The Field-Being Worldview—Substantialism and the
Non-substantialistic Turn

By Lik Kuen Tong

The world is not an assemblage of independent, substantial entities; nor is it reducible to a determinate totality of atomic facts. It is rather a Great Flow or Great Ocean of Becoming which owes its reality to the perpetual self-definition and re-definition of power concrescence. The worldhood of the world is not predicated on a big chunk of matter contained and spread over in a receptacle of absolute time and absolute space, but is described by the temporalization of the Great Flow grounded on an all-encompassing field and matrix of energy, experience, and meaning—the fundamental strains of power concrescence out of which all things are made. What is primordially given in our field-apperceptive experience is never a substantial array of static and inert beings, but is an incessant process of activity forming a dynamic plenum or continuum of multi-leveled and multi-dimensional web of trans-differential configurations, emergent characters arising from the complexification of the power strains, which refuses to be objectified into definite, exhaustibly divisible, and clearly and distinctly demarcated wholes and isolated, mutually external individuals. Strictly speaking, there are no "beings" or "things" at all conceived as absolutely self-identical and self-contained entities. From the Field-Being perspective, shared by the dominant traditions of Far Eastern philosophy and the non-substantialist orientations in twentieth century science and contemporary Western thought, the notion of an unchanging substrate or "thing-in-itself" conceived as an isolated subject detachable from its predicable actions, attributes and relations, is a philosophical fiction, a conceptual construction or fabrication of the mind which has no real basis other than the vital-rational demand for simplification and expediency, ultimately dictated by the necessity of human survival and control. The truth is, nothing is self-sufficient or merely itself without reference to other things in the universe—or, as we would put it, there is no being other than field-being.

In the Field-Being universe, every appearance or manifestation is a functional determination of empowered activity. More exactly, it is multi-facial effect of power concrescence procured by the complexification of energy, experience, and meaning, the power strains forming the trans-differential web or fabric of the dynamic plenum. While “energy,” in the language of Field-Being, names the pro-creative efficacy of power, experience and meaning pertain, respectively, to the topological in-touchness and in-formational illumination of empowered activity. To experience is to be in touch—directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, across the topological field of power concrescence. And whatever is illuminated in the experiential process of concrescent tactility, that is, the in-formation of emergent characters that are felt, perceived or understood, is a determination of meaning. Thus conceived, energy, experience and meaning are inseparably intertwined in the complexification of power concrescence, upon which the concrete constitution of the dynamic plenum depends. Pro-creative efficacy, concrescence tactility and in-formational illumination require each other and mediate each other; they are the three principal elements in the field-reflexive articulation of the trans-differential web or fabric. Here in the Field-Being scheme, the perennial conception of Being, Truth, and Becoming can be unambiguously formulated, or rather reformulated. For what is Being but the presencing of empowered activity, apart from which there is nothing—nothing at all? And what is Truth in the primordial sense but the self-revelation of Being, the process wherein the dynamic plenum reveals itself to itself? But there can be no experience of Being and Truth except from the standpoint of a percipient subject in process of Becoming, that is, in the self-definition of power concrescence. It is in the process of becoming—or what we call the “diremptive event”—that we are topologically situated in the bosom of Being and Truth.

The terms “diremption,” “diremptive event” and “diremptive function” are used here to designate the process and reality of individuation or differentiation in Field-Being. Field-Being cosmology is centered on the diremption of the dynamic plenum whereby field individuals—also termed transfinite subjects—emerge as worldly existents in the self-definition of power concrescence. What is to be noted immediately is that field individuals or transfinite subjects are not independent, self-identical substances, but are more or less enduring and transitory centers of empowered activity generated or procured by the field-reflexive articulate action of the trans-differential matrix. The birth of a field individual or transfinite subject begins with the original givenness and topological occupation of a concentrated manifold of power concrescence. This is the “vital matter”—an aesthetic plasma of energy, experience, and meaning—determining the primordial constitution of a worldly existent. It is the fielded substance of a life form broadly understood. In the Field-Being cosmological scheme, the ordinarily recognized “beings,” “things,” or “objects” that appear on the theater of conscious experience are not themselves field individuals, but are the surface phenomena of power concrescence, emergent characters of becoming woven by the vital force of empowered activity involving the trans-differential co-dependent participation of a multiplicity of enduring centers or transfinite subjects. Just as the ripples and waves that arise on the surface of an ocean are generated by the internal movement and dynamic conditions of the ocean acting upon itself, so the emergence of field individuals and their apparent or manifested characters is a field-topological affair, being a holistic act of the diremptive function—an internal movement of the dynamic plenum in its field-reflexive undivided wholeness. A field individual, which arises originally as a concentrated manifold of power concrescence in a diremptive event of individuation, is not a mechanical part in a cosmic machine but a dynamic aspect of the field-topological order integral to the undivided reality of the plenum. It follows that while every field individual or transfinite subject is unique by virtue of the singularity of its primordial givenness and of its topological locus in the plenum field, it is also hopelessly bounded up with other worldly existents situated in all directions in the trans-differential web or fabric. Uniqueness and relatedness are, in other words, but the two sides of the same underlying reality. This inseparability of uniqueness and relatedness which underlies the notion of the world as a trans-differential web and fabric of field individuals is the backbone of Field-Being discourse, in which there is no rigid conception of identity or essence possible. From the Field-Being standpoint, reality is essentially fluid and ambiguous: nothing has a rigid identity. The trans-differential fabric admits no simple characterization and categorical classification except as an intellectual expediency of experiential organization.

In the final analysis, the history of civilized thought, as we see it, is simply a history of the trans-differential opposition and mutual adaptation between the substantialist and the non-substantialist approach to reality, and not, as the Marxists would have it, a battle field between materialism and idealism. Since the substantialization of the world is a requirement and necessity inherent in human life, substantialism is more than a special case of non-substantialism. In fact, the recognition and appropriation of substantialism is essential to the non-substantialist outlook.

In many forms and disguises, the trans-differential opposition between substantialism and non-substantialism is as old as civilized thought. Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to say that it defines the very meaning of philosophical wisdom. But while the “trans-differential problem” (as we may so designate it for the sake of convenience) constitutes the inherent problem of philosophy from the very beginning, it only came up vividly in the forefront of intellectual consciousness since the late nineteen century. For the century which follows is a century that witnesses the rise of field-being thinking and the collapse of all rigid identities and dichotomies.

The emergence and pre-eminence of field-being or the field concept of being is undoubtedly the most important feature of twentieth century thought. One encounters its applications both in science and in philosophy. In the scientific context, the quantum field theory in mathematical physics (which combines relativity theory with quantum mechanics) and the Gestalt theory in psychology are, of course, among the most notable examples, although the field concept is no less prevalent in life science and the social sciences. In philosophy, field thinking is dominant in the thoughts of Nietzsche, Bergson, James, Dewey, Whitehead and Heidegger, Derrida and Foucault—to name only the most obvious. Indeed, the field conception of being may turn out to be the most advantageous vantage point in the study of contemporary thought.

Intellectual historians have made much of the so-called "linguistic turn" in contemporary philosophy. While its importance cannot be doubted, its true nature and status may still be debated. It is our conviction, however, that if one may speak of a depth structure in twentieth thinking, the linguistic turn may yet remain a surface phenomenon. For lying deeper than the linguistic turn is the "Non-Substantialistic Turn”—a far more pervasive and decisive movement that has constituted the one thread going through the various major strands of contemporary thinking: from quantum field physics to holographic cosmology, from process philosophy to system theory, from deep ecology to green peace, from structuralism to deconstruction, from critical theory to gender studies, from existentialism to hermeneutics, and so on. What then is the meaning and significance of the Non-Substantialistic Turn? What bearing does it have on the future of philosophy? And on the comparative study of philosophy in the global age, in particular, on the philosophical dialogue between East and West and across all cultural traditions? These and other related questions are what define the theoretical perspective of the field-being thinker or philosopher.