One Hand Clapping

A fantastic book that I think I need to read again to fully absorb. ‘Awe’ inducing in the way the best science books are. I can no way compress the book into a short blog post, but here are a few take aways.

The book opens with the conundrum, that if existence is all material, atoms and chemical reactions, then why does it feel like something ’to be’? Essentially pushing back against materialism/reductionism, and opening a bucketload of questions and threads.

He proposes the concept of ‘ideas/essences’ that contain meaning, and they exist independently from our imagination.

Not in a ‘magical/mystical sense’. But instead that they are real patterns/organisations in nature and our minds can discover them. They exist in nature whether or not you imagine them, but are not detached from the material world; they are embedded in the structure, relations and causal flow of the entire system.

Emergence is a good example to understand this, that ’the whole is greater than its parts’. Molecules are not just atoms, but also contain information about their configuration and shape. A melody is not just the notes, it is the harmony produced by their arrangement.

“An emergent system has properties that are not reducible to the properties of its components. "

He gives the example of carbon and oxygen. Biochemically, they are like the ‘chemical Vishnu’ and ‘chemical Shiva’ of nature. Carbon with it’s ability to form four separate chemical bonds, ‘unify electron clouds into a communal whole, build impressive molecules of increasing scale’. Oxygen on the other hand with it’s ruthless ability to break bonds and steal electrons.

With the idea of ’essences’, they are not just ‘mere elements’ but they play a functional meaningful role in a larger system as destroyers and creators. Meaning emerges from the relationship of things to other things; the relational nature of everything.

Material things are not just material things, but also having an embedded meaning from their relationship with other things.

That’s what the Koan ‘what’s the sound of one hand clapping’ gets at by the way. “When two hands come together, the sound is what’s born out of their contact”. There are not two things, but just one thing and its their interaction that is making the sound. There is a oneness, nature knows no boundaries.

Something one can experience from a subjective single person perspective too (meditation).

I like his concluding sentences.

You must stop seeing your mind as being opposed to nature and rather see it as an integral part of it… your brain is a corner of the universe where nature’s ideas compress into a singularity

Overall mind bending and wide ranging book exploring the origins of life, evolution, selfhood, the mind, consciousness and much more. Too much marginalia. I’m going to have to read it again…

TLDR : Meaning is real and that it arises within the relationships and organisation of nature itself.