The working title of the novel was The Atoms of Love. It was, of course, an ironic concept. What is love made of? In our modern minds we tend to think it arises out of the biological; that its intensity is driven by evolutionary pressures. Its crazy logic is conditioned by the mechanics of organisms adapting to changing environments. Greek tragedy explores how the unthinkable becomes real, driven by love's excesses, its demonic offspring, hatred, and the unknowable causal agency of the gods.
A Greek tragedy begins with a thought that is transgressive and shocking in the extreme. Oedipus is told he will marry his mother and murder his father. Medea tells us she will murder her children in an act of revenge against her husband who has abandoned her for another woman.
Oedipus is the victim of fate. He doesn't willingly carry out his terrible actions. They are the result of his anger when he quarrels with and kills then man he fails to recognise as his father, but mostly the inexplicable and tragic logic at the centre of existence. A horrifying prophecy come true. Medea's identity is grounded in her love for her husband and children. She has forsaken her homeland, parents and family to marry Jason. When he betrays her love, she is diminished to a point of absolute wrath. Her thoughts and actions become the very antithesis of love, the contrary of what brings joy, but she commands our sympathy and fearful awe in equal measure.
Such intense psychological depictions might be contrasted with the Pythagoreans who studied geometry, numbers and music. The greatest of them, Plato, also studied love. Geometry, numbers, music and love are things not made of atoms. We may think of them as dependant on the material, but Plato didn't think so. He considered them to be eternal identities that existed separately and above the world of objects that are born and pass away. The number five is eternally the number five. It doesn't change identity in the way a child becomes an adult or an acorn turns into an oak tree. Instead, it has the power to map the mechanics of the universe. It measures speed, mass, volume etc. It gives us the ability to predict outcomes with great precision.
Numbers can measure the intervals between different notes on a musical instrument. When a pianist strikes a major chord (a combination of first, third and fifth notes of the scale) based on the first note of a scale, then strikes a major chord on the fourth note, then the fifth, introduce a minor seventh note and there is an overwhelming desire in the listener to be taken back to the first chord again. It is the classic three-chord trick of many a rock n roll tune. We are given pleasure and completeness.
The 'meaning' of music is created, not by each individual note on its own, but by the relationship between one note and the next, leading to the almost infinite variety of music. The 'meaning' of the music resides, not in the strings of the instrument, but in the mind of the listener where something resonates with something. What is this first something? This First-Thought?
Given that most of us are drawn to music, it is reasonable to assume this First-Thought existed before we were born. And, given that it is partially constituted of numbers, would be considered by the ancients to be eternal in some way - numbers are everlasting forms. There is also a Second-Thought. It is the 'I' that resonates with the First-Thought. It is the person who is moved and excited by the music. It is independent of the First-Thought, but comes alive and knows that it is experiencing something because of the First-Thought. Without the First-Thought it would be an empty, sad capacity in search of something, because it is incapable of generating its own First-Thought. And what applies to the listener also applies to the composer and performer. Their skill is to surf the wave of the First-Thought.
Using computers as analogies for brains or clockwork mechanisms as models for the universe is always inadequate. Using animals as a comparison to the human even more so. But I want to break this rule. We have a beautiful labrador dog called Jess who is intelligent, full of love and great company. When my wife and mother of my three children was sadly taken from us because of breast cancer, the children never came home to an empty house after school. There was always an enthusiastic tail-wagging welcome. I can safely say that I could not teach Jess the basic axioms of Euclidian geometry.
I don't believe this makes Jess inferior, just different. But let us assume it to be true, that Jess does not have the capacity to understand the rules of geometry, then it begs the question: what do I already know in order to know geometry? What capacity do I have in order to understand it and use it to build buildings? Indeed this question can be asked of any form of cognition, even where Jess understands the sound of me gathering her walking lead in the utility room signifies we are going for a walk. What does any sentient creature already know so they can understand the world around them? Indeed it could be asked of plants who 'know' to turn towards the sun for energy.
But the route to understanding the 'First-Thoughts' is experience. Not, for instance, the type of question 'what is music?' but 'what is it like to experience music?' We could put the question to dogs and plants but, obviously, we will not get an answer. We cannot know their experience because they cannot tell us. We cannot experiment to understand the experience of plants and animals because it would, most likely, be a form of pseudo-science. One has to be situated 'in-the-mind-of' the one who is experiencing. We can only understand the mechanics of their behaviours, not their feelings of experience.
The First-Thought/s are simple but potent originals. They are the conditions for things to happen. They are the ideas that shape the world. We do not create these forms from nothing, just as we do not create the physical world around us from nothing. Our nearest mountain range was there before we were born and will continue after we pass away.
First-Thoughts are a form of mind. Their potency comes from a capacity to 'will' things to happen. They are a form of desire that is greater than and foundational to the material world. Furthermore, they can be distilled, by a kind of reductio as absurdum, to the greatest First-Thought; the highest, simplest and purest form of intentionality. What could this be?
We could first consider hate. It is a form of First-Thought. The capacity to hate is universal to all of us, but hate is destructive and not generative. Hate needs something to hate, therefore something must precede it. Consider the contradictory of hate; love. Love is self-subsisting and self-sufficient. Nothing need precede it. It wants to give before it takes. It wants to nurture. In its purest form it is happy and content with itself. Yet because it is generative, it would naturally will the 'otherness' of the material world.
This is such a strong thought for Plato and the Platonists They believed that First-Thought forms are a true account of what is truly Real. They have a pure existence somewhere but not here and are not immediately apprehended by the senses. The world of objects and changing seasons and the vastness of space are mere pale shadows of these First-Thought forms which can only be intuited thorough an intensely rational but mystical form of contemplation. But it is what we should aspire to for supreme rational consolation and a flourishing of the good soul.
Many philosophers objected to the abstract 'otherness' of these forms, not least Plato's greatest student, Aristotle. The basic forms of geometry, as with all First-Thoughts, are simply more of the many complex things that exist in the world. The sheer 'thereness' of the physical world, its un-ignorable majesty, is primary. And there is the niggling suspicion that First-Thoughts are an invention of the human. They are accidental to the evolution of our species. Nevertheless, Plato's ideas resonated down the centuries after his death and in more recent times inspired mathematicians, such as Bertrand Russell, who developed logicism and eventually computer logic.
Medea's hateful, destructive rage seems to fly in the face of this primary First-Thought, especially if it is identical to love. She wants to destroy the life she has created. But her story comes into being because she married for love. The gods are responsible for the First-Thought of love, but also the First-Thought of revenge. They are not faultless. The cosmological and the personal are tightly interwoven in Greek drama and philosophy. The intensity of Medea's rage implies the cosmological. Her anger is monumentally present, because the capacity for anger is given from above. But the route to the gods is the intensity of feeling, the experience of being human. This is not only true of the great Greek tragedies but Plato's dialogues. The rich variety of characters in Plato's Symposium sows the seeds of Aristotle's critique; that the perfect First-Thought is too simplistic, too self-identified, too unimaginable to be true. The rich multiplicity of human character, which Plato captures so well, proves this.
A Greek tragedy begins with a thought that is transgressive and shocking in the extreme. Oedipus is told he will marry his mother and murder his father. Medea tells us she will murder her children in an act of revenge against her husband who has abandoned her for another woman.
Oedipus is the victim of fate. He doesn't willingly carry out his terrible actions. They are the result of his anger when he quarrels with and kills then man he fails to recognise as his father, but mostly the inexplicable and tragic logic at the centre of existence. A horrifying prophecy come true. Medea's identity is grounded in her love for her husband and children. She has forsaken her homeland, parents and family to marry Jason. When he betrays her love, she is diminished to a point of absolute wrath. Her thoughts and actions become the very antithesis of love, the contrary of what brings joy, but she commands our sympathy and fearful awe in equal measure.
Such intense psychological depictions might be contrasted with the Pythagoreans who studied geometry, numbers and music. The greatest of them, Plato, also studied love. Geometry, numbers, music and love are things not made of atoms. We may think of them as dependant on the material, but Plato didn't think so. He considered them to be eternal identities that existed separately and above the world of objects that are born and pass away. The number five is eternally the number five. It doesn't change identity in the way a child becomes an adult or an acorn turns into an oak tree. Instead, it has the power to map the mechanics of the universe. It measures speed, mass, volume etc. It gives us the ability to predict outcomes with great precision.
Numbers can measure the intervals between different notes on a musical instrument. When a pianist strikes a major chord (a combination of first, third and fifth notes of the scale) based on the first note of a scale, then strikes a major chord on the fourth note, then the fifth, introduce a minor seventh note and there is an overwhelming desire in the listener to be taken back to the first chord again. It is the classic three-chord trick of many a rock n roll tune. We are given pleasure and completeness.
The 'meaning' of music is created, not by each individual note on its own, but by the relationship between one note and the next, leading to the almost infinite variety of music. The 'meaning' of the music resides, not in the strings of the instrument, but in the mind of the listener where something resonates with something. What is this first something? This First-Thought?
Given that most of us are drawn to music, it is reasonable to assume this First-Thought existed before we were born. And, given that it is partially constituted of numbers, would be considered by the ancients to be eternal in some way - numbers are everlasting forms. There is also a Second-Thought. It is the 'I' that resonates with the First-Thought. It is the person who is moved and excited by the music. It is independent of the First-Thought, but comes alive and knows that it is experiencing something because of the First-Thought. Without the First-Thought it would be an empty, sad capacity in search of something, because it is incapable of generating its own First-Thought. And what applies to the listener also applies to the composer and performer. Their skill is to surf the wave of the First-Thought.
Using computers as analogies for brains or clockwork mechanisms as models for the universe is always inadequate. Using animals as a comparison to the human even more so. But I want to break this rule. We have a beautiful labrador dog called Jess who is intelligent, full of love and great company. When my wife and mother of my three children was sadly taken from us because of breast cancer, the children never came home to an empty house after school. There was always an enthusiastic tail-wagging welcome. I can safely say that I could not teach Jess the basic axioms of Euclidian geometry.
I don't believe this makes Jess inferior, just different. But let us assume it to be true, that Jess does not have the capacity to understand the rules of geometry, then it begs the question: what do I already know in order to know geometry? What capacity do I have in order to understand it and use it to build buildings? Indeed this question can be asked of any form of cognition, even where Jess understands the sound of me gathering her walking lead in the utility room signifies we are going for a walk. What does any sentient creature already know so they can understand the world around them? Indeed it could be asked of plants who 'know' to turn towards the sun for energy.
But the route to understanding the 'First-Thoughts' is experience. Not, for instance, the type of question 'what is music?' but 'what is it like to experience music?' We could put the question to dogs and plants but, obviously, we will not get an answer. We cannot know their experience because they cannot tell us. We cannot experiment to understand the experience of plants and animals because it would, most likely, be a form of pseudo-science. One has to be situated 'in-the-mind-of' the one who is experiencing. We can only understand the mechanics of their behaviours, not their feelings of experience.
The First-Thought/s are simple but potent originals. They are the conditions for things to happen. They are the ideas that shape the world. We do not create these forms from nothing, just as we do not create the physical world around us from nothing. Our nearest mountain range was there before we were born and will continue after we pass away.
First-Thoughts are a form of mind. Their potency comes from a capacity to 'will' things to happen. They are a form of desire that is greater than and foundational to the material world. Furthermore, they can be distilled, by a kind of reductio as absurdum, to the greatest First-Thought; the highest, simplest and purest form of intentionality. What could this be?
We could first consider hate. It is a form of First-Thought. The capacity to hate is universal to all of us, but hate is destructive and not generative. Hate needs something to hate, therefore something must precede it. Consider the contradictory of hate; love. Love is self-subsisting and self-sufficient. Nothing need precede it. It wants to give before it takes. It wants to nurture. In its purest form it is happy and content with itself. Yet because it is generative, it would naturally will the 'otherness' of the material world.
This is such a strong thought for Plato and the Platonists They believed that First-Thought forms are a true account of what is truly Real. They have a pure existence somewhere but not here and are not immediately apprehended by the senses. The world of objects and changing seasons and the vastness of space are mere pale shadows of these First-Thought forms which can only be intuited thorough an intensely rational but mystical form of contemplation. But it is what we should aspire to for supreme rational consolation and a flourishing of the good soul.
Many philosophers objected to the abstract 'otherness' of these forms, not least Plato's greatest student, Aristotle. The basic forms of geometry, as with all First-Thoughts, are simply more of the many complex things that exist in the world. The sheer 'thereness' of the physical world, its un-ignorable majesty, is primary. And there is the niggling suspicion that First-Thoughts are an invention of the human. They are accidental to the evolution of our species. Nevertheless, Plato's ideas resonated down the centuries after his death and in more recent times inspired mathematicians, such as Bertrand Russell, who developed logicism and eventually computer logic.
Medea's hateful, destructive rage seems to fly in the face of this primary First-Thought, especially if it is identical to love. She wants to destroy the life she has created. But her story comes into being because she married for love. The gods are responsible for the First-Thought of love, but also the First-Thought of revenge. They are not faultless. The cosmological and the personal are tightly interwoven in Greek drama and philosophy. The intensity of Medea's rage implies the cosmological. Her anger is monumentally present, because the capacity for anger is given from above. But the route to the gods is the intensity of feeling, the experience of being human. This is not only true of the great Greek tragedies but Plato's dialogues. The rich variety of characters in Plato's Symposium sows the seeds of Aristotle's critique; that the perfect First-Thought is too simplistic, too self-identified, too unimaginable to be true. The rich multiplicity of human character, which Plato captures so well, proves this.
Boot prints and bicycle tyre marks in the icy mud today. It was minus three degrees centigrade.
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