That photograph is fantastic! Where is it, and who's the artist?
On 17/05/2021 01:37, Alan Sondheim wrote:
Theory http://www.alansondheim.org/P1050632.JPG "Theories don't give meaning, but they limit the kinds of meanings we can give." - from Judith Roitman, Introduction to Modern Set Theory, 3rd edition, 2013, p. 29 I've been having a really difficult time with this book; at this point I don't have the background to read it, but I'm trying in any case. But this sentence seems remarkable to me, and what it might imply in general. Theory becomes, not explanatory, but descriptive of the limits of meaning. Bear with me. Think of a theory has describing the underlying, scaffolding of a domain or domains which are always both leaky and circumscribed. (For example, particle theory, cosmology, quantum theory, and so forth.) The theory elucidates the scaffolding within limits. What is the phenomenology of meaning in this regard - for example Einstein's "The Meaning of Relativity"? I'm talking I fear, on the level of high-school philosophy here. If one construes meaning within a particular domain - energy for example - one might say "The meaning of energy is E = Mc^2." It's a translation from one language, perhaps to another. It explains. The meaning lies in the explanation. But suppose theory does the opposite - limits explanation, not by offering a (provable?) equivalence, but by indicating the limits of the meaningful. This idea (and I'm sure I'm misreading all over the place) might indicate that theory is a form of paring-away at one ontological domain, by re-producing something more or less true within the epistemo- logical. To continue on my high-school (or earlier) level, for example, if God is ontology, and gravity epistemology, then one way of looking at this might be to consider that God and "God" are weakened by the structural "leaking" of gravitational theory. In terms of my own thinking re: somatic ghosting, the "leaking" from analog to digital apparently empties the body of its gristle, at least on a popular level; the resulting dubious ontology of the body slides into, and is subsumed by, the fabric of over-arching digital epistemologies, which appear as the horizon of fundamental praxis itself. I'm aware that nothing can be said sensibly within such a paragraph as this; on the other hand, there is something in the quote which resonate, as if some other and perhaps more skeletal appearance were present, disturbances in the current and past order of things. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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