‘Physics as Metaphor’ & RAW

‘to discover subjectivity in science, we need not invoke metaphysics, but only ask how length is dealt with in physics.’ – Roger Jones, Physics as Metaphor, ch1

‘And what about “matter”…? This is a metaphor, too, a petrified poem, and is related to meter and measure…’ – RAW, The New Inquisition

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Here’s a book that Robert Anton Wilson cites intriguingly: Physics as Metaphor, by Roger Jones (1982). And what an unexpectedly wide, deep and luxuriant read. Bob W. references it several times, and it’s on at least one of his book lists (’50 books from the library of Robert Anton Wilson’, RE/Search #18). I said “unexpectedly” as I haven’t seen it mentioned before in the wider Wilson world. Hence this post, and a query.

Dr Roger S. Jones, a distinguished teaching Professor of Physics at the University of Minnesota, died in 2011, aged 76. He previously worked as research scientist in experimental high-energy physics at Laboratorio Nazionale di Frascati, Italy. He also wrote Physics for the Rest of Us (1992), which has several chapters addressing metaphor, consciousness and semantics in science.

To quote Wilson: ‘As Dr. Roger Jones says in Physics as Metaphor, “whatever it is we are describing, the human mind cannot be parted from it.”‘ – RAW, Quantum Psychology, ch4

I think Physics as Metaphor had some effect on RAW’s writing (particularly The New Inquisition), in approach and word choices. RAW used “Idols”, “Idolatry” and “The Citadel” to a heightened, almost comicbook aesthetic in The New Inquisition (the 1987 cover illustration appears to pick up on this). Physics as Metaphor uses the terms “idols”, “idolatry” (a lot) and “the citadel” (to a lesser extent) in a similar way to RAW, describing parts of the scientific establishment. And some of Jones’s more uninhibited polemical remarks about the latter recall RAW’s “gloves off”* passages in The New Inquisition:

‘The religion of physicality depends on many supporting sects. The strongest of these is physical science itself. That science is a religion and scientists its priests is often difficult to appreciate. […] A defender of physics may protest that this is farfetched, a gross and unfair exaggeration. Science, unlike religion, is based on reason and facts… But did not the medieval Roman Catholic Church always make the same claims? Were not its acts and dogmas endlessly justified by complex but eminently reasonable arguments?’ – Roger Jones, Physics as Metaphor, ch3

Dr Jones adds: ‘What I am saying is that science and religion both go wrong when they become dogmatic and idolatrous.’ Incidentally, he gets the “idolatry” terminology from Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (Owen Barfield, 1957). He writes: “when metaphors become crystallized… they become idols… an idolator is not so much one who creates idols, but one who worships them.”

Bob Wilson makes the same point at the start of chapter two of The New Inquisition, after quoting from Exodus (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them”). He points out that artists, novelists (and most of us, in fact – including scientists) make images, or metaphors, most of the time – we can’t help it, as human cognition tends to work like that. But we don’t have to bow down or worship (ie reify, take literally) these mental creations. “Nonetheless, any image or metaphor can quickly become an Idol if it is not immediately identified as an art-work; Bacon and Nietzsche (among others) have animadverted on that subject before me.” (RAW, TNI, ch2).

But more than “idols” and “idolatrous” semantics (or “The Citadel”), it’s Jones’s writing about metaphor as fundamental to basic assumptions about “physical reality” that gets my attention. Specifically, his explorations of the metaphors “behind” our notions of space, time, matter and number – “the foundation concepts of physics” (as he puts it). You probably wouldn’t exhaust the digits of your hand counting the folk who wrote about metaphor in this manner/context (on basic scientific and mathematical assumptions) at that time. But you’d count RAW among them – and Roger Jones. (A few years earlier, 1980, Lakoff and Johnson published ‘Metaphors We Live By’, an epochal work on conceptual – including ontological – metaphor. And you can find examples of RAW writing insightfully about metaphor as fundamental to our “reality” conceptions earlier still. (See: Wilson’s metaphor).

‘We’re trapped in linguistic constructs. All that is, is metaphor. I believe somebody said that before me…’ – RAW, Language, Reason & Reality

Another little-known writer of note on metaphor-as-fundamental, Colin Turbayne, is cited by Roger Jones. In The Myth of Metaphor (1962), Turbayne argued that many modern philosophical and scientific ideas, particularly material substance, come from “dead” metaphors unconsciously taken as literal truth. He critiqued Newtonian and Cartesian machine models of the universe, and favored Bishop Berkeley’s metaphor of “world-as-language”.

To digress slightly, Turbayne was once college professor to Greg Goode, co-author of Emptiness and Joyful Freedom (which I’ve referenced a few times in this blog). Goode wrote a very interesting article about Turbayne’s book, addressing some of the metaphor issues – it’s available at The Culturium. Turbayne taught on Berkeley, but Greg says he never saw Turbayne present Berkeley as a metaphysical idealist. Rather, “he hinted a few times that Berkeley had a more profound philosophy that wasn’t related to idealism at all”.

‘Turbayne even gave a name to his approach, “the metaphorical way”. He considered it more profound than idealism because idealism (like materialism) lands us in a trap that the metaphoric way frees us from.’ – Greg Goode, ‘Colin Turbayne and the Myth of Metaphor‘

If you regard “matter” and “mind” as metaphorical constructs, as RAW, Jones and Turbayne did (at least part-time), then the “metaphysical” distinction underlying materialism vs idealism, not to mention a whole extended modern dualistic worldview based on Aristotelian, Galilean, Cartesian, Newtonian, etc, approaches to science, doesn’t make much sense – except ironically in special contexts where it “works”, often to very useful effect. And “things” maybe start to look different – sort of Dada-Cubist? (Or is that just me?) From that stand, perhaps even Berkeley can be reappraised.

Incidentally, RAW liked Berkeley: “to my taste he was one of the three or four [best] philosophers who ever lived. He’s the one who proved the universe doesn’t exist – God just thinks it does. I like that. That to me is one of the all-time heights of metaphysical reasoning… and only an Irishman could do it.” (RAW, ‘Fear in the Night’, Beyond Chaos and Beyond)

Back again to Roger Jones:

‘I do not draw any sharp distinction between some ultimate entity and our perception of it. Thus I cannot talk about our mental constructs as simply a response to some independent, albeit unknowable, reality. I think of a whole continuum from construct to object as a human creation, although not a capricious one.’ – Physics as Metaphor, ch3

In other words, “the map is not the territory” is a map. (Or seems like a map, although E-prime looks redundant/pedantic to me in this case).

Wilson’s chair & Jones’s table

‘What this apparently means is that space and time are only real to our mammalian sense organs: they are not really real.’ – RAW, commenting on Bell’s theorem, Beyond Theology, The Illuminati Papers (p97, 1980 edition)

RAW uses the provocative subtitle, ‘SPACE AND TIME MIGHT NOT EVEN EXIST’ (including all-caps) in one of his articles: The Meeting of Science and Mysticism (Fate magazine 1992). A note for readers relatively new to Wilson’s oeuvre: if you take statements like that only “literally”/”face value” or only “ironically”/”put-on”, etc, then you’ll likely encounter many perplexing contradictions. (And in this case, the subtitle’s wording might have come from the magazine’s editor, anyway). Of course, if we use Wilson’s preferred framing of the tuned-in vs the not-tuned-in, we can at least say we experience – or tune in – something we call “space” and “time”… Or can we? Do we “experience” space and time, or just infer them from experience?

And if we only talk about tuned-in inferences – as opposed to, say, “unconscious” or “preconscious” inferences (and all that “unconscious” or “preconscious” implies about something “outside” experience, eg space, time, matter, spooky “fields”, etc) – then how would we tell the difference? (The difference between “pure” or “direct” experience and experience “constructed at least partly from inference, conditioning, etc”?).

One of the great ironies of physics: its most practically reliable model, “statistically” speaking (quantum theory), leads us to doubt the “objective existence” of space (and time) – hence RAW’s all-caps subtitle. But as Roger Jones argues, the whole dualist conceptual framework in which science (and everyday language structure) “takes place” rests on taken-for-granted spatial metaphor. So when we start to seriously question space, time, matter and number (“the foundation concepts of physics”), never mind consciousness, “outside” of established, ie dualist, conventions, we produce circular definitional gibberish and strange loopiness – and we tend to sound like idiots, blissed-out mystics or crazed solipsists.

In a number of places (books and articles), RAW attempts to clarify this conundrum by describing some of the main modern alternatives to pre-quantum causal/physical models, proposed by serious people as answers to the question of what Bell’s theorem (and its experimental confirmation) “actually” implies about “things outside” mathematics. For example, he describes alternatives offered by Dr David Bohm (everything-in-total-rapport “monism”, faster than light communication, implicate/explicate order, new conceptions/metaphors “of” space and time, etc).

And in The New Inquisition, Bob W. lists “four and only four theories” in philosophy on the relationship of “mind” and “matter”. (Note here: Roger Jones argues that conventional “mind”/”matter” dichotomies arise from/with our conventional spatial metaphors, and that they make no sense without those metaphors). Here’s RAW’s list (which he regards, in TNI, as exhaustive):

1. “Mind” is an epiphenomenon of “matter”.
2. “Matter” is an epiphenomenon of “mind”.
3. “Mind” and “matter” are equally real, but separate, and work in predetermined harmony with each other.
4. “Mind” and “matter” are human metaphors.
   (RAW, The New Inquisition, ch6)

We can call these, respectively, 1) fundamentalist materialism, 2) idealism, 3) Cartesian-type dualism, and 4) “the metaphorical way” (to borrow Turbayne’s phrase). Wilson states his preference:

‘The fourth theory – “mind” and “matter” as metaphors – is, nobody will be surprised to learn, the one that seems most sensible to me.’ – RAW, The New Inquisition, ch6

But he adds that some metaphors appear more useful than others, and that “mind” and “matter” “have seemed to be useful for a long time, and still seem useful to many.” He also adds (to return to Roger Jones’s argument of the inseparability of these dichotomies and the spatial metaphor): ‘If “matter” is a metaphor, what of the “space” and “time” in which it is conventionally assumed either to move or stand still?’ (RAW, The New Inquisition)

(As a bonus, if you wonder where Einstein’s General Relativity fits in all this, Dr Jones provides an explanation of relativistic spacetime causality using the “light cone” metaphor of modern physics. The Relativity Theory represents another form of causal determinism, but along geometric lines. As RAW puts it, “Einstein remains in a ball park we can visualize – with a little extra effort”. Quantum theory, on the other hand, implies no such causal “connection” “in” space).

This brings us to Wilson’s chair and Jones’s table!

‘Roger Jones’s Physics as Metaphor spends most of its time trying to make clear to the reader the transactional or poetic element in so seemingly factual a statement as… This table is three meters long… In case Dr. Jones’s point still seems obscure or excessive, consider the celebrated “cock-eyed room” designed by Dr. Albert Ames…’ – RAW, The New Inquisition, ch1

Bob refers here to Dr Jones’s deconstruction of the supposedly “objective” measure of length, as applied to a table. To summarise Roger Jones’s argument, our notion of a table as an objectively apprehended “thing in itself” comes primarily from a spatial metaphor, based on the notion of extension (eg length), operationally defined in terms of measure, based on number… with the most basic concept of number (from set theory) dependent on… spatial metaphor. And the circularity of this metaphorical construct of objective physical reality becomes hidden in everyday language.

(Jones also considers the idea of “length” at an atomic scale, where, in modern physics, it seems a non-applicable or incoherent concept).

‘I do not see a table. What I perceive is an oddly shaped brown area in my visual field. I do not see its height, breadth, and width. I infer these by fitting my touch and visual sensations into a predetermined construct for a table which has certain spatial properties with measurable dimensions.’ – Roger Jones, Physics as metaphor, ch1

RAW condenses a similar argument, but with a chair, in various places in his writings, eg:

‘Take a chair. Any god-damn chair… Get up and look at it. You don’t see the chair alone… You see what language and metaphor allow you to see.’ – RAW, Right Where You Are Sitting Now

We possibly dismiss such arguments as academic and abstract, because in everyday life we can’t function without practical concepts such as length, height, solidity, etc, as applied to objects we’re constantly utilising or bumping into. But this kind of “misses the point” that both Jones and RAW make. Here’s Roger Jones again, addressing this objection:

‘We find that we must be able to estimate length in order to measure or define it. A prior understanding of length is needed for the definition. Such a circular definition is no definition at all. […] although this logical problem seems to have no bearing on the practical application of the concept of length (for example, we can measure space well enough to send people to the moon and back), it is of paramount importance in debunking the notion that an objective definition of a measurable length guarantees the independent existence of objects.’ Roger Jones, Physics as metaphor, ch1

Dichotomy metaphors

RAW’s intro to The Alchemy of Opposites, by Rodolfo Scarfalloto, seems like a good juxtapositon at this point. Bob writes that Scarfalloto’s book works as a popularisation of an insight that only G. Spencer Brown’s more technical Laws of Form previously explained clearly. Namely: “why we must always begin by positing polar opposites and why we must end by reconciling the opposites”. Why must the human mind “overlook unity” once we begin thinking at all, and why must we “re-discover it if we continue thinking clearly enough and long enough”?

This reminds me of another comment RAW once made (I don’t recall where – it seems a long time ago) that stuck in my mind because it resonated with my earlier Anxiety Culture, a modest little zine and ancient website. He said human anxieties originally arose with the development of culture (thinking, conceptual dichotomies, etc) and that as a species we then spent most of our time using culture to alleviate our anxieties somehow. Using a thorn to remove a thorn, so to speak.

Returning to the earlier point about preconscious or unconscious inferences. Or anything “outside” experience that seems to shape experience. The ever-present “implicit”? The “source” of metaphor? Here’s RAW commenting, from Scarfalloto’s book:

‘A symbolism that appears in so many places and times does not belong in the category of “beliefs” or “concepts.” It pre-exists such front-brain abstraction. It comes, rather, from that timeless abyss which Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious,” or from Sheldrake’s “morphic field,” or the “akashic records” of Theosophy, or Tim Leary’s “neurogenetic archives” – ie from a level so deep that we cannot profitably consider its signals (symbols) as ideas but only as the preconditioning forms (or archetypes) out of which all our less primitive images, and eventually abstract ideas, can grow.’ – RAW, intro to The Alchemy of Opposites

That quote reveals a few of Wilson’s favorite blueprints. I’ll leave it to readers of this blog to ponder whether the “collective unconscious” manifests “in” space/time/matter (eg via brain substance). Or whether space/time/matter appears (as metaphor) “in” that spooky collective “field”. Or both and/or neither, etc.

Oh, yes – my query. Does Roger Jones come up anywhere in material I don’t presently have access to (eg various RAW correspondences, interviews, etc) that throw a light on RAW’s takes on Physics as Metaphor, beyond the brief citations in his own books? I’m fairly sure I’ve exhausted the “usual sources” in looking for mentions of Jones (including RAWIllumination.net, the Overweening Generalist blog, old and new, Prop Anon’s RAW biography, Eric Wagner’s ‘An Insider’s Guide…’, the two main RAW fan sites, Scott Apel’s Beyond Chaos and Beyond, etc) although I may have missed something. Thanks!

“And what about ‘matter,’ the idol of the Fundamentalist Materialists? This is a metaphor, too, a petrified poem, and is related to meter and measure
(and, oddly enough, to mother also).”
– RAW, The New Inquisition

* RAW’s takes on “science”, like his takes on “feminism” and many other things, don’t fall into any of the “usual” either/or, pro-/anti-, all-or-nothing, etc, pigeonholes. “No shit!”, I hear some say. But for me it’s subtle, ironic, not all obvious. I’ve previously written about those subtleties and ironies in RAW’s writings here on science, and here on “political correctness” & feminism.

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Montages: Brian Dean