Interlude 16: Sentience vs. Sapience

Sentience?  What is it?  Essentially, it’s the ability to sense.  It comes from the Roman verb sentiere, which means “to feel.”  Related words are sentiment, sensual, and sentient, which means – to be aware.  Why is this important?  Because all things in the Universe can be classified as either sentient or non-sentient.  (For simplicity’s sake, we shall confine our discussion to our home Universe.)  Also, sentience is the basis of First-Born law, activated by the discovery of “4,3,” the Law of Connections.  The Continuum entrance requirement.

Sapience?  What is it?  Essentially, it’s the ability to think.  It comes from the Roman word sapientia, a present participle, which means wisdom or sagacity.  Related words are sapiens – wise; and sapid – tasty (as in, a wise man has good taste).  Why is this important?  Because it is often confused with sentience.  Feeling vs. thinking.  Also, all things in the Universe can be classified as either sapient or non-sapient.  Question: Did the First-Born misuse this word as well?  Answer . . . maybe.

I look out, and I see a rock.  It marks the edge between my driveway and the lawn.  And it has a purpose, to prevent people from driving on the grass.  It’s a sunny day, and the sun’s rays warm the rock.  It responds by expanding a little, but does it feel the warmth?  Clouds move in, and rain falls, wetting the rock.  It changes color to a darker hue and even absorbs some of the water.  Does the rock feel wet?  A driver veers from the driveway, runs over, and breaks said rock.  Did the stone feel pain?   And more; does it wonder why the Universe would permit such an injustice?  Answer: probably not, because sentience requires a sensory apparatus to carry the impulses to and from a conscious mind.  A consciousness.

Question: Must one first feel in order to think?  Do thinking and feeling go hand in hand, or are they opposites?  Or . . . are they both opposite and similar?  Is each a requirement for the other?  For purposes of simplicity, we shall confine this discourse to living beings.  In order to be considered alive, an entity must both feel and think, although this is cruelly unfair to Albert.  Must self-repair and reproduction be preconditions as well?

Fact:  To be sentient or sapient, one must also be conscious, an obvious observation.  And most would agree that the aforesaid rock is not conscious, though some would disagree since the definition of consciousness is rather vague – the awareness or perception of something.  And our rock did respond to stimuli – it got warm, it got wet, and it broke. 

How about an amoeba?  No, let’s not go there.  Let’s jump through all the intermediaries and go straight to the big one – the Macroverse, the Cosmos . . . the Universe.

We all know that the Universe is sapient and sentient, that it feels and thinks, and that there is consciousness.  The First-Born discovered this and even communicated with it.  And it was not “Hey, how ya doing,” either – since there were frame-of-reference problems.  Still, it was a real breakthrough, a “universal” one.  Question: By what means does it sense?  And how does it communicate that sensory data?  Via the fabric of Space-Time, what else?  Plus, there’s another little factor that I discovered – that all things are connected – The Law of Connections.  But the question must be asked: Is there a central processor somewhere, a brain?  From what I’ve been told, the answer is no.  The awareness is omnipresent, sort of everywhere.  Is it a god?  I don’t know, but everybody I meet these days is kind of a god, depending on the definition.

Fact: There is a Beyond.  A space beyond the Great Barrier, beyond our Universe, into what they call the Aether.  I am currently en route.  And from what I’ve been told, it’s a place where vast manifolds meander and provide the core-essence of all things, the basic constituents of Space, Time, and Matter, in their various manifestations.  Also, there is a place where they come together, a genesis point; and when the conditions are right, new Universes are birthed in rather large, explosive bangs.  Indeed, it was near one of these places that the First-Born chose to build their new home, their Locus.  A place where they could witness and bask in the glow of such massive reproductive activity.

Question: Was this grand genesis managed?  Surely this humongous, coming together was non-random.  The answer is – unknown.  Maybe there was a governing entity.  For simplicity’s sake, the First-Born refer to the putative manager of this birthing process as The Mother.  A question must be asked: If there is an entity, is it sentient, and also, is it sapient?  Does it feel and think?  Many adhere to the belief that the answer is yes.  I use the word “belief” because there are a very large number of unknowns associated with this.  Such as, by what means does this actuality sense and communicate?  And if the entity is a sentient being, is it a god.  Did the First-Born pay proper obeisance when they moved next door?  Were they punished for not doing so?  I do not know, nor does anyone I’m acquainted with.  However, there is one fact that I am quite certain of: For every mother, there is usually a father.