Physics as Metaphor

Published by Sphere, 1983, softcover, illustrated, index, 254 pages, condition: new.

Accessible to the layman like me and yet wonderful thesis of how all scientific law and fundamentals such as time, measurement etc are themselves just metaphors. Whatever the maths proves, science still needs to turn it into language and it is here that metaphor is resorted to and thus also here where it all begins to break down because of language's imprecision. Einstein bemoaned that he couldn't explains some of his more abstruse theories because the language to explain it didn't yet exist. It still doesn't once you get into M-theory and string theory and multi-dimensionality.

I define metaphor as an evocation of the inner connection making things: It is an act of consciousness that borders on the very creation of things, blurring the distinctions between them, even between them and their names. 4

The heart of our modern idolatry is quantification the world reduced to quantities and the relationships between them, the belief that the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete itself. Physical science persuades is to disregard, devalue, and even deny what we cannot measure, to act as though such things as love, life, optimism, wonder, and beauty do not matter much in an objective description of reality. I do not dispute the wealth of knowledge science adds to our wonder and experience. [] But I rebel at the dominance is quantitate description in our scientized lives which sustains our idol of objectivity and keeps us from initiate participation in the world. 14

Since there is no way to separate our knowledge is the world from our consciousness of it, changed in either world or mind must be understood as changes in both. World and mind are seemingly different, perhaps complimentary, aspects of the same thing. 68

The quantitativeness of physics does not guarantee an objective physical world and there is no meaningful boundary indeed no real difference between subjective and objective approaches to things. In all of this, I have conceived of consciousness as evolving. Reality, a projection of consciousness, must also evolve and is a timely expression of the state of the human mind and spirit. As we explored space, time, matter, and number, we saw that their purely quantitative aspect, as used in physics, is inseparable from our subjective intuitions of them. But as we saw as well that these cardinal metaphors deal with our deepest questions and fears about existence. They express our elemental needs for extension, distinction, identity, stability, endurance, variation, movement, and meaning. We know we shall not last forever, but we church at the assurance of a canonical three score and ten years of life (or, at the latest prediction from mortality tables). We fool ourselves and hang on to enough sanity to remain functioning animals through the magic of number and extension. But the world beyond our metaphors and illusions is unitary and chaotic. It is a world filled with terror of death. 171

We feel ourselves to be symbolic, ethereal, timeless beings, and yet we know we are creatures of flesh and matter, subject to decay and death. We struggle heroically against this cruel paradox, creating symbolic systems in society, science, religion, the home, and the mind to reinforce ourselves and give us meaning. These vital lies provide a screen against despair and the awesome horror of a meaningless life and death, but they also prevent us from facing truth squarely. Our life struggles are secondhand and illusory. 175

Life without illusions is not possible, not even meaningful. What matters is to become more conscious of our myths and metaphors, to recognize that they are the only reality we have, and to learn how we participate in creating them.