The Starry Night by Van Gogh reminds me of the analogy used by David Bohm, "the river of reality".
The following text is addressed to a very special person who has helped me to go down the rabbit hole. Here you have a few of his great articles that I have translated into spanish in my blog.
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You are not alone 'B'.
In my case, I consider that I have followed a similar path to yours, moreover, along the way I have met a few philosophers who have come from the worship of science and technology after having woken up from the hangover of the Promethean myth. If you don't know them yet, I recommend you to read David Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order), Fritjof Capra (The tao of physics), Byung-Chul Han (apply deepl translator to this article), and many others that will enrich that creative and mystical facet that we, the former techno-optimists reconverted to neo-Luddites, yearn for so much.
When I read them, as well as when I read you, I see that I am not alone. My mind thinks through yours ... and we all need to think ourselves through others, to feel that fraternal and creative link between observer and observed.
Capra, explains how in the West we have had to hit the ball higher than ever using all those fossil fuels to finally come up with a knowledge (quantum physics) that takes us exactly where the Eastern philosophers (and also some Greeks such as Heraclitus) were millennia ago.
The case of David Bohm (quantum physicist of the 60's) deserves special attention, his Holomovement makes System Dynamics pale:
David Bohm, said that observables, from subatomic particles to societies, are like whirlpools that fold and unfold constantly from the river in eternal flow. This occurs in all systems, at all scales. Some whirlpools are ephemeral, others more persistent. Some are stable, others feed back until they become destructive: a bad thought that takes over your mind, a tornado that sweeps everything away, an economic system that takes us to the abyss ...
According to David Bohm, "order", is relative to the scale and context of the phenomenon on which it is applied, and always has two sides (which like Yin and Yang alternate and interpenetrate): an 'explained order' that manifests itself before our senses, measuring instruments and understanding, and another 'implied order' that we do not see. At a given scale, whirlpools unfold from the implicate order becoming visible in the explained order, but after a lapse of time (relative to the scale) they fold back into the implicate order. This constant alternation of enfoldments and unfoldments forms trajectories visible in the explained order, from that of a subatomic particle in motion, to that of a society evolving (see Note).
In "the river of reality", the whirlpools are not understood without the rest of the river, and the river is not understood without the whirlpools ...
Sorry to take up so much of your time, but I think you will enjoy reading one last note taken from the potion book of our sorcerer cousins coming from science:
"clarity emerges from shared indecision (shared fogginess)"
This phrase, which seems to be a nonsense Taoist verse, makes a lot of sense in fact. Let me explain:
A subatomic particle, before being observed, is "undecided" or "foggy", that is, it is in a superposition of states, and only when it is observed, it is defined and acquires a particular well-defined state. The well-known scanning tunneling microscope achieves its great "clarity" by taking advantage of this "fogginess".
That is if we look at an isolated particle. But now consider what is known as "quantum entanglement", which occurs when two or more particles share their "indecision" or "fogginess" through an instantaneous and not physical bond that is preserved even at huge distances. Sharing "indecision" means that if we observe one of the entangled particles and it defines itself in one way, its partner or the rest of the particles entangled with it, will react (without being observed, without anything altering them) defining themselves in a way completely coordinated with whatever the companion particle that has been observed has "decided" to do. Hence, the sharing of "indecision". Nothing will happen randomly, and all this without sending signals to each other.
This is observed in superconductors at very low temperature, when electrons coordinate like a flock of birds to avoid obstacles and flow without resistance. In a certain way, the electrons, by sharing their indecision, manage to flow in the most optimal way, they manage to "see" the best path, the "clarity" arises from the shared "fogginess".
But also, life, against all odds (given the high temperature of its processes that makes it difficult), has learned to use quantum entanglement to its advantage:
Chlorophylls in the leaves of plants and trees entangle to help incident photons find the best path that takes them to the reactive center with minimal energy loss. Chlorophylls entangle, sharing their "fogginess" so that photons get "clarity". The result: an efficiency comparable (slightly higher) to that of our solar panels, but with a great nuance that would give superiority to the plant kingdom if we take into account (1) the number of extra functions (ecosystem services) that the plant do perform and the solar panel do not, and (2) that the plant collects photons with abundant and recyclable materials, contrary to how solar panels do. Quantum entanglement makes it possible to do with simple carbon compounds (chlorophylls) what has to be done with precious metals and metallurgical grade silicon in solar panels without entanglement.
The electrons in the bird's retinas entangle until the Earth's magnetic field manages to reach some of them. The magnetic field causes those electrons to define themselves, which triggers a coordinated response in the rest of the entangled electrons that establishes a chemical pattern triggering a signal that reaches the bird's brain, making it "see" the Earth's magnetic field and use that to orient itself. The "clarity" of the bird's vision comes from the shared "fogginess" of the electrons in its retina.
So far was what has been verified by science. But there is more:
There are scientifically founded evidences (not definitive and there is still a long way to go until verification) that consciousness, in humans and perhaps in other living beings, is a phenomenon orchestrated by quantum entanglement (see Roger Penrose's Orch OR theory and this revealing article). The "clarity" of thought would arise from the "fogginess" shared between certain molecular structures inside neurons.
Finally, David Bohm, very concerned about the collapsing drift of our industrial society, goes a step further in the interpretation of these quantum phenomena, applying them to the possibilities (so damaged today) of coordination and dialogue of human communities. In his view, it is the increasing atomization of individuals and cultural/intellectual endogamy what increases our individualized "fogginess" and leads to more individual and collective dysfunctionality. He claims to the need for the emergence of a collective consciousness ("clarity"), and argues that people disposed to dialogue, coordination and reconnectivity should do like the electrons in the retinas of birds: share their indecision or "fogginess".
And this has been my little piece of "fogginess" shared with you ..
... a hug, dear sorcerer
Note:
Behind every signal perceived by our senses or understanding, there is a periodic oscillation, which can be understood in terms of enfoldments and unfoldments, the period of the oscillation being relative to the scale on which the phenomenon is perceived. We call trajectories to those marks left by these oscillations in our memory. Every displacement and every process has an oscillator (or a sum of them) behind it.
Bohm says that "when it appears to us that an electron moves in space-time, it is due to a continuous series of enfoldments and unfoldments". To understand this we can resort to two analogies.
The first, from Bohm himself, is based on a thought experiment from a laminar reversible flow machine, and is explained in detail in his book "Totality and the Implicate Order".
"The machine consists of two concentric glass cylinders, with a very viscous fluid, such as glycerine, between the two cylinders, arranged in such a way that the outer cylinder can be rotated very slowly, so that the diffusion of the viscous fluid is negligible. A drop of insoluble ink is placed in the fluid and then the outer cylinder is rotated, with the result that the drop unfolds in the form of a thin strand that will eventually become invisible. When the cylinder is spun in the opposite direction, the strand form recedes and suddenly a drop becomes visible that is essentially the same as was there at the beginning."
"Let us first place a drop, A, in a certain position and rotate the cylinder n times. Let's then place a drop, B, in a slightly different position, and rotate the cylinder n more times (so that A has been folded 2n times). Then place another drop, C, along the line AB and rotate the cylinder n more times, so that A has been folded 3n times, B, 2n times, and C, n times. We will proceed in this way until a large number of drops are folded. Let us then move the cylinder rapidly in the opposite direction. If the frequency with which the droplets emerge is faster than the minimum resolution time for the human eye, what we will apparently see is a continuously moving particle crossing space."
"This folding and unfolding in the implied order obviously provides a new model which may be, for example, that of an electron, and is quite different from that which has provided us with the usual mechanistic notion about a particle which at each moment exists only in a small region of space, and which changes position continuously with time. What is essential to this new model is that, instead, the electron is to be understood by means of the whole group of folded ensembles, which are generally not localized in space. At any given moment, one of them may be unfolded and therefore localized, but, at the next moment, it will be folded to be replaced by the one that follows it. The notion of the continuity of existence is approximate, because the rapid recurrence of similar forms changes in a simple and regular manner (just as the wheel of a bicycle, spinning rapidly, produces more the impression of a solid disk than that of a sequence of spinning spokes). Naturally, in a more fundamental way, the particle is only an abstraction that becomes manifest to our senses. What exists is always a totality of wholes, all present at once, in an ordered series of stages of folding and unfolding, which in principle intermingle and interpenetrate each other completely through the totality of space and time."
The second analogy, of my own making, is based on something observed in "The Game of Life," a cellular automaton designed by British mathematician John Conway in 1970. The cells of the square grid are activated (alive) or deactivated (dead) from a random initial configuration, following a very basic set of rules, until they give rise to complex behaviors. If a dead cell has exactly 3 living neighboring cells it is "born" (i.e., the next turn it will be alive). A living cell can die by overpopulation (if it has more than three neighbors around it) or by isolation (if it has only one neighbor around it or none at all). A cell stays alive if it has 2 or 3 neighbors around it. Such activation and deactivation of cells can be seen as foldings and unfoldings in the implied order. One of the emergent phenomena is the 'apparent' displacement of some structures (gliders) along the board. Although what manifests itself to our senses is the continuous movement of the glider, in reality the glider does not exist in isolation and what is displaced is a kind of wave of influence that propagates from one cell to the neighboring cells.
