Discreteness

Within the depth-psychology corpus and its allied philosophical literature, ‘discreteness’ emerges not as a simple property of bounded objects but as a secondary, derived, and often epistemologically fraught quality that stands in irreducible tension with continuity. The dominant voice in this debate is Iain McGilchrist, who draws on quantum field theory — particularly the work of David Tong and Art Hobson — to argue that discreteness is a product moulded from an underlying continuity: particles are ripples in fields, not self-subsistent atoms. This ontological subordination of the discrete to the continuous maps, for McGilchrist, onto the distinction between left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere modes of apprehension, where the left hemisphere carves the world into bounded, countable units while the right perceives flowing, interpenetrating wholes. Gilbert Simondon approaches the same polarity from a philosophy of individuation, arguing that discontinuity is ontologically prior to continuity at the level of physical individuation, yet insisting that the two are complementary aspects of a single relational reality rather than opposed substances. Wolfgang Pauli’s physicist perspective enters through his formalism of exclusion and field quantization. The core tension — whether discreteness is primitive or derivative, whether it is a feature of reality or of our mode of attending to it — runs through all these texts and renders the term a site of genuine interdisciplinary contest.

In the library 18 passages

the discreteness arises secondarily out of the continuity … the processes described by the theory mould discreteness from underlying continuity … continuity (the wave) with discreteness (the particle) within a single uniting phenomenon (the field).

McGilchrist, citing Tong and de Broglie, argues that discreteness is not foundational but is moulded from a more primitive continuity, and that the wave–particle duality reconciles both within the unifying concept of the field.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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the discreteness arises secondarily out of the continuity … the processes described by the theory mould discreteness from underlying continuity … continuity (the wave) with discreteness (the particle) within a single uniting phenomenon (the field).

Parallel passage in the alternate edition confirming that discreteness is ontologically secondary to the continuous field, and that both modes are held together in the field phenomenon.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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the tendency which tries to reduce the complexity of phenomena to the existence of simple elements indivisible, and capable of being counted … every attempt to disengage definite individual entities from the flux of natural phenomena as artificial … the need has been realised of effecting a synthesis of the two oppo

McGilchrist presents de Broglie’s historical account of the discrete–continuous opposition in physics as an ‘uncannily accurate’ description of the hemisphere difference, framing the synthesis of both as the central challenge of modern physics and psychology alike.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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a change in one discrete entity causing a change in another discrete entity sequentially (left hemisphere take), entanglement would no longer require faster than light communication over unlimited distances between particles.

McGilchrist aligns the model of discrete causally-sequenced entities with left-hemisphere processing, contrasting it with a right-hemisphere Gestalt-field view that dissolves the problem of non-local entanglement.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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a change in one discrete entity causing a change in another discrete entity sequentially (left hemisphere take), entanglement would no longer require faster than light communication over unlimited distances between particles.

Alternate-edition parallel: the discrete-entity model is identified with left-hemisphere sequential causation, and its transcendence in field-Gestalt thinking dissolves the paradox of quantum entanglement.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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The discontinuous can therefore manifest sometimes as continuous and sometimes as discontinuous according to whether it is organized or disorganized … the discontinuous is first with respect to the continuous … the study of individuation, which grasps the discontinuous qua discontinuous, has a very profound ontological and epistemological value.

Simondon reverses the usual priority, arguing that the discontinuous is ontologically prior to the continuous and that individuation — which is the genesis of the discrete — therefore carries the deepest ontological significance.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis

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A particle is a particle not insofar as it occupies a certain place spatially, but insofar as it only exchanges its energy with other supports of energy in a quantum manner. Discontinuity is a modality of relation.

Simondon redefines discreteness relationally: a particle’s individuality is not spatial boundedness but the quantum-discontinuous mode of its energy exchanges, making discontinuity a property of relation rather than substance.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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the increase of mass and energy makes the dynamic regime of the corpuscle tend toward the continuous when its speed tends toward the speed of light … Quantum Theory: Notion of the Elementary Physical Operation That Integrates the Complementary Aspects of the Continuous and the Discontinuous.

Simondon frames the quantum as the elementary operation that integrates discrete and continuous aspects, while noting that relativistic limits reveal an epistemological boundary to any complete account of individuation.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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quanta may overlap each other, nonetheless each one maintaining its separate identity. The field quantum ‘lives a life and dies a death of its own’ … In that way, it is more like an event within a temporal and spatial continuum.

McGilchrist draws on Brooks and Hobson to show that field quanta possess a qualified, relational discreteness — a separate identity within a continuous medium — making them events rather than things.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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quanta may overlap each other, nonetheless each one maintaining its separate identity. The field quantum ‘lives a life and dies a death of its own’ … In that way, it is more like an event within a temporal and spatial continuum.

Alternate-edition parallel: field quanta are characterized by a provisional, event-like discreteness embedded within continuity, undercutting the particle-as-solid-object picture.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself, since such a method often implies the loss of important properties of the system.

McGilchrist cites Planck’s holism to argue that discretizing a system into parts destroys emergent properties, linking the epistemological problem of discreteness to the pathology of reductive analysis.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself, since such a method often implies the loss of important properties of the system.

Parallel passage invoking Planck’s systemic holism as a counter to the left-hemisphere tendency to decompose the world into discrete, independently analysable units.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the individuation of the physical object is neither that of the pure discontinuous (like the rectangle or the square) nor that of the continuous … by introducing a quantum condition, which in fact diminishes the system’s veritable quantity of information.

Simondon locates psychical individuation between pure discreteness and pure continuity, using the quantum condition as an analogy for how a reduction of informational complexity can paradoxically enhance perceptual grasp of individuals.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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Classical corpuscular theory is articulated by classical energetic theory in the following manner, marking a privilege of continuity over discontinuity: an electron animated by a periodic movement of frequency v can continuously emit and absorb the electromagnetic radiation.

Simondon reconstructs the classical privileging of continuity over discreteness in energy exchange as the conceptual error that Planck’s quantum hypothesis corrected, giving the discrete a foundational relational status.

Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting

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A particle is a localised bounded object. It has edges, or perhaps, as some think, it is only a point … A field, on the other hand, is something that exists everywhere as a property of space.

McGilchrist uses Brooks’s contrast between the bounded, edged particle and the everywhere-present field to vivify the ontological difference between discrete and continuous modes of being.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside

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A particle is a localised bounded object. It has edges, or perhaps, as some think, it is only a point … A field, on the other hand, is something that exists everywhere as a property of space.

Alternate-edition parallel presenting the particle/field contrast as a choice about how to ‘perceive reality,’ foregrounding the epistemological dimension of discreteness.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside

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