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1.11.2012
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I'm still looking into the ontogon/phylogon references in "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick." I believe this next quote [49:1119] raises an interesting question about how far PKD conflates ontogons, humans and matter.
"We ontogons are not only systems for processing information but (1) information creates us; and (2) the main processing is a diversification and proliferation. You get more out of the ontogon than you put in:"
The quote is followed by a diagram drawn by PKD of two arrows pointing toward a rectangle and many more arrows pointing away, out the other side.
This description of the compounding of information from information not only sounds like the endless recombinations of ideas we read on the internet (this site included) but it resonates on a deeper level with a quote from a 1991 Terrence McKenna lecture,
"So this is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science – that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could
almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving or complexity-conserving engine. It makes
complexity, and it preserves it. And it uses it as the basis for further complexity."
McKenna, like PKD, characterizes the universe, not as a location but as a process, in his words, an engine. For both, the forward arrow of time is leading us toward complexity; first physical, then biological, until, it is presumed, the ontogons reach a stage so complex that they can think, become self-aware and eventually understand the process of their own creation. In this case, we can say that a source of creativity is found in feedback from increasingly complex systems.
And what is the end game here? McKenna saw an eschaton, a culmination to the growth, and a birth of consciousness into something new. For PKD, the end is elusive, uncertain and even more complicated...
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