A Universe Comes into Being

"A universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an outside from an inside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance. The act is itself already remembered, even if unconsciously, as our first attempt to distinguish different things in a world where, in the first place, the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please. At this stage the universe cannot be distinguished from how we act upon it, and the world may seem like shifting sand beneath our feet.

Although all forms, and thus all universes, are possible, and any particular form is mutable, it becomes evident that the laws relating such forms are the same in any universe. It is this sameness, the idea that we can find a reality independent of how the universe actually appears, that lends such fascination to the study of mathematics. That mathematics, in common with other art forms, can lead us beyond ordinary existence, and can show us something of the structure in which all creation hangs together, is no new idea. But mathematical texts generally begin the story somewhere in the middle, leaving the reader to pick up the threads as best he can. Here is the story traced from the beginning."

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - 2016)
Laws Of Form 

Postscript. This simple "point and shoot" image (albeit with an assist from Photoshop's perspective-crop tool) was taken with my iPhone as my wife and I were waiting for yesterday's matinee of Les Mesirables to start at the Kenney Center in Washington, DC. I have been drawn to mirrors and reflections ever since my teenaged-self stumbled across their deep mysteries through Borges' stories. Objectively speaking, the image is composed of nothing but metal, glass, some branches and leaves, and just a hint of a massive chandelier hanging just inside the Kennedy Center. But, as all Borgesian souls know, this "objectively banal reality" is but a shadow of the dynamic undulating froth of invisible universes! The first step toward catching a glimpse of these other realities is - as G. Spencer Brown reminds us - to draw a subjective distinction.

The Original Mystery

"Let us consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus… of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam’s razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.

Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record. 

Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is indeed amazing. Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.

 

But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i. e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself

It seems hard to find an acceptable answer to the question of how or why the world conceives a desire, and discovers an ability, to see itself, and appears to suffer the process. That it does so is sometimes called the original mystery. Perhaps, in view of the form in which we presently take ourselves to exist, the mystery arises from our insistence on framing a question where there is, in reality, nothing to question.
...
Thus the world, whenever it appears as a physical universe*, must always seem to us, its representatives, to be playing a kind of hide-and-seek with itself. What is revealed will be concealed, but what is concealed will again be revealed.

* unus = one, vertere = turn. Any given (or captivated) universe is what is seen as the result of a making of one turn, and thus is the appearance of any first distinction, and only a minor aspect of all being, apparent and non-apparent. Its particularity is the price wo pay for its visibility."

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - 2016)

Laws Of Form

Laws of Form

"We may take it that the world

is undoubtedly itself

[i.e., is indistinct from itself],

but, in any attempt to

see itself, as an object,

it must, equally,

undoubtedly act so as

to make itself distinct from

and therefore false to itself.

In this sense,

in respect to its own information,

the universe must expand to

escape the telescopes through

which we, who are it,

are trying to capture it,

which is us."

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - 2016)

Laws Of Form

Forms, Space, and Distinctions

“A universe comes into being when

a space is severed or taken apart… 

by tracing the way we 

[make such distinctions] 

we begin to reconstruct …  

the basic forms underlying linguistic,

mathematical, physical, 

and biological science.”

- G. Spencer Brown (1923 - )

Laws of Form

Distinctions, Forms, and Science

“A universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart… by tracing the way we [make such distinctions] we begin to reconstruct … the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science.” — G. Spencer Brown Laws of Form (1979)