{"id":598,"date":"2013-05-15T15:25:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T22:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/?p=598"},"modified":"2015-01-05T21:16:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T04:16:31","slug":"the-universe-is-like-an-analogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodandtruth\/2013\/05\/the-universe-is-like-an-analogy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Universe Is Like an Analogy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I love this New Scientist video and article<\/a> by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander on the centrality of analogy to human consciousness (you can register for free to read it, although you have to subscribe to see it for longer than two weeks). Quote:<\/p>\n

Analogy is the motor driving the build-up of concepts throughout our lives. Concepts, rather than being neat boxes into which all entities can be precisely, objectively and mechanically sorted, are fluid mental structures that, through many successive analogies, evolve continually. For example, 1-year-old Timmy\u2019s first word is \u201cmommy\u201d, and he uses it to designate his own mother. However, his mother is not a static thing, but a constantly varying pattern of things, at whose core Timmy has identified something stable and invariant. Already we are dealing with abstraction and analogy-making, but Timmy\u2019s initial concept \u201cmommy\u201d is merely the foundation of a future skyscraper.<\/p>\n

Soon he will realise that other children, too, have mommies. Then he will enrich his category \u201cmommy\u201d by adding the mothers of cats and monkeys. However, he has not yet realised that his own parents also have mommies. A year later, he will laugh when told he once resisted this idea. At this point, \u201cmommy\u201d has given birth to the more abstract category \u201cmother\u201d, which is reaching out tentacles of abstraction to embrace mythological mothers, motherlands, motherboards and even the maternity celebrated in \u201cIdleness is the mother of philosophy\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the conclusion in the penultimate paragraph:<\/p>\n

Is analogy the core of cognition? Yes. Is analogy irrational, subjective and concrete? Yes indeed, but it is also the underpinning of rationality, objectivity and abstraction. Analogy is not a rare luxury of thought or an exotic, remote corner of cognition. Analogy is the entire transport system of thought, including motorways, roads and trails; it pervades thinking, from throwaway remarks to deep scientific and artistic insights. All along the spectrum, analogy lets us see the new in terms of the familiar. It guides us in learning new concepts, solving mathematical problems, dealing with interpersonal conflicts and making political decisions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reality \u2013 that we cannot think apart from analogy \u2013 is in many ways at the heart of religion, particularly monotheistic religion. How can we possibly understand, much less come into relationship with, an infinite, omnipotent, omniscient Being, from our vantage point as finite humans? We have<\/em> to speak from analogies \u2013 there is no other way to even begin.<\/p>\n

All religions tacitly acknowledge this; Swedenborgians tend to confess it more explicitly. And in New Church thought, it is not only human thought that is grounded in analogy \u2013 it is reality itself. So, for example, physical water, with all its physical properties, comes into existence<\/em> because of a higher analogous reality, that of truth<\/em>. God has created the physical world as He has so that we can climb up the ladder of analogy \u2013 as described in the New Scientist article \u2013 and grasp spiritual concepts despite the physicality of our thinking and our minds.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a passage that I love from Arcana Coelestia<\/em><\/a> that illustrates the impossibility (in this world of time and space) of thinking apart from analogy:<\/p>\n

With a person who is in space, interior things appear as higher things, and exterior things as lower ones; but when the idea of space is put off, as is the case in heaven and also in the interior thought of man, there is then put off the idea of what is high and what is low; for height and depth come from the idea of space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you catch that? When a person becomes more spiritual, he realizes that heaven isn\u2019t really higher<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s simply more internal<\/em>. BUT\u2026 of course, more internal is a spatial term as well! The passage continues:<\/p>\n

Nay, in the interior heaven there is no idea of things interior and exterior, because something of space adheres to this idea also; but there is the idea of more perfect or more imperfect state; for interior things are in a more perfect state than exterior ones, because interior things are nearer the Divine, and exterior things are more remote from it. This is the reason why what is uppermost signifies what is inmost. (AC 4156<\/em>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even here, the language can\u2019t escape analogy \u2013 we\u2019re \u201ccloser to\u201d or \u201cfurther from\u201d the Divine, spatial terminology. We simply come to understand better what those analogies are driving at as we experience them more. It calls to mind the Taoist saying, \u201cThe Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.\u201d We can come into more and more perfect images \/ analogies \/ appearances, but we always need to acknowledge that when we\u2019re talking of the Infinite, we\u2019re never<\/em> going to be seeing it as it is in itself.<\/p>\n

And this idea is at the heart of the New Church concept of God. We believe that God came into the world as Jesus Christ to show Himself in a perfect image \u2013 the \u201cimage of the invisible God,\u201d as it\u2019s put in Colossians 1:15. And again, New Church theology teaches that these analogies are real<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s not that Jesus was just a painting of God, but He was and is God Himself in human form. And because Jesus has come as the visible God, we can come into relationship with the otherwise invisible, unknowable God of the universe, \u201cthe Father,\u201d who is as the soul within the body , which is \u201cthe Son\u201d (yes \u2013 another analogy). Here\u2019s how it\u2019s put in True Christian Religion<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

This New Church \u2026 is to worship one visible God in whom is the invisible like the soul in the body. Thus, and not otherwise, is a conjunction of God with man possible because man is natural, and therefore thinks naturally, and conjunction must exist in his thought, and thus in his love\u2019s affection, and this is the case when he thinks of God as a Man. Conjunction with an invisible God is like a conjunction of the eye\u2019s vision with the expanse of the universe, the limits of which are invisible; it is also like vision in mid-ocean, which reaches out into the air and upon the sea, and is lost. Conjunction with a visible God, on the other hand, is like beholding a man in the air or on the sea spreading forth his hands and inviting to his arms. For all conjunction of God with man must be also a reciprocal conjunction of man with God; and no such reciprocation is possible except with a visible God. (TCR 787)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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