Episode 20 - Geometrical Thinking

Talk given in Liverpool, UK, in the early 1960s. 

There is a very old Chinese statement that says - fire does not burn, water does not wet. The statement has to do with subjectivity and the fact that all we receive from outside is motion and that how we experience this motion depends on our own sensorium and its qualities. As individuals with senses we are interpretative mechanisms. No individual can possibly know anything beyond the limits of its own substance. Stated another way, all a being can know are the modifications of its own substance and any change occurring in a being other than a change initiated by the will of that being itself, is interpreted as coming from outside. 

Every stimulus that comes to us, from whatever source, can tell us nothing about the source of that stimulus. All we can ever know is what we become aware of inside ourselves as a result of that stimulus. “All that comes to us is motion and how we receive that motion in our substance determines what we believe about the external world.” Therefore, no individual can know the essence of another. All it can know is the perimeter stimulation of it. “When we consider then, any being whatever, in so far as it is circumscribed and we study the form of it, and the substantial formal relations within it, we are thinking geometrically.” 

A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.