59. Complexity and Identity (w/ Neil Theise)

Neil Theise joins me to talk about his book Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being. As a liver pathologist gazing daily through his microscope, Neil lives in an ongoing liminal state between scales: the micro cellular and the macro organismic. How is it, he asks, that any given "thing" seems to disappear when you zoom in or out? Neil brings a complexity science lens to this issue of lensing, which he synthesizes with his longterm practice of Zen meditation to interesting conclusions. Is this processual "no-thing-ness" what the Buddhists speak of as "emptiness"? What is the "I" if it can be similarly deconstructed? What insights can meditation add to the metaphysical picture once we appreciate the limits of other ways of knowing?

0:00 Introduction

0:57 Spark-'Notes on Complexity'

4:30 Neil's Interdisciplinary Background

14:33 Body or Cells? Scale, Process, and (Relative) No-Thing-ness

40:29 "Self" and Complimentarity

50:03 Self and the Limits of Science: Consciousness and Quantum Physics

56:24 Self and the Limits of Mathematics: Incompleteness and Intuition

1:08:45 Can Meditative Practice Reveal Metaphysical Realities?

1:26:51 No Separation