The Metaphysics of Harmony

As our official philosophy blog, Actuarial Universe will explore issues of ultimate reality.

There are many ways to approach ultimate reality. Many of them may be right. Some converge upon unity as the ultimate "value."

What is striking about the unity perspectives is that science and mathematics now lend support to that idea.

From Plato to Kant, Shakespeare to Locke, the idea that ultimately all is one prevails.

Now, the deepest calculations and consternations of scientists and mathematicians go there.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics gives the entities and interactions which define reality at the subatomic level. The particles and waves are virtual and probabilistic. They exist in a web of connections, called fields, and appear to be entangled.

They may emerge from dimensions beyond those our intellects and senses can perceive. When the clouds of energy within the nucleus "interact" with the electron clouds surrounding it, atoms emerge.

When the electrons of these atoms "interact "with those of other atoms, molecules emerge.

From molecules emerge the objects of chemistry and biology.

As we move up the ladder of complexity, the original elements become part of a framework which doesn't seem to reflect their origins. Only recently have scientists begun to uncover connections among complex objects which have patterns similar to those at the subatomic level.

Words like chaos, fractal, and self-organization begin to emerge from this haze of super-atomic reality.

The fact is that there is now a metaphysical scenario, supported by a partial mathematical structure, which portrays a universe in which everything is connected.

From the Big Bang to eternity, there is an underlying symmetry which connects everything at creation. The symmetry at Creation was perfect. It broke as the world cooled and structures which eventually emerged into us emerged. At the core of everything however is the primordial connection.

There are many ways to slice ultimate reality. One is the way that education has been divided. Philosophy, science, art, politics, history, economics, all part of a tapestry of human understanding.

From a scientific point of view, reality is the things we see and feel and their constituents. Nature, humanity, society, the cosmos, all part of a tapestry which scientists explore.

Reality can also be looked at as the sum of human intellectual activity. Plato's Forms, Kant's Categories, Shakespeare's Complementarities, Smith's Invisible Hand, Rousseau's General Will, Pirsig's Quality, Heisenberg's Uncertainty, Dirac's Sea, Schrodinger's Wave, Mandelbrot's Fractals, Mozart's Harmonies, a mosaic of truth and beauty.

Another perspective on ultimate reality is as the envelope of realms. There is a cosmic realm, a philosophical realm, a complex realm, an economic realm, a chaotic realm, a classical realm, a subatomic realm, a human realm, all creating a vision for our minds and bodies to experience.

Stay tuned.

Lee