Michael S. Schneider - A Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe: Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science

John Michell

Sooner or later there comes a time in life when you start thinking about Reality and where to find it. Some people tell you there is no such thing, that the world has nothing permanent in it, and, as far as you are concerned, consists merely of your fleeting experiences. Its framework, they say, is the random product of a natural process, meaningless and undirected.

Others believe that the world was made by a divine Creator, who continues to guide its development. This sounds a more interesting idea, but, as skeptics point out, every religion and church that upholds it does so by faith alone. If you are naturally faithful and can accept without question the orthodoxy of your particular religion or system of beliefs, you will feel no need to inquire further and this book will appear superfluous. It was written for those of us who lack or have lost the gift of simple faith, who need evidence for our beliefs. We cannot help being attracted by the religious view, that the world is a harmonious, divinely ordered creation in which, as Plato promised the uninitiated, things are taken care of far better than you could possibly believe. Yet superficially it is a place of confusion and chaos, where suffering is constant and the ungodly flourish.

This is where we begin the quest for Reality. Looking closely at nature, the first insight we obtain is that, behind the apparently endless proliferation of natural objects, there is a far lesser number of apparently fixed types. We see, for example, that through every generation cats are cats and are programmed for catlike behavior. In the same way, every rose has the unique characteristics of a rose and every oak leaf is definitely an oak leaf. No two specimens of these are ever exactly the same, but each one is clearly a product of its formative type. If it were not so, if animals and plants simply inherited their progenitors characteristics, the order of nature would soon dissolve into an infinite variety of creatures, undifferentiated by species and kinships.

This observation, of one type with innumerable products, gives rise to the old philosophical problem of the One and the Many. The problem is that, whereas the Many are visible and tangible and can be examined at leisure, the One is never seen or sensed, and its very existence is only inferred through the evident effect it has upon its products, the Many. Yet, paradoxically, the One is more truly real than the Many. In the visible world of nature all is flux. Everything is either being born or dying or moving between the two processes. Nothing ever achieves the goal of perfection or the state of equilibrium that would allow it to be described in essence. The phenomena of nature, said Plato, are always becoming, never actually are. Our five senses tell us that they are real, but the intellect judges differently, reasoning that the One, which is constant, creative, and ever the same, is more entitled to be called real than its ever-fluctuating products.