What are things?

PrinceOfTheWest

PrinceOfTheWest

Knight of the Stone Table
Royal Guard
Emeritus
"I our world", said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
"Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
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With this almost passing exchange, Lewis brilliantly pierces the modern mindset that a thing is no more than its component parts. What do you think of this? Does this exchange make sense to you? Is it true? Could a star be something more than simply what it is made of? How about a rock? Or a bee?
 
Well, some people have a religion where they worship the trees as they feel their gods reside in them. Watching volcanoes, one can understand how the Hawaiians started to worship the god Pelee, the god of the volcanoes.

Ramadu? Coriakin? Mrs. Which? Fred? Are they the intelligence within the certain stars?

I think some things can be more than the constituent elements. Humans are a prime example. We are animal life just as much as an elephant or a monkey, but we are so much more. We understand our world and can manipulate it in ways that no other animal can imagine.

MrBob
 
Modern physics teaches the importance of the observer. In other words we cannot understand the properties of the nuclear reactions of the atoms within a star with out understanding the observer which is also a participator. Thus a mind is behind the actual physics of a star. So it is not too far off to say there is a person behind a star. :confused:
 
I'm having trouble connection your second and third sentences there, Timmy. Just because an observer participates in the observed phenomenon doesn't necessarily mean that every phenomenon is observed, does it?

Part of what I see from Ramandu's statement is that composition does not define identity. As a properly raised post-Enlightenment empirical rationalist, Eustace was implying that a star was no more than a giant ball of flaming gas; it was this point that Ramandu was addressing. Stars in our world may be made of flaming gas, but they are more than that.

By the same token, I have heard human beings described as colloidal suspensions of organic compounds maintained by complex interactions of controlled energy, romantic attraction described as hormonal interplay honed by millions of years of evolution, and parental love described as nothing more than an instance of the evolutionary urge of a species. This is called "reductionism" - i.e. the reducing of phenomena to their simplest perceivable components.

Is a star "no more than" a great ball of flaming gas? Are humans (or squirrels, for that matter) "no more than" animate collections of organic colloids? Or is there more meaning than that? If so, where do we find that meaning?
 
Physical composition may not define our identity, however in a metaphoric sense, who we are is what we're made of. It really depends on your level of spirituality or faith whether you believe that all which surrounds you is in some sense living and retains a certain power behind it, that it is something more than just a physical existence.

Most people do not reach that extent of deep contemplation when it comes to creation, unless they are a believer of a deity figure. And from my own personal experience, those who approach the world in a purely practical and specifically scientific sense (reductionism), are mainly atheists presenting their perspective on the reason behind such matters.
 
Remember in the Time Trilogy, Madeline L'Engel addresses this same concept when she shows the mitochondria in a body's cells praising God through their "dance." In fact, she shows that some of them, for some reason, refuse to dance, no longer want to praise God, and Charles' body begins to die because of it (although they don't realize that their action is causing their death, too, of course).

But I think anyone who can sense his dog has a feelings and personality can understand that animals (and people) are more than what they're made of -- so why not a star?
 
"But I think anyone who can sense his dog has a feelings and personality can understand that animals (and people) are more than what they're made of -- so why not a star?"

For that matter, can life itself be considered as more than its made of? All life is made up of non-living substances such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and the myriad of elements--the same things as the stars. How does life form out of non-living elements?

Can a star be more than just a star? Well, what other criteria are we talking about? Can it also be life? That would require a complete change in our definition of what a life form is or a radical new understanding of what constitues a star (or non-living thing).

Can something be more than what it is? Yes, but it would require a much different level of understanding of the object than we currently have.

MrBob
 
Hey PotW, I was just trying to encourage you in that there might be more to the universe than just materialism, just as Lewis is implying. If you want me to go into a explaining quantum physics, I am sorry I can't. But no one as far as you and me observes the physics of the sub-atom. But quantum physics says that the physics of the sub-atomic matter is based on an observer-participant effect. Now if all matter is constantly being observed in some way and that matter exists only based on the observer effect, then there is a person behind all matter such as your star.
 
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There are traps laid for us on the road out of materialism:

1) We can begin to feel excessive contempt for ourselves as the "mere animals" we are, in contrast to the spiritual realm; OR--

2) We can go to the other extreme: play upon whatever spirituality we perceive ourselves to have, _overestimate_ its value, and assume an _inflated_ opinion of ourselves, in which we refuse to believe that we are guilty of any sin that we could need to be forgiven from.
 
narnianqueen1 said:
Physical composition may not define our identity, however in a metaphoric sense, who we are is what we're made of. It really depends on your level of spirituality or faith whether you believe that all which surrounds you is in some sense living and retains a certain power behind it, that it is something more than just a physical existence.
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I would agree that what we are made of contributes to what we are - and I think Ramandu (and Lewis) would agree. However, I think the point Lewis was trying to make is that we are much more than merely what we're made of.

Most people do not reach that extent of deep contemplation when it comes to creation, unless they are a believer of a deity figure. And from my own personal experience, those who approach the world in a purely practical and specifically scientific sense (reductionism), are mainly atheists presenting their perspective on the reason behind such matters.
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I didn't quite understand that first sentence, but I've had the same experience with materialistic rationalists - reductionism seems almost a creed to them. What interest me is why they're so passionate about it - it's almost that they're threatened by the possibility that they could be more than that. Of course, in a sense they would be - their entire world view hinges on there being "nothing more" than the material, so if a crack shows up in that, then everything could crumble.
 
We are straining out gnats and swallowing camels here. The passage in the book meant exactly what it's supposed to mean. That there is more to the world than what can be seen or touched.

When is a document a Christmas card? When is a band of metal a wedding ring? When is carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur a missing child?

The difference, plain and simple, is the association of the physical matter directly or indirectly with spiritual significance. A stamp, for instance, is not even a mechanism, it is a signal that a living person gave up something of value to them to persuade another living person to go out of their way to deliver a letter. The only reason it exists in the physical world is the legitimate need of one person to communicate with another.

What part of a clock, in particular, carries the moral significance of on time, of too late, of not nearly long enough? What part of a calendar captures the grief of, "I'm sorry but it's cancer. You have six months to live, maybe seven."?
 
I dunno, I thought that last camel was kind of tasty!

I think you've nailed it precisely, Magister - that was my understanding of Ramandu's statement exactly.

To ponder MrBob's excellent points: since life seems to contain non-living elements such as atoms, how does the living relate to the non-living? Is "life" just an illusion, a particular arrangement of inanimate things interacting? If so, what does that do to the concept of human value and dignity? And do we really understand life? What forms of life and consciousness might there be that doesn't look like us?
 
I think that matter, spirit and energy are related through some underlying fundamental quality they share, something I call Aether for lack of a better term. Much as diamonds, graphite and coal are related through carbon.

The idea of some sort of intermediary between spiritual and physical is hardly heresy. It explains a lot, actually.

For one thing, God said "Let there be light!" and there was light. How did God soverignly do this?

1) Is nothingness frightened of God? Is the darkness afraid that God will clean its clock if it doesn't obey a superiour?

2) Is God's power magic? Something that, like Harry Potter, he commands because he knows the right spells, wielding a power rather than being one?

3) Is reality as we understand it merely nothingness with a paint job? That is to say charitably "an illusion", or truthfully "a very clever and complex lie"?

So what does that leave? If there is Aether, then all the points in the universe where there is "nothing" are like the black areas of your flatscreen computer monitor, areas of potential waiting to be realized.

Now then, what is Aether (sometimes "Ether")? In the 19th century it was the framework of propagation through which energy radiated. It fell out of favour as a scientific theory in the 20th century, but then in the late 20th century the existance of a framework that physically makes up the space/time continuum (yes, like in Star Trek and "warp" drive) has been suggested by several eminant folk.

Whether this is right or wrong, who can know? All I know is it seems ludicrous to me that God's soverignty is some sort of mystical means of bossing around nothingness as if it were actual property or a living employee. That sort of thinking leads to absurd conclusions, such as an all-powerful God who has the time and talent to add enough zeroes to zero to make ten.

Aether does not dispute that everything that exists, existed, or ever will exist comes from the hand of God. But if Aether is universal, does that mean it is a thing that God did not make, and isn't that heresy? Not if Aether is a property of God and that as a property of an all-present God it is therefore all present.
 
*Resurrects an old and fascinating thread*

EveningStar said:
When is a document a Christmas card? When is a band of metal a wedding ring? When is carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur a missing child?

The difference, plain and simple, is the association of the physical matter directly or indirectly with spiritual significance. A stamp, for instance, is not even a mechanism, it is a signal that a living person gave up something of value to them to persuade another living person to go out of their way to deliver a letter. The only reason it exists in the physical world is the legitimate need of one person to communicate with another.
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I also really like and agree with this explanation. To elaborate further (or to put it a different way), I would say that when you explain what something is, it is impossible to capture the essence of what it is by merely enumerating its constituent parts, but one must capture this "spiritual significance" (as you say) only by speaking of purpose and intention. For instance in the example of a wedding ring, no one says that it's (merely) a circularly arranged group of gold (or silver) atoms plus some other metals. But it only becomes clear what it is, what it's essence is, when we consider its purpose. To address POTW's point:

POTW said:
To ponder MrBob's excellent points: since life seems to contain non-living elements such as atoms, how does the living relate to the non-living? Is "life" just an illusion, a particular arrangement of inanimate things interacting? If so, what does that do to the concept of human value and dignity?
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This has huge implications obviously for mankind, and this is why (in my view) those materialist reductionists who fight so hard to erase "purpose" or "higher significance" in any explanation are doing this-they don't want to consider that they might have a purpose outside themselves, because ultimately they wish to be "god" of their own life.

Connecting this back up with the "star" comment in VDT, I think Lewis might have been hitting on the point the Bible makes right and left in that nature declares the glory of God, and that what a star really is may be something that God creates to show his awesomeness and power! Perhaps Lewis didn't necessarily have this in mind, but rather wanted to just open this line of questioning, and this would be my answer from a Biblical perspective. At any rate, to limit the explanation of what it is to its constituent parts would be to miss what God tries to reveal about himself through His creation.

EveningStar said:
The idea of some sort of intermediary between spiritual and physical is hardly heresy. It explains a lot, actually.

For one thing, God said "Let there be light!" and there was light. How did God soverignly do this?

1) Is nothingness frightened of God? Is the darkness afraid that God will clean its clock if it doesn't obey a superiour?

2) Is God's power magic? Something that, like Harry Potter, he commands because he knows the right spells, wielding a power rather than being one?

3) Is reality as we understand it merely nothingness with a paint job? That is to say charitably "an illusion", or truthfully "a very clever and complex lie"?
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I'm not sure I entirely get your point here (or in your following few paragraphs) regarding "nothing" and God creating. Especially your question #1. I always thought of God the Creator as creating Space, Time, Matter, and Energy so that even empty space, or "nothing" would be something that God created. Is this the point you are trying to make? Scientifically, this makes sense, because modern science has recently discovered that "empty" space is actually filled with energy-called the vacuum energy, which seems to be what you are referring to by "Aether".
 
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Displaying a solid black photo on my monitor looks just like watching the monitor when it is turned off, but there is a big difference. In one case the black is the absence of light, in the other the black is red, green and blue levels of zero.

The full potential of space is there in every blessed point of it, with the vast majority of it set to level zero, zero, zero.
 
Inasmuch as I have ever pondered what Lewis meant (which is not that much), I have always assumed he had Plato in mind - not least because I know he was keen on Plato, and from the Professor's line in TLB about Narnia and the New Narnia. Hence, what a thing is is not the material of the thing, but the Form (or Idea) behind the thing. So ES is correct in saying that it is the significance of a thing that makes it what it is.

'Things' only exist in our minds. Take a moment to look around the room you're sitting in? How many things are in it? You will quickly realise that this question is impossible to answer. What counts as a 'thing'? The chair you are sitting on is one thing - right? But does it have four legs and a seat and a back? Six more things. So are there seven things - four legs, a seat, a back and a chair? Or does the chair not exist at all? The person sitting next to you is one thing. But do they have a heart, lungs, brain? How many cells make up their body? How many molecules? So is there a person, or only a collection of atoms? (And of course, the atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons; the protons are made up of quarks.....)

What makes a thing what it is is not anything intrinsic to the thing, but only our ideas being imposed onto the world. So the thing is far more than what it is made of. It is what the thing is for and how it fits into the grand scheme of the universe that makes it what it is.

Peeps
 
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