Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

So there are ‘perfections’ in the world that we can imagine and which can be realised. But, there are perfections in the world that can be imagined, but which can never be realised. Take, for example, the Fibonacci ratio — otherwise known as the Golden Mean. It’s a simple fraction and is, in this sense, mathematically perfect. It occurs frequently in nature, but here the perfection is never quite reached. There has, instead, to be a series of whole numbers — the Fibonacci sequence — which tends towards perfection, but could only reach it through an infinite number of iterations. Seashells — and for that matter, drawings of Fibonacci spirals — are somewhere between this. The curve is theoretically perfect, like its associated ratio, but the practicality of creating the spiral can never be perfectly achieved.

We have to turn to Plato to drill down further into this. Plato is best remembered for his world of perfect forms (the Realm of Being), which exists quite separately from our everyday, familiar world (the Realm of Becoming). The usual interpretation of this is to say that Plato thought our world to be a poor shadow of the world of forms — that Earthly things are shoddy representations of their eternal and perfect form. But it seems that there are perfect forms that can be explained and understood, but could never, by definition, be realised. This is a puzzling conclusion. I don’t have an answer to it except to say that I think it is a fundamental paradox of the universe. There are perfections, but the world in which we live is flawed. This is a paradox that will stay with us throughout the work, and we’ll see various aspects of it appearing in all of the subjects covered.

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