Names, categories, and numbers are essential to so many productive areas of our lives. They are essential to having a conversation, understanding, and sharing at the personal level, and essential to vital scientific breakthroughs and learning about our place in the universe. However, names, categories and numbers can, and should, never wash away novelty.
When we name or categorize something, there is an implicit suggestion that this something is known (Varela et al, 2016). When a something is known, at least a degree of mystery and novelty has been removed. The something which has been named, can be boxed off, categorized, and no longer warrants the same degree of attention.
Assigning numbers and mathematical formula is a way of naming phenomena or describing something. Whitehead (1967) observed, from the perspective of a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher that despite the power of maths we must ensure that we do not strip the novelty out of our lives and the universe. Whitehead’s (ibid) point was that attempting to describe the world and the universe through maths runs the risk of leading to a mode of thinking in which there is nothing beyond the maths.
Varela et al (2016) and Thompson (2016) among a myriad of other thinkers point out, drawing from Eastern philosophic traditions, and Western science, that we and the universe is in a state of constant change. Although much of what we observe may seem stable, and we can act upon it as though it were stable, it is in motion. This motion could manifest in unexpected and surprising ways. The weather can suddenly change, the mood of us or a friend could suddenly shift. And we could be prepared or unprepared for this change, embrace or resist it. Novelty is all around us and running through us.
This also applies to our personal relationships and social encounters. If we categorize someone, the result is, at least part of that person, becomes static and unchanging. We are unable to imagine that someone could be something beyond that category. This has serious implications for our empathy and ability to connect with other perspectives (McGilchrist, 2019).
If we reduce people, the world, and the universe to categories, names, and numbers, then part or all that thing we categorize metaphorically dies. We cease to imagine; notice change and crease to become curious about undiscovered features. As Whitehead (1967) argued, we must always appreciate the potential of novelty in everything, otherwise the universe and our place within it is reduced to names, categories and numbers. There is always something beyond our formal way of engaging with something, we just need to imagine what it could be.
Reading
Whitehead, A (1967) Adventures of Ideas. Free Press
McGilchrist, I. (2019) The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press; Expanded Edition.
F. J. Varela, Thompson, E. Rosch, E (2016) The Embodied Mind Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press.
Thompson, E (2014) Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press
