August 18th, 2007 Fred McVittie
The snake of the Cosmic Ouroborus offered by history and legend represents the scales at which the universe operates, from the smallest meaningful measurement, the Planck length, at one end (the tail) and the largest meaningful measure, the entire visible universe, at the other, the all consuming head. In the model developed by Premack and Abrams these scales are wrapped around into a serpentine loop with the suggestion that these is some physical force or property which unites the smallest and the largest. No such force has been discovered yet in physics, although superstring theory is suggested as a possibility. Without this connection between the smallest and the largest, this understanding of the Ouroborus is little different from the traditional way of understanding the Cosmos generally referred to as the ‘Great Chain of Being’.
The Chain of Being idea is found in many theological and philosophical traditions and is part of the ‘Perennial Philosophy’ of Huxley, Aurobindo etc. It is a way of understanding the universe by configuring it conceptually as a hierarchy with all entities: living, non-living, ‘divine’, and ‘profane’ having a particular place on this hierarchy. Medieval Christian illustrations of the Great Chain inevitably place God at the top of the hierarchy, with angels, archangels, cherabim and seraphim stacked below Him. Somewhere beneath the angels we find humanity, and below the humans are animals, primates only slightly lower, insects well down the chain. In some illustrations the chain is continued downward to include inanimate material below the level of living creatures.
D.E. Harding’s reworking of this hierarchy replaces the personification of the spiritual that denotes the upper levels with the equally unfathomable and awe-inspiring image of the large-scale universe. Beyond the human scale of medium sized objects Harding indicates levels at the scale of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and the ultimate scale, unmatched in grandeur, the totality of the universe. Harding also extends the scale downwards in scale (although the sense of ‘down’ is replaced by ‘in’) beyond the level of inanimate material occupying the lowest levels in Medieval illustrations, and includes in the hierarchy the levels of atoms, subatomic particles, and ultimately, the incomprehensibly infinitesimal space which lies at the heart of all matter. A space which is reduced to a dimensionless point. Exactly here.
A striking aspect of both these images of the hierarchy or Great Chain is that there is an implied direction to the flow of ‘energy’ (for want of a better word, causality? Responsibility?) within the chain. In the Medieval image of the Chain, the direction of power and creative energy is downward, and God, at the top of the hierarchy, is responsible for the origin and maintenance of that which is below Him. “And without him was not anything made” as the Gospel of John would have it. All is seen as an emanation descending from on high. At the point of the hierarchy at which human beings are found there is an assumed responsibility for all lower levels; we have ‘dominion’ over the creatures of the Earth, and even those of us who are not Christian, or profess no faith at all, may still feel that we are responsible for the Earth and its safe-keeping in a way which transcends simple self-interest.
A more detailed look at the Great Chain at the point where humans are shows us that humanity itself is divided hierarchically, with kings and aristocrats placed on a slightly higher level than the mass of common humanity, and whilst we may reject this caste system today it is still embedded in our cultural, legal, and political systems. The Sovereign of England rules by divine right and that right is hereditory. When I was a child, when we sang hymns in school assembly, our rendition of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ still included the second verse.
The rich man at his castle
The poor man at his gate
He made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate
The re-imagined Great Chain of Being which Harding indicates, and which is also found in Ken Wilbur’s writings for example, is superficially similar but significantly different. As noted above, the levels in the hierarchy above the human, which in the Medieval Great Chain were populated by spiritual beings, in the physical Great Chain are larger orders of scale, with an acknowledgment that different laws operate at these different scales. God is replaced by the totality of the universe (or the visible universe at any rate), the Angels become galaxies and the Cherabim and Seraphim are the Solar system and the planets. The levels below human, or rather below (or inside) human scale, are the levels of molecules, atoms, quarks, bosons, and the rest of the subatomic menagerie.
Absent from this model is the implication of greater value associated with higher levels of the chain, so the model cannot be used to prop up an aristocracy or justify the existence of a caste system (although there is a scent of just that kind of value difference is some of Wilbur’s writing.) A distinct difference between this model and the Medieval one is that the direction of creative power is reversed. There is no assumption that divine creative force operates from the far reaches of the universe, working through smaller and smaller circles of influence until, ultimately, it is conferred upon the human being. Instead the flow is imaged as originating from the ’source’, which is the void at the centre of the most infinitesimal
This distinction, which difference in which responsibility and ultimate understanding is not seen as lying at the top of the hierarchy, with the equivalent of God, but at the bottom, mirrors the modern understanding within the physical sciences. The quest for the most effective description of how the physical universe operates is a journey downwards, towards the most essential particle, the fundamental building block of the entire edifice. In place of emanation we have emergence, and the flow of creative energy is upward, with the higher levels, the higher orders of being, emerging from the behaviour and properties of the entities populating lower levels. So the behaviour of a material is understood as emerging from the properties of its constituent elements. A block of iron is hard because the atoms of iron which compose it have strong bonds between them, and these atoms have strong bonds because the electrons and protons which make them up have the particular configuration they have, etc etc. As responsibility and explanatory power is deferred downwards, so the creative energy is routed such that it flows upwards.
Both these images of a hierarchy of Being also therefore contain a heirarchy of power and creativity, and whether the movement of this power is seen as descending from on high or bubbling up from below it is still imagined as originating elsewhere. We, as humans located as we are somewhere in the middle of the Great Chain, medium sized objects half-way between angels and rocks, between the everything of the universe and the nothing at the heart of the atom, are not near either of these putative origins. In the hierarchy of the chain we are the middle link, a conduit for an energy or power that moves us and then moves on.
This image of a hierarchy is not without its uses, particularly if we imagine the potential for both upward and downward motion. The image serves more purpose however if it is wrapped into a circle such that the smallest is connected to the largest. In terms of the Medieval Chain this means equating Divinity with the essential quality possessed by all entities, something like a soul perhaps. In physical and non-theological terms that means finding a physics for the unification of the largest with the smallest. As noted above, some suggestions point to superstring theory for this connection.
When the bottom of the chain is connected to the top a Cosmic Ouroborus is formed, the tail of the snake entering the mouth and the universe is simultanously consumed and consuming, creating and destroying.
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