Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0909020939410.28865@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Short prolegomenon to philosophy iv
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 09:40:12 -0400 (EDT)
Short prolegomenon to philosophy iv Analysis in this context says nothing whatsoever about physical theory, its direction or relation to the humanities. It occurs as metaphor, indicative of parallel operations within a critical phenomenology, but also as an approach, keeping in mind the obdurate, the broken, the wayward, and the lack of return; in curved space, a parallel transported vector in general does not return to itself, a measure of curvature based on dissimilarity. In theory, the object, like the author, continually shifts against a foam-like holarchy of inscription and information. The twist as kernel continually changes as well; thus interpretation occurs within a hermeneutics of stochastic/chaotic flux. Philosophy never ends, and one might well be suspicious of fundamental philosophies that reify an obdurate positionality from which everything is generated; the holarchic entanglement of information on the horizon of a black hole is indecipher- able. I think of philosophy always plural, always broken, part-object philosophies without end, that advance only to the extent that scientific theory tends towards a form of increased knowledge. Philosophies continue and constitute an endless dialog in retreat and circumscription, a dialog of phenomenologies of being-in-the-worlds, ranging across inscriptive fields and domains; every moment of stasis is deconstructed, and every moment is superseded. Philosophy does not talk to itself; it talks to and of the world, and ought listen: just as narratives are constructs useful to make sense out of chaos with a surplus of contrariness and noise, just so philosophical groundwork is useful, but undercut by surplus. One small advantage of postmodernity was the recognition of the inherency and import of undercutting; the "myth of eternal return" is found lacking, as every- thing, everywhere, everywhen, twists and is always shattered, always other, even if only to an infinitesimal degree. It is only within the realm of quantum physics and below that absolutes reign, in the sense that quantum numbers and fundamental particles are described by finite sets of numbers, wave equations, probabilities, and the like. The combinations among anything constructed from these - atoms, molecules, fields, and the like - tend towards the foam; by the time one reaches the temporal or spatial scales of being-human, it becomes impossible to return to, or postulate origin. And _this_ is semiotically related to other spaces embodying sememes, semiotic domains, and fields of inscription, however defined; in short, they don't compute, except dynamically, lost like any weather system, losing any philosophy. (End of short prolegomenon to philosophy.) "The twist is not a knot, but at least among the humanities, indecipher- able! Otherwise there would be nothing left for us to do!"