Souls and Connection Clarification

[Darth Revan he/him]

I have been picturing the Spiritweb as a sort of graph where Connection is the edges and souls are the vertices. However, I don't understand how this would work with something like a tree. Would the tree itself have a soul and be Connected with, say, a bird living in it, or would the tree be represented by a subgraph where each leaf or branch has its own soul with an extremely strong Connection to other nearby souls within the same tree. This partially comes from the infamous stick scene in Words of Radiance, which demonstrates that a stick, which used to be part of a tree, has its own distinct soul.

[Calderis he/him]

@Darth Revan the rabbit hole is definitely there. For example. 

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=979#17

Quote

NEPENE ()

Do cosmere planets have a soul, like in final fantasy?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

If that doesn't obviously have smaller but distinct parts with souls of their own... What does? 

[Nathrangking he/him]

Each object has an independent soul such as the example you gave of stick. the things which are closely associated such as the leaves would have connection to the tree but would not be "connected" to the soul of the larger object. 

[Oversleep]

Spiritweb itself is a subgraph of the graph that is the Spiritual Realm.

I think that leaves would be their own entities belonging into the "tree" collection. It basically depends on human perception anyway. Is there representation for sand or for every grain of sand? Well, we see sand as "one thing" but then we could separate it if we look closer.

tl;dr: Everything is a collection of something else. The basic building block, the atom of Spiritual, is Investiture.

[Darth Revan he/him]

So that implies that the tree itself has a soul and then each part of the tree also has a soul. So the tree is a physical object composed of objects that have souls, but it has a distinct soul to represent the complete entity. I feel like this makes sense, but is also a bit of a rabbit hole, because a leaf has different parts that would allow you to make the same argument, as does a forest, on the other side of the spectrum. Every atom could have a soul, and the entire Cosmere could also have a soul. If this is the case, it opens up a lot of interesting questions.

[Nathrangking he/him]

 @Darth Revan from what we know each complete object has a soul, thus a leaf or stick has a soul. An atom is only a block that makes up an object. The trees would have a spiritual connection to the whole of the forest.

[Darth Revan he/him]

At the risk of sounding naggy, what qualifies an object as "complete" in that definition?

[Nathrangking he/him]

@Darth Revan I suppose that one could gauge "completion" by asking does the thing or can the thing whatever it may be exist independently of anything else and have an identity of its own beyond that of a building block.

[Darth Revan he/him]

Ooh, I'm a fan of that. I can see where you're coming from there. I realize that it's a hard thing to talk about because it doesn't fit with our understanding of the universe, but I can go forward with that in mind.

[Darth Revan he/him]

3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

@Darth Revan the rabbit hole is definitely there. For example. 

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=979#17

If that doesn't obviously have smaller but distinct parts with souls of their own... What does? 

Do you think that a group of humans could have a soul, too, then? Like a family. It's a bit more of a leap.

[Calderis he/him]

Just now, Darth Revan said:

Do you think that a group of humans could have a soul, too, then? Like a family. It's a bit more of a leap.

I think the distinction between sentient beings is more strict and segregated. 

[+Extesian he/him]

3 minutes ago, Darth Revan said:

Do you think that a group of humans could have a soul, too, then? Like a family. It's a bit more of a leap.

I can think of one Sleepless who may think so

Quote

“What body part do you feel that you are most like?” he asked. “Are you the hand, always busy doing work? Are you the mind, giving direction? Do you feel that you are more of a . . . leg, perhaps? Bearing up everyone else, and rarely noticed?” “Yeah. Lame question.” “No, no. It is of most importance. Each person, they are but a piece of something larger—some grand organism that makes up this city. This is the philosophy I am building, you see.”

 

[Nathrangking he/him]

5 minutes ago, Darth Revan said:

Do you think that a group of humans could have a soul, too, then? Like a family. It's a bit more of a leap.

I don't think that they collectively have a soul, but there may be a tenuous level of connection I might think.

 

3 minutes ago, Extesian said:

I can think of one Sleepless who may think so

 

As philosophy for most as for himself reality.

[Darth Revan he/him]

12 minutes ago, Extesian said:

I can think of one Sleepless who may think so

 

To me, this seems to indicate that there is some sort of soul present, but I personally think that it is less individualistic than the soul of a human (maybe it has less Identity?). To go back to the computer science style graphs, I think it's fair to say that each vertex is some sort of fundamental soul--the most basic type of object that can have a soul as defined by @Nathrangking. Then, these form subgraphs with closely Connected objects, where the subgraphs have their own souls, too.

But I feel like there needs to be some measure of how closely the vertices/souls in the subgraph are intertwined. For example, a human being seems to us like it is exactly one thing. We know that the arms and legs and fingers and hair have their own souls, but in normal conversation, it is reasonable to talk of a person's soul and not worry about the fact that it is a composition of many things. This results from the individual souls composing the human soul having strong connections since they are always together and they work together. So the human soul subgraph probably has a lot of heavily weighted edges.

On the other hand, a family's soul is more fragmented. There's probably relatively less Connection between a husband and wife than between a tooth and a gum. This is what makes it harder for us to see a human and a family as each having souls.

[+hwiles He/Him]

Everyone here is dancing around the exact same mathematical concept as near as I can tell:

Fractals.

The structure of the veins in a leaf are extremely similar to the structure of the branches on a tree, which are extremely similar to the structure of a forest. A microscopic image of a rock is similar to an image of a rock is similar to an image of a mountain.

In my mind, the spiritual aspects (souls) of "things" in the Cosmere follow this principle of infinitely repeated geometry. Every quark has a soul, which combine to make atom-sized souls, which combine to make molecule-sized souls, ect. All of the souls always exist, but most of them are too small to be noticed most of the time. A person is made of billions of cells working together which are individually alive. If any one cell dies, there is no detectable change. This is also how cities, countries, and planets work. A planet has a soul that is composed of the souls of its inhabitants, including the rocks, gases, Investiture, and people, that compose it.

Edit: Google or YouTube "Mandelbrot set" for a visual representation of fractals far more elegant than words could ever describe.

Edited August 14, 2017 by hwiles

[+hwiles He/Him]

56 minutes ago, Nathrangking said:

@hwiles I  was not suggesting that at all.Based on what we have see thus far there are no equivalents in shadesmar for souls of atoms or the like. The souls may be fractal like, but I think that they are more like the blueprints for a said object packed into a small space.

I think it's a fairly arbitrary distinction to claim that objects smaller than sticks/leaves don't have souls...but I'll agree to disagree. I can't "see" protons, but I know they are there, presumably the same would hold true for the spiritual aspect of a proton in the Cosmere.

[Nathrangking he/him]

It is not arbitrary at all.If every atom were represented in the CR then several things would be true. 1st we the readers would in our several experiences with the CR have seen these atoms represented. All that we have seen are full objects represented. 2nd that means that objects view themselves as a collection of such particle which leads to the 3rd assumption which is that nothing of the CR could be forged,soulcasted or otherwise changed because at the present no one that we know of is aware of particles and the like thus there would be no way for them to change the reality of the object.

[Calderis he/him]

17 minutes ago, Nathrangking said:

It is not arbitrary at all.If every atom were represented in the CR then several things would be true. 1st we the readers would in our several experiences with the CR have seen these atoms represented. All that we have seen are full objects represented. 2nd that means that objects view themselves as a collection of such particle which leads to the 3rd assumption which is that nothing of the CR could be forged,soulcasted or otherwise changed because at the present no one that we know of is aware of particles and the like thus there would be no way for them to change the reality of the object.

You're conflating the Spiritual and Cognitive realms. 

The Cognitive Realm relies on cognition and perception. To appear individually in the Cognitive Realm, they would either need a level of Cognitive function to appear as a flame, like we see with fish, or they would need to be observable as an individual object.

Neither of these are true and I doubt they bar a Spiritual representation.