93
9.2 Hypercontradictory Naturalism
If there is a species-wide mismatch with Nature—a supposition with no possible
proof, other than a host of empirically accessible data sets all lending support for
this belief—then what? Biological remorse within “the age of anxiety,” as
W. H. Auden titled a book of poems in 1947?
15
Remorse that has no physical infrastructure, no known psychological or emotional capacity to meaningfully grapple
with information that tells us at least one-third of all Himalayan glaciers will have
melted within a few decades?
16
Logicians speak of “hyper-contradictions,” levels of truth, and the very logic
itself of paradoxes; a set of propositions, both proven true and proven false whose
outlines involve semantics, mathematics, physics, and ecology. But ultimately, their
Medieval Clouds of Unknowing—Insolubilia—remain.
17
Throughout the biological
sciences, paradoxical frontiers meet every fact head on. Survival itself proves to be
the most vulnerable of all statements of fact, and thus is central to paradoxical thinking. We posit points of alleged truth within a given duration that normally comports
with the life of a thought and that of its thinker. Finitude cloaks every durability,
transforming our most hallowed pillars of certainty into a realm of the penumbra,
and the sequential fictions by which we manufacture our identities, pasts and
futures, cultures and fixations.
18
A long history that has seen the merging of formal logical studies with various
sciences continues to prompt philosophical debate over the essence of truth, the
nature of a proposition, and the endless twists upon the slightest inference, induction, extrapolation or conclusion, with or without the reality of infinity.
19
15 Random House, New York.
16 See
https://www.dw.com/en/stark-warning-on-melting-himalayan-glaciers/a-47353374,
Accessed February 4, 2019
17 See “Hyper-contradictions, generalized truth values and logics of truth and falsehood,” by
Yaroslav Shramko & Heinrich Wansing, Journal of Logic, Language and Information 15 (4):403–
424 (2006); and Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 8, No. 1, “The Logic of Paradox,” by Graham
Priest, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1979), pp. 219–241, Published by Springer, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30227165; See also, Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract
Sciences, by John Woods, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
18 See, for example, “Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth
despite habitat destruction,” Zong Xuan Tan, Kang Hao Cheong, eLife 2017;6:e21673 DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21673,
https://elifesciences.org/articles/21673v4,
Accessed
September 21, 2018; and “A Paradoxical Evolutionary Mechanism in Stochastically Switching
Environments,” Nature.com, Article | OPEN | Published: 14 October 2016, Kang Hao Cheong,
Zong Xuan Tan, Neng-gang Xie & Michael C. Jones, Scientific Reports, Volume, 6, Article number: 34889 (2016), https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34889, Accessed September 21, 2018.
19 For a superb bibliography of Primary Sources concerning these topics, from 1897 to 1945, as
well as Recent Sources, see “Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic,” the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradoxes-contemporary-logic/, Accessed February
6, 2019. In Jainism, for example, there are at least eleven forms of infinity. See “Zero and Infinity
in Mathematics: Ayoga Kevali and Siddha in Jain Philosophy,” by Medhavi Jain, II ISJSTransaction, Vol. 4, no. 1, Jan-Mar., New Delhi, India, 2020, pp. 18–19.
9.2 Hypercontradictory Naturalism
9.2 Hypercontradictory Naturalism
If there is a species-wide mismatch with Nature—a supposition with no possible
proof, other than a host of empirically accessible data sets all lending support for
this belief—then what? Biological remorse within “the age of anxiety,” as
W. H. Auden titled a book of poems in 1947?
15
Remorse that has no physical infrastructure, no known psychological or emotional capacity to meaningfully grapple
with information that tells us at least one-third of all Himalayan glaciers will have
melted within a few decades?
16
Logicians speak of “hyper-contradictions,” levels of truth, and the very logic
itself of paradoxes; a set of propositions, both proven true and proven false whose
outlines involve semantics, mathematics, physics, and ecology. But ultimately, their
Medieval Clouds of Unknowing—Insolubilia—remain.
17
Throughout the biological
sciences, paradoxical frontiers meet every fact head on. Survival itself proves to be
the most vulnerable of all statements of fact, and thus is central to paradoxical thinking. We posit points of alleged truth within a given duration that normally comports
with the life of a thought and that of its thinker. Finitude cloaks every durability,
transforming our most hallowed pillars of certainty into a realm of the penumbra,
and the sequential fictions by which we manufacture our identities, pasts and
futures, cultures and fixations.
18
A long history that has seen the merging of formal logical studies with various
sciences continues to prompt philosophical debate over the essence of truth, the
nature of a proposition, and the endless twists upon the slightest inference, induction, extrapolation or conclusion, with or without the reality of infinity.
19
15 Random House, New York.
16 See
https://www.dw.com/en/stark-warning-on-melting-himalayan-glaciers/a-47353374,
Accessed February 4, 2019
17 See “Hyper-contradictions, generalized truth values and logics of truth and falsehood,” by
Yaroslav Shramko & Heinrich Wansing, Journal of Logic, Language and Information 15 (4):403–
424 (2006); and Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 8, No. 1, “The Logic of Paradox,” by Graham
Priest, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1979), pp. 219–241, Published by Springer, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30227165; See also, Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract
Sciences, by John Woods, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
18 See, for example, “Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth
despite habitat destruction,” Zong Xuan Tan, Kang Hao Cheong, eLife 2017;6:e21673 DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21673,
https://elifesciences.org/articles/21673v4,
Accessed
September 21, 2018; and “A Paradoxical Evolutionary Mechanism in Stochastically Switching
Environments,” Nature.com, Article | OPEN | Published: 14 October 2016, Kang Hao Cheong,
Zong Xuan Tan, Neng-gang Xie & Michael C. Jones, Scientific Reports, Volume, 6, Article number: 34889 (2016), https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34889, Accessed September 21, 2018.
19 For a superb bibliography of Primary Sources concerning these topics, from 1897 to 1945, as
well as Recent Sources, see “Paradoxes and Contemporary Logic,” the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradoxes-contemporary-logic/, Accessed February
6, 2019. In Jainism, for example, there are at least eleven forms of infinity. See “Zero and Infinity
in Mathematics: Ayoga Kevali and Siddha in Jain Philosophy,” by Medhavi Jain, II ISJSTransaction, Vol. 4, no. 1, Jan-Mar., New Delhi, India, 2020, pp. 18–19.
9.2 Hypercontradictory Naturalism