Log24

(Continued from Midsummer Eve)

"At times, bullshit can only be countered with superior bullshit."

— Norman Mailer, March 3, 1992, PBS transcript

"Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all."

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 1962, as quoted in The Enneagram of Paradigm Shifting

"In the spiritual traditions from which Jung borrowed the term, it is not the SYMMETRY of mandalas that is all-important, as Jung later led us to believe. It is their capacity to reveal the asymmetry that resides at the very heart of symmetry." 

— The Enneagram as Mandala

I have little respect for Enneagram enthusiasts, but they do at times illustrate Mailer's maxim.

My own interests are in the purely mathematical properties of the number nine, as well as those of the next square, sixteen.

Those who prefer bullshit may investigate non-mathematical properties of sixteen by doing a Google image search on MBTI.

For bullshit involving nine, see (for instance) Einsatz  in this journal.

For non-bullshit involving nine, sixteen, and "asymmetry that resides at the very heart of symmetry," see Monday's Mapping Problem continued. (The nine occurs there as the symmetric  figures in the lower right nine-sixteenths of the triangular analogs  diagram.)

For non-bullshit involving psychological and philosophical terminology, see James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology .

In particular, see Hillman's "An Excursion on Differences Between Soul and Spirit."