GREEN QUEEN'S DREAM: Fiction and science; The hidden Truth of the fantastic - Part I

"Are you and I and all Fantastica," she asked, "are we all recorded in this book?"

He wrote, and at the same time she heard his answer: "No, you've got it wrong. This book is all Fantastica - and you and I."

"But where is this book?"

And he wrote the answer: "In the book."

In the movie "The Neverending Story" from 1984 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088323/) - based on the magnificent book by Michael Ende (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27712.The_Neverending_Story) (READ IT!) - one of the most intriguing aspects of words are introduced.

A thing does not exist until it is given a name.

I remember being mesmerized by this from the first time I heard it as a child. All of Fantasia is being swallowed up by the Nothing - not darkness, not anything at all - just pure nothingness. There's nothing there. At all.

As the Nothingness silently engulfs each piece of grass, wood, rock and living being, the world is quietly slipping away - becoming no thing at all. Shapeless, a void. '

"The Nothing is spreading," groaned the first. "It's growing and growing, there's more of it every day, if it's possible to speak of more nothing. All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn't want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us."

"Is it very painful?" Atreyu asked.

"No," said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. "You don't feel a thing. There's just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won't be anything left of us.”

The book differs slightly (or should I say extremely) from the movie. They are both good, in my opinion, the book because it is one deep profound piece of exquisite writing; The movie because I deeply, deeply loved it as a child.

What is common ground in both books is that Bastian is the unknowing savior of the world. By giving the childlike princess a name, he literally "calls her into existence" and by doing so saves the world. In the field of biocognitivism "we", as observers, are defined and recognized by one thing only: We are able to distinguish 'something' from 'something else', and by doing so; We become separate from our surroundings and thus become a "Self".

The implications of this are puzzling.

Since the universe consists of waves and particles vibrating at different frequencies, clustering together forming differently shaped objects, there is actually no set limit to where "I" begin and where "everything else" starts. Sure, I've got skin, but what keeps my skin in place, what constitutes this recurring reproduction of physical human form? These questions are the most important ones that the biocognitivists try to answer, and I can by no means say that the answers exist. What DOES exist, is the explanations of what defines human consciousness; In other words: What "I" am.

"I" am the consciousness identified with a human form, limited by the outlines of your skin and your physical appearance. The physicality of you changes throughout your life, but somehow there seems to be a consistent "I" that follow and inhabit this human form and is deeply engrained in it. This reflects in our language. We say "this is my hand" or this is my new hairdo". Newsflash; You're not your hair. Not your hand either.

I remember I used to drive myself crazy as a kid, trying to define how much of my human body I could peel away before "I" disappeared. Would I still be me if my brain were the only thing kept alive? Or what about heart? I never found the answer.

What I did find, was a definition of what "I" am, and I found it in the most unlikely place: In language theory. (Following excerpts from the book Autopoesis and Cognition by Francisco J. Varela & Humberto R. Maturana)

"The actual component (all their properties included) and the actual relations holding between them that concretely realize a system as a particular member of the class (kind) of composite unities to which it belongs by its organization, constitute its structure."

Furthermore: "The fundamental cognitive operation that an observer performs is the operation of distinction. By means of this operation the observer specifies a unity as an entity distinct from a background and a background as the domain in which an entity is distinguished."

This last part is the important one.

What makes us human and what creates an "I" separate from "Everything" is, in other words, the ability to distinguish one thing from another. Seems trivial, doesn't it?

CHECK THIS OUT:

OUR WHOLE WORLD IS MADE UP OF THE WORDS WE USE TO DEFINE EVERYTHING IN IT.

If this doesn't rock your world, you need another drink.

We're all freakin' Adam in the garden of Eden.