The person in the picture below is holding an image. In the image there is a person, herself, who is holding the same image, in which there are smaller images, and so on and so on. This also happens when looking at a mirror, with another mirror placed opposite. You can see an infinite number of mirrors reflecting off each other. This is called the Droste effect, a visual form of recursion.

Figure 3. Droste Effect.

Dialectical logic does not conform to the rules of formal logic, but it is the commonness of many things, which is a logical relationship that we have to admit. Phenomena such as Droste effect, Klein bottle and Mobius belt all provide visual images of dialectical unity relations. The upper and lower sides of the Mobius belt are connected, and the inner and outer sides of the Klein bottle are connected. 

Figure 4. Klein Bottle, Mobius Belt, Yin Yang Diagram of Taiji Theory.

This relation of dialectical unity is not new to us, and many people are aware of its profound philosophical significance. But what it means, no one has been able to describe clearly. This dialectical view of the world did not become the most fundamental overall view of the world that metaphysics of philosophy should present to the public. The Chinese ancient idea of Taiji Yin Yang is similar to this world view, but it did not said that the Yin and Yang represent the subjective world and objective world.

8.4 Colored Glasses

Why are the subjective world and the objective world dialectically united? Because we wear a pair of colored glasses. We have to rely on our senses and brains to do science and to understand the world, our senses and brains have limitations like a pair of colored glasses.

Scientists don’t realize that they are wearing colored glasses when they see the world. If they see everything red, they assume that the physical world is made up of red elements. They don’t believe that the red color comes from their own glasses. Philosophers are aware of this, which is the Copernican Revolution of Kant: not that our understanding conforms to the object, but that the object conforms to our understanding.