Ken WIlber, hodne zajimavy chlapik

INCOMPLETE OR UNCERTAIN

A general theme running throughout the Idealist writers -- and indeed, a theme found in virtually all of the mystically or contemplatively oriented philosopher-sages the world over -- is that finite things, finite holons, are somehow profoundly lacking, or even profoundly contradictory, in and of themselves. "All finite things are contradictory," as Hegel put it. Na­garjuna would maintain the same for all finite phenomena (both thought and things are self-contradictory). From Eckhart to Bradley, from Shank­ara to Ramana, from Abinavagupta to Gaudapada -- the general notion is that, as Hegel put it, "All things in themselves are contradictory."

These types of statements have often stirred much controversy in philo­sophical circles, and many philosophers are either annoyed or puzzled by what they mean (or even can mean). But the reason these types of state­ments ("All holons are self-contradictory") come from mystically ori­ented philosopher-sages is that they have glimpsed the eternal, tasted in­finity, and thus all finite things by comparison are pale, incomplete, uncertain, shifting, shadowy. And thus to be merely finite is not only a constriction, it is ultimately self-defeating: to be merely finite is to deny Infinity, and this is self-contradictory in the deepest sense because it denies one's deepest reality.

This is why, I think, Hegel says, "For anything to be finite, is just to suppress itself and put itself aside." And thus, "all that is determinate and
finite is unstable." And it is this incompleteness, this instability, that drives the agitated movement of the entire finite and manifest universe: "Only insofar," he says, "as something has contradiction in itself does it move, have impulse, or activity."

I mention all of this because, as I said, virtually every mystically ori­ented philosopher ends up making some sort of these types of state­ments -- none, perhaps, with more exuberance than Francis Bradley: "Re­lation, cause, space, time, thing, and self are self-contradictory." And Nagarjuna's powerful dialectic is an intense and unrelenting bearing-­down on every single category of thought imaginable, all with the same result: they are totally self-contradictory and, if consistently pressed, they totally self-destruct (leaving Emptiness, leaving the formless infinite; the deconstruction of the phenomenal leaves prajna).

The deconstructionists have picked up certain of these lines of thought (mostly from Hegel, whom Derrida uncharacteristically treats with much respect), but after Bradley and Nagarjuna, the deconstructionists are very thin soup indeed, and, depressingly, they almost always miss the punch line: if you don't want to be a complete self-contradiction, then you must rest in infinity.

But admittedly, the philosopher-sages' explanations of why all holons are "self-contradictory" are not very clear, and have caused a great deal of confusion. I think the situation can be explained more easily and a bit more clearly.

The point, as I would put it, is that every holon is a whole/part. There are no wholes and no parts anywhere in the manifest universe; there are only whole/parts. If actual wholes or actual parts really existed some­where, then they could rest; they would simply be what they were; there would be no massive instability, no internal "self-contradiction."

But every holon is simultaneously a whole/part. It has a dual tension inherent in its very constitution. As a wholeness, it must achieve a degree of coherence and consistency in order to endure at all as the same entity across time (this is its regime, code, agency, relative autonomy, and so on). But as a partness, as a part of some other holon, it must embrace its partialness, embrace its incompleteness, or else it will simply not fit in, will not be a part but will always drift off into its own isolated wholeness. In order to be complete, or to complete itself, it must join with forces larger than itself. As a whole/part, there is thus a constant tension be­tween coherency or consistency, on the one hand, and completeness, on the other.

And the more of the one, the less of the other -- neither "force" can win without destroying the holon, and so the holon remains in constant instability. The more consistent (self-contained), then the less complete (the less in communion).

And thus [...] all holons issue an IOU to the Kosmos, where IOU means "Incomplete Or Uncertain," and which specifically means, the more complete or encompassing a holon, the less consistent or certain, and vice versa. To say a holon can be complete or consistent, but not both, is also to say that every holon is therefore incomplete or inconsistent (uncertain), and thus: every holon issues an IOU to the Kosmos.

Put more simply, since every holon is incomplete or inconsistent, every holon issues a promissory note to the universe, which says, in effect: I can't pay you now, I can't achieve certainty and stability and complete­ness and consistency today, but I will gladly pay you tomorrow. And no holon ever delivers, or can deliver, on that promise.

This IOU principle has, of course, started to become very obvious (and very famous) in certain branches of knowledge, particularly mathematics, physics, and sociology (to name a few). In mathematics, it shows up as Tarski's Theorem and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, both of which are taken to mean that in any sufficiently developed mathematical system (mathematical holon), the holon can be either complete or consistent, but not both. That is, if the mathematical system is made to be consistent (or self-certain), there remain fundamental truths that cannot be derived from the system itself (it is incomplete); but if the system is made to include these truths and thus attempts to become complete, then it inevitably (and inherently) contradicts itself at crucial points -- it becomes inconsistent.