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Step 4: Abstracting the Concept
So far, we’ve been discussing how things come to exist in terms of the two fundamental perspectives of science, relativity and quantum mechanics. Building on these two steps, lets now abstract the process. We begin by renaming our blue spaceship object “A.” In order for “A” to exist, we now know that two conditions must be met. First, “A” must have its own range of potential characteristics or possibilities. Let’s call this Condition 1. Second, as we’ve learned from Steps 2 and 3, there must be something else, a non-A, which “A” can be defined relative to – this is Condition 2. In order for any “A” to exist, both Condition 1 and Condition 2 must occur. Our blue spaceship could not exist if it were the only thing in the universe; it needs other things to exist in the universe that help define it. Our spaceship needs its own potential characteristics: size, shape, motion, position; and those characteristics can only be defined by relationships with the other existing things in the universe. Without either of these two co-operating conditions, “A” could not exist. And the more additional things exist to establish a relationship, the more real “A” becomes.
This would seem to be the uncertainty principle on a grand scale. If there were only two objects making up the universe, both would be precisely defined by their relationship. However, in a vast universe with a huge number of objects, each related to and defined relative to all of the others, each would seem to have too many different definitions to be well defined. But all of these trillions of realities defined by trillions of relationships actually add up to one very solid reality. From a trillion points of reference, our spaceship has a trillion different positions, but all together they add up to create the spaceship’s overall reality of position. In classical or Newtonian physics, space and time were the background canvases against which position (and other characteristics) was defined. In our relative universe, the sum total of each individual object’s reference points becomes that background canvas. And the only precise definition is the one that comes from the total of all the references.We have then what might be called the Certainty Principle: the more relationships an object has, the more precisely it is defined; and as the number of relationships – in space and through time – approaches infinity, the object approaches absolute reality.
And don’t forget our other dynamic from quantum mechanics. Just as “A’s” reality is conferred by it’s relationship with non-A, so too is non-A’s reality conferred by its relationship with “A.” As amazing as it may seem, just as our blue spaceship receives its defined reality from the rest of the universe, the rest of the universe (as a group) also receives its reality from its relationship with our blue spaceship. As “A” needs non-A to exist, so too does non-A need “A” to exist. It is in the relationship of “A” with non-A that the reality of both is established. In the language of philosophy, the whole needs each of its parts just as each part needs the whole. Call this the Existence Formula: Condition 1 + Condition 2 = Reality.
Like a super-sized quantum system, the universe is a vast array of individual “things,” each having a virtually infinite range of potential realities. It is through the relationship of each “thing” with the rest of the universe that those realities become actualized.