The Coherent Universe

The Coherent Universe is Peter Hewitt's organisation of and sustained introduction to Geoffrey Read's "New Fundamental Theory of Matter Life and Mind," based upon Read's 1988 lectures and his current collaboration with Hewitt. It addresses key philosophical issues in the areas of ontology, quantum physics, the life sciences, and (somewhat more modestly) parapsychology and spirituality, in ways that seek to avoid the difficulties and failures of reductive materialism, abstract idealism, naïve top-down holism, and traditional dualisms of mind and matter. Readers of Whitehead, Bergson, Bohm, and Sheldrake will warm to the project. Hewitt's helpful historical and conceptual framing of the issues and arguments, e.g., the mind-body problem, how life emerges from non-life, quantum non-locality, and even telepathic interaction between minds, invites attention from quite different quarters. The Coherent Universe usefully might serve as a textbook for a variety of university courses.

Read's theory is based upon a cosmic One that becomes Many through "a continuing process of on-off events." This domain of primitively experiential digital fluctuations (I was briefly reminded of Wheeler's "sea of quantum foam" in this regard) underlies all of physics and, as I read it, connects science in general with a ground Source, such as Nirguna Brahman or the Tao. Read goes to considerable lengths to show how particular quantum laws and events (e.g., Schrödinger's wave equation), if not strictly derivable from these primordial fluctuations, at least make more sense in light of them. Wave/particle duality, for example, is dramatically recast, if not dissolved, in Read's system, because there are no micro or macro-objects to move through space. "Light . . . is, at the noumenal level, merely selective effect between sequences. . . . Light and matter are fused." (p. 198) What Read terms a 'qualification sequence' is "a series of simple generative events, each of which is either the Ultimate or Nullity differently qualified. These simple entity/events are the ultimate constituents of the universe." (p. 156) From here up the Great Spectrum of Being, compositions of intrinsically associated sequences lead through progressive complexity to the life sciences and human consciousness. While Hewitt finds Read's theory incommensurable with the field theory of General Relativity, thereby recasting what any grand unification that connects gravity with the other three fundamental forces could be, nothing in his theory (at least that I could find) explains how any type of expanded dimensional differentiation and/or integration (eleven to thirteen by some accounts) might be accomplished. One unstated hint in his account appears to be that all differences between domains or levels of reality reflect differences of degree, not of principle. Hence, in other arenas the challenges, say, of connecting mind with body, or life with non-life, need not be the hopeless projects that long have attracted philosophers and scientists.

Read's innovative and substantive principle of inter-level connectivity in this regard is the emphasis it places upon the persistence of the past. In previous science, each configuration of ultimate particles lasts only for an instant. "In the new theory . . . past configurations persist. The process is not commutative but cumulative. . . . All previous states of the universe continue to exist, but as it were suspended or frozen in time. When reactivated they can exert a powerful influence on the present. The universe could be thought of as an ever-rising sea, the present being the surface, and the past, the ever-accumulating submerged layers made up of previous events." (p. 4)

More specific comparisons with other thinkers and systems that have attempted to reconnect that which never should have been disconnected in the first place, e.g., Bohm, Wilber, Theosophy, would be a welcome addition as would a consideration of more potential criticisms. Read claims, for example, to defend a non-reductive cosmology. But the emphasis he places on physics and the "ultimate constituents" underlying physics does not altogether support that claim. Still, this must be balanced against his urging that: "What is needed . . . is a concrete [physical] substance theory which leads as naturally to a spiritual world-view as classical atomic theory led to a mechanistic. . . . The path to the stars leads through matter not away from it." (p. 371) On other fronts, more seems involved in consciousness than greater levels of complexity and the presence of the past. Field theorists, for example, will not warm to the idea of consciousness emerging from qualified sequences of associated events. In fairness, however, Read might have built in some basis for field consciousness at the very Source of his account – the infinite One. It's not clear what to call his theory – probably a good sign, he might offer. His explanations in places seem more functional and ontologically neutral than a project of this sort invites and I was left a bit unclear concerning the fundamental relationship between consciousness and the four forces – primordial, derivative, or a fifth force. I suggest a label of "Cosmic Neutral Monism" with double or multiple emergent aspects, perhaps not far in spirit from the Energy Monism I proposed in Paradigm Wars

I was disappointed that more conundrums of mystical spirituality and parapsychology were not investigated more fully. An infinite sea of concurrently fluctuating events of ultimates/nullities, for example, might shed some light on the paradoxical experiences some mystics report of being something yet no-thing, everywhere yet nowhere. And what about love? More than a few mystics and scientists have felt that love irreducibly plays a fundamental role in cosmic coherence. Read proposes that clairvoyance is merely a special form of telepathy, explainable in principle by the same kind of sympathetic resonance he offers for apparent mind-to-mind information transfer. But the description of clairvoyance offered to accomplish this seems a considerable limitation of what clairvoyants themselves actually experience. And assuming there are some complex, non-hoaxed crop circles, what might Read's theory offer by way of an explanation? One can address only so much in a book of this scope and no writer fully succeeds in addressing what reviewers suggest they might have. Certainly I have touched only upon a few of the book's interesting topics, including many useful insights in the field of cognitive psychology, and I may not have fully understood or done justice to parts of what Read has proposed. However, with Hewitt's assistance in this book, he has succeeded in making a significant contribution to the emerging genre that seeks to illuminate wholeness, rather than exploit fragmentation, within an otherwise diverse and multidimensional spectrum of being. The Coherent Universe should invite spirited discussion for years to come.

For further information, see www.geoffreyread.org