The Totalization of Shadows, Part VI
A garden of forking paths, a maze,a labyrinth, a Galton's Quincunx!
Please take a look at this simulation.
posted by Yusef Asabiyah at 4:49 PM
Thursday, October 02, 2008
A garden of forking paths, a maze,a labyrinth, a Galton's Quincunx!
Please take a look at this simulation.
Contributors
Previous Posts
- Abstraction and Concept Creation, Part III
- Abstraction and Concept Creation, Part II
- Abstraction and Concept Creation, Part I
- Linguistics of Violence - Because I Say So!
- The Totalization of Shadows, Part V
- Noology Or ”Thought Without Image”, Part II
- Noology Or ”Thought Without Image”
- The Totalization of Shadows, Part IV
- The Totalization of Shadows, Part III
- Accusatory Thought - and Other Ailments
8 Comments:
What philosophical implications do you make of this?
The profound implications of the simple Galton quincunx (I had a lucky break when I found this simulation--I was only looking for an image,)make it possible to go further with my thoughts in parts IV and V.
Without the concepts behind the quincunx, I cannot show what I am talking about when I try to show, in multiple places in the blog, the conflict between a "both/and" logic and the bedrock of western civilization: the concepts of essence and identity.
The quincunx does have a striking resemblance to a garden of forking paths.
Imagine first, I am a marble (a hard, indivisible ball,an individual, a possessible entity of the kind I found so fascinating at age 7), at the top of the quincunx. Each peg in the quincunx is a bifurcation of the path in the garden. I can either go down one path or the other (either/or) but not Yogi Berra style down both at once.
Imagine second, I am a population, swarm, multiplicity of marbles. I enter the garden path and I flow through the bifurcations, though they separate and sort me. Rivers flowing through separate channels, a braided stream, blah blah blah...I am sure you don't want my faux poetry on what this is.
These are two ways of envisioning the self. Also two different ways of picturing history, ethics, etc. but one picture opens out continuously while the other telescopes back into "itself."
Very peculiar I would try to say what I need to say with strained poetry when the language I require is mathematical. I think a great deal of my effort--maybe my mission in life--is to show how an explication of "both/and" logic is mathematical and has nothing to do with relativism or a radical subjectivity. It really does have something to do with mathematics used in quantum mechanics, but only if the cross fertilization of quantum mechanics and philosophy is perfectly rigorous, as I in my life have never encountered from the best philosophers or the best scientists.
However, the upshot is the difference between philosophy as creative and philosophy as the repetition of a story which contains, oppresses, and forestalls and forecloses.
--Y
Hi Yusef,
Thanks for your posts.
You write,
Very peculiar I would try to say what I need to say with strained poetry when the language I require is mathematical. I think a great deal of my effort--maybe my mission in life--is to show how an explication of "both/and" logic is mathematical and has nothing to do with relativism or a radical subjectivity. It really does have something to do with mathematics used in quantum mechanics.
You are obviously engaged in an “either-or” paradigm of mathematical vs. philosophical discourse.
But is this a “real” dichotomy?
- and when you state,
the upshot is the difference between philosophy as creative and philosophy as the repetition of a story which contains, oppresses, and forestalls and forecloses.
- aren’t you falling into your own trap: mathematical “language” as objective versus philosophy as story-telling?
- or are you saying that quantum mechanics is story-telling in "another" language?
Orla
"You are obviously engaged in an “either-or” paradigm of mathematical vs. philosophical discourse."
I do think mathematical discourse has often succeeded in being schizophrenic, while philosophical discourse hesitates, conserves, reterritorializes, (and thus falls from flight.)
Philosophy and mathematics would and could cross-fertilize each other, eliminating a de facto either/or situation. I wish they would. Maybe they will.
To the extent philosophy has failed in cross fertilization with mathematics, it really is a story-telling. (Here, to say story-telling is perjorative.)
The elements of philosophy which serve as recalcitrant to mathematics are these peculiar psychologized and psychologizing elements of identity, self, necessity.(etc.)
You have often criticized me for psychologizing-- but I have been trying to come up with a way to show what I am doing with these psychologizing elements is reconceptualize them. Language makes this very difficult. Writing I as "I" has not been satisfactory.
--Y
Thinking a bit further about your objections, Orla--I'm not planning to shift to mathematical language or play it off as superior to philosophical language or discourse. What I want to do is bring into this discussion some concepts of mathematics which are really very basic,central, pure--maybe too pure--undeniably important to science, but which in my experience are underutilized or misused by "continental" philosophers.
Hi Yusef,
You're right about this. I'm just not qualified to discuss this any further. I wish I were.
Just a note: This reminds me of Wittgenstein's move from Tractatus to Philosophical Investigations (in reserve, so to speak!)
But isn't this search for the PURITY of mathematics another "story" in the philosophical narrative?
Orla
To move on maybe Returning to the Hominids would be the way to go?
I hope I can soon produce a PART 3.
I haven't done anything over the last few weeks but watch the bailout shenanigans. I hope to post something here in the next few days.
I will look forward to reading your PART 3, Christoffer.
-Y
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