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PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to develop a theory of the evolution of the "universe," and by universe we are referring principally to the one of which man is a part. This requires a foundation in which the laws of physics are integrated with the testimony consistently expressed by empirical evidence not explained by science, such as ESP, as well as by spiritual insights. It establishes a formal system in which consciousness, especially higher consciousness, can exist.
Science as usually interpreted does not provide for consciousness. Accordingly, there has arisen a conflict between science and religious thought, a conflict which is frequently dismissed because, it is said, science is not concerned with final issues. Such an interpretation of science has invaded other areas. This is particularly true of the social and human sciences, such as psychology. Here it is difficult to understand how we can have a valid science of man, if that science does not recognize final causes, since for man final causes are of the greatest significance. They are, in fact, the touchstone of his behavior. They inspire his works, his goals, his responsibilities to his fellows.
We have a situation in which science, modestly disclaiming any knowledge of the ultimate issues and sticking to its requirement of particles operated on by forces, has become the model. This model has in turn become the ideal of the psychologists who, dismissing all subtlety of the psyche as "metaphysical," create their image of man as a biological machine which can have no mind that is not brain, and no psyche that is not explicable as chemical activity, simply because, in their view, the laws of physics do not recognize any other fundamental ingredients on which to draw. This being so, we can no longer forgo an invasion of the inner sanctum of science to see if it is indeed true that the universe contains nothing but billiard balls (particles, drives, response mechanisms, etc.).
Origins of the theory
Having given the reader an idea of what the book is about, I would like to offer a brief description of the steps by which my theory came into being. This will also conveniently involve acknowledging my sources, which include cosmologies embodied in old myths. Despite current neglect, these ancient concepts are in close accord with modem scientific findings.
The beginning was my ambition, while still in college, to construct a theory of the universe. I was intrigued by the Einstein theory of relativity, and my request for a course in relativity was granted. I was also influenced by Bertrand Russell's speculations on logic in his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.(1)
1) Russell, Bertrand. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin, 1919, 1960; New York: Macmillan Co., 1919.
The spirit of the times, emerging from the horse-and-carriage era, was rejoicing in "new thought." The automobile, the telephone, the radio, the motion picture inspired an enthusiasm for encompassing space. Lindbergh's solo flight to Paris expressed an emerging ambition to contain the universe mentally. The theory of relativity claimed to capture totality in the pattern of space and time.
My first attempt, in 1927, to construct a theory of the universe was influenced and motivated by the same confidence in the possibility of explaining the universe in intellectual terms. I called it the theory of structure; it was based on a theme similar to that of relativity, that reality could be formulated and captured in pattern. But almost as soon as I started it, I encountered a difficulty: the enigma of time, an issue I still feel is vital. I considered that the neglect of time was responsible for the Cretan paradox, discussed by Bertrand Russell: someone says that all Cretans are liars; but he himself is a Cretan. If he speaks the truth, then he is lying; if he lies, he is speaking the truth. The problem, I felt, could be resolved only by making logic subordinate to time, and this required expanding my theory to include time. A distinction must be made between an act in process and an act completed - such as a verb for the former, and a noun for the latter - which could include verbs in the past tense. The Cretan could say what he wished about past statements, but he could not do so for the statement he was making, for the very practical reason that it was not yet complete: judgments could not include themselves.
I concluded that structure could not properly portray time. Structure is a system of relationships that exist all at once, in simultaneity. It cannot encompass that which takes time to unfold. I changed my theory to one of time-structure, and then to the theory of process. This was to be more general than the theory of structure: it would include structure as a moving picture includes the individual frame.
Relativity had, of course, included time as a fourth dimension, and though it gave time an imaginary coefficient in the formula for interval, this did not impress me as a sufficient distinction. Relativity still referred to the "structure" of space-time, which I felt overlooked the crux of that which distinguishes time from space: its asymmetry and one-wayness.
I had noticed in art that the insistence on symmetry came at a point
in time when the particular art form was beginning to deteriorate. In the development of Chinese vases, for example, the curves of the earlier forms are asymmetrical and later give place to forms in which the bounding line is the sine curve. The outlines of such vases coincide if one is inverted, indicating symmetry. While this is "pleasing to the eye" as a curve, it becomes vacuous as a statement. The same curve, known as the Hogarth line of beauty, came to the West also at a time when formal art was becoming exhausted.
So, the appeal of symmetry, of questionable validity in art, could be misleading for a theory of the universe and erroneous in the treatment of time because it disregards "time's arrow" (one-wayness). I intended that my theory of process should stress that very quality of time that the theory of relativity ignored.
I later learned that, soon after this, in 1928, Dirac had discovered a mathematical expression that predicted the electron and the as yet undiscovered positron (which, like the heavenly twin in the Egyptian story, remains on the other side of the river of rebirth). Dirac's formula, unlike the quadratic expressions of relativity, was linear. A linear equation employs plus and minus signs and thus preserves the asymmetry that a quadratic expression, which is a sum of squares, factors out (because the square of a minus is a plus). The asymmetry registered by Dirac reveals the hidden positron.
But to return to my story. I found I could carry my theory of process no further. (It had not yet occurred to me that process had certain definite stages, nor that each of these stages had a distinct character.) At that point my life took a new direction; I decided that I must learn to solve problems to which the answers could be tested, and so turned to invention. But what to invent? After some preliminary attempts based on a misunderstanding of aerodynamics, I became more circumspect and in late 1928 went to the patent files in Washington to evaluate some of the possibilities I'd been thinking about. Some of these, like sound on wire (now on tape), I found had already been invented. Others were not promising for other reasons. Choice fell on the helicopter, which at that time had a long history of failures and clearly needed doing.
I started on the helicopter, with which I was involved for nineteen years, the first twelve on my own, the last seven under the auspices of Bell Aircraft.
While I have always been intrigued by science, I do not consider myself a scientist. The scientist has a certain attitude toward nature. He is preoccupied with the discovery of law - and having discovered it, he holds it sacred. The inventor too must discover law, but this is not his goal. He has his mind set on something he wants to achieve, to fly, for example, or to communicate without wires. So he must both learn the law and then apply it, which involves a turnabout, a change of direction. The law is essentially restrictive, it limits the possible; but when it is stated objectively, we may find that it can be turned about and will, through its very certainty, provide the means by which our end can be achieved.
Here again is an example of time's arrow; if B is always preceded by A, we can say A causes B, and not otherwise: cause and effect depend on the direction of time. On the other hand, if we know that A causes B, and we observe B, we can then deduce A; "where there's smoke, there's fire." These two principles - causality and inference - make it possible to make determinism work for us, to make the laws of nature expand our freedom rather than restrain it.
This attitude of learning to use a law instead of being blocked by it may have played a part in my conception of determinism or law as the agency of free will rather than inherently in conflict with it. This is important for the theory of process, since process, as we will later show, must create determinism in order to have means to achieve its goal (see end of Chapter I).
Many problems in the development of the helicopter involved this sequence: finding what happens, the laws or regularities, and rerouting one's course to make the same laws work to help; as when the carpenter planeing a board discovers he is working against the grain and turns the board around.
I also found in the helicopter an example of how evolution works. I found by experience that without purpose, without a goal-directed activity, the helicopter could not possibly have evolved.
Because of its analogous function of building from blueprints, we might liken the assembly line to DNA. Evolution, it is supposed, is due to accidental mutations in the DNA. But the helicopter assembly line brought home to me quite forcibly that there was a built-in predisposition in what formerly had been an airplane assembly line to resist the change to helicopters and revert to airplane manufacture.
This could be counteracted only by constant vigilance. As a crowning touch, when the manufacture was transferred to Texas and new equipment was required, the equipment ordered was that for the manufacture of airplanes. The error was caught in time, but by a person outside the manufacturing organization, one of the helicopter team.
Purpose is the important factor in developing a machine. The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery to talk of man as a mere mechanism - intending by this to imply he is without purpose - shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man. Indeed, there never was a machine that did not have a purpose. And there is perhaps no purpose that does not require a machine, whether a human body or some other kind, to achieve it.
From the fact that examination of the physical parts of a machine, often referred to as the hardware, will not disclose the purpose unless assembled and in operation, it should be easy to infer that one cannot understand man by an examination of his physical organism, his body, alone.
When, in 1948, the Bell helicopter reached production status, I was free to return to my original interests. My release found me intrigued by such phenomena as precognitive dreams and the ability of the African violet to regenerate the whole plant from a piece of a leaf. These, and problems of ESP with which I then became absorbed, called for a more inclusive science than the physics of my college days.
I again took up my theory of process, not only for its emphasis on time, but for the presence implicit in process of a purposiveness that pushes toward the attainment of a goal.
I had also become interested in ancient myths, in particular the myths of cosmogony, which describe how the universe came into existence. In many of these accounts, process is described as occurring in seven stages. This is true of Genesis, in which God makes the universe in six days and rests on the seventh. As the Genesis account itself puts it, these were not days, but generations. So too the Zoroastrian and the Japanese accounts. Not all traditions explicitly state that there are seven stages, but by noting correspondences we can find the implication of seven stages in yet other myths: for example, the Greek myth of Cronus. Most emphatic in its insistence on seven-ness is the ancient Hindu tradition. In any case, I now had a hint, perhaps a directive, that process involves seven stages.
But as a scientist, of course, I could not blindly accept this number merely on the basis of tradition, for, like most modem minds, I suspected that mere superstition had led to its selection, rather than any valid theoretical reason which required seven stages and not some other number.
It was at this time that a friend, Harry Smith, reminded me of the well-known fact that the torus, or doughnut, has a unique topology, such that a map drawn on its surface requires seven colors in order for all bordering countries to be distinguished by differences in color. Now on the ordinary surface, that of a plane or a sphere, such a map requires no more than four colors. Since colors are distinctions, it occurred to me that, just as the sphere may be thought of as analogous to structure, so the torus may be analogous to process. If so, its seven colors would correspond to the seven stages which might be expected in process.*
Now the torus shape, which is also that of a vortex, occurs widely in natural phenomena: it is the shape of a magnetic field, of a tornado, and of eddies in water. And especially interesting is the fact that it is the only manner by which self-sustained motion can exist in a given medium. It is a unique manifestation of air in air (a tornado) or of water in water (an eddy or whirlpool). Of course, we can have waves on the surface of water, but that is at the boundary between two elements. The vortex is consubstantial with its matrix; they are the same material.
*Even more impressive are the mathematical credentials of the torus. Mathematics recognizes topology, the science of surfaces, as dealing with more profound relationships than does geometry. Geometry deals with measure and angles of figures on a surface, but topology deals with different classes of surface, such as the Moebius strip or the torus (see Appendix n). This should be important because the abstractions of mathematics have often proved to apply to real situations; the imaginary numbers are invaluable in equations which deal with waves or oscillation; the curved space of Riemann gave Einstein the basis for relativity. Toroidal space-time could be next.
What first appealed to me about the torus was that I now had, from theoretical considerations of the most fundamental sort (topology or the science of surfaces), a possible sanction for assuming that process has seven stages. Such sanction is stronger than that from any empirical test, because individual instances can never guarantee an invariable rule; there is always the possibility of a white crow.
In this Introduction I will not stop to give further arguments connecting process with the topology of the torus. They are set forth in Appendix II. Here I am simply giving an account of the steps by which my theory developed. Suffice it to stress that I considered I now had reason to take seriously the ancient accounts of creation in seven stages and to accept this number as a working hypothesis.
This takes me to another influence, the Mahatma Letters,. a book put together by Sinnett from letters he claimed were received from one of the Masters who inspired the theosophical tradition. Although well written, it is not an easy book; I read it several times before I appreciated it. But it was quite explicit on the subject of the seven stages of evolution. The author spoke of the known animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, to which he added a kingdom beyond animal and three more preceding the mineral. These, he said, he could not go into because science did not yet know of their existence. Since the Mahatma Letters were written in the early 1880's, at a time when the atom was still a theoretical entity (its size was not known until about 1900, and the possibility of splitting it had not even been thought of), I could surmise that the findings of science since then might provide identification of the three kingdoms preceding minerals. The mineral kingdom, of course, must be molecular, for all materials are composed of molecules. Since atoms combine to form molecules, they must constitute a kingdom immediately prior to molecules, and the protons and electrons which form atoms must constitute another.
Sinnett, Alfred Percy. Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Transcribed and compiled by A. T. Barker. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923.
There remained one further prior kingdom to identify, and for a while I called this subnuclear. It was not until quite some time later that I realized it must be light. Light, itself without mass, can create protons and electrons which have mass. Light has no charge, yet the particles it creates do. Since light is without mass, it is nonphysical, of a different nature than physical particles. In fact, for the photon, a pulse of light, time does not exist: clocks stop at the speed of light. Thus mass and hence energy, as well as time, are born from the photon, from light, which is therefore the first kingdom, the first stage of the process that engenders the universe.
Thus I now had seven kingdoms: light, nuclear particles, atoms, molecules, plants, animals, and a seventh, as yet unnamed, of which man would be one manifestation.
The next major step occurred when I chanced upon an old zoology book, published in 1915. The author divided the animal kingdom into eight grand phyla. (The phylum is the major category of the animal kingdom.) By ignoring the horizontal difference between starfish and mollusks, I could recognize seven, rather than eight, levels of organization in the evolution of animals. This suggested that each kingdom might itself be thought of as a process, and I was able to divide the other kingdoms into seven substages and in some cases to predict categories I had not known existed (as had been done when the periodic table was introduced). The periodic table, in fact, was unequivocal in its support of the theory, for it divided all atoms into seven "periods," which show as the rows of the table itself.
This substage division made available to me information from a number of disciplines. It not only confirmed the theory, but also provided detail and feedback to refine it. What is most important, it suggested the peculiar power of the seventh stage, which I deduced from what was common to the seventh substage of prior stages: namely, dominion, such as DNA possesses over molecular processes in organic life.
These and other points will, of course, be covered elsewhere in the book. The whole theory is briefly outlined in Appendix I. In this Introduction I am describing only how the theory developed. The grid (see Chapter VII), or breakdown showing seven stages each divided into seven substages, was an important step because it gave backbone to the theory and made possible the principle of symmetry which I will later explain.
Perhaps the most important development was the recognition of the first kingdom as light. This took me into an investigation of quantum physics and of the developments growing out of the discovery by Planck in 1900 of the quantum of action. These revolutionized physics and revised the very basis of scientific thought. As I will endeavor to show in what follows, they provide the possibility of an entirely new view of the universe.* The older concept of a universe made up of physical particles interacting according to fixed laws is no longer tenable. It is implicit in present findings that action rather than matter is basic, action being understood as something essentially undefinable and nonobjective, analogous, I would add, to human decision. This is good news, for it is no longer appropriate to think of the universe as a gradually subsiding agitation of billiard balls. The universe, far from being a desert of inert particles, is a theatre of increasingly complex organization, a stage for development in which man has a definite place, and without any upper limit to his evolution.
In this drama man is at a critical point. He is more than the beasts in that he is in a different kingdom, but in this kingdom he is still not very far along. He is, in fact, at its midpoint, at a stage corresponding to that of the clam in the animal kingdom. Like the clam, he is buried in the sand with only a dim consciousness of the worlds beyond. Yet potentially he can evolve far beyond his present state; his destiny is unlimited.
*The theory we are presenting, in fact, accounts for many points that current thought still regards with discomfort and puzzlement: the uncertainty of individual photons, the curious capacity of light to anticipate its future, and the lack of identity of protons and electrons. Most importantly, it anticipates the higher orders of organization exemplified by life.
