Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘continuous’ functions as a term of profound ontological consequence rather than mere descriptive convenience. The passages reveal a sustained tension between continuity as the primordial substrate of reality and discreteness as a secondary, derivative phenomenon. McGilchrist, drawing on quantum field theory and Bergson, argues that underlying unity is fundamentally continuous — particles being ripples in continuous fields — while discreteness emerges secondarily from that ground. Bergson’s dictum that ‘all change, all movement’ is ‘absolutely indivisible’ anchors a process-philosophy in which continuity constitutes the very essence of duration, time, and motion. Simondon complicates this by inverting the hierarchy: for him, the discontinuous is ontologically prior, and continuity emerges as a functional equivalence of sufficiently disorganized discontinuity. Von Franz and Hillman approach continuity through psychological development: feeling-time, unlike clock-time, is organized in qualitative clusters, yet continuity remains ‘essential for feeling development.’ McGilchrist synthesizes these polarities through Schelling’s stream image, insisting we require ‘continuity and discontinuity together.’ The theological tradition, as represented by John of Damascus, deploys the continuous/discontinuous distinction to adjudicate the natures of Christ. Across all these registers, the term marks the boundary between analytic decomposition and living process — the point at which reduction destroys what it seeks to understand.
We need, then, continuity and discontinuity together – to ride the twin steeds.
McGilchrist argues that neither pure continuity nor pure discreteness suffices; reality and consciousness require their complementary interplay, figured through Schelling’s stream image of resistance within flow.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
We need, then, continuity and discontinuity together – to ride the twin steeds.
A duplicate passage confirming McGilchrist’s central claim that the continuous and discontinuous are co-constitutive rather than opposed absolutes.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous, fluidlike objects spread throughout space … The objects that we call fundamental particles are not fundamental. Instead they are ripples of continuous fields.
McGilchrist, via Tong, establishes that modern physics grounds discreteness in underlying continuous fields, making continuity the deeper ontological stratum.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
All particles are waves in a universally distributed continuous shared field that envelops each and all of us: values in the field change with space and time.
The continuous field is presented as the universal ground of existence, dissolving the particle/wave dichotomy into a single unifying phenomenon.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The discontinuous is first with respect to the continuous. This is why the study of individuation, which grasps the discontinuous qua discontinuous, has a very profound ontological and epistemological value.
Simondon inverts the standard hierarchy: discontinuity is ontologically primary, and continuity appears only as a functional equivalence within disorganized discontinuous systems, grounding his theory of individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
We shall think of all change, all movement, as being absolutely indivisible … such a division can apply only to the representation, not to the entity itself, whose essence is change, motion, flow.
Via Bergson, McGilchrist argues that continuous flow is the irreducible essence of duration; analytic division into parts destroys the very thing it attempts to describe.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
one static element stacked on another will never result in anything that has duration … the essence of duration is to flow.
Bergson’s argument, rehearsed by McGilchrist, that static parts cannot constitute continuous flow, making duration the foundational category of lived reality.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
James saw the entire universe as a seamless flow: ‘its members interdigitate with their next neighbours in manifold directions, and there are no clean cuts between them anywhere.’
James’s ‘stream of consciousness’ is cited as evidence that both cosmic reality and subjective awareness share a continuous, non-jointed structure.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
an equilibrium to life that must constantly be disturbed and re-established … the acrobat can balance on a tightrope only by virtue of its constant capacity for disequilibrium.
Schelling’s principle of dynamic equilibrium, mediated through water imagery, shows continuity as a living balance maintained through perpetual local discontinuity.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the motion of a particle is continuous but not differentiable … the global evolution of the matter-field over time … cannot be treated as an infinitely divisible series of states.
Feynman and Bergson converge in showing that continuous motion resists mathematical decomposition into differential parts, preserving the integrity of flow.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Feeling time is organized in clusters, more like an organic growth … thus is continuity so essential for feeling development.
Von Franz and Hillman distinguish feeling-time from clock-time, arguing that psychological continuity is qualitative and organic, essential to the maturation of the feeling function.
, Lectures on Jung’s Typology, 2013supporting
If any one asks concerning the natures of the Lord if they are brought under a continuous or discontinuous quantity … The natures of the Lord are united without confusion so far as regards subsistence, and they are divi-
John of Damascus deploys the continuous/discontinuous distinction as a theological instrument for parsing the two natures of Christ, showing the term’s extension into metaphysical theology.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
the disorganized dis-continuous is equivalent to the continuous; it is functionally continuous … the aspect of continuity can present itself as a particular case of discontinuous reality.
Simondon demonstrates that continuity is not a basic given but an emergent functional appearance of sufficiently disorganized discontinuous systems, subordinating continuity to discontinuity ontologically.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
there is no rigid organic form as a bearer of the processes of life; rather there is a flow of processes, manifesting itself in apparently persistent forms.
Von Bertalanffy’s formulation, cited by McGilchrist, extends the physics of continuous wave-dynamics into biology, where living forms are understood as persistent patterns in continuous process.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
atoms are node-points of a wave dynamic, so in biology there is no rigid organic form as a bearer of the processes of life; rather there is a flow of processes, manifesting itself in apparently persistent forms.
A duplicate passage confirming the analogy between physical and biological continuity: all apparent solidity resolves into continuous process.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The continuous energy spectrum of beta rays, discovered by J Chadwick in 1914, immediately raised difficult problems of theoretical interpretation.
Pauli’s historical account of beta-ray spectra illustrates how the discovery of a continuous (rather than discrete) energy distribution created a theoretical crisis, motivating the neutrino hypothesis.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994aside