¶ Generalisation Degrees Of
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Index Entry
The whole process of generalizing generalizations forms a pyramid whose base consists of all the special cases of direct physical experiences. But when we said, ‘We take a piece of rope and tense it,’ we did not in fact have a rope in our hands. We have all had so many rope experiences that we generalized the concept. This was a first degree generalization. The discovery of always and only coexisting tension and compression was a second degree generalization. Finding a whole family of always and only coexisting phenomena was a third degree generalization; and conceiving therefrom a relativity was a fifth (sic) degree generalization.
In this pyramid of generalizations, the human mind then goes way beyond the biologicals in its development of an increasing and diminishing conceptual Universe. So we find the metaphysical not only balancing the physical-- which should have been expected-- but also encompassing the physical by one tetrahedron, and thereafter reducing its myriadness to unity. The metaphysical, as with the circumferentially united, great-circle chord vectors of the vector equilibrium, coheres the physical.
“…Man is the great antientropy.”
¶ Citations
- NASA Speech, p.89, Jun’66
