The science of the ancient Stoics was naïve and erroneous. Modern science has come up with all the answers. The universe is not based on any life principle but, as “natural science” will have it, is just the ashy aftermath of a great dirty explosion. The end result is that, despite all of Becker’s the creativity of attempts to revamp a new Stoicism compatible with current science, he necessarily ends sliding into the Epicurean paradigm diametrically opposed to his original intention. Current science is atomistic, dualist and a philosophy espoused by Bertrand Russel, Peter F. Strawson, and so many others of modern times, the same position espoused by the ancient Epicureans.

As Becker well knows, the “doctrine that the universe should be understood as a purposive, rational being” is central to Stoicism. Throw it into the dustbin of history and Stoicism goes with it. Becker, or any of the moderns for that matter, has not even attempted a case against the ancient scientific doctrine. The only argument seems to be is that if it is ancient then it must be inferior to the science of us moderns. In those days, they did not even have internet shopping and motor cars. An alternative approach, and the one promoted here, is to resurrect the ancient science of antiquity and in particular the Stoic version.

The Stoics conceived a world free of anything or anybody behind the scene pulling the strings. There can be no outside organiser. This world is totally unconstrained. There are no pre-ordained rules. The only principle constraining the world is that it be totally unconstrained. Thus, the central principle is of a rational kind. The system is constrained by its own Logos. This principle applies to the cosmos, and equally to any being of the Cosmos.It is important to note a key subtlety here that distinguishes the Stoic mode of thinking to that of Aristotle. The principle doesn’t apply to Everything as Everything is not a thing. It applies to Anything. The Stoics never proposed a TOE (Theory of Everything). Instead, they proposed a TOA (Theory of Anything). This subtlety rests on the difference between thinking abstractly and thinking generically. The Stoics were not abstract thinkers like so most other thinkers. They were not generalists, they were generic thinkers, they were generitists.

One modern way of describing the principle of such a system is that it is bound by the iron laws of First Classness (FC), a term borrowed from Computer Science. FC is a fiendishly difficult concept to formalise and even more difficult to make iron like. Many examples of FC abound in Computer Science but won’t be mentioned here. Remember though that asking your local guru on the matter will only result in a partial answer. The only thing we will say about FC is that it leads to the common perception that developing systems that do not violate FC is considered Good. Whenever a software developer violates the principle in his work, he knows deep down that he is committing a sin which one day will come back to haunt him. Thus, in the field of software development, the FC concept provides a moral compass to software engineers. It is perhaps, the only moral compass.

Returning to the Stoics, a basic expression of FC in Stoic physics is that the property of an entity must be considered an entity in its own right. If this were not the case, an entity would be ontologically more important than its property, or perhaps vice versa. FC demands a dictator free zone: no one definitively calls the tune.

Now Becker argue as that in the centuries following the Renaissance the advancement of science put Stoicism on the defensive. This is certainly the case in the emergence of classical physics. Classical physics violates the Stoic FC requirement concerning entities and their properties. Classical physics opted for Second Classness constituted of two modes of being, particles and force fields between particles. The force fields were not particles in their own right but a kind of something else. Stoic physics was dead in the water. Physics had become an Epicurean atomistic, dualism.

But then, in the twentieth century came the rise of quantum mechanics. The tables were turned. There were no force fields, just particles. The forces between particles could be explained by an exchange of other particles called gauge bosons, particles in their own right. The movement back towards the original Stoic FC doctrine had started. However, quantum mechanics is still only an empirical “suck it and see” science. None of its findings can be derived from first principles. The source of any such principles of course can only be from the dictates of FC, a slippery beast but not an impossible one.

FC is a principle and has no explicit structure. However, structure, a certain kind of structure, is necessary in order not to violate FC. Some of the ancients knew this going right back to Empedocles. A reverse engineered version of the reasoning will appear in a book I am writing, but we all know what it looked like. Empedocles called them the four Roots. Others have called them the four Letters. The Stoics saw it as the theory of the four Elements. In my book, I argue that the four Letters can be interpreted as a unifying science that includes the four-lettered genetic code as a special case. I call it the God Code.

That any entity in reality can be coded by a four letter, generic code has stupendous implications. That every cell of an organism must contain a copy of the same code for the whole organism is incredible enough. What is even more stupendous is that that this genetic code should be more generic than just for the animate, applying right across the board, applying to anything. None of this would have surprised the Stoics. This was the way too that they saw the world. Present day traditional sciences might be devoid of any “grand teleological explanations” as Becker states, however things will be different for the resurgent new unifying science based on the ancient Stoic doctrine.

The naivety of the theory of the four Elements lies more in the naivety of the eyes of the modern beholder than in the ancient theory. The naivety of modern science lies in its belief that the only source of scientific knowledge is because of empirical measurement. This naturally leads to a dualistic way of seeing the world: The world is populated by material entities, which possess sensual properties. The sensual properties are not material and are not even entities. This is a valid and useful way of conceiving the world. It is particularly useful as it is free of any costly overheads that may come with a more elaborate conceptual schema. All that really matters are the data. However, it is not the only way, and certainly not the most fundamental way of conceiving the world.

The empirical view of the world violates FC because of its dualism between entity and property. Ignoring attempts by quantum mechanics to buck the trend, modern science is based on Second Classness.
This acceptance of a Second Classness view of the world can be traced back to Aristotle. Aristotle interpreted the four Elements of antiquity in a way that would be somewhat similar to the moderns. The four elements were the elementary constituents of matter. Matter was a simple mixture of these four elements.

Aristotle retained some of the ancient form of reasoning in terms of oppositions, but otherwise his approach resembled the moderns. For him each of the Elements possessed particular, plain and ordinary properties. Thus, according to Aristotle:

By Ground Zero, we mean the centre of the Cosmos. Ground Zero has a certain shape, the shape of the entity located at the centre of the Cosmos. As we know, this entity is none other than any subject whatsover that takes the pain to contemplate on its particular spot in the universe. Without fail, this subject, like any other subject, sees itslef as being located at the aforsaid location, notably the centre of the Cosmos, the centre of its Cosmos, at least.
As for the shape of this entity, the generic subject, it has a left and a right side and also a front and a back. This is the structure we have been referring to as the semiotic square. It is a structure that can be interpreted in many ways, as a blueprint for epistemological organistion of knowledge, for example. There are also ontological, and of course many biological interpretations. On the biological front, this structures can be thought of as the structure of a whole, as coded by a chromsomal codon. Any biological organism is organisaed as an entity viewed as a whole from a myriad of points of views. To each codon there corresponds a holistic point of view. The genetic cum generic code is the language that articulates the geometric algebra of this exhaustive but holistic view of the organism. Another intepretation of this highly generic semiotic square is that it offers a schematic for elementary cognitive structure.

Chrysippus Square of Oppositions reconstructed, based on four of his undemonstratables

So prodigiously generic is this structure that it can make the head spin. To top it off, we now have Chrysippus joining the fray. Now Chrysippus was consided by the ancients to be the equal of Aristotle, so he cannot be dismissed as a lightweight. In the diagram below, we have organised four of his five fundamental syllogisms into a form which falls quite naturally into the elementary structure of the generic semiotic square. As can be seen, the premises of the first and the second hypothetical conjunctive syllogisms make one diagonal of the square and the two disjunctive forms mark out the other diagonal. It is becoming clear that we have here, a structure which has a resembalnce to the Square of Oppositions of Aristotle. The Scholastics added the AEOI four lettered labelling to Aristotle’s system and spent over a milenium probing into its delights. Not to be outdone, we have added our lettering to out reconstructed version of the Chrysippus Square in the hope of preparing it for its reinvigorasted role in the present millenium. Suffering from a lack of creativity, we have borrowed the RNA version of the biologist’s genetic code. Why invent when you can steal, is our motto. It took the author a little while to get the right fit, but he is reasonably confident that the his allocation of the CAUG lettering, is the spot on. He would be very miffed if this was not the case.

Chrysippus and the Grand Unification
The ancient Stoics have been the historic mentors for the material presented in this work. They developed the most succesful and diverse form of monistic philosophy that the Western world has ever seen. Zeno provided the intuitive and informal core elements of the doctrine. Chrysippus’s logic marked the first tentaitve steps towards the formalisation of a unifying science. The full significance of Chrysippus’s contribution has been little understood by the moderns, blinded as they are, by the achievements of the current day sciences. Despite these achievements, the present day sciences are lacking in any kind of cohesive unifying discipline. The unifying science started by the Stoics, will provide such a unification.
Of critical importance is to learn how to reason in a different way than is customarily taught in modern schools and universities. The moderns only have a partial grasp on rationality. Modern science and mathematics only understand the notion of the true and the false. What lacks, is the understanding of truth. However, the very mention of this word, truth, can seem off puting. After all, probably more people have been burned at the stake because of an alledged incorrect understanding of truth, than for any other reason. However, buried amongst the historic debris of lost causes lurks indeed the rusted hulk of truth.

Nevertheless, as any philosopher knows well, truth of this kind must be self justifying. For many, such as Karl Popper, the notion of a self justifying truth is synonomous with the blind faith of religious zealots and doctrinaire extremists, something anathema to science. Popper is content with the kind of knowledge where each proposition is forever condemed to the judgment that it might be false. Even worse. at the same time the proposition must accomodate to the stark reality that this judgment might indeed be true. But then again, it mightn’t. Modern scientists are a brave lot.

Sidenote: Popper did eventually nuance his views on this matter in the light of the self justifying biological organsim notion. In so doing he imlicitly admits that the bilogical organism is obsessed with self justifying its continual existence in the world. As such, biological organsims seem to have ontologically more in common with the logic of religious zealots and political fanatics, than with the cool, dry head of the analytic philosopher. 


The stark truth about truth is that it must be relative. and never absolute. It is only in this way can it become an absolute truth. In other words, it becomes an absolute truth relative to itself. This is the essence of monistic philosophy: It is the rationality of the self justifying Self. Relative to this subject, there is only one truth.

We have already made inroads into the science of the subject.. Unlike the analytic rhetorical type reasoning of the analytic philosophy, the reasoning of this right side, monist philosophy is expressed in terms of oppositions and oppositions between oppositions. It is in this way that the readoning becomes a relativisdtic form of reasoning. Rather than rhetorical, it becomes dialectical. The nuts and bolts of the reasoning deals with the dialect of two entities, one which has and the other that is. These entities differ by gender, the first corresponding to the feminine gender, the second to the masculine. The dialectic of to have and to be, constitues the core essence of the monistic, right side form of reasoning.
This is the dialectic of the subject minamally conscious of itself. It leads to a particular kind of knowledge. It leads to the generic truth that reality, viewed from any particular perspective, is the reality viewed from the the point of view of the generic subject, the any subject whatsoever kind of subject,
The elementary form that arose from our investigations was the semiotic square. This structure arose from the opposition between what the subject is and what the subject is not, that is to say, what it has. This opposition was formalised in terms of the gender construct. This leads to the four distinct parts of the square being gender typed MF, FF, FM and MM.
This very generic quadtuple structure is highly lacking in determination. The edifice is so undertemined that it is not even clear whether it corresponds to the semiotic structure of knowledge of the world, or the stucture of the world itslef. Is this epistemology or is it physics? Is this the structure of Mind or is it the structure of Body? Is it structure of a generic language or that of a generic world?
Finding an answer to these kinds of questions is key. It is here that we find the great enigma of this science. Unlike the analytical thinkers who want to understand the realtionship between Mind and Body in terms analogous to that between horse and cart, the synthetic monist thinker must take a different tack. The horse will not be seperated from the cart but treated as an organic whole. One cannot have one without the other. We cam across the very essence of the monist solution in the form of the gender construct. Rahter than plucking attributes from a predefined definitional framework or harvested from emperical measurments, we constructed the one single fundamental attribute from which stem all other attributes of our science. This was the attribute possessed by the pure feminine entity. The attribute, an entity in its own right, was the masculine entity. These two entities are different. They differ by gender. However, they are absolutely indistinguishable. Two entities are distinguishable if they have different asttributes. Here there might be two entities but there is only one attribute between them: Two entities; one has an attribute, the other is the attribute.
This gender construct provides the generic formula for all of the science that follows. The dialectic of the masculine and the feminine provides the generic base for all other seemingly dyadic stuctures such as the popular Mind Body duality of the analytic philosophers. The relationship between the pure feminine and masculine is a generic form of the same relationship between Mind and Body.
Not everyone will agree with this assertion. Certainly, an analytic philosopher or anyone reasoning from a Cartesian viewpoint, would take the abstract road, abstractly arguing that Body is like a machine and Mind is an intelligence that drives the machine. The two are linked together by some kind of “bridging laws”, perhaps, There is no dialectic here as the notion of a bodyless mind and mindless body, is considered quite respectable. They can conceivably go their separate ways: Put the brain in the bottle and the brain dead body on life support, should do the trick.
Such a surgical seperation is impossible for an organism constructed from the gender construct. The organism is constructed according to a four-lettered code. According to out gender calculus version of this code. Each letter is made up of one of the four binary gender typings, MF, FF, FM and MM. On the face of it, the organism might be just a highly complex essemblage of hydro-carbon based compounds. However, from an organisational point of view, it is a seething mass of intertwined, gendered entities. It is this gender typing of content and form of the organsim that ensures systemic coherence. It is in this way that the One can be constructed from the inseperable and indistiguishable Two.
The Stoics saw this dynamic systemic organ

isation of the organism in terms of the tensions and tenos of a fifth kind of substance they called pneuma.

The pneuma is in constant motion. It is a process into itself, and from itself. The inward process produces unity and substance, the outward process dimensions and qualities. The pneuma is a disposition (hexis) in process. As a disposition, the pneuma holds the cosmos together, and accounts for the cohesions of each individual entity. The pneuma is the cause of the entity’s being qualified: For the bodies are bound together by these. [Chrysippus views on the pneuma (Reesor, 1989)]

The coherence, the very being of an organism is synomous with it maintaining Oneness. The mechanism for achieving and maintaining Oneness is through the establishment and maintenance of gender typing. The oranism must know, without a shadow of doubt, what it has and has not and what it is and is not. In all cases. These are the key determinants of consciousness. Also, the determinations are purely relative. They are purely subject-ive. This, one must admit, is trully a beautiful, self referring system.

Beautiful indeed, but how does it work? With profound beauty one would expect an accompanying simplicity, a profound but simple principle. Seeing that everything involved in this kind of self organising organism is relativistic, there should be some some fundamental relativistic principle at play. In the tradional sciences of our day, the only reltivistic principle known is in physics. There is no known equivalent in biology. In physics, we see relativty theory expressed as demanding that the laws of physics remain invariant from one reference frame to another. Perhaps more pointedly, as shown by Zeeman, the principle of relativty is intimetely bound up with the non violation of the causality principle. It is here that one can grasp the simplicity and elgeance of the theory. System coherence demands the coherence of causality. The claim of generic science is that this is not enough. A much more demanding form of relativity is required, what we call generic ralativity.

If the work presented in this book is to be more than the usual exposition of inconclusive philosophical prose, then we should be able to advance an equally simple and elgeant formulation concerning the essence of generic relativity, the cornerstone of the generic science we are trying to develop. Fortualely, we don’t have to look far. The principle is located at Ground Zero and there is noone who knew this spot in the Cosmos better than Chrysippus, the Stoic logician par excellence. Ground Zero is the location of the Logos, the reasoning faculty of any subject whatsoever. The form of the Logos can be understood in terms of the dialectic of having and being which leads to the semiotic square. Chrysippus provided tha logical framework of the Logos semiotic square in the form of four of his five undemonstratables. We have ressurected this structurte as an alternative to Aristotle’s Square of Oppositions as already shown in Figure 30. We have named this Chrysippus’ Square of Oppositions. The fit between this strucute and the four undemonstrables is confortable and reasonably self evident. Thes stucure effectivel provides an additional logical impetus to the thrust of our argument. The four undemonstratbles provide a logical dimension to the interpretation of the four element theory and the corresponding four letters.

Absolute Incompatibility

Five undemonstrables minus four leaves one. The missing syllogism is the third undemonstrable, the incompatibility syllogism: One can’t have one quality and the other at the same time. We now come to the fundamental tenant of generic science. It is founded on the premise that there is noting more incompatible in this world than the masculine and the feminine. This premise does have some intuitive appeal and so we will stick with it. This is not a bad idea as it appears that the whole cosmos hinges on the concept. It is this incompatibility principle that holds not only the cosmos together, but any being whatsoever that exists,

In the case of biological organisms, the concept should be relatively easy to grasp. A stumbling block might be in accepting the fact that the genetic code is more than a mere transcription language which curiously somehow accidently became a convention adopted by all living organisms since the year dot, without exception. Accidents do happen, but this accident does seem a little bigger than most. Life might be subject to evolution, but the language of life seems absolutely impervious to change. Nature seemed to have got it absolutely spot on, right from the start.
The reader may rest with that interesting accident hypothesis or move on to considering that the code may be based on a generic semantic and ontological structure. According to our take on the question, this structure is based on the dialetics of being and its naturally orthogonal counterpart, that of having. This can be formalised in terms of the gender construct and leads to a four letter code based on the four possible binary combinations of the two genders. It is generally accepted that all biological processes are coded by the genetic code, what we claim to be the genric code. Moreover, in multi-clled creature, the same code is repeated for each cell. We say that this code expresses a relative typing on all aspects of the organism. At the very ground roots level, the typing is in terms of complex combinations of gender typing. We claim that the organism relies on this form of organisation in order to arrive at knowledge and consciousness of itslef. It is via this absolutely relativistic gender typing that the entity knows what pertains to it or what does not. This is the most elementary and most essential feature of life.

Morevoder, the basic health of the organism will be placed in peril if this typing mechansim starts breaking down. The cohesian of the system demands the constant maintenance of the integrity of gender typing through the organism. The Stoic picture of a pneuma permeating every aspect of the organism is very helpful The penuma is constantly attracting and reppeling, constantly maintaining the equilibrium of the organsim.

The Stoics claim that there are two primary principles working through the pneuma, the active principle and the passive principle. This terminology is also helpful, as long as we recognise that the active and passive ultimately refer to the masculine and feminine, in a particular configuration. For example we refer to the feminine as active by the mixed gender term FM. The masculine as active becomes MM and so on for the passive MF and FF variants.

Maintenance of the integrity of gender typing throughout the organism is paramoint. Since the system is changing and reacting to its environment, this integrity must be synchronised. This brings us back to the key logical ingredient that keeps guarentees such coherence. The coherence principle.

The Gender Coherence Principle

The organisational coherence of an organism is regulated through gender typing. The maintenance of organisational coherence is synonomous with maintaining the integrity of gender coherence. This can best be expressed in the form of Chrysippus’ third undemonstratable, the incompatibility syllogism. The premise can be restated in the form

We will call this the gender coherence principle, the fundamental organisational principle of Nature.

Note in passing that an entity can have multiple gender typing. However, it cannot have two different gender typings at the same time. This raises interesting question regarding the degeneracy of the genetic code. Take the amino acid asparagine, for example. It can be coded by either the bases AAU or AUC. In gender terms, this translates to the gender typing MFMFFF or MFMFMM. According to the gender coherence principle, such an netity has two possible “quantum” gender states. At any time it can be functioning as either MFMFFF or MFMFMM, but not both at the same time. Remember that gender typing at any instant of time is not absolute and cannot be measured deterministically by a third party. Gender typing is relativisitic and dynamic and in coherence with the organism so typed.

Note that the so called superposition of states addressed by quantum mechanics dissapears if they are considered to be more like relativistic gender states. Any observer that tries to deterministically measure a relativistic gender state of an organism will encounter superposition. For the organism in question, there is no superposition whatsoever. Relative to its integrity system, the gender coherence principle demands that the very opposite apply at each and any instant.

As for the organism, in the life sciences the organism might be a cat on a slab in the lab. For the physicist, the organism might be a much smaller or much larger creature. However, it is stillan organism based on the same generic organisational principles.

Physics Interpretation

In an appendix attached to this work, elementary particle physics will be interpreted from a generic point of view. This realuts in elementary entities like quarks and leptons being gender typed in terms of codons, similar to in biology. In this way, any being in nature code itself in terms of the genric code based on gender typing. This includes the cosmos itslef, as a dynamic self organising being.

In traditional relativity theory one can discern an elementary organisational coherence which can be stated in a form comporable to the gender coherence principle. In this case it becomes the principle of causal integrity. The principle states the dialectic of cause and effect.

This is the most fundamental organisational principle known to traditional physics. The law must not be violated in any context (i.e., in any reference frame) and so demands a system that obeys Einstein’s Special and General Theory of Relativity.

One can see that the form of Eistein’s relativity has a certain resemblance to the generic form expressed, not as a causality coherence, but as gender coherence. There is also a fundamental difference, Eistein’s relativity demands a coherence across time: Causes must preceed effects in time. In other words Eistein’s relativity is diachronic in nature. In contrast, the generic version of relativity demands a coherence at the same time. In orther words generic relativity is synchronic in nature, and up until now, has been totally ignored in physics.

Computer Science Interpretation

It is important to keep in mind at all times when dealing with the generic that it is not an abstract science. Generic science is capable of formalism but not as as an abstraction, which is necessarly dualist. Generic science is monist and non abstract. Some effort is required to become accustomed to this totally different paradigm. Interpreting some of the concepts in a Computer Science setting can help, in this regard, unlike axiomatic abstract mathematics, Computer Science is a constructive science and naturally synthetic in nature. It also leads to natural monisms where the theory of code can be expressed in code.

Generic science is a disciple which has for its vocation the task of articulating the structure and organisational principle of any living being. The science is naturally constructionist. This raises the question of how to construct an organism based on generic science principles. Such an organism would have to be based on gender typing and be organised on the gender coherence principle. In addition, the whole system must not violate the principle of First Classness. Is this possible?
This is a silly question as our very own presence on this globe is at least some kind of feasability proof of the concept, a living proof in fact.

What we wish to do in this section is to provide a very simple example of how Computer Science, unknowingly, has already started to go down the path of Generic Science. Our example is the very computer itself, the Von Neuman computer.
Before Von Neuman, there already existed programmable calculating devices. However, they all had one thing in common. They were based an an absolute dichotomy between data and program. For example, the program migh be hard wired into the device and the data fed in via paper tape. If we want to put some gender typing into the mix, we could say that the program was masculine stuff and the data feminine. With this arrangement, the gender coherence principle could be satisfied because at no time is any confusdion possible between what was program stuff and what was data stuff. Data was always on the paper, and program in the machine. The only problem was that such a device violates First Classness which is incompatible with such a blatant and absolute duality. First Classness cannot tolerate a world cut up into two, one made of paper and one made of the other stuff.

Von Neuman started the process of moving the calculating macjhine into the realm of a generically organised entity. He made two innovations. The first innovation was shared memory where there was no longer to be any absolute dichotomy between data stuff and program stuff. They were all loaded into shared memory in the same format as small chunks of information. Von Neuman was then faced with the problem of how the computer could tell the difference between program stuff and data stuff. It was here that Von Neuman decided to invoke his version of Chrysippus’s incomatibility principle. The principle was that:

In order to implement this principle, he came up with his second innovation. It was called the Program Counter, The Program Counter is a pointer into the shared memory of the computer. The rule was that a program instruction was the chunk of memory pointed to by the Program Counter at a particular instance in time. All the rest of the chunks were considered data. Having executed that instruction, the Program Counter would be incremented to the next memory location, and that would then be considered a program chunk and no longer potential data. In the case of a JUMP instruction, the Program Counter would be moved to some other distant place in memory and the process continues. The computer was born.

Like practically every major advance in computer science, the Von Neuman’s computer was an exercise of eleiminating violations in First Classness, in this case, eliminating the fixed dichtomy between data and program. Hence forth, the distinction became relative to the dynamically changing Program Counter. What was program and what was data depended on contect.

However, such a deice is far from freeing itslef from violation of First Classness. The Program Counter itself, becomes a rigid priveledged memory location, totally estranged from the run of the mill informastion chunk in shared memory. That is yet another dichotomy to be eliminated by generic engineering principle. There is a long way to go.

The Von Neuman computer needed a fuew furth innovations in order to be operation. However, not many other innovations were needed. Add a stack, interrupts, and a few input/output ports and that’s about it.

Left side reasoning relies on a linear, sequential, punctual form of rationality. This has become the standard and universally accepted form of reasoning in science and mathematics. Nowadays, few professionally educated people would countenance the possibility of a science based on a completely different form of reasoning. Indeed, if such a science were to be proposed, the common belief is that it would be characterised by the epitaphs fuzzy, woolly, bleeding heart, mystical, irrational and New Age. The author does propose an alternative form of reasoning which is quite “orthogonal” to left side reasoning and he intends to rebuff any such characterisations. He claims that ultimately, at its core new the science will be more rigorous that left side science. This is because the science will not rely on the vagaries of measurement, only the reason applied to reason.

There are two takes on reality, two kinds of knowledge, two kinds of science. In this work the traditional sciences, traditional knowledge we call left side. This kind of knowledge relies on a priori knowledge. Right side knowledge is unconditioned by any a priori and must be developed using pure reason alone. The two kinds of knowledge sit on opposite sides of a great divide. A deep understanding requires a deep understanding of this great divide. The ancients had their say on the matter. Consider, for example Parmenides who came after Heraclitus but before Empedocles.

Parmenides

Parmenides was one of the first to put forward a clear view of the structure of reality from a reasoned perspective. The philosophy of Being, ontology, starts with him. His poem, On Nature, recounts the epic voyage of the young man on his quest for knowledge.

The tone is dramatic and urgent. Despite only disparate fragments of the text remaining, one can almost hear the pounding hooves and see the sparks flying as the wise chariot steeds gallop at a furious pace through the black darkness on the renowned way of the Goddess. Streaking towards where Dark meets Day, maidens show the way. There is no room for dilly-dallying here. This is not the time for fine-spun arguments. It is time to confront the truth. The goddess, with her own hands unerringly conducts this man who knows through things. Wheels swirling, the chariot axle glows red in the socket and gives forth the sound of a pipe as they approach the gates. The daughters of the Sun hasting to convey him to the light, take back their veils. Having arrived at the gates of the ways of Night and Day, after much persuasion they pass through the gates. The young man is greeted kindly by the goddess. She welcomes him to her abode, far from the beaten tracks of mortal men.

She invites him to have an open and critical mind, to learn all things, but above all the unshaken heart of persuasive truth. There are two takes on reality. On the one side there is that taken by mortal men as they blindly stumble about in a world of opinions. On the other hand, away from the world of fickle beliefs, there is another world that harbours unshakable truth, a world where reason holds sway. At the epicentre of this world of reason is the simple truth that there are two possibilities. The goddess declares:

“The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for anything not to be. This is the way of conviction.”

She then recounts the other possibility:

“The other, namely, that It is not, and that something must needs not be.” She then explains, “That, I tell thee, is a wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is not – that is impossible – nor utter it.”

The Parmenidean Paradigm

An epic journey is always a good ploy to get the reader into the right frame of mind. Excuse the pun. Parmenides’ allegory like any allegory can be read in many ways. One could see the tale as taking place on two levels, a logical foreground a gender background. The background imagery displays the feminine in all its plurality, culminating in the abode of the goddess. There the ethereal feminine welcomes the singular masculine, he who knows through things. However, he is but a youth still in quest of knowledge. Nevertheless, he knows he has been conducted here for a purpose.

Across the unsaid background tapestry, spreads the ephemeral abode of goddess and teaming maidens. It is far from the world of mortals and untainted by their bumbling subjectivity. This is the pure feminine, so pure that it is totally devoid of attribute. It is completely unknowable. She is not even real. The goddess, the feminine incarnate, explains that “you cannot know what is not.” You can only know what is. It looks as if the goddess has negated herself out of existence.

This is Ground Zero of rationality. Many thinkers have come here over the ages, each making their own interpretation. Parmenides paints his picture in great clarity. On one side, we have the land of mortals enmeshed in opinions. On the other side is the immortal land of Truth. This other side is what we have been referring to as the right side take on reality. It is in this domain that Parmenides must construct his version of monism philosophy. He must explain Oneness. Like all who have toiled in this domain, he must tackle the dialectic of the One and its other. His reasoning is stark, even brutal: The One is, the Other is not.

As we have seen in previous sections, right side reasoning is expressed in oppositions and oppositions applied to oppositions, a dialectical, semiotic form of thinking. Left side reasoning starts from given preconditions such as opinions, traditions, rumours, gossip, innuendos, measurements, experiences, sensations, axioms, stabs in the dark, fabulation, and sometimes wicked self-serving deception, just as the good goddess explained: This is the natural lot of mortals. Right side reasoning has no preconditions. It must start from the primary opposition. It is here that we find the primordial form of Ground Zero. The task for the philosopher, the ontological scientist, is to provide an explanation of Ground Zero in terms of the primary opposition. The understanding of this primary opposition varies, depending on the thinker. In the case of Parmenides, his position can be summarised as follows.

• What is the primal entity?
  Answer: It.
• What is its specificity?
  Answer: It is.
• What is the primary opposition?
  Answer: The opposition between what is and what is not.
• What exists?
  Answer: Only what is exists, what is not does not and cannot exist.
  Comment: What is determines the knowable. Even more strongly, it determines the known. The deep essence of It is known. It is, end of story. What is not determines the inherently unknowable. The totally unknowable is tantamount to not existing.
• Where is the origin of the primal entity located, i.e., where is Ground Zero?
  Answer: In the eternal present.

The above five points do not cover the complete ontological paradigm of Parmenides. Like any ontologist worth his salt, Parmenides must provide the enveloping rationale for why the above points are necessary.

David Furley has honed in on a passage from the narration that attempts to explain the noyau of the argument, the raison d’être of It:

The last section of the Way of Truth is particularly difficult. Parmenides repeats his assertion that there is no not-being and there are no different degrees of being; what exists is equal to itself everywhere and reaches its limits everywhere. From this he concludes that it is “perfect from every angle, equally matched from the middle in every way, like the mass of a well-rounded ball” (Furley)

We see here Parmenides’ attempt to explain First Classness, the central, all enveloping characteristic of rational reality. A world satisfying First Classness must be totally unconstrained in every way, the ultimate in perfection. It is here that resides the great challenge to ontology. This is the task confronting us. We have to understand such a world that is totally unconstrained with no one behind the scenes pulling strings, and no king pin calling the tune wether seated on high, low, in the middle, in or out of reality.

If there were to be hidden forces at work behind the scene, then a fundamental science of reality would be impossible. On the other hand however, if reality is left free to be dominated by the draconian requirement of the totally unconstrained system, then indeed it must be exactly that, a totally unconstrained system (the only constraint allowed) The iron laws of First Classness(FC) spring in to play, the laws of ontological fair play organise fair play. In this great riddle, there is only one answer and, as the goddess said, only one “unshaken heart of persuasive truth.”

Reconciling the coming into being, the genesis of reality, with FC is not easy. The very notion of a determined beginning violates FC as this privileges the starting point entity from all others. FC does not allow privileged entities and there is nothing more privileged than coming first. Parmenides resolved that violation by saying that an entity at the beginning does not exist, as it no longer is. He then argued that it never could have existed, finally ending up with the formula of the only thing real is the eternal present and nothing changes.

It is interesting to look at how the Stoics resolved the problem, as they too adopted a doctrine based on FC. For the Stoics, the only immortal was Zeus. They were pantheists so the universe was the body of Zeus. The body changes, is born and dies away in the conflagration but Zeus stays immortal throughout the process. The universe had a beginning and eventually ended up in the conflagration. In this more complex scenario, avoiding the violation of FC becomes more difficult. The beginning and the end of the Cosmos in the conflagration become privileged moments, one preceding all that will exists and one succeeding, thus violating FC. The Stoic solution was that time was circular with the whole story exactly repeating itself the next time around. In this way there are no privileged points in time and FC is not violated. This Eternal Return solution retained many aspects of the Parmenidean solution. Bodies in the past did not exist, nor did those in the future. The only bodies that exist are those in the present. By eternal repetition of the cycle, nothing really changed and no state of being was irreconcilably privileged over any other. FC was respected.

Parmenides’ allegory of the young man streaking across the heavens waved on by the veiled daughters of the Night, heading straight for the abode of the goddess evokes the image of a spermatozoid streaking to a rendezvous with the unfertilised egg. However Parmenides’ does not allow the union to be consummated.

There will be no masculine principle uniting with the feminine principle in this scenario, despite the atmospherics being full of it. The closest we get to any explicit such union is at the level of logic: one proposition in the affirmative and the other in the negative and never the two shall meets. Parmenides pitched his paradigm at the loftiest level and really could not embrace any explicit masculine feminine union as this would imply an explicit beginning and so violate FC. For a work around for this conundrum, we have to wait for Empedocles.

In the meantime we understand that there are two ways of understanding reality, one is the Way of Truth and the other is the Way of Opinion. For Parmenides, the only repository of truth was in the One, a pureness of eternal, ungenerated Oneness. It is that unique Being that “neither was nor will be, because it is in its wholeness now, and only now.” In truth only the One is.

For Parmenides “The only true reality is Eōn—pure, eternal, immutable, and indestructible Being, without any other qualification. Its characterizations can be only negative, expressions of exclusions, with no pretence of attributing some special quality to the reality of which one speaks” (Calogero, 2010) As for the Way of Opinion, this is the world of appearances, a misleading world of falsehood. It is this Being and only this Being that truly, objectively is. All else is illusory.

Parmenides provided a vivid image of how the very deepest reality could be comprehended. This image in useful to carry forward in one’s mind in the development to follow.

Ontological Calculus of Empedocles to the Stoics

This is not a scholarly work. In writing about Empedocles and the Stoics, for example, we imply that this is the way they thought and expressed their ideas. Clearly this is not the case. Rather than being scholarly, our approach is to fundamentally reverse engineer ancient thinkers’ concepts. As a consequence what we write is often more of what the ancients could have thought, and sometimes what they should have thought, if they remained true to their doctrines.

Keeping this in mind, we will now repeat the summary of Parmenides doctrine and adapt it to the next phase in the development of ancient physics. In order to develop the theory of the Four Elements, the initial structure of Parmenides must be pushed to the next stage. What follows is a brief summary of this next step, as seen from a modern perspective. The key idea is what we call ontological gender. It is this structure that explains how the fundamental starting point for our unifying science. The ancients got there first, but there is some cleaning up to do.

We have already considered these concepts in earlier sections, but here is yet another angle.

The Gender Paradigm

• What is the primal entity?
  Answer: Any entity whatsoever.
• What is its specificity?
  Answer: Entity has the attribute of absolute non-specificity.
  Comment: This attribute, that of absolute non-specificity, is an entity in its own right, in accordance with First Classness.
• What is the primary opposition?
  Answer: The opposition between what has the attribute and what is the attribute.
  Comment: The entity that has the attribute determines feminine gender, the entity that is the attribute determines masculine gender. This is the definition of ontological gender. These two entities are different by gender but indistinguishable.
• What exists?
  Answer: Only what is exists.
  Comment: This follows Parmenides but adds some detail: Only what It, that entity of pure masculine gender, fundamentally exists. The pure feminine entity has something (the attribute of total non-specificity) but when it comes to whether it is, clearly it is not. Having something differs from being something. However, the pure feminine entity, although different, is indistinguishable from the pure masculine. Parmenides glossed over that point.
• Where is the origin of the primal entity located, i.e., where is Ground Zero?
  Answer: The location is that determined by the primal entity.
  Comment: The whole Cosmos gyrates around this location. Thus, Ground Zero can be thought of as any location whatsoever.

This summary has added in some innovations that don’r belong to the ancients. However, it is in keeping with a strictly generic approach that the Stoics were pioneering.. The summary represents where they were heading more than where they were at.

Traditional sciences, what we call left side sciences, express all knowledge in terms of attributes of things. This is quite reasonable because it is impossible to directly know the thing that has the attribute. The knowledge of things is always indirectly achieved via attributes of things. Note also that in pure left side science, an attribute is not a proper thing as it is in pure right side science.

In our work we are endeavouring to develop the right side science that does not rely on any preconditions whatsoever. Harvesting attributes as a precondition for theorising is a fundamental left science activity, but not so for right side science. Thus, all the empirical attributes that abound in left side sciences are forbidden on the right side. If right side science is to have any attributes then it has to reason them into existence, not measure them. This reasoning process leads to the attribute par excellence, that of masculine gender.

Then comes the incredible aspect of right side science. This is the only attribute we need! All other attributes can be constructed from it or with it. We enter into the web of gender intrigue. The only guiding principle at our disposal is that of FC. FC demands that an attribute must be capable of being considered as an entity in its own right: In this context it becomes the masculine qua feminine MF. What is good for the gander is also good for the goose. The feminine entity must also enjoy the possibility of being considered as an attribute in its own right: It becomes the feminine qua masculine FM. Here we are starting to get compound gendered entities, depending on roleplaying. The other two combinations are the pure gendered entities qua themselves, notably the masculine qua masculine MM and the feminine qua feminine FF.

In the process we have advanced from the primordial Parmenides paradigm through to the Doctrine of the Four Roots of Empedocles and later developed into the four-element doctrine of the Stoics.

There are four elements that have mixed gender MF, FF, FM, and MM entities, corresponding respectively to expansive air, water, converging water and fire.

These binary terms can be thought of as noun adjective pairs where F and M can play the role of noun or adjective, depending on their position in the pair. These terms are the elementary terms of the generic code. The genetic code is the biological instance of the generic code where the four letters, using RNA notation, are A, U, G and C respectively.

As a side note, it is interesting to look for traces of generic structure in natural languages. English, because of its huge vocabulary and penchant for labelling things does not offer fertile ground. However, French is a good place to look as it retains a strong version of gender typing. In fact it is rather pure in this regard as it even allocates gender to the names of countries. Ignoring gender constructs though and just considers the noun adjective example:

   une histoire vraie

which means a true story. Reversing the noun adjective order gives

   une vraie histoire

which means a made up story, providing a certain kind of negation of the first construct.

In the generic code, reversing MF to give FM produces an even more dramatic kind of negation, as will be seen. MF and FM, or air and water in the old book, are really like chalk and cheese.

D. J. H. Moore