REPOST: Disclosure (Elements *as* Space and Time)

[Alain Stalder]

This was my most important post ever, my best idea, the basis of my website
exactphilosophy.net since relatively shortly after that...

https://www.exactphilosophy.net

Let this be my last Usenet post ever...

(Never say never, but this would be my wish at the moment...)

--

Subject: Disclosure
Date: Thu 20 May 2004 02:24:44 CEST
Newsgroups: alt.astrology.tropical
From: Hermes <hermes at exactphilosophy.net>
Message-ID: <hermes-D2B436.23443619052004 at news.bluewin.ch>

In condensed form:

me, see: space, in/out
pictures change: time, rest/move
fire:=out+move, earth:=out+rest, air:=in+rest, water:=in+move

want, pictures change differently: 5th element

Long version:

Let me start with a similar text that I wrote in 1993,
which was actually at the root of my journey into
philosophy, psychology, astrology, etc.

me, conscious

see
changes: time
more than one thing,
something else than me: space

want: pictures change

Kant discovered (or argued, if you prefer) that space
and time are the most fundamental things, the only things
that exist "a priori". Both are necessary for thinking.

The idea is to imagine that one opens one's eyes for the
first time and sees...

One thing that one notices, is that what one sees changes.
That is time.

In addition, there is more than one thing that can be
seen, and there is the conscious "I" that observes and
the pictures that are seen. That is space (anything that
separates two "things").

Without space and time, thinking is not possible.

Finally, one notices also that, depending on how one wants
what one sees to change, things will change differently
(Schopenhauer), although not necessarily in the way one
would like to. That is (free) will.

Now, that was where I was standing in 1993, simply putting
what Kant and Schopenhauer had discovered about 200 years
earlier into condensed form.

More than 10 years later, last Wednesday (2004-05-18) the
situation was a bit different: Saturn is in Cancer and
Chiron in Capricorn, which has, in my observation, the
effect that one is forced to reduce the "home" zone, to
retract a bit to an inner core and start to grow new things,
especially relations, gently from there, while avoiding
some of the old relations because they needed to be
removed (Chiron's healing). Luckily, Jupiter in Virgo is
helpful for growing new structures, even repeatedly.

Brief, I managed to connect a few things that I learned
in the meantime in a potentially very promising way.

Aristotle had the four elements composed of dry/wet and
hot/cold. During my newsgroup posts, I discovered a few
different ways of looking at this composition. One of
them is that in/out can be identified with wet/dry.
Many things, especially organic ones, are wetter inside
than outside. What is measured in science, is what can
be seen and touched (fire and earth), while quantum
mechanics uses logic (air) to describe what happens in
the world by a wave function (water).

If you link that to the fundamental link between space
and subject/object or in/out, you have linked one of the
two opposites that define the four elements directly to
space and thus to a primary necessity for thinking.

Now, with that working, I tried to get time in, in the
same way. Hot/cold does not do, but recently, I had
discovered here (also with some help by DJ) that the
opposite rest/move can also be used to describe one of
the two necessary pairs of opposites to describe the
four elements. Fire moves up, air rests (actively),
water flows down, earth rests again.

So the observation that some things that one sees move,
is nothing else than the discovery of the opposite
rest/move, which is practically equivalent to the
discovery that there is time, the other thing that is
fundamentally needed for thinking.

So, to get things across as clearly as possible: From
the basic experiences in/out and rest/move, one gets
space and time and can *define* the four elements:

fire:=out+move, earth:=out+rest, air:=in+rest, water:=in+move

Now, where's the clue?

Well, that was already the clue. It is an almost formal
reasoning that leads to the existence of four elements.
In other words, if the reasoning is correct, then the
fact that there are the four elements, in the way that
Aristotle and others postulated them, is not just a
cultural thing, but a property of *nature*, i.e. it is
physics, not "just" philosophy, psychology, astrology.

Of course, a lot will depend on whether that concept
can actually grow, whether it will be possible to
derive more of the properties of the four elements
and maybe even star signs, or the I Ching, etc. and,
of course, link that to quantitative experiments.

For the moment, at least the 5th element fits nicely:

The observation that, depending on how one wants
what one sees to change, things change differently,
defines (free) will, a concept separate of the four
elements that can be called/defined "5th element".

Again, the approach is different, a concept that is
common in astrology or maybe also psychology, has been
defined as something quite fundamental and necessary
for thinking and living.

Finally, note that Neptune is transiting in opposition
to my sun, so maybe things will stay at that and the
rest will remain an illusion, or do so for the moment.