Descartes’s Twelfth Step
An earlier entry today (“Hollywood Midrash continued“) on a father and son suggests we might look for an appropriate holy ghost. In that context…
Descartes
A search for further background on Emmanuel Levinas, a favorite philosopher of the late R. B. Kitaj (previous two entries), led (somewhat indirectly) to the following figures of Descartes:
This trinity of figures is taken from Descartes’ Rule Twelve in Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It seems to be meant to suggest an analogy between superposition of colors and superposition of shapes.Note that the first figure is made up of vertical lines, the second of vertical and horizontal lines, and the third of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Leon R. Kass recently suggested that the Descartes figures might be replaced by a more modern concept– colors as wavelengths. (Commentary, April 2007). This in turn suggests an analogy to Fourier series decomposition of a waveform in harmonic analysis. See the Kass essay for a discussion of the Descartes figures in the context of (pdf) Science, Religion, and the Human Future (not to be confused with Life, the Universe, and Everything).
Compare and contrast:
The harmonic-analysis analogy suggests a review of an earlier entry’s
link today to 4/30– Structure and Logic— as well as
re-examination of Symmetry and a Trinity
(Dec. 4, 2002).
See also —
A Four-Color Theorem,
The Diamond Theorem, and
The Most Violent Poem,
