Tuesday, July 31, 2012

THE ‘SECRET OF FIRE’:

Beyond Sense Perceptions

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

[Print version of this article]

The following article was originally published in EIR on August 17, 2012.

On Wednesday, July 25, I had published a relatively short report, titled, The Human Mind: Two Views. The following day, I had presented a related subject as an included topic of the regular, Wednesday, video feature, The Weekly Report. Now, I shall present, here, an extended, summary, print version of the core of the most essential features of that topic, th e topic which is the subject of my own remarks on the core of the combined, crucial elements of both of the preceding, two presentations. Here I combine, and slightly amplify, the crucial elements of the essential content of both preceding reports, as “for the record,” as if “under a single roof.” Otherwise, thus, as I shall report here, these days in science represent the reaching of a significant milestone in my life’s work.

The implied question which I answer in this present report, is pointed at the fact that the control of society, allegedly from above, is based chiefly on what is fairly identified as “a pack of lies,” fictions which are distributed for what is claimed to be the edification of popular opinions.

Witness, for example, the recent exposures of truth from certain notable British and U.S. leading personalities, in the matter of Glass-Steagall. The evidence had been there “all along,” but when the time had come that it were more prudent for the edification of the wealthy, to expose the fact that the termination of Glass-Steagall had been a lie from the outset, the “change in party line” occurred with very little effort at informing the general public of what had happened all along through more than forty-odd years of “public opinion.”

The case of the popular belief in a wrong-headed notion of the meaning of “fire,” illustrates the point respecting the fabric, and fabrications of induced “public opinion.”

I. Why This Report on Fire

Heretofore, it had been a customary practice, to present the subject of the physical principles of nature, within the limits of the terms of “sense-perception” as such. In my long experience of this matter, presentations of that nature, have been, usually, composed of two distinct parts. There has been, first, a customary, explicit representation of the argument, as explicitly stated here, in terms of reports composed on the basis of the subject of demonstrations of sense-perceptions, as such; but, you will note in the course of this report, there is often added something which may be described, broadly, as a mere description of what it is proposed that the reader, or lecture-hall audience, might mistakenly attribute to the stated definitions presented in sense-perceptual categories.

The outcome of such a proceeding, might leave that audience with a stubborn suspicion, the suspicion that the art of the stage magician has been included in the play. The alleged facts presented under such circumstances, would be bad enough; the added element of explanation, has an effect on the audience, tending to say something like: “If what I have really said, sounds to you like a side-show, which you must figure out for yourself— I might hope that you understand what . . . I am trying to say.” The net effect of presenting such carnival music, is to suggest to the audience, the worrying suspicion, if only briefly, that the presentation of the alleged facts of sense-perception presented, seems to be some kind of fraud; the additional explanation makes one wonder, “Am I being taken in by some set of stage-magicians? Or, am I supposed to find it more comfortable, just to try to believe in this side-show?”

The more appropriate question, would be: “What has been missing here?” What has actually happened to produce effects, such as that, on this audience?

Should we console ourselves by wishing to believe, that: “The audience is being given the opportunity to see the texts and other exhibits on whatever is tantamount to ‘the screen.’ ” However: it might have been suspected, that there is nothing behind the screen. The customary audience is left to imagine what might be a possibility, which, somehow, might have been discovered behind that screen, a screen behind which I would warn you that what you might actually expect to find there, is nothing at all.

“Ah, but, perhaps, there is actually nothing behind that screen”?

So, the member of the celebrated, standard audience, is left to mumble to himself, or herself, perhaps with some resentment, or choose to enjoy the following dubious thought, that:

“Sense-perception is sense-perception, which is proven to be sense-perception, which is essentially shown, and (perhaps), proven, by nothing so much as the decision to continue to believe that there is a sense-perception on a screen, which, in turn, has, apparently nothing substantial within it, or behind it. Quite naturally, popular opinion, being popular opinion, it will be more comfortable for the victims of this side-show, to try to join the rest of the suckers in trying to believe.”

Bernhard Riemann pointed toward the existence of a similar kind of generic problem, as in the third, concluding section of his habilitation dissertation.

Therefore, let us, finally, provide the audience with what needs to be discovered, if anything, as “lurking behind the screen.”

A Musical Example

The possible best chance of discovering a solution to the kind of problem which I have just outlined above, might be found in the successive work of Johann Sebastian Bach, Arthur Nikisch, and Wolfgang Furtwängler. The advantage of such musical examples, is not merely the fact of the sounds (sounds are, after all, merely sense-perceptions, and therefore typical of that same rubbish known as “popular opinion,” or the like); it is the quasi-shadows expressed in the way in which the sound of the music might be projected upon the human mind (as if between the cracks in the written score), which is that which contains the direct evidence for the Classical musical cases. The proper question to be posed, on that account, is: “Why is the music itself necessary? Why must it be presented in that way?”

Such questions do have the merit of “amounting to something of importance for the questioning mind.” The question is: “Why do they do, what they do there?” If there is something wrong with the bare notes of a musical argument as such, “What is missing?” “What is the actually provable solution to that emptied riddle?”

The solution to that riddle, is not a mere object; it reposes, not on a screen, but in what sense-perception, as such, suggests might be the unseen action which actually works as if from behind the screen; that is what, in fact, moves the objects.

Therefore, that taken into account: “What is the demonstrable difference in the unseen motion whose effect is intrinsic to the matter at hand? It reposes in what is moving, as if from behind the screen of sense-perception.”

The answer reposes, essentially, in the proper distinction of man from beast. There, is where I, your author for this occasion, chooses to “look,” in both my writing, and my audio-visual presentations of yesterday; it reposes in the relevant, actually existing action lodged “behind the screen” which is the score, just as Bach, Nikisch, and Furtwängler had demonstrated that fact.

‘Another Vicarious Hypothesis!’[fn_1]

The secret of our subject here, lies not in “fire” as barely presumed as such, but in the principle which prompts mankind to define his own, efficient distinction from the beasts, which is to say: in his reliance on the usefulness of the notional experience of belief in “fire.”

“Fire,” when used, scientifically, merely as a descriptive term, signals the actual presence of a crucial element from which our investigation is derived; but, it is, also, so to speak, as Bernhard Riemann stated in the concluding portion of his habilitation dissertation, a kind of “hand-waving” term of convenience.

“Fire” serves, on precisely that account, as the term which illustrates mankind’s specifically unique, and willful capability of using “fire,” according to sundry manifestations of that homely, generic term. That term, so employed, is the hallmark-shadow of the most essential distinction of man from beast. It is the “fire behind the screen,” the fire whose heat is actually experienced in a very practical way, as if from behind the screen: in an experience which not only distinguishes man from beasts, but expresses that effect in a very unique way.

The accompanying code-term for pinpointing the identity of the human use of “fire,” is located, precisely, within mankind’s acquisition of successively higher “species” defined as expressions of the general category of matters signifying mankind’s willful power for using fire (when the term is used as in a manner of speaking) in ways and means which the upward evolution of mankind as a willful species has generated.

Let us discuss this term, “fire.” The discussion can become a bit tricky, if we ignore the fact that mankind’s use of the term “fire” covers a large (in fact, expanding) variety of respectively distinct types of species. For example: nuclear fission, thermonuclear fusion, matter-antimatter reactions, et al., et al. These latter categories, and similar ones, exist only for the noëtic potentials of the human mind, not for lower species of life. It is no exaggeration to state that these ideas, as ideas, are uniquely products of the capabilities which are potential for the human mind, not other species.

The distinction just stated, is of crucial importance, especially so for the poor fellow, scientist or not, who continues to believe in the efficacy of sense-perception as a supposed vehicle of scientific truth. Or, to express the same categorical thought otherwise, the proper (which is to say “efficient”) notion of the popular opinion’s general category of “fire” is actually known only as something unknown as a principle of “fire” as such. As scientific progress illustrates with a certain, ever-growing set of categories of “fire” in general, that notion of “fire” exists, for mankind until now, only in the creative powers of the human mind. The human mind is the only known instrument which can understand the true meaning of “fire,” because only the human mind is capable of knowing the efficient meaning of the series of categories of “fire” which I have illustrated in my remarks on this matter, just above.

In fact, it is proper to look at this subject-matter in a reverse ordering. “Fire” appears as the inherently fearful, least denominator of human creativity in its general, progressive ordering of the effects of the power of human reason. Sense-perception among human beings is a footprint of the implicit repertoire of assorted categories of ever-higher ordering of mankind’s ability to discover the true meaning of “thermodynamics” in general. “Fire,” viewed within those terms of reference, is the expressed power of human creativity. There lies the essential distinction of man from beast. There lies the meaning of human creativity. There lies the essence of scientific progress.

Sense-perception, is what is needed by our dogs. The argument is now continued from here.

II. The Argument Which
Must Be Used

I herewith continue the argument at the point I completed the preceding chapter.

Heretofore, usually, the most discreet customary continuation of the usual argument has abandoned a continued effort to assert a completed ontological proof; at that point, the customary practice has been some “hand waving” sort of statement used by the proponent as a “best guess” respecting an additional matter for which the proponent has no actually conclusive evidence to present, but, rather, the best reporters tend to wave their hands (often unctuously), suggesting that we have reached as far into the outskirts of the unknown as they are willing to treat as a fact on that occasion. That is commonplace practice.

Up to the point I have taken the present chapter’s scope this far, there is nothing terribly wrong in the scientist’s resort to such “hand-waving” methods for dealing with a subject-matter for which the relevant party presents no actual proof—on the condition that his implied claims go no further than that. The problems arise at the point the “hand-waving” evasion, is promoted, as if it were actually to be represented as a “scientific fact.”

The case of the work of Bach, Nikisch, and Furtwängler “hits the outskirts” of a science of music in just this way; but, only the “outskirts.” It addresses, and that securely, a very significant aspect of the problems to be considered. It “fails,” if the word “fail” should be used, only in respect to the deeper questions it does not encompass.

Therefore, we must state the case against the “hand-wavers” as follows.

The customary argument against which I represent here, must be attacked from the vantage-point of noting the inherent error of asserted belief in not only human sense-perception, but that of lower forms of life generally. Most simply, but correctly said, sense-perception by people and others is premised on the implied assertion of a proof which depends categorically on sense-perception. So, sense-perception depends upon sense-perception: not exactly an impressive claim to verities. In short, any human conclusion respecting sense-perception depends for its underlying (i.e., “categorical” authority) on a proof which is independent of an original basis in sense-perception as such.

This is not to imply that sense-perception is inherently false in the claims associated with it. It means, exactly, what Johannes Kepler meant in his method (echoing that of Nicholas of Cusa) employed for the uniquely original discovery of the principle of gravitation. Hence, the relative uniqueness of the authority of “fire.” But, do not halt there. It is man’s willful management of “fire as a principle,” which is the uniquely appropriate instrument for true empirical knowledge of mankind’s knowledge, “not the masturbation-likeness of reliance on sense-perception.”

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