Chaos and Essence: Defying Logic?
by Prof. Kiqhle Sostoui
A great many times have the powers of Essence and, whether or not they are believed to exist, the mysteries of Chaos been described as "defying logic". At first, I would be tempted to put this down merely to the colloquial usage of the word "logic" to refer to that which is intuitive, common sense, or within the standard physics governing most of our universe, or even to put it down to dramatic hyperbole. But I believe it is worthy of further consideration.
Essence[]
A simplificiation of the rich field of enquiry that is the study of logic would be to say that logic is the metaphysical process by which conclusions follow from premises, defined by a selection of rules of inference, and thus acts on the starting axioms that make up existence to define an entire reality.
If you take these axioms to consist solely of the standard laws of physics, then the use of Essence violates logic by definition, as Essence is something that allows phenomena to occur which would not otherwise do so. But if you don't restrict ourselves in such a way then this does not appear to be the case: Essence can be modelled by adding additional (super)natural laws to our list of axioms, and using logic to describe the consequences.
There are a few situations where this may not hold. Consider that rare ability to "phase" through solid objects. Geometric physics explains - via logic - simultaneously why solid matter has the property of impenetrability and why it stably occupies a fixed volume despite the mutually attractive forces pulling it all together: the product of two identical spinor waves at a given position is zero, much like the sum of two oppositely-pointing vectors, or a positive number and its own negative. This means that identical electrons - whose positions are determined by spinor waves - cannot pass through each other, nor coalesce into a microscopic mass. This is the exclusion principle, but how might this make "phasing" violate logic?
Consider such an entity passing through a wall, while still walking on the ground; although rare, this ability has been observed. Such an entity is apparently subject to the exclusion principle, not only between the particles in its feet and the electrons in the floor but also as it remains a stable space-occupying object, but is clearly capable of flouting the principle between those same foot-particles and the electrons in the wall!
The simplest resolution of the phasing paradox is to suggest that such Essence entities are not made of electrons, but some equivalent spinor particles that are almost entirely identical except for some Essence-related reasons. This explains how an entity of that kind can pass through the wall yet still possess macroscopic volume. As for the floor, they aren't walking on it, but levitating in such a way as to avoid going lower than the surface. Another possibility is that Essence involves strong emergence: axioms that only act upon emergent phenomena. This may be philosophically undesirable, but it's not ruled out by logic. The phasing paradox would thus involve some alteration of the geometry or physics of the situation that specifically applies only to either the wall or floor electrons, depending on whether or not the phasing entity contains true electrons, simply due to the structural feature that they are contained within.
Or it could simply defy logic. Further examples of contradiction-utilising Essence phenomena would help to illuminate the situation.
Chaos[]
The idea of Chaos is so broad and yet unknown that it's impossible to say very much about it that's in any way conclusive. There is one conception of Chaos which might be definitive on the matter, which states that Chaos includes and transcends all physical and metaphysical concepts, including existence and logic. In a world beyond logic, our set- and space-based language is utterly irrelevant, so even words like "includes" and "world" become nothing more than contrived metaphors, but they will have to do for lack of anything with better descriptive power. Chaos could then even "include" "worlds" which have some analogy of logic but where different rules of inference act on axioms that may or may not be different - and presumably both cases are manifested - to those of our own reality.
What we can discuss with more certainty is other "Planes of Existence", which supposedly exist at various "places" "within" Chaos. Individuals that have entered them, and religious groups with contact with Essentials, provide us with the most reliable information about these Planes, although it's impossible to be sure of just how accurate any of it really is.
One big clue that these Planes may actually defy logic is the common claim that "time does not flow" in many such realms, despite the fact that the same descriptions provide details of events: not just the Planes' history, but even the more general phenomenon by which it is possible to describe things existing in different states at the same location. What seperates the states is thus what we know as "time". Furthermore, there even appears to be an arrow of time, which is to say these states can be arranged into an order with each state depending on its predecessors.
Time not flowing despite the existence of something that fits the very definition of a flowing time would make for a very bizarre kind of contradiction, however. This would not so much be a failure of the rules of inference, but a contradiction of definition (although you could say this is actually a violation of the rule that [X] implies not not [X], where [X] here is the time flowing). I say it's more likely that "time does not flow" instead refers to differences between the functioning of spacetime in these Planes and in our reality, and possibly due to Essence having a non-particulate nature and hence entropy effects such as ageing do not occur. Memory formation appears to be uninhibited; presumably the arrow of time still allows it to happen by a similar mechanism. But maybe it just defies logic.
Gravity confirms that spacetime is certainly different there, as rather than there being an actual mass-generated gravitational force that would cause the bulk of the Planes to form spheres and even black holes under their own self-attraction, there's just a simple downwards direction, and most of the Planes are literally flat planes. It may seem unusual that, with two spatial dimensions in which movement is unconstrained, a third in which there is a tendency to go in one direction (down), and a fourth where one-directional travel is mandatory (time), the spacetime of these Planes corresponds to the low-energy planet-bound intuitions that are instinctive to the vast majority of this universe's inhabitants... but that's a matter for a whole other philosophical discussion.
So what can we make of this? Do Chaos and Essence truly violate the basic laws of inference that underlie our reality? In the latter case, the answer is probably no, although Essence may still be very metaphysically distinct from everything else in the universe. With Chaos, data is lacking, as would be expected from a concept whose existence we cannot even confirm. If we assume that it does exist and that the most transcendental beliefs about it are correct, then the answer becomes a (trivial) defintely yes. As for individual Planes of Existence, it seems plausible (and it would be surprising for none of them to if the previous yes is true), but scientific inquiry has yet to study them in enough detail to confirm whether logic truly does cease to hold there.
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