1. Construction and the necessity of links
(the Doxographic Tradition)
It is necessary that segments of the following be unclear. The truth towards which we strive is impure within the context of language. Thus links will be made that may seem unnatural, more like leaps. However, it is never impossible to connect sets of data with one another, regardless of their disparity. Anything which can be understood as discourse can be saved as a string in a computer program. Likewise, regardless of their content, the new strings can be incorporated into the pre-existing system of logic threads and strings.
"Are you so foolish to believe we will openly teach you the
greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone
who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense
of their words, what the Hermetic philosophers write, will
soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will
be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out."
-Artephius
Images form links to one another according to their similarity. The web of association our brains weave from experience provides a surface upon which reality unfolds. The foreign experience is one without close parallels in an individual's personal history. A native experience is such because of its rapid association with a similar past event. Our personalities are the strengths and weaknesses of our associations. Rather, our personal responses to events are caused by recalled outcomes of previous similar and thus linked events. Despite cross cultural similarity caused by common experience, we all have individual perspectives on past events- thus individuality.
Infant's brains have similar structures over the entire surface of the globe. It is this likeness in composition and function that provides a tangible, physical link between all the brains presently evolved. The similarity of brain hard-wiring provides the biological basis for a shared @.
A common @ from which we all extend is similar in structure to the Logos. This smoky data bank for humankind was first referred to by an Ephesian (ancient Greek) named Heraclitus. He, like most of the pre-Socratic thinkers has passed his wisdom unto the present through the Doxographic Tradition.
Here now is a link between contemporary memory structure and the evolution of global consciousness. The Doxographers, as exemplified by Theophrastus, recorded opinions. A subject of considerable controversy has been created by the doxographers, the Authenticity Frague. The debate centers on whether or not these historical philosophers were recording actual history, or inventing it.
There is a powerful motive for the false attribution of text. Consider the commentator Simplicius, writing in the sixth century A.D. Certainly he has an opinion of his own, along with countless others, contemporary at that time. Simplicius however, does better than regular authorship. He records his opinions and to give them immediate clout he attributes them to an earlier thinker with more renown than he. What author wouldn't sacrifice the credit of authorship, in exchange for immediate acceptance of his or her ideas? As Simplicius commented on the Physics of Aristotle he "made long quotations from Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras... for the sake of literary embellishment" (KR&S 1). This scenario is not necessarily the case, however even when the doxographers were quoting, (not fictionalizing) they were very likely to have quoted out of context, entrenching their own system of belief.
The link between the evolution of a our SRs and that of current events (whose evolution is history) is significant. Just as there are advantages to recreating the past, there is a similar motive to fabricate memories. the Jungian psychologist Wundt writes, "Memories are created moment to moment based on ques provided by the present context. Memory as an information retrieval system does not exist, rather the mind exists solely in an interpretive and creative capacity." This is a pointedly severe plea for existence in the present. Acknowledging the primacy of the immediate situation is the most we can do to improve our condition. This entire paragraph however, is an invalidated digression, a literal outcropping from the main course of the text. Justified as a scaffolding is necessary for any serious construction to take place.
The construction of links is beyond reproach as the ideal way to clear rocks from the stream of discourse, that there may be a smooth flow along the data banks of deNile (idea). When approaching the delta (any image) the best we can do is link it with another image. So it is with children learning words. Words are composed of letters, an arrangement of symbols given meaning by their patterns of reoccurrence. As such we are introduced to the alphabet and numbers.
Symbols it seems are the basis of simile. The association and manipulation of images is often in the arena of text. There is however, a more abstract application for aphorism than verse. The graphic aphorism, as exemplified by the pythagorean's representation of triangles, is another viable avenue for the expression of interactive process.
Foucault claims that man's work is criticism. This can be expressed with much more implied complexity as a graphic aphorism.
