Daily Excerpt: Rainstorm of Tomorrow (Dong) - Preface

 

Preface

“Philosophy is dead,” declared Stephen Hawking in agreement with many others. “As philosophers have not kept up with science, their art is dated” (Warman, 2011). However, if we refer to the history of how humans peruse knowledge, we will not find that different disciplines replaced one another in sequence. It is not that the wilt of religion gave rise to philosophy, or that the denouement of philosophy set the stage for science—nor is the world segmented into discrete, incompatible disciplinary fields. A biological reaction can be expanded to millions of chemical reactions or trillions of interactions between physical particles; likewise, the emergence of “social behaviors” among neural networks as they grow and that of “tacit agreement” from quantum entanglement have implied the possibility of adopting a sociological language to explain phenomena previously deemed as lifeless and strictly adherent to the laws of physics. Every discipline is a language capable of encompassing all phenomena in the world. Each speaks with a unique voice. In practice, however, we rarely lean on one discipline alone to explain everything around us. For example, we are not likely to use the language of physics—despite its sufficiency—to restore psychological activities to the interminable and trivial interactions of physical particles, on account of its low efficiency and incapacity to provide us with a holistic view. With the advancement of disciplinary differentiation, individual pieces of knowledge are often restrained to the little patch of his/her own specialty. For one to grasp the world in an all-encompassing picture, we need to weave the threads of different disciplines together; that tapestry is called the philosophy of science.

Rainstorm of Tomorrow: The Ever-Flowing Banquet of Philosophy is a book that dexterously weaves the storied philosophical themes of truth, ethics, and aesthetics together with the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, neuroscience, epigenetics, social Darwinism, utilitarianism, evolutionary psychology, and modern art—from the soberest rationality to the wildest conjecture—to generate provocative or even alienating discourse on topics that you might otherwise regard yourself as being familiar with, and challenge you to re-think any settled positions that you may take for granted.

Part One, Truth, begins with an intriguing, playful metaphor—the tree growing into the soil with its roots buried in the air—to approach a subject that might otherwise have seemed too abstract or philosophical: the knowability of the world of nature. Does such a reversed perspective of the tree defy the existence of the world-in-itself in a manner akin to the counterintuitive theories advanced by quantum mechanics? If not, then how does the mirrored image challenge the language we use to describe the objective nature of the world? The chapters in Part One cope with these questions by scrutinizing the relationship between body and mind—also called matter and energy nowadays—as being simply the head and tail of the same coin. Further recruiting the theory of relativity, Part One ends by presenting the astonishing similarities across distant spatial and temporal scales and proposing the possibility of the universe as the inner cavity of a giant creature—as opposed to its stereotypical consideration as infinite and boundless. This take on truth imparts an almost mystical sense of what it is to be human, to be in this world, and to be conscious of the many ways we can apprehend it.

Part Two, Ethics, conceives of the ultimate meaning of present human existence as ensuring its continuation into the future: namely, existence for existence’s sake. It interprets utilitarianism as a tool to achieve this goal in a biological language: as the drive underlying instinctive behaviors, including survival and reproduction. The chapters in this part, then, elaborate upon the complicated manifestation of utilitarianism, represented by the deceptively simple principle of gaining advantage and avoiding harm, which is demonstrated by the conformity to utilitarianism by anti-utilitarian events and the violation of utilitarianism by seemingly utilitarian events. Through an eclectic selection of material from philosophy, psychology, genetic engineering, Chinese fables, Japanese anime, and Western dystopian novels, Part Two provides a multi-faceted, cross-cultural examination of what leading a “perfect” life means as well as how the possibilities for doing so will change in the future and what inherent tensions exist between self-fulfillment and social engagement. While addressing these questions, Part Two does not hesitate to broach controversial issues, such as whether humans will eventually evolve into immortals or ascend the throne of God.

Part Three, Aesthetics, probes the essence of beauty, art, and the existence of a standard aesthetic paradigm. It begins by describing many renditions of a tree, an object already familiar to you, and explains why such eye broccoli as analogs of modern art are more likely to be regarded as purely aesthetic objects than others exhibiting exterior beauty by stressing the transcendence of the utilitarian interest of aesthetics. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness but rather indifference and the cessation of work when the creation itself has no utilitarian purpose. The chapters in this part further speculate as to why preferences for some aesthetic concepts are universal while others may vary from person to person. Evolutionary psychology ascribes the establishment of universal aesthetic concepts to conflicts of interest in primitive human society, the origin of which having been long forgotten across centuries of memory inheritance. Memory is inheritable through our “encephalic waterpipes,” made of semi-plastic, shape-memory alloys, which are gradually bent into different shapes under the continuous scouring of the everchanging environment and consequently generate diverse aesthetic paradigms. However, in the case of life-and-death, these flexible waterpipes will be restored to their original shape, manufactured from the same old mold, ensuring that any human is capable of employing an adequate stress reaction in response to threatening circumstances. Such conditioned reflexes are carved bone-deep into our memories in the form of beauty.

Overall, this volume casts light on philosophical questions that are described in scientific contexts but are ultimately beyond the reach of science—the type of questions that can be addressed but not answered so long as we hold to our position as human beings. That being said, philosophy remains one of the most frFustrating disciplines in that it welcomes questions but evades answers. This never-perishing sense of frustration is symbolized by the book title, the everlasting Rainstorm of Tomorrow, which is not something to eliminate but rather to hail as the ultimate driver of human civilization.

The way that human civilization advances is sometimes described as the Red Queen’s race. In a room that is constantly rolling backward, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” (Carroll,1993, p. 161). Many implications can be derived from this metaphor. First, how did this ecosystem come into being? Did the Red Queen enchant the ground to roll back first and then shut all kinds of species into the room in a nightmarish game of survival? Or was the initially static room set in motion by the disarrayed species themselves, with those unlucky enough to have run obliquely or opposite to the mainstream direction digging their own graves? In other words, did our ecosystem evolve into its present form spontaneously without any initial push or design? Human scientists are trying to unveil the origin of our evolution by exploring the necessary conditions that trigger artificial intelligence (AI).

Moreover, how fast can human beings evolve? The answer is the average backward speed of the room. While humans, as a front runner, have been accelerating the rotating speed and bringing those who can barely keep up with the pace to the brink of extinction, our evolutionary speed is also encumbered by the slower footpaces of other species, since the average speed of the room depends on all. Why do we choose to stay inside the room then? This is because we, as humans, share a symbiotic but nonidentical interest with the will-to-live, a term frequently mentioned in Part Two, Ethics. While the will-to-live treats us with happiness in the form of social recognition whenever our ability increases, it ultimately aggregates individual achievements into collective progress that advances the continuous evolution of mankind. On the other hand, most members of the human race are only willing to invest a marginal effort for progress at the cost of indulgence since they aim for happiness instead of evolution. As a result, we satisfy ourselves with being at the front of the room and exploiting livestock for our welfare. While few pay attention to what the Red Queen said next, “if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that,” we must ask what happened to those who did run twice as fast or those who simply ran too fast to care about the cheers of others. They stepped outside the front door and disappeared from the sight of the public who remained inside, much like the others who ran too slowly and slid out the back door. We must acknowledge that the greatest men who ever existed are not those we celebrate today but those who have remain unknown across the long course of history. Imagine someone who advocated animal rights when even slaves were traded as commodities or someone who studied the elemental building block of the world back in the Stone Age. The records of their thoughts were long weathered and annihilated before any successor could possibly recognize and appreciate their value. Human wisdom drives us forward, whereas the upper limit of human wisdom—the inability to comprehend theories outside the room—imprisons us.

It was on insomnia-plagued nights that I journeyed into Rainstorm of Tomorrow: The Ever-Flowing Banquet of Philosophy to record cogitations stranger than fiction: the culprits behind my stolen sleep; the raging beasts of thought who know no weariness until the relief of dawn; the rebellious, nocturnal souls shed of daytime attire as social elites. On these nights, I could not stop wondering what those prophets experienced outside the room where the mass resided. Maybe they broke into another room of greater elimination speed and fiercer competition. Embattled by endless challenges and triumphs, they may lose themselves in the heavy fog of nihilism. Nihility is a pack of opportunistic wolves lurking in the shadows, leaving restless hunters in ravenous hollows. To eat or be eaten, hunters set out on a journey that is at once futile, halfway, and paradoxical. They scaled a mountain and turned back halfway, not because the scenery on the summit lacked beauty, but because it is just as beautiful. They hailed the sea to find no answer. No answer is the answer. They sold a field of flowers and told the world of miseries. They exploited every possibility the world could offer but did not indulge in any of them. Until then, they were banners for an epiphany: how narrow the world is compared to the immense potential of what life could be. A pity that most men, for fear of a wolf attack, curl themselves up inside a tin box named purpose and significance. 

For more posts by and about Renyuan Dong and his award-winning book, click HERE.

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