What IS This "Thing" In Which We Live And Have Our Being? And What Does It All Mean? - A Cosmological Proposal

(I'm going to send this unedited as I have too much that must be done. I will edit it in the corresponding blog post: )

Dear F,

If I ever publish my novel, "Tusil Saasil: Trick Of The Light," you can read my full investigation about the non-existence of color except as a trick of the light interacting with what we call "color vision."

The gist of my analysis is to "look at" something at high noon, and then keep looking at it until dead of night.

The color of "the thing" we look at not only changes, but eventually disappears.

So what color is a "leaf?"

Green?

If so, what shade of green?

Or, perhaps a leaf is gray.

Or is it black?

Color is a potential phenomenon of pigment interacting with color vision.

Take away ALL pigment or ALL manifestation of color vision, and "poof!", the colored thing that once could be seen, literally disappears.

Color recedes through shades of gray into blackness.

Just as color definitively disappears -- at least in any humanly meaningful way -- so too with the rest of physical universe.

This is not a word game. This is not one of Zeno's paradoxes.

Without sense perception anywhere in Universe, the Universe recedes from physicality into metaphysicality.

Without sense perception the Universe literally disappears.

This "disappearing act" (just like the Universe's "appearing act") reveals the ontological (i.e., intrinsic to being) difference between Potential and Act. (I have not read Aquinas on this interactive topic, but the relationship between "potential" and "act" is a BIG DEAL to him.)

We are, truly, co-creators of the universe -- at least in any way that we humans know universe.

 

"Creator God" before creation is pure potential.

But "God so loved the world that he sent his only child into it."

So what ya gonna do?

How are you going to act in this domain beyond latent potential.

We humans (and other sentient creatures) -- creatures that might be called "Children of God" -- are the incarnation/enactment of the physical universe -- again, in ANY humanly meaningful way.

It has long been a Christian theological given that God the Father is metaphysical -- which means "beyond the physical."

We humans (and other sentient beings) are The Agents -- the only agents who incarnate the physical Universe... the actors who give the universe shape, form and color - at least in any and every way that is humanly meaningful. 

Remove humans from the equation -- and, as a consequence, remove sensory perception -- and the "world" disappears... just like color leaches out of leaf when ambient lighting goes from full noon to dead of night.

Without sense perception, the Universe is pure potential with NO perceived shape, form, color, smell, audibility, tactility. (It is not coincidental that we ask the critical question: "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" No it doesn't. Why not? Because sound only exists -- in reality, as distinct from potentiality -- when a vibration occurring in an atmosphere capable of transmitting vibration, hits a tympanic membrane and is then heard" by the brain. In every way, perception is ALL in our head... or in the sensoria of other sentient beings.)

Every humanly knowable attribute of "universal potential" exists because our senses (and those of other sentient beings) literally bring physicality into existence. 

If God/Universe/Magnum Mysterium wants/intends or simply inclines toward physical existence (and doesn't just partake of metaphysical existence), God-Potential needs his/her/their children to bring physical universe into being - or, at least, into any kind of being that can be beheld, perceived, interpreted as a physical reality.

No sensorium, no physical reality (in every way that we humans know reality).

We sentient beings are, literally, co-creators.

If "heavenly bodies" are not perceived, they exist (at least by human definition and human epistemology) only "in potential" just as color exists only as a function of light.

Well...

"You get the picture."

But if there are no sentient beings, there is no picture to be "gotten."

We humans literally beget physical reality as we know it.

Among other specifically human functions, we incarnate love.

Love

A

PS I only have time to touch upon a "cosmic" topic that has long made perfect sense to me. God/Universe/Magnum Mysterium is metaphysical, and so "the purpose" (or at least "the thrust") of incarnate, enfleshed, physical reality is that The Divine Milieu is imbued with an explorational nature which "seeks" to know itself physically. And so, we have evolved to serve as The Divine Milieu's sensory probes, giving "God" the full experience of Being, not just metaphysically, but physically. And as a consequence, at the metaphysical level, let's say "below" the 
"pop-up" manifestation of physicality, "culminating" with human sentience, we sensory probes are all - in a way - interchangeable extensions of "God," or - in Christian terminology - we are begotten children of "God the Father" partaking of God nature. For the sake of proper humility, it is important to note Mahatma Gandhi's observation: 

John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas and Theosis (Christian Divinization)

https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-ford-john-wayne-aquinas-and.html

And lest we forget...

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." William Shakespeare.

JBS Haldane

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane

The behavior of systems is always greater than the sum of its parts.

Who knows?

On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 8:59 AM FV wrote:

Color is still a mystery to me. 

Just caught part of a PBS show on the colors of the world .

The blue of the ocean , how deep does it go, ?

On Wed, May 3, 2023, 11:44 PM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a long marveled that I DON’T know it “like the back of my hand.”