Can you describe matter? Can you tabulate the distinctive qualities this thing has that makes it specifiable as just this thing and none else. I find it extremely hard to describe matter. The moment I describe it as colored, it's transparence as water or glass suddenly comes up. The moment I try to label it as solid dark clumps, sky blue air and plasma burst forth in luminous hues. Fire is matter. Electricity is matter. What the hell is matter made of? Just quarks they say--pure particulate structures not reducible to anything else. But what does that even mean? Pure particles without substance?Geometical forms without content? With description there is always the possibility of comparison. But when you're talking matter, what else is there to compare it to that can clarify its being to us? It is the assumed substrate for all our sensory-projected constructs. Tangible and intangible, visible and invisible, localized and ubiquitous, animate and inanimate, it defies all our attempts to pin it down. It is all these things, and if there is anything to dark matter and bose-einstein condensates, probably much much more besides.
Naturally this meditation enlarges what we mean by physical reality. For if matter is such an inexplicable generalization or indeterminate variable, a sublime and power-packed substance that is both everywhere and nowhere at once, what do we even mean by physical any more? Is the distinction between mind and matter useful to us ? Was it ever real to begin with? Abstractions within abstractions all the way down. That's how you know you're in a construct.
Naturally this meditation enlarges what we mean by physical reality. For if matter is such an inexplicable generalization or indeterminate variable, a sublime and power-packed substance that is both everywhere and nowhere at once, what do we even mean by physical any more? Is the distinction between mind and matter useful to us ? Was it ever real to begin with? Abstractions within abstractions all the way down. That's how you know you're in a construct.