Seldon’s Opus: Key Excerpts. Excerpt No. 6 --
‘An «Aufheben» ‘Qualo-Fractal Tower’ is NOT a “Hierarchy”.’
Dear Reader,
It is my pleasure, and my
honor, as an Officer of the Foundation
Encyclopedia
Dialectica [F.E.D.] Office of Public Liaison,
to share with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release
by the F.E.D. General Council, key
excerpts from the internal writings of our co-founder, Karl Seldon.
The sixth such
release in this new series is pasted in below.
[Some E.D.
standard edits have been applied to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s
discourse].
Regards,
Miguel
“a dialectical [«aufheben»], finitary
‘qualo-fractal tower’ -- e.g., like that of our «kosmos» as a whole, consisting of an «arché-monads»
scale/level, that of pre-/sub-nuclear “particles” [non-composite
bosons and fermions], ‘‘‘topped’’’ by
a scale/level of composite boson and fermion «monads»[mesons, protons, neutrons, hyperons, etc.], ‘‘‘topped’’’,
‘‘‘in turn’’’, by a scale/level of atomic nuclei/atom «monads», ‘‘‘topped’’’ by
a scale/level of molecular «monads», ‘‘‘topped’’’ by a scale/level of prokaryotic, or, better, of pre-eukaryotic,
living cell «monads»,
and so on -- is NOT a “hierarchy”, as the ruling class, and their “scientific”
servants, would
have it.”
“This is because, in terms of ‘interactivity’, and
‘interactability’, all ontological categories, or all of the «monads» that those ontological categories represent,
exist in the same space, on the same “plane”, in terms of their access to one
another.”
“Each fundamental ‘«monad»-ic’
kind is accessible to interaction with all of the others.”
“Dark Energy”, and “Dark Matter”, as presently unknown to us
as the nature of their «monads»
may be, can -- and do -- impact human society, and also all of the other scales
of ontology that are earlier in their cosmological ‘extantcy’ than is human society.”
“At their most basic, ‘«arché
»-ic’ root, our bodies are made of quarks and gluons. Our bodies
“still” contain these , and quarks
and gluons
can, in principle, and do, shape our bodies,
and all of the ‘post-prenuclear’ scales of
‘cosmo-ontology’ between us and those quarks and gluons, including the tiny portions of that total 'cosmo-ontology'
that are also contained in our
bodies.”
“Likewise, the electrons within the atoms that also compose our bodies, e.g., if impacted
by incident electromagnetic
radiation -- by its “photonic” «monads» -- will affect the rest of the scales of
«monads» that
also compose our
bodies.”
“Likewise the protons and neutrons that also compose those atoms.”
“Likewise the molecules that those atoms also compose.”
“Likewise the organelles, e.g., the mitochondria, of our bodies’ eukaryotic livings cells -- those organelles that are the ‘‘‘living fossils’’’
of ancient prokaryotic living cells
that once merged to compose the forerunners of those eukaryotic living cells out of which our bodies are [also] made.”
“Some attenuations there may be, in the accessibility of the
units/«monads» of the higher,
and of the presently highest, ‘qualo-fractal scales’, to the action upon
them of the units
of the lower, and of the lowest, ‘qualo-fractal
scales’, and in the accessibility of the lower, and of the lowest,
‘qualo-fractal scales’ to the action upon them of the units of the higher,
and of the presently highest, ‘qualo-fractal scales’.”
“But there is nothing of the kind of absolute barriers
between the units
of different ‘qualo-fractal scales’ that would justify applying, to such ‘qualo-fractal
towers’ -- to such ‘qualo-fractal scaled-similarity
regresses’ -- the ruling-class-promoted term “hierarchy”."
My Response: There is an ancient name for the pattern that constitutes the trilogy within Asimov’s eventual ‘heptalogy’, and that you note as follows — “To summarize the Foundation series in another manner: each sequel challenges the premise of the previous book, forcing the reader to challenge the assumptions that he or she has developed.”
Going back at least to Socrates and Plato, and, perhaps, to Zeno, that name is “dialectic”.
The ‘self-reflexivity’ essence of dialectic also applies to the nested nature of Asimov’s relationship to — and USE of — “psychohistory”, that you also note, as follows: “In Asimov’s work, psychohistory provides the ability to predict the behaviors of large groups of people as a whole and even manipulate those behaviors. I swear that Asimov applies this idea to his own readers in Foundation and Empire!”.
A group calling itself ‘Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica’ has endeavored to bring Asimov’s insights, expressed via his fictional Foundation history, into actuality.
They have developed a new mathematics — whose core is a CONTRA-Boolean Arithmetic and Algebra — and applied it to model the history of humanity on Earth, via seven ‘psychohistorical-dialectical meta-equations’, including separate ‘meta-models’ describing (1) the [psycho]history of the progression of the dominance of the forms of human ideology\knowledge, from Mythopoeia, then to Religion, and then to Philosophy, then on to Science, and on to Psychohistory itself, (2) the [psycho]history of human social formation(s), (3) the [psycho]history of human social RELATIONS of human-societal self-reproduction, and (4) the [psycho]history of human social FORCES of human-societal self-reproduction.
Using this new mathematics of ‘psychohistorical dialectics’, they have ‘pre-constructed’, symbolically, the institutional and functional structure of a successor social system to that of the present, including deriving draft constitutional amendment and statutory undergirding for that successor system, plus a plan to foreshorten the ‘New Dark Age’ that that present system impends, versus the ‘Global Renaissance’ that it also potentiates.
For more about this developing story, see: http://www.dialectics.info.