expansions
misc.
ω |
setting out |
letters from home
After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination. (And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation; For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.)The difficulties I have struggled with in writing here seem to closely parallel those Wittgenstein describes; discovering that was surprising, and a great comfort.
My ramblings seem Sisyphean, each day my goal appearing like a mirage, no closer than it was before. Sketches I have made show the journey I've been on, yet I was headed somewhere else. I see the text I write and in them hear my thoughts, yet find that overnight these have escaped the lines I tied them to. expression is recursive, iterative and developmental for all involved. Words are illusory, maps not territories, this is the Red Pill.
Unable to imagine culture could trip me up, I arrived in Finland from London enchanted. I'd fallen in love. The country felt soft the people seemed kind, and, unlike with Greek or Chinese, at least I could read Finnish. Then my love died, and with her the society I had been part of died too. Overnight I found I had become not only alone but incomprehensible.
As a child I felt lost. Searching for a world of black and white, the simple logic of maths and science became my safe place. And it seemed the perfect guide. Yet while it appears straightforward —and fundamental to descriptions of chaos— scientific logic can be very misleading in the navigation of everyday life.
Scientists imagine their facts will change the world, but only the stories told with them do that; meanwhile, the investments we've made in the stories we know keep it the same. Facts are unhelpful in themselves. We've not dropped far from the trees; leaders know gibberish and bravado sway us just as much or more than reason or courage do.
Having neither the wisdom nor the humility of Wittgenstein I have ploughed on with this story of stories, on being heard; encouraged by the passing virus that killed the Wrath-of-god. Approaching its end I find that I am changed; this story has re-written me in realizing how mazed we now are in new ways of "criss-crossing wide and disparate fields".
butterfly chaos
If the term: the butterfly effect, hadn't been made well-know in 1952, by Raymond Bradbury, this and chaos theory were by Jeff Goldblum in 1993, in the movie: Jurrasic Park. Despite the latter however, the butterfly effect and chaos theory refer to two distinct phenomena.
Chaos theory refers to the unpredictability of systems, or, more specifically, to the exponential reduction in the ability of increased knowledge of the past, or present, to predict farther into the future. This disproof of determinism was recognized in the work of Henri Poincaré on the 'Three Body Problem', in the 1890s, and then by Edward Lorenz, working on long-range weather forecasting, in 1963.
The Butterfly Effect, refers to the behaviour of systems. Systems theory
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the last universalist
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist", since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.
the wrath of god
Timur, the last great nomadic emperor, known as the 'Wrath-of-God', invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After capturing the city, Timur ordered every soldier to present him with at least two severed human heads. When there were no more men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners many resorted to beheading their own wives; 20,000 citizens were massacred. Scholars estimate that Timur's military campaigns overall caused the deaths of 17 million people. Four years later, in the city that is modern-day Shahrisabz, as the 'Wrath-of-God' prepared to invade China he was killed by a virus.
From the preface to: Philosophical Investigations, by its author: Ludwig Wittgenstein; Cambridge, January 1945, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.
writing recursions
Like speech, writing appears to be transparent; however, meaning is not intrinsic to words, or to any sign, it must be deduced. It must be imagined. For meaning to be established, a context for signs is required, a conversation —on the other hand, computers have no need for understanding so have no need for discussion.
Writing engages both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, the conversation that then takes place stabilizing and developing a writer's perception —monks were advised to write journals to fight the demons that visited them in the isolation of their cells.
T.S Eliot began work on his poem 'Little Gidding', in February 1941. With every draft, however, he became increasingly dissatisfied. Realizing the problems he was having were not with the poem but with himself, in September he stopped writing altogether, returning to finish it a year later. Despite his fluency, writing was a journey even for him.
see: Left hemisphere speech: Parts of the brain involved in speech, healthline.com, May 2019, retrieved: 5 Jan 2022.
and: 'Writing with the right hemisphere', Steven, Rapcsak, Pelagie, Beeson, and Rubens, Nov 1991, in Brain and Language, Elsevier.
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chaos
Chaos refers to the apparently random states of disorder and irregularity exhibited by complex, nonlinear, dynamical systems actually governed by interconnectedness, underlying patterns, and self-organization. While these systems are deterministic, their predictability is limited as it is is impossible to completely know their actual state at any point in time and the smallest difference in this from what has been assessed leads to behaviours that diverge exponentially over time from that foecasted —a characteristic often referred to as the Butterfly Effect.