Submitted by Andrew McCarthy MD, Sep 30, 2007 22:58

Remember to keep categories/fields straight and don't forget fundamentals. Mathematics is much more than idea. It gives one a sense of one kind of order but not a sense of existence. In order to have order, there must first be an existence that can give order. And I think that the whole phenomenon of mathematics would not exist without sensory input that can sense the existence of not just an ordered measurable world but an existence that is beyond the limits of any kind of mathematical calculation.

Existence is something that simply must be or nothing exists and that is an impossibility. (It is this principle that can so easily be skipped over.) Existence must be something beyond everything we can sense, otherwise one could not sense in a rational way. It is not rational to say everything is both real and transient. Thus science would be a joke (and science is very serious.) If everything we sense is in movement, there must be something it moves against. It must occur within something that is still as well as imperceptible. (And remember we only sense things within certain wavelengths and thus should not that tell us that there may be things we cannot see or hear or touch that we have no rational idea of?)

It is why previous generations assumed that personhood must have an immeasurable soul or consciousness that did this ‘sensing'. It is the perception that if one can be rational and measure and define things accurately (which I agree with within certain limits), one must admit that there must be a consciousness that can do such things and thus it is part of our existence that can never be measured. This consciousness may seem to have both mind and heart but such words cannot begin to describe its hidden existence. Remember, the basic aspect of our measurable existence must come from our sensory input and such input must be received by something. Math is something that man can do in an abstract way. But in order to create math there must be something that can perceive existence first. Now a computer can do math very well but it must first be created. A child looks at a computer as a given but does not see the human toil that went into the whole process. The hidden toil is taken for granted. And thus we give this computer a kind of intelligence that it never had on its own. It was dependent upon its creator.

Math is dependent upon the creation it can measure. To say that the process occurs without a creator is simply a childlike mistake. The universe to me is a poetic creation. It is an artwork of unimaginable rhythmic proportions. Of course it must have had a creator! Creation is full of life and thus so must a creator be full of life. And man will never be a computer because his actions are never computer like. As Socrates said in his prison cell, his fight against his opponents was freely chosen by his own sense of self. It was this that gave him integrity. He knew he must stand up for what is good and right. It had nothing to do with his body or his body parts. He believed in the essence of immeasurable notions such as beauty and goodness and justice a priori to measurable things. We, modernity, do not think in this manner. We would say ‘if it cannot be measured then it must not exist'. Even worse we say "such a claim is irrational. Such a claim, though, is not logical, if one really believes that something must be real and not just transient. I would say it is irrational/ illogical to say that everything is in motion for if so you could never measure it with accuracy and thus all accuracy would be lost from us. There can be no such thing as just relativity. Things may be relative to each other but there must be something that exists that is still and immeasurable.

Socrates discussed this logic in Phaedo. In order to measure there must be a measurer, even if the measurer is infinitesimally removed from the process. But as soon as one admits to a creator that is a non-mechanical being, well that opens up the question of why the creation took place in the first place… And I think it is this that scares all those who really think they can know truth via human objective reason alone and that includes religious and secular, scientist and writer. Our rational or reasonable definitions and equations simply cannot answer this question. This is beyond our capabilities. We do have logical thought that can lead us to at least admit that our current existence, as all there is but this state, has logical problems It is here where one should begin to feel fear and trembling as per Kierkegaard. (And thus he was excommunicated.) It is why Socrates put the idea of goodness above all things he could measure. Goodness, the immeasurable, must come first.

I think this is why Kierkegaard was called the founder of Existentialism. He believed in the same thing Socrates believed in. But how man has distorted both Kierkegaard and Socrates. With K they threw in the other existentialists without making the distinction above about what is hidden. The field then became a kind of nothingness, all about an existence where we can think of ideas, mathematical phenomenon, linguistic phenomenon, humanistic principles but with the notion that all existence is transient and meaningless. That is not what Kierkegaard thought. He dealt with how earthly existence is affected by what is hidden, by what is immeasurable. Meaning in life came from what was hidden and not from what we rationally define or measure. And Socrates did the same thing.

This makes sense to me otherwise many ideas are meaningless in that they are non-verifiable. Drury has a section on this when he discusses the ‘fallacy of the missing hippopotamus'. (pg 15-16, Danger of Words) Here is what Dr Drury says: "I chose this rather bizarre name from a discussion which once took place between two philosophers, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein illustrated the point he wished to make by the following example. Suppose I state ‘There is an hippopotamus in the room at this minute, but no one can see it, no one can hear it, no one can touch it. Have I now with all these added provisos said anything meaningful at all?' Surely not, for a proposition that can neither be verified nor refuted has no useful place in scientific language… But I think you would be surprised to find how easy it is to make this sort of logical error. Modern science is full of missing hippopotami. We are inclined to fall in love with an hypothesis and so when facts begin to speak against it, we invent a subsidiary hypothesis to save the face of the first and this process continues until without realizing it, our first hypothesis has become so secure it is irrefutable. But ALAS in doing just this we have deprived it of all significance"

Here is an example with simple math. We say 1+1=2 and in mathematical terms this does have merit for it follows the rules of rational math. But in existence 1+1 is never 2. They are entirely different. One is in the process of becoming 2 and is made up of odd numbers which will disappear once it is two while the other is at rest as an even number. It is already at two. Mathematics cannot ever see this for such a notion is one that is immeasurable to the field of mathematics. In math they are equivalent but in reality they are as different as red and blue. So math cannot explain all things except if you believe in tautologies as explanations.

Take mass as another example. It is taken as something solid and real. Yet mass is energy via Einstein's E=mc (squared). But is it not true that what is solid must be still and cannot be in motion for if it is in motion it is not solid. So is mass "a hippopotamus in the room?' We say it is there but it can only be expressed as energy. So where is its solidness if it is always in some form of motion from its elements?

Now how about objective reason? We sense mass as real and thus we sense ourselves as real. We sense time as moving at a speed that makes us sense real mass (ourselves) moving through time. But mass is energy and time is certainly not moving in a constant fashion. Movement against movement … what kind of security is that? And somehow we think we can reason this way as something that can reach truth?? Please forgive me but such a notion is impossible if one believes in things being real. All these notions are dependent upon the speed of light and all light is dependent upon quanta and all quanta are dependent on Pi. And Pi is immeasurable. Thus our objective reasoning is limited by the above and the only way you can give it any credence is believing in something as immeasurable. Thus in order to have reason as a rational notion, then rationality must admit to what is imperceptibly still. Otherwise you are irrational by your own definition.

Well there are so many hippopotami that we never want to discuss. And thus a notion of top down or visa versa is meaningless for what is top and what is down? Math and science have limits to its place in existence by their nature of measurement. Top and bottom are constructed ideas that cannot be verified in existence if reason itself has elements that must be immeasurable. As I said earlier I know most people do not think like I do (and that is probably a good thing J .) But the Irish have never been agreeable with what modern man has come up with. As Freud said, "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." And I would say that the Enlightenment never caught our fancy either. In fact when the Enlightenment was just getting started, with Cartesian thought sweeping Europe, well the Irish were getting exterminated by Cromwell. (I guess we could not be enlightened then either.)

Well I would argue with all of you until I am blue in the face but I am sure that I will not be able to convince any of you. But the Irish have always given precedence to the heart, to poetry, to song as a better guide to truth than some sort of ridiculous science project. I will let the great poet James Mangan (1803-1849) tell it in his great lyrical note of rejection of the Enlightenment. I love neurology and psychology but if you forget why you do it, then you are lost. It remains first an art and then a science. And thus art is a mystery… and will always be as such…

The One Mystery

‘Tis idel! We exhaust and squander

The glittering mine of thought in vain;

All baffled reason cannot wander

Beyond her chain.

The flood of life runs dark- dark clouds

Make lampless night around its shore:

The dead, where are they? In their shrouds…

Man knows no more.

Evoke the ancient and the past,

Will one illumining star arise?

Or must the film, from first to last

O'erspread thine eyes?

When life, love, glory, beauty, wither,

Will wisdom's page, or science's chart

Map out for thee the region whither

Their shades depart?

Suppose thou the wondrous powers,

To high imagination given,

Pale types of what shall yet be ours,

When earth is heaven?

When this decaying shell is cold,

Oh! Sayest thou the soul shall climb

That magic mount she trod of old,

Ere childhood's time?

And shall the sacred pulse that thrilled,

Thrill once again to glory's name?

And shall the conquering love that filled

All earth with flame,

Reborn, revived, renewed, immortal,

Resume his reign in prouder might,

A sun beyond the portal

Of death and night?

No more, no more-with aching brow

And restless heart and burning brain,

We ask the When, the Where, the How,

And ask in vain.

And all philosophy, all faith,

All earthly- all celestial lore,

Have but one voice, which only saith-

Endure- adore!

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