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This is a follow up to the last post with a closer look at the nature of mathematical allegory. The inspiration came from a question that raised the issue of the relationship between mathematics, allegorical representation, and material reality. The post was written quickly and covered a lot of territory, so it is not surprising that some clarification is in order. The planned topics will be back - cultural inversions and the occult are on deck. It's just that one of the rewards of creating the Band is having a venue for tackling interesting things when they occur, and the entropic-Satanic-globalist homology has been hard to stop thinking about since it came up last week. And it is relevant to Postmodern inversion. So lets try and clean up the relationship between math, empirical experience and the limits of discernment in a finite fallen world.
Douglas Sandquist, Star Concert
Put simply, the world of our experience is blurry and bound by finite limits of discernment, while math contains notions of true infinity and absolute precision that simply are not empirically evident. This gap is where the limits of discernment become apparent. To clarify this, we need to go back to the basics.
Douglas Sandquist, Star Concert
Put simply, the world of our experience is blurry and bound by finite limits of discernment, while math contains notions of true infinity and absolute precision that simply are not empirically evident. This gap is where the limits of discernment become apparent. To clarify this, we need to go back to the basics.
It can be important to state things as clearly as possible, because so much deception is based on verbal wizardry. Convoluted nonsense is mistaken for profound because it is difficult to understand, but the reality is that the most complex truths, if true, are consistent on the level of basic facts. If your elegant equation assumes 1 + 1 = 3, it is wrong, no matter how intricate the following reasoning.
Joseph Jarrow, Poster for The Queen of Chinatown, Library of Congress
If the foundation isn't sound, the bottom falls out.
Absolute precision of sign and signified is impossible. This is obvious when you think about it. There are no systems of representation that are literally the same as the thing that they represent. Representing is an act of translation in that it is translating a direct "experience" into an allegorical form. This is done in order to communicate - to move or translate something known internally into the world outside of the self.
The early semiotic posts looked at Peirce's three part notion of signs. The value isn't whether he's correct in all detail, but in showing that what is being communicated isn't an object in itself, but a speaker's perception and/or thoughts about it.
The subject of the representation is based on personal experience. Your perceptions and thoughts are clear to you, whether right or wrong factually. You know what you want to communicate because it is your idea. Representation comes in when you want to share it with another person - translate the clear mental picture into a form that others can translate it back into their own mental pictures. The quality of the communication is based on how accurate the information transfers are, although this can't be measured precisely. Because of this, languages and other types of representation tend to evolve organically over time.
Speech, words, numbers, pictures are all ways of communicating internal thoughts to an external audience. To make it really simple - the words and pictures that you're reading right now are not the same thing as either the thoughts they convey or the experiences that shaped those thoughts.
This what the Band means by allegorical. All our interactions are done through systems of representation - allegories standing in for something that cannot be transmitted directly. Even the meaning or significance of shared experiences are interpreted differently. So on some level, we are always working through allegories. When people refer to the movies in our heads, this is what they are getting at. This means that there is always a difference or a space between what we are saying and what we are thinking.
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965, MOMA, New York
Kosuth captures the idea of translating forms of representation. His take is explicitly Neoplatonic, with contrasting levels of reality in the chair, the picture of the chair, and the definition of "chair". But it also illustrates the difference between perception and verbal and visual representation. Of course, this is a picture converted to digital information...
Some conceptual art is quite good. The problem is that legitimately interesting ideas are in short supply in the art world.
The "philosophy" of deconstruction fixates on this difference and declares that it makes meaning impossible. The problem is that it left out a qualifier that inverted the meaning. It should declare that it makes complete meaning impossible. The act of translation moves clear inner knowledge into a transmissible form. This means that some information is transmitted, just not all of it. Communication doesn't require the perfect reliving of someone's thoughts - it just requires that the representation conform with the thing it represents in some aspect.
If I tell you that the sky was a deep blue, you don't know the exact color I'm picturing, but you do have a narrowed range to focus on.
You know it wasn't Carolina blue.
Representation is cumulative - we can add description, show more angles, make more analogies, etc. to bring the representation closer to a truthful recreation of the subject, but is can never be the same thing.
This is without mentioning the internal processes of translating sensory data into thought. As blurry as the above description is, the reality is far blurrier. But then, perfect communication is impossible.
This is expressed in Biblical allegory as seeing through a glass darkly. This mode of communication uses figural language - word pictures with double or multiple references - to trigger the reader to think of something that can't be adequately communicated literally. The dark glass of the representation blurs perception, letting you "see" some aspect of the truth without getting the perfect experience. St. Paul was using it to refer to knowledge of divinity, but it is a good metaphor for the blurry revelations of representation in general. The specific quote and picture from an early post:
The reality of life in our experiential world is that representation is necessary for communication, but representation IS by nature transformation.
This means that imperfection - the difference between the representation and the thing - is inherent in communication.
This doesn't make communication meaningless but it does make it incomplete. To compensate, we've developed many forms of representation, each with physical properties that suit specific kinds of information.
A picture is the clearest way to let you know the exact color.
Numbers are the clearest way to let you know the dimensions.
Words are the best way to let you how to care for it.
The point is that we communicate through allegorical systems with different core properties. Which brings us to the Fallen/Finite comparison from the last post.
Finite and Fallen are are based in different systems of representation or allegory: mathematics and figural language.
Finite becomes apparent in the gap between the abstract precision of mathematical models and the messiness of empirical observation. Fallen uses verbal allusions to a condition that cannot be perceived in itself.
The Finite world appears when mathematics makes us aware of a materially unreal order that is not present in our empirical experience of reality. Put another way: the absolute purity of mathematical truths become the background against which the finite nature of human discernment becomes apparent.
Fabrizio Troiani, Backlit Leaves, 2013, photograph
Mathematical precision makes the imprecise nature of human discernment clear relationally. Empirical observation cannot match the crystalline perfection of quantitative abstraction.
This is clear to anyone who took basic sciences in school...
The basic rules of Newtonian physics are taught with ideal, meaning unreal, constructs like perfect vacuums and frictionless surfaces. This allows students to learn the principles in isolation - literally abstracted - from the messy complications that render the perfect mathematical relationships unclear in the world of experience.
Contrast this with starting laboratory science and the introduction of uncertainty. From the first dispute with a lab partner over reading the meniscus to the sensitivity limits on the most sophisticated instruments, it is obvious that the mathematical abstraction of theory and imperfect empirical observation are different.
The Finite world is revealed because
it does not measure up to the infinite
precision of mathematical allegory.
The Fallen nature appears when we perceive deeper or immaterial truth within the narration of human experiences in that limited empirical world.
Emil Keyser (1846-1923), Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, oil on canvas
Theft, guilt, and deception in one very expressive picture.
Figural allegory is a way of representing something that lies behind what we can perceive directly. The Satanic self-deification of Postmodern moral relativism is apparent all around us, but the examples seem to be individualized and disconnected. Figurative language lets us see the larger pattern that the different incidents express.
The Fallen world is revealed when
the absolute is alluded to in the limited
precision of linguistic allegory.
One indicates something missing. The other uses what we have. The allegories start on opposite ends but signify the same condition.
As modes of representation, math and language are systematic because they combine vocabulary and syntax to make more complex expressions. Both start with descriptive signs - words and numbers - with rules that let you put them together in ways that others can read. If you understand the complete system, you can communicate very abstract and speculative concepts with considerable accuracy. But they do so differently.
Mathematical, verbal, and visual allegories for a cone.
Making a comparison between different systems means looking at how each communicates, including what kind of information is being transmitted. The abstract quantification of mathematics and impressionistic qualities of figural language describe different aspects of the external world in different ways.
Mathematics differs from language in how it describes. It begins with quantification - exact objective counts - a form of information that is perfectly precise and transparent. This foundation gives mathematics an internally pure truth value that qualitative descriptions lack.
There are precisely five crystals here, no more, no less. Take one away and there will be exactly four, every time. There is no gray area - the sentence is either objectively, logically correct or it isn't.
But the foundation also limits - the count doesn't tell us how the crystals feel.
Math is a descriptive abstraction,
not a descriptive copy or simulacrum. At the most basic level it is “quantity”
without substance. This gives it a precision that is perfectly transparent and replicable. As a "language", its syntax is refined, extrapolated symbolic logic, meaning that no matter how complex it
becomes, each step is logically, self-evidently truthful. It is this quality that makes mathematical notation a problem for the deconstructive assumptions of Postmodernism.
It's also what allows the invariant consistency of math blow out weak inferences. The last post mentioned how the end of the Enlightenment eternal universe model created temporal problems for some presumed "natural" processes. With infinite time, all probabilities transpire at some point. In a finite temporality, timing becomes a physical constraint. This is the problem facing evolutionary biology: not enough time to fix mutations across the species.
It's also what allows the invariant consistency of math blow out weak inferences. The last post mentioned how the end of the Enlightenment eternal universe model created temporal problems for some presumed "natural" processes. With infinite time, all probabilities transpire at some point. In a finite temporality, timing becomes a physical constraint. This is the problem facing evolutionary biology: not enough time to fix mutations across the species.
Digital imagery is interesting because it is built on a mathematical logic, but the source code and and the image we see are not the same experience. The image is translated into numbers, transmitted, then translated back by another device into an on-screen picture.
Digital mediation differs from analog in that the perfect precision and reproducibility of quantitative communication enables limitless exact reproductions.
Converting binary strings into words or pictures is a translation between modes of representation. They are experientially different ways of signifying the same thing.
Mathematical communication is translation into a form of representation - it is allegorical in the broad way that we have been using the word in that it signifies something other than the numbers themselves. The sentences, whether digital code or complex equations mean something - they carry information content with signs organized in a logically syntactic way that others can "read". This is a roundabout way of pointing out the obvious fact that truth expressed mathematically is different from truth experienced empirically. They can express the same thing, but one is allegorically mediated through a system of representation and the other is experiential.
You can experience the difference:
Mathematical knowledge differs most sharply from empirical observation in the same way it differs from verbal language - the perfect internal precision of quantitative allegory vs. the inherent subjectivity and imprecision of a qualitative one. Abstracting quantity from substance frees mathematics from the material limits of finite reality.
Abstraction isn't material reality - empirical observation confirms that perfect precision is not found in the world of experience. This means that the internal consistency of math allows it to create logically sound constructs that are materially unreal. In simple terms, we have entire sets of imaginary unreal numbers that “exist” mathematically but not in material reality.
There is an extant concept of periodic infinity in math that is not extant in the empirical world.
This means that the limitless nature of math as an abstract sign system diverges from the finite nature of our material universe.
In the last post, we referred to the Finite world of experience as a limit of discernment. This was the point of the pattern we pointed out where the more we stretch the scope of our information-gathering range, the further we seem from ultimate understanding.
Mathematics convert observations into precise quantitative allegories that provide a universally consistent descriptive model. But math's perfection is internal - it comes from its foundation in immaterial quantities and symbolic logic. It is not binding on the material world. If correct, mathematical models can be predictive, but predictive value is what determines their applicability the material world. When new instruments reveal new empirical anomalies, the internal perfection of the model no longer conforms to our observations, meaning a new, more complex models are needed.
To come back to the last post, the "limits of discernment" don’t apply to mathematics qua mathematics. Math is conceptually
limitless with absolute quantities, infinite extensions, and unreal numbers - the only constraints are the rules of logic and the creativity of the mathematician.
This is confused by modern Science!, which has morphed into a weird priesthood spewing globalist dogma. The level of mathematical literacy is so poor in so much "research" that the graphs and charts are often little more squid ink to make the preferred narrative seem impressive to other innumerates. The mythology is pure enlightenment inversion:
An empiricist makes actual observations and concludes that reality is not ultimately rational in a way that human minds can fully grasp. Mathematics are capable of absolute precision. Reality isn't.
He is therefore unsurprised when the models prove inconclusive or dead wrong...
He is therefore unsurprised when the models prove inconclusive or dead wrong...
...as was the case with hot earth conspiracy theory. Here is some data compiled by Howard Hayden comparing 73 climate models (mean in solid black) with satellite and weather balloon measurements. The red arrows show IPCC language and the associated degree of certainty about their modeling.
As the data and the models diverge, the stated certainty increases. This is Science!
Of course, the empirical reality may point somewhere else:
Oh look - the aristocracy! It is very convenient for a fake crisis to be ginned up and rushed into policy that re-monetizes vast land holdings while virtue-signaling with a floodlight.
As the data and the models diverge, the stated certainty increases. This is Science!
Of course, the empirical reality may point somewhere else:
Oh look - the aristocracy! It is very convenient for a fake crisis to be ginned up and rushed into policy that re-monetizes vast land holdings while virtue-signaling with a floodlight.
In cosmology, the priests and wizards can change their allegories just as abruptly as the climate illusionists. But they are also working at the outer limits of discernment, with frees them from the burden of having to accommodate readily-available data. Out here, if new information invalidates the latest model, the priests can conjure phantasms to account for the discrepancy. "Dark" matter and energy are rhetorically-named postulates that were wished into discourse to explain why the data wasn't conforming to the models.
Dark matter had the potential to save the oscillating universe and resurrect the Enlightenment dream of a naturally-occuring eternal perpetual motion machine. All that was needed to stop the expansion and pull things back together was to assume that the vast majority of the universe was made up of an unclassifiable substance that exerts gravitational pull but offers no trace of its existence.
It is enough to point out that none of the predicted dark matter tells showed up in the Large Hadron Collider. Made up things not being real means moving onto a new hypothesis in the Scientific Method, but for Science! is is a sign that we're on the right track.
It is enough to point out that none of the predicted dark matter tells showed up in the Large Hadron Collider. Made up things not being real means moving onto a new hypothesis in the Scientific Method, but for Science! is is a sign that we're on the right track.
The Hubble revelation that universal expansion appears to be accelerating didn't help. But the priests conjured dark energy - dark matter's evil twin - to account for this unexpected twist. Dark energy also has no detectable properties other than what is needed to save the model, and has proven equally real empirically.
One benefit of the dark brotherhood was to reduce positive or visible matter and energy to under 5% of the universe. A consistent pattern in post-Enlightenment Science! is degrading the dignity of humanity "natural" mechanistic processes that never bear up under enhanced discernment. They love pointing out that we are animals on an insignificant mote on the edge of an unremarbable galaxy speeding through an entropic void. Now even all that is trivial compared to the true, invisible nature of the universe.
There's just one problem:
When the evidence no-shows, the outcome resembles the faulty foundation. Opposite direction, same result.
Absolute precision of sign and signified is impossible. This is obvious when you think about it. The sloppiness of the model should have been the first clue:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/darkmatter.html
https://www.newsonia.com/reader/report/dark-matter-and-dark-energy-do-they-really-exist/
https://physicsforme.com/category/dark-matter/
https://earthsky.org/space/does-dark-matter-exist-in-our-own-solar-neighborhood
https://brownspaceman.com/what-is-dark-matter-and-how-much-is-in-the-milky-way/
These numerologists may f@#$in' love science, but they couldn't even settle on the same percentage distributions. 'On a scale of 1-100" isn't exactly taxing the limits of mathematical precision. Apparently the love went unrequited.
Math is predicated on logical exactitude, so if there are no errors in the mathematical model and the empirical results don't match the model, than the model fails as an allegory for empirical reality no matter how perfectly internally coherent. Not because it is incorrect, but because empirical reality doesn't meet a mathematical standard of abstract perfection.
The
pattern? The empirical universe is illusory and unclear when contrasted with the absolute logic of math
Plato was insightful when he placed mathematical entities on a higher ontological level than material reality, in-between the world of appearances and the ultimate reality of the Forms. He recognized that their abstract nature allowed them a purer truth than the things we see.
Returning to our Kosuth piece, we see interior forms of reality - a text, a black and white photo, a material object - in an ontological progression from least real (the text) to most real (the chair). This recalls Plato's use of familiar things as allegories of higher states that can't be seen directly.
the description : the picture : the chair
as
the chair : mathematics : the Forms.
Music was prized for the mathematical precision of its harmonic foundations. The perfection of the harmonic scale enables the creation of immaterial beauty "beyond" human experience. This also linked it to dangerous passions, but the connection between math and music as vehicles for higher truths goes back at least to Pythagoras.
The fact that Pythagorean harmonies didn't perfectly define the heavens isn't a knock on the math. It was just an early sign that the empirical world doesn't conform to the absolute precision of qualitative allegory.
If the last post was unclear, it should be apparent that the Fallen/Finite connection does not impose a limit of discernment on mathematical allegory - that is infinite in precision and scope. It is actually the gulf between math and empirical experience in the material that reveals the limit to discernment that appears to be inherent in material reality. Without mathematical perfection to serve as a contrast, the finitude would be less apparent.
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