YES or NO? The Role of Reason in the Cosmological Evolution unto Complexity (Part 1)
(I.)
Reason was born in the first change of state, by which we mean the first absolute change from nothing into everything, when things moved from non-existence to existence. Albeit this first instance of reason was an oblivious reason. The evolution of that not-to-be into the great to-be of it all merely formed a qualitatively poor, because unconscious, reason. But, thankfully, the universe that this primal reason produced had three spatial dimensions and a time and movement that was expanding, exploding, cooling, and, through what may have either been lucky coincidence, or a preconscious affirmation of the positive alternative of authentic-because-knowing being, it developed spaces with the right conditions for allowing complex life-forms capable of developing self-consciousness to come about.
What this narrative tells us is that everything is based on the most elementary reason, or everything comes from the most simplistic, binary questions: YES or NO?; POSITIVE or NEGATIVE?; TO BE or NOT TO BE?; PLUS or MINUS? From the binary interrogative comes all complexity.
Logically, an evolution of reason requires analyses, and a pre-requisite of analysis is an ability to observe. The cosmos therefore needed to evolve into something that its own basic physical nature was incapable of producing. Fire, rocks and empty space lack the physical attributes allowing them to make any observations. In order to compensate for this lack, the cosmos needed to evolve into something else, into what we call ‘living organisms’.
But to do this, the cosmos had to create conditions that would allow the development of such organisms. Instinctively the cosmos knew, through the basic preconscious reason that drives it, that it needed something like an eye. The creation of conditions that could allow the existence of living organisms began to evolve, the objective being the eye of reason – the power to observe.
The evolution needed to produce consciousness in the universe had a qualitative sense to it that could only come via an implicitly logical understanding that (a) qualitative being required consciousness. But how can this be? How can a need for consciousness be appreciated without consciousness? This question has traditionally been resolved with the concept of God, but if we then ask, as we must, where the consciousness of God first came from, we come back to the same conundrum. God or no God, the creation of consciousness in the Universe can only be understood through the idea of a preconscious logic forming the very essence of the physical makeup of the Universe.
Physical and metaphysical understandings of the Universe are in this way united by the binary logic of primordial reason. Everything started with a preconscious indagation within the void around the idea of YES or NO.
