When I stated this blog in 2014, my first
couple of posts introduced me, a retired electrical engineer, and the subject
matter I hoped to cover, which is the connection between physics and
consciousness and how it leads to solutions to nature’s greatest puzzles. Since
I’m not trained as a philosopher. It has taken me this long to realize that
some of the metaphysical concepts I covered in my third post are very close to Plato’s theory of forms or theory of ideas. I find that his approach is different from mine
but reaches some of the same conclusions, and it’s enlightening to look at the
subject from both viewpoints. That’s what I’ll try to show in this post, but
first I have to say that I think it’s pretty exciting to be exploring the same
ground that Plato did 2400 years ago, especially since we seem to agree in
important ways.
What is Plato’s theory of forms? Bertrand
Russell, in A History of Western
Philiosphy, explains it this way:
This theory is partly logical, partly
metaphysical. The logical part has to do with the meaning of general words.
There are many individual animals of whom we can truly say, “this is a cat.”
What do we mean by the word “cat”? An animal is a cat, it would seem, because
it participates in a general nature common to all cats, Language cannot get on
without general words such as “cat,” and such words are evidently not
meaningless. But if the word “cat” means anything, it means something which is
not this or that cat, but some kind of universal cattiness. This is not born
when a particular cat is born, and does not die when it dies. In fact, it has
no position in space or time…
According to the metaphysical part of the
doctrine, the word “cat” means a certain ideal cat, “the cat,” created by God, and unique…The cat is real; particular cats are only apparent.
He goes on to explain that according to Plato,
cats and all other groups of individuals that share a common name also have a
common idea or form. This form is real, made by God; all the others are only
copies or reflections of the form, and are unreal
The major conclusion here is that for every
type of thing, there is a form or idea that is real and unique, and has no
position in space or time—it is atemporal and aspatial. If we look at
everything that exists, the common form or idea would be existence. It is atemporal, real, and has no beginning or end.
Everything else has a beginning and an end in time—a temporal existence.
In the post I mentioned above, I reach
exactly the same conclusion. Using as a starting point Descartes’ famous “I
think, therefore I am,” I find that, not only is there an atemporal existence
that is the source of everyting, but it’s an idea that is conscious—a thought
thinking itself. In other words, if it must exist but has no beginning, it must
create itself, that is, it must think itself. A thought thinking itself is the
essence of consciousness as we know it. Thus, atemporally, existence and
consciousness are identical. Temporally, they are different, since not
everything that exists is conscious.
The existence of atemporal existence implies
the existence of everything that can possibly exist, including the universe,
which has two aspects, temporal and atemporal. The temporal universe is the
physical universe. The atemporal universe is the logical universe. It is what
physicists call the “block” universe, containing every instant of time all at
once.
Comparing my approach with Plato’s, where
Plato’s forms are created by God, my forms are created by atemporal existence,
which also creates itself and therefore is
God.
I’m not going to try to give you all the details
of how the physical universe comes to be, since I’ve already done that by
creating this blog. You’ll find the details by reading the blog. You can start
by following either of the links above.
