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@@ -74,6 +74,13 @@ It is undoubtedly, a historically constituted division. For, even with the sixth \Q{It is also clear that many of the tests used for measuring \dq{intelligence} are scored essentially according to the candidate's power of appropriate selection. Thus one test shows the child a common object and asks its name: out of all words the child must select the proper one. Another test asks the child how it would find a ball in a field; out of all the possible paths the child must select one of the suitable few. Thus it is not impossible that what is commonly referred to as \dq{intellectual power} may be equivalent to \dq{power of appropriate selection.} Indeed, if a talking Black Box were to show high power of appropriate selection in such matters---so that, when given difficult problems it persistently gave correct answers---we could hardly deny that it was showing the behavioral equivalent of \dq{high intelligence.} If this is so, and as we know that power of selection can be amplified, it seems to follow that intellectual power, like physical power, can be amplified. Let no one say that it cannot be done, for the gene-patterns do it every time they form a brain that grows up to be something better than the gene---pattern could have specified in detail. What is new is that we can now do it synthetically, consciously, deliberately.} \Qs{W. Ross Ashby, \booktitle{An Introduction to Cybernetics}} +\topinsert +\hbox{}\vfill +\centerline{\picw=3.5in\inspic{peirce.png}} +\caption/f{A letter from Charles S. Peirce to his former student Allan Marquand contains the first known description of a switching circuit designed to perform logic.} +\vskip 1in +\endinsert + \break \sec messages numbered between 383 and 877 @@ -192,6 +199,9 @@ The following \dq{random} points are intended to serve as a radical-traditional * The teleconference can be defined as a network of multiple connections, involving complexity, order, and hierarchy. Any private world of perceptual/cognitive activity depends upon self-defined comprehension of the whole. It can function as the theater for establishing root metaphors and analogies introduced by the unique conceptual pressures encountered in the teleconference itself. For instance, adapting ordinary language, in addition to various specialist lexicons and argots, to the novel purposes of this activity. For instance, translating certain mythical forces from their lost redemptive power to a redefined descriptive power. * Taking off from the physicist Margenau's concept of the \dq{Requirement of Multiple Connections} the premise is that through their definitions, constructs enter into relations with each other. The interest here leaves aside, at least for the moment, the origin and focuses on the character of the connections which constructs may enter (each conferencee represents a constellation of such constructs). These may be of two types, \e{formal} and \e{epistemic.} + +\vskip 1em + \begitems\spaced * A formal connection is one which sets a construct in a purely logical relation with another construct (construct can be read here as any message which defines a distinct point of view). They are in a sense hypothetical judgements. Classic examples of formal connections: a) the relations between geometric quantities and their axiomatic sources, or b) between the golden mean and its expression in a particular set of angles in a picture plane. One peculiarity of formal connections is that their formal character becomes less obvious (even transparent) when and if they are empirically verified. * An epistemic connection is equivalent to and arises from a rule of correspondence which links the construct with data or evidence. Examples of epistemic connection: a) the relation between a tree and the perception of it b) between a force and an awareness of muscular exertion. One of the terms is a construct, the other is in nature. Connections are also both formal and epistemic in equal degree, as in any graduated experience, from empirical to ideational and back. @@ -243,6 +253,12 @@ In regard to Brendan's trinity of modes (with its implicit critique of certain W As for Brendan's \dq{delicious infection}---I would (driven as it drives me) draw on, in full flush of reference, my very last Kierkegaard: \Q{The individual becomes conscious of himself as being this particular individual with particular gifts, tendencies, impulses, passions, under the influence of a particular environment, as a particular product of his milieu. He who becomes thus conscious of himself assumes all this as part of his own responsibility. At the moment of choice he is thus in complete isolation, for he withdraws from his surroundings; and yet he is in complete continuity, for he chooses himself as product; and this choice is a free choice, so that we might even say, when he chooses himself as product, he is producing himself.} +\midinsert +\centerline{\picw=3in\inspic{homeostat.png}} +\cskip +\caption/f{A diagram of \dq{automatic homeostat} from the notebooks of W. Ross Ashby which he later used in \booktitle{Design for a Brain}.} +\endinsert + I submit the following as entries in the glossary for this exchange. The connections between these words stem from intuitive contagion, and not necessarily a strict adherence to formal definition. They are essentials (in the cybernetic sense) as transferable to cybernautic activity. \begitems\spaced\style o @@ -297,6 +313,12 @@ On a more sinister level, the security of the entire world now rests on the cont \break \sec messages numbered between 1187 and 1658 +\midinsert +\centerline{\picw=3in\inspic{neumann.png}} +\cskip +\caption/f The first page of the first program written for a modern computer. Von Neumann illustrated versatility of the new machine by coding an operation central to business applications---sorting. He illustrated that program step by step in an appendix to his June 30, 1945, report on the design of {\caps Edvac}. +\endinsert + \phdr{[1187]}{Gillette}{} \e{Art} said Zola is a \dq{corner of \e{Nature} seen through a temperament.} We have a \dq{field} of temperaments (variously programmed) defining a spread of association and lateral interconnection. Each temperament is amply supplied with its own endemic assumptions and intellectual habits bred by unique and peculiar methods and requirements. @@ -315,6 +337,12 @@ Among them, in this case, is a susceptibility to a kind of metaphysical pathos, * From the perspective of the Nominalist, an art (or Art) can have no existence apart from its concrete embodiments drawn from the receptacle of traits by which it is defined. \enditems +\midinsert +\centerline{\picw=3in\inspic{harmonic.png}} +\cskip +\caption/f Curves drawn by the eighty element harmonic analyzer designed by A.A. Michelson and S.W. Stratton. This is an application of Fourier's principle of harmonic analysis. Roughly speaking, he proved that any continuous curve, no matter how irregular, can be approximated by adding together a number of simple regular curves. +\endinsert + \phdr{[1201]}{}{} Science, concerned with processes and \dq{processing} is not properly concerned with substance (that is, it is not concerned with \dq{being} as poetics and certain strains of art are). Hence, it need not be concerned with motivation. All I need know is \e{correlation.} The limits of science, \e{qua science,} do not go beyond the statement that, when certain conditions are met, certain new conditions may be expected to follow. In art, motivation is imbedded in discontinuity---conditions be damned. @@ -343,10 +371,16 @@ The older schools of thought that developed in China and Central Asia were balan Jalaluddin Rumi told of man evolving from the crystal, plant, fish, bird, animal, man to angel: storing within the flesh memories of all levels of life. In support of this holistic family tree is a basic proposition from Sufism: \Q{In the realm of phenomena there are only connections without cause: no phenomenon is the cause of another. All causality is in the divine names, in the incessant renewal of their epiphanies. Thus identity of a being does not stem from any empirical continuity of his eternal hexeity. In the realm of the manifest there is only a succession of likes from instant to instant.} -\Qs{Henri Corbin, \booktitle{The Creative Imagination of I'bn Arabi}} +\Qs{Henry Corbin, \booktitle{The Creative Imagination of Ibn ʿArabī}} Islamic cosmological doctrine is structured on a profound understanding of the psychological behavior of man. This sense of unity is a manifold of conscious patterns constructed to correspond to the physiology and internal geography of the body. +\midinsert +\centerline{\picw=3in\inspic{shannon.png}} +\cskip +\caption/f A page of C.E. Shannon, \essaytitle{Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,} \journaltitle{Bell Systems Technical Journal} (Oct. 1949). +\endinsert + \phdr{[1581]}{Gillette}{} The teleconference seems to possess all the seeds for an authentically new species of \e{semiotic freedom.} This stage represents (in its first primitive forms) the invention of \dq{terms} for another kind of conceptual diversity. The oscillation from metaphor to metonymy and back creates the beginning of \e{syntactics} (intuitions of possible links and permutations) and \e{synecdochic} thinking (the mapping of transforms into motives of search which translate \dq{objects} into \dq{events}). @@ -360,3 +394,12 @@ The teleconference seems to possess all the seeds for an authentically new speci * Compared to Hesse's monks and their bead-computer, this system represents the advance of \e{homo ludens} over \e{australopithecus.} The curve is asymptotic. It ranges from Duns Scotus to the \dq{cut-ups} of William Burroughs. From occult grammars (Kabbalah, I Ching) to particle physics (quarks, quasars), yarrow sticks and Tarot in one sentient ball of wax. From the fundamental Vedantic notion of Sat, Chit, and Ananda (Being, Consciousness, Bliss) to schemes for paying teleconference rent. * It is germane to note that the linguistic root of the word \e{religion} derives from \dq{reconnect,} i.e., from the Latin \e{ligare} and \e{religare.} We have barely scratched the surface on the issue of the contradistinct attributes of art and science. Their respective traditions, methods, and truths serve as a fecund nexus with which to begin again and fin again along the riverrun, whence it all begins again. \enditems + +\midinsert +\centerline{\picw=1.25in\inspic{vocal1.png} \picw=1.25in\inspic{vocal2.png}} + +\centerline{\picw=1.25in\inspic{vocal3.png} \picw=1.25in\inspic{vocal4.png}} + +\cskip +\caption/f One cycle of vocal cord movement at low frequency. +\endinsert |