The Certainty and Heroism of Open-Mindedness

By: Gerald Reilly

Recognising understanding:

“Twenty years ago, we thought we knew all we wanted to know; now, we know almost nothing.” (Sir Bernard Lovell, 2012, during his last recorded interview.)

Neither Newton nor Lovell are making admissions of defeat. Rather, declarations of open-mindedness, open-enquiry and paradoxically, statements of certainty.

Lovell was responsible for the construction and operation of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope; this instrument detected helical radio waves spiralling through space. Knowledge spirals rather than accumulates; understanding is enhanced when recognising temporary limits.

Clutching to a finality labelled, ‘the truth’, indicates how little we grasp. Heroism is to be recognised wherever there is the courage to remain open-minded; to question; to be willing to begin again. Not, in claiming the conquest of a summit of ‘the truth’ and descending into an illusory comfort zone.

The certainty of open-mindedness is that each answer generates new questions, each discovery generates something of the great ocean of unknown. Neither relativism nor scepticism but rather, recognising how understanding develops.

winding stairs

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The Staircase and its limits: Freemasons are grown-ups playing at being stonemasons who, are in the process of constructing allegorical temples.

Classically, a temple is a building to accommodate local administration within an empire or kingdom; the spring of its civic and civil enactment.

Masonic lodges are allegorical temples for the dissemination of understanding from which springs both the civic and civil engagement to build a better world. Perhaps since King Solomon, there has been a memic superiority of the stonemasons trade and this, reinforced with cathedral building in medieval Europe.

It became assimilated within the policies, procedures and practice of the cultural phenomenon known as, speculative freemasonry: a celebration of the ethos of skilled workmen.

DVD the ascent of man

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However, artisanal rivalries are inconsequential. In his iconic, The Ascent of Man, Dr Jacob Bronowski proposes: “The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”

Perhaps now we would say, the hand is the cutting edge of the ability to think and learn, cognitivity.

The proposition is that dexterity and cognitivity developed together through developing each other. This, in an ever-ramifying expression of cultural possibilities; not by specific changes but rather, in the process of change itself. (See Palimpsest, Matt Battles.)

Is there an ocean of truth for Newton to discover? There may well be a boundless ocean of understanding in which to humbly step. Might we understand from Lovell that knowledge is partial and transient.

Bronowski uses ‘ascent’ figuratively to describe sapiens moving in a series of changes .

A set or series of steps or stages is a staircase which enables changing from one space to another; staircases can be either straight or winding. Freemasonry uses the winding staircase of King Solomon’s Temple (1Kings 6v8) to symbolise progress in the research of nature and science.

Masonic ritual claims the winding staircase alludes to the Liberal Arts and Sciences. The first three steps are the language-based liberal arts: grammar; rhetoric; and, logic.

The four sciences: arithmetic, pure number; geometry, number in space; music, number in time; and, astronomy, number in spacetime.

The Pythagorean discovery of musical harmony emerging from mathematical patterns and proportions suggest that knowledge has rhythm, that understanding resonates rather than accumulates.

Music, as number in time, provides a particular insight into the symbolism of a winding staircase and much beyond, helical turns.

A staircase remains bound to a fixed geometry leading to a reachable summit of ‘truth’ upon which to plant a flag of certainty. Such is the geometry of closure, of final answers, an illusory certainty.

Not the heroic certainty of open-mindedness and open-enquiry. Destination rather than resonance; to conquer rather than with which to align.

A straight staircase allows sight of an apparent destination; the use of a spiral staircase requires heroism to make a turn at a time.

helix

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The helix as recursive emergence: A winding staircase describes a helical space. To move beyond mere ascent, we must embrace emergence, as that of a butterfly from a chrysalis. The model of helical space offers this as the continuous process of change itself.

Unlike the staircase, the helix is not merely structural, it is generative. It spirals through time, returning not to the same point but to an iteration thereof. The helix transmits recursion, memory, and transformation. Not simple ascent but rather; revisiting, reframing, and reimagining. Each helical turn is a moment of reflection, a synthesis of past and future.

Here certainty and open-mindedness unite: the helix is certain of its form: recursive, iterative, spiralling but openly in a journey of change. The helix does not conquer truth, it engages with uncertainty as its method, not as an obstacle. This spiral form is not an abstract: it is encoded in life itself.

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Consider through a helical lens, Darwin’s theory of evolution. Nature is framed by selection, a mechanism of competitive filtering, differential survival through adapting to environmental change.

However, if reframed as iteration, it becomes a process of continual modulation, through recursive cycles of variation, feedback, and re-expression.

Each generation does not simply replace the last; it carries forward genetic memory while introducing variation which is spiralling into new adaptive possibilities.

Natural history can be seen as a generative unfolding; an adaptive rhythm; a vibration; a frequency in which each helical turn carries the memory of the past and its potential.

The double helix of DNA embodies this architecture of biological memory; recursive, self-replicating and, iterating across generations.

It records survival not as conquest but as adaptive modulation, refinement, through variation. Perhaps ‘natural selection’ can be understood as iteration. Cognitivity spirals through history, the hand that etched symbols in Lascaux caves returns with a finger-tip on a touchscreen.

Throughout sapiens’ developmental journey, dexterity and cognitivity have been intertwined in Bronowski’s “cutting edge” of cultural change, a choreography of genes and memes.

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Understanding as Resonance: The helix unites biology and culture in a principle of recursive iteration. DNA and human understanding develop, not through linear accumulation but rather, through cycles of variation, testing, and refinement.

A helix is more than structure; it resonates in a frequency of enquiry: understanding emerges through an openness to assimilate, an interplay of ideas.

Knowledge is not a fixed edifice but rather, a living process. This resonance introduces tempo to the helix, the beat beneath Bronowski’s hand, the rhythm within Lovell’s humility, the music of Newton’s ocean: the scientific methodology of music as number in time.

Rather than generating a paralysis of despair, each helical turn opens new possibilities. Through this recursive process is generated the heroic certainty of open-mindedness and open-enquiry. To be openminded is not surrender but rather, is a renewal.

The helix symbolizes this perpetual quickening: not a ladder to a fixed truth but a spiral of inquiry resonating with possibility. As the spiral continues, understanding is enhanced; heroism is the courage to align with, rather than resist, this endless unfolding.

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Music as number in time is indicated in a fugue, a single musical subject spirals through multiple voices, keys, and transformations. Each return is both recognition and discovery: the theme simultaneously familiar and renewed.

The fugue doesn’t ascend to a climax of truth; it generates understanding through recursive variation. Knowledge as resonance rather than conquest is where understanding emerges not from reaching an endpoint but from the spiralling process of change itself. Bach’s last fugue remains unfinished.

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Reimagining the Allegorical Temple: The ubiquitous helix appears at the basis of every scale. The String theory proposition is for the fundamental constituents of the universe being as vibrating strings, the cosmos as resonance as music at the quantum level.

DNA encodes biological memory in its double helix. Electromagnetic waves spiral through space. Galaxies wheel in spiral arms. And understanding itself spirals through recursive iteration.

In this light, we can reimagine Freemasonry’s allegorical temple not as a static edifice but as a living helix, a spiral of civic and civil engagement. The Liberal Arts and Sciences, once arranged as steps, now become variations, vibrations, in an ongoing process.

The liberal art of grammar is the consensus enabling communication; rhetoric, for the modulation of expression; and, logic, the embodiment of expression.

Being the scientific methodology of music as number in time, understanding is generated in a rhythmical unfolding.

Is a temple frozen music? Life within or without a temple is never still and thus, temple building is never completed but rather, in a continuous process of adaptation.

The helix continually reframes as civic and civil engagement. Civic enactment is not a fixed obligation but rather, recursive participation, a spiral of contribution, reflection, and renewal.

Civil engagement transcends superficial politeness to become a rhythm of coexistence in the shared process of becoming.

The allegorical temple transforms into a helix of on-going enhanced citizenship where, understanding is co-generated through dialogue and co-participation.

Dexterity and cognitivity combine to generate experience: call it consciousness if you must.

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