David Peat

ThreeFROM OBJECT TO PROCESSWe are creatures of nature. Wecan’t always live in a world of dreams, paradoxes, axiomatic mathematics,and uncertainties. If, from time to time, we have our head in theclouds, our feet should always be planted firmly on the ground. If welive in a high rise in the midst of a great city, we should never forgetthat our distant origins lay in grassy plains, rivers and streams, forestsand deserts, oceans and mountains.Our bodies are formed of matter. We require matter, in the form ofair, food, and drink, in order to live. This material world is the oneinalienable certainty of all life. In many of the world’s religions it issymbolized by what has been called the World Tree, whose crownreaches up to heaven while its roots descend deeply toward the centerof the earth. This tree is also an image of individual human life, a lifethat aspires to the transcendent, numinous, and spiritual by virtue ofits secure foundation within the earth.But our understanding of this stuff of the world was radicallytransformed by quantum theory. Chairs and tables dissolved into an52