Put the ‘Uni’ back in Universe

Just about everything you need to know about the Universe can be found in its name. It is  ‘forever one’ (uni); and it is ‘perpetual change’ (verse). It is permanence (Aletheia) and  transience (Doxa) – Parmenides. “Abide in me/Fast falls the eventide” – Whitehead (from an  Anglican Hymn).  

For reasons probably rooted in culture generally and language specifically and possibly  even in biology (neurology), we find it difficult to think organically, i.e. to embrace  complementarity (e.g. wave/particle duality). We are much more comfortable thinking  hierarchically.  

We prefer ‘decision trees’ over‘virtuous cycles’. We prefer to explain phenomena via  ‘causality’ rather than ‘recursion’. We like to attribute an event to ‘external causes’rather  than to the event itself. We are born to shirk responsibility: “The devil made me do it.” 

Accordingly, for decades scientists sought in vain to establish either the particle or the  wave as the ‘primary’ (default) state of a quantum. There is no ‘primary’. 

As a result of this bias, Plato could no longer understand Parmenides, less than 100 years  after the latter’s death; nor could Karl Popper, 2 millennia later. Be assured, this same virus  still infects our thinking today. 

When we think ‘Universe’, we likely imagine a collection of discrete objects and events and  a network of relationships connecting them. Universe, the whole, is the consequence, not  the cause, of everything that is in it. We reason from parts to the whole. That’s us! 

We are much less likely to imagine Universe as an organic whole, precipitating unique,  knot-like events along pre-established threads of relatedness (logos). We are less  comfortable deducing the parts from the whole. 

We didn’t notice then that the Emperor had no clothes and we don’t seem to notice now that our preferred model makes no sense. We are lazy detectives, anxious to close our  cases, less concerned with identifying the actually guilty parties. 

According to this hierarchical model, Universe is merely a mathematical construct, a  shorthand way of referring to the multiplicity of things. As such, it is inert. It is at most the  arithmetic sum of its parts. Taking redundancies into consideration, the whole may even be less than its parts.

Illustration: Suppose we have a Universe, X, made up of three events, A, B, and C with the  elements of each as follows: A = (l, m), B = (m, n), C = (n, p). So we have 3 events made up  of 2 elements each, or 6 elements in total. But note, 2 of those elements (m and n) occur twice. Therefore, Universe X contains just 4 discrete elements (l, m, n, p) and so in one  sense at least, the whole (4) is less than the sum of its parts (6). Universe is nothing if not  economical. It doesn’t ‘chew its cabbage twice’ (that’s a theorem, BTW.) 

As mentioned above, such a Universe is inert. It lacks agency. It is an accumulation of  influences, exerting no influence of its own. Its virtual existence is a fragile function of  arbitrary forces accidentally interconnecting various nodes. According to today’s Standard  Cosmological Model, these connections will gradually weaken and eventually evaporate resulting in ‘Heat Death’ (i.e. Max Entropy) aka ‘Big Freeze’.  

The Universe we are describing is known as an ‘Archimedean Universe’. In my view, if such a  universe existed, it would necessarily be unstable. It begins at some arbitrary point (e.g. Big  Bang) and its demise (e.g. Big Freeze) is inevitable; it’s all just a matter of time. 

As stated above, an Archimedean Universe lacks agency. It cannot regenerate; it cannot  adjust its elements via homeostasis. Its only function is the elimination of redundancy. In  other words, according to such a model, Universe is DOA. 

That said, it’s amazing that from 300 BCE to 1900 CE, Archimedean geometry was thought  to be the only game in town. For millennia reluctant students have been trained in a system  of geometry (Euclidean) that is incompatible with stability in any real world. Add to this the fact that Aristotle et al. thought the Universe was ‘infinite’ in space and time, and you can  see the metaphysical mess we’re in. 

On the other hand, all of these problems disappear if we imagine that Universe is primary  and its parts secondary. Such a Universe is One before it is Many. Interestingly, a Universe  in which the Whole and its Parts are co-primary, i.e. complementary, achieves the same  result. Only an entirely derivative Universe is terminally unstable. 

Alfred North Whitehead, a legendary monist, defined the Universe in terms of three  elements: Unity, Multiplicity, and Creativity (i.e. change). While he did not specifically  address the Archimedean issue, it’s clear that his cosmology is at least compatible with a  non-Archimedean formulation of geometry. Appropriately, he described his thoughts as a ‘Philosophy of Organism’.  

R. Buckminster Fuller on the other hand, ‘designated’ spokesperson for pluralists  everywhere, often said, “Universe is plural and at minimum two;” but he also said, “I seem  to be a Verb.” As ‘verb’, Fuller sublimates primal plurality into organic unity. Fuller’s ‘Verb’ is roughly equivalent to Whitehead’s ‘Creativity’; it balances unity (permanence) with  multiplicity (change). 

Fuller developed his ‘pluralism’ in the context of an Archimedean model, but I think that,  taking his work as a whole, he fits more comfortably alongside Parmenides in a Universe based on a complementary relationship between the Whole and its Parts.  

For Whitehead, the Universe consists solely of events. Whatever is not itself an event is a  derivative of an event. Since Universe (Unity) is a primary existent in Whitehead’s model,  Universe must itself be an event. As an event, it can…and must…exert influence on the  events that constitute it. 

I take Fuller’s concept of ‘verb’ as congruent with Whitehead’s concept of ‘event’. Both  models rely heavily on the concept of Synergy. The title of Fuller’s master work is  Synergetics. In Whitehead, the agency of the whole complements the synergy of its parts.  

All of which leads to a very peculiar conclusion: Universe can be more, or less, than the  sum of its parts!  

How can that be? In fact, it cannot be otherwise! Universe is an event, and every event  represents a creative advance relative to its logical antecedents. (Otherwise, it is not an  ‘event’ and so not a primary existent, according to Whitehead.) Every event ‘prehends’ all  the events in its ‘Actual World’ but contributes something unique and novel to that World going forward. Therefore, every event is by definition more than its elements. 

Likewise, borrowing a concept from set theory, each part within a Whole plays a unique role; it does not repeat. Potential redundancies are pruned and overlaps are conflated. 

In fact, a critical theorem in all non-Archimedean geometries states that no two entities  can ever ‘overlap’. Even tangency is prohibited. Suppose we have a Universe that consists  of just 3 events. If these events collectively constitute one Universe, each event must be  embedded in another and/or it must embed another in itself. That’s the solidarity of  Universe. 

So, in a Universe consisting of just 3 events, there are only two possible configurations: (1) C is embedded in B and B in A; (2) B and C are disjoint but both are embedded in A. Config #1 is straight forward. C is less than or equal to B and B is less than or equal to A. The whole  is greater than or equal to the sum of its parts. 

Config #2 is more interesting. Depending on a variety of case specific variables, B + C can  be less than, greater than, or equal to A. A is greater than or equal to B and A is greater than  or equal to C but A is not necessarily equal to or greater than B + C, even though B and C  are subsets of A.

This is only counter intuitive because we trained at the feet of Euclid and Archimedes. The  #10 (A) is greater than #7 (B) which is greater than #5 (C). One way of looking at natural  numbers is to say that #10 contains #7 and #7 contains #5. In that case A (#10) > B (#7) > C  (#5). No surprises here! 

On the other hand if B and C are disjoint (neither contains the other), then A (#10) > B (#7)  and A (#10) > C (#5), but A (#10) is not necessarily greater than B + C (#12). 5 year olds can  understand this, but when we adults move from arithmetic to geometry, we magically  introduce a new constraint based on the concept of a Venn Diagram. 

If we picture A (above) as a circle and B and C as circles within A, it is clear that A (#10)  cannot contain both B (#7) and C (#5) unless B and C overlap. Try it, you can’t draw it! But  we also know that B and C cannot overlap in a non-Archimedean universe, unless one  wholly contains the other (above).  

But who says that the Universe has to behave like a Venn Diagram? After all, John Venn only  developed his famous sketch 150 years ago. Unconsciously, Venn’s Universe assumes the  axioms of Euclidean Geometry. 

We need a more powerful model if we are going to understand how the ‘real world’ works. A, the whole, must have a degree of independence from its parts (B and C). A must be a  player in its own right and it must play a part in the constitution of B and C. 

Today, we are all Heracliteans; we worship change, often for its own sake. We see change,  and call it ‘progress’, everywhere we look. But change (Doxa) cannot occur other than in the  context of stability/permanence (Aletheia) and in order for change and stability to co-exist,  we must live in a non-Archimedean Universe.  

The state of the world today, Century 21, does not allow us to wallow in parts, no matter  how beautiful. We must begin to focus on the whole and note how it shapes each of its  parts; we must put the ‘uni’ back in Universe!

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Image: Salvador Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres (1952) depicts the face of Gala, his wife and muse, fragmented into a constellation of floating spheres that form a harmonious, three-dimensional grid. The work reflects Dalí’s fascination with atomic theory—suggesting that matter, love, and spirit are all unified through invisible cosmic order. By dissolving the human form into molecular orbs, Dalí portrays the interconnectedness of all existence, where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other.