A Vision by W. B. Yeats: The Four Faculties

October 23, 2013 Martin K. Jones 2 Comments

A Vision by W. B. Yeats is the focus of a large amount of scholarship for a book on the occult. It looks interesting as a source of metaphor and symbolism, and I hope to return to it at another time. There is an excellent website devoted to Yeat’s Vision, the link of which is below.

Above I show the fourfold of the Faculties: Will, Body of Fate, Mask, and Creative Mind. It is not arranged as recommended by the four elements, but by my whim.

I saw a preview of the recent movie “Kill Your Darlings” which mentioned A Vision and showed the woodcut of the Cosmic Wheel.

Modal Things

October 11, 2013 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

As a complementary fourfold to Things Happen, here is a combination of Structure-Function and Modal Verbs.

Actions may. Parts can. Structures must. Functions should.

Actions may occur. Parts can vary. Structures must maintain. Functions should perform.

[*7.192, *8.40]

fourfolds

Things Happen

October 9, 2013 Martin K. Jones 3 Comments

When someone says “Things Happen”, we think they are being superficial. That’s because we want to hear an explanation of why the thing has happened. In fact, the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” mandates that everything must have a reason or cause. Still, you can’t argue with the fact that things do happen.

Aristotle described four causes that explain why things happen. These four causes are called the efficient, material, formal, and final causes. This classification was all the rage back before the scientific revolution, but now it has been mostly abandoned. Still, with some modification, I believe it can be useful for the modern world.

Why do things happen? They happen by actions, from parts, into structures, and for functions.

This fourfold is a mixture of two others: Structure-Function and the prepositions I’ve associated with Aristotle’s Four Causes.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/things_happen.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/

Discourse, fourfolds

Modal Verbs

September 23, 2013 Martin K. Jones 4 Comments

This fourfold of modal verbs was mentioned in an earlier post A Story for Everyone, but was not shown explicitly. It consists of can, may, must, and should.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_verb

[*6.6, *6.36,*6.60, *7.188]

fourfolds, Philosophy

Schopenhauer’s Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

September 9, 2013 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

Schopenhauer’s Four Classes that comprise his Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason are diagrammed above. Becoming, Knowing, Being, and Willing are these classes.

From Wikipedia:

In his Translator’s Introduction to Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, E. F. J. Payne concisely summarized the Fourfold Root.

Our knowing consciousness…is divisible solely into subject and object. To be object for the subject and to be our representation or mental picture are one and the same. All our representations are objects for the subject, and all objects of the subject are our representations. These stand to one another in a regulated connection which in form is determinable a priori, and by virtue of this connection nothing existing by itself and independent, nothing single and detached, can become an object for us. …The first aspect of this principle is that of becoming, where it appears as the law of causality and is applicable only to changes. Thus if the cause is given, the effect must of necessity follow. The second aspect [knowing] deals with concepts or abstract representations, which are themselves drawn from representations of intuitive perception, and here the principle of sufficient reason states that, if certain premises are given, the conclusion must follow. The third aspect of the principle is concerned with being in space and time, and shows that the existence of one relation inevitably implies the other, thus that the equality of the angles of a triangle necessarily implies the equality of its sides and vice versa. Finally, the fourth aspect [willing] deals with actions, and the principle appears as the law of motivation, which states that a definite course of action inevitably ensues on a given character and motive.

States of Matter

August 22, 2013 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

The four most familiar states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Other states exist (such as Bose-Einstein condensates), but if I talk about them I couldn’t put them into a nice fourfold.

Note that the sequence of plasma, gas, liquid, and solid is arranged in the order of highest to lowest temperature (usually). Compare this to the classical Four Elements of Empedocles (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth) and to the made-up fourfold of Bright-to-Dark, based on light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter

http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_states.html

http://gizmodo.com/there-are-way-more-than-three-states-of-matter-1182677930

Discourse, Psychology

Lacan’s Four Discourses, V2

July 11, 2013 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_discourses

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/random-thoughts-on-lacanian-discourse-theory-dejan-as-analyst/

[*6.118, *7.50, *7.51]

fourfolds, logic, Space and Time

Human Limitations

July 10, 2013 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

— Democritus

What are humans limited by? We are limited by time and by space.

We are limited in time because we are mortal beings, bound to the past by our birth and to the future by our death, delimiting the short interval of our lifetimes.

We are limited in space because we are finite beings. At each point of time we are constrained by what we are and what we might become. We are bound both by our actuality and our possibility. Our nature defines our actuality and our nurture sets our possibility.

Certainly, we can transcend our limitations, but this just means they weren’t really the true limits after all. We can’t say for certain what our real limits are, so that’s a good thing.

This fourfold also reminds me of the following modal square of opposition. At birth, much is possible. At death, all becomes impossible. Nurture is contingent and Nature is necessary.

References:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-deontic/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_and_Necessity

[*7.174]

epistemology, fourfolds

E. F. Schumacher’s Four Fields of Knowledge

July 9, 2013 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

This fourfold is created from the product of two duals: Self & World, and Inner Experience & Outer Appearance.

The Inner Experience of Self is Experience.
The Outer Appearance of Self is Behavior.
The Inner Experience of World is Communication.
The Outer Appearance of World is Science.

The first fourfold is very similar to Hjelmslev’s Net, where Content is Inner Experience, Expression is Outer Appearance, Substance is unitary “Self”, and Form is multiplicity “World”.

It is also almost identical to Ken Wilbur’s AQAL as presented here.

References:

E. F. Schumacher / A Guide for the Perplexed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed

http://www.integralworld.net/edwards2.html

[*7.88, *7.174, *7.176]

evolution, fourfolds, Physics, Science

Light and Dark: Matter and Energy

June 21, 2013 Martin K. Jones 8 Comments

What are dark matter and dark energy? We do not know; we just know of them by their effects.

Dark matter is thought to be present in halos around galaxies since the estimated amount of matter is too small to keep the galaxies rotating at their measured rate. Dark energy is thought to be present in the empty spaces between galaxies pushing them apart because the velocities separating them are actually increasing instead of slowing down. Nobody knows what dark matter and dark energy really are, but new theories are often being suggested. Perhaps one of these theories will be tested soon and we will have a better idea of what these mysterious materials and forces are.

Could it be that dark matter and dark energy are linked by an equation, like normal “light” matter and “light” energy? For ordinary matter and energy, which are really two aspects of the same thing, it is Einstein’s famous equation: E= m*c^2. But since we have no idea what the dark stuff is, we can only conjecture.

Why should we care what these things are that are so difficult to characterize? In any scientific investigation, if we have gaps and inconsistencies in our knowledge and our theories it just bothers us to no end. We’re just not happy until we figure out the puzzle. In this case, the universe is almost completely made up of these dark parts, so it seems pretty important.

Unfortunately in my diagram the horizontal axis is light energy-dark energy, which is separating, and the vertical axis is dark matter-light matter, which is combining. In many of my fourfolds the horizontal axis is combining or conjunctive and the vertical axis is separating or disjunctive. Is the energy-matter dual more important than the conjunctive-disjunctive dual? Perhaps this fourfold doesn’t really fit but I like it anyway.