目次
Introduction — Why Place These Two Texts Side by Side?
In 1968, Miura Tsutomu published Benshōhō wa Dō Iu Kagaku ka (What Kind of Science Is Dialectics?) through Kodansha’s Gendai Shinsho series. Reconceiving dialectics not as “philosophy” but as “science,” and illustrating its fundamental laws through a wealth of everyday examples, the book became a classic that has been read continuously for over half a century. Its central claim is unequivocal: matter is primary, and consciousness is merely a reflection of the material world.
In November 2025, Maria Strömme, a materials scientist at Uppsala University, published a paper in the peer-reviewed physics journal AIP Advances. Titled “Universal Consciousness as Foundational Field,” the paper flipped Miura’s claim precisely 180 degrees. Consciousness, Strömme argued, is the fundamental field of the universe, and matter, spacetime, and energy all emerge from it.
At first glance, these two texts appear to be in outright contradiction. One says “matter comes first”; the other says “consciousness comes first.” In the history of philosophy, this opposition has persisted for millennia — there is nothing new about it.
Yet when we place the two texts side by side and read them closely, something more than mere opposition emerges — a strange pattern of intersection. In this essay, I will first lay out the arguments of both, then analyze where they clash and where they cross, and finally — using the very method of dialectics that Miura himself taught — attempt to aufheben (sublate) the two into a third perspective.
Part 1: What Did Miura Tsutomu Argue?
Dialectics Is a “Science”
Miura’s starting point is a fundamental question about the status of dialectics: Is it “philosophy” or “science”? His answer is emphatic: the latter.
In the days before the individual sciences had matured, philosophy encompassed all of learning. But as physics, chemistry, and biology developed, the territories once claimed by philosophy were taken over by science, one after another. Dialectics is no exception. It must be treated as a science that elucidates the general laws of motion governing the world — this is Miura’s position.
The object dialectics addresses is the law of motion of the world itself. That water consists of hydrogen and oxygen; that light exhibits wave-particle duality — the individual sciences discover such facts one by one. Dialectics, building on those findings, elucidates the general laws that apply to the world as a whole.
The Three Fundamental Laws
Miura explains the three fundamental laws of dialectics with abundant concrete examples.
The First Law: The Interpenetration of Opposites. Everything in the world exists in relation to other things; no completely isolated entity is possible. Yet at the same time, each thing possesses a relative independence from others. “Connected and simultaneously not connected” — this seemingly contradictory expression is the starting point of dialectical relations. Miura illustrates this law through vivid examples: a policeman and a thief walking hand in hand, the infinite reflections of facing mirrors, the meshing of gears.
The relationship between cause and effect is also reconceived dialectically. Metaphysics thinks in terms of a one-way arrow: cause → effect. But in dialectics, the effect becomes a cause in turn, and the child becomes a parent in turn — a cyclical, developmental relationship of mutual transition.
The Second Law: The Transformation of Quantity into Quality. When quantitative change exceeds a certain threshold (called the “measure” or “degree”), it converts into qualitative change. As the temperature of water rises and reaches 100°C, it undergoes a qualitative change from liquid to gas. A drug in small doses has no effect; in the right dose it heals; in excess it poisons; in greater excess it kills. Quantitative change is continuous, but qualitative change is discontinuous — a leap.
Moreover, qualitative change becomes the starting point for a new round of quantitative change. The chain quantity → quality → quantity → quality… constitutes the form of development.
The Third Law: The Negation of the Negation. The development of things follows not a simple linear progression but a spiral process: affirmation → negation → negation of the negation (a return to affirmation at a higher stage). A grain of seed is sown in the earth and sprouts (negation of the seed); the plant grows and bears new seeds (negation of the negation). The new seeds are “the same” as the original, yet what was one has become many. A return to the starting point — but one that contains development.
Materialism and Partisanship
An argument of Miura’s that must not be overlooked concerns the “partisanship” (Parteilichkeit) of learning.
Learning is neither neutral nor classless. The opposition between materialism and idealism is not merely a theoretical disagreement but reflects a difference in practical social standpoints. The ruling class tends toward idealism because it needs to justify its rule as eternal and natural, while the ruled class tends toward materialism because it faces material conditions head-on and seeks to transform them.
Miura further warns of the danger of beginning from a materialist position only to “fall” into idealism along the way. To be conscious of the partisanship in one’s learning and to constantly reflect on where one stands — this, Miura insists, is an indispensable condition for correct understanding.
“Doubling the World” and “Doubling the Self”
Miura develops an original analysis in epistemology as well. Through cognition, human beings “double” the world inside their heads — they create an image of the world separate from the actual world. Furthermore, humans can objectify themselves, gazing upon “another self” as if in a pair of facing mirrors. This capacity for “doubling the self” underpins all human cultural activity: language, art, and science.
What Miura emphasizes here is the direction of this doubling. The material world comes first, and human consciousness reflects and doubles it. Spirit does not produce the world; the world produces spirit. This is the core of materialism and the overarching premise that runs through all of Miura’s arguments.
Part 2: What Does Strömme’s Paper Argue?
The Three Principles — Consciousness Is the Foundation of the Universe
Maria Strömme’s paper takes as its starting point the “Three Principles (3Ps)” proposed by Sydney Banks:
These three principles are formless and eternal, existing before space, time, and matter. Consciousness does not arise from the brain; rather, the entire material world, including the brain, arises from the consciousness field — this is Strömme’s fundamental claim.
The Skeleton of the Mathematical Framework
Strömme formalizes this metaphysical claim in the mathematical language of quantum field theory.
Before the Big Bang, there exists an undifferentiated universal consciousness Ψ₀, with no time, no space, no matter. It is expressed as a superposition of all possible configurations of reality:
Ψ₀ = Σₖ(cₖΨₖ) — Eq. (1)
The “collapse” — the transition from the undifferentiated state to differentiated reality — is triggered by “universal thought” T̂:
T̂Ψ₀ = Ψₖ — Eq. (2)
Three pathways for this collapse are proposed.
First, symmetry breaking. The consciousness field follows a Mexican-hat potential V(Ψ) = λ(Ψ² − Ψ₀²)² and spontaneously breaks symmetry to differentiate — by analogy with the Higgs mechanism in particle physics.
Second, quantum fluctuations. Tiny perturbations Ψ → Ψ + δΨ accumulate and seed differentiation, much as quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation seeded large-scale structure.
Third, self-reflection. Universal consciousness differentiates through the introspective act of observing itself, modeled via projection operators: Ψₖ = PₖΨ₀. A correspondence with Wheeler’s “participatory universe” is noted.
After the Big Bang, the differentiated consciousness field Ψ propagates through spacetime according to the d’Alembertian wave equation, and its localized excitations appear as individual consciousness — sentient beings:
T̂Ψₖ = Ψᵢ — Eq. (10)
Individual consciousness further shapes subjective experience through “personal thought” τ̂ᵢ:
τ̂ᵢΨᵢ = Ψ’ᵢ — Eq. (11)
Crucially, the separation of individuals is said to be an “illusion”; all consciousness remains connected to the universal field. Death is not annihilation but reintegration into the universal field.
Experimental Predictions
Strömme does not stop at pure speculation but offers several experimental predictions: correlations between random number generator (RNG) outputs and collective emotional events; brainwave synchronization patterns during meditation; and the existence of non-random structures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, many of these predictions are methodologically contested, and rigorous experimental verification is still needed.
Part 3: Collision and Intersection
The Ontological Inversion — A Fundamental Clash
The opposition between the two could not be clearer.
Miura states: Matter is primary; consciousness is a reflection of the material world. Spirit does not produce matter; matter produces spirit. Dialectical laws are not concocted by the human mind; they inhere in the material world itself, and humans merely recognize them.
Strömme states: Consciousness is primary; matter is a differentiation of the consciousness field. Before the Big Bang, the consciousness field Ψ₀ existed, and matter, spacetime, and energy emerged from its collapse. The brain does not generate consciousness; a localized excitation of the consciousness field appears as the brain.
From Miura’s vantage point, Strömme’s paper is a modern incarnation of Hegel. Just as Hegel depicted the world as “the self-unfolding of the Absolute Spirit,” Strömme depicts the universe as “the self-differentiation of the universal consciousness field Ψ.” Miura criticized Hegelian dialectics as “standing on its head,” and the same criticism would be leveled at Strömme. Dressed up in the equations of quantum field theory, it is structurally idealism through and through — so the argument would go.
Yet Strömme’s side has a counter-argument. Materialism cannot answer the “hard problem of consciousness” — why a collection of matter gives rise to subjective experience. If consciousness is placed at the foundation, this problem simply does not arise. Perhaps it is materialism that is standing on its head.
The Strange Sharing of Dialectical Structure
Despite the fundamental opposition, a strange structural similarity exists between the two. Strömme never uses the word “dialectics,” yet her framework embodies the three laws of dialectics almost intact.
Interpenetration of opposites. In Strömme’s framework, universal consciousness and individual consciousness are opposed yet mutually interpenetrating. Individuals are differentiated as Ψₖ, yet they maintain entanglement with the underlying field Ψ. The relationship Miura described as “connected and simultaneously not connected” holds here as well.
Transformation of quantity into quality. The accumulation of quantum fluctuations δΨ in the consciousness field triggers symmetry breaking — a qualitative transformation. The structure whereby continuous quantitative change converts into discontinuous qualitative change (the Big Bang as a “leap”) follows exactly the same logic Miura explained using the example of water boiling.
Negation of the negation. Undifferentiated unity (Ψ₀) → differentiation and individuation (Ψₖ, Ψᵢ) → reintegration into the universal field through death. It seems to return to the same starting point, yet it stands at a higher stage, enriched by experience and differentiation. The spiral structure Miura illustrated with the grain of seed is reproduced on a cosmic scale.
In other words, dialectics starting from matter and cosmology starting from consciousness articulate the same form of the laws of motion. Is this a coincidence?
“Doubling the World” and “Self-Reflection” — A Mirror Correspondence
One of the most original concepts in Miura’s epistemology is “doubling the world” and “doubling the self.” Through consciousness, human beings replicate the world inside their heads and can further objectify themselves to gaze upon themselves.
Strömme’s “differentiation through self-reflection” (Ψₖ = PₖΨ₀) is strikingly similar in structure. The claim that differentiation arises from the act of universal consciousness observing itself is a mirror inversion of Miura’s “doubling of the self.” In Miura, a material being doubles consciousness; in Strömme, consciousness reflects itself and generates matter.
The two are diametrically opposed in direction, yet they agree on one point: a recursive structure of self-objectification lies at the root of both creation and cognition. This is noteworthy.
Turning Miura’s Weapon Upon Himself
Miura demanded of his readers that they become conscious of the “partisanship” in their learning — that constantly reflecting on where one stands is an indispensable condition for correct understanding.
Let us turn that weapon upon Miura himself.
From his materialist dialectical standpoint, Miura linked idealism with the self-justification of the ruling class. But this analysis is itself bound by a particular historical context — Cold War Japan, an era when Marxism held intellectual authority. To claim that any position regarding consciousness as fundamental is ipso facto a ruling-class position is surely an oversimplification.
The Advaita Vedānta and Buddhist śūnyatā that Strömme’s paper references developed among Indian ascetics and cannot easily be associated with ruling-class self-justification. Indeed, these traditions, which teach the illusory nature of the phenomenal world, have the power to relativize existing structures of power.
Furthermore, if we follow the logic of the “negation of the negation” — the third law Miura himself expounded — then materialism, too, must pass through negation to develop into a higher stage. To cling to materialism while remaining unable to adequately address the problem of consciousness is to obstruct the very development of dialectics.
Miura said that dialectics is not a completed system but “something that must be developed through ceaseless confrontation with reality.” If we take those words seriously, then fleeing from the confrontation with the “reality” of the hard problem of consciousness cannot be permitted.
The Limits of Strömme — What the Absence of Dialectics Produces
On the other hand, Strömme’s paper has serious limitations of its own.
The most fundamental problem is that it does not explain why the collapse occurs. Why did the perfectly undifferentiated consciousness field Ψ₀ need to differentiate in the first place? Strömme states that “universal thought T̂ initiates the collapse,” but as to why T̂ acts, she offers only the tautological explanation of “the creative force of Mind.”
From a Miura–Marxist dialectical perspective, the answer is clear: contradiction is the driving force of motion. The contradiction inherent in Ψ₀ — the tension between unity and differentiation, between potentiality and actualization — is what makes the collapse inevitable. Because Strömme does not consciously employ dialectics, she fails to grasp the movement of contradiction within her own framework.
Moreover, Strömme’s framework almost entirely lacks a social and historical dimension. The social contradictions that Miura persistently pursued — the “interpenetration between human beings” through labor, exchange, exploitation, and class struggle — find no place whatsoever in Strömme’s universal consciousness field. Individual consciousnesses Ψᵢ are treated as equal excitations of the universal field Ψ, but in actual society consciousness is never equally distributed. Access to education, information, and power is uneven, and the material conditions that produce that unevenness are precisely what Miura called the “base.”
Even if placing consciousness at the foundation resolves the “hard problem,” if the price is the loss of the capacity to analyze social contradictions, then it is a different kind of “fall.”
Part 4: Aufhebung — In Search of a Third Perspective
Questioning the Question “Matter or Consciousness?”
What the foregoing analysis has made clear is that materialist dialectics and Strömme’s consciousness-field hypothesis, while ontologically diametrically opposed, share structurally isomorphic laws of motion.
The interpenetration of opposites, the transformation of quantity into quality, the negation of the negation — these laws appear in the same form whether the starting point is “matter” or “consciousness.” Like left and right hands, they stand in a mirror relation while sharing the same skeletal structure.
This fact suggests a possibility: the laws of dialectical motion are a more fundamental structure that precedes both matter and consciousness.
Miura located the laws of dialectics as “laws inherent in the material world.” Strömme (without using the word dialectics) described isomorphic laws as “inherent in the consciousness field.” But if a structure common to both exists, that structure may belong to a third level irreducible to either matter or consciousness.
An Ontology of “Relations” — Neither Matter Nor Consciousness
What I wish to propose here is the view that “relations” are fundamental.
Matter exists as matter only within relations. Elementary particles exhibit their properties only through interactions with other particles and become determinate only within the relation called observation. Consciousness, too, exists as consciousness only within relations. Without being aware of something, consciousness cannot exist. Consciousness is always consciousness of something; it presupposes a relation with an object.
The “interpenetration of opposites” that Miura described demonstrates precisely this “primacy of relations.” Opposing terms presuppose each other, interpenetrate, and transition into each other. Cause and effect, self and other, worker and capitalist — neither can exist alone; both come into being only within the relation.
In Strömme’s framework, too, the collapse of Ψ₀ is described as “self-reflection” — the establishment of a relation with oneself. The moment the relation of universal consciousness observing itself comes into being, differentiation begins.
The opposition between matter and consciousness is, in dialectical terms, merely a moment within a deeper unity. That “deeper unity” is relation itself — the dynamic structure that generates difference, connects difference, and develops through difference.
Repositioning Dialectics — As the Laws of Relations, Not of Matter or Consciousness
From this standpoint, dialectics can be repositioned as follows.
Dialectics is neither “the laws of motion of matter” nor “the laws of motion of consciousness” but the laws of motion of relations. The interpenetration of opposites is the law of how relations bind and interpenetrate opposing terms. The transformation of quantity into quality is the law of how the quantitative accumulation of relations generates qualitatively new relations. The negation of the negation is the law of how relations negate themselves and develop spirally into higher-stage relations.
Understood in this way, the opposition between Miura and Strömme is sublated. Material relations (Miura) and conscious relations (Strömme) are different manifestations resting on the common ground of relation.
Quantum mechanics corroborates this intuition. In quantum entanglement, two particles do not possess individual states; the relation itself is physical reality. A relation that cannot be decomposed into the state of particle A and the state of particle B — non-separability — is what lies at the base of the quantum world. Here, neither “matter” nor “consciousness” is primary; what is primary is the structure of relations itself.
Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics points in precisely this direction. Every physical quantity is defined only in relation to another system. Not “things” but “relations” lie at the base of ontology.
Anticipated 2,500 Years Ago — The Buddha’s Teaching of Dependent Origination
If we broaden our view here, we notice a remarkable convergence. The conclusion of this essay — that “relations are fundamental” — stands at virtually the same point as the teaching of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) that the Buddha expounded 2,500 years ago.
Dependent origination holds that all things arise through causes (hetu, direct causes) and conditions (pratyaya, indirect conditions), and that nothing exists independently and self-sufficiently. “When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases” (Saṃyutta Nikāya). Existence is not substance but relation; it is process.
This teaching of dependent origination resonates with all three positions examined in this essay, yet is reducible to none of them.
Miura’s dialectics holds: “Opposites mutually presuppose and interpenetrate each other. No isolated substance exists.” This overlaps with the “mutual dependence” of dependent origination — the principle that everything comes into being in dependence upon other things. The logic of mediation that Miura illustrated with his gear-meshing diagram — “A is linked to C through B” — is the very structure of the “conditions” (pratyaya) in dependent origination.
Strömme’s consciousness-field hypothesis holds: “The separation of individuals is an illusion; everything exists as relations within the universal field.” This resonates with śūnyatā (emptiness) derived from dependent origination — the teaching that all things lack svabhāva (an independent, inherent essence). Strömme herself references Buddhist emptiness, yet interestingly, she does not fully develop its implications.
However, the teaching of dependent origination exerts its most essential power when applied to the very opposition between Miura and Strömme.
The Buddha, when confronted with metaphysical binary oppositions such as “Is the world eternal or non-eternal?” and “Is the self identical with the body or separate from it?”, adopted the stance of avyākata (the unanswered) — he declined to answer. This is not indifference or agnosticism. It is an active refusal on the grounds that the very framing of the question is mistaken.
The question “Does matter come first or consciousness?” is, from the standpoint of dependent origination, just such a mistaken binary opposition. Matter and consciousness arise in mutual dependence; the question of which comes “first” contains the fallacy of reifying one term of a relation. Miura reified matter; Strömme reified consciousness. Dependent origination rejects both.
Nāgārjuna, in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), pushed this logic to its extreme: “Neither from itself nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause, does anything whatever, anywhere, arise” (Chapter 1). What remains after every substantialist account of arising has been negated is the web of relations itself — a dynamic structure that possesses no substance in itself, yet enables all phenomena to come into being.
What this essay has presented as an “ontology of relations” is, in this sense, perhaps a modern rediscovery of a thought that Buddhist philosophy has developed with great sophistication over its long history. Dialectics, quantum field theory, and dependent origination — three traditions belonging to different cultures, different languages, and different eras, all pointing to the same ground. The fact that they converge suggests that there is something essential at that point.
Inheriting Miura’s Legacy
This third perspective does not negate Miura’s legacy; it inherits its best parts.
What Miura devoted his life to pursuing was the apprehension of the world not as fixed but in motion, change, and development — grasping “things” not as fixed substances but dynamically, within “relations.” That is the quintessence of dialectics.
Miura held materialism to be the indispensable foundation of dialectics. In his time, this was a justified judgment. Yet as Miura himself stated, dialectics is “something that must be developed through ceaseless confrontation with reality.” The advance of quantum mechanics, the discovery of the hard problem of consciousness, the appearance of consciousness-field hypotheses like Strömme’s — through confrontation with these “realities,” dialectics itself can pass through the negation of the negation and develop into a higher stage.
To move beyond the binary of “matter first or consciousness first” and to stand at the point where “relations are fundamental” — this is nothing other than the consequence of applying to Miura’s own question the method of dialectics that Miura himself taught his readers: not “either/or” but “both/and.”
Conclusion
Reading Miura Tsutomu from 1968 and Strömme from 2025 side by side was a curious experience. Two texts separated by more than half a century illuminated each other’s limitations and possibilities like a pair of facing mirrors.
Miura’s richness of concrete examples and his demand for consciousness of partisanship still offer much to learn from. But a materialist dialectics without the reach to address the hard problem of consciousness faces limits in its persuasiveness in the intellectual landscape of the twenty-first century.
Strömme is provocative in her bold hypothesis and mathematical formulation, but owing to the absence of dialectical thinking, she fails to fully capture the laws of motion within her own framework and leaves social contradictions unaddressed.
The third perspective that sublates the two — an ontology of “relations” — is still only a germ. Yet at the very least, it offers a starting point for reexamining the very framing of the question “matter first or consciousness first?” — a question that has persisted for two millennia.
As Miura emphasized repeatedly, the essence of learning dialectics lies not in resting content with ready-made answers but in facing the contradictions of reality head-on and continuing to think for oneself. If this essay serves as a modest aid to that end, so much the better.
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