[...]esh and powerful may be to another seem old and trite
suggestiveness =/= representaive of its period --> literalness: attention to human purposes and values ==> [flase] sense that all has been explained and understood

human's recognition of dependency upon power not of this world --> religious expressino = transcendent hope and trust (=/= Nietzsche)


*(mesopotamian) numinous = immanence (in feature of confrontation) =/= all transcendence

mesopotamian experience of numinous power = revelation of *indwelling spirit* --> power at the center of something that caused it to be and thrive and flourish =/= Old Testament's numinous = transcendent {---> go to the experience of Moses with the burning bush: ‘God =/= bush’ --> **God happened as it were sojourn there موقتا but he is altogether transcendent, and there is nothing but a purely situational ephemeral relation with the bush}
--✕--> a mesopotamian would have experienced the burning bush differently: numinous power of the bush's being (not just “in” it) --> numinous = immanent =/= transcendent

power speaking to Moses in the desert disassociates itself from the bush and identifies itself as the god of Moses's father --> needs introduction =/= numinous power speaking to the mesopotamian Enkidu in Gilgamesh Epis does not choose to disassociate itself from it locus and so needs no introduction. --{"the sun god heard the word of his mouth; from afar, from the midst of heaven, he kept calling to him.” <-- the power is here seen as immanent in the visible sun, is what animates it and motivates it, *is the god who informs it*}

in Akkadian (the language in which epic of Gilgamesh is written): ‘the word for X = the numinous power in X’
•(word for) visible sun = sun god
•the sumerian word for sky, the visible blue dome overhead, which turns black and full of stars that make their wat across it at night = the name of the numinous power in the sky, its power and its will to be, the sky god

the form given to numinous encounter may adjust to the content revealed in it

*sometimes the form-giving imagination reads details and meaning into a form beyond what is given in simple observation* --> the numinous power in thunderstorm developed from the dark thundercloud into an enormous black eagle, but since the mighty roar of the thunder could not well be imagined as issuing from other than a lion's maw, this bird was given a lion's head

**form-giving imagination**
rings the changes on a basic meaningful form in a whole series of variations, each expressing the underlying numinous content in different ways
-series of suggestive variant images all expressive of its power to wax, to produce and yield


lord: a charismatic leader magically responsible for producing fertility and plenty for his subjects
...situationally determined nonhuman forms --✕--> victory of human form over nonhuman forms slowly and with difficulty (with the begining of third millennium from early Dynastic onward)


intransitive: fulfilled in the specific situation or phenomenon and did not reach out beyond it (~ characteristic boundness to some phenomena)
(ancient mesopotamian saw) numinous as immanent ==> name that power and attribut form to it in terms of the phenomena


[Jacobsen's well articulation to pose a question -->] *the characteristic of mesopotamian boundness to the externals of situation in which the numinous was encountered...* ==>
•intransitiveness
•differentiation ==> pluralistic aspect (--> polytheism) --> divine aspects that it recognized

plurality ==> ability to:
•distinguish
•evaluate
•choose

“No god went by, why are my muscles paralyzed” (Gilgamesh) --> ‘god = paralyzing fear’
uncannily good luck
sudden realization of having come to harm
numinous power experienced in sudden illness
*no allegiance was invented* ==> no cult developed

they are gloomy, their shadow dark,
no light is in their bodies,
ever they slink along covertly,
walk not upright,
from their claws drips bitter gall,
their footprints are (full of) evil venom.

(from [more primitive?]) dread --to--> fascination

the shivers and chills (of death)
that fritter the sun of things,
spawn of the god of heavens,
spawned on an evil spirit,
the death warrants, beloved sons of the storm god,
born of the queen of the netherworld,
who were torn out of heaven and hurled from the earth as castoffs,
are creatures of hell, all

we are not determined, we are engendered


numinous as immanent --> external habituation: inviting (or magically enforcing) the presence of the power within

efforts of such habituation:
•cult dramatic
•fashioning or appropriate divine images
•religious literature
•temples

*cult drama: the form fills with its content*
literally re-present god, presenting his external form, (bring about the god's presence through ritual representation of him) --> beneficent results for the community [--> still works today]
•sacred marriage
•yearly lamentations
•battle drama (primeval contest for world order against the forces of chaos)
fashioning of images (of the god) --> to achive lasting presence

poetry: means of invoking the presence of powers [--> we are doing this still?! bad poetry]
creative power of the word underlines all mesopotamian (religious) literature
•works of praise
•works of lament (specialized lamentation-priest @Sana, Ali )
*lament: influencing and swaying the divine heart by reminding the god of past happiness, rather than by magically recreating that past*


(mesopotamian:) *temple = house*
(implication between) the divine owner and his house --> emotional closeness of a human owner and his home + the *closeness of essence* (of being) --amounting--> to embodiment =/= habituation
--> house = temple = representation of the power that is meant to fill it

(similar to human dwelling) ***house = temple = the place where the owner could be found (or felt)***
--> that god (the owner) was present and available

the god's retainers --> because the temple was god's home, was not only near and approachable, he was involved with the fortunes of the community and commited ti maintaining it --> *mesopotamian temple was profoundly awesome* (it carried awesome aura, awesome or angry nimbus هاله)
-the temple was covered with loveliness
-the god's private apartment shrouded in darkness : the dark room (no eye is to see)
--> specific closeness of essence + the power inhabiting it

authoritative revelation
know what was “the proper thing”

house mountain
house rising sun
house causing light
he who issues forth from the thriving...


ancient =? ancient to us ~=? ancient to them

there is no living cultural tradition that connects us with mesopotamia

immediate unanalyzed total reactions (?)

false meanings jar, stop, and lead no further

older elements (seemingly unchanged) come to mean something quite different, have been interpreted to fit into a new system of meanings

religious metaphors:
•spiritual core in phenomena
•rulers
•parents


[and then later] dark age closed down on mesopotamia
many divine wills to the willful whim of a single despot
*major gods became natural gods* (identified with narrow national political aspirations)
--> barbarization of the idea of divinity

...................................

(how to take seriously) water's materiality --> how to think with water (or *how water means*):
•water can bring human conceptual life along with it from local to global concerns
•[can help us to] go beyond qualities that express some timeless properties

(my point: the experience of fire is as inseparable from that of stone)
[Alberti suggests] *to think in terms of the properties of the phenomenon ‘rock/water’ as engendered by specific, embodied practices in this place* (=/= grappling with the question of the agentive capacities or properties of the rock or water)

***there are many waters (fires, jinns, divs, stones, shadows), not only many meanings of water (fires, jinns, divs, stones, shadows)***

}--> Alberti's brilliant response to Strang's bad idea of universal notions of properties (which is a very common tendency towards relationality among artists --> Strang: “common material properties of things, and the shared cognitive and phenomenological processes through which people interact with them, generate recurrent ideas and patterns of engagement in diverse cultural and historical contexts”)

to bear on the form and content of an argument about water as:
•material
•social
--> describing relations (human and nonhuman) established through water
*what water can do: flow*

agentive or affective capacities of materials --> (bad philosophy of flux) flow as a overgeneralized model for materiality =/= expanding relations water engenders through its properties in particular locations or rivers

*humans are able to shift conceptual scales through reflexivity*

(Alberti asking within archaeology:) how to reconcile materials and meaning without introducing a representationalist logic where meaning is applied to matter by a thinking subject? how to show their co-existence without resorting to determinism?

now everyone is busy and talking about *relationality* than about *meaning* (=/= my work has alwayes been about both, how to take risks in meaning, my lecture-performances = adventures of meaning)
-we cannot mearly talk about relationality {quasi-universal experience of properties ==> commonalities of meanings across time and culture}, the question of meaning remains --Alberti--> how are we to think about non-arbitrary categories, meanings and values without recourse to universal properties? how different meanings can adhere to the same substances?

materials (water, parasite, etc.) lend themselves to conceptual innovation

often things are willed away (not by a more agentive segment of the population [<-- paranoiac understanding], but) due to the attraction of other kinds of work elsewhere

(how not to) think of the entire phenomenon as one in which properties become determinate (~ scheme transfer) --✕--> properties are imminent in embodied human engagement with that world [~ Baradian: there is no such thing as a property that belongs to an independent object]
•body may be the first tool
•properties (or potentials [ajayeb style?]) cannot be listed

X as agent presents us, as shadow shows...

...................................

winds
روح ruh, spirit =/= wind: thermal expansion of air ~ air’s tendency to rarefy and expand under the influence of heat
(recognition of) thermal expansion of air ==> motor of global atmospheric circulation

explaining winds --Borrelli-->
•how rational thought could grasp
•how divine power descended to earth

pneumatic machines
gears, weights, levers, pulleys

****premodern natural phenomena
--more--> exploring and classifying *varieties* of things =/=
--less--> common *causes* of things

varieties =/= causes


cause ==>? highly complex phenomena
  |           |  
[-O-] ==> {t|/?#$^%V!~)&^} <-- premodern science and art today stays here (---> go to Stewart’s attunement to phenomena)


[*]navigation: negotiation between the direction one ‘witches’ to travel & the direction that is ‘possible’ to travel --> wind sense:
temperature
humidity
intensity
regularity
smell
knowledge of astronomy + geography


wind rose --> (connection between:) celestial + astronomical order + terrestrial variety (of land + living creature)

estimate the speed of the ship
throw a log with a rope attached to it overboard, and measure how much rope went overboard within a given period of time

Pliny the Elder --> historia naturalis

Seneca --> naturales quaestiones
air has a natural power of moving itself [==> agency باد]
}<== Seneca’s stoic worldview: conceived the cosmic principle of all life and movement (pneuma) as a subtle substance pervading everything and giving rise, among other things, to all weather phenomena
air = expression of pneuma (alive & live-giving)
all weather = manifestations as transmutations of air
(late medieval encyclopedia -->) *weather = a kind of alchemy of air*
(late medieval wind diagrams -->) wind: cosmic divine powers blowing from the celestial sphere onto earth

Aristotle + Albertus Magnus ==> explanation of the nature and origin of winds in Renaissance meteorological works
air and were then dragged along by the circular movement of the celestial spheres so that they ended up moving horizontally

hot and dry exhalations

aeolipila: a hollow metal sphere (shaped like the face of Aeolus) with a single tiny hole in it

air possessed a force (“vis”) that heat could awaken

16th century --increase--> interest in systematic explanation of meteorological phenomena

#workshop on wind poetry
epic battle, systems moving air, agency,

feature of Renaissance thought --> the idea of *a middle instance (neither fully corporal nor fully incorporeal) intervening between matter and soul* [+ fire as intermediator] ~ spiritus, pneum, quintessence ~ fire or air

...in schematic abstract structure of body-spirit-soul, spirit is somewhere in between

spirit: air-like substance
air: preferred vehicle of spirit (conveyed the breath if life + *used by demonic spirits as a means to produce material effects*)

*spirit: celestial origin to the “innate heat” (calidum innatum) of living creatures

effects of solar heat on air : act of vitalization

pneuma of the stoics + astral body of Neoplatonic philosophy + medical spirits of Galenic medicine }==>
•Renaissance
•(christian notion of) Holy Ghost
•the idea of close connection between wind and divine power (in Bible)

(in alchemical view) spirits were somehow connected ti air <== quintessences were often separated from raw substances in the form of vapours


ajayebnameh ~= natural magic
*kinds of natural motions*
1. avoidance of avacum: from the form of a portion of air, when it does not want to be either expanded further or separated (from other matter). horror vacui --kinetic--> motion was regarded as due to a property of a specific part of the machine
2. resistance to excessive compression: the form of basic matter should not become less that what is right for it
3. the tendency of heavy things to descend and of light things to rise

air = vital spirit that joins things together, resounding spirit if the world instrument

Paraceksian theory of aerial niter
(an active principle) aerial version of earthly gunpowder - responsible for life, combustion, thunder, lightning, (some) illnesses
--> connecting the activity of air + life + weather phenomena

wind: (***in its irreducible qualitative variety***) expression of cosmic spirit + محرک باعث a motive force to be accurately estimated

منجنیق ~= geometry هندسه *pneumatic engineering* : distinction between moving and moved components ==evoke==> motive forces
elaborated pneumatic machines
mechanical clocks
tension of strings

*wind ==> celestial influences*
(Cardano regarded) expansion and contraction of air as symmetrical phenomena, both consisting a source of motive forces
-in the universe the element air had the function of receiving and conveying fiery celestial influences on earth providing health and wellbeing fir living creatures

Telesion (1509-1588)
soul and spirit identified with each other as a very subtle material substance pervading all bodies and making them capable of sensing and reacting to rach other with pleasure or pain
*(man’s) immortal soul did not play any role in determining natural phenomena*

innate heat of living bodies

wind: humid vapours flowing through the air
thinness of wind vapours


16th century
expiration and inspiration of the lungs
Holy Spirit is expressed in the nature of winds
interest in wind and weather was kindled by reports reaching Europe from the East and West Indies about hitherto unknown meteorological phenomena عجایب


orderly majesty of God ==> encyclopedism about the universe + an analogue of a memory system

Jean Bodin
firm believer in and opponent of demonic magic
theater of the whole nature universe naturae theatrum
reason of wind (ratio ventorum):
•sun
•impulse (impulsus) of the angels or demons


sphere of sacrobosco
De sphaera mundi
(On the Sphere of the World, pre-Copernican astronomy)


...our sublunar world

gunpowder theory of thunder ⛈
compact earthly matter from underground whose expansion with expansion so fast that it moves large masses of air, like “salniter in fire or gunpowder which has caught fire”


visualization
making air visible
inverted glass experiment
linking thermal expansion & contraction of pure air to wind formation (Cardano)

(under the influence of) celestial fire ==> air (could become alive and active) acquiring motive force

on the transmutations of air

(typical of 16th century) steering the religious significance of the study of nature
spirit: a cosmic subtle substance, both recipient + vehicle of celestial influences ==allow==> elements to transmute into each other (+ meteorological phenomena)
(Drebbel’s favourite cosmic spirit:) fire = clearest of all elements ad top of the hierarchical order of elements (fire, air, water, earth), clarifying the other elements [such as Siavash]

(for Della Porta:) meteorological phenomena = transmutations of the air (in literal sense)
air becoming thinner or thicker ==rise==> winds, thunder, clouds, rain, snow, linking heaven + earth + bringing life to all animated creatures

(Della Porta conceived of) wind in vitalistic terms
...winds rising up from the mouth of the retort (boiling water)
how heat endowed air with motive force


(Drebbel presenting to the public) perpetuum mobile : expansion and contraction of air (which he claimed) demonstrated the force behind all movement and life

weatherglass (+ aeolipila) --demonstrated--> ****highly nontrivial natural phenomena**** (transformation of energy from heat into mechanical motion)

(ajayeb’s) theory about the origins of the wind

Galileo --> earth's rotation ==> (<--evidence--) wind
Bacon --> exhalations together with air [rarefaction and expansion of air / exhalation drawn up by sun] ==> wind
Fludd (meteorological cosmica) --> wind: principal meteorological phenomenon (princeps meteororum) and closest to God
“wind is an aerial spirit, of middle consistence, inspired or animated by the breath of Iehova, which he extracts from his treasure-case according to his will, to effect either a punishment or a benediction”
•angels: efficient cause of winds (in borg macro- and microcosmos)
•(changes in the air --corresponded-->) temperament of living creatures ==> wind
•pulse of the heart caused by the spirit of life
•thermal expansion
•vaporization (+ contraction) of air
•pneumatics


“wind = thermal expansion & contraction of air” --> a vitalistic-alchemical Rosicrucian conception of meteorology and cosmology =/= Descartes’ mechanical-corpuscular view of nature -->{wind <== vapours drawn up from earth and water by solar heat (vapours expanded when heated and when they encountered the opposition of other vapours clouds or mountains they ended up escaping in the one free direction)
•vapour: (made out of) small corpuscles together with even smaller particles filling the gaps between the corpuscles

Froidmont --> wind: (made of) dry and hot exhalations =/= animated (as the stoics dream)
{winds flow towards Earth because of their gravity, like streams and rivers in their beds} gravity ==> wind =/= (direct expression of) celestial power and caused by God’s angels


scorched by rays and reflexes of the sun
denser


Torricelli conceptualized the motion of the hot and cold air masses by thinking them as separated by the walls of a building and in this way he ignored the air’s life-like tendency to expand when heated. instead he reasoned in terms of change of weight applying Archimedes principle


علم کلام
*reflections grounded on literary descriptions of ancient artefacts*
+ based on actual devices
--> wind = source of a potentially infinite quantity of motive force, the multiform expression of a single cosmic principle animating air

inverted glass experiment : a ***demonstration ~= simulacrum*** (of celestial motive forces) [~=? a fable]
#a demon working on demonstrations

mechanistic explanations ==> mechanical conceptualization:
•astronomical clocks
•clockwork automata
•computing machines
•optical tricks

--Borrelli--> weatherglass only became interesting when considered as a means of quantifying phenomena

*artefacts and artificial processes that lent themselves to conceptualization in vitalistic terms:
•alchemical experiments
•magnetic compass
•pneumatic engines
•speculate on wind
•falling bodies
•pendulum


(Halley’s) wind: successions of strokes indicating the direction in which a ship would travel under the influence of the wind blowing (at the specific point of the sea...) -~-~-> direction of a virtual invisible motive force

...................................

(?) people rely on singular ontology and multiple epistemologies

interpretation =? appropriation of other's existential labor (~/= culture)

Alberti's pot: instantiations of a concept of a world that is chronically unstable
(cranial modification, tattooing, treatment of the dead --manage-->) the inherent instability of bodies
•one's perspective is intimately connected to the body one is
}<-- did Alberti say all these things from the pots? no.


in Ingold: the indigenous people are presented as having some kind of privileged access to the workings of the world due to their close relationship to the land


ethics of theory
accounts of non-western
in our reconstruction of the past
usage glossed as a heuristic: an interpretive tool


Alberti --> claims to universality in our theories of matter rely on falsification through assimilation other people's theories of matter
==renforce==> (archeology) academy as an alibi for neocolonialism

(we should stop) searching for the answer to our relationship with the physical world [ontology of everything <-- this is my problem with philosophy] =/= ***accept a role as the point of articulation among sources of theories of matter, tangible evidence of alternative ontologies, communities past and present***

problems:
•*the elision of ontological claims by epistemological claims* : necessity of a singular ontology (as a guarantor in theories) even while a diversity of epistemologies are recognized and accepted (and when we pluralize “ontologies”)
•to use ethnographic accounts at the level of analogy (<-- i do this all the time)
•privileging of others (of their accounts of the world) --> for example in Ingold =/= attempting to *gain purchase on other people's world* --> for example Viveiros de Castro's concern is ontological (dialogical) =/= epistemological (monological)

*epistemologies masquerading as ontologies*(?)
•pluralizing the terms [ontologies, knowledges, epistemologies, etc.] --> (sending out the message that) we are good relativists --✕-->? actually allowing alternative theories of reality

([i have talked about this problem elsewhere -->] ontologies are relegated into) hierarchical epistemologies:
•anthropology --> they look at cultures --access--> ontology (nature of things) [==> “culture = ontology"]
•native ontology --> they look at matter: indifferent unchanging universal substance --produce--> epistemology [disguised as ontology] (worldview, perspectives)
}==> **our incommensurability is understood only at the level of epistemological difference**

-when i was iran, we were interested in the western ontologies, their universal theories of matter. people didn't recognize western philosophy as a cultural perspective or different epistemology, but as ontology. this is relation unfortunately is not reciprocal ---> go to Star Trek
-when you read other people's theories of matter, you don't do epistemological inquiry (~= anthropology)


***foreclosed =/= privileged***

tendencies in archeological theorizing:
1. *foreclosure: other peoples’ worlds are avoided, delegated to non-theory, to exotic finger-painting on the surface of matter (=/= what general theories are made of) --> appropriated through absent presence
2. *privileging: other people's worlds are privileged, given serious consideration (alterity is initially embraced) --> appropriated through assimilation
◦in a grand synthesizing theory of matter (~ an enframing mechanism that holds the other enframings within a space of intelligibility) the ethnographic material serves a buttressing tole: indigenous theories resurface as heuristics of analogies for specific cases

ethnographic information is crucial to recognizing the alterity of the past

(Alberti concerned with) how the indigene occupies textual space in Ingold: indigenous words appear in key moments in Ingold's text to seal an argument, or provoke an idea (at the level of analogy)
--Bakhtin--> monologism disguised as dialogism : a single voice playing many parts


analogical thinking:
--Thomas--> (interpretive) open ourselves to the difference of the past
--Alberti--> (appropriative) relies on representationalist logic; using analogies interpretively to the types of past we construct

(Viveires's) *controlled equivocation*
we compare mistaken assumptions on both sides

***interpretation =/= multivocality (polyphony)***
@apass: what other textual strategies can we develop other than polyphonic (multiculturalism at the level of text)?


[!we should say no to] general thing theory : tendency to produce overviews, universal accounts of the material world
•phenomenological world of essences that are revealed
•ecological world of affordances that are at hand
•some social world of false transcendence
-


...................................

mirror
ayene
pieces of metal that soldiers put on the back and legs
چارآینه

جفای فلک آینه گون ==> self (of the poet)
فلک falak --> ayene-gun --> jafa
دل del --> sang --> transforms stone to blood

آینه اسکندری ayene eskandari (was it a telescope? to inform/spy)
ارسطو به فسون و اعداد آن را از قعر دریا برآورد
•math اعداد, tricks فسون


mirror trap دام آینه

at any moment هرآینه

قبله مساز زآینه
mirror =/= qibla


آینه گردان
mirror-stepper = sun
•seven mirrors هفت آینه = planets


a short essay on matter mythology

[...]

Hayula---literally meaning ‘unformed monster’ tells the histories of nonhuman material and mythologies of matter-energy flow in the eye of different cultural convertors

[...]

Hayula (Persian: هیولا) (in classical islamic philosophy) mythologically refers to a pre-cosmological ‘form’ of energy---literally meaning ‘unformed monster'---from which eventually the ‘universe’ and ‘persons’ where created, and systematically provokes a meshwork of meanings that interrelate notions of energy, form, and selfhood in a premodern intercultural cosmology

[...]


parasitically seeking a host for Hayula nun-human histories

[...]


Memory is not the only and privileged way of connecting the past to the present. One of many crucial and important ways that past comes to effect the present is made over form. Form, with its strange logic and efficiency, has the capacity to freeze time. Life as we know it lies in the results of the processes that future forms come to effect the present. Any being's very survival depends on its ability to access the zones of continuity and possibility in these processes. How we can articulate these forms? What are the operations that connect the form-embedded self to the others?

4 billion years ago, the gravitational force of a mass of hydrogen atoms accumulated into a dense point of critical state. As a result of this formation new fusions released many sip-offs of different energies and materials which we perceive today in our bodies and in the light that reaches our eyeballs from the time immemorial of that hydrogen cloud. This fossil of materiality implies the existence of traces of an ancient reality before the existence of the familiar--the terrestrial life. While these traces are gauged in theoretical experiments in which radioactive ratios of nuclides inform us of such ancestral events, in Amerindian cosmogonies not so differently steered hypothesis are explored. Yawanawa, the origin myth of the people of Pano from the western Amazon, imagines the anterior of the world where nothing existed, yet there only people existed--everything was made of people. Before the diversification and classification of kinds there was a primordial human, as the only substance of which everything eventually fabricated.

Like Yawanawa, Hayula (Persian: هیولا) literally in today's usage with the meaning of unformed monster, is a technical term in Iranian-Islamic cosmology indicating the first principle of everything material of which all other constitutive layers of beings are molded--minerals, plants, animals, etc. Hayula in one hand locates the lowest of the lowest, the bottom of the scalar existence where God resides at the very top, and on the other hand possesses a great anatomical plasticity, a persistent pre-cosmological being that undermines the second law of thermodynamic. First were the object then came the subject--to give away to the results of the stabilization of the infinite potential for transformation contained in Hayula, as universal substance, a matter out of which the world could have come to be formed.

The narratives of the time before form, an era of pre-cosmological beings, primordial people with unlimited and unbound corporeality, is the story of the originality of Hayula's virtual potential for being. Hayula, not fully human, tasting beyond morality (destruction, anthropophagy, etc.), becomes the subjects of other interventions and morphs into spheres and features of the world--of biological aspects, celestial bodies, humanoid zones, etc.

The realm of Hayula comes to interpret, and thus permit and strain, who and how an I can be, at the same time that it provides the vessel for the continuity, the survival, of that I. Here the I is the continuity of an inhabitation of a point of view. It marks a relative position within a hierarchical logic that spans the cosmos, a hierarchy that ranges from the nonhuman to the human realm and from the demons to the realm of the formless. Following the classic joke, that one goes to a place in order to discover the directions of how to keep out of that place, this project proposal suggests to explore the Hayula's experience of self and how it incorporates destabilizing its, which might permit or prohibit seeing beyond its conditions.

In another level of description we will look at the concept of Hayula as a device in cross-catalytic relations in matter-energy flows, looking at it as a semi metaphorical and physical nonlinear model for structure-generating processes that populate our world. How attractors and transistors consolidated different energy flows of certain intensities to gain access to self-organization? The energy trapped in winds and currents, atmosphere and hydrosphere, solar energy that plants capture through photosynthesis, has clocked societies for centuries and gave them rhythm. A small fraction of a plant life that has powered most of civilization's past intensifications. Enormous reservoir of oceanic and atmospheric energy fuels a great variety of self-organized structures: tornadoes, cyclones, pressure blocks, and, more importantly for human history, wind circuits. These forms of spontaneous structural generation suggest that inorganic matter is much more variable and creative than we ever imagined.



[...]

...................................

(Wietske Maas)

materiality that is specific to the eye

similar to a plant, the eye is not a simple aperture to absorb light, but a filter to mitigate external stimuli.

unveil vision as a process of chemical contamination and digestion stemming from plants. vision is rooted in the materiality of digestion.

the human eye is an organ complicit with plant photosynthesis.

in fact, seeing is a process of photosynthesis. as much as plant photosynthesis absorbs excessive light and turns it into the carbon structures of sugar molecules, the human eye has to mitigate light and turn it into the neural structure of vision, cognition, and memory. in this process the eye protects itself from the corruptive metabolism of light, tapping into some ancestral mechanism shared with plants.

if human eye protects itself like a plant, we can think of photosynthesis itself as a sort of primeval organ of vision spread out across the skin of the vegetable kingdom.

material commonality (worth exploring)

incarnate an external organ of vision

our tie with the general metabolism of light

correlations between human vision and the organic world

using a technique to record the surface of reality or using to reveal the internal chemical composition of matter

in the chromatogram, a light reaction reveals the inner chemistry and transforms matter composition into visual patterns

different regime of visibility
light is not just a stream of waves to be passively refracted and recorded but an active and autonomous medium of image-making

mineral kingdom -- forces that drive the becoming of both organic and inorganic matter

drive to formation (Bildungstrieb)

“Runge's willingness to attribute a life force to chemicals is a continuation of Romantic natural philosophy but meshed with Geothean morphology and experiment.” (Leslie)

chromatogram is an image, which discloses it's own bodily formation

here our focus should shift from the eye as a globular organ in the head of a vertebrate animal to the eye as an epidermic lens, a light-mitigating organ that attenuates the visceral contamination of radiation.

our inseparable alliance with plants

our eyes are immersed within a vegetative metabolism of a kind. we look at plants, but plants have already cannibalized our gaze as they become part of us looking back at them.


complex architecture of light:
plant photosynthesis is probably the most abused metaphor and analogy of life, widely quoted across a diverse spectrum of schools of thought to justify naturalist ideologies. it is believed that photosynthesis is behind a process of energy accumulation central to natural equilibrium and the food chain. however, there are various ways the process of light metabolism could be understood. it could also be understood as a process towards cosmic corruption and fermentation, or as a process towards more “complex architecture of light”.

...................................

[...]



(Ilana Halperin)

corporeal mineralogy

we are autobiographical trace fossils

what constitutes life in the world of geology?

microbes feasting on the mineral bodies of stones

more animal than mineral

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big bang, first second of existence, second second, what is going on with the materiality

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the dark matter, in Caecilian Kircher, we don't know what it is

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[...]


[Gholam Hossein Rahimi + Abd Al-Rasul Emadi, 79113902605.pdf]

it is “proven” that location is not hayula (nor apparition)
hayula is anything that can have many faces [this is greek]

according to Aristotle: matter cannot separate itself from hayula (bzw. its apparition) but it can from its location.

in another sense, location is sometimes close to the notion of ‘face’ (surat صورت) of the matter, because it constitutes where the matter ends and where does it begins.

Avicenna: location is separate from located
‘location is the limitation of matter’
location and causality? ‘there’ (hamanja همانجا) is not ‘the reason’ (elat علت)
for him: ‘makan chizi joz nahayat-e jesm-e havi nist’ (مکان چیزی جز نهایت جسم حاوی نیست)
(location/place is nothing but the limits/ends/finalities of the holder or the comprising thing)

two locations meeting each other

Avicenna disagrees that hayula could be location, because he argues that hayula only accepts the significant apparition and not any.
some has believed that the location is the face of matter, because the matter is at its face/apparition the same way it is at its place/location.
the matter/jesm/ جسم doesn't move out of its face rather it moves within its face.
water -to-> air [this is apparition]
location -to-> located [this cannot be!]

هیولای ثانی hayulaye sani (secondary hayula) : it has act/ also is able to its “next level”

[they haven't thought about the notion of gravity.]

جسم jesm: body, object, substance, matter, corpus, flesh

when the matter/jesm/جسم leaves the space it takes orientations/coordinations/ab'ad/ ابعاد with itself away from that locality/place/makan/مکان

location/makan/ مکان : when matter is in location, the location is.
void/khala’/ خلاء: when location is emptied of matter, it is void.

for Avicenna, matter/jesm/جسم (can) have mental (zehni ذهنی) and hallucinative (vahmi وهمی) derivatives that are accessible in all its axis/directions (ab'ad ابعاد).
[we have to consider that here hallucination/vahm/وهم is a strong category of thought, it opposes reason/aghl/عقل, it is a device that Avicenna regularly uses in his research.]

for Pythagoras, void/khala’/خلاء is hole through which the universe breathes.
for them void was that which is between the natural numbers; 1, 2, 3, etc.
(they didn't distinguish between numbers and matters)

گسست/Gosast/rupture can only happen in corporal matter

[porosity, has social and material meanings: a measure of the void, the “accessible void”. and a sorting algorithm, ability to absorb fluids, and volume of bodies] [relates to Aristotle's notion of matter that which resists---the resistance of matters]
for Avicenna, the extension of admixtures is as follows:
•two matter from two different corporalities mix
•two dimensions mix
•one dimension and one matter mix

ذات zat: being, essence, substance, nature, the very core self of, same, identity of, spontaneousness, material object,
-the Zat/essence...

what is when apparition enters void?\

زمان سمتی zaman-e samti : directional time (?) [#archive]

for Avicenna location and located are inseparable, location is holder or an exterior or outer surface of the located.
for him, void has two problems: (1) the void's dimensions will mix with the matter's dimension. (2) void is infinite, therefore movement is impossible, since there is part of the universe that is not void therefore there can't be void in the universe since it has to be infinite.



Hayula has no resistance to different apparitions/surat/صورت

surathaye jesmani صورتهای جسمانی

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[...]



pandora’s complexity

purely (?) material objective agent (evolving?)

Hayula--the first principle of everything material

bi-surat بی صورت

اشکال تن ashkal-e tan***
virtual proto-humanity (to different corporalities) --> pre-organic / anthropo*morphic* --> inter-corporal predation --> (sets post-mythic relations between species) --> trans-ontological intentionalities

hayula is a state of latency or potentiality --> possibility of metamorphosis in interpersonal relations...

every apparition demands a recipient

(مولوی‌) Rumi wants to be able to read the return-state to the hayula:
تبدیل شدن به tabdil shodan:
...be arkan (ارکان instrument)
...be heyvan (حیوان animal)
...be jan (جان aliveness? liveliness of artifacts? --?--> agency)
...be hilat (حيله, tech---means & ways) [tech? #ruse]

(in Rumi:) ruse ==> قید صید gheid-e seyd
Hafez is all about farib (فریب ruse)

material agents: {//complex forms of movement //affiliation into space}

stones, a substance indigenous to every place. (those who give up or try to stop or turn back become stones.)



the meta-fall of the material (in hayula هیولا)


apparition/surat/صورت (essence/mahiyat/ماهیت)?
matter/madeh/ماده (hast/هست/being/is-there)?

 --(surat)-->--(surat)-->
animal---flora---inanimate---hayula
 <--(madeh)--<--(madeh)--

in Sohrevardi, he removes the light as projection and ray-tracing, and proposes a theory of light (of theory of being) as “Filter” (veril?, hejab حجاب). (there is no filter between the sphere of the eye and the sphere of the planet Mars.)

apparition is essential or part of the essence or itself the essence

Hayula: mojude mobham o bi-ta'ayon, joz ghove-e mahz va este'dad-e serf nist. (jesme basit)
هیولا: موجود مبهم و بی تعین, جز قوه محض و استعداد صرف نیست
(جسم بسط)



[...]

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(Delanda)

we are taking “real history” as starting-point

-to capture the dynamics of human historical processes, we must allow the nonhuman physics to infiltrate the human society---complex materials that form human culture. --> (for example) water in its several distinct states (solid, liquid, gas) in phase transition (intensity of temperature)---that which human society “see” as material-change

example of spontaneous structural generations are coherent waves:
*solitons* - forming in many different types of materials, from tsunamis (ocean waves) to lasers. --> *attractors* {stable states, which can sustain coherent cycles activity {periodic / chaotic}}
*monsoon* - a wind circuit that has powered all sail ships in Asian waters for centuries---in those urban centers in contact with monsoon, knowledge of its dynamical behavior and skills in tapping its energy accumulated.


“materials” are {-energetic -genetic -linguistic} --> the flow of human and the animal gene we have domesticated

the specific dynamic pattern of turbulent urban evolution in (European) towns should not be view as the result of “progress” but as the result of certain dynamics that intensify the accumulation of knowledge and technologies, and of certain institutional norms and organization. for instance, the 11th century industrial revolution can be viewed in terms of reciprocal stimulation between technologies and institutions, fueled by: -solar energy (agricultural) -gravitational energy (water) --> to power grain wills --> intensified by the flow of money.

*story of the bone*
(organism never forgot its mineral origins)
in organic world, soft tissue (gels and aerosols, muscle and nerve) reigned supreme until 500 million years ago. at that point, some of the conglomerations of fleshy matter-energy that made up life underwent a sudden mineralization, a new material for constructing living creatures emerged: bone. it is almost as if the mineral world that had served as a substratum for the emergence of biological creatures was reasserting itself...



genes as sorting algorithms, are themselves sorted out by selection pressures such as: -climates -predators -parasites


structure-generating processes sort things (1) take heterogeneity [collection of materials---pebbles, genes, roles, etc.] (2) homogenize them [through sorting operations] (2) consolidate them (into more permanent state)

catalyst: a chemical substance capable of “recognizing” specific material and altering that material's molecular state --> now it reacts with certain substances with which it would not normally react.

catalyst provokes a meeting of two substances

autocatalytic loops

superposition (interconnection of diverse overlapping elements),
catalysts,
stable patterns,
spatial intervals,
sedimentation,
cooling magma,
threshold of crystallization,
vicious fluid,
molten materials,
bifurcation,
densification,
intensification,
reinforcements,
injection,
nucleation events,
dislocations,
endogenous,
endogenous stable states,
chemical clocks,
aggregate,
consistency,
elementary atoms,
stratified structures,
interlocking (matching temporally),


species --> (gene pool of a ...) = an organic stratified structure

stratifies structures involve simple form of causal relations---one arrow from cause to effect [we can see this modality in the creation of institutions]


coal is the product of one of several types of mineralization that organic matter can undergo, and submitted by “civilizations” to deposit intensive exploitation --> flow of nonhuman energy ==> fuel its industrial revolution

industrial age = the crossing of a bifurcation where previous autocatalytic dynamics come to form a self-sustaining autocatalytic loop.

(both) industrial revolution and biological evolution, they lack [rpgressive direction nor consistent drive toward complexification---some species complexity while others simplify


cities as real transformers of matter and energy
cities are open or dissipative (esraf اسراف) systems, with matter-energy flowing in and out continuously



(in autocatalytic loops) the trigger-flow interactions: interlocks a series of separately reproductive systems into a single interactive reproductive system

antimarket ---money--> mining regions ==> intensified coa extraction ==> iron production ---> [steam] mechanical energy ---> cotton textiles ---> flow of profits ===money==> experimentation with coal, iron, steam

skill / know-how = catalytic info
(info capable of bringing together and amplifying flow of energy and materials)

economies of agglomeration (anbashtegi انباشتگی)

the law of diminishing returns (bazdeh nozuli بازده نزولی)
a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. (image)


illumination --> coal gas
motorization --> steam


knowledge is an input of production which exacts high transaction costs. only where patents are perfectly enforceable will information be allowed to flow through markets, else antimarkets will prefer to internalize it into their hierarchies. one way a corporate hierarchy may internalize knowledge is by funding a research laboratory.


at some point urban societies would have reached a point of saturation, and the intensification would have ceased. but electricity simultaneously increased the flow of energy and the potential uses of that energy.


automated formal systems ==> victory of analytical over embodied knowledge (the self-taught inventor of the 19th century)
--> unbalance of power between informal and formal knowledge


(factory = planned autocatalytic loop)


the science of centralization
-powerful computers allow the centralized control of geographically dispersed activities---coordinate and monitor compliance with central plans ==> internalization of antimarket institutions


the fully coexistence of the autocatalytic loops:
the digital / the energetic / the material
==> accumulation of hierarchical structures


are computers evolving in the direction of routinization?
-eroding the combinatorial richness of knowledge and making flows of information ever more sterile?


future turns out to belong to hierarchies?
-human history is a narrative of contingencies, not necessities, of missed opportunities to follow different routes of development, not of a nonlinear succession of ways to convert energy, matter, and information into cultural products.



[...]

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the gene tells the flesh: “you are a human” or “you are a...”
**the flesh does not know any organs, continues pulsing to its own rhythms

(how to understand) activities of processes in other spheres of reality

living creatures and their inorganic counterparts


(G. Simmons:) “the flow of energy and mineral nutrients through an ecosystem manifest themselves as actual animals and plants of a particular species.”


biomass = circulation of flesh

plants biting into the system of solar radiation---capturing its sugars

in a sense “higher” animals are just fancy decorations in an ecosystem
(decorative large predators)

ecosystem = succession of plant assemblages ==> stable states ==> climax

ecosystem = a blind groping from stable state to stable state in which each plant assemblage creates the conditions that stabilize the next one.


continental forest <--- stability {the capacity to maintain a state with relatively minor internal fluctuations}
islands <--- resilience {the capacity to absorb major external and internal fluctuations by switching between several alternative stable states}


cities interaction with microorganisms

medieval cities ---islands--> {-concentration of energies -low degree of species heterogeneity (mainly humans)}

medieval European towns ----> isolated islands {/heat /food-web /cultural}

cattle as storage devices
process of shortening and redirecting food chains


biomass ["natural” state] ---> cooked biomass ---> processed through the “civilizing” power of fire*
{raw =/= cooked} ==> legend/myth
--> the cultural materials that accumulated unconsciously, sorted out by the pressure of the parasites themselves---germs and humans formed a meshwork

food ~ flow of flesh

culture is not a completely separate sphere of reality, but instead mixes and blends with flows of organic (and even mineral) materials.

flow of genetic materials

gene / ecosystem
|              \
homogeneous =/= heterogeneous

*genes tease out a form out of an active flesh

(genes ~) replicators began not only merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continues existence.
-how these “replicators” created constructs out of flesh and bone ---> then how did ‘self’ emerged in this?


                (layers)
genotype  .../.../.../.../...  phenotype
   |             |                 |
info coded | self organizing   |  adaptive traits
into genes | processes (stable) |  of a plant / animal


human gene is variable du to: {1-ecosystem 2-taboos}


(ancient) migrations : vehicle for the mechanism of evolution that today is producing the greatest evolutionary effect, allowing the incorporation of new genes into established gene pools, enhancing intrapopulation and reducing interpopulation variability.



[leas normative and binding] to other cultures <-- culture --> to the same culture [central to society]


strata = reproductive niche
(niche : adjusted timing and quality)

hierarchy building = {-homogenization (by a sorting process) -consolidation (through coding into legal, religious, and other formal regulations)}


limits of bounded rationality (عقل معاش aghle ma'ash?)
(Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.)
--> for example soil loss, due to careless exploitation of the forests’ resources has been a constant threat to urban centers throughout history. most urban civilization were able to pass their genes for only seventy generations before they ran out of soil ---> although some material and energy flows can be “socialized” (submitted to cultural control), in practice many are not.



(my interest and work on hayula is about:) the creative morphologies that have always resided outside the (west versus east) homoestatic text of the self and other

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contemporary US film bestiary <==
•EC comics --> popular weird fantasy, horror science fiction
•creepy magazine
•the twilight zone --> horror, science fiction, suspense, comedy
•film noir --> flawed character hero <== german expressinonist cinematography
•cryptozoology (adventure)


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division's of life

-monolithic notion of the mind has been challanged by psychology and phenomenology

biology has been previously essentially zoocentric --> monolithic notion of the body --> medically proper animal body =/= if we zoom in the living canvas, organisms blend into a pointillist landscape in which each dot of paint is also alive --> symbiosis, gaia, prokaryotic sex (omnisexuality)

gaia --> biosphere und understood not as environmental home but as body (physiological process)
bacterial omnisexuality --> fluid genetic transfers = sexual
=/= unitary self assumed in the zoocentric model

medieval microcosmic
correspondences among prokaryotic, eukaryotic, zoological and geophysiological (gaian) levels
--> holonomic continuum --> *a type of individuality that is spatially and temporally more inclusive* [-my research on ajayeb has been more tended on the temporal inclusivity]
==> (in new biology) chimerical body: hybrid of bacterial species --Sagan--> like that many headed beast, the microbeast of the animal cell combines into one entity bacteria that were originally freely living, self-sufficient and metabolically distinct

•when respirers entered and did not kill but, rather, were incorporated by larger anaerobic archaebacteria
•mitochondria are the descendants of bacteria that had be come lodged within the cells of animals and plants

bacteria ==> eukaryotic cell

(the fable of) [Spencer's] animal world as a “gladiator's show” --> evidence for parasitism and competition (~ social progress in 19th century)

the grass-green photosynthetic organelles of all plants may be the descendants of a single, wildly successful bacterium, now shackled, albeit gently, in its cytoplasmic prison
-Sagan

*all cells with nuclei (a unicellular amoeba or amultibillion-cell anaconda) <== orgiastic encounters (eating, infecting, engulfing, feeding on, having sex with and so on) among quite different types of bacteria*

(plant cell) chimera = protective anaerobic host cell + internally multiplying photosynthetic bacterium + respiring bacteria

metabolic waste product of the mutation ==> atmospheric oxygen --> catastrophic --> energetic catalyst --> ...

fermenting bacteria (like trolls or elves in a cosmic fairy tale) dwelling underground --> stromatolite

army of mutants that evolved in the aftermath of the oxygen infusion (the greatest pollution crisis the earth) ==> human beings

chimerical eukaryotic system:
*spirochete* [...] at the edge of larger cell, sites of leakage supplying a constant flow of food [...] renounced their former freedom of movement in order to permanently attach ==> a means of locomotion and food acquisition
•spirochete and mad talent, lyrical drive, (tubercle patients were orators or grandios liars)

[*]human body: an architectonic compilation of millions of agencies of chimerical cells

eukaryotic cells leveling cytoplasmic calcium concentrations ==> [our] calcium phosphate of bone (mineral infrastructure of our bodies):
because seawater concentrations of calcium are often four orders of magnitude higher than [one in ten million], ocean-dwelling cells must exude calcium to avoid poisoning. in the full-fathomed sea did the bones of our ancestors and the shells of their eukaryote relatives evolve. skeletons dramatize an ancient waste, whispering a ghostly testimony to the useful internalization of hazardous waste sites. this givesa good indication of how life within the general economy evolves to deactivate, sacrifice and eventually incorporate the dangerous excesses that accrue from its solar growth. -Sagan
--> the body is multiple (even if orchestrated by vicissitudes and the need for harmony over evolutionary time
--> *nature is chimerical through and through*

intraorganismic genetic transfers

*health = matter of maintaining an ecology =/= matter of defending a unity*

[*]body: ornately elaborated mosaic of microbes in various states of symbiosis

the fiction of the self
**self is not only corporal but corporate**
-Sagan


telescopic technologies ==> Earth as a living entity ~= gaia: (a species of noble lie) biosphere behaives as a body
-temperature, pH and the distribution of reactive gases have remained extraordinarily stable for hundreds of millions of years

animal body --> exposed to natural selection =/= living[...]