Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1609262342490.21456@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Social notes from all over my brain and the word of philosophy
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 23:45:00 -0400 (EDT)
Social notes from all over my brain and the word of philosophy http://www.alansondheim.org/contage14.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/wordofphilosophy.txt Freud's dreamwork operations - condensation and displacement - map in an interesting way in the generation of n-dimensional simplices and measure polytopes. Consider an equilateral triangle 'condensed' and drawn to an external (non-planar) point (whose edges are equal in length to the triangle's) - a tetrahedron is formed. Consider a tetrahedron 'condensed' and drawn similarly to an external (non-3-spaced point) and a 4-simplex is created. Similarly, displace a square in a non-planar direction, and a six-sided volume is formed; displace that in a non-3-space dimension and a 4-volume is formed. "Even" displacement tends towards rectilinear volumes (however one can displace at any angle); condensation tends towards focus on the drawing-out point. Of course this is an outmoded poetics, but of interest here. I read as much as possible in current cosmology and particle physics; I'm also aware I'm somewhat nearing death. So I turn towards the thought of knowledge itself; what good does it do me to understand, say, the Higgs boson or a current dark matter theory? What difference does it make if I comprehend or not? And I wonder if, when some grow older, they deaccession knowledge, just as one might begin deaccessioning books or musical instruments or life itself? The closure at the end is always, momentarily, muddied, of no interest or concern to oneself and others. Meanwhile I continue exploring the 'word of philosophy' - material at the url above - to almost no readership; this is again the problem of operating, working, writing, as if online were a viable forum (in relation, say, to seminars, classrooms, conferences, books, journals, colloquia, etc.). Most of the time I have between two and five readers; my theory becomes increasingly a situation of talking to oneself, hoping I catch my errors, and that, somewhere down the line, the material will be collected for a more permanent form of publication, perhaps even discussion. (It's frustrating because I'm working in fairly innovative ways, in terms of music/sound, codework, theory, virtual worlds. Yet the materials die in the rush of newsfeeds and email.)
