On Forms
Life and the universe did not arise from randomness because randomness cannot explain the cohesion and persistence of anything. Why is everything not just a soup of particles that come together in haphazard combinations and then fly apart? Why is there even such a thing as a planet? Randomness, that is, fundamental pieces and their tendency to combine, cannot account for why any particular combination should hold together. But even more than that, why should any combination become a whole in its own right, why not just some fundamental bits thrown together?
As an illustration, we can go back to the monkeys. The famous metaphor of monkeys with typewriters, tirelessly producing text. That letters are produced and made into words does not capture the fact that a word has a meaning, apart from its being a combination of letters. Although the number strings of text producing gibberish is much larger than the number of meaningful sentences, probability does not get to the heart of the issue. One can model a language probabilistically, but language itself must already exist as a cohesive entity with its own meaning.
Language is a particular illustration, but it applies everywhere. Reality is made of cohesive wholes, not arbitrary combinations. One possible term for these cohesive wholes is forms.
Although the word “form” has a particular meaning within the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, I am not using it as part of a particular philosophical framework; it is simply a convenient term. The idea of cohesive wholes is not specific to a particular philosophy; it has been a widespread belief throughout history.
And there are significant consequences of this idea. One in particular is that if there are forms, if there are specific ways that things can cohere and not others, then what can exist is not arbitrary. There may be innumerable possibilities, that is possibilities beyond anyone’s ability to enumerate or reckon with and yet, that does not mean anything goes. Simply because something can be imagined or described in words does not mean it exists in the way it is envisioned and, indeed, it may not exist at all.
Another point of view is that everything that exist is merely an arbitrary combination. There is some fundamental stuff, but if that stuff has any significance at all it is not relevant to what we human beings consider significant. That stuff combines in certain ways, but the combinations themselves are only significant insofar as we prefer one over another. And if one person prefers one and another person another, then the more powerful decides what the arrangement will be and there is nothing more to it. And although it is not strictly entailed by the theory, an idea that often goes along with it is that since the combinations are arbitrary, they can be made into whatever anyone wishes them to be given enough effort and time. One might call this worldview manipulism.
Manipulism is influential, although typically implicitly rather than explicitly. Predictions about the future are made on the basis that Earth’s environment, human society, technology, and human beings can be manipulated arbitrarily. But is that true?
There are more people literate than there were at the time of Shakespeare or Homer or Dante. Writing is far easier on the computer than with pen and paper. And there are more people writing now than there were then. And yet, where is the next Shakespeare? If it was merely a matter of numbers, one would think it would have happened by now. If great literature was just a matter of assembling symbols according to probability, then there should be many Shakespeares by now. It is no good to say something like “the probability space is too large”, because if it is just arbitrary combinations, how were those old writers able to do what they did. Paper was even scarcer back then so they had less tries at getting down what they wanted.
Of course the answer is that a story is a cohesive whole, not an arbitrary combination of symbols.
What about medicine? In spite of grandiose claims to the contrary, the best medicine either helps the body do what it does naturally or removes impediments to the working of the body. Generally, the more invasive, the more disruptive of the body systems, the more dangerous the treatment. If the body is indeed a form, then it cannot be changed arbitrarily, which is in fact what we see.
What about the digital technology? People have made all kinds of dramatic statements about computers as if the emergence of digital technology was the discovery of a whole new category of existence. It would be more versatile and robust than anything yet seen and keep building upon itself and people would be smarter than ever. And yet none of this happened. It is true the Internet and digital technology have been subverted, but it never acted like a new category of being. What it looked like was a project by human beings, sustained by immense human effort, not a new form.
The point is that change is not arbitrary. If there are cohesive wholes, then it is a mistaken idea that human beings can do whatever they wish with the world. To go against the forms, by trying to force certain things upon the world is possible, given enough power and resources, but it cannot last, it cannot cohere organically. But conversely, seeking out and trying to live in accordance with what is natural, is the proper approach.