Stepping back: ontology

Continuing our series of posts on Dr Wolfgang Smith's 2019 monumental monograph: Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality. (Angelico Press, 2019, also available on Amazon Kindle). 
For further reading on this and related material, see the Philos-Sophia Initiative website.

In his penultimate chapter, Dr Smith revisits the tripartite universe, viewed with an ontological perspective. He prays in aid an ancient cosmic icon, see left. The circumference stands for the corporeal world (bounded by space and time); the interior for the intermediary (bounded by time alone); the centre for the spiritual (subjected to neither bound).

Having recalled that time belongs to the cosmos alone, he argues that the cosmos originated in a cosmogenetic Act. This exemplifies vertical causality (VC). He then poses the question: whence does horizontal causality (HC) arise?

It is VC that gives rise to HC. HC entails a transmission through space, the corporeal domain is the one and only spatio-temporal domain and therefore the sphere of action of HC is the corporeal domain. The salient feature of HC s that it has to do exclusively with quantities that are inherently spatial. HC, as known to physics, assumes the form of a differential equation relating spatial and temporal magnitudes, and reduces thus to a ''law of motion.'' The fundamental laws of physics—expressive of horizontal causality—are based on vertical causation.

As one ascends the scala naturae within the corporeal domain itself, the efficacy of horizontal causality is progressively diminished through the incursion of vertical modes. In terms of the traditional ''mineral, plant, animal, and anthropic'' partition, it appears that the hegemony of horizontal causation is restricted at best to the ''mineral'' or inorganic domain.

The first edition of Smith's monograph ended with this chapter and a call to others to explore the implications of his etiology for the sciences, for philosophy and for an understanding of man. A second edition included a new final chapter with his further reflections on the cosmic icon. We shall look at this chapter in our final post.

To be continued.