What else? Many topics have not even been broached. Time-binding energy—what may it not achieve in course of the aeons to come? What light may it not yet throw upon such fundamental phenomena as Space, Time, Infinity, and so on? What, if any, are the limits of Time-binding? In it are somehow involved all the higher functions of mind. Is Time identical with Intelligence? Is either of them the other's cause? Is Time in the Cosmos or is the latter in the former? Is the Cosmos intelligent? Many no doubt and marvelous are the fields which the scientific study of man will open for research.
Appendix I. Mathematics And Time-Binding
The purpose of this appendix is to give an expression of some new ideas which evolve directly out of the fact that humans are time-binders and which may serve as suggestions for the foundation of scientific psychology. The problem is of exceeding difficulty to give expression to in any form and therefore much more difficult to express in any exact or correct form, and so I beg the reader's patience in regard to the language because some of the ideas are in themselves correct and sometimes very suggestive in spite of the language used. I am particularly interested that mathematicians, physicists and metaphysicians should read it carefully, forgive me the form, and look into the suggestions, because scientific psychology if such a science is to exist, would by necessity have to be a branch of physics. I particularly beg the mathematicians and physicists not to discard this appendix with too hasty a judgment of “Oh! metaphysics,” and also the metaphysicians not to do the same with an equally hasty judgment “Oh! mathematics.” I hope that if this appendix is sympathetically understood, mathematicians and physicists will be moved to investigate the problem. If mathematicians and physicists would be more tolerant toward metaphysics and if metaphysicians would be moved to study mathematics, both would find tremendous fields to work in.
Some scientists are very pedantic and therefore intolerant in their pedantry and they may say “the fellow should learn first how to express himself and then ask our attention.” My answer is that the problems involved are too pressing, too vital, too fundamental for humankind, to permit me to delay [pg 210] for perhaps long years before I shall be able to present the subject in a correct and satisfactory form, and also that the problems involved cover too vast a field for a single man to work it conclusively. It seems best to give the new ideas to the public in a suggestive form so that many people may be led to work on them more fully.
The old word “metaphysics” is an illegitimate child of ignorance and an unnecessary word in the scientific study of nature. Every phenomenon of nature can be classed and studied in physics or chemistry or mathematics; the problem, therefore, is not in any way supernatural or superphysical, but belongs rather to an unknown or an undeveloped branch of physics. The problem, therefore, may be not that of some new science, but rather that of a new branch of mathematics, or physics, or chemistry, etc., or all combined.
It is pathetic that only after many aeons of human existence the dimensionality of man has been discovered and his proper status in nature has been given by the definition of “time-binder.” The old metaphysics, in spite of its being far from exact, accomplished a great deal. What prevented metaphysics from achieving more was its use of unmathematical method, or, to be more explicit, its failure to understand the importance of dimensions. Metaphysics used words and conceptions of multi-dimensional meanings which of necessity resulted in hopeless confusion, in “a talking” about words, in mere verbalism. An example will serve to make this clear. If we were to speak of a cow, a man, an automobile, and a locomotive as “pullers,” and if we were not to use any other names in connection with them, what would happen? If we characterized these things or beings, by one common characteristic, namely, “to pull,” havoc would be introduced into our conceptions and in practical life; we would try to milk an automobile or we would try to extract gasoline from a cow, or look for a screw in a man, or we would speculate about any or all of these things. Too obviously [pg 211] nonsensical—but exactly the same thing happens, in a much more subtle way, when we use such words as “life in a crystal” or “memory in animals”; we are thus mentally making a mistake no less nonsensical than the talk of “milking an automobile” would be. Laymen are baffled by the word dimension. They imagine that dimensions are applicable only to space, which is three dimensional, but they are mistaken; a moving object is four-dimensional—that is, it has three dimensions as any object at rest, but, when the object is moving, a fourth dimension is necessary to give its position at any one instant. We see, therefore, that a moving body has four dimensions, and so on. As a matter of fact, scientific psychology will very much need mathematics, but a special humanized mathematics. Can this be produced? It seems to me that it can.
It is a well known fact that experimental sciences bring us to face facts which require further theoretical elaboration; in this way experimental sciences are a permanent source of inspiration to mathematicians because new facts bring about the need of new methods of analysis.
In this book a new and experimental fact has been disclosed and analysed. It is the fact that humanity is a time-binding class of life where the time-binding capacity or the time-binding energy is the highest function of humanity, including all the so-called mental, spiritual, will, etc., powers. In using the words mental, spiritual, and will powers, I deliberately accept and use them in the popular, ordinary sense without further analysing them.