The Heretic Sings

Reading from my old biology textbook today, I got to thinking about the vagueness that exists in the distinctions between species, and sometimes even between individual organisms and their environments, but seems to disappear as we probe deeper, to the level of protons, neutrons, electrons, etc. Whenever I think of things like this, the calm, diffident, good-humored and fearless voice of Richard Rorty is whispering in my ear, admonishing me to set aside the notion that we have finally "cut nature at the joints", that there even is any ultimate "nature of reality", that we ever escape the confines of language in the course of our understanding. It's very easy to misinterpret such warnings- as easy as it is to think there must be some madness in Friedrich Nietzsche's insisting that there is no world order in one breath, and in the next that everything proceeds by strict necessity (an important part of his quaintly fallacious proof of the Eternal Recurrence, which is no less interesting or impressive for being literally false). It is only to say that, without any need to seperate mind from matter, or things from their properties from their interactions with other things, or to place any part of nature in charge of another, from the very beginning everything has been right on its way without any supervision or explanation (or excuse), and it is the height of human folly that we hope to drag the whole grand scheme, the whole awesome and mysterious process, into our little state of affairs, to be encompassed in our hilariously anthropic little cosmologies, as though all of it has to have something to do with us. Over our entire history as a species, and in miniature over the life of every one of us, we have expected to find something familiar in our investigations of nature, to find reason reasoning back at us, to hear a louder and more kind or terrible "I am that I am" than we can muster for each other or ourselves, and again and again we have been horrified to uncover the absurdity and indifference of a nature that is profoundly alien to us. We have suffered this, and really only suffered from ourselves, but in time we have also learned a new reverence for this nature that grows ever more exotic to us, and for the great luck we have to be a part of it. If it is a good idea for us to set aside the notion of having cut nature at the joints, it is because, even if we have managed to do that, there's no bell that goes off when we get it right, no higher level we ascend to upon attaining that elusive prize; it won't look any different to us from what we were doing before. There is no special ring of Truth, and no royal road to it; there's still just us, whatever we are, doing what we do, with the mystery forever before us, laughing at the darkness when we can, and letting in the light when we are strong enough.

I'm sorry if it hurt to read this. It's been too long since I've written. Worries squelch creativity, but I had to do something to prove to myself that I'm still alive. I hope I've convinced you as well.