Stuck Between a Rock and a World View

In the center of Raphael's painting "The School of Athens" stand two men. Plato points one finger up to the heavens, holding his "Timaeus", a book about the virtues of existence. His student Aristotle stretches his open hand out over the earth, holding his "Ethics", a book about the existence of virtues. Humanity has been arguing their two positions ever since.

The second premise is Plato's. Our existence is a poor copy of something perfect and abstract, which he called a "form". The Greeks believed virtues like goodness and beauty were real truths in the universe, and that we are mere byproducts of them. You can see the same shape in many belief systems since: the true version of things is somewhere else, and the goal is to reunite with it. Even science has a small root here, since everything is energy that came from a single point. The bottom line: the parts only exist because of the whole.

The third premise is Aristotle's. Our existence is gradually taking shape out of infinite chaos, through a growing number of recurring events, which he called "instances". This is the scientific method's home turf. We only came to value goodness and beauty after seeing enough good and beautiful things, over and over. What is the goal, then? It is still being decided, though one option keeps coming up: survival, often at any cost. The bottom line: the whole only exists because of the parts.

Which one is right? Go back to the first step. Both are. In this book the two are called "the Dynamics": two seemingly opposing states of existence that shape everything that comes after, including you.