Getting at generalization, via detail; and example as member or part |
Mimesis. Imitation. A copy, model, representation. Sign, symbol, word. Pattern, mould, net, image. All are modes of the exemplar. What we think something to be like. Not what it actually is. To represent an original in toto you must produce the original. And it is indefinable as is. Because we can't get at the details. To us, inconsummate*.
Webster:We know what the exemplar is like, because that's what we render, as best we can, confusing it with what it stands in for. None of us have seen the sun, though we have seen its many faces. We call what we perceive, "the sun", packaging it with whatever we may have heard or learned about it. Sparing the details we do not know. These details if we were to pursue them, hunt them down, would in turn produce details, and so on. Not interminably. There is a limit to division, the Greeks knew that. For every new edge we invent, a fresh surface is presented. Beyond is the ultimate paradox: the ground of all grounds, where force marries force.
How do i know? Details. Ideas dispense with details, because ideas are properly the ilk of dreams and visions: emotions. Substance, reality is grounded in detail. The details enjoy the property of details. Images do not. Whether they come together in the Persona of the Grand Designer, i do not wish to contemplate, for it is idle. Whether there is a Grand Designer i leave you to determine. Some knowledge must be private.
Webster:You see how we grasp examples and make them over into a generalization, a floating of an idea, to which a response might be sought.
Webster:Detail = slice. Slice as a triangulation of a circle. And how a tangent evolves. A division that furthers propagation. But details of details, that is the province of analysis.
So older or former rites and belief would persist, modified or revised under new tutelages.
Webster:Wood or stone can be cut to specified sizes. Near enough. By extension, natural science, as it calls itself, presumably because thaumaturgy is supernatural science, can cut any observed phenomena into convenient dimensions. How so? Aren't energy and its slips: light, heat, magnetism, radio and electricity attached at one end to our experiences and the other to magic? Has anyone scientifically explained gravity apart from formulas?
"...It is tantamount to finding the solution to a very large number of simultaneous equations involving an indefinite number or unknowns, without recourse to matrices... I thought to develop an equation which would resolve all such disharmonies. My tactic was to cancel out what I call 'aberrations' and 'wolf terms', on both sides of the equation."
"And the upshot?"
"I achieved success, along with a modicum of perplexity. In the ultimate resolution I was yielded a highly significant equation: nullity equals nullity."--Jack Vance, "Ports of Call" P.254 Tor Books © 1998 by Jack Vance, Paperback Edition Mar. 1999
"The flaw in a gem doesn't make it a pebble." Attributed to Confucius.
The fantasy we share, that a Grand Designer is and was responsible for the making of our universal world subtly implies and inherent perfection -- no flaws. Since the world we live in and endure is patently by our reckoning flawed, the perplexity is, how did these flaws originate? Usually, we find a finger pointing to level blame. Sin in its various forms attributed to a thinking being, supernatural or human. Chance or luck are straws to be grasped. Or fate which seeks us out particularly, to explain misfortuity.
The fantasy compensates for the Grand Designer's carelessness in application by seeking to control the distribution of events. Crafts are established. We trade in magic, superstition, religion, metaphysics; folk and scientific lore are sought to gain the upper hand on peradventure: if he has no wife, no luck, an empty belly or pocket, and a sore back in his chagrin he invokes miraculous and hopeful cure-alls, whatever seems to serve the purpose.
Do these work? Is a remedy ever the solution to a First Cause? Nah. It's a stopgap.
Preventing the evil day when we realize we are mortal: things change. That's all. That's enough!
Must we blame the Grand Designer, howl at the skies, feeling letdown?>
Suppose the world is as it is. Not a problem to be solved, but to be lived, experienced on that basis, dealt with as it happens. Whose or what the intent beside the point. Learning how to make rules and form habits; learning how to make exceptions to rules and habits when and where they are needful. Making over the rules and habits, discarding or metamorphosing them. Meeting change with change. Compacting with experience as it happens. Will this providentially replace prayers, pills, rabbits-feet and fairy godmothers? Or speculations about Original Design? The answer is: tangents and mutations, or if you like, "aberrations and wolf-terms" in their imperfection balance the harmony of this procedural equation, or the moments of the various forces about this axis called time.
Webster:Observations by Tich Backhouse:
Whut are all the gods at best but favourable magical powers? Holy magic they calls it. Whut makes it holy? Cos they sez so? Scratch any scientific theory an' you'll find magic in it somewheres.
Our anchors for truth-- which means sound reason -- in knowledge, our axiomatic grounds, are intuitional. They cannot be proved by right reason. We may question them, but not lightly, for we do not build our house out of cards, we build from a secure foundation, as secure as we can get it, tested by experience, that of our own and others', the others that have gone before and our present others. We build against 'quakes and floods and subsidence and fire and attack, though whatever we construct may be shattered at a blow from providence, a god's magical power sent to prove the mettle of the mind that built the structure.
Thus revolutions in knowledge occur, proceeding from one fixed state to an unsettled one, grapples are thrown to steady the motions, and once more pilings driven or footings set. We move analogies and metaphors around like magical formulas to catch the god of magic's attention. Because we live in a different age we generate changing beliefs. The question i ask is: are their supports reworded and reworked intuitional responses, after all, from the gut, that level, which give us our steadying perspective on things experienced, not from the reason, not as a result of the machinations of the reflective mind, but from those inner feelings that depart intuitively or irrationally from what is considered usual, normal or accepted, so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature? Invisible agency that defies other than oracular powers. A difficult question to frame. More difficult to answer.
The root belief of natural science, particularly the physical sciences, is that satisfactory natural explanations can be found for any phenomena.
Webster:Reason, then, is supernatural, if it is superior to sense perceptions. Surely reason is as natural as any other phenomena? The workings of the mind constitute natural phenomena. We are of nature, natural, despite our efforts to be unnatural. Can anything observed be un-natural? Well, the supernatural. And rationalists will not admit that supernatural phenomena exist. Everything has a natural explanation.
Has anyone explained gravity? Gravity is the product of a sleight-of-hand. We fool ourselves as well as the audience. That is the trouble. Tautologies. Magical formulas. Measurements of phenomena made by mechanical extensions of ourselves.
Our current picture of the brain is that of a splendid machine. An artificial intelligence with a whopping I.Q., as high as the programmer can make it. What we are looking for is an artificial intelligence brainy enough to programme itself. Like us. But better. Who would own the world then? The world of knowledge, I mean. Not us.
Magicians, despite the general impression, do know what they control. There is a science of thaumaturgy. In many stories this science runs amok. Gets out of hand. We hear of the failures, the successes are expropriated, become common stock.
"What devil is this, cutting with a piece of stone!" "Metal, he has made a blade out of metal!" "This new metal, it will not rust!" Demons at work. Miracles do happen. The origins lost to human memory.
The story of the manufacture of porcelain is recent wizardry in the proof. We call it invention. Formulas explain it. We explain away everything. We are besotted with explanations. It's a natural talent. Oh, yes, anything done to excess is unnatural, for it destroys itself. And it is in the interest of nature to propagate itself, or so it seems. Contradictory impulses. Or laws. Or effects.
Providential regulations. Generous but strict. The devil is, we don't know who wrote the rules. As fast as we figure them out the author retreats behind a cloak of mystery.
Our only link is to assume this author is rational (like ourselves) or irrational (like ourselves). Which assumption wins in this tug-of-war? Neither, they unwittingly balance out. How? Because of syncretism* , they marry. For the life of us, we see to that!
©Laurie Ashton, 1999
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