Friday, 20 March 2009

Nature and divisibility

Nature (or reality) is is neither continuous nor discontinuous. When we are analysing natural phenomena it's fine to decide that a distinction can be applied here, or a separation there, as long as it is understood that in doing so one is creating a distinction that exists only by virtue of the act of creating it. To believe then that the distinction is an aspect of reality existing quite separately from the person who supposes it to be there is fallacy. It must also be accepted that in creating the distinction one is immediately presented with the problem of how the separated parts are related (a problem that could be resolved by the removal of the distinction).

It should not be inferred from this, however, that the distinction has no place in reality, since the mind is part of the world it perceives, and insofar as reality exists at all it exists in the mind of the person who is themselves a constituent of that reality. Mind and reality become identical, and include all the forms reality takes consequent on the mind that creates it.