Gödel’s Infinite Candy Store

[Eugene I]

What you are saying makes sense, but they way we use methods in the engineering practice is that we not only pay attention to where and how the methods can work well, but also where and how they may not work well and fail us. So, applying this practical approach to reasoning as the validation criterium, we know that reasoning indeed often works well in spiritually informed science. However, there are many cases where it does not. If we take examples of many cults and modern conspiracy theories (like "the society controlled by reptilians or aliens or franc-masons", or Scientology, Mormons or Jehovah witnesses etc ), they are often based on fairly solid logic and reason. If you only accept the basic beliefs/assumptions of these views, the rest of the world picture that they present often makes prefect rational/logical sense. You can often see very smart people among Mormons or Scientologists or conspiracy theorists. So, we can see that reason alone quite often fails us in the spiritually informed science and alone is not sufficient to discern false from true. Something else is needed here.

[AshvinP]

What you are saying makes sense, but they way we use methods in the engineering practice is that we not only pay attention to where and how the methods can work well, but also where and how they may not work well and fail us. So, applying this practical approach to reasoning as the validation criterium, we know that reasoning indeed often works well in spiritually informed science. However, there are many cases where it does not. If we take examples of many cults and modern conspiracy theories (like "the society controlled by reptilians or aliens or franc-masons", or Scientology, Mormons or Jehovah witnesses etc ), they are often based on fairly solid logic and reason. If you only accept the basic beliefs/assumptions of these views, the rest of the world picture that they present often makes prefect rational/logical sense. You can often see very smart people among Mormons or Scientologists or conspiracy theorists. So, we can see that reason alone quite often fails us in the spiritually informed science and alone is not sufficient to discern false from true. Something else is needed here.

There is still confusion here - I am not saying reason alone can figure all these things out. Obviously it must be applied to actual data points in the phenomenal world we are studying. The big difference between engineering and spiritual science is that the former can be satisfied with "good enough" results for whatever application it is working on. It should have no illusions that it is penetrating into essential dynamics of Reality itself. Spiritual science, by definition, is concerned with those essential dynamics which give rise to the phenomenal world of appearances. That is why it must take into account the Reasoning process which bridges appearances with essence. At a certain point, Reason is not enough anymore, and that's where higher cognition comes in. But we don't need to go there to understand why all of this spiritual science can be done objectively-verifiably. I think some illustrations from Goethean Science will help, but I will have to circle back on that later.

Also, there is no need to reference scientology, cults, etc. - that provides absolutely no clarity because I am not even sure what spiritual conclusions some of those people hold or how "logical and reasoned" their conclusions are.

[SanteriSatama]

Searching for answers through mathematics has fundamental limitation. To grasp this we must take a step backwards and appreciate the fact that first of all, doing mathematics is really doing thinking. At the moment we imagine that mathematical thoughts tell us in themselves something about reality, we are making a great presupposition. Implicitly we assume that reality is created by (conforms to) mathematical thoughts and we try to mirror the external mathematical reality process in our local math thoughts.

In the last few centuries this was justified approach but now we must go further. Instead of trying to make an intellectual model of the supposed reality through mathematical thoughts, we should turn our attention to the very intimate process of producing the thoughts in the first place. Why try to abstractly model (and thus avoid) that which we can directly investigate in its true nature, instead of confronting it directly?

Once our spiritual activity becomes the object of experience we begin to view formal mathematical systems as set of rules that tells us what is possible and what is forbidden to think. Consider this:



To put that in a simpler analogy, we can imagine an axiomatic mathematical system as rules for walking. A simple such system could be that we're allowed only to take one step at a time and turn at right angles. In this way we can quickly assess that the only reachable places we can step onto, form a kind of grid with one step size. This would correspond to the white tree above - the provable theorems. To prove a theorem means to find a combination of steps and turns which reaches at a specific spot (the theorem). Spots in between the grid are false theorems because it may (or it may not) be possible to show that we can never step there if we comply to the axiomatic rules. If we do step there we must have violated the rules.

This is a crude analogy, not taking everything into account. Now we must translate to thinking. To think within a formal system is similar to accepting some rules (like stepping and turning) but for our thinking. Yet our thinking is very flexible and we can continuously step out of the rules and encompass 'what we've been stepping through' from a higher level. This allows us to make a map of mathematical statements as the one above.

Today we're at a critical threshold of human development where we're bumping into this limit - where the intellectual thinking turns upon itself. Contemporary science and philosophy (even widespread spirituality) don't at all want to approach this point where thinking encounters itself. It is somewhat understandable - it's much more difficult to investigate something incessantly twisting and morphing. This is the great dilemma of the intellect. If it has to investigate itself in the way it feels comfortable with, it must deaden itself - it must freeze itself into immobile mineral forms which are convenient to look at. But this means that all thinking must cease! The other alternative - where thinking livingly experiences itself in mobility and constant metamorphosis is quite impossible to grasp in static concepts and thus it's considered unworthy for scientific exploration. Yet it is precisely there that we must look. We are indeed capable of beholding the mobile and living nature of thinking but we need concepts of another kind, which are fluid, living. Just as we can't learn to ride a bicycle by just holding on to abstract rules but must turn them into living, flowing experience, so the Imaginative experience of thinking is a skill that must be developed. Through it we begin to uncover higher order spiritual processes that ordinarily lie hidden behind the intellect. It's like the intellect is a result of a standing wave. Normally we are conscious only of the static points (corresponding to intellectual thoughts). The other parts of the 'vibrating medium' don't rise to consciousness. When we begin to glimpse into Imaginative consciousness a whole world of processes and beings becomes apparent - a world of unceasing metamorphosis. There, in the stationary nodes of this world we experience our ordinary ego with its rigid thoughts but now from a higher perspective of our true "I"-being, which we can't really say that we posses but it possesses us.

My whole point is that we should be quite careful when using mathematical conclusions for speculating about the nature of reality. We should never forget that after all we're exercising thinking in this way, and we are voluntarily locking ourselves within certain patterns and shapes of thinking spiritual activity.

Another problem with the Gödel's candy shop is that it implicitly assumes a certain fundamental character of time. It is indeed true that at our stage of evolution it is like we're only seeing a tiny aperture of the Spiritual potential at a given time. Yet it is a preconception that this aperture will always stay of the same size, so to speak, and will be able to probe only that much of the potential at a time. Even the most preliminary glimpses in the Imaginative realm already present us with the 'vertical' aspect of the potential and the fact that the aperture actually grows. This really changes the way we view Time. This aperture grows all the time through the integrative process of memory. In our ordinary consciousness we can only think about the memories but in Imaginative consciousness we can really see that Time-memory is a growth process and the past exists within the metamorphic organism that we have turned into. The more the evolution proceeds, the more the living aperture of our being encompasses the Eternal, which so to say inflows in our being. This is what DH dismisses - that there's a 'vertical' integration of potential. It's assumed that the potential is explored only 'horizontally' in bits as large as the aperture allows. But the forms of higher cognition available to us through the proper training, clearly present us with the vertical aspect. This actually makes the whole evolution much more profound. We not only explore the candies in a given horizontal plane but at certain stages we rise above and encompass as a whole the domains which previously we were forced to explore sequentially. Needless to say, this completely transforms our self-image. We see our ordinary self as being spread out in a labyrinth and how it was gradually cohering towards the point where it can see itself as proceeding from a higher order self. This latter part is the main obstacle in our age. People just don't want to even consider that there could be anything of higher order that lives behind their ordinary thoughts and feelings.

Nice post, Cleric. I very much agree on fluid and dynamic mathematics. Some comments.

I'm quite fond of the Buddhist way of considering thinking a sense among others, part of general sentience (and there's little if any difference between sentience and being). Perhaps, hopefully, thinking could be a sapient aspect of sentience.

I don't agree on axiomatics (in the arbitrary formalist sense) and reducing mathematics to mere rule following based on arbitrary axiomatics. Wittgenstein questioned and wondered mathematics as a part of his inquiry into rule following and language games, but his genious was to wonder and question with beginners mind, and he ended up taking a strong position against formalism, the materialist school of mathematics. Intuitionism, the idealist school of mathematics, does not consider it possible to reduce spiritual being(s) mathematics to linguistic thinking - but on the other hand, construction and application of mathematical languages take part in participatory creation. They can be and are very potent magic, hence ethical responsibility is of utmost importance in mathematics.

Mathematical language consists of formal and natural language. Neither is metalanguage, they are peer aspects of an organic whole, which can be further analyzed into 1) Expressions in formal language 2) Interpretations of expressions of formal language (interpretations in natural language, in terms of various metrics, etc.) and 3) Definitions. The all important difference between definitions and axioms (in the formalist sense) is ethical, definitions strive to be comprehensible and communicable, they are semantical and can't be merely formal.

As said, intuitive, idealist mathematics does not reduce to construction of mathematical languages. Intuitive, pre-linguistic experiencing and contemplation of geometry and mathematics is at least as important, and precursor to all intuitively coherent language construction, which can on it's turn be very helpful for communicating and opening new ways to contemplate, meditate and experience spiritual sentient participation in evolution of mathematics.

[SanteriSatama]

May be Santeri will explain better The idea of the actual infinity is an abstraction, what we know from experience, as well as from computational mathematics, is only endless sequences of phenomena or events. To my knowledge nobody has ever experienced the whole infinity of events. For example, the sequence of the events of iterating addition x(n+1) = x(n) + 1 has no end, it never stops, however, the computational process will never reach the whole infinity of all x(n) numbers. So, every specific number x(n) actually exists because there is an algorithm (path) to reach to it (experience it). However, there is no algorithm/path to reach to the infinite wholeness of all numbers. In mathematical terms, the infinity of all numbers is incomputable, and similarly, the set of all ideal forms is un-experienceable. So, the set of all potential ideations is simply an abstraction, an idea, the actual set of all ideations it is not possible for us to experience, and therefore there is no experiential evidence that it actually exists.

Now, if you assume a hypothesis that the set of all ideation still actually exists, you will run into the Russel self-referencing paradox. The set of all ideations is obviously itself an ideation, so it must contain itself. But that is not possible and leads to contradiction, here is a simple math proof that goes like this (but you need to know the set theory to decode it):
Suppose there were a set U of all sets (for example, an ideation of all ideations). Let A be defined by A={S∈U|S∉S} Since A is a set, it's an element of U , and you can ask if A∈A. Following Russel's argument, you can show that A∈A if and only if A∉A. Since the assumption of the existence of a set U of all sets leads to a contradiction, therefore such a set doesn't exist.

You explained the problem of "actual infinity" quite well. A common term for open ended processes is "potential infinity". Actual infinity is a no go if you want to hold on to LNC, as it is as such an oxymoron. At best you can you can use actual infinity for paraconsistent speculative heuristics, if you take it foundational axiom together with LNC of generally bivalent logic, you make your math self-destruct.

Gödel's incompleteness theorem is a part of more general undecidability of the Halting problem. Many meditation tricks are based on the Halting problem, repetition of verious mantras etc. with various empirical results in what is very complex field of empirical investigation.

Eckhart Tolle offered the following trick, which is analogical to iterating addition. Thinking questioning itself fully focused by iteration of: "I wonder what might be my next thought?" etc. etc.

When I did the trick experiment, it lead to ceasing of internal dialogue for a duration, after which the first thought was: "I wonder what might have been my previous thought?"

Codependent arising of past and present is very fascinating phenomenon, non-linear mereology of Bergson-durations allowing also for pre-incarnations and what not. The Flow of Time with endless forms of ebbs and currents and whirls and pools and recyclings and oceans in puddles is far from limited to unilinear form.

[SanteriSatama]

There is a spiritual reason why I'm not a big fan of the Platonic hypothesis. It makes life and progression meaningless. If everything possible already exists, achieved, known and actualized in the eternal realm of ideas, then what's the point of doing anything, making efforts to know, to develop, to evolve? While if the ideas are only actualized into existence when experienced, then we are the discoverers in the limitless universe of ideas, we are making ideals real, we make actual inventions and progress. For me personally it encourages and motivates my creativity, it gives me a sense of adventure into previously unknown and unexperienced. Note that "limitless" is not the same as "infinite", "limitless" means that we are always pushing the limits and expand and create the world of new ideas into the realms that have not even existed before, while "infinite" means that the whole infinity of ideas is already there and known by consciousness, and we as personalized alters are just going by infinite circles there.

Eugene, I can say many things here but I'm afraid that we'll succumb again into abstract technicalities.

I've talked about this many times but you still seem to hold on to the fundamental nature of linear, sequential Time. Even in purely physical sense General Relativity suggests the events of past and future exist simultaneously.

Holding on to linear time and still maintaining the candy shop view has some consequences. Let's take memory. I suppose you would agree that even though in our incarnate state our memory is limited to our current life (unless we don't do something about it), in the disincarnate state we see our state of being as a link in a chain of metamorphosis.

What is your view on this?
One variant is that our state of being is like a moving window (aperture) along the Cosmic potential of states of being. That means that as we metamorph towards new states of being the older states gradually fade away into oblivion. In this sense we are always in the 'middle' of an infinite movie strip where the aperture encompasses certain amount of frames. As the aperture progresses towards new frames, the oldest frames move out and cease to exist as far as our individual conscious perspective is concerned. The consequence of this view is that there's no way to know if we are not reexperiencing frames that are quite similar to something else that we may have already experienced infinitely long ago.

Another variant is that memory builds up infinitely. But there are many problems with this. For one, we should already have infinite amount of memory, unless existence started in a given instance with blank memory state and continued building up from there.

All these things are quite abstract and certainly are far from my comfort zone. I try to speak concretely about the nature of Time and the Eternal by showing how consciousness transforms when we move along the axis of higher cognition, but since the topic of higher consciousness is right down dismissed, my explanations seem to amount to nothing. That's why I bring the question in a quite abstract manner, to indicate in a way, that if we accept linear time as fundamental, we hit upon quite some paradoxes.

The "Platonic hypothesis" is kind of a misnomer, as in Sophist Plato's discussion of Great Kinds concludes against static view and adopts dynamic ontology of process philosophy.: being is characterized by dynamis. Through Aristotle, who made a kind of a mess of it, Plato's dynamis evolves into contemporary notion of "potential". The "actual" by Aristotle's terminology is energeia, from which concept of energy has evolved.

I don't think the philosophical origin of these concepts justifies Cantor's notion of "actual infinity". Energeia is present and sentient and hence as such true being. It is possible to experience dynamis as "a darkness oozing infinite potential", a place of part-whole relation with mind boggling feel of immense vastness which in retrospect seems like a means of delegating participatory creation in a kind of peer-to-peer manner, and what not. Creation is continuous with no end, and as I said in previous post, forms of Time are endless. This does not justify postulating any kind of genuine immutable "Eternity", as e.g. a soap bubble superposion of multiverses can pop and be replaced by another kind of soap bubble, etc.

[SanteriSatama]

There is an infinite variety of ways to make/interconnect transistors on a chip. Most of them are useless or at best just poorly performing, but still some of them are very useful and well-performing. We learn from collective experience in the engineering community which structures are most useful in different scenarios. In most cases we tend to be very conservative and use the known solutions that we already explored and know all their pros and cons. However, as the technology evolves and the application requirements and areas expand, the previously explored structures do not perform up to the expectations anymore, and we need to further explore the space of possible circuit topologies and find new solutions. In order to do that, we often need to think out-of-the box, forget the structures and solutions that we previously explored and got used to, and search for completely different possible topological solutions and signal processing concepts, in other words, to practically be "possibilians".

What's your view on memristors etc.? The area is way out of my expertize, but early on in my investigation into foundations, I intuitied an idea of "transistor" or something like that, which cound function simultaneously both as an amplifier and a switch.

Intuitionism is more computation friendly with radical creativity, as mental computation is not limited by the material conditions of machine computation, which is limited by math of classical physics. Mind-melt computation (go Spock!), integrated mind-machine solutions, etc... first of all, we should not limit theory of computation to mechanistic machine paradigm (Turing didn't "computer" meant human computer), delegating simple minded automated tasks to machines is useful for some purposes, but that's not the creative edge of computation IMHO....

[AshvinP]

What you are saying makes sense, but they way we use methods in the engineering practice is that we not only pay attention to where and how the methods can work well, but also where and how they may not work well and fail us. So, applying this practical approach to reasoning as the validation criterium, we know that reasoning indeed often works well in spiritually informed science. However, there are many cases where it does not. If we take examples of many cults and modern conspiracy theories (like "the society controlled by reptilians or aliens or franc-masons", or Scientology, Mormons or Jehovah witnesses etc ), they are often based on fairly solid logic and reason. If you only accept the basic beliefs/assumptions of these views, the rest of the world picture that they present often makes prefect rational/logical sense. You can often see very smart people among Mormons or Scientologists or conspiracy theorists. So, we can see that reason alone quite often fails us in the spiritually informed science and alone is not sufficient to discern false from true. Something else is needed here.

There is still confusion here - I am not saying reason alone can figure all these things out. Obviously it must be applied to actual data points in the phenomenal world we are studying. The big difference between engineering and spiritual science is that the former can be satisfied with "good enough" results for whatever application it is working on. It should have no illusions that it is penetrating into essential dynamics of Reality itself. Spiritual science, by definition, is concerned with those essential dynamics which give rise to the phenomenal world of appearances. That is why it must take into account the Reasoning process which bridges appearances with essence. At a certain point, Reason is not enough anymore, and that's where higher cognition comes in. But we don't need to go there to understand why all of this spiritual science can be done objectively-verifiably. I think some illustrations from Goethean Science will help, but I will have to circle back on that later.

Also, there is no need to reference scientology, cults, etc. - that provides absolutely no clarity because I am not even sure what spiritual conclusions some of those people hold or how "logical and reasoned" their conclusions are.

If you take your proposed engineering solution to a colleague, and he does not like it - maybe because it goes against his proposed solution or because he did not come up with it first - will he say, "another colleague came to me with a solution a few years ago, and his solution also made great sense according to logic and reason, but it turned out there was a huge flaw and the solution didn't work, so now I am not going to even consider your proposal"? Ideally, no, because that is closed-minded and may inadvertently discard a great solution to a deep problem. That is how I view the "cult" argument you made. So I hope you consider what is below with an open mind to see why we claim the scientific method applies to spiritual matters as much as any other ones. No one is asking you to accept the conclusions on faith, or even the method, without testing it rigorously against your own experience and Reason, but rather to at least consider the possibility that spiritual matters can be usefully investigated this way. And, I am more than willing to consider the possibility that we are completely wrong if informed arguments are presented to that effect.

In the present series of lectures I have mentioned the name of Goethe. Goethe was, as you know, a member of the community of Freemasons and was acquainted with its rites. But he experienced these rites in a way of which only he was capable. For him, real life flowed out of the rites which, for others, were merely forms preserved by tradition. He was able to make actual connection with that spiritual reality of being, which flowed in the way described from pre-earthly into earthly existence and which, as I said, always rejuvenated him. For Goethe underwent actual rejuvenation more than once in his life. It was from this that there came to him the idea of metamorphosis (Note 1) — one of the most significant thoughts in the whole of modern spiritual life and the importance of which is still not recognised.

What had Goethe actually achieved when he evolved the idea of metamorphosis? He had re-kindled an inwardly living thinking, which is capable of penetrating into the cosmos. Goethe rebelled against the botany of Linnaeus in which the plants are arranged in juxtaposition, each of them placed in a definite category and a system made out of it all. Goethe could not accept this; he did not want these dead concepts. He wanted a living kind of thinking, and he achieved it in the following way. First of all he looked at the plant itself and the thought came to him that down below the plant develops crude, unformed leaves, then, higher up, leaves which have more developed forms but are transformations, metamorphoses of those below; then come the flower-petals with their different colour, then the stamens and the pistil in the middle — all being transformations of the one fundamental form of the leaf itself. Goethe did not say: Here is a leaf of one plant and here a leaf of another, different plant. (Note 2) He did not look at the plant in this way, but said: The fact that one leaf has a particular shape and another leaf a different shape, is a mere externality. Viewed inwardly, the matter is as follows. The leaf itself has an inner power of transformation, and it is just as possible for it to appear outwardly in one shape as in another. In reality there are not two leaves, but one leaf, in two different forms of manifestation. A plant has the green leaf below and the petal above. Intellectualistic pedants say: “The leaf and the petal are two quite different things.” Nothing could be more obvious, as far as the pedants are concerned, for the one form is red and the other green. Now if someone wears a green shirt and a red jacket — here there is a real difference. As regards clothing, at any rate in the modern age, philistinism prevails and is, moreover, in its right place. In that domain one cannot help being a philistine. But Goethe realised that the plant cannot be comprised within such theories. He said to himself: The red petal is the same, fundamentally, as the green leaf; they are not two separate and distinct phenomena. There is only one leaf, manifesting in different formations. The same force works, sometimes down below and sometimes higher up. Down below it works in such a way that the forces are, in the main, being drawn out of the earth. Here the plant is drawing forces from the earth, sucking them upwards, and the leaf, growing under the influence of the earth-forces, becomes green. The plant continues to grow; higher up the sun's rays are stronger than they are below, and the sun has the mastery. Thus the same impulse reaches into the sphere of the sunlight and produces the red petals.

That is one small snippet from a series of lectures, which is simply recounting a conclusion Goethe reached through the scientific method as informed by a more "living thinking" (i.e. spiritual thinking), but the point is to notice how different the thought-process and conclusions can be with this nascent spiritual science. Also, I think most people can sense an intuition that, although they had never heard of this approach or conclusion before, there is a deep underlying logic to it. That is another thing we should notice and take hold of if it occurred, rather than trying to rationalize it away.

[Eugene I]

So I hope you consider what is below with an open mind to see why we claim the scientific method applies to spiritual matters as much as any other ones. No one is asking you to accept the conclusions on faith, or even the method, without testing it rigorously against your own experience and Reason, but rather to at least consider the possibility that spiritual matters can be usefully investigated this way.

As a possibilian I'm always open to any possibility.

But now, regarding Goethe's claims

He was able to make actual connection with that spiritual reality of being, which flowed in the way described from pre-earthly into earthly existence and which, as I said, always rejuvenated him.

- I cannot test it against my experience because I don't have such experience.

Regarding the metamorphosis of the phenomena according to the logoses (primordial ideas), that is a valid view, but I can not confirm that it is how actually the nature works even within the idealistic paradigm. Let me give you an example: waves. Goethe would say that he sees waves everywhere in nature (on the water, as light, as sound etc) because they represent metamorphoses of the primordial idea of the "Wave". However, here is an alternative explanation: Goethe (as we all do) developed high-cognitive-level ideas representing certain commonalities in the patterns of nature (such as waves), and he made himself to believe that he actually perceives the primordial "Wave" logos of these common patterns. But in fact MAL itself had no such ideation as "Wave" whatsoever, it just manifested the reality based on very simple patterns of phenomena (for example, Schrodinger equation). Intrinsically there are no waves in the equation, but when this equation was allowed to "unfold", it produces a rich variety of patterns, many of them behaving like "waves". MAL observed them with awe and was really surprised to see so many beautiful patterns and waves coming out of his simple idea of the Schrodinger equation, MAL had no idea of the waves before it discovered them through his manifestation experiments.

In other words, does spiritual activity "invents" new ideas, or does it "discovers" pre-existing ideas by observing metamorphoses of the forms in nature?

Now, which explanation is actually true? As a possibilian I'm open to both, but I don't know. I have no way to test and prove one vs the other. The reason does not help me here because both seem reasonable.

[AshvinP]

So I hope you consider what is below with an open mind to see why we claim the scientific method applies to spiritual matters as much as any other ones. No one is asking you to accept the conclusions on faith, or even the method, without testing it rigorously against your own experience and Reason, but rather to at least consider the possibility that spiritual matters can be usefully investigated this way.

As a possibilian I'm always open to any possibility.

But now, regarding Goethe's claims

He was able to make actual connection with that spiritual reality of being, which flowed in the way described from pre-earthly into earthly existence and which, as I said, always rejuvenated him.

- I cannot test it against my experience because I don't have such experience.

Yes, I understand that. This is sort of like my back and forth with Jim on the other thread - after he said it does not matter for the scientific method-results whether one pursues it with idealist metaphysical assumptions (or non-materialist ones) vs. materialist ones, I responded with Goethe's example of just that occurring. Then he started saying, "ok but the idealist science is wrong". Switch "idealist science" for "spiritual science", and "idealist science is wrong" with "we cannot confirm whether spiritual science is true or false", and it's the same exact discussion. I am not asking you personally to verify the validity of the spiritual science claims, only whether you can acknowledge that they are, in fact, scientific claims which can be investigated.

Regarding the metamorphosis of the phenomena according to the logoses (primordial ideas), that is a valid view, but I can not confirm that it is how actually the nature works even within the idealistic paradigm. Let me give you an example: waves. Goethe would say that he sees waves everywhere in nature (on the water, as light, as sound etc) because they represent metamorphoses of the primordial idea of the "Wave". However, here is an alternative explanation: Goethe (as we all do) developed high-cognitive-level ideas representing certain commonalities in the patterns of nature (such as waves), and he made himself to believe that he actually perceives the primordial "Wave" logos of these common patterns. But in fact MAL itself had no such ideation as "Wave" whatsoever, it just manifested the reality based on very simple patterns of phenomena (for example, Schrodinger equation). Intrinsically there are no waves in the equation, but when this equation was allowed to "unfold", it produces a rich variety of patterns, many of them behaving like "waves". MAL observed them with awe and was really surprised to see so many beautiful patterns and waves coming out of his simple idea of the Schrodinger equation, MAL had no idea of the waves before it discovered them through his manifestation experiments.

In other words, does spiritual activity "invents" new ideas, or does it "discovers" pre-existing ideas by observing metamorphoses of the forms in nature?

Now, which explanation is actually true? As a possibilian I'm open to both, but I don't know. I have no way to test and prove one vs the other. The reason does not help me here because both seem reasonable.

Your illustration here is not contesting Goethe's archetypal metamorphic view but confirming it. Goethe did not naively believe that a "plant archetype" existed as something that looks like a primordial plant in the spiritual realm. So what you call "manifestation of Schrodinger equation" would be another way of saying "manifestations of the archetypal idea". We should be able to agree that Schrodinger equation (or whatever equation may reflect in abstract symbols how these dynamics occur), under idealism, cannot possibly be pointing to anything other than an archetypal idea. Whether we consider that archetypal idea instinctive, meta-cognitive, discovered, or invented is irrelevant to the scientific fact that an archetypal idea is responsible for the manifold forms we observe. Higher resolution, of course, will only be gained via higher cognition which can penetrate into the realm where the archetypal idea resides. So, your Reason has led to the same conclusion as Goethe's from a different (math) angle.

[Eugene I]

Yes, I understand that. This is sort of like my back and forth with Jim on the other thread - after he said it does not matter for the scientific method-results whether one pursues it with idealist metaphysical assumptions (or non-materialist ones) vs. materialist ones, I responded with Goethe's example of just that occurring. Then he started saying, "ok but the idealist science is wrong". Switch "idealist science" for "spiritual science", and "idealist science is wrong" with "we cannot confirm whether spiritual science is true or false", and it's the same exact discussion. I am not asking you personally to verify the validity of the spiritual science claims, only whether you can acknowledge that they are, in fact, scientific claims which can be investigated.

They are valid claims, but claims of spiritual science, in other words idealistic blend of the metaphysical science, and not strictly natural science. Jim does not want to allow idealistic science to enter the arena of the natural sciences, even though he is ok with the materialistic metaphysical science.

Your illustration here is not contesting Goethe's archetypal metamorphic view but confirming it. Goethe did not naively believe that a "plant archetype" existed as something that looks like a primordial plant in the spiritual realm. So what you call "manifestation of Schrodinger equation" would be another way of saying "manifestations of the archetypal idea". We should be able to agree that Schrodinger equation (or whatever equation may reflect in abstract symbols how these dynamics occur), under idealism, cannot possibly be pointing to anything other than an archetypal idea. Whether we consider that archetypal idea instinctive, meta-cognitive, discovered, or invented is irrelevant to the scientific fact that an archetypal idea is responsible for the manifold forms we observe. Higher resolution, of course, will only be gained via higher cognition which can penetrate into the realm where the archetypal idea resides. So, your Reason has led to the same conclusion as Goethe's from a different (math) angle.

So, let's say the MAL had the idea (archetype) of the Schrodinger equation, but did not have the idea/archetype of Wave. The MAL only developed the archetype of Wave when it experimented with the idea of the Schrodinger equation and was able to observe the wave patterns occurring in the manifestation of it. So, a new archetype was "created" by the MAL at the moment of such discernment that never existed before. And this is also what all conscious being do. But of course once an archetype is discerned, it can be "passed around" and shared between conscious beings, and so become an "objective" (shared) ideal reality. This is how new archetypes come into existence as a result of spiritual/conscious activity in a non-Platonic idealistic paradigm. But alternatively, in a Platonic way, we can propose that the archetype of Wave always existed and was only "discovered" by the MAL during the exploration of the manifestation of the Schrodinger equation, and it is the archetype of Wave that was unfolding along with the unfolding of the Schrodinger equation to exhibit the wave patterns. Again, which paradigm is true - I do not know and have no way to tell, but I'm open to both.