Rather, I think it is fragile, it is broken up and annihilated in the flow of becoming. — SaugB

I agree that the traversed substance is broken up but I do not think it is annihilated. I think yellow traverses another thing to become orange and so on. So it is not annihilated but transformed i.e the 'orangeness' of red is still there.

But if you consider yellow as the initial stage and orange as the final stage then there are still transitory phases present. Then we cannot even consider orange as a fixed state.

Sounds like a transposition of Zeno's traversing half of a half of a half... distance with color.

If physics solves Zeno's paradox by pointing to the relationship between distance and time as measured for a moving object, then maybe we can apply it to a color continuum (or perceived changes in color states) in some way.

But if you consider yellow as the initial stage and orange as the final stage then there are still transitory phases present. Then we cannot even consider orange as a fixed state.

Yes, I agree. The way I see it, all processes involving becoming have a starting point and an end point, but with transitory phases in between. So yes, between yellow and orange, there would be many shades of darker yellow before we get to orange. But the problem is why does any process of becoming end where it end and not end before? For me, it has to be because of some fragility to the transitory phases, and not because they are 'elusive.' If we think in terms of the transitory phases being elusive, we are already not thinking along-with the process and only thinking-back once the process has ended.

As to your other point, I think it is really interesting that you think an entity in becoming is broken up but not annihilated. But even when we think that it is broken up and not completely annihilated, it is still hard to see how it participates in a flow of becoming as one single thing, which it has to be, because the entity that was yellow was one single thing and the entity it becomes, ie, a red entity, is also one single thing. So, it is one entity when it is yellow, and unless it breaks up when it is orange, and then reassembles to become red, it is difficult to see how yellow becomes red via any process.

Sounds like a transposition of Xeno's traversing half of a half of a half... distance with color.

If physics solves Xeno's paradox by pointing to the relationship between distance and time as measured for a moving object, then maybe we can apply it to a color continuum (or perceived changes in color states) in some way. — Nils Loc

Yes, now that you mention it, it does sound like Xeno's paradox! Physics probably does have an answer for this. I might need to think this through, but here's a response: I think the difference is that when we speak of the change of position of an arrow, like Xeno does, we get the sense that that arrow is impossible to locate at any one point in space. The arrow is, in other words, elusive. But I have been trying to think becoming in terms of the fragility, and not the elusive-ness, of the in-between. Maybe this means that in becoming one need not look for where the arrow is when one does not find it at the location it is supposed to be in. Rather, in becoming, one knows exactly that orange is supposed to be 'located' between yellow and red, but it is still not there, so it must have been destroyed in [or close to] the flow of becoming. And, if that is so, ie, as soon as you say something is destroyed between the two poles in a becoming, big problems emerge for the idea of becoming itself.

But, when 'this' becomes 'that,' it traverses something in between, such as when the color yellow becomes red it traverses orange. And whatever is traversed is not the end-point of that becoming, by definition. So, how do we attribute existence to that traversed thing — SaugB

Your example of color change reminds me of physical Phase Transition. The perceived shift in color is caused by a change in wavelength, and the gap "traversed" between one peak and another is insubstantial Time. Hence, those frequencies of on-off blinking (max/min; yes/no; something/nothing; positive/negative; hot/cold; energy/entropy; potential/actual) are increments of Planck Time. So there is no physical "substance" in between color states --- just the Potential for being, that I call Intention, Causation, Time in action.

However, Phase Transitions, such as water to ice, are assumed to result in intermediate physical forms. But scientists haven't been able to detect any "in between" substances". The H2O is still the same stuff, only its energy state and physical properties (functions) are different. So, I'm guessing that, like color phases, it all boils down to "on/off" or "being/non-being" or "something/nothing". And that digital "1/0" process is also found in Shannon's definition of "Information". So, what comes between the 1 and the 0? : Potential (the power to be, to exist).

Therefore, I agree that "all things flow", but the seemingly continuous process of causation and evolution is ultimately digital, or quantized as waves of maximum/minimum energy (100% -- 0%). And those change-causing waves are what we call "Energy", or what I call "Information" or "EnFormAction" in my thesis. But, don't worry if this unconventional notion doesn't make sense. It's based on my personal esoteric theory of Cosmic Information.

This is probably more than you asked for. But, in this post, I'm selfishly applying my hypothetical theory to your question about "Flow", which I hadn't considered previously. I apologize for intruding on your thread. :yikes:

Mind-Energy-Information : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page70.html

Planck Time : Planck units are not based on properties of any prototype object or particle (the choice of which is inherently arbitrary), but rather on only the properties of free space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

Everything starts out continuous and ends discrete. Even consciousness. You need a subconscious mind before you can awaken to your ego. The omega point of the universe is an Universal Absolute. Parmenides was right and Zeno (not with an X by the way) helped prove his point

Hence, those frequencies of on-off blinking (max/min; yes/no; something/nothing; positive/negative; hot/cold; energy/entropy; potential/actual) are increments of Planck Time. So there is no physical "substance" in between color states --- just the Potential for being, that I call Intention, Causation, Time in action. — Gnomon

It's cool, your thoughts were good to hear and I am thinking about them out loud here, although the terminology is quite new to me. So, one unit of Planck time [ie, one 'blink'] is something with nothing else in between, but just the "Potential for being," as you say? But is it not true that given there was a duration, no matter how short, between the hot entity staying hot and then becoming cold, something actual happened in that duration to that entity? If there is no becoming, ie, no process- and time- based based transformation from off to on or hot to cold, then what makes us say it is the same single entity that was once hot that now is cold, or off that now is on? Without becoming, would it not be two distinct entities that have the two phases? Your thoughts were very good food for thought for me, thanks!

Everything starts out continuous and ends discrete — Gregory

That's a really interesting philosophy. It seems, from your point, that the in-between phases in a supposed becoming are all a continuous part of the first point in a becoming, while the end point is an absolutely distinct point. Quite cool!

And apologies for getting Zeno's name wrong.

I like the way you said that. Did you know Stephen Hawking, in his no boundary hypothesis, put the continuous fundamentally prior in the formation of the universe? That is, time goes back through descending fractions but never has a first discrete start. To say what is south of the South Pole, you would have to be there and look up. For Hawking, the "up" is time fragmenting into space, into infinitesimals

But the problem is why does any process of becoming end where it end and not end before? For me, it has to be because of some fragility to the transitory phases, and not because they are 'elusive.' — SaugB

If you are talking about a flow, then it has a direction. It is approaching some destination by departing some place.

But that then already adds the presumption the flow is marked by an irreversibility. If the flow is a spinning on the spot or movement that wobbles back and forth, then the flow is cancelling itself out. A reversible flow becomes the effective absence of a flow. It becomes indistinguishable from what we might call stasis.

On the other hand, if a flow has a direction and that is made irreversible by marking some spot that it reached, then the symmetry of "becoming" is broken. We say a change has happened. An event occurred. That is now in the past. The change has become and is now a fact about being.

Now our marking some spot is an act that might merely interrupt a flow. If the flow was from yellow to orange to red, what was stopping it continuing on elsewhere, or instead reversing itself back to yellow before we had time to check?

Or if the flow comes to its own stop, what's that about? At most it says the flow, as a direction, has ceased to have that irreversible story. The flow now spins or jitters on the spot. It is what physics would call a harmonic oscillator. It is in a constant state of becoming still, but of the symmetrical kind where the differences aren't making an irreversible difference.

So the stopping and starting points might be something we arbitrarily impose on flows so as to make an irreversible measurement that allows us to describe the world in terms of directions and points or stages transversed,

And nature itself would seem to stop and start, depending on whether a flow was symmetric or asymmetric, oscillating or getting somewhere always different.

So a self-consistent metaphysics can be constructed from a pure story of "becoming" because a flow already has the contrasting possibilities of being either reversible or irreversible.

That has major implications for our physicalist model of time of course. It seems both like another "dimension" at the micro level - a symmetric and reversible direction - but also a flow with a generalised irreversible and asymmetric direction, the one marked by the thermodynamic arrow of entropy production at the macro scale of observation.

Time (and energy) symmetry is thus basic to being able to explain particle physics in terms of quantum harmonic oscillators, or stable spin states resulting from locally broken symmetries.

And thermodynamics is then basic to explaining a Cosmos that on the macroscale is evolving in a direction marked by its cooling and expansion. A journey that is irreversible even if it does eventually peter out in the indifferent stochastic symmetry of a generalised Heat Death at the "end of time".

So, how do we attribute existence to that traversed thing, ie, in our example, the orange between the yellow and the red? — SaugB

And how do we attribute existence to the moment in time at which that color exists? Does time flow in a continuum of instants? Or does it exist only in intervals? Bergson argued that time as we live it is in duration (durée réelle), and time for science is a matter of instants - allowing for the freezing of time for purposes of calculations, like instantaneous velocity. So the existence of "a traversed thing" is equivalent to an instant of time.

Peter Lynds had a paper published in the Foundations of Physics Letters some time back in which he proposed there are no instants of time. Some physicists thought his ideas were profound, while most others considered them rubbish. This discussion of time is analogous to dialectics concerning the existence of irrational numbers.

Peter Lynds had a paper published in the Foundations of Physics Letters some time back in which he proposed there are no instants of time. — jgill

The Planck scale gives us a pretty dialectical answer on the notion of instants and distance.

The Planck scale - in representing the shortest possible frequency of energy - arises at the point where spinning on the spot and moving in a direction have the same size. The quantum of action is defined by the first fundamental difference - the first beat of a wavelength. Or the possible distance transversed by a light-speed particle making a single rotation.

So the action starts from the point where symmetry and asymmetry, the reversible and the irreversible, have just become "a thing". The particle can go on spinning "on the spot", so sticks out as that part of the world which is just oscillating. And the particle can go on travelling in a direction that sticks out as that part of the world where the distance just keeps getting longer.

The Planck scale is the birth of the dialectical contrast between the reversible and the irreversible as an actualised physical reality.

So Bergson was right about durations. Or if we are to talk about point-like "instants", then we have to recognise that they must already have this internal dialectical structure. An instant already marks the point where irreversibility AND reversibility have just entered the world as "a thing".

And how do we attribute existence to the moment in time at which that color exists? Does time flow in a continuum of instants? Or does it exist only in intervals? Bergson argued that time as we live it is in duration (durée réelle), and time for science is a matter of instants - allowing for the freezing of time for purposes of calculations, like instantaneous velocity. So the existence of "a traversed thing" is equivalent to an instant of time. — jgill

You raise interesting points; it leads me to think [or at least speculate] that a lot might depend on the specific type of process or machine that is causing the becoming. What I mean is that, for a quite sophisticated machine, maybe we are able to see the becoming for quite a long duration such that we see the orange phase between the yellow and red throughout certain moments in time before it gives way to red. So, my answer is to say that "the traversed thing" is not necessarily a point in a continuum of some kind, because one can often see some traversed thing as a single traversed thing, equivalent to an instant of time as you say, depending on such things like the speed of the process of becoming, even though one cannot see all traversed things in any becoming. I am trying to say that some of the traversed things are not elusive at all, as points on a continuum might be thought to be, but that they are fragile, and cannot participate in the flow of becoming after they have arisen. The thought is not about whether a traversed thing is 'missed by calculation' on the one hand or 'properly calculable' on the other, for it is completely there to see, completely visible and concrete, like the color orange in a yellow-to-red becoming done by a sophisticated machine...but why does orange 'give way' even after it has become visible in a particular yellow-to-red flow of becoming?

We sense discrete things within the flow of the continuous. If the past exists eternally and the machine doing the moving is in the future (as Aristotle thought), then the continuous, again, is first (prior). So this idea is in ancient and modern physics. How the continuous can form the discrete is what this thread is really about I think

But even when we think that it is broken up and not completely annihilated, it is still hard to see how it participates in a flow of becoming as one single thing, which it has to be, because the entity that was yellow was one single thing and the entity it becomes, ie, a red entity, is also one single thing. So, it is one entity when it is yellow, and unless it breaks up when it is orange, and then reassembles to become red, it is difficult to see how yellow becomes red via any process. — SaugB

If you are asking how it happens, then it it is difference in energies of electro-magnetic waves that cause colors to change.I think you are also viewing red as a final stage but it can also be a transitory stage. Everything is ever changing.
As Heraclitus said: "You cannot step into the same river twice."

...but why does orange 'give way' even after it has become visible in a particular yellow-to-red flow of becoming? — SaugB

But colour experience is a psychological construct. It is a reading we impose on nature.

So yellow is produced by the brain as a measure of the relative absence of "blue" wavelength light, and an even balance of "red" and "green" wavelength energies. It is a complicated judgement.

Then orange as a hue is a reddish-yellow. Or yellowish-red. It is a further judgement about a "position" on the spectrum of "colour experience" the brain is constructing.

The physical world itself is just wavelengths that are shorter or longer - contracted or stretched - in some continuous fashion. Or at least that is our scientific conception of the world.

So the whole business of primary hues and secondary blends is a bad analogy for talking about the continuity of change.

What happens when you ask the story of how yellow turns into blue? Why does it have to pass through white to get there?

Blue certainly doesn't look like whitish yellow, or even blackish yellow. Cripes, blackish-yellow doesn't even look blackish-yellow. It looks brown!

So colour experience might get the question going. However it potentially also very misleading as colour experience has quite a weird dimensionality once you delve into the psychophysics.

It could be even more interesting to draw an analogy to the color magenta. Magenta is the color that comes after violet and before red. But it doesn't actually exist on the electromagnetic spectrum. There is no magenta wavelength.

Heh sorry I'm mostly going off on a tangent here ... not sure I really contributed anything to the conversation.

The Planck scale is the birth of the dialectical contrast between the reversible and the irreversible as an actualised physical reality. So Bergson was right about durations. Or if we are to talk about point-like "instants", then we have to recognise that they must already have this internal dialectical structure. An instant already marks the point where irreversibility AND reversibility have just entered the world as "a thing". — apokrisis

This certainly gives Planck time a new spin in my thinking. I've assumed it had more mundane characteristics in terms of light traveling a tiny distance and the four universal physical constants. I assume your first sentence above refers to an inability to measure below certain limiting dimensions.

I've assumed it had more mundane characteristics in terms of light traveling a tiny distance and the four universal physical constants. — jgill

The three Planck constants (Boltzmann's k reduces to the others) anchor everything, as Okun's Cube shows.

So the reason the Planck scale has the Planck temperature is that the Planck distance covered at the speed of light, and hence marking the Planck time, gives you an event with the energy density of the Planck frequency. :grin:

I assume your first sentence above refers to an inability to measure below certain limiting dimensions. — jgill

Yes. I'm treating the Planck scale as the cut-off. Obviously we don't really know what goes on. But we have some pretty good arguments.

I think you are also viewing red as a final stage but it can also be a transitory stage. Everything is ever changing. — philosopher004

I completely agree with this. But when I was thinking of this, I was actually thinking of a machine that stops the process of becoming at red. I think you mean that in nature generally red can also be a transitory stage, which is true, but I do wonder about the 'less-than-everything' field here.

As for the scientific explanation, I know there has to be some explanation as to how one color becomes another color. But I think my point was trying to go more into the why: why does the transitory stage between two colors give way, philosophically speaking? To me, the idea that a transitory stage is elusive is not very persuasive. So, I began to think of the entity at the transitory phase as fragile, broken up and apart, no matter how subtle the flow of becoming in which it is.

But it doesn't actually exist on the electromagnetic spectrum. There is no magenta wavelength. — Bird-Up

Thanks for raising this point. But I feel like you are thinking of becoming as the process between two prominent end points [for eg, two colors with wave lengths] and an elusive middle [eg, magenta]. I would say that even if all points were well-known, even if, let's say, a machine in charge of becoming made an entity magenta in color for years and years, when it finally becomes some other color, how are we to think of what happened to that magenta? It is difficult to say it was elusive, for it was there for years and years, so it is almost as if some stronger way of understanding the process is needed. So, I would say that any middle point in a becoming gets broken apart in the flow of becoming, as it is fragile, not elusive. Even if magenta is there for years and years, once that entity becomes some other color, we must come to see it as actually fragile.

What happens when you ask the story of how yellow turns into blue? Why does it have to pass through white to get there? — apokrisis

If we think that yellow does not have to pass through some other color to get to blue, I think we may have the issue of whether we are dealing with the same entity when we say "it was yellow" and "it is blue." In my mind it is even more difficult to think of a continuity between a yellow entity and a blue entity if there is no becoming in between that made that yellow entity that blue entity. If something yellow became something blue, then I can say one single thing changed color. If, however, I try to think of a 'digital' type of shift from yellow to blue, without becoming, it is almost as if there are two distinct entities there, one yellow and the other blue. We can say, "It was yellow. It is blue." but are we really talking about the same "it" in both those sentences? Wouldn't their difference in color be the defining mark that would make them different entities? I don't know..I think will need to think more about this, but thanks for raising your points.

We can say, "It was yellow. It is blue." but are we really talking about the same "it" in both those sentences? Wouldn't their difference in color be the defining mark that would make them different entities? — SaugB

The 'it' in your t-shirt case might refer to the t-shirt.I think they can't be different entities because only their color changed but their essence of being the same t-shirt is not lost.

When we view the human body, metabolism occurs to keep us from dying.In other worlds metabolism(change) is helping us to live(constant).I think the flux is necessary to maintain the uniformness of the universe.

But is it not true that given there was a duration, no matter how short, between the hot entity staying hot and then becoming cold, something actual happened in that duration to that entity? — SaugB

In my hypothesis, that intermediate "duration" between energy peaks and valleys is not Time, but Timelessness ( a state that cannot be measured in Planck units). Again, that notion is too complex, and too far above my pay grade to explain in a forum post. And the math necessary to pin it down is beyond my untrained abilities. Besides, these Ideal notions are merely incidental to the purpose of my thesis, which is to understand, in a layman's overview, how & why the Real world works as it does : to dispel the mysteries.

Anyway, I would say that the gap between waves of energy is not "actual", but Potential. In my not-yet-fully-formed thesis, the default state of BEING is timeless, eternal, Potential. So, our space-time temporal Actual world is an exception to the rule. Hence, it didn't just randomly happen as a matter of course. Instead, it was Caused by Intention or Purpose (which implies the power to produce change). Again, I don't expect that "nonsense" to be understandable from the current perspective of empirical Science. It's just a way for me to think about notions that are beyond Real, beyond Good & Evil, beyond Hot & Cold.

Regarding the problem of Continuity, if you look closely at Causation, as Hume did, there is no obvious empirical connection between the Cause and the Effect. So, I would guess that the Link is Mental, and part of the meta-physical process of En-formation, or EnFormAction. Those are terms coined specifically for my thesis of Enformationism. And you won't find them in the dictionary.

BEING is static Potential, until an intentional decision to act is made. So, the result of causal Entention is dynamic "Becoming". However, I wouldn't think too hard about such out-of-this-world concepts --- it might warp your mind, and make your brain smoke --- as it has with mine. :joke:

EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (metaphorically : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility : BEING.
AKA --- The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

I think of that traversed thing as not so much elusive ... Rather, I think it is fragile — SaugB

I think it would be both correct and incorrect to say that the flow of the universe is elusive. Let's use the night sky as an example.

If someone set out to prove that stellar constellations truly exist independent of human perception, they would ultimately fail. Even if you try to break the logic down into smaller and smaller transitional steps, the smallest step is still a leap of faith that fails to truly connect concept-A to concept-B. There's no inherent characteristic of stars that demands you must connect them together into something called "Orion's Belt". So in that sense, the flow of star constellations is forever elusive. They simply don't exist objectively.

On the other hand, it would also be wrong to claim that the night sky is completely arbitrary. People do see shapes in the stars, even when they are perceiving the shapes through different (and independent) cultural lenses. So why does this happen? What is the mechanism that somehow unites our perception into a common end result? I would say it comes from the fact that we are all using the same tools to investigate the appearance of the stars. Specifically, we all have a standard-issue set of human eyes that create our perception of what the night sky looks like. So the functionality of the human eye itself determines what shapes will appear significant to us. For example, the positioning/brightness of Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka (the stars that make up Orion's Belt) has appeared significant to many people over the years, even if the constellation is labeled by different names. In this sense, the flow of a stellar constellation is not elusive. There is a standard by which the logic moves from point A to point B. It would not be accurate to call flow "fragile", because the structure of the human eye is not fragile; we tend to keep developing the same human eyes, one generation after another. Of course, evolution dictates that the functionality of the human eye is ultimately a work-in-progress, always changing slightly. But bringing up that point just changes the time frame: when is flow fragile? Over the course of a lifetime it seems to remain stable. Or is flow ultimately fragile because it remains a moving target? Both points would seem significant to me, each in their own way.

We have heard the philosophy that everything flows [eg, Heraclitus]. But, when 'this' becomes 'that,' it traverses something in between, — SaugB

Your question sounds like Zeno's Paradox. He assumed that the "gap" traversed between any two steps in a race (movement in space & time) is infinitely divisible. Hence, motion (and Time) is impossible. If so, are our experiences of those distinctions illusory? Are we just imagining Space & Time? Is Change even possible?

Max Planck resolved his own paradoxical situation, in the measurement of minute quantum level increments, by defining the smallest possible increments in the Real world. Hence, he excluded the unreal Ideal notions of Eternity and Infinity. Idealistic Mathematicians noted that, if you continue dividing that "gap" into smaller pieces, they eventually become infinitely small, hence irrelevant to the measure of space or time. Thus, trivializing the paradox. But Realistic physicists took a different approach and observed that if you can measure the beginning & end points of the race, the total of all intermediate steps (gaps, increments) must be finite.

Therefore, like Einstein, I suspect that the solution to the stated problem depends on your perspective --- it's all relative. The paradox results from the assumption of Infinities in the Real world. But the physical solution is found, only if you ignore idealistic Infinity. So, are asking for an Ideal answer, or a Real answer? :nerd:

Zeno's Paradox Solved??? : https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/05/05/this-is-how-physics-not-math-finally-resolves-zenos-famous-paradox/#3c8aa0b633f8

PS__"Flow" may be an interpretation, in the mind of the observer, of seemingly sequential sensations. So, the way Flow feels (continuous vs discontinuous) depends on your attitude, Realistic or Idealistic. Either/Or Paradoxes like this can keep puzzled philosophers occupied for thousands of years.

Therefore, like Einstein, I suspect that the solution to the stated problem depends on your perspective --- it's all relative. The paradox results from the assumption of Infinities in the Real world. But the physical solution is found, only if you ignore idealistic Infinity. So, are asking for an Ideal answer, or a Real answer? :nerd: — Gnomon

I don't know if I was thinking of sub-dividing something to reach something extremely small, such that the question of infinity is raised. Rather, I was thinking of why, in any process we call 'becoming,' where there are at least three phases, with two end-points and a middle point, the middle phase gets passed over or traversed. Is it because it is elusive, as if in a sense it was never there? I do not think this line is convincing, because you can clearly see the middle phase in some processes of becoming. While you are right that a lot of the middle phases in any becoming are elusive, and cannot be seen, because, in a sense, they are infinitely small, I believe that even when some middle phase is very evident and visible, but it gets traversed, there has to be some explanation as to why it gets traversed. The explanation that the middle phase is so small that it is Idealistically infinite only works for some entities in the middle phase but not all of them. That was why I was proposing that the middle phases which are visible and evident, that we clearly see and know as not being the final end-point, are not elusive but fragile, that is, some phase or entity which gets broken apart in the very flow of that becoming. And the problem is, if that middle phase is broken up in becoming, then what really becomes the final phase? If yellow has a clear orange as a middle phase, but that orange gets broken up in the flow of becoming, what really becomes red [assuming the whole chain of becoming is yellow-to-orange-to-red]? This is why the notion of becoming itself appears problematic for me. Instead, we are left to imagine some kind of creative force that is active after the middle phase has been traversed, that is, after orange has fragmented and broken up in the flow of becoming. Otherwise, the arising of red as an end-point in this process cannot be explained. This eventually leads to the conclusion that there is no such thing as becoming, that there are only stable beings, and that becoming is an illusion. Now, the real and ideal distinction is important here, as you suggested. However, I am not thinking of the natural world when I imagine a machine that is causing a yellow-to-orange-to-red becoming; instead, I am thinking of a specific machine which just allows one singular entity to start from yellow, traverse orange, and become red, and it can be orange for any unit or span of time--the point being that that orange is traversed, overcome, even though it is not elusive. In sum, when fragility of a middle-phase entity in the flow of becoming is the only way to explain this process, then becoming itself becomes problematic as a concept. So, I am going for a quite Real answer, as you put it.

I believe that even when some middle phase is very evident and visible, but it gets traversed, there has to be some explanation as to why it gets traversed — SaugB

It is a victim of the momentum of time itself. Whatever that is! I suppose if time has a kind of mass, then the expression is not completely bonkers. :cool:

It is a victim of the momentum of time itself. Whatever that is! :cool: — jgill

I think that is very well said. The way you put it suggests that time is not that gentle a flow, and that it is not so much the middle-phase thing which is fragile, but time which is strong.

Rather, I was thinking of why, in any process we call 'becoming,' where there are at least three phases, with two end-points and a middle point, the middle phase gets passed over or traversed. Is it because it is elusive, as if in a sense it was never there? — SaugB

Whenever humans conceive of a continual progression as a series of steps, they implicitly digitize a whole system. For example, as someone pointed out above, the color spectrum is not inherently divided into the conventional colors of the rainbow. Instead, we tend to standardize "separate" colors for our own analytical purposes. Hence, the increments are somewhat arbitrary and relative to the perceiver. Is "Becoming" inherently a sequence of discrete stages, or is it hacked by humans into smaller segments for the sake of understanding the "elusive" middle?

The Flow of a river is usually conceived by laymen as continuous, without your one-two-three steps. But scientists and philosophers can choose to analyze that holistic Flow into the movement of discrete particles. Is the scientist right and the layman wrong? What real world example of "something in between" being overlooked or trivialized provoked you to ask the question? :smile:

Goethe vs Newton Color Theory : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours