Emergence: what, how, whence, and wherefore

Harnessing Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, and quantum physics to set the record straight on a fraught subject

The issue (and what the uncertainty principle has to do with it)

Few concepts in metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of mind are as persistently contentious as emergence. A typical formulation of the issue goes like this: how can phenomena which seem qualitatively different from their basic physical constituents — like the intricate self-organization of life, the subjective dimension of consciousness, or the complex dynamics of economies and societies —arise in a universe governed by fundamental physical laws? This formulation involves two claims: first, that the universe is governed by fundamental physical laws, and second, that there are basic physical constituents.

Implicit in the first claim is the assumption that the universe is a legitimate physical system. A legitimate physical system is not something that is “given” to us or discovered by us. It is a theoretical construct designed to isolate a tractable problem. A physical theory deals with a particular class of physical systems, but it too does not deal with what is really “out there.”

Physical systems are often said to be approximations to (or simplified representations of) “actual physical systems,” but this is wrong. There is no actual physical system at the end of a chain of increasingly accurate theoretical constructs. A physical theory can be an approximation only to a more accurate theory. To claim that the universe is governed by fundamental physical laws is to claim not merely that every legitimate physical system is so governed, which is patently wrong, but also that everything is a legitimate physical system, which is preposterous. As Karl Popper put it succinctly in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005, pp. 37‒38):

Theories are nets cast to catch what we call “the world”: to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavour to make the mesh ever finer and finer.

Something remarkable happened as physicists tried to make the mesh finer and finer. It wasn’t the discovery of quantum theory per se or the need to henceforth distinguish between two basic kinds of physical system: classical and quantum. It was the contextuality of quantum mechanics. It was the conceptual requirement for a boundary across which ordinary language cannot reach. At the bottom of it all, it was the discovery of a physical (rather than neurophysiological) limit to the spatiotemporal resolving power of sensory experience, as symbolized by Planck’s constant.

When we speak about a classical physical system, we use classical language which (following Bohr’s usage) is ordinary language enhanced by the terminology of classical physics. When we try to speak of a quantum physical system directly, words fail. Classical language does not apply. Neither its kinematical concepts (like position and orientation) nor its dynamical concepts (like energy and momentum) are available for attribution unless they are measured. Moreover, each potentially attributable property is defined by how it is measured. In a word, the properties of quantum systems are contextual.

Why does a quantum system have a position only if it is measured? Because we can measure the system’s momentum. If this is found to have a definite value, then the uncertainty principle forbids attributing to the system a position. And why does a quantum system have a momentum only if it is measured? Because we can measure the system’s position. If this is found to have a definite value, then the uncertainty principle forbids attributing to the system a momentum.

Classical physics regards space and time as intrinsically partitioned all the way down to infinitesimal regions or intervals. A classical physical system therefore has a definite position as well as a definite momentum at all times. If a physical system cannot have both a definite position and a definite momentum (at the same time), space and time cannot be intrinsically partitioned all the way down. The uncertainty principle forbids it.

Ordinary language uses words which owe their meanings not merely to the logical structure of human thought but also, and in a major way, to the spatiotemporal structure of human sensory experience. It applies to things we can see. A quantum system, however, isn’t something we can see, and the reason we cannot see it is not simply that our neurophysiological makeup precludes it. The uncertainty principle encapsulates a physical limit to the spatiotemporal resolving power of sensory experience, irrespective of technological enhancements (microscopes and such). If we try to use ordinary language to describe what for physical reasons we cannot see as if it were something that in principle we can see, we are bound to make predictions that are demonstrably false. This is why ordinary language cannot cross the boundary between a quantum system and its measurement context.

In light of the above, does it remain possible to take the experiencing subject out of the equation, as it was before quantum physics came along? So long as space and time could be regarded as intrinsically partitioned all the way down, it was indeed possible to deny that they are but projections or reifications of the structure of sensory experience. But if the objectivation of the spatiotemporal structure of sensory experience is limited for physical reasons — if what is really “out there” puts a cap on how far we can objectify said structure — then it stands to reason that what is really “out there” cannot be spatiotemporally structured in and of itself.

What, after all, makes us believe in a reality independent of experiencing subjects? At bottom it is the recognition that there are things we cannot change, or cannot change just anyway we want, because it would contravene the natural order. Our inability to “violate” the laws of nature — along with the fact that they appear to hold equally for everyone — makes us believe in something that exists both “out there” and in its own right. Something does indeed exist “out there,” something that allows us to objectify our constructs or our experiential invariants — to the extent it does — but since it cannot be regarded as spatially structured in and of itself, it is essentially beyond words.

And yet, in spite of all this, it remains academically correct and de rigueur to insist that reality is fundamentally quantum. This comes to saying that quantum-mechanical correlations are all there really is — the correlata be damned, experimental contexts be damned, ordinary language be damned. One’s duty is to show how there appear to be experimental contexts, how there appear to be property-indicating events, how there appear to be probabilities, and even what probabilities are if no one is there to assign them.

In addition to that, one must show how there appear to be basic physical constituents. The modern concept of a particle is a hotchpotch of three disparate aspects. There is the theoretical or axiomatic aspect, which forms the subject matter of relativistic field theories; these theories are exclusively concerned with particle types. There is the referential aspect, which concerns individual particles — the particles that are observed in experimental contexts. And finally, there is the operational aspect, which forms a ramshackle bridge between the other two; its role has been aptly summarized by Wolfgang Ketterle in a popular talk, in which he said that after several years of practice one gets used to “preparing waves and detecting particles.” (See also this post.) Thus, in order to show how there appear to be individual particles, one first has to show how there appear to exist particle-individuating experimental contexts.

Consider this fine example of upside-down reasoning. Assuming that physical space is partitioned all the way down, one can show that a particle cannot be located in any sharply defined region of space. From this, the conclusion has been drawn that particle talk is “strictly fictional” (see this post):

Our experience shows us that objects (particles) occupy finite regions of space. But the reply to this argument is just as simple: These experiences are illusory! Although no object is strictly localized in a bounded region of space, an object can be well-enough localized to give the appearance to us (finite observers) that it is strictly localized.

Authors who arrive at this or similar conclusions never question the assumption that physical space is accurately represented by a transfinite manifold of triplets of real numbers. A particular instance of the streetlight effect, it demonstrates the hypnotic power of mathematics over theoretical physicists. The real reason why no object is strictly localized in such a manifold is that objectifiable space isn’t such a manifold.

An illustration of the streetlight effect

A final comment on the notion of basic physical constituents. When we’re dealing with a quantum system containing particles that lack distinguishing attributes, the particles it contains lack individual identities. If we detect them at two different times, each time in different places, we are tempted to ask, “Which of the initially detected particles is identical with which of the subsequently detected particles?” Since it rests on a false assumption, as quantum statistics tells us in no uncertain terms, this question is meaningless. What we are dealing with is not different things but one and the same thing detected in different places. (One of the two occurrences of “different” is illegitimate.) This being so, it stands to reason that even when particles are distinguishable, they are not different things but the same thing detected in different places and with different properties (see this post). So then, how many basic physical constituents does the universe (or any legitimate physical system) contain? Arguably just one. This obviously is a metaphysical claim, albeit one with a long and distinguished pedigree. We shall return to it in the final section.

An emergence of worlds (one after another), an evolutionary manifestation of the world, or both?

In his book Physics and Philosophy (Harper & Brothers, 1958, p. 91), Werner Heisenberg wrote:

It is in fact quite plausible that for certain primitive animals space and time are different from what Kant calls our “pure intuition” of space and time. The latter may belong to the species “man,” but not to the world as independent of men.

Physicist-philosopher C.F. von Weizsäcker once said that “nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science.” While Heisenberg interprets the first part as a justification of the classical ideal of “complete objectivity,” he interprets the second part as explaining why we cannot help using classical concepts: “There is no use in discussing what could be done if we were other beings than we are” (Ibid. p. 56).

It stands to reason that human consciousness is superior to that of the next primate, and that the latter is superior to that of each rung of the evolutionary ladder down to the paramecium. It further stands to reason that as consciousness evolves, the perceived world evolves, including (and especially) its spatiotemporal aspect. Human consciousness itself has evolved, and is likely to evolve farther, as Jean Gebser has argued at great length (see here and here).

According to Gebser, the world as we perceive or conceive it has emerged, together with our current mental structure of consciousness, from an earlier consciousness structure, which he termed mythical, and it is slated to be superseded by another world, through the emergence of another consciousness structure, which he termed integral. This not only casts the question of emergence in a new light but also casts doubt on the usual claim about the historical priority of the universe — as we conceive it! — over the evolution of mentally conscious beings and their conceptions.

As mentioned in a previous post, the mythical world is essentially a congeries of 2-dimensional images, which the mythical consciousness is incapable of integrating into our 3-dimensional mental world. The mythical self finds itself at the center of a sphere that has the so-called fixed stars affixed to its boundary, the firmament. Lacking our awareness of the “third” dimension of viewer-centered depth, it never occurs to it to inquire into what lies beyond this sphere, nor even into what lies between itself and nature, which surrounds it like a cave. It could not handle perspective in drawing and painting, nor was it able to arrive at the detached, subject-free “view from nowhere,” which is a prerequisite of modern science.

While we tend to believe that the world existed before we came along, it takes but a nanosecond to realize that it can’t have existed, all by its lonely self, more or less just as we experience or conceive it. Things are not as they seem, as Arthur Eddington illustrated with his two tables and Wilfrid Sellars with his two world images — the scientific image, which lacks the “categories pertaining to man as a person,” and the manifest image, which is devoid of the theoretical posits populating the scientific image.¹

What can be said about today’s scientific image? First of all, there is none — there is no image. We no longer have anything resembling a faithful representation of what is really “out there.” When physics was classical throughout, it was possible to think of its deterministic correlations plus their correlata — point masses, bodies, non-contextual properties, and events — as constituting the scientific image. But now we are dealing with two “domains,” one containing the correlations, the other containing their correlata. To my mind, the best way to come to terms with this duplicity is to think of the latter as containing the manifested world and of the former as containing what is instrumental in its manifestation. Instead of being constituent parts of the world, subatomic particles, non-visualizable atoms, and partly visualizable molecules are instrumental in its manifestation, or so I have argued here, in my book, and in several published papers.

Having said that physical space isn’t partitioned all the way down, and therefore isn’t accurately represented by a transfinite manifold of triplets of real numbers, I briefly need to address the fact that, for reasons of mathematical convenience, the formalism of quantum physics nevertheless makes use of such a manifold.

How does quantum physics deal with non-objectifiable distinctions, such as those we make between sharply bounded regions of space? To find out, suppose that an event E can happen in a number of ways, and we want to calculate its probability regardless of which way it happens. (The paradigm example is an electron detected behind a plate with two slits and presumed to have passed through either² slit.)

When dealing with situations in which the distinctions we make between those different ways cannot be objectified — they exist only in our minds or only in the mathematical formalism — we must calculate the probability of E by summing over the amplitudes associated with these different ways. On the other hand, when dealing with situations in which the distinctions we make between those different ways can be objectified, we must calculate the probability of E by summing over their individual probabilities — we must apply the classical law of total probability.

The converse does not hold. If two quantum systems A and B are correlated so that a measurement M(A) on A allows us to infer what the outcome a measurement M(B) on B would be if it were made, we must add the probabilities of the possible outcomes of M(B) even if M(B) is not made. (For an example of this kind of situation see the experiment discussed in this post.) This is what decoherence theorists get wrong. They hold that in any situation in which quantum physics requires us to add probabilities, the distinctions we make between the corresponding alternatives can be objectified; situations in which quantum mechanics requires summing over probabilities warrants the objective distinctness of the corresponding alternatives. (The decoherence argument also fails because it invokes probabilities from the start, whereas to succeed, it would have to account for the emergence of probabilities in a world in which no one is there to assign them.)

Now that we have formed an idea of how quantum physics deals with non-objectifiable distinctions, it is time to ask: what determines whether or when our distinctions can be objectified? The answer in two words: sensory access. Does this mean that someone needs to directly observe the position of the proverbial outcome-indicating pointer P? It does not. If, using a common but misleading terminology, information about the outcome-indicating pointer (and thus about the indicated outcome) gets “dispersed” into the environment, it becomes possible to obtain this information through a second measurement, performed on some part of the environment, without looking at the original pointer P. What is required is that someone, somewhere, acquires this information by taking cognizance of an outcome-indicating event, whether directly or indirectly via the environment.

To come to the point, the manifested world is not manifested in vacuo; it is manifested to us. It does not comprise all that by some theoretical criterion is accessible to human sensory experience. It comprises all that is actually experienced by someone, somewhere, as well as all that can be objectified on this basis — with sufficient confidence, it goes without saying — via the known correlation laws, both the deterministic ones of classical physics and the statistical ones of quantum physics. This includes everything we can reliably infer about the past, before humans came along.

Speaking of the past, it too came into existence with the emergence of the mental consciousness structure, for to the preceding mythical consciousness time wasn’t linear as it is for us; it was cyclical. The past became a thing when historical reflection replaced mythical imagination. This isn’t meant to deny that the past as it has been discovered by various scientific disciplines — the past we can objectify with a reasonable degree of confidence — existed before we came along. What is meant is that the objectifiable past is that aspect of reality which mental consciousness is capable of revealing.

The world grows richer with each emerging consciousness structure. New aspects of reality are revealed but also, increasingly, realized. Through science and technology, mental consciousness has transformed the world in ways that must seem miraculous to a mythically conscious being. When a species of integrally conscious beings emerges, not only is another aspect of reality revealed (to them) but by the superior power of their consciousness this aspect is also be revealed to all mentally conscious beings, gradually if not at once. To the latter this “induced” revelation will be a transformation of the world at least as miraculous as our technological transformation of the world was to a mythical consciousness.

A new aspect of the world was also revealed when the mythical consciousness structure emerged, one that our mental arrogance tends to label as ignorance and superstition. Sri Aurobindo took a more charitable view of the mythical ways of sense-making (and a less charitable view of our rational ways), for instance when in his epic poem Savitri he refers to the emergence of the mythical consciousness:

Darkness grew nurse to wisdom’s occult sun,
Myth suckled knowledge with her lustrous milk;
The infant passed from dim to radiant breasts.
Thus worked the Power upon the growing world;
Its subtle craft withheld the full-orbed blaze,
Cherished the soul’s childhood and on fictions fed
Far richer in their sweet and nectarous sap
Nourishing its immature divinity
Than the staple or dry straw of Reason’s tilth,
Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts,
Plebeian fare on which today we thrive.
[pp. 242‒43]

One characteristic of our present perspectival consciousness structure is that it is exclusive and (especially in its deficient manifestations) dismissive of the wisdom of the structure that preceded it. The coming aperspectival structure, on the contrary, will integrate the respective merits of all previous structures while freeing them of their exclusiveness. This is why Gebser termed it integral.

The “aperspectival world” is a “world” whose structure is not only jointly based in the pre-perspectival, unperspectival, and perspectival worlds, but also mutates out of them in its essential properties and possibilities while integrating these worlds and liberating itself from their exclusive validity. (The Ever-Present Origin, p. 294)

Final words: whence, how, and wherefore

To us mentally conscious beings the world exists “out there.” Not so to an integrally conscious gnostic being. As you may recall, what is chiefly responsible for the apparent mind-independence of the external world is its thoroughgoing lawfulness. While our actions are empowered by nature’s laws, they are also constrained by them. While they form the bedrock upon which our technologies are built, they draw lines we cannot cross.

To a gnostic being, the laws which cause us to perceive the world as external, are freely self-imposed. (They are intended to set the stage for the drama of evolution.) Hence for a gnostic being, there is nothing that would cause it to perceive the world as external. While we appear to be shut into separate “bubbles of consciousness”,³ divorced from each other and looking at our shared world “as if through a glass darkly,” gnostic beings know each other as selves of a consciousness that contains the world.

To textually support this, I now resort to Sri Aurobindo. Gebser himself identified his integral, aperspectival consciousness structure with the consciousness Sri Aurobindo dubbed “supramental.” While their respective contextualizations differ, their respective characterizations of the currently emergent consciousness enrich each other. Here is how Sri Aurobindo describes the state of a Yogin on the way to the supramental realization:

the whole universe is seen by him as happening within himself, not in his small ego or mind, but within this vast and infinite self with which he is now constantly identified. All action in the universe he sees as arising in this being, out of the divine Existence and under the stress of the divine Truth, Knowledge, Will and Power. [EPY 123]

In order that the drama of evolution could take place,

an implacable plunge of supreme Consciousness and Being into an apparent void of insentience, inconscience, non-existence was inevitable; for without that plunge ... the creation of that phenomenon of cosmic Energy which we call Matter would have been impossible….

In the void of that Non-Existence all the powers of being are held involved and latent; in the impenetrable darkness of that Inconscience all the possibilities of consciousness lie ready to be evolved; in that insentience is a drowned Delight of Existence which emerging in the contradictory figures of pleasure and pain can struggle upwards towards cosmic expression of its own truth of the Bliss that supports all things. [EDH 224]

Emergence, then, does not begin with matter or the physical universe. It begins with this Non-Existence, this impenetrable darkness of inconscience and insentience. It begins with the culmination of the process of involution, which “has been” effected by a mutual exclusive concentration of the consciousness aspect of Sachchidananda. (The quotes are intended to remind us that the temporal priority implied is contingent on our temporally and spatially localized perspective.)

All creation begins with relations.

It is by entering into relations with itself that Sachchidananda becomes a supraphysical universe containing a multitude of supramentally conscious beings. By subsequently turning relations that are internal to its consciousness and constituent of its content into relations that are external — first external to a multitude of mental selves but eventually external to a multitude of fundamental particles — it progressively removes itself from the scene. Differently put, by turning itself inside-out, Sachchidananda sets the stage for the adventure of evolution. And it is by entering into spatial relations with itself that Sachchidananda first emerges from the resulting state of Inconscience and Non-Existence as a material universe containing a multitude of inconscient and non-existent relata.

But how can the fundamental particles of physics — those vaunted “ultimate constituents of matter” — not exist? Inconscient they may be, but non-existent? Let’s recall that the modern concept of a particle is a hotchpotch of three disparate aspects. Only the referential aspect refers to individual particles. This comes to saying that individual particles only exist to the extent they are observed in experimental contexts. The axiomatic aspect is exclusively concerned with particles as types, which are characterized by their dynamical relations: how they interconvert into and interact with each other. (The less said about the makeshift operational aspect, the better.) Bottom line: there is no such thing as a particle in itself. Composite material objects (from nucleons to molecules and on to mice and men) are made of (i.e., manifested by means of) relations that ultimately obtain between nonexistent “constituents.”

When life emerges from matter, when mind emerges from life, and when — eventually — supermind emerges from mind, what essentially emerges (in discrete if overlapping steps) is the unity of Sachchidananda. This progressive realization and dynamization of unity goes hand in hand with an incremental internalization of the relations that hold among the corresponding relata. The emergence of supermind from mind (followed by the integration of mind and life into supermind) completes the process. Not only will the “others,” who are external to the mental self, become internal to the one Self of all, but also

[t]he outer world itself will become inward to the spiritual awareness, a part of itself, intimately embraced in a knowledge and feeling of unity and identity, penetrated by an intuitive regard of the mind, responded to by the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness, taken into an achieved integrality. [LD 753]

In us mentally conscious beings the unity of our material “constituents” is partially realized. This applies specifically to the relations that hold among the cellular and higher-level components of the human brain, which are partially internalized. To the extent they are, they are internal to our mental consciousness and constituents of its content; they account for our experience of an external world and the rest of our inner lives. (“Inner” here includes our conscious thoughts, emotions, and sensations but not our vastly more extensive subliminal minds.)

1. W. Sellars, Philosophy and the scientific image of man, in R. Colodny (Ed.), Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, pp. 35–78 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962).

2. The ambiguity is intentional.

3. H.F.J. Müller, People, tools, and agency: who is the kybernetes? Constructivist Foundations 1 (1), 35–48 (2005); Brain in mind: the mind–brain relation with the mind at the center, Constructivist Foundations 3 (1), 30–37 (2007).