The Self-Evolving Cosmos: A Phenomenological Approach to Nature's Unity-in-Diversity (Series on Knots and Everything) [Hardcover]

Steven M. Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2008 | ISBN-10: 9812771735 | ISBN-13: 978-9812771735

This unique book offers an original way of thinking about two of the most significant problems confronting modern theoretical physics: the unification of the forces of nature and the evolution of the universe. In bringing out the inadequacies of the prevailing approach to these questions, the author demonstrates the need for more than just a new theory. The meanings of space and time themselves must be radically rethought, which requires a whole new philosophical foundation. To this end, the book turns to the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Their insights into space and time bring the natural world to life in a manner well-suited to the dynamic phenomena of contemporary physics.

In aligning continental thought with problems in physics and cosmology, the book makes use of topology. Phenomenological intuitions about space and time are systematically fleshed out via an unconventional and innovative approach to this qualitative branch of mathematics. The author s pioneering work in topological phenomenology is applied to such topics as quantum gravity, cosmogony, symmetry, spin, vorticity, dimension theory, Kaluza-Klein and string theories, fermion-boson interrelatedness, hypernumbers, and the mind-matter interface.

Contents: Introduction: Individuation and the Quest for Unity; The Obstacle to Unification in Modern Physics; The Phenomenological Challenge to the Classical Formula; Topological Phenomenology; The Dimensional Family of Topological Spinors; Basic Principles of Dimensional Transformation; Waves Carrying Waves: The Co-Evolution of Lifeworlds; The Forces of Nature; Cosmogony, Symmetry, and Phenomenological Intuition; The Self-Evolving Cosmos; The Psychophysics of Cosmogony.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Self-Evolving Cosmos is an exciting, creative, interdisciplinary, and scholarly work recalling the collaboration between Hermann Weyl and Edmund Husserl on the function of mathematical intuition in cosmological physics … It is a major, ground-breaking, poetic work of powerful intelligence illustrating the use of a promising new research tool in the challenging areas of quantum and cosmological physics. --Patrick A Heelan, PhD, William A Gaston Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company (February 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9812771735
• ISBN-13: 978-9812771735
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,249,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly new kind of science, August 14, 2009

By 

Lyle Fuller (Victoria, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Self-evolving Cosmos: A Phenomenological Approach to Nature's Unity-in-diversity (Series on Knots and Everything) (Paperback)

In "The Self-Evolving Cosmos: A Phenomenological Approach to Nature's Unity-in-Diversity," Professor Rosen provides an alternative to unified theories resulting from positivist thought, such as string theory, a theory that has produced an immense number (~10 to the 500th power) of solutions with none having any greater meaning so that no narrowing of the field is possible.

In contrast, Rosen takes a phenomenological (based on the philosophical insights of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger) approach, starting with a "first principles" of individuation and meaning that encompasses dialectical paradox. Instead of a dance of splitting and recombining vibrating strings, each complete in themselves, he asks that you picture a dance of sub-lemniscate, lemniscate, moebial and kleinian topological bodies of paradox engaged in a harmony of autogenesis, fusion and spatiotemporal emergence. These topological bodies are "spatio-sub-objective" beings; the units of lifeworld (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) dimensionality. Generation of fundamental force fields and matter particles is worked out in detail via a cosmodimensional matrix, and physical and psychical dimensions emerge in alignment, so that "ontogeny recapitulates cosmogony" as the cosmos evolves.

Anyone who considers Jungian models of the psyche (such as the conical model) to be metaphors for both psychical *and* physical reality will especially welcome this completion of Rosen's trilogy. The second book of the trilogy is "Topologies of the Flesh: A Multidimensional Exploration of the Lifeworld," where he advances topological phenomenology by working out the details of basic topodimensional processes and their co-evolution. The last two works are the result of a creative burst that seems to have begun during his writing of the first of the series: "Dimensions of Apeiron: A Topological Phenomenology of Space, Time, and Individuation."

As fantastic as archetypical parallels between psychical and physical realms may seem, most intriguingly there is possible contact with experiment (although Rosen makes no reference to this). Such a view is necessary if we are to begin to understand the results of various experiments indicating anomalous statistical shifts as the psychophysical responds to meaning, including the ongoing "Global Consciousness Project," which may lend support to one of his proposed psychophysical alignments (that of the weak force with the emotional aspect of consciousness).

It is clear that we have reached the limits of positivistic thought and in this joyful, rich synthesis of process thought with the philosophies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Jung, Rosen shows how the subject is present in reality through a dialectical blending of discontinuity and continuity - subject and object - via the depth dimension, to give us a much needed new direction in his latest groundbreaking works. Rosen presents us here with a new physics with new solutions to previously intractable problems. Even the positivists will eventually need to touch the monolith.