TO: Barry Smith, Department of Philosophy, State University New York, Buffalo,
FM: Bruce E. Camber
RE: A boundary question that strains the dependent-particular framework — seeking your thoughts
URL for this page: https://81018.com/smith-barry/
First email: 10 February 2026
Dear Prof. Dr. Barry Smith:
My name is Bruce Camber. I studied extensively with John N. Findlay at Boston University (1975–1980, doctoral program), and his work on value, infinity, and the structure of the Absolute never quite left me. I write now from the intersection of that philosophical formation and a cosmological project I have been developing since 2011, which I believe raises a question in formal ontology that sits squarely in your territory.
The project began in a high school geometry classroom in New Orleans. We were mapping the interior of a tetrahedron — dividing edges in half, connecting midpoints, observing the four smaller tetrahedra and the central octahedron that emerge — and carried the process inward to the Planck scale (roughly 112 steps) and outward to the edge of the observable universe (roughly 90 more). The total is approximately 202 base-2 notations. What began as a STEM exercise has developed into a serious proposal for re-grounding cosmology in a base-2 exponential framework that replaces the big bang singularity with what I call a Generative Nexus — the locus where convergent mathematical formulae first achieve consistent, self-sustaining expression. The model is documented in full at https://81018.com/.
The question I want to bring to you concerns the hexagonal cross-section of the octahedron.
When an octahedron is sliced along its equatorial plane, the cross-section is a perfect hexagon — a 2D form with sixfold symmetry that the tetrahedron cannot produce. In my model, where primordial spheres at the Planck scale stack and pack according to the geometries of the octahedron and tetrahedron, this hexagonal interface is the plane where the two complementary solids meet. It has no thickness. It carries the full symmetry information of both structures. And it permits passage between them without breaking the underlying symmetry — a fact recognized in materials science (the {111} plane in face-centered cubic structures) and in Buckminster Fuller’s isotropic vector matrix, though never quite named as a unified philosophical object.
My question is this: is this hexagonal interface a boundary in your sense? It satisfies the condition of being intrinsic rather than fiat — no convention drew it, the geometry demands it. But it appears to do more than your dependent-particular framework naturally accommodates. It does not merely separate; it mediates. It belongs to neither solid exclusively, yet it carries structural information about both. And in the larger context of my model, it is the place I am tentatively calling the interface where the finite and the infinite touch — where the continuous, symmetric, harmonic properties I ascribe to infinity first become discrete and measurable in the finite.
I am aware this strains your framework in the direction of what you might call a region rather than a boundary — which would, of course, demand its own boundaries and invite a regress you would rightly want to avoid. I am also aware that you, Barry Smith, in 2026 may have moved considerably beyond Chisholm’s dependent-particular ontology, and I would be genuinely grateful to know where you stand now on boundaries that seem to carry information rather than merely demarcate.
I am not an academic physicist. I am a philosopher by formation, an independent scholar by circumstance, and a builder of models by vocation. I have been using multiple AI systems as convergent independent evaluators — a methodology I document as MI Concurrence Review — and the structural assessments have been substantive enough to embolden me to seek human interlocutors of your caliber.
I would welcome correspondence, criticism, or simply a pointer to work I may have missed. The model is available in full at 81018.com. A formal statement of its central propositions is at 81018.com/230553-2/.
With genuine respect and hope for dialogue,
Bruce E. Camber
PS. I have been reading your work Boundaries: An Essay in Mereotopology within L. Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm (Library of Living Philosophers), LaSalle: Open Court, 1997, 534–561
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