Hyperobjective Reality and the Reinstatement
of Determinism in the New Culture Epoch
A Critical Review:
by
Bernard X. Bovasso
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The Polyimagical Realm
I must note that as primarily a painter at
the time of composing this work (1986) I
was also painting "angels." They
were in figure what I have called personatypes
and simulated, imitated realities, yet arché
and beyond typification (typos) in content.
This ambiguity is in fact the subject of
this book. The simultaneity of image and
immanence is not a problem, except we have
no credible concept for simultaneity, or
complementarity, and by which ambivalence
prevails as the earmark of reality. Now,
in the year 2004 it is the least I can say
for showing the differences that only analytically
repose in mutually exclusive camps, that
of C. G. Jung's rigorous and extensive amplification
of Freud's Psychoanalytic and the new Post
Modern wave of James Hillman's Archetypal
Psychology and its polytheistic trimmings.
In that case the many gods earn a capital
"G" and in contention with the
One God. But speaking as both a painter and
a poet I can only fall back on an experiential
standpoint, something reminded by Plato 2500
years ago in his Ion dialogue: "and
therefore God takes away the minds of poets,
and uses them as his ministers, as he also
uses diviners and holy prophets, in order
that we who hear them may know that they
speak not of themselves who utter these priceless
words in a state of unconsciousness, but
that God is the speaker, and that through
them he is conversing with us."
Bernard X. Bovasso Spring, 2005 Additional
biographical notes about the author can be
found at the bottom of this page.Bernard
Bovasso ORDER FROM: http://www. authorhouse.
com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~26198. aspx
Paperback $16.00 ISBN 14180499994
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CONTENTS I: The New Determinism: Cosmos Contra
Tyche
II: The Debate; A Question of Alternatives
III: Psychological Predisposition
IV: Introversion and Male Homosexuality
V: Science, Myth and Catholicization
VI: Epistemic Correctness and Hyperobjectivity
Forword:
Pre-Determination and Choice
It is not often that an uncalled for coincidence
asserts itself in a timely manner. Involved
in this case were two scientifically addressed
subjects appearing in the May issue of Scientific
American that were topically miles apart
but retained of a peculiar thread of relation.
I could not resist the novelty of the coincidence
and decided to announce my response in a
brief letter to the editor. Levity, however
soon gave way to compulsive seriousness.
There was more here than deserves a casual
response. Indeed, something epochal was at
hand. A culture phenomenon had run itself
into an ontological dilemma that was equally
the problem of hard core physics. Students
of culture and students of matter in general
mutually exclude each other. But why should
I be surprised at this? It has always been
that way. Yet, it has always been my view
that reality, whether culturally, socially
or psychologically explicit had a direct
relation to how the world and universe, in
all their materiality and physicality, are
scientifically interpreted. Here was an opportunity
to make my point. The material shoved in
my face was not only an epistemological ball
game but emotionally charged. I could not
resist the temptation and sunk deeper into
a conceptual morass, struggling to stay afloat
and avoid entanglement in the bottom weed.
It was, however, a surprisingly quick heroic
adventure and the following paper surfaced.
* * * *
The subjects of Quantum Mechanics and male
homosexuality juxtaposed may have been as
disquieting to the scientifically inclined
readers of Scientific American as were some
of the graphics appearing in the May, '94
issue. They included a generous array of
photographs of scantily clad persons variously
embraced in suggestive homoerotic poses.
The sensually sublime studio shots illustrated
a series of articles by Simon LeVay and Dean
H. Hamer under the heading; Is Homosexuality
Biologically Influenced? Whether the graphics
were intended to editorially influence the
question is only rhetorically suggested.
The provocative illustrations, in any case,
served visual notice to the readership that
Scientific American had come out of the closet
and arrived in the open, less squeamish about
tilting with moral, psychological, philosophical
and metaphysical questions. In this case
it joined in the widespread media attention
and promotion given to the culture trend
towards same sex preference.
But the term preference merely serves a political
convenience in the cause of civil rights.
If homosexuals were made in heaven, that
is, genetically predisposed, or on earth
by psychological conditioning (too much Ma
and less, or no Pa), no acts of free will
and freedom of choice would be involved.
Thus a notion of "preference" must
be accommodated as an as if or virtual reality.
The culture phenomenon, accordingly, goes
far beyond a question of actual sexual practice,
preference or chosen lifestyle. It touches
at some essential and fundamental concepts
that strongly influence, for example, an
interpretation of quantum mechanics. With
or without such intention the coincidence
of alternatives has poignant significance,
reminding that the scientific mood of the
moment expresses a need for an alternative
(to whatever conceptual omissions it suffers).
In other words, the May issue of S. A. was
itself expressing an alternative for coinciding
between its covers not only Bohm's alternative
and a biological ground for the Gay alternative,
but an alternative to its usual manner of
presenting scientific papers.
Immediately following the alternative sex
articles was an extremely comprehensive piece
titled Bohm's Alternative to Quantum Mechanics,
by David Z. Albert. What appeared to be a
silly coincidence of meanings suggested that
Bohm's alternative (theory) as an attempt
to remedy the indeterminism ruling modern
physics. It was no different than the hope
to locate a biological influence in male
homosexuality. Short of such influence the
explanations for homosexuality remained as
much indeterminate as quantum mechanics,
and more likely limited in cause to cultural,
social and psychological contingencies. A
biological foundation would, as would Bohm's
alternative, provide an objective premise
serving as first cause in any chain of causalistic
reasoning. On the other hand, the new determinism
would be presented by still another challenge;
the compromise of the freedom of choice.
Even prior to that the question loomed: Is
a sexual modus a question of choice any more
than choosing between two fundamentally opposite
yet equivalent scientific interpretations?
In the standard Copenhagen interpretation
(the school of Niehls Bohr) the position
of the observer in a probabilistic cosmos
of random events and chance coincident established
a very distinct world-view which, by and
large, has had great cultural influence.
Here, a field of random events provided itself
as the matrix to a notion of freedom and
choice, simply because it negated the influence
of a teleological prefixed and apriori directed
course of events. In this view, following
an egalitarian principle and the politics
of rights and freedom, it is assumed the
observer (as subjective presence) has a choice.
But Bohm's alternative theory challenges
the probabilistic, subjectivist picture of
reality implicit in the standard formulation
of quantum mechanics. It is only upon second
thought that it is realized choice is possible
only in a random manifold of events and by
which the accidents of coincidence are summed
as essentially acausal and as if without
priority according to the mandates of both
cosmos and the Logos. This "alternative"
is also predicated as a virtual reality and
suggests there is no more choice for the
subjective presence in what was once enjoyed
cosmogonically in a universe of random events.
In the study by Simon LeVay and Dean H. Hamer
the notion of the homoerotic tendency as
a genetic predisposition also leaves no choices
in the question of preference for alternate
sexual lifestyles. In both cases--that of
Bohm's abolishment of randomness and the
biological determination of a sexual lifestyle--the
subjective presence is objectively prevailed
as a child of predetermined destiny.
* * * *
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Part II: A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES
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The New Determinism: Cosmos Contra Tyche
The challenge to the freedom of choice, however,
comes up against more than the theoretic
problems of physics. A principle of indeterminism
had equally settled to predicate the deconstruction
of Western Culture. It is echoed in Nietzsche's
proclamation, God is Dead, herald to the
new age of relativism and uncertainty corresponding
with a structural affinity for horizontal
rather than vertical social order. Was the
Death of God merely a symptom of the epochal
demise of the masculine cultural priority?
Was it contingent upon the rise of feminism,
the global appeal of an egalitarian principle
and the quick and massive expansion of the
technologically enabled age of consumerism?
How much did a fundamental indeterminism
and relativism transhistorically sweep an
entire culture to its present day momentous
climax in universal ontological uncertainty?
Indeed, which came first, the scientific
transformation of physics or the cultural
mood? Or, alternately, what is the rule by
which they are rendered coincident? Is there
a synchronicistic rule of order correlated
to the chaos of random events, accidental
coincidences and ubiquitous uncertainty?
Even if Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg
were immune to such cultural upheavals, the
momentous proposal of the uncertainty principle
and the arrival of quantum mechanics cannot
be viewed as merely a random accident. The
cross-link between the particular concepts
of Quantum Mechanics and the cultural dissolution
of a God-the-Father centered universe was
indeed more critically endangered by the
introduction of randomness, or chance and
unpredictability. The development was theologically
unacceptable, at least to those who fathomed
the implication, such as, for example, Einstein
himself (for whom God does not play dice
with the universe ). Perhaps the scientist
was less worried about a universe submitted
to the vice of gambling than he was about
the introduction of Madam Tyche, Lady Luck,
as an agency of determining alternatives
and absorbing thereby the human endowment
of freedom of choice. He did, in fact, whether
consciously or not, respond to the return
of the goddess and her implementation of
tyche not only in physics but the personal
life (not to mention the stock market!) In
other words: a universe where chance rules
and displaces the predetermined moira ("apportioning
out") of individual and collective destinies.
The notion of chance or random events, it
should be noted, was active rather late in
human history. It is less the mark of the
Age of Reason but the signature of modernism
(industrial technology, super-states, capitalism,
socialism, great dictators, etc.) where the
fate of the individual is no longer a private
destiny. The private destiny is replaced
by an ideology of individual freedom and
rights. This does not, however, account for
"fate," or destiny, except as those
genetic accidents that may leave the individual
with either physical or psychological disadvantages.
Hence, the egalitarian ideal is violated,
whether by the Fata Morgana, or Lady Tyche
(Luck), the female fairy (fata), or the goddess,
who serves as the agency of an inscrutably
deterministic and fixed destiny that is regulated
as if ordained by chance and randomness.
The activity of such a figure serves as the
complement to a concept of cosmos and the
divine order as manifestations of an ontologically
in place God. In that case order and design
would be meaningfully prefixed, teleologically
directed toward a final, or eschatological,
perfection. Random events, coincidences and
accidents would indeed be unthinkable under
such a format. The order of Jung's synchronicity
would have been brought to order according
to a physicalized nomos and the acausal nature
of meaningful coincidence absolved of uncertainty
by the simple device of ontologizing and
thus factoring the nature of uncertainty
as an actuality. This would merely be an
extension of calculating, as Albert notes,
"the positions of all the particles
in the world at any time, and the worlds
complete quantum-mechanical wave function
at the time..." And this would this
include factoring in the equation a quantum
of ignorance?
Albert elaborates: "Any incapacity to
carry out those calculations, any uncertainty
in the results of those calculations, is
necessarily in this theory an epistemic uncertainty.
It is a matter of ignorance and not a matter
of operations of any irreducible element
of chance in the fundamental laws of the
world. Nevertheless, this theory entails
that some such ignorance exists for us, as
a matter of principle. The laws of motion
of Bohm's theory literally force this kind
of ignorance on us. And this ignorance turns
out to be precisely enough, and of precisely
the right kind, to reproduce the familiar
statistical predictions of quantum mechanics.
That happens by means of a kind of averaging
out over what one does not know, which is
exactly the kind of averaging that goes on
in classical statistical mechanics."
Thus the Fata appears to intrude itself as
a part of deterministic order and it is nominally
and epistemically combined as "chance"
in a single moment of uncertainty which the
physicist attempts to investigate and quantitatively
fix in terms of measuring wave function and
mass! But this quantum of ignorance equally
plays a vital part in an approach to the
relation of synchronistic phenomena to psychic
processes and archetypal influences.
Jung notes, for example, in his initial investigations
of such phenomena: "I know, however,
from long experience of these things that
spontaneous synchronistic phenomena draw
the observer, by hook or by crook, into what
is happening and occasionally make him an
accessory to the deed. That is the danger
inherent in all parapsychological experiments.
the dependance of ESP on an emotional factor
in the experimenter and subject is a case
in point. I therefor consider it a scientific
duty to give as complete an account as possible
of the result and to show how not only the
statistical material, but the psychic processes
of the interested parties, were affected
by the synchronistic arrangement. 1
Consistent with Bohm's approach, the "ignorance
factor" was also an instrument in the
measuring of a phenomenon: where wave functions
provide the inherent uncertainty in the purely
empirical approach. In either case, however,
the uncertainty, and which is the measure
of the observer, is not statistically overridden,
but ontologically accommodated insofar as
it represents a state of being. Or said otherwise:
a knowing of God is not ontologically real
without the immanence of doubt, uncertainty
and ignorance. But this is precisely the
epistemological position taken by Sir Karl
Popper when he asserts that a question of
science is not involved when a considered
object of science is beyond disproof. Along
such lines, Heidegger observes: "The
god-less thinking which must abandon the
god of philosophy, god as causa sui, is thus
perhaps closer to the Divine God. Here this
means only: god-less thinking is more open
to Him than onto-theo-logic would like to
admit."2 As a result, the question of
God as a given and hence beyond scientific
scrutiny and the object or phenomenon that
is beyond science because it cannot be disproved
would appear to have more in common than
not. In other words, the question of God
as the agency of order in the universe is
once again rejoined as a scientific question
and by which, it would appear, Bohm's new
alternative would not only controvert Popper
but requalify Einstein's deepest hope that
God did not exercise his cosmogonic prerogative
at the crap table!
Commencing the epochal theological turnabout
at the end of the 19th Century, the unseating
of a god concept was in order. It is displaced
by all that is opposite in nature and yet
equivalent to it, generalized nominally,
as Mother Nature. She is rooted (etymologically)
as mater, matrix and matter. Why does She,
as Mother or Matter, have mass when her husband
is weightlessly identified with Spirit, or
a relatively massless photon? She is large
without her (husband's) laws, that is to
say, without her husband when He is gaming
with the "other woman," Lady Luck!
Regardless of the possibility of divine philandering
and cosmological crap shooting, if there
is any nominal equivalence here, then the
idea of God the Father must be met unequivocally
by Mother Nature as His complement. However
facetious this may sound it merely falls
back on what is intrinsic to language and
the way we (must) think. Linguistically and
conceptually speaking, for example, taking
the theos out of "theory" would
be as bad as taking the mater and matrix
out of matter! This would leave-although
without notice-the rule of random events
as its own negation, a Chaos in appearance
with Theos as no more than its unconscious
immanence and latent (seminal) potential
of order. In that case a principle of ubiquitous
randomness regulating subnuclear events would
be theoretically irrelevant especially that
probability would be left as the beam in
the eye of the beholder (as Schrodinger's
cat-in-the-box paradox demonstrates). Nevertheless,
subjectively convenient probabilities and
explanations in randomness are not threatening
(to scientists) simply because they do not
violate an understanding of causality (as
a fixed and determinate principle), locality
(as the rule of time and space) and both
of which are regulated in a fixed and determinate
constant. With these rules (of Theoria) in
place the play of random events may be accommodated
so that Order (Cosmos) enjoys the priority
over Chaos (randomness).
But no sooner demonstrate the possibility
of nonlocality, acausal connections and action
at a distance, than measure the disappointment
of Einstein for the "EPR paradox"
and its failure to demonstrate an objective
frame of reference. Apparently the chaos
factor of Mother nature and Tyche has been
classically in strong contention with the
ordering principle. But no matter, "It
is now emerging," observes Albert in
his article, "that those conclusions
were settled on somewhat too quickly. As
a matter of fact, a radically different,
fully worked-out theory exists that accounts
for all known behaviors of subatomic particles.
In this theory, chance plays no role at all,
and every material object invariably does
occupy some particular region of space. Moreover,
this theory takes the form of a single set
of basic physical laws that apply in exactly
the same way to every physical object that
exists... That theory is principally the
work of David J. Bohm of Birbeck College,
London."
Although his formulation has existed in the
scientific literature for more than 40 years,
it has until quite recently been mostly ignored
simply because removing the demon of chance
would provisionally reestablish a fixed objective
standpoint for scientific premises. An isotropic
and deterministic universe was also proposed
by the Marquis de Laplace 200 years ago.
It met with opposition by religionists since
it indicated that the possibility of the
absolute predictability and measuring of
the universe and physical phenomena competed
man (as scientist) with God. The deterministic
model lasted until the beginning of this
century until the notions of complementarity
and the uncertainty principle removed the
last possibility of fixed reference for the
object. And this disallowed the locality
assigned to the subjective presence and the
non-locality traditionally assumed for the
Divine Presence. But the new quantum mechanics
idea of indeterminism and chance was by far
the greater threat to a theological premise
insofar as it inferred a new definition of
God. However the isotropic model offered
by LaPlace and then Bohm overlapped an idea
of God, could it be put back into science
to represent a principle of an absolutely
objective standpoint?
In either case a tertium comparationis would
have been (re)established by which an understanding
of phenomena may be mediated. It may be apparent
to the scientist and philosopher that a one
on one relationship to phenomena is a useless
attempt at "pure empiricism." Between
the subject and the object a mediating imperative
is required that includes the presence of
the Logos, an epistemic registry by which
mind and experience (of the object) are combined
in a representation. Short of that it is
impossible to speak of scienza or praxis.
It would admit that God (as Father in Being)
is not dead but simply lost in the great
culture swell of indeterminism, the mother-grounded
probabilistic, subjectivist picture, where
anything goes, doctrinal permissiveness is
the rule, with social and ethical relativism
as the (typical) norm of a deconstructed
culture.
The problem of requiring an objective ground
for both science and a form of culture points
up another distinction in a definition of
God. Was the Nietzschean "God is dead"
proclamation referring to the Beingness of
God or God as a being (a thing or person).
The distinction has strong relevance to the
ambivalence of Quantum Mechanics insofar
as the Beingness of matter is different from
the ontic "thingness" nature of
matter as particle and wave. From the standpoints
of 19th century science and theology, and
now, Bohm's Alternative, the conditional
and relativistic presence of the observer,
the measuring subject, would be something
necessarily apart from what is fixed and
objective as Being in and by itself.
The beingness of matter is accounted for
by Bohm in a concept of non-locality, the
simultaneity of events at a distance. Since
this is disallowed in relativity theory it
would represent a hyper-objective reality
in the same sense of non-locality as it applies
to Jung's "objective psyche" and
by which he means the collective and transpersonal
unconscious. In either case the subjective
factor is offset because irrelevant to a
postulate of non-locality by which the object
(and hence the subject!) is not fixed in
a particular position in time and space.
Neither is its quantum energy and mass limited
to such fixed particularity. Accordingly,
no sooner say "hyperobjective"
and "non-locality" than indulge
an idea of a hyper-being as transcendent
subject that is also ubiquitously beyond
particularization. In either case the nature
of Being is not predicated but prevails sui
generis so that it is not limited to locality.
If Being is not compromised by a relativistic
locality, then things and events in becoming
(actuality) cannot displace it. But in the
view of Quantum Mechanics that is precisely
what happens so that not only is subjective
being relativized in time and place but Objective
Being (as a God concept) is reduced to locality
and thus diminished or left deniable altogether.
On the other hand, from the philosophical
standpoint of Martin Heidegger, the God presence
never left science or any other article of
Western Culture but is inextricably imbedded
in all cases. All statements, along with
language would be invested with what he refers
to as the onto-theo-logical.[1] Would its
reinvestment, as suggested by Bohm's Alternative,
serve as a cure for uncertainty? Would its
readmittance as an immanence for scientific
and philosophical thinking renew confidence
of a meaningful Universe and Creation? And
if uncertainty and indeterminism was a gnawing
problem for male homosexuality and alternative
sexuality, would not some ontological reassurance
be offered by locating an a priori biological
foundation for homosexuality?
Were the editors of S. A. aware of this mutuality
of mission in the separate articles and were
they indulging a subtle editorial comment
by juxtaposing them in the same issue of
their publication? More to the political
rather than the "coincidental"
point, alternatives drew the focus, especially
that the homosexuality papers were presented
in the form of a debate. The format provided
the homosexuality question with a number
of possibilities for resolution: consensus
through polling, a public referendum, or
perhaps a trial by a jury of scientific peers.
The burden of judgement in a scientific a
scientific question was in this manner passed
on, after a ritual of dialectical exchange,
to the readership. Would a democratically
achieved consensus decide the question of
how male homosexuality may be enabled to
meet with majority approval or, more critically,
whether it will be allowed morally (by natural
law) correct because rooted in other than
humanly contestable necessity. If same-sex
love was thus attained to a hyperobjective
priority, in this case grounded in a genetic
pre-disposition, the conditional ground would
fall away as irrelevant and homosexuality
would be included as a part of evolutionary
speciation.
Even greater stakes are implied if the question
of alternatives, in this case grounded in
a hyperobjectivity (without need of an observer),
relates Bohm's alternative to the homosexuality
question. In either case Divine approval
is sought if at all the alternative compensates
whatever is all and opposite to the philosophies
of materialism and relativism familiar to
a 20th Century world view. Here, the alternative,
because hyperobjective in nature, amounts
to what Heidegger referred to as the step
back, a recursive move that in fact would
serve to reinstitute the Deity in scientific
thinking. But was the God in Science ever
really lost except veiled and concealed?
The tandem alternatives thus far noted represent
a bending back to what is inescapable: the
conceptual foundation of Western thought.
That difficulty lies in language. Heidegger
continues; "Our Western languages are
languages of metaphysical thinking, each
in its own way. It must remain an open question
whether the nature of Western languages is
in itself marked with the exclusive brand
of metaphysics, and thus marked permanently
by onto-theo-logic, or whether these languages
offer other possibilities of utterance, and
that means at the same time of a telling
silence."[3] The philosopher states
this as if it were apodictic and an inescapable
destiny!
Mathematics may offer other possibilities
as the language of "telling silence"
but which is nevertheless onto-theo-logically
permeated until it is rendered godless by
the uncertainty principle, the Devil of indeterminism
itself; the principle of indefinite specification.
Is such uncertainty, shaped to conceptual
proportion, without precedent in the history
of Western culture? Has it displaced the
onto-theo-logical by which physical events
are invested with a deterministically fixed
order?
In reaction to this, physicality in Bohm's
theory is apparently itself the fundamental
destiny and demonstration of order. "In
Bohm's account," notes Albert, "wave
functions are not merely mathematical objects
but physical ones, physical things. Bohm
treats them somewhat like classical force
fields, such as gravitational and magnetic
fields. What wave functions do in Bohm's
theory (just as classical force fields do)
is to in effect push the particles around,
to guide them, as it were, along their proper
courses."
But does such "guiding" of particles
in a prefigured track that is no less their
correct course represent the conceptual acme
of physical and cosmic determinism!"
It is, of course, difficult to imagine a
mathematical object as physical. A mathematical
object is a representation. It is not the
thing itself but only itself as a mathematical
representation, just as Being in itself is
not to be confused for beings (physical things).
Since Being in itself is a direct reference
to the onto-theo-logical and which in itself
is a representation, it stands (in Being)
as a hyperobjective state. Bohm's alternative
exemplifies such ontological virtuality but
then steps back and makes a short circuit
run from mathematical object to physical
object, circumventing, as such, the necessary
(for thought or thinking) agency of representation,
the language (or Logos) itself! His approach,
as such, is unconventionally metaphysical
and only inferentially onto-theo-logical
but succeeds, nevertheless, at achieving
a hyperobjective hypostasis, a physicalizing
of a virtual reality, or the reification
(thingifying) of wave function, in attempt
to render it physically concrete.
* * * *
Here, I must admit, I have coined the term
"hyperobjective" especially because
it so conveniently seems to accommodate Bohm's
alternative and, as we shall later see, his
concept of "Implicate Order". Although
it may be obvious that the metaphysical thing
in itself and the onto-theo-logical investiture
are merely subsumed in so ungainly a category
as the hyperobjective, it remains a necessary
postulate because required to accommodate
the solidifying of wave function whereby
space is rendered absolutely uniform. And
of course neither objects or motion may accommodate
themselves in such a medium.
This would, of course, disqualify the difference
between space/time and the thing in space/time
and so pave the way for a notion of spatial
and hence material non-locality
(which at the moment may be defined as the
virtual reality of a"Black Hole").
Neither objects or motion (as we know and
define them) are feasible in such a dense
medium. But, more calamitously, what this
also achieves is the virtual annihilation
of the lowly subjective presence. It manages
this by including the observer as part of
the total statistical calculation. Yet, notwithstanding
that object and subject are inseparable as
unit polarizations, the purpose of a postulated
hyperobjective reality is to absolutely and
unequivocally attempt (dialectically) to
requalify the observer, the lowly measurer
representing mortality, according to a new
frame of reference.
The mortal presence has, in this argument,
already been rendered somewhat impotent because
its necessities have been limited as the
contingencies of measure, and whose mortal
reality is designed in uncertainty. Consequently,
the future as only statistically (mathematically)
and not ontologically predictable. Here,
the psychological nature of the hyperobjective
possibility reveals itself: as the most viable
allusion to a state of immortality. Bohm,
in effect, seeks to absolve the mortal presence
of limit to a statistical frame of reference,
but in doing so the subject, as it were,
is swallowed up by the object which, as a
nuclear particle, is both physically in place
yet ubiquitously all over the place. Following
in the Bohmian physical paradigm the mortal
subject, because physical, would be assimilated
to hyperobjective Being, in effect, "The
Father and I are One." Would this in
turn infer that the incarnation of hyperobjective
being (Being in itself) attempts to physicalize
the Divine Estate?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, be it reminded, I am not declaring this
is what Bohm in fact had in mind or that
he even grasped the full metaphysical possibilities
of his physicalistic speculations. It may
only be assumed he had hopes to declare the
incarnation of hyperobjective Being (Being
in itself) as a physical event; that is,
what would amount in theological terms to
the materialization of the divine estate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At this point it may be clear that a piece
of Alice In Wonderland logic has been extended
to its necessary climax in either absurdity
or divine revelation. More tangibly manifested,
however, is a psychological state of mind
turned in on itself, re-embodied in the pleroma
of hyperobjective reality, the virtual state
of immortality achieved: where World and
Self because thinkable realities are physically
bonded as one, and attained thereby of singularity;
homo qua homo in the modus of cogito, ergo
sum, death overcome! To Think, therefore
would be the antithesis to death and annihilation
and by which Mind is postulated as the Heaven
of the thinker.
A caveat is in order here and which draws
some relevance to the above noted coincidence
of alternatives: the homophilia state of
being as a rarefied introverted existence
that is not necessarily confined to and thus
translated in sexual terms, but in whatever
the mode of comportment where absolute uniformity
is demanded and intrusion from without proscribed.
Since the attempt is made to unconditionally
conserve both world and self as homogeneously
uniform it may be understandable that it
represents an inscrutable form of heterophobia;
where the Other and Opposite (self) must
be rigorously suppressed because posed as
a fatal intruder into the unus mundus of
such colossal self-world-cosmos identity.
It is here that the question of male homosexuality
as genetically pre-ordained takes its place
as an unconditional absolute along with Bohm's
new alternative. The question must thus be
addressed in either case: does such self-identity
by which a closed universe is defined according
to a fixed absolute reflect more a state
of mind and a psychological attitude whose
introverted necessities requires a universe
that is invulnerable to compromise by random
events and those accidents of change by which
the individual destiny is reconditioned?
If there is the barest suggestion of this,
would it not reflect a yearning for an apriori
absolution by which the individual is freed
of all responsibility for the contingencies
of the life destiny?
The Debate
The male homosexuality debate engaged Simon
LeVay, whose specialty is neuroanatomy, and
Dean H. Hamer, a scientist versed in biological
chemistry. Dr. LeVay is also founder of the
Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education. Both
specialists, in their Evidence for a Biological
Influence in Male Homosexuality (the article
may have just as well been called The LeVay/Hamer
Alternative), presented a case for how a
bio-genetic causality is related to homosexuality.
Their tandem views were countered by William
Byne, a medical researcher and practicing
psychiatrist, in his The Biological Evidence
Challenged. Each side presented didactic
arguments and what appeared as appropriate
evidence. More to the political point, alternatives
drew the focus, especially that the Homosexuality
papers were presented in the form of a debate.
The format provided the homosexuality question
with a number of possibilities for resolution:
consensus through polling, a public referendum,
or perhaps a trial by jury?
The burden of judgment in a scientific question
was in this manner passed on, after a ritual
of dialectical exchange, to the readership.
Would a democratically achieved consensus
decide the question of how male homosexuality
may be enabled to meet with majority approval
or, more critically, whether it will be allowed
morally (by natural law) correct because
rooted in other than humanly wrought biological
necessity? It was, however, somewhat disturbing
to realize that the debate format amounted
to a politicization of a scientific issue.
This left me at a loss to make an educated
choice. I was somewhat disarmed and obliged
to fall back on a subjective response. Yet,
the pro-biological authors won my approval
simply because they wrote in a way I found
appealing and they seemed fair-minded. For
all that, their argument hardly convinced
me. I simply preferred them to their opponent.
My judgement, by and large, was determined
subjectively. In a debate format such is
often the case: judgement precedes the evidence
and nature ofthe issue and leans sympathetically
toward a preconditioned emotional and subjective
response: Scienza compromised by doxa!
On the other hand, the challenger to their
case, William Byne, immediately rubbed me
wrong in the first paragraph of his article.
He started out with a naive epiphenomenalistic
statement: "All psychological phenomena
are ultimately biological." Just as
well say all this is ultimately all that!
Why indeed refer to anything psychological
as phenomenon when in fact it has been reduced
to epiphenomenon? More likely, reducing one
thing as the contingency of another is a
cheap shot judgmental means of disqualifying
it. In such an approach, whatever is favored
and agreeable is assigned position as prima
causa. What is repugnant is given to the
rear as merely derivative or dependant. What
else could I immediately think but this psychiatrist
was an epistemological cluck. I forced myself
to read on, found that he presented a credible
challenge, but totally dismissed him when
at the end of his discourse he again committed
epistemological heresy by wistfully concluding:
"Perhaps the answers to the most salient
questions in this debate lie not within the
biology of human brains but rather in the
cultures those brains have created."
Now there is something to choke on. At least
the fellow was consistent in his approach.
Was he speaking euphemistically or did he
really believe that culture is the mere epiphenomenon
of brains?--that brains arrive ready made,
proceed to create out of themselves, and
all without even a remote consideration that
brains and culture enjoy an exchange relation
in each their particular modes of discursion.
Could it be, in this peculiar psychiatric
view, that the (biological) evolution of
brains had nothing to do with the evolution
of culture and the collective response of
humans in time and experience? That brains
would posit "brains," such as they
are, were a given in and by themselves, indeed,
no less apriori hyperobjective brains!
Such a fundamentalist view is obviously prepared
for discourse only insofar as it is guaranteed
a preconceived conclusion. He knew all along,
and before a ritual debate, "that all
psychological phenomena are ultimately biological,"
and that biological brains created culture.
Did he mean the brains of individuals, or
a collection of brainsall at once? Whose
brains created culture? Was it possible to
attribute the creation of language, for example,
to the exceptional brains of some unknown
singular individual? Barring such possibility,
it may be admitted that the creation of culture
was the effort of collective brains. This
poses an immediate problem for the culture-pro-brains
argument. Is it possible to isolate a biologically
constituted and all pervasive collective
brain? Saw and scalpel are useless here.
Statistical analysis is not. It may then
become clear that the expressed constituent
elements of this collective brain are in
fact measurable only as statistically derived
quanta. Jung called them archetypes such
as they are prevailed in the quantum field
of the collective brain. The manifest form
of these quarky endopsychic predispositions
is, of course, called "culture."
The field, or body of such non-molar quanta,
is called "Psyche." And since psyche
is quite invisible (to the senses), yet no
doubt attributable to biology, it is astounding
that psychiatrists and psychologists do not
dispense with the study of the soul (psyche)
and focus on bios? That would mean giving
up the great convenience of epiphenomenalism;
of being at two places at the same time but
knowing neither of either! In this way the
manifest image, or personification, would
be reducible to psyche qua bios yet available
for their hard evidence in appearance for
final conclusions. But that is precisely
why it is fashionable to compare the operation
of the brain to a computer; to confuse neurological
performance for the operations of mind and
intelligence; or all in all short circuit
the connection of biological and physiological
processes to mental activity. Such quick
resemblances, homo qua homo, indicate a generalizing,
ignotum per ignotius, where the least is
known of either.
It would have been more practical, even for
a practicing epiphenomenalist, to accept
that brains and culture are in an evolutionary
relation of relentless mutual exchange. A
case for brains creating culture sets the
stage for a premise of un-natural selection
in the evolution of culture. Such may be
the case for the contrary to "natural"
but Dr. Byne must lose my vote because hardly
blessed with the power to grasp that the
relation of things rather than the things
themselves is the thing; or object of science
I would hate to think (as a painter and poet)
that my creative efforts may be reduced to
a pile of categorically fixed a priori gene-beans)!
** ** ** **
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Psychological Predisposition
In view of my choice, however, it was not
so simple to turn over my vote to Messrs.
LeVay & Hamer. They too have put all
their categorical beans in one biological
bucket. Neither am I without suspicion that
their scientific approach is graced with
a certain amount of proprietary intention
for promoting the social acceptability of
male homosexuality. Heterophobe that I am
not, this wouldn't bother me, except their
argument proceeds with predetermined biogenetics
and ends with the freedom of choice to locate
the causal nexus of male homoerotic proclivities!
The luxury of rationally having it both ways,
however, is benchmarked as tautology, the
logical sin of self-predication
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After two biological explanations offered
they are generous enough to speculate a most
compelling third: ". . .that there is
no causal connection, but both sexual orientation
and the brain structures in question are
linked to some third variable, such as a
developmental event during uterine or early
postnatal life." Their tertium quid
is not only mediatory and fairminded but
psychologically accommodating. But why stop
at uterine or early postnatal life in this
recursive procedure? Why not move back even
further? They already infer as much. Toward
the end of their article they make, perhaps
without fully exploiting it, the critical
point: ". . . that the hypothetical
gene acts indirectly, through personality
or temperament, rather than directly on sexual-object
choice." With that statement the contest,
debate, case, is closed and as if they had
they pleaded nolo contendere. The winner
is the third variable, or more precisely,
the tertium comparationis by which complements
in relation are interfaced. Only from here
may we proceed to extrapolate, keeping in
mind that a psychological predisposition
may enjoy priority over the declamatory notion
of an a priori genetic predetermination in
same sex alternatives.
Unfortunately, the authors' curiously miss
the point about what constitutes psychological
predisposition when they add (and in doing
so blow their cover): "For example,
people who are genetically self-reliant might
be more likely to acknowledge and act on
same sex feelings than people who are dependent
on the approval of others." This brings
up a vital problem of the over-exposed Gay
community; the urgently compelling need for
social, political, ethical--and, in the case
at hand, biological--approbation. This is
hardly a question of self-reliance but one
of self-commitment to a way of life that
has little to do with how others may judge
it. In other words, a question of ontological
resolution; or what is generally euphemized
as "self- esteem."
No sooner admit a genetic foundation for
self-reliance, after, of course, an apology
to Ralph Waldo Emerson, than a host of other
personality traits and affectations are forthcoming
and which may be attributable to the same
genetic treasurehouse. It may even be acceptable
that Romanticists and Classicists, Liberals
and Conservatives, or Democrats and Republicans
are genetically pre-ordained for either a
left or right handed political bias.
Before, however, swallowing the short-circuit
reasoning in evidence here, some basic headwork
in the logic of classes and types is in order.
Indeed, forget "self-reliant."
It would fit in the same class with both
sexual-object choice and political-object
choice. Are such phenomic affectations contingent
upon a predisposition far more structurally
bare and morphologically fundamental, that
is to say, genomically quarky?.
It is impossible to predict how the articulation
of a psychological predisposition will manifest
itself. Such predisposition, by nature of
its psychological definition, precludes conclusive
concrete description according to (empirically)
discernible qualities. Indeed, it is by necessity
that the physicist offers the barest directional
valences of a quark, insofar as it represents
the most fundamental, non-qualitative
(statistical) description of matter. It must
remain ubiquitously satisfying for all material
possibilities. But the uncertainty is even
greater in terms of psychological predispositions
simply because a translation has to be made
from physical evidence to interpretive description
of expressive behavior. Need it be said,
translation from the physical to the psychological
paradigm cannot be made on the basis of qualities
in resemblance or apparent sympathy.
Better, therefore, to understand psychological
predispositions by the logic applied to a
quark. Only the most essential of description
is possible and which has to do with the
alternatives of spin, direction, and location,
all aspects of the wave function. In the
case at hand only a predisposition to a particular
alternative of directional valence is possible
to ascertain before taking the rather overdrawn
jump to such affectations of judgment as
self reliance, sexual or political object-choice.
In other words, is the predispositional quark
nature of the subject either inwardly or
outwardly inclined, subject or object orientated?
Is it an inny or outy, uppy or downy, righty
or lefty?--or all in all a predisposition
for understanding world and self from either
an exoteric or estoric standpoint?
Such inclinations merely assert whether a
predisposition pre-exists for an introverted
or extraverted psychological attitude. Where
that takes us in terms of sexual or political
alternatives is determined only after the
fact of conditional circumstances. It is,
accordingly, only remotely possible to determine
whether the many modes and varieties of sexual
expressions, choices and preferences are
genetically predetermined and fixed. This
is no more possible to affirm than whether
the varieties of religious experience, belief
and faith may be reduced to a question of
biology and genes. Or for that matter, whether
the political differences of Liberals and
Conservatives are a priori and genetically
pre-ordained.
Such reductions too easily establish the
possibility of "race memory," or
the genetic retention and Lamarkian transmission
of acquired images and ideas. Indeed, DNA
may carry a code but certainly not morphologically
engramed little pictures, illustrating sexual
programs or poitical expositions! Neither
is the brain and its genetic background so
neatly comparable to the performance of a
word processor with graphics capability and
an extensive clip file! But, following Psychoanalytic
notions, is the brain a garbage pail receptacle
of bundled away, ready made and visually
defined archaic images phylogenetically accumulated
from a primordial past and residing psychically
in situ? . Along similar lines, it is a quaint
modern superstition that a cloned Albert
Einstein or Adolph Hitler would axiomatically
produce, respectively, a scientific genius
and a political despot!
The nature of genetic predisposition is not
so categorically deterministic. The facultas
praeformandi and what is rendered fait accompli
are related only after developmental articulation
is completed, taking into account the contingencies
along the way. Aristotle understood this
when he discoursed on the nature of entelechia,
potentia, dynamis and morphe, and how they
are related (the seed and its potential to
form according to its genetic endowment).
On the other hand, a predisposition may actualize
in resemblance to an image "remembered"
from a past never actually experienced. This
not a "race memory" since every
actualization as an image involves an original
transformation without precedent that neurologically
has nothing to do with memory retention of
a particular ready made and stored image.
The transformation from raw and undefined
cathexic potential is prevailed as a process
of relentless evolution; the innate predisposition
in constant transformation as an interaction
of it and experience in the world.
Because a predisposition is genetically innate,
its image description is not fixed. Its wave
description may be determined, that is, where
it is genetically located, but not its whatness.
Schrodinger, for example, is obliged to remind:
"Real existence is a term almost hunted
down by many philosophical hounds, and its
simple, naive meaning has almost been lost
to us. I wish, therefore, to remind here
of another imperative. We have spoken of
the fact that [sub nuclear] particles are
not individual simply because the same particles
are never really observed twice, just as
Herakleitos said of the river. We cannot
mark an electron-- paint it red'--and not
only that we cannot even think of them as
marked, otherwise false results are obtained
by incorrect `counting' step by step--for
the structure of line spectra, in thermodynamics,
and many other cases... In contrast, it is
very easy to imprint an individual structure
on a wave so that it can be recognized again
with complete certainty..."
What the reality of a particle has in common
with a genetic predisposition is the state
of immanence. In either case no two descriptions
actualize as predictive repetitions but serve
a continuous interaction that is evolutionary
in each case. Although "types"
of descriptions may result and be classified
according to a structural commonality, total
identity and resemblance is impossible simply
because the contingencies of actualizing
(wave description in the case of a particle)
imply locational variations. But in the highly
theoretical nature of hyperobjective reality,
immanence and potential are literally everywhere
at once and yet nowhere at the same time.
* * * *
The ancient ideas of potential as pre-formal
immanence, or indwelling, is no less cogent
than the modern notions of predispositional
causal relations in the transmission of DNA,
e. g., the ancient Hebrew idea of the Shekinah
and its vessel, the mobile Ark of the Covenant,
suggesting the divine seminal immanence is
transitive yet inscrutably ever present.
Indeed, would it be fit to speak of a "wave
function" implied by the mobile Ark?
A physical model does not apply in the ancient
case but certainly a conceptual one does.
The conceptual model, however, is far more
accommodating than the modern physical paradigm.
In the case of the latter the range of the
conceptual paradigm is limited to a particular
physical evidence that tends, as such, to
foreclose the fuller potential of actualization
for a given predisposition. Such premature
finalization leads directly to the folly
of a politicized argument according to which
it must be decided--as if an either/or choice
were involved--whether either a priori genetic
endowment or conditioning determine the destiny
of an individual or, for that matter, a collective
body of people.
Such logical tilting is dissipating if not
occlusive to the fuller realization of a
latent potential. Unfortunately, the exclusionary
dialectical logic has ruled the modern mind
and its mode of arriving at judgements. In
the case at hand, the digital either/or operation
may categorically deny or affirm all bio-genetic
influence in psychological temperament and
offset, obscure or postpone a scientific
conclusion.
Part IV: A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES
Introversion and Male Homosexuality
The partisan views expressed in the questions
of quantum physics and that of homosexuality
may, accordingly, be divided into two major
attitudinal orientations regardless of subject
material. In one orientation a decidedly
inward approach is favored. It is inward
in the technical sense of introversion, characteristically
self-indwelled and which is structurally
accommodated in a closed system. In psychological
description such introversion enjoys definition
as "subject-directed." This is
hardly "subjectivist," or solipsistic,
insofar as the "inner world" of
the subject represents a real universe, although
one that for the most part tends to be closed
off from external influence and conditioning.
The so-called "inner world" is
understood as the true (in the sense of value)
objective reality. "World," in
this case, is conditioned by Self, and not
the other way around. A genetic predisposition
for introversion may actualize such descriptions
as same-sex love, an essentially inward orientated
attitude, or where the world is drawn in
the image of self. In all cases the focus
is on world as inner, the self homo qua homo
in love with self. This is not simply an
example of self-centered egoism but an attitudinal
predisposition by which world and self are
understood as an intensive and esoteric closed
and impenetrable circle. The "world
within" is presented as a virtual hyperobjective
reality, an interior chthonios or underworld
familiar in Greek myth as the domain of the
phallic Hades and the androgynous Dionysos.
Or as Nietzsche described it in his Birth
of Tragedy, the "realm of the mothers."
Whatever the ambiance of intensive introversion
it is especially characterized as a state
of alienation. Bohm, for example, experienced
certain social and professional difficulties
often associated with the introverted predisposition
for alienation. Such essential alienation,
in the case of homosexuality, precedes actual
sexual choices and preferences that are determined
after the fact of conditional circumstances.
The difficulties encountered in such alienation
are in the main cultural, especially that
Western culture is preeminently outgoing,
extensive, exoteric or extraverted. Alienation
in such cultural ambiance is hardly considered
except as something pathologistic. On the
other hand, the extraverted predisposition,
insofar as it inclined as object rather than
subject directed by and large accommodates
the Western culture ideal. Where the extravertd
object seeking invests itself in the other
than itself, the introverted subject seeking
is more at home with itself and what is similiar
to it.
Along similiar lines, collective extraversion
would be in its cultural determinations less
sympathetic to a same-sex inclination, or
indwelling on Self. On the other hand, however
a predisposition for self- identity may be
intrinsically partial to an essential to
an inwardness the fact that it may may settle
as an alternative sexual practice, there
are many other modes of expression to which
the inward directional bias that may be drawn
that reflect spiritual, philosophical or
political alternatives. It is more than apparent,
for example, that male homosexuals manifest
a greater sensitivity for inward or psychic
reality, creative imagination and fantasy,
along with a special affinity for those endeavors
demnanding a heightened aesthetic sensibility.
The male heterosexual, on the other hand,
finds it difficult to accommodate or accept
such preoccupations from the cultural pro-masculine
standpoint. The inwardly dwelled man, aside
from any declared sexual preferences, is
often enough denigrated as feministic simply
because the woman, from mother to wife, carries
the inner world for a real he-man. In this
manner the inner life of the male is barred
to him. Unable to relate to his native "inner
world" the psychism remains intact past
puberty and early manhood, resulting in what
I have come to call "the matri-retentive
male." In other words, the attitudinally
inward directed male may be driven to the
feminine estate that, culturally and in a
most literalistic manner, is the only accommodation
a malepredisposed in this manner may indulge
for his introverted necessities.
More often than not a conflict ensues whose
resolve is in an alienation that separates
the introverted male from football jocks
and the kind of ladies that enjoy them. Same
sex preference is after the fact of such
psychogenic conflicts, offering as such the
course of least resistance to an external
paradigm of inwardness. The greater human
consideration is not for the manner of sexual
preference effected but that an essential
inwardness is given expression from the outside
in rather than the from the inside out, representing
as such an inversion through invasion from
without of what superficially resembles inwardness.
Here an external feminine image is a convenience
of such a reverse cathexis. The masculine
"inner woman" (as anima is thus
atrophied as inner and the external feminine
image is adopted in turn as a persona identity.
From a morphological standpoint the feminine
describes a womb- space receptacle, a vas,
place of containment and darkness that is
inward and esoteric, as opposed to the fundamental
extentional or erectional morphology of maleness.
But if the male personality is in some way
shielded from the endopsychic anima and its
function of maintaining a relation to the
unconscious it may be forced to assume the
feminine image as a personality vestment.
The affectation, if only in the pretense
of a life-style serves as an urgent means
of defense from a direct confrontation with
the unconscious. In that sense the "gay"
personality, fortified by a community in
kind, serves as prophylactic device for warding
off an invasion from within and an overt
psychosis. This is not to indicate that the
extraverted male is less prone to such invasion
under similiar matriretentive circumstances.
In either case the nature of introversion
when unaccommodated in the personal ecology
reflects the unconscious in its most threatening
womb qua tomb, eros qua thanatos personification.
Science, Myth and Catholicization
The editors may not have required that Simon
LeVay, Dean H. Hamer and William Byne--the
contestants in the homosexuality debate--consider
the possibilities presented in David Z. Albert's
review of Bohm's alternative; that is, at
least before they put their views to print.
In either case, a great shyness was in evidence
that worked fruitlessly to conceal any partisan
response to the sociological phenomenon of
an exponential increase of the homoerotic
alternative in modern Western culture. Be
that as it may, it would appear that the
airing of gender politics in a scientific
journal has gone out of its way to exclude
not simply a more definitive survey and analysis
of the social, psychological and cultural
circumstances involved, but the subjective
standpoints representing each the debaters'
particular sexual preference. But, as evidenced
by Bohm's theory, the subjective presence
is no longer an obstacle, at worst, an unwelcome
intruder carrying the obsolete baggage of
uncertainty in the proposed brave new world
of hyperobjectivity.
The not so subtle a clue that uncertainty
is on its way out is the rather ubiquitous
use in recent years of the term "politically
correct." It is the crude forerunner
to an instituted epistemic absolute, a virtual
"law of nature," in effect, the
Word of God engraved on the stones of whatever
discipline or mode of thought. Little speculation
is need to anticipate the full effect of
Bohm's theory instituted: Or if a case for
the biological origin of homosexuality is
accommodated by consensus. What do the parties
to the debate gain in a new age of hyperobjective
scientistic correctness? Indeed, the same
old categorically tempered nuts and bolts
of Classical and Newtonian science idealism
is till screwed in the promise of progressive
salvation! LeVay and Hamer imply as much
when they conclude: "We believe scientific
research can help dispel some of the myths
about homosexuality that in the past have
clouded the image of lesbians and gay men."
It is, of course, par for the course that
part of the myth of science includes as one
of its propensities a duty to dispel myths.
The nature and specifics of such myths are
not discussed, unless it is assumed that
there is a self-evident mythological rather
than biological basis for the enmity that
exists between homophobes and heterophobes.
However the line is drawn between such partisan
societies, the causes of hostility in either
case derived in a lack of scientific enlightenment?
Does such enlightenment pave the path for
what is correct, politically or scientifically?
Or is such advocacy merely a device for seeking
universal approval, a necessity spared the
genetically self-reliant Gay person.
Apparently those who are genetically both
self-reliant and homosexual make up a small
minority of the Gay community. It is thus
inferred that for the greater majority too
much emphasis is placed on World rather than
Self in the question of approval. In other
words, the outer object (society at large)
is disproportionately far more important
than self-qualification and evaluation. In
technical terms this is refereed to as ,
something suffered by the , or the introvert
not reconciled with the functional nature
of introversion. The effort to achieve social
and cultural approval is misleading if there
is no reckoning with a genetic predisposition
for an introverted psychological attitude.
It is highly possible that such an attitude
is collectively shared by those who have
either banded together as a community of
homosexuals, or were lead to a choice of
a Gay life style in the first place because
as introverts they found little comfort or
support in a society that is culturally valenced
toward extraversion. Were such persons born
homosexuals or born introverts? A person
genetically predisposed for inwardness and
for whom Self, and the expression of Self,
are far more compelling than the rewards
of object- oriented worldliness may just
as well choose to pursue the practice of
art and embrace the art community. But even
here it will be noticed how artists are compulsively
obsessed with winning approval and recognition
in the world. Indeed, as in the homosexual
case, the World is the enemy to be overcome
because it does no more than repress and
oppress the sensitive person, a person highly
responsive to self and the endopsychic world.
Only wistfully could Andy Wharhol, who was
both a homosexual and an artist, admit that
the glories of fame and the special attentions
of society (whether in approval or not) are
worth no more than fifteen minutes of ones
time. In view of this, it would be hoped
that the first "myth" to be dispelled
by science would be that introversion, and
the personality demonstrations of its tendencies,
does not represent a moral deficiency, a
dysfunctional psychology or require a special
social sub- class accommodated as "nerds."
If fame, success and social approval are
set as the exclusive requirements for predicating
Self then it may be clear that self-achievement
has been divested of its subject. Indeed,
Self and subject are separated with the latter
swallowed up and homogenized in hyperobjective
reality. Euphemistically this would amount
to claiming that the worldly rewards of achievement
and fame include a position in (or at best,
15 minutes of either history or immortality).
It may be apparent in this respect that as
concepts hyperobjective reality and immortality
have something in common.
** ** ** ** The greater slippage in scientific
veracity is apparent when the weight of science
is intruded in the fragile fields of conscience,
freedom of choice and the courage to be
(what one is, or chooses to be). Keeping
this in mind, regardless with or without
a priori biological justification, the freedom
of choice is compromised if it requires the
engraved in stone truths of hyperobjectivity
to qualify itself. Apparently LeVay and Hamer
are aware of this and much more when they
note: "We also recognize, however, that
increasing knowledge of biology may eventually
bring with it the power to infringe on the
natural rights of individuals and impoverish
the world of its human diversity." It
is apparent to them that relentless proselytizing
and the attempt at catholicizing the scientific
propriety of alternative sexuality amounts
to missionary enforcement, fired in the zeal
of overcompensated doubt. This may happen,
of course, when the articles of science are
construed in the hyperobjective sense of
moral imperatives, force-fitted to satisfy
virtual rather than actual necessities, in
this case the necessities of sexuality examined
scientifically. Even more alarming, however,
it appears axiomatic to the authors that
the mission and destiny of science somehow
includes "... the power to infringe
on the natural rights of individuals and
impoverish the world of its human diversity."
Is it suggested that the verification of
a biological influence of homosexuality would
first, "infringe on the natural rights
of individualsimpoverish the world of its
human diversity." Obviously, an infringement
would be at hand if a homosexual was informed
that his choice of a life style was biologically
pre-destined. It is equally clear that such
biological affirmation would work to compromise
the "human diversity" distinguishing
heterosexuality as an instrument of evolution.
In either case, science is employed for doctrinal
purposes, as demonstrated in other great
proselytizing efforts aimed at world catholicization,
such as Roman Catholicism and Marxism. In
all cases human diversity must be overcome
and natural rights are only those that are
spiritually, scientifically, politically,
psychologically, etc., correct, according
to the epistemic indelibility of what is
finalistically instituted
(placed in being, instatuerre) as a hyperobjective
reality. But need it be emphasized here that
this is the destiny of science only when
it serves as the instrument of an ideology.
** ** ** **
Part V: A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES
Epistemic Correctness and Hyperobjectivity
In the case at hand, the partisan view favoring
a biological explanation for homosexuality
and that representing the new determinism
as expressed in Bohm's Alternative, appear
at home in the introverted closed system
of hyperobjective reality. Such a reality
may be euphemistically referred to as "inner
reality", or further predicated as "spiritual,"
"transcendental," "mystic,"
or "psychic," since all such terms
indicate the esoteric reach of introversion.
This does not entirely accommodate the nature
of hyperobjective reality simply because
it is constituted by premises already externalized
and evolved in world rather than self experience
and then, after a critical stepping back,
introjected and installed in the medium of
the self. Essentially, this would describe
a continuous evolutionary process that is
the chronic reality of intensive introversion.
It includes, for example, the venerable company
of Plato and Platonists, and those whose
philosophical outlooks have nominally have
come to represent the transhistorical long
haul of conceptually expressed introversion
as opposed to Aristotle and the Aristotelian
extraverted objective reality defined as
res extensa. The latter influence, however,
is by and large the stronger one in Western
cultural evolution, representing a persistent
outgoing, outreaching, extensional or exoteric
inclination toward the object. But here the
object is all that is outside the Self and
limited to the world and matter. Such extraversion
is unquestionably in empirical relation to
the object only if the object is definable
as a thing of the senses. The inner object,
as res intensa, endopsychic object, is out
of the question. Offhand such distinctions
would appear nominal, since for the Platonist
the inner object is real, whereas for the
Aristotelian the outer object (of the senses)
is actual. Need it be reminded here that
real and actual are not synonymous for a
philosopher.
In view of such predispositional inclinations
for the inner or outer, Bohm's theory appears
either derived, or intimately related by
coincidence, to certain historically prevailed
ontological understandings. Heidegger, for
example, attempted to show how the idea of
God (as the Onto-Theo-Logical) is absolutely
penetrated into every aspect especially language,
syntax and logic of Western culture. This
would establish the onto-theo-logical as
an absolute, or objective reality, much in
the manner of how Bohm deals with materiality
and physical events. And this is precisely
the same essential outlook enjoyed by LeVay
and Hamer who attempt to locate the causal
nexus of homosexual inclinations in a biological
and genetic foundation. Each would in effect
and principle allow homosexuality the status
of an a priori objective reality or, more
precisely, a hyperobjective reality. In this
same rarified or transcendental class Plato's
a priori intelligibles (archetypal ideas)
comfortably fit, as does Jung's notion of
a "collective unconscious" (that
he alternately refers to as objective psyche).
Both share a commonality with Bohm's alternative:
their hyperobjective reality is not contingent
upon the presence of an observer.
Theologically, the hyperobjective reality
would precede mortality and in that sense
render it irrelevant. Indeed, only divine
angels inhabit this heavenly, empyrean realm,
along with Liebnitz' impermeable "windowless
monads," and more lately, Rupert Sheldrake's
"M-Fields" and how he applies them
to a "shared order" notion to account
for the EPR paradox. In such company as the
music of the spheres we may now enter the
a priori and archetypally genetic engram,
the encoded facultas praeformandi for homosexuality.
If, however, such a mixed bag occupies the
hyperobjective reality, its contents must
owe their being to the radix philosophorum
alternative proposed by Parmenides in his
concept of the Logos: as uncreated, impermeable,
indestructible and eternal, setting as such
the historical ursprung for all notions of
the hyperobjective reality to come. What
such a reality sadly leaves behind, however,
is the mortal and human estate, burdened
as it is in contingencies, accidents of being
and development. The sum of conditional and
environmental factors articulates the mortal
presence and frames it in þthe probabilistic,
subjectivist picture of realityþ that has
in fact made up the major trend of scientific
weltanschauung since the Classical and Newtonian
approach to physics succumbed to the relativity
view. This same trend also influenced such
divergent fields as sociology, psychology,
political science, etc. In all cases the
emphasis was placed on conditioning so that
the traditionally observed hyperobjective
reality of a priori elements was severely
repressed. From a simplicistic standpoint
the historical contest poses þspirituality,þ
and the patrilinear cultural mode, against
"materialism" and its subdivisions,
such as positivism, relativism, deterministic
socialism, behaviorism or what is often predicated
as matriarchal. Obviously, scientific veridity
has not been spared influence in either of
these polar ideologies and what distinguishes
them conceptually. Their conditional causality
doesn't dispose of but merely occludes the
question of conceptual duplexity.
Bohm's mathematically demonstrated alternative
indicates an unequivocal hyperobjective reality,
or one not offset by the measuring attempts
of an observer and the relative position
of the observer doing the measuring. On one
hand this would conceal the question of conditional
influence, and on the otherÄjust because
of the occlusionÄreinstates not only conceptual
duplexity but Cartesian dualism. More alarming
to the prevailing quantum model and the principles
of relativity, Bohm's theory: "... allows
for the possibility that something that occurs
in region A can have a physical effect in
region B, instantaneously, no matter how
far apart regions A and B may happen to be."
In other words, the universe from origin
to end is fixed as one continuous nut, prevailed
beyond the measure of time and space. It
is implied, accordingly, that beginning and
end occur simultaneously, regardless their
time and distance apart. This is because
the conditional time and space occupied by
the observer are not polarized to either
event but factored in the general equation.
This would obviate the subjective observer
and in effect subvert the human cognitive
presence. The observer would be present but
not dialectically polarized in a subject/object
relation but subsumed in the resulting hyperobjective
reality. The observer and all its specifics
would be absorbed in the general statistic
since it is the observer that generates the
problem of uncertainty that for Bohm's theory,
notes Albert, þ... is necessarily... an epistemic
uncertainty. It is a matter of ignorance
and not a matter of the operations of any
irreducible element of chance in the fundamental
laws of the world.þ Such ignorance (the uncertainty
factor of the measurer) is simply averaged
out, as it were, swallowed up and digested
and thereby incorporated in the hyperobjective
reality.
Obviously, the obstacle to this totalistic
cosmic fascism is the observer as a free,
if not hermeneutic, agent whose presence
disturbs a totalistic concept of the totally
deterministic nature of material and physical
phenomena. Because not given to chance the
hyperobjective reality is prevailed as a
closed universe in which matter has absolute
presence but no extension. This also happens
to be a viable definition of God! It is also
the world view of the obsessed introvert
for whom hyperobjective reality expresses
inner world as a totalistic condition. Equally
served would be god as mother, a black hole
reality enjoying zero mass and ultimate density.
Apparently, in the onto-theo-logy of the
new hyperobjective (scientific) religion,
the diety no longer needs be genderized and
gender no longer needs be dialectically declared
in terms of a physical polarity. It is thus
inferred that gender difference and the heterosexual
condition need no longer prevail in deference
to the unisexed þnew generation,þ that is
sensually gratified in the hyperobjective
reality of homo qua homo sexuality.
The material being of the deity without extension
infers that God is absolutelyÄin the totalistic
senseÄ ubiquitous, and follows Bohm's theory
of non-locality. It is worth reminding that
a notion of non- locality would have provided
Jung a physical basis for his synchronicity
hypothesis, especially that he understood
such þacausal meaningful coincidencesþ acted
as if time and space as measured conditions
were abolished. But time and space as a measured
(relativistic) unity satisfies neither Bohm's
alternative and Jung's synchronicity insofar
as they accommodate a principle of simultaneity.
The question must be here asked; are such
notions merely metaphysical hypotheses? The
answer is that they are if their antitheses
and complementary postulates are excluded
and they are rendered homo qua homo in bias.
This gets back to the question of a priori
genetic predispositions (entelechia in potentia)
and their discourse in the conditional reality
of extension, contingency and the accidents
involved in the physical elaborations and
articulations of time and space.
In view of such complex interplay it would
be impossible to determine whether a human
nature was genetically predetermined either
homosexual or heterosexual or, for that matter,
either male or female. In other words, either
too much or not enough is laid to what is
genetically given, just as the same such
deficiencies apply when causal explanations
are limited to physicality (as object). In
either case, world and Self are forced into
dialectical opposition and as if they were
not all along vigorously in complementary
relation. Hyperobjectification infers that
homophysis enjoys priority over heterophysis,
whereby the unus recommends itself as if
it were not a unity of complements (as simultaneous
instants) but a þsmoothþ and þuninterruptedþ
homogenous mass; indeed, fully conformed
to the paradigm of the Alchemical massa confusa,
Chaos, or undifferentiated material state.
The isomorphic condition defines the chaos
as an homo qua homo uninterrupted plasma
that is antithetical to what is ordinarily
meant by þorder,þ or cosmos, except it is
understood in potentia: order indwelled as
an immanence in the homo qua homo state.
Such latency, however, passively accommodates
the infinite smoothness of the Chaos and
the homo qua homo mass. Only when interrupted
or analytically þcutþ is the principle of
order in play. This amounts to an intrusion
into the undifferentiated smoothness of chaos
but which begs the question whether the intrusion
arrives from within the mass or from without.
From the standpoint of non-locality, the
intrusion is simultaneously inward and outward
in origin. Such simultaneity and non-locality
was apparently understood by St. Augustine
when he offered the metaphor of God as a
circle whose center is nowhere but simultaneously
everywhere. The notion is neither unique
to modern quantum theory or St. Augustine's
theologism. It is simply the common sense
topological understanding of a point in space.
Obviously, since a point has no spatial dimension
it remains non-local. Euphemistically speaking,
a point is used to mark a place in space.
But such an operation requires that the space
is defined in the first place by a boundary.
No sooner define a boundary than an analytical
exclusion is performed where space is rendered
hyperobjective and removed, accordingly,
from space as the Being in Itself enjoyed
of the Kantian an sich. It is only deceptively
that Space in itself and hyperobjective reality
enjoy a commonality; simply because space
in itself, like Being in Itself are not achieved
by exclusion! Exclusion is an analytic operation
whereas Being in Itself is archai, an original
given.
In such descriptions it may be apparent that
Chaos and Order are bound in the complementarity
relation. What Chaos is to the wave function,
Order is to particularity and mass. However
difficult complementarity is to accept it
is made even more problematical because it
must include what is impossible in the measured
descriptions of time and space; a principle
of simultaneity and non- locality. The obstacle
to such a principle would be the measuring
presence fixed in a particular locality.
Yet, a concept of complementarity infers
itself contingent to a principle of simultaneity,
one the necessity of the other. They are
demonstrable, however, not empirically but
by statistical quantification. Does the latter
affirmation disqualify the subjective presence
simply because it does not make its calculation
in situ, that is to say, þon location?þ This
would admit that mind and its operations
are hardly defined in the Cartesian res cogitans
that, if included in the definitions of non-locality,
would enable simultaneity as a physical event
of the mind. That is a scary possibility
best dismissed as þmetaphysical,þ except
now metaphysicality enjoys an ontological
place (sans locality) in the virtual reality
of hyperobjectivity.
Once the uncertainty factor (of þignoranceþ)
is accommodated, such as it is in Bohm's
theory, and the subjective presence is hyperobjectified,
there is no question that wave and particle
may be received as a singular event and the
uncertainty dichotomy integrated as an unus
mundus. The problem here is how to hyperobjectify
the subject, or what amounts to a radical
alteration of consciousness as we know it.
No doubt such alteration would include endowing
a mathematical object, an abstract concept
or an idea with physicality so that it is
available to sense perception. Such physicalization
of the immaterial ghosts and spirits of mind
would, of course, be contingent upon the
physicalization of mental process itself,
in the sense of the Cartesian res cogitans.
In that case, however, the relativistic format
of consciousness would cease to exist so
that þphysical,þ and þmaterial,þ would be
without reference, just as þspiritual,þ and
þghostþ (as in geist) would equally be set
adrift. The term þspiritualþ cannot exist
without the term þphysical,þ just as the
necessary complement to þmindþ is þmatterþ.
But if annihilating one or the other complements
is successful there is then achieved a hyperobjective
reality where physical/mind may exist in
and by itself or, alternately, spiritual/mind
may exist in and by itself. In their hyperobjective
states such complements are finalistically
bifurcated and have absolutely nothing to
do with the other (in the operation of exchange
relation). Annihilated in such a state would
be the possibility of anything heteromorphic.
In this sense hyperobjective reality is homomorphic
in particular and spatially isomorphic, if
at all the latter may be spoken of in terms
of wave description.
Bohm's alternativeÄor what I have so far
referred to as hyperobjective reality is
hardly without conceptual precedents. It
follows in its theological paradigm as a
particular definition of God; of God before
the creation, without man and in and by Himself,
or what is later extrapolated in the Monophysite
doctrine of Christ as all (Spirit) divine
and not (corporeally) mortal. In this sense,
mortality subsumed, denied or abolished (by
hyperobjective decree), necessarily postulates
original creation and eschatological end
as a single moment. Like the yearned for
utopos it is a non-locality, no-place. But
post-Bohm's alternative, it is the human
event (posteriori Adam and Eve in their Garden
of Paradise) intrusion, the mortal sin of
interrupting this uroboric moment of absolute
and uninterrupted continuity and performing
its indelible and irreversible þcut:þ the
unus mundus hyperobjective Bohmian paradise;
the moment of origin/end, archai/eschaton,
sliced like a salami into so many increments
of time and space (that all the King's horses
and all the King's men, with the help of
God and Bohm's theory cannot put together
again).
* * * * F I N I S
About the Author Bernard. X. Bovasso is essentially
a painter of art he calls "The Abstract
Sublime" and also a poet. Upon graduating
from the Cooper Union Art School he was awarded
a fellowship to the Yale University Summer
Art School (1950). During 1958 he completed
a work concerning Vincent van Gogh according
to its mythogenic aspects. The MS was sent
on to Prof. Dr. C. G. Jung in Zurich. Jung
turned the book over to Frau Sybil Birkhauser
of Berne who was a protégé of Dr. Myra von
Franz, Dr. Jung gave him a letter of introduction
to Sir Herbert Read the British art historian
and a correspondence followed both with Frau
Birkhauser and Sir Herbert. The germinal
concept for this work (The Polyimagical Realm)
began during this period and was completed
in 1986.
