The Physics of Transfigured Light by Leon Marvell

Author:Leon Marvell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Esoteric Spirituality
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2016-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

ARBOR VITAE

Why does a neuron look like a tree or perhaps a rhizome? The key to this seemingly inane question lies in the notion of “looks like.” A thoroughgoing positivist would pronounce that we are misled by the phrase looks like: a neuron actually looks like what it is, a neuron. But this, I think, would miss the point entirely. It is by no means accidental that we say a neuron resembles a tree; rather it is directly contingent upon the fact that we are immersed in a history of symbolization constellating around the image of a tree. In short, we think it looks like a tree because we think it has something to do with thinking!

The foregoing needs to be clearly explained. It is possible to hypothesize that the neuron would never have been found if it did not in some manner resemble a tree, plant, or rhizome. Imagine rooting around in an encephalon without knowing what you were looking for, idling about, as it were. What is inside the brain? you are asked. “Nothing but mush,” you would most likely reply. Now consider that you already know that human knowledge, human thinking, looks like a tree—how would you fare if you vaguely hoped to find the physical substrate for human thought in the brain? I wager that you would find the neuron within minutes.

Louis Rougier in his La Métaphysique et le Langage, in a remarkably concise passage, attempts to sum up the entirety of Western thought (and that of the Platonic/Aristotelian East).

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