All posts by anomalogue

Gives me pause

Etymology

This post poses a question regarding the relationship between posing and positing. It is interesting to me that we pose questions, but posit assertions. Situations can pose problems. We keep people posted on what is happening, particularly about these problematic situations.

It appears that this family of words revolves around two centers of gravity, split from an original root, “ponere“, translated as ‘to place’ or ‘to show off.’ pausare ‘to pause’ and Latin positura ‘position,’ from posit– ‘placed’, almost a complementary negative/positive pair, with pausare being a momentary cessation of movement — a stop-motion or freeze-frame for catching a whirling problem in the act of being problematic — and positura being a positive movement of putting a thing forth.

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An eymological exposition of ponere words:

Pose – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French poser (verb), from late Latin pausare ‘to pause,’ which replaced Latin ponere ‘to show off.’ The noun dates from the early 19th cent.

Posit – ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere.

Position – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French, from Latin positio(n-), from ponere ‘to place.’ The current sense of the verb dates from the early 19th cent.

Posture – ORIGIN late 16th cent. (denoting the relative position of one thing to another): from French, from Italian postura, from Latin positura ‘position,’ from posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere .

Suppose – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French supposer, from Latin supponere (from sub– ‘from below’ + ponere ‘to place’), but influenced by Latin suppositus ‘set under’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Impose – ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense ‘impute’): from French imposer, from Latin imponere ‘inflict, deceive’ (from in– ‘in, upon’ + ponere ‘put’), but influenced by impositus ‘inflicted’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Expose – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French exposer, from Latin exponere (see expound), but influenced by Latin expositus ‘put or set out’ and Old French poser ‘to place.’

Repose – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French repos (noun), reposer (verb), from late Latin repausare, from re– (expressing intensive force) + pausare ‘to pause.’

Positive – ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French positif, –ive or Latin positivus, from posit– ‘placed,’ from the verb ponere. The original sense referred to laws as being formally ‘laid down,’ which gave rise to the sense ‘explicitly laid down and admitting no question,’ hence ‘very sure, convinced.’

Ditto

Philosophy

Serres: “Whether royal or imperial, whoever wields power, in fact, never encounters in space anything other than obedience to his power, thus his law: power does not move. When it does, it strides on a red carpet. Thus reason never discovers, beneath its feet, anything but its own rule.”

I’ve tried to make this point several times when observing the phenomenon of the elevator pitch.

Today’s power is busy, and it expresses itself as intense impatience: “Say it so I get it instantly and effortlessly, or don’t say it.” This constraint constrains all communication to repetition of the already-known; a reference to a thought already had; a ditto; flattery.

(Ditto. Irony detected and left intact.)

Myth thematics and mathematics

Fables, myths & parables

Myths are narrative formulas.

In mythological algebra the characters are variables; the plots, operators.

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To express an objective matter with precision, mathematize it.

To express a subjective matter with immediacy, mythematize it.

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Is mathematics inherent in nature? Are myths inherent in humanity?

Perhaps both are collaborations with immanence: true instaurations.

“I don’t know my way about”

Design, Philosophy

For expertise the unknown means “I still haven’t figured out the answer to this problem.” Expertise lacks the answer, but what the question is and how it will produce an answer is not in question.

For philosophy the unknown means “I still haven’t figured out how to think about this problem.” Philosophy lacks not only an answer, but the way to ask and answer a possible question. How to ask and answer and what the answer is are found together.

Wittgenstein’s formulation is elegant: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’.”

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Any explorer in a new land will not know his way about. His skill is not in already knowing the landscape. His skill is navigating unmapped territory and finding his way about. He will emerge with a map. He will not try to draw it before he has explored it.

We should be suspicious of any explorer who claims to already have a map and to know his way around unexplored territory. Either he’s taking you somewhere that has already been settled, or he doesn’t know his way about “I don’t know my way about” and is likely to get you lost in the wilderness.

Innovation needs philosophy.

 

Grammatical alchemy

Philosophy

Let’s not have a face-to-face conversation this time. That’s what kids do. They gaze at one another, each a potential mating object for the other, seeing, being seen and being seen seeing.

Instead let’s have a face-face-to-object conversation. Let’s do science together. That’s the only way to get to know one another intimately, as subjects.

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Each individual I runs a circuit through the world of things on its way to becoming a We.

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Grammatical alchemy: First person singular becomes first person plural by way of third person, and in the process second person singular is transmuted from third person to first.

Challenges vs. problems

Etymology

Examining the etymologies of the words, it is strange that we use the word “challenge” as a euphemism for “problem”.

Challenge: ORIGIN Middle English (in the senses ‘accusation’ and ‘accuse’): from Old French chalenge (noun), chalenger (verb), from Latin calumnia ‘calumny,’ calumniari ‘calumniate.’

Problem: ORIGIN late Middle English (originally denoting a riddle or a question for academic discussion): from Old French probleme, via Latin from Greek probl?ma, from proballein ‘put forth,’ from pro ‘before’ + ballein ‘to throw.’

Chord: golden ball

Chord

Rilke, via Gadamer:

Catch only what you’ve thrown yourself, all is
mere skill and little gain;
but when you’re suddenly the catcher of a ball
thrown by an eternal partner
with an accurate and measured swing
towards you, to your centre, in an arch
from the great bridge building of God:
why catching then becomes a power —
not yours, a world’s.

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Dialogue between Michel Serres and Bruno Latour:

Michel Serres: Just as Leibniz wrote a monadology, an elementary or atomic philosophy, here is a theory of valences around atoms, a general theory of relations, like a theology in which the important thing would be angelology — a turbulent array of messengers.

Bruno Latour: Wait a minute. This is very important, but I’m lost again. You are taking up again the metaphor of scientific method, which will not completely convince me, since, on the contrary, the general impression is that the sciences are multiple substantives, a formidable proliferation of objects, whereas for you the synthesizing element…

Michel Serres: …is relations.

Bruno Latour: But, even more than relations, the types of relation.

Michel Serres: Not only the mode of relation but the way this mode of relation establishes or invents itself, virtually or physically.

Bruno Latour: Is it like comparing passes in rugby? I mean the ways of passing and not the configurations of the players?

Michel Serres: Configurations or fixed places are important when the players don’t move — just before the game begins, or when certain established positions are called for at various points in the game — scrimmages or line-outs. They begin to fluctuate as soon as the game begins, and the multiple and fluctuating ways of passing the bail are traced out.

The ball is played, and the teams place themselves in relation to it, not vice versa. As a quasi object, the ball is the true subject of the game. Tt is like a tracker of the relations in the fluctuating collectivity around il. The same analysis is valid for the individual: the clumsy person plays with the ball and makes it gravitate around himself; the mean player imagines himself to be a subject by imag- ining the ball to be an object-the sign of a bad philosopher. On the contrary, the skilled player knows that the ball plays with him or plays off him, in such a way that he gravitates around it and fluidly follows the positions it takes, but especially the relations that it spawns.

Bruno Latour: So, your synthesis would come about in the area of the passes, of movement, and not in the area of the objects?

Michel Serres: Look at how the flames dance, where they go, from whence they come, toward what emptiness they head, how they become fragmented and then join together or die out. Both fluctuating and dancing, this sheet of flame traces relations. This is an illuminating metaphor, if I may say so, for understanding what I have in view — this continuing and fragmented topological variety, which outlines crests. which can shoot high and go out in a mo- ment. The Rames trace and compose these relations.

Bruno Latour: Wait, I need to back up a minute. I thought I understood that there was in general a hermetical conception…

Michel Serres: Hermes passes and disappears; makes sense and destroys it; exposes the noise, the message, and the language; invents writing and, before it. music, translations and their obstacles. He is admittedly not a fixed preposition but, as is said nowadays about mailmen, he plays at pre?pose?, at delivery person.

Nietzsche:

Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball: now you, my friends, are the heirs of my goal; to you I throw my golden ball. More than anything, I like to see you, my friends, throwing the golden ball. And so I still linger a little on the earth: forgive me for that.

Saulinism?

Metaphysics, Philosophy

I was talking with a good friend of mine last night about “organized” atheism and why we both distance ourselves from it.

For me, the problem with atheism does not lie in the incorrectness of the belief it professes. If you were to make a list of the average atheist’s professed disbeliefs, my list of disbeliefs would match it, check for check. I am especially in agreement with atheists in their disgust with the Fundamentalist “God”. On my list that box is checked twice and starred.

Where I find atheists lacking is in their philosophical complacency. The atheist’s checklist of disbeliefs is too short, and it doesn’t grow. That’s fine if the question of God’s existence bores you and you have other things to think about. That is just a non-theism: non-concern for the question. I also respect anti-Fundamentalism, though I question the choice of philosophy as weapon in that battle.

But what about these “militant” atheists who furiously check and re-check the same three boxes? I believe they actually help Fundamentalists by treating the Fundamentalist theology as the last word on faith, when it is not even the first. Fundamentalism is not religion taken to an extreme, it is failure of religion to begin.

Here is what I’d like to convey to the tiny handful of urgent truly philosophical atheists: There is no single belief in God, and so there cannot be a single disbelief in God.

Being an atheist is necessarily harder than being a theist, because you must understand a belief before you can refute it. To do the job right, an atheist must not only able to enter the belief (or at least its conceptual space) in order to understand it. This “entry” is the nature of authentic theisms, and if you do not know what I am talking about, you have some basic learning to do before you can get going. Then the atheist must find the way back out this belief. Finally, he must be able to draw a map of that path from entrance to exit. This atheism is difficult and respectable.

Here is an outline of an atheism I could respect: this atheism would industriously hunt down every existing conception of God in order to understand and destroy it. Once it destroyed every existing conception it would then turn its attention to anticipating every future conception, in order to prevent its birth if not its conception.

Let’s give this atheistic discipline a name: Saulinism.

But do remember: it is easier to get in than to get out — especially once you know the difference between in and out.

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P.S. Or make it pretty.


Briefs and the politics of creativity

Philosophy

Creative briefs come in every shape and size. Some are brief statements on a single sheet of paper, while others fill a briefcase.

They also reflect drastically different philosophies of creativity and the politics of creation.

If I were going to classify them — and you know that is exactly what I’m going to do — I’d put them in two categories:

  • Briefs that specify, by sketching out a creative answer to be fully fleshed out by the team.
  • Briefs that problematize, by sketching out a productive question to be answered by the team.

I won’t pretend I don’t have a very strong personal preference, but I admit that both approaches when applied well with the right team can produce great results.

Introversion and extraversion strategies

Philosophy

I very nearly re-wrote a post I already wrote in 2010, drawing out a chord from two passages from Nietzsche and Buber, both distinguishing between dialogue that takes place between individuals and discussion that takes place among members of a group — what Buber called interhuman versus social phenomena.

The reason I was going to write it was to jot down my intention to express these ideas as venn diagrams. A sketch:

Each individual has a certain set of personal things they can/will discuss. Two individuals are likely to have some amount of overlap. But with each additional individual the overlap diminishes.

But each individual also has a larger set of things they can be expected to be able to discuss — a more public or social mode of discussion. This set is a combination of very accessible topics, which approach pure sensory fact (the weather, for instance) and convention: the manners we have all been taught, the attitudes to which we are expected to adhere, the shared values we all are expected to uphold. The more people present, the more the conversation will have to follow the public mode.

I think introversion and extraversion has less to do with numbers of people than with what kind of interaction is more or less likely to happen as people are added or subtracted. So, as Buber noted, two individuals can be alone but still interact in a public or extraverted mode. And three or four introverts with similar interests can still interact in an introverted mode.

When introverts get finicky over chemistry of groups, I suspect it an attempt to preserve a possibility of introversion. Likewise, extraverts will often invite a wide range of people into a situation in order to make boring introverted conversation less possible. And some  introverts will do the same thing, to get relief from themselves, temporarily or permanently. Conversely, extraverts will sometimes enlist introverts to help them excavate their privacy.

Now that I’ve written this out, it is very unlikely I will draw the idea.