Why Copernicus

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Why Copernicus?

This question is the deep question of our times. Or better it is the question that really started science.

The problem of Copernicus (or perhaps better the problem of a Copernican writ at large) was to over turn the problem of position.

That is ,before the revolution, one assumed that humans and the world were united in some manner. Aristotle could therefore directly analysed the nature of the world. His perceptions, and the world were by and large one and the same. The theory of the four humours that inter-linked perception, the soul and the world was critical to this understanding. Matter contained all forms potentially and with a certain humour, awaiting the advent of a certain final cause to form this potential into a real form.

To investigation the stars was to look at the skies.- and learn (or char).One might of course have aids, and yet the aids did not effect the over all logic. The world was as one perceived it.

Of course this was not absolutely true. Greek thinkers long before Copernican though the earth might orbit the sun. and yet when this thought was had a series of rather implication about the nature of knowledge was not drawn. The thought changed nothing.

It was onto this world that Copernican revolutions fell like a thunder clap.

At its centre s the idea that ones point of perception is itself a thing of the world. Ones point of view therefore matters,.

What was then interesting at this point was the reactions of philosophy and science to this problem

Up to this point the two had run close together (the world of natural philosophy= science). And yet they split in their reactions to this being within.

For philosophy to be within was a point almost of exhaustion. One needed yes to theorize what this being within was. But that theorization was the point one could sop thinking at. Once one had solved what that being was, thought was finished. One had found as Kant would have it, the lad of truth amidst the ocean of error. To be in the world was therefore to be able to define what one was in that world, and so to finish thought.

Philosophy therefore sees Copernicus as giving it a right to be a discipline. That is to make thought turn on humans (for which read the philosopher themselves, or their friends or their world). A right to finish thought. Be that finishing itself be a matter of perceiving (which articulates this level utterly honestly, by making it turn of hidden springs elsewhere); or the subject (which says ‘Yah Boo’ to the notion of reality, in its desire to set up Copernicus as truth); or language (which dissolves the problem of exactly who the system is orientated around into the oh so smug problem of language);or reason, which locates the human learning process as itself, in its tumble into understanding, as the special point in thought) ; or Will (which locates the special position of human though as a way to grasp the world objectively, wile asserting the rights of the world to defy this position, that is to have a will); or (will to) Power (which invents an axis in which humans and the world are caught, giving humans a position as it queries that position); or Being (which asserts humans in Being what they are as it is thrown into a world) or Becoming or …. To be a philosopher is to invent your own Copernican revolution. A student philosophy is then confronted with a pick and mix of revolutions to chose form.

Moreover all these revolutions are exclusive (if not absolutely so) and personal. To follow one is therefore to think as Nietzsche or as Foucault. This exclusivity is not absolute. There is nothing stopping one also thinking like Schopenhauer or Hegel, at times, and yet there is no need to do so. On the contrary the good philosopher works by unpicking as much a possible the thoughts of others. That is by rendering them as unthinkable as possible.

Each Philosopher therefore treats the history of philosophy as the tinder on which the bring their own individual burning glass to bar.

It is almost as if the Copernican Revolution was carried home into philosophy Each Philosophy was then a unique point of focus (New philosophy, empiricism, Scepticism, Critical Philosophy…), around which everything else was always already focused (even if they know it not). Philosophy turned then the Copernican revolution into the right to focus thought around itself (once again).

Indeed it thought this revolution made this turning all he more intense. Philosophy claimed to be the unique exponent of this turning. Just think learn a few smug moves, a couple of dilemma, and BINGO! One thinks better – for philosophy is the science of questions, of making one think so very very well don’t you know..

The effect on science of he Copernican revolution was a little different. Science felt the revolution is a sense more truly than Philosophy, in that it made human humble. The point was that each element in humanity represented a position.: whether that position was the earth in orbit around the sun; or the existence of water (rather than ice or water vapour), or the precise reason why time moves as it does; or humans position in matter (a position related with more fundamentally particle of sub atomic matter); or the humans position within energy (nearish absolute zero,…)

Science is then the discipline of augmented texture. That is of marking a point where a certain effects are born. To be in the universe is therefore o be downstream of atoms (and in the world of molecules) and bound up in time and to move slower than light). A UNI-verse is then mapped out in relation to those critical points it is downwind of (Degrees Kelvin or the speed of light).

Each point is therefore a point not really of rupture so much as emergence. It is the point where our world the world we are firmly within is born. The point from which we too flow. The un(I)-verse, is therefore the marking of these point f starting, the point I and thinks I am not are threaded together.

Or to put it another way, the Copernican revolution blends humanity back into the universe (as did the theory of the four Humours)- but it is a universe of the shared.. In perceiving light or time or heat as we do are directly sharing in elements of the universe (the perception is therefore of a thing common with what is, and is in this quite accurate -Einstein versus Bergson, my money is on Einstein, he can count). And yet this sharing is then conditionally. The world of matter and energy has a point at which it was created for us ,and for itself. A point beyond which the rules of what is (and what could be) are different. We might not then be alone in the unIverse(d), that is our perceptions might involve us directly grasping the Uni-verse but in that grasping it and ourselves are versed as together . That is we are both made, and though that making located at a point or place, and share what we share because of how that making occurred. Beyond this point is then a world which we might also share within (up to another point), and yet what we share in which be different or relate to us as different.

Moreover to gasp the underlying world, that is the world before the sense that one is placed in the world, it is necessary to gut perception though some artificial aid (this is the point modernity really breaks with antiquity). The microscope breaks with the world of form, that is the world of large scale organsism, and grasps at a world of matter (that is cells). It therefore breaks with the elaborate hierarchy of souls (the souls of the eye is in sight) to hypothesize a world of cells, which appear (in other contexts) capable of doing their own thing (that is being living organisms in their own right) even as they are caught up in the body. The Body becomes therefore at once an organism (all the cells communicate with one another) but also a union of inter-related organisms, which could in different contexts (perhaps, and some certainly) live apart from the body in which they are located (and all certainly do share certain aspects of those elements that do live apart) .

Life (that is organisms) becomes thereby composed within a world of livings which are only grasped through the agency of the microscope (that is through changing the rules of perception).

The ability to grasp the level beyond the rupture becomes a technical problem, as much as it is a conceptual problem. The game is always to devise a tool which on one level interacts with the world beyond the threshold, and at another gears that interaction (or transmutes it) into aspects in our world. One creates then points of contact or transition of translation, point of eruption.

There is of course at the point a neat little assumption here. An assumption which moreover would of course be an anathema (or t least utterly problematic ) to post Copernican –philosophy. That is the assumption of translate-ability, between elements either side of a Copernican point. Now this assumptions runs absolutely at the heart of then entire enterprise (as perception itself might be understood as necessarily involving a similar process). This point of sharing or translation is necessarily not a point of analogy or even expression. expression.

The flickering monitor screen is not then flickering in a way similar to the movement of amidst is monitoring. On the contrary there is really nothing shared between its movement and those of atoms. Nor does the monitor express these movement as a face expressed an affect. Core to that expression is the fact that the element of expressing, the face is utterly different from the expression itself, even as it gives it. A face of fear is not fear itself, and yet is the pinot a fear merges, and a world created.

The gearing of an instrument is however pitched between these two elements. What is caught up in a net and moved of to the screen as a series of forces geared and re-geared by other forces. The line of the screen which eventually arise, are then lines which bear no relation to the original. And yet in sharing a degree or a passage of energy, which originated in the original, the are neither merely analogous to the original (there Is after all a link, albeit a such shimmering one): the two are caught up in the same creative axis. By the same logic the picture I not an expression. It is predicated not of difference but a common bond (the theory of energy say) that effects a translation. The problem of building a machine which allows sight is then itself caught up in defining a common bond which jumps across a Copernican divide, and allows one world to erupt into another

At this point however the situation is complicated by to clear problems. The first problem is that the point of creation are not necessarily crisps and clear as science (or thought) might like. The paradigm case for this lack of clarity is of course the problem of LIFE. In a sense it makes no sense to ask exactly where LIFE starts . or at least it make no real sense for science to as this question. Life, which is the articulation of a being within a world (and so the ability to react to the world as a thing beyond)- is itself the ability to pitch oneself within Copernican revolutions. It is the point of the articulation of such revolutions. Now where that point begins (that is the point one says this ability to pitch within a series of revolutions) is almost by definition unobservable. It is the point of folding up of the world – which cannot be seen in this world for how could a point of articulation be seen).. There is then necessarily no clear point one can see that moment in articulation. What life is becomes then a hazy and confused point. Is a Virus or a Prion alive or for that matter does a random portion of DNA control anything? Become essential unanswerable questions, as they involve treating this point of articulation either as if it could be simply derived from within the prior level because it cannot by its simply nature, be seen (as how does one see where articulation of others begin). This is the Naff question about the status of DNA. Or alternatively they treat life as if looking from within one can find a moment a point of articulation of other begins within a series f process. The point here is then that his rather depends on the amount of articulation one is allowing to be life. That is there is no doubt a point where one can claim that every point to a degree articulates itself within the universe (indeed it is almost an assumption of common treads that there is such a point), all of which are unperceivable, and yet possibility definable. Articulation therefore does not necessarily need to being anywhere. It is not that kind of thing. And yet that odes not of itself mean that one should necessarily extend dimensions of living to all things (which would be a philosophers solution, and would pose this extra dimension of ‘life’ as a point of Copernican change, a point of focus, which runs parallel to all of reality, a parallelism which would then involve a science of the immeasurable, desperately defended) . The more authentic scientific solution is simply to accept that some point as lured. There are element not alive, their are elements that clearly are (and can then be treated as such). And the point of focus between the two is then open, not clear., even though it is tangible enough.

It is of course at just this point philosophers start to sharpen their fangs. Thy feel themselves to be peculiarly the master of these paradox. They risk therefore rushing in to define live, and miss the second problem.

And this point a far deeper problem erupts. The point of revolution while they are often absolute in themselves, create extra connections between different levels or layers. That is the point in which one level interacts with another, given their shared elements is never quite as clearly was the Copernican revolution might suppose. The being that is the most massive of subtle organization, is not utterly distinct from the interaction of subtle sub-atomic particles, although all the weight of matter lies between them. the order s not real therefore, life (or atoms) are also subatomic particles (and if this was not also true all measurement would of course be impossible). That is more when levels removes by some weight of being conjoin is some manner rules which were apparently fixed are suspended, and other possibilities opened out.

Possibilities are therefore created in creating illicit bonds between similar elements (Delouse new this so very well) – bonds that are what is more integral the very process of perception and monitoring. Moreover this connection is not accidental. Life, involves of itself the pitching of Copernican revolutions. It matter then little to its principle what those revolutions are. If one creates ‘illicit’ (or better additional) links between elements apparently removed from one another, one creates extra revolutions or dimensions within which one is .to err, hat is to define new ways to intermeshed odd links between matters is therefore the root of living.

The Copernican revolution is therefore for science less the stately transplanting of point of focus and more a blistering eruption of points or axis within which the world can be created. The position of life within these blistering is unique only in that it exists as the moment the blisters are articulated from within the processes themselves. Thought is about posting point of creation for rules (which include humanity within those rules, but always also other elements as well). While power is always offered by the breaking of those axis (or better the eruption of one axis into another axis – the world of molecules into the world of life= the DNA) . It is (as Deleuze understood very well) within this eruption that philosophy needs to articulate its own nature. That is it is rather well suited to allowing one to understand how and why one can articulate oneself in a shifting slide of dimensions, without necessarily resorting of a logic of fundamentalism (which often characterizes that quest(ion) for life).

To achieve this last move however philosophy needs (as again Delouse understood I what is Philosophy at Least) its procedure. The came is not to create nice little Copernican revolutions of ones own (in which all others are burnt) it is rather to arrange within philosophy (and its relating to what is not philosophical) element or Copernican revolutions internal to philosophizing itself. Philosophy thereby to take on the aspect of science, that allows it to arrange revolutions within a single world and yet in doing do not loose sight of what it is. That is it needs to understand itself as the shifting axis which can re-examine these revolutions, and invent ways of understanding how they might intermesh in odd ways, and yet do so without that oddness imply hierarchy or determinism. Nice trick if one can do it…