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Egads! Last time I posted a comment on this discussion was back in 2007! How time flies...

Paul and I are still locked in (friendly) battle about this topic. As far as I can gather, Paul is still of the "order arises from randomness" school, and I am from "we create ourselves and whole universe out there" school.

This is a very, very complicated subject, of course, as one can see from the comments posted here by Paul, Laura (whom I don't know), and myself. I think that it is complicated for several reasons:

1. We don't have the proper language to talk about it, since...

2. We are really talking, here, about EVERYTHING, and...

3. We have so little empirical material to operate from in this investigation, and it may well be beyond empirical methods.

The particular path that I have been contemplating recently as an attempt to attack this problem is one that I've shared briefly with Paul, and hope to get his further feedback on in the near future. It's a very short passage in the Zhuangzi (= Chuang Tzu), an early Daoist work (I think that the Daoists were attacking this same problem, along with doing some other stuff):

"The understanding of the men of ancient times went a long way. How far did it go? To the point where some of them believed that things have never existed — so far, to the end, where nothing can be added. Those at the next stage thought that things existed but recognized no boundaries among them. Those at the next stage thought there were boundaries but recognized no right and wrong. Because right and wrong appeared, the Way was injured, and because the Way was injured, love became complete. But do such things as completion and injury really exist, or do they not?" [Chuang Tzu, Burton Watson translation]

More to come...
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