unity of Philos-ophy, Mathematics, Science and Religion. Many gratuitous ideas in the writings of popular apologists of scientific knowledge, are now rendered untenable and much current academic thinking is controverted. The writer also postulates a basic Law of Cosmology. All growth and its subsequent sustainability in any evolved or still evolving system of the Cosmos is simultaneously reflexively self-functioning and trans-itively other-dependent.

Having expounded his basic revolutionary concepts of Special and General Relativity, Albert Einstein then spent most of his subsequent research exploring the topic of an enigmatic and elusive Unified Field, but without real success. There are other approaches to this ultimate goal of understanding the Metaphysics of the Universe. The themes in this Thesis are developed with reference to the Self of the Cosmos as a selfexistent selflife essence having life and existence from itself, from its very own self, a se, and hence called a-se-ity. Aseity’s being and becomingness can be expressed comprehensively in terms of a Unified Field of Self-Other Existential Relativity.

Distinction and union figure in all psychic processes, not the least being that of laughter. Persons count and persons laugh and a fount of humour is blessed ambiguity. We are amused by expressions admitting several possible and quite different comical interpret-tations. It is in the analysis of why we laugh that mirth's two-in-oneness spree becomes a symbol and leading theme opening up and revealing patterns which give added meaning and unity to human activity.

Childlike minds laugh at the absurd situations of circus clowns. It is in the comic association of seeming opposites and contrasting situations when things by nature apparently incompatible, are found together in spite of their rugged differences, that the self enjoys itself become both at once. Such is the actual nature of knowledge. To know is to become.

Through and with and in knowledge, the soleself becomes now more than what it was before. The I-self becomes intentionally identified with its complement, the known other-self. Something of the latter becomes inside the being of the former. The known has a new or added existence in the knower. The sensory display unit of the self's cerebral computer perceives the otherness of the conceived information whose data is stored and processed in the brain's hardware. Such other-self-ness may be either a personal other or it may be just an impersonal thing, with or without life. Self's being wills to meld and grow in becomingness through self-functioning iterative feedback other-dependence.

Human beings are questionable animals. Question-able, because they are able to question. They are conscious of many kinds of relations. Aware of distinction and union, they study and question relationships in order to better understand the way one thing in itself stands with respect to an other. The search for and discovery of more meaningful answers to the most important and basic questions that humans ask is wisdom and the lovers of wisdom, as their name implies, merit being called philosophers.

For Aristotle, perhaps the most famous of the early Greek thinkers Philosophy began with wonder. As long as people continue to wonder they will continue to seek wisdom. Philosophy is rooted in the desire of the conscious mind to understand the world, in the desire to find meaningful patterns in human relations and to find solutions to the problems which continually arise, teasing the mind and demanding its reflection on them. The most universally pondered subjects would seem to be those concerned with the meanings that selves give to the mysteries of love, life and the purpose of their own existence.

The ability to question in wonder is not an attitude that is acquired nor can it be taught. Rather it is a basic manifestation of emerging consciousness. Little children live in a world that is for them still a wonderland, and they ask questions continually, often to the point of being tiresome and even annoying. They ask questions of their elders fully expecting that there are answers. Where do they come from? What is to become of them? How? Why? Far too often it is a pretended prudence that gives them the misleading replies of popular convention and convenience and they are left frustrated in enforced ignorance. The scandal thus done to little ones by placing obstacles in the path of their quest for becomingness deserves punishment by submersion in the sea, necklaced with a millstone. The blind continue to lead those whom they have blindfolded, and the ditches never lack for filling.

Maturity is reached when humans become childlike again in their questioning, but grown-up and experienced enough to know that, though their questions may seem to concern absolute things and values, the complete answers must forever remain in patterned webs of relativities. The human self is consciously knowledge-able. It is not agnostic by nature but only by circumstances. It has an intuition of truth, but more often than not self-interest has resort to a stand-over approach in its regard, rather than trying to under-stand where and how truth is to be found.

The reflexive self is the reflecting subject and reflected object of its own conscious self-activity. Absolute truth is known only in the quiet, still depths of the self's inner consciousness, where its true other self speaks in silence. A self's witness to integration's real and consistent becomingness is true, is truth. Disintegration is unbecoming and self's willed accep-tance of such bears an untrue witness. Consistency demands freedom from all contradiction while any real becomingness implies positive growth. The latter implies change in time and spaced time itself is the great cosmic mystery in which the self is immersed.

Two terms are needed to form a relation, namely, a first or alpha term, the term from which the relation-ship begins, and a second or omega term, the term to which the relationship is directed or ends. The two terms are not the relation but the things related. The relation is really a third term, being the specific oneness or togetherness link (or modification of it) between the distinct terms and is positioned by the unifying activity of the psyche. It is the conscious self that looks for and discovers relations between distinct things through personal identification with both at once.

Another name for two-in-one is biune, and for three-in-one triune; their abstractions follow as biunity, and triunity or trinity. In the next Chapter, we shall introduce four-in-oneness as a quaternity. In a biune relation, two physical ones, i.e., a one and a one become a one psychical two. Two unit atoms of hydrogen join together to become one unit hydrogen molecule. In and through their unity, a new one proceeds. The two related terms remain distinct but unified and a third one emerges. Three ones are now involved, the two ones we started with and the one these two become. Every biune relation is by its very nature also triune. Every biunity is also a triunity or trinity. The trinity of knowledge comprises three terms, the knower, the known and the knowing or melding-act of the knower becoming the known. This is effected in the oneness continuum of Aseity’s Spirit of Self-Other togetherness.

Knowledge is a relation of a special sort. Inasmuch as it is basic to the very nature of psychical existence, it might well be called a self ↔ other existential relation whose simple harmonic functioning may be reflexive or transitive or both. All thought's act and art proceeds in a self-other-functioning feedback system, in the intentional self-and-other unity whose mindset’s identity can be expressed personally as an infinite set {self, otherself}. Cognition is the two-in-one-ness of a conscious being and its becomingness, the biunity of the soleself and its otherself. The conscious surfacing of this psychical conception is expressed verbally in what is termed an idea or concept.