(esoteric / exoteric 10)

             At the outset of this discussion of ‘reversals’ I point to sexuality, first of all, because nothing in ‘inert’ matter points to the necessity of ‘the other’. An environment of ‘inert matter’ would only have ‘otherness’ in terms of the discrete differentiation of ‘inert’ particles. And while chemistry or molecular science still clings to the particle as the basic analytical function, physics has witnessed the ‘ultimate’ particles dissolving into ambiguity. ‘Particle’ is something of a discretionary imposition based on our own sense of cogency. Why does ‘nature’ resolve into ‘opposing’ bodily forms which require each other, and thus require mutual attraction, in order to reproduce the organism? As a poet, of course, I look at the symbiosis in the plant kingdom in which great ranges of the phyla have adopted mobile organisms as ‘pollinators’; and wonder at the fact, as if nature had transformed attraction itself into creatures, many of them, of themselves, of extraordinary strangeness and beauty.
             Also as a poet, of course, I witness the peculiar fact that what appears as beauty or attraction to an insect commonly also appears as beauty and an epitome of beauty to the human eye.
             As much as the Darwinian may dismiss this as frivolous, the nature of the reversal requires something more than an analytical reductionism that ignores the basic fact of reversal itself. Undoubtedly, we can subdivide any process of change to the point at which the change itself ceases to be visible, but this does not obviate the change. It only certifies the observer’s unwillingness to observe it.

             As long as we can treat the five senses as a parity, we can treat them as discrete but not radical. They are the equally differentiated functions of the body in terms of perception. But when we look at them in terms of their evolutionary origin, we must recognize that all begin in the embracing responsiveness of skin, the act / react sameness of skin sensitivity and the wholeness defining nature of skin, the original self-sense and precursor of consciousness. What links the senses together and allows them to produce perception is this original sameness, a sameness distinct, from the first, from their functional differentiation in terms of ‘sensation’ per se, their specific neural differentiation, finally. And, obviously, this neural differentiation does not obviate their original intimacy and cogency in the ‘wholeness’ of skin.
             At the same time, image, for example, is not necessarily implicit in the light sensitivity of skin, its responsiveness, first of all, to the warmth of light. Like sexuality, if we step back from analytical reductionism, we must ask how this ‘reversal’ takes place. How does the skin function of the eye produce image? I have no doubt that the evolutionary scientist can trace the sequence of incremental changes. But it’s not a question of responses to the external. It is, in fact, a question of the end result. Does matter ‘know’ that visual image is possible? The question is ostensibly absurd, since we have to use the allegorical ‘knowing’. But then, how is human knowing possible?
             I have said that the Darwinian pseudo-scientists and pseudo-philosophers sometimes deny consciousness in order to further their polemic. And this is perhaps the most specific case in point. Any intelligent child can see that Darwinian incrementalism of ‘inert’ matter cannot summate into knowing. But rather than acknowledge this peculiarly self-evident fact of experience or empiricism (the putative basis of science), the Darwinian scientist turns into a fountain of incrementalist ‘facts’ in order to deny that knowing is what it is. But, above all, this is where the Darwinian proponent reverts to the Humean argument that all ‘fact’ is only sensory. We cannot allow inference in science. Which, of course, is why we still assert the Ptolemaic rather than the Copernican system, since the Ptolemaic is empirical by this definition – an exact description of what we see – while the Copernican is inferential.

             Allowing, then, for the moment, the inferential possibility that consciousness and knowing have their radical basis in experience, as much as they may be inferential in their own right, we can see that knowing and awareness are not simply tangential results. While reversals such as sexuality and the image forming function of sight emerge incrementally – since such is the inherent nature of evolution – they cannot be posited as the consequences of inert matter operating in an environment of inert matter. Their radical nature and the fact of reversal deny it.