Rigid bodies, as the special theory of relativity has taught us, do not exists. QM: The spatial differentiation of the world does not go “all the way down.” CCP: Space is differentiated “all the way down.”.CCP: All (relative) positions are sharp.QM: “Space” has two senses: (i) an undifferentiated expanse, (ii) the totality of existing spatial relations. CCP: Space is a pre-existent and intrinsically divided expanse.QM: Synchronic multiplicity rests on spatial relations. CCP: Synchronic multiplicity rests on delimiting surfaces.If parts are defined by geometrical boundaries, the positions of the parts are as sharply defined as their boundaries, and there isn’t anything fuzzy about the way geometrical boundaries are defined. This is how we come to think of space as a pre-existent expanse that is intrinsically divided “all the way down.” But if this is how we think, we cannot conceive of fuzzy positions. If, in addition, the parts of material objects are defined by the parts of space, then the parts of space exist in advance of the parts of material objects. In a world whose synchronic multiplicity rests on surfaces, spatial extension exists in advance of multiplicity, for only what is extended can be cut up by the three-dimensional equivalents of cookie cutters. Let’s consider some of the CCP’s implications and how they might lead us up the garden path. If we perceive things as if rigidly cut out from a background or a mass, then the background or mass from which one thing is cut out differs from the background of mass from which another thing is cut out, even though the two things are cut out from an indivisible whole.
Here we have the reason why, when asked to imagine two exactly similar objects in different places, we balk at the logical conclusion that the “two” objects are actually a single object existing, appearing, or manifesting itself in different places. It conceives, perceives, senses things as if rigidly cut out from a background or a mass and employs them as fixed units of the material given to it for creation or possession. It is this essential characteristic of Mind which conditions the workings of all its operative powers, whether conception, perception, sensation or the dealings of creative thought. Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer…. Cosmologically speaking, mind is the agent of this secondary action limiting, defining, dividing, individualizing: In the Vedantic scheme of things, the original creative principle and dynamic link between UR and the world is a consciousness that, following Sri Aurobindo, we may call “supermind.” The creative action of supermind is primarily qualitative and infinite and only secondarily quantitative and finite. There is, however, a deeper reason why our visual world conforms to the CCP, for our brain works as it does because our mind works as it does - and not the other way round, as we are wont to think. The corresponding regions of the phenomenal world are filled in on the basis of contrast information that is derived from boundaries in the visual field. Data arriving from homogeneously colored and evenly lit regions of the visual field do not make it into conscious awareness. Vision is based on a neural analysis of the visual field (the optical images falling on the retinas in both eyes) that capitalizes on contrast information. There is considerable neuropsychological evidence that the CCP is “hard-wired”: the way in which the brain processes visual information guarantees that the result - the visual world - is a world of objects whose shapes are bounding surfaces. Because it says, in effect, that the synchronic multiplicity of the world - the word’s multiplicity at any one time - rests on surfaces that carve up space much as cookie cutters carve up rolled-out pastry, we may refer to this idea as the “Cookie Cutter Paradigm” (CCP). It is safe to say that the following idea appears self-evident to anyone uninitiated into the mysteries of the quantum world: the parts of a material object are defined by the parts of the space it “occupies,” and the parts of space are defined by delimiting surfaces (boundaries). It will be blatantly obvious by now that the ontological implications of quantum mechanics go counter to some of our deepest convictions concerning space, time, and matter.
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