By the Late John Brockman (7 page)

Undifferentiated activity. Don’t call it Life. Don’t call it Man. Talk “of gods and
man destroyed, the right / To know established as the right to be. / The ancient symbols
will be nothing then. / We shall have gone behind the symbols / To that which they
symbolized.”
¹⁵
Use unambiguous language for objective description: elementary physical laws are
all expressed by statistical formulas. “All the pictures which science now draws of
nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical
pictures.”
¹⁶

The description is the thing. The most important thing is the next word; the to-be-said.
Not a word and yet another kind of word: “a refinement of general language, supplementing
it with appropriate tools to represent relations for which ordinary verbal expression
is imprecise or cumbersome.”
¹⁷
No ultimate subject. “Just by avoiding the reference to the conscious subject which
infiltrates daily language, the use of mathematical symbols secures the unambiguity
of definition required for objective description.”
¹⁸

Get through the history of words. “Throw away the lights, the definitions, / And say
of what you see in the dark / That it is this or that it is that, / But do not use
the rotted names.”
¹⁹

Universe: verb. The coupling of observer-observed system. The doing of man-environment.
The doing of “I think.” Universe: not observer, not man, not I. The unity is unitless,
an expression of undifferentiated activity. “We need no longer discuss whether light
consists of particles or waves; we know all there is to be known if we have found
a mathematical formula which accurately describes its behavior and we can think of
it as either particles or waves according to our mood and convenience of the moment.”
²⁰
It “exists in a mathematical formula; this, and nothing else, expresses the ultimate
reality.”
²¹

“Our task can only be to aim at communicating experiences and views to others by means
of language in which the practical use of every word stands in complementary relation
to attempts at its strict definition.”
²²
This exercise sets forth exact notions with the inexact language of the spurious
names and generalizations that have crept into the language as truth. There’s no other
way. “There are no precisely stated axiomatic certainties from which to start. There
is not even the language in which to frame them. The only possible procedure is to
start from verbal expressions which when taken by themselves with the current meanings
of their words are ill-defined and ambiguous.”
²³
Welcome the contradictions, welcome the confusion . . . as you would success.

The coupling of observer observed system is finite. The observation, the measuring
operation, is irreversible. The real world measured itself out of existence. “The
model need not be that of an objective, immovable world around us. Philosophers of
our time cannot ignore the fact that Interaction be tween observer and observed is
finite and cannot be made as small as desired. Observation and perturbation inevitably
go together and the world around us is in perpetual flux because we observe it.”
²⁴

“A physical quantity must not be defined by verbal reduction to other familiar conceptions,
but by prescribing the operations necessary to produce and measure it.”
²⁵
Universe is finite decreation of the outside world, independent of us; decreation
of the outside world not directly accessible to us. The description is the thing.
The description: a mathematical formulation, the statistical expression of coupling.
“The making of models or pictures to explain mathematical formulae and the phenomena
they describe is not a step toward, but a step away from reality.”
²⁶
Universe is finite: not a word, and yet another kind of word, and “the word must
be the thing it represents.”
²⁷

No nouns: “the notion of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of change is completely
abandoned.”
²⁸
The unity is unit-less: “An actual entity is at once the subject experiencing and
the superject of its experiences. It is subject-superject and neither half of this
description can for a moment be lost sight of.”
²⁹
Unitless unity: the negation of one. Unitless unity. the operation, the statistical
expression of coupling, of activity. Unitless unity: “The poet and his subject are
inseparable.”
³⁰
There is no ultimate subject. “Before the birth of Doubt / We—you and I—were one,
/ Who now, alack, / Are both undone!”
³¹

“To measure is to disturb.”
³²
“We used to imagine that there was a real universe, outside of us, which could persist
even when we stopped observing it.”
³³
The negation of the empirical notion of antecedent observation: “we can never catch
the world taking a holiday.”
³⁴
Observation and perturbation inevitably go together and “the method of pinning down
thought to the strict systematization of detailed discrimination, already effected
by antecedent observation, breaks down.”
³⁵
“Each observation destroys the bit of the universe observed, and so supplies knowledge
only of a universe which has already become past history.”
³⁶
We cannot abstract ourselves from the world. We form together with it, an inseparable
whole. There are no actors and spectators, but a mixed crowd . . . “reject, absolutely
renounce the idea of an objective real world.”
³⁷
The concern is with “our observation of nature, and not nature itself.”
³⁸

Description is the thing. Decreation of the idealized real world, the thing world,
the people world. “Experiments are the only elements which really count.”
³⁹
Coupling of observer-observed, an event: the matter of fact. “The elementary particles
themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather
than of things and facts.”
⁴⁰
Physical phenomena: not things made of matter. Coupling: the matter of fact. “Do
not look behind the facts since the facts themselves make up the doctrine.”
⁴¹
Physical phenomena: coupling: the matter of fact. “To confront fact in its total
bleakness is for any poet a completely baffling experience. Reality is not the thing
but the aspect of the thing.”
⁴²

Unnecessary units in a language mean nothing. The unnecessary unit: an invention.
The real world: an invention. Invention: a question of decreation. Invention: a question
of realization, not intention. We must not assume the existence of any entity until
we are compelled to do so. “We approach a society / Without a society.”
⁴³
We are compelled to assume the existence of an entity only by decreating that entity.
Invention by decreation.

Concepts are the impersonal effect of an epoch. Names are included in conceptual exercises
either to impress the reader or to support a notion so weak as to require a name with
which to tyrannize the reader. “The first idea was not our own.”
⁴⁴
Not one idea in this exercise is original. They are the ideas of the reader, not
the author. There is no author. Not one idea in this exercise is original.

The final elegance: assuming, asking the question. No answers. No explanations. “Why
do you demand explanations? If they are given, you will once more be facing a terminus.
They cannot get you any further than you are at present.”
⁴⁵
The solution: not an explanation: a description and knowing how to consider it.

Everything has been explained. There is nothing left to consider. The explanation
can no longer be treated as a definition. The question: a description. The answer:
not explanation, but a description and knowing how to consider it. Asking or telling:
there isn’t any difference.

“Why is a contradiction more to be feared than a tautology?”
⁴⁶
Success in this exercise is confusion. Knowledge is tautological. “Knowledge is the
thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.”
⁴⁷
The decreation of reality: as it is known; as it is not known. The decreation of
reality: the invention of reality.

Make or do: You can’t do other than do. Each observation destroys the bit of the universe
observed, and thus supplies knowledge only of a universe which has already become
past history. Make-create: spurious conceptions of the empirical notion of antecedent
observation. Make-create: accretive advance from nothing to made; from nothing to
created; from nothing to thing. Make-create: a real world taking a holiday. You can’t
do other than do. Doing: do. Not doing: do. Make-create: do. Not making-not creating:
do. Observation and perturbation inevitably go together and the world around us is
in perpetual flux, because we observe it. You can’t do other than do.

Nothing comes before performance.

“Concepts which refer to distinctions beyond possible experience have no physical
meaning and ought to be eliminated. This principle should be applied to the idea of
physical continuity.”
⁴⁸
No nature at an instant. “An infinitely small distance cannot be measured . . . we
should especially emphasize the impossibility of physically defining a continuum in
space and time.”
⁴⁹
No accretion. It is impossible to locate a thing, stuff, etc., in space at an instant
of time. No pictures. Experiments, measurements are what count. These “events must
be treated as the fundamental objective constituents”
⁵⁰
. . . an “analysis in terms of doings or happenings.”
⁵¹
No nature at an instant. “Nature is such that it is impossible to determine absolute
motion by any experiment whatsoever.”
⁵²
No nature at an instant: no movement; no change; no distance; no speed; no development;
no continuity; no creation; no from; no direction; no there; no before; no accretion.

No nature at an instant. But “what can be described can also happen”
⁵³
: the description is the thing. “Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.”
⁵⁴

“The past has another pattern and ceases to be a mere sequence— / Or even development.”
⁵⁵
No accretive time: a unique seriality of incremental creative advance. Physical phenomena
cannot be represented in the accretive spacetime continuum. No nature at an instant:
no pictures: no mirrors. “No pictorial interpretation on accustomed lines, but establishing
relations between observations.”
⁵⁶
These relations are represented statistically. Their expression, a consequence of
the coupling of observer-observed is independent of time and place; independent of
development; independent of seriality.

Measurements, experiments are what count: nonaccretive discrete energy values for
discrete states (S) of experience. The measurement (S) destroys the bit of the universe
observed. Observation and perturbation inevitably go together and “the world around
us” is in perpetual flux because we observe it. No accretive states of experience:
S2+S3+S4, etc. To measure is to disturb. Every measurement is Sl. There is no S2.
There can be no addition, no comparison, no creation, no reproduction, no difference.
A no-signals region extends between past and future. “One picture of the scenario
about the caterpillar stage does not communicate its transformation into the butterfly
stage.”
⁵⁷
No-signals region: no difference. No accretive states of experience.

The end of the beginning, of first, of last, of before or after, of between. A no-signals
region extends between past and future: no man’s land.

It isn’t necessary to be aware of concepts in order to live them. Knowledge makes
no difference: measurements are what count. Knowledge makes no difference: “to know
is to measure.”
⁵⁸

The doing of “you do.” I, you, she, he, they, represent the concept of the static
unchanging subject of change, advancing through accretive states of experience in
a space-time continuum, There’s nothing for you to do. “Do I dare to eat a peach?”
⁵⁹

I: a noun. I am: noun’d. Existence is being: noun’d. To be or not to be: noun’d. Universe
as finite: negation of the noun: no things: nothing.

Coupling: irreversible: noninterchangeable. “If you came this way, / Taking any route,
starting from anywhere, / At any time or at any season, / It would always be the same:
you would have to put off / Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, / Instruct
yourself, or inform curiosity / or carry report.”
⁶⁰

Coupling of observer-observed system is finite: the observational process is irreversible.
“Physical knowledge is of an observational nature, in the sense that each item is
an assertion of the result of an observation, actual or hypothetical.”
⁶¹
“The study of coupling between observer and observed system, between man and physics,
will probably oblige us to revise the notion of value and to dissociate it from that
of scarcity.”
⁶²
“Value is in activity.”
⁶³
Physical phenomena: a verb. Value is not to be found in scarcity of people, things,
ideas, etc. Physical phenomena: the irreversible coupling: a verb. “Only the final
sum matters.”
⁶⁴
The computation assumes the history of the system in its expression. “Physical science
consists of purely structural knowledge, so that we know only the structure of the
universe which it describes. For strict expression of physical knowledge a mathematical
form is essential, because it is the only way in which we can confine its assertions
to structural knowledge. Every path to knowledge of what lies beneath the structure
is then blocked by an impenetrable mathematical symbol.”
⁶⁵