On the dream of cladistics

An orthogonality is a diametrical opposition. It may be between classes, as that between 'hairy-hairless' and 'hair color', or between dimensions, as that between 'X' and 'Y'. The typical property of an orthogonality is that it lacks a common middle. There is, for example, no hair color that can be assigned to both a hairy and a hairless object. Orthogonalities emerge in the moment we conceptualize reality. Indeed, reality itself protrudes as an orthogonality between what we call 'pattern' and 'process'.

Orthogonalities are difficult to interpret in an existential sense, since both of the opposites have to "exist" as being interdependent, although not both of them thus can exist at the same time as being contradictory. An orthogonal relation do we sometimes express as that one "thing" is BOTH one and its opposite, as in that a photon is BOTH a particle and a wave. However, if this statement is correct, then it logically means that a wave also is BOTH a photon and a particle, which, obviously, isn't correct. The problem is that concepts have different extensions (ie, are of different inclusiveness among objects), and that this difference is impossible to express for certain relations. We can, for example, say that SOME waves (ie, photons) also are particles, since 'wave' is intermediate in extension between 'photon' and 'particle', but we can't incorporate this distinction in a statement about photons, since the extension of 'photon' is smaller than that of both 'wave' and 'particle'. The extension of the concept we explain must be intermediate between the concepts we use to explain it. Instead, the correct expression is that a photon is NEITHER a particle nor a wave, since it does not have any erroneous connotations, but leaving the photon unexplained.

The correct statement about reality is thus that it is neither pattern nor process, thus leaving reality unexplained. This statement excludes the existence of something like Higg's particle, although it would have explained reality if it indeed had been a particle, which it can't be because it would have meant that a particle is a wave. There is thus no Higg's particle, although Higg's particle-ists claim to almost having found it.Never will we cross the boundary between knowledge and belief.