Author: The Telos of History

FORWARD

A Frame of Reference: The Curios Bond Between Word and Image. *

The “Storied” Structure: De-constructing the Metaphor of Language

THE “WORLD TREE”

Now the whole Earth was of One language and of common words…

– Genesis 11:1

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A LEXICAL EDIFICE – OR THE GROUNDWORK OF BEING..? Like a Picture of Space & Time – or just a Riddle inside of a Rhyme.

THE ENIGMA OF UNITY

The Whole, the Part, and the ONE; as in the “image” of god.

“The world is a system of inseparable differences.” – Alan Watts

“We are One – but we are not the same…” – U2

A COMMON SENSE: PICTURING “THE ALL” OF LANGUAGE

In-Between the sum of its parts: The Labyrinth of Metaphor

OUR POSITION IN THE WORLD is a lot like the “situation” of a whole unto its part – which in reference to itself – requires some kind of an observer – to tell that there’s a kind of difference. Whereby like a part is to its whole (were it somehow broken down as in to pieces) – as a picture of our current situation – this “position” of ours (now ) would equally be “the place” in which we find ourselves (at present): Wherefore by the virtue of this “image” (which is the order of its lo-gic) – being where we are – we should someway find this “picture” to be obvious.. Therefore cur-rently speaking – as a picture of the present situation – it would also be the premise from which our story (both) departs – and so must finally return… Whereby ONE could also say (according to such a fundamental end): This is where we are, and “that” is why we’re here. One might even say (according to the LANGUAGE which we have): Such would be the “telos” at “our moment”.

LIKE THE PARTICLE TO THE WAVE: It is simply because both part and whole are members of the very same unity – that in some fundamental way – they would be also ONE (and the same)… While it is likewise for the moment (being now ) – as chance would someway have it – it appears as if it’s WE who bear that testimony… And while to some that’s plain as day, if it also were the premise for “our-selves” – then the simple fact of its “ALL” – should be entirely self-evident – if not overtly obvious… So that by working as a whole – and “being part” (i.e. how our manifested end achieves itself, its so-called “golden mean” per se) – it would be also in accordance with the fundamental dictates of such a LOGIC… So that likewise, in the end – in its “characteristic” way (such that it is pictured – by the “wording” – of a language) – such a plain (but) working principal could also equally describe (to us) the picture – that’s “our world”… Which would be also just to say: That it is someway to portray (for us) the elemental nature – of the structure of correspon-dence – which in-turn describes our universe; and in some fundamental logic of its own (which is its LANGUAGE) – that would be the role of “human being”.

One might even say – it’s “common thread” …

Continue on to Chapter 1: “THE SPECTACLE OF THE WORLD”

Depiction of the Wall of Jericho, Farhi Bible c. 1366

* Refer to the short video “The Treachery of Images”

Chapter 7: Dragon of the Eclipse; A Recursive Pun Masquerading as a Veiled Metaphor

The Moon’s Nodes and a Point of Assemblage

“The Teli in the universe is like a king on his throne.”

– Sefer Yetzirah 6:3

The Telos of history is to repeat itself

– The author

The deeper we look, the more involved one becomes.

– Immemorius

An Axis Mundi: Where the Head and its Tail are Involving

Crux of the Serpent’s Spine

IN THE TELLING OF ITS LEGENDARY STORY: “Caput and Cauda” – the moon’s nodes (ascen-ding and descending – from the Latin root nodus meaning “knot”) are made from the stuff of a primordial coincidence. As the “twin-like” harbingers of a great celestial portent – like the faces of a coin – the two gained “currency” in astral myths throughout the world because of an intimate relationship to a most curious celestial phenomenon.

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AS THE CELEBRATED “SIGN” OF AN IMAGINARY BEAST (ascend-ing as a head – while descending as its tail): It was once upon a time that its enigmatic figure seemed as twisted like a creature in a “knot-like” form; such that in the story (of our story telling mind) – its twisted turning form was seen to ‘creep’ along a path from (a) be-low to (an) above, then above to below; devouring a peak within its trough (like a summit to its valley) – as it would seemingly “emerge” from (an) under to (what’s) over (from a cleft at its horizon) – much like the sinew of a wave.. Such that it was seeming to be some-thing that’s both “in” and along the way (wrapped about the navel of the world) that being figured like a knot on some imaginary string (twist -ed as if wrapped about an axis ) – was seen as crossing thru a point that would be some “where” at the middle.

north_and_south_nodes1 astrology-lunar-nodes-dragon

STORIED FIGURE THAT IT WAS: (Pregnant with a Meaning)

Warp & Weft

LIKE A PATH THAT’S SOMEWAY PICTURED by a shuttle on a loom (looming from below, and from above): Its ser-pentining form was seen to “twist” in such a way – that the some “thing” which was pictured as a knot upon its string could paint the outline of its rhythm as a “woven” point in space… Such that like a woven point in time – it would be somehow through the telling of its “yarn” – that the image which was conjured (in our story telling mind) could paint its convoluted portrait as a mighty living thing; a vast and awesome creature that has weaved its way through time, which has been figured as a form, through the “loom of its meander“: A proverbial Leviathan… Tracing outlines of a rhythm thru a story of its form to be a “thing” that’s some-how turned upon itself; while its image “held a place” for what was once an empty space – as if its “point” were like the “cleft” – at one’s “horizon“.

AN ARCHAIC SENSE OF PLACE & A CURIOUS FORM OF “CURRENCY”

A SERPENT IN THE ECLIPSE, OR A BULL ON A HORIZON:

AT THE HEAD OF A TAIL – OR IN THE “TALE” OF A HEAD (THE “TWO” THAT IS SOMEHOW ONE)

“Swallowing” a Stone, or (at) the “Point” of an Assemblage? A Point which Cuts Both Ways: Following the Clew

Knot this, not that. – The author

“A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself”

– Niels Bohr

The “Cleft” on One’s Horizon

NOW RIDDLE THIS:

AND BEING SOMEHOW AT THE MIDDLE: As with the twin sides of a coin (or like their axis), it would be somewhere at their cross-ing (i.e. their nodes ) – that “a face” through which it ‘sees’ is but the face of what is seen. Not the “thing itself” – but rather more – a portrait of its “abstraction” (i.e. “the picture” of a knot upon its string – as in “the image” of a swallowing dragon).. Such that as the head does to its tail (creates an “axis”) – its figure holds the place for an imaginary space – as would a face that’s (both) the center and “a crossing”… Tracing outlines of its story – through the portrait of a form; as in a “curios kind of circuit” – or topology.

Continue to Chap 8: The Looming End, or and End that Looms. What is Meant by the Labyrinth?

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Portrait of a man with Labyrinth, Bartolomeo Veneto c. 1510

* Refer below to: “The Law of the Instrument”

Chapter 6: THE SLANG OF AGES

Ainsoph, this upright One, with that noughty besighed him zeroine… To see in his horrorscup he is mehrkurious than saltz of sulphur.

– James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake (261.23-26)

PREGNANT WITH A MEANING

“The medium is the message” – Marshall Mcluhan

In his “Le Mystère Des Cathédrales” – Fulcanelli introduces the enigmatic term “Cabala” (to be distinguished & juxtaposed with the Hebrew Kabbalah) as a way to refer to a special category in the use of common language. Derived from the Latin root “caballus” (meaning horse, as with the Spanish word caballo), Cabala (as he describes it, however similar to the ear as the Hebrew Kab-balah) is “an arcane Latin term possessed of rich and vivid history”.. According to his narrative – this Cabala should be regarded as a kind of “horseplay” or Tom foolery; a homo-phonic form of lexical assonance which he calls “a parley or dalliance”, one whose very form or substance could be someway characterized to have a spirited “life of its own”.. Fulcanelli further goes on to write that this so-called horseplay (Cabala) has been known at other times and other places by other names and that together as a whole – they can all be somehow characterized by a certain inclin-ation towards an “oblique” style and free-form play on words. He further assures that the style in which “it speaks” is clearly recognizable – if one has “eyes to see or ears to hear”. And further still – that this Cabala was not only just a spirited play of words, but could be equally character-ized as a special form of cant or argot: A proverbial “slang of ages”. *

As if all roads lead thru Rome Fulcanelli goes on to compare (this) Cabala to (that) Kabbalah by claiming it to be the more universal of the two – placing the former firmly under the rubric of a “phonetic cipher”. And when it is at play – “acting” (on the one hand) as a hermeneutic tool, while performing (as the other) as a common thread of elementary meaning (much in the manner of a Rosetta stone) – it comes to someway “re-present” that essential “thing” which both frames and circumscribes the fundamental unity of every form of language; drawing upon word similarities and semantic assonances (such as homophones, puns, polysemes, and tropes) while employing them as “symbolic tools for expanding the expressive reach of words”. Being much like the free-form style of modern day hip-hop, techniques falling under its rubric have been known at other times (cloaked in legendary guises) through such effervescent titles as the Langue Verte of the Hermetic alchemists, the twilight language of tantric Buddhism, or those fabled winged words of song renown of bards like Homer – or what some might call the language of the birds.

The author further goes on to say that as a hermeneutic tool, the phonetic Cabala is a short-hand way to understand the “gist” of alchemical texts and symbols – and that when combined with the study of word roots (etymology) “it can configure the mind in such a way to have an ev-er deepening and richer set of associations from which to draw, while expanding the semantic space open for contemplation”. He further writes that this broadened expansion of the faculty of language can reverse the “Babel effect” of the confusion of the tongues “by connecting to a level of mind (or of unity ) from which individual languages are but partial projections”.

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” – Virgil

NOW RIDDLE THIS:

A Concealment of Concealment

Finally – it is through the logic and example of this “horseplay” (or Tom foolery) that Fulcanelli leans deeply into the storied meme of the Trojan Horse – characterizing the timeless epic tale as a symbol (or the sign) of “a recursive pun which ‘masquerades’ itself as a veiled metaphor”…

Which would also mean to say: That as a thing – as the “token” or “a sign” for the hidden carrier of meaning (i.e. somehow as its object or its icon) – our “polytropic” horse delivers its semantic payload much like the rebus or a palindrome; referring back onto itself in ways which are both oblique as well as obvious… Much as would the notion of an “embedded” concept be some way assonant – to a thing that’s somehow “pregnant” with (a) meaning.

Continue to Chapter 7: DRAGON OF THE ECLIPSE

* “Slang of Ages” – refer to Walter Becker

Chap 5: The Problem with a Purpose: Teleology, Tautology, & the Anthropic Principal.

“Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist; he cannot live without her, but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.” – J.B.S. Haldane

Finding purpose is just like the elephant in the room – once it’s somehow noticed, there appears to be no get-ting rid of it. – the author

MEANS TO AN END: An Implicit Implication

TELEOLOGY IS THE STUDY OF PURPOSIVENESS: In classical Greek philosophy, it was an in-terpretative methodology whereby the explanation of phenomena is made sensible according to the purposes they serve – rather than their causes… Its name is derived from the two Greek words telos and logos.

TELOS means “end”; that for the sake of which something is done or occurs. In its most contem-porary sense, telos pertains to a thing’s evident purpose, its aim, or its ultimate goal. However, being idiomatic to ancient Greek language (and its own history of thought) – telos is an archaic word possessing a range of subtle meaning – and to classical philology, it remains a term of not-able interest and semantic conjecture.

LOGOS is a familiar ancient word that remains seminal to the corpus of Greek thought; as a polysemic term in a field of related studies, even in antiquity, the nuance of its interpretation was itself the subject of doctrine. From the disciplines of rhetoric, to those of philosophy and theology – derived from the Greek lego (“I say”) – its sense carries with it a range of meaning from “speech”, to “explanation”, to “reason”, to “word”.

Then vs. Now; Tail vs. Head

A Tale of Tangled Viewpoints

AS A METHOD OF APPROACH TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE teleology has suffered setbacks in our modern times – the tarnish on its name being somehow caused or owed to a certain kind of “implicit” modern stigma: What many would refer to today as “intelligent design”. Having once been regarded for its virtue – but now in someways out of fashion – it is simply because “an aim” implies intelligence (because intelligence implies an agent) – that (now) it’s much to our chagrin (teleologically speaking, that is): Something like an unwanted passenger (which would be some ways like the elephant in the room ) – our so-called “**problem with a purpose” (that is implicit to our language) – has passed down hand-in-hand through time – “**together” with the subject of its discipline..* Which is “the reason” why nowadays (owing to its purpose – so to speak) – that like an unseemly bedfellow – **any kind of teleologic approach becomes a slippery kind of slope – for the “modern man” of science. And much like any fall from grace – it was all downhill from there.**

As a truth begets the lie, so the lie begets the truth. – Anon

As above, so below – Hermes Trismegistus

THE PROBLEM WITH A PURPOSE: “CAUGHT” WITHIN A RHETORICAL FRAME

The “Figure of Speech”; a Polytropic Form of Entanglement

“A mirror mirroring a mirror” – Douglas Hofstadter

Intelligent Design – or a Double Edged Sword? Infinite Regression to the Mean (or “the form” of self-reference?) Turtles all the way down:

WERE ONE TO PUT IT IN A NUTSHELL: Like a form of double trouble (somehow getting two for the price of one) – Teleology has become something of a problem inside a problem for mod-ern science… Owing to its reason (like an inconvenient sort of truth), regardless of our endeav-ors, however hard we may try – somehow “in the end” – one can neither sidestep nor escape a certain form of predicament; a sort of double bind that is somehow “both at once” – a dilemma of our logic, and a logical dilemma. And being someway like a self-fulfilling prophecy (something like our “chicken & the egg”) it is a problem that’s both implicit to its “mean” – as it is equally the fated outcome of teleology’s “own” – teleological implication; something that in one way or the other (hitting close to home) we all inevitably “face” in-tandem with the subject of its discipline. So much so that nowadays (being consequently unable to sidestep its certain implication) – like a line drawn in the sand – it seems that we must choose (a position or a side) – so that we might somehow come to terms with BOTH a fundamental truth AND the one confounding fact – of its own unavoidable conclusion… So that whether it comes down to rhetoric, to biology, to physics, or cosmology (whichever way it is that one might “choose”): WHEN IT COMES RIGHT DOWN TO ASK ITS QUESTION (does there appear to be an end behind its purpose) – the problem with our “subject” is simply this:

A FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH: ONE CANNOT TAKE “THE AIM” OUT OF “PURPOSE”… We might think it’s someway possible – but it is somehow in ‘the end’ (and by its very definition): Purpose can neither be removed or subtracted from itself (or from anything for that matter) – without it someway achieving its own “end”…

Which would consequently lead us to that other troublesome problem…

THE CONFOUNDING FACT: ONE CANNOT EVEN TRY TO TAKE THE “AIM” OUT OF “A PUR-POSE”, WITHOUT IT SOMEWAY BEING ON PURPOSE… (which for a person with intelligence – by design – could present one with something of a pickle.)

Which might prove aim-less in what follows…

**AN UNAVOIDABLE CONCLUSION: WE MAY AIM, AND WE MAY TRY – THAT WE MAY TIE OURSELVES IN KNOTS; HOWEVER, IN THE END: WE CAN’T EXPLAIN “THE END” WITH-OUT “A PURPOSE” (because we cannot “part” the logos from its telos – we cannot take a telos from its logos).**

WHICH IF YOU THINK TO ASK THE QUESTION also means to say: We can’t explain “the end” out of “the word”; cause as “de-signs” of our intelligence – they are always “done” on purpose.

THEREFORE IN THE END – as a “matter of reason” for science (teleologically speaking, that is): It is simply because “the one” becauses “the other” – that any kind of teleological approach has proved so maddeningly circular for its modern form of empiricism… And whether “by design” or not – by appearing either way (so one may somehow choose ) – the way it “frames” its question became the fate of its approach – because when we’re speaking teleologically, the problem with its mean (which is the problem of our measure) can be something like the argument of whether (or not) the cup is “half-empty” or “half-full” (which as everybody knows, would depend on how you look at it)… And as if being in “a whole” we’re not “a part of” (or as if clutching to a straw or to a fig-leaf), it would be somehow in the end – that balancing teleology’s (own) inherent virtue with its “seeming implication” – would prove far too great an ask (or risk) – for its (own) empiric-al lens… And while un-provably so – it was only a matter of time (or inevitability) – that likewise (in the end), any form of teleological thought would someday “find itself” – excommunicated – from the church of modern science, only to be deemed (ironically) somehow outside the scope of its (own) modern purview… While however (and in the end) – as Mark Twain would once put it: “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…”

ERADICATING THE AGENT (the inconvenient truth) The “Mark” of an Intelligence: The Teleology of “Teleonomy”

SO IT WAS that with a nip here, and a tuck there (and in a sotto-voce fashion): That given all its implicit logic – but wedded equally hand-in-hand, “together” with its own inexorable problem (that any kind of “purposed-end” implies for modern science); that given all its “double trouble” (with the shout of hallelujah) – a once unseemly bedfellow – “once” the elephant in the room – would one day “find itself” – conveniently “re-purposed” and rebranded… Whereby in a modern manner of speaking (to the science of our time ) – as the shadow of its former self (through ruse of modern guise) – its once familiar image – could be cleverly repackaged – as its new improved (but once familiar) form… Then it was somehow et voila ( just like the empiricist’s new clothes): That through a sleight of modern language – its reason’s now re-labeled “teleonomy”…

THE UNMOVED MOVER

“Everything that is a proposition of logic has to be in some way or the other like a tautology.” – Bertrand Russel

SIGN OF GOD – OR THE SIGN OF ITSELF

TAUTOLOGY is yet another distinguished term having origins in ancient Greek language; as a device or tool of rhetoric its name means “repeating what’s been said”.. Made in the likeness of its own image (being somehow true to form) a tautology is a statement or expression in which the same “thing” is said twice but in different words (the “one” relying on “the other”) so that its own reflexive point (its “axis” – so to speak) becomes the meaningful equivalence between two parallel phrases or related terms… The prefix tauto literally means “itself”; it forms a grammat-ical contraction between the two Greek words “to” + “auto” – meaning “the self’ or “the same”. Thus a to-auto-logos (in a manner of the rebus or a palindrome) literally connotes the form, im-age, or idea of “the self explanation”. Much like a truism, a tautology can be understood in terms of a self-evident statement of what is plain or what is obvious. However for the tautology, what is most important for “itself” – what is most pivotal – has everything to do with what’s implicit; because what would be “implicit”, would be (both) equally and at once that very fact (or quality which it has or it “posseses”) that by its “own definition”: “Is” what it says ‘it’ is to be.. Because it’s somehow in the end – someway describing itself … Curiously performing as its own generative principle – simply to exist as its own very “reason” for being; which would be namely – referring to “itself” – as if “it” – were nothing but the implicit re-iteration of “its” own “subject”: Cause at the end of the day – “it” – is no-thing but a frame (that someway ‘pictures’); which like the some- thing called our “consciousness” – is no-thing – but “a portrait” – of a self-referring system – re-ferring to “the frame” which is “its” – “self” (that is )… Such that being “what it is” (by belonging to itself, while being no-thing ), it so becomes its own explanation, being nothing but the reason behind its very own purpose: Because it’s some “HOW” – in the end – “nothing” and “the story of itself”… So like a story in the logic of a mirror: BEING “LIKE” A MIRROR (someway “this” and “that” – while it is someway “that” but “this”) – it would appear to be the nature of its very own ‘subject’ to be structurally edified by a fact of its (own) recursion; cause while its someway look-ing back (while it is someway vice-versa) – it would be built upon “THAT” reference to its “self”. So for all its means and purpose: Like the pivot, or a fulcrum (or an axis – or the language we call consciousness), a tautology’s raison d’etre literally would have every “thing” – to do – as the re- presentational “form” of its own descriptive function. Such that being “in and of itself” (created in the “likeness” of its own image ) ONE could even say: WHAT IT IS – “IS” – WHAT “IT” DOES.

SUCH THAT WHILE IT’S BEING WHAT IT DOES – it so “becomes” what-ever it might do.

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh – Exodus 3:14

BECAUSE AN “X” MARKS THE SPOT

A-PARENT STRUCTURE (the “familiar” form)

TO BRING THE MATTER HOME – consider what is known in certain academic circles as “the Anthropic principal”. With anthropos meaning “human” in Greek – according to Wikipedia, the anthropic principal is a philosophic consideration that says “**observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious sapient life that observes it” and “that any working theory of the universe will be necessarily constrained by the need to allow for human existence.”** In the fields of astrophysics and cosmology – the anthropic principal has been proffered as a logical argument to account for the emergence of human life (or of consciousness) in terms which are deemed obvious or “self-evident”… It posits (more or less) that observers are necessary to the existence of a universe… Or put a bit more plainly: That the “spectacle” of the world – requires an audience. Taken at face value, the anthropic principle addresses the bare necessity of things being as they are. Very simply put: Things are the way they are – because – that’s the way they are… Through its teleologic approach to the story of life in our cosmos, the Anthropic principle is both a truism and a tautology clearly expressed – but in its own oblique terms:

IF LIFE WERE NOT POSSIBLE – THEN NO ONE WOULD KNOW IT. **

Continue on to Chapter 6: “THE SLANG OF AGES”

* Synchrony vs. Diachrony

** A possible solution to “the liar’s paradox”

Header image: “Relativity” by M.C. Esher

Chapter 4: A Rubric of Reference – The Forgotten Knowledge

Sign of Life: A Riddle and a Rhyme

The Crux of the Mater: Some “where” at a crossroad

Encountering its visage, the spectacle of its sign; its beguiling form in-guise a riddle, confronted by our serpent’s spine…

Imagin-ations once provoked (solicited by our question’s sign); we take our mental stabs at meaning – enticed to solve its reason’s rhyme…

Unravel thee – in “tangled” form – and all to “figure” out.

“What” – it is ..? And that which “appears” to be happening …

In-form of our incisive “crux” – where the head and its tail are in-volving.

The deeper we look – the more involved one becomes.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field…

– Genesis 3:1

Nosce te ipsum: A Forgotten Knowledge (a Greek key)

An ancient sign of uncertain origin – “ouroboros” in Hellenistic Greek means “tail-eater”. Having once been regarded as a vital (or numinous) sigil – a sign of life per se – even to the Hermetic philosophers of late antiquity (who probably coined the term), the circular form of the serpent’s sign was already considered timeless… Much like Chronos (“time”) of the Orphic Greeks, El Olam (“the eternal”) of the Phoenicians, or the Hellenistic Aion (“eternity”) to name but a few, like a proverbial “ancient of days” – the serpent was considered something that was old as time itself… Or to put it somehow mythically: According to our ancestors – its figure is as old as our human ability to reckon “time” as such (in reference to ourselves, that is) – which would make it the stuff of memory… Which would also mean to say – that humanly speaking (being somehow “there” since our beginning) – any kind of reference to our serpent’s sign (being “relative” to us) would make it rather old indeed.

A LIFE OF “IT’S OWN”: THE SIGN THAT SIGNIFIES THE SIGNIFIER SIGNIFYING “ITSELF”

**Both perennial and timeless, the sign of the ouroboros was a fitting image for the “living form”; as the** living image – to the science of “its time” – its **mercurial emblem was a universal token for the animating principle… And as the “universal” symbol for our consciousness – to scholars of the time – the serpent’s tail-eating form** came to aptly signify the nexus… Through the riddle of its visage (the curious construction of its elegant design), its sign could somehow “characterize” the curios relations of being to becoming as an intimate relationship between space & time.

Therefore – like its proverbial ancient ancestor – that “snake upon a pole” of old – the banner of its aegis became a fitting sign for the indeterminable totality of our conscious/unconscious continuum; that “thing” which all-together we call life… While likewise so it was, referring to one’s awareness (as a living human being) – that “a-sleep” or “a-wake” – the sign of the ouroboros became equally a short-hand for the frame of reference “personified”. And being such that it is for both (a representative sign for the presence of a viewer) – being somehow “in the end” – its “tail-eating form” could so uniquely characterize the conscious experience of mortal existence.

NOW RIDDLE THIS

THE CLEW TO AN ENIGMA: WHAT WALKS ON FOUR IN THE MORNING, TWO AT NOON, AND THREE BY EVENING?

As a tutelary figure (much like our picture of the Möbius) – somehow “on its face” – the rubric of the ouroboros is a self-referring construct. And to receive somehow its boon (the unlocking of its cipher) – something like a mirror – one must stand before its sign and be “confronted” by the semblance of its visage; storied figure that it was – our serpent’s “tail” reads something like a re-ference to the fable of the Sphinx (whose name in Greek means “strangler”)… And as its form is pondered (or so the story goes), the “situation” (in) which we find our self – “looks” – something like this: A creature’s puzzling image is posed to the viewer – as the “form” of a question…* And while referring to the querent (so the riddle goes ) – as one interrogates “its sign” we somehow “find” – that we are “caught” within the gaze of an imaginary beast: Something like the hero in a maze (or some “thing” like the palindrome).. And being someways like a Theseus to (our) hapless young Oedipus (who somehow found their-selves confronted by the hybrid) to solve the “riddle of the sign” – we gain the “clew” to an enigma… Which would also mean in some odd way – “the picture it portrays” – is nothing but “the knowledge of its question”…

**With its answer – for the moment – being “man”…**

(The Greek Key)

Continue on to Chapter 5: “The Problem with a Purpose”

Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphinx

* What am I ?

Color drawing above by C.G.Jung, from the Red Book

Chapter 3: Language and its Game of Words. What is in a Name?

“Man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are, of things that are not, that they are not.”

– Protagoras

… and whatever man called each living creature, that was its name.

– Genesis 2:19

Words refer to nothing but a value we ascribe them. – Anon

To “mean” – means also to divide. – Webster’s dictionary

“We are all suspended in language…” – Niels Bohr

… and the word was made flesh.

– John 1:14

The Set Which Represents All Sets

“There is no quantum world – only a quantum mechanical description.” – Niels Bohr

A Poly-tropic Description – the Many-storied Structure

AS SHAKESPEARE SAID BEFORE: “All the world’s a stage”. And as Plato tried to picture with his story of the cave: On the face of it – things are somehow more than what appears… While like a Holmes to our dear Watson (who would be searching for a “clew”) – some of us may find that we must ask ourselves again: What to name this “show” that we’ve called life..?

How shall we describe it?

Humans after all are somehow creatures seeking meaning – perhaps it’s nothing but a game of words ..? One might even call it: “Rose by any other name”… So that if you’d choose to frame it different (were one to frame it as a drama): It’s where the play of life’s performance is “scripted” like the plot-line of a zero-sum game, “staged” behind the curtain of an all or nothing backdrop – and “set” before the gamut of an unlimited realm of equivocality and equivalence…

And “we” is the common thread.

IN OTHER WORDS: IT WOULD ALL ADD UP TO NOUGHT (but for the language) …

And the devils’ in the details. *

Not this, not that… – The Upanishads

If this, then that… – The Buddha

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” – The Beatles

A Human Scale or the “Tongue” of a Balance?

A pan of merit, a pan of liability, and the tongue of decree deciding between them.

– Sefer Yetzirah 2:1

Squaring the Circle: A Logic Behind Every Conclusion

A Multi-Storied Structure that’s a Frame which is referring to Itself. The Very Common Thread

IMAGINING the Hard Problem of Consciousness (picturing “the All” of language)

“a mirror mirroring a mirror” – Douglas Hofstadter ...”running and returning” – Sefer Yetzirah 1:4

THE “FORM” OF LIFE IS A COMMUNICATION WITH ITS FEEDBACK: “In-formation” becomes language, language turns to information… And in a play of this and that (while it is playing that or this), something like a reflex (with its every back and forth) – further inform-ation “points” to language. Like the picture of an echo in a network of response; some “where” at a crossroad – the ALL of in-formation turns to language… And in-between the One and “its other”, some “where” between language and itself, like a mirror in a mirror (in a mirror) – we are but as interlocutors in a dialogue.

An Enigma of Unity

“Meaning is the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate.”

– Dagfinn Føllesdal

FOR INSTANCE “PICTURE” what it is that I am saying: “That” would be the point of what we’re “doing”. First – imagine space and time as the arena of life’s living stage… Okay – got it? Next, keeping the first image in (our) mind – on the one hand – consider a familiar trope like “the human condition” – then as the other – equate that picture with what (our) physical science today might likewise name “the material world”. Moving forward with this very “common” exercise (of ours) – say we were now to picture our two “figures of speech” and consider them both as if they were each “parts of a set” which could mutually include one another? So far so good one might imagine (i.e. not a pro-blem – I’d suppose)…

NOW if somehow you can “see” what I “mean” – let us say it’s now because we re-cognize that each of our terms would ultimately “point” (back) to the very same thing… So that (the) “what” I am meaning to say is (if it was broken down to “bits”): By being “figures of speech” (being mem-bers of the language which is “ours”) – such that they’re referring to a some “thing” framed by conscious-ness (which as a whole is – to its part – would be their “one”); they would likewise, in the end (which means in one way or the other) always point (back) to the “who” (who share the language) – which would be no-thing but our “what” that’s someway figured as the “One” (that’s “meant” by consciousness). And if you’d reckon this is so (by having found that we agree) – it’s cause that only now “this” re-presents our sharing of “that” picture through the mind’s “I”. So if you’re seeing what I mean – maybe this time ’round try to keep it in one’s mind, that in so doing (by making them mutually in-clusive) – we (now) CHOOSE to somehow real -ize (make in some way complementary), or to “say” as if we “see”: That what might seem to be a difference (which may “appear” between the two) – could just be somehow ONE and the same – something like a “rose by any other name”… Which would also mean to say (if we were “wholly” in agreement) – that both could smell as sweet… Because according to our very own LANGUAGE (which some might also call OUR COMMON TONGUE) – “we” – is the common thread.

“IT FROM BIT”

– John Archibald Wheeler; Theoretical physicist and coiner of the term “Black Hole”

The Mirror of Language that’s in “A-Maze” of its Metaphor: The Reflexive Bond between Word & Image

A “Tangled” Hierarchy (effects which may precede their cause)

“A mechanism can at most, presuppose a mechanic.” – Alfred North Whitehead

EX NIHILO ALIQUID (Something from Nothing)

AND THEN it’s somehow et voila – there you go: And that’s what you call IMAGINATION. And the “what” it somehow means for us – is something just like magic – cause in a meaningful turn of a phrase – one can now equally refer to both and say something like this: IT IS FATE that each of us find ourselves “caught” in life’s circumstance. “Ending” in (a) birth – re-turning thru death – and with every-thing (else) stretched “in-between” – by likening fate both to one’s predicament and the make-up of the world: In the metre of a poetic image – man correlates THE UNIVERSE.

It’s as if ONCE UPON A TIME – we’re “stuck” – mired in the glue of life’s “unbounded” metaphor (“caught” within its grip); that having suddenly “found” the words, we sud-denly find our wings… And then, it’s somehow just like presto – “appearing” as out of thin blue air – that having suddenly found the words (as if once they were somehow “lost” then un-forgotten), we can now say things like this: Fate’s “circle” entwines us – as if it were the shape of life’s mortality… And like the fibers of a rope or the forges of a chain – strung together in a “play” of words and meaning; as if by fate – we are each encompassed by the “form of inevitability”. A some-thing which is “in and of” itself – that operates upon our (own) respective lives – like the tangles of a net, the closing of a noose, or the twisting of a knot upon its “string”.

“Clotho colum retinet, Lachesis net, et Atropos occat.” – Ovid

We are all in the grip of life’s curious sort of “stranglehold”. And as it circumscribes its metes & bounds for what has – or can – be “said”, that being someway in its “tangle” – it would somehow predicate the contour of fate’s constructive measure; such is the “frame” of language. Holding the narrative of our lives within a warp & weft of its spun-out fabric – all at once containing us – while we are equally constrained within its web of CHOSEN words… In life’s imaginary form of pass-time – ONE could choose to say: The living of its language –“performs” before our eyes – as “the picture which we have”; and some would call that consciousness…

BUT LET THE BUYER BEWARE: Cause if we’re living in the language of its zero-sum game (where “this” may* equal “that” – because it’s we’re the common thread) – by running like a plot line, “the measure of our meaning” could run something like a syntax for its one and only rule.**

Cause only NOW it’s in reverse.

And why is that – you ask..?

BECAUSE IT’S “THEN” (when looking back) – as if “to come” as our surprise – while after only haven chosen might we real-ize …

IT IS SOMEHOW AFTER ALL’S BEEN SAID (or done)…

SOME “WHERE” in the turning of a phrase: IT’S SOME “THING” like a blade which cuts both ways (or somehow fate’s uncanny “twist”); when in some funny kind of way it’s “found” – that we’ve been recompensed (in-turn) – by an “allotted measure” of our own choosing…

Until somehow we are …

Every single one (of us) …

Requited by the “tale” of our own respective end.

AS THE STORY OF OUR LIVES – or as lines from a well known script – our “play” of words has prompted an endless variety of personal responses. So much these days for the proverbial wis-dom which says THE WORLD IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT.

Continue on to Chapter 4: “A RUBRIC OF REFERENCE”

Ixion Bound to the Wheel

* Caveat Emptor

** If “this” – then that … (with somehow all things being equal)

Header image: Tapestry by Henry Moore; The Three Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, & Atropos (the spinner, the allotter, & the “un-turned”)

CHAPTER 2: THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS

“It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to say how nature is. Physics concerns only what we can say about nature” – Niels Bohr

There is nothing you can see that isn’t shown. – The Beatles

Of the multitude of things that we can say of it, first and foremost: Consciousness is narrative. In other words – it is a telling. Whereby (in the manner of speaking) one could even say – what it “is”, is what it does – simply because without it, one would not be able to “say” anything at all. And as the telling is its “hallmark” – being somehow true to form – it is through reflexive acts of self-aware perception – that this self-referring narrative (we call consciousness ) – is only but a tale that’s someway told; and conversely as “it is” – as with being to becoming – both are some-how true at any single time.. Unless **we blithely overlook it – the truth is (none could argue): It is the mean of every means; with its capacity to describe, it is the consequential thing by which all things can be spoken of. It is the universal arbiter of that metric we call language – the measure of our kind – which clothes its very nakedness in the fashion of the day by apportioning the void in ways that we see “fit”…**

Such that while referring to “itself” (as so it’s wont to do) **– what’s so curios for “us all” (about this consciousness of ours ) may perhaps be simply this: As you’d take the bit of time to some-way think about it – to the “mind’s eye” (which is the image that is conjured in our mind) – this so-called “telling of a tale” (that’s someway told) – “looks” something like a picture in a story of a journey… In other words – as it is pictured in our mind’s imagination – conscious “ness” is a storied journey. And to the mind’s “I” – being conscious – is a lot like being in a moving vehicle, with “us” as a passenger; a panorama thats replete with an observer in the frame – with a land-scape and horizon – in a constantly unfolding yet ever-present kind of moving “motion picture”.**

While on the other hand – as the vessel of our consciousness, one could even say that from the mind’s eye (view) unto its own “naked” vantage (being somehow like our picture – in its mirror ): As it travels through its landscape (so that it might move toward its “horizon”) – what is seen to be “the world” may in fact be little more than but its momentary portrait; so that like a picture in the story of a journey – it would be little more than a moment-to-moment snapshot or a shifting point of view… One that “makes” its time – referring to itself (that is). Being “all at once” (while seeming “as it were”) little more than a series of moving pictures – viewed from a kind of stage.

Were one to even further make the point: By appearing to itself in such a manneristic way – “appearing” to be a projection of its own imagination (being some “thing” like a mirror, that is); from the mind’s eye view (and its own peculiar vantage), this continuum we call consciousness appears to frame a snapshot of its twist and turning path. Which somehow means it’s “framed” in such a way – as if (it was) a telling of our story, were nothing but a portrait – of a momentary picture of its journey (which also means – it’s only just a tale that’s someway told )… So as you’d take the bit of time we’d need “to picture it”: With(in) the coursing of our mind’s “imagin-ation” – it might seem somehow all at once – something like the story of a wheel upon an axis. Such that “relatively” speaking (being always relative to itself, that is), like the tale that is told – it is always looking outward from a certain inner point – while it’s ever looking-in from some periphery.. So being “in” and “of” “itself” (as the whole does to its part) – because it’s shaped the way it is – by “appearing” to itself in such a way (like the journey of a wheel upon its axis ) – and as the “vessel” of our consciousness: Being somehow for the moment with a “certain point” of view – picturing the **world upon its momentary course – would be a “snapshot” of the circle (that’s its “path”).**

And should you find that ‘bit’ of time one needs to think about it (consciousness – that is): In its kind of odd/peculiar way (in a sort of “fashion” of its “own”) – it somehow paints the picture – of “a portrait” – of its journey… A strange and curios trip. As if (it was) we’re traveling down “that road” – as through some riddle in a plot-line – chasing our own very “tale” ; it would appear to be “pursuing” its very own narrative. While doing it in such a way – that like a “you” or “me” – it makes a reference to itself.

So welcome back my friends to the show that never ends... Welcome to the Labyrinth.

Without its ever-ending story – there is no “tail” to be told…

Continue on to Chapter 3: “LANGUAGE AND ITS GAME OF WORDS”

1-theseus-and-the-minotaur-in-the-labyrinth-edward-burne-jones.jpg

Theseus and the Minotaur, Edward Burne-Jones 1861

Chapt 1: The Spectacle of the world

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

– Max Planck

“… the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.”

– Niels Bohr

Samsara and nirvana are One.

– Nagarjuna

WE ARE ALL OBSERVERS: Watchers. On-looking participants in the spectacle we call “the world”. In the arena of life’s day to day affair, we pay the world our casual regard – its ubiquitous presence is taken to be a given; habituated as we are to its comings and its goings – our world (in its manifest appearance) is a thing that most of us (most of the time) take for granted… And perhaps this is a part of our nature; that “part” of the way of things which somehow characterizes the way things are.

Breaking The (Classical) Mold

But while complacent we may be (as watchers and lookers-on) – as “witness” to an omnipresent spectacle, we humans are also creatures of imagination.. So riddle this: Within its myriad of images and all its correlated phenomena – looking “outward” to the world (and) thru the window of our eyes – do we simply find what (we “appear”) to see? Or is it (more) that we see – what we expect to find ..?

Which way does it seem to you?

WHO can say. And the question is more than just rhetorical. When it comes right down to the “chicken or the egg” of it – perhaps it’s because we imagine there to be no “apparent” context in which the “two views” can be teased apart – that when it’s down to what we believe – there is little to distinguish the one proposition from the other. Like the artful sleight of hand (as if “seamless” or invisible), or the rhyme of a well-timed word, bound-up in the rhythm of a tortuous riddle (as if someway we’re “entranced”) – the reflexive question challenges our assumptions by comparing the “vantage” provided by one’s view point to “the situation” of one’s point of view – as if to ask whether (in the end) the two views could ever be “disentangled”.

So much for objectivity… Like being in a kind of Mexican standoff with our “selves”, this curious circumstance of our own perceptual quandary appears to be somehow wired-in to our experience – and therefore seemingly unavoidable… But just like Schrödinger’s elusive cat – however unsettling this may be for us – it is only but the gist of an inexorable dilemma with profound implications for “our human situation”.

Side-stepping for the moment any of its quantum implications (or “uncertainty”), if we take our rhetorical exercise another step further it can all come down to the sim-ple, larger, and more intimately related question of whether an “objective” material world can exist “out there” – independent of ourselves – before we are in the picture to see it; a curious question indeed, but one that few of us ask given all its practical-ities… But regardless of what we may think of it, or however absurd it might appear, and despite all our time spent searching for definitive answers – we will still remain befuddled… Why? Because if we cast as wide a net as possible to ask that broadest of questions: Can the existence of the world be disentangled from the presence of our on-looking selves? – inevitably we will find and must eventually admit – that we cannot escape the “semantics” of our own predicament. Namely – that the existence of a questioner is pre-supposed by “the question” – and that a “who” is out of neces-sity – caught – within the rhetorical frame.

It is as if the querent (our “who” that is in question) – the hypostatized person that’s implied by our subject’s object (or conversely speaking by our object’s subject) – our hypothetical “self” (so to speak) – were somehow at the fulcrum of a peculiar sort of crossroad or rhetorical chiasm; suspended & juxtaposed, or someway superposed at a point midway between mirrored or opposing views (to have someway become “lo-calized”). Looked at systemically or taken as a whole – like an unusual series of twists and turns in an odd sort of maze – in the end – one can not definitively say if it is the world or the mind that perceives it which comes first.*

It’s like the ordinary palindrome, or simply not seeing the forest for the tree… In the arena of life’s day to day affair – “the question of our consciousness” – would appear to be wedded to a habit for complacency.

Continue on to Chapter 2: “THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS”

The Kerykeion

* Refer to the article: Does the universe exist when we’re not looking?

Header image: “Hand with Sphere” by M.C. Esher (Self Portrait)