Poly(pan)theism
Breaking Apart a Monolithic “Nature”
The “Universe” is by definition the totality of all that “exists”, considered as “one” – i.e. the “Uni” in “Uni-verse”. This expansive and generic definition covers so called “Multiversal” conceptions as well, insofar as the term “multiverse” unifies the many – oxymoronically named – “universes” under it in a totality. We need not dwell directly on the details of the specific ontologies this might be articulated with. This definition works for the physicalist as well as the idealist, and everyone else. However, I will try to articulate how, when we analyse the “Uni” in “Universe”, we get a point that many philosophers over the millennia have reached on the nature of “unity”.
This won’t be a bland monism. This is a generic consideration of the nature of the unity of all things, and by extension the unity of each thing, the nature of “unity itself”. The path we will take is through physics, the logic of the initial “singularity” – i.e. the “Big Bang” – and how through this, coupled with the nature of unity we will probe, we end up with a radical multi-naturalism that is also a “multi-theism”, a “polypantheism”, and a “polytheism”, in different respects.
I
Unity
The question of existence is closely related to the nature of “unity” or the “unit” (broadly speaking); that is, the way or ways in everything and each thing, can be considered “one”. For the Platonists, for instance, the question of unity is the question of existence[1], insofar as the first condition for anything to exist is that it be “one” in some way[2]. This insight (which is by no means exclusive to them) leads to some interesting lines of thought.
First, in referring to a thing through its individuality (“qua unit”, as the individual entity it is), we are subordinating everything else about said entity. The first way we make this kind of reference is via the proper name[3]. There are many people named “Oluwaseyi”, but there is no species or animal group named “Oluwaseyiness”. There’s no “whole” we form that we are parts of through our proper names. What is common between all people named “Oluwaseyi” is not some prior nature the name would indicate, it is that we are each a unique entity. When we call out “Oluwaseyi”, we are referring to a specific person, not a general species. What is common is that nothing is common. There are other things about me that are categorizable as “common”, as something “shared” in the sense of “particular” in a universal e.g. our humanity, but all of that is united in specific and unique people, a reference to whom is not a function of negation – i.e. I am not Oluwaseyi as a negation of everyone else. I am Oluwaseyi as the unity of an uncountable number of characteristics united as one entity, a positive unity. These two ways of distinguishing entities, the negative and positive, interplay in each entity insofar as it exists, but the latter is logically prior to the former, since there must be something, a unit, to distinguish. Given this precondition, the term “existence” cannot just be restricted to the “physical”. Insofar as even mere concepts can be counted as “one” in various ways, they exist, their mode of existence being, precisely, conceptual. The various aporias and other questions that arise from this – including those that might arise when we consider what this means for the nature of numbering itself – continue to be grappled with. This essay represents one of them.
II
Singularity
Hawking defines a singularity thus:
“A spacetime is singular if it is timelike or null geodesically incomplete but cannot be embedded in a larger spacetime.”[4]
In layman terms, the most basic of paths end at a point that cannot be continued even if one wanted to. To use an example, the top of an ideal cone is a type of “singularity”, the paths to the top cannot be continued after the top; the curvature there is infinite. Another (perhaps slightly incorrect) example would be a straight vertical line. We know the formula of a gradient or slope from this equation
In the example of a vertically straight line, which means, that the denominator in the equation 0 in this case. Anything divided by 0 is “undefined”, meaning it breaks the entire model we are using. The slope can be considered “infinite”. If we could represent a graph of the change in slop as a line becomes more vertical, there will be a point where the graph just shoots up to endlessness. One can rightly ask if it makes sense to speak of a “slope” in that case. There is no perfectly physical cone, therefore there is no perfect conical point. Singularities in physics generally indicate where a theory breaks down, we need a different or modified theory. In physical practice, the tip of a cone can be considered curved, and this curve is not infinite. The edge of a knife is not infinitely sharp, there is no perfect physical square corner. Physical time seems to have a minimum period (the planck time), and this time is not a true timeless “moment”. This is why it is possible (and prudent) for any physicist to be sceptical that there is a true physical “singularity” in, say, a black hole, or the beginning of the universe. The singularity is more ideal than physical. It signifies where the theory fails. It is possible that there are other models that can explain the data without a physical singularity. One might even wonder if the phrase “physical singularity” is not a misnomer. But, in our consideration of these questions, it is the ideality of the singular that is important and necessary for us, because in considering the metaphysical import of the discovered earlier states of the physical cosmos, we find that this ideality is what can help us understand how the platonic logic of the singular and/or unique provide a way to understand the “Uni-verse” in a non-contradictory way.
III
All, Not Whole
Damascius’ argument against an ultimate “Whole” and “Ontological Closure” of all things under or in only one “thing” can be summarized thus:
If all things are under one thing, then it is not “all things”.
The logic is simple, really. Given the definition of “thing” as “existent”, in all the ways this is possible, there cannot be a really existent first principle of all things, since even it has to be among all things[5], what it is supposed to be a principle of. The strongest objection to this comes from the monotheist Classical theist tradition[6], which would reiterate that “God” is not “a thing”. However, the objection fails, since the classical theist understanding of “thing” is predominantly defined by the negative distinction, which, if the henological reading of Plato holds, is only one subordinate way we refer to and understand the existence of things. The positive individuation of all things is also active in the Damascian argument, where for the Monotheist, only the God is fully understood as positively individuated i.e. explained in himself, “beyond being”, unrestricted by hierarchy and negative distinctions. The distribution of ineffability this way in Damascius undercuts the contingency argument for monotheism, including a classical theist monotheism, up to the most apophatic traditions of it. The argument is considered valid as an argument towards an ontological principle, but on the henological reading, it is not an argument for one God. Instead, each thing, considered qua unity (or unique individuality) is in this way qui generis, a se, which leads to a new way this ontological principle can be considered[7]. A really existent principle of all things, thus, undermines the very concept is supposed to explain.
IV
Uni-Verse
We can immediately see how Damascius’ argument brings problems for any conception of “Uni-Verse” that considers it as one total whole that determines everything “inside” it. The first problem is that this “whole” is limited, as all “wholes” must be “limited” by definition, being a “thing” that categorizes many things. A “Whole” cannot be all things, thus the universe cannot be a whole. Likewise, an “infinite whole” is an oxymoron, as wholes are definite. There are “infinities” in each one thing (if only abstractly, like the number line on a thread), but these wholes are not infinite in every respect, and it is in these aspects that their wholeness is defined[8]. The number line is a line, with at least one negative difference from other kinds of lines and other kinds of wholes. The universe is all things, there is nothing for it to have difference with. The logic of wholes break down here, like a singularity. It is this logic that compels physicists to say things like:
“The Big Bang did not happen at any single point. This is because at the beginning, all distances in the universe were zero. Every point in the universe was therefore effectively in the same place, which means that the Big Bang did not happen at any particular point, it happened everywhere.”[9]
The Universe, here, is “acentric”, that is, it has no centre, at least no exclusive centre. There is no “outside” to view the Big Bang from. That would be physical space to be explained, and what expands wouldn’t be a “Uni-verse” according to our definition. But there is a perspective for this expansion. It is internal to the Universe itself, and it is simply where we are, where we happen to be. Since the “expansion” is the separation of each “point” in the universe from every other, each of these “points” can be considered as the centre of a “perspective” on the motion of everything else. Also, since the earliest moments of this expansion have the universe as homogenous, there is no formal difference in the contents of the very beginnings of this “perspective”. What then, distinguishes the perspectives?
V
Multi-Naturalism as Polytheism
The extension of an ideal Geodesic (or world line) from the earliest moments of expansion till now and to whatever future defines one perspective on the infinitude of the universe. Each Perspective is not, here, a part of some greater whole. Each is the whole. Every “point” ideally had no “distance” from any other “point” at the beginning. Obviously there is a problem here, since this breaks physics. Every vision of a physical entity you have is of that entity’s past, but look far back enough, even into space and time, you reach a point where that unimaginable distance and your position at that point where not separated. In short, look far back enough and you arrive at the very position you are. Acentricity, as we see, becomes Polycentricity, many centres, all united in beginning and yet each is unique, not separated negatively. The only way to distinguish these “centres”, considered in themselves and not as per their predicates, is positive individuation, expressed in the proper name. If “Uni-Verse” refers to only one whole entity, then it breaks its very definition, and is no universe. Instead, the universe is united internally, in each of the centres from which it “emerges” from. Instead of “all in one”, we have “all in each”. Given the primacy of individuality prior to predicates (and thus “being” as a category), it follows that it is the very primacy of the multiplicity of centres that secures the integrity of the “Uni-Verse” insofar as it is “natural”. This integrity and unity, insofar as it joins past to future at once, is independent of time, establishing time itself. The singular is ideal, and is discovered by the coincidence of the deep past, one’s present and any possible future. Therefore, rather than one “Overnature” over many natures, we have many “natures” united in each “singular”, each an ideal unity in the ideal multiplicity; each is the “Uni-Verse”, and all of them are in each one; a “multinaturalism”[10] that, given the nature of the singularities that unite them, is a “polypantheism”, a substantive polytheism, since only Gods are ultimates with proper names.
[1] “…my argument throughout has denied that Plato is concerned with the notion of existence (nor with the attendant problems of the verb “to be”; see ch. 4, sec. 8; ch. 7, sec. 3; ch. 8, sec. 9). Instead, his attention focuses on identifiable individuals, just because individuals, ones, are what is basic and identifiable. The problems of “being,” therefore, are attached to whether, and how, we can determine that something is an individual; and whether that can be done without precluding its being the possessor of properties as well. So being is being one something, in the first place; and only somethings can be such—only determinate individuals (so the theory goes) can be the possessors of properties. - Mary M. McCabe, Plato’s Individuals, 2nd Paperback Edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999).
[2] “Every multitude incorporates unity in some way.” (Prop 1) - Antonio Vargas, “Proclus’ Elements of Metaphysics,” accessed November 23, 2022, https://www.academia.edu/44841806/Proclus_Elements_of_Metaphysics.
[3] Edward P. Butler, “On the Gods and the Good,” no. September (2014): 20.
[4] Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, Princeton Science Library (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
[5] Edward P. Butler, “Damascian Negativity,” Dionysius 37, no. December (2019): 114–33.
[6] David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, 2013, https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-3784.
[7] Oluwaseyi Bello, “Certain Theses on the ‘Non-Thirdness’ of Being,” Substack newsletter, A Play of Masks (blog), February 4, 2023, https://symmetria.substack.com/p/certain-theses-on-the-non-thirdness.
[8] Rene Guenon, The Multiple States of the Being (Sophia Perennis, 2004).
[9] “Did The Big Bang Happen Everywhere At Once? The Physics Explained – Profound Physics,” accessed March 26, 2023, https://profoundphysics.com/did-the-big-bang-happen-everywhere-at-once/.
[10] Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation’, … the Society for the Anthropology …, 1 January 2011, https://www.academia.edu/49762936/Perspectival_anthropology_and_the_method_of_controlled_equivocation.