timelets

timelets @ 2024-08-31T22:30:00

2024-09-01T05:31:13Z

...space-time cannot in reality be
considered as a self-subsistent entity. It is an abstraction, and its
explanation requires reference to that from which it has been extracted.
Space-time is the specification of certain general characters of events
and of their mutual ordering. This recurrence to concrete fact brings me
back to the eighteenth century, and indeed to Francis Bacon in the
seventeenth century.
...
in order to
understand the difficulties of modern scientific thought and also its
reactions on the modern world, we should have in our minds some
conception of a wider field of abstraction, a more concrete analysis,
which shall stand nearer to the complete concreteness of our intuitive
experience.

whitehead. Science..., 1925

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timelets @ 2020-04-01T14:40:00

2020-04-01T21:43:38Z

Pan's mantle, or clothing, is with great ingenuity made of a leopard's skin, because of the spots it has; for in like manner the heavens. are sprinkled with stars, the sea with islands, the earth with flowers, and almost each particular thing is variegated, or wears a mottled coat.

--- Francis Bacon, The Wisdom of the Ancients.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_the_Ancients/2#Chapter_VI

This would be a good illustration of the principle that a difference against a background is a precursor to data.

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The invention of [mythical] chariot

2020-03-16T07:27:12Z

...from which was born Ericthonius, a man well made and handsome in the upper parts of the body, but with thighs and legs like an eel, thin and deformed: and that he, from consciousness of this deformity, first invented chariots, whereby he might shew off the fine part of his body and hide the mean.

Francis Bacon, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, XX.

We can think about a normal human as an implementation (object & an inclusion map) for personal transportation: legs both enable and limit our ability to move. Replacing legs with the chariot extends the range, i.e. represents a different object and an inclusion map. Note that the human is still in control. As the result we have a parameterized family of maps:

Control x Conveyance {legs, chariot} -> Transfer.

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timelets @ 2020-01-13T21:45:00

2020-01-14T05:52:52Z

Again Sphinx proposes to men a variety of hard questions and riddles which she received from the Muses. In these, while they remain with the Muses, there is probably no cruelty; for so long as the object of meditation and inquiry is merely to know, the understanding is not oppressed or straitened by it, but is free to wander and expatiate, and finds in the very uncertainty of conclusion and variety of choice a certain pleasure and delight; but when they pass from the Muses to Sphinx, that is from contemplation to practice, whereby there is necessity for present action, choice, and decision, then they begin to be painful and cruel; and unless they be solved and disposed of, they strangely torment and worry the mind, pulling it first this way and then that, and fairly tearing it to pieces. Moreover*

the riddles of the Sphinx
have always a twofold condition
attached to them;
distraction and laceration of mind,
if you fail to solve them;
if you succeed, a kingdom.

For he who understands his subject
is master of his end;
and every workman
is king over his work.

--- Francis Bacon, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. XXVIII. Sphinx Or Science.

https://www.bartleby.com/82/28.html

* I just had to write out the sentence that follows in the form of a poem, rather than its original prose.

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