confluences between
magic, philosophy and science
Nelson Job
This article in portuguese: HERE
"I
can even sleep, but at the same time strong dreams keep me awake."
Franz
Kafka
"Cowan City" Yerka
The
relations between magic, philosophy and science were hidden for a long time by
the Illuminist paradigm. Now we can approach with greater consistency the
intense resonances between those modes of knowledge. Establishing the proximity
between, specifically, Hermeticism, the avatar of Western magic, the Philosophy
of Difference, according to development by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and
Modern Physics, with emphasis on Quantum Mechanics, Chaos Theory and elements
of Cosmology, it is possible to elaborate an ontological theory of dreams and a
new conception for transcendence.
Hermetism, an open
definition
To
define ‘magic’ is an inglorious task, since demonology historian Stuart Clark
(2006) sustains that magic is nothing; it is whatever a certain cultural
scenario determines it to be. A helpful definition for composing the concepts
of this article is made by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss (2003), defining magic
as “the art of change”. In this article, we
will use the most influent example of Western Magic: Hermeticism.
Hermeticism
(Westcott, 2003) is a confluence between the wisdom associated to the cult of
the god Thoth in ancient Egypt
with the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus. It is commonly associated to the
mythic figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Master: of the physical,
mental and spiritual worlds), and is named as the god Thoth himself, as well as
his greatest disciple, without any historical corroboration of his existence,
which indicates that the texts attributed to him were written by different
authors using his name. Hermeticism was organized in the turn of the 19th to
the 20th century in seven principles, which will be used to weave the relations
with philosophy and science in this article.
Hermeticism
influenced the philosophy of Leibniz and Spinoza, as well as great names of
science. Giordano Bruno (Yates, 1964) based his important conceptions of an
animic, infinite, decentralized and dynamic universe on Hermeticism, among
other inspirations. Kepler (Connor, 2005) – who performed with remarkable
acclaim the role of astrologer – was also influenced by the Hermetic knowledge
to compose his Harmony of the World. Isaac Newton was inspired by Alchemy and Hermeticism
to create his general concept of force and gravity (Dobbs, 1984). Newton removed from the
second edition of his Principia the
affirmation of his belief in the transmutation of matter, relegating the quote
to his Optica. From this it is
possible to speculate that Poincaré and Einstein may have, with the equivalence
of energy and matter, recovered the occult Newton.
The
influence of Newton’s
physics was independent of his Hermetic influences, but science never lost the
Hermetic accent, above all in some peculiarities of modern Physics. This
purified Newtonian Physics, the Inquisition, the postulation of a language
ontologically disconnected from the world (establishing a separation between
words and things) and the triumph of Illuminism relegated Hermeticism, between
the 17th and 18th centuries, to ghettos without any
credibility.
The
Philosophy of Difference, between other modes of knowledge, tackles the problem
of dualities such as nature and culture, body and mind, subject and object, etc.
or, at least, puts those dualities in movement. We will use here the conception
of Philosophy of Difference defended by Deleuze (2006) in his book Difference and Repetition: it intends to
“take away the difference from its state of damnation”; no longer subordinating
difference to opposition, analogy, similarity, denial, identity, that is, to
all aspects of mediation and representation, for that is how pure difference is
reached. It is not about inscribing difference in the general concept. Difference
is affirmation. It is not a question of givens, but how the givens are given. The
process-based tonic is extremely relevant, as well as the concept of becoming: the
change that changes, without support, continuously, but in an inconstant way,
eliminating permanence and transcendence. Here, becoming is in principle
equivalent to being, but goes beyond it, that is, ontology itself is in
becoming in the Philosophy of Difference.
In
this article we will use the seven items of Simulacra presented by Deleuze which
are considered by Manuel Delanda (2004), while present in the entire opus of Deleuze,
duly altered and updated in different planes according to the problem in question.
These items belong to a Bergsonian ontology, composed by the actual, the
intensive and the virtual.
The
virtual: the coexistence of times past, present and future, where the future is
ontological, as all time, but it does not involve the production of the new: the
becoming. The actual: the present that passes away, the present moment and the
intensive: the passage from the actual to the virtual and vice-versa, with one
way not corresponding to the other. The actual, the virtual and the intensive
overlap, as there is no pure virtual or actual (Bergson, 1999). The Principles
of Hermeticism also overlap. As the functions of Modern Physics speak about the
same universe, but in different levels, they also overlap, and this
superposition is a goal of science with the name of Theory of Unification.
The entangled differences
The
Seven Principles of Hermeticism will now be related to the seven items of the
Simulacra and the seven functions of Modern Physics. It is worth to note what Heisenberg
(1999) said about the philosophy of Heraclitus: “If we replace the word fire with energy, we may
almost repeat his affirmations word by word, according to our modern point of
view”.
The
Principle of Gender, in Hermeticism, asserts the relationship between the male
and female principles engendering the continuity of the universe. Not “man” and
“woman”, but different and complementary cosmic principles. Deleuze says that
the item of Simulacra called involving center is the accretion of complexity of
living beings, the physic-chemical, organic and cultural unfolding
without involving a teleological evolutionism. Now, the cosmology of Mário
Novello (2010) supposes a bouncing universe, eternal and dynamic, as the cosmos
enunciated by Heraclitus. Here, the relation between these three modes of
knowledge share a dynamic process-related cosmos, continuously self-creating in
all levels.
In
the Principle of Cause and Effect, from all previous causes emerge an effect,
that is, the effect is not generated by a single previous cause, but by the
entire chain of events so far, keeping the idea that cosmic processes are
continuous. Deleuze says that the molar and the molecular are a double
articulation that is simultaneously of the order of quality and extension,
which in Physics corresponds to the non-elementary particles. We can note
visions with differentiated, but implicated levels of organization, taking part
in a grand cosmic process.
The
most popular Principle of Hermeticism is the Principle of Correspondence, which
says: as above, so below, relating macrocosm and microcosm. In the Philosophy
of Difference, there is the concept of monad, systematized by Leibniz, and
developed by Gabriel Tarde. Deleuze (2000) conceptualizes the monad drawing
from these authors, affirming that it is the living and perpetual mirror of the
universe, but with a closed level resonating with the entire universe and other
directly connected to the universe. The philosopher articulates the monads with
the fractals, self-similary figures related Chaos Theory. The so-called wave
collapse also conflates these concepts, in the sense that the monad, example of
the intensive in Bergson, actualizes the virtual, as the wave, in Quantum
Mechanics (QM), collapses into a particle. Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff
(2002), using his model of quantum consciousness created with physician Roger
Penrose, links the version of the wave collapse caused by the supposed quantum
gravity, called Objective Reduction, with an example of monad. As the
monadology creates a new statute of the subject, non-aprioristic, but
relational in becoming, where the sequence of monads is the place of emergence
of the subject, also the sequence of Objective Reductions in the brain creates
the flow of consciousness, differing from the conventional interpretations of
QM where the observer realizes the wave collapse. Finally, the speculative
proposal of quantum gravitation called Causal Dynamic Triangulation (Ambjorn,
Jurkiewicz, and Loll, 2008) establishes a fractal self-similarity in the
quantum level of matter. All these levels show a profound relation between the
micro and macro levels of the cosmos, indicating that each portion of the
cosmos bears the totality, even if in becoming.
The
Principle of Polarity says that everything in the cosmos has its opposite that
is, in truth, the extreme of the same thing; everything has its double, that
are different in degree but of the same nature. The concept of resonance, that Deleuze
unfolds based on Gilbert Simondon, affirms the intrinsic relationship between
two instances, being even capable of being non-local, and those two instances,
even when generating an individuation process, follow their process of
differentiation. An example would be the non-local resonance between Leibniz and
Newton when
they created the differential calculus, but with different formalisms. In QM,
the quantum entanglement is the simultaneity relationship between two
elementary particles in quantum state, with some differences, such as spin
rotation. Here we can verify in these three modes of knowledge a relationship
of simultaneity between different but interlinked processes.
The
principle of Rhythm shows that everything has an ebb and flow in the cosmos,
patterns of behavior. The concept of abstract machine in Deleuze e Guattari
(1995) also indicates a process of trans-spatial and trans-temporal
self-organization between vectors that compose a pattern. Manuel Delanda
(1997), building on a proposal by Prigogine, relates abstract machines with
attractors, where the strange attractor, in Chaos Theory, becomes one of the
simplest example of an abstract machine. The strange attractor is formed by
self-organizing vectors, bifurcating fractally. With those relations, we can
observe that the cosmos possess a process of self-organization, manifested in patterns
identified in many levels.
The
Principle of Vibration affirms that the entire cosmos is vibrational, as in the
Philosophy of Difference: everything vibrates, as exemplified by the concept of
multiplicity understood as a noun, not as an attribute or an adjective. Difference
of difference producing divergence and de-centering. Here the vectors begin to
appear, but the sense and connection are not yet well defined. One of the
Unification Theories, the Superstring Theory (Greene, 2005), also presumes a
vibrational cosmos, of strings vibrating in different ways, generating
different manifestations of elementary particles. There is no need to place our
bets in the entire superstrings theory; it is its vibrational aspect that is
being pointed here. In this item is easy to relate the vibrational aspect in Hermeticism,
in philosophy and Physics: all is vibration.
Finally,
in the Principle of Mentalism the
cosmos is the mind, and matter is understood as a coagulation of this mind. The
plane of immanence, a concept of Deleuze and Guattari (1992), is pure
difference, infinite velocity, the positive zero. The plane coexists with chaos
and cannot be thought about without it. Deleuze and Guattari conceive the time
of philosophy as the coexistence of various planes, without eliminating the
“before” and the “after”. In QM, the quantum void is the function closest to
these concepts, as it is formed by a complex structure of relation between
opposite that cancel each other, but which can be excited to generate some material
form. There are many examples of a similar structure, such as the concept of Tao,
one of the fundaments of Taoism. In this last articulation, we can perceive
that there is an instance in the cosmos that almost does not exist, but exists
minimally, generation the possibility of emerging the cosmos from itself. But,
as we have seen, the way does not come only from this primordial instance, but
in becoming, in arriving at it, in a process of de-coagulation of matter, be it
through meditation, quantum state or from causing changes in the bodies that
may or not be subtle, but which are intensive.
These
relations between Hermeticism, philosophy and physics can take us to
unprecedented places. A peculiar question is dreaming. Psychology, since Freud,
delimited the study of dreams to a representational model, reducing the oniric
processes to a mere exercise of interpretation, inherited from Christianity, which
stigmatized dreaming and hunted down its interpreters. Observing ancient
traditions, such as Shamanism, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, and in
Ancient Greece, with the oneirocritica
of Artemidorus, the dream is generally treated as a state of reality that
includes many levels, and also as a non-temporal process that allows intuitions
about the future (Shulman and Stroumsa, 1999).
The
Philosophy of Difference affirms that the dream is virtual, since during sleep
the sensory-motor is relaxed, allowing a flowing into the virtual, with
dreaming being this non-temporal exercise. The narration of the dream,
actualizing this dreaming, should be less interpreted and more experienced, as
an invitation to new possibilities in life. The dream not as the protector of
sleep, as neuroscience want us to believe, but as a singular modulation of
vigil; in other words, through the oniric philosophy of María Zambrano (2006), we
affirm that the greatest challenge is not interpreting the dream, but
assimilating it.
If,
in the quantum consciousness model of Penrose and Hameroff, there is quantum
entanglement in the brain, we may speculate that there is quantum entanglement
between two or more brains and between brains and other objects. Articulating
this to a cosmological possibility in which the universe may possess different
physical laws in different places (Novello, 1988), we could also speculate that
during dreaming the brain entangles with places where the cosmos has other
laws, sometimes incomprehensible ones, much different from this corner of the
universe. The cosmos, then, is understood as a material that is also oniric, where
the threshold between dream and vigil is so soft as the quantum and classic
thresholds of the universe.
For another transcendence
Another
development of the relations realized here is the radicalization of the concept
of becoming. If given its maximum liberty, the becoming – which, above all
after Spinoza, allows the problematization of dualities, including between
transcendence and immanence – brings a novelty: the postulation of an a
posteriori transcendence. If transcendence is forbidden to the becoming, an
epistemological transcendence is created by this: there is no transcendence in
the becoming. This is a fact if we conceive a priori transcendences: the
Platonic world of the Ideas, the God of Scholastics, the mind having different
nature than the body, in Descartes and the Kantian categorical imperatives. These
concepts, really, have no place in a Philosophy of Difference, but a wild
becoming, without any bounds - including epistemological bounds – can generate
transcendence, a posteriori, of course. But here, this transcendence indeed
transcends all knowledge and experience; it is not known if it exists, but only
that it can possibly be created by the becoming. It is not a new duality, since
then we would know something about it: that this transcendence would be in
opposition to immanence. But such is not the case, since this transcendence,
beyond any way of knowing, is also beyond any category, and to fit it in a
dualism would be to categorize it. It is not the advent of a discontinuous
either, since when we state a continuous immanence we do not know if this
transcendence makes the immanence discontinuous. It is only assumed the
possibility of an a posteriori transcendence, generated by the wildest
becoming, and nothing else can be known or said about it so far, without
creating apriorisms and epistemologies disconnected from ontology.
When
a virtual dream concept with the status of reality is generated, an oniric
ontology is also established. So we can observe another element of such
ontology: being in becoming, it cannot be disconnected from an epistemology,
for there is no definitive way of knowing about it, since here magic, philosophy
and science are understood as immanent modes of knowledge. However, at any
moment can be generated, if it has not been done already, an a posteriori
transcendence, eliminating any apriorism in the cosmos, an oniric ontology in
wild becoming.
So
the dream is the start of all magic, as said by Zambrano (1994). Which goes to show
that magic is present in all modes of knowledge, philosophy, science, but also
the arts. Magic and art are the first versions of the desired assimilation of
dreams, with magic recurring to practices that cross the threshold of the
actual. In those practices is the core of science, and from the apprehension of
these processes, philosophy emerges. We did not speak of a species of “theory
of everything”, but of a springboard to a not-knowing, concepts that promote
the abandon of concepts, event if the evocation of this not-knowing is not
consistent: the intuition of an a posteriori transcendence. There is an
awakening in the dream, which is reality. An oniric ontology is made.
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"Snow Storm" Turner
