Arthur M. Young - The Reflexive Universe: Evolution of Consciousness

Evolution of Consciousness

Arthur

Ar

M. Young

Introduction by huston Smith

The reflexive universe

This edition of The

Reflexive Universe is

Volume I in the Anodos

Series of the collected

works of Arthur M. Young

published by Anodos

Foundation. Except for

editorial and typographical

corrections, updating of

front and back materials, and

an introduction by Huston

Smith, this eighth reprint is

a facsimile of the original

volume published by

Delacorte Press in 1976.

also by Arthur M. Young

The Geometry of Meaning

The Bell Notes

Which Way Out?

Foundations of Science

Science and Astrology

Mathematics, Physics, and

Reality

Nested Time

Arthur M. Young

The reflexive

universe

Evolution of consciousness

Anodos

Anodos Publications

Front cover: photograph of the Orion Nebula, M14. Courtesy of Corbis Images, 1999

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use the following copyrighted material.

Excerpt from pp. 175-176 of Clairvoyance and Materialization by Gustav Geley: translated by Stanley Barth (1927). Used by permission of Ernest Benn Limited.

Chart of the plant kingdom from Harold C. Bold, The Plant Kingdom: 3rd edition, 1970. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

Illustrations on pp. 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, and 121 from C. A. Villee: Biology, 6th edition: Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Company, 1972. Reproduced by permission of the author and publisher.

Illustration on p. 113 of sunflower with counterclockwise and clockwise spirals: Adapted from Mathematical Games by Martin Gardner. Copyright 1969 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Copyright 1976 by Arthur M. Young

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Jerry Tillett

Cover design by Rocki deLlamas

Eighth edition

First publication, Kindle edition 2015

Anodos Foundation

Rural Route 1, Box 465

Cambria, CA 93428

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Young, Arthur M. 1905-1995

The reflexive universe.

A Merloyd Lawrence book.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Evolution. 2. SciencePhilosophy.

3. Consciousness. I. Title.

QH371.Y68 575.01 76-2675

ISBN-10: 1-892160-15-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-892160-15-7

The reflexive universe

was orginally published by

Merloyd Lawrence

and also published by Robert Briggs Associates

The publishers wish to thank Sheila La Farge

for extensive editorial assistance

in preparing this book for publication.

Acknowledgments

In the course of rewriting this book a number of times, I have drawn on many friends for ideas, criticism, and suggestionsTed Bastin, Chris Bird, Oscar Brunler, Jean duCharm, Chris Clark, John Coggeshall, Ira Einhorn, George Hall, Charles Hapgood, David Hill, Bartram Kelley, Sheila La Farge, Payson Loomis, Mary Benzenberg Mayer, Alice Morris, Charles Muss, Ken Pelletier, Charles Price, Jeanne Rindge, Ivan Sanderson, Joan Schleicher, Eric Schroeder, Alice Schwarr, Saul Paul Sirag, Harry Smith, Vincent Smith, Nick Spies, Kelvin Van Nuys, Chycherle Waterston, Rick Werner, Chris Young, and most of all my wife, Rutheach has made a distinct contribution.

Contents

Chapter I I

Chapter II I

Chapter III I

Chapter V I

Chapter VI I

Chapter VII I

Chapter VIII I

Chapter IX I

Chapter X I

Chapter XI I

Chapter XII I

Chapter XIII I

Chapter XIV I

Chapter XV I

Chapter XVI I The evolution of the self

Appendix I I

The arc: additional properties of the levels

Importance of the committees

om Eddingtons

Fundamental Theory)

Index

About the Author

Introduction

Huston Smith

Which seems more likelythat the less derives from the more, or that the more derives from the less? Until recently, everybody opted for the first possibility, for how could something come from nothing, or a stream rise higher than its source? A shadow is diminished light, not diminished darkness.

The problem is that science seems to challenge our intuitions on this point, for it shows dead matter coming first, followed by plants, then animals, and finally rational intelligence. This disparity has created a deep fissure in our collective consciousness, for where we came from bears powerfully on our estimates of who we are. Fortunately, a way out of the impasse is beginning to emerge, and to my knowledge no other book points more clearly toward it than the one in hand.

Arthur Young endorses the sequence that science reports and proceeds from there to extend it backwards by documenting the steps that brought the corporeal world into being. Quantum physicists have been doing that too, of course. Everything we know about Nature, the physicist Henry Stapp writes, is in accord with the idea that the fundamental process of Nature lies outside space-time. This makes that process metaphysical by including the physical while also being beyond and before it.

Young then proceeds to argue that this metaphysical process is profoundly reflexive. Initially it is in sole command, but in the course of time it gives rise to creatures with which it shares its control and its consciousness. (Faithful to our sense that the more cannot derive from the less, Young assumes with Alfred North Whitehead that the fundamental process of Nature is conscious.) As the terminus of this grand speculative scheme, Young envisions creatures that eventually evolve

out of the constricting matrices of space, time, and coercive causation to identify with the untrammeled freedom and awareness with which the story begins.

One of the instructive features of the book for me is Youngs account of the steps by which the matrices of space-time proceed from Natures fundamental processsteps that begin with photons (that are not imprisoned in space and time) which give rise to nuclear particles (subject to time but not space), and then atoms (which are subject to the constraint of space but not of time, insofar as the timing with which atoms release particles is unpredictable in both theory and practice), and finally molecules which are bound in space and time. More important, however, is an accompanying contribution. By arguing that the corporeal world comes into existence through a succession of increasing strictures on freedom, the authorno mean scientist in his own right, having invented the Bell helicopterresolves the conflict between science and our basic intuitions. For until they found themselves challenged by modern sciences early, crude reports, peoples everywhere expanded those intuitions into some version of the Great Chain of Being in which the finite world moves into place through the Infinites progressively veiling its infinity to allow finite things to exist. (Ex = out;

stasis = stand; exist = to stand out, by implication from a background that is infinite.)