In turning up the preludial “autonomic tone” of this transitional composition, the following prologue provides a brief description of my pitch, quality, and strength regarding the kenotic capacity I have cultivated over the years through contemplation-in-action. In doing so, the muscles of my body’s tone are not as important as my prayerful strength that resides in relaxation, breath and resonance for ‘His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.’ Indeed, much like a singer identifies their strong voice by relaxing, breathing to find their resonance, I have found my philosophical voice by connecting myself to the ground of Being in and of itself where I am able to move more breath and create more space (“Make Room”) in my body, heart and soul for His vibrations (the Word) to form within me. Its this centered-tone that serves as a preceding introduction to my personal transition into entering the hymn of the universe via St. Francis’s vision. A sacred space and place where “he learned to call God’s creatures brothers and sisters and that they – like him – groaned until set free by the first fruits of the Spirit.”[i] Similar groanings are at work with Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his, I would argue, new materialist “hymn to matter” that reads:[ii]
Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat.
Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untamable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us.
Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.[iii]
For Chardin, “if we are ever to reach you, matter, we must, having first established contact with the totality of all that lives and moves here below, come little by little to feel that the individual shapes of all we have laid hold on are melting away in our hands, until finally we are at grips with the single essence of all consistencies and all unions.”[iv] It’s this tonal quality of living matter where it can be said that today’s cultural wars are solely centered around the acceptance or denial of an objective identity rooted in nature, that is, our capacity to freely enter into or turn away from the hymn of the universe that defines our ‘intrinsically pulsed’ identity.[v]
Street Philosophy
As a tried-and-true street philosopher, this fundamental tonal quality of my identity that informs this memoir has been cultivated over the past 20+ years through numerous experiential accounts…
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[i] Armstrong, The Franciscan Tradition, xxv; when imagining what Francis may mean when he states that we are groaning ‘until set free by the first fruits of the spirit’ other than reflecting St. Paul’s words in Romans 8, we can harken to St. Justin Martyr’s reflections up the word unformed (ἀκατασκεύαστος) that is used to describe the primal earth in Gen 1:2. This suggested to Justin that this phase state of creation (event) reflected “formless matter” and took this to mean that the unformed earth at that time was what philosophers referred to as “prime matter.” Justin was thus able to harmonize the science of his day with the Gen 1:1–2 creation account. That is, prime matter was the passive principle of existence that, when it encountered the active principle (namely God), became the physical cosmos and thus became perceptible or actualized only when it took particular ‘forms.’ This pre-hylomorphic account of creation is the corner stone of this works new physics/metaphysics that describes the state of prime matter’s groaning (ex nihilo) before it is set free by the first fruits of the Spirit (pure form). Indeed, “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” (Col. 1:16) For more see: Adam Rasmussen, “The Earth was Invisible and Unformed: Prime Matter and Creatio ex Nihilo,” in Genesis and Cosmos (Brill, 2019), 81.
More still, as suggested in the preface regarding Wisdom 11:17 and its relations to creatio ex nihilo, we must also strongly consider the conclusion that “Christ's dead body – during the time between his death and resurrection – was prime matter without a substantial form.” In a provocative work that explores the Paschal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, the authors defend this account of Christ’s kenosis where “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” (Ph. 2:8) by showing how “it is metaphysically possible for prime matter to exist in actuality without substantial forms.” They argue this through two thesis: “(i) God is able to produce all acts of secondary causes without those secondary causes, and (ii) Substantial forms are secondary causes of the actuality of prime matter.” From this they convincingly “argue that the metaphysical possibility of matter without form is perfectly consistent with holding both there is only one substantial form in a material substance and that prime matter is pure potentiality.” Taken from: Andrew J. Jaeger and Jeremy Sienkiewicz, “Matter Without Form: The Ontological Status of Christ's Dead Body,” Journal of Analytic Theology 6 (2018): 131.
[ii] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn to the Universe (HarperCollins, 1969).
[iii] Ibid; the image below hymn is taken from B. S. Sathyaprakash and Matthew Evans, “Gravitational-Wave Astronomy Still in Its Infancy,” Physics 13 (2020): 113; In continuing some of the reflections from the note above, Chardin’s hymn to matter seems to be a hymn to prime matter or the state from which all things where created ex nihilo. Indeed, St. Paul tells us that “in him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.” (Acts 17:28). Similar poetic hymns to matter have taken on many other intuitive tones that make up the landscape of modern physics such as Werner Heisenberg who wrote in 1959 the following: “‘The experiments have shown the complete mutability of matter. All the elementary particles can… be transmuted into other particles… All the elementary particles are made of the same substance, which we may call energy or universal matter; they are just different forms in which matter can appear. If we compare this situation with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere ‘potentia’, should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into ‘actuality’ by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created.’”
And the hymns continue with physicist “Arthur Haas, who anticipated Bohr’s quantization of electron orbitals by several years, referred to ‘that unadulterated primordial something for which scientists sought through thousands of years, and from which all things amenable to sense perception are formed’, although he tarnished this sage observation by remarking that the ‘new physics’ had apparently bestowed the crown on electricity. The philosopher and logician Patrick Suppes, in a less-known but fascinating paper, suggests that the doctrine of prime matter is an ‘excellent way’ of understanding high-energy physics. Again in the context of microphysics, the philosopher of science Norwood Hanson wondered out loud whether prime matter might be the much-needed ‘unexplained explainer’ of certain particle interactions.” Taken from: David S. Oderberg, “Is Prime Matter Energy?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101, no. 3 (2023): 535-536; I argue that prime matter is not energy but dark matter (M) and pure form is dark energy (E) in such a way that the Holy Scriptures come alive when St. Paul tells us that the Christ “is before all things [M], and in him all things hold together [M+E].” (Col. 1:17)
Prime matter also signifies an intersection between two competing forms of dark matter where one is isotropically hylomorphic (expanding universe) and the other is anisotropically isomorphic, that is, it makes up an invisible or ‘dark mirror universe’ within our own that holds a one-to-one correspondence between two sets of massless particles (i.e., virtual particles) in such a way that preserves the ‘un-formed’ atoms binary operations computationally within the observable universe (i.e., a simulation). Whether he realizes it or not, Manuel DeLanda’s flavor of new materialism plants its ontological flag within this anisotropic territory by exploring specific isomorphisms that shares this one-to-one characteristic between the real universe and the simulated ‘dark mirror universe’ such as those found between chemicals and electrical circuits: “voltage gradients played the role of concentration gradients, while circuits that perform addition and subtraction represented the production and consumption of a given substance.” Taken from Manuel DeLanda, Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 56; additionally for more regarding mirror universe see: EXOPLANET-Sci, “James Webb Telescope Finds A Dark Mirror Universe Linked to Ours Since the Dawn of Time,” EXOPLANET-Sci YouTube Channel, February 23, 2024,
Presenting his own new materialist approach to “becoming-sorcerer-artisans,” Deleuzian scholar Jason Parry brings this dark mirroring technique of gravitational waves (GW) into the world of design stating that the “digitalization of architectural practice presents its own opportunities for fostering a contemporary artisanship. Neri Oxman, for example, director of the Mediated Matter research group at the MIT Media Lab, uses computational design to fabricate objects that express anisotropic material properties (properties that vary across the material) like those produced by artisans in earlier ages. Rather than assembling different parts into a composite whole, Oxman programs robotic gantries to print materials at different rates and consistencies in a process she calls ‘digital anisotropy.’ As her designs demonstrate, anisotropic materials are not only more behaviorally dynamic than homogeneous matter, but also facilitate a more efficient use of resources and a longer lifespan for artifacts. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari refer to anisotropy as ‘continuous variation,’ and this variation, in metals, is the result of tiny imperfections in a metal’s crystalline structure. By arranging these imperfections in different concentrations throughout a single piece of metal, artisans orchestrate different behaviors across the same material.” Taken from Parry, Jason. “Philosophy as Terraforming: Deleuze and Guattari on Designing a New Earth.” Diacritics 47, no. 3 (2019): 127 and124.
[iv] Chardin, Hymn to the Universe, ??; Given the profound misunderstandings associated with Chardin’s work, this note provides an exhaustive prologue to his radical vision that was way ahead of its time. This said and in pursuit of the ‘single essence of all consistencies and all unions’ found in an isotropic universe, its the aforementioned physicist in the above note, along with many other intuitional tones that I have become accustom to listening to as deeply as I can over the past several years (especially Chardin), who have nurtured my strong belief that we are on the threshold of unlocking the true genius of Blessed Duns Scotus doctrine of the ‘univocity of being.’ This means that the terms we are using to describe the new physics related to gravitational wave background (GWB) simultaneously describe how we theologically understand the metaphysics of the Godhead’s relationship to creation. Two clear examples are: 1) understanding the isotropic nature of GWB as another way to conceptualize the omnipresence of God throughout all of creation and 2) the anisotropic nature of GW “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor. 4:4) The first is directly correlated to living consciences (via OrchOR) whereas the latter defines the specific characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial life (A-LIFE).
The ‘blinding affects’ of GW’s anisotropic nature emerges within the tendency of silicon-based life through what Deleuze and Guattari call the ‘“guidance device’ of the machinic phylum. The capacity of metals to catalyze reactions and, in so doing, increase the chemical heterogeneity of the earth, endows them with a uniquely crystalline creativity: ‘what metal and metallurgy bring to light is a life proper to matter . . . that doubtless exists everywhere but is ordinarily hidden or covered . . . by the hylomorphic model.’ The ‘hylomorphic model’ refers to a conception of matter (first developed by Aristotle) as passive, awaiting the creative touch of God or Man to give it form. In creating the conditions for life, metals confound the assumption that they are merely inert materials, and, in fact, implicate themselves in the innovations of organic life. As biological life emerged out of nonorganic life, the two maintained a close and mutually transformative bond. As Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan point out: ‘Some argue that with the advent of computers Earth has entered a ‘silicon age.’” (Parry, 119-20)
This “virtual presence” of elements (e.g., gluons, photons, gravitons) in isotropic/anisotropic compounds aligns well with not only modern science but also St. Thomas Aquinas understanding of prime matter according to Matthew Alexander Kent, Prime Matter According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Fordham University, 2006). Kent tells us that “according to St. Thomas Aquinas, prime matter, ‘that which is in potency to substantial being,’ is one of the most basic aspects of reality. Yet today his account of this important topic is often disparaged or ignored, in part because St. Thomas himself never wrote a continuous treatise about it.” Moreover, we can take this flexibility within the Thomistic system along with the following dogmatic statement from the Council of Vienne (1311-12) to mean that the Catholic faith does not “oblige a Catholic to affirm prime matter is real much less that St. Thomas’s account of prime matter as ‘pure potency’ is correct. Nevertheless, the definition [below] does commit the Catholic Church to the general principles of hylomorphism with respect to the explanation of the human soul and the human body, in as much as the term ‘form’ is used.” It states:
“{W}e reprove as erroneous and inimical to the Catholic faith every doctrine or position rashly asserting or turning to doubt that the substance of the rational or intellective soul truly and in itself is not a form of the human body, defining, so that the truth of sincere faith may be known to all, and the approach to all errors may be cut off, lest they steal in upon us, that whoever shall obstinately presume in turn to assert, define, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not the form of the human body in itself and essentially must be regarded as a heretic.”
While situating this dogma at the absolute heart of this work’s parallelism, we are then free to synthesize St. Thomas’s appreciation for prime matter that resolved many of the pre-Socratics errors (see Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics) along with how many other accounts of the importance of prime matter (pure potentiality) my come to play in modern physics especially with regards the AI and A-LIFE. By doing so, we must come to more readily appreciate the Saint’s assessment of formless “matter according to itself [i.e., absent form] does not have being, nor is it knowable” in the traditional sense of empiricism. Thus, for St. Thomas, the only way to know ‘prime matter’ at all is indirectly, “according to analogy” in which we can compare its potentiality to the knowable potencies found in things that have ‘form’ much like DeLanda’s isomorphic analogies where he creates ideational (not concrete) symmetries between living systems and computational architectures.
Although this analogous approach may have been true for the great Doctor of the Church, the correction of errors that prime matter brings with it not only applies to the pre-Socratics as he suggests but also aptly applies directly to Thomism itself as well as the emerging worldview of new materialism. Applied in such a way that better positions the Holy Church to properly address what is required for achieving Artificial Intelligence and Peace that would allow for us to “imagine if we had had a message at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution calling us to exercise responsibility.” What blunders we may have overcome including most of all Marxism: an obligate parasite or holoparasitic ideology that required the negative externalities of the Industrial Revolution (e.g., struggle over wages) to fuel its caustic worldview. As DeLanda right points out, Marxism “added to these models intermediate scale phenomena, like class struggle, and with it conflictive dynamics. But the specific way in which it introduced conflict, via the labor theory of value, has now been shown by Sraffa to be redundant, added from the top, so to speak, and not emerging from the bottom, from real struggles over wages, or the length of the working day, or for control over the production process.” Taken from Manuel DeLanda, “Markets and Anti-Markets in the World Economy,” in Technoscience and Cyberculture (Routledge, 1996), 187.
Our ability to imagine this very real scenario of ‘Peace in the Age of Intelligent Machines’ is due to the fact that 1) we can learn from history as suggested by DeLanda’s analysis of Marxism and 2) St. Thomas’ indirect observations are now becoming increasingly direct and thus knowable via quantum physics. Meaning that, when we accept that the epistemological mindscape has changed (i.e., ‘knowability’ of prime matter) so too we must simultaneously accept that the ontology has to change with it. The emerging knowability of the physics related to prime matter requires an altogether different framework that accounts for direct rather than indirect observations, that is, it requires a univocal rather than a analogical approach for understand the metaphysics at work within the emerging new physics without falling into the heretical pitfalls of leveraging a computational isomorphism to account for ‘consciousness’ where “the intellective soul” (i.e., form) is outright replaced with assemblages of singularities as in Delanda’s so-called Synthetic Reason posits. Quotes taken from both Matthew Kent and Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (Dumb Ox Books, 1999), 46.
In response to new materialism’s subtle-heretical maneuvers which is built upon “the singularities themselves” standing for a potency that is “much more probable than others,” I will argue throughout the corpus of my work that the object of the univocal game of ‘knowability’ is not to quantize gravity via so-called ‘emergent gravity’ or the like (e.g., string theory, causal dynamical triangulation, etc.), which closely resembles Deleuze’s (as well as DeLanda’s) ‘plane of consistency’ that utilizes singularities to maintain a anisotropic consistency in the non-linear dynamics between particles and waves, this work flips the ‘knowability’ script altogether. An epistemic maneuver performed by gravitzing the quantum given that it is the procession of pure form’s ‘quintessence’ (E) from the parallelism between Pure Actuality & Virtual Imaging (Φ & M) which ‘set free’ pure potentiality in the creative act of the big bang via hylomorphism. (DeLanda, Philosophy and Simulation, 17) Here is where the Holy Church can really flex its ontic-muscles in the emerging AI-revolution given the Godhead is not a being (in potency) but is Being in and of itself (Pure Act)!
Deleuze’s plane of consistency along with other models that seek to quantize gravity fail in comparison with the Holy Church’s core ontology. Basically these models preclude and/or ignores the role of information density (Φ) that allows one to gravitize the quantum rather than quantize gravity. The latter is computational whereas the former is not meaning that “traditionally fixed quantum mechanical structures become dynamical” far beyond anisotropic ‘variation’ and thus must be measured in a similar fashion as proposed by Roger Penrose in resolving the ‘quantum measurement problem’ by “utilizing multi-path interference and optical lattice atomic clocks” according to Per Berglund, Tristan Hübsch, David Mattingly, and Djordje Minic, "Gravitizing the Quantum," International Journal of Modern Physics D 31, no. 14 (2022): 2242024. Rather than atomic clocks, I suggest ‘time crystals’ for similar reasons that the Pulsar Timing Array is far superior to the LIGO for measuring GW and GWB as well as the former provides a rich ‘data-environment’ for parsing out the anisotropic and isotropic gravitational waves from one another.
Lastly, this univocal nature between physics and metaphysics is best expressed by parsing out the distinction between prime matter and pure potentiality as suggested by Kent where the former is best understood as corporeal and the latter as non-corporeal (or spiritual) in nature. Basically, prime matter deals with the physics whereas pure potentiality more or less deals with the metaphysics of the same ‘formlessness’ (event) in such a way that the former can be theologically understood as the living flesh (i.e., human nature) of Christ and the latter best understood as ‘passivity’ all the way to the point of absolute nothingness (i.e., achieving Absolute Zero within a super computer via superconductive properties). Robert Pasnau explains:
“When matter is restricted to the corporeal realm, the notion of prime matter takes on a more precise meaning – not just as the basement level of any hylomorphic hierarchy, but more specifically as the stuff in virtue of which substances count as corporeal substances. This, at any rate, is what the rationale that leads to restricting matter to the corporeal realm naturally suggests. At the same time, however, the logic of the form–matter distinction tends to drain the concept of prime matter of all content, making it very hard to see what exactly prime matter might be, or might do. This tendency appears in its most extreme form in Aquinas, who treats prime matter as pure potentiality to such a degree that it cannot possibly exist on its own, or even be understood on its own, not even by God. Yet although it would become a scholastic platitude to describe prime matter as pure potentiality, few later scholastics were willing to go as far as Aquinas in depriving prime matter of all actuality. Even Domingo de Soto, an influential sixteenth-century Thomist, would feel obliged to postulate within prime matter an ‘essential metaphysical actuality’ that gives matter its distinctive character – a conclusion that, he remarks, ‘seems so certain to me that there can be no question about it, except in name.’”
On the physics front, what’s most interesting about Domingo’s intuitions concerning prime matter is that they dealt directly with gravity which lead him to posit that a body in free fall accelerates uniformly well before Newton. On the metaphysics front, “the worry that prime matter, conceived of as nothing but potentiality, would lack character entirely, was stated forcefully by John Duns Scotus[…] Scotus had said[…] ‘if you ask whether or not matter ought to be called an actuality, I have no wish to dispute over names.’ What is important, according to Scotus, is that ‘matter is a true reality’ and ‘a positive being.’ On the usual reading of Aquinas, these are claims to which he, too, would assent; this raises the possibility that the dispute over whether matter has some actuality just is, in large part, a terminological dispute. Scotus, however, treats the strict ‘pure potentiality’ line as tantamount to denying that matter is a thing in its own right, distinct from form, and there is indeed room to wonder whether this is correct, or even whether it might be Aquinas’s intended view.
The chief argument for prime matter having actuality was that it could not otherwise serve as the stuff that endures beneath every change, both substantial and accidental. On this conception of prime matter’s role, it may not need any special sort of character. But if matter is also to play a role in explaining the corporeality of physical substances, then it must presumably be more than just a bare, purely potential, substratum. Specifically, since the defining character of body is three-dimensionality, prime matter might naturally be supposed to account for extension.” This is precisely where I take the physics of prime matter, that is, into the metaphysics of extension in order to foreclose the analogical ‘holely’ gap between the transcendent and immanent without overstepping the processional (ordinal) relations between Pure Actuality’s Being and Pure Potentiality’s becoming. This allows for my metaphysics to properly parse out anisotropic variability from isotropic uniformity. Taken from Robert Pasnau, “Form and Matter,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 238-240.
As philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams once stated, “experience acquaints us with bodily things in wide variety: earth, air, fire, and water; rocks, flowers, and trees; worms, birds, and lizards; cats and mice, lions and lambs; sun, moon, and stars; and, of course, human beings. Two things cry out for explanation: difference and change.” This account of change is precisely where prime matter stepped in for St. Thomas in resolving many of the errors of the pre-Socratics and will continue to helps us resolve many of the errors of his system as well as the subtle heresies of new materialism’s anisotropic commitments to absolute pure potentiality. Taken from Marilyn McCord Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham (Oxford University Press, 2010), 4. Architectural theorist David Abondano defines these new materialist commitments to pure potentiality as “non-standard materiality” where the “isotropy (homogeneity) of industrial materials is being overcome by the production of anisotropic (heterogeneous) materials, customized in order to perform a variety of functions; in other words, digital technologies enable the production of synthetic materials that resemble anisotropic qualities of the materials produced by nature.” Taken from Abondano, David. “Transition Towards a Digital Architecture: New Conceptions on Materiality and Nature." Archidoct, 2015. Vol. 2, (2), February (2015): 34.
Arguably, its was this crying out for an account of ‘difference’ that inspired Gilles Deleuze to build his so-called ‘Time-Image’ in order to head the new physics (i.e., GWB) off at the pass so to speak via privileging anisotropic ‘relations of exteriority’ over isotropic ‘relations of interiority.’ For Deleuze, his philosophy of Difference and Repetition is found solely within “an anisotropic image, whose properties vary according to its directions.” Basically, he privilege’s centripetal over centrifugal flows of information. Indeed, for him and Félix Guattari, “variability, the polyvocality of directions, is an essential feature of smooth spaces of the rhizome type, and it alters their cartography” within what they refer to as the plane of consistency. Without going too far into the esoteric rabbit hole of Deleuze’s philosophical system, what’s important here is that a smooth space is anisotropic and a striated space is isotropic where the latter “contains” the former “whose growth it slows or prevents, and which it restricts or places outside” within the realm of pure potentiality (i.e., absolute zero). First quote taken from Gilles Deleuze, “Cinema, Truth and Time: the Falsifier,” Deleuzian Seminars no.19 (1984): https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/lecture/lecture-19-3/; last quotes taken from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1987), 382.
[v] Kiara Alfonseca, “Culture Wars: How Identity Became the Center of Politics in America,” ABC News, July 7, 2013, https://abcnews.go.com/US/culture-wars-identity-center-politics-america/story?id=100768380#:~:text=Across%20the%20political%20spectrum%2C%20Americans%20fight%20to%20define%20the%20national,to%20define%20the%20nation's%20values.