Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0802150048030.7695@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Inhering characteristics of matter, let us say substance.
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:48:21 -0500 (EST)
Inhering characteristics of matter, let us say substance. Let us say substance without differentiation, by which we mean, cohering matter, the phenomenology of the _same_ without transitivity (as in for example Irigaray). One is always lost in the same. At the limit, one might consider the same a manifold without geodesics, striations, closed upon itself, windowless, sightless, catatonic. But this is only a limit, never found, incapable of seeing or being-seen; it is the limit of death, the maw that absorbs us all. Now to open it up a bit: "RECAPITULATION. -- The common or essential properties of bodies are, Im- penetrability, Extension, Figure, Divisibility, Inertia, and Attraction. Attraction is of several kinds, viz. attraction of Cohesion, attraction of Gravitation, Capillary attraction, Chemical attraction, Magnetic attraction, and Electrical attraction. The peculiar properties of bodies are, Density, Rarity, Hardness, Elastic- ity, Brittleness, Malleability, Ductility, and Tenacity." (J L Comstock, A System of Natural Philosophy, 1854 and earlier.) Electrical attraction is of one or two kinds, positive or negative, aus- tral or boreal. It is an inhering fluid which gathers, puckers, expends. Shape comes: "FIGURE OR FORM _is the result of extension, for we can not conceive that a body has length and breadth, without its also having some kind of figure, however irregular._" Fractals come: "Some solids are so irregular, that they cannot be compared with any mathematical figure. This is the case with the fragments of a broken rock, chips of wood, fractured glass, &c.; these are called _amorphous._" Inversion comes: "A single grain of musk will scent a room for years, and still lose no appreciable part of its weight. Here, the particles of musk must be floating in the air of every part of the room; otherwise they could not be every where perceived." What parts of the whole subtend figure, location, differentiation from the other? Attraction might be said to construct the other, the other's construction of the self, both and neither, imaginary, chimera. Gravitational attrac- tion is like to like; magnetic and electrical like to anti-like, but of the otherwise same; capillary, specific like to specific other, of which both adhere to their essential characters; chemical, unary or mutual transformation of specific like to specific other; and cohesion, like to like or like to specific other. The peculiar properties inhere. "RARITY. -- This is the quality opposite to density, and means that the substance to which it is applied is porous, and light. Thus air, water, and ether, are rare substances, while gold, lead, and platina, are dense bodies." Today this is in fact density, and a peculiar property in general might be considered that which is related to the atomic or molecular constitution of matter, or rather the particle constitution of matter, hence for example the neutron star, or rather the constituating configuration of matter, hence for example the black hole, or rather nearly decomposable phenomena, hence possibly dark matter or strings, or whatever preserves at least the very weakest of phenomenologi- cal structures in the true world and its descriptive messay/anysign. From William Peck's Introductory Course of Natural Philosophy for the Use of Schools and Academies, edited from Ganot's Popular Physics, 1873: "Physics is that branch of Natural Philosophy which treats of the general properties of bodies, and of the causes that modify these properties. The principle causes that modify the properties of bodies are: _Gravita- tion, Heat, Light, Magnetism,_ and _Electricity._ These causes are called _Physical Agents._" There are solid and fluid bodies. Bodies have mass and density. The gener- al properties of bodies include Magnitude, Form, Impenetrability, Inertia, Porosity, Divisibility, Compressibility, Dilatability, and Elasticity. Be- yond Gravity, there are molecular forces which include Cohesion, Adhesion, Capillary Forces, Absorption, Imbibition ("the absorption of a liquid by a solid body"), Tenacity, Hardness, Ductility, and Malleability. The book, "Peck's Ganot," is based on Ganot's elementary version of his Traite Elementaire de Physique; I have the 3rd 1854 edition. Here, physi- cal agents are as follows: "l'attraction universelle, le calorique, la lumiere, le magnetisme et l'electricite." Under general properties of bodies: "l'impenetrabilite, l'etendue, la divisibilite, la porosite, la compressibilite, l'elasticite, la mobilite, et l'inertie." Particular properties are those observed in certain bodies or certain states of bod- ies, such as solidity, fluidity, tenacity, ductility, malleability, hard- ness, transparency, and coloration; there is density, weight, various forms of elasticity, etc. Heat, steam, hydraulics, magnetism, electricity, fluids, gas: the world is in flux, numerous solids are porous, some transparent to magnetism, x-rays and other out of directly perceivable bandwidth radiations and receptors - all challenge the muteness of amphiboles, some absorb others, some gener- ate others, some construct others as problematic, some are coherent, some inhere, some leak into Freud's hydraulic model, some are id-messy or libido-messy. As I have pointed out, electrical fluid inhabits the spherical; the point, punctum, drains it. Harboring matter is puckered, withdrawn. The fluid seeps off in due time. It can be gathered in leyden jars, spewed from voltaic piles (dynamic or galvanic electricity), generated from machines (Wimhurst, von Guericke, etc.) with glass disks or cylinders or small furnaces and stem or cat fur, pith, resin, tin foil (see the electrophor- ous). It is social, the subject of "electrical recreations" led by men for young women holding hands, sparking one another, hair stood on end, short- circuiting jars and condensers. It's the men who electrocute dogs and birds, test the apparatus against the limits of life and death. It's the pith-man and pith-woman who jump up and down in funny embrace in a small electrostatic entertainment. It's the woman who demonstrates the magnetic swan to a small boy. There's ectoplasm, outside the ken of these books, these models, as are all sorts of spirits. Still, Peck/Ganot states right at the beginning: "The Universe may be regarded as made up of _mind_ and _matter._ MIND is that which thinks and wills; MATTER is that of which we become cognizant through the medium of the senses. Science admits of two corresponding divisions, _Science of Mind,_ or METAPHYSICS, and _Science of Matter,_ or NATURAL PHILOSOPHY." Three simple points from all of this: Much coheres, inheres, to matter; some of what coheres or inheres is in problematic relation with an other (general or specific); and much of these relatively early dialogs empha- size a simplicity of fluidic substance and magnetic/electromagnetic experimentation. While the science and technical characterization of the world is clearly outmoded, the _phenomenology_ emphasizing a blurring of static and dynamic, force and presence, circuit and stasis, state and operator, and self and other, is rather sophisticated and uncannily resonates with the messy and problematic distinctions among analogic and digital/discrete domains, emanent and organic life, and real and virtual as well as sign and anysign, all within the true world. We can't stop now; we're just beginning to understand that the question isn't how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin - the question is, how many angels are in it.