Humane Transcendence

Preamble:

We live in a dialogue with the infinite. This may seem outlandish, but it is the ‘outlands’ that provide the bounds to our lives. Bounds that we constantly try to transcend. This is our nature. To be confronted, enticed, or afraid of the infinite and simultaneously needing to live, work, and perform in the finite world. This conflict is so central to humanity that it has been a preoccupation for thinkers since the beginning of recorded history.

In Kant’s formulation our vision, our reason, is bounded by a transcendent horizon. This boundary limits our surety in knowledge, but clearly also shapes the world of our experience.

Kierkegaard describes our existence as a synthesis between finitude and infinitude. He describes us as tied to both, and the fabric of our lives as the relation between these two poles.

We now know, thanks to Einstein, that our world is bounded in the same way. That something as simple as motion is limited by the bound of the speed of light, and this bounding influences, however imperceptibly, all movement. The fabric of our world has the same two poles: the finite, and a bounding infinite.

It is not my purpose here to the explore Kant’s approach, Kierkegaard’s formulation, or the theory of relativity. My command of each of these is limited and my aim is elsewhere. I am interested in simply establishing that the infinite, the transcendent, however unreachable by reason, journey, or introspection, is nevertheless fundamental to our world and our lives. Moreover, the form of this relation is not arbitrary. Kierkegaard suggested rather strongly that getting this relation wrong is despair. Einstein, influenced by reading Kant, formulated the equations that describe this relation in the physical world. It is my hope over time and several posts to work out an understanding, hopefully with some clarity, of how we can best dialogue with the infinite.

A further note is perhaps necessary. I am a Christian and do not come to the subject without a perspective. When I say that we cannot reach the transcendent, I am not suggesting that we cannot encounter it. The basics of Christian theology and Christian experience is that the transcendent wills to reach us. It did and does. The central records of Christianity, the Gospels, report the transcendent in the finite form of a man. A true paradox.

This exploration is at least partly my journey in matching up my life experience as a Christian with my work as a design engineer. It began with what is best described as an epiphany. I realized one night that modern calculus, unlike all mathematics that came before it, isn’t bounded by the infinite but is founded on it, and incorporates it. It doesn’t start with the finite, which approaches infinity as a limit, but starts with it as the basis. A true paradox. In the same manner, Christianity is not an approach to the transcendent like most philosophical and religious systems; rather it is founded on a transcendent event and incorporates this now immanent but transcendent person into the fabric of our lives.

Using mathematical reasoning as a strong analogy for developing philosophical approaches is well established. Kant used an example from basic mathematics to argue his case in the Critique of Pure Reason. Much of ancient Greek philosophy took inspiration from the perfect forms of geometry. Our modern age is one formed and imbued with a remarkable explosion of science and technology. Almost all of this advancement is enabled by a 17^th century revolution in math: infinitesimal calculus. Given this, it makes sense to pursue it’s form as a source from which to draw wisdom. This is my plan.

It appears to me that if we were to draw wisdom from the incomparable success of infinitesimal Calculus, we would look for a ground in the infinite; not in Descartes’s ‘I’ or the perfect forms of Plato. We could choose to reason from, not only to, infinity. I hope to demonstrate, or at least strongly suggest, that to ground being you have to divide by nothingness, and not start with it.

I appreciate that dividing by zero is a calculation error. However, it must be apparent that life is not a rational calculation, nor does the cosmos we inhabit seem to follow these rules. Similiar to calculation, writing directly about the transcendent and infinity is fraught with difficulties. Neither are contained in reasoned argument. The best we can do is point and depend on common experience. Throughout, I will depend on the generosity of the reader to make that leap.

I am conscious that the above is a very quick walk through and raises innumerable questions. When I started this project, I hoped to be succinct. I have failed and my penance is a lot of work. I thank the reader in advance for his or her patience as I try to put all of the above on a sound and clear footing.

Infinity: Pursued and Avoided

How do we encounter, negotiate, and dialogue with the infinite in our lives?

Any pursuit of excellence engenders a negotiation with elusive perfection. Even a mundane task, such as vacuuming a bedroom, never reaches full completion. The carpet will always offer up more. Every pass over the woven fabric yields dirt – less each time, but still always something. Therefore, to avoid madness or starvation, we must have a rationale for ‘good enough.’ Life is too short to explore the final limits of vacuuming. It is the damaged or disturbed mind that pursues cleanliness to an extreme (just ask Lady Macbeth). For the well-adjusted among us, limiting pursuits is so well-trodden so as to become habitual. Not always rewarding, but a necessary expedient. It is, in a word, rational.

To understand this more clearly, consider what it is like to do something new. A huge part of the learning process is determining the thresholds for good-enough, pretty fine, and excellent. Take for example, refinishing a table-top. I choose this because I have a vivid memory of trying this about twenty years ago with a couple of kids as helpers. It didn’t go particularly well. How much do you sand it? When are you done this step? Does that minor flaw is the left corner really matter? Will it show up after the stain and sealer are applied? Notice that at this point, if you are at all concerned about the result, you are stressed and have no certainty. Of course there are people who have done it before and can offer you both advice and the comfort of someone to blame if it doesn’t go well. YouTube experts are especially good for this.

Regardless of the technique, you have to find some criteria, some rationale, for setting limits. For every new experience this is fraught, because you are faced with an infinite problem if you don’t. Certainty of a good result is like a black hole before you. The only real solution is to rationalize. Sure, I rounded the edge a bit over there but it will be okay. The little bit of rough edge grain here will take a little more stain—but that is just character, right? Now, if you worked in a factory, all these choices would be made for you. Companies are rationalization machines. They have teams of people to simplify the process and set the limits. If not, they would not be in business for long. This is the fabric of commercial activity.

This dynamic is also true in my day job as an engineer. When I design a product, there are always improvements possible. There are tough, angst-filled decisions about what is “good enough.” For a new product, no one really knows. A perfect design, like a perfectly cleaned room, is a recipe for an infinitely long struggle with ever-diminishing returns. Yet at the same time, the pursuit of excellence produces greatness and is ennobling. Pushing the boundaries of our knowledge, endurance, and skill elevates our lives and produces fruit for others to enjoy. When theory meets the real world, every decision becomes a pull between excellence and finite constraints. The design process is always rationalized because, in the end, the product has to become part of the finite world. For idealists and engineers (one can be both at times) this struggle between excellent and practicality is an everyday encounter with infinity. A struggle very seldom resolved.

This dialogue with the infinite is so central to our human condition that it manifests in the archetype of mountain climbing. Our language is infused with “higher level,” “elevation,” “scaling the peak” and so on. The joy and sense of accomplishment of a climber, when at last he or she mounts the summit, is manifest. They have conquered. Their climb is perfect. In this one endeavour, there is no diminishing return and, although finite, the mountain has a peak. There is no conflict or rationalization.

Although the psychology of this is obvious, our greatest honours are given to those who scale peaks without a summit: peaks which, the further up we go, the steeper and more difficult the climb. Our cultural heroes never stop until age or misfortune stops them. Whether they work in marble, oil, melody, or verse, they give us a vision of the transcendent. They inform this dialogue with the infinite and draw us upwards in their wake. This is the source of beauty in art. This is the gift from the artist, from the poet, and the thinker to the rest of us.

It is this sense of something beyond our own limits that separates art and kitsch. Kitsch is a truncated vision, a tidy and limited view, a false, if pretty, perfection. The completeness of Kitsch is its goal but also its flaw. Its petty perfection hangs like a lie before us. It is no coincidence that it arose during that very rational age of the late 19^th century. Faith in the completeness of human reason is a very tidy but small-minded faith, which was shattered in the 20^th. This is why Kitsch rings hollow and untrue.

We know there is more. We feel instinctively that our lives are a constant dialogue with the infinite, and we yearn for a vocabulary and a diction with which to describe the transcendent. Whether it is enunciated with a cello, with brushstrokes, with prose, or by the smiling eyes of a beloved friend, we are drawn towards it.

However beautiful a landscape, our heart is drawn inexorably towards the horizon, towards this temporary boundary, and our eyes follow. The sun in the western sky reaches the limit of our view, bursts into colour, and then goes where we cannot follow. The sense of yearning and melancholy many feel at sunsets is this feeling of delight in a vision of the boundless and at the same time a reminder of our own boundedness. The wonder of a star filled sky, the great expanse of the ocean, a mountain peak lost in clouds all engender the same sense of our finitude connected through a continuum to an apparent or real infinity.

This mixture of delight and yearning is fundamental to our human condition. We are a blend of the infinite and the finite, and when we encounter this reflected in the world, it draws us. We meet this blend of the immediate and the transcendent every day—in each other. I appreciate the stark intimacy that this evokes. We rationalize our relationships, not exclusively, but partly, to avoid this. Art is a way to experience this intimacy without the consequent clumsiness.

Rembrandt’s portraits of his mother have this effect. First the face and then the eyes of his mother draw you into a momentary participation in his love for her, and hers returned. You have the perhaps undeserved privilege of knowing this person through the eyes of her son, while looking into hers. It is ennobling and humbling. It makes one grasp, if one ceases rationalizing for a moment, that each person we encounter could be viewed this way; that we might, if the layers of habit, shame, and pride were peeled back, see the glory and transcendence behind each pair of eyes.

One wonders, and wonder is apropos, if our view of the world were not best seen as looking at a face: that the ubiquity of our dialogue with the infinite is not, in fact, strikingly like our love of a friend. In both, our communication and vision are through finite means, yet encounter the edges of the transcendent. However, it seems to me that there is a veil: a barrier that allows only a partial vision. I have come to understand that this veil is not over the world or others, but it hangs in front of my own eyes.

I am reminded that there was a veil that was famously torn, but I am getting both theological and ahead of myself.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.