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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.” ·
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: one is 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, and thus
achieves 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 — |