15. Emergence of Meaning

This web page is associated with a book called called Reverse Engineering the Universe.

The book can be bought at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Dr_Jerome_Heath_Reverse_Engineering_the_Universe?id=_OvqBQAAQBAJ

The book gives a more complete explanation of these issues and includes a number of related topic discussions. The combination develops the understanding of these concepts from a number of viewpoints.

In emergence the limits on the possible paths of activity (mechanisms available) are limited, which is part of the development of totally new properties and rules that appear as the system evolves. “Constitutive characteristics are not explainable from the characteristics of the isolated parts. The characteristics of the complex [system], therefore, appear as ‘new’ or ‘emergent’…” – Ludwig von Bertalanffy

In Zen enlightenment the understanding of the universe lies in understanding that the void behind that universe is real and eternal. Recognizing the void reveals that existence cannot be purely temporal. Now the recognition of the void is related to the recognition of the existence of the not-symbolic (postulating a not-whatever is a common koan methodology for Zen enlightenment), which reveals the context of a meaning (the not-symbolic being the context for the symbolic) as more important, more universal, and more permanent than the defined meaning (which is symbolic rather than not-symbolic and often very reflexive in nature). The not-symbolic makes up the real universe (the context); the symbols only define the objective and subjective universes that we talk about.

Then Jung's archetypes are thought holes (or channels of meaning) where we can place ideas, but these archetypes can only be pointed at symbolically. Although we must discuss archetypes by using symbols so they fit into language (the shadow, the child), the archetypes are themselves not a symbol but a not-symbol that can hold some symbol which gives us meaning (through the symbol). Synchronicity then is recognized and understood when these not-symbols line up behind the occurrence which has no “scientific” or symbolic explanation. Thus archetypes, which are the not-symbolic, clarify synchronicity by being the background for it. The archetypes are the shadow of the symbol.

But this archetypal region of thought is tied to the world that our physical senses encounter. Thus we only understand the world from our senses as it is carried to our rational thought through the archetypal region. The Archetype, or better the archetypes, mediate our understanding of the physical universe.

To the Zen enlightened the true meaning can only be arrived at through the void. The void underlies true meaning. The context of this discussion is, more general, in that we seek to develop that the not-symbolic underlies true meaning. This is a more general understanding of enlightenment and emergent meaning. The not-symbolic provides the soil in which meaning can grow…in our thoughts. The symbols are nothing and mean nothing without the not-symbolic. Archetypes are the form of the not-symbolic.

The edge of language is meta-language but it is more distinctly the world of not-symbol. We recognize the meaning of the symbol or group of symbols from the world of not-symbol that surrounds the expression. The symbols in an expression fit into holes or channels of meaning that define what the symbols are in the expression and thus what the expression means. Without the holes or channels from the archetypal world of the not-symbol the letters on the page would be meaningless nonsense.

The process is based on the finding thought patterns that match the context of the immediate instance (constraints), so it becomes recognizable.

The thought concepts form within the constraints of the present mind.

Jerome Heath