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Change, process, development and transformation characterize inanimate and animate forms. “The tendency for asymmetrical forms to become more symmetrical illustrates the universal form of process … and may therefore be regarded as the source of process … Process is the separation, persistence, and extension of form. But separation is never complete, form is never perfect, process is universal, and the development of any particular system may be reversed in the course of the development of a larger system.1 The completed Platonic ideal of perfect form, perfect symmetry, is maximum sameness in a world in process and equals holistic human termination and cosmic heat death.
As the horizons of the particular system, science, widened and deepened, the cleavage between animate and inanimate became a spectrum; the illuminated ascending primate scale confronted a prehensile thumb, bipedal locomotion, and learning by trial and error; evolving theorizing produced Keosian's2 notion of repetitive biogenesis and Hoyle's3 steady-state cosmology assuming enclaves of continuous creating which every human being on this planet is.
Creation myths have given meaning to human existence for millenia. Science, viewing nature with wonder and awe, undermined Biblical fundamentalism and created the H-bomb. Dread, integral to primitive cosmologies and those of Eastern civilizations, burst into the West's mind structure via existentialism.
The image of twentieth century science abruptly disintegrated. Its development toward greater sameness was reserved by the larger system, cosmos; its diminishing asymmetrical proportions became enhanced; positive entropy was increased; dimensions were added; and its total gestalt had changed. In Zen practice, the disciple, at the limits of his despair, abruptly (tun,4 in Japanese) experiences an illumination, a satori. In the creative process, after having given up, sudden, out-of-the-blue insights are also described.5 In science, disintegration and chaos again