Panpsychism and Animal Instincts: Electronic-Psychonic Oscillations

When formulating a thought, the electronic and psychonic matter of one's being enters oscillation by polarizing itself, and through a law of succession or reciprocal collision, it sets in motion all psychons that have the same nature as the tonality of their thought and that are found in the electro-psychonic ocean in which they are immersed. The first psychon, oscillating, collides with the second and this with the third, and thus, through a lightning succession of collisions, all atoms of the universe that have the same nature enter sympathetic oscillation or vibration. [...] It is logical to presuppose that very subtle exchanges of universe-psychonic influences, not yet classified by modern science, occur between these zones of the infinite and the living organism of the earth. We think that the universal electron can easily, based on laws yet to be studied, transform into psychic force and vice versa, like matter into electrons.

Demonstrations and Practical Applications

Every doctrine is valid depending on its capacity to provide operational tools for the evolution of the individual; a new scientific hypothesis, instead, is required to explain the anomalies of other scientific paradigms. Panpsychism, in the formulation outlined in this writing, requires as the only additional hypothesis the fact that the psyche obeys dynamic and constructive laws analogous to those of physical matter, although in an environment or geometric space very different from the usual three-dimensional one. By admitting this simple hypothesis, it offers an opening to the explanation of numerous anomalies, abundantly studied, yet still unexplained.

Animal Instinct

Instincts are innate behavioral patterns that exist in most members of a species. Unlike reflexes, which constitute simple responses to a specific stimulus, the presence of instincts presupposes a psychic terrain common to the species that we could call group soul in the case of animals or collective unconscious in the human case. The animal world is full of interesting, astonishing and marvelous instincts; here we want to report some cases that, while not exhaustive, are in our opinion significant.

The Cat "Reflex"

Let's take the classic "reflex" of a cat that rotates while falling to land on its feet. After determining the fall from above visually or with their vestibular apparatus, cats manage to twist and fall on their feet with these key steps: bend at the center so that the front half of their body rotates on a different axis from the rear one; tuck in the front legs to reduce the moment of inertia of the front half of the body and extend the rear legs to increase the moment of inertia of the rear half of the body so they can rotate the front part up to $90°$ while the rear half rotates in the opposite direction up to $10°$; extend the front paws and tuck the rear paws so they can rotate more of their rear half while their front half rotates in the opposite direction less; depending on the cat's flexibility and any initial angular momentum, the cat may need to repeatedly perform steps two and three to complete a full $180°$ rotation.

In this case we have spoken of reflex adopting the contemporary terminology that wants to attribute to this phenomenon the name of reflex, meaning by it a feedback reaction of the organism to a simple stimulus. However, the choice to use the term reflex, while being very reassuring, is quite questionable. Certainly the speed with which cats perform this movement has naturally suggested an automatic reflex similar to the patellar reflex that occurs when the knee is struck with a hammer. However, it is well known that a decerebrated cat shows no righting reflex, suggesting that a higher brain function, perhaps even consciousness, is necessary for cat righting. It is therefore a complex reflex arc, more similar to the pain withdrawal reflex than to the knee reflex.

What is the problem then? In withdrawing an arm or hand due to pain, the movement is extremely simple and natural, while in this case the movement performed by felines would be so complex and articulated that for dozens and dozens of years physicists of Maxwell's caliber dedicated themselves to its explanation without success. More recently the problem has been taken up again to help astronauts balance in free falls. Even now the fall of cats is studied by robotics with prototypes that try to imitate its mechanism created by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Boston Dynamics. Yet, despite the theoretical and technical difficulty in executing the movement, all cats...