Metaphysical conceit | literature | Britannica.com
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This post's title refers to a metaphysical conceit
in the previous post, Desperately Seeking Clarity.
Related material —
The source of the above mystical octahedron —
See also Jung's Imago Dei in this journal.
Religious remarks in the Times Literary Supplement
issue dated April 7, 2023 (Good Friday) suggest a
review of other remarks — from July 1, 2019 —now
tagged The Exploded Cube. Some will prefer more useful
types of explosions.
The "branding" part of this post's title and tag —
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The scene went from bad to worse. The camerlengo’s torn cassock, having been only laid over his chest by Chartrand, began to slip lower. For a moment, Langdon thought the garment might hold, but that moment passed. The cassock let go, sliding off his shoulders down around his waist. The gasp that went up from the crowd seemed to travel around the globe and back in an instant. Cameras rolled, flashbulbs exploded. On media screens everywhere, the image of the camerlengo’s branded chest was projected, towering and in grisly detail. Some screens were even freezing the image and rotating it 180 degrees. The ultimate Illuminati victory. Langdon stared at the brand on the screens. Although it was the imprint of the square brand he had held earlier, the symbol now made sense. Perfect sense. The marking’s awesome power hit Langdon like a train. Orientation. Langdon had forgotten the first rule of symbology. When is a square not a square? He had also forgotten that iron brands, just like rubber stamps, never looked like their imprints. They were in reverse. Langdon had been looking at the brand’s negative ! As the chaos grew, an old Illuminati quote echoed with new meaning: ‘A flawless diamond, born of the ancient elements with such perfection that all those who saw it could only stare in wonder.’ Langdon knew now the myth was true. Earth, Air, Fire, Water. The Illuminati Diamond. — Dan Brown, Angels & Demons |
I prefer Modal Nietzsche.
Related vocabulary —
See as well the word facet in this journal.
Analogously, one might write . . .
A Hiroshima cube consists of 6 faces ,
each with 4 squares called facets ,
for a total of 24 facets. . . ."
(See Aitchison's Octads , a post of Feb. 19, 2020.)
Click image to enlarge. Background: Posts tagged 'Aitchison.'"
"In the fantasy, Owen is still working on his Rubik’s Cube.
Finally, he finishes — he’s put together all 6 sides."
— "Maniac" Season 1, Episode 9 recap: ‘Utangatta’
by Cynthia Vinney at showsnob.com, Oct. 9, 2018
Related material —
See also Exploded in this journal.
"Let us consider the crux of Hopkins' sensibility…"
Seeking claritas :
From a "cube tales" post of June 21 —
The number "six" in the second tale above counts faces of the cube,
as shown in a post of June 23 —
.
". . . Then the universe exploded into existence . . . ."
Material related to the previous post and to Alfred Bester's
1981 followup to The Stars My Destination titled The Deceivers —
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The Lapis Philosophorum :
"The lapis was thought of as a unity and therefore often stands for the prima materia in general."
"Its discoverer was of the opinion that he had produced the equivalent of the primordial protomatter which exploded into the Universe." And from Bester's The Deceivers : Meta Physics "'… Think of a match. You've got a chemical head of potash, antimony, and stuff, full of energy waiting to be released. Friction does it. But when Meta excites and releases energy, it's like a stick of dynamite compared to a match. It's the chess legend for real.' 'I don't know it.' 'Oh, the story goes that a philosopher invented chess for the amusement of an Indian rajah. The king was so delighted that he told the inventor to name his reward and he'd get it, no matter what. The philosopher asked that one grain of rice be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth.' 'That doesn't sound like much.'" Related material : |
From "Guardians of the Galaxy" —
"Then the Universe exploded into existence…"
For those who prefer a more traditional approach :
See also Symplectic Structure and Stevens's Rock.
A chess set previously mentioned in this journal—
These chessmen appeared in the weblog Minimalissimo
on Sept. 20, 2010. In Log24 on that date, the issue was
not so much the chessmen as the underlying board.
See "The Unfolding." See also the following from
the Occupy Space gallery in Limerick today—
| C A V E S – Anthony Murphy Solo Exhibition Opening 7 pm Thursday 1st Dec Exhibition 2nd – 22nd Dec 2011 Plato's allegory of the cave describes prisoners, inhabiting the cave since childhood, immobile, facing an interior wall. A large fire burns behind the prisoners, and as people pass this fire their shadows are cast upon the cave's wall, and these shadows of the activity being played out behind the prisoner become the only version of reality that the prisoner knows. C A V E S is an exhibition of three large scale works, each designed to immerse the viewer, and then to confront the audience with a question regarding how far they, as privileged viewers of the shadows and reflections being played out upon the walls, are willing to allow themselves to believe what they know to be a false reality. The works are based on explorations of simple 2D shapes; regular polygons are exploded to create fractured pattern, or layered upon one another until intricate forms emerge, upon which the projections can begin to draw out a third dimension. |
From today's previous post, a fragmentary thought—
"Professor Dodge and the underground artists
whose work he helped save are the subjects of a book…"
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Jim Dodge, Stone Junction (a novel first published in 1989) From pages 206-208, Kindle Edition— `Have you seen it?' Volta hesitated. `Well, I've dreamed it.' Daniel shook his head. `I'm getting lost. You want me to vanish into your dreams?' `Good Lord, no,' Volta blanched. `That's exactly what I don't want you to do.' `So, what is it exactly you do want me to do?' `Steal the diamond.' `So, it's a diamond?' `Yes, though it's a bit like saying the ocean is water. The diamond is perfectly spherical,* perfectly clear— though it seems to glow— and it's about two-thirds the size of a bowling ball. I think of it as the Diamond. Capital D.' `Who owns it?' `No one. The United States government has it at the moment. We want it. And to be honest with you, Daniel, I particularly want it, want it dearly. I want to look at it, into it, hold it in my hands. I had a vision involving a spherical diamond, a vision that changed my life, and I want to confirm that it was a vision of something real, the spirit embodied, the circuit complete.' Daniel was smiling. `You're going to love this. That dream I wanted to talk to you about, my first since the explosion? It just happened to feature a raven with a spherical diamond in its beak. Obviously, it wasn't as big as a bowling ball, and there was a thin spiral flame running edge to edge through its center, which made it seem more coldly brilliant than warmly glowing, but it sounds like the same basic diamond to me.' `And what do you think it is?' `I think it's beautiful.' Volta gave him a thin smile. `If I were more perverse than I already lamentably am, I would say it is the Eye of the Beholder. In fact, I don't know what it is.' `It might be a dream,' Daniel said. `Very possibly,' Volta agreed, `but I don't think so. I think— feel , to be exact— that the Diamond is an interior force given exterior density, the transfigured metaphor of the prima materia , the primordial mass, the Spiritus Mundi . I'm assuming you're familiar with the widely held supposition that the entire universe was created from a tiny ball of dense matter which exploded, sending pieces hurtling into space, expanding from the center. The spherical diamond is the memory, the echo, the ghost of that generative cataclysm; the emblematic point of origin. Or if, as some astrophysicists believe, the universe will reach some entropic point in its expansion and begin to collapse back into itself, in that case the Diamond may be a homing point, the seed crystal, to which it will all come hurtling back together— and perhaps through itself, into another dimension entirely. Or it might be the literal Philosopher's Stone we alchemists speak of so fondly. Or I might be completely wrong. That's why I want to see it. If I could actually stand in its presence, I'm convinced I'd know what it is. I would even venture to say, at the risk of rabid projection, that it wants to be seen and known.' `But you're not even sure it exists,' Daniel said. `Right? And hey, it's tough to steal something that doesn't exist, even if you can be invisible. The more I think about this the less sense it makes.' * Here Dodge's mystical vision seems akin to that of Anthony Judge in "Embodying the Sphere of Change" (St. Stephen's Day, 2001). Actually, the cube, not the sphere, is the best embodiment of Judge's vision. |
See also Tuesday's "Stoned" and the 47 references
to the term "bowling" in the Kindle Stone Junction .
Furthermore… Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!
Examination Day
(For the college curriculum,
see the New Zealand
Qualifications Authority.)
If Cullinane College were Hogwarts–
Last-minute exam info:
The Lapis Philosophorum
"The lapis was thought of as a unity and therefore often stands for the prima materia in general."
— Aion, by C. G. Jung"Its discoverer was of the opinion that he had produced the equivalent of the primordial protomatter which exploded into the Universe."
— The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
And from Bester's The Deceivers:
Meta Physics
"'… Think of a match. You've got a chemical head of potash, antimony, and stuff, full of energy waiting to be released. Friction does it. But when Meta excites and releases energy, it's like a stick of dynamite compared to a match. It's the chess legend for real.'
'I don't know it.'
'Oh, the story goes that a philosopher invented chess for the amusement of an Indian rajah. The king was so delighted that he told the inventor to name his reward and he'd get it, no matter what. The philosopher asked that one grain of rice be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth.'
'That doesn't sound like much.'
'So the rajah said. …'"
Related material:
Part I: Mathematics and Narrative
Apostolos Doxiadis on last month's conference on "mathematics and narrative"–
Doxiadis is describing how talks by two noted mathematicians were related to
"… a sense of a 'general theory bubbling up' at the meeting… a general theory of the deeper relationship of mathematics to narrative…. "
Doxiadis says both talks had "a big hole in the middle."
"Both began by saying something like: 'I believe there is an important connection between story and mathematical thinking. So, my talk has two parts. [In one part] I’ll tell you a few things about proofs. [And in the other part] I’ll tell you about stories.' …. And in both talks it was in fact implied by a variation of the post hoc propter hoc, the principle of consecutiveness implying causality, that the two parts of the lectures were intimately related, the one somehow led directly to the other."
"And the hole?"
"This was exactly at the point of the link… [connecting math and narrative]… There is this very well-known Sidney Harris cartoon… where two huge arrays of formulas on a blackboard are connected by the sentence ‘THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS.’ And one of the two mathematicians standing before it points at this and tells the other: ‘I think you should be more explicit here at step two.’ Both… talks were one half fascinating expositions of lay narratology– in fact, I was exhilarated to hear the two most purely narratological talks at the meeting coming from number theorists!– and one half a discussion of a purely mathematical kind, the two parts separated by a conjunction roughly synonymous to ‘this is very similar to this.’ But the similarity was not clearly explained: the hole, you see, the ‘miracle.’ Of course, both [speakers]… are brilliant men, and honest too, and so they were very clear about the location of the hole, they did not try to fool us by saying that there was no hole where there was one."
"At times, bullshit can only be countered with superior bullshit."
— Norman Mailer
Many Worlds and Possible Worlds in Literature and Art, in Wikipedia:
"The concept of possible worlds dates back to a least Leibniz who in his Théodicée tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. Voltaire satirized this view in his picaresque novel Candide….
Borges' seminal short story El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan ("The Garden of Forking Paths") is an early example of many worlds in fiction."
Background:
Modal Logic in Wikipedia
Possible Worlds in Wikipedia
Possible-Worlds Theory, by Marie-Laure Ryan
(entry for The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory)
— Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams, 1931 (Eerdmans paperback, April 1979, pp. 43-44)
— Aion, by C. G. Jung, 1951 (Princeton paperback, 1979, p. 236)
"Its discoverer was of the opinion that he had produced the equivalent of the primordial protomatter which exploded into the Universe."
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"We symbolize
logical necessity with the box  )and logical possibility with the diamond  ).
"The possibilia that exist,
— Michael Sudduth, |
"We symbolize logical necessity
with the box )
and logical possibility
with the diamond ).
— Keith Allen Korcz,
(Log24.net, 1/25/05)
And what do we
symbolize by 
?
On the Lapis Philosophorum,
the Philosophers' Stone –
"'What is this Stone?' Chloe asked….
'…It is told that, when the Merciful One
made the worlds, first of all He created
that Stone and gave it to the Divine One
whom the Jews call Shekinah,
and as she gazed upon it
the universes arose and had being.'"
– Many Dimensions,
by Charles Williams, 1931
(Eerdmans paperback,
April 1979, pp. 43-44)
"The lapis was thought of as a unity
and therefore often stands for
the prima materia in general."
– Aion, by C. G. Jung, 1951
(Princeton paperback,
1979, p. 236)
"Its discoverer was of the opinion that
he had produced the equivalent of
the primordial protomatter
which exploded into the Universe."
– The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester, 1956
(Vintage hardcover,
July 1996, p. 216)
"The possibilia that exist,
and out of which
the Universe arose,
are located in
a necessary being…."
— Michael Sudduth,
Notes on
God, Chance, and Necessity
by Keith Ward,
Regius Professor of Divinity
at Christ Church College, Oxford
(the home of Lewis Carroll)
See also
The Diamond Archetype.
For more on modal theology, see
Kurt Gödel's Ontological Argument
and
The Ontological Argument
from Anselm to Gödel.
Great Simplicity
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is the day that Daisetsu Suzuki attained satori,
according to the Zen Calendar. “Daisetsu” is
said to mean “Great Simplicity.”
For those who prefer Harry Potter and
Diagon Alley, here is another calendar:
To Have and Have Not
Those who prefer traditional Western religions may like a site on the Trinity that contains this:
“Zen metaphysics is perhaps most succinctly set forth in the words ‘not-two.” But even when he uses this expression, Suzuki is quick to assert that it implies no monism. Not-two, it is claimed, is not the same as one.* But when Suzuki discusses the relationship of Zen with Western mysticism, it is more difficult to escape the obvious monistic implications of his thinking. Consider the following:
We are possessed of the habit of looking at Reality by dividing it into two… It is all due to the human habit of splitting one solid Reality into two, and the result is that my ‘have’ is no ‘have’ and my ‘have not’ is no ‘have not.’ While we are actually passing, we insist that the gap is impassable.**”
*See: Daisetz T. Suzuki, ‘Basic Thoughts Underlying Eastern Ethical and Social Practice’ in Philosophy and Culture — East and West: East-West Philosophy in Practical Perspective, ed. Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), p. 429
** Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957, Unwin paperback, 1979), p. 57.
Personally, I am reminded by Suzuki’s satori on this date that today is the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I am also reminded by the rather intolerant tract on the Trinity quoted above that the first atomic bomb was exploded in the New Mexico desert at a test site named Trinity. Of course, sometimes intolerance is justified.
Concluding unscientific postscript:
On the same day in 1896 that D. T. Suzuki attained satori,
lyricist Ira Gershwin was born.
Dies irae, dies illa.
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