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The druid
said: “He’s a more flexible blob” 1. The observational starting point: the slime mould as
procedural exemplar In Finn’s
worldview under Procedure Monism, every living being is a bounded
iteration of the Universal Procedure (UP) — the one rule-set that continually organises random input into
locally stable, self-organizing and self-regulating systems. In this
schema: ·
The yellow slime mould (Physarum polycephalum),
the
blob, demonstrates
pure procedural emergence: o It is not
segmented into permanent organs or individuals. o It
self-organises dynamically via chemical feedback and distributed
computation. o It solves
problems (finding food, optimising paths) by trial, error, and feedback —
random walk corrected by contact. In Finn’s
language, the
blob functions
as living instance of the Universal Procedure with a minimal rule
set: sensing, responding, reorganising. 2. Step one: general principle — life as adaptive blob Finn’s
framework holds that all life forms are procedural blobs —
transiently bounded flows of matter-energy organised by the UP. ·
Continuity of process: every
living system maintains itself by continuous feedback, not by fixed form. ·
Flexibility: adaptive restructuring in
response to contact events. ·
Distributed intelligence: problem-solving
without a central metaphysical “soul.” The slime
mould demonstrates that intelligence and order emerge from procedure alone,
not from designed architecture. 3. Step two: evolution — increasing procedural
complexity, not categorical difference As
evolution proceeds, each new species (as biological platform) is not a
metaphysical innovation but a further iteration of the same UP under tighter
constraints and with richer internal feedback loops. ·
The mould computes chemically. ·
The worm computes neurally. ·
The human computes symbolically and socially. Each step
is a procedural recursion that expands the range of possible
contacts and adaptive responses. Hence,
the human is still a blob — a coherent dynamic
pattern of matter-energy — but one whose procedural flexibility has
increased. 4. Step three: the human blob — more
flexible, not less blobby From
Finn’s vantage: ·
Form: The human body is no less a
blob than the
mould — 70% water, continuously metabolising, exchanging molecules with its
environment. ·
Mind: The brain, as an evolved
procedural network, is a slime mould in hyperdrive — electrochemical,
self-organising, contact-reactive. ·
Society: Human civilisation is a meta-blob — vast
distributed cognition, same algorithm on a larger canvas. Thus,
when Finn remarks, “He’s a more flexible blob,” he simply
states that Homo sapiens represents an upgraded iteration of
the same universal blobbic
algorithm — more elastic, symbolically recursive, but
fundamentally identical in kind. 5. Step four: logical progression of the argument 1. Premise
A: The slime mould demonstrates that self-organisation,
perception, and adaptation can occur without fixed boundaries or central
control — i.e. a blob can
think. 2. Premise
B: Evolution increases local flexibility of the same
procedural capacity (the UP). 3. Premise
C: The human is not metaphysically distinct but
procedurally continuous with the slime mould. 4. Conclusion: The
human is a more flexible blob — not an exception to nature but an advanced
expression of it. Thus, the
minim follows by strict continuity of procedure, not by analogy. 6. Step five: interpretive commentary — the druid’s
irony Finn’s
minim, like most of his “Minims,” carries both scientific precision
and druidic mockery: ·
Mockery: it undercuts the human
pretence to transcendence — the metaphysical inflation, indeed hubris that
imagines and then projects “man” as “image of God.” Indeed man, as species member,
is right in portraying himself as ‘made in the image of God’ provided he accepts
that every other member of all 7 million species now inhabiting the earth can
portray themselves likewise. ·
Precision: it locates intelligence,
creativity, and even self-consciousness squarely within the natural procedural
continuum, not outside it. ·
Moral: to call man a “more flexible blob” is to
restore ontological humility: man is merely a better
problem-solving patch of the same universal slime. 7. Step six: relation to Procedure Monism and Realness In the Procedure
Monism model: ·
Realness arises at contact events
— quantised exchanges of information or energy that, happening serially,
stabilise identity. ·
The slime mould’s contacts are chemical; the human’s include symbolic, conceptual, emotional, and
technological. ·
Therefore, humans achieve greater density of
contact-events, hence greater degrees of realness, but the
underlying logic remains that of the blob. Humanness
= high-frequency slime moulding. 8. Step seven: the metaphysical context — from slime to
soul The minim
thus closes the evolutionary loop between biology and metaphysics:
The druid
recognises himself as the blob that knows it is a blob, thereby
achieving moksha — release from the lie of being something else. 9. Final synthesis The
natural context of the minim is the continuity of the procedural life-form,
from slime to sapiens. 1. All
beings are self-organising blobs of procedure. 2. Evolution
= increased flexibility of blobbic response. 3. The
human, as a high-resolution slime mould, is a blob that can
talk about blobs. 4. Hence,
consciousness is the blob becoming
aware of its own procedural blobbiness. Therefore: The human
is not a transcendental subject but the universe’s most articulate blob — |