Author: The Telos of History

FORWARD

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

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

A “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 GROUND-WORK OF BEING? Like a “Portrait” 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

From a Hermeneutic Circle to an Axis of Meaning

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 a fundamental way – they would be somehow 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 would be entirely self-evident (were it 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 somehow 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 “a wording” – of our 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 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 a “token” or the “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 Anthro-pic 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

Discovering something’s purpose is just like the elephant in the room – once it’s somehow noticed, there ap-pears to be no getting 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 form – 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 term possessing a range of subtle meaning – and to classical philology, it remains a word of not-able interest and semantic conjecture.

LOGOS is a familiar ancient term that remains seminal to the corpus of Greek thought; as a polysemic word 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 “explanation”, to “speech”, to “reason”, & “the word”.

Then vs. Now; Tail vs. Head

A Tale of Tangled Viewpoints: The Diachrony of our Synchrony

AS A METHOD OF APPROACH TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE teleology has suffered setbacks in our current time – 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 someway 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’s implicit to every 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 form of teleological approach becomes a slippery kind of slope for the “man of modern science”. And much like any fall from grace – it was all downhill from there.**

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

As above, so below – Hermes Trismegistus

OUR PROBLEM HAS A PURPOSE – “CAUGHT WITHIN” A RHETORICAL FRAME: THE TOOL/OBJECT PARADOX

The “Figure of Speech” – the “Form” of Interpretation – in a Polytropic Web of their Entanglement

“A mirror mirroring a mirror” – Douglas Hofstadter

THE DOUBLE AXIS OF THE WORD : TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN Intelligent Design, a Double-Edged Sword, or a Form of Self-Reference?

Somehow in the “End”: Following in the Thread of a Plot-Line Towards an Infinite Regression to the Mean…

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 its 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 meted measure and of teleology’s “teleological implication”: Something that in one way or another (hitting close to home) we all inevitably “face”, in-tandem with the “subject” of a discipline. So much so that nowadays (being consequently unable to side-step its “certain” implication) – like a line drawn in the sand – it seems that we must CHOOSE a position (or a side) – so that one may somehow come to terms with BOTH a fundamental “truth” AND the ONE confounding fact – of its “own” unavoidable conclusion. So that whether it comes to rhetoric, to biology, to physics, or to cosmology (whichever way it is that we might “choose”): That when it all comes down to “frame its question” – the problem with our “AIM” is simply this:

AN INTELLIGENT DESIGN – OR A “SIGN” OF OUR INTELLIGENCE?

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH: WE CAN’T SUBTRACT THE “AIM” OUT – FROM A PURPOSE. Such that we may think it’s someway possible – but it is somehow “in the end” (and by its very definition): That a purpose can neither be removed or negated 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 ONE CONFOUNDING FACT: WE CANNOT EVEN TRY TO TAKE THE “AIM” OUT OF A PURPOSE – WITHOUT IT SOMEWAY BEING “ON PURPOSE” (which for a person of intelli-gence – by design – could present one with something of a pickle).

Which might prove aim-less in what follows…

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

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

THE LOGOS OF ITS TELOS: THE MATTER OF REASON FOR SCIENCE

An Inconvenient Truth.

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 form of tele-ological 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 – cause when we’re speaking teleologically, the prob-lem with its mean (i.e. the problem of its measure) can be something like the argument of whether (or not) a 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 was reckoned somehow in “the end” – that balancing its virtue with its “seeming implication” – would prove far too great an ask (or risk) for its own empirical lens… And while un-provably so – it was only just 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) some-how 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; TAKING THE “I” OUT OF INTELLIGENCE

“If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” – Abraham Maslow

A Hallmark of Man’s Intelligence: The Teleology of “Teleonomy”

SO IT WAS that with a nip here, and a tuck there (and in a very quiet fashion): Handed both the means of an implicit logic, but wedded equally hand-in-hand – together with its own inexorable problem (which a telos might imply for modern science); that given all the double trouble (with a 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… And 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

“X” MARKS THE SPOT

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”

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

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

Chapter 4: The Rubric of Reference – A Forgotten Knowledge

Sign of Life: A Riddle and a Rhyme

The Crux of the Mater: Somewhere 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 the question’s “sign”); we take our mental stabs at meaning – enticed to solve its reason’s rhyme…

Unravel the entangled form – & “figure” out its clew.

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

In-the-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 (the 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 aware “ness” (as a living individual) – 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) – by 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 ourselves – “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 we interrogate “the sign” – we somehow “find” – that we are “caught” within the gaze of an imaginary beast; something like the hero in a maze (being some “thing” like a palindrome)… And being someway like a Theseus to our hapless young Oedipus (who someway find their “selves” confronted by a “hybrid”), to solve our “riddle of the sign” – we gain the “clew” to its enigma… Which would also mean in some odd way – “the picture it portrays” – is nothing but a “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

Chap 3: Language & 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

TO “MEAN” – means also to divide. – Webster’s dictionary

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

The Set Which Represents All Sets

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

THE LANGUAGE OF A MIRROR: A Polytropic Description of a Many-Storied Structure

In the Labyrinth of its Metaphor : The Human “Scale”

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

How shall we describe it?

Humans after all, are somehow meaning seeking creatures – 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 a “limitless” realm of equivocality and equivalence…

And “We” is its common thread.

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

And the devil’s 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

The Squaring of a Circle : The Framing of an Axis

A Many-Storied Structure That’s a Frame (that’s 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

THE “FORM” of life is a communication with(in) a feedback: In -“formation” turns to language – and language re-turns as 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; somewhere 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 “WHAT” IS THE POINT

THE STRUCTURE OF A UNION, AN AXIS OF MEANING, & A TOWER OF BABEL

“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”… So as “ONE” must somehow “be-gin”: FIRST – imagine space & time as the arena of life’s living stage. Okay – got it? Next, having this 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 also refer to as “the material world”… Moving forward with this very “common” exercise (of ours) – say we were now to pic-ture our two “figures of speech” – then “weigh” them both as if they were each “parts of a set” which could mutually include one another? So far so good you might imagine (i.e. not a problem – I’d suppose)…

“Who’s on first” – Abbott & Costello

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 (were it broken down to bits): By being “figures of speech” (belonging to the language which we share ) – they are both the subject and its “object” – as a “thing” that’s framed by consciousness (something like a whole is to its part – would be their “one”); and as a member “plays” its part – they would somehow in the end (by meaning one way – as its other) always point (back) to the “who” (who’s sharing language) – being 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’ is simply now because (our)“this” is someway “that” – when we’re weighing both these pictures thru our 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 (“making” them mutually inclusive) – 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), both could smell as sweet… Because accord-ing to our very own LANGUAGE (which some might also call OUR COMMON TONGUE) “we” is the common thread: All because we’re somehow in the end – and a “who” is “what” we “mean”.

“Down the Rabbit Hole…” – Lewis Carroll

“IT FROM BIT”

– John Archibald Wheeler, coiner of the term “Black Hole”

A Mirror of Language that’s in “amaze” of its own Metaphor

A “TANGLED” HEIRARCHY – Effects Which May Precede Their Cause. The “Form” of Interpretation; a Reflexive Bond between Word & Image

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

EX NIHILO ALIQUID (Something from Nothing): Our “WEIRDLY” Woven Yarn

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 as (a) 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 metrics 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 a “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 twistings of a knot upon its “string”.

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

WE ARE ALL within the grip of life’s curious sort of “stranglehold”… And as it circumscribes its metes & bounds for what has, or can be “said” – being ever in the “circle” of 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 and weft of its own spun-out fabric – all at once containing us – while we are equally “constrained” within a “web” of CHOSEN words… As 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 when 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 having 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 …

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

Sine Qua Non: What’s Plain as Day

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 thru reflexive acts (of its self-aware perception) – that this self-referring narrative (we call consciousness) – is only but a tale that’s someway told; while conversely as it is – as with being to becoming – both are some-how true at any single time. And 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 mea-sure 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 would seem so curios for “us” (all) about this consciousness of ours – may perhaps be simply this: That as you’d take the bit of time to someway “think”; to the “mind’s eye” (which is the “image”, which is conjured – by 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 imagin-ation – 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 its passenger; a panorama that’s replete – with an observer in the frame – within a landscape/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 we travel through its landscape (while it moves toward that “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 a story of a journey, it would be little more than but a moment-to-moment snapshot or a shifting “point” (of view)… ONE that takes 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 imagin-ation (being some “thing” like a mirror, that is); from the mind’s eye view (to 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) the telling of our story, was 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”: Within the “circle” 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 a “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 the “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 & curios trip. As if (it was) we’re traveling down that “road” – as through some riddle in a plot-line, chasing our very own “tale”; it would appear to be “pur-suing” its very own narrative. While doing it in such a way – that like a “you” or “me” – it creates 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 the “witness” to an omnipresent spectacle, we humans are also creatures of imagination… So riddle this: Framed within a myriad of images – couched between its correlated phenomena – as we look upon the “world” (through 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?

Only 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 is seen – 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 the practical-ities… But regardless of what we might think, or however absurd it may appear, and despite all our time spent searching for definitive answers – we will still remain be-fuddled… 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)