 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
The
Theory of Prolepsis
by Johnes Ruta, independent curator & art theorist
|
|
|
|
|
| (Link: The Wikipedia definition of PROLEPSIS) | ||
|
||
|
Table of Contents 01. Prolepsis : The Rhetoric of a Definition 04. Semantic Argument of the Dream 05. Narrative Style: "the Dream of Consciousness" 07. Perpendicular Forces 08. The Geometry of Anticipation 09. Theurgy of Matter 10. The Dream Reflection in the Face of the Deep 11. Conclusion : The Bridge (back from paradox) |
||
|
||
|
Quote: Niels Bohr, Danish (1885-1962) , Nobel
Prize in Physics 1922, began each of his lectures saying:
“Every statement that I utter should be regarded by you not as an assertion, but as a question.” |
||
|
||
|
Definition of
PROLEPSIS : anticipation as: ********************************* The purpose of this essay will not be to analyze dreams or to propose a symbolism of dreams, but to explain my narrative presentation of a sequence of dreams which create a panoramic and psychological story, in novel form. In terms of the distinctions between dream experiences and events in the "real" material world, there appears to normal states of thought a dichotomy which may require further exploration of how premonitions inherent in some dreams create a particular framework of "Time" as it appears to the senses, compared with both the "rational sense" of time, and the evolving of scientific understanding of "time." As a literary device, the rhetorical principle of prolepsis is the same means used in the genre of Science Fiction -where events are built upon previous fictional ["a priori"] circumstances. But this principle can also be active as well in the past or present, such as in the archaeological or forensic discovery of previously unknown events. In some cases, a paradigm shift of historical perspective is thus produced.
"Prolepsis" is from the Greek , [prolambanein] and means literally "to take" something "beforehand". In this seemingly obvious definition we may discover both the principle and the effect of anticipation : the assumption or representation of a future act or eventuality as if it were already accomplished or existing. As with the function of the "hand," from the Greek [ancient "hchehri" or modern "heree" or the Latin hensus, ] prolepsis means really the act of the mind to get or to grasp -- in the possessive sense of seizing or holding something -- the object of a thought, before that object has even begun to appear. In this principle of comprehension, in the "hensile" meaning the brain acts as the extension of the hand; that is to say, where the brain relays back to the hand the enablement of its own will or emotional intention ...to touch, but more so in the certainty of to have. In the 20th Century we watched this principle be carried to its monstrous extreme, when the metaphor of Ativistic darkness assumed itself to power in the abdication of "enlightenment" -- when the force of naked Certainty, in the name of Adolph Hitler, clad himself in the glorified Will of tyranny, and purposefully took the rhetorical device to rationalize a Holocaust in the 20th Century of immeasurable proportions of suffering and murder: "...Future generations thank us for our efforts..." It is this problem that we wish to explore, the bias in the possessive sense of "reality" itself in psychology and society: the intention to possess "reality", in part, parcel, or in the realty of property, as well as the appropriation of objects by a subject, becomes therefore the agenda of possession, which we might term (perhaps not so tongue-in-cheek) "Reality Chauvinism." * * * * In the grammar of speech, prolepsis can occur as naturally as by the implication in the selection of a particular adjective to qualify a noun (either object or subject,) where the result of the completion of the action of its verb is already anticipated: ... "Oxen turn the furrowed plain." In the formal argumentation of classical Rhetoric, prolepsis is a discipline which teaches the student to build into his opening proposition the responses to the possible "objections" to his argument, in order to rebuttal them in advance, and thus preempt from his opponent the effect or statement of those objections. We will also consider what it is in language that generates or enables the rhetoric of the "objection." When the usage of an adjective clause following the preposition "like" or "as" remains within the realm of evident effects understood by its contemporary science but more often pertinent to another type of association, that description is considered to enter the realm of poetic simile, as likeness. A figure of speech expressed in a manner which is beyond the terms of "likeness", enters the dimensions of equivalence, identification, relation, or hyperbole: that is, metaphor. Could the evolved human form of consciousness ever be stated as a direct evolutionary result of a primitive exercise of human species brain power? The theory of Behaviorism advanced in the 1960's, appears in retrospect little more sensible than Bishop Berkeley's Empirical theory in the 18th Century, that nothing exists in reality outside of what we individually perceive in the immediate, even as we move from room to room. On the evidence of simple survey, the data surely suggests that there are too many individuals perceiving concurrently, and witnessing a consensus of events, for the fabric of reality to be non-cohesive outside the range of one's presence. As well, we might conclusively say that it is our individual attractions that impel each of us towards the object of our desire in various positive or negative actions; but it does not follow that there is no consideration of choice that takes place in the thought process: we do not blindly cast ourselves headlong in the direction of each and every stimulus, even as our appetite might suggest. Simply amplified brain-aggression (or brain-posturing), the confidence contained in a subject's assertion of his own attributes or qualities (as they previously exist by development, acquisition, or heredity) could only be made under the support of an ego formation which has been buttressed into an unconscious, submerged personality trait. In social situations, this phenomenon takes place by a method of feedback of the attention or praise given by one's listeners: The first subject preempts or captures the attributes of another subject before they have been made manifest in the interval of time it takes to speak. Prolepsis is also implied in the common "transitive" construction in every compound sentence in human language: Where a subject has a direct object of discussion or possession, this assumption if uncontested becomes the very statement of possession: When C is held by B, and B by A, then C is also held by A. The object of the discussion is held as a relation to the property of the subject him/her-self -- This is the very meaning of definition -- A bridge is desired to be built and perhaps a foreign continent to be occupied. Can one not see the metaphor to the human body? Contrasting this form of aggression or territorial bordering, when epithet is used as a device of humor, (from Greek: epithenai, "to put on",) there is also the deliberate or spontaneous occurrence of prolepsis. This is the scheme which often occurs in speech : the substitution of one term by another more abstract, so ascribing or anticipating an insinuated condition or impending situation. To explore some of the inherent paradoxes of anticipation, I will use a discussion of the particular style of my own writing on dreams as a means to gauge the nature and grounds of knowledge (an epistemology), and also to examine the limits and validity of physical matter, even as experienced in the dream state. These elements will also lead me into the later discussion of "Abstraction" in art as it is made of distinct objects from their non-objective or subjective perspectives.
As a kind of "mathematical proof ", this essay was prompted by the insight of a geometric interaction of subtle forces, a revelation which occurred during a conversation with painter/writer Joey Tomorrow Fekieta, sculptor Suzan Shutan, and Andy Firk on the evening of January 28, 1992. This "geometry" was contained in the realization that the electric energy occurring during the thought of a creative idea in the brain could easily be viewed as a tangential line at a right angle to Time. We view time, in terms of relativity, as the continuity of the arrival of light from a gravitational source. Depending on the source of a thought, whether perceptual or conceptual, the path of this line would flow either into or away from an instantaneous point in the stream of photons of light (represented by the cyclic motion of the hands of a clock, or the marking of measured seconds in a digital time piece. Being hard-pressed to explain my geometric perception in an analogy which everyone in the conversation found comprehensible, I will take the time now to provide background and evidence for this proof in the third section, "The Semantic Argument of the Dream," and will then recount "parallels" in older philosophical systems, quantum and physical science in the section called "Perpendicular Forces." Therefore I owe this investigation to the instigation of my visual artists friends.
02. Theory of Narrative -- Continuity and Contraction
Story-telling in a novel can work with different effects: it can build the value of compassion or invoke less ideal emotions. Just as it is crucial that our perceptions recognize and adapt to new situations brought about by new scientific discoveries and new technological abilities, we also need to enable the recognition of portrayed elements of human life. In the context of certain literary works, moral solutions (or immoral ones) resolve social situations or dilemmas. In contrast, a literary work which actively portrays a panorama of life without taking sides in a moral dilemma, generates a different kind of "landscape" of reality. In the case in which a new narrative is developed where a moral situation is not specific, or not defined, this "landscape" then reveals inherent or intrinsic characteristics in the dimensions of the story, locale, or persons, via the on-going narrative itself - in other words "the picture tells the story…" Considering human progress in the means of story-telling of the past three thousand years, from the times of oral-traditions being handed-down from generation to generation, to the establishment of learning academies, to the copying of literary and illustrated manuscripts in medieval times, to the wide publication of books of literature with Guttenberg's printing technology, to the dissemination of electronic books, digitalized audio readings and on-line file downloading, we finally begin to understand the physical principles of Media themselves and to appreciate their dynamics. Indeed, a wide discussion and analysis of these principles was presented by Marshall McLuhan in his groundbreaking book Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, published in 1964, which also predicted many of the social impacts of the computer and of miniaturization. Thus aware of the evolution and jumps of methods and technology, we then perceive the gap between the linear perceptions of thinking enabled by literacy, along the lines of logical/linguistic "categories" of knowledge, and the non-linear thought processes enabled by electronic technologies. This gap between linear and "post-linear" media can easily widen, eventually causing a breach in the historical continuity between these two basic steps in human evolution : It is the very communication between successive periods of technological development in which we have the continuity of History itself, in the arts, in literature and poetry -- and in the historical phases of music, architecture, style and fashion.
In psychological terms, any development of a literary form which pushes further open the thematic limits of the human imagination must be understood as a structural shift in concrete reality. This kind of development should therefore be considered as a barometric or seismographic tool which aids in the estimation of the dimensions of psychological and psychic "reality." Just as extreme new forms of comedy and satire can seem to stretch the limits of conventional "sanity" (sometimes being whimsically perceived as "insane"), so too, in prose writing, must new themes and novel modes of human thought also be taken into account as reasonably "sane."
.-- As a valid state of the logical mind, we shall explore aspects of the In-Comprehensible in personal perception, perspective, and communication in the development of Post-Aristotelian and post-medieval philosophy from Descartes' neo-Rationalist methodology incorporating innate ideas; to John Locke's emphasis on sense perception, reflective experience, and the phenomena of mind; the mathematician Leibniz' metaphysics from Plato. David Hume developed an Empiricism, that is, a supremacy of perception. Immanuel Kant reconstructed the categories of knowledge and the logical criteria of the critical faculties. Hegel qualified Aesthetics in art as one of the main operations of "Dialectics," that is, a critical process to understand and appreciate truth and beauty and the synthesis of opposites. In the 20th century, Husserl developed a system of scrupulous introspection, Phenomenology, which analyzes the experience of external events upon the individual's conscious mind, and their comparative essential meanings upon different people.
In this scenario, when the author is detected to speak through the words or actions of his main character, the role and degree of subtlety of that character, then become a significant factor which will distinguish that novel as either an expression of philosophy or of propaganda. In the second type of approach, the narrator takes a neutral editorial perspective in order to objectively describe the lay out of the landscape, setting, or place, and the proceedings of the action. In this type of approach, I would add that, whether intentional or not, the layout of sequences of events, and the handling of the gaps of time from one scene to the next, actually then constitutes an "outline" of partitioned time periods of the story. In modern scientific terms, this therefore indicates the author's existential understanding of Space/ Time itself.
A natural difficulty in the understanding of academic science is, of course, the degree of complexity involved in operating measuring instruments and in the properties and interactive behavior of properties. The scientific parallel of the reader's ability or inability to follow the non- linear visual and verbal patterns of such novels is the inadequate public understanding of 19th century Quantum Theory. The general difficulty in fathoming the behavior and functions of subatomic particles has given rise to the concept of the "Counter-Intuitive Theory," wherein we think certain functions of matter to be beyond, or contrary to, our intuitive reference points. Perhaps this is because the development of Rationalism in the realm of Logic and the intellect occurred during the same historical phase as the early discoveries of atomic structure: The principle of Atomic Weight was well apparent in the 19th century in the easily identifiable differing weights of mineral and metallic elements, according to their varying displacement of water of by objects of identical size but differing density. In the mid-19th century, experimental science had reached a period of logical stasis, and there was a period of hostility between many scientists and philosophers over their apparently separate paths of development in the use of Reason. The atomic principle was defined an indivisible particle, according to the consistent physics of Democritus, Aristotle, and Newton. A turning point in the expected results of logical experiment did occur, however, in a single mundane experiment being performed by Max Planck, with the super heating of an iron ball: the measured decline of its temperature back down somehow revealed unexpected and inexplicable spikes of thermal energy on the graph being released in the cooling process…. Max Planck's radical inductive synectic analysis then shifted to a new Principle of Atomic Number, described by the Quantum Theory which explained these spikes as bursts of layers of multiple atomic shells. After more than 2,200 years, the atom could no longer be considered indivisible!
In July, 1945, after 50 years of severe tribulations, a "theory" of atomic structure, still unverified by visual technology, did lead indisputably to an effective method to release an atomic explosion. The atomic nucleus still had not been visually seen.
In the extreme narrative forms used by these authors, it is the narrative thought impressions or abstract dialog between characters which drives the personal interactions of a story. In the "mainstream novel" these thought-forms are lacking or become peripheral or experientially marginalized if present.
In spoken and written language, it is the ordering of phrases and of the words in the passage which conveys the understanding of a description or sequence. That which is presented first in a sentence automatically becomes the basis of any coherent knowledge of the information being presented to the reader. It is the pretense of the scene itself. To explain in advance to the reader the dynamics of the story being related there must be a common identifiable visual or sequential pattern of action. The passage of descriptive text into a sensible continuity making up a story generates a presumed reality -- As in the common sensibility of an audience watching a dramatic story at a movie, so in solitude is the "suspension of disbelief." in the thought process of the reader of a fictional story. To write about life is one thing -- to write about dreams and to interweave them to create a continuous story is also to write about life, as the dreams we experience in the night also originate in the natural psyche. How do these images move and weave themselves into sensible stories? This understanding requires perhaps a shift in the understanding of history itself, the psychological necessity to recognize the meaning of symbols as they pertain to the uncertainty of the future. So it is also with the difficulty of a positively unfolding future of humanity -- that a collective social awareness of the issues of the day creates a pattern with which we commonly trace the occurrence of a multitude of events into a forward motion of current history as interpreted by news reporters in our daily media. In much the same manner, the acceptance by the individual of the responsibilities of life generates a continuum in the concurrent imagination. In scientific terms, this exercise involves the realization and analysis of potential connections between emerging technologies. But the problem is at least two-fold: First, there are the benefits to the course of invention, applications which will develop the human race through the creation of personal labor-saving devices. But second, there is the importance, in historical terms, which involves understanding the concurrent relations between all the arts and sciences during any given time period. By extension, this inductive principle applies to understanding the time in which an individual is aware of the future implications of the day's events which we witness on television news programs or read in the newspaper. Here, in this perspective is the very danger of thought -- that of the means by which we apply our prejudices which are based upon our own seeming deductive reasoning process. -- Another, more conscious method of approach to this problem is (or would be) the conscious deployment and deliberate refinement of a perceptual awareness and comprehensive analysis of the historical conditions which pertain to the situation being viewed. The purpose would be to reverse the conventional tendency to view the components of any critical situation only within a synchronic, reductive, behaviorist perspective. - In other words, in terms of "cause and effect" -- to limit the permissibility of causal factors to only immediate preceding elements, rather than to the consideration of pertinent preceding historical patterns.
Considering the dynamics of historical change in the second half of the Twentieth Century, it seemed that there have been at least two different trends of continuity at work in the progress or evolution of history. If we were to consider whether there were particular threads of plot which run through history, we would wish to identify what such strands represented and what composed them. - In these terms, we would compare literary analysis, and even social discussion of the elements of Plot, as a worthwhile methodology, and a logical parallel, to the recognition of historical trends in the present tense. We may call these two trends by many names: we may identify them as the differences in ideology between East and West, similarly as were the differences in economic philosophy between the American North and South (Union and Confederacy) in the 19th Century, or as between "Liberal" and "Conservative" in many modern political societies, or as between the poles of repression and liberation of individual biological preference, or indeed between anarchy and varying degrees of social order. My central thesis is just this: That the duality of these arguments do seem to represent quantitatively different forms of Energy in flux (juxtaposition and/or agitation), but they are merely the modern presence of the same forces which Hegel in his day identified as the same basic problem of "thesis" and "antithesis." Yet, there is also the distinction, as witnessed in the developments of any contemporary clothing fashion, between traditional on-going trends and innovative example; and these trends illustrate, in the broad scope, also a form of geometric relation between the uses of time, "objects" (such as individuals), and space, in historical record. When not vying for the same space, these distinct trends coincide and blend, to reveal new visual ideas and new figurative arrangements and expressions of the human being. * * * * * * * * * *
Conversely, we have seen a corruption of language carried out by agencies whose interest has been to portray the destructive effects of their policies, activities, and actions in a diminished light of reality. The most familiar of these terms is "collateral damage" which refers to the non-target human casualties of military actions: The effect here is to absolve blame in the murder of innocent civilians situated near military targets. In understanding these broader trends we may consider the evolution of two historically distinct streams: on one hand -- of tribal, egalitarian, medieval and modern collectivism -- and, on the other hand, of sea trade, Merchantilism, colonial management of production, and corporate capitalism. These relationships also consider the perspectives between stability and growth : Explained in the psychological terms of the past century, my own effort to reach an understanding about the communication links (static and dynamic) between the Mind and the Unconscious, may present the appearance to others that I, as a publicly involved activist in the art field, have occasionally taken my imagination out onto a tangent of thought-In the method of my own analysis though, I am confident to believe this tangent to be a limb of the Tree of Knowledge in need of exploration. As a speaker in the public forum on the subject of creativity, I am well-aware of the hazards of the use of metaphor, that it is much alike crossing the ice formed over a river in winter, one cannot be positive about the safety of support of one's weight, that the thickness of the ice cannot, as perhaps affected by unseen currents below the frozen surface, cannot be surely gauged unless a broken edge is seen. As my climb of the Tree of Knowledge brings me to look out over the landscape of signals and signs, I realize that I might not be able to make myself heard fully and clearly without some detailed explanation to those still gathered around the trunk of the Tree, who, failing to look aloft, wonder to where I have wandered off laterally. Such is the point and the problem of metaphor, as we hope to convey our new experience by writing down a description of the continuity, as we hope to reconstruct a world into which we have traveled between the covers of a book ... The primary duty of non-fictional writing is the explanation of the writer's ideas and definitions in a clear enough manner that they will describe the structure of images, patterns, or phenomena of the subject of the writing. This convention is extended, to some degrees, into any kind of writing that is being employed: fiction, prose, poetry-any story, bit, or system of science or general knowledge presented in essay or outline form. Anyone who has done historical research, crime detection, jig-saw puzzles, or computer analysis will testify that the parts which lead to the solution of any kind of puzzle are very often discovered out of linear sequence. These known parts must be subjectively arranged and rearranged as more parts of the puzzle are located, until a cohesive pattern can be ascertained, or it can be demonstrated that missing parts to the puzzle are lost or not yet available. In my own style of fiction writing, especially where the text pertains to the description of dreams, I have purposefully often pushed the conventional limits of phraseology to a fusion of poetic and prose language, in order to test the very cohesion of matter and consciousness. This is "rebel Epistemology." There are ideas about the little explored avenues of information which are connected into the Unconscious, in all of its own practical, psychosocial, erotic, and metaphorical references. These ideas require a means of description in order to take something as formless and/or suggestive as the images in our dreams, and to somehow fit them together into these sometimes meaningful, symbolic, or ominous stories. We will also discuss the skeptical proposition that dreams are merely disjoined, independent images.
Therefore, in any new understanding of thinking and perception, we must account for these existing perspectives and as well bring into bearing the new and accepted theories of science in our own time. These theories have already had subtle or subliminal influences on how and what we can see, and how we express to one another. The next and unavoidable step is to continue the exploration of the relations of our perceptions to our communications. Along with the historical use of fable, such as in Aesop, Leonardo, or La Fontaine, there has also been employed the use of allegory, that is, a story line which creates a parallel to the description of a scientific principle, which serves as a device to specifically explain or illustrate that scientific thought. Examples of literary allegory in prose are to be found in such works as the Hypneroticamachia Polifili, 1499, Rablais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1536, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 1725, Voltaire's Candide, 1765, Anatole France's Penguin Island, 1909, and William S. Burroughs' The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express of the 1960s. Less understood is the principal of metaphor. Though widely used in poetry as a means to create a "bridge" between two dissimilar sensations or visions -- the use of metaphor in prose writing specifically conflicts with the prose methodology of linear exposition of descriptions and the narrative sequencing of events in order to tell a story. However, when one wishes to record in writing the remembered sequence of events in a nighttime dream, one is soon perplexed by the difficulty to build a "sensible" continuity of dream events in strangely unfamiliar or eerily familiar locations - along with a sequence of objects which have varying aspects of appropriate presence in the dream story. This pattern of "non sequitur" connections gives rise to the perception of objects as symbols, both within the dream sleep experience -- and in the waking reflection, or "piecing-together," the parts of a dream memory, and the consideration of its "meaning." Indeed, the consideration of a dream experience, and the translation of such experience into a literary format, then raises questions of the nature of "consciousness" and the problems of knowledge as addressed in the discourse of Philosophy. A rigid categorization of knowledge had organized the late Hellenic world, crystallized in the teachings and writings of Aristotle and promoted throughout the known world by Alexander. This rigid system supported Roman colonialism and persisted following the deflation of the Roman Empire, holding together Western society in a state of stasis through its bleak centuries of barely preserved literacy, until the novelty of trade with the Far East brought about a new awareness of beautiful things from distance lands. The spread of the trade in spices, silks, and fabrics, the expanding scale of cathedral architecture, the religious war expeditions into the Near East, and the evolution of artistic painting opened up the boundaries of the known world beyond the categories of known categories, until the Aristotelian system of knowledge slowly became woefully inadequate in relation to new discoveries in medicine, metallurgy, sensory perspective, and astronomy. Still, the static, linear systems of Aristotle enjoyed a resurgence of teaching under the Scholastic School following Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologia, until its irrelevance became unbearable and was finally marginalized by the Italian Humanist philosophers of the 15th and 16th centuries. In England, Sir Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum" recommended an "experimental method" as an alternate to the "blinders"-type usage of Aristotlean categories, in order to describe and explain newly discovered phenomena. Copernicus dared to publish and refine Aristarcus' ancient Roman heliocentric view of the solar system being secretly taught in seminaries, and Johannes Kelper painstakingly analyzed his mentor Tyco Brahe's vast tables of astronomical planetary observations until he reluctantly concluded that even Copernicus' perfect Aristotelian heliocentric orbital circles were actually orbital ellipses. And Robert Boyle's 1661 "Sceptical Chymist" determined that the metaphorical system of alchemy had now been well surpassed by the alchemists' own discoveries of the properties of metal and gaseous substances, and that the ancient orientation of substances according to Galen's hot/cold wet/dry characteristics and that all materials were combinations of mercury, sulfur, and salt were no longer substantiated theories under new analysis. In formal Philosophy in the early 17th century France, Rene' Descartes discarded Aristotle's rigid categorization of the known world and proposed new theories of innate properties of matter and optics, spatial energy vortices, and innate moral principles and innate Consciousness. In 17th century England, John Locke by contrast developed a system that knowledge is only acquired by experience, leading to even more isolated views of knowledge only from experience. Immanuel Kant later worked to synthesize these apparently disparate views. In Poland and Germany, Leibniz defined new mathematical systems of calculation, and used these to elaborate observations and key principles of Optics and astronomical motion. Most curious, and relevant to the concepts of "consciousness" and "perception", is his principle which correlates and identifies mathematical "absolute integers" with a form of "absolute entities" described by Plato, called "monads." These "monads" are impermeable mathematical entities, each with individual qualities, which are also concurrently "perceptive of all other monad qualities." If these "monads" have perception, then would Leibniz have granted them existence in the Cartesian methodology? Cogitans ergo sum. In this series of short essays it is my intention to look into the relations of three linked phenomena: (1) To explore the connections between language and creativity, to be understood in the light of 20th Century science; (2) To give description to the "geometric" patterns and perspectives that are focused in the "line," in writing, in painting, and in nature; (3) To explore the "psychological dream narrative" and the visionary aspects in literature, the suggestivity of fragments, and the elemental "precipitation" of events. To gather or create the vocabulary of a "visual language."
|
|
|
||
|
03. Entity= 1/ Subject vs. Object An examination of the basic principles which distinguishes something as either an "object" or a "subject" will help to reveal the hidden implications and assumptions in our verbal descriptions, and in our thoughts and speech. This is naturally the means by which we interpret to our own minds the unfolding or occurence of events in the forward moving flow of time. The semantical context of what it is which forms an objection in the rhetorical sense, or an objective condition in the practical dimension -- and that which predicates a subject or a subjective situation in a verbal statement -- seems to underly the very critical issues in our civilization of property, the differential of power and privilidge in gender discrimination, and of sexual expression and communication.
By contrast,
the word "subject" derives from the Latin subicere, "to
throw under", with the meaning of one which is placed under
authority or control. Within this denotation, there are several
typesof meaning in use in general language: (1) one that is placed
under
That which
can be considered objective function also is defined in several
senses. It As it is related to the "subject", the objective is that which emphasizes or expresses the nature of reality as it is apart from personal feelings or reflections; it is the entities which have no lives of their own, but are the side-products of the Social Contract.
By contrast, actions taken by "lower forms" of animal life are normally attributed to the effects of involuntary energies which are called the "instincts", such as hunger, repro-ductive drives, and colonizing organization. In the "Plant Kingdom" kinetic actions are normally attributed to growth, breakage or decay. In the "Mineral Kingdom," activity is considered due to external elements such as weather or erosion, interior geologic pressures such as in volcanic magma or petroleum deposits, and crystalization. It is thus that existent forms considered non-sentient are viewed as virtual "objects." Any suggestions of sentience in these organic and inorganic forms, except in the current speculations of biophysicists about viral colonial behavior, are most often regarded with skoffing scepticism. It is also thus that these forms are forgiven their faults.
*** 04. Semantic Argument of the Dream The subject of my creative writing in two novels, "Fires Eternal Morning", and "Rain of the Tiamat", is the exploration of the link of the dream with the archetypes of human history. Archetypes can be defined as the personal images and scenes which seem to undertake mythic proportions. In this essay I wish also to explore the link of the dream with religious propitiation, and with the anticipation and unconscious precipitation of events. To explore
the meaning of archetypal experience is to evaluate the perceptual
faculties and come to a recognition of the forms and patterns which
are recurrent in the sounds and visual structures of our world,
or recurrent in the smells and tastes present in
One may also vaguely remember spending times with a relative or childhood friend whom one cannot name or see clearly in the memory but might have had similar likes to one's own mature tastes in reading or music. Perhaps these impressions could be actual genetic echoes of the personality traits of one's own ancestors, but as inner images of unknown source, I will consider such occurrences to be possible proto-types in the greater category of archetypes. The human body is often the focus of archetypal images: in my own memory there is a view of myself lying on a sandy beach, seen as though from standing above my own head, overlooking my body with my feet pointed out to sea, the interior of my featureless silhouette, filling with endless waves rolling and undulating and washing slowly to shore. One might speculate whether these references are echoes of the individual self, strains of childhood memory, or possibly the shadows of ineffable beings. Experiences of this sort seem to carry a relaxing effect, akin to opiate-induced visions, and these effects are basically tonic to the nervous system.
The human
question remains unanswered by all fields of psychology, by science
or medicine, and all the worlds major religions : What is the nature
and the significance of dreams? As demonstrated by all sleep experiments,
(in my own knowledge for example, those of the late Dr. Robbie Watson,
at the Sleep Research Center at Griffin Hospital
Even in civilized
life, the time sense of the dream is rarely set in any conscious
continuity with the memory of the moments just prior to passing
into the sleep state, and this is consistent with the measurements
of alpha waves in an inactive phase in the cycle
As dreaming is the most ultimately personal form of experience, it would seem to require a highly democratic and individualized form of description and association. It has been intriguing to me from a self-psychological point of view, that over various periods in my life (and similarly that of late 20th Century history), I have detected a certain alternation, or an overlapping parallel of styles, as I construct these dream narrations into a "fictional device," between the two modes of : (1) chronology and (2) selective determination. In the former mode, chronology, as reflected in natural behavior, the manifestation of the instincts takes place and is later viewed in a retrospective of events described in the grammatical present-tense, if considered in words at all. Similarly
as in the writing of medieval chronicles (agrarian village histories
and gathered news reports spanning periods of decades), the unfolding
of events is recorded in In agrarian
society, previous to the introduction of print and newspapers, the
passage of time was marked socially by those experiences held in
common by their unusual nature: the births, marriages or deaths
of prominent persons or loved ones, or by the extremes of In modern
television news reporting -- where the anchorperson speaks into
the all-knowing, un-informed eye of the public archetype -- the
style of chronology unconsciously employs the system of Darwin's
Theory of Evolution: Daily developments, natural and anthropological,
are boiled down to the depiction events as isolated individual pheno-mena
-- categorizing the objective case, without regard to any pattern
recognition or subjective correlation to related events, except
in the moralistic sense based on the commonality of The disruption of the fabric of a minor culture, or the forced adaptation of an isolated individual are subliminally viewed under the two dimensional closure of the television screen, encapsulating a panorama of emotions displayed by interviewed participants, witnesses, and onlookers. By contrast, when writing in the latter mode, that of selective determination, my selections of particular dreams to construct a story line are seemingly more representative of the exercise of making choices by a unified psyche. But to examine the dynamics of the term "determination", outside of a strict literal reading, still raises questions regarding the relation-ships of personal and biological motivations.
The higher faculties of the rational Will of "thought" are themselves a microcosm of all other instincts and processes. Thought is also at times conscious of itself: 'it's "Self"' : "Who" is thinking about "what" ? It would seem, moreover, that the "self" which represents the instinctual/intuitive being, the physical/ mental person as witnessed in the dream, is the most integrated, or seamless of the inner personalities.
05. Narrative style : "dream of consciousness" In my youth I determined to design a form of composition which would blend and arrange my own nocturnal visions and experiences into a working plot, and since then I have developed a style which is both a purely sequential chronology of my morning records, and alternatively, a selective organization, a combination of poetry and prose. The purpose of that composition at the beginning, to record the symbolism of erotic, morbid and mysterious dreams, dictated a perhaps casual use of form: an experiment of poetic phrasing and sense of time, an enclosed or abrupt scope of episode, culminating in a resolution of emotion with prophecy in a form akin to epic. However, in the midst of that experiment of form, a recognizable pattern quickly emerged to my understanding, showing several parallel threads of continuity of action and purpose, and also showing the similarities of circumstance and mood.
Streams of the energies and events of life -- that is, the undercurents of motivation, facets hormonal/emotional/spiritual, and those mental/ intellectual/ commercial -- are often developed in literature as an unfolding of the narrator's experience. However, the recurrence of dreams over a period of time also strongly implies that there are recurrent messages in the deeper psyche. The "stream" if regarded by the above described principles of chronology and determination, would appear more as a concentrated view from a raft into the forest of trees on either bank as one passed downstream, or perhaps the focus of attention on the brightly colored stones seen on the bottom : Linear drift or propulsion is forward in time, the lateral perceptions the activity witnessed along the way. One stands walking backwards into forward time, visible of the past, the rest still cloaked in shadow. This principle
is in slow-motion the same as the sensation which Albert Einstein
as
"Fires Eternal Morning", works with the element of psychic fire in the dream and the possibility of material annihilation that its use poses, the sense of loss of family and safety, the environment returned to primitive hostility: the setting of a middle American social fabric such as it existed in the Cold War Period, disrupted by an apocalyptic political upheaval triggering natural catastrophes. "Rain of Ti'amat" describes a modern society undermined by the elemental forces that its own contemporary politics, therapeutics, and goods have sought to suppress and send to oblivion. It is an atavistic resurgence of the nightmare powers of the unbelievable primordial mother dragon remembered from the dawn of civilization, the Monster of the Id, which threatens anew to sink it into an irresistible entropy of darkness and control. The principle of prolepsis often comes into play in the course of the plot of a dream as it unfolds, where emotional or mental anticipation or certain fears or phobias sets or foretells events or behavior, or establishes the recognition of another person. The anticipation may be concerned with an emotional response to an experienced feeling, or to the expectation of another's actions. Mood plays an important role in the experience of dreams; the dream content may be animated by vivid color, or may be dark and sinister to invoke anxiety...
06. The Monad The philosophical model which represents the most seamless and integrated of forms is that which is called the "Monad", proposed by the mathematician G.F. Leibniz (1646-1716), also the inventor of infinitesimal calculus. One must consider a diagramic structure of thought itself, in the same sense as in the lesson of diagramming a sentence in elementary grammar class (a nasty example, to be sure) in order to discuss the perpendicular geometric effect of thought as it comes into convergence with relativistic world-lines. I would like to compare the effect of tangential lines with this earlier protypal model which Leibniz has created of an egg-shaped or indefinate column-shaped integral form. I would also like to begin to show how these models are both mathematically and conceptually related in a historical relationship which has been at work beneath the threshold of perception.
The growing prominence of foreign trade with the East from the late Thirteenth Century on had brought about the emergence of a mer-chantile class whose wealth began to surpass that of the landed gentry of the ancient patrician and feudal aristocracy. Spices were greatly desired in order to improve the taste and preservation of meat; silks as a relief from the coarseness of European textiles. In seafaring towns and cities job opportunities arose in the many levels of commerce which would allow an escape from the static, landlocked worlds of peasant and vassal alike. In the North countries, removed from the strongest influence of the Church's sovereignty over the moral and economic order of society, the old finite universe of feudalism seemed ready to disintegrate and lay bare its essentials and underpinnings to the eyes of mathe- matical scrutiny. Johann (Meister) Eckhart's writings on Christian symbolism in the 13th Century, proposed direct communion with God, bypassing the catechistic authority of the Church. Such also was the visual understanding later contained in the artworks of Albrecht Durer, Pieter Brueghel, and Hieronymous Bosch.
The principle of objectification was descended from the philosophy of Aristotle (Analytica Posteriora). The egg of the deductive process of syllogism was hatching in Leibniz' time as the scientific (post-alchemical) methods of experimentation and forensics. As an alter- native, Leibniz incorporated two other principles of Aristotle: the inductive process (also Analytica Posteriora) and (via Descartes and Thomas Aquinas) the soul (De Anima). Monads which exist in the Absolute of Time/Space (that is to say, outside of space/time) each as an "singular" entity, reflect all other Monads from all of their facets, as well as all of the entire universe. In Leibniz's formula: "the Monad is the integral unit of activity, mirroring all other monads, but incapable of fusion or interface. Each Monad exists as in a series, each in its own place mirroring all the others, the last in the series being the most active, therefore God." This seemingly abstract theory, proposed during the same period as the finite mechanized universe of Sir Isaac Newton, was to gradually submerge in the subsequent layers of conceptual philosophies build upon its basis of the symbolic logic of 18th Century scientists, until its reapplication to the conceptual structures of "logical entities" and the communication of parameters utilized by the digital computer. Norbert Wiener, one of the builders of the first working computer, the ENIAC, gives Leibniz' principle of the calculus ratiocinator the credit of the first reasoning machine design, the machina ratiocinatrix. Leibniz replaces the pair of corresponding elements, mind and matter, proposed in Spinoza's geometry as the self-contained attributes of God, with a continuum of correspon-ding elements: the monads. In his 1949 book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine, Norbert Wiener (himself a pupil of Bertrand Russell) explains : "While these are conceived after a pattern of the soul, each monad lives in its own closed universe, with a perfect causal chain from the creation or from minus infinity in time to the indefinitely remote future; but closed as they are, they correspond to one another through the pre-established harmony of God. Leibniz compares them to clocks, made with God's perfect workmanship, which have been so wound up as to keep time together from the creation through all of eternity." In his Monadology (1714), Leibniz addresses this theory to a theological issue: "It is impossible that there should be no souls because souls are the simple substances of which the universe consists and therefore were there no souls there would be no bodies. Bodies are composits, and the simples of which composits consist are the monads. All the monads are not souls, but souls only differ from simple monads by their position in the hierarchy. The reason there can be no interaction between mind and body is not because they are sub-stantially different, but because the monads which constitute the reality of the body do not give it the status of the body. It is only for the dominant monad or mind that the body is body, the mind therefore could only act on the body by acting on the monads which constitute the body, and there is no interaction between monads." Rather than viewing the universe in a mechanized model, Leibniz turns an organic insight: "Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each animal is also such a garden or pond." In this statement he refers to living organisms as plenum, wherein other living organisms, such as blood corpuscles have many if not all of the attributes of living matter. In form, the Monad can be visualized as an impervious, impene-trable chromium spheroid, reflecting with a precision that is mercurial with warmth and depth. The universe of monads can be thought of as a line of endlessly rising marble columns coming around in a chain to form a vast circle, each a pillar of space supporting the history of Time, in this case of the planet Earth, beginning in the mists of the void, and crowned by the dewy, unfolding petals of the scarlet rose. Were the Monads to be named in chronological order, as if they were a pond full of gardens, we might call them: ...the void...the origin...the past...the physical present...the potential...the ideal...the eternal...the dream...
A simple model
of comparison between a three- and a four-dimensional structure
would be to estimate the position of the Earth on a certain day
of the year. Astrophysicists have determined that our sun is moving
at a rate of approximately 200 miles per second Beyond Virgo is also the area in intergalactic space which measures the warmest in the background field of "radio-activity" considered to be left over from the BIG BANG, the Singularity before symmetry. It is also the direction in which all galaxies appear to be moving, as they mutually expand, according to the evidence of the red-shift of the doppler. The fact that our sun follows its own orbit in the turning galaxy, and the galaxy itself is moving out into the void of space, would require us to trace a "world-line" of the Earth's location, spiraling forward into time, much as our own Moon follows its own orbital path around the Earth in motion. Leibniz interpreted the monads as occurring in a series, the last being the most active. However, in the light of 20th Century theories we will attempt to interpolate : Investigations begun in 1929 by Edwin Hubble at Mount Wilson Observatory are currently continuing to determine whether the number of galaxies within various distances from us increases in (1) direct proportion to, (2) faster than; or (3) more slowly than, the cubes of these distances. If the first possibility is true, the space of the universe is Euclidean (static); in the second case, the universe has a negative curvature, being wide open in all directions; in the third case, space has a positive curvature and must eventually close upon itself. In the first case, in a static universe, the series of monads would indeed form an endless straight line forward into time. Both of the other possibilities would require us to consider all of the monads forming a circle along the edge of the curvature of space. In the second case, a negative curvature strongly suggests the ancient Gnostic vision of "The Pleroma", described by Valentinus in the Second Century: the sense of the Absolute of the "fullness" of a universe of totally expansive depths, such as an unfathomable ocean, indeed the well of the subjective cosmic/oceanic experience spoken of by diverse mystics over the ages. Perhaps in the third case, that of a positive curvature, as pre-dicted by Einstein in his Theory of General Relativity, the diameter of this circle of monads would measure the Conceptual times the Speed of Thought squared.... *** 07. Perpendicular Forces
To clearly
illustrate this metaphor, I will recall the example of a photograph
of a widely smiling young man. Noting the unusually ecstatic face
frozen in time, I was suddenly prompted to wonder whether in the
next moment his face smiled more widely or less -- that
08. The Geometry of Anticipation In scientific experiments at the turn of the 20th Century, in- struments called black bodies (dense metallic objects) were used to guage the release of emissions in electro-chemical reactions. The black body is a useful testing apparatus as its composition will completely absorb all radiant energy focused onto it with no reflection and should naturally give off a continuous spectrum of heat and light, as opposed to the testing characteristics of various other chemical elements. It was then detected that when heated to a given temperature the black body itself gave off a maximum amount of energy at a particular wavelength, decreasing as the temperature was increased. This effect presented a dilemma to experimenters, because previous theories had stated specifically that if electromagnetic oscillations were given out by naturally vibrating materials, the quantity of energy released would increase indefinitely as the wavelength of the radiation was decreased, thus according to the principle of frequency undulation. In 1900, Max Planck derived a solution to the phenomenon by suggesting that if the radiation from the black body were given out discontinuously in quanta, where the energy of a single quantum was proportional to the frequency of the radiation, the emission of the longer wavelengths towards the red end of the spectrum would be favored at low tem-peratures, as the energy of the quanta would be small. At higher temperatures more energy would be released, with the emission of larger quanta at the shorter wavelengths. Thus a maximum amount of energy (the "quanta") was emitted at a certain wavelength, and the wavelength shifted towards the short end of the spectrum as the temperature was increased. It is as if a dam were built without gates and so perfectly level that the water accumulating in its deep resivoir would eventually fill to the brim, inching out over the wall until the resistance of surface pressure were suddenly exceeded, and the water released, spilling out in a massive rush, uniformly over its top.
But in scientific experimentation and in the language of mathematical formula, the meaning of probability directly counteracts the anticipation of logical results. If seen in
its geometric perspective, the concept of prolepsis is the basis
of the simple (normal) duality of object vs. subject.It proposes
the subject as a figure (the interior, contained body), in mutual
or parity orbit with its object (the exterior, other body) -- So the whole nature of anticipation becomes transformed from the possibility of the possession of a fixed object, and raised to a scientific level, in terms of the question of probability to:Where is anything? Alfred North
Whitehead, writing an admonition to physicists and philosophers
in Science and The Modern World, 1928, and Adventures in Ideas,
1954, elaborated a phenomenon which he called "The Fallacy
of Absolute Location," warning that the logic
In the 1970's,
speaking of the Quark particle, now believed to constitute the basic
building blocks of the proton, three to each, Salaam argued against
the so-called "Dogma of Exact Confinement" advanced by
certain physicists working in the field who had predicted that any
evidence of the quark would only be detected by experiment within
the boundaries In order to
state the probability of a nonconfined pattern of quark particles,
and their hypothesis that quarks and electron particles were directly
related in their display of so-called
The concept of a so-called "space" wherein an object is situated had been challenged in 1935 by Werner Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle," stating that particles are contained in predictable positions only according to the laws of Probability, rather than any temporal observation through an electron microscope. This means that a given particle is nearly unobservable in a predictable location.
The use of Abstraction in the imagery of 20th Century painting poses the question, to human comprehension, of a visually represented expression of qualities which are apart from the nature of discernable or existent objects. -- Nearly a contradiction in terms. The "abstract" is literally that having only intrinsic form, with little or no attempt at a "pictorial" representation. (Were I to have composed the previous sentence as "that subject having" I would have effectively perverted the meaning of subjectivity into its opposite, objectivity.) The essence of the subject is that which is only one step above the self, that is, its envelope of self-consciousness; or else its compliment, the next monad in the endless series. The intrinsic is that belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing, the inner architecture or amorphous parts of a thing. The thing itself might be an objective object or it might be a subjective entity. At least in the case of the latter, as the development of the entity expands in terms of its own growth, some of those constituent parts might be shown to be subjective factors, that is simply, the individual's own specific experiences, having occured or being later viewed in a particular emotional color or light. In terms of painting, the principle of abstraction must by definition denote the indivi-dual experience of the artist expressed by the artist, whether that experience be of their own perception of a geometrical or mathematical space in his own terms, or of an amorphous, polymorphous, or metamorphous space. In art history, many of these forms of expression have already been demonstrated and applied. Geometric; Op-Art and Photo-Realism have demonstrated the geometric and mathematical experience. Amorphous representation has been illustrated by Impressionism, Indian Space Painting, and Abstract Expressionism. Polymorphous art has been created by Pointillism, Fauve, Bauhaus design, Dadism, Futurism, Pop-Art, and the Anachronistici. And metamorphic representation has been demonstrated with Cubism, Surrealism, and many examples of so-called "Outsider Art."
Eventualities (not a style or movement): Renaissance --> Baroque --> Post-Modernism
The dream then is more than a doorway into fantasy or other times: It is a mani-festation of the possibilities intrinsic in the various realities that we know. These images are the reflections of reality upon the chromium surface of the monad, as detected or organized by the eye of the unconscious mind. Unlike matter/energy time/space which must obey the equation of E=MC2, each monad that exists eternally, or one that is actually created from nothingness, reflects everything which surrounds or confronts it, but does not manifest its internal contents. What then are these internal contents? Does this mean that the contents are oblique and/or opaque to external reality? The Monad, whether it is representative or perfect actually carries two separate forces in operation: (1) The external force, which in a "representative mode" may also be non-objective, abstract, or figurative (of the figure's postural model), but yet remains in each sense a simile or a copy -- or in a "perfect mode" is prismatic, or absolutely reflective only of another Monad. Similitude is the principle by which the activity of growth proceeds by extension, and/or recognition, and/or abridgement. Abridgement is the effect of elongation and return to itself. Recognition here is the conscious realization of likeness in another or in the self. Extension
is the principle of (2) The internal force, which is entirely organic
of itself, and operates without given revelation only according
to its own structure of chemically balanced secretions, electrically
active pulsations, and ultimately according to its own encodations
of matched linkages.
To continue
as a species, and to ensure the survival of all the species of life,
we must begin to resolve the dilema and the dicotomy of object and
subject, to form a democracy of beings and of all king doms of existence,
and to accept not only the mechanistic nature of
Even here in this middle domain the ephemeral situation presents itself in the intrinsic problems of the workings of the psyche, the nature of emotions, and the confrontations and juxtapositions of both with mental thought. It is, however, non-predictable phenomena which can be antici- pated. This is not to state the obvious, but to attempt a recognition of the amorphous quality which cloaks the potentiality, a cloud of dark shadow; and also to attempt a realization, an unfolding of the seeds of those hidden qualities. The categories
of the mind are only the perception of the duality of these amorphous
and overlapping realms, the intersection of two perpendicular planes,
each formed by a pair of orbital circles in planar phase. A geometric
construction of four points, it is some- Sometimes the distinctions or the parallels of activity or energy are clearly revealed with frightening consequences, such as when the sighting of a dead animal by the roadside occurs coincidentally at the moment an important consideration or decision in thought. The question of mortality is somehow affirmed. The literal sense of the term "confrontation" should be understood as the adjacent, oppositional, frontal border of two separate entities, where the biologic stresses provide pressures from the inside of each border. The most obvious model of this interaction is the model of sexual behavior in the human, both in intercourse and in the emotional embrace. The element of time given to the expression, either protracted or brief, determines the degree and nature of the systems response and resolution of these intrinsic forces. This is to say that time is required for the organism to remotivate, restage, relive and relieve the forces of instinctual energies. This formula contains an implied recognition of the identity (the sameness in parity) of the inmost pressuring forces, and therefore an identity of subject and object, on the most human level of biologic need, apart from personal differences. It is often
argued, in both Eastern Yoga and Western contemporary anti-sexist
culture, that the conscious abstinence from sexuality elevates or
liberates the rest of the organism from this need. But many facets
to this theme remain recurrent, which continually frus- The forces of chronology can be identified as those in biology which compose the basic sexual drive itself: (1) instinctal attraction and desire made conscious; (2) common confrontation and affection with the object; (3) the penetration and/or compression of the sexual organs; (4) release in orgasm, relaxation, and physiological tonus; (5) gestation and reproduction; (6) perpetuation of the species; (7) sleep and dream; (8) aging and progression; (9) death and silence. There is a region of correspondence, however, between chronology and determination in this model of behavior, and this correspondence is clearly expressed in the Hindu culture with its historical pre- occupation with sensuality, the erotic, and the languid landscape of the body, suggesting a transcendancy of chronology. Most mysteriously, it is the function of uncertain possibility and its possible reward of fulfillment that replenishes the motivating spiritual purpose of all action -- to reconnect the totality of animate souls. The nature of the intimacy of the emotions is, by contrast to chronology, the etermination to reveal Time by the opening up of unknown potentialities. The Bridge represents the equation of the qualities, the constants and variables of each of the meeting parties, multiplied, divided, or exponentialized, across the coupula of the is, crossing the short parallel span of two horizontal lines, the equal sign. Time presses forward with the urgency of giving birth to the universe itself to be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|