Let’s get right to it, shall we?

With respect to ontology, let us say that there is no “it,” no independent reality that is exclusive of the observer.  This is a basic insight from second-order cybernetics: the observer must always be included in the observed.  Despite this, of course, we do have much talk and thinking about “it” that does not take the observer into account—we are very interested in the “what” of the universe, but have a fairly difficult time illuminating our own nature.  But this is okay, because ultimately the talk about “it,” the pointing to “it,” (not the thought of the “it” itself) is more fundamental to “it” than anything else, because it is the relations that are primary.  We can say that thingness is a subset of relatedness.  Following Eugene Gendlin’s (1997, p. 22) process-concept of “interaction-first,” we can conceive of relations not as forming between two already-existing “things,” but rather as being recursively self-generated between other relations.  In this sense, things are the precipitate of relations, a hardening out of a more fluid state.

Going further than Gendlin, we can take a cue from the process-language of alchemy (Miller, 2008) to see how relations themselves are a precipitate of the tension between complementarily opposing potentials, made by a distinction out of the whole.  This corresponds to the recursive ontological alchemical sequencing of the elements from Fire (the whole) to Air (polarity) to Water (relation) to Earth (thing), to Fire (a new, transformed whole).  Relations are to opposing potentials of a distinction as things are to relations.  Opposing potentials are themselves a precipitate of the whole by virtue of distinction (of Fire by Fire), and work alongside each other within the whole simultaneously.  Each step from the whole is a kind of step-down transformation; ontologically we could say that beginning with level N, we move to level N-1.  Each level is pulled out of simultaneity by an act of distinction within the whole, of the whole, by the whole.  A cascading of levels of distinction thus yields the ontology of “things.” (more…)